Yesterday would have been my mom’s birthday. It’s celebrated on the calendar as Mom <3
I’m no longer tormented, but there’s a buzz of her there in the background a little more prominent than the daily.
For the longest time, I couldn’t even commune with her. She felt impossibly far and unreal. When I started studying and playing with energy, receiving powerful activations, I built a bridge I can now traverse at any time.
Grief didn't disappear. It softened into relationship.
It’s an invitation to relax the shoulders, let down my guard, soften, let myself be held instead of the habitual stance of holding it all up.
Inherent in any of our habits of trying to hold it all is the idea that we are holding it all… alone.
It’s the fuzzy interference like the old school TV signals at night. Starry. Gritty. Static. It’s the kind of background buzz that drowns out sensitivity.
The numbing hum is most present in the hardening.
A hardening that leads to rushing, which leads to gritting, bearing, and forcing.
It’s not flow, as there is nothing fluid about the brute, clenched jaw.
The clenched jaw is symptomatic of a clenched sacral and root—swadhisthana and muladhara.
It’s where our creativity and fertile birthing power reside. In this realm, the fleshy realm of body and bone. Receptivity and pleasure. Stability and power.
To birth anything, we must trust that we are held, to surrender open to the current of almighty Love.
To construct the bridge to our loved ones no longer with us, we must be open to receive them. The open arms of forgiveness rather than the crossed arms of accusatory abandonment, harumph.
What if we let ourselves be hurt open?
It’s tender to miss someone and communicate with them from the other side.
Being willing to experience the full spectrum of our pain is what softens us enough to cross, build, or even see the bridge that’s there.
Sometimes I think the symbol of the cross isn’t just that of human and divine converging at the heartspace, but also the willingness and divine permission to cross over and converge at all.
My mom. How she held me when she could. “Give it all to me,” she’d squeeze me in my saddest moments, until she couldn’t.
(In my memory, what I see in this moment, is that I was such a sad and thoughtful kid—an expanse of inner world. [You can see it in my birth chart, born into Saturn Dasha, Saturn in my 12th house, Pisces moon in the house of relationships, Virgo rising, Mercury in Aires in the house of the occult and kundalini, Jupiter and Venus in Gemini.] It makes me wonder if my kids are as sad as me. They don’t seem it, but there is so much awareness and depth of inner life we don’t have access to in another.)
My mom. She’s been waxing in presence the last couple weeks, like the moon.
Running with a gym friend who gets regular immunotherapy treatments after stage 4 cancer. She’s thinking about how we should all wear pink shorts for the competition we are training for. I like the idea and share that my mom died when I was 14 after being sick for a few years.
It’s a fact of my formation I don’t mind sharing. Because a hardening’s grown around the share, like a fact that you can distance yourself from.
A fact, like Mom had blue eyes and dark hair—dark like my daughter’s hair.
Facts keep the feeling at bay. I can share from the mind without the heart-tears welling. But of course I miss my mom. Why wouldn’t I. Of course I do, and I’m allowed to.
I built a shield rather than a bridge.
The fact of the matter is, that I felt so disallowed as a child to feel that ache, I built a shield rather than a bridge.
The sudden brief burst of compassion and utter understanding that came from my running friend, shuddered through me as we ran—warm and sweet and simple.
That was Mom. Sometimes we forget how our loved ones speak to us. It’s a many-layered life, where my friend can speak and also convey so instantly, honestly, and unknowingly the love of a mother.
A couple of days ago, I got into a conversation with a student about our daughters. She shared how she knows her (now grown) daughter was sent here as her angel, and I shared how I often I have realized my daughter contains the spirit of my mama.
“We are so blessed,” she said as we hugged. Mama.
Yesterday, my oldest came home early. I’d had the house to myself with all my house-to-myself plans. I put the plans away and asked if he wanted to play a game.
“Sure, what game?”
I went to the game closet thinking about something that’s a just-us sorta game. Scrabble!
He agreed and continued all the way to the end, even though he said he wasn’t having any fun feeling slaughtered, and didn’t even give up when he wasn’t allowed to play ‘fuckit.’
I told him he did great. To improve you have to keep playing; it’s like going to the gym and getting stronger. He disagreed. It is not like going to the gym at all, Mom.
“You should have played with my Grandma or my Mom. They were word wizards, just like you. It’s a good skill to have. It’s my mom’s birthday today, so thanks for playing this with me. It reminds me of her.”
When I selected Scrabble, I didn’t remember that it was Mom’s birthday.
That was Mom. Giving me special one on one time with my uber busy 15 year old.
The buzz, the bridge, the tenderness. The way to commune, communicate, and be in community with your loved ones in body now or otherwise is to soften the edges and let down your guard.
Putting the guard up is a safety mechanism. But safe is overrated and damp. We want to savor this short life, experience passion, joie de vivre, full expression.
Now’s a beautiful moment to slow everything down to experience living at all.
When the experience of time slows through your presence, you still get things done. But instead of grinding through your moments like a distasteful punishment, you get to be lit up and radiant by it.
If you have a loved one you want to reconnect with, start with talking to them. Say hi. I miss you. I love you. Thanks for being there. I want to reconnect with you, but maybe I don’t know if I know how. Can you show me.
Let yourself shed tears. Soften into the tenderness of being held.
Let go of the white knuckling holding it all up, holding it all together.
Listen and trust your ability to listen. Trust how presence flows through you—words, visions, inner knowing, feeling sense.
Listen in openness, a soft focus, rather than hardening.
Trust the timing. The messages or presence may arrive instantly or in days, a loving inner voice, a scent on the wind, a feather found, bald eagle’s call, a memory, dream, song, repeated numbers, conversation, synchronicities.
Love,
Heather