“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
Rumi
I believe that. I’ve been witness to the magic of allowing yourself to believe. Many times over. In fact, those feathers and many more in my collection are just one sign that someone I loved dearly is close by. How precious is that? To know you never lose the ones you love.
Many of us, myself included have experienced Loss and Grief recently. It comes along when you least expect it and grabs your heart and twists it wringing out the tears leaving you raw and open.
As a former RN I believe in the Kubler Ross grief cycle. Not only for the loss of a loved one but for any loss. For those of us with Mast Cell Disease, Cancer, EDS, any type of debilitating illness or injury. Your life changes and with that..you experience loss of many kinds.
We all experience grief in our own way. It may come in waves and toss us around like tiny birds on an angry ocean. Or perhaps it sits there, hidden until something triggers it and then it grabs our mind and heart squeezing until the tears are forced out.
According to Keubler Ross the five stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally acceptance. Not in any particular order, perhaps jumping back and forth for however long it takes to get to acceptance and peace.
As a Buddhist I believe in Death and Impermanence of Life. It’s part of the natural part of life, however, death is not the end of life. It’s merely the end of the body we inhabit in this life. Our spirit remains and seeks out new life.
When we come to the last moment of this lifetime,and we look back across it, the only thing that’s going to matter is,
“What was the quality of our Love?”
Richard Bach
As adoptees we arrive in this world already burdened with the unbearable loss of our mother. We spend our lives in a place of darkness and sorrow, sometimes not even recognizing the depth of pain we carry.
It doesn’t matter that you understood that your mother was unable to raise you or she thought she was doing what was best for you, or perhaps too young and under pressure.
IT DOES NOT MATTER.
She let go. The whole family let go. They all let go.
“They” will never understand. “They” were never let go.
It becomes a family of pain. My Mother shut down. She carried “the secret” inside her tortured heart for years. My heart goes out to her. The pain must have been unbearable. I felt it the moment I gave birth to my daughter 36yrs ago. I looked in her eyes and immediately felt my Mothers pain.
Adoptees never completely heal. Neither do their Mothers. After search and reunion even if it goes badly we at least have the potential for growth. We have a chance to move from the traumatized self to the revitalized and transformed self.
Tomorrow is my Mother’s birthday, five days before mine. She died a short 9 months after I moved across Canada to get to know her. I found my Mother and Lost her all in the same breath. I was so filled with grief and pain from the first loss and the loss at her death my Mast Cells took over my body and sent me into the mast cell abyss from Hell.
Her family will grieve for her. They will reminisce with each other of the memories that holds them together as a family. I will grieve for the loss of what could have been. For the loss of heritage, genetic markers, memories that bind, love that stays, family that never was. It never goes away, this grief.
To all of us in the past weeks that have experienced loss,
I dedicate this blog to you and those we have lost.
Look around you…notice the small things..the wind blowing softly past your ear. The butterfly sitting on a flower. The soft rain hitting window panes. The brilliant red leaf as it flutters slowly from the tree.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE
NAMASTE