I woke early last Friday morning. I wake up early most mornings these days; my mind starts turning on around 6 or 7 every morning, no matter how tired my grieving body feels. But on that particular day I woke early and felt energy in my body, actual energy.
I felt I needed to spend some time in the woods, something that always nourishes me but that I haven’t felt up for doing even once during this long, impossible month. I pulled some affirming cards and continued to follow the flow of my energy and I was out in the morning air before 9, feeling really aligned, really with what I know as spirit.
I wandered through the woods and sat in the sun and left some offerings in gratitude and I felt so open, so present to being fully there and being in relationship with all of the life around me. There was such an ease to all the moves I was making, including when to leave and walk home, and the decision to go visit Dad on my way back.
In each one of those moments I felt very with Mom, supported by her fully. I felt her with me as I feel her most of the time now: as a warmth around my heart, a protective wrap that makes me feel safe and loved and held at the core of my being.
And.
And.
When I stopped by to visit, Dad reminded me (gently, just as a point of remembering) that in life, Mom always worried about me going to the woods by myself. She always worried for me any time I went any place by myself, even to spend the kind of alone time in nature that feeds me so much. She knew I needed it and didn’t try to stop me but she worried and loved me through it but worried and worried.
In remembering that worry I felt the contradiction land in me.
I felt myself wanting, needing to trust that her energy is supporting me now because the part of her I’m feeling most is how constantly she loved me through the worry. I felt myself wanting to trust that death softens people and she doesn’t have the same fear anymore, that she relates to my decisions differently now, as an ancestor.
And.
Trusting what I feel and know through its contradictions is such huge work. The contradictions, the impossibility of full knowing, the impossibility of all of it feels like a weight pulling so much of my attention.
And.
I’m finding that that’s true of all of it, anyway.
Every part of this is weighing on me and demanding all of my attention. I don’t know if ‘figuring it out’ is any kind of goal, but I know I need to keep being with it, I need to be in every part of this all-consuming, deeply scary thing that I’m doing right now.
–
On Sunday, I told my therapist this story and she reflected back to me so much of what I knew and really wanted to trust: that people, who are spirit and are infinite but who experience life in bodies and are shaped by the world and their experiences while in those bodies, can expand in death. The contractions they knew in life (the pain and loss my mom knew, the way that manifested into fear for us, our physical bodies, so much of the time) can loosen, after. Their contractions can loosen because they’re in the infinite now, and if they are well in spirit (Mom is definitely well in spirit, I know that with my whole being), they can love and support us in the infinite, without the limits their physical life gave them.
I received this reflection and told my therapist that I believe that completely, that I trust its truth with my body if not always with my mind — and that it also scares me.
Every part of this scares me. The fact that I’m now trying to make sense of who my mom is in and after her death is so deeply scary, that even the parts of the process that feel good, that feel like connecting to and trusting her pure love as an ancestor and feeling supported by it, scare me. It all does.
–
There is no answer to this, no neat resolution. There is only being in each moment, with each feeling. There is only being with energy and spirit when it comes to me early in the morning and calls me to be in the woods, there is only being with the truth of the warm presence I feel around my heart, and there is only being with the contradictions and fear my mind pulls me into alongside each feeling.
There is simply being, and noticing each part of that being.