Dear reader,
I have not been entirely open with you. This year split me open in ways I did not choose. My mother died of dementia nine months ago, and it was not the soft landing some people describe. It was a five-year unraveling. A vibrant woman losing language. Losing concepts. Losing the keys. Losing the thread of her own reality. Hallucinations. Falls. A fractured pelvis. The slow surrender of mobility. Facility to facility. And through it all, my dad loving her so fiercely he overextended himself in ways only a devoted spouse can.
She and I had a very complicated relationship. Which means grief has been… layered. Relief. Rage. Numbness. Exhaustion. Life on autopilot. And lately, out of nowhere, loss. The loss of the person. The loss of a relationship I hoped for – the loss beneath the loss. Losing a mother, the person who carried your beginning and ushered you into life, unmoors you in ways you never expect.
The closest metaphor I have for my grief is an underground river. Some days it’s a roaring rapid carving its own path through my chest. Other days it winds softly through a canyon I can barely perceive. Some days it is a dry riverbed, cracked like the Rio Grande that cuts through my home state. On those days, grief becomes a kind of stillness – not absence, just quiet.
Grief is part of being human.
No one gets a hall pass.
While that sounds sobering, it is also strangely grounding because it means we are not alone in it.
Not ever.
My therapist offered a reminder I now hold close. Grief has its own timing. Sometimes it hits with a force that feels physical. Other times it drifts into the subconscious where it moves without our awareness. Both are allowed; both are precious.
If you are in your own season of loss, the invitation I extend is do not rush it.
Sit with it when you can. Notice what it is asking of you.
If it feels right, pull up a chair and have a quiet conversation with it.
Let it tell you something you might not have been willing to hear before.
If this Holiday season brings your first celebrations, first mornings, first rituals without the person you love, I honor you.
I see the tenderness of your path.
I wish you steadiness and peace as you move through it in your own time, as well as in your own way.
And if you’re finding your way through grief and could use a witness, let’s talk.