Grieve Like A Badass

It is with a heavy heart that brings me to Facebook once again to announce the passing of one of my own. Sometimes our lives take strange, winding roads.  Sometimes, we find ourselves in places we never imagined in our wildest of dreams.  Sometimes, life takes our breath away for wonderful reasons and sometimes for horrible reasons.  Sometimes, we feel as though life is cruising in the sunshine and sometimes it feels as though the torrent is unrelenting.  Sometimes, we turn a corner to find unexpected horror and sometimes unexpected beauty.  

Today's  message is this:

Magic

Still

Exists

In 

The

World

Just like life can change in a moment for the worse, so it can with good.  You never know what awaits you in the next moment. If you choose to find it, if you choose to seek it, if you choose to change the way you see yourself and others, if you choose to…you will find magic.  It’s everywhere.  Little geocaches carefully placed by a loving Heavenly Father to keep hope and awe and wonder alive in a world that wants you to feel dark. 

A wise widow friend once told me…”Grief has it’s demands and it will get them one way or another.”  Over time I have added upon that wisdom.  “You can either hand over the price we must all pay willingly, or you can withhold the price and it will be withdrawn from your soul by force.”

As soon as my eyes opened, confusion descended.  It was Easter morning 3 years ago. Where was I?  It took a good 3 seconds for my brain to start firing the horrors of the night before.  The realization that Kaden was in a morgue this morning slammed into my chest like a hammer on an anvil.  My heart was flattened beneath the two and drained of blood.  My mind twisted with pain as last night came flooding back, in all it’s horror.

Sometimes life feels like we are in a boxing ring.  Sometimes it’s just downright a freaking dog fight. Hopefully, that’s not how it is all the time for us but sometimes, it definitely can feel this way.  I have found myself in the ring MANY times at this point, more than I can count and more than I’d like to admit to.  I think there are many of us that are in a ring and don’t even understand who our opponent is, what it is that we are even rumbling with.  For the majority of the time I spent in the ring of life, needing to fight my way onto sunnier paths, I have not known who or what my opponent really was.  I’m in a ring, shuffling back and forth, swinging at shadows and ghosts.  All my efforts doing nothing for me, because I can’t land a punch to anything other than air.  So much anger and frustration and exhaustion and grief.  Shadows and ghosts, shadows and ghosts. 

I’ve come to believe that we all wear masks, some are just thicker than others.  Some of us have figured out how to make our masks razor thin.  Some have huge, hefty, thick masks and their bodies/hearts/minds are bent under the weight of them.  Some live in the in between. 

I told my 13 year old I was doing 10 posts leading up to Kaden’s death date with all the most powerful lessons learned along the way.  I asked for her teenage wisdom, what she thought her most powerful lesson learned has been.  Without even thinking she said this: “You never know who is hurting, so freaking be nice”.  I decided to tackle that one tonight.  She is so right.

We all have a fire inside of us.  For some the fire is just glowing embers and some have raging infernos.  I’ve had both and everything in between.   The fuel for our fires are different for everyone.  They can consist of logs of abandonment and abuse,  wood of highly conditional love and criticism, kindling of loss and trauma.  These things feed the fire and it grows.  If we aren’t tending to the the blaze it is likely to get out of control.  We must all become “tenders of our fire”

Day 8 of 10 day countdown writings of last year leading up to Kaden's death date anniversary.  

"The lesson I’ve taken from these experiences is this: We all die before we really die.  Versions of us die.  We must evolve.  We must change.  We must pick up from ashes and create something new.  The reality is that when I visit the grave of my husband and son, side by side on a green hill above the city….I visit the grave of myself also."

Day 9 of the 10 Day Countdown to Kaden's Death Date Anniversary.  Today I talk about the Gift of Perspective.