Grieve Like A Badass

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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”

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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."

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

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Hi guys.  Today is going to be the first episode in a 10 day countdown I did last year, leading up to the anniversary of my son’s death.  PS - if you’ve lost someone, what do you call that date?  I’ve heard it called a couple of things like graduation, angelversary, death date... .  If you have a good one, leave it in the comments on socials, I’ll put a link in the show notes.  Anyway, that year it felt important to me for some reason to force myself to put some clarity around what the hell I’ve gotten out of this wild ride, with death riding shotgun.  So, every Sunday for the next 10 weeks, I’ll be releasing my crazy, rad, horrible,  lessons from last year’s endeavor. .  So, without further ado, this was my first post in the countdown.  

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Loss is not just death, not by a long shot.  There are sooooo many things to grieve, so many things to lose, so many things we wanted, so many things we loved.  Get to work learning the skill of grieving because you will need it over and over throughout your life.  This can be learned!  Because we all have a helluva lot to Grieve, y'all.  You open up more room in your life to live the good stuff when the loss has somewhere to be laid down.