I just posted the longest video I have ever posted of myself out into the ether. Thank you instastories. It was all about the dream I have on my heart. I've been up here tending my grief the last 3 or 4 days, revisiting a course I took with Pixie Lighthorse in 2016 .. Honoring Grief with Owl. It was intense that first round! This was two years ago, before I knew anything about dmd. I grieved hard then and I didn't even know what was coming in the form of pain. So, I decided to tend my grief this week, to revisit. I think it's excellent practice to revisit. As Kirkregard says, in his Kirkregardian way, "Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forward." With all this grief tending (amongst doing all the things, feeding the children, getting then to school, bedtime, etc., while Nate is at Orphan Wisdom School in Canada), there is another side. Turns out, it's celebration.
According to Pixie, grief work isn't so much about the loss, it's more about grieving who we were before, who we wanted to be, who we were when ... When we were unprepared. We had an idea of who we were going to be, before this terrible thing occurred. What do we do with all of it? All the fear, the tension, the pain? We lay it down and give it peace, we honor what we didn't get to be and we live our lives forward.
What comes from tending grief is a celebration of who we, of who I, get to be as a result of dealing with it.
I now get to be someone with a ton of compassion, someone who gets to mother a very fragile human who has a huge heart and a clear and steady light. I get to be flawed and less judgmental. I get to be raw and more vulnerable then I ever thought possible. I get to release control and surrender to this life. I get to start engaging more with life as it really exists. Pixie says grief is an ascending action. It brings things up and out and with that comes release and celebration.
Everynight (for the last 3 years), B and I do a check in . I ask him the same two questions every night (I've tried to change it to, but he insists). I ask, "is there anything I can do better?" and "what are you grateful for?" His answers are always the same. "Be super duper happy" and "you" ..
I'm always honest with him and some days I can only say, I’m committed to trying. But I think his magic is starting to work. Because it has stirred a dream into my heart. I can't give you the details about what it means to be super duper happy, but I can say, there is celebration on the other side of this grief. And that celebration has given me a glimpse into a future, I never thought possible.
There’s more. One of my top strengths #strengthsfinder is Learner. A learner loves to learn and learn and learn ... But what happens when a learner keeps all that learning inside? It stagnates, and dissipates and it's gone. So, my very gentle challenge to myself is to share. To write, to process, to share the lessons on this dream of being super duper happy. That starts now.
Goodnight with Love,
Kat