Sometimes I feel like a weather balloon, barely tethered to the earth by a string.
Sometimes I’m standing on my tip-toes in chin-deep water, and any small wave will suck me under.
All the time, there’s a ball of hot sadness that sits in my chest, ready to crack open at any minute.
I am not the same person I used to be.
I am rearranged on a cellular level.
I think there was a bit of a break, a time when it wasn’t quite so much like dragging an elephant through the desert. (That’s when I had the emotional energy to write my boundaries course and set it in motion.)
But around the nine-month mark, I started hearing myself saying, “This is long enough. I can’t do this any more.”
Like my body has a certain grief gestation period, and then something’s gotta give.
Only it doesn’t give. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t end. It just keeps going.
Last week, in anticipation of Mother’s Day, I was just waiting to go back to sleep all week long. I got up, I worked in the morning, I slept all afternoon. I got up in the evening, I made dinner, I went back to bed.
My dear friend and grief guru, Jeanne, told me that we just keep going forward.
Whatever stage of grief we’re in, it’s going to pass. We just keep moving forward.
On Mother’s Day, I planted flowers.
That’s the only way forward I could find that day.
Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, whose son died this year, posted this bracelet that she received from a friend.
I find it inspirational.
They come in helpful multipacks.
