I want to try to capture what is stirring deep within me tonight. These feelings seem so paradoxical yet tonight they are harmoniously bringing healing.
A couple weeks ago I realized that I was feeling mothered by a woman who recently entered my life. Though I wrestled with some fear because of being hurt so many times in the past, I gratefully let her mothering settle in and fill me.
The past week or two I have been thinking about a woman who became like a mother to my husband and I, back in the city we left nine months ago. I smile as I recall the light and joy she brought to our lives each week and on special holidays. I texted her to let her know I was thinking of her and miss her. I smile at the memories and let her love reach us from afar.
I recall the other mothers in my life - my stepmom, my mother-in-law, and my sponsor - all of whom I can recall their affections and warmth. And then I recall Michelle...and I feel the grief begin to rise, sharp and hot, piercing through my chest. But it is because of something so good that left me wanting more, and I recall with gratitude how I learned to feel SECURE in her love, even as her presence waned and was taken by cancer. She made it safe for me to bond again.
As all these feelings of gratitude settle in, it begins to displace the decades of aching and longing, and the grief rises to the surface and trickles out...but unlike many tears before, I welcome these because I know they are being replaced with that for which I have longed. So I release them, and with them the emptiness that plagued me for so long. Usually I hate Mother's Day because it just reminds me of my soul's deep void. But tonight I have some hope that this next Mother's Day could be a warm and grateful day as I allow the love from all these women to continue to fill my canyons of loss, pain and grief.
I am grateful for the grieving, for it is making room.
