Say something, I'm giving up on you...

 

When I first heard this song, I cried.  So many of life’s losses, so perfectly captured in one heart-breaking song. 

As I read the comments on the song, one in particular stood out: “No no no,” it read.  “The old man in the video isn’t giving up on his wife.  You would never give up on someone you love.”

If only it were that simple.  It’s not, of course, and that’s the reason this song resonates so deeply.  Giving up on someone you love is exactly what it’s about. It’s about the impossibility of walking away from something you love with all your heart.  It’s about letting go, while frantically wishing you could hold on.  

I can clearly recall the very moment when I gave up on my mom. The cancer, never really gone, had returned in full force to ravage her body.  She was sick, so sick, in terrible pain, and lost in a haze of medication-induced confusion.  Her doctor wanted to know if we would authorize another round of chemo. Despite the sliver of hope the chemo would provide, we all knew what the decision had to be. Our answer was no.

I can still feel the impossibly complicated emotions flooding around me …. fear… despair….relief.   Relief that she would die.  In part, my relief was for her. She would be free again – free of pain and fear and all the restrictions of an earthbound life.  But in part, my relief was for me.  I, too, would be free … of hospitals and sickness and the terrible anxiety that came with watching my mom die while knowing I could not make her better.

And in that terrible moment of letting go, I desperately, wildly wanted her to stay. 

Say something, I’m giving up on you.

You're the one that I love...

And I'm saying good-bye.

Feeling Joy

A couple years ago, I posted about my method for finding joy. A lot has happened between then and now, but I haven't lost sight of this simple goal. And actually, I've gotten pretty good at finding joy, mainly because my life is chock full of a multitude of joys right now: two beautiful,  healthy children who I truly enjoy getting to know as people, a new job in which I thrive and grow and inspire others to do the same, a husband who is still my best friend, and true girlfriends who make me laugh until my side hurts.

When I posted about finding joy, I also mentioned feeling joy.  There are many things I (try to) do to keep perspective so that I can feel all the joy in my life: writing, walking, breathing, reading, and, lately, meditating.  Each of these helps me to find perspective, to slow down and remember to see the beauty that exists among the chaos and monotony of everyday life. 

Still, though, even after going through my joy list, I occasionally find myself lacking. There is something that runs beneath my life and pulls me back from fully leaning in. Something that nibbles at the edges of my joy, urging me to push it down, just a little, lest it be taken away from me.

It's sneaky, though. In fact, it's so subtle, that I didn't even really see it until recently, when I was reading Brene Brown's Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, and Lead.  Brene is part researcher and part storyteller; her research revolves around vulnerability, shame, and courage.  I first came across her work in her T.E.D. talk The Power of Vulnerability. It resonated deeply with me, as has my journey through her book.

In the book, Brene talks about how she will sometimes stand in front of her children, sleeping in their beds, and ponder how amazingly blessed she is. At which point she will immediately and vividly envision some terrible fate arriving at their doorstep, taking it all way.

And I thought: Holy crap. I do that.

Like last night, when I was laying in bed after a wonderfully fulfilling day with my children. I was reflecting on how good life was when I had the sudden realization that, if I got cancer and died right now, my baby girl wouldn't even remember me.  It was such an awful, heart-breaking thought that I had to get out of bed and find something else to do. 

Most of the time, my fear doesn't show up in horrible visions of planes crashing or houses burning or cancer taking lives. It's not like I walk around in the midst of an major meltdown, fending off anxiety attacks left and right (I did when I was pregnant, but that's a whole different story). It's much more subtle than that.  It's more of a backing off, a stepping away, an invisible shield that rises between the life I'm building and my engagement in it.

Brene explains that this method of protection, which she calls "foreboding joy," exists among many of us. And she says it has a whole lot to with vulnerability.  To be lost in a moment of joy is to be vulnerable. Open. Soft. Unprotected. So we unconsciously try to beat life to the punch; we imagine the bad things that could happen as a way of protecting ourselves if they do.

In the end, of course, we can never prevent the bad things from happening.  Instead, we're only preventing ourselves from truly feeling the love that exists within each moment; from fully accessing the joy that is right there in front of us.

Brene's solution? Gratitude. In her book, she talks about how to use gratitude inside those moments when we are trying to access joy but find ourselves facing only fear and impulses to control.  As soon as she feels a "shudder of vulnerability," she uses it as a trigger to acknowledge her gratitude.  In that moment, she turns the fear around by fully acknowledging all for which she is grateful, right there, right then.

I tried this today at the park. It was a gorgeous day and my children, bellies full of ice cream and hearts full of love, were skipping ahead on the path in front of me.  Watching them, I was overcome with the beauty of it all. For a moment.  Then slight feelings of discomfort starting creeping in. I thought of the book. I thought of my life.  And I silently repeated to myself:

I am grateful.

I am grateful.

I am so, so grateful.

And I was.

A Safe Place To Fall

I tried something new at my daughter's gymnastics class this morning. Instead of joining her 3-year-old class on the floor, I stayed back to watch her from a distance.  In previous sessions, I had stayed by her side, guiding her through the motions and encouraging her along the way. This morning, though, felt different. She seemed more confident, more ready to conquer the class on her own. Off she ran, ponytail bouncing, to take on the world.

At one point during the morning, I stood watching her struggle on the balance beam. Even though the beam was no more than two feet off the floor, the fear on her face was clear.  Twice, she fell off, and twice she climbed back on. It took all I had to stay put. I wanted to run and rescue her, to save her from the angst of having to do it all on her own.

As I watched, I realized what an incredible gift it is for us, as parents, to let our children fall. To let them fail.  Because when we learn to tolerate failure, we also learn to push ourselves towards success.  And if we can't tolerate the thought of failure? If we are paralyzed by the fear of falling? Then we don't even climb up onto the beam. 

Then my little girl got stuck.  She reached the end of the beam, and she didn't know what to do. Her little face crumpled and she started to cry.  My mother bear instincts took over and I was at her side in a flash, pulling her into my arms and telling her that she was brave and strong and amazing for having gotten as far as she did. 

Those moments on the beam seemed to capture the careful balancing act that we all maneuver as parents.  The hardest part of parenting isn't the long hours or the laundry or the doctor's visits or the PTA meetings.  Not at all.  The most challenging part of parenting, at least for me, is the constant struggle between stepping up and stepping back; between pushing our children toward independence and giving them the support they need; between letting them fall, and catching them when they do.

There's more though. This dichtomy doesn't just shape my mothering.  It also forms the shadow that is the loss of my own mother. It exists at the very heart of what it's like to live without her here.

On many levels, my life without my mom is so much more than I thought it would be. Losing her was like getting shoved onto that balance beam and left there all alone.  At first, I didn't want to take a step. For a long time, I remained frozen in place. The hand that had always been on the small of my back, guiding me across the beam was suddenly gone. It was terrifying.

When I did take a step, though, what a marvelous step it was. I gained courage and trust in myself. I learned I could wobble, and not fall. I learned I could fall and get back up. Without a safety net, I thrived in ways I could never have imagined. I grew up.  I am who I am because my mother is not here.

But. There is still a little girl inside of me. One who sometimes gets stuck on the end of the beam.  Whose little face crumples and whose arms reach out to be gathered up and swept into that place of love and safety and all things good again. Except it's no longer there.

Don't get me wrong.  I have many people in my life who love me. I am lucky that way.  I have an ever-present source of support and encouragement from the people who believe in me.  I am not without.

Still, there will always be an ache for that which I have lost. In all that comes with losing a mother, the most profound is this: There is no longer a safe place to fall.

"You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
― Anne Lamott