2018 is slipping away. It ends tomorrow night at midnight. Two of my mother’s oft-uttered phrases repeat often and ring true always: “It all goes by so fast!” (spoken when she was 65, two years younger than I am today, at my father’s side as he crossed over to the other side). And “Time evaporates” – spoken often by Grace when she was in her 80’s. She is with me every day.
I spent my twenties and thirties working hard to prove that I was not like her. In my forties and since, it has become clear that in many ways, I AM her.
Grace and I shared a deep reverence for the natural world – a love for birds, plants and all that lives and breathes upon this planet. We embraced wildness in the world and in ourselves.
I now understand at a deeper level some of the conflicts and regrets Grace may have faced as a result of living out her “wild-woman” persona. She engaged in a life long struggle to overcome her early experiences with a mother for whom “what will other people think?!?!?” was a guiding principle. Grace did care what others thought, but she would never admit it.
I began this piece as a reflection 2018 – what it brought and what it took away. Today, as my thoughts form on the page, however, they all go back to my mother. She left the planet almost 17 years ago. She would have turned 100 in 2017. I think of her daily and miss her frequently. In many ways she was a paradox, because she embodied kindness, acceptance and compassion in her dealings with others. She valued honesty, and was outspoken about many things, and yet held tight to her own innermost feelings and I now realize, her secrets. When it came to her own emotional life, Grace was the queen of denial. “It didn’t bother me a bit” is another of those internalized “Graceisms” that I hear frequently in my head. I suppose this served her well.
Denial was one of my first coping skills. I learned it early from her and employed it to my detriment for many years. For the most part, I have given up on denial. I’ve become much better at identifying “what bothers me” and doing or saying something about it. I still have some distance to go, but I am getting there.
I have come to believe in a kind of emotional and spiritual DNA that connects us with our parents, and other ancestors. I have known since I was in my twenties that my mother, her mother and I are all cut from the same emotional fabric. Our lives and our choices differed in many ways, some due to the times we lived in, and some due to our individual experiences and personalities, but I see a big wide streak of anxiety, fear and depression that runs straight through our lives. To balance that, there is also hope, sensitivity, kindness, humor and a tendency to be overcome by silliness from time to time. These are all ancestral “gifts” I carry from my mother’s line.
I am leaving 2018 with more questions about my origins and history than I have ever had, yet at the same time, with immense gratitude for everything I have survived so far in this life. Rape, alcoholism, infertility and cancer have been my greatest teachers. And this year for the first time ever, I have felt liberated from the weight of all that trauma. Everything I have survived has helped me become who I am now. I hope I can continue into 2019 and beyond with an open heart, humility and the will to keep learning and growing for as long as I am on the planet.