~GRIEF~
My boy will be leaving soon. In a few months he will turn 16 and then, a couple of months later, he will leave Spain and head to another country for boarding school.
My wild, tenacious, incredible boy. My heart is bursting with pride at his achievements and supplying me with never ending tears at the sadness that his departure will bring.
For it’s not just his absence that I grieve. It’s the end of the era. It’s the ending of that immersive childhood life that we shared together for so many years.
This beautiful boy who taught me to be a mother. Leaving. An almost-man, off on his journey of self-discovery, on a quest for knowledge, a desire for new experiences.
And I sit here and allow it all.
The pain that his absence will bring.
The grief of feeling life passing, moving on.
The despair in knowing that aging comes to us all.
The sadness of ending.
The fear that my worry about him will break me.
Pain and grief come in life. It’s automatic. To live incarnated in a human body is to experience the highs and lows of the human incarnation.
It is not wrong to have these feelings. It is not wrong to have any feelings. We have just been taught that these uncomfortable, yukky, unpleasant feelings are bad. And usually we have been taught that we should try and run from them.
And hide.
Feelings that aren’t perceived as positive are usually shunned in our family and friendship groups, and our culture as a whole.
Anger, rage, shame, grief, despair, rejection, vulnerability, jealousy, frustration.
These are repellent emotions. We want to avoid these feelings in others and we want to avoid these feelings in ourselves.
We use all kinds of ways to avoid the difficult feelings.
For me in my life it has been:
Drinking
Food
TV
Gossip
Positive affirmations
Political debate
Over-socialising
I don’t want to feel pain because who wants to feel pain?
But the more we avoid these feelings the bigger they become. Like a monster in our minds hiding in the shadows, always looming, getting bigger and bigger by the day.
They seep out and poison our days. They create a shaky ground on which we walk.
They are a little off stage, making small movements and destabilizing us.
For me this grief of my son leaving has mingled with other wells of grief in my life, bringing back the dark madness-making sadness over our lost little girl; a confusing grief I had as a child when a friend suddenly died; the melancholic grief of losing older family members over the years. The unreality of losing my treasured grandmother two decades ago – how could someone I loved so very much just not be here? Says my heart. My mind says don’t be stupid! People get old and die. But still my heart hurts.
Emotions are not logical.
But they want, yearn, desire – desperately desire – to be HEARD, to be FELT and to be SEEN.
If we do what they desire we have the chance to integrate them, and to be free from the control they exert over us when we ignore them.
If I don’t sit with the emotions I have about my son leaving for boarding school, it starts to affect my relationship with him, and my day to day feeling about life.
I see him through my cloud of emotion, and not for who he really is.
This morning I woke with this sadness lodged in my heart and in my discomfort I said something that he perceived on his beautiful young, fresh face as really quite cruel.
And I felt crushed.
If I don’t sit with my pain and tend to it, love it and allow it all to be there, then I have this vague feeling in my days that something is off, that a looming terror is on the horizon. I feel jumpy and panicked. I feel like I can’t relax.
So I say to my family – I need to just sit alone and cry now.
And that’s what I do. I say – it’s ok Di, just let it all come. I am here, I am here for you, whatever arises.
Up comes the sadness. It moves in waves, sometimes feeling like it will almost be too much for me to handle. And when it feels like it’s too big I say it, this is so big, this is so hard to handle.
And that seems to help. Just admitting how difficult this is for me brings more space and more tenderness as I hold myself in this sadness.
Then comes guilt and anger. Two emotions that are playing together today. Smashing me with guilt over moments of bad mothering, terrible memories where I got it wrong, moments when I just didn’t know any better.
And then this deep, earth shattering feeling of regret: I have run out of years to fix myself for him, I have run out of years to be a better mother.
Fear appears. My trusty friend fear. Fear that takes many many incarnations in my life – and in this it is the fear of my dear, sweet, tender baby venturing out into the scary, awful, terrifying, exploitative, harsh, vast, world. Alone. Without my protection.
Of course, I realise too it is my own protection that I am seeking.
Gradually this pain starts to ebb away. It’s shrinking. The more space I allow it the bigger it grows and then the smaller it becomes.
And suddenly this crushing pain of emotion starts to subside.
I know that for now it has passed because I feel lighter. I feel a turn towards the positive. I smile and I hug myself.
I go into his room and apologize for saying the thing that was mean. And he forgives me and hugs me and I cry unexpectedly.
I hadn’t planned to cry, not wanting to pour my feelings on him. But he doesn’t recoil as he sometimes does. He is strong and he hugs me like the almost fully grown man that he is. He hugs me like he is his own human, ready for the world, strong and solid, not just this tender little boy that I keep hold of in his mind.
In that hug I felt not just his strength but his love for me. His love to protect and support me. To be the man that he is, to transition from my little boy to the strong adult son that he is becoming.
I know there are many many more feelings that will arise as he journeys out of my immediate permanent influence.
But I am not afraid of them. I know that I am strong enough to hold myself and guide myself through it.
I have learnt the tools to hold ALL my emotions. Regardless. And that makes me feel strong and brave.
And once that cloud of dark emotion has integrated I can feel a burst of joy.
I can see him clearly now.
I see the beauty in the adventures he will have, I feel excitement at what he will see and learn and come to know. I feel in awe of him and the focus he has brought to his young life.
I feel free.
I am holding it all – the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows of life.
I am excited and ready for the day.