The Prayer
I had grand visions of writing about thankfulness, gratitude and abundance during this season. I kept trying to force myself to sit down and write something beautiful about my life and how amazing it is and how #blessed I am to be alive and surrounded by such amazing people. But every time I started, I felt sick. I felt fake. I couldn’t bring myself to type the words. Because while I am all of those things, there has been a much bigger, much darker prevailing feeling over me during the months of October and November.
It took a minute to identify what it was. I grappled and tried to manipulate it, find a higher better feeling than what I was feeling, but still, I was left with this looming sense of darkness right in the middle of my chest. It took exactly four weeks to identify this very old, very familiar feeling. This thing I wanted out of me but couldn’t part with for the life of me. And finally, as I was driving and talking to my mom, it hit me. It’s grief. And I knew exactly what had kicked it off.
I went to a wedding. I hadn’t been to a wedding in quite some time because we who are old AF don’t really go to weddings anymore! In the middle of the ceremony, the bride called her husbands’ children on stage (he had two kids from previous marriage) and she gave the most endearing speech to them. She promised to love them, protect them, and give them a soft place to land if they needed it. She said she knew she wasn’t their mother and didn’t want to be but that she would care for them and love them as a bonus mom. I could barely control the feeling in my body. I wanted to sob but couldn’t. It was so sweet. So why was I so sad? Then this duet came on stage and began to sing “The Prayer” half in Italian and half in English just like Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli. The tears started but I did a good job concealing it. The only person I knew at this wedding was my partner and I wasn’t going to sob uncontrollably in front of a bunch of strangers. I stopped myself but the train was already set in motion. I left that night with the tightness in my chest and felt it for weeks. Oh, I tried to make it go away. I tried to eat it away, run it away, rage it away. But nothing worked.
The words of that song kept coming back to me. “We ask that life be kind. And watch us from above. We hope each soul will find, another soul to love..” After the call with my mom, I decided to download the song. I sat in my chair and listened. The tears started. Then the sobbing. I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to. I gave in to it. I let myself feel how sad I am that my kids are being raised in two different homes. I let myself feel sadness for the young woman who stood in front of her friends and family all those years ago to make similar vows to my ex. I let the guilt wash over me when I realized in that moment that even though our marriage vow was broken, that I had become bitter about my ex instead of supportive and loving. That even though we aren’t married, those vows could still be true in a new and different way. For our kids. For each other. Because even though we needed to be divorced, we didn’t have to be enemies.
I let myself feel sad about their dad being in a relationship with a woman and would this new woman be as loving as the woman was at the wedding to my kids? Would they have another person to hold them when they are sad and I don’t get to be around? All of it. Every single last bit of it just had me in my feelings. I bawled over the fact that my kids were going to be away from me for the first time in their lives on a major holiday. It all just felt like too much. Five years after our initial separation. And it still felt so hard.
I wish I could say that all of this went away that day. It didn’t. That was two weeks ago. Grief is funny like that. It comes unexpectantly. It stays as long as it needs to. Then it vanishes as soon as it came but you never know how long it’s going to be there. I felt it very acutely again last Wednesday when my kids boarded a plane for Thanksgiving with their dad. I felt it when my youngest face timed me from the hotel that night and was so excited. I wouldn’t get to be there. They were going to Universal Studios for the first time and I wouldn’t get to see their faces light up. I felt it on Thanksgiving day when I was tossing around my partners nephews and wishing my own babies were with me.
I have learned over the years that running from this inevitable thing, this thing that we all experience at some point in our lives, and for some of us, over and over again if we are tuned it, is pointless. I try. Trust me, I try. I have some very sophisticated defense mechanisms that have me avoid for a bit that dark and life dulling feeling inside. I have also learned that no matter what I do to try to postpone it, it will get the best of me at some point. So, I have mastered the art of avoiding for a minute, and then giving in! I’m hopeful that one day I will skip the avoiding part and just lean in, but I’m not that evolved yet!
This line from Grey’s Anatomy sums it up, “It isn’t just death we have to grieve. It’s life. It’s loss. It’s change. And we wonder why it has to suck so much sometimes, has to hurt so bad. The thing we gotta try to remember is that it can turn on a dime. That’s how you stay alive. When it hurts so much you can’t breathe, that’s how you survive. By remembering that one day, somehow, impossibly, you won’t feel this way. It won’t hurt this much.”
I hope that your Thanksgiving was filled with all the beauty that life has to offer. I hope that if you were experiencing grief that you had someone to hold you or at least hold space for you. Just know that you are never alone. Ever. This too shall pass. Thank you for always sharing in my journey and I’m forever grateful for getting to share in yours.
Love,
