Had to get this out. Sorry not sorry. Better out than in.
I am angry and that is so uncomfortable for me to admit, feel and say. But I am. It’s my parents anniversary today. I asked my dad how he was going to celebrate, or commemorate? He said well I don’t have anyone to celebrate with.
What do I do to celebrate their marriage? Light another candle?
I cannot get a new mom. I do not want to get a new mom. I honestly still can’t believe she died the way she died. But she did, and I’m still sobbing as I do the laundry. Saxon hears me crying and reassures the kids, “Oh it’s just mommy crying.” And then walked away. They are so used to it, my family, that they don’t think to hug me anymore. I need a hug. 8 hugs a day, they say. This is so lonely, going through this very human and unique experience so many others are going through.
I haven’t written her obituary yet or posted the videos from her service on Caringbridge. I am overwhelmed by grief which is love and takes almost all my energy. I have to remember I have about 1% of my energy to do all the things that feel impossibly hard.
I feel angry that I have to clean, cook, do anything for anyone else. I am scared my kids will feel like interruptions, that they will know that I just want to check out. But maybe I am hiding it well. I apologized to them last night at bedtime after Silent Night before good dream spray and forehead blessings, for being grumpy and impatient. They were like, what? You’re not those things! And I was like. Oh, maybe I just wish I was someone else sometimes. Someone who drinks a lot of chamomile and is vegan and calm and meditates every morning and makes her own beans.
I want someone to rub my head and clean the inside of the microwave.
This is a new pace for me. It’s still my grief pace. My grace pace. But I’m also writing a lot. I’m working more, just as the bitter cold sets in. I want to, but still find it so hard to concentrate. My grieving brain is still making sense of this new reality. I am reorienting. Not sharing much, but writing so much. I’m having horrible dreams. My tongue has teethmarks all over it, says my acupuncturist. Sleep is not restful.
And I have good days. Great days. Sunshine days. Where I slow down and cook and exercise and connect with folks who give me energy instead of drain me and I get enough sun even though I found out my Vitamin D is low so I’m on supplements per the breast clinic since I’m high risk for breast cancer due to my genetic testing results. Fun. That was fun, going in for 2 hours in a cold open gown answering questions about my past births, how many times have you been pregnant? How many live births? It’s all in my chart, but here we are. Who else had cancer in your family? How old was your mom when she died? In my chart. But here we are.
My dream of writing a book, or realizing I already have and just deciding to edit it all together, and focus on it, meaning stop doing other things until it’s done, is getting stronger. The pull is there. As is the pull to be a doula. But I need to finish this pilot first. One thing at a time. Work without attachment to the outcome. Go with the flow, but what if there is no flow? The water is frozen.
And work. People are changing and cancelling everything on me. Literally every meeting, every project, everything, is moving and shifting and I can’t keep up. Even our flights to the Philippines changed by two days and the airline is like, sorry! So we’re going to just live in Singapore? Honestly, just keeping up with the basics without planning feels impossible and now so many plans. The only word that keeps bubbling up from the deep freeze is anger.
So I’m back to wondering, can’t I just be a mother and remodel the kitchen and have hairy legs? Apparently I’m not the only woman who wants a kitchen island. We want to paint the house in bright colors. We want to go to Mexico. And a new bedroom so everyone can actually sleep. Or move? Not now. It will all happen. Trust the timing, Britt.
I’m still so fucking deeply angry. A woman is literally pitching my tv project behind my back. Another woman is releasing music with my vocals without a contract or even a tag on IG which I am never on but still. Women? Not me not today. But yes me yes today.
And these moms are being mean girls at my kids school and it makes me want to barf. They never ask themselves the golden question: what if I’m wrong? They aren’t curious. They are scared and bored. So much racism, so many micro-aggressions, so energy draining, so immature. But here we are. I will have to help resolve it. I already am. Work.
I am so tired. My kids are sick. I’m worried they are sickly but it’s just school and germs and winter? There are snotty baby wipes all over the floor. Their noses are red and no amount of vaseline or shea butter can stop it.
I am hiding in my bedroom from the mess that awaits me in the rest of the house. Cleaning is still easier than sitting still. I still can’t be with it, this sorrow. I can help others, I can perform acts of service in the area of my pain, but I am skipping some steps, like just “being with it because you can’t heal what you can’t feel!” and it’s catching up to me! Here we are.
The cat rolls in dirty snow and then lays on my pillow. Gag reflex. And no one likes this new fish they begged me to get at Petsmart and now every morning it’s like, um, “Did anyone say good morning to the fish? (No). Did anyone feed the fish? (No response). Is the fish still alive? (Somehow, yes.) Now they would prefer a lizard or parakeet. So I’ll take him into my room.
I’m in a hospice bereavement group and I’m the youngest one and the only one who is there because I lost my mother, but far from the only one who has lost their mother in the room. Everyone else has recently lost their spouse. I love them all except one. The one who doesn’t listen and interrupts and over-talks and I am like, wow I cannot will not be like this. It’s so painful, violent and hurtful. I was paired with her. We each had 5 minutes to listen to the demise of our loved one. We focused on the final days. I cried. She interrupted. And then she shared my story with the group and she got it all wrong and inserted herself. And then she told us all that she was terrified at the social security office because she was the only white person in the whole place. Wow. I mean. Mean girls.
If I have the energy to talk with you about my mom, please don’t suggest anything or interrupt me. I don’t need that. I need you to listen. And offer a hug. And clean my stove. Maybe make some popcorn. Share a fond memory of my mother. Remember the big days. I always get a sick stomach around the 13th. I just realized this morning it’s because she died on the 13th. Our bodies know.
We were on the train on Dec 26th to Oakland after I was Santa and we did all the huge holiday things and I had a deep, clear NO in me. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t breathing. I was hyperventilating. Crying. I called my dad. I said I can’t do it. I'm so sad. The first Christmas without mom. These fucking firsts. The first year. I didn’t know. Now I do. He understood, he was so kind about it. We got all our suitcases and got off the train and turned around and went home. The next day I got Covid. That was the FIRST time I said no when I wanted to say no. I recommend it. It’s scary and liberating.
Our bodies know.
The school called a highly unnecessary snow day yesterday, after the 3 day holiday/arctic freeze weekend in which our heater blew cold air instead of hot air and it made me cry so hard. So hard. And it’s supposed to be business as usual? Am I using the stressors of life to procrastinate or is it truly and deeply winter and I must winter, as my body refuses to move quickly. What about re-wilding? What about the slow slow way? Where did that desire to slow down go? I want it back.
I’m working on a documentary about the GI system and shame and wondering if there is a connection between GI illness and shame. I bet there is. We shall see. We do our first set of interviews today and I am considering a turtle neck as I just saw my neck and double chin in some footage I shot last week. Wowzers. How did all this time go by?
When I wake up in a panic that I haven’t achieved enough and that I’m not where I’m supposed to be, my friends ground me back down into my beautiful power. They’re the only ones that can do it. He is done listening. Let us all find our elders, our mothers, our girlfriends, who are weathering the same storms we are in their cocoon homes. The commune is coming.
I just did my GI Hypnotherapy on zoom with 8 other people where we talk about our GI symptoms. Like a poop support group. They are good listeners.
I am angry. It scares me.
Saxon and I are getting our logo and website done for Three Things, our new non profit. More soon, but what a ride so far. And another task to track and more bank accounts and grown up tangs. I keep thinking I will have a schedule that flows, with one day on my business and the rest in my creative, but these days are scattered, so much static electricity. It’s like mercury retrograde for work projects right now. So after so many cancellations and changes from other people I cancelled everything tomorrow. It will be an X Day. Going to the spa to soak and cry and get rubbed. I’m bloated so much that the girls asked if they were going to have a little brother. Am I still able to even get pregnant?
I miss my mom. I missed the chance to ask her everything. In my Writing Grief class I wrote her a letter and met her in the afterlife, on a cloud in the ocean at Club Med, and I was writing to her, asking her and telling her all the things, and then she started responding. I kept writing. She was talking to me. I’ll take it. Thank you mom.
My dream last night: A group of friends, young wild white big mouths laughing ignoring me in my new house I am renting out. I left Seylah in the room with them for one minute without knowing it. She came out acting hyper and I asked what in the world was going on did something happen she said yes they grabbed me opened my mouth forced me to kiss them and touched me inside. She for some reason was dressed in white short shorts and a thong. Horrified. She’s been assaulted. Trying to be pretty. She was upset. I was murderous. I scream the most in my dreams. It’s never tears. It’s all screams. Howls. My throat hurts now in waking life. I didn’t protect her. I couldn’t protect my mom either. Everyone’s relaxed and having fun but me. I’m trying to make sure no one gets hurt or falls down the stairs. Even in my dreams I’m trying to hold it all together. I can’t stop screaming….then the girls both climb into bed with me in real life. I wonder if I woke them up? And I am so grateful. I can only cry that they are alive and safe and here with me.
Nya is in a whining, screaming phase where she can’t sleep so she’s going to have a sleep study. We all need one. But sometimes on my darker days I scream at her to stop screaming. If that’s not irony I don’t know what is. Sometimes we all just laugh at the absurdity. It’s really all you can do. There is so much humor in this grieving. Thank goodness. I am grateful they know they can cry, they can be naked, they can be themselves, they can dance and sing and practice playing piano just like mommy and daddy and it’s when we make the mistakes that we learn. I am learning with them.
Seylah’s name means “a pause in music” and Nya’s means “purpose.” Pause and purpose. Perhaps this is the wisdom already right in front of me and all around me. Perhaps there is no present, only the future and the past when so many things take up our mental space. How do we get time back so we can actually have moments and pockets of presence?
Are all these photos of my mom all around the house helping me? Or triggering me? Both?
The deepest expression of love is non doing presence. That’s when we’re inhabiting who we are. I can always start again, recommit to just being with my family and letting them love me instead of worrying that everything is a problem because it is changing. Grief does indeed shine a light on all the things that are hard and all the things that could use some healing. And usually, when grieving, you don’t have the energy to tackle those things. So grief brings it all up. I switched from talk therapy to grief yoga. That helped. The somatic. High recommend.
We celebrated Kwanzaa this year. High recommend! It was really beautiful. On the day of Faith, I asked the kid what faith was to them. Here are their answers, for us all:
“Faith is jumping off the diving board! Getting lost! Believing in yourself. Traveling to a faraway place.” So there we are.
Pause and purpose. Re-wild and slow. With hurry there is no trust.
But now rushing to get the kids and go to film some interviews about poop! Eradicating shame by any means necessary.
I had to get this out while I had the house to myself for a whole entire hour! Thanks for listening. So much more to come.
Love,
B
Oh and I love Helado Negro. His music is how I feel. High recommend!
You are a beautiful soul, an amazing person, an amazing mom, an amazing friend, an amazing wife, and an amazing human! PLEASE HEAR THIS IN YOUR SOUL! Grief sucks!! My ears are always open for you while I am cleaning your microwave, stove, and bringing popcorn! ❤️😘