Writing this Season Change in Sharpie Marker

The early months of grief were tender, they were soft, they were bent toward holding and being held and survival. 

Then the numbness came. 

I didn’t want to feel any of it anymore. I wanted to turn it all off. 

So I turned to the numbing agents that work best for me: 

Work, activity, entertainment, loud volume. 

They turned off, for a season, the pain in me. 

But as it usually goes, grief came for me.

She started sneaking up in my sleep and in my dreams and in every still moment I had. 

I pushed her away to the best of my ability. 

I didn’t think I had the strength to feel anymore pain, I didn’t think I could measure up anymore to all that had happened. 

I pushed it down as fervently and as far as I could… but as it usually goes, she still found a way through. 

And she didn’t just bring my mom’s death along with her. She brought every trauma - she brought the loss of my Lily, the loss of my dad, challenges with Zoe, difficulty of all sizes and measure… all of a sudden they bled into every waking moment and my coping skills, my push-it-down-and-away skills were outmatched. 

I’d like to say that I’ve learned with each loss 

how to face grief, 

how to embrace her. 

But the truth is: 

Even though it’s a familiar at my table, I never really have made the choice to allow it to dine with me. 

In October of this past year, when all of my coping skills, push-it-down-and-away-skills were overwhelmed and my wounds began to bleed into every part of my life…. 

Then, I had to make a choice. 

And I chose, to let grief dine with me. To formalize its visit and make it my guest. To give it space and feed it with love and care, and attentive hospitality. 

I turned down the busy. 

I spent copious amounts of time (so many hours each week, over so many months) in trauma-focused therapy. 

I told my friends. I let them know that I was drowning, and that I needed help. 

I buried my numbing devices: Netflix binges, Tylenol PM, sugar. 

I picked back up weights and started re-training my own thoughts around my resiliency each time I completed a new circuit. 

I carved out time, each morning, every day to give space to my feelings, to record with pen where I was at, and to find the presence of the I Am in the midst of it. 

And here’s the big thing: 

I got outside. 

I know that might seem a little on the soft side, 

But it wasn’t. 

It was loud. 

It was wild. 

It was October - March in the worst winter we’ve seen in years. 

It was freezing temps and feet of snow and wild wind and ice… 

And I’ve never felt more at home. 

The elements saw me: 

In my pain and my anger and the “who am I now?” that I screamed into the wind. Who am I now: an adult orphan at 35, with one child who died in my arms, and another with a disability. Who am I now, after all that I’ve seen and held and weathered and survived? What kind of life could there be for me? 

I know it seems cringey, but I like to err on the side of vulnerability… the big question for me was: 

How can I live with what has happened for another 35 years? 

I have half my life to go. 

But I was losing too much blood, 

through the gaping wounds in my heart. 

Survival in the short-term was plausible… but in the long-term it was not. 

Still, my love for my kids, my husband, my friends, my community: it tethered me here. And it forced my hand… to do the work, to say a courageous yes: to invite grief to dine with me… 

The only place I could really make the proper space, for our sitting together, though: 

Was outside — at a picnic — on a rough edged blanket of ice, with the wind howling at me. 

The elements: they were permission-giving. 

To call it like it was: 

The worst. 

Unfair. 

Horrifying. 

Unimaginable. 

Emptiness. 

Despair. 

Rage. 

I was candid with grief as we sat together.

I wrestled full-force with the horror of what I’ve seen and its permanency.

And grief, she was ruthless, but she never left the table.

She never abandoned me.

So we sat together, at our picnic outdoors, and watched the water for many months — from October to March. 

And the water changed, as it always does, during those months. From still, to waves, to slush, to ice… 

I asked Water to speak to me, to teach me, its secrets about weathering. 

The Living Water gave me metaphor, and prose, and nurture, and the picnic buffet grew as I returned over and over again to the water’s edge. Grief and I sat together and we shared tears and memories and when I very least expected it, I realized that we had started to exchange hope. 

Who knew 

That on a rough edged blanket of ice 

With sandwiches of sorrow 

And cups of bitter tears, 

Hope could emerge, 

Soft and new 

Tender and changed 

From what I knew before 

With answers on who I am now — 

— despite all that I’ve lost 

—— all that I’ve witnessed firsthand 

——-— the amount of goodbyes I’ve said bedside 

———— the beautiful bodies I’ve held as they’ve breathed their tortured last ———

Here, even now: I can live. 

I can live, with all of that. 

I can live. 

I’m going to say that again, for my own sake: 

I can live. 

I can live, 

With what has happened. 

It can reside in me,

And I can still live. 

I don’t have to spend my energy for the next 35+ years, the whole second act of my life, pushing it down and away, numbing its pain… 

I can give it a home. 

And still live. 

To know this logically is one thing. 

I would say that I’ve known it cognitively before. 

But where I know it now — is in my body. 

It’s in my feet, who have walked miles and miles over this season, turning things over, bitterly cold in my boots and sore at the end of each day. 

It’s in my ears. My AirPods have been plugged in for the whole journey: connecting me to music to worship my way through. A little tune or note of music, and my ears signal again to my body: move forward, darling. 

It’s in my legs and arms. They’re re-teaching me how strong we are. 

It’s in my chest — where breath used to be short. This is the place where I carried it all, if I can be honest. I think this is where grief lived most in my body. The proximity of my hurting heart to my respiratory function, made it so damn difficult to keep breathing through. How do you do that when you feel caged and afraid? The only way to slow down fight or flight, to signal to your nervous system that all is okay, is deep breath.. in and out. I now can do that. I can inhale again (after a very long 30 months of short-circuited oxygen) … I can inhale again what is, and still exhale hope. 

“The body keeps score” they say. 

Yes, and. 

The body can be re-trained to find a new way. 

“I can live” is the new narrative my body shares. 

Thanks to the wild elements, 

The gift of giving grief space, 

A God who has quite literally “met me in the wilderness” outside, 

A therapist who leveraged all of his tools on my behalf, to help set me free, 

And family and friends who stuck with me, and encouraged me to get all the way to the bottom of it, on my own but never alone… 

I can live.  

I need to write this publicly, 

Not actually for your knowledge and certainly not for commendation… 

I need to write it publicly,

As a way for me to write in Sharpie, permanent marker right here, right now… 

My grief is no longer fragile. 

It’s holy and it’s home. 

The ground beneath me doesn’t shake. 

It’s steady and I’m planted. 

I don’t have to weather survival. 

I can grow. 

Sharpie marker and another stone, 

I’ll put upon the cairn of rocks, 

To remember 

God’s faithfulness 

That I have never been alone 

And the road ahead is yet filled with hope.