I have had to learn a lot of lessons lately. I have a sense that this last year has been a year of weaning, gleaning, releasing and decreasing. I have a sense of remaking myself yet again. I am called to change, to change, and to change again.
Through life, we may be called upon to remake ourselves due to many different kinds of experiences we may encounter. It can be by choice or by circumstance. Each time there is a major change in one’s life, we are demanded to change with that change. Some changes might be big, some not so big, but usually it has impact upon us at any level. We have the normal maturation changes that happen in our life. Some are traumatic to us; some are not and we sail smoothly through the transitions. Some are within; some are caused from without.
June 12 marks a major change in my life. Losing a child, under any circumstances, is profound. Who I am now, now that I am not her physical mother any more? I have lost grandparents, parents, siblings, and a soulmate, and this does not compare. Each loss creates a change, no matter at what age you are at. I have often mentioned her with sad smile, have ruminated on what ifs and hows and never come up with an answer as to a curative to this complicated relationship our family has had with her. After, as I have said, it became more poignant, more focused and I had to work through all the negatives that a mother goes through. We cannot idolize her, but we can forgive her, and there was always love no matter what, in some form, but in a mother’s heart, she was always my baby girl that I could not reconcile with who she became. It has created a need for change and I am stil sorting that.
Shortly afterwards, and while I was still grieving hard, I was called on to change again. This was less dramatic, but emotionally potent. I realize I have changed due to two other incidents of betrayal of sorts in the last couple of years. This one came out of nowhere and rose from my willingness to help others who were struggling. I cannot let it change my compassion-driven way I chose to live. I am guarding my thoughts, emotions, and expressions well so that I do not become closed. I am being asked to change to where I am more protective of myself. But not at the cost of who I am at my very core.
I have been asked to change, again, over the last month as I am being drawn again into closer commune with my way of living The Good Red Road. It has been a loving, embracing, experience, and, although I must be wary, I am gleaning the best of this experience and am sensing a closer spiritual walk to that I chose many many decades ago... or that chose me. And, I had a lesson to remember. As I was sewing my Ribbon Skirt, my daughter passed away and I had been preparing to make the skirt to dance in. As is my wont, I kept super busy, but thoughtfully so, to keep myself on track with the grieving process. I was literally still sewing the ribbons on the material when my sewing machine began sewing backwards. For the life of me, I could not get it to sew right. Suddenly, it hit me. I was not to finish the skirt to dance... of course not, it is not proper protocol to dance when newly aggrieved. A lesson was reminded and I put away the materials and took the sewing machine in to be fixed... which it did not need so the repair man simply serviced it. I can now finish the skirt for a different purpose. Lesson learned and change made.
During this whole time, I was focused on helping my children deal with their personal relationship with their sister. Each child would have different relationship with her. The older two would have childhood memories. The younger three would have different memories, each, as well. The youngest had no real relationship with her at all so he was spared the depth of grief that the rest of the children would have. One was angry at her older sister, and rightly so. The betrayal was great there. I had to honor her anger while I was grieving in a different way. Each of my children contacted me immediately knowing how devastated I would be feeling. Each one I counseled according to their need, while still honoring my own. It has strengthened and deepened my relationship with my children. I felt the change in me and honored the change it would make in them.
There is a kind of peace that has come over me that I recognize as new. I am not emotionally shut down. I am not numb any more. I am changed by these events. I honor the changes and let them make of me what I must in order to be a better person, a better friend, a better mother.
©Carol Desjarlais 8.18.23
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