Tender is the Night…

I’m so tender hearted that I come in and out of tears and laughter like I am dancing from one emotion to the next. This is just the way I am now. I allow myself to feel and move freely between these rhythms, and in return I am able to learn all the subtle nuances of each step. It is entirely my own expression and this is what is most remarkable, to me. Relying on my own instinct and learning to lean into and just trust my intuition, I am focused solely on how I am navigating this wild terrain, rather than looking around me to see how to do it or what comes next. Important stuff.

Strangely, I find that even my pain is sacred to me. It holds the weight of the ache of my loss of my beautiful boy. I am in a close relationship with my pain; we are constant companions and I am no longer myself without my pain. This is a wonder to me but the wonder of it all is that I am able to observe through self reflection myself experiencing pain while simultaneously experiencing the pain. If that makes sense?

What I am witnessing in myself is difficult to articulate but I will try by saying A.) that Isaac’s death and Isaac’s life are ever present. B.) My relationship with him endures in a way that I could never have imagined and this, also, is so much a part of my daily life that it feels completely familiar and natural and normal. And I totally accept that this could mean I am batshit crazy, but I spend zero time worrying or wondering if I am, and even explaining myself this much seems clumsy where usually there is effortless grace and trust in this realm and total allowance that surprises me, even as I feel nonchalant about it! 

Are ya still with me?

I have come to understand that something that is powerful for one person may simply not hold relevance or meaning to another and therefore cannot be shared, or fathomed or believed. And that’s ok. 

My relationship with Isaac, especially as a youngster, always felt like we had our own planet and language– it wasn’t that the world didn’t get us or we didn’t get it– it was just more like we were fulfilled with a population of 2. So this isn’t a stretch so much as it is a return to our connection. A knowingness, and I am grateful for whatever allows this connection to prosper despite the complexity.  The best way I can explain it is like those pictures where you are supposed to unfocus in order to see. 

Capisce?

Sometimes I have to work hard to let it be. Tenderhearted as I am, I frequently find myself so awestruck by this tragedy, still scratching my head, bargaining, trying to rewrite history in my daydreams, night visions and prayers. It catches me off guard all the time. I have not figured out yet how to tame this wild horse– I am still being taken on a ride, but I think I have learned how to hold on. And that is really something.

Back when I was looking around for What The Fuck Do I Do Now, before I started looking only within myself, I kept thinking I had to make progress while also feeling beat from the start. How could I ever make or want to make progress, what the fuck is wrong with me. But now I return again and again to the inner wisdom of understanding that it is my human nature, my conditioning, to want pain to end. To resist discomfort or label it the enemy. To believe in a linear timeline and life and death as black and white. And that’s cute, that’s understandable naïveté– but it just isn’t practical reality for me any more. The death by suicide of your only child blows your shit up. To smithereens. To outer space. That’s a fact. I live in a constant state of awareness and awe that life carries onward– I am mystified and horrified and have been radicalized and humbled and I feel loud and angry and meek and holy and everything in between almost all of the time. I have learned how to share space with all the feelings and how to rearrange the furniture so no one gets hurt when I go from pirouette to moon walk to genuflecting.

This is where I’m at these days. How about you? 

All

Of

The
Feels!!!