Meet my bestie, "Grief."

A teenage friend of mine recently lost her second daughter at just two weeks old. Such a loss can be catastrophic for a young woman, I know. Wounds too fresh should not be touched, so I waited a little bit to gather my thoughts and inspiration... and I finally mustered up enough peace and will to write her. In addition to my tears, this is what poured out...

The pain won't stop.

But you'll get better at living with it.
For now, I hope you'will get in touch with that grief.

That pain will be the one thing that will remind you you're still alive,

that you've survived your overwhelming loss.

At this point, I know the emptiness in your gut feels like it's growing.

You may think that its black hole will soon swallow you entirely,

or perhaps that it already has.

That darkness may be your actual womb missing your baby;
a feeling usually replaced when a new mother gets to hold her baby in her arms,
but you and I aren't so lucky.

The best definition of 'forgiveness' I ever heard is "giving up the hope that the past could be any different."

In our culture, forgiveness is usually something we're expected to give others, when they do us wrong.
But in times of loss like these, who do we blame?
Who has done us wrong?
Yes, "God" seems vindictive, if at all existent.
No one else took her from you, so we all too often end up blaming ourselves.
It's not a valid blame, but still THAT is where the forgiveness MUST be given.

You MUST find a way to eventually forgive [yourself].
"...to give up the hope that the past could have been any different."
In the mean time, feel into the Grief. Get to know it like it's your new best friend, because...well, she is: Grief will be the closest friend at your side for years to come. You'll get to know how to tell her to shut up when you're too busy, and you'll let her spill her guts when you have the time to really listen. Don't ignore her, or she'll blow up at you when you least expect it... but never let Grief become more important than your life. She'll be the best friend you'll want to share secrets with, and listen to sad songs with. No one will understand you like she does (especially not the men in your life, and that's okay.)

So, from my old best friend to your new best friend... I'm so sorry for your loss.

I Love you: a Post-Valentine's Day poem

I LOVE YOU.
No really, you. Yes you.
I love you. I love you just as much today as I did yesterday...
and perhaps even a little more.
I love you without condition:
my love is a simple, humble gratitude for your presence in this Universe, on this plane of consciousness where we have met.
I love you,
because I know I have loved you before,
and will love you again.
I love you because my prophets have taught me to love you this way.
I don't have to like you to love you (but I like you anyway),
nor do I have to see you, tell you, kiss you, or touch you to love you; I only have to know of your existence.
Will you meet me here?
Will you knock down your walls, your defensive ways of skepticism and mistrust to meet me in this holy place?
If you don't, I will love you the same.
I will continue to love you until the day I die, until the day you cease to exist as you, or the day we cease to exist as us, at which time I will love you infinitely more.

without a Sun

I lost my Sun.

The center of my Soul-ar system.

You call it birth, I call it supernova. Bright lights, pain, explosive emotions.

And when it was all said and done, only blackness at my core.

Everything a mother's life revolves around, now gone.

No centrifugal force to keep my shit together,

inevitably everything fell apart, before crushing back in on the dense darkness.

Some say the Sun didn't disappear, but was transported through a wormhole to a different corner of the Universe, part of a new solar system. Some days I can barely feel its warmth radiating from so far away, but I cannot see its Light. It must be so far away that it will take years until I see it again.

So, my Son, how many light-years are you away from me?

I don't know what you look like.

Little Man,

I've been strong about this.

Even last night at my adoption-awareness support group, I showed them the thank you card that finally came in the mail for the birthday presents.

But I didn't want her handwriting. When I pick up an envelope out of my mailbox from Littleton, CO, there's only one thing I want to be in it: a photo.

One little photo of your face.

Is that too much to ask for?

I haven't gotten a new photo since Christmas, and then it was just a mass-mailed family shot posed in some department store studio. Your face was about one square centimeter, but it meant the world to me. I could see it changing, which isn't hard to notice when I only get one. That is, when I get one.

Augh, am I being petty? Should I be eternally grateful? 

I have no idea. I never have.

Today I found myself wandering a store trying so desperately to efficiently choose a birthday gift for my son, who turns 4 on Saturday. It has been six months since I've heard from his adopting parents and two years since I've seen him. It's hard enough to look at toys without fighting back daydreams of my son playing with them, but there I was, erratically picking up toy after toy, this time trying to see him play with it. Would he love it? Would he even like it? Rather, would he like it for more than twenty minutes? I pick up two tool sets based on a past photo I've seen of him playing in a construction hard hat, pretending to use a screwdriver. It's the one that warms my heart so much because his birthfather and I were home renovation contractors when we got pregnant... he was pretending to be like his father and he didn't even know it. Then I abruptly threw the two play tool sets back onto the shelf because I feared that his adoptive parents may read into it and think I'm encouraging him to be more like us, and walked away. I find more cool, boyish toys and pick them up only to turn them over and think maybe they're too advanced for his age, and then again he is advanced for his age. But that thought only spirals me down memory lane to the last day I saw him, just after his second birthday, when he wowed me with his ability to speak in full sentences already, and then my eyes filled with tears and I'd snap back to the present moment where I was trying not to lose it in front of the store clerk grudgingly restocking the shelves. I try to sniffle silently, and blink away the warm saline clouding my vision of the innumerable choices stacked along the aisle, and pick up the first toy I touched just to seem like I had a clue as to what I was doing in that store.

My stomach growled so I decided to take a break and walk over to the candy aisle to peruse the chocolate, hoping its natural concoction of endorphins would alleviate some of my emotion. It wasn't even a minute later when I was disgusted by the amount of toxic, neon-colored junk they call "candy" and sulked back over to the matchbox cars and puzzles, glancing one more time at the cute play tool belt before realizing, even if his parents didn't read into it like I feared, I was making the decision based on a year-old photo of him. What if he's grown out of "fixing" and "building" things? Was it just a phase that has already passed? How many other phases or interests has he developed and lost? I have no idea what he likes to do: I never have. So how am I supposed to shop for his special day when I'm clueless as to what's special to him? I emigrate from the toys to the children's books, and settle on two. Again, deciding on a Mickey Mouse adventure book based on a photo they sent last summer of Ryder absolutely ecstatic about getting Mickey's autograph at Disney World.

These little pieces of evidence of his life are more than precious to me, but still entirely impossible to survive on. Our "open" adoption was meant to be more than the occasional photo: it was promised to be inclusive, and I am far from "included" in his life. So as I wrap up and ambiguously label his gifts "From: Anne," my heart breaks that I cannot tell him these books are from his Mama and that I would do anything to be able to give them directly to him. One more birthday comes and goes and I know less and less about my son: less about what he loves, about what he wants, or does, or feels. If I had to decipher his life based on the photographed evidence that is rarely bestowed on my inbox, I would deduce that my son is never fed, read to, or even held; and I know that's not true. It would just be nice to see it.

maternal instincts

I can kid myself that I'm not as maternal as I used to be.

Or that I'm not as stricken with the maternal urges as I used to be.

Really, I just think I've become better at controlling them, but they're still there.

When my housemates' infant (I live cooperatively now with a family with children) cries, I no longer crave to take him from the rocker and sing lullabies to him. I do, however, have intense heartaching urges when they ignore him. One day I couldn't stand to wait longer than 60 seconds of his waking cries--that had become desperate screams--before I retrieved him from their bedroom because they were "busy" outside in the gardens. I had him quieted down to whimpers by the time they came inside the open door and mumbled something like, "Oh, thanks, we couldn't hear him." Their 30 month old I also feel compelled to care for, especially since her little brother was born and they have started to neglect her development. She, at a critical time of toddlerhood, has become a whiney shadow in their distracted midst. There are days when I feel ripped at my seams because there's only so much I can do with/for her. I read an average of a book per day with her (this morning I read three). I find myself compulsively reinforcing her tremendous speech development or intervening in her behavior (second nature to me as I'm a behavioral therapist) and even interpose when she wanders out the open front door and down the sidewalk when her father falls asleep on the couch. Although she does get to tag along to a ton of educational public events with her parents, at home she is encouraged to be completely independent, even when the parents are available.

Impressive, right? No, she's only two--this is the time to be constantly interacting: independence (that which doesn't develop naturally during the "terrible twos") should be encouraged later. I can only imagine how loquacious she'd be if they actually talked to her around the dinner table. They obviously did great with her, because she's brilliant and so very advanced for 30 months, but she's starting to tantrum because they ignore her unless she's repeatedly whining or screaming requests.

I digress.

I guess my point is [at the risk of sounding full of myself]

I think I'd be a great mother.

I even think I would have been a great mother at 21.

Why did my own amazing mother, then, think I wouldn't have been?

She never said I wouldn't have been a good mother, she implied I couldn't have been.

She explicitly expressed that she felt she would have been obligated to raise the child.

Not be a grandmother to my son, but "to be a mother again."

She has no idea how much it hurt me to say that.

And I can't bring myself to tell her.

alone on Valentine's

Alone.

A lone woman in this bed tonight.

It used to make me cry: to not feel him next to me.

I couldn't sleep without his wall of warm muscles

prostrated to my right.

I returned to him night after night,

even after he kicked me to the curb.

Knowing there was nothing I could do,

I returned anyway just to feel him

there in those last few moments as we drifted off.

When I woke up, he was gone.

And in my awakening, I realized he was never there.

I couldn't fill the void in my heart with him.

Nor was I a strong enough vessel to contain his love.

He began to fill me, and I cracked.

He poured into me, and I broke.

Now empty.

Hardening in the Sun of the Eternal Love.

Curing.

Healing.

I have found solidarity in solitude.

Tonight I lay wrapped in blankets of grace, trust, independence.

This bed is barely big enough to hold my new extensive heart.

No valley among mountainous pillows could hold this radiating chakra,

this bursting dan tien.

The chasms in my life are filled with overflowing waters,

sacred uncoiling kundalini,

pulsing qi force giving life back to my

sole soul.

So this is what happiness is.

With a fadeless smile under these sleepy eyes,

I drift off with no one next to me and EVERY ONE of you within me.

Happy Valentine's Day,

Open up, Let's all fall in Love with one another.