We moved our youngest daughter to college two weeks ago. Three cars caravanned to Mississippi. Eldest daughter had been at home working remotely for the last three months for summer break. She took part in the move in process and then headed back to her own school, two hours away. We got youngest settled in, met the roommate and her family and eventually George and I departed.
One car came home solo on that Sunday.
The nest is now empty.
There is so much meaning to that small statement.
My first gut instinct is to deny that I'm sad, or that I might get depressed. I really really want everything (meaning me) to be okay. I desperately NEED to be okay (and of course, my daughter!). The feelings of why that sentiment is so strong is because I went through horrendous postpartum depression and it still terrifies me that I might to back to that deep dark isolated place.
I now have tools and experience to address situations that may arise.
I don't feel depressed right now. There is a vague sadness and certain little things hit for a few seconds. This is more discombobulation, characterized by confusion and disorder. It's different than went I sent eldest off when I grieved early and often. The house is extremely quiet yet I really crave silence. One, because I am an introvert and two, because that is when I hear God, my higher power and I process life which helps with becoming unstuck and more combobulated!
We do now have three cats, yes three, and a dog who follow me around. I was unconsciously filling the nest as we lost two of our elder pets last fall. What made me saddest when we arrived home that Sunday was seeing Snarg. This is the cat that lived in youngest's bedroom and slept with her at night. I felt bad that Mallory would not be there for Snarg on a regular basis anymore. But shy, skittish Snarg is adjusting. I had to realize the cat is not as deeply traumatized as we humans. She is branching out and coming to be with George and I. On cue, Snarg had just came all the way across the house to my bedroom and to the chair in the corner that I write in.
So what is hitting me is now what? What is my focus? I have lived to be the best mother I could to my daughters. I have done a lot of work to heal generational wounds so that I could be available to them emotionally and mentally. I have spent years in therapy and the last few have been amazingly productive using Internal Family Systems which includes body work, because the body holds the trauma. And amazingly, that work has dovetailed remarkably with my spirituality. It's all inner work!
What I have to remind myself is although I lived to be there for my children I learned to take care of myself along the way. And now, I just want to be.
I just want TO BE for a little bit.
I'm tired. I am an introvert and I pushed through to do all kinds of things in the last 22 years as a stay at home mom. Did I ever want to be in charge of a group of children? Never. I liked the idea of it but it was not in my wheelhouse. But I did that many times. I even created ways to do it, to have opportunities for my children.
I need to reset. I need to give myself some time and space to lean into the new normal.
George and I are adjusting to this new normal as well. I believe we still like each other! We were eased into being alone together again as Mallory was always gone.
My children still need me in different ways. The first two weeks of school, I talked to my youngest more than I did all summer. They are both making their way and I'm so proud of who they are, how emotionally attuned they are and their drive. I was so scared of everything at their age, but I have learned so much about myself and healed that I hope that I can pass on the wisdom I have obtained and still gaining.
Ready or not, here is the empty nest. It's a new chapter. I can go slow, rest, and take time to process to lean into the next steps. I know I very much need to trust my divinely given instincts that are telling me this is what I need now.
Saturday night, I came across the post of Anderson Cooper announcing the birth of his second son, Sebastian. I played the video of him explaining how he and his former partner and now best friend were parenting both sons and the children's surnames would both be Maisani-Cooper. They are a family. He described how he felt the presence of his deceased mother, father and brother while raising toddler Wyatt Cooper with Ben. He then read a quote from his father, Wyatt Cooper which made me weep.
All of it made me weep.
(Thank you to the man on Twitter who painstakingly captured the words on video in written form.)
Here are Wyatt Cooper's amazingly loving and accurate words.
"Life itself is brief. And yet each life encloses all eternity. We are, all of us separately and together engaged on the same tough journey. Each of us taste its joys and sorrows. Each of us gets by as best as we can. And we must whenever possible reach out to each other tentatively to touch with our hands, with our eyes, and with our hearts. We must wish for each other love and laughter, good thoughts and happy days. We must go rejoicing in the blessings of this world. Chief of which is the mystery, the majesty, the magic that is life."
For some reason, ever since Anderson Cooper started writing and documenting his and his mother's life and their relationship journey, I was mesmerized. First in the book, "The Rainbow Comes and Goes" and then in a documentary, "Nothing Left Unsaid." Anderson has been through tremendous loss, and examined it and come through it looking for light and love. Gloria Vanderbilt led an astounding life trying to fill in the gaps for missing loved ones. A dad that died when she was one and a mother who was not able to connect with her. She and Anderson shared their grief over losing his dad, Wyatt, all too soon and then ten years later, his brother, Carter. They shared how their relationship worked and didn't work. I love a family who speaks their truth and tries to work things out together. Relationships are messy and there has to be open, honest and mature communication. If you don't have that, it's really hard to make it work for both parties.
I celebrate Anderson and his best friend choosing to raise a family together and it really resonates deeply for me. Family can be who you make it to be. It can be those who reach out and touch our hands, eyes and hearts. I have tried to connect on a deeper level with family and it just hasn't worked. It's devastating to come to that conclusion yet I have learned that God ( the Divine One, the Trinity, the Christ Consciousness or Universe) will bring people and situations into my life that will fill my longing for attachment and connection in a loving and kind way. It will not look like what I expected but if I can let go, forgive and move on, my heart will be touched by love when I least expect it.
Today, on Valentine's Day, a manufactured day with confusing origins, I will still celebrate LOVE.
The kind of love that listens to my deepest concerns and I listen to theirs. A love that is kind, responsive, mature and patient. It's not perfect but it shows up. That's my version of First Corinthians 13. A veil is lifted and I only understand in part, but the part, the mystery that I see is so generous and overwhelming, I can't do anything but figure out how to lean into it again and again.
I am so very thankful for the loves in my life. The unit that I created: my husband and daughters, friends who are soul sisters, family, and others who cross my path in all kinds of ways. And of course, the four legged sweethearts cannot be left out!
My firstborn graduated from high school in May. This is something both very exciting and exquisitely bittersweet all at once. Our bird is flying the nest. It's such a cliche but it's my cliche now, up close and personal. I have worked really, really hard to make it the best nest possible. I made an intention very early on in regards to my offspring to be emotionally present for them. I didn't even know what that meant, I just knew I needed to be emotionally connected. I ended up looking at patterns in my life and worked to change the ones that weren't helpful. I wanted my girls to know, I was on their side, and had their back and they could talk to me. Every human being longs to have connection with someone who sees them and hears them...just as they are even if they are not on the same page.
What I didn't expect was along the way, I would learn how to care for my own self.
I am learning how to do be present for myself, to listen to the divine intuition that is a magnificent guide for how to proceed. It can be just a small flicker of a thought that registers for but a second, and I have learned over time...LISTEN TO IT. Lean into it.
In my head, I very much want my eldest daughter to gain her independence as she moves six hours away but for my heart, this departure has been unfathomable for years. Watching a movie or tv scene of the drop off at college has ripped me to pieces.
So now it's our turn.
From the very beginning, to bring Riley into the world, we struggled. It was a two year journey which included horrendous fertility treatments. We finally succeeded, and then we brought our bundle of joy home and I went off the deep end. My postpartum depression was not only unbearable sadness but relentless anxiety. Anxiousness permeated every thought and decision and it was never ending. It was a very rough few months and the pictures where I smiled betrayed what was really going on. There are moments of time that are hardened in my mind as the worst of my life and it was during this period.
I eventually sought help and began coming out of it. (I didn't know how to clearly communicate and ask for help) The first night of taking an anti-depressant was one of those. I didn't sleep at all (which was already a problem) and for hours truly thought that I was going to have to be hospitalized and the baby was going to be taken away.
The pervasive loneliness, isolation and feelings of losing my mind slowly lessened but it has stayed with me. When I think of that time, the pain is easily brought to the surface.
As a baby, Riley was my constant and the learning of unconditional love. It was the two of us twenty four hours a day, seven days a week with George popping in every now and then. I was her meal ticket and it seemed to never end. She looked to me for everything and I wanted to learn how to do "that." In the beginning I faked smiled and singsonged through it. And over the years through much hard work, the fake smile became genuine. With therapy, I began learning who I was, how to be in the moment, and how to feel everything that came my way. I learned that feelings are not who I am, and they are energy that will flow if you allow them.
The letting the energy flow has been one of the hardest skills to learn.
In this past year, I'm learning with some very intense therapy to be caring and nurturing towards all my deeply seeded parts of pain and anxiety. I am going back and addressing times of trauma that are imprinted in my soul. Trauma doesn't have to be a horrific one time event. It is something that gets trapped in your psyche because you did not know how to handle the situation at hand. And each person handles the same life situations differently. In therapy, long forgotten scenes pop in my mind that made a lasting impression. These times are the foundation for my emotional muscle memory. This is what I act out of every day. "The Body Keeps The Score" book by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk has been one of my sources to understand how deeply embedded events in our lives end up affecting us for life.
Some of those moments I can still picture in my head from our old house are when Riley was a baby and I felt utterly helpless, alone and teetering on the brink. Over and over and over again, I didn't think I was going to survive. Through my therapist, I am processing these times with all the skills that I have now. It is a reconciling that I never knew I needed but has been so powerful. Slowly these feelings don't terrify me as they did in the past.
But now...my eldest is venturing off. The child inside of me feels like she will be overwhelmed and decimated by this loss, if I label it a loss. I am grieving her evolving to a new stage of life and I know I am not alone. She will still need me, but it is in a new and different way than the last eighteen years. She will not be in our home. She will not be in my physical presence everyday and her room will be empty.
{Time out for crying.}
The pain energy will move through, the crying jags will recede. Life will change and we will adjust. At times, this summer, as we don't see things eye to eye, I have moments where I think, oh my gosh, yes, it's time and then I quickly move back to, I am going to miss her like the dickens.
On her end, my eldest is both excited and scared as well. Coming out of the crazy pandemic which rocked her last two years of high school and Italy trip (!) this structure loving girl is ready to establish a new routine in her new place. She is discombobulated once again and has lots to do to get ready to move on. She needs my help. It turns my stomach sometimes as I engage in college virtual seminars and then I talk to the scared part and it passes. I am working to be present for her as much as possible while tending to my own needs. It's not pretty at all and it's not photogenic.
Yet, this is THE new learning curve. Both/and. Both being present for her AND myself.
We can do hard things. We have done hard things and we can do them again.
We will both survive, and thrive and there may be dips and valleys along the way, but that is life.
So I have been partaking in Internal Family Systems therapy with my longtime therapist for the last few months. I'm so glad she went to a conference and we began this new journey. It is awkward, and uncomfortable but throwing me for a loop in the best possible way. The theory is that we have parts of our personalities that sprang forward to take care of us since we were children (and continue today). Life happened to us and we were overwhelmed and protective parts arose. These parts are very connected to our woundings.
My most active protectors are anxiety, sadness and eating. I know judgment and shame are in the mix but I don't know how they show up. We begin by seeing which part is showing up in my body at the present time and then we kindly, compassionately, talk to the part and there is always another one waiting in the wings. I have chest pain that appears as anxiety, I have sensation that starts in my chin and leads to my eyes for sadness. My therapist tenderly asks questions like how do I feel about the anxiety? Can sadness go to a a safe spot and let us talk to anxiety? Does it know Adult Carolyn is here? What age do you remember this showing up? Whatever the parts want to do, is okay and met with gratitude and compassion. With each question, we are teaching the wounded parts that there is an adult core (Self) of confidence, compassion, acceptance, calmness, wisdom, connectedness, and leadership that is in place and is ready to take over. We are synthesizing the protective wounded parts with the core Self.
And guess what that core self is?!
God.
The Divine One.
One That I Want to Get to Know!
IFS therapy at this time in my life amazingly builds on other theories and spirituality that I have been exploring for years. One of my favorite therapist teachers, Mary O'Malley, has advocated for curiosity, compassion and kindness with ourselves. This stands out to stark contrast with the judgement and shame that I have heaped upon myself for decades. The religion of my youth added to the self-criticism. God was not a loving being, but a judging Santa Claus in the sky, whom I needed to be saved through Jesus in order not to be punished to Hell.
I didn't want to get to know that God. Who would want that?
The judging Santa Claus with a side of Jesus was the message I received and took to heart and it has taken two decades and counting to begin to rewire and transform my image of God.
My life along with this therapy is a spiritual journey of being in the present moment, and for me to know God is inside each and every one of us. The love of the Divine One is unconditional, and the Trinity. Oh the trinity! I continue to heal with the Father, Son and HOLY SPIRIT in the mix. There is a Divine Flow which has been around from the very beginning of creation of the World. (Thank you Father Richard Rohr!) This flow when I can rest in it, makes me feel connected to the entirety of creation, humans, plants, animals and includes those with whom I utterly politically disagree in our current most divided world. You know that's some powerful stuff.
It takes a long time to unlearn what was learned from the very beginning of our lives. Spirituality is really about unlearning. One of my biggest teachers is emotions.
Emotions overwhelm me (as they did in extreme form in Postpartum Depression). If I don't identify with them, attach to them, become them, they flow through. (Different flow though!!)
I know this mechanism well but I lose sight of it and then I remember again, and then I forget. In my most recent therapy session earlier this week, I very unexpectedly was taken back to the postpartum depression I had with my first child. In past sessions, I have gone back and forth between sensations of anxiety and sadness in mere seconds. In the last session, holding those two emotions this time, seemingly "out of nowhere," my mind went to my first postpartum experience. I had fallen into a deep pit of despair, and volleyed back and forth between grief and overwhelming anxiety. I hit bottom one night after months of struggling, when I finally started an anti-depressant. That night, it ramped my anxiety up even further. I did not sleep at all, and my overwhelming fear was that I needed to be carted off to a hospital and that my baby needed to be taken away. The memory of this night and the postpartum depression, is still present in my body and I can call up the depth of the fear, isolation and utter despair easily.
I felt so utterly alone and abandoned.
My therapist and I address the Postpartum Depression experience lovingly and carefully during this session. I attempt to recognize that my adult self is present. When I answer the age question, it seems like I'm a teenager. When finished, she tells me the Postpartum Depression is likely related to feelings of abandonment from early on. She told me to take special care of myself. For days afterward, I felt the aftereffects of examining these parts in the form of mental exhaustion, irritability and sadness. I felt blah, I really wanted comfort. Not so long ago, my therapist and I had discussed looking at anxiety head on and not avoiding it. I was having chest pains, with the pandemic and my daughters going back to school. My therapist would ask, how do I feel about the anxiety? I began to feel edgy towards her which I have never done. I'm freaking terrified, of a heart attack right now is how I feel. After the session, I did a little research into heart attacks, because you know, I had too(!) and as I had gone through cardiac testing before, I knew the chest pain was anxiety. I sat with that knowledge and when I began to feel the anxiety again, I thanked it for working to take care of me, for showing up and that Adult Carolyn had this.
And the chest pain went away.
I know it will come again, and I will forget but ultimately, I plant to practice gratitude, kindness and compassion towards the anxiety over and over.
So, here I was again, days after exploring postpartum in my last session. I don't like it, I want to escape it and I want it to GO AWAY. I talk to a friend. I look things up on the internet. Somehow I come across this video of Glennon Doyle. It is a 23 minute Master Class in being with the pain while laughing. She comes on very strong, but hold on for the ride.
She gets my pain. She is saying this stuff out loud and people respond to her. I respond to this.
She and Pema Chodron both say: "If you can sit with the hot loneliness of pain for 1.6 seconds, when yesterday you could only sit for 1 second, that is the Journey of the Warrior."
Glennon continues: "When we transport ourselves out of our hot loneliness, we miss our transformation. And everything we need to become ourselves is in that hot loneliness".... "the pain teaches us what we need to know."
This is spirituality like I never knew before whereas the judging God of my youth would never evolve to knowing how much I'm loved, how I am at one with the entire universe and knowing the peace that surpasses all understanding.
With the hot pain, also comes joy. When you numb pain, you also numb everything else.
So this crazy therapy is deep, deep spirituality at it's core and coming to know God and myself in ways I never ever dreamed of.
Namaste.
Here is the Oprah's Super Soul Conversation featuring Glennon Doyle Melton.
A former first grade teacher that taught both of my girls was having stomach troubles after having beaten breast cancer a few years earlier. She and her husband have a high school sophomore daughter, the same age as my eldest and an older son that is a senior in high school. She was quiet and reserved but you knew she was present. It took me a while to understand this though. Having people in your life that are with you full on in the moments that you spend with them is an amazing gift. It's nothing about themselves in that moment, it's all focused on you. I have been diligently learning how to be present, especially with my children. Shirley possessed that ability with such quiet grace.
I didn't really get to know her during the lower school years but after she retired, I had an experience when we were both chaperoning a middle school cotillion dance session. This is when I saw the mom side of her and her sense of humor. It was a wonderful surprise to get to know that side. I didn't see her much after that as our children were at different schools. But I struck up a friendship with her husband through social media. He is the most gracious, friendly, down to earth, and kind man. He doesn't meet a stranger and he sends a note to mark the smallest of occasions. I think he read one of my blogs and made me feel special because he took the time to comment on what had struck a chord with him.
You never know how a small action can affect another person in a positive way.
This past April, I was sitting in an Old Navy dressing room with one of my daughters and I got a FB message from him, that was written by Shirley. My heart dropped and the tears fell as I understood what I read. She had just been diagnosed with stomach cancer and the prognosis didn't seem good.
From an outsider's perspective, her writing and what her husband shared as times went on, she was strong and brave and had accepted her fate with a deep faithfulness. I was awed by their strength. She had lost her own father young in her life. She had conversations with her children for them to understand they knew her and would know what she would think for matters in the future.
Those are brave and vulnerable conversations.
This family's journey has struck something in me and has stayed with me.
As time progressed, there were updates through FB and then Caring Bridge. By summer, they stopped treatment because she wanted to live out the rest of her time, with her family and travel.
From a selfish point of view, I thought what if I were in the same situation leaving my daughters and husband behind.
Life just doesn't seem fair. I have come to expect that stuff just happens, and I think about my faith. Could I handle a journey like that? Could I be gracious? I still have a lot of fear and anxiety that pop up for me yet I am coming to understand the true unconditional nature of God.
I know for sure, that God has ways of helping me understand things that are too much for me, if I stay aware and open. The signs of God's unconditional love never look like what I think they will, but they fill the need if I am patient and let go. They are obvious especially as I practice observance.
In our neighborhood, for many months, there have been three pet bunnies that have roamed across the street in my neighbors' yards and sometimes in our own yard. They ran mostly between the three yards directly across from my house. When I have come outdoors, I never remembered to look for them. I was always unexpectedly delighted in spotting a combination of the white one or the two brown ones. Seeing those white cotton tails hop away brought me such joy in that moment. But I also knew those bunnies weren't going to be around forever. After a while, we noticed we hadn't spotted the white bunny for some time.
One Saturday a few weeks ago, Shirley's husband posted a picture on Facebook of a fox that was in their neighborhood. On Sunday afternoon, my neighbor posted a picture with a very similar looking fox, with one of the brown bunnies that it had killed next to it.
What a coincidence.
I couldn't help but think of this family. They don't live that far away from us by foot with a BREC park and woods nearby.
Within days, I received the news that Shirley had moved to a hospice facility.
And not much time after that, my husband texted me on his way to work that the fox was lying dead on one of the streets of our neighborhood. It looked like it was peacefully sleeping with not a mark on it.
Again, my thoughts turned to this family. What does this mean?
A few days later, my neighbor and I who have talked many times about the wildlife that has showed up in our area, texted me a picture of a beautiful white stately egret that was on her back fence. That night Shirley passed away.
The next day, I read the news that she had moved into the great mystery. That afternoon, Mallory and I spotted the egret with our own eyes in another neighbor's yard.
On the morning of her service, I was walking the dogs and it hit me that I really, really wanted to spot the remaining bunny before I left. I had seen it previously and neighbors had seen it recently.
But then I got it.
I wasn't going to see the bunny. I had already seen the beautiful white egret.
I don't have control over what happens in this world. I have to look for the Divine signs that life goes on. Loved ones are still with us if we pay attention.
When I read the quotes in Shirley's funeral program, I was taken aback with what had been chosen. They were so perfect and so meaningful. It's more important what you do in your life in the time you have, how you make people feel and to celebrate even when things come to an end. Be grateful for the moment at hand. This has been a goal of mine to learn to live life in the moment at hand.
Shirley was a beautiful, gracious and faithful soul. She inspires me to live my life authentically as I am.
In preparing for the Joyce Rupp book study I facilitated in the fall I found this beauty that she wrote. I have found that this type of spiritual poetry is a balm to my soul. This one is so very truthful of my journey inward. Hope that it resonates with you as well.
Preface the persistent voice of midlife wooed and wailed, wept and whined, nagged like an endless toothache, seduced like an insistent lover, promised a guide to protect me as I turned intently toward my soul. as I stood at the door of "Go Deeper" I heard the ego's howl of resistance, felt the shivers of my false security but knew there could be no other way. inward I traveled, down, down, drawn further into the truth than I ever intended to go. as I moved far and deep and long eerie things long lain hidden jeered at me with shadowy voices, while love I'd never envisioned wrapped compassionate ribbons 'round my fearful, anxious heart. further in I sank, to the depths, past all my arrogance and confusion, through all my questions and doubts, beyond all I held to be fact. finally I stood before a new door: the Hall of Oneness and Freedom. uncertain and wary, I slowly opened, discovering a space of welcoming light. I entered the sacred inner room where everything sings of Mystery. no longer could I deny or resist the decay of clenching control and the silent gasps of surrender. there in that sacred place of my Self Love of a lasting kind came forth, embracing me like a long beloved one come home for the first time. much that I thought to be "me" crept to the corners and died. in its place a Being named Peace slipped beside and softly spoke my name: "Welcome home, True Self, I've been waiting for you." ---Joyce Rupp
A month or two ago, I met with my small group as part of the Spiritual Formation certification process. We do so every other month or so. At the end of the meeting, our wonderful leader had a display that included these seashells. But they were turned over. We each picked one.
As I picked it up and turned it over. I gasped.
And my reaction was exactly what a leader hopes for. On that day, or that particular week, I needed to read that I am enough.
It was such a fantastic Divine moment. Meant to be.
