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.
{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.
Namaste.
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