Oh November...
Sometimes I am just breezing right through, and then I feel a little gut punched.
I was scrolling through my Facebook feed last week, and in someone's status update, I caught a glimpse of a tiny profile picture of a woman who had commented.
In that moment, I felt this overwhelming heaviness in my chest.
That, folks, is the experience of grief.
This woman was probably an age that would have been close to my mom's. She looked absolutely nothing like her. Her comment was completely neutral and unrelated to anything my mom would have written.
And yet, there was the heaviness.
I missed my mom.
I missed my mom so much in that moment that I had to sit with that feeling and breathe through it.
I looked outside the window and breathed.
The feeling faded.
The longing for my mom went back to the reserve in my heart where the grief lives.
This is such a tender time of year for all of us who are grieving. And this grieving is more than this loss of our loved ones. It's the loss of a dream. It's the loss of our dreams for them. It's the loss of our dreams for us.
For those who are feeling a little tender (or completely open and wounded) this time of year, I see you.
Take good care.
Seek support from people when you need it. Seek solitude when you need it.
Lean in to those hard feelings. And breathe.
When the feelings fade or are too much to sit with for too long, let's put it away for another day. And take in the current moment.
Let's look around to our space in the here and now. Look around the room, look outside the window, look at your people, look at your pets, go outside, do what you need to do to remind yourself that you are here in this moment.
And breathe.
