A funny thing happens when you first have kids… you enter into a liminal space. A space where you’re no longer who you were, but you’re not quite yet who you’re becoming. A doorway opens, asking you to leave behind much of the life you once knew. The transition; everything that you’ve ever been taught about being a successful, productive person in today’s society is suddenly put on hold and you have to learn to challenge your identity and worthiness by what feels slow, quiet, and unseen. Instead of the flashy achievements, high paying jobs, or hustle that shows how much of a boss babe you are, you are being asked to sloooooow the F down and question everything you’ve ever known.

The endless goal chasing. How many things can you cross off on your to do list? How quickly can you get back to your pre-baby body? What perfect ways can you set up your day to be the “perfect mother?” The question enters:

What brings you worthiness as a human being?

Is it in the doing, or is it simply in the being? And having a baby will quickly turn all of that to shit when you realize the house will not get clean, the gym is not first on your to do list, the career has to get put on hold (*note, i recognize how much a privilege it is to do this), and anything that maybe made you feel like a “productive” individual from our societal viewpoint no longer is first on the priority list. Instead, you’re being deeply needed, almost 100% of the time, by this little being that could not survive at all without you. And often, they need ALL of you.

It is in these moments, as you are beginning this intense rite of passage, the shift from maiden to mother, that many of us begin to question who we are. What is our identity and worthiness shaped by? If I strip away the constant upleveling… the chasing. The perfectionism. The endless doing doing doing. Am I still worthy?

I know we’ve all had this experience where your partner comes home fresh in those newborn days, and asks what you did all day (well intended), and your triggered reaction is to defend why nothing got done around the house because you were caring for your newborn baby who needed every ounce of you. But truthfully, you are fighting your own worthiness trigger, learning the never ending lesson that we are all worthy by just being.

We are born worthy and deserving of love without any qualifications. And perhaps this is work we were never meant to learn and do alone.

Unfortunately we keep getting fed the same worthiness optimization plan. Not only do we find it in the toxic bounce back culture, but also on what I would think is an unintentional darker side of the wellness realm when it comes to perfectionism. When we’re trying to do our best and search for healthier lifestyles, we still hear “when you… regulate yourself enough, become less broken, eliminate your triggers, reach emotional stability, heal your trauma, optimize your routines…you’ll finally become a calm mother.” While I believe there’s power in many of those practices, it’s in the “why” behind their goals. Joe Hudson shared this quote that I love, “We cannot shame ourselves into change, we can only love ourselves into evolution.”

What if one of the deeper lessons motherhood is here to teach us is about learning unconditional love. The way we love our children so deeply, so unconditionally… Can we also learn to love ourselves that way? The way we are challenged daily to sit with their hard emotions, the anger, the frustration, the sadness… Can we learn to allow ourselves to sit with those emotions too? I’ve read and also learned that how quickly we try to shut down our children’s uncomfortable emotions is directly correlated with how well we can sit with those emotions within ourselves.

Motherhood must be one of the deepest spiritual experiences someone can go through. First, it massively uproots your entire identity. It shifts the way you experience every part of life. It challenges your nervous system like very little else. Then it asks you to decide what matters most. And if you think you can skip these steps, jump immediately back into the life you had before, you end up getting met with these same lessons again and again as the journey asks you to spiral deeper into understanding them. The reality is that the total breakdown, the falling apart, the relying on something bigger than yourself…all of it becomes the catalyst for motherhood to do its work on you, if you let it. It asks you to not let motherhood simply be an interruption to becoming ourselves but instead one of the primary ways we do so.

As I’ve slowly begun to come out the other side of the “newborn to three year old” fire, I’ve started to have this deepening realization that the breaking and becoming of motherhood (what researchers and psychologists now call matrescence, the profound physical, emotional, psychological, relational, and identity transformation of becoming a mother) is truly a two to three year process. And the cycle deepens again when a new baby is born. Like the spiral, with a new layer of looking at the same patterns with deeper meaning. Sure, you’ve been through the process before, and you can pick up on your old tips and tricks a lot easier the second time around, but the healing and patterns that show up again continue to ask you to go deeper. It reminds you to slow down. To allow yourself to just be. To recognize how quickly time moves. That the beauty is all right in front of your face but if you’re so focused on the next thing, you’ll miss it. It continues to teach you that you simply cannot and should not muscle through this journey alone, or you’ll likely end up depressed and disconnected. The deeper I’ve understood this transformation, the more I’ve realized that understanding isn’t enough…we need to be witnessed and supported through it. You see, this notion that motherhood was meant to be done in a tribe never feels more true than when you’re deep in a pit of triplet newborns crying at once, with a two year old clinging to your leg. And you somehow have to complete all the mundane tasks of daily life, let alone have a conversation where you are truly heard and seen through all facets of the emotions that bubble up to the thoughtful question “how are you, really?”

Imagine if motherhood was still held in a tribe? If the women in your life were present and thoughtful enough to challenge you to speak the truth about “what has been heavy about your week?” If they give you the safety, the permission, and the space to not be “the strong one” for once, and let you fall apart with a soft landing space.

I know there’s no perfect antidote, but as I slowly begin to come out of the fire of the very intense initiation I’ve had into motherhood, I’m beginning to understand the medicine, the balm that softens the soul through this transition. In a book I’m reading by Jessie Harrold, Mothershift, she, like many others, writes about how motherhood is a rite of passage. She states “A rite of passage is a kind of life change that changes everything. It is a transformation that runs deeper than changes we might experience, to the things we do, think, or feel, and right into the very marrow of how we identify ourselves in the world. A rite of passage has the potential to bring us closer to our own sense of who we are and what matters most to us. Far from being solitary endeavors of self-actualization, rites of passage grow us into mature adults that know and use their gifts to contribute to their community, as leaders and elders.” And virtually all traditional and indigenous cultures have ingrained that in order for someone to safely and successfully integrate their initiation, they must be witnessed and supported in it. Yet, somehow in today’s society, the initiation into motherhood is beginning to become more and more isolated.

All these thoughts have slowly come to me through these past 5 years of mothering, facilitating women’s circles and retreats, and getting tested in my own fire. While it is not the only solution we need, I’ve begun a new women’s circle but this time with an emphasis on the mothers. Specifically, “Mothering the Mother.” A space where the mother remains at the center. It’s not about fixing ourselves, chasing productivity, pursuing perfection, or “upleveling”, but instead focuses on just witnessing our experience in community which allows regulation, perspective shifts, and healing. What would it look like if mothers received the same tenderness they give so freely? How would it help us integrate, feel supported, and become wise elders in our community? Research suggests that when new moms understand just how life-altering, and also how normal, the transition into motherhood can be, they are significantly less likely to experience postpartum depression. Evidence that some of the best medicine is in hearing other people’s stories and in knowing that you’re not alone in this.

My hope is simple…that my little circle of friends going through the fire feel supported. And when they finally come up for air, they reach a hand back for the mother behind them. While it doesn’t fix the lack of true hands-on support we all need in our homes every day, it softens the edge of the sharp transition, and gives us a space to deeply be seen. I dream of this type of experience “Mothering the Mother” to be shared across communities in various ways. Nourishing retreats, more facilitators intentionally creating safe spaces that ask the hard questions. Spaces where mothers can just come together and feel supported in a way that is not surface level, but deeply authentic. A widespread cultural shift in the way we care for mothers.

If you’ve made it this far, what are your thoughts on these reflections? How can we bring authentic connection into motherhood? How can we bring more of “The Village” experience into our modern-day lives?

*Note: Many recent reflections inspired by my current reads:
Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Birth, and Childhood, by Lucy Jones
Mothershift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage, by Jessie Harrold

If I were to look back to my early 20s I would have never quite guessed this is where I’d have landed. I wasn’t sure what I planned to write today but what feels like wants to come out onto the page is a letter to my 20-year-old self. So here it goes:

Rosie, today is your 20th birthday, and wow do I have so much to report from the other side. Life will be completely different than you’d expect, mostly in the best way possible but also with some hard to report life-changing experiences that absolutely crushed you. But don’t worry, you wouldn’t be the wonderful person you are today without them. That’s how life works sometimes. The good and the bad are often needed. And yes, you…You are wonderful. And I can say that because I know how hard you’ve worked to strip back the layers and become who you are today. To learn how to return to the goodness in your heart that has always been there underneath all the layering of society’s expectations that were placed upon you.

Twenty years old will be the last age that you have that truly feels like a child. Where only little “t” life traumas have shaped you, and mostly you have been shaped by love, curiosity, rebellions, testing your edges, and a wonderful whole and complete family that showed up in the best ways they knew how. Not that life wasn’t hard around you at times, or that you didn’t have heartbreaks, but that you were pretty protected and supported as a little girl from it all. What a true privilege that has been. Where your greatest worries were about passing a test in school, getting caught for sneaking out, or what you were going to be “when you grew up.” It’s the last year that responsibility was a simple easy word that meant just focusing on you and your future. I don’t say this to scare you, but just as a precursor to know that when the hard stuff comes, that it still works out in the end.

At 21 years old your dad will disappear off the face of the earth and it will be the most earth-shattering, confusing experience that you have gone through. You’ll hear from him one last time in April 2013 and you will cry as he tries to explain things that don’t make sense. You ask him if he will call you on your birthday, but the day comes and goes and you never hear from him again. We will spend the next 12 years searching for him, reaching out in any way we know how, and I’m sorry to report nothing will come to fruition. There will come a day, when you somehow get the news that he has passed. When you’ve found a new lover, married him, have 4 beautiful children, and he will not know any of them. What a heartache that will feel like. During the past 12 years searching for him, you always hold onto a sliver of hope that he will return again, but it’s in that final year before he passes, only a couple months before his death, that you finally find some closure. I think intuitively knowing you will never truly get to say goodbye. So you sit in therapy, and meet him in the sunshine, on a park bench, side by side. It kind of reminds you of the New Girl episode, where Nick meets a little old Asian man in the park. They can’t speak the same language but they somehow have the best day ever and Nick leaves feeling like he learned all about the world through him. In our park bench adventure, you’re the only one who can’t talk. We sit side by side and I let everything on my mind out in words. You can only show emotions through your face, but you listen and hear it all. You hear how angry I was. How sad I was that you left. How sad I am that you never got to meet them all. How mad I was that you left Mom all alone. You listen to what my life is like now, and how deeply I wish you could be here and see it all. How badly I wish you could be that elder in my life who could give me deep and true wisdom that I know you possessed so thoroughly in your heart. And towards the end, as I am outwardly silent just letting tears stream down my face and my therapist is asking if I’m okay, I’m still having this sweet and beautiful conversation with you deep down. Knowing that you actually are there, on the other side, listening to it all. Just like you taught me through meditations, and dreams, and the meeting on the bridge as we exchanged colors. As I say I forgive you. That it’s really all okay. Or I know that it slowly will be. That I can’t even begin to imagine all that life had thrown you through the years. The challenges, the heartbreak, and the fears. I hold your hand knowing that we don’t need to say sorry anymore. We don’t need to really even have these conversations anymore. I just want you to know that I’m so happy to have you here. Enjoying this little moment in time together. And that I knew how much you loved me, and that you still do. Then I’d find an old sticky note again that you’ve kept all that time and soak in this reminder:

“Rosemary, your heart and beauty is an inspiration. Your love will magnetize tremendous joy and peace to this world. Use your light to accelerate this planet higher to the light. Love, Dad.” Just like you always taught me. To find my light and light others.

As the years go on, you continue to try to find a balance between listening to your own hopes and dreams and layering on what “success” looks like within society. Being raised by an Asian father with the highest expectations. And following in the footsteps of 3 successful older brothers. You ACE PT school, become a Doctor of Physical Therapy and begin the grind of seeing patients endlessly. Life is sweet, you have a lot of fun and some wild times. But something deep down feels the need to shift, but the question is what and how. How do you go your whole life chasing accolades, getting major achievements and then hitting your mid 30s and realizing that success is not how society has defined it. And you actually want a major career pivot. Maybe something similar but different. Or more refined. There’s more to this. It’s deeper than this. Healing happens so much deeper than just the physical, which is all you work on all day long. It feels shameful at first, to go through all of that and then ask “is it what I really want?” You begin asking the questions but life throws another huge obstacle in your way that forces you to pause and allow that to sink in further. You actually have to place your career on hold for quite a while, and that becomes a blessing as you work through what your heart truly desires.

Enter major life disrupting events. First you navigate a heart-wrenching miscarriage, followed by the birth of the most beautiful baby girl you could ever imagine. Life continues to flow through its peaks and valleys. Perfect, loving, sexy husband, that supports all your wishes and dreams. Bouncy, joyous baby girl. You guys try for baby number 2 and end up hearing “I see three heart beats” at your first ultrasound. Estimates are anywhere between 1 in a million, and much, much higher for your specific case. It comes with an endless list of high risk fears spouted off to you in the first appt, followed by a 5 weeks pre-labor hospital stay, NICU x3 babies, and ending our hospital inpatient journey clocking sweet baby Leo with a 13 month stay. During that time, you experience what it’s like to watch your baby encounter MULTIPLE very near death experiences, CPR, ECMO life support, endless weeks of being medically induced sleep, all while you are trying to navigate the shift of having newborn “twins” at home, and the emotional rollercoaster of a 2 year old. It will be the hardest thing you and Connor ever go through, testing your relationship, your own inner well of strength, and every ounce of faith you can find in God to help you pull through. This time, however, I’m happy to report that you guys all make it through. You don’t come out the other side unscathed, but your very intense initiation into motherhood changes you in ways that will forever be hard to describe. Success and happiness look so much different than you ever thought you were chasing in those early 20s. When your house is full of love, when everyone is healthy at once, when you see your sweet little boy walk for the first time when you never knew if he would. That is true success. That is a rich life. You get to wrap yourself around the world’s most patient, sweetest man every night, and be reminded that while love and marriage doesn’t always look perfect, the beauty is in continuously figuring it out together so we can make this beautiful life together. So we can continue to dream what it means to be happy in our home, in our hearts. So we can raise 4 incredibly big hearted kids to share their love with the world, and with each other. While we never thought we would have 4 kids, one of the absolute greatest gifts is seeing what we’ve given them; the love of each other. Not a day goes by that they aren’t reaching for each other, loving each other. What a gift.

Through all of these life experiences you’ll continue to sit with the questions– where must I go, what must I do? And it continues to get more and more clear that the doing and the being are the answers. The life experiences that shape your next step. In the now of loving and being with these growing little ones. Sitting with the rite of passage that I have just walked through over these past 5 years of motherhood. Not jumping ahead to what this all means. But instead recognizing that the gifts and the answers come from being here now.

It’s wild to be on the other side and recognizing that all 4 kiddos are now out of the “infant brain” period. The boys are 3 now, and I am slowly recognizing a new me again. I feel vitality building in my bones, a fire being relit in my heart for all that I am learning, all that I want to share, and all that I want to help others just sit with. It brings me back to a moment when the boys were 1, Leo had just come home, and I had a realization that motherhood did NOT need to be martyrdom. That there are of course many moments in time that their care will be all consuming, and that just surviving is indeed what you will need to do. But that when you see the opening, that you grab it by the horns and pull yourself up. Pull yourself up for fresh air and not sink into the idea that we have to live in motherhood martyrdom. So you ask for help, jump into therapy, find your women’s circles, begin exercising again, make an effort to reconnect with your love. You come back to your own vitality. You begin to feel life force flowing through you again. An electric current that pulsates through you, allowing you to feel the aliveness in the little moments in your day. The pings from the universe that bring you so much joy. You can hear the little whispers telling you to dig deeper here, share more about this there, connect, connect, connect. You smile and cry and say “thank you” to yourself. Thank you to God. Thank you, thank you. For all that is. Thank you for learning that that inner well of a mom does not run dry. And when you follow the little glimmers, everything begins to light up again. No matter the challenges of daily life, you get to choose everyday to sit with the expansion that is thrown at you or contract against it. Motherhood is the greatest initiation, the greatest spiritual experience I have ever been through. The most intensely I have had to sit with myself. With every emotion that makes its way to the surface, and not just a few times, but every.single.day. Through this, I’ve learned that the female brain goes through an incredible amount of rewiring during matrescence, akin to pubescence, and it’s impossible to not come out the other side with anything in your life unchanged. Your entire identity will shift as you know it, but what a world expanding shift that will be. You learn that motherhood should not be done alone. Never alone. Every single mom is going through some level of this in her own way and why in the world do we need to do this alone? Motherhood, as a rite of passage, should really be witnessed, held, and celebrated in community. Something that society does very little to support. So on the other side now, there continues to be a deepening inkling for where more of your work should be going. More moments that allow us all to sit with the stories, and hear me too, or I see you, or you’re not alone. What a privilege to be surrounded by that, and yet it should just be our day to day.

So I’m coming to you today from the other side of this wild and crazy 15 year shakeup. I don’t have answers about where life will go next, and what my next step will look exactly like. I can tell you that grief is heavy and doesn’t exactly get less heavy with time, but there are indeed more breaks in the waves. Longer periods that it doesn’t shake your world when you recognize he’s not here anymore. And the love… it will always stay the same. I can tell you that motherhood will absolutely break you, but the remaking is so full and so beautiful that you can’t quite imagine how you’ve never seen the world in this view until now. Like the veil was lifted. With a kind of light shining on everything you see. I can tell you how incredibly important it is that you say yes to your 22 year old baby self when the man you love asks you to marry him after a very short time dating. Because when you wrapped yourself in his arms and felt that immediate shift where your nervous system said “yes, this is peace. This is safety. This is love.” That you trust that feeling. Your intuition knew right away. How privileged you are now to know this kind of love and support that you are free to ask the questions “what’s next for me, and for us?”

I can’t tell you at all what the next 15 years will likely look like, but I am sure, without a doubt, that I will write myself a letter again in 15 years and say “Look at you. You did it again. Life worked out. You’re not perfect every day but you have the choice everyday to try and show up through love. It was hard, and all consuming, and wow how beautiful. How beautiful is it that we’ve made it here. With more love, more joy, and a deeper self-love than we can imagine. Not forcing past the hard, but choosing to sit with it until it passes. You find the glimmers, and feel God’s life force build and grow and flow through you guiding your next steps. What a journey it will be.”

Happy 20th birthday. Happy 35th birthday. Happy 50th birthday. It’s not what you’d expect, but it’s everything you need.

An ache under the frozen surface, waiting to bubble up.

But the ice only melts in layers.

Sometimes it’s a little creek,

and other days a full river.

But rarely the waterfall to unleash it all.

I breathe and melt one drip at a time

but the surface still doesn’t crack.

Waiting. Just waiting.. for the undoing.

And then the day finally comes to say the final goodbye.

There’s some peace in the knowing as the cards all settle into place.

But I don’t shatter and melt like I thought I would.

Until you come to me in a dream and place your hand in mine.

Warm. Soft and safe.

There’s no words that could explain it all.

So we don’t even try.

But there’s love.

Love in it all.

Love in your touch.

Love in your presence.

We listen to the music together, as friends.

Just one more moment together.

Simply enjoying the being.

With no place to be.

And slowly it comes.

A couple drops from the sky,

Melting the surface.

Before I know it, the storm is in full force.

And I’m wrapped up in it.

It’s pouring now and the melting begins.

I thought it would hurt…but it doesn’t.

It’s actually the most blissful experience I can imagine.

The letting go of the pain.

As my shoulders begin to shake and the tears stream down my face in full force,

The expansion begins again.

But there’s no obstacles blocking its way this time.

No more layers protecting it all.

I know that you’ve always been there.

Deep in my heart.

You’ve always been there.

And when it’s time for you to go,

I don’t need you to stay anymore.

I watch as your hand slowly drifts away,

And I don’t grasp for it.

Because all I’ve ever needed is already here.

Deep in my heart.

A piece of your love, yes.

But the way I’ve learned to love me through it all.

It’s always been here.

I just had to find my way back.

To the little me, dancing in the field of fairies,

Feeling love in everything I see.

Feeling me. Just like you taught me.

So I melt. Soften. And expand again.

And the water flows out towards the ocean where it meets the rest of life.

Waiting with open arms.

I saw how your eyes beautiful blue, similar, but different than your daddy’s, remind me of a blue that’s like calm water, full of wisdom and holds the power of life.

I noticed that time never stands still, and seems to move faster than it should. Another one of your shirts no longer fit over your head, and that mark on the wall has already moved an inch in just a few months.. despite me making sure you aren’t standing on your tiptoes again.

You showed me how suddenly you could say your name with the proper “L” sound. You said “La La La! See! I can say L perfectly!” And suddenly nuna and wuna, became “Luna.” When did that happen? Where did I miss that change? My heart is so proud and also cracked a little, recognizing the loss of that little voice, that will never be the same.

Every walk you never fail to point out how beautiful the day is, or how beautiful nature is. Sometimes it’s the moon, or a flower, a cloud in the sky, or how the water is rippling in towards the shore. It all has a sparkle to you, and my heart swells knowing my words have become your little thoughts. And oh how proud I am that you can see the beauty in these things too.

You ask to be a part of every little thing in my day. Can you stir the eggs, wash the dishes, sweep the floor, plant the seeds, and snuggle me to bed. I know it will all take longer this way, and is often harder, but also remind myself what better way to connect, give meaning to my work, and just share in our day.

You remind me when sometimes I’m frustrated, and need to take a moment to breathe. Or maybe I rushed you too quickly, or said something too harshly, and how I need to apologize so that you feel heard too. And again I am the student, learning what it means to listen. And you forgive me in two seconds, giving me a hug and running back out to your day.

Your little mama demeanor only gets stronger by the day. Checking to make sure brothers are okay. Do they need a hug when they’re sad? Do they want a snack or a toy? Maybe just a little snuggle on the couch will make everything better. And they just melt into you.

Our bedtime conversations have suddenly become so much more thorough, where you’re asking harder questions and I really have to think about the right answers. And I remember the dream I had right before you were born. Where i birthed you, and to my bewilderment you began speaking the truths of the universe. And now I realize these truths really do come out of the lips of children— fresh questions and answers with no taint on them.

I’m mourning the loss of little you. A version that will never be the same. And I’m loving the you that you’re becoming… so brave, and kind, and full of wonder. I don’t know how I got so lucky.. that you chose me as your mama. But I do know that depth of gratitude I feel for all that you are now, and all that is still to come is what makes every hard moment worth it. All the versions of you that I have yet to meet. All the adventures we will have together. All the ways that life will continue to open before my eyes because my prayers were spoken into existence as you walked onto this earth.

I love you little moon. 🌙

I’ve taken a deep dive into much of this work and want to give credit to multiple authors for their wisdom; Dr Nicole Le Para, Martin Prechtel, Bessel Van Der Kolk, Brene Brown, Rumi, Sogyal Rinpoche, Carl Jung, Gabor Mate, and Brianna Wiest.

While much of this is still a work in progress for me, here are some little nuggets that I’ve learned and taken away in this season of life. These are what feel true to me. They may not be everyone’s experience and that’s okay. Either way, I hope some resonate with you <3.

1. Allowing ourselves time to grieve and feel all the feelings that come up is an expansion of the soul. It is self-recognition. It gives the space for what needs to be heard, felt and seen to allow true healing. Without allowing yourself this experience, you are creating a contraction in your body that holds tension and potentially lifelong dis-ease. “Being strong” instead of feeling it all, is actually the contraction. The leaning in, letting go, and “falling apart,” is the breakthrough; the expansion. Let yourself expand.

2. While the above is important, it is even more prudent to remember everyone processes grief differently. Rather than judging ourselves or others, we should allow ourselves to be as we are. That is the ultimate peace. Judging how we should show up blocks the very experience of healing. Healing isn’t a race—it unfolds in it’s own time. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to grief. If your timeline looks different, find freedom in feeling exactly as you do. This may look like anger, or even resentment first, and then you’ll find there’s probably something hiding under that… like sadness. There is no right way. Find people who can support you by accepting where you are right in this very moment, versus where they/you think you should be. Healing will come at the pace that’s right for you, as long as you don’t ignore it.

3. When we are in the middle of an extremely stressful situation, our body likely has shifted into “fight or flight”, or “freeze” relative to the sympathetic nervous system. This is a state that feels safe to us in this moment. It’s a place that we often need to go to just get through the day in the best way we know how. It is not a time to say “you need to be healing.” Timing will be different for everyone. You may shift in and out of these states. But when we are finally able to come to a place where the threat has passed, we will then need to have the courage to ask if now is the time to come back to me. The longer you go, often the harder it is to ask those questions, but there should be no rush to ask before you are ready.

4. Shadow work is about working to uncover the unconscious aspects of ourselves that we repress, deny, or are unaware of. They are the parts of self that at some point, likely during childhood, we were conditioned to believe were not okay. The labeling of “this is a good feeling, this is a bad feeling.” The beauty in doing “the work” is that you learn to honor all feelings and the wisdom that they bring. Feelings are communication. You cannot select which emotions to feel. You either flow with or resist them all to some extent. Many times you’ll find that sitting with the hard feelings actually ends up lifting the fog on the beauty you were meant to see. This is because life exists on a spectrum of duality. This simply means that the depth in which you can feel true grief, sorrow, anger, etc., is also the height of which you can feel true joy, love, happiness. Allow yourself that luxury of soaring high by diving deep.

5. Per the well-known sayings “name it to heal it” and “what your resist, persists;” most people’s greatest fears is that if they allow themselves to truly feel the anger, sadness, or deep despair, is that they will get stuck there, in the suffering. But suffering is actually the refusal to accept your reality. From my experience, you will not get stuck in a feeling if you give yourself the proper space and time to feel it. This may look like time set aside with someone you know and trust to hold space without judgment, or time with yourself without distractions to honor what comes up. The key is setting aside time specific for processing. Otherwise it may become an underlying tension that holds its grip on you. Naming it, honoring it, releasing it, is actually the much more efficient way through. No one ever healed by simply holding it together.

If you’re going through a challenging season of life, this is my call to you; to just be where you are. Without resistance. I’m in the trenches with you, cheering you on.

xx,

Rosie

A daughter’s first love is often her father, and you were mine. I would light up when you told me I was beautiful, and strong, and capable of anything. While you carried yourself with a bulletproof exterior, I knew that all it took was one deep hug to make you melt.

You weren’t perfect, but none of us are, and I know you tried hard. And many traits I carry because of you, are my most favorite parts of me.

You taught me how to close my eyes, open my heart, and listen to God’s calling. To trust my intuition, as it wouldn’t lead me astray. You showed me what it means to work hard for your family, and fight to keep us showing up for each other, even in the hard fights.

You raised some hard workers, and high achievers, but more importantly, you raised us learning that the most important thing is that we be there for each other. And while that took some trial and error… I wish I could tell you it paid off. That we really do all drop everything to be there for each other.

It’s heartbreaking that after all that hard work raising us, our story took a turn… and a heart attack, a mental breakdown, and circumstances I’ll never understand, ripped you away from my life. Like dust in the wind. Just, gone. Still here… but gone.

But you taught us to be strong and I promise you we put up a good fight. For so many years we fought for you… looking for you. Endless calling, emails, texts, physical letters and pictures, even traveling across the world in search of you.

And to mourn the loss of someone who is still on earth, but completely absent in your life, is without words. It’s a battle I don’t wish on anyone. It’s confusing, and heartbreaking, and never ending. So much left unsaid. So many unanswered questions. There’s always the hope that something will change and you’ll show back up. That wrongs could be righted, and I’d pour love into you without second guessing it.

But instead, I would meet you like you taught me, on that bridge in our meditations. And instead of you passing me a color that I had to guess, I passed you love. A big enveloping of love. I know you felt it. I know you needed it.

I’d tell you about my amazing husband and kids, and how beautiful and strong they are. How they’ve turned my world upside down, but how it’s worth every ounce of energy. I’d tell you much I get it now… how hard it is to be a parent. And also being on this end of things now, that I’d never ever truly understand how you left.

And then I’d let myself be mad. Mad at you. Mad at how things played out. Just mad that this was our story. Sometimes I told you how unfair it was that you didn’t give us a second chance to show up for you in whatever way you needed. All you needed to do was ask. And also that you weren’t showing up for me… at times when I needed you most.

Sometimes I felt the weight of your trauma, and your family trauma sitting in our bloodline, and the grief you must have felt not fully unpacking it. And I slowly let it unravel, one thread at a time, so it doesn’t hold me like it did you. And so my kids don’t have to feel more than a whisper of it.

But after 12 years of this journey, suddenly we’re here. With an abrupt ending. the final closing of a chapter. Life took you too soon. You were too young, and it wasn’t supposed to end like this.

I’ve given you so many goodbyes over so many years, yet this one is the final goodbye. With no more little whispers of hope that I’d be able to do it in person just once. No more wondering if our story ends a different way, or dreams of running into you on the street. No more building of a lump in my throat when I see a little old Asian man, and for a heart-aching second I’m wondering if he’s you. There’s no more.

And the grief hits different. I’m not screaming into my pillow like I did all those years ago. When the waves felt like they were 100 feet tall. But the tears fall again, like a waterfall that comes and goes depending on the season. It’s been 12 years of mourning you… and its the rainy season now. So it pours.

I know there will be periods where it goes dry again. And on an unexpected day it’ll downpour. But I’m welcoming it with open arms today. Because over this season of life where you’ve been gone… I’ve learned so much. I’ve become friends with grief. I’ve pulled up a chair, let her in, and listened to her story. And she told me that grief is really just love. Love that’s begging to be seen and heard. Love that honors the time we had. The greatest gift of all.

I know you see the clarity now. I’m sure it hurts and there’s things you would change. But you can let it go now. None of that really matters. Wrap yourself in that love and go home. Your mom and dad, and most of your siblings will be there at the door… waiting to greet you.

And if you look down at me right now, I hope you feel it. Grieving a love lost. A love that will always remain. A love of a thousand suns, burning bright for you. And I hope that light guides you through that tunnel on your way home.

I love you, Dad.

xx, Rosie

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