Grief is Love Not Wanting to Let Go

 Grief is a tricky thing. Everyone copes differently, and in a house of six people, it ebbs and flows and sometimes crashes hard.  The most difficult thing is knowing how to support the people you love who are hurting the most.

My husband lost his dad on Saturday. He was a brilliant, kind, funny, sharp man when I met him almost fourteen years ago. He was still all of those things the last time I saw him in late 2022. The sharpness had dulled a bit due to his disease (similar to Parkinson's), but I could still see the twinkle in his eye at times. I saw the love and pride when he looked at his son and grandkids. 

Knowing how to support my kids is relatively easy for me. I may not have wanted four kids when I was 18 years old and thought I'd be a tortured author living in a studio apartment in New York City. But I'm glad God always has a better plan than I do, because being their mom is my greatest blessing (and biggest headache depending on the day). I know how each of them responds to crisis. How they respond to stress and big feelings. I know how to love them through it. 

My husband is a different animal. He's the strong one in our relationship in the most visible ways. He stands by my side when I go through difficult emotions, even if he doesn't always understand them, he loves and accepts that I am a highly emotional person. He is not highly emotional. He is a very hard egg to crack on the emotional front. To see him breaking down over this loss, that was gut-wrenching for me. I feel the need to come in and protect him, to shield him from other things so he can process this loss in his own way, on his own time. He's not someone who rushes things, and he's probably not even completely dealt with 5% of the emotions he's going to feel over the next several weeks and months and maybe even years. 

As Earl Grollman said, "Grief is love not wanting to let go." 

I promise we won't let go of the memories we have of you, Julio. I promise we will all do our best to feel the sadness, but not let it consume us, and we'll support each other along this new journey we haven't had to navigate yet as a family. Thank you for making my husband a strong, good, hard-working man. You will be missed. 

Uncomfortably Stuck

 When I was going through the grief of my first marriage ending, and navigating dating for the first time in over a decade, plus raising twin toddlers without a stable co-parent in the picture, I started going back to church. I had turned away from it off and on over the years, feeling judged for decisions I made, feeling like I wasn't part of the "good kid" crowd and having struggled with depression and anxiety since I was in my early teens. That wasn't as socially acceptable as it is today, and sidenote, I'm so grateful that the narrative around mental health has changed since I was a teenager. 

Going back to church as a single mom in my twenties was a little rough. I wasn't really in the same place as many of the young adults attending church, because I had been married, divorced, and had two toddlers by the time I was 26. But there was one night I remember vividly, my moment where I realized that being broken could be a beautiful thing. Rising up from the ashes of pain and betrayal and hurt and grief, it could be a beautiful thing. 

Shortly thereafter, I got a tattoo on the side of my ribs of a cross with the words "Sweetly Broken" stretched across it. I think those two words accurately summed up how I felt. I was broken, but I was coming back together, and it was all going to be ok (mostly). 

In this season, I feel entirely different. If I had to pick two words to describe where I am, it would be Uncomfortably Stuck. 

I feel stuck in my career.

I feel stuck in wanting to do more, give back, serve a purpose, feel like I'm making a difference somewhere, but yet, the mom guilt of doing anything that takes away from me being the best mom I can be is this huge catch-22. 

I feel stuck in this holding pattern. 

I feel stuck in the choices I made twenty years ago to not pursue my PhD and become a college professor. And now I feel like it's too late. And to be honest, I'm tired. I don't know if I can take on the mental or emotional stress of something new and different that demands my time and energy. I don't have enough of that to go around most days as it is. I'm forever drawing from an empty cup no matter how I try to fill it up. 

Let's look at the positives. 

I have four beautiful kids. I have a supportive husband. I have amazing parents. I have a handful of family and friends that I love and cherish. 

I have a decent paying job that allows me the flexibility to work from home and still be a mom and show up to most school activities and sports events. I am still able to drop off and pick up my kids from school most days. On days that I can't, my husband or my parents do. My kids have family raising them, not strangers. I am blessed to be able to say that in the area we live, the cost of living, and the fact that most households require two incomes (outside of the home). 

I volunteer as a mentor at the local high school, meeting with a junior once a month to discuss their academic goals and their future. I occasionally volunteer at church in the early childhood department. I'm the team mom for soccer. 

I recently had to make some hard decisions for myself and my family and stop volunteering with an organization that I had been involved with for over 10 years. That sucked. But I know at the end of the day, it's best for my family and my own emotional health. In place of that, I've begun a journey to be a CASA (court-appointed special advocate) for foster youth. It's an 18-month commitment. It's six hours a week for the month of February of online video classes and a few more hours of reading and studying up on policies and procedures. I attended the first class last night, and the whole time, I'm thinking, this is super interesting, I'd love to do this, but how much is it going to cost me in terms of time with my own family? How much added stress is this going to put on me, which then causes me to snap at my kids or not be as present for them. 

I saw something on Instagram this morning that just sort of clicked for me. It said: 

"My best friend's mom taught me the most important parenting lesson: She demonstrated how to make a kid feel wanted, secure, and loved unconditionally. Now as a busy mom myself, I think about her when I'm feeling maxed out and am tempted to tell my kids I don't have time to do something. Instead, I remember how she constantly said that her relationship with her kids was the most important thing to her and nothing else mattered half as much."

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO HER. NOTHING ELSE MATTERED HALF AS MUCH.

I want to be that mom. I want to embrace that maybe, just maybe, my purpose is being fulfilled every single day when I show up for my kids. Sure, I have a job that helps pay the bills. But my primary JOB on this earth is to raise good human beings. 

I don't need to save the world. I don't need to be a CASA to a foster kid. Maybe now isn't the season for that. Most of the people in the class I attended last night were retired. Or empty nesters whose kids had gone off to college. Maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe the busy-ness of this season of life is my purpose. To be there. To pick them up after the dance at midnight. To be the house where their friends feel comfortable hanging out. To show up to all the practices and games. 

Maybe my presence in my own kids' lives is what I really need to be focused on, and then I won't feel so uncomfortably stuck, thinking I'm "between" other things. Maybe I shouldn't feel stuck, but actually settled and ok with sitting on the couch and reading a book now and then and not needing to DO something that gives back to someone else all the time. 

Is this a mid-life crisis? I feel like it is. I feel like it started during COVID, I went back to school to become a teacher, decided when I was close to the finish line that wasn't the answer. Now I'm chasing this dream of saving foster kids in some way, and maybe I should just focus on saving my own kids. Or at least being here for them every step of the way if they're stumbling or falling or crumbling. Maybe that's exactly where I'm supposed to be. 

I'd like this mid-life crisis to end now, please. I don't want to be uncomfortably stuck anymore. 

Missed Opportunities

I can be impulsive. I can be reactive. I can be scared to move forward and make big changes. I am prone to thinking about how a change in my life will affect my kids, most of all. 

I regret not moving forward with the teaching credential. I was scared last fall, and unsure of my next steps. Instead of chasing a dream, and jumping out on a limb, I froze. I stopped myself from moving forward. Now, months later, I'm seeing things in my current job that remind me of why I did not want to keep working in this field. I see missed opportunities to make a change in my life that would impact my mental health, my relationship with my kids, my relationship with my husband, and my sense of self-worth. 

I feel as though I am always reaching for the next thing, but then when it gets close enough to my grasp, I give up. I'm afraid to make that big leap. I'm afraid of failing. I'm afraid of not being perfect, or making a mistake and everyone seeing me fall. 

I don't want to live my life looking back at missed opportunities to make things better. To do better. To make a difference.

I've recently stopped my volunteering with Safe Families and El Roi Foster Ministries. I felt called to pursue becoming a CASA. I think my pull towards that is to have an impact on a child's life in a way that doesn't impact my family by bringing a child into our home and disrupting everyone else's lives. The more I think about becoming a CASA, the more I think I should have pursued the teaching credential so I could make an impact daily with kids that came through my classroom. 

Turning 40 has been a bitch. I feel like I've missed so many chances to be something more, to claim victory over decades-long battles and depression and self-doubt. 

Now that I'm recognizing and realizing this, what's next? Do I start over again? Do I just "stick it out" for 25 more years? 

Have you ever felt like you just missed the biggest opportunity to change your life, and you're frozen out of fear? What did you do? Did you settle or did you chase that dream, and prioritize your own happiness over others that you love?