Ramblings of a Mama in Mourning

I'm reeling, and I have to write somewhere, so I'm writing here.

When my mother, Susan, died at 32, we saw it coming.  She had an incurable disease, got sicker and sicker, and died slowly at home, surrounded by loved ones.

Tonight, my friend Susan died.  She was also 32.  She had a 2 year old son who won't remember her except through the stories of the many people who loved his mother.

I met Susan when my son was 8 months old and we both attended our first "baby-que."  Susan and I, and many many other mamas, had chosen the same midwife, and our midwife hosts a baby-cue every October, bringing together hundreds of her mamas and their babies.  Susan was pregnant when I met her, and she resembled my mother a bit, and had my mother's name, and I thought that was a neat coincidence.  We sat together in the grass and chatted most of the time I was there.

I think I told Susan about the mothering group I'd joined a few months earlier, and either she already knew others in it, or she joined shortly after.  My life started falling apart after that baby-cue, so I lost touch with just about everyone I knew.

Susan and I could have been great friends had I remained in Orlando and active in the mothering group.  When she suffered a stroke Monday morning, I discovered that we had dozens of friends in common, in and out of the mothering group.  People I'd known in high school somehow even knew her.  And every single one of us was praying, lighting candles, sending love, healing, and positive energy and asking all our friends and all their friends to do the same.

I wanted to believe that she was going to live.  Because perfectly healthy people don't just drop dead, damnit!

Susan was vegetarian, fit, active, radiant...and I'm morbidly obese, trying to be vegan, inactive, and radiance is my goal for this year but I'm SO not there yet...I know it's cliche to have survivor's guilt, but why the Hades is she gone and I'm still here?

And what are the chances that a person would know two women named Susan who would die at 32?!

And...

And...

I feel so helpless. 

I want to give every single hurting heart a huge hug, to help them to know that Susan has just gone Home, and she'll be there to great them when their times come, radiant as ever, and that if they just close their eyes and reach out with their hearts they can connect with her love and feel her wings closing around them.

I found out Susan had passed fifteen minutes before my tutoring shift was over.  I knew when the phone rang what I was going to hear, but I answered it anyway.  My student's brother heard me say that my friend had died, and just before I left he rushed downstairs to give me a picture he had colored to make me feel better.

I think it's a flower.

It does make me feel a bit better.  :*)

<-insert Xena's warrior cry here->

I need to talk about just how messed up I was up until not even a year ago.

It amazes me that I could be an inspiration to other people, such a help to other people, while simultaneously hating myself.  It amazes me that I was so out of it, so off-balance, that the only self-worth I could garner came from trying to please everyone else.

This face about sums it up.

For context, in case you haven't read my earlier blog posts, let's summarize my childhood with a single word: abuse.  Let's summarize my young adulthood with another word: rape.  Okay, I can summarize my life up until November 2010 with one word: victim.  Or, survivor.  Depending on how you look at it.

Becoming a mother was the beginning of healing for me, though things got a lot worse before they got better.  In June 2008, at the age of 27, I found out I was pregnant.  At the time, I was in a co-dependent "friendship" with a woman who conned me out of $14k over the course of six or seven years, who was also mooching off of me, living in my apartment with her then-boyfriend. 

I discovered my unplanned pregnancy the same week that I was laid off from my job, high school teacher, the thing I had always wanted to be when I grew up.  I had just started a new relationship, but was impregnated by a different man, the only "friend-with-benefits" I'd ever had. 

The moocher "friend," a woman I trusted and loved with all my heart, took off a few months into my pregnancy, leaving me a 10 page letter about what a horrible person I was and how sorry she was for my child because she was sure I'd be a horrible mother.  My baby's sperm donor had no interest in our child.  My boyfriend started treating me like crap early on, but I had already broken the lease on my apartment and moved in with him.  I felt helpless.  I felt trapped.

Don't we all look so happy together?

I tried to focus on the positive.  I had my heart set on a happy ever after...with a misogynistic deadbeat who sexually assaulted me every single night for two years - and I didn't recognize it as sexual assault until last month, when a friend who had read my memoir called it what it was!  I kept making excuses for my ex, to myself as well as to my friends, until the night he left me and my one year old son penniless and homeless, in November 2010.

Hello, rock bottom.

I was an exceedingly lucky homeless person.  I didn't have a home for a few months, but I always had a bed to sleep in, people to help me search for work and to watch my son while I searched, people giving me whatever they could spare, even if it was just love and support over the internet.  My son and I never had to sleep on the street, never went hungry, and never went without knowing that we were loved.

It still amazes me how empowering an experience it was for me.  There were dozens of people helping however they could, many of whom I barely knew, all cheering me on, encouraging me, telling me I could do it, pushing me to prove to myself that I could.  I couldn't let myself fall to pieces or give up, because I had a precious toddler depending on me.

It probably goes without saying that I was depressed as all hell during all that.  I was so scared, and so angry, but I suppressed all my negative feelings as well as I could.

Holding it all in was killing me.  The optimistic, light-hearted, playful, affectionate, nurturing woman I had been locked herself away in some hidden corner of my heart.  I felt like a hollow automaton, just going through the motions, doing whatever I had to do.

My love for my son, and my determination to give him the best possible start in life, kept me from killing myself.  My beliefs about positive, conscious parenting drove me to seek out methods of self-healing so I could be the best mother I could be.  My spiritual path and experiences provided the tools I needed to put myself back together, piece by piece, and pure Divine Love provided me with a home in the last place I ever would have thought to look.

In this home, I am loved, supported, valued, and given the space I need to heal.  Gratitude really isn't strong enough a word to express how I feel.  I truly am blessed beyond my fondest dreams.

Now, having finally learned to love myself, having finally healed to a point that I feel like a whole new person, no longer either a victim or a survivor...now I have too many friends suffering the same kinds of crap I suffered.

My inner warrior princess is shrieking her battle cry, ready to throw her chakrum and cut through all their chains, if they would just hold up their wrists at the right angle.

I want to help.  I want all that I suffered and all that I've learned from that suffering to help others, to empower them.  I wish I could just hold them in my arms and overwhelm them with self-worth, confidence, and determination to make their lives even better than they can imagine.

But I can't.  I can't make anyone feel, think, or believe anything.

All I can do is offer my unconditional love and support, guidance when they ask, and keep praying that one day soon when they look in the mirror they will see themselves as the beautiful, loved, powerful beings that they are.

But...dammit, people!  Life is too short to waste on misery!

In Memoriam

A few days ago, a former professor of mine died in a car accident.

Chances are, I never would have had the opportunity to speak with her again anyway, had she survived, as she had accepted a position at Louisiana State University in 2008, and I live in Bradenton, Florida. I didn't expect her death to hit me as hard as it has.

For one thing, I see and talk to dead people. I know there is an afterlife, and that it's a good one. I know that we reincarnate or not, as we choose, from my experiences and the experiences of those I've spoken to. I feel death is something to celebrate, not something to fear, when our time comes.

It's not the fact that she's dead that has put me in this depressive funk. Rather, I think it's sympathy for her surviving loved ones, her current and former students and colleagues, who now have a gaping void in the space in their hearts formerly occupied by this wonderful woman's friendship and spirit. Perhaps it's also compassion for the terror and pain she must have felt in her last moments, and the guilt I imagine whomever called the coroner instead of the paramedics probably felt when that person found out she wasn't quite dead yet.

I firmly believe that everyone has a right to their feelings, whether or not society deems them appropriate. Our emotions are guides for us, just like our senses of pain and pleasure. When we hurt, it's a communication to us that something is wrong, something that, presumably, we can fix. When we feel good, it's a signal that things are going good, keep it up!

So while I'm surprised at how much the loss of this person I hadn't spoken with in years, and with whom I may never again have spoken, has affected me, rather than hide my feelings from others or suppress them, I'm choosing to express them and let myself go through the stages of grief, so that I can start celebrating the memories and the next stage in her journey.

Thank you, Jeanne, for being such a vibrant, passionate, funny, wonderful woman, and for being such an effective teacher. My writing would suck much more had I never known you. <3

Jeanne's Death - Washington Post

Here is a video interview with Jeanne, which gives some great advice to writers, and shows the personality I'm talking about: Jeanne's Interview