Some wounds we spend a lifetime spiralling around.
This particular one I’ve explored, examined, poked and prodded at more times than I care to remember. So many dietas and ceremonies spent trying to get to the root of it. Yet these past days, it’s so very alive I haven’t needed to go searching for it.
It’s not hidden in a crevice in my heart, not trapped in some dark corner. Impossible to avoid, even if I wanted to. Because it’s right here, alive and rippling under my skin. One breath and I’m there. The familiar sting hits the back of my nose and eyes as the tears, repressed for so many years, arise with ease and a quiet grace as my body transforms once more into an ocean of grief.
The storm washes over, within and through me. As though it’s the very first time. Strange how so many years can pass and it still feels so very alive. So new. So raw. Like picking off a scab that’s long healed and nicking the fresh skin so that blood pours out, hot and red. Reminding me of how very alive – and how very human – I am.
You see, yesterday marked 33 years since my fathers death. A short, but significant lifetime to be without him.
Most years go by with a simple smile in my heart. A gentle nod of gratitude to him for all the lessons learned. For carrying me with such love in my early years. And for the gift of pain that has burned me in it’s fires of transformation so I could embody the light he first bestowed upon me.
But this year, it’s different. Freshly grieving my beautiful kitten, the familiarity of loss transports me with shocking ease straight back to the core of the grief that has accompanied me for a lifetime.
As uncomfortable as it might be, and as all consuming as it is, I’ve learned to walk straight into the storm rather than try to avoid it.
And so I breathe into it, letting it consume me. Inhaling slower and deeper, my breath creating a spaciousness around the grief. Allowing me to behold it with a melancholy kind of wonderment.
And as I tip over the edge of the chasm, I surrender to the watery depths once more. Rolling around deep in the ocean of grief, getting smashed by waves over and over again.
The shape of it leaving its mark on me once more. Cracking open old forgotten wounds. Saltwater entering the cracks. Emptying me. Filling me. Washing me clean. Reminding me once more of what it means to love, and to lose in this dance called life.
But it wasn’t always such a conscious choice.
I spent most of my teen and adult life battling the darkness that descended when he died. First in the depths of my emotional body as depression, and later when I had forgotten how to feel, it started to eat me alive. Quite literally. At first manifesting as a decade long battle with crohns disease that saw me facing multiple surgeries that nearly claimed my life. And later, as cancer, seeking to make a home out of me. My pain, disguised in the sinister cloak of cancer, burst forth all over my body – on my leg, on my belly, in my womb.
A lifetime of grief and longing made manifest.
For so many years I thought it was the grief of losing my father that had me so destroyed. Depressed. Broken. So filled with grief and rage. Stuck with a body ravished by illness and chronic pain.
Yet in the years spent healing my body, and the grief of losing my father, I found a stubborn layer of pain that didn’t go away…..
Because it ran much deeper than that.
I saw that my fury, my rage, my alone-ness, the years spent in anger….
Was all projected at Her.
Because she lived. And he died.
Because she chose to leave me. And he fought courageously against the dying of the light, wanting more than anything to stay with me.
And I realise now, this deeper grief came from losing her in his wake.
Death, as cruel as it seems, has a kindness to it. At least I knew he didn’t want to leave me. It brought me some comfort.
Yet now, in these moments when the grief returns, I can still feel my eight year old self raging at the world for taking everything she once loved away. Part of her is still stuck, lost in the dark forest of her fury and confusion.
All these years later, I’m still trying to figure out how to get her out.
Nobody ever comforted her. Held her. Asked if she was ok. Let her cry. Quite the opposite. At the funeral, my short round teacher and what felt like an impossibly tall headmistress pulled me aside. One grabbing me harshly by the ear, and the other, with her pointy crooked fingers poking into my shoulder, whispered conspiratorially into my ear that I should never mention my father again. That I shouldn’t cry. That I had responsibilities now. And that I should do everything in my power to not upset my mother.
So I decided to grow up.
And be good.
And I resolved to never cry again.
And so it was, that not only did I lose my mother and my father that day. I also lost my childhood.
The weight of responsibility landing hard on my shoulders, pushing the magic, innocence and light out of me as quickly as he died.
In the years that followed I tried with all my might to save her from the depths she spiralled into. I cooked. Cleaned. Stayed home from school to help her. Even made her fucking drinks each night and bought her cigarettes, helping her numb herself even more.
But she was so lost in her longing she could barely even see me most days. It didn’t take long until her grief consumed her and she was lost to me.
It was then that the deeper pain claimed me.
After so many years of trying to save her. Eventually I turned on her.
All my pain, vitriol, hate, anger and rage. Hurled at her. So consumed I became with my own hurt, I refused to acknowledge hers. She was supposed to be the mother. I was supposed to be the child.
But it never quite worked out that way.
::
A few years ago I met up with a cousin of my father, who was also one of his best friends.
He told me tales of my parents. Of how they’d walk into a room and the entire space would be captivated by their love, and by her beauty, her aliveness, and the joy she radiated with her laughter.
Who was this woman? Why had I never known her? Where did she go?
It took me many years to finally understand.
::
Yesterday I spoke to my mother.
And it dawned on me that I am now the same age she was when he died. Left alone to grapple with a flock of five children under the age of 13.
Her fairytale existence ripped to shreds. Her soul-mate, gone.
Is it any wonder she got lost?
::
On my last dieta with the rose, as I was lying in my hammock, I felt a sharp pain arise in my chest.
I asked her to pierce me to the core with the pain. To help me feel it fully.
And as the pain in my side grew, it expanded, until it filled the whole of me with pain, loss and grief. Tears burst out of me. Memories roared around me. I relived it all once more.
“Again. Deeper.” I asked as she pierced me even more. “Show me the fullness of it.”
And with that, Mother Mary appeared.
Standing above me, gazing at me with love in her eyes and her heart ablaze.
And as I swam in the waters of my grief, she lifted me up, cradled me in her arms and placed me inside my mothers body….my body merging with hers, my heart landing in hers.
The pain was unbearable. Sword after sword stabbed me in the heart, piercing me to my core.
A scream escaped. A piercing cry of love and loss tore through me.
Everything else disappeared as I cried her cries and felt her pain as she roared me into this world, birthing me with the force of pure love. And then I felt her pain and screamed her screams as he died, the depth of her love ripping me to shreds.
The howl of the wolf-mother. The primal scream.
A sound that marks the moment of life and death. A sound borne of pure love. A sound so raw, so wild and so deep that it pierces the fabric of reality, tearing a hole in the universe itself.
The only thing powerful enough to let life pass through.
Peeling back the veils, shattering illusion. Returning me to the inevitable truth. That life is given, and life is taken away. That life is love. And life is grief. And that I can’t have one without the other.
::
Things with us are different now.
They’re somehow soft. Joyful. Gentle. Easy. There’s a familiarity where once we were strangers. An intimacy that we alone share.
You see, she was always a mystic. Had visions. Spoke in tongues. People would come to her for healing. Her inner witch hidden behind a rosary that I insisted on rebelling against.
And now it’s me who is buying her rosaries.
So much more in common than I ever wanted to admit.
There was a time I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as her. And now hours on the phone pass like minutes as we speak of Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, Jesus. The Goddesses of Egypt. The plants. The lineage of the rose. Of life, death, rebirth and love. Of lives spent quietly exploring the realms of Spirit.
And it’s only now as I write this that it fully lands….
That yes, I am her daughter. And she is my mother.
But I am also her mother. And she is my daughter.
That we are constantly birthing each other, as we rebirth ourselves.
We are sisters.
One a reflection of the other.
Brought together by the grace of a Rose.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the sweet, loving heart medicine of the rose and how it can help you with your healing, check out our upcoming Rose Initiations here.