(Originally published on Motherless Mom, October 16, 2019)
My mother passed away on August 20, 2005, less than two weeks after I turned 20. My birthday and the anniversary of my mother’s death have been a part of the same story ever since. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I am doing, come August: Feelings are going to be felt.
When I moved back home to take care of my mother during her final few months, I put my life on pause. I’m well aware of my privilege here: I had an incredibly compassionate boyfriend who took over all our bills from our rental in the Chicago suburbs and the amazing staff at the acting school I went to in the city allowed me to put my classes on hold until I could return. I know that not everyone has this kind of opportunity and I’m forever grateful to everyone that made accommodations for me.
After my mother’s death and the settling of her affairs, I returned to my former life. Well, I physically returned to my former life, but I no longer fit there. It felt then as though everything around me had shifted, but now I know that it was me who did the shifting.
The girl from before had been confident, ambitious, driven, and optimistic. The girl that returned was battered, beaten, and busted. Grief changes a person. My relationship quickly faltered and I quit acting school. I took up drinking, new behavior for me at the time. I was no stranger to self-medicating, but I had always preferred substances that allowed me to remain lucid and in control. Now I understood the allure of alcohol. I could drink myself to a black-out daily and not remember the death of my mother, the death of my dream, and the death of myself as I had always been. Plus, as a major bonus, drinking was legal and socially acceptable- SCORE!
I moved by myself to a tiny college town where I knew no one, close enough to my little sisters that still needed me that I could hop in the car and reach them within just a couple of hours, but far enough away that I could hide from the eyes of anyone that knew me as I was before. I reinvented myself unconsciously and while the new me was a shit-show, to say the very least, at least that version of me felt safe and hidden from the concerned and inquiring minds of my family and friends from my former life. I hid there for four years before returning to my home state where I started talking to an old friend that would then become my husband.
I reinvented myself, again. This time as a wife and a mother and life started moving so quickly for me that I found my old neuroses took a backseat to my new neuroses that I was developing as a mother, but even with all of the postpartum funk I went through I still always felt like I was at least moving forward and away from my grief.
See, seven years ago I was given a chance to create new and beautiful August memories; my oldest daughter was born on the 11th of August, 2012. This was a healing experience for me in so many ways. As a child sexual abuse survivor who had previously never been able to go through a simple pap without shivering and shaking and sometimes kicking doctors involuntarily, birthing my daughter created a new set of memories for me and that part of my body. I was shocked when my 6-week postpartum checkup went smooth as silk, not an inkling of panic or accidental violence! This was a completely unexpected outcome. I did not expect that giving birth would heal the visceral physical memories of that trauma, but it did.
Just as giving birth reprogrammed my body to no longer relive the trauma from my youth during doctor’s exams, my first-born naturally shifted my mindset away from grief and loss. My sweet baby girl gave me more than enough to think about and do every day, all day, and grief was displaced by the all-consuming nature of maternal love. Well, that and the chaos of a newborn baby! To top it off, I had postpartum mood disorders that lasted from one pregnancy to the next, so there was plenty to distract me from the grief that had, at one time, engulfed me.
I felt freed from the grief that had defined me for so many years. Through becoming a mother myself, my relationship to the loss of my own mother shifted. I now had a new perspective on my loss because I had a new identity. I was no longer just a grieving daughter, now I was somebody’s mother. As somebody’s mother, I would never dream of continuing on the self-destructive path I had followed for so many years before.
Fast forward to now: My youngest has just entered full-time preschool, I’m about to finally complete my BA in just a few short months, and life is shifting again. Being a stay-at-home mom has always kept my days filled, sometimes to bursting. There’s the speech therapy appointments and the play dates, the road trips and the fort-building, sometimes there would be dance and gymnastics classes, and there will ALWAYS be the incessant snack-making. There’s the boo-boo kissing, the mediating, the Googling-what-kind-of-lizard-is-this, the Lego-structure examining, and the art table cleanups that typically involve finding at least one item that begs the question: “WHY ON EARTH DID YOU GUYS PAINT THIS???”
Now, as I type this up, my oldest is “busking” in our living room with her drum and harmonica and the youngest is putting “money” (ABC flashcards and pink and purple dice) into her jar; these girls are always doing something interesting… and distracting! They’ve kept me so busy these last several years just trying to keep up with them.
They are growing up and out into more independent lives and I know I’m on the verge of another rebirth and reinvention. I will finally have the time, the space, and the resources to look inward and clean mental house, and beginning to unpack some of this old baggage has felt nothing short of glorious!
The difference between then and now is I am at the wheel this time. I’m not trying to numb myself or be led along from one major life event to the next. I’m making choices and taking charge now of both my mental health and my physical circumstances in ways I don’t think I ever have before. There is something exhilarating about being in this position of conscious reinvention, honestly. As many “regrets” as I have, I really can’t truly say that I would do anything differently, at this point.
As rocky a road as it all has been, I can’t and won’t play the “what if” game. I have a beautiful family, a fulfilling life, and a perspective that I’ve paid heavily for.
Standing here on the verge of another reinvention, all I have is gratitude.