grief

This Father’s Day

~ Jenna ~ Leave a comment

We went through your old things;
report cards, photo books, trophies, letters.
When you were 19 you noted that having an exciting life was a 1 of importance to you (18 being the least). I’d say it definitely wasn’t boring.
Did you have any big ragrets?
Not even a single letter?

The back house smells of 24 and World Cup parties.
We’re not with you, but here with all of your things. What stories did you have to add? What happened with Lisa from sophomore year? Did you in fact have a bitchen summer?
This Father’s Day felt a little lighter. Family felt a little stronger. Your memories felt a little happier.
Though grief doesn’t really know the calendar. I wonder if tomorrow I’ll feel desperately sad.

I wanted more of you and couldn’t stop standing in the back house trying to feel and hear you. True father-daughter love is keeping my Cinque Terre painting on the wall all those years.
Mom was about to say something inappropriate at Papa’s house and I smacked her leg under the table and she yelped, “Okay Jeff!!!”
Honoring you at home and at bat. Remember how every time we missed the ball you’d say, “My bad that was a bad pitch.”
Thank you for holding our hearts and characters with unconditional positive regard (Cheryl Strayed’s phrase). I hope my kids see me the way I see you. I hope they feel as safe with me as I did with you.

We’re older now. Grief and motherhood haven’t exactly been anti-aging for me. Maisley just turned 16 and Coura walks, talks and surprise, surprise is a strong willed wildling.
What hasn’t changed – the love I carry for you in every cell of my body. The way missing you has become a way of life. How I still lean into your affirming side hugs. I’d truly give up everything I own to spend a minute with you on your worst day.

I love you Dadio. I hope it feels like glass on Bass Lake every day where you are.

Gardening

~ Jenna ~ Leave a comment

I ask God to pull out the roots of anxiety in my mind and body.

When I close my eyes,
I envision God
taking the deep-seated roots,
transforming the pain, fear and grief
– into love –
and planting a garden.

A garden
of vibrant color,
warm sunshine,
easy, deep breaths and
nourishing beauty.

A garden,
ever-green
and eternal.

Two for One

~ Jenna ~ 1 Comment

It seems
that
deeply 
and compassionately
falling in love
with myself
– every layer –
feels a lot like
finding
God.
Or is it the
other
way around?

Thoughts from Inside

~ Jenna ~ 3 Comments

Right after my dad died I wanted the world to stop. For everything to be put on hold and for everyone to feel what I was feeling. Breaking News on every channel of the TV: My dad died.

1.5 years later, the world seems to be slowing to a halt. That fictitious thought I had now coming dangerously close to reality with the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are all in this collective experience together (though greatly varying degrees), sharing similar emotions of sadness, fear, anxiety and pain.

And while we’ve never seen this pandemic before, these feelings we are experiencing are ones we have lived over and over. With experience we know that fear, anxiety and pain are companions of love, kindness and gratitude.

Nasdaq is plummeting, but compassion is skyrocketing with daily reminders that steady mental health, weekly grocery store runs, physical and emotional comfort, and quality medical care are absolute luxuries.

Parents are always talking about the rapid speed at which our kids grow and the clocks tick. We are living in a rare blip of history where time is all we’ve got on our hands right now (and excessive amounts of craft particles).

We raced a leaf boat down the gutter in the rain yesterday. Maiz introduced me to “Cousin David”, the plant on our side yard. And a bird flew into the house just as the girls went to bed.

Surely someone’s flying over the cuckoo’s nest around here.

It’s March 18, 2020, another day and a new opportunity to practice living with uncertainty of the future, finding safety in ourselves despite a lack of control, letting anxiety move through us, and revealing that seed of calm within amidst the storm.

(Please seek God for more information on how).

The world is turned upside down, but we’ve seen her underbelly before and we know we will get to the other side.

First Impressions

~ Jenna ~ 2 Comments

When I first saw her she was all stick and bones.
Her thin trunk, merely the keeper of weathered branches.
Had she just lost everything or was she just about to bloom?
I couldn’t see her whole story, I just knew she had one.
She didn’t seem worried, confident it was just a season; fruitful days ahead.
Unattached to what she had lost or what was to come.
Rooted in abundance.
When I first saw her I longed for greenery to cover her naked limbs.
Then a bright yellow finch stopped by to relax on her narrow branch.
Stubbornly alive and whole she was.
And always is.
Nothing is wasted in the resting place.

For the Books

~ Jenna ~ 1 Comment

Twas’ the night before Christmas eve and I was sitting in my room sorting and getting ready to wrap each of the girls’ presents I had thoughtfully collected over the last month. As Ryan, Maisley and Coura rushed into the house with dinner, I threw a blanket over the gifts and went to join them. 

After dinner, Ryan and I got to talking about car trouble or something interesting, when we noticed that a silence had fallen over the house. I ran into my room to find Maisley playing with her tea set from Santa Claus, Coura with her Christmas jammies in hand and every present overturned. 

All Christmas season I had been hearing about how it’s not about the gifts. The priest left us with, “I hope your Christmas is REAL this year”. The Grinch lays it out pretty clear – it ain’t about the gifts people. I know this, I preach this, I believe this!

So in good Christmas spirit, I scream-cried my brains out on the floor for the next 30 minutes. Christmas is ruined, my irrational small-mind kept repeating. 

I’m learning so much right now – in therapy, in my writing, in my own personal experience of grief and motherhood and life. There have been so many shifts in my head and my heart, but only smaller, less noticeable ones in my actions.

I’m hoping my insides match my outsides more in 2020. I’m also giving myself a break because it seems healing happens in moments, that it’s not linear and not all at once. 

In the reruns of our early days, this Christmas will simply be: the one where they accidentally saw all of their presents. And more appropriately: the one where we shared our first Christmas morning together at home. 

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Christmas Present

~ Jenna ~ 1 Comment

As I was on my usual walk through the eucalyptus trees, I noticed an abandoned play structure in a backyard, overgrown with weeds and sticks and leaves. It made me think about that family whose kids are now running around soccer fields, texting their friends and rolling their eyes at the people who gave them life. The once beloved play structure now just a keeper of memories from the wonder years, a symbol of time flying by.

This time of year always makes me feel like I’m not doing enough. I get paralyzed by the fast pace and overwhelm. Instead of embracing it, I want to run away. Every year we end the holiday season saying, “We’re not doing that again!”. Our hearts begging for boundaries and for us to take control of our time. 

I’ve been feeling a little down since Thanksgiving, tired and ready for life to slow down or for me to catch up. This year is especially off since the holidays are highlighting the alternate universe we are living in, the one where my dad wasn’t the one to put up our Christmas lights or straighten the tree. The one where he’s not sitting in his office, leaning back in his chair and enjoying the extra-hot chai tea latte we surprised him with. 

While making Christmas traditions with our kids this year, I am remembering all of the magical seasons of my childhood. Shopping for a tree with my dad, carefully mounting Rudolph on the second story, and making candy cane shaped cookies with my mom. As I pause to remember more clearly, I can also see us shoving the tree through the front door with my dad covered in sap as he sneezed uncontrollably from allergies. Oh and the time he fell off the ladder right in front of me. Or how mad my mom would get when our candy cane cookies looked more like penises (who am I kidding, we are still not mature enough to make normal candy cane cookies). 

Memories are funny that way, often shinier than they were in the moment. The reason older women always tell you to enjoy every second with your precious babies. (I will never be one of those women.) 

If things are going to look better than they really are a few years down the line, I might as well lighten up a bit. Lessen the expectations I carry around like a scarlet letter on an ugly Christmas sweater. What if the biggest boundaries I need to set are within myself, changing my perspective and doing some good old fashioned positive thinking with a sprinkle of gratitude. Give equal air time to the good things and not just focus on the challenging. 

In this moment, my babies are just two slippery, delicious butter balls in the bathtub. When that tub and these years become just a flash of memories, what will I remember?

Birth and Death, Breath by Breath

~ Jenna ~ 3 Comments

My knees met the floor at the side of my bed in desperation, exhaustion. Ironically, the same place I bowed down to birth, I found myself surrendering to grief.

In anger and tears, I had lost all strength. The pain was too much.

As time recklessly and graciously ticked on, the swell passed.

When I got to my feet, I was surprised to uncover that giving birth had taught me how to survive grief. 


As goes birth so does death,
breath by breath. 

Waves of intensity build to a first breath,
from a last.

Every swell comes crashing with a purpose.
Feel it, don’t fear it.
Welcome it, don’t fight it.
Dance to it, flow with it and let it move through you.

But don’t let it take you away.
Feel your feet on the ground,
your gaze on the wall,
the breath in your lungs.

Deep inhale.
Full exhale.

Determined minds present an endless Q and A:
What just happened? What’s next?
Why him? Will she ever come?

Deep Inhale.
Full exhale.

When your limit is near, the wave knowingly retreats:
Sweet relief.
Find your balance.
Brave a smile, an effortless laugh.
Reach for hope, a glass of water, connection and gratitude.

But how will I get through that intensity again?

Deep Inhale.
Full exhale.

You were made for this.
Cut from the same cloth as the sea and trees,
made to be two things at once.
Living and dying,
ebbing and flowing. 

Birth and death,
a tug-of-war of fear and hope.
Compassion, anxiety, resilience, resistance.

Tucked beneath comfort blankets and glossy eyes,
new life has unearthed.
Everything forever changed. 

What’s left? What’s next?
What’s always been:
Nothing but love.

Deep Inhale.
Full exhale.

The Ocean’s Faithful Student

~ Jenna ~ 1 Comment

The breath is where it all begins and where it all ends. It comes naturally some days and others like an unwilling daughter at nap time. It’s where we find our peace and it’s the safest path to our intuition. It’s our first responder when shit hits the fan. The breath both reveals when we’re out of touch and is the way we come back home. It fuels our voice and our fire. It’s our pause and fast forward. It’s the last stop home for the wind and it’s the ocean’s most faithful student; in and out, in and out. It’s reliable and forgiving, there’s always a next one as long as we’re living. The way we get by is breath by breath. 

It’s our road map – through birth and through death.