Me + Momma: Letters to the Dead — On Your 78th Birthday

It’s been a long time since November 11, 1991, but every year on your birthday there’s still this ebb + flow between the immense gratitude I have for the years I did get with you and the anger I still carry because you left.

I was only 20 when you died. With promises of you having more time for me through my teenage years… when others grew up, we’d finally have time together… and exchanges throughout my young life, “You’ll be okay because you’ve always been independent,” while dropping me off yet again somewhere so you could bond with your new family… a letter for another time.

Grief changes shape. We get stronger. We learn how to carry it. But we don’t forget. And sometimes, it still hurts exactly the same.

I love you so very much. And I’m still angry that you left me.

You never got to meet the love of my life … and also to be there with me when I lost him.

and when I lost him … I never saw the world the same.

You never got to meet the kids from my second marriage… the love you would have had for them…

You weren’t here to walk beside me through my divorces.

You didn’t see me graduate college… you missed watching me prove that I could do something people told me I could never achieve in and in a field that they thought was lost on me.

You’ve missed so many versions of me, and I’ve missed being able to share every one of them with you.

I’m on this incredible healing journey now, and I hope wherever you are, whoever you are helping, you can see me…. and finally see meI hope you’re proud of me for trying to accomplish some of the things you weren’t able to accomplish in this lifetime—for both of us.

I’m learning to set myself free from self-criticism.

To love this body instead of shaming it and learning to work with my body + not against it.

To stop measuring my worth by whether I please other people.

To stop trying to fit inside boxes that were never made for me.

Accepting + understanding this neurospicy brain… because now I am understanding how to work with it. I’m so hungry for knowledge of everything now. It’s exciting and overwhelming at the same time.

I feel like the world is so new now—the way I see it, the way I understand it, and the way I understand the sensory-ness of myself and the things I need to do to help keep my body regulated for me to succeed and know myself better.

I spent decades thinking something was wrong with the way I experienced the world because of the shame that was placed on me, without ever having a doctor explore how my brain actually worked. And I realize the times were different.

I’m not angry about that.

I’m excited.

Because now, understanding my brain has made the world feel new again.

I’m learning that it’s okay to be different. More than okay—and I still want to be different + not an NPC in this life.

… and let me tell you… it’s practice, and some days it’s real effin’ hard, and I’m doing my best to show up for myself every.single.day.

I want to evolve.

I want to become a better human.

I want to learn from my mistakes without allowing the former facts of my life to define who I am today.

And I want to learn forgiveness. I want to be free to be moved by music and lulled to sleep in the sounds of nature, finding all the beauty on this beautiful canvas we live on, and mostly, help others find their hearts so they can find their joy too.

Because we all stumble. ans sometimes… stumble many times.

It’s how we get back up + face ourselves… that matters.

I’m also beginning to understand how my unprocessed grief has followed me through my life in ways I didn’t always recognize.

Losing you led me into some incredible adventures + some pretty spectacular mistakes. And somehow, I have gratitude for all of it, because every piece has helped make me the woman I am now.

But underneath all the healing, the understanding, the spirituality, the gratitude and the growth is something much simpler: I just really miss you and what could have been.

And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that I grieve something else, too.

I wish I could have watched you evolve.

I wish I could have seen you break free from that silent unhappiness we always talked about. I wish you’d had more years to discover who you were outside of everything that had been expected of you.

I wish I could have watched you realize that you were worthy exactly as you were.

I watched you wager your worth on people who simply weren’t capable of showing you the love you deserved. I wish you had lived long enough to understand that their inability to truly love and see you was never a measure of your worth.

I wish I could have watched you stop shrinking yourself.

Stop apologizing for your body.

Stop carrying shame about your size.

Stop believing you had to please other people to be worthy of taking up space.

I wish you’d had the chance to let go of all those voices that told you that you weren’t enough because you were a woman, because of your body, because you were different, or because you didn’t fit into someone else’s idea of who you were supposed to be.

I wish I could have watched you become the woman you wanted to be.

And I wish you could have seen how much I loved you and that you were always enough for me.

And maybe that’s why this healing feels so much bigger than just me.

Because the freedom I wish you could have found is the freedom I’m finally learning to give myself.

To take up space.

To love my body.

To be different.

To make mistakes + learn from them… and not be shamed for them.

To change.

To evolve.

To stop asking other people to validate my worth.

To live as myself without apologizing for it.

Maybe some of this healing belongs to both of us.

Maybe, in some strange + beautiful way, every time I break one of those patterns, I’m setting a little piece of you free, too.

I am the most comfortable I have ever felt in this vehicle and its computer brain of mine, and I am learning to be more grounded in it every day.

Happy Birthday, Momma.

I love you.

I’m grateful for you.

I’m learning to be a good steward of me—my body, my mind, my spirit… + my soul.

I’m still angry with you.

I’m still learning from you.

And holy heyzeus, I still just…. really fucking miss you.