Hearing church bells toll a few blocks from here after the moment of silence for Newton yesterday morning echoed and echoed my aching soul.
I’ve been struggling since last Friday more so than I might have “expected” I would have? I’m just trying to put a few words here to the fact that my grief has felt “abnormal” somehow. It has been bottomless at times, as I am sure it has been for so many.
When I hid in my colleague’s room at the beginning of school on Tuesday, and just bawled before I could walk down to homeroom, I knew I was on delicate emotional soil. Perhaps the combination of my role as a public school educator and as a mother of a 5 and 7 year old further contributed to my feeling untethered from my core. Whatever that really means.
Then I received a phone call from a dear friend who just said; “This is who you are Cat, you are our feeler. This is your gift. You are taking it all in, and it is rocking you so hard…” The simplicity of her words allowed me to land again somehow on the perimeter of this quicksand of sad.
Shrek was so present, even if he was somewhat caught off guard by my emotional departure this past week. He and I had this intense conversation about all of the “violence” all the time, everywhere. He holds so much of that in his heart in his work, and simply because of the compassionate being that he is. What allows us to hold this world like it is, with consciousness and compassion, and go on to wrap presents and argue about who is taking out the garbage? How do we impart the message with integrity that peace begins right here to all of our children from age five to thirty? What do we want that to look like? What do you want that to look like? How do you impart this to your family?
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Now that the days are becoming a little lighter, I’m trusting this too will be echoed by my own turnings to the lightness of my family large and small in the coming days and weeks. To small acts of tenderness that reach deep. To allowing myself to feel, to heal, and to continue to better myself and increase my own capacity for love.
What a lovely ray of light in such a dark, dark time. Thank you, Catherine. Y
Thank you so much. Thank you!
Thank you for writing this, Catherine. I found myself struggling with a similar experience. I cried every single time I turned on the news or every time I had a quiet moment to really digest the tragedy. I love that your friend called it a gift to feel because sometimes it feels like such a curse. That is an absolutely beautiful picture of your boys. Btw, my blog moved -www.fayemccray.blogspot.com. Lots of love, Mama!
Thanks for letting me know it reached out to you Tiara. Yes, totally agreed it can feel like a curse. Off to check your blog right now, and see your beautiful family.
Thank you for being a feeler and for your post. It is a scary time and we will benefit from feeling it.
I have struggled more with it than I imagined I could as well. It still pops into my head multiple times a day. No mom, in my opinion, could be the same after hearing of such a tragedy…it rocks us to our core.