The tears sat on the surface all day yesterday, while I often found I was holding my breath trying to keep the emotions down.
A friend had also sent me this note earlier in the day: “Thank you for being a great mother to yourself, the earth, her critters, and all of your past companions.” This enticed many emotions within me to stir.
Scrolling through Facebook this morning seeing photos of mom’s and daughters, and women with their dog companions, I came across this post:
This allowed the tears to begin to come to the surface and the emotions to flow as I came out to my Joyful Pause Cottage and do what helps me to process things by writing about it. It will be two years on May 11th that my dachshund, Gidget, died. Though that year – 2019 – it was the day before Mother’s Day.
This became a significant marker in my life. Earlier that week, before Gidget died, I’d remove another layer of healing and the deeply buried reason why I’d never had children. While on a conscious level I thought I just didn’t want children – never having felt that maternal instinct – in reality, I’d buried it alongside a deep well of pain and the memory I didn’t want to acknowledge for over two decades of being touched inappropriately as a child. Walking that self-healing journey with Gidget as my master teacher is what I wrote about in my latest memoir, I’m Fine Just the Way I Am.
I still remember how it felt so raw when it came exploding to the surface. While my heart felt the intensity of it all it was also a welcome release of what I’d held in for way too long. That acknowledging, accepting, and integrating led to a letting go and what brought me into a new lighter space of being.
The marking of Mother’s Day, while I’m so honored and grateful for the beautiful relationship I have with my dear mom, this day also has a bittersweetness to it, too. I don’t want to ignore that, but feel my way through it. It’s how I take on the role and responsibility that I believe we as women often overlook – which is being a mother to ourselves – to our inner child.
There are times I miss nurturing and caring for a dog and have had painful moments with that. I’ll also never be someone who shares photos of good times and the love of a daughter or son. But I’ve also had moments of realizing and feeling the beauty of this time in the expanding of nurturing myself along with my relationship with John. Life isn’t a this or that – it’s a delicate balance of dancing with all the emotions.
How often we want to run from these emotions and block our heart from feeling – but it’s in the feeling that we are honoring every aspect of our being human. There are times I don’t want to feel just as I realized I was doing yesterday, but I also understand this is what will continue to set me free – to live from that sensitive being of who I am is being the best mother to myself that I can be.
And so today I honor the vulnerability and bittersweetness of it all – and my gratefulness of the role I’ve played in being a mentor to others – the love I’ve shared with the animals in my home and the wild – the love I have for life with all its twists and turns – the love I have for the little girl within – and the deepest of love and gratitude I have for a mom that has loved me through it all with the utmost of unconditional love.
P.S. On Tuesday I’ll be releasing a video daily sharing an excerpt from each chapter of my book in tribute to Gidget and the healing journey she and I walked together. I hope it will inspire and encourage others to walk their own self-healing journey. I believe at my core this is how we heal the planet.
XO
Barb
Photo credit: Lisa A. Lehmann
If you’d like blog post updates in your inbox just Click here to subscribe.
