On grief and Nicole and Covid

Just before the eve of the one year anniversary since your suicide, Nicole, I am struck by so much.  By the fact it’s been a whole year. By the fact that you aren’t here to experience the upsidedown Covid-19 world we are living.  By the grief that surrounds us all in so many different ways. The lack of linear timeline to grief. How we are not actually taught what grieving looks like.  How it isn’t linear, how it can sneak up on you. We’ve talked about so many things in the Birth Story Medicine winter semester that I am a part of right now. Every week, I get on a call with 9 wonderfully wise women from 5 different countries and we discuss deeply how birth story work can be woven into so many facets of our lives, and also how the Covid crisis has affected us on an individual level, too. It is a very special part of each week that I am beyond grateful to be a part of during this time. We talked about grief through author Karla McLaren’s eyes a couple weeks ago and how grief is so different than sadness.  “Sadness arises when you’re holding on to something that isn’t working anyway; sadness arises to help you relax and let go.”  Karla calls grief the “dark river of the soul.” She says “Grief will arise in response to many kinds of loss: to the end of a love relationship, to the irretrievable loss of your health or well-being, to the loss of a cherished goal or possession, to the end of normalcy and stability, or to a stunning betrayal of trust. Grief enables you to survive losses by immersing you in the deep river that flows underneath all life. If you can’t move into your grief, you may only experience destabilization and dissociation in response to the shock of loss, injustice, inequality, and death – instead of being cleansed and renewed in the river of all souls.” 

And we are so quick in this society to scoop people up out of that river. Dust them off. Move on.

Tonight I was struck by the overwhelming anxiety/grief/loss of where we are right now. Was listening to One Bad Mother before my newborn care class tonight and their talking about how this is not normal.  What we are all doing right now is not normal. We joke, we post memes, we try to make sense. And yes, It’s survivable, sure. On some days I feel almost normal and then it’s like this all at once remembering of all that has been lost. I just taught several new parents through a screen how to care for their babies. I can’t give the same assurances I normally do about what is already such an unpredictable and tumultuous time. “Get the wonder weeks app, but I don’t know if you’ll be able to go to an in person support group.” We got some unsettling family member health news that I’m not even really processing yet. Buggie did music class on Zoom today. Clare did dance on zoom and had a zoom meeting with her Teacher. Seeing her light up to see her teacher's face also brought me back to thoughts of Nicole. Who herself was a Montessori kindergarten teacher. I think about her suicide note and the clear anger and pain and grief that was felt in those words. Trying to hold my shit together while I took Clare to fairytale town’s Easter egg hunt. How instead of the egg hunt this year Clare got a letter today from peter rabbit (Sammi at FTT) And how In some ways I respect the family’s decision to scrub her suicide note from the Internet, I also feel sad that those words are no longer there to bear witness to. And how that story deserves witness. 

And then I think of the collective grief we are all experiencing. The collective trauma. The mental health crisis that is sure to rise in relation to covid-19. The stigma that is still enshrouding mental health. Those who feel they have to hide their issues behind perfect houses, surface level “perfect” lives. Flashing to sitting in your “perfect” living room probably a year before things really went bad, Nicole, and you brushing off clear signs of mental health challenges, gently trying to steer you towards more help. As best I could.  Our lives already having taken us on some divergent paths but always feeling kindred spirit in your passion and zest. Flashing forward to the last time I saw you in person, your erratic behavior. How I wish I had done more to help you in that last tumultuous year post divorce. How deep down I know I couldn’t have done more than I did. How I needed to protect my own mental health. How I went into my own new postpartum period with a baby born just a couple months after your divorce. Guilt. 

How I see you in every mom I come across who is struggling with their mental health. How I always wonder if I am doing enough. How you will always cross my mind with every new mom I hug. It will always take me back to our own first time mom days, baby blankets filled with newborns, worries about sleep and whether we were doing “it right” – as if there is a right.  As if you need to have it all figured out with a newborn. As if anyone does. 

I wrote a blog post when Clare turned two about finding balance and equilibrium and coming out of the postpartum fog, finding joy and community and myself in yoga (yes it took two years postpartum to really get there – sorry first time mom friends.)

And now here I am staring down Charlotte’s 2nd Birthday on Sunday in quarantine – Charlotte who shares a birthday with Nicole’s first born. It feels like SO much and heartbreakingly beautiful and synergestic and brutiful (as Glennon Doyle says) And there isn’t balance. There’s blend and juggling too many balls and still finding my own new normal after 2nd baby followed by appendectomy 4 months after that, followed by buying a business 2 months after that. And 18 months after buying that business, here I am still catching my breath, furiously typing this on my phone with a toddler attached to my breast, in the middle of this “dark river of the soul.”  It isn’t neat. It isn’t tidy. It isn’t wrapped up in a bow. It may not be completely coherent or polished but it feels good to write. Life isn’t that way. It’s brutiful. And tomorrow I will light a candle for you, Nicole. And for us all.