There is an aching in my awareness, a need to be fully me in each moment. without needing anything to be different, a surrender to the essence of me, the wellspring of Nanciness that is that has been yearning to spring forth into life, to be breathed into being by the very desire of my heart, the desire that has been there from birth, my birthright.

What I want you to know is that grieving for my daughter got easier when I surrendered to this unseen force within me, this longing to follow my own rhythm, to dance my own dance.

I resisted becoming myself to please others, or so I thought.

 I resisted becoming myself to fit in, to be loved, to be liked.

And each time I sold myself out for perceived reward my essence wilted, my wild nature lost its spirit, like a balloon with a slow leak, one so small it imperceptible to the eye.

My beautiful spirit, quashed by the idea that everyone else had all the right answers. When all along my own wild tender spirited heart was quietly waiting to be seen.  To be seen exactly as she is.

I am wild, beautiful, messy, and quiet.

And no words can accurately define my True Nature. I surrender to not knowing. My grief journey gave me a huge lesson in not knowing. Before that there were times when I touched the not knowing, always with conditions. I told myself, I’m willing to be myself in this situation, as long as x y or z doesn’t happen. (How many times to we rationalize our actions just one last time?)

Or I’m willing to do that as long as so-and –so isn’t offended. Living my life waiting for permission and approval from everyone and no one was exhausting!

It’s so much easier to be me!

When I need a recalibration of my mindfulness practice, I return to this practice; accepting each and every feeling, situation, mood as I go throughout my day with out attachment. Allowing myself to feel all of the feelings without needing to change them, even if they threatened to take me back to a place of knowing and control, which for me were places of death to my spirit. I am navigating my days moment by moment and everything can change in each moment.

I’m learning once again the micro nuance of present moment.

When someone asks me if I get tired of talking about grief, doesn’t it keep me in the missing of my daughter, I want to scream, NO, it’s the only thing that makes sense to me, and I’m not stuck anywhere. If I were stuck I wouldn’t be able to feel the pain of her death, of not being able to have a relationship with her physically here on this earth. I can see now that Divine arrangement is perfect, whatever lesson my spirit needed, hers was willing to assist me with, and mine hers. The enormity of this is more than my head can figure out, and I surrender again to being willing to not knowing. I get to be me this time around.

Grief, what is it?

The natural reaction to any loss, I know, but what is it really? To some it’s the state of trying to hold on to the way things used to be. To me it’s the passage to honor what was as we move into what is next.

Death is a natural part of life.

The too early deaths, violent deaths, while they may be devastating are still a part of the stuff that happens. Too early is story, violent is difficult to understand, yet when it happens it is reality.  Living in our world gives us the opportunity to feel our feelings, all of them.

What is my why?

Why do I do what I do?

Why did I write my book?

The simple answer is it was easier to write it than to continue resisting the call to write it. If I were to go deeper into that, I am being called to share my wisdom. One piece of wisdom is that by feeling all of our feelings we can move through the feelings that make up grief and find our own why, our own reason to go on living. If we all stopped living when the first person in our family died, we would be trying to control our own destiny, we all have a certain time on this earth in form.

For Leah it was 17-1/2 years. If I had known that going in, would I still have had her? You bet, I wouldn’t have missed one minute of the bright light that she was, that she is. I wouldn’t have missed one minute of the myriad of lessons that we learned together. Yes, losing her is too high a price to pay to not be who I am meant to be, that’s my why, to live the life I was meant to live through the initiation of being her mother, before she was born, while she was here, and after she died. Divine arrangement knew that we were the right souls for this journey. Why I’m the one still here, I don’t know, and I’ve given up the need to know the reason.

I’m here because I am.

And while I am I intend to live fully, feel fully, love fully and help others to do the same.