Dancing and Dropkicks

Grief Slash Joy. Joy Slash Grief.

I don’t have a lot to write these days.

Or rather, I do but can’t quite get it to the point where it all makes sense. Can’t quite have it cleaned up and tied with a bow. I have paragraphs on paragraphs of ramblings and rants and raves from this month, last month, several months ago but I can’t get it out the door. I know that’s part of the gig when it comes to writing. For putting your work and yourself out there. For anything, really. You’re rarely ever fully ready, most likely your own worst critic and there’s no time or use waiting for perfection.

I know that. I’ve written about that. But I guess it’s just that the giant elephant full of grief that follows me around and decides to sit on my chest, my head, my heart every other hour of every other day is something I’m still getting used to. Not just with writing. Or sharing what I’m shopping. But with everything. I guess I knew that this was going to shake me up and drag me down. But living it everyday has been a different experience. When you’re someone who, in general, lived life mostly on a happy and hopeful vibration- it’s an out of body experience to be pulled so quickly and abruptly down into the heavy and hard waters of grief day after day, just when you have a moment to gasp for air, for joy. Or just to get some damn laundry done.

It’s never ending, often out of nowhere and firing on all cylinders at every angle. You may have a moment of reprieve and then you get flipped upside down. All while trying to live, work, mother, wife, friend, exist.

I’m someone who dances the juxtapositional (and very female) dance of being pretty roll-with-the-punches/fly by the seat of my pants while also l-o-v-i-n-g a plan. To prep. To strategize. To be nobodies fool. Easy breezy as long as I know where the wind is blowing and at how many miles per hour exactly?? Even when life throws me a curveball or knocks me off my feet and off my course, there is typically always an opportunity to reset and re-strategize even if you’re in the eye of the storm.

And yet there is no strategy against grief. Not really.

Sure you can cry and pray and sleep. You can meditate and exercise and go to therapy and hug your friends and take it day by day. Read the books, listen to the podcasts, breathe the breath-work, see the signs, scream into the abyss. Know that it takes time, softens with time. Know how lucky you are in so many ways. Know that it’s ok to just Be.

But all that doesn’t stand a chance against that elephant dropkicking you square in the chest out of nowhere. When you expect it or you don’t.

When you smell a scent or pass a place. When it’s this day or that day. When it’s a day that is only a few days away from a Day. When your 4 year old asks when their grandmother is coming back from Heaven while driving him to school on a bright beautiful morning. When he says he picked out an outfit to wear for when she comes back. When is she coming back? Why isn’t she coming back?

Make her come back.

You grip the wheel and steady your voice all while having your heart dropkicked across the intersection. Wait for the green light as you close your eyes and silently smile back a sob, soothing another when you so desperately wish to be soothed. To be soothed by her. The only strategy you want to come up with is one that cannot be strategized.

Make her come back.

You can strategize your way out of most anxieties, big to-do lists, low bandwidths, mistakes and misunderstandings. Have a plan of action to navigate hurdles and high goals. But with loss, there’s no actual solution. There’s no “Ok let’s figure this out”, no offloading some tasks, no chipping away, no let’s get some sleep and tackle it in the morning. You can know what way the wind is blowing but the breeze will not bring back what was lost. There’s no plan, no different better outcome or response to “Make her come back”. No matter how hard you try or tantrum about it. No matter how much you cry and crawl through it or around it or over it.

But I guess this brings me back to the “getting used to all this” part. When it comes to living with grief, working with grief, parenting with grief, showing up as wife, friend, my own person with grief, experiencing joy with grief- it’s a completely new existence in which you have zero clue how to go about existing. There’s no going back to what worked before but you also don’t know what works now. How to deal with the dropkicks on a bright beautiful morning. It’s not the loss that you can fix, that you can strategize. It’s living with the loss. You have to reset and re-strategize the strategy.

F strategy.

“Learning how to live with loss.” It’s so simple it could be on a Hallmark card. A self-help book. Probably is. But I’m still wrapping my head around it. Living with loss. Mothering with loss. Growing with loss. Joy with loss.

And while I know there will be a time when I recognize the joy and the light existing right smack dab in the middle of my loss, you and I both know it is wildly different. Different when life was just Joy- full stop.

I recognize that I perhaps have not given a ton of time and attention to joy in my writing. There can be so much content out there about how hard motherhood or loss or life in general is that I sometimes stop myself, not wanting to further contribute to the noise. I’m not wanting to champion the idea that if it’s not hard than you’re not “in it” enough. Not worthy of the title enough. Of mothering or grieving or living. I know it is vital to make space for the life-altering joy in motherhood. In life. To make space for the reality that grief is love. That you grieve hard when you loved, and were loved, so very hard.

I believe it all whole heartily. I do. And I think I have championed it. Made space for it. Certainly before loss. It was who I was on most days. And even after. In little moments. In big. If and when you are feeling joy, are in your joy, or even just your hope- you need to honor that and protect it.

But the new existence part and “getting used to it all” part is about making space not just for joy but also the dropkicks. Because with loss, you won’t have one without the other. No matter how big the moments of joy may be, I’m also silently or not so silently, simultaneously, getting my heart dropkicked left and right. The highest of highs also often come with the hardest of hits. I am now made up of, among other things, joy and grief. On Anderson Cooper’s incredibly brilliant and heart-wrenching podcast “All There Is”, he explores grief in all it’s forms and layers- for Anderson himself and others. When Stephen Colbert joins, he describes his own joy/grief existence as living with a beloved tiger. Always in the room. Always capable of scaring, surprising, pouncing on you. Of hurting you like no other- but it is Stephen’s tiger and it will live as long as he does. And Stephen will learn to live with it.

An elephant, a tiger, a dropkick, a pounce.

So it’s not just about being able to fully feel joy and light again after loss. It’s doing so while also getting stomped, pounced, dropkicked or, for lack of a better phrase, getting your ass kicked right next to the joy. Or even just feeling the presence and possibility of it in the room. The elephant in the room, if you will.

You could be using every ounce of effort to seek joy, feel the light or even just get the lunches packed and the noses wiped- but you simultaneously will also need to use every ounce of effort to endure the hits. Not unlike in motherhood.

Light and Lows. Joys and ass-kickings.

And what makes it messy or just hard to have a handle on it all is that I’m still wildly grateful for my life. In love with my life. Living my life. Seeking fun, and joy and growth in my life. I have to, and very much want to, for my kids, for my family. And for myself. Or I guess that part is not messy. It’s clear as day. And comes with good reason. A long life without any Joy/Grief, Joy/Something. The messy part, the hard to handle part is loving my life alongside the debilitating loss. With the elephant of grief on my chest. Dancing one minute and getting dropkicked the next. I am still getting used to not being capable of feeling complete, utter joy with out a slash something attached to it. Getting used to- kinda being a downer at times? At feeling these feels. The Joy/Grief. Excited/Grief. Motivated/Grief. Mothering/Grief. I know that the Slash Grief, the Slash Something will soften and soften as time goes on. But there still will always be a Something.

When I first listened to Stephen Colbert’s words last Fall, fresh off sudden loss, the tiger’s claws were consistently, casually and comfortably digging into my body and being. An unflinching grip on me no matter how much I strategized and survived. Several months into this new existence and I’m still be dragged up, down and around. Some days I feel like I’m getting better at having my heart dropkicked at intersections, at smiling back the sobs or at soothing when I want to be soothed. On having tools and resources and safe spaces to not smile back sobs, to be soothed. To make space for my joy and for that of others. Call it strategy, call it strength. Call it time. It doesn’t stop the dropkicks from coming. The tiger from pouncing. The elephant stomping. But it is something.

And other days, there is no Joy slash Grief. There is no strategy. No tools. No strength. No softening.

There is just Grief.

A lot of growing up and living life is realizing that sometimes you’re really just gonna be “going through it”.

But even with that phrase, I love that there’s a “through”. You will move. You are not dead in the water. You will get from one point to another. Even if it’s two steps back and one half step forward. You will move. Through, over, under, around, in, out. Not in an instant or a day. Or a year. But at one point you will be “really going through it” and then at another point you will look back and realized you were at the through part. Through it. Out of it. With it, in ways. But through. Going through grief and with grief to get to Joy. You changed along the way and have some companions or baggage whether you like it or not. But you moved. And will keep moving. With, over, through, out.

For every time my 4 year old has asked, has cried out, has spiraled at why his grandmother, my mother, is not coming back from Heaven, there are just has many times that he has, completely unprompted, pointed to the sun and said it is shining so bright because of her. He has felt her and seen her in rainbows and butterflies and fiery sunsets. He has stopped what he was doing and put his hand to his heart, saying it’s beating so fast because she is saying “Hi”. Saying I love you. Saying I’m here. He doesn’t stop asking the how, why, where and when. He doesn’t stop getting sad and scared with the answers or lack of strategy and solution. But he also doesn’t stop seeing and seeking and feeling and believing. And somehow knowing.

At almost 12 months to the day, I continue to be clawed at and stomped on. To gasp for air and plan for the unplanned only to get pulled down, back, under again. I don’t think I will ever fully get used to it, but also I will never stop seeing and feeling and believing. And somehow knowing.

Lows and Light. Grief and Joy. Slash Somethings. Slash A Lot Of Things.

And if you’re in your joy and your light, your hope and your happy or you’re in your grief and loss and unplanned, I hope you can protect both sides. Both sides of existing and experiencing. Make space for both. Move through both.

And thank you for making space- or rather making space for me making space- for my Grief and Joy. And sometimes just Grief.

I have a feeling this elephant of mine has a soft spot for dressing up while dropkicking. For vintage white whales and styling hacks and musings on muses. We’re gonna be making space for that again soon.

But right now I’m really going through it. I’ve been going through it. But I’m also doing everything I can to go through it.

Xx

Amanda

One more thing….

This passage is a favorite and clearly resonates with my own experience. I couldn’t quite find the right way to chop it up too much to include up above so here’s my favorite part below. You can read the writing in full here.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.