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9 months after my mom died
It's been a little over 9 months since my mom died a 2-day hospital ICU death after almost four years of cancer. She was 69, and I am finding that her approaching birthday in October along with the symbolic 9 months (like the time to childbirth) is poking at my psyche, tearducts, and heart. I am caught between wanting to embrace the feelings and wishing I didn't have to.
My mother led a life in denial of her mental illness, and I am her only daughter. She was unpredictable and angry quite a bit. She also had a deep maternal love that I have not wanted to see because it wasn't trustworthy when she was alive. I'm wondering if I am wanting to have a new opening of trust at this time, and if so what to do with the resistance? And what I can do to hold on to my feelings long enough to have more clarity about what they're trying to tell me?
Response
You are asking and struggling with some profound feelings and questions. I am moved by the insight and clarity you have about the possibilities of this moment. One of my teachers talks about the unique opportunities of certain moments in time such as the opening in our energy fields of a birthday. Your mother's approaching birthday and the (pregnancy) cycle of your grief seem to be inviting you to a deeper level of relationship with your mother. I pause here because most of us believe that relationships end with death. I do not hold this belief and not because I have any psychic information about the after-life. I know from my own (personal and professional) experience that as long as we live, our relationships continue to evolve because we continue to evolve. Perhaps your heart is softening and opening to your mother because you no longer have to carry the pain of your relationship - her mental illness, unpredictability and anger - in you current physical realty? Sometimes resistance is a habit - parts of your psyche haven't gotten the "news" that your mother is no longer a threat to your ordinary reality. Ask yourself what it is you are resisting. Is it valid? Do you need to be resisting? Don't worry about holding onto your feelings until you have clarity. Your feelings are holding onto you! They're not going anywhere. I will conlcude with what the poet Rilke said so beautifully: Live the questions because if the answers were given to you, you could not live them now.