Learning to thrive after early mother loss
Coach: Distance swimming is about going along the shoreline so you can stop any time you want. (I had never thought of it that way.) I said I find it so daunting to look back and know I’ve got to swim all the way back there where I started. I don’t think I’m totally tired out – it’s more mental.
We floated and relaxed, enjoying the cold sinking in to our bodies, while watching for spots where it would be easy to get out of (or into, next time) the water. Cold water is so calming after the initial shock.
The lake looked dark blue and choppy. Close-up, the water was clear, and the gravel bottom looked varied and pretty as usual. Pollen and tiny bits of plant matter floated on the surface as usual. The coolish breeze and the partly cloudy sky, though beautiful and milder than a glaring full sun, were different weather than I’d swam in before. No matter how insignificant a difference it should have been, it felt like a less familiar environment.
I investigated a river for a potential swim. It originates from mountain snow in the municipal watershed at a high elevation. The river is beautiful, cold, and surrounded by forest and by leafy suburbs.
I’d say the message I took in, about how to handle my loss and my new life, was “Soldier on.” The future was obscured by worry. I couldn’t afford to give in to unpleasant emotions because I thought they would churn me like a tsunami wave and never stop.
As I mentioned last week, I spent the weekend at a retreat for women who lost their mothers before age 21. I looked forward to all of it: traveling to Los Angeles, staying alone in a tiny Airbnb camper-trailer, walking each day to the retreat house, and spending all day with women who have shared this traumatic, or at least seismic, event of mother loss. And I wondered how I would feel. I had forgotten one thing. When I sign up for something, I often resist the experience when the time comes. During the past 30 years, I’ve been to…
I’ll spend the weekend at a retreat with Motherless Daughters author (and support group creator) Hope Edelman and others. I don’t know what to expect to “get out of” it. I hear my inner eleven-year-old asking, “Will I cry?” because at Mom’s death, she did not.
An intensive swimming course reminded me of the importance of curiosity as a driver of great experiences and learning.
When I can’t sleep, it isn’t that I can’t fall asleep to start with — it’s that I wake up either hot or revved-up or both. I tell myself the feeling is from a hormone, maybe cortisol, which will clear out in about twenty minutes, and until then I should relax my body by focusing on my breath. Of course, going back to sleep isn’t always that straightforward. What is it like for you, if you awaken in the night? Sunday Jan. 17, 2021, 4 AM — I woke up two hours ago and am not sure I’ve been back…
The only bad thing that ever happened, bike-wise, was the night my college roommate’s and my bikes were both dismantled and most of the parts stolen. We came out of our proofreading jobs, met up on the corner, and found our bikes half missing.