4 weeks ago my Mama Gentile died. Bi-polar. Effervescent. Amazing. Challenging. Volatile. I adored her. I didn’t know how to handle being close to her without taking in hurt.
After her death, I gave my best attempt to reach out to friends, lists, supermarket clerks. I told everyone I met that my mother had died when they asked, innocently enough, “How are you?” Surprising things happened.
Strangers, yet people with recent deaths in the family stopped what they were doing, looked me in the eye, got tears in theirs, and reached out to hug me. People I barely knew invited me to dinner. People from around the world emailed. Some friends reached out & kept reaching out. Many friends and lists, didn’t call, or write or stop over. Some criticized me for not reaching out in ways that worked better for them. I felt enraged at discovering that I was alone in my grieving. Later, I found out the reason people didn’t reach out and the piece I had played in that:
1) They didn’t want to intrude
2) They didn’t want to make it worse
3) They didn’t want to imply that I couldn’t handle it myself
4) They didn’t want to do the wrong thing
5) They didn’t think my emails were to them since they went out to a list.
6) They wanted me to make a personal and specific request as to what I wanted in the way of support.
7) They assumed they weren’t close enough to me to matter, or to make a positive difference.
I began to be aware in my body of two things:
1) Our culture is so messed up around death, dying, grieving, and big emotions. We run. Hide. Suppress. Numb out. Dip in & out. Anything rather than face them, claim them, breathe them in and be transformed by them.
2) I had push-pull with intimacy that reflected the wounding in the culture around emotions & intimacy. I longed for intimacy. I was afraid that in loving you I would abandon myself. I had unconsciously put up a wall to keep people at a distance that felt manageable.
Both things were part of my being alone in grieving. The cultural wounding & my push away energy.
Ultimately being alone to grieve was a gift. I took the time to go deep with my own feelings. I gave myself space & compassion for anger, anxiety, shame, sadness, mourning, and loss. Yet, I knew that for many people being alone to grieve would either have them stuff their feelings, or wallow in them. Why? Because there is very little training in the culture on grieving as a sacred process of going deeply down, harvesting the lessons, and coming back up with new insight. There is very little training on how to BE WITH strong emotions without either taking them on, or trying to save the person (or oneself) from them.
After 3 weeks of staying with the emotions, I was able to ask myself new questions. I love that. I love that about me. It supports my belief that our lives are formed by the questions we ask ourselves.
I asked:
- Do I think my mother loved me? (Yes)
- Do I think she did the best she was capable of? (Yes)
- Do I think she hurt me? (Yes)
- Do I think she meant to hurt me? (No)
- Do I believe, that now that she is dead, that she is still limited by the patterns & concerns she had in her lifetime? (No)
- If that’s the case, do I have an opportunity to have a new relationship with my mother? (Yes)
And then I discovered something else. Having a new relationship with my mother, meant having a new relationship with me, and with my body. It is a release an opening. An opportunity to become me on a whole new level.
A week ago, I took an amazing workshop by Staci Haines author of “Healing Sex.” The right side of my body began to cry out. I realized that I had internally been pushing people away or pushing myself away and the right side of my body was so tired. I invited a dear male friend to support me in bringing awareness and attention to the pain in my body. I discovered that with regards to energy in relationships, I knew how to give, how to heal another, how to take, and how to merge YET I had no idea on how to open to receive. I was depleted.
I am now on a journey of learning to receive and to let down my walls and my “push away.” The results are amazing!
I can see & feel the love people have for me. I can see & feel the gift it is when I let their love in. WOW! Sometimes it feels so big & so shattering to who I thought I was; my old identity. I feel the empowerment of The Warrior who takes a stand, protects, & serves. I feel a deepening of the Divine Feminine who opens & receives with grace.
The biggest surprise is what has happened to my complaint about community. IE ” I don’t have a community. People don’t know how to be a safe community to me.”
EXAMPLES OF THE TRANSFORMATION:
Someone hit my car today. An older gentleman who told me he had cancer. I held his hand. I hugged him and blessed him. He was my community.
I asked to shop girls if they wanted to hear what was opening up for me around the death of my mother. They said yes. We talked about life, death, the suppression of emotions, the negativity about aging. One was reading “The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying.” It was wonderful. They are my community.
I stopped in the donut shop to talk to a new mother, I had never seen before. She is my community.
I talked with the woman shivering at the stoplight we were waiting to change about the challenges of San Francisco weather. She is my community.
Today, I realized there are no strangers. There is only a community. My community is as big or as small as I SAY and what I am willing to care about and be involved with.
Where ever you are as you read this. You are my community. You mean something to me. Why? Because I say so. Because I choose to have my heart be open to the connections. Because the world needs to be a community to survive.
Thank you for reading this. Thank you for caring. Thank you for being on the journey of living a life that is conscious, caring, compassionate, and sacred.
Always,
Francesca
