I am tired tonight. but I feel compelled to say this- my grief is long and hard and ongoing. I am not done. I don’t know when this will be. Actually, let me rephrase this- I may never get over this loss. I am not asking for any special treatment or acknowledgment. None at all. I simply want my friends to know that I am forever changed. I am cracked wide open. I am completely incapable of having a hard shell anymore. I have no armor on. I am soft and supple to any emotion and pain. I am vulnerable. But not in the way that you may think. I am functioning okay. I am working, guiding, communicating, directing, organizing. but I am also not pretending to be someone I am not. What you see is what you get. I may be quiet, I may observe. I may be loud, I may be alert. But one thing I will not be is inauthentic. I am me. and that means I am accepting all of me more than I ever have before. all my wounds, insecurities, and defects. I won’t condemn myself much anymore. What a tired useless dialogue that is.
Benjamin wants one thing for me. Just one- Self Love.. His passing has propelled me to look deeply at all that I shunned inside myself. “No more”, he says,”No more”. “Accept the darkness and when this takes hold,I am right here, mom, to hold this space of Loving Safety”.
As I walk this path of self forgiveness, the grief goes on- the missing, the longing, the tears. yet,maybe through these unending tears,come rejuvenation of this weary soul. This Soul that met Benjamin a lifetime ago- and knows without a doubt- that our rejoining can happen in any moment- in the center of my broken open Heart.