Grief:
Coming to terms with the hand you've been dealt
As the only survivor in my immediate family, with no partner or children of my own, holidays are often difficult. Understandably, they are times when families are usually together.
I am fortunate to have many amazing friends/my cultivated/chosen family, and I celebrate bigger holidays with them.
However, when it is one that doesn’t allow for an extensive period of time off, not at Christmas or New Years, I’m usually alone—like Easter.
I know the dangers of social media and FOMO—I stay away from facebook at certain times—when I’m not in the mood to absorb all the Christmas cheer, and especially on Mother’s Day. Sometimes Father’s day as well.
I believe that I was meant to be childless, to work through the intergenerational trauma and the emotional inheritance and wounds of my family. I believe that author Ruby Warrington’s words apply to my family and situation—Sometimes a family goes through too much trauma to sustain another generation.
I also believe that in my love of traveling and reading, learning and writing, my independence and autonomy is better for me, healthier. I believe that I am more happy than I would have been as a parent. Truly.
But I am not someone who cannot stand children. There was a time when I wanted them. I would make a very good auntie, or as my cousins’ kiddos call me: “Cuzzin Danielle.”
I do have maternal instincts and, as such, I experience some pangs of losses on the holidays, occasionally, then I see kiddos on facebook coloring eggs.
I don’t allow myself to dip too much into the what if-scenarios, but I do wonder what my babies would look like and be like. I think mothers who lose children always do, but it is certainly a different situation than for those of us who didn’t get our ‘rainbow baby’ or ‘adopted baby’ to follow.
The decision to not pursue those is on me, certainly. I have no partner and I’m not well off to do it alone. I don’t have extended family to help.
I am proud of my evolution. I am self assured in my independence, now. It has taken a long time but I think it radiates. A guy I was chatting with on a dating app recently told me, “You ooze independence.”
A high compliment. I took it. It’s true, I probably do.
And I am happier with that than I ever thought possible. Truly. I love to go home to my cute and cozy and peaceful home. And I read and eat and do what I want. No schedule or routine to adhere to, precisely because I don’t have kids, or even a partner to cater to.
And yet, yet—
Sometimes—especially for those of us whose lives are so shaped by grief and losses, I do think and on holidays—
Wow.
My life certainly turned out differently than I ever thought it would. Much more solitary.
There was a time that would have scared me. My emotional inheritance from my mother was the fear of abandonment—obviously as a result of her mother abandoning her.
I am living my fears, in so many ways. And when I feel that paralysis of loneliness, I also think about a quote that says—
“Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
“Lean into the feeling of loneliness: what will it teach you? Explore it. You won’t die from it.”
I believe that. My feelings of loneliness are chances to learn about myself and to grow.
The other truth of the matter is this. And it’s a hard truth—
My family was not the feel good kind in the social media. And I know that.
There were tensions and conflicts, mental illnesses and addiction, clashes, self-abandonment. It was not rose-colored, more like (often) shit stained.
As such, if I’m real with myself—I entertain no fairy tale ideas that if they were still alive we would have happy moments together. (Unless they got the mental health help that they needed.) Those moment, oh, they were so very rare when they did happen.
Sometimes I feel liberated because they are passed, at peace. Other times, at holidays, it is the weight of grief.
But it is for what could have been. And, as the quote states above, it is an acknowledgment of the hand that I have been dealt, the family that I had, the losses I have endured with their choices and manners of death, and the wounds, grief and weight, that I still carry. And will throughout my lifetime.
