50 :: 90 {Solstice to Equinox}

We are in deep mourning in our house, Isabella & I.

The brutal day that I alluded to on Monday and the story that I was integrating later in the week. All the same thing.

How do you put words to loss?

Bone-aching loss?

Mind-numbing loss?

Inconceivable loss?

How do I own the loss and celebrate the life when the end of that life was so painful?

One of Isabella's first friends took her life early Monday morning. Iz was awakened by a phone call from the police asking if she knew this friend's whereabouts. In the morning, I went into action. Find her. FB page? Posters? I started to plan where to put them. Should we start walking? Looking?

An hour later, we got the news that she had been found.

It is taking every energetic tool in my tool-belt to integrate this loss. Forgiveness practices, tending to all of my parts, mindfulness, leaning into love, leaning into nature, allowing myself to feel (really feel) the loss and sadness and grief.

With a suicide, the hardest part is that the sweet human child who was unstoppable can get forgotten in our trying to understand the adolescent human being who was so very, very sad, who felt hopeless and helpless.

I am doing all that I can to see her in her fullness: her despair and her infectious joy, her beauty and kindness and silliness and humor and one-of-a-kind-ness.

I loved that uniqueness...and grapple knowing that this part of her, this one-of-a-kind-ness that I loved and valued caused her pain. She couldn't figure out how she fit.

And so I sit...my heart broken and yet filled to the brim with love for this child, for my child, for my community that is my rock, for the beauty that surrounds me. For the reminders of what is really important in life...each other, our Earth, the beings on it.

I am letting my grief unfold. Allowing exactly what needs to come up, come up. Tears (countless and seemingly never-ending), but holding them in a larger container (I am SO grateful for the vastness of the container that I have been given and have cultivated).

Today, my grief took me to the beach. Long walk, soaking in the ocean and sun and blues and greens. Alone on a huge expanse of sand. Alone but for the birds. Did I mention that she loved birds? (all animals, cats mostly, but birds, too)