The reins

“I completely accept the rejection of this guest post, as I understand that I am not technically a babylost mother,” wrote Christine when she submitted her post, Birth And Death, about the loss of her eight year-old son, Levi. “I did want to send it your way, however, as I wrote this piece specifically for this blog. Kate Inglis’s Notes for the Everlost saved my life. I have read it probably a dozen times. I am so grateful for the women who consciously choose to speak truth from the heart.”

I founded Glow in the Woods in spring 2008, one year almost to the day after my son Liam died in the NICU after six weeks of love, longing, and agony. I spent the next ten years assembling many talented writers to build the community here at Glow, and writing Notes for the Everlost, which came out in Fall 2018. All these years later, emails like Christine’s — and all the writing here, all your stories — still make me cry. But not in a sad way, oddly. It’s just a repeated humbling, a circular sharing of love and company with other parents who understand.

Do we all have the same details, the same origin story? No. But this space gives us a place to be where there’s no need to edit, to soften our edges. It’s meant so much to me, and it’s brought me some of the most rewarding friendships of my life.

“It’s encouraging to see my heart in the world in bigger ways now,” Christine wrote. “I sense it as a renewal. Maybe my life force is coming back in deeper ways as I cultivate my practice to stay grounded with myself and forgiveness and creativity and patience and grief. All things that are so difficult, and not modelled by very many people in my life.”

Christine shared with me how she found my book, by chance, among recipes, thus finding us here at Glow and being inspired to write.

“Your book read like a permission slip to face this season authentically and to invite all the fear in too. Because, yes, holy hell… of course I was terrified. I had actually given up on the grief memoirs. I decided I would take a really good cookbook to the bottom of the well with me. My older son, Isaac, and I were in a local bookseller when I found Notes for the Everlost in the cookbook section. I read the last page, broke open, and sent a big thank you up to the sky. I have no doubt Levi orchestrated that moment. And, now that I feel Liam as well, I’m sure they were colluding.”

See? All these years later, on the eve of passing along the editorial reins of Glow to Jen and Emma, your new co-editors — you’ll be hearing more from them soon! — I’m sitting here feeling weepy and so grateful. To hear Liam’s name in companionship with Levi’s, a boy I never knew of a mother I’ve only just met. But already we share so much.

This is a long post, but I’ve asked Christine if she could share here another piece she wrote for a pediatric palliative care journal after Levi’s death. It feels like the right way to say farewell, and to say thank you. To share the writing of someone else, after I’ve shared so much of my own. It shines so much light to see myself in the words and in the love of others. Yours, hers, ours.

Thank you, Glow community.

On Forgiveness

By Christine Gharagozian

Grief is hard work. Staying connected with it and open to it requires trust in self.

Sometimes it all feels like a cosmic prank. It has been just over two years since I lost my younger son and I still occasionally want to scream into the void, How can I trust the very same Life that handed me that which I feared most?

The void screams back: Try the alternative on for a while and let me know how that feels.

The early days felt like a sand storm, a white out, a brush fire, a burning down. I could not discern up from down. I developed an affinity for very dark humor and deeply empathetic human beings. Something deep inside of me knew that I would get through this season one way or another and it was grounding to be in connection with people who also sensed that. Sadly, there were not very many of them. Just enough to get my very human need of love and acceptance met.

These days, I am grateful to have access to the paradox. My emotional boundaries are growing as I deepen my connection to myself, and I am able to sense our interconnectedness more and more. We give love; we receive love in return. My mind is clearer and my body is softening into my process. When the big waves come, I am more able to invite them in and watch them move through me.

Letting go has been a slow, delicate process and healing from trauma has been very painful. I remind myself frequently that the only way is through. I am pondering what resurrecting JOY would feel like for me. I dream of writing a book one day and I am researching a career in freelance writing. I sense that would feel joyful. I also occasionally imagine working at a think tank with warm-hearted human beings who also feel that the earth would be a gentler place if folks just cried more often. We would all sit around an old solid oak table. We would craugh (cry-laugh) throughout the day and get paid to think about deep shit.

It does feel miraculous to spend some time imagining this and it also feels far away. Both. The paradox of my present moment.

How did I discover this place that feels oh-so-much-more-peaceful than the alternative of being traumatized repeatedly? I forgave myself. Relentlessly.

There is a voice in my head that tells me I am a failure. This voice tells me that good mothers successfully keep their children out of harm’s way. I sat down for months and wept and got to know this voice inside of me. I attempted to meet this voice with curiosity and compassion because I quickly learned that shushing it only made it louder and made me even more miserable.

Slowly, this voice started to simmer down. It had less of a hold on me. My curiosity grew. I read all of Eckhart Tolle’s books and began to sense that I understood what he was describing more and more. Yes, clearly, I am not this voice. I am not my thoughts. Well, then, what in the hell am I? Who am I? My curiosity grew.

As far as I can tell, I am Love. I always have been. I always will be. So are you. I am also quite skilled at getting in the way of that truest of truths: my humanness. I fear because I know that everyone I love will eventually die and I cannot know when. I have always known this. It is simply more stark now. I cannot avoid it.

To cope, I forgive myself daily for not always leading with who I know myself to be. Love. I do my best with what I have been given and I trust that I will continue to grow. As I see it, Life is most assuredly both. It is wretched and it is glorious. Suffering is optional when we forgive ourselves in honor of our dead and those who continue to live.