I’m not sure where to begin.
Do I begin with the moment life broke out from the bottom half of me, breathing and trembling and needing me more than life itself? Do I begin with the beautiful downfall that motherhood is, and how it rips from you, rages through you, charges you, and changes you?
Or do I start with my birth?
Do I start with how I came breaking through blood and barrier, came tumbling down that sacred tunnel, right on into this broken world, all heavy with the truth of trauma? All laden with the song that life is laced, through and through, with loss after loss after loss?
I’ve never hurt so deep in life as I have in this current season. Never felt so hollow, so heartbroken. So lost, so languished by loss.
A few months ago, I turned in the manuscript for my second book, set to release on February 6, 2024. It’s a book that chronicles my life, as well as my losses. All the large and seemingly little ones. Moving. Losing land and losing home. Failed friendships. Survivor’s guilt. The breakage that comes with becoming a mother. Coming through divorce in my childhood. Loss of innocence. Loss of church. Loss of dreams.
But when I turned in this manuscript, all tidy and ordered, I didn’t know that loss would continue to leak, in and through my life. I didn’t know I’d come to welcome new wounds and unlock doors to undiscovered dreams gone dead. I didn’t know that there’d be new diagnoses to not deny, new decisions to be made in the timespan of cruel deadlines. New gravestones to grieve at. New realities to reckon with.
I’d yet to really realize the irrevocable truth that everything really is broken. This world, our ways. There really is wreckage at every corner. Grace upon grace, yes, but also gushing wound upon gushing wound.
I write a little bit about this in my new book, about how we carry the ache of our earliest ancestors, wearing life’s first loss like it is some kind of skin. I write about how the fall of man is really the world’s first trauma, the first injury, the first loss.
Here’s something I’ve noticed—in churches, in conversations between Christians. Of the garden, it seems we’re fond of talking about guilt and sin. But what about grief and sorrow? We speak of sin and Satan but not of tears and trauma.
In light of that, I don’t have a tidy bow, today.
Just these wonderings. Just these thoughts and truths. Just these sorrows. Just these shadows; just these shapes dancing where light doesn’t pass through. Like in this clip below, shadows of honeysuckle lighting up my forearm. A beautiful paradox of light and dark.
For weeks, I’ve wanted nothing more than to list a litany of my losses, as of lately. To write them all up. Give them space, give them breath. To release them instead of ruminate on them.
I know that I’m in a season, and I know the sun will turn its kind face upon me again. But, for now, everything is broken. And I can’t put a tidy bow on it. And sometimes that’s how seasons go. Sometimes that’s how life goes.
Everyday, I keep a practice of writing down the things I’m grateful for. And, perhaps, I’ll do that here sometime, too. For now, though. Just this.
Just this litany of losses.
I miss New York, my home state. I miss New York City. I miss Rockland County. I miss Orange County. I miss the Hudson Valley. I’m sad that I had to give up my dream of homeschooling. I’m sad about my diagnosis of Hashimoto’s disease. I’m sad that it’s an invisible disease. I grieve the money, time, energy, and the “no’s” that it takes to manage this disease and care for myself. I’m sad about friendships that I’ve lost over the last few years. I’m sad that they’ve ended without tidy bows. I’m conflicted over grieving these friendships and yet knowing that the end of them is exactly what’s been needed. I grieve this broken season of my marriage, and the strain it is putting on all facets of my life. I grieve the loss of church community. I grieve the role of “pastor’s wife” and the millions of labels, boxes, misunderstandings, expectations, and judgements that come with that. I grieve the Covid-19 pandemic and all the ways it broke our world, and my life, further. I grieve the loss of my grandfather and how I wasn’t able to attend his funeral, due to the pandemic. I’m sad about the many ways I juggle many worlds, as a result of being a mixed girl. I’m sad about the invisible nature of the griefs that come with bouncing between cultures, yet never really knowing how to claim just one. I’m sad that I lost my black ring. I’m sad that our trusted daycare center closed down. I’m sad that I still don’t have my own car, and I grieve the one thousand ways this complicates my already complicated life. I miss my family, and I’m sad that we’re all scattered. I grieve the trauma of growing up with a brother with brain damage, and the many fears that’s instilled within me when it comes to my own children. I grieve the loss of my friend, Suzy, a friendship that began budding just before the pandemic. I grieve the loss of my alma mater, the loss of its stunning campus and the eventual shut down of the entire college. I grieve my rootedness at this college, how it was grounded in Nyack, New York, a village that deeply matters to me. I grieve the recent loss of my late paternal grandmother’s house in Monsey, New York, and the way I discovered on Google maps that it was torn down and built over with a religious institution. I grieve the state of Hillburn, New York, my maternal grandmother’s historic village, and how it is undergoing loss and change. I grieve the lostness of the ancestral history of this village. I grieve the colonialism and racism that brought brokenness to the story of this village, my people. I grieve the fact that I feel powerless in preserving this place. I grieve redirections in my career and the limbo that I feel when it comes to work and purpose. I grieve the coexistence of my dreams and physical limitations. I grieve my grandmother’s diagnosis of leukemia. I grieve this season.
That’s my litany of losses. That’s life, right now. Everything is broken and I can't put a tidy bow on it.
I feel like Riley Andersen from Pixar’s animated movie, Inside Out. Sadness isn’t a bad thing. It’s not a disease to avoid, not a depression to fix. Not an inconvenience to overlook, a timeline to skip over, a complaint to dismiss.
It’s a feeling to acknowledge, not paint over with candy-coated positivity.
If anything, in the listing of my losses, maybe you’d come to truth in somehow, sometime, listing your own and confessing the sadness that stems from them. Because,
Your sadness isn’t
something to
get over.
For now, and for you, here’s this. A never before shared poem (from my forthcoming book), and, below, an unrehearsed, imperfect cover of “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish.
I want you to know that
blood never belonged
in these brooks
and on this land.
I want you to know the
wind never set out
to carry the sound of
weeping in its whispers.
I want you to look to the
east and feel the earth rise
up to meet your tired feet.
I want you to look to the
west and see the sun dancing
a dance that looks
nothing like sorrow.
I want you to acknowledge
these hills, this home,
our hold on this holy land.
I want you to sing your song
to the Great Spirit—
of gratitude, of thanks,
of the dawn lighting
land with grace.
❤️❤️
So many long, tight hugs from afar, my sister friend.