Originally written July 26, 2020

I’ve really been struggling this past week. At the same time, I could tell you that it has been a good week. One that in many ways feels like the life I used to live.

It is summertime and summer is so insanely demanding when I live it right. Working in the garden, watering everything that wants to be wet, harvesting – harvesting – harvesting, tending to the fruit trees, processing fruit either by drying or canning or baking, fending off the mosquitos, flies, yellow jackets, gnats and every other bug that wants to buzz, bite or sting, spending time working in the morning, hiding from the heat in the afternoon and enjoying the reprieve of the cool evening air.

This is all so memorable to me. So much like every summer that has ever passed. It is country life. Homestead life. A simple life. And then, there is the complexity of the gaping hole in my time, in my heart and in my sense of understanding who I am and where I fit in the world.

People tend to look at their lives in sections.

Childhood, adulthood, motherhood or fatherhood.

I have only ever experienced two of these – childhood that lead straight into motherhood. It is all I feel I have ever been. I have no point to return to. No life to reclaim. I don’t know what this new life is or how it is supposed to feel or who I am supposed to be.

When I look in the mirror, I see a mother. I see a mother’s breasts, a mother’s belly and a mother’s curves. When I look on my walls, I see photos of a child who once filled the space of my womb, the time in my life, the rooms in my home, the dreams of my future, but alas, he is gone. He no longer resides in this realm with me. 

When I look out into the world and think of where I should be, the point that I feel I want to return to is when I experienced motherhood. I felt it in every moment, every cell, every thought and every dream. It filled my laughter, my conversations and my tears. I yearn for my child and I also yearn for my place in the world to return to me. The one that tethered me to a place within myself that felt like home. I do not want to be adrift. I do not want to be set free or told to spread my wings and fly out into this new world with all of its new possibilities.

I want my child back.

I want motherhood back.

I want my life back.

I am grieving so many things. So many things that Josiah gave to me. So many things that the people who murdered him stole from me.

I am grieving the loss of my son, my aging body, my peri-menopausal womb, tired and fading eggs – a body that does not want to return to motherhood no matter how much my heart and mind ache for it.

I am alone in ways that I cannot describe and that few can comprehend.  

I am not who remember. 

I am not who I will become. 

I am adrift somewhere in between. 

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When Grief Speaks is a selection of writings that originated as journal entries and Facebook posts when I was in early grief after my son, Josiah, was killed. They speak straight from the heart, from the depths of despair that many bereaved find themselves in. I offer them here to not only openly share myself with you, but also to connect with those who may feel as I once did. As grief unfolds and matures, it changes. We grow grief muscles that we never wanted. At some point, we find that we can carry what we once thought would crush us and in that, we find hope.