Today would have been my mother's 80th birthday. Landmark events associated with my parents are always interesting, as they make me pause for reflection and think about how I am progressing through the odd journey that is grief.
After a huge amount of time dwelling in the land of glass-is-half-empty, devoid of motivation and enthusiasm, this is great progress.
But what if I don't know who I am? Huge shifts in my life have made me a different person and I have to get to know her all over again.
What are my goals? What are my values? What do I want to do and be beyond someone's wife and mother? What do I want to change in the world? How can I find the means to do that? Who are the important people in my life?
Who am I.....really?
Some of these questions require a bit of looking back. How I respond and react to my present has roots in my past. Most of the questions aren't perplexing - they're exciting gateways to new possibilities. Some of them are puzzling and bewildering and are taking me on a journey to the past and back again. My life from the age of twelve is being re-examined with eyes open to new possibilities and doors I never opened because they were so firmly sealed shut I was not even aware they existed.
All of this culminates in a buzzing turbulence. Soaring highs of the excitement of self discovery coupled with swooping lows when contemplating the complexity of change.
In my last post I talked about my revelation about my lack of autonomy. There was no period of figuring out my place the world without that place being shared by someone else. The revelation that day left me in tears....and then I locked the thoughts about it away in that box of jumbled emotions I couldn't deal with right then.
I think now it might be ok to open the box. I feel like a teenager on the cusp of discovering what life is about...of figuring out how to be a grown up. I have to do it with a lot of people's needs to take into account...not just mine.
It won't be easy but I think its time.
