Atalist's Dungeon

 How long is too long to grieve? It feels like everyone has their own timelines of when they think you should be done grieving and getting on with the world around you... and I firmly believe the answer is you don't stop. Things just become less sharp. It's like a wound that doesn't fully heal, one moment it is almost closed and the next it reopens and feels raw.  There is also an expectation with grief that if you go to an event where people are grieving, that your grief will look a certain way. I ran into that on the weekend and could not "act" the part. People kept trying to provoke a response out of me but I was so far beyond numb that I had nothing to give them. No act, no tears... nothing. Just me, blissfully numb and not really responsive.  Do I miss my mom? absolutely... I want to talk to her every day, I want to tell her all the things, but that is not on anyone else's time frame but my own. My grief is not orchestrated. It is not for display and not ...

 With the quiet comes the radioactive moments.  The moments where I can't breathe and when I break into a million pieces.  Today is my parents' anniversary and it hurts to think they didn't get to this day, that there were no more celebrations for the two of them... but at the same time. We will use this day to memorialize the love that they had. If I can say anything, they loved each other fiercely. Through the difficult and the trying times, they were there for each other. That was most evident in the last months of my mother's life. We fought so hard and that was because of the love that was the foundation of their relationship and what brought Carly and me into this world. We had a loving and wondrous childhood full of laughter, and ridiculousness and that foundation is what I base my faith on that my mother is out there. I do not feign to say how she is out there, just that I know that she is.  She sees us hurting, trying to push through and continue to live rob...

 I have been doing a lot of talking about what it has been like to go through grief with losing my mom what feels so quickly, and yet today I am going through another kind of grief. Today it was leaked that the United States Supreme court is intent on overturning Roe v. Wade. For those with no context as to why this case is important I can supply you with the cliffnotes version. Roe v. Wade made access to abortion legal and protected. It was and continues to be a ground-breaking case that set the precedent for many legal proceedings and in turn allowed for Women's rights. It pushed forward the belief of bodily autonomy and allowed for Women to feel safer from government regulation of our bodies. The risk of having to go through an unwanted pregnancy, an illegal and potentially life threatening backalley abortion was something that we moved past as a society, to offer legitimate health care and sexual health for all.  Fast forward to the Trump administration going on the offens...

 I have been quiet.  I have been silent.  It's not that I have nothing to say, quite the contrary, but it has been more that I needed to take time for me, for my family. I needed to just be for a while. My world has been in flux. Death, work, and taxes will do that but it's more that I realized that my whole family needed healing. My kids are dealing with grief and trauma, my dad is working hard to keep himself busy and I am over here, way too busy for words. I needed to stop. I needed to do things for myself for a change. Infinitesimal change is still change. I unplugged for moments. I spent time with my kids, worked around the house, and smiled. It was so needed. How therapeutic and yet, there were moments where the bottom fell out beneath me.  Dad came down to our house for a weekend. It was wonderful and fun. We had cocktails, did some shopping, laughed, ate delicious food, and enjoyed each other's company. However with all of that, there was still some work to d...