I've been practicing heaps of self-care these days and so in the spirit of my practice I went to bed last night at 930 pm. This is outlandish for me, by a long shot. Surprisingly, I fell asleep in no time...but it didn't last long.
At around 2 am we woke up with Oliver in between us and tried to gently usher him back to his own bed. He went willingly only to turn back around when he realized he had a big mosquito bite that he couldn't tune out. 2 am mosquito bites actually feel like a severed foot - to a 6 year old. Not long after we got him settled, Lilly showed up distraught over a robot eating some people out of their car at the drive in (she's never even been to the drive-in). They were the robots owners no less! Nightmares suck, I know them all too well and I just can't turn my kids away when I hear the sheer panic in their voices. Danny left for the spare room as Lilly crawled in - a sleeping situation we know all too well at this point. (This post isn't about sleep - but as a side note, I have never recovered from the first 2 years of having twins and now almost 7 years later I am a beast when I get woken up in the night.)
Somehow, this particular night I was calm - I barely recognized my soothing voice when I stroked Oliver to sleep, or when I cradled my nightmare shaken girl whispering about anything but robots in her ear.
And so here I am at 2:16 am awake, and calmly staring at the ceiling fan. It was a good nap anyway from 930pm-2am. I toss and turn and eventually reach over and grab my phone to flip open my Kindle app and read through my book. I am reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. A book I started a few years ago with mysad-ass-excuse for a book club (no offense ladies, we tried) but wasn't overly keen to read at the time. About 7 months ago when my yoga teacher was staying with me during a workshop she lead here in Terrace, I asked her what she was reading and she said "Wild". I quickly remembered beginning the book and that I still had it on my kindle. I was intrigued that she was reading it and thought maybe I would give it another try.
You know, sometimes the right books come along at the wrong times, and then one day they find their right time. This was exactly the case with this book. I felt like it wasn't even the same book or likely it wasn't even the same me who was reading it. Without revealing much about the plot - Cheryl Strayed decided (with little to no training) to hike the PCT (Pacific Coast Trail) on her own in search of herself. I have never done such a thing - Hell, I can barely make it on a medium level trail here in northern bc for a few hours, let alone the months she spent on this grueling trail - but I have certainly been "hiking" around my life, trying to find myself. So it resonated. I got it.
So it was truly no surprise, at 2:30 something am when I landed on a profound part of the book that reached out and grabbed me by the chest. Cheryl realizes she is out of water and in this moment of despair remembers sitting with an astrology reader who (something she didn't put much faith in) started talking to her about her father.
Page 204
"It seems like he was like a Vietnam vet" she persisted. "perhaps not literally. But he has something in common with some of those men. He was deeply wounded. He was damaged. His damage has infected his life and it infected you."
I was not going to nod. Everything that had ever happened to me in my whole life was mixed into the cement that kept my head perfectly still at the moment an astrologer told me that my father had infected me.
"Wounded?" was all I could manage.
"yes" said Pat. "And you're wounded in the same place. That's what fathers do if they don't heal their wounds. They wound their children in the same place."
I slammed my phone down on my belly and started to weep, uncontrollably, trying to keep quiet enough not to wake Lilly up beside me. I shook my fist at the sky (or ceiling fan in this case), wishing that he was still here and that we could heal our common wounds together. What was I supposed to do with them now?
My father was a wonderful man, but he was burdened. Burdened by every experience he ever had. He was quiet and stoic so people didn't always see his empathetic sensitive side. They did not know how deeply affected he was by everything that occurred in his life and in the lives of those around him. He held on to things, he stressed often and worried even more. It wasn't until I had Lilly and Oliver that I realized that his anger was a manifestation of his fear. It wasn't really until I had my son and saw so much of my father in him that I understood what he was like as a boy, before "being a man" hardened him and forced him to hide that side of himself.
He sacrificed a lot for us. He hid his emotions and stress so that we would not see it - but we felt it and were affected by it none the less, and maybe more so because of his silence and what he likely considered courage. It was hidden deep down in blue of his eyes.
So when I relate to this common wound - the wound I hold deeply in my heart, the wound I protect and cherish because it was his and it's mine and a part of what I have left of him. When I speak of "this wound" it does not imply he intentionally hurt me in anyway, but through our connectedness we shared it. I simply know the wound she is speaking of in her story, and felt exactly what was being communicated to me from the pages. I felt it through every cell of my being.
Grief is not a destination that you go to and stay in, nor is it somewhere you ever fully leave. It's potholes that you don't see on days when your head is looking up at the sky - that you stumble over and fall into. It's a plate at a party that your dad used to have and suddenly you are locked in the bathroom sobbing into your hands, wiping your face with a dirty hand towel. It's having something to tell him you know he would love and picking up the phone only to be slammed with the harsh reality that he won't be picking up on the other end...
It's a hard thing, to write about someone who is no longer here. To put your experience with grief out there for the world (or facebook) to see. Because everyone can pass judgments on the reveal of your personal, individual and very intimate experience with loss. It's also hard to bear it in silence and in private because you fear it will make people uncomfortable and not know what to say. The heaviness of it becomes a new norm, building strength as you carry it around like the backpack of a hiker.
I hold my father's wounds, as my own and I hold them like a badge of honour - forever touched by his experience that bleeds into mine. We learn so much from our parents, and even still after they leave. I have learned so much from him since the day he left, April 22, just over a year ago.
I continue to learn from him every single day.
And as I laid there at 2:30am shaking my fist at him, at God, at whoever could see and hear me - in an angry yet respectful recognition of the hard ass lessons that I have to learn in this life - I realized that the hardships are well disguised gifts that sometimes take years to unravel like the penny in a million pieces of paper and tape you get at your 5th birthday party. I graciously unravel these lessons from my father and carry them on my heavy but open heart everyday. I have learned to sit and wait for them instead of running away.
I love you Dad. I know you are no longer wounded, and that because of this - I also have a chance to heal.
I love you too Gale, as I know we share in these experiences not one in the same, but each in our own individual way, we understand the burdens and gifts of being his daughters.
Love Big Kid.
With love and gratitude,
Grace Karyn
At around 2 am we woke up with Oliver in between us and tried to gently usher him back to his own bed. He went willingly only to turn back around when he realized he had a big mosquito bite that he couldn't tune out. 2 am mosquito bites actually feel like a severed foot - to a 6 year old. Not long after we got him settled, Lilly showed up distraught over a robot eating some people out of their car at the drive in (she's never even been to the drive-in). They were the robots owners no less! Nightmares suck, I know them all too well and I just can't turn my kids away when I hear the sheer panic in their voices. Danny left for the spare room as Lilly crawled in - a sleeping situation we know all too well at this point. (This post isn't about sleep - but as a side note, I have never recovered from the first 2 years of having twins and now almost 7 years later I am a beast when I get woken up in the night.)
Somehow, this particular night I was calm - I barely recognized my soothing voice when I stroked Oliver to sleep, or when I cradled my nightmare shaken girl whispering about anything but robots in her ear.
And so here I am at 2:16 am awake, and calmly staring at the ceiling fan. It was a good nap anyway from 930pm-2am. I toss and turn and eventually reach over and grab my phone to flip open my Kindle app and read through my book. I am reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. A book I started a few years ago with my
You know, sometimes the right books come along at the wrong times, and then one day they find their right time. This was exactly the case with this book. I felt like it wasn't even the same book or likely it wasn't even the same me who was reading it. Without revealing much about the plot - Cheryl Strayed decided (with little to no training) to hike the PCT (Pacific Coast Trail) on her own in search of herself. I have never done such a thing - Hell, I can barely make it on a medium level trail here in northern bc for a few hours, let alone the months she spent on this grueling trail - but I have certainly been "hiking" around my life, trying to find myself. So it resonated. I got it.
So it was truly no surprise, at 2:30 something am when I landed on a profound part of the book that reached out and grabbed me by the chest. Cheryl realizes she is out of water and in this moment of despair remembers sitting with an astrology reader who (something she didn't put much faith in) started talking to her about her father.
Page 204
"It seems like he was like a Vietnam vet" she persisted. "perhaps not literally. But he has something in common with some of those men. He was deeply wounded. He was damaged. His damage has infected his life and it infected you."
I was not going to nod. Everything that had ever happened to me in my whole life was mixed into the cement that kept my head perfectly still at the moment an astrologer told me that my father had infected me.
"Wounded?" was all I could manage.
"yes" said Pat. "And you're wounded in the same place. That's what fathers do if they don't heal their wounds. They wound their children in the same place."
I slammed my phone down on my belly and started to weep, uncontrollably, trying to keep quiet enough not to wake Lilly up beside me. I shook my fist at the sky (or ceiling fan in this case), wishing that he was still here and that we could heal our common wounds together. What was I supposed to do with them now?
My father was a wonderful man, but he was burdened. Burdened by every experience he ever had. He was quiet and stoic so people didn't always see his empathetic sensitive side. They did not know how deeply affected he was by everything that occurred in his life and in the lives of those around him. He held on to things, he stressed often and worried even more. It wasn't until I had Lilly and Oliver that I realized that his anger was a manifestation of his fear. It wasn't really until I had my son and saw so much of my father in him that I understood what he was like as a boy, before "being a man" hardened him and forced him to hide that side of himself.
He sacrificed a lot for us. He hid his emotions and stress so that we would not see it - but we felt it and were affected by it none the less, and maybe more so because of his silence and what he likely considered courage. It was hidden deep down in blue of his eyes.
So when I relate to this common wound - the wound I hold deeply in my heart, the wound I protect and cherish because it was his and it's mine and a part of what I have left of him. When I speak of "this wound" it does not imply he intentionally hurt me in anyway, but through our connectedness we shared it. I simply know the wound she is speaking of in her story, and felt exactly what was being communicated to me from the pages. I felt it through every cell of my being.
Grief is not a destination that you go to and stay in, nor is it somewhere you ever fully leave. It's potholes that you don't see on days when your head is looking up at the sky - that you stumble over and fall into. It's a plate at a party that your dad used to have and suddenly you are locked in the bathroom sobbing into your hands, wiping your face with a dirty hand towel. It's having something to tell him you know he would love and picking up the phone only to be slammed with the harsh reality that he won't be picking up on the other end...
It's a hard thing, to write about someone who is no longer here. To put your experience with grief out there for the world (or facebook) to see. Because everyone can pass judgments on the reveal of your personal, individual and very intimate experience with loss. It's also hard to bear it in silence and in private because you fear it will make people uncomfortable and not know what to say. The heaviness of it becomes a new norm, building strength as you carry it around like the backpack of a hiker.
I hold my father's wounds, as my own and I hold them like a badge of honour - forever touched by his experience that bleeds into mine. We learn so much from our parents, and even still after they leave. I have learned so much from him since the day he left, April 22, just over a year ago.
I continue to learn from him every single day.
And as I laid there at 2:30am shaking my fist at him, at God, at whoever could see and hear me - in an angry yet respectful recognition of the hard ass lessons that I have to learn in this life - I realized that the hardships are well disguised gifts that sometimes take years to unravel like the penny in a million pieces of paper and tape you get at your 5th birthday party. I graciously unravel these lessons from my father and carry them on my heavy but open heart everyday. I have learned to sit and wait for them instead of running away.
I love you Dad. I know you are no longer wounded, and that because of this - I also have a chance to heal.
I love you too Gale, as I know we share in these experiences not one in the same, but each in our own individual way, we understand the burdens and gifts of being his daughters.
Love Big Kid.
With love and gratitude,
Grace Karyn
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