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 It's called "The Five Stages of Grief" and is written by E. Ethelbert Miller, director of African American Resouce Center at Howard University. 

The Five Stages of Grief

Denial
This has nothing ot do with blackness
This has everything to do with blackness

Anger
I could break things
but everything is broken

Bargaining
Maybe I should have left
with the slave catchers

Depression
I will die in this same skin 
that I'm living in

Acceptance
Cotton never left the plantation
only my mind did

I've been thinking on this poem, ever since I read it. I can relate to it in a lot of ways. Not just from a racial standpoint.

For Denial - many times we either give too little or too much credence to how outside influences affect our lifes. For the WLS patient it could be "This has nothing to do with food. This has everything to do with food." In reality, whatever the factor, the truth lies somewhere between those two points and it isn't always an easy delineation. With my grief, my mother's death, my emotional instability as of late isn't 100% about her death. But it isn't 100% about her life. She's gone. And sometimes I wish her back but why? So I could be the kind of person to her that I was? That's no good. Or so she could be in pain? That's especially no good. So that middle ground is hard to deal with. It's easier to deny how gray and muddy life can be and assign blame to something we can call concretely evil or wrong.

For Anger - How many times have I felt this way just in the last few months?? Being mad because there's nothing left to break. My life is, for all intents and purposes, a hot mess. I had to give up the home I own. I moved on...nothing. And I spent $10k burying my mother. There is no room for me to fuck up. There's nothing that I can easily "break" that won't severely affect my life in a very negative way. I feel unsafe and I have no way to lash out. I'm basically being forced to deal with all this constructively which makes me angry. I should be able to have the opportunity to zap out. To go crazy. To "lose my head" as my grandma would have said. I should have that right. But I don't. And that makes me angry.

Bargaining - take your mind off the literal sense of the word "slave catchers." There are slave catchers all around us. For me, it's those people who can give up neurotic thought and control and acquiesce themselves to a significant other or partner. I often look back on my life and think how much easier it would have been if I had submited to a man, became his wife. I may not be what I am today but I also would not be alone. I'd have a partner, someone with whom to face life's biggest challenges. But to me that seemed like enslavement. I am enlightened (or at least I tell myself that). I'm liberated. I am INDEPENDENT. But it's all so tiring. Let someone else worry about the bills. Let someone else worry about the day to day. Let someone else think about how the children will get to school or be fed or how the car will get maintained of the lawn will be cut. If I'd been willing to make that sacrifice...to live a simple life...to not go after my so-called dreams...I'd have that. I suppose the grass always looks greener.

Depression - This one seems pretty straight forward to me. For the slave it is the realization that you are black. You're born black, you've lived black, you'll die black and you'll never, ever be free. Well...we all have some form of blackness. For me it's food addiction. I am what I am and I'll die what I am. I don't know that I'll ever get the inner peace some of you find from WLS. I don't know if there'll ever be a day when I am free from those obsessive food thoughts. A day when my mind can rest from them. Some days I allow myself to be depressed about that. Some days I choose to ignore it. Somedays I practice denial.

Acceptance - related to the thoughts on depression, for me that could be re-worded to say "Food never left the equation, only my mind did." It's always going to be here. In our lives there's always going to be adversity. There's always going to be some unfair system over which we have little to no control. But notice that last line. "Only  my mind did." That's the ONLY thing, friends, that we ever have control over. We don't have control over other people and things. Insofar as our actions are, in part, in reaction to other people and things (over which we have no control) we don't even have complete control over our own actions. But in the realm of our mind we do have control!

There is a saying I got on a fortune cookie that stands out to me. "In the realm of our minds, whatever we believe to be true either is true or becomes true." You can make the choice about what truth is in your life and you can believe it.

That's what I'm struggling with now. What is my truth? What is the story I'm wiling to tell myself for the rest of my life and can I really, really believe it?

 I dunno. 

Life is settling down. The girls are about to set off on summer adventures. And I am scared to death. 

Ordinarily I don't mind being alone (although I truly do hate it when my children go away for so long) but t his year I can already feel that this separation is going to be tough for me.

When someone major in your life dies, there is the weeping and gnashing of teeth that is requisite for the occasion but I'd like to posit that the REAL grieving doesn't quite begin then. It's sort of like getting a deep cut or injury. Your initial reaction is to the pain. You cry out for help and someone assists you, so that you don't perish. But in the days, weeks and months that follow you begin the process of recovery, which can be every bit as painful as that initial wound, just in a different way. And that's precisely what the quietness and emptyness of my house will elicit.

I suppose I should feel glad for that. I hear there is peace on the other side of that long, difficult road. The sooner I get on the road, the sooner I reach my destination, right? Except I am not yet fully convinced I WANT the peace of accepting that my mother is gone from me. Part of me doesn't believe I deserve that peace and the other part of me doesn't want to let go of any scrap of time and space where she actively exists. And yes I do know she still does exist. She was here. There is evidence. But you know what I mean. I have not, in my head, put her in the ground. I still use her phone number as my supermarket discount code. Her number is still programmed into my phone. Her bedroom remains in tact and for that matter I've not been to her house since the funeral. I've not let her go yet and I'm just not sure I am ready to. 

Lately, particularly, I've been feeling what I'm sure someone must have deemed "motherless child syndrome." I would even go a step further and call it "SINGLE motherless child syndrome."

Do any of you watch Grey's Anatomy? Well if you did you know what I mean when I say my mother was my "person." She was who I belonged to. Who I came from. I don't know much of my other family well. I don't feel particularly connected to them. They don't feel particularly connected to me. 

I am a member of many different kinds of family, plenty of which are not based on blood relations but there is something to be said for HAVING connections with blood relations. I have my brother and we'll build a new family consciousness. I have become the matriarch, a role that I don't accept yet but that everyone has bestowed on me. It's an honor, to be sure. I just don't know how to deal that or where to put the associated feelings.

So, that's a bit of why I am half dreading the summer. I can't fully dread it. It's always been my absolute favorite season. I'll try to post here throughout just to draw on your wisdom and experience and advice. Everyone has been so wonderful thus far.

Thank you.

 

That's how I feel today. Poor little old me. Dammit. I hate that feeling! 

I am not a big fan of what I consider whinyness and today I feel whiny.

I've been experiencing insomnia and I'm tired.

My car got hit by some idiot who wasn't looking when backing up.

I have less than two weeks until my move and the motivation to pack is just not there.

My kids argue with me.

It's cold and rainy.

And I miss my mommy.

So here I am...at work...trying. I really am trying. I work for a wonderful organization that brings hope and help to impoverished people around the world. It is my job to convey that message through my writing. 

But today I don't feel very hopeful.

Damn. 

Aside from my mom passing away, I've been dealing with the process of letting go of my home of the last 12 years.

This has been such an interesting process. In the past instead of making big decisions, I'd let them make me. I'd wait until I had few options left and then make an emergency decision (which USUALLY meant a bad decision). This time I was proactive.

It's also funny to me how sometimes in life you have to let yourself free fall into an inferno to avoid the worst kind of burns. This time last year I was trapped. Suffocated by a mortgage I couldn't afford. My house was in extreme disrepair. I had no money for anything but paying the damn mortgage. Some weeks I wondered where my grocery money would come from.

My mortgage company wouldn't help me. They said, "well you're paying on time every month so it can't be that bad, right?"

And when the idea first came along to stop paying them I was vehemently against it. I, after all, am a responsible person. I pay my taxes. I go to church. I keep my word. This is not something an honest person does, is it?

So I did what I do most of the time when I am conflicted. I sat on it and did nothing. But I could tell fast that that wasn't going to work. Then I prayed. And sought the counsel of...just about everybody. And after a lot of soul searching I finally felt ok about what I was doing. I am not justifying here. It was what I had to do to get out of this situation. And I needed out badly.

I laugh when I think about that first month I did not send in my payment. I thought I'd be kicked out the next month. Here it is a year later and I am still here. After a few months a funny thing happened. The company that did not want to help me before all of a sudden presented options! Exit options, mind you, but I didn't care. This house is sort of like a container of old self. Anthony (my ex) and I moved here together 12 years ago with our then only child. And our relationship died in this house. I had a nervous breakdown in this house. I had another child and I struggled and I triumphed. But this house very much represents who I WAS: a person who hadn't started her journey yet. I'm now well on my way.

We are set to close on the house on April 30th. So I know the next natural question. "Where are you moving?" I HAVE NO CLUE! I am all packed up and yet have not yet secured a new house yet. Last week was supposed to be about doing that but instead I spent the week fulfilling THE most important duty a child can do for their parent: I was burying my mother.

Am I scared? Ohhhhh yes. Excited? Definitely. I feel like I am entering a new chapter in my life. And I feel like my mom is in an even better position to see it now than she was before. She is watching over me and if she has anything to do with it, her baby will never go without.

So thank you, friends, for your advice, your wisdom, your experiences, your PMs explaining how you went through the same things. I appreciate that so much. I definitely do NOT feel like I am alone. And even though I am fricking bawling right now (my youngest calls it "having a moment") I am actually very comforted inside.