They're watching

If there’s one thing I’ve come to believe it’s that that the universe never gives us more than we can handle. Right now, however, the universe is grossly overestimating my stamina.

This is a more personal post than most, yet I believe the lessons I’m learning are relevant to my readers.

This week, we lost one of the most amazing women I’ve ever met, my dear mother-in-law. Here is my tribute to her.

This is the first loss for my children who are 9, 11 and 14. They were all very close to her so it’s hitting especially hard. I’m learning a lot about each of them right now as they process in their own way. And it feels like a game of whack-a-mole, where one is settled then the other tips over. Repeat a dozen times a day.

I have centered my husband and his role as caregiver for his declining mother for months. I’ve carried the weight of our family to free him up to be with her until the end. He’s in so much pain right now and I’m digging as deep as possible to continue to show up with empathy, even when I know I’m getting a lot of it wrong.

Somewhere in that emotional mess is me, the grieving daughter-in-law who lost a very special loved one. When I get a millisecond to stop caring for everyone else, I’m totally disoriented.

Here’s the irony: I have a trademarked model for this exact thing. I created the Bounce Back Blueprint™ as a human-centered approach to facing, navigating, learning from and thriving through hard times.

Thanks, universe, for the very real-time situation to test my work. <insert sarcasm>

I’m happy to report that it seems to be working. This is less about validating my own thought process and more about the self-awareness of why I created the model in the first place - to find a healthier way to handle setbacks vs. the “get back to normal” approach we’ve been conditioned to.

Why does that even matter? Because my kids are watching.

This is the first loss for us as a family and I feel them looking at me every moment, asking without asking, “How do we do this grief thing?”

My sweet babies, here’s how we do it:

• We practice being present in the moment, locating ourselves now and now…and now.

• We say how we feel then we reach for more words to describe it. Sad is obvious but it might also be overwhelm, confusion, nostalgia, anguish. (Thanks, Brene Brown, for the gift of building our emotional vocabulary.)

• We recognize what’s familiar. When have we felt something similar and how did we cope? How have others dealt with this that we could learn from?

• We explore ideas for what we can do, what’s within our control. Today it might be taking the day off school, tomorrow it might be connecting with a friend. There is no right or wrong, we are curious and lean into the things that ‘fill our bucket’ again.

Eventually we will make some plans for our new chapter, but not yet. We’re not ready. We give ourselves the gift of time, of riding the waves of grief as they come so unexpectedly then move out, providing much needed relief.

We breathe. We breathe again.

We exercise patience.

We give grace.

We extend love.

This is how we do it.

💔