It’s been a Year

Well, today is not one of my favorite days. One year ago today, my mom went to Heaven.

Man, even as I type that it still doesn’t seem real. I still cannot believe that my mom is dead. I don’t know if that will ever feel real. I really don’t.

But it is real. She is no longer here with us in the flesh. I believe she is here in spirit, but today I miss her actually being here.

My mom could light up a room. She was so luminous and infectious with her energy you just couldn’t help but feel warm around her. Her smile was bigger than life and her laugh echoed for miles.

Luckily, she passed on several of those qualities to her children, so we still get to hear her laugh, in roundabout ways.

She also passed on some of her not-so-great qualities to all of us, that we now get a kick out of. Her temper, for example, is alive and well in all of us. And for those of you who didn’t know my mom had a temper…count your blessings…hehe.

That woman was fierce.

Even when she would be DEAD ASS WRONG, she would not cave. And it would drive me absolutely crazy. Because I am the same exact damn way.

Oh my God, my mom and I could fight. Holy shit, we could argue. And I never understood it at the time, but it’s because we are basically identical people.

And 2 Alphas rarely get along with each other….there’s too much estrogen….too many chiefs!

So we would fight. And we would both call my sister to argue our sides. My poor sister always felt stuck in the middle, but my mom and I never cared. (That’s the alpha in us.) We would call her up and bitch and moan until we felt heard.

Believe it or not, I am laughing so hard as I’m writing this blog. Now, those have become precious memories. Thanks to time, and therapy.

It’s taken me a lot of work in therapy to get to the place I am now. I had to work through a lot of guilt after my mom died. I felt like I was such a piece of shit daughter to her. All I could think about was how many times her and I fought. Or the one time I snuck out of the house and she had to come grab me by my ear and pull me out of a house party, in her fucking pajamas. Or when we fought another time and I told her I hated her.

Yep. I told my mom I hated her.

And now she’s dead.

That was not easy to sit with. Believe me. It started to kill my soul actually.

I thought about that stuff almost every day. And I cried harder and harder the more I punished myself with it. Why was I so mean to my mom? Why was she so hard on me? Why didn’t we get along? What was wrong with me? What was wrong with her?

Just endless amounts of torturous questions as the spiral continued.

Thankfully, in therapy, I’ve been able to work through those feelings of guilt and anger, and find forgiveness and peace.

Being a mother to my own son has helped me find forgiveness and peace with my mom. Mothers fight with their children. And daughters are sometimes little bitches. And moms don’t always know what to do. And kids will always test boundaries. And moms make mistakes too.

BUT….

Moms always, always, always love their children. Even when we are so pissed off our heads might explode, we never stop loving our children. Just like my mom never stopped loving me, and I never stopped loving her.

Like, back in high school when I told her I hated her, of course I didn’t mean that. Of course that’s not true. But, at the time, when you are so hurt and angry, you lash out at the people you love the most. And maybe I’m just delusional but I feel like that was how my mom and I’s relationship was. We just really lashed out at each other.

And now, I have such peace with that. I laugh about it to myself quite often actually because of how much I understand things better now.

Mom and I struggled to get along because we are the same damn person. And you can’t have too many of us in one group. Like, most of my friends are not like me. I’m a lot. Ummm, hello? Have we met? Like, I’m a lot. And my mom was a lot. So when you put that together……boom.

It’s just too combative. And it’s hilarious to me that I see that now. I find a weird sense of peace about that. I just feel like I understand my mom so much more now.

Especially as I get older, I really notice how many things my mom had an effect on. She’s in every song I still sing to Theodore every night. She’s in my long fingernails that Theodore loves for me to rub on his back or his head. She’s in my guitar when I play songs with Theodore. She’s the fire in my veins when I’m worked up about something. And she’s the person I pray to now, along with Jesus.

As I said before, I had to do a lot of work in therapy to get to this headspace. But, I’m so grateful I did. Because now I am healing and letting things go and not hanging onto negative shit that doesn’t matter.

I dove deep into working on healing because I knew that my sadness would consume me. I knew that if I didn’t work through my anger, I was going to start self-destructing. And I can’t do that. I have a little boy and a business and a family. So, I had to go get help.

Now, I can talk about the reality behind a mother/daughter relationship without all the guilt. I can look back on our fights and laugh about silly they were, but also how normal they were. We were not the first mother and daughter to have rough moments, and we damn sure won’t be the last.

I mostly wanted to bring this up, though, because no one had ever talked to me about it before. No one had ever told me what to do with the anger you have for someone who is dead. Like what do you do with it? Where does it go? Nowhere.

So, it festers. And creates the perfect storm.

I knew that wouldn’t be good for me and my mental health, so I got to work in therapy, and again, I’m so grateful I did. No one deserves to carry around those burdens of guilt. That accomplishes absolutely nothing. And I know my mom wouldn’t want that for any of her children. How I know that so matter-of-factly, is because I think of my own son, and I know with every fiber of my being that I would want him to move on and be happy. I would never want him to spend one second on earth feeling guilty about a silly fight he and I had. That’s just part of growing up.

And I know my mom feels the same way.

I will leave you with some advice, though. Don’t wait until someone passes on before you try to understand them. Put in the work now to find forgiveness and peace. And, always, always tell people you love them. My mom was amazing at that. She always told us that. Through her voicemails that I’ve saved, she still tells me she loves me, whenever I need to hear it.

So, I will be listening to that on repeat today.

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Mama!

Love you most!

Em