We started our Christmas baking today. My tummy is full of butter and sugar, but it was so worth it. I love hearing Christmas music playing and seeing happy kids as we make cookies.
I hope that our smiles can be more frequent than our tears this Christmas.
After months of training and trying and praying and hoping, I sold my horse today.
There’s a delicate balance of holding on and letting go. The best and kindest thing I can do for this beast I love so dearly is let him go to someone who is a batter fit for him. It’s really sad since he was to be my heart horse – I had planned on him being in my life for the next 20 years.
The reality is I am a different person now than I was a year and a half ago. What I want is different, and what I am willing to accept and tolerate in my life is different. It’s led me to change several important relationships and this is just one of them.
This last year has been filled with loss and this adds to the grief. But there’s something different forming inside me as well. I’m getting more clear on who I am and what I want.
My heart horse will be going to someone who really likes him and is really good with him. It’s better for him, and it will end up being better for me too. We have the next month together before he begins his new adventure.
I have been living an exercise in broken trust. I was always of the belief that if my trust was broken – severely broken – that I would not be able to recover that relationship. It certainly proved to be true in the case of Mr. X, although he breaks trust and his word at any opportunity he is given so I figured maybe I was being too rigid in my thinking when applying this rule to other aspects of my life.
I realized this summer that my heart horse and I were in a serious breach of trust – he didn’t trust me, and I didn’t trust him. I enlisted some help and have spent the last few months working to rebuild our fractured relationship.
I realized today that even when I really, truly love someone or something, if my trust is broken – the relationship can’t be repaired. The added lesson was that just because I decided to be reliable and dependable doesn’t mean that my partner (horse/person – whatever) will also decide to be the same. And sometime the best thing that can be done for all involved is to just lovingly part ways.
I believe we either live with love or we live with fear. But there are certain relationships that just seem to organically evoke fear – to me that is my intuition telling me that the relationship isn’t the right one for me.
I used to believe love will fix everything. I still believe that -but I add to it
Love will fix everything, but the results may not be the ones we envisioned. Faith lets us know that it’s things are all happening for a greater good.
We have had the flu in our house the last couple of days, and while I’m glad we had the ability to shut down and get better, it has had an unexpected side effect. Stopping and being sick has given me the time to feel the tsunami of grief I have been holding at bay. I feel like there is a lot of mourning I need to do or haven’t done, but specifically now it’s for my mom. Things have been so busy and stressful since she died I feel like I can barely catch my breath sometimes. Then other times I feel like I should be further along in my grief process – like there is any set timeline for grief!
I have talked several times with a good friend of mine who lost her mom a few months before my dad died. She still gets emotional and says that she is having such a hard time processing the fact that her mom is gone. I guess sometimes the grief just hits hard and sticks around for a while. We are entering the time of the year when mom got so incredibly sick and things were so very stressful and scary. All these memories keep coming back and sometimes it’s just a lot to process – I look for distractions where I can but that’s not always a healthy thing to do either.
However, I look around as we are here – safely in our home. I have two of the most amazing rays of sunshine who live with me, and I know that life does indeed go on. They miss her, I miss her, but we have beautiful memories to share, and many new ones to make.
And having these feelings come up so strongly has made me realize that I need to honour them, I need to set aside time to remember my mom and the gifts she gave me. She was such an amazingly strong person and she taught me so much about myself.
We are enjoying a very lovely second summer. After the massive amount of snow we got the first part of October, most of us are welcoming this weather with open hearts.
The view today was stunning. I love these mountains so much. They bring me balance and help feed my soul.
We celebrated thanksgiving with good friends of my parents today. These people reflect back to me (and the world) the same kind of love that my parents shone out.
This weekend has been full of contrasting emotions. Final internment for my parents, Banff and supper with my aunt, thanksgiving meal with family friends, and my kids and I have some trauma memories attached to thanksgiving from our old life. Highs and lows.
It’s a good reminder that life goes on and we keep making new memories every moment of our lives. We get to choose what kind of new memories we will make. I watched my kids be happier than I’ve seen them in ages spending time with him. I hadn’t realized how much they needed a man around to do things with, to laugh with, to experience things with. It brings a different kind of balance to our family and I’m grateful for that.
I am so full – in my belly and my soul. The feeling of contentment is a good one.
We took my aunt to Banff for the afternoon and a thanksgiving supper at Melissa’s. I love that town and it was awesome to share it with her.
After an emotional day it was so nice to spend some family time recharging and enjoying each other’s company. Sharing memories from my dad was also much needed.
My kids laughed and relaxed like I haven’t seen them do in ages
Today, on mom’s 78th birthday and the beginning of the thanksgiving weekend, we held an internment ceremony for mom and dad and placed their ashes in the ground at the Cochrane Cemetery.
All week long my heart and my tummy have been aching at the thought of putting the urn in the ground. Even though Dad has been gone for 3.5 years and mom for 8 months and we have already scattered ashes at the ranch, it still felt so final. However, it also felt so right. They are in the “old” part of the cemetery with family, friends, and neighbors – they are right beside my grandparents.
Standing there with our friends and family around us, it felt in the oddest of ways, like the perfect way to celebrate mom’s birthday today. She always loved a party and my uncle hosted a reception after the ceremony that was like a birthday party from heaven in her honour with dad by her side.
I am so grateful for this tribe. We need them, we need to remember we are part of something bigger both here on earth and spiritually.
After some much needed afternoon naps my sister and her crew and my aunt (thank goodness she’s here, it’s so good to have one of dad’s siblings here too) discovered it was the perfect snowman/fort day and pulled my kids into the fun. It was a great ending to an emotional day – to remind us that this place is still home and the place where we will continue to make memories and share love.
I actually feel less sad now than I did 24 hours ago.
I had the most amazing acupuncture session today. Transformational is an understatement.
We talked a bit about my losses and my inability to understand it. I came to see how it’s so much less figuring out the how’s and the whys (which my brain really wants) and more allowing myself to surrender.
I don’t know how to surrender gracefully, but it’s something I’m learning. I understand myself on such a deeper level after that process today.
Then we picked up my aunt from the airport as she’s here for the weekend. I don’t get to spend enough time with dad’s side of the family and I’m really excited to get this opportunity, even if there’s some sad emotions we all are facing.
Sadness and joy together – always.
I had an emotional moment in church today. I feel like when I’m there, and we are talking about love, and singing songs about hope and faith, it makes all the strength I’ve been faking melt away and I get very vulnerable. I was holding in my tears (badly) when the girl passed me a note she’d written. She wrote of how people come and go but the love is eternal. It was so sympathetic and genuine it made my heart smile.
I’ll be glad in some ways when we have done this final internment, but it also feels so…. final at the same time.
