Grief

I love this picture because it reminds me of my mother as a giver of life. She found this little bird injured and dying in her yard in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo León.  She nursed the little bird back to health, feeding it with a dropper. She was showing my son, Atzin, how to take care of the bird.  That was my mother.  She gave life to plants, flowers, corn, etc.  She also lived life grateful for every moment.  She knew how to live in the present and honor her past.  In many ways, my mother was the keeper of our family's cultural identity.  She represented all the beautiful things in Mexican culture. She taught me so many things.  I know how to make a colcha by hand and how to cart wool.  I can sew, I have her love of cooking and nourishing my family with good food, I am completely fluent in Spanish thanks to her.  My mother was a poet.  She had a 6th grade education, but read everything she could, and had her little notebooks at home where she would write poems.  I found one recently that she wrote for her own mother.  If my mom would have had access to an education, she would have been a phenomenal intellectual.  She loved learning, thinking, and writing.  Losing her was not just about losing a mother, but also losing my direct connection to my own cultural identity and history.  I felt like there were still so many things I never asked her or learned from her that I needed to know, and that I took for granted I would have the time to ask.

This holiday was very difficult for me.  It has not yet been a year since she died.  I began the holiday break in an extremely sad emotional state.  It was as if I was finally was feeling the toll of all of the months of my mom's chemotherapy, her death, and then assuming care-giving for my dad.  Meanwhile, I was navigating a stressful and demanding work life and parenting a teenager.  All of these events had taken place in a little over a year with her beginning chemotherapy in November of 2013, completing her chemotherapy treatments in April/May of 2014, then dying of a brain aneurysm in May of 2014.  After her death, we scrambled to make funeral arrangements, which I still feel guilty about, because my mother did not have the service that I think she deserved.  It was rushed and affordable, not well planned.  There were many circumstances that shaped or limited what we could do for her.  Immediately after this, we scrambled to put in place a temporary plan for taking care of my dad; we felt it was important for all of us daughters to be present with him for a few weeks.  Then, we finally put in place a more long term plan for how we would all share in his care.  In the middle of all of this, I continued to teach both summer sessions and sort of make my way through some sense of "normal" at least in appearance to those on the outside.

This winter break, the first I thing I did was sit on my couch and cry.  I was hurting and I was tired. There was the part of me that knew I would get through this pain, and had to experience it.  At the same time there was this part of me that felt like the immediate depth of the pain was so severe that I could not tolerate it.  I wanted to hide and escape from the world.  I did not decorate or do anything for Christmas.  I did not celebrate the New Year.  In fact, I felt like it was almost insincere to do so.  The last year had been extremely difficult and I was in no mood to celebrate it.  I avoided Facebook, being bombarded with those "Thanks for being a part of my year" posts.  It was painful. I finally, finally, was able to bring myself to say the words "Happy New Year" to people as I saw them and they said it to me.  Honestly, I don't even want to remember that the holidays even happened this year.  I know, this all sounds very "negative," but I had to give myself permission to go there - the place of darkness, and be there, and honor it.  I know that I never want to be alone again during the holidays.  I know that I want to be with my dad in Mexico, with family in another state, or I want to be with family and friends here in Chicago.  But for this year, I needed to go inward.  I needed some space and time to escape and be with the darkness.

There is a psychotherapist, Miriam Greenspan, who wrote a book called Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair.  In this book, she argues that the avoidance of dark emotions is part of why we see escalating levels of depression, addiction, anxiety, etc.  She sees dark emotions as spiritual teachers, if we can live mindfully with them.  She knows this from personal experience dealing with the death of one of her children and the disability of another.  She believes that conscious suffering can deepen our connection to life and make us more compassionate.  I believe this too.  I also understand as she says, that our tendency is to turn away from this.  This tendency is made worse by our society that expects us to "return to normal" as soon as possible.  I know that I felt the immediate expectation to return to work and didn't even feel like I could take the "cuarenta dias" [40 days] to be with my grief.  Even if I didn't return to work, being a caregiver would not have allowed that space.  I do appreciate that I had that time now.  Greenspan believes that dark emotions can be transformed into joy, grief with gratitude, and resilience.  And of course, she questions, as I do, the prevailing "mental health" and psychiatric attitude toward grief and despair, with such discomfort on the part of therapists and doctors with these emotions that psychopharmacology is the preferred method of helping people cope with this darkness, ultimately delaying their moving through the grief.  This approach returns people to a "normal" state rather than walking with people through the despair and focusing on transformation.  I am slowly returning to a state that I recognize, where I feel my drive and passion for my work and for life in general.  Why is all of this on my blog about recipes? Because, even though it was difficult to maintain, I knew that my healing and moving through this grief had to include maintaining my exercise and putting good, wholesome, unprocessed foods in my body.  I bought a book called How to Eat by Thich Nhat Hanh, slowed down, and practiced mindfulness when cooking and eating.  At each meal, I would read one of the reflections in the book to help me slow down, be in the moment, and eat with gratitude.  I will end with one of the meditations in his book in honor of my mother:

Slowing Down

     When we can slow down and really enjoy our food, our life takes on a much deeper quality. I love
     to sit and eat quietly and enjoy each bite, aware of the presence of my community, aware of all of
     the hard and loving work that has gone into my food. When I eat in this way, not only am I
     physically nourished, I am also spiritually nourished. The way I eat influences everything else that
     I do during the day.

     Eating is as important a time for meditation as sitting or walking meditation time. It's a chance to
     receive the many gifts of the Earth that I would not otherwise benefit from if my mind were
     elsewhere.  Here is the verse I like to recite when I eat:

          In the dimension of space and time, We chew as rhythmically as we breathe. Maintaining the
          lives of all our ancestors, opening an upward path for descendants.

     We can use the time of eating to nourish the best things our relatives have passed onto us and to
     transmit what is most precious to future generations. (p. 14-15).

 So you see, food is not just about eating.  It's about love and it's about honoring our ancestors and nurturing and teaching our children.  It's about healing both physically and spiritually.  Thank you mom, for your wonderful gifts and teaching me that food is love, and that we should make and do everything with love and joy, and nourish others, both physically with the food we eat, but also spiritually and emotionally with our presence, joy, and gratitude.  May you rest in peace and know that we carry on your legacy.