I want to start off by thanking Gillian F. Barnes for providing me with this platform to tell my story.  Please understand that this piece will have content that could pose as potential triggers for certain people.  This article will touch upon death (namely parental death), medical emergencies, seizures, cancer and discussions of depression and anxiety.  I implore anyone that may be affected by this post to take a break if needed, or to seek help in the event of an emergency.  

This is an article I’ve debated long and hard about posting as it will be talking about my mother who passed away one year ago.  She was the type of person who didn’t like having her business shared with strangers, and I was concerned about respecting this aspect of her even though she’s no longer alive.  And so, after I asked for a sign to ensure that I had her grace,  l am confident that she has given me the go-ahead to write this article.  The main reason for this to be the chosen topic is to aid in my own inner healing, but I also hope in some way it will help inspire others as well who may be going through similar loss of a parent, or grieving a parent going through a long and arduous battle.  

My relationship with my mother was complex, as I imagine most families could be.  There would be moments all throughout my childhood and adolescence in which we were at odds with each other.  But there was no mistaking that at the heart of it all was love.  From a very young age, I understood early on that my parents did everything they could to make ends meet, and there were times of struggle.  But I was well cared for, I was fed and had a roof over my head, I had clothes even if they were hand-me-downs from my cousin.  My parents had divorced when I was young and did what they could to stay friends.  Though, arguments still broke out between them as they’re bound to in such circumstances.  When I turned eleven, my parents decided to try again and moved back in together in a single wide mobile home.  They stayed together for fifteen years and remarried in 2015.  They still had their fights, as all couples did from time to time.  But I’d like to think they made each other happy.  And they stuck together right through the end.  

On New Years Eve of 2012, my grandpa–her father– was struck by a vehicle when he attempted to cross the street.  While this happened, I was spending time with my husband's family (Though he was only my boyfriend at the time).  My parents had gone to the scene of the accident and were on their way home by the time my boyfriend dropped me off back home.  When my parents came home, they told me the news that my grandpa didn’t make it.  While I couldn’t say for sure, to this day my gut instinct was that this had been the catalyst for what was to come.  

While my mom processed her own grief, she helped out her mom who had moments of intense meltdowns to the point of needing emergency care.  My mom, dad and I ran groceries for her even when things were getting tight for us, mom would help sort out paperwork and did what she could to take care of my grandmother.  However, my grandmother favored my uncle above my mom and their sister.  Whenever we would help her out, she would never cease to mention him and his girlfriend and acted rather ungrateful for mom’s efforts.  The stress and resentment eventually got to be too much, and so my mom told her that since my uncle was so highly praised, he could be the one to help her from that point on.

Sometime during that year, my mom went to our nurse practitioner for a yearly physical exam, and they found a pea sized lump on her right breast.  At the time, the lump was benign but our NP (Who I will name Marianne for this article) recommended to keep an eye on it and to have it checked every so often.  Though finances were getting tight, and mom decided to ultimately stop going to see Marianne. Marianne would ask how my mom was doing from time to time during my visits.  And I would usually follow it up with “She’s fine.” or “She’s doing well.”  And she would tell me to let my mom know she was thinking of her and that she should schedule an appointment soon.  

Of course, behind the scenes, she wasn’t fine.  

The lump on her breast had been growing and growing.  And eventually, in October of 2016, the lump had burst when she turned in her sleep.  At the time, it was more of an inconvenience for her than anything else.  But the wound wouldn’t heal over.  My dad and I tried to tell her to get it checked out, but my mom objected to it very harshly.  In her mind, it would cost way too much and she didn’t want us to go bankrupt over something so trivial.  Upon reflection, I do think she was also afraid of the worst case scenario and didn’t want to hear the hard truth.  And so, we bought our own gauze, our own bandages, and every day and night from that point forward dad would change the bandages on her wound.  

From there, things declined rapidly.  She couldn’t stomach food, even the smell of certain things cooking would be enough for her to grab the garbage can beside the couch.  Eventually, she would even throw up water.  Day by day she laid on the couch and withered away.  If I were to look back on those times, I could still very vividly see her bony frame, reminiscent of a living corpse.  And every day I had to keep my head low and went to work like everything was normal.  Every day I kept a mask on and tried to be my bubbly self while in my head I worried  about my mom.  Once the work day was done, I would come home and continue to watch her suffer.  To this day, I still wish that I could go back in time and shake myself, scream at myself to plead to her, to yell, to fight her–to do more–to do something!  And the worst thing about it all was knowing there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it because she was too stubborn to seek help.  And if she was too stubborn to seek help, then it wouldn’t matter what I had to say, nor what dad had to say.  

May of 2019, mom’s wound had fungated, and she was very weak.  Dad and I knew it wouldn’t be long before she would fall asleep on the couch to never wake up again.  At one point, I had the day off, but dad was scheduled to work.  I ate breakfast and went back into my room, I couldn’t bring myself to look at my mom while I passed by her.  As I was getting dressed, I heard dad yell from the living room, “I can’t believe you’re going to just sit there and make us watch you die!”  

At that moment I felt shaken up.  Of the two of them, dad wasn’t normally the one to raise his voice, and it only served to confirm my worst of fears: That she would die soon.  

Once the pit in my stomach went away temporarily, I wandered into the living room to charge my iPod.  Dad had already left for work by the time I sat down across from my mom.  Five minutes of silence went by until mom told me to grab the phone and call dad back home so he could take her to the emergency room.  

I did as instructed, and before I knew it, we were on the way to the ER.  Mom was so weak dad had to carry her into the truck, and then into a wheelchair once we arrived at the hospital.  The doctors asked quite a few questions, and we explained all that happened for the past few months.  They hooked up an IV of liquid nutrients to her body, she was critically low on potassium and sodium among other things.  After they started the IV boost, the doctors left the room to discuss the situation.  When the doctors and nurses returned, they told mom they would have to transfer her to another hospital half an hour away to perform some XRays and tests.  At that point my dad recommended I spend the day with my boyfriend (Who I will name Tyler for this article) and his family to try to help ease my anxiety and to be surrounded by supportive people.  Much later after these events had passed, my dad revealed to me that while I waited for Tyler to come get me, a doctor came into the room and told him and mom to get their affairs in order since they estimated she only had two weeks left.  

When Tyler came and got me, I broke down for the first time since it all happened.  I laid on his chest and cried until no more tears could be squeezed out of my eyes.  Once Tyler explained the situation, his family allowed me to stay overnight with them in a spare bedroom.  The next morning, dad picked me up and took me to the hospital mom had been transferred to.  When we got there, mom was awake with more color to her complexion. The daily news on TV filled the room with hollow background noise. I texted updates to Tyler about mom’s condition, but even with my head down, I could see mom and dad look at each other with a broken expression on both of their faces.  “Do you want to tell her now?”  I heard dad whisper.  I looked back up and that’s when they delivered the diagnosis.  

Mom had stage four metastatic breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes and lungs.

The diagnosis was terminal.  

I took the news with a sense of numbness.  I had figured it was likely cancer with how the lump had burst on her, and with the symptoms she had experienced.  We talked with a nutritionist to set up meal plans to get mom’s weight back up, then a financial counselor came in.  She explained that there were programs to help mitigate the financial burdens of chemo and other medical expenses and showed us the options.  After she had left, I could no longer hold in my resentment toward mom.  I snapped at her that had she not been so stubborn she would have found this out sooner.  That she wouldn’t be on death’s door had she just bit the bullet and gotten help.  She wept and said “I know, and I’m so sorry.  I had put money before you all.”  And my heart broke.

During the start of chemo, mom had overheard the doctor on the phone state that she would be lucky to live one year, and yet she managed to surpass the odds.  There were the usual hiccups that would be associated with chemotherapy–hair loss, a metallic taste in the mouth which made meal times tricky to work around, constipation and later on diarrhea when she needed to change chemo prescriptions.  There were also the annoying wait times for labs and wait times for chemo chairs.  Despite everything the appointments had thrown at her, she pushed through them all.  

All the while, I was fighting my own battles.  The years of witnessing mom fade away on the couch and struggling through medications  had taken its toll.  I started to fall into seasonal depression during the winter, which upon self reflection, had eventually grown into a chronic depression as well as anxiety (note, these are self diagnosed.  Always always seek a professional diagnosis if you suspect you have depression and/or anxiety).  Food had become my sense of comfort and I gained the weight I had lost in high school back–and then some. Despite this, throughout mom’s treatments I started to feel hope.  As if there was finally going to be a light at the end of the tunnel.  

2020 came and the COVID-19 pandemic had hit.  Work closed down for a couple of months while everyone scrambled to navigate this alarming occurrence.  It was quite stressful to navigate the unemployment system for relief payments during the closure, as I admittedly struggle with the ability to understand the complexities of such governmental systems.  

In April, I was back to work and masks had become the new normal.  From there my depression and anxiety only spiraled.  I resided in a majorly “red” rural state and town, and so I was no stranger to people complaining about masks and making jokes about them.  Due to the pandemic and the fact I worked in a retail environment, there were body count limits we had to impose.  An employee would stand outside the door of the building and kept the doors shut until enough people left so more people could enter, and masks had to be imposed.  While on “guard duty” I could feel the judgemental eyerolls and exasperated groans for the long wait as the line grew and grew.  I knew it wasn’t me they were irritated with, but with how my personality worked, I still couldn’t help but internalize it.  

And when the people who were unmasked did come through, most were luckily apologetic and ran to their car to grab one, or grabbed one from the container we had outside.  There were also those that walked off in a grumble.  At one point, a couple tried to go through and when I asked if they had a mask, the guy pulled his shirt collar up over his nose and his partner laughed.  The one moment that stuck clearly in my mind however was a woman. She looked to be about mom’s age (about 50’s), and her husband came up to me without a mask.  I asked if they had one.  She huffed and said “I don’t do well playing sheep.”  

I wanted to yell at her about my mom being immunocompromised due to chemo.  I wanted to yell at her that if she thinks that her refusal to “play sheep” was a way to protest against “following the crowd”, she should think about how goats follow herds all the same.  But instead I smiled behind my mask, nodded, and said “It is what it is.” Because, unfortunately, my job was more important than the pain she caused.  

My faith in humanity waned with each case of people that wouldn’t dare be inconvenienced, even if it meant the possibility that my mother–and people going through treatment like her– could die.  I still thank everything that is good and whole in this universe that she never once caught it.  

My faith would only be tested all the more when later that year, mom started to decline again.  The doctors examined her and found that the cancer had spread to her brain.  Mom went from chemo to radiation in order to keep the cancer in check.  

It wasn’t long until my mental health had hit a breaking point and I had a melt down one day.  My mom came to my room to ask a question and noticed my tear stained face, she asked what was the matter.  I hesitated to tell her that I was depressed because all through childhood I was taught by her to stop being overly sensitive, she would ask me if I would cry if the teachers were to yell at me like I do when she shouts at me, and as a child I learned through peer bullying and through my other mental illnesses how to mask my emotions.  

When I finally told her that I was depressed, she asked me, “What do you have to be depressed about?”  As if to ask, “How dare you act ungrateful and say you are depressed?  Others have it so much worse than you.” Like I hadn’t watched her for years suffering and dying right before my eyes and I had to pretend everything was peaches and roses.  And when I tried to explain what was going through my head, that even I couldn’t explain coherently,  she said something that was like a metaphorical slap in the face:  “I don’t understand you.”

At that moment, nothing hurt more than hearing my own mother tell me that she didn’t understand me, her own daughter.  I felt like she had looked at me as if I were a stranger at that moment.  And so, when she left me to cool off, I wept long and hard.  I knew then that she was not a safe person to talk to and vowed  not to open up about my mental illnesses to her again.  

I don’t justify what she said or how she handled the situation.  But after the scars had healed, I made peace with it and forgave her for that moment.  Because while I didn’t have the headspace to consider it at that time, I came to a conclusion as to why she handled such scenarios the way she did.  

I came to realize that it’s because she, too, was broken.  

Whether she would openly admit it or not, her upbringing was one where there was nothing wrong. You didn’t talk about issues because it was no one's business what went on behind closed doors.  Her mother had her issues which only worsened with confrontation, and with how those issues were handled by her father on top of that favoritism that was placed on the only son in the family, I understand now how that generational trauma played a factor into her outlook on mental health.  I think, too, that deep down in that moment she was just as depressed and scared that her body was betraying her progress.  

My depression and fear wouldn’t go away.  I couldn’t bear to watch my mom die in front of my eyes again.  I wanted to run, to escape and never look back.  And so, on Facebook I scrolled through the marketplace to look at listings for places to rent as a form of escapism.  My eyes eventually locked on to a house that was three bedrooms and one bath listed for $925 a month.  My mind had instantly begun to fantasize about Tyler and I moving in together, one room could be the master bedroom, then another could be my writing office, and Tyler could use the third as a video gaming room.  I shared the link to him and joked about it, saying “If only it were possible.”  He then responded, “Why can’t it be?”  

I had my protests once I realized he was serious.  It would cost too much to move out, plus I would feel guilty for up and abandoning my mother like that, no matter how much I wanted to escape her declining health.  Not to mention,  at the time it was in the middle of November, so there was Christmas to think about.  However, after enough debates and back and forth arguments, he suggested we at least take a look at it.  And so, I caved.  For a first-time rental, I fell in love with it.  Though, doubt loomed in my mind if we’d be able to financially make it work.  The second biggest concern for me was how mom was going to react.  One of the things we butted heads for years up until her diagnosis was my desire to apply for a drivers license.  She had told me at one point “Either you can save up for a vehicle, or you can save up to move out, but you can’t do both.”  

As it was, I had finally gotten her to cave on that argument, I figured if I were to bring up moving out she would just get annoyed and grumble, “You don’t know what you want, do you?”  So, one day when it was bitterly cold and there was snow on the ground, I went outside to talk with my dad and asked his advice.  I asked him if there was any chance Tyler and I could pull it off.  Dad said he had faith we could, and that he’d be more than willing to talk to mom on my behalf to get her on board with it as well. That day, they had to go out of town, either for treatment or errands I can’t remember now, but I was wrapping up presents in the living room and begged some higher power to please let things go well.  I then got a text from my dad saying “thumbs up.”  

Amidst the holiday rush, Tyler and I went through the stress and excitement of packing and getting our affairs in order.  We moved in together on December 12th 2020.  To this day, I can say it was the best thing that could have happened for both of us.  

Christmas was bitter sweet, we received a lot of stuff to help with the move-in, though the gifts felt hollow.  It wasn’t that I was ungrateful for the gifts–especially when I knew that my parents didn’t have a lot to give to us as it was. The only thing that mattered to me was making sure the time spent with mom would count.  For I had a feeling deep down in my heart that it would be our final Christmas together.  

Dad made sure to keep me up to date with how mom was doing the following weeks and months after.  The tumor on her brain caused cranial pressure and seizures.  The first time it happened, he was terrified and wasn’t sure what was going on.  Once the seizures started, dad placed himself on medical leave from work out of fear that mom would have an episode while he wasn’t home.  

I paid them a visit one day, and unfortunately witnessed one for my own eyes.  It wasn’t the first time I had witnessed a seizure.  During one of my previous jobs, I was ringing out a customer with epilepsy who felt an episode coming on, so the person that was with them had sat them down on a bench, only to move them to the floor once the seizure happened.  I tried my best to remain composed while I called management over.  However, with my mother, composure was not my instinct. Her shriek of “Oh god it’s happening again!” still echoes in my head on occasion.  Dad instructed me to call for an ambulance while he helped her through the episode.  Her mouth foamed and chest heaved through her convulsions, like a fish that was suffocating out of water.  I was scared she may die while I dialed 911.  It was all I could do to try to settle my panicked voice as I told the operator what was going on and counting her breaths.  

She had come out of the episode by the time the ambulance came.  She felt so embarrassed from the attention she drew up and felt angry at herself.  She apologized to me for the scare as she was being guided to the ambulance.  Dad took me home and headed to the hospital to meet her.  

Whether it was the seizures or the radiation treatment on her brain, I cannot say.  But after that day, she changed.  Mom had hallucinated that her favorite store was right across the street from them when it was really a half hour drive.  From that same store, she bought so much furniture that we could barely fit it all in the truck, let alone have the space to store the furniture at their place.  When she realized dad and I were concerned, she had a melt down and insisted that it was an investment.  I tried to calmly explain to her that we were simply concerned that she was throwing money around without a second thought, in which she yelled at me that she can spend her money however she pleased.  Tyler then took me back home where I cried myself to sleep.  

After that incident, I stopped visiting them as much.  I felt guilty, I knew I had to spend as much time with mom as possible.  But my heart couldn’t take the possibility of seeing her have another seizure.  I couldn’t take seeing her slowly die, nor could I handle the pain of her poisoned mind consuming her.  Tyler and I had planned to go out of town one day when Dad called me up saying that they were putting a hospice bed in the living room for mom’s comfort.  I knew then it wouldn’t be long. So, on the way back home I decided to go to her favorite restaurant to buy her a slice of cake and drop it off.  Seeing mom’s face light up when I handed her the cake slice was all I needed.  

On the 26th of April 2021, dad had asked if I wanted to visit mom. It was a good day for my mental health, so I agreed. When I got there, mom was sleeping.  Her breath labored to lift her chest.  A couple of family friends were there as well to chat and watch over mom. She groaned every so often when she needed attention, unable to speak.  Later in the afternoon, I texted Tyler that I was ready to go back home.  I touched mom’s cheek and told her that I loved her before we left.  

Tyler and I were in the process of doing dishes together when at 5:35 I got a call from dad.  I moved to the bedroom so that I could hear him over the sound of the water.  Mom was gone, he assured me she went peacefully.  I was in a state of shock after I hung up with him that all I could do was sit upon the bed and stare at the wall ahead of me.  I felt numb to everything while I told Tyler what happened.  While Tyler had called his family to deliver the news, I somehow managed to call my employer and notified them that mom had passed away.  They gave me two weeks of bereavement to help me grieve and provided their condolences.

For months I was in an awkward lull.  When I wasn’t filled with a state of numbness, waves of intense heartache punched my chest.  I felt lost, and doubted how I could possibly navigate the complexities of life now without her around to guide me.  One day, I walked with dad and the road we took passed by the childhood apartment he and mom had raised me in.  After he left, I went upstairs to my office and I curled up in a fetal position on the floor and sobbed.  Nostalgia had stabbed through me with a serrated knife. I wanted to go back to being a child, I wanted to forsake my adulthood and go back to building mud pies in the backyard and watching Lizzie McGuire and other shows I loved as a kid, I wanted homework and knee scrapes to be the only thing I had to worry about.  Most of all, I wanted mom back to take care of me.  

September 27th, Tyler took me to the local park and proposed.  Joy had overflown through me, and I became overwhelmed with emotion.  I expressed my regret that mom couldn’t share in our celebration.

The holidays were especially difficult.  Our first Thanksgiving without her, dad had set out a plate of food for her so that she could be with us in spirit.  When I came home later that day I had a melt down for the first time after a couple of months had passed.  I grew angry.  I was angry because if mom had gotten help sooner, she would be here today.  I cursed the cruel irony that through her idea of sacrificing herself for our welfare, she did the most selfish thing she could have ever done.  Because for that reason, and because she couldn’t handle the potential truth of her health, she had left me alone and she had left dad alone.  And that wasn’t fair.

Christmas time wasn’t much better.  I was irritable at every little thing and miscommunication between Tyler and I caused me to snap at him, after apologies and discussions were held, everything was made right again.

Time eventually dulled the pain.  Though I still have my depressive episodes, I had accepted the loss and allowed it to transform my mindset.  Where I’d normally be a happy shut-in, I’ve become more adventurous.  The desire to experience as much of the world as I possibly could had crept in.  At the worst of times, that desire would build to the extreme of the occasional existential crises.  

Work felt stagnant at the same time as it had felt demanding.  And so, I had quit and sought out a fresher environment.  I found a job that took a toll on my mental health and quit within two months.  After a long search, I finally settled into a job that was the perfect pace for me.  The job had made me want to go to work, and my mental health was on an upswing.  Unfortunately, what was good for the goose wasn’t necessarily good for the gander.  I was let go of that job because, according to the position head, I struggled to prioritize customer needs over tasks, and I couldn’t see all of the bigger picture of how the position was to be run.  All at once, my depression came back with a hard blow.  I wondered what was wrong with me if I still had the issue of time management that I had from my first disclosed job.  I reflected on how my upbringing was filled with accusations of laziness when in reality my mind would overload to the point of shutting down.  I thought about how this caused a demand to focus on working hard and how that (as well as my own personality) impacted my social skills.  Once again, I had become irritable just as I had during my stages of grief when I lost mom.   I also had the occasional panic attack over normally common sense things.  It was enough where I grew terrified as to how badly my mental health had become.  I truly thought I had gone psycho, or at the very least was going through an early mid-life crisis.  

And I knew then that I needed intervention.  I had only been to counseling once to work on self esteem issues as a kid, and I remembered it somewhat helped for a time.  Though, it seemed with years of adulthood revealing the harsh realities of the world had only caused a regression.  I sat down with Tyler and did the hardest thing I could have committed myself to do:  I admitted that I needed help.  

He was fully supportive and said that he was glad that I was the one to start the conversation.  Eventually, I told my dad as well.  I explained to him that, while I firmly believed that what we went through with mom’s illness was a way for me to find my inner strength to overcome turmoil,  the trauma I sustained simply couldn’t be healed on my own–nor by my fiancé no matter how much he wished he could.  Dad understood and reached out to someone he knew to poke feelers out for any grief counselors.

 So far, I still haven’t heard about any openings and even a few of my extended family members expressed that they had been looking for therapists for a couple of years, but trying to find resources had been difficult  due to the restrictions COVID-19 has placed on many places.  In the meantime, all I can do is to keep looking and do my homework.  And when I have my yearly physical with Marianne in a couple of months, I fully intend to disclose my mental struggles and ask for professional recommendations.  

Shortly after I was let go from my last job, I found a writer’s meeting event one day and asked my Tyler if we could go.  He said he was surprised but so happy for me that I wanted to take the leap.  Though, it was just as much about distracting me from grieving my job loss as it was about forming connections.  That’s how I met Gillian and a couple of other writers that I clicked with.  Because of those connections, I vowed that this time my breakout novel will be published and that I would stop letting fear hold me back. As we speak, I’m almost finished with my second-to-final round of revisions and then it’s off to be alpha-read.  

On June 11th, Tyler and I got married.  For our honeymoon, we went to Old Orchard Beach and explored the sights.  We recharged with the clean ocean air while we combed the shore for seashells to bring back home with us as mementos of our trip.  We had our summer dose of mini golf courses and went to a zoo in York with a parakeet feeding exhibit. On the way back home, I wanted to check out Victoria Mansion in Portland.  While we toured through the artistically crafted architecture, I became awestruck with the history behind its walls.

While on the long trip home, I wished more than anything that our honeymoon would have lasted forever, that we didn’t have to return to the harsh realities of the world that awaited us.  

Later in the month, plans had been made to go to my very first Renaissance faire with my extended family, which I’m very much buzzing in anticipation for.  I’m glad to say that’s one bucket list item to be crossed off!  

I look forward to seeing what other adventures await me and can only hope that once I get the proper help I need, I’ll be able to dig deeper to become my best self.  For now, I’m doing all that can be done to help me on my way to recovery.  

I started exercising with my husband, we ensure we hold each other accountable so that the both of us can lose some much needed pounds.  Only three weeks into the regiment and I already feel a difference in how I carry my belly.  I’ve also started to control my diet in a more mindful way, and discovered that I’d been lacking sufficient protein and taking in a high amount of carbs with my previous lifestyle.  The balancing act of trying to surplus my protein intake without affecting my carb and fat intake has been a struggle.  

I’ve also started the difficult habit of putting the phone away one hour before bedtime and not touching it during the first hour upon waking.  Last night I had difficulty sleeping, my mind wide awake as I stared up at the ceiling.  I wanted to reach for my phone to scroll through social media, but I had to restrain myself.  Instead, I read a couple of chapters from a writing book before I got bored and put it away only to fall asleep fifteen minutes later.  

I’d also been taking note of my emotions and how certain events correspond to my mental and emotional processes.  This mindfulness has allowed me to determine if I needed time for self care–and furthermore, I had started to reflect on what self care means for me.  

Some days it’s soaking in a bath with epsom salt and lavender scented bubbles, painting my nails, meditation and listening to LoFi beats.

 Other times it’s simply getting tuned into what may spontaneously hit my instincts for the day, be it a drawing idea to put on my digital canvas or to go out and explore the town, or to finally put away the basket of clean laundry that had been sitting around for a few weeks.  

Sometimes I just curl up on the chaise with a plate of cheesy pizza sticks and watch my favorite comfort movies such as The Mummy (1999), Tremors (1990), The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003), The Sandlot (1993), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) or A Thousand Words (2012).  

My dad and I would meet up almost daily for a game of cribbage as a way to chat and help the both of us find comfort through the lingering grief.

 If Tyler is around and not too tired from work,  we will sometimes play board games or video games together.  We had just recently finished a Co-Op run on an indie game called Haven which was published by The Game Bakers  in 2020.  Watching Kay and Yu’s relationship grow has been the right amount of relatability to brighten up my mood on recently difficult weeks, and flying through their home planet Source was an amazing escape when fleeing from the real world has proven impossible.  

When Saturday nights arrive, Tyler and I would sit down at the dining room table with extended family and we would play D&D as a collective way for all of us to escape everyday stresses.  We had just cleared through part one of the Lost Mines of Phandelver and the next thing in store for us now is to figure out where our next campaign will bring us.  

The hardest part for me, when it comes to self care, is the ability to silence the inner voice in my head telling me to stop lying about and to do something productive.  I’m still very much learning how to enforce the habit of telling myself that rest is productive.  That sometimes, laying in bed, letting the body decompress and not trying to occupy my mind is productive.  The guilt of wasting a day doing nothing still tends to eat away at me sometimes–especially where I can’t help but feel the idea clashing with my desire to live life to the fullest.  But I have faith that eventually, I will understand the balance that I must maintain and things will work out because of that.  

Trying to navigate through the “new normal” is still a learning process, as is the continuing journey of learning about myself and who I really am deep down.  Sometimes it’s not easy.  At this moment, a quote from J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (1955) comes to mind, “How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand...there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.”  While I may not have the answer, I’m slowly trying to find ways to pick up those threads, and to heal those hurts.  And it’s a comfort to know that I don’t have to go at it alone.  I have hope yet, that in the end things will turn out alright.  

My journey doesn’t end here.  And through the strifes and Shakespearian slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Hamlet, Act III Scene I), I will face everything head on.  Even if I stumble and fall, even if I wish to run and hide through whatever challenges life may throw upon me, I will fight on.  For the most damaged people are the ones that will blaze through the dark all the brighter with phoenix fire burning in their hearts.

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