It was just the first anniversary of my mom’s death. It is amazing and beautiful to me that her presence now is a deep source of comfort and refuge and safety, of guidance and companionship, the kind of relationship I’d always longed to have with her which was impossible due to the ways her trauma made her unavailable, harsh, and unpredictable. What an incredible gift to finally feel close and safe and nurtured with my mom, truly worth waiting for.  

This entire last year has been a process of disentangling from my mom, watching dissolve the cloud of fear and self-protection and defensiveness that I’ve lived in all my life, often without realizing it. As I mentioned in my last blog, I’m only slowly noticing its existence by noticing its absence. As I also mentioned in my last blog, the most painful aspect of dealing with my mom’s death has been the way that my partner has had difficulty being able to show up for it, so while my partner was out of town for 2 weeks for a silent retreat, I took myself to Ozark Sufi Camp to grieve and honor my mom with spiritual family. It was the perfect place for me to be.

The camp theme–No Part Left Out–was incredibly resonant for me in looking at the legacy of my mom in my life, all the distortions built into my personality structure as I learned to contort myself in life to try to stay safe. And the theme was a healing framework to hold the significance and complexity of my mom’s passing in my life—the deep honoring of her, the sorrow of losing her, and the tragedy of missed opportunities, as well as the relief and liberation resulting from her absence. 

My camp experience felt like an initiation, a big leveling up resulting from the momentum of the transformative work I began soon after my partner left. I am now a person who sets boundaries! It began with saying no to a spiritual retreat leader but quickly spread to family members, friends, even total strangers. I tend to continually let people overstep—and often don’t even notice when it happens–because I could never stop my mom, but now I am someone who pushes back on that. Throughout my life I never expected people to be able to show up to do their work because my mom wasn’t able or willing to, but now I am someone who does only my 50% and expects others to do their share. I previously would work really hard internally and externally to make it all ok, but now I can see that it is not mine to make ok. And my little girl is everything to me now—my loyalty goes to her. And she is learning to trust me more not to abandon her over and over as I chase after unavailable others and squash myself to try to keep everyone happy in all the ways my mom trained me to be. It is only the beginning sprouts of these new ways of being, but they are manifesting into form rapidly. 

Interestingly, my mom has become my biggest guide and ally in this work. She came to me at Sufi Camp in the form of Armadillo, whose medicine is boundaries—offering her loving support and help with this important work I’m doing, knowing as a soul that it was her personality wounds that created my need to do this important work. While I will never know what would have been possible with my mom if I’d ever said to her that I didn’t like how she was showing up and wanted it to change, I can practice that with my partner and others and see what happens.

So this has been a time of deep and accelerated growth, insight, empowerment, and clarity, learning about my limits and withholds, freeing myself to speak, saying no more often than ok, taking truly unprecedented action in my life with courage and consistency, becoming a new person in front of my eyes (as my testosterone self turns 18!). While one friend tearfully confessed that she missed Old Sam, the placater and bridge builder, it is clear to me that there is no going back from here, even if it creates some significant disruption in my life. 

I returned home from Sufi Camp with a stomach virus that felled half the camp on the last day. Spending 2 days in bed puking my guts out was a sacred death ritual to my old self, born into my mom’s trauma and conditioned to serve her rather than my soul. It allowed me to purge that residue from my body, just as smashing the clay sculpture I did at Sufi Camp in a parts workshop helped me purge that residue from my emotions.     

On the eve of my partner’s arrival back in town, the stars really seemed to be lining up for a spectacular culminating experience: seeing the Northern Lights for the first time, something that’s long been on my list of desired experiences! It seemed like such a fitting conclusion to the 2 weeks I’d just had, of appropriate magnitude and a whisper from Spirit acknowledging the important deep inner work I’d faithfully done. Well, the Northern Lights literally came to my door, but I missed seeing them lol! Realizing this felt sad and confusing at first and made going back into the darkness (and letting go of the hope of light) feel like a defeat somehow. I felt my spirit start to sink.  

But then I remembered I like the darkness—I am a creature of the night so it is my element—and so going back to the darkness felt comforting and surprisingly like the affirmation of myself that I thought the Northern Lights would provide. And the darkness didn’t have to feel sad or scary or alone—because I think there was something about it that perhaps tapped into my fears of the void. But then I remembered that the void is the womb—the place where new beginnings are generated, the East. Which was just perfect for me because I had just completed a fierce and vigorous ritual of release to the West, the place of letting go of what no longer serves us. Which is why I had turned my back to the west when the Northern Lights came.

And just as I wouldn’t have experienced the beginnings of that comfort and refuge with my mom if my partner hadn’t broken up with me for a time last year, if my partner had been here this year, I wouldn’t have had all this accelerated growth, nor written this blog about my journey. Nor would I have been inspired tonight to write this blog if I’d seen the Northern Lights.

All the puzzle pieces that align this way and that for us to have our particular journeys of healing and awakening and emergence. The unfolding is just fascinating, and I’m learning to trust that each experience that I’m having is exactly the right one for me. The new views you can see around each new corner often makes me speechless with surprise and wonder, and often make me laugh with both hilarity and humility. All I can wonder is where will I be taken next?

The Northern Lights from my driveway (taken by my housemate)