Finding Connection in the Face of Change and Loss

During my power walk this morning, I was thinking about motherhood when I had a profound moment. Many years ago, I lost my infant daughter, Catherine Rose, and my mother was there with me, in my grief, to hold space for me. She remained a loving presence even though she was being triggered to relive her own grief—she too had once lost a baby.

Now, I’m holding space for her as her brain is deteriorating into dementia. In many ways, I’m mothering her. 

Despite the grief involved in this “long goodbye,” there is also a bizarre gift in it all. 

Her world has slowed down so much that when I spend time with her I go into a state of being and quiet. There is not a lot of conversation to be had with someone experiencing memory loss, so oftentimes, there are not a lot of words between us. Yet we are able to connect through our breath. As we sit together, there is a synchronicity that occurs. Rhythmic breathing occurs naturally.

My mother becomes like a beautiful mirror as I watch the things that attract her awareness.  She spends long moments looking out the window, noticing the dogs and birds and squirrels and connecting with nature. 

Together we create a space of presence, harmony, love, and connection. I feel I’m meeting her innocence and her heart. 

When my second daughter, Elyse, was an infant, I asked my mother to show me how to bathe her. “I think of all the babies you have washed,” I told her. She was the mother of seven babies and even more grandbabies and was always so capable and loving.

Now that my mother is in her old age, I help bathe her. “I feel so honored to be able to do this,” I said recently. 

She looked at me and said, “You’re such a beautiful soul, Mary.” 

That moment was bittersweet for me because in many ways, she is not my mother anymore. We are moving to a place of being who we truly are, beyond our familial roles. We are souls. 

It’s the circle of life. It’s the inevitability of change. 

Sometimes these kinds of changes threaten to overwhelm me with grief. When this happens, I focus on rhythmic breathing, which taps into the circular energy of all things. I also look to nature, which, in this case, is moving into Spring, a time of bursting forth but also being patient. 

I appreciate the rise of feminine energy that is occurring on this planet, and the way it invites us to witness and receive each moment as it is. 

My mother and my daughter have both given me the gift of the moment. That’s something that will never change. 

I am much more than my emotion. An emotion is something that comes, stays for a short while, and then goes away. I don’t have to die just because of one emotion. I know I can handle an emotion with the practice of mindful, deep breathing. —Thich Hnat Hanh