She draws me rainbows and colourful swirls and announces to me “This what heaven looks like, Mummy. My big brother is there. He died. But he is in heaven now, so it is okay. He has special lights on his hands”. River, my daughter, sees things that I cannot. She tells me stories about how she has been to heaven before she came to live with us and that she has seen Christian and that he made her laugh. I believe her. My eldest daughter Scarlett is a sensitive soul too and a beautiful artist. She tells me fairy tales and spends more time in her fairy garden than in front of the tv, she knows little of Hannah Montana and all the other so-called idols that young girls seem to worship these days. I catch glimpses of her praying in her bedroom at night time and that melts my heart. Ocea, my darling little one is the youngest of my children. She has lived through a lot in her short 3 1/2 years of life. For 23 months she was very unwell and up until only 4 months ago her illness went undiagnosed. Because of her illness, Ocea only has the development of an 18 month old and the speech of a 14 month old. We are currently trying to teach her to eat again and she is having speech therapy and a few other therapies to help her catch up. For most of Ocea’s life she has spent her days laying on the couch or in my arms. She is my shadow. Oh how I love her. It is so wonderful to see her little body healing and to see her begin to grow again. I am in awe of my daughters. Their beauty and their spirits leave me lost for words and I find myself praying “Please let me keep them”.
I haven’t ever really spoken to about this before but today I am going to brave and open up about my struggles with anxiety. I have suffered with anxiety ever since Christian died. For so long I was positive that one of my daughters would be taken from me and to be honest I think a part of me still believes that one day while they are still young, one of them will die. I know, it is a terrible thought that serves me no good purpose. Maybe it is because I know that baby and child death is just so random and just because you have lost one, doesn’t mean that you will not lose another. No one is immune to death. No one. I have to try to accept this and it is so difficult to do that. For years I have worried for my babies to the point that I created a sleep disorder for myself as well. For years I have concentrated on the possibility that something horrible might happen to them and up until very recently I have never tried to heal my situation. Accepting the unknown has been one of the hardest things I have ever had to try, but I have been putting so much energy into healing this fear of mine that I believe it is finally beginning to work.
Obviously we are all different with different belief systems. Your beliefs may differ from mine and that is okay. I believe and respect that everyone has the right to believe whatever they wish to. What is working for me, might not work at all for you, especially if you do not believe in life after death but I am going to share my experience anyway. So I have started positive visualizations. I know that will probably make some of you laugh out loud, but I was desperate and I didn’t want to “fix” myself by going on medication. I just feel that medication for me, is only going to mask the issue and not actually fix anything at all. So yes, the idea of starting to positively visualize my situation came to me one night when I finally laid my body down to rest. I lay there and began worrying about my daughters and wondered if they were all breathing okay. Of course I could not be sure so I got u to check on them all. Not surprisingly they were all wrapped up warm in their beds and were breathing peacefully. I laid back down and instantly began to worry that I had not locked their windows and so up I got again. When I laid back down I began to worry about Scarlett’s school excursion the next day. She was going to have to go on a bus without me. What if the worst was to happen? An accident. And what if she was hurt and all alone? My anxiety was crippling my heart and mind. I knew that she had to go on this excursion and that I could not stop her from going and that I wouldn’t stop her from going even though it meant that I was going to suffer myself until I knew she was safe and back at home. I lay there and thought about how this anxiety was truly ruining me as a person and even more as a mother and for the first time I asked myself how I could fix this.
I knew there was no quick fix for my problem and since I did not want to medicate myself I would have to work very hard on a spiritual level to heal this burden that I was carrying. I have strong beliefs but I rarely voice them as they are only mine and I would never want to force them upon anyone. Anyway without going into all of my beliefs I will say that I believe that the children that I hold in my heart are well and truly alive in the realm of Heaven and although I cannot see them, they are there and I will one day be with them again. I believe I will always be connected to them for I am their Earth Mother. Their DNA is forever apart of mine and that is a bond that nothing can break. So I closed my eyes and began to think about the connection that I have to my Heavenly and Earthly children and I imagined that my heart was a glowing flower (much like the one out of Tangled). As my flower opened up, 6 cords of light reached out of my body. Each one of them found my children wherever they were and embraced them. The cords entered my children’s hearts and we would stay connected to each other by pure light. Nothing can break these mother cords. Nothing. We are eternally connected and eternally safe, together. This one little visualization has helped to calm my worrying heart more than I ever imagined it could have. I have found myself with a new deep spiritual belief. Even if something were to happen to my darling daughters we are eternally connected through my Mother Cord. Throughout my day if I begin to worry about my daughters I visual their unbreakable connection that they have to me. When I am missing Christian the most I visualize our hearts being connected to one another and all of a sudden, Heaven and Earth become one. Physically we may be separated. Spiritually, we are never apart and I remind myself of that every day.
Physical and spiritual connections are so important. We need them to grow, to enjoy, to mourn, to remember, to heal and to live and not just to exist but to live richly. Can you imagine a life without connections? You can’t. There is no life without connections. I think that the reason that our community is so amazing is because we are so connected to each other, we have our own cords that we connect to each other. We share a deep bond. That bond creates understanding. Understanding creates recognition. Recognition creates healing.
My fear is not is yet cured, but it is healing. The one positive thing that I can see come out of my fear is that I am a more beautiful Mother. My children will never question my love for them. They know how much they are treasured and adored and they know that I will do my very best to ensure their safety.
We have just come off an incredibly healing weekend with The Still Standing worldwide event and International Bereaved Mothers Day. This weekend ahead for some countries it is the traditional Mother’s Day, a day that I truly believe is in some desperate need of healing itself. It is a day that so many of us dread. There is some light towards the end of this week though. I along with some very inspiring ladies, including Fran and Mandy from this magazine, Carrie from the STILL Project and Rachel from Teamotions will be coming together online to speak about our experiences as Mothers grieving. We hope to help those who are really dreading Mother’s Day to get through it. To get all the information on the hangout you can watch the promo here. To all the wonderful people who left a comment on my facebook page about what they would like to see me write about this month, thank you. I truly appreciate you taking the time to make a suggestion. All of your suggestions have now been placed onto our topic list for things to speak about at our Mother’s Day Google Hangout.
Wishing you all much peace wherever you are on this road and if you suffer from anxiety like I do, I pray that you find the perfect way to heal and calm your heart and mind. Feel welcome to voice your fears here, I am sure I am not the only one out there that feels like this, but sometimes it sure does feel that way.
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