Finding the Way Home in the Aftermath of Grief, Fear and Loss
The struggle and search for meaning led columnist Sherri L. McLendon to redefine her sense of self and place in the face of uncertainty and deep personal change. She shares her experience and insights here.
Sherri L. McLendon
In my family, the words “Mama” and “home” have always been synonymous. No matter where I have lived, I have always gone home to my mother’s house, the place where unconditional love and acceptance were served up along with huge helpings of family and home cooked meals.
The connection between our family and ancestral tree and the way we spend and earn our life force energy is undeniable. For decades, my Mama held the space and place needed for each of her four children, then her grandchildren, to expand and grow. Her dining room table would be the place that college plans would give way to business plans, where dreams would lead to actions. Books would be written on its surface, historic buildings saved, costumes sewn, ecologically destructive dumping stopped, hearts mended, radio shows recorded live, and Christmas or Easter decorations crafted. Not just our lives, but her own were defined here, in waves of sharing, pots of coffee, home baked cakes, and boatloads of laughter.
The message from both my parents, but especially my Mama, has always been that the world was ours to individually change and shape and experience in any way we chose. The love at home was each of ours, too – unconditional.
After my mother’s death, everything I knew about the world was called into question. I entered the cave of dissolution, an alchemical process forged in tears, a river of no return. The struggle and search for meaning led to a search for my own home place within – and without.
Is it only in Southern families that we feel love and loss so deeply together? This yearning for something lost, a distant past of which there is an imprint, but no memory? At my door, Regret knocked, along with anger that the place I call home is so far from the place where I live. Fear came calling, too, the fear of flying without a safety net. I became the baby bird, falling through the air, whose mother wouldn’t return to the nest. This fear of the unknown, of feeling not-enough to meet the challenges of life without my Mama’s established home base, was held tightly in my fist, the anger and stuck-ness like sticks of metaphysical dynamite.
That kind of energy needs a place to go.
Gratefully, the numbers reflect that my business has remained stable, and at times, has grown. Nonetheless, I have spent most of the past year moving my house and home and family, trying to find and redefine my place in the world. I have done some things well, and others, mistakenly. The experience has been both rose and thorn: elated, humbling, and fraught with tension, humming with insights. Surprisingly, I have ended up where I began, but not in the same place at all.
Here are a few things I have learned:
• If our foundation is shaken, it’s difficult to grow the container of our business and life. Secure your base before making sweeping changes or investing in big-ticket items.
• When our emotions run too deep for words, moving mountains can help channel the energy to reduce the potentiality for destruction.
• Choose the mountain to be moved wisely.
• Making space through releasing those things that do not serve, both personally and as a family, can help. But the release process itself can be bittersweet at best.
• Give yourself room to grieve at the most inopportune times. Drink lots of water, and cry buckets. Smile rainbows.
• Our dwelling spaces should be used wisely, not wasted: physically, bodily, mentally, and spiritually.
• Moving can be a rite of passage, but all change requires movement. Dance it out – no matter how heavy you feel.
• Place attention upon and use discernment in the expenditure of your energy in all its forms. Make certain your financial and personal needs are met. Exercise simplicity and self-care.
• Last, but not least, be willing to express the essence of your Mother. Forgive her. Feel her presence, and that of Spirit. Celebrate her love with every twirling dervish turn.
May you meet yourself on the road home, going and coming.
“Women, Spirit and Money” conscious business coaching with Sherri L. McLendon, MA, is now online at www.womenspiritandmoney.biz. Recently, ranked #31 of the top 99 PR pros in her area of expertise on Linked In, Sherri’s work as a marketing PR specialist and content strategist with Professional Moneta International is at www.monetamarketingpr.com.
