Feelings Fitness Podcast
Feelings Fitness Podcast
When Mother's Day Brings Both Tears and Laughter: A Grief Journey
Grief holds a strange power over time. It expands, contracts, and weaves itself into celebrations meant for joy – particularly on days like Mother's Day. For those of us navigating motherhood after losing our own mothers, the day arrives with a complex emotional landscape that few openly discuss.
To anyone walking this complex path of mothering through grief, please know you're doing something sacred. You're living proof that love continues, even through the tears. Your grief is welcome here. Consider this your permission slip to honor both realities – to miss your mom deeply while loving yourself fiercely. Share this episode with someone who might need to hear they aren't alone in navigating this tender territory.
Welcome to the Feelings Fitness Family Podcast. This is a space where we can explore the heartwork of home, healing and holding space for all the feelings that come with parenting. Today's episode is a tender one. It's for anyone navigating Mother's Day with a heart that feels both full and aching. You see, I lost my mom three years ago and now, as a mom myself, this day is layered. It's joy and pain, presence and absence. It's handmade cards and missing phone calls. It's laughter over waffles with powdered sugar on top and tears that come out of nowhere. If you're feeling that too, you're not alone.
Speaker 1:Let's take a deep breath in through the nose and a nice long sigh out through the mouth, releasing a little bit of that grief as we navigate through it. Our breath can always be a place that we can come back to if we need to release some of the tension that something like grief over the loss of a mom or whomever else. The breath is always something that we can come back to if we need to release a little tension, especially tension that can be built up from grief. So grief clearly doesn't follow the calendar, but days like Mother's Day it shows up louder, especially for me, having lost my mom. My mom was the kind of woman who loved deeply, gave freely and anchored our family with quiet strength. And now I carry her legacy even as I miss her voice, her hugs and, oh my goodness, her infectious laughter so good. Sometimes I catch myself wanting to call her just to say oh my goodness, did you watch American Idol? Did you watch Dancing with the Stars? All those hilarious things? Oh, million Dollar Listing that one was hilarious. We had so many things that we would really just kind of call and laugh about. But all I have now is silence and the echo of her love in the way I mother my own children, and that is both heartbreaking and beautiful. So I used to think healing meant moving on. Now I know it means moving with it. I've stopped trying to get over the grief. Instead I'm trying to grow through it. Grief has taught me so many things Patience. It softened me. It's made me more present, more grateful, more human. And there are days I feel broken and there are days I feel strong because I know I'm showing up for my kids, even when my own heart is heavy, especially on these. And each year I do try to do something that honors my mom on Mother's Day and my final episode of the Feelings Fitness podcast.
Speaker 1:I did that Growing Through Grief series, so if you haven't listened, feel free to go back and listen to that. I really put a lot of thought and energy into that because after losing my mom three years ago, I really like had never felt that intense grief before because I had never loved someone or something so much and then lost that. So I thought, losing my cat Wellington, that was the first real, real, like extreme loss that I felt. I know it seems silly, bear with me, but um, that was intense for me. And but losing my mom, oh my goodness, there's just so much love that there's like this hole in your heart and you're figuring out where does that go? And so going through the grief process is pretty intense because you're trying, yeah, where the grief is like, where there was so much love and um. So anyway, I created that growing through grief series and the final episode was Mother's Day and I said at the end of that that I was just taking a short break because I realized that there was so much that I could put into the whole topic of grief, because grief is such an intense feeling and this is all about feelings here and so I took a little bit. So I said I was going to take a little bit of a break. And then here I am a year later finally putting some something out there.
Speaker 1:But something was said to me at the end of that series that really kind of broke my spirit a little bit and it was a little bit about like, kind of like, who's listening to it anyway? The whole podcast, the whole growing through grief, and I didn't quite know what to do with that. And so, in typical fashion for me, once someone tells me no, I take it as a definitive. No, it's like you know, you didn't get book the job. No, okay, maybe I'm just not meant to do this, I'm done, you know all like. I just kind of a lot of times in my life have taken no as a definitive. I'm not good enough and this isn't meaningful enough, and so I end a lot of things.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of what I did with the podcast. I got a little bit of negative feedback and then I was like, well, I guess nobody's listening anyway. Well, when I finally went back in and looked at the numbers that Mother's Day episode, my final episode that I've recorded, the last one I did so a year ago is the most downloaded of all of the Feelings Fitness podcast episodes and so I was like you know what? There's something to that. So here I am coming back to share a little bit more about this growing through grief process and beyond just motherhood, parenting, the whole bit. So I added on the family, so Feelings Fitness family, just to kind of further identify who this podcast is for and why you might find it beneficial to listen in. Anyway, I digress official to listen in. Anyway I digress.
Speaker 1:That kind of came off of the talk track a little bit, but I wanted to share that because I do think that there are times in our life where we shut things down because we think somebody else's opinion is more powerful than our own feelings about our path forward. And it's not, it's okay, it's not a big deal. I think it's all in what we decide to do with that. And it's not to be angry that something was said, it's to take what's said and use that to move forward and to always stay the path that feels authentic to you. And you know, motherhood definitely challenges us to try to stay authentic and to kind of rein in our emotions and move forward the way that we feel we should move forward our emotions and move forward the way that we feel we should move forward.
Speaker 1:Anyway, so back to the point, though. The point is doing something to honor moms. You know and I'm talking about honoring my mom that I lost. I lost my mom, all right. So, to circle back, the idea was to do something on Mother's Day to honor our moms, whether they're still with us or whether we have lost them. So, like I said, I, like I said, I ended sharing a letter that I wrote to my mom on the first Mother's Day that I was without her. So if you want to listen to that letter, it's the last episode Growing Through Grief, Mother's Day, and it just was such a nice way to release some of the regret that I had and honor her at the same time.
Speaker 1:So that was one way that I honored my mom, and sometimes it comes through baking some of her recipes or playing her favorite music. We have songs that will come on the radio, and when she was still alive, it was like, if the song came on the radio Paul Simon's song, you can call me Al, and others of his as well we would call each other If we didn't answer it would land on the voicemail Just super fun. But so whenever those songs come on, I certainly like it gives me a smile. It doesn't even make me sad anymore. It makes me so happy, so happy that I have that connection with her and, honestly, sometimes just sitting outside with a hand over her heart whispering a thank you into the sky, knowing that she's always watching over me and my family. And then I also do something on Mother's Day to honor myself as well, because I'm a mom too and I'm in the thick of it, dealing with all the emotions of my kids, with sports and school and just building a life building a life. But so my kids deserve a mom who certainly shows up fully as. So my, my kids deserve a mom who shows up as fully as she can, and I deserve to be celebrated too.
Speaker 1:So if you're grieving today, let this be your permission slip to hold both things to miss your mom deeply and to love yourself fiercely. Clearly I don't have all the answers, but I do know this Grief and growth can live side by side and love the kind our moms gave us. If you're lucky enough to have had a mom like mine was. It doesn't end. It roots itself in us and we pass it on in how we parent, how we live and how we keep going. To all the grieving daughters who are also mothers, you're doing something sacred. You're living proof that love continues, even through the tears, even through the silence, even now. Thank you for listening today. If this episode resonated with you, I hope you'll share it with someone else walking this path. You're not alone. You are loved deeply. Until next time, be gentle with yourself and know that your grief is welcome here.