Acceptance and Love: the Same Thing?

Sometimes it feels like there is a growing but, from my perspective false, equivalency in our society that says that acceptance is the same as love. The “logical” continuation of this false equivalency is that if you believe certain behaviors, beliefs, thoughts or acts are unacceptable then you are being hateful. Perhaps we want to believe that the world is as simple as all that. Perhaps it is easier to cast someone who thinks or believes differently as a villain. But let’s play this out.

Scenario 1: Let’s imagine a sister. She’s a wonderful sister, and she’s generally served as an encouraging, supportive person in your life. She loves you. You love her. She starts using heroin and continues to get help then relapse, sometimes stealing from you and your family and getting into dangerous situations. Is it possible for you to love her while not accepting her heroin use?

Scenario 2: Imagine you have a treasured son. He comes home from school at age fourteen and announces he doesn’t need to go to school anymore. He’s got a job he loves working the register at a local fast food store. You’re concerned; you consider what this choice could cost him and his future. Can you love him and, as a parent, not accept his decision to drop out of school?

Scenario 3: You’ve been married for five years, committed to love and honor one another. Six months ago you bought a house that was a little tight on your budget and then found out last month that you are pregnant. It’s stressful but exciting and you know you have each others back. Then your spouse comes home and shares with you that they quit their job today; they were disrespected by their boss who hurt their feelings so they quit in a whirlwind of emotion. Can you still love your spouse while not accepting their decision to quit their job before they found a new one?

My point is, I think our life is full of people whom we love dearly that do things we strongly disagree with or may not “accept” in the way the word acceptance is usually used. Most of those things exist on a spectrum. There are, of course, some things the dominant culture(s) might generally agree upon (like drug abuse and child neglect being bad, for example). Others might be based on cultural, societal or religious beliefs that will not be agreed upon in part because the base values driving them are different or in conflict (like individualism/collectivism, Eurocentric/multiculturalism, patriarchal/matriarchal, etc).  This is why it feels dangerous to conflate love and acceptance. Also, is it really love if it only exists until there is a difference discovered between two people on which they cannot be totally aligned?

A Thanksgiving In My Hometown: When Home Isn’t Home

I spent it… alone. Is that irony? The song “Ironic” has irrevocably skewed my understanding of the word.

But what is home, anyways? I wonder if most people who move away from their hometown and move back find themselves processing this same question. Or maybe it’s only the ones whose parents are gone? I was raised at a time and in a culture where you didn’t talk about the ugly, difficult or painful things happening within a family. Residue from the 1940s and 1950s of keeping all the harm, hurt and trauma hidden from friends, family and neighbors. There’s so many things we were taught to not talk about. I wish I could succinctly tell you of all the blessings and curses that come from things that happened behind closed doors; I sense that would be a novel. My parents aren’t the heroes I thought of them as a small child, nor the “villains” I saw in my young adult years. No. I must reconcile myself with the the fact that they too, are broken and fallible beings who were hopefully doing their best, just like me.

But my parents have been centered at much of my life since around the time that I was maybe 10 or 11. In addition to, let’s call it common familial issues of the 90s and early 2000s (I don’t want to label them as normal), my parent’s shared my mother’s prognosis with my sister and I. And slowly her and I became caregivers and stewards of the home. We boasted of my sister making the entire Thanksgiving dinner as a preteen or the responsibility we learned from doing most of the household labor starting at a young age and there are good things that came from those responsibilities. But the flip side was the isolation and pain. I can still vividly remember crying as I learned to give my mother shots. As mom lost control over her body, she tried to seize more and more control over the autonomy of our family. This is one small facet of my mother – but it is true nonetheless. And it had consequences.

I wonder if my sister would have delayed travel so long, or would have moved more freely around this globe, if that dependency hadn’t been there. I sometimes wonder if we would have been able to invest in ourselves and our relationships enough that we wouldn’t be single in our 30s. I wonder if maybe I would see romantic relationships as a blessing instead of a burden where you lose power and autonomy. I don’t think any of this is our parents fault, or at least, that is was done intentionally or with maliciousness. Obviously, I myself am aware of how hard it is to first be aware of things like this and then secondly, even WHEN you know, how hard it is to overcome it.

This is quite the meandering post, likely due to my lack of ADHD medicine and my consumption of Thanksgiving libations. ANYWAYS… I spent a really lovely Thanksgiving alone. And it looked a lot like the Thanksgiving I had in Seattle. I was invited to five different Thanksgivings, all in cities other than the one I currently reside which I find hilarious and illuminating. You see, after my mother died, I was devastated that after all these years with family time and traditions, I missed her last. And then dad just… gave up for a bit, kind of. My sister and I (and it was mostly my sister because she was in town) suddenly became responsible for everything related to mom’s passing, her services, as well as everything mom used to do for dad like finances, etc. So the first holiday after her passing, Dad and my sister came to visit in Seattle. It was really hard in so many ways but I was glad to see Dad traveling and getting a chance to see some of the PNW. I don’t think there’s any good way to spend your first holidays without someone.

Also, for context, I had taken the job in Seattle because I was worried the cost of moms care was going to make them run out of money. I moved 2000 miles away to make more money to take care of my mom, and then she died 9 months later. Is that ironic? I still don’t know.

So I had this amazing opportunity through an actual miracle to move back home, if I wanted, and keep my job. I’d eventually have to move again when policies changed or with a promotion but with my Dad in decline and my sister bearing most of the weight of helping him with the medical stuff and learning to live independently, it made sense. There was a massive pro and con list too – the list was disproportionally skewed in Cincinnati’s favor. So I moved.

Guess what? Dad starts to improve a bit as he learns to live with his grief and also because he fell in love again a few months after mom died. He also moved back to HIS hometown a few hours away, which makes sense. I am beyond happy he is doing well, he’s back with his family and friends and he’s newly married. But it leaves me asking again… what is home in the midst of all this? I lost and gained friendships when I moved to Seattle; and the same can be said for moving back. But as I reflect on all the invitations I received I was reminded that true friendship and love is not held back by proximity. Great loves have written letters for years throughout history; friends have lived in separate cities for decades and remained close. Perhaps I no longer have a hometown; maybe I’m just from Cincinnati and my home is wherever the love of friends and family is present.

A Hometown

I was feeling conflicted the last month or so about whether to go somewhere for Thanksgiving and really… conflicted about if Cincinnati, as much as I love it, is the right place for me. I found myself also feeling guilty because I would have given nearly anything to have been back here just a couple years ago.. to be able to be here for the last months of mom’s life. But what is a hometown when the people you call home, aren’t there? And intellectually, I want to say that I know this isn’t literally true. Only my mother is gone. But she was the keystone of our family, and when you remove the keystone, the rest of the blocks fall. Our family, as individuals and a unit, have been displaced from the roles we held for much of our lives.

So perhaps unsurprisingly, my anxiety was through the roof yesterday and I used that as an excuse to skip church, like I have most weeks lately. In the evening I hadn’t done anything “spiritual” all day other than… the way I always feel close to the Divine when I walk or hike outside. So I said to myself, “Scripture says to seek the Lord and bring everything to him. So let’s do that and see if anything clicks.”

I pulled up the most recent church service at this Portland church I used to watch a while back, and I was both comforted and annoyed when I discovered that it was titled, “Community as Home.” A few minutes in, the teacher(?) started speaking about the Benedictine Vow of Stability (originating from around the 500s AD). So OBVIOUSLY, me being me, I started researching the Benedictine Vows.

Rephrased, the Vow of Stability is one of three vows and is a monastic commitment to live, grow, nourish and die where you are planted, unless God causes you to go elsewhere. The challenges, gifts and shadows of that particular vow from people who have taken them and lived them were fascinating. Some nuns mentioned the temptation of comfort in such a structure and the importance of pushing oneself and seeking to exist in places of discomfort.

And though I’m not quite ready to sign up for the convent yet (still trying to figure out what this next era of mine will be)… I could see how these vows seem to bear some of the fruit that is… less present in my life and spirit right now. It reminded me of advice I got from one of the wisest women I’ve ever met when I was in Seattle. She basically told me (paraphrasing) that if I want depth and connection, I need to commit to the place. We act and behave different when we’re building something vs when we are shopping for something. I found a lot of my anxiety was actually caused by my lack of that commitment.

I know there’s things I’m avoiding processing right now… stuff I’m trying to compartmentalize or drown out and I feel like I’m avoiding it and it’s not costing me that much. But it’s actually costing me a lot. I know I should start therapy probably, but it’s the same thing I’ve struggled with for a small number of other losses or traumas I’ve had in my life. They are so big and life altering that I couldn’t bring myself to talk about them – I don’t believe anyone can really help.

Heartbreak (the romantic kind)

I just woke from a dream where an ex from my past was, instead, still my partner. My love. And we were in the midst of a break up. He was gathering up some of his things into boxes and I was devastated.

I gestured to the photos of us over time, to ones of us with our arms around his children, smiling. I could not find words to speak – only sobs and tears as he took each photo. He kept gathering his things until there was nothing left of us. No reminder of our time together, of the family I thought we had built.

I woke up feeling like I had been weeping. I haven’t have my heart broken by anyone romantically in at least a decade. I forgot how horrible it feels. As I woke more, I felt relief that it was a dream, comforted by the distance in my heart from that particular brand of heartache. But a little later a tiny part of me also noted I hadn’t loved anyone that fiercely either.

So far from “Perfect”

Yes, I find joy dozens of times a day. In the sound of waves, the shapes of clouds, in cuddles with Watson. I am filled with gratitude. I am happier than I recall being since I was probably a very small child. I’ve cut back or cut out all that fun stuff like partying all night, drinking more than an alcoholic beverage and/or a coffee a day. I have a skincare routine. I get the sleep I need. I go to the doctors. I have discovered my faith and seen it strengthened (and tested). I have done and continue to do the gut-wrenching work of healing and emotional development.

I also made myself cry an hour ago because I saw a video of a cat using the buttons I got for Watson to say it was ready to die – listened to it’s pained meows, only to learn it did it several times more before being euthanized the next day. And it took me back to my last days with Moose. Of holding him close, looking him in the eyes and trying to pour all my love and peace into him as he slipped away, by my word. And years later, I’m still struggling with that decision.

So that for some reason seemed like the perfect time to listen to Never Is a Promise by Fiona Apple (a beautiful but moderately heartbreaking song that I forgot reminds me of an ex). In my chest, I feel an ache for all the things that made him someone I love and all the insurmountable obstacles that doomed our relationship. And that ache reminds me of the similar ache I feel when I travel. The way I am always falling in love with a place while feeling the simultaneous ache in my heart for another. I’ve scattered little pieces of me around this globe – tons of places and people I have had the opportunity to love and treasure, and those people and places have pieces too within my heart.

And then I’m in my minds eye. I see the paper thin skin of my moms hand, feel it’s velvet texture the last time I held it. The momentary surprise in her eyes as they met my tear filled eyes – because I’m not a hand-holder. I’m the one who makes her laugh when things are hard. Who tries to win a smile when disease and illness start to feel crushing. And if all else fails, who finds a way to piss her off just enough that she forgets she’s sad or scared for a few moments. But all I had were heavy goodbyes that tasted of ash and had the crushing weight of finality. And I felt, knowing that while we might speak again, I would likely never hold her hand, kiss her or hug her again – and it upended me. And I can feel it all. Right now.

I imagine this kind of thing is shared across humanity – yet it’s often spoken of as if we can only feel one thing at any given time. As if all these feelings are contrary to the others. That is not how life has felt to me – it was always this miraculously complex saturation in my own humanity, in our collective fragility and finiteness. That the paths not walked, the places left behind, the people now gone, the opportunities missed – the words left unsaid or spoken which we desperately wish we could take back. It’s all part of a mosaic of space, time and being. Of knowing that rarely in life are we truly in full mountains and valleys – no – usually we are all the things in life at once: we are the emotional rivers that carve the valleys, the rains that cleanse the lands and bring new life, we are the seasons and the days and nights – the storms and the wind and the sunshine. We are the jagged rocks and the grassy knolls, the gentle streams and the powerful currents. We are the lamb and the lion.

The Pleasure of My Own Company

It sounded impossible. Four days without any words spoken, without any people to spend time with processing, discussing, laughing and crying. No TVs. No radio or music. Just quiet. Just me alone with myself, creation and God.

Are you afraid to be alone with yourself? Without anything to distract you? I was…

When I went on my first silent, solitude retreat, I almost left within 24 hours! It felt emotionally overwhelming to exist without distraction. But then I grew to love it, to treasure those brief periods a few times a year where I would withdraw to reflection and nature to be still and listen.

I find myself reflecting about how essential this early training was for my to be able to be where I am now. Part of that journey required me to look at what all the noisy and busy parts of my life were attempting to hide and drown out. It encouraged me to do the work of figuring out how to come to terms with those things within me, to move from a place of self-hatred to… dare I say it? Love. I feel like that word gets tossed about a lot – that the true gravity of the choice to love gets missed. The weight of that commitment. It is no small feat to love well.

I’d spent a most of my life striving to be worthy of love, respect and inclusion and feeling that somehow, to accomplish such a thing was nearly impossible. I suppose I was right, in a way. That seeking was faced outward, towards a performative world that is largely transactional. But as I dove into the Word, and myself, I realized two things.

First, that my faith tells me I already have these things from God. Not because of who I am, but because of who God is. That led to a secondary epiphany: that the only guarantee I have towards being loved, respected and included is to be those things, to have it be a core part of my nature and expression to myself and others. As all early followers of Christianity knew, belief isn’t something that stays in the head – it must by it’s very nature move to the heart, to the mouth, to our hands and feet. As it did, my sense of worth stopped fluctuating with the opinions of my family, friends and coworkers. Or people who follow or like the things I post. As that became set apart, the way I relate to others changed. No longer in desperate need to get something for myself from others, I was free – free to be exactly who I am. Free to become, to change my mind, to error and fail. Now that I have abundant love, I find myself able to be a source of love without needing any sort of reciprocity. The source of my joy is not in others, or in my circumstances, but rooted in who I am and in my gratitude for being.

I know that I was created and formed by Love, made in the very image of Love. I am also a recipient of God’s cruciform, agape love. And it is a wonderful and beautiful thing to be able to reflect that same love into my communities and spheres of influence. But there is also something extraordinary and beautiful in my times of solitude, where I must simply be. I’m not quite sure how to wrap words around these senses and feelings, but I feel like I get a taste of what Christians know of the triune God who is three in One. I remember the Trinity being compared at one point to the Gift, the Giver, and the act of Giving. So though I spend more time alone now, I am simultaneously never lonely. I too can choose to be the gift, the Giver, the act of giving.

These Are Some Words I Wrote; Sometimes They Rhyme

I am tired, tired

of this worrisome heart

That beats too fast too often

Prone to fall apart.

Full of second guesses

Of what ifs and why nots

Stealing second after second

As my stomach turns to knots.

I know not why I worry

Or what my body fears

But since I lost my mother

I hear beats racing in my ears.

When I do slumber

Panic rips me from my sleep

At times it seems as if

My soul, the Lord, He doth not keep.

Was the loss of her one too many?

My time with her too few?

As I live a life with plenty

All I really want is You.

God feels so very far away

Death and grief so near

I want to seek You in the solitude

But my pounding heart is all I hear.

My faith was once my anchor

Deep roots, and I the tree

I can hardly tell up from down

Tossed in this stormy sea.

If I cried out to You as I sink,

lifted my hand up with a plea

would You calm the storm?

Would You rescue me?

My Mom is Dead

She passed away on March 19th. I wasn’t there. I got the call, was it from my sister? It’s hard to remember. Pieces feel crystal clear and foggy all at the same time. But I could hear my father wailing in the background. Weeping. Heartbroken. I feel like I heard him say she was getting cold, but it’s hard to know. I was thousands of miles away.

My mom wasn’t perfect, but her whole life she strived to be the best mother to my sister and me. She loved me so much. She loved me more than I can understand even now, and I loved her. We were close. Not the way Rachel and her were. I used to think that… meant something. But it didn’t. Rachel and I are very different people and so we had very different relationships. That’s all – it’s really that simple.

My mom was so afraid of death. All her life. Now that I think about it, I wonder if that was part of my fear from such a very young age. But that’s another story for another time.

She had a fear of being buried alive, of being cremated alive, of dying alone. I advocated for hospice earlier than most people agreed with and it made me feel misunderstood and judged. I felt like people thought I had no hope or had given up. But I had taken a class about death and the dying. I had learned about hospice and even considered becoming a chaplain myself. So many people fear death in our society (I do too) that many end up spending their final days alone. Mom was in pain and disoriented in a strange room with unfamiliar people and I had little doubt that if she were of sound mind, she’d have chosen to be “home,” comfortable and with people who loved her.

I was not there. I was beyond blessed to have a company that allowed me to work remotely, and a lifelong friend whose mother opened her home to my dog and me for a month. After driving across the country in July away from my hometown and to my new city (and swearing to never do that again) I found myself loading up my car and heading East in winter with my dog at my side. I can’t tell you the dates – they mean nothing. Before mom died and after. It’s hard to be more orientated than that.

So across the country, with temps hitting the negatives, we drove to my mother whose health was in decline. To my sister, who was trying to take care of absolutely everything. To my dad who desperately needed hip and knee surgery but cancelled his surgery so he could remain by my moms side.

I got to my hometown, settled into a home that wasn’t mine but was a comfort nonetheless, because of the countless days and nights I’d spent there growing up and the family who always made me feel welcome. I worked long hours and tried to be more of a help than a hinderance to my sister.

I visited with mom, but generally she seemed to have very little in common with the mother I had seen in December. Rare glimpses between mood swings and delusions. I spent some time with friends. I spent more time crying.

I can still kind of hear her voice saying, “I love you too, honey.” Or when she said “I’m so sorry, I’m going to get better, I promise.” And I told her I had no idea why she was apologizing, she had nothing to apologize for. I was just grateful to see her and spend time with her. I can feel her hand in mine as I held it. Her soft skin. The strong nails I so admired as a small child. But the terrible truth of it all is no matter how great our will or how tight our hold, those we love will slip beyond our grasp, or we will slip beyond theirs.

When I left around a month later, it seemed as if we might have some more time. Months, we were told. The month in town was hard for me on top of an already difficult couple of years. The long working hours I was required to do didn’t help, nor did living in a home that wasn’t mine with a stressed dog. Nothing felt like solid ground. The years of Covid isolation due to moms vulnerability, several moves, deaths, job hunting and changes, health challenges, financial hurdles and parental issues… I had been trying to take care of myself and improve my health but a person can only handle so much. I had been too stressed for too long, according to my doctors. But at the time I didn’t know how much harder it would get.

So I drove across the US again, me and my reactive dog. Now probably also traumatized dog. Bitter cold temperatures and strong gusts of wind; snow either piled taller than my car on the banks of the road or blowing across it like a sandstorm. Through plains and deserts and mountain passes. Somehow doing it all without chains because I didn’t know any better.

Mom had already taken a turn when I arrived back in Seattle. But I’d only been at this job 8 months and I had very little time left. We spoke a few times over the phone, her and I, when she could. Rachel and Dad agreed it made sense for me to stay where I was. Although mostly unspoken, I think we all knew that I would return after she passed. This is the nature of our world – of having to keep a job and pay bills.

I try not to have guilt or regrets. My mother was proud of me for the job I got and the courage it took for me to move here, but she was also hurt that I left, though she never said it. She told me she was grateful that I did it so I could help with the costs of her care, but she only said that when things had progressed quite far and it was hard to know how much it was really her. She always insisted, before December, that she didn’t need or want my financial help… and I guess ultimately she was right.

It’s hard to know I left all of them just nine months before we lost her. Nine months I could have spent with her, helping Rachel and Dad, getting her to laugh and distracting her momentarily from the daily challenges she faced in life. I had suspected my time in Cincinnati was getting short, although I tried everything I could to stay – I applied for hundreds of jobs in Cincy! But it was not meant to be. Where all my applications failed a recruiter and interview after successful interview led to an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I was so intentional those last couple years – regular phone calls, dinner, jeopardy or movies and visits with Watson, after the loss of my big guy. We built a stronger relationship and store of memories because of my sense of a move in my future. How different might things have been if I hadn’t been trying to savor each family meal and holiday, knowing I may not be there for the next one.

At first, I struggled a lot because I didn’t get to be there with her in her last days (not in person – it’s my understanding that she thought I was there quite frequently). I knew how badly she didn’t want to die alone, and she didn’t. Not really. But I wish I could have been there for her a little more. I didn’t see her and I chose to not see her before cremation. I didn’t think… a goodbye like that would have been so outside of the context in which I knew and loved her. I thought it would do more harm than good.

I’ve since come to the realization that there is no right place to be as I lose a foundational person. Their loss… it is an earthquake which crumbles the foundations. It turns my bones into putty and mouth to ash. The pain I feel deep within my chest – I still don’t understand. We talk about heartbreak but it makes no sense, does it? The terrible, real, physical pain I feel within my chest seems as if it could kill me, should kill me.

In truth, I feel like I’ve slipped into an alternate reality. My brain is still struggling to reconstruct the world and orientate myself within a universe where my mother does not live and breath. It is finding it incomprehensible, I think. Genuinely. I don’t know what it is like for others but in addition to my grief, I suspect my neurodivergence offers an additional hurdle. It feels as if my brain is working overtime to solve a complex formula that has no solution. And so my brain reboots itself; there must be an error in logic, it seems to determine. There has to be a solution. But there is none, and so my brain sends out signals to my body already in long-term stress mode. ANXIOUS! Fear… ANXIOUS. Wait, are we entering REM sleep? PANIC. WAKE UP.

I’m no longer in that deep, weirdly numb while weeping, chronically exhausted phase of loss. It seems as if my panic, anxiety and stress are trending in the right trajectory. But I also feel like the grief itself is a bit worse each day. I feel a day further from the last time I spoke to her or the last time I hugged and kissed her. Her face in my minds eye is a little less distinct. I can’t remember what she used to smell like, or even the last words she spoke to me.

Nighttime Reflections

My Mom is in the Hospital