What is a mother

A mother is love

A mother is tears

Happy , sad, scared tears, tears for the unknown.

A  mother is worry for their health, kindness, calm. joy, hope and faith.

A mother is not caring so much about how I look but how I react, not caring so much about how clean everything is as long as we had fun making the mess.

 A mother is wanting to always keep a child safe while not sheltering them from the real world, wanting them to learn on their own accord at their own pace.

A mother is not always blood

A mother is wanting them to laugh, not the cause of their cries.

A mother is taking a moment to breath, when you want to scream.

A mother is letting go of your trauma to make good memories  for your child.

 A mother is not afraid of saying no or being hurt when they get mad for saying no.

A mother is security

A mother is offering a hug before an interrogation.

A mother is pain

A mother is safety

A mother is you being there for a child no matter how far they stray

A mother is letting them go though you want them to stay

---

 

Written (2010) while watching my own kids grow, Edited (2020) for the things we both have learned along the way.

 

*Dedicated to the memory of George Floyd, a black man who screamed for his mother while being suffocated to death at the hands of a white police officer.

*Palestinian-American artist Shirien Damra’s illustration paying tribute to George Floyd.

 

 

Thanks for reading

Sheri

 

I see you

My sweet Lily Bean January 20 2012

A poem for Lily

I look around and your all I see
Your face in the clouds
Your fingers and hands
Like branches,leaves in the trees
The sunset, so beautiful reminds me of you
The pink of a sunrise
Your lovely soft cheeks
Waves crash to shore
As a smiles alights your face
My thoughts of you surround me
The beauty of nature belongs to you my sweet lily flower.

 

Written May 22 2012

By Sheri Hall,  for her daughter Lilly Hall who died 2.5 months earlier.

 

Singularity

I just finished a book titled ‘The time of my life’ by Cecilia Ahern

Its the second time I gravitated to it, only getting a few chapters in the last time and maybe not understanding the concept got bored. This time, after a few weeks stuck at home. #Quarantine2020 I picked it up again.

Its concept is that when we’re ignoring our inner self our outer self suffers. When we pretend we’re fine things go wrong because we’re not paying attention to our lives. For me this was the perfect time to finish this book, to fully grasp its concept. I’m feeling so gross and bloated all the time, stuffing my face because I’m pretending I’m fine, going through the every day motions as though I dont matter.

But I do matter and unfortunately it took a pandemic to realize that I need to take control of my life. So I accepted the offer to start school in September in the special Education teaching program, even though I tried relentlessly to talk myself out of it. And I will see where doing something for myself will take me.

 

 

 

 

This morning this poem popped up in my feed and I felt it. Its one of those descriptions of thoughts that are hard to put into words but this person has, so I’m sharing it.

Thanks for reading,

I wish you a peaceful Sunday.

Sheri

 

 

SINGULARITY
by Marie Howe

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money —

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you.   Remember?

There was no   Nature.    No
them.   No tests

to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up   to what we were
— when we were ocean    and before that

to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all — nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb      no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

8 years gone…

The memorial video shown at Lilys funeral

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Sheri

‘Lilies cry’ a poem by Tanya Loewen-Watson

#Truth

I had a FB memories pop up from 2012 this is what I wrote…

So I made it into a meme with my artwork.

Thanks for reading.

Some days….

Grief poems, thoughts & rituals.

 

Made my first meme with a poem I wrote 6 years ago for my daughter…

That is what I love about writing, keeping journals, diary posts etc… You can go back to exactly how you felt at a certain moment in time be it happy or sad.

Sheri

A poem for Carson

Your death creates fear about futures unclear

Your loss makes us anxious; how to steer clear

Your innocence stolen; gone too soon

Broken down simply;

Death creates fear

Loss is anxiousness

Your life was stolen

The story untold while grief unfolds

Anger subsides,  no answer to why

Young and trusting or foolish and rushing

Those left behind; hurt and confused

Forever staring at the invisible bruise

What makes a child turn away

Do drugs, solicit sex instead of play

Why has society drifted from truth

That an end by drugs is common for youth

The loss of a child is the worst; its true

Whether 3, 11 or at 22

The order of death is not correct

The mind scrambles to accept

Hurt and pain fill each room

With presence of a life gone too soon.

_________________________________________

Written for Carson Crimeni a 14 year old boy who was given drugs by older kids to watch how he reacted.

He died. 

His death has affected our community not only because of its circumstances but because of his age, naivety and vulnerability. And because it creates fear in us all.

I drive by the site at best 4x a day, I see the flowers, my heart pounds as my eyes swell. He is not my son but very well could be. No one knows who it could be next, no one is invincible.

Child loss is a pain no parent can heal from.

You can learn from it. You can grow from it. You can continue to live. But there is no getting over the loss of a child, regardless their age.

I hurt for his parents, for all parents who’ve lost a child to drugs, accident, illness or violence. Miscarriage, stillbirth or congenital diseases.

Death creates fear and uncertainty but moreso when its your child and you can’t understand why or how to move on, the world stops awhile.

I wrote this (above) but the picture attached below with a poem is written by an unknown author.

 

 

Thanks for reading,

Sheri

Grief poems, thoughts & rituals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Capture your Grief; Relationships

Day 16 – Relationships

Relationships and Grief:

Grief from a death, loss of job, divorce, betrayal of trust, there are so many ways that can be the cause of our discomfort of our grief, as well as, secondary factors that those have led to such as anxiety, sleep problems, claustrophobia, distrust, anger.

To manage so many forced emotions due to one uncontrollable action or many unforeseen events that occurred can be daunting, exhausting, unwanted. So for many we take it our on the relationships closest to us. We yell quicker, we hurt with less care of the result, we ignore or become aggressive to them. Grief can be a major destruction to relationships. It can force us to see someone in a different light, with the new forced lens of our new reality. It can force us to appreciate different things that maybe did not matter before therefore changing how we view a relationships importance to a specific person. Relationships are very complex, that of mother/daughter, father/son and vice versa, that of our spouse or partner, our relationship with our children or nieces and nephews, aunts or uncles. All are very different from each other and can and will be impacted differently by grief.

I think the only advice is to take your alone time, time to walk independently in your own thoughts and not others opinions or judgment. Space away to help figure out emotions without feeling the need to change them for certain people which results in having us begrudge them. Everybody wants to fix you and that in itself is what causes the problem within relationships after an event that causes grief. Distance from those people can help to figure out your own boundaries and navigate each specific need towards dealing with the grief and or situation that has caused it.

An odd fact told to me and my husband after we were told if our daughter survived and lived with all her disabilities is that the divorce rate among parents with disabled kids was higher. Gee thanks? After she died, it was repeated but because of the different reason. I found it, still find it odd that people let alone a doctor would find this information useful let alone necessary. What worked for us was distance, distance from others to live and be in our sorrow without facts or statements from others. People will assume you are withdrawing but no, we need space and time to learn how to navigate on our terms for the new normal we live.

Take your time. You will need it to preserve the relationships that matter.

Thank you for reading,

Sheri