Sunday Dispatch #1
A dead mom visit, an Inside Out 2 crying trigger, sweet hospice stories, & proper chili assembly discourse
Welcome to the first Sunday Dispatch!! A weekly-ish series where I round up any Extra Slice1 quips you may have missed. There’ll also be a roundup of shares, faves, tips, and little joys I’ll share at the end too!
This one’s sharing a personal entry from last week, reflecting on magical happenings after loss. But future dispatches will and can be about anything from the week.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy!
10/13/24
I heard from my dead mom this morning. :)
There’s a guy I work with who plays music during our morning shifts, and the majority of what he plays are the soulful oldies but goodies: Kool & The Gang, Earth, Wind, and Fire…
That vibe. Sometimes 2000s metal and rock. But he’s never played instrumentals.
So tell me why the day after I wrote a letter to my mom updating her on my life, asking about what the afterlife’s been like for her, and telling her I loved her, this very niche instrumental plays on my co-worker’s Bluetooth speakers that correlates to a reel I made for my mom after she died??
Not long after her funeral, I made a reel with trending piano audio that sounds like it would be played over a tearful falling snow scene in a movie. In the reel I showed mom/whoever viewed it all the gorgeous flowers and plants and a dining table filled with cards, and wrote in a text overlay something like, “POV: your home after your mom’s funeral. We love you, mom.
Months after I made that reel, I’d avoid it. I’d avoid any auto-playing reel or social media source that’d play that song cause it’d immediately drag me back to the place and time of my reel: days after the surreal event of burying my mom. Coming back home to a house drowning in reminders that this was our new reality.
I just watched it (muted) while looking for it for today’s Dispatch, and seeing the footage I took immediately brought me back to the feelings from that tumultuous winter. It’s such a weird sensation, especially with life being SO different now.
Anyway, having that be the first and only time I’ve heard my co-worker blast an instrumental through our workspace made me really believe it was my mom communicating with me to let me know she was around when I was writing my letter to her.
It feels good to believe that, anyway.
It’s not too farfetched for me; unexplainable things happened after mom died that seemed very much like things mom would’ve done.
So I’m very happy I followed the pull to write my mom a letter. My therapist was the one who told me to write letters to her in the first place. Sharing my anger, my sadness, or just to talk to her like I never could before. But I haven’t written to her since I first started seeing my therapist around springtime last year.
This specific “pull” I feel at random times has never led me wrong; sitting down to write that letter felt like I was cozied-up in a sacred and intimate ritual.
It’s the same pull I feel whenever I pull tarot cards for myself. I may go months and months without pulling a single card, but when that urge happens? It’s always exactly what I need.
Self-awareness and intuition are such important skills to learn. Knowing yourself is the BEST thing you can ever do for yourself.
As I start stepping back into online spaces, I’m making that part of my mission: to guide people into truly knowing themselves and becoming an active participant in their lives.
I’m still getting my sea legs with time management after work, so the only thing I have to share with you is my first Extra Slice installment I posted just yesterday!
But I also let some powerful words flow over on Instagram. I was making a graphic and it just came out of me, so I went ahead and got it up on that platform and got off the app right after.
That’s all for this week! I’m proud of myself for showing up, and making progress.
My treat for getting this first Sunday Dispatch and Extra Slice up and published is finally buying the game Fields of Mistria!!
I’ll let you know how the gameplay goes next time! :)
Gratuitude for everything and building a natural practice of it. Even the sun moving off the seat I wanted to sit at in the screened-in porch while I ate my lunch.
The part of Inside Out 2 that makes me cry (since we’re talking about loss this week, this makes me think of what my mom may have been going through):
One death thing this week, I promise. But the hospice worker I fell in love with on YouTube (I bet you won’t be able to resist her either). I listened to her read her audiobook and it was one of the best reads/book listens (this is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, but check your local library or Libby app as well) of my year. Here’s a sweet day in the life short by her: https://youtube.com/shorts/jP-qzhiwa98?si=1zSlXwk15NO70w6F
And a couple more to marathon like I did until 3am:
This short, sweet, and storytelling food game called Venba! It takes an hour or two to play the whole thing, but it’s so fun, tells a sweet and real story about an Indian family immigrating to Canada in the 1980s, and it made me SO hungry! I’m going to an Indian restaurant soon that serves a lot of what I “cooked” in the game!
Grapes my mom trailed from our recipe bin back at the last apartment she decorated. I always thought this was a cute touch, and will do the same in my own place and/or once we get this house completely together.
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Dispatch! It’s chili season and I must ask you the question I asked my boyfriend and co-workers:
Beans, or no beans? Noodles, or no noodles?
If you do have noodles with it, what kind? Do you add any toppings?
For me, we brake up angel hair pasta, and add beans for sure. I eat it on its own with crackers, or add cheese and sour cream!
What say you?
See you next time!
The Extra Slice is a series I post in silence, sharing life lessons from the past or in real time I feel don’t fit into a newsletter or personal essay, but believe you can still get inspiration, motivation, and lessons from for your own life!
Oh yes, definitely a visit. Be on the lookout this week too.
Yes to beans! Yes to noodles! Together? I'll have to try that at some point...