Trusting my gut.
...... Maybe. And my biggest healing revelation since my mom died.
So a lot’s been triggering me this weekend when it comes to my mom (aka: lots of tears), and a lot of the time it comes from me consuming content online.
I’m at a place where I’m playing with the idea of deactivating my IG by the end of the month1, but I enjoy IG stories.
Maybe a good compromise would be to tell people to come on over to Substack if they’d still like little sneak peeks into my thoughts and days (something I’m doing anyway).
But here’s my current dilemma…
Is it a good idea to write extra email newsletters/reflections when they come here on Substack? Instead of posting them to an entirely different email provider?
I don’t want my inspo-written reflections to seem like spam, but I also think last week’s Friday Reflection was too long cause I kept too much of what I wanted to say til the end of the week.
If I write more, should they go behind a paywall? Have an included (and quick) audio narration? Nah?
You let me know:
Anyway, I’d love your take recieving more reflections (when they come) on a weekly basis would be okay with you.2
(So I don’t have to send a second email, and so you can get an idea of reflections I may send throughout the week… here’s something that was also on my mind to share.)
I learned yesterday that I seriously need to do some reparenting work.
During one of my many cries this weekend, I realized I cried about how unfair it felt to experience my mom in a way I had always dreamt of, but never had until the last couple months of her life.
I personally felt those last months were the most intense, hardest, yet most bonding we had ever done. But it came with the price of her falling apart to reach her softer middle… And I hated that.
Her middle name might as well have been “Strength”; she took her implications of that word very seriously. And to—what I believe—a detriment. So seeing her show up in all the ways I had been wishing she would as a parent was bittersweet.
I know I don’t need to leave a disclaimer, but I always feel like I have to protect my mom no matter how complicated my feelings are toward her. But she loved me, and was kind and caring… and, she didn’t listen.
I’d tell her what I’d actually need, or what I’d feel, or who I was, and to me I always felt like that was dismissed and talked down on in a condescending manner.
It’s like telling someone your love language, or about who you are, and the other person never hearing you. That type of chosen miscommunication sears quite a detrimental belief inside a person, as I recently discovered.
So this weekend I cried about a moment around the last month of my mom’s life that I treasured, but felt so confused by, because it wasn’t something she’d normally do. But I loved it, but I hated how it had to come about.
And then it struck me a few hours after that cry, that I can provide myself with what I needed back then (which—I soon realized—were also things I needed ever since I was a pre-teen).
I can be my own parent, and give myself what I needed at that moment with my mom, and beyond.
And I think that’s pretty magical.
Yesterday I had to do a quick Google search while the epiphany around my reparenting needs were still fresh. I read one article, and quickly skimmed over some graphics on ways to start reparenting yourself before I turned away from the screen to just sit with myself and analyze all the times I yearned something from my mom.
And ultimately, I think I just wanted more affection (she wasn’t too touchy feely), to be heard, and listened to.
One of the pieces of advice online said it was okay to hug yourself (I truly felt like I needed permission to do so), so I did.
I told myself that what I needed, mattered. I told myself to listen to when my body or mind says it needed something. Try hard to never ignore listening to what I need at any given moment.
And it felt good. It felt right to tell myself that I’d listen harder, and closer to what I need (rather than brushing it off, or talking down on myself or “shoulding” all over myself).
And it was a nice revelation. I understand now that I was just reviving an unhealthy relationship with myself that should have been laid to rest with my mom.
This is a newer revelation, and I’m curious to see how it helps with my healing.
I know we should give ourselves time to embrace the healing we’ve already done—and I will—but I’ll feel extremely good about my healing around my mom when I feel 100% comfortable and confident in getting a tattoo to commemorate her.
If I can be comfortable with the idea of any tattoo to commemorate her, then maybe I could eventually fully get behind getting the intricate piece I designed a few weeks after she passed.
That, would be an amazing milestone.
I slept on it, and I came up with the idea to curate my “favorites” to follow and check in on, on IG. Help reduce the mindless scrolling. There’s a “Favorites” page you can switch to on IG, don’t cha know?!
Post sleeping on it, I still would like to share reflections I have before THEE Friday newsletter but I may keep the other behind-the-scenes things to IG since I’m working on having a better handle on IG. So I won’t send you too many emails. People just aren’t on my Substack thread!