“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” -Leonard Cohen
My Interpretation: For a long time, I thought healing meant hiding the cracks. Holding myself together tightly enough that no one noticed where life had split me open. But maybe the cracks are not evidence that I am broken. Maybe they are proof that I survived enough to let something softer grow inside of me. Maybe light has been trying to find me this whole time.
The holidays have always been bittersweet for me.
Actually… that is not entirely true.
Bittersweet implies the sweet part gets equal footing. Mine rarely does.
Most people count down to long weekends, cookouts, fireworks, Christmas lights, birthdays, Thanksgiving tables, Easter baskets. They think about traditions.
I think about anniversaries.
Every holiday seems to carry someone’s absence.
⤷ Someone who should still be here.
⤷ Someone who never became who I needed them to be.
⤷ Someone I had to grieve while they were still alive.
The Fourth of July weekend is the anniversary of my mother’s passing.
Every year it sneaks up on me.
People are planning fireworks while I am quietly remembering the woman who gave me life but could never quite give me the version of motherhood I spent my childhood hoping for.
That grief is complicated.
I do not grieve the mother I had nearly as much as I grieve the mother she could have been.
I grieve conversations we never had.
≫ The safety I never felt.
≫ The forgiveness I learned to give before anyone had earned it.
≫ The little girl who kept believing that maybe next time would be different.
Yet somehow… I also carry pieces of her that I am grateful for.
✧ My protectiveness.
✧ My willingness to fight when someone I love is threatened.
✧ My refusal to let Rowan question whether he is loved.
She taught me what I would never allow.
Sometimes our greatest teachers are not examples.
They are warnings.
The difference is that I hope Rowan remembers my fierce love instead of my fiercest mistakes.
That matters to me.
Maybe more than anything.
But it is not just the Fourth of July.
Every holiday seems to have its own ghost attached to it.
Instead of letting myself feel any of it, I became very good at making sure everyone else had a good time.
→ Smile.
→ Host.
→ Cook.
→ Take the pictures.
→ Keep the peace.
→ Carry the weight.
Somewhere along the way, I became… small.
⤷ Not physically.
⤷ Emotionally.
I caught myself looking in the mirror recently & had this strange realization.
I hardly recognized the woman staring back.
Not because she looked different.
Because she looked quieter.
Smaller.
Like she had spent so much time trying not to inconvenience anyone else that she accidentally erased herself.
Then I started wondering…
How many people have disappointed me simply because they never knew I needed something from them?
What if I have been standing at home plate waiting for someone to pitch… while they never even realized the game had started?
Do I blame them for not seeing me?
Or do I blame myself for becoming such a pathological people pleaser that I stopped letting people know where I was standing?
I genuinely do not know.
Maybe… the answer lives somewhere in the middle.
A few weeks ago, someone raised their voice toward me at a concert.
Not because they were angry.
The music was loud.
They simply wanted me to hear them.
Before my brain could process what was happening, my body had already stepped backward.
Trauma has a funny way of making decisions before you get a vote.
Then I saw it.
Their face changed.
Their eyes softened.
Not with judgment.
Not with confusion.
With pity.
I cannot explain why that bothered me so deeply.
Understanding?
I can handle understanding.
Compassion?
Absolutely.
But pity feels different.
Pity feels like someone is looking at the version of you that trauma shrank instead of the version of you that survived it.
Those eyes have followed me ever since.
Then the other day, I noticed something sitting on my kitchen counter.
Alpha-Hole.
If you have followed me for any length of time, you already know.
My sourdough starter.
⇨ The one with entirely too much personality.
⇨ The one that somehow became a tiny symbol of hope without asking permission.
He has been neglected lately.
Not intentionally.
Life happened.
Grief happened.
Survival happened.
But there he was…
On the counter.
Fed.
Patiently bubbling.
Waiting.
Ready to become bread again.
Ready to rise.
Maybe that sounds ridiculous.
It is just flour.
It is just water.
Except…
Maybe… it is not.
Maybe Alpha-Hole is reminding me of something I forgot about myself.
Things that are alive can look dormant.
They are not dead.
They are waiting.
⇥ Waiting for nourishment.
⇥ Waiting for warmth.
⇥ Waiting for someone to believe they are still worth tending to.
Maybe that someone has to be me.
Because I cannot keep making myself smaller just to make everyone else comfortable.
I cannot keep measuring my worth by how little space I take up.
I cannot spend another holiday carrying everyone else’s joy while quietly burying my own grief underneath it.
I have done enough shrinking for one lifetime.
Alpha-Hole is on the counter.
He is marinating.
Soon he will become bread.
& maybe…
Just maybe…
So will I.
Not bread.
That would be weird.
But… someone who rises again.
Someone who remembers that surviving was never supposed to become the same thing as disappearing.
I have spent enough time becoming smaller.
Now it is my turn to rise.
xoxo ♡
Whisper to the ghosts. Yell into the void. Just don’t be an asshole.