Tuesday, July 31, 2012

kindness

My friend Jess  wrote these lines over three years ago:


I’ve spent a year re-telling the same sad story. It’s so short too. How many ways can I write ‘My baby died, I never knew her, I wish I did.'

I think about those lines often, when I write, when I talk of her...Lucia died. I never knew her, I wish I did. It's true, you know. That is what all my work boils down to. Jess has a gift for cutting through the bullshit and writing the line that sums it all up.

I never knew her, I wish I did. So instead of not-knowing her and wishing I did, I write and paint and do other yummy, delicious stuff. I wear raven feathers and dance barefoot in my studio to pagan music. I meditate in suffering until it fills my chest. I breathe it in like unwelcome water. Searing pain and dull ache and the feeling of death. My lungs burst, a flood pocked with drowned moths and buzzards erupts from the hole left behind. I light wooden-wicked candles that smell of campfires and crackle like a language. I eat hundreds of life savers, but I am still lost.

There are people all over the world whose babies just died. They feel completely alone, like I did. I remember. I remember thinking, "I will always be that woman whose baby died." Because it used to matter to me which woman I was. I told a friend that, and she thought I was lying. Who would think that? It sounds like literary license, but it isn't. It is what went through my head. This will define me. I knew that this thing that just happened--being told my baby was dead in me--rewired my pathway. That I would have to tell this story over and over again just to make sense of it.


I bemoaned and wailed and called and keened and prayed and clucked and sighed. And then I conjured a community. They were conjuring me. Leaning over cauldrons. Adding eye of nice and aroma of clever. Chanting, "Let these people be babylost and not overly angel-y and maybe a little punk rock too. Let them be artists and magicians and conjurers. Buddhists and pagans and Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians. And full of compassion and patience and support."

There is a community of people whose babies died. Sometimes I write here for them. Sometimes I write here for me. But I am here. Over and over again. I have asked myself if it is healthy. If it is okay. If it is weird.  I asked psychics too and tarot readers and mediums and women that talk to angels. I asked them if it is healthy, but in me I know that I have to give back to this community who saved my life. I know that I need to keep writing here, painting here, talking about grief and daughter-death. I counted on someone three years out, ten years out, seven years out to tell me that what I was feeling was normal and that I was going to be okay. Not back to the way it was before, but something better even. Those people showed me a way to integrate this storyline into my life. Jess happened to write about this today at Glow. Even though I was writing a little bit about it too over here a quarter of the world away. I take writing about Lucia and telling this sad story seriously, because my story has changed. I can say with confidence and love that my daughter Lucia gave me the most amazing gifts. She taught me so many truths, so much beauty, so much compassion. She taught me about my weaknesses and strengths, and I have allowed her death to become the way to connect to thousands of people, because at first, I only allowed her death to cut me off from everyone.

We all grieve. If we don't now, we will one day. If you can find nothing to like about someone, nothing to feel empathetic about, use that as a starting point to grow compassion. Every person has lost someone. Every person will lose someone. Every person will be someone's grief.

Last Friday was the MISS Foundation's International Kindness Day project. For it, I offered to paint mizuko jizo for parents, friends, family, anyone who wanted one. I meant to do it in silence, but after an hour and a half of sitting through the massive tonglen session, then one painting group, it felt too isolating. Plus, the kids popped in, and I talked without thinking. I am human, and besides, it is enough to do thirty-five paintings. I wanted to listen to my music, the rain, sing, dance. I need to also be kind to me. Here is a video I made after Kindness Day. It explains about me and why I do this.



17 comments:

  1. Gorgeous. Angie. The video is gorgeous. Thank you for sharing this, and your gifts, and your grief. I love the mantras. I'll be fitting those into some daily routines.

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  2. I am touched by your life.
    thank you

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  3. Thanks so much for this, Angie, and for taking a day to paint and honor Lucia and our children. I loved the video.

    I am also grateful for your suggested starting point for compassion because sometimes compassion is hard, and this will really help.

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  4. Your writing is so eloquent and always manages to express just what I am thinking. It makes me feel less alone. Thank you for sharing with me and with this community.

    Lisa xx
    dear-finley.blogspot.com

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  5. Your video was so powerful, Angie. I sit here watching it with the tears that have been welling up inside me all morning. Thank you for helping me get them out. I have read a little bit about the mizuko jizo, and you've inspired me to find out more. Thank you for sharing your gifts. They are very special indeed.

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  6. Beautiful, Angie. It was just what I needed to see today. ♥

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  7. Wonderful, you are amazing in your love for this community, your family and your art. Breathe in grief, breathe out love.

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  8. I just love you. I appreciate your creative kind spirit. I appreciate your truth and the beauty in the ugly that is grief. I thank you for walking the path ahead of me with a candle to show me light and the wwarmth of the soul that radiates to the community you have helped through this dark hell. We all find our own way... It's helpful to see someone else's path for it's similarities, and it's differences but also to know we can keep going. Like old women on a winding path up a steep treacherous mountain single file one before the other, but helping point out obstacles giving encouragement trying to make sure we don't plummet off the edge. That you for walking before me. For helping me navigate this terrain.

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  9. You are a warm, vibrant and beautiful soul. I wish you were not part of our community, but in the same breath, god I'm so thankful for you.
    xo

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  10. Beautiful, Angie. I did not feel kind at all this year, and in the end, I decided my act of kindness would be to myself: to forgive myself for not being kind. Maybe next year. Or maybe some random day, or days, between then and now.

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  11. This is the most beautiful thing I've seen in quite a while, Angie. Thank you for everything you do, for being you. So grateful. xo

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  12. "...I have allowed her death to become the way to connect to thousands of people, because at first, I only allowed her death to cut me off from everyone."

    Thank you for this, for being here, for being the awesome person you are. Loved watching the video. Much love & xo

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  13. So beautiful. The words of your tonglen meditation ill stay with me for a long time.

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  14. Just wanted to say I received my painting and it is so lovely. I'm going to frame it and put it near Finley's urn as a lovely reminder of the kindness of strangers and the support of a wonderful community. Thank you so much.

    Lots of love,
    Lisa
    http://dear-finley.blogspot.com

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  15. " I remember thinking, "I will always be that woman whose baby died." Because it used to matter to me which woman I was."
    .
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    Before my son died, back when we still had a small glimmer of hope that he would live, my father sat at my bedside in the hospital and told me that whatever the outcome I should not let what was happening define who I was. At the time I didn't totally understand what he meant by that. How could it? Why would it? I know now that he knew what I was too naive to believe; that my baby was going to die and I was going to be destroyed and that I was going to have to rebuild myself.

    Later, at my first therapy session I immediately started talking about my fears that for the rest of my life I was going to be known as the woman whose baby died. His loss felt so massive that it pushed and pulled and molded me into someone I did not recognize. It was completely frightening and I thought that I must be horribly ugly to gaze upon.

    It took me a long time before I realized that becoming a different person was not the terrible thing I thought it would be. Yes, I am the woman whose baby died and maybe the woman people think talks to much about her dead baby. But I am also the woman who has learned what real empathy and kindness are. I'm different. I'm the woman with a dead baby but I am a better woman.

    Thanks Angie, for all your beautiful writing and hard honesty.

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