When Heart and Mind Collide

When you talk about letting go (esp. letting go of complicated things), many times over your mind knows already what to do and your mind is totally ready to let go and has probably started to let go, but your heart will have to catch up and it's taking its own sweet time. The mind is knocking your head over and over again while saying, "You should know better! You should know better! Let go!" but then your heart is saying, "I'm not quite there yet, you know? I need more time." The mantra "be kind to yourself, be kind to yourself" must then be repeated over and over and over again as you try to let go of your own frustration.

Today is a friend's birthday and it reminded me of something that crossed my mind during TTC. I was born two days before my mom's birthday, so in a way I was her early birthday present. This fact never really raised to the surface of my consciousness until we started TTC (chuckle!). And furthermore, on husband's side, his eldest brother had the same birthday as their dad. At that time the idea of being able to get/give a birthday present this way (either for me or my husband) was really appealing.

I realize now that this was one of the things in my "baby dream package" that I had to let go of. This and the fact that I would like to be able to tell our child her/his birth/childhood stories the way my parents did. These wishes are just a few examples of the many, many, many layers of invisible losses. No wonder it takes a lot of time and a lot of work, especially when your heart is taking much more time to catch up. And no wonder it's so misunderstood, don't you think? When the world scratches its head and responds, "Loss? What loss? Get over it, I'm not comfortable with your pain!", what we truly experience is a complicated maze of losses or rows and rows of buried wishes (some of which we'll only find further away in the journey) and in the depth of it all, it's so overwhelming that it's difficult to even begin to explain it to someone outside the journey. All you can do is find your own tribe and take as much time as you need...


glitter-graphics.com
Anyway, this is something unrelated, but I'd like to share this gorgeous video clip with you all. Someone in the comment section wrote this: "this performance was dedicated to their former teammate, who died from brain cancer. this was the song he used to perform with when doing the individual competitions. usually group gymnastics have teammates cheering them, clapping before/after each big feat, but for this they remained quiet for their said teammate. so moving and so beautiful!"