letting go

Love, Libby

in ,

I am ready for her to be free…I know she is too!

It’s 9:30 PM. I am 8 years old and not in bed yet. My mom stumbled up the stairs earlier and my father sits on the adjacent couch watching something on TV with me. We are silent.

I walk upstairs to bed. My mom isn’t there. She is sleeping on the toilet. I wake her up and put her to bed. Kiss her and tell her I love her.

I am 8.

This happened for years. And to a young girl, it felt wrong. I knew it was wrong. I knew something wasn’t right.

I navigated this for years alone in my head. Nobody talked about my mom’s problems. So i just managed on my own. A sister who didn’t live at home. Another who was too busy being a hormonal teenager to be bothered with anyone but friends. And a father who was so blinded by a peculiar balance of complete adoration and resentment to my mother that I could literally feel it in my bones.

I was alone. And scared.

That hasn’t left me. If I am being honest, I have never felt safe. I am anxious about life most days, waiting desperately for the house of cards I live in to come crashing down on my head – so fragile, a cool breeze could come by and ruin it all.

But I forget to look at the bigger picture sometimes: I am ok.

I have never been less than okay. So I need to learn to trust this life and the process.

Growing up in dysfunction makes you feel uneasy. I went through life like this. When things looked normal on the outside, I was most likely faking it. As a matter of fact, I still do. But there are times where it becomes unrealistic to continue to fake it. Because deep into my core, I am a HORRIBLE liar and an EXCELLENT oversharer.

I have let that scared little girl have the drivers seat all my life. Sure I have shimmied the wheel away from her clutches at times. I made grown up decisions without her. But she always creeps back into the drivers seat. She didn’t know how not to drive. She’d been doing it her whole life.

Letting her rest and being the grown up she always needed is my life’s work. I am forever not wanting control. Neither one of us is a very proficient driver anyhow. But every day I try to show up for me and her so we can both feel at ease in our skin.

So, little girl, go play…rest…be free. And know that you are safe within me.

Love, Libby

Letting go

in , , , ,

I have spoken before about the beauty of letting go. I am mesmerized by the fall. We marvel at the leaves and the bright colors they turn before they fall to the ground. They serve us all summer with shade, protection, cool. And then when they are so tired, they fire up before they fade away.

It amazes me we don’t do this with humans…watch intently as they fade away into whatever takes us on. The miracle of life is as much at the end as it is at the beginning of life. We just don’t celebrate it. Everyone I have known that’s close to me that has passed away has always gifted me with something more magical than I was prepared for at the time. I just didn’t know what I was seeing in that moment.

Is that the problem? We don’t recognize what we see when we see it. Or do we need space from the beauty of it all so it can sink in?

This photo sat on my phone for a few months. It stopped me in my tracks today. I think because I didn’t think much of it at the time. I just discarded it as one of those things I see that I love…like the one zillion photos I have of the beach at sunset. It’s just another sunset. Just another beach. Just another leaf from a tree.

But really it isn’t. It’s all powerful. It all has tiny meaning as we shape ourselves into who we are. This leaf meant something to me at the time. And today, its message leaned in for a powerful whisper - like the warm whisper of a sweet lover - saying to me gently, again, that it’s okay to let go.