What do the anniversaries of the people we’ve loved and lost have to teach us? In this blog post, I’ll share how I’ve come to understand how love, loss, and liberation are intertwined, and how, if we keep our hearts and minds open, these experiences have the power to transform us.

February is a poignant month for me. It is both the month my mother was born and the month she died. Some days, I can’t believe it’s been six years since she departed this earth, and on other days, it feels like yesterday. That’s the power of anniversaries of the death of loved ones. They are markers in time that remind us of the times we’ve lost and can’t recapture with the people we loved, but they can also remind us how the love we shared with them can never die.

When I decided to start writing a regular blog post when my latest book, Catch Me When I Fall: Poems of Mother Loss and Healing was released last May, I followed my intuition and titled it, “Thoughts on Love, Loss, and Liberation.” It’s becoming clearer as the anniversaries of the death of my mother unfold how these three experiences−love, loss, and liberation are intertwined.

Mostly what I felt during the first couple of years after my mother’s death was a profound sense of loss. The grief pervaded my essence and penetrated my bones. I questioned how and if I’d ever feel joy again. I felt cheated and lost, having finally found the mother I’d always wanted, then losing her suddenly and unexpectedly just a few years later.

What I also experienced in great supply during the early years after her death was a deep presence of her eternal love and care for me. Through every miracle and sign of her continued presence, I could feel her assurance, as if she were reminding me, “Honey, my body may be dead and gone, but I am never far away.”

As long as I’ve kept my mind and my heart open, there have been constant reminders she was near−a red helium-filled, heart-shaped balloon ascending past my office window, a bumper sticker or billboard on the highway with the exact message I needed to hear on my way to work, a google video I didn’t make with her laughter cackling in my pocket on my phone when my spirits needed lifting. Despite the overwhelming grief of losing her, those first two years following Mama’s death have proven to be the most magical of my life.

And now, almost six years later, what’s emerging in me is a deep sense of liberation−a freedom to be me in a way I’ve never experienced before. For much of my mother’s life, I felt the burden of being responsible for her happiness, for her safety, for being who she wanted me to be, often at the expense of being myself.

I would never trade the time we were blessed to share together, especially the last couple of years of her life when I was her primary caregiver and she lived nearby. But I would be dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge how her death also freed me to be more authentic, to release the anxiety not being enough that had always held me captive, to say goodbye (on most days) to the voice of the inner critic I’d internalized for so many years. And the most beautiful part of this freedom has come in recognizing so clearly now, how she also wants this sovereignty for me.

As you reflect back on the people in your life you’ve loved and lost, how do the themes of love, loss, and liberation emerge up for you as a result of the time you were blessed to share together?

  • How has loving those you’ve lost carved more space in your heart for expressing love and compassion to others?
  • How has loss transformed you and shaped you into who you are today?
  • In what ways have your losses liberated you to grow into your authenticity and be become who you are today? What have you let go of and what have you gained?

So this February, I wish you a Happy Earthly and Heavenly Birthday, Mama. You are missed but never forgotten. I feel your arms around me every day.

Thank you, dear reader, for following my blog and for taking the time to read this message. I wish you all beauty and transformation that comes through love, loss, and liberation, whenever and however it appears.

With love and gratitude,

…Donna