laugh out loud

the last year came to an end for me me with good music and writing and family and sleep. it was a gentle end to a gentle year. a year full of very welcome newness and healing and knowings and growth. last year things came in steps and brought change -  the kind that is real and stays- because it comes slowly and in layers on top of each other. a year that has made space by untangling old knots. space that lets me free to remember and to welcome what comes.

yesterday was the first day of 2017. yesterday i laughed. a. lot. and it was fantastic. i laughed so hard that i cried with zoe. i laughed at a movie and at dinner with friends and with mike and the kids after dinner. it was a strange thing because i saw something in me that i haven't in a long time. something that feels like it kind of died, or perhaps it was buried alive. you can only really laugh like that when you are untethered. when your mouth is free to open wide and your belly is willing and able to let loose and you can lose yourself in the moment completely. when nothing is so serious or so broken or so painful that real laughter can't happen. yesterday i remembered that for most of my life, i've been lucky enough to have that freedom. yesterday i felt the pure joy of letting go and laughing so hard i couldn't breathe.

then today happened. it wasn't awful. it wasn't dramatic, okay it became dramatic. it was, of course, zoe. or me, with zoe.  i came back from seeing a sick man in the very poor namuwongo community, and she met me at the door. 'where was i? why wasn't i there for her? why didn't i help her when her dad asked her to eat breakfast?' it was the beginning of the derailing. noon and she hadn't yet brushed her teeth or bathed (really the only 2 things we were asking her to do all day) and you would have thought we asked her to run a marathon and take the SATs.

(as usual, the things that annoy us most in other people are the very things we struggle with). what i get most infuriated with zoe about, is her seeming lack of ability to try. to accept her disability and move on with her life. what makes me the most mad is her stuckness. her burdened-ness.  but that has been my problem too.

i could feel the webs. the tentacles, the vines climbing on me and pinning me down. all the fears and pains and angers and guilt that come with parenting a special needs child wrapped around me and tightened snake-like with each breath. i wanted my breath back. i wanted my joy back. i wanted to get out from under this tarp of darkness and LMFBO (laugh my freakin' bum off) again. so i did what i usually do after i verbally lose it but refrain from murder, i cried.

but i today it was different.

i cried in an empowered way. i cried to dissolve the tarp. to allow myself to go right ahead and grief that moment, so i can go and enjoy the other moments. i realized i have the ability to choose to climb out from under. to snip the vines. break the webs and i don't have to stay tethered there!

last year gave me the space i need to begin to see it differently. it's not about holding both the good and the bad and pain and joy. it's about feeling the reality of life and then allowing yourself to let go of the heaviness. to be able to feel the pain, and then to be able to release it.

it doesn't come easily to me- the letting go part. for so long, holding it seemed the only thing to do. releasing it seemed like betrayal or denial. but with the freedom that comes from honestly looking at my life for what it is, not what i wanted it to be, or thought it should be, or wish it would be, i am free to unloose those tentacles. i am choosing to hold on to laughter and freedom and not let that go. i am choosing the re-birth of that part of me that i thought was gone. and it feels so good.