Dear Lottie and Tom,
How you handle situations without your Mum, or questions from your friends at school, or thoughts you wake up to, wake up because of, or wake up worrying about – is ultimately up to you. But I’m here to help, when and where I can.
I’ll never know exactly what you’re thinking. I’ll only know what I can see, and what you tell me, but I’m in the fortunate position of having a good idea of how you’re processing things, and how you’re adjusting, as you get older.
I think I know how you’re feeling from time-to-time, and how you’ve travelled over the last couple of years. And how you’ve grown as you’ve begun to realise your little normal, is normal for you, but not so for others.
And for some reason, this last week has been a bit more intense than others, and I think I know why.
Mother’s Day.
A Mother’s Day that will be our third without Mummy.
Grief and true loss are personal… because a person is gone. Your own individual relationship with that person – just gone, lost forever – in person at least.
Relationships are personal. A husband and wife… a mother and child… all personal, and all different. So it makes sense that grief is personal and different for each person.
The loss is yours, and yours alone. Yours to adjust too, yours to learn to live with, and most importantly, yours to shape as you go on to do whatever you put your mind to.
Of course, I’ll be here to support you, to love you unconditionally, and to help you – but I don’t pretend to know exactly how you grieve, or exactly what you’ve lost.
So for me, Mother’s Day is about your loss and your grief. Which is why we’ll take it slowly this week and do our own little things to have fun and to remember. But we’ll also try and minimise the impact of a day, that really lasts a couple of weeks.
I want it to be a #funday, not sad Sunday. Over time you’ll work out your own approach to navigate the week, and the Day, but for the time being, I’m going to try and help you out a little bit. And try not to overexpose you to something you’re still trying to process in your own way.