Resurrection...

For all of those who celebrate, Happy Easter.  This day has always just been about chocolate bunnies and finding eggs for me.  I didn’t grow up in a religion.  I think I was like 10 before I even understood that there was a religious significance to this day.  Today, it is still about the chocolate bunnies.  Not so much the eggs anymore.  I would literally be dyeing them and hiding them from myself.  Not really that good a time.

So if today is about the resurrection of Jesus for you.  I hope you have a day that contemplates his come back.  The sacrifices he made and the love he gave in the face of great cruelty.  While I am not a follower, I am a believer.  I think Jesus was a bodhisattva.  A bodhisattva is an "enlightened being" in Mahayana Buddhism this is someone vows to delay entering Nirvana—the final, personal liberation—to instead remain in the cycle of rebirth and help all sentient beings achieve enlightenment. Driven by compassion, they represent the ideal of putting others' happiness before their own.  And I seriously mean no disrespect to anyone Christian by my ideas.  I am just sharing how I think of Christianity and Jesus.  I am sure a lot of you think about this very differently and I think that is cool.

So on this day Jesus rose from the dead, I woke up thinking about all the times I have risen from the dead.  And, of course, I mean the metaphorical dead, I do not believe I have ever been significantly close to dying.  Although I am sure when I hit bottom with alcohol I was much closer than I knew.  Also, that first time with COVID, I was praying to live and die at the same time...

Of course there was the hitting rock bottom.  I absolutely rose from the dead that time. I was on a nightly suicide mission and kept failing.  And then one day, I woke up and everything changed.  I changed, how I lived changed, who I hung out with changed.  Everything about my life was different.  I can absolutely see there is before sobriety time and an after.  And the two me’s barely resemble each other.

When I left my marriage was another resurrection.  I am sad to say that being married felt like a death to me.  I didn’t feel seen or heard or appreciated.  I lived in service to others and there was no place for me.  I had two roles:  wife and mother.  And those were the only two universes I could live in.  When I left and got my own life, one that incorporated the mother role, I had time and energy for the me role.  And that felt like a resurrection.  A conjuring up of the woman I was before I became a wife and then a mother.  And I want to clarify, this was not because of my ex-husband.  This was not his fault that I felt this way.    I am just as much responsible for becoming invisible in my own life.  I did it and allowed the situation to occur.  But I will also tell you that when I left, I was reborn.

The first time my heart was shattered I was 47.  I know that seems like a very old age to experience your first heartbreak. But it was mine.  I don’t think I was really capable of great love before that time.  And fuck, did I love that guy.  Intensely, passionately and completely. So when it all went to hell, I felt like dying.  I thought about it a lot.  Not like suicide, but I just couldn’t imagine going forward in my life without him.  I cryked a lot (crying + hiking).  It was the only thing that saved me.  Cryking was my salvation, it was my resurrection.

And I suppose right now I am kind of in yet another resurrection.  My kids are adults and branching out on their own.  21 years of being a mom on the daily is coming to a close.  And I don’t mean that I am not still a mom on the daily, I will always be a mom on the daily.  But my kids are on their own and doing their own thing and the heavy lifting of motherhood is changing.  And I am left with myself.  And so it kind of feels like another death, and another chance to be reborn, again, still.

I rise up from the dead a lot in this life as it turns out.  The above only mentions the big ones.  There have been many smaller deaths along the way.  Times where I was lost, dying and then found a renewed purpose and meaning in life.  Smaller resurrections that didn’t come with sweeping changes so much as there were minute changes that altered me in significant ways over time.

I have been restored to life repeatedly. Sometimes against my will.  Thankfully.  I mean, I wish I could say that all my resurrections were initiated by me, but often, they were not.  I was forced into some sort of death, and then something beyond my grasp and understanding, moved me forward.  Brought me back to life. Restored me in a very life affirming way that made me realize that what I was doing right before that metaphorical death was not really living.  It was surviving.  And anyone who has lived and survived can tell you they are not the same!

Today, on this Easter Sunday, I find myself grateful for all the resurrections in my life.  All the times I have been living like I was dying and then, through a turn of events I didn’t plan or orchestrate, I experience a “death” and that death leads me to a rebirth.  And while mine have never been as dramatic as Jesus, they have altered my life and world completely.

Today I am grateful for all of the resurrections, mine and others.  I am grateful for this life and for all the deaths that came for me that didn’t take me completely out of the game but did cause me to stop and re-evaluate how and why I was living.  I am so very grateful I am still here and given yet another chance to live well, and in service and with great love and awe.

Again, still...