Summer 1987
You’re the type to hold things in, sweetie – you shouldn’t though – I’m trying to encourage you to get your hurt and anger out when you feel it. Bottling it up will only hurt you more, Christianna. You don’t have to be tough on the outside- that’s what you do now – you play it tough, nothing hurts – nothing can get you. But it does. Work at getting things out, okay sweetheart?
My mom wrote this when I was 6 years old. Twenty-six years have passed, and it still holds true in terms of how I deal with my hurt and anger. It is an excerpt from a journal she wrote for me when I was a child. Starting on August 14, 1985, the day I turned 9 months old, when she was 29 and ending with the last entry, on my 7th birthday on November 14, 1991, when she was 36, it chronicles my development and our relationship.
The purpose of the journal was so that I may have a documented account of who I was – who her and I were – when I was a baby. She described my personality, my likes and dislikes, lists the words I say or, rather, mispronounce, details my “firsts” and revels in the joy of her relationship with her daughter and my discovery of the world. Inadvertently, she would express her feelings as a mother, as a daughter who had recently lost her own mother, as a new bride, as a woman trying to find her happiness in the confines of modern society and as a person trying to find the meaning of life. It is a journal filled with love, advise, questions and human connection.
The final year of entries takes a turn. Her voice becomes more urgent, what was once inadvertent digressions into her personal feelings, was now intentional conveyance of her truth. She had been diagnosed with extremely aggressive breast cancer that had passed into her lymph nodes and was given about six months to live. Now, this journal may be the only tangible mean by which to tell her little girl who she is (perhaps, was), what she believes (believed) and what she stands (stood) for. Luckily for my brothers, father and I, my mom beat the odds and lived 15 years past the predictions, until she succumbed to metastatic breast cancer.
I received the journal after she died, in September 2005, along with some other keepsakes she had held onto for me. I couldn’t read it. The sight of her handwriting alone generated unstoppable crying, it sent me into a tailspin. I had grown up with her letters; she always wrote us cards, left notes everywhere, her handwriting was so characteristically “her.” The ink was too much for me to absorb. I cried endlessly, which was a frequent occurrence even without the journal. And what if I cried over these pages, blotched the ink, distorted everything and destroyed the journal? It was all too much.
So, the journal remained in the chest in which it came. Locked away. I would open it to a random page now and then, read snippets, but the tears always overwhelmed me. I was flooded with the memories, the loss obstructing my breathing and I literally could not read. Over the years I had managed my sorrow, managed my loss, placed a tarp over the void and did not cry with every reminder, I could even discuss her life and death with relative composure, but this journal… was my Achilles heel.
In the summer of 2017, I found myself in a very dark place. My relationship with my family was crippled, my professional life was nowhere near where I had hoped it would be, I was in the middle – or maybe the final – stages of the painful dissolution of a friendship that had once been my port in the storm, the closest thing I ever felt to having a sister, and felt out of place in society as a woman and individual. I could no longer articulate where I was going, no longer identify what I wanted, I had lost my way, I had lost myself.
In these moments of despair, I missed my mother most; invariably looking up to the sky, or out at the Aegean, talking to her. I needed her counsel, her support, her love. How do I fix what is broken? How do I even identify what exactly is broken to begin with? Where do I fit into my own life? Why do I feel so powerless, when by all accounts, I am a warrior! Why did she have to die before I had my answers? Why did she have to die before I had time to grow up, grow out of being her daughter and become her friend?
So, thirty-two years after she started writing the journal, twelve years after first fingering through its pages, I turned to the last remaining, untapped resource, my journal, in search of, if not answers, guidance. Despite experiencing severe dehydration, both the journal and I survived the emotional cascade. In fact, I more than survived; I was empowered, not because she gave me answers, but because, among other things, she reminded me that I’m not alone in my uncertainty, I’m not alone in these questions, we are not alone and that together, through acknowledging and embracing our shared humanity, we find the courage to power through.
I also realized that aside from facing similar issues as individuals, we also viewed societal problems in the same way, in fact, in thirty years, our world had not changed all that much. Women had yet to find equality and, actually, our current administration seemed to be doing all it could to undermine years of progress in women’s rights. Racism was not only still in existence, but it was flaring with extreme examples of police brutality, racial profiling, acts of outright hatred and expanded beyond the black community to include additional races, Latinos, Muslims and members of LGBTQ. We were entering our country and soldiers into wars of profit in the Middle East, increasing the defense budget and, for some reason, continued to debate the value of spending on educational and universal healthcare. What have we been doing for thirty years?
Had I read this journal at 20, I do not know if I would have been able to relate to most of her writing. Had I read this journal before, it probably would have been my mom writing to me, her daughter, and of course I would have come away with a lot, but I would not have had time to develop questions brought on by adulthood, the time to evolve into the adult woman I am today, and her words would not resonate with me on these levels.
Today, not only was I reading my mom’s words to me, an extremely personal conversation, today I was also entering the mind and soul of a young thirty-something year old woman, who wrote to her baby daughter, in an attempt to explain what it means to face the loss of her parents, the loss of herself, investigate the meaning of life and find justice and joy in a frequently-unjust world.
Today, we were two thirty-something year old women, dealing with life, separated by three decades. Today, we identified with one another, today we broke through the mother-daughter relationship, today we were peers. I identified with her loss, with her fears, with her ambition and her drive, with her hope and her questions and at times, her desperation; in this parallel universe, we are friends.
As I read the words of my mom and friend, the woman who knew me best, I realize that my mom had identified who I was, at my core, the good and the bad, from when I was a young child. She addresses issues and advises me on issues that I am still struggling with today, characteristics of mine that I consider impediments, obstacles to my growth and success. So, determined to find my way out of my tunnel, I decided to begin the process by heeding her advice and getting the hurt and anger – and the love and hope – out.
In Finding Diamonds in the Snow I plan on unbottling the hurt. I will share the experience of reading and responding to my mom’s journal entries, as a way to deal with my feelings of loss, try to find answers to my existential questions, discuss social issues that matter to me and hopefully, in the process, encourage others to share as well, thus bringing together a community of people who find strength and solace in our shared humanity.
The title of the blog reflects the courage and hope with which she lived her life and it also reflects the courage and hope I wish it can bring to anyone going through their own loss, be that the death of a loved one, divorce or breakup, falling out with a friend, the loss of one’s self or anything else that causes a spiritual void.
