I have written before about how going home can hurt but that it can also heal. Trips home remind me of how very different my life is now. I rarely go to the place where I grew up other than to be with friends for the funerals of their family members. In a few days, I will again make the seven-hour drive back home for a funeral. However, this one feels very different; it is for the funeral of my foster mom. A woman who, along with her husband, took me and others into her home for various lengths of time when parents couldn’t or wouldn’t care for their children. One who willingly opened her home and shared her heart to try to help heal what she was not a part of breaking.
As I reminisce, tears I never knew I needed to cry flow down my face. Even before starting the drive, my mind has traveled back to my childhood. It is a place of chaos, turmoil, brokenness, rejection, and a yearning to belong and be deeply loved. Although I am looking back with more understanding, it also requires that I look back with more honesty. And it hurts. It’s lonely, uncomfortable, and scary in my childhood memories where no one knows the pain, fear, or insecurity. It is a place in me that needs to grieve what I never had – a life without a mother after the age of seven years to protect, nurture, teach, support, and love; a safe place to take my concerns, questions, ideas, and emotions; a place that would not have birthed in me lingering insecurity and doubts. Someone who would have encouraged my ideas, cheered my successes, and been a guide through life’s changes. That is the way my mind imagines life with a mother anyway.
Merely the thought of returning has turned me inside out this week. And yet my toolbelt of experience and education has given me the knowledge that there is always hope available for healing and growth from pain. Grieve well; live well.