{"id":3643,"date":"2025-09-28T13:56:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T17:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/?p=3643"},"modified":"2025-10-01T15:59:54","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T19:59:54","slug":"in-the-shadows-of-mystical-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/?p=3643","title":{"rendered":"In the Shadows of Mystical Grief"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

By Deborah Blackwell<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

After my mother\u2019s long, exhausting, and tumultuous years of life-and-death illness, she finally entered hospice last August. She hung on … and on … until five months ago, when she experienced a dramatic, life-ending event that mirrored her life’s chaos. This forced me to step away from my own life to address this intense situation, all while trying to deal with my son’s now-cured cancer, my then-jeopardized job, a fragile world order, and exhaustion from years of debilitating Long Covid.<\/p>\n

Life, during my mother\u2019s awful ordeal and afterward, felt like an overwhelming, unsustainable tangle of what-the-f*ckness<\/em> invading every minute of each 24-hour day. Everything I believed I had control over unraveled, leaving me with an engulfing, fuzzy feeling I came to call Mystical Grief.<\/p>\n

But what exactly is Mystical Grief?<\/p>\n

I thought I could sort it out with the free grief support hospice offers for 13 months after a loved one passes. Note: She wasn\u2019t my loved one; she was my mother. I could write my own book with Jennette McCurdy\u2019s title, \u201cI\u2019m Glad My Mom Died.\u201d Sorry, not sorry. My mother was abusive, and my life with her was traumatic. When she died, I thought I would feel better, but instead, I just felt sad that she had left everything unresolved. No apologies, no reconciliation \u2014 just shocking, horrible skeletons in her closet that sprang out on us every time Sir Husband and I were cleaning her house. These tragic skeletons deepened the mystery of her and my life with her. And by default, added wrinkles to my Mystical Grief \u2014 this confusing, multilayered, unsettling, uncomfortable entity that hovers in, around, and over me, asking for a lot. Hey, you, pay attention. And good luck figuring me out.<\/p>\n

That blob of what-the-f*ckness didn\u2019t go away when she died either, as I had hoped. It just compounded a bigger question: What\u2019s the meaning of life? Seriously? What?<\/p>\n

As I stood at the kitchen sink rinsing out my empty Fage zero percent milkfat plain yogurt container this morning, I wondered, \u201cIs this the meaning of life? Rinsing out an empty container? Be mindful, Deb. In a monastery, you\u2019d be cleaning the bathroom floor with a toothbrush. This is definitely better.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t even like plain yogurt, but a few years ago, my nutritionist told me it was the best way to start the day, and I\u2019ve been doing it every day since. It\u2019s a habit \u2014 a core part of my morning routine \u2014 just like the daily calls, drama, and demands of my mother until the day she died.<\/p>\n

So, if I can figure out the meaning of life while rinsing out a yogurt container, then I\u2019m on track, right?<\/p>\n

Nope. Nothing about the meaning of life has been more complicated to clarify after this confusing, chaotic, and exhausting past year. Mystical grief compounded it, and navigating each day has often felt like driving a bus without wheels. But as the weeks and months go by, and the havoc turns toward recovery, my anger has shifted into hurt. Deep, profound hurt, now amplified by a sibling, a mirror image of my mother. The chosen one in charge of her estate has taken over where she left off, and the sadness that has sprung from this lifetime\u2019s family of origin can often feel overwhelming.<\/p>\n

The lovely hospice social worker helps. Basically, I get to unload all my upset into my webcam, and she shares a nugget of wisdom in each of our Grief 101 therapy sessions. Her medical team knew about my mother; they saw right through her fake \u201csweet old lady\u201d manipulation and validated what I had been begging people to notice my whole life.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s human to need refuge, or sanctuary. And we look for it from others, from our surroundings, from self-help books, from therapy sessions, or even by doom-scrolling. We look for ways to avoid or escape dealing with the ickiness in our lives, our pain, our suffering. Suffering makes us feel deserving of, or entitled to, all kinds of things \u2014 revenge, retribution, answers \u2014 but mostly, I think, it\u2019s relief. We want relief.<\/p>\n

And last week, I realized that nobody and nothing can truly fix this or provide relief for me, except me. I need to learn how to live from my heart, not from my hurt.<\/p>\n

Grief IS mystical. It\u2019s complex. Scary even. And it multiplies, layer after layer of unprocessed emotions that we didn\u2019t even realize were in there, reveal themselves like an unsupervised archaeological dig.<\/p>\n

But this beautiful nugget from the social worker was a game-changer: \u201cPlace your love where it needs to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m learning to do that \u2014 bring heart energy, lovingness, softness, ease, to whatever, whomever, wherever. Relief is not in resistance. It\u2019s in learning how to live inside the mystery of life, alongside Mystical Grief. And for me, for now, that means everything.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[64,74,61,50,46,48,49,66,65,57,100,62,32,94,24,45,31,43,44,58,63,77,67,56,59,84,106],"class_list":["post-3643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-acceptance","tag-adulthood","tag-belief","tag-calm","tag-change","tag-choice","tag-comfort","tag-courage","tag-empowerment","tag-family","tag-future","tag-growth","tag-happiness","tag-healing","tag-insight","tag-journey","tag-joy","tag-life","tag-life-lessons","tag-love","tag-peace","tag-purpose","tag-relief","tag-self-love","tag-stress","tag-vulnerability","tag-well-being"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3643"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3650,"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643\/revisions\/3650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deborahblackwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}