By Shae Hadden
Bio

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Snow blankets the crocuses today… I can see the remnants of autumn
leaves nourishing the roots of these fragile blooms, reminding me that
the blossoming of new growth is part of life’s natural cycles of birth
and death.

I’ve been looking at myself and my life from the perspective of ‘new’ for the last while…(see my post on the Mirror of Old)
and the view has freed me. Each morning, I’ve taken an extra moment to
really look at myself in the mirror, to take in the woman staring back
at me as if she is someone I’m creating anew each day. The signs of age
are still visible, but I see something else I hadn’t noticed before.

I
can see my mother in my eyes, a gentle soul now departed, her blue eyes
smiling back at me with kindness and quiet questions. If I’ve chosen to
create a ‘new life’, then why haven’t I forgiven
myself for what I’ve done and what I haven’t done in my life so far?
Why am I hanging on to my past perceptions, memories and patterns? And
why haven’t I let go of the grief, guilt and loss I’ve carried since
her death? Through my flood of tears, all I can see this afternoon are
these crocuses gloriously and boldly sharing their golden essence with
the snowy world.

In
the peace after the storm, I realized that all these incompletions from
my past—unfinished conversations,
unexpressed ideas, unshared acknowledgements, inflicted hurts, withheld
forgivenesses—have truly become baggage, unnecessary to carry on my
journey, relentless in their gravitational pull, a weighty and
weightless limitation on my ability to be the ‘new’ me I’m declaring
myself to be. So I’ve chosen to let go of the past, to forgive myself
for being ‘imperfect’, and to ackowledge that I make a difference just
by being in the world.

It’s
been two years since my mother died, and today, for the first time, I
can actually see myself as a whole woman, perfect in my imperfection,
and even perhaps, ‘beautiful’ in my own way.

I am profoundly grateful for this new perspective…thank you, Mom, for the questions.