© by Suraj Holzwarth 2022
There is nothing more intense, no labor harder, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, nothing more dismembering to the body and soul than the death of our child. Few ever really understand bereaving parents, EVER. No one that has not walked this path can begin or wants to begin to imagine it. It's a lonely path with few by our side as our child dies again and again, day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year.
The only wisdom I can share with other bereaved mom's is that we both know, and our child tells us indeed they are not lost or dead and we, their initiates enter the relentless burnishing to become, what I have called a "MOTHER OF PEARL." This is a journey we walk together, and I find my way along this path one step at a time, one day and a time, one moment at a time. There are times of deep despair and moments of great revelation. Underneath this rollercoaster and burnishing of our body, mind and soul, is my daughter's and your son's Spirit light, their starlight pure truth. They are patiently guiding us to a higher ground, and if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, they are catapulting us along a possible fast track to enlightenment, awakening to the highest level of spiritual embodiment. They ask us that we might be the ones to rest in peace in the pure knowing that all death is purely illusionary. Though it's way too easy to say this, even overly trite and cliche, we as parents are being struck by this lightning at the center of our very existence, our children some bizarre spiritual bad ass Cupid penetrating their arrow of Divine Love, Wisdom & Truth. This holy teaching is piercing our hearts to the very core, to heal not only the perceived loss of our child, but to the very core all the inconceivable and unresolved loss, pain, and traumas of our entire life including unresolved childhood, ancestral and past life stories. It's an earthquake, volcano, tsunami and tornado of consciousness all wrapped up in one.
For most parents just surviving child loss is a feat. I told myself if I am going to stay in this body (and every mother knows she often thinks of leaving to go with her child) I need to find joy again, I need to not just survive my daughter's death, but thrive. From surviving to potentially thriving, I have learned the only way to face such a challenge, is to surrender and face it head in tiny steps. But I understand how so many parents (as well as family and friends) want to simply run or numb or never get out of bed. Facing it, looking it in the eye seems to be a very dangerous choice and wrought with many pitfalls where we can get so identified with the pain, sorrow, blame, regret, and anguish it could simply swallow us whole. Family and friends vanish because it might touch so much of their own unfinished grief and trauma business. I only know that for me, I must let this burnishing continue, allowing myself to be at the hands of some unknown alchemist, (which seems disguised as my daughter) with hopes that my greatest illusions will cease to evade me, that some base metal that I have repeatedly banged my head against throughout life might now somehow hurt enough for me to stop, ask for divine help and intervention and allow it to be turned into a shimmering gold. That's my hope anyway. Somewhere deep below this emotional muck and mire we both know that our children's light is guiding us through the Darkest Night of Our Soul to a potential awakening we could have never understood, dreamed of or reached alone. Nothing is ever as it seems. At some later point when all this intensive burnishing is complete, and we have let go of all attachments to the past with them and others, we will be the ones to be born anew while still in a body. When people look in our eyes, our soul will be empty of the crazy madness of this world, we will have awakened from this nightmare and its seemingly endless sorrow and despair will be filled only with the pure love light of consciousness. Then we can own the real truth of this dynamic labor process, that although we birthed our children into the physical, they will have indeed birthed us into the everlasting and eternal life. As we gave them life, so will they give us. That's their real gift back to us if we can receive it. It’s what they keep telling us. We will have become a living beacon of truth in a hopelessly numb and traumatized world. We will have shown that the friction of the hardest initiation a human can endure can be used to potentially pierce the veil of all illusions, that it indeed in our seemingly endless anguish had some purpose. We will have come home, the friction having made in us a pearl, a Mother of Pearl.