Recently I pulled a card in my Sacred Rebels Oracle deck, which I highly recommend. I was surprised to see an owl with the heading “The Storm”. It made me nervous. I recently got my second tattoo, an owl, on my forearm. Her name is Betty. She represents my transformation from mother hen to wise counselor. This, of course, will be a huge stretch. I officially as of last week have three teenagers. I thought the older they got the more relaxed I would be as a parent. But no, quite the opposite has happened. 

It seems that with every passing year I worry more about them. I am naturally a professional worrier. As a child I had an undiagnosed anxiety disorder that resulted in some creative coping skills. Before bed I would imagine every potential disaster that could befall my household. Fire, flood, earthquake, WWIII, serial killers, and finally, the most unlikely disaster in southern CA, a tornado. 

I thought that this was a totally normal ritual to protect my family. In my mind, I was simply covering my bases by casting a statistical spell. Don’t they call that “covering the spread” in gambling? Anyway, I thought it was working since I had no evidence to the contrary. 

It turns out that imagining these kinds of scenarios happening to my children is the opposite of comforting. It’s torture, in fact. I have had to come up with a different coping strategy for the harshest reality that we only create our offspring, we don’t get to control their choices or their outcomes. Back to the tarot card. The owl represents finding calm amid a storm. The card reads “I am participating in the storm, but I am not controlling it.”

Wow. That sums up my experience of parenting perfectly, especially teenagers. I remember a pivotal moment when my son snuck out of the house in the middle of the night. I called my aunt Sherry in the morning. “I’m tapping out. I can’t do it anymore, I gotta leave it to the dads. I am not emotionally mature or strong enough for this.” There is a reason she is my longest serving mentor. She didn’t try to argue the point. Instead, she told me about the first time one of her FIVE kids did something risky and she found out about it. She described her visceral reaction as if it had happened yesterday instead of over a decade ago.

There was something so powerful hearing this “same here” story from the person I most closely associate with unflappability. 

A few years ago, my grief counselor Glenda talked to me about the tectonic shift that accompanies major loss. We all experience it at some point, some of us much earlier than others. Then we must make a choice. We either walk forward accepting that the cost of living is loss, or we retreat. We hide, we numb, we lash out. How we incorporate the reality of grief and loss into our experience of each phase of life directly impacts our well-being. It also affects the well-being of those who are connected to us. 

I wake up every day grappling with the facets of this truth for myself and for my clients. Some techniques I have found tried and true for navigating loss and instability are these: 

1. Step out of the fight or flight ring for a minute…give yourself permission to pause. Taking an active break from grief is not a betrayal of the person you lost.
   

2. Ask yourself what you know to be true about your loss in the context of your beliefs? Create a ritual that engages your beliefs and which illuminates the best parts of your relationship with your loved one. 
   

3. Ask yourself what you know about your history of bringing strength to adversity. No matter the size or significance of this strength, think of it as a glowing ember that you can grow and cultivate now. 
   

4. Seek support and counsel from someone who can sit with sadness and uncertainty. This may be a professional or a friend. Make sure they know exactly what you are looking for. I regret the times I wanted to fix my mom or avoid her naked grief at the loss of my brother Will. 
   

5. Consider what you are willing to accept and/or forgive in order to walk forward despite the presence of pain and uncertainty. 
   

If you are struggling with loss right now and want support, please reach out. If you have some strategies that have helped you from your own experiences, please share!