A Palimpsest of Soul and Skin

It just hit me: in the last year—if not longer—I'd have a daily sense of anticipation and anxiety that I'd receive a phone call from my mom saying that something had happened to Granny—that she'd taken sick or died. I carried that fear around for a long time. In fact, I think I've carried that fear around for decades. It became a habitual thing, that anticipatory grief. I just had that old sensation once again, like feeling around for a tooth that I used to wiggle, but finding only space. It's very disorienting. Anticipatory grief has done me no good; I certainly don't feel more prepared for this loss, and it only stretched out the sadness over the years.

I go through phases where I feel positively ravenous for more learning, more creativity, and more activity than time and energy seems to allow. Then I become immobilized and overwhelmed, because I have perfectionist tendencies that end up defeating me before I begin. I often just give up before I've started.  At other times, I will start with a bang, only to fizzle out. I'm  still  beating myself up for what I call "my Garden of Shame”. 1  Now, to be fair, we'd only  just  moved into a new rental house in February of this year, so starting a new garden (as an absolute beginner) was quite ambitious. Additionally, we were decompressing from a cross-country move a few months previously, as well as reeling from Warren's unexpected unemployment, not to mention acrimonious court shenanigans over the Christmas holidays involving my ex-husband and his impulsive and ill-advised plans to relocate  both  of my kids from Qualicum Beach to Fort McMurray w...