Lessons From Loss – Behold My Father & Mother Within Me

~ January 1, 2024

At 15 years old I experienced the dramatic and traumatic sudden loss of my mother in physical form in a drunken driving accident. Just two months prior to her accident I had also been reeled deeply by yet another dramatic, sudden loss of a best friend in another tragic accident. Both sudden and forever life altering.

It took me years of both debilitating addiction and what is now lasting sobriety of almost 19 years to fully realize how physical death of those we hold dear can be perhaps one of the greatest catalysts for inner transformation available. Above and beyond any other teaching, our own lives are the most sacred Sadhana (disciplined practice) we can experience and learn from.

Our very own life is our most holy guru, teacher and purveyor of true wisdom. And it is in quietude and deep surrender that our journeys in life up to this very moment will reveal to our own hearts the lessons of both our pain and joy. This pure, crystal clear seeing and clarity of revelation is rare and seems to be a gift of pure divine grace.

It is not simply an understanding on a mental or even an emotional level but is more akin to the phenomena described by the mystics, sages, prophets and holy men and women throughout the ages. 

For it is in a flash, perhaps milliseconds, yet truly it is outside of time, that years of our life’s experiences flash before us. Gracefully revealing what some of us already knew. That there was always higher purpose at work. Always. Always. Yet now grace has said here… hear – see, KNOW.

I spent what seemed like forever transmuting the pain of my mother’s physical death and absence into a meaningful life experience, both for my own self and those I would come to love. I knew that if I did not, that it meant I had also died along with her. And this existence and that life lesson would have been all in vain.

I knew even then at 15 years old, at the beginning of that grief, that for her to die, meant life for me. Even the bitter pain, tended well over the years, became like perennial rose petals sprinkled all around me, always softening the harshness of this mortal world. Also softening my own tendency towards harshness and hardness with others. The day my earth mother died was the same day the mother within me was birthed. Behold the mother within me.

Now that my earth father has just passed on, I solemnly welcome with openness, awe and expectancy that great mystery to also be revealed in his absence too. Come now ye wise counsel of majesty and show me, teach me, reveal to my heart alone, this truth I know now. Behold the father within me.