cracked open

on grief, rebirth, and the courage to feel yourself again

today is easter sunday.

the fourth since finn died and the first where i didn’t feel the hidden gut punch. where i was actually able to soak in the morning sun, while my youngest two ran around collecting eggs and eating the candy i had stuffed into plastic eggs at midnight, after a 10:30pm last-minute run to target. my two teenagers helping me hide everything before we all finally fell into bed.

yes, i could have gone before the last possible moment, but every year i am one of the last customers checking out the night before. some things just never change.

and yet, something did change this year.

the girls used to get raisins, annie’s bunnies, stickers, and sugar free chocolate chips stuffed into their eggs.

i must say, i’ve loosened up, just a bit!

i used to run a no-sugar regime when my oldest two were little. now my youngest two get all the traditional candy, and my seven-year-old eats until her belly hurts. i’ve swung from one extreme to the other, and i’m at peace with that. i now believe in letting our bodies decide, in learning to listen to that wisdom.

because trauma created such dissociation in my own childhood that i couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t remember anything, and so i controlled the outside instead: the food, the sugar, and all the things i could see and measure and manage.

but when you are finally safe, when you are surrounded by loving humans who, while they may not be perfect, are in your corner, believing you, rooting for you, something shifts.

you start to exhale.

you start to listen to your own body and your own hard-won wisdom.

and sometimes you still make mistakes.

you will have times where you consume too much, be it sugar, alcohol, technology, or stress.

but then you learn to swing back toward balance.

and it’s not because someone is forcing you, it’s because you can finally feel yourself again. and when you can feel yourself, you can hear yourself.

this is how we claim our sovereignty, our ability to have boundaries, to know when something is enough, to know when we must walk away.

this is also the first easter with none of my family of origin present. i won’t speak to the details of that, not yet. there are things still moving through processes that require my silence for now. but what i will say is this: it might be the bravest and most loving thing we do is recognize that family is not only who we were born to. sometimes family is who chooses us, who believes us, and who stays, even when the truth hurts.

and this year, for the first time, i feel something else arriving too, tender and unexpected, like a fresh shoot in spring. it is the kind of gift that arrives one day, without warning, there it is. like the universe decided to keep a promise i didn’t know how to still believe in.

i do believe finn had something to do with it all. i actually believe he is the one sending this little blessing from the universe. and in this season of rebirth, i am learning to receive it.

because after winter must come spring.

i was feeling all of this earlier this morning. the sun on my face, the sound of small feet running through the grass, chosen family, chosen belonging, as real and warm as anything i have ever known.

which is, of course, the oldest story there is. for spring doesn’t ask for permission, it simply arrives. and whatever name we give the story, whatever tradition holds it, the truth underneath is always the same:

life returns after death.

light returns after darkness.

the seed underground is not gone, it is becoming.

ēostre, the germanic goddess of dawn and spring, likely gave us the egg, the hare, even the word easter itself. across cultures she appears in different forms: persephone returning from the underworld, isis gathering what was scattered, inanna rising.

it is the story of a soul that could not be extinguished.

spring reminds us we are always in the middle of a story, never at the end. cycles continue with or without our consent and evolution is a spiral that never ends.

yet sometimes this story finds us in the most tender and unexpected ways. this morning, on our porch, soaking up the early april sunshine, after all the easter festivities, my youngest daughter, sophia, sat beside me and practiced her lines. she is playing lady spring in her first grade play this year. and as i began to type these words, she spoke hers:

“now rest my little fairies of the sun, while i meet brother winter in his last hour of fun. don’t mind his cold voice, my little child, he will be gone in a little while. hold fast with your roots in mother earth’s keep, soon loud king winter will be fast asleep.”

she has been practicing those lines for weeks. and this morning, finally having memorized them, she wanted to recite them to me on the porch, so proud, her face full of that innocent joy that has no shadow in it yet.

i don’t believe in coincidence.

i believe in serendipity.

which is really just another word for the universe showing us how connected we all are.

that sophia was chosen for this part, that she chose this morning to finally say the words by heart, that i was sitting there, beginning to write about resurrection and the return of light, the sun on both our faces.

it is not coincidence.

it is the universe smiling her approval.

we must hold fast with our roots in mother earth’s keep, until that time when we can burst forth from the darkness.

the world is so full of goodness and light, but we must first reach deep into our roots, into our collective and individual shadow land and wasteland full of pain and sorrow. there, buried deep, are our own seeds of love, of truth, of courage. we must be brave enough to withstand the pressure of the cracking open of those seeds. it isn’t a pleasant process, but it is part of life.

it’s when we refuse to let ourselves be cracked by the pressure and called forth by the gentle rains and the healing sun that our pain festers and rots in the dark.

all the broken and dominant systems of our world that would have us forget, cower and escape that pressure, that’s where the real risk lies.

but when we courageously embrace this discomfort, when we sit in the flames as they melt away all that doesn’t serve, when we are willing to shed the layers that are harmful, be they addiction, or hurt humans, or both, that is when we find what has been buried there all along. that is when the voice returns.

just start typing.

just start speaking up.

that’s what it takes.

we stop ourselves so often, so much of the time, so completely.

why do we censor ourselves this way?

did it start when we began to doubt ourselves and our intrinsic genius?

around the ages of 1-3, when we were exploring what it meant to express ourselves with all different kinds of verbal and nonverbal language?

when we began to feel how chaotic and dark this planet of humans was and how much our parents, either genuinely trying their best, or actively abusing us out of unresolved pain, or somewhere in the middle…

when we believed that this must mean we were wrong, or broken, or that silence was the only way to stay safe…

when we learned that reading the temperature of the room and accounting for all the possible threat, while simultaneously shrinking to stay safe…

i believe that is when we learned to turn down the volume or shut it off completely.

then we grow up and repeat this learned behavior again and again and again.

we look for love in all the wrong places, mistaking home for familiarity and familiarity with pain.

but we eventually get to a breaking point, a cracking open place.

it’s a place of no return, where the cost to stay small becomes an ocean too vast to swim through.

after we have almost drowned in this silence filled with sorrow, at that point, we must find a new way.

or we don’t, and that’s when we permanently check out, either to drugs, distraction, or we do succeed in ending it all once and for all.

of course, only those who aren’t here anymore can say whether that choice actually held relief, or just the chance to come back and practice those same lessons again next time.

there is no fire and brimstone hell.

i believe it is all allegory.

the hell we live inside when we have forgotten our soul’s voice and silenced our true selves to the point of oblivion.

though they would have us believing it is a real place to instill even more fear.

i wrote a song about reclaiming ourselves.

it’s called, let’s just be, and was the first song on my album birth of venus.

i created the album as a way to recover my buried voice and regrow my wings that felt like literal stumps upon my back, after my beloved husband, finn, had passed of cancer and as i was beginning to uncover the dark abuse of my childhood.

i found music as my way through.

“baby, we’re so done trying. won’t let us breathe. too much, we’re dying. let’s go home, where we can be free. take back your throne, let’s just be.”

here is the song:

and this wasn’t a call to end it all. it was a call from deep within my soul to make home here.

i believe we all have this opportunity.

i believe we have these challenges and that they are happening for us, not to us, as a way to free ourselves and this beautiful place we call home.

but it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it is happening for us, when we are in the midst of drowning.

it feels like the way hell is described, which is another reason that i know those teachings are allegorical.

that and the fact that i have always been slightly clairvoyant and clairaudient.

once finn died, these psychic gifts, of which i believe we all have access, it’s just that some of us remember more than others how to use our senses that aren’t just the purely physical five senses, opened wider.

so i say this not as a way to say,

oh, listen to me. i can see beyond and therefore you need to believe me.

no. i say it as an invitation.

you too can find the books about being your own medium.

you too can go on a healing journey that helps you remember who you were before it all got buried in the darkness that shapes so much of this hurting world.

and you too can see if what i say rings true for you as well.

it is all a grand experiment.

rudolf steiner, founder of waldorf education that shaped so much of how i understand learning, and how i once taught, and where sophia is currently going to school, with her sweet little play, put it simply and completely:

“feelings are for the soul what food is for the body.”

to know something, we must first feel it.

not just read it, or be mentally convinced of it, but to feel it, the way you feel the warmth of sunlight before you can name what warmth is.

this is, after all, easter sunday, the oldest story of death and return told in the language of spring itself.

the stone rolled away, the body gone and something luminous left in its place.

whether you hold this as literal truth or as allegory, the invitation is the same:

what in you has been buried that is ready to rise?

what sealed-off place inside you is waiting for someone to roll back the stone?

because i have lived it.

i have been in the tomb.

and i have found, slowly, imperfectly, often alone in the dark, crawling on my hands and knees, my way back into the light.

and so can you.

this easter is the first time i have been able to stop and simply enjoy what life feels like after all the burned bridges, the pain, the anguish of losing finn, being cracked open to the memories, and walking away from the toxicity.

and today, on this day of spring sunshine and resurrection,

i feel whole.

i feel safe.

i feel simply free to be me.

and i’ve gratefully got my precious children here too, along for the ride with me.

so whatever darkness you have been sitting in, whatever silence, whatever grief, whatever tomb, it is not the final ending.

i know this as a felt sense now, with the sun warm on my face this morning —

i have finally made it home.

happy easter. happy ostara. blessed spring.

---

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞