Brace for Impact: Learning to Live After Loss

Losing Mom was one of those things in life that I couldn't prepare for. You can't prepare for that kind of loss, for that kind of unknown. The years Mom was sick are the same years I was really getting deeply (and consistently) into personal development, and I think my immersion in the world of personal development had a massive impact on how I processed losing my mom, because I could see that the entire experience only had the meaning I gave it. There's no objective reality, there's only perception of reality, so I chose to try to find positive, because that was the reality I wanted to live in. 

What impacts does a person have on your life, even after they’re gone? What are the impacts on your life because they are gone? 

Losing someone close like that is a dynamic experience. You don't process it once, and then it's over. Even today I’m still learning some of the ways I am affected by the loss. 

One impact is that it's reinforced a commitment to excellence in my life, a standard she always strove for. At odd and sometimes inconsequential times I'll think, “Is this how Mom would have done it?” When I'm tempted to short-cut something -- big or small -- her memory is right there, calling me forward.

It gave me "permission" to be (and stay) wildly ambitious. Mom was gifted in so many ways, and she didn't put limits on what she could achieve or go for. Even after having her babies, she showed up big for her passions and callings outside of that one, and that was the model I grew up seeing and knowing. 

She was an amazingly gifted athlete and held several state records in CA, accepting a collegiate scholarship the year Title 9 passed. In those days athletic scholarships for women weren't big money, so she worked to pay her way through college: no parents money, no student loans. She got her Master’s Degree at night while she worked full time, at a college an hour from home, with two toddlers. She ran a successful practice (biz) and seemed to genuinely love her work -- she touched many people’s lives in very profound ways. She was a guest professor several times, contracted to do expert witness testimony for the state routinely, and actively lobbied politicians on matters important to her.  

In her “spare time”, she coached my Little League softball team for ten years, and one of my traveling teams, too. She rarely missed our high school games (never a home game) and brought me dinner to the away games. Not only did she (together with my dad, of course!) fund my travels across the country to play sports, a few times she traveled across the country as well, just to watch.

Add in that she had a husband, 3 active kids, like 19 (ok, 3) dogs, 2 cats, and a pool and house to clean…WTF! When, or how, did she make time for it all?!? Obviously, SHE SHOWED UP BIG, in all the ways. 

I imagine you can see why I might feel like the bar was set high. It makes me a better person to have had such a strong, powerful example, and I am truly thankful every single day to have had her as my mother. But, I didn't use it all in health ways. 

We tend to remember extremes, and to make the ones we deeply love and lose into heroes. And the extremes can be hard (sometimes impossible) standards to live by. Those (above) are all facts, they’re not made up, but I don’t remember the missteps she took walking that path and building that life. She’s gone now, so I will never see her make another mistake. And since the mistakes aren’t the things that stick in your memory, or at least not in mine, I remember her as someone that didn’t make mistakes. I've turned that into an unhealthy standard on more than one occasion. 

Also, for a really long time I chased a certain life path in the hopes of pleasing my mother, even though she was already gone. I didn’t quickly (ummm, ever) forget that one of the biggest disappointments in her life was when I chose not to play collegiate sports. So after she was gone, I made a lot of decisions based on what I thought she’d have wanted, not what I truly wanted.  She seemed to always make the most practical decisions, put her head down, and make them all a raving successes. She wasn’t into the frivolous or the “finding yourself bullshit” (don’t misunderstand, I am into that “bullshit”), which is part of why it took a decade+ after her passing for me to finally launch in earnest the personal development (coaching) business I have now. 

I felt like I had to do life in the way she would have, lest I disappoint her again. 

This method of evaluation, the, “Would this make Deb proud?” method, was the standard I used to evaluate all aspects of my life for a painfully long time, until I finally got sick and tired of trying to obtain the approval of someone that couldn't give it. It’s exhausting and empty. 

As I write this, tears are streaming down my face…I wanted to do so good for her! (Original writing = 2014. No tears in the 2024 update/revision.❤️) I still want to make her proud! And while I do still wish so often that she could be here to tell me when I have and have not accomplished that, eventually I woke up to the pattern that I was playing out, and could see how costly it would be to keep trying to live my life “as she would want it.” I couldn't keep trying to be "the perfect daughter" to a woman who never expected me to be one in the first place, and, either way, a woman who was no longer here to express pleasure or displeasure at my choices.

Her example and standards meant (and mean) SO much to me…how could I "ignore them," any of them, to become my own person, when I'd never again have the opportunity to explain to her that I really respected the beauty and intelligence of her ways for her, but they weren't all my ways? It felt scary to become my own person after losing my mom at such a pivotal part of growing up (just starting to really become an adult). I had so much of my life left to live, years and years of choices and decisions in which I might do, or not do, things that could make her disappointed. And if you think disappointing your live mom sucks, try disappointing (assuming you are disappointing) your dead mom! The weight is unbearable, so I had to set that down. 

Losing my mom never meant that I was supposed to live my life for her.

Eventually, I had to let that idea go, and risk being me. I had to start doing life my way, so I could start growing into the person I'm meant to be, and make the impacts I'm meant to make. Maybe she wants her kids to take a very different path than her. Maybe not. Maybe she’s proud of the choices I've made that were wildly different than the ones she made. And, maybe not. Either way, I can't know, because I can’t ask. But it's a chance I have to take if I want to build my dreams, and, to me, that's a chance worth taking.

Yes, I'm going to be brave enough to evaluate my life based on my own standards, and pursue the passions and dreams that I care about. And I think she'd be proud of my courage to do that. And, even if she's not, she's the one who taught me how to show up like that. So there's that. 😏