Disclaimer: This article will be long. I’m sharing a bit of my pain and triumph dealing with loss. I promise I won’t have any more long articles but I had to share…. This gives you a glimpse into who “The Muslim Therapist” is…..
The struggle was real to write this article…. I started on several pieces…. NOTHING felt right, until today, January 18…. I sit laying in my bed with tears streaming down my face. Today is the day my universe crashed and nothing has been the same since. This is the day, I lost my dear mother. I was all of 19 years old. I had everything I could think of going for myself. If you know me personally and you’re reading this, you know, if I’m nothing, I am CONFIDENT. Well back then, I was a bit over-inflated….. I used to call myself the “Golden Child” because everything I touched or attempted to do turned to “gold.” As the youngest child of two, I didn’t know what “ No” meant. My dear mother and brother truly treated me like their nickname for me, “Princess.” I struggled painfully to get through the murder of my older brother when I was 17 years old. I had just had the best time of my life at an Ivy League university and then “Boom,” life-altering change. My brother who was on the way to law school was brutally murdered. My brother was more a father to me than my daddy. He was the epitome of what a big brother should be. He was my first playmate, a friend and most importantly a PROTECTOR. I felt safe in the world when he was around. I could truly be me. He and my mother truly fostered an atmosphere in my home where I could be me without any hindrances. I went into a deep depression (not clinical, but it certainly disrupted my regular functioning). I tried to stay upbeat and chipper but it was all for show. I was wounded so deep. I was young, pretty, smart, resourceful and had the world at my fingertips, yet I was depressed. It took to this moment of writing this to truly recognize that. I remember there was the handsome young man who eventually went on to play professional football for the Minnesota Vikings, who was so enamoured with me. He worked at the mall. Going to the mall was my “therapy” at the time. This fine brother would break his neck to be at the front of the upscale men’s clothing store he worked in to see me pass by every Saturday just to ask the same question, “ Can I have your number?” To each week get the same response “ No, but you can talk to me now” said with the biggest smile I could muster up in my sadness. This discourse went on weekly for nearly a year.- How could I, who was totally boy-crazy at the time, reject the attention I was getting from this popular brother in the city of Cleveland (he actually lived in Euclid, a suburb of Cleveland)? I was going through GRIEF and nothing or no one could lift my spirit until I had grown more comfortable with my pain. What's this concept of “Growing More Comfortable in my Pain?” I’m going to come back to that….
My momma…. Words cannot describe how supremely magnificent she was. My mother was the epitome of femininity (did you see my first blog post on Femininity?). She carried herself with dignity, grace, and pride. She taught me to love the skin I was in and to absolutely love my height! She totally made me feel good about being the perfect height to be a model. She taught me how to walk and carry myself in such a way that I would glide into a room, effortlessly. My mother was the BEST cook and baker. She never used recipes and everything was perfect and yes I am absolutely biased. She taught me about pain in life. She would always tell me that smiling faces can lie, so always be on guard. I later realized this came from hurt and pain she suffered in her younger years but the lesson stuck nonetheless. My mother was my everything.
After my brother’s death, my mother went into what I can now diagnose as clinical depression. My mother’s intense grief turned into depression which flourished into my mother losing the will to live after her first born child was murdered. My mother died from pneumonia and complications with her heart as a result of the pneumonia. She died A YEAR AND FOUR MONTHS AFTER MY BROTHER. In less than a year and a half, I lost my entire immediate family. I was officially alone in this world. I was no longer the “Golden Child,” I was, in fact, a “Motherless Child.” During this time I muddled through college. I still got all A’s as I was always used to that but my spark was gone… I started out being a pre-med major but quickly changed that because my mother wanted me to be a doctor, not me. I took a path to try to figure out this thing called life…. I was BLESSED with a cadre of friends who supported me to no end. That helped me slowly but surely lessen the pain and grief. I graduated from undergrad school and then started my journey into adulthood. I spent most of my early adulthood feeling hostage to the circumstances of my losses. I hated being a “victim” of sadness and pain. I couldn’t stand to see the looks of utter sorrow in people when I would share my story of loss (I did not add that my daddy was gone as well). There are definitely details, that I won’t share that occurred in my life but needless to say, I survived.
“Growing Comfortable in my Pain.” As you have figured out by now, this article isn’t talking about the traditional stages of grief, as a matter of facts, there isn’t anything traditional about grief and loss. As I matriculated through life, I found myself growing further and further away from the person, I once was. This isn’t a bad thing if you didn’t like from whence you came, but I actually did. I saw myself becoming someone who was completely unlike my former self. I saw myself making excuses for my failures (failures as it related to my specific path in my life). As much as I loved my brother and my mother, I could Not continue to use their loss as an excuse for my not attaining certain goals or milestones in my life. I decided that I would change my life and change how I perceived their loss. This thing of “Growing Comfortable in my Pain,” meant that regardless of how odds may have been stacked against me (self-imposed or otherwise), I would go on to create some new happier memories or goals in their name and honor. I had to understand that the pain of their loss would NEVER change. I would ALWAYS LOVE MY MOTHER AND BROTHER, bottom line. I knew that I had to come to terms in my LIFE, of their passing. I could not stop living my LIFE to the fullest because they were no longer here. Though I believe my mother lost the will to live because of the loss of my brother, I could not and would not go down that path. I am happy to say that this blog “The Muslim Therapist” and the fact that I am a therapist is a testament and honor to my dear momma and brother…..
******It was so cathartic writing this. I had to put a bit of my therapy in writing…*****
