Shift

May 27, 2025

There are moment’s I still have to wrap my head around the fact that I won’t see my mom for the rest of my life. I lost her in December and I still have a challenging time understanding that she is gone. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced sadness as deeply as I did the day we lost her. From then, until now, pain has opened me up in ways I never thought was possible. I am beginning to understand that’s the potential blessing of pain. It open’s you up. It makes you feel vulnerable and you come face to face with the universal truth of, loss.

I am sometimes consumed by my grief or, observing it. As the days go by, I observe it, more than I become it, which I am glad for. I have learned so much about myself, about the trauma I was carrying, about the happiness and joy I was shutting out of my life. The experience of losing my mom has brought me face to face with truth’s I never realized I had.

Familiarity is one hell of a veil.

I have never thought of someone as often as I think of her. She is in everything that I do. Everything remind’s me of her. She show’s up in all of my experiences. I have had to root in my beliefs when I lost her because I just had to believe that I would still have the chance to experience her in my life. In some way. In some form. And that, was the blessing for me. I didn’t just have to begin intentionally cultivating a relationship with my God, I had to begin intentionally cultivating a relationship with myself.

Many have been saying, “You just have to love yourself.” Everyone understand’s the sentence, but honestly, what does that even mean? How does that translate into action? Cultivating a relationship begins with honesty. It has to root firmly in the foundation of honesty. Every single meanwhile, fulfilling and transforming relationship must be built on an honest foundation.

To see yourself in a way you’ve never seen yourself is a vulnerable experience. Something that I didn’t realize would happen and I think it’s going to continue happening. In a sense, we are all always going to be in a state of, “becoming.” Once we reach one level, we aim for the next, whether we are conscious of it or not. No matter how little or big. We continue to evolve into someone different. With different perspectives. Those different perspectives shift our whole understanding of the world.

I realize that this post is all over the place. It was beginning to start like a memorium to my mother. Then, it started to move into the truth of pain and how it changes you. Then, it’s about how perspective’s shift. Perhaps, it isn’t all over the place. Perhaps, it is just the reality of change. There are times it seems chaotic, but it is really happening in divine order.

If you take anything from this, it is - let pain open you. Let it teach you what it was meant to teach you. Let it open you up to the reality of loss, change, and miracle’s. Be present with the one’s you love. Do not forget yourself.

I am right there along with you, figuring out what’s next, shifting my perpsective’s on how I see myself and therefore, how I see the world, lifting veil’s to uncover truth’s, leaning into the beauty of living a physical life. In all of it, we are blessed.

Love always,

Ariel