If you are expecting a blog on a quick fix to a summer body, stop reading here.
Yes, this is about losing weight but not the kind that congregates around my thighs or the type measured by kilojoules or lumps of fat.
This weight is the heaviness that you feel sometimes in your stomach, lately more in my chest, spreading to my shoulders and sometimes settling in my heart. It is a dis- ease, worrying kind of weight that you feel for those you love. You can feel it for an elderly parent who is lonely and frightened, for a child on the threshold of adulthood in an unrecognisable world or a friend who is making bad life choices. Sometimes when you love and care for many, the weight becomes especially hard to hold, heavy and also needing to be balanced. You almost need a scale for this kind of weight to make sure that it is distributed evenly and equally. No one should feel left out or neglected. Attributing this extra load to being stuck in the ‘sandwich generation’ or just between a rock and a hard place is perhaps a simplification. Wait for it, here is the link between the weight and the loss.
Years ago I bought a book that has travelled with me to all the places I have lived. It stands on my bookshelf, still relevant and poignantly beautiful to me, despite its yellowing pages and broken binding. ‘Necessary Losses’ by Judith Viorst is a truly authentic ‘how to navigate all stages of your life’ book. She writes about ‘the loves, illusions, dependencies and impossible expectations that we all have to give up in order to grow.’
Re reading excerpts, my thoughts become clearer.
When I think of my mother, I mourn how she used to be and what she was capable of, at the same time I take on more and more of what she used to do.
My children are all of legal age, they are all at home (one leaves for college next year) but still, across the hallway of our bedrooms, I miss them terribly. I miss playing with them and teaching them and them not thinking about ‘wtf is wrong with me’.
Yet even as I ignore the midlife niggle in my left knee and ankle as I run, I appreciate so deeply each and every time I can still pound the pavement.
And that is the message of the book and hopefully this piece of writing. These losses at all stages of life, the ones that make us feel weighed down and heavy, are also linked to our gains.
I cannot wait to hold my mother in my arms again and support her to stand for as long as I can. I will savour every second we have.
I would have been ‘a good enough parent’ if I’ve taught my children to be self -sufficient and I will be there to help them up should they fall along the roads they take. Else I will be standing and cheering them loudly and wildly from the sidelines as they sprint to their futures. No doubt they will be muttering as they run ‘wtf is wrong with you?’
And as for the middle aged me, well, that is a topic for another time.
In My Head 