I originally wrote this as an email that I didn’t send for an entire year. When I finally sent it, I got a fairly positive and large response from it, so I decided to take it to the blog. CW: talking about having lost a parent. Earlier today, I was struggling to create a caption for instagram and…I had things to say, but none of it was happy. None of the things I “should” say on Instagram felt genuine. And showing up genuine is something I try to do. Even if that means being messy. So I just posted something unimportant quickly and called it a day. Okay. Whatever, it’s done. Moving on. But here I am, feeling the urge to write…wanting to lean into the feelings, pushing through the fears that no one cares, that no one will read this, that I will lose followers, subscribers, clients. I try to keep in mind that part of working for myself means that I get to create the terms in which I work. Most of the time, I choose to show up as a whole human. A whole artist. (Woah, there. I just dared to call myself an artist. Someone must have slipped something into my coffee this morning). Okay, Leah. Get on with it. Fine. I am sad, and I feel sort of pitiful. Like I want someone to take care of me. I want someone like Mrs. Doubtfire (not a dude in prosthetic makeup, but a kind, wise, motherly figure) to come into my house, fold my laundry, get my kids dressed and to school, bring a coffee and a nutritious breakfast to my desk, then cup my cheek while she tells me, “Cheer up, deary. It’ll all get done. You’re doing a good job.”  When I was 24, my mom died from cancer (the juxtaposition of this sentence below Robin William’s patting out his flaming boobs…chef’s kiss to my dark fucking humor). Her name was Barbara. She died in 2013. I got married in 2014, graduated college in 2015, became a mom in 2017, quit my other photo job and went full time in my own business in 2020, bought a house in 2020, had my second child in 2021. She missed it all. She didn’t see me begin to heal or find a rhythm of being true to myself. Honestly, I don’t think she got to fully become true to herself or heal much either. Being overwhelmed with household tasks, work, my kids, my mental health (wahhhh, can it be spring please??), navigating being a married person, living in this scary, weirdo, collapsing capitalistic society that gives zero shits about the well being of parents or entrepreneurs unless they can make a buck off of us… It makes me wish I had help. And I do have help. I have amazing friends. Sometimes I hire help. My mother-in-law is lovely and often lends a hand when we need it. But none of it can replace what it would be to call my mom in tears, be completely vulnerable and tired and messy and say, “I can’t do this anymore.” She’d say, “Honey, I’m on my way.” I want my mommy.  “Honey, come home,” is what she said to me when I called her crying from the stairwell of Hashinger Hall in 2007. I had been at KU for 2 ½ months, and a bad breakup had made my already wavering mental health absolutely tank. I didn’t want to be in school, I didn’t know how to cope with the pressure, and I knew I wasn’t ready to be there. It was unknown to me then, but I was depressed. She told me to come home. So I packed up, wrote my roommate a farewell note, withdrew from my classes, and with a final booty bump, I forced the door of my ’94 Chevy Corsica to close on my mini fridge and overflowing laundry baskets. And I went home. I needed my mom. This next part was almost ritualistic, and I often take my mind back there when my heart is seeking comfort: every time I went home, I would go into the house through the basement, climb the stairs, and my mom would come around the peninsula from the kitchen and meet me for the longest hug.  Yes, I wanted you to see exactly how it happened. The best hugs that made everything better.  Mother’s Day 2012, I think. My little brother, my mom, and me. I don’t remember much of the day from the photo above. I think we shared a meal. I would have forgotten about the day entirely, had we not taken this photo outside my apartment. I don’t have enough photos of my mom. She was usually the one taking them. There aren’t many photos with my entire family. Oh yeah, my dad is still around. To be brief, our relationship is quite fractured (and he could have never filled Mrs. Doubtfire’s shoes, not nurturing in that way, ya know). Real talk: I’m not about to turn this into a pitch like…you’re gonna die someday, so hire ME to capture your family forevvvverrrrrr. Nah. Fuck that. You have a camera on you 24/7. Your photos don’t need to be professional to be important.  I share photos of her because she was hilarious and sweet and wonderful, and I just want you to see that. I miss her. I’m sad she didn’t get more out of life. She deserved more. She didn’t get to retire with my dad and travel the country in a camper, stopping at all the good fishing spots along the way, like she’d wanted to. Selfishly, I wish I had her. I can’t help but wonder how much easier life would be had she made it through treatment. I can’t help but wonder if my dad and I would have stayed close. She was the glue. To both my immediate family and extended family. I lost her and simultaneously lost the connections she would have gifted me by bringing family together at every occasion. You might be thinking, Leah, you could call your family and get them together. Yeah. Sometimes I do. But don’t come at me with your practicality, let me be sad. Okay? That’s what I’m trying to do. Trying to feeeeeeel. Feel the feelings. Instead of let them build up and slowly eat at my soul. And you know what else happens when you lose someone? You get to be disappointed at all the people in your life that don’t show up for you the way you wish they would. I used to harbor resentment for some folks that just didn’t show up the way I needed. It hurts. It’s another thing to mourn. But eventually, I learned that we are all doing the best we can. It’s hard to show up. It’s hard to add another thing to your life. Some of us just don’t know how and when to show up (and even more of us don’t know how to ask for help). And in the earlier days following her death, I wondered if my family didn’t want to get together because they’d just be reminded of how my mom isn’t there. Or they didn’t want to see me because I reminded them of her. It’s a pang to the heart, for sure.  Lukita Maxwell as Alice and Jason Segel as Jimmy on Shrinking. Did you watch Shrinking, with Jason Segel and Harrison Ford, on Apple Tv? Jimmy, a therapist, fails to show up his mourning, teenage daughter because he too, is mourning, and facing his daughter is just a big reminder that he lost his wife. I liked the show. It’s funny and heartbreaking. It explores what grieving looks like and the ways that we cope. I saw myself in a lot of it. There’s a scene where Alice is sitting in the dark, crying because she can’t remember what her mom’s voice sounds like. Yeah. I cried with her. Like, I bawled. Grieving is weird.  Seeing someone else grieve can give you the permission you need to feel. I cried more when I watched the Glee episode where Finn dies (after actor Cory Monteith actually died) than I did at my own mother’s funeral. He died just a few weeks before my mom did, but the episode came out a couple months after. And I wasn’t more sad about Finn’s death, obviously. I was just in my own home, alone, and felt the permission to finally release the tears I’d been holding back in efforts to be strong and just keep going.  My mom, my dad, my brother, my mom’s parents. And you can see Rocko running around in the background. Me, my dad, and brother are the only ones that are still alive. And that’s really weird for me to think about. I didn’t start writing this to inspire or teach you anything. At this point, I’m not even sure I’ll send this. I’m just here to show up as a whole human and express the things that feel hard right now. I guess, if I do hit send, I am inviting you to do the same, whatever that looks like for you. Sometimes you have to make space for it, because our busy schedules don’t always accommodate the full human experience (wtf, we gotta do something about that). You know, the pain, grieving, rest, even the joy. Have you penciled in a good cry fest lately? Made any room for REST in your Google calendar? I’m kind of kidding. But also, I’m being serious. I should probably pencil in some time to feel all the things. Our lives keep up busy and tired, and in order to cope with the complexities and tragedies of life, we numb ourselves. We over-consume, overspend, self-medicate, scroll endlessly… And we are up against systems that are designed to keep us doing those things. It is entirely too easy to reach for our phones when we sense our emotions bubbling up. I once read somewhere that when we numb the bad, we also numb the good. You can’t choose what to numb. Your body shuts it all down. RESIST that, and give yourself the gift of feeling this entire, wild rollercoaster of what it is to be a sentient being. If this blog post leaves you in tears, I’m sorry about that. But also, you’re welcome. You probably needed it. I hope you can let those tears out and then go out and find some joy. Some peace. I know the world is on fire, literally and figuratively, but there’s good out there too (and it’s almost always linked to community, just saying). Permission to grieve the life we could be living and also feel the joy of the life we are living. The two can co-exist. We’re in this together Love you, Leah Evans |
Oh Leah! You know I’m not good with words, but thank you for the tearful heartfelt words. The tears are flowing after this read. I love you!