What we expected and didn't receive

Rambling notes on longing for a different version of the world

This isn’t the post I was planning on writing today but my fingers led me to my keyboard and here I am, in the early morning while the house wakes up, tapping away to an internal rhythm.

Yesterday was a full day. Life feels a bit like a rollercoaster recently. As a parent of teens and one doing exams, the flux of perimenopause and the global horrors unfolding every day, I feel like I’m forever needing grounding - scrambling for a feeling of steadiness that’s oh so fleeting.

And this is the thread of what feels alive in me today in fact, for months and months(years?) now everything has been tinged with the feeling of shaky ground, and of loss.

Yesterday on the other app I posted a video of a 21-year-old roller skater. They’re skating in the sunshine, music banging, drink and cigarette in hand (ok, not condoning either but you get the vibes). They are, at least to me, the epitome of freedom and the carefree vitality of a 21-year-old.

I can imagine myself as her, wind in my hair, off to meet my friends to do, not much except laugh and talk about whatever takes our fancy and let the golden hour before sunset bathe our faces in warm light. I know I’m projecting but it feels like a moment lost to time, so far out of reach that it’s like the memory of a memory of a dream.

Something in this makes me sad. There is a longing in me that pricks my eyes with tears and makes my heart ache.

I long for the days of carefree delight, ones that aren’t tinged with the heartbreak of genocide and the concern that sits low in my belly about ‘the state of the world’. And no, I’m not expecting sympathy for sitting in my warm safe house mourning the problems I see in the newspaper. My needs are met and my belly is full of food, but I know I’m not alone in this feeling.

This is not the world I dreamed of passing on to my children - to all our children. One where climate crisis means the end of ecosystems and the scars of global warming echo around the globe. One where genocide is ignored by those in power and overconsumption and the gap between those who have and have not widens by the second.

There’s a piece of writing by Nora Bateson (name checking Keri Jarvis for introducing me to her work) that has been haunting me since I read it, I’ll share it at the end of this post (scroll down if you’re impatient like me). It speaks to the ache of passing on a legacy that is lacking.

I don’t believe you have to be the official definition of ‘mother’ to understand this feeling of loss. The sadness that bubbles up from knowing we’re offering forward a crumbling version of the world into the hands of our babies. We thought it would be different. We expected it to be different.

So what to do with these big big feelings - the push and pull between hope and hopelessness that feels like it’s pulling me (us?) apart?

I want to offer something that’s been holding my heart and helping me feel less alone and that is to place these feelings in the context of the work of grief.

Over the last three months, I’ve been learning at the feet of Francis Weller, Holly Truhlar and Steffi Badanek in grief ritual training. It’s a lineage dedicated to relearning how we sit alongside our feelings of loss and digest the bitter tinctures of sorrow.

Exploring how we transmute our grief into something different and perhaps generative. So that instead of only destroying us, our grief ripens our hearts’ capacity to fall in love with the world all over again.

This feeling of loss around what we expected from the world, how we imagined our life to unfold, Francis Weller names as the 4th gate of grief. This is the threshold where we meet what we expected and didn’t receive.

The 4th gate

When we were born into this world we expected a wealth of belonging, a living culture to land ourselves inside of, the warmth of a village.

We thought we were arriving in this moment to know and feel love and togetherness, we expected relation, community, participation - not just with each other and our immediate family, but with the cosmos, our ancestors and nature. We expected clan and togetherness. And in the same breath this is what we expected to pass on to future generations.

Instead we’re faced with separation - colonialist, capitalist structures that want us to be divided and alone. A culture obsessed not with aliveness but with death, and power and holding the individual as god.

We feel the emptiness from what we expected and didn’t receive.

Our lack of belonging, community and participation, the lack of village isn’t a personal failure - we’re simply not living in a culture that’s ALIVE

The grief you feel is real. Bearing witness to ecocide, genocide and never-ending devastation is unbearable. Our sense of safety is being stolen from us.

But this sadness you feel is also an invitation. We can be a loving witness to our feelings without them pulling us under. We can support ourselves and each other to grieve at this gate and feel fortified that we know, beyond our pain, the remedy is available to us.

The medicine to this gate is belonging - in all its iterations, and we will always find our way home.

The sadness we experience at this gate of grief is an offer of guidance. It holds the seed of what we might bring forth into the world to repair our dying culture. To repair our sense of possibility and belonging. We can offer forward something that feels like hope.

Opening ourselves to the depth of feeling of at this gate is a call to responsibility. We are the cabin, the boots, the rucksack for the journey ahead - we can offer ourselves as a home of fortification and belonging to those not yet on the path - we can become the medicine.

I’ve found it resourcing to consider my place in the world from this perspective. In a dying end-stage capitalist culture, where can I offer life, aliveness, connection? What small threads can we weave that might begin to patch up the blanket of the world.

Our acts of resistance and solidarity might feel small and futile but there is still possibility for change - there is still hope.

I refuse to let go of the belief that in the future I dare to dream of, there’s a version of us all skating down the road together in the low sunshine, smiles plastered on our faces, holding hands as the wind dances in our hair - safe, carefree and together.

Mama now - Nora Bateson
(for my children - what it’s like to be your mama)

Your eyes will see the derailing of assumptions.
Your hands will hold the crumble of the old matrix.

I do not have any authority to lean into,
I have empty pockets where parents used to advise their children,
I do not have any maps, myths or mother-wisdom for you.

I can fix your breakfast but not the culture,
And when you ask about how to be a good person,
I cannot lie to you.
Everything you touch in a day is in some way bloodied.
You have been born into an edgeless violence.
But I will not judge or measure you against a bygone metric.

I am here too, ready to learn with you.
Unsure how to be or who to be.

I can only read fragments of your worry,
As the future is a horizon of confusion.
I cannot protect you. And yet it is my only job.
Aching as I witness from this side of the hourglass.

Other generations of parents knew the outlines,
School, career, family, and retirement.
But your life will be another shape entirely.
Forming in the fractures.

When you say you need a goal, I offer you an expired ticket.
Superficial memes roll off the tongue right into your bullshit detector.
Success in the existing system is not going to do you much good.

Your integrity is your rage, and I will nourish it.
Your dignity is your curiosity, and I am tiny beside it.
Your courage is your pain, and I will sing to it with you.

We will riot together.
We will notice the nuance of small graces in the day.
We will wash the grit of loss for each other.

I am your mama, and your future is the story of a storm.
I am your cabin, your boots, your rucksack.

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I’m always open to conversation around my writing or anything I share - feel free to reach out in any way that you need.

Sending love from my tender heart to yours ❤️

Sara xx

Some things you might be interested in:

• I currently have space for new 1-1 clients you can find the information about coaching with me HERE

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PS: If you enjoyed this post you might want to read my last post on grief ⬇️