“Fight Like Hell” Swinging Back at Depression.

Life has been wild. For the last few weeks we’ve been navigating my mom’s entry into Hospice care. I’m grateful for our prayer warriors and friends that have surrounded us as we have this time with mama.

I can’t even lie ya’ll my heart has been taking a beating, child. I have been stressed to the literal max. Worried constantly about “what’s next”. I’ve been feeling defeated at times and tired of navigating so many various challenges back to back. Whew, deep breath.

I often feel like my life with mom is flashing before my eyes every day. All the memories, re-reading all the emails and so many pictures. It’s hard sustain hope in this place because there are some very obvious things in front of me, one of those being that mama’s condition has changed quite rapidly. The other being that I have to find a way to live once that moment of transition actually arrives.

I have to be willing to take every lesson, every trial and use it as soil for the next part of my journey. Depression, has tried to convince me that I won’t survive without my mom on this physical plane. Depression has made me question why our family legacy has played out in this way. Depression has made me question whether I’ve done enough. Depression has made me feel hopeless to watching the daily changes in seeing mama slip away from me. And some days depression wins and I have to lose myself in sleep or a few old movies to find my way back to center. Some days depression wins and I am enraged. Other days I am operating with a strength that I know is not my own.

It has been painful at times to find this center and this grounding in the midst of such extreme lows and chaos. If you’ve ever been with a loved one through the care journey you know all to well the daily feeling of distress that just comes with loving our people deeply.

Every phone call sends a pause into your spine. You’re exhausted from restating the same story to social workers/nurses/doctors/insurance companies. Fighting between how do you maintain being engaged in your work (I.e making a living) and spending invaluable time with your people. This system, that we are all paying into doesn’t do much to ease the burden that many families face when it comes to end of life planning.

Day by day I’ve been asking myself what I need to focus more on to allow more ease/flow/connection vs. worry/rush/distress. Coming back to this idea of “holding on to hope” I’ve asked myself what am I hoping for? A change in condition? For this to not have happened? For there to be some magical change in the coming days? I’ve often felt gaslit by this idea that I needed to have hope for something that you could obviously see was moving in a different direction.

Some people may call this not having faith but I believe that God also gave us common sense and logic for very good reasons.

Instead of existing in this bypassed condition of operating in a faith that denies the current reality. Instead I want a faith and a hope that allows me to open my eyes to the current reality. Instead I want to embody a faith that doesn’t view death as the final say so. I want to embody a hope that leans more on creating new realities from the seeds planted by the current one.

Proverbs 18:21 “There is life and death in the power of the tongue”. Meaning we have the authority over our lives to actually create new worlds. We can breathe life into an experience or we can die in the circumstance.

There’s also a time and place to apply this lesson. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 also reminds us that “To Everything There is a Season

1To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” 

There are seasons in our lives and we have to know what it looks like to have hope/faith/joy in that particular season. So now-when I think about having hope in this season of our lives.

I am reminded of this new Netflix show “The Night Gaurd”. In one of the scenes the woman is about to be attacked and the emergency dispatcher is helping her hide in the home from the intruders while on the phone. He says to her that in the event that the intruders do find her “fight like hell”.

And that’s the hope that I’m embodying right now - I am fighting like hell against guilt, defeat, uncertainty, rage, this system. And I am fighting like hell to stand my ground, to keep caring for myself, to keep showing up, to keep believing that there is more life left to live.

I am fighting like hell to remember the seeds my mom planted in me throughout my life. I am fighting like hell to provide her a peaceful transition. I am fighting like hell to release myself from the painful memories we shared. I am fighting like hell to believe that I am enough and that I know enough to make it through this season.

So today for Messy Movement Monday I hope you fight like hell. For your joy, for your peace, for your pleasure..

See you on the dance floor,

Rashi

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