Tag: unconditional love

A Life Erased #familydysfunction #conditionallove

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections16 Comments
Image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay

I wonder if there is anyone who does not contemplate erasure, even if they have never experienced it first hand. When I was a young child growing up in an atheist household, I’d often find myself frozen in a self-imposed terror while thinking about nonexistence when I should have been sleeping. It’s probably safe to say that the concept of nonexistence has driven many lives towards various forms of religions, spiritual quests, and existential crises. After one has experienced existence, the notion of nonexistence becomes a little hard to stomach.

This is not a post about erasure after we die. It is about erasure while we live. It is a story about my personal experience with erasure.

Yesterday, through a Google search, I discovered that my step-grandmother had passed away at the end of last May, at nearly the exact same time my maternal grandmother died. No one told me about her passing. In fact, if you read her obituary, I don’t even exist as a part of her life.

My memory, though, tells a different story. A story of a little girl and her older sister flown across the country to be integrated into a family that wasn’t theirs. A family that struggled, some parts more successfully than others, to accept them. And one of the more successful people with that acceptance was my step-grandmother. She, in my memory, tried the hardest to accept my sister and me as her own, at least for many years. And, my memory tells the story of a girl who loved her step-grandmother and longed to be loved in return. I think I was, at least for awhile.

I once wrote a poem about this complicated love. The poem was about a little girl and her step-grandmother mixing together the ingredients of zucchini bread on a kitchen counter. I couldn’t, though, get it right, as much as I tried to revise and rework it. Which seems fitting, I suppose.

My mind has not erased this memory, even if my muse cannot recreate it. My body remembers the rhythm of the shredding of squash against a grater, the stir of the wooden spoon inside a metal bowl, and the dusty perfume of cinnamon filling my nose. I still use my step-grandmother’s recipe for zucchini bread. I even corrected my mother’s intentional error in the recipe book she gave me years ago, crossing out my maternal grandmother’s name and writing in my step-grandmother’s. Making bread with my step-grandmother is one of my happier memories with her. A memory I have chosen not to erase.

And there are more. The days when she took us on the “fun” instead of the “educational” outings that came with required essay writing. Those rare days when my step-grandmother, my sister, and I would ski through the snowy woods of the White Mountains, or slide with gleeful abandon down the water tubes at Weir’s Beach. My tongue still recalls the sweet pleasure of butter crunch ice cream at the end of a hot summer’s day…

And, that inner child inside of me still wants to be beloved.

Yet, she has been erased. Again. Erased from a life because she didn’t fit herself into it in the way that was expected. A product of conditional love. Still, I refuse to believe my step-grandmother and I didn’t share a love for one another. I refuse to erase the proof that lives inside of my cells. And so I will allow myself to feel this complicated grief, and try as best as I am able, to process its messy, uncomfortable form.

The last time I saw my step-grandmother was approximately 17 years ago, even though we lived, for most of those years, just 15 minutes away by car. I didn’t see her because that was my mother’s wish. Yet, my mother was not erased from my step-grandmother’s obituary. Instead, my mother erased her own daughters.

In the years before my maternal grandmother passed away, she would often talk about my mother and wonder why she had chosen my stepfather over her daughters and grandchildren. I could never answer that question because it was not mine to answer. All I could tell her was that it hurt me. It has hurt a lot of people in many different ways.

Everyone bears their own unique story, but love is the light that threads through all life. Instead of erasing the darkness, it illuminates its shadows and allows us to see them more clearly. I’d like to believe the nudge I have felt over these past several months to Google my step-grandmother was from the thread of love that comes from her. She, after all, didn’t choose to erase me. And, I have not forgotten her.

In Memoriam: “Gram”

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections15 Comments

It’s been a week since my grandmother left this life and rejoined the realm of spirit. She was 94.5 years old, and for the last two decades of her life she awaited the day when she would be rejoined with her beloved husband, the man I used to call Poppy.

Donald and Elizabeth Davis, aka Poppy and Gram

I feel lucky to have had my Gram in my life for nearly half a century. It is a much longer time than most. My mother was a young mother when she brought me into the world, and her mother was there to welcome me into this life. One of the last memories Gram shared with me, as she often did, was of that day.

“Did you know, Alethea,” she reminded me as I sat beside her on her bed, “I was the first person to hold you?”

Gram holding my sister and me, newly born

I know the story well, as I do so many others Gram used to like to share with me. Although we lived, for most of our shared lives, 3,000 miles apart from one another, Gram and I spoke regularly on the phone. When it became evident that she was getting ready to transition out of this life, my sister and I decided to fly the distance to visit our Gram one last time.

It was, in many ways, just like old times. Except it wasn’t summer, there were no longer mystery meals to unwrap on the plane, or cigarette smoke to pollute our lungs. It was, though, just the two of us again, flying west to see the family we had left behind when we were four and six years old, if only for a few days.

And we are both glad we did. We spent many hours of those two days sitting with Gram, trying to help her find comfort in her increasingly uncomfortable body, and even wheeling her outside for some time in the fresh air to look at the gardens surrounding the facility where she lived.

Gram’s weariness with life was apparent, but so was her unfailing love for us. Gram was happy we were there and didn’t want us to leave.

Although our Gram and Poppy had their faults, as all people do, they always exhibited unconditional love for me and my sister. It was something we needed as children, and clung to, despite only seeing our grandparents for a few days a year, if we were lucky.

In those few, brief visits, I have compiled a lifetime of happy memories. Sitting on the sun-soaked deck of my grandparents’ pool and eating homemade dried granny smith apples with Pringles and cans of pop is one of them. As are the moments when Gram would take my hand and trace each finger from the base to the tip before she took her emory board out to shape my nails and push back my cuticles. “You and your sister have such pretty hands,” she’d tell me, “just like your mother’s.”

Mine was a childhood filled with a sense of not belonging, of feeling like I constantly needed to prove my self-worth and earn my keep, but never was that the case at Gram and Poppy’s house. For those few blissful days each summer, my sister and I were able to relish the bliss of unconditional love, and even of being spoiled a bit.

At Gram and Poppy’s we’d watch forbidden cartoons during daylight hours and gleefully open cabinets filled with the junk food of our choosing. Outside, we’d turn handstands on their perfect lawn and lift our feet above the water in their chlorinated pool. Whenever I smell cedar, I think of Gram and Poppy and their home atop Mt. Scott in Portland. It was the closest place to heaven I found in my godless childhood.

Gram and Poppy sold their house on Mt. Scott many years ago, but during our brief trip west to say goodbye to Gram, our father drove my sister and me to see it. It looked the same, but very much changed. Just like life. Just like the entire trip.

The heaven/haven of my childhood

The night before Gram passed, I had a conversation with her in my mind. I told her how much I loved her and that it was more than okay to leave. I knew she was ready. She had been working hard, in fact, at letting go. Gram knew I believed in life after death, even if it wasn’t in the same way she did.

“Send me a red bird,” I requested the following morning after I learned of her passing. “Let me know you made it okay.”

I was in the car, and as I turned the corner, a red-breasted robin stood in the road in front of me. It looked at me, then flew away.

I turned the radio on, and through the speakers came the word “bird.” NPR was doing a showing on birds.

“Thank you, Gram,” I told her. “I love you.”

The Butterfly in the Heart #heartchakra #healing #unconditionallove #butterflysymbolism

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Energy Healing5 Comments

butterflyinheart

All of our healing comes back to the heart. The heart chakra is the seat of our soul, and our connection to the divine energies of the universe. When we have a healthy heart chakra, we radiate pure, unconditional love and open ourselves to the return of this love.

When we experience pain, betrayal, and fear, especially during our formative years when we are most vulnerable, we can learn to protect ourselves by closing off the heart chakra. When we are given love with conditions, or suffer abuse, we adopt the belief that we are unworthy of unconditional love, and that this pure, untethered love is obtainable. Instead, we look at love as something with limits, and build walls of protection around our own inner source of love so that we do not run out of its light.

This system of belief is not always easy to change. It takes security, trust, and faith. When we begin to live with a healthy, open heart chakra, we erase the fear of vulnerability and not being loved by another. We understand, with faith, that the energy we send out to the universe comes back to us in multiplied form. When we realize that we are worthy of unconditional love, we begin to see that love is limitless. From this place of heart-centered pure love, we attract the energy of joy, abundance, compassion and the gift of unconditional love from others. We become magnets for these energies, and are no longer an energetic match for fear, conditional love, and betrayal. This translates to the people we attract to us.

I associate the energy of the butterfly with the heart chakra. Often, during healing sessions, I will see butterflies emerging from the heart chakras of my clients as they shift into self-acceptance and let go of their conditioned fears. The energy of the butterfly is pure joy and freedom. It is beauty without limits. The butterfly teaches us that we have within us the power to transform ourselves, to shed the weight of density, and to grow our wings.

Love

On By Alethea KehasIn Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections4 Comments

It’s one of those words that is as complex as it is simple. Love. Last night, in the moments before sleep, I thought about love, and what it has meant to me in this lifetime. Overcome by a sudden wave of emotion, I realized my soul was asking me to release still more of the dense energy that I have accumulated as a barrier to allowing a complete, unobstructed flow of love energy.

Although I work with the energy of love to heal others, I am also still healing myself. Even though love is the ultimate state and expression of the free soul, many of us carry with us the energy of fear. We are, quite simply, afraid to open up completely into what our egos tell us is the vulnerable state of love. We fear rejection. We fear that we will give love unconditionally and it will not be returned, or worse, we fear we will be betrayed by our love. Our fear creates patterns that are hard to break.

As a child I accepted that love was something that must be earned, even at the sacrifice of my inner truth. I wanted, like all children do, to be loved at all costs. To whom I gave my love to was a choice that I thought was not my own. As a result, love turned into a concept that was muddy and confusing. Love, for me, was complex and dangerous, and it often resulted in pain.

I traded love in for loyalty. I traded love to survive. Yet, still I loved in my desperate and silent way, sacrificing my inner-self along the way. I found myself loving the “wrong” family members, the “wrong” pet, the “wrong” friends and the “wrong” boys, and as a result I welcomed in the greedy energy of betrayal and pain. I was an easy target. When we consistently send out the message of, “I love you, but I must not deserve your love in return,” or “I want to love you, but I am afraid to,” we cannot fully receive the pure energy of love without the trappings of fear.

Through fear we impose a complexity to love that does not exist when love is in its pure, unconditional form. Although love is the highest, purest frequency of energy that exists, it often takes great courage to live in it fully. We, as humans, have complicated our world with fear and all its restraints and conditions. Breaking away from them can make us feel vulnerable, when, in reality, it opens up our inner strengths. It frees our trapped voices. It leads us to our pure, divine, essence.

When we embrace the truth that love is our truth; that love is our divine right to give and receive in pure form, we open ourselves to all of its gifts. Through the family I have created I have learned (and am still learning) this lesson. Love ripples back. It attracts to equal frequency. Pure, unconditional love, frees the soul’s truth. When we get there, we realize there are no constraints. We realize that there is no rejection or pain. We realize that it does not matter that our love cannot always be “returned” to match our frequency, not because we are unlovable, but because a fear exists that may not be our own.

Love, in reality, opens doors, it breaks barriers. When we live in the frequency of love, we free not only ourselves, but raise the collective energy of the world, helping to release the sticky web of fear.