Mother's Day Round 2!

A special guest essay on love and hope

Trigger Warning: Child Loss

My Friends!

I am so excited to introduce you to Michelle Hord. Michelle is a dear friend with a very tragic story that she has transformed into something hopeful and beautiful. In 2017 in the midst of a brutal divorce, Michelle’s then husband killed their child. I know that’s unimaginable and it probably seems like an odd story for me to share on Mother’s Day but Michelle’s story is one of truly learning to live with loss. As a friend, Michelle is an ever present reminder of the power of hope, real hope. The gritty, messy kind that somehow transforms loss and pain into something beautiful.

I love her very much and I know you will too.

Happy Mother’s Day Friends!

xxMarisa

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A Mother’s Heart

By Michelle Hord

I

Found

Joy

Not happiness that fleeting child that ebbs and flows with the tide.

But the stuff that makes your spirit tingle

When you hear someone talk about going to hell…and making it back.

Excerpt from “Down by the Riverside,” by Michelle Hord

In early May each year, we are bombarded with signs, sounds, and symbols of the joys of motherhood. On our various screens, we see images of smiling children, extravagant gifts, and flawless families. These glossy images supposedly show us what it means to be happy. What it means to celebrate. What it means to have traditions. What it means to have a mother, be a mother, care for a mother, and mourn a mother.

As we carefully compare these images to our own, it is easy to see what is missing in our own life picture. Blank spaces that represent guilt, disappointment, betrayal, misunderstanding, or grief. But sometimes, when the image is missing something, a new piece (peace) is just beyond the horizon.

I lost my mother suddenly in 1994 and then my maternal grandmother just months later. At 24 -years old, I was a motherless daughter. When I was blessed to have my own little girl in August 2009, I felt the absence of my mother but was encouraged by my ability to create new traditions, to fill in some of the emptiness in my life’s picture with this new light and new love.

Then in June 2017, my life picture was ripped to shreds. My then husband committed the unimaginable act of taking our seven-year-old daughter’s life during our tumultuous divorce. Any new Mother’s Day traditions were shattered. Tattered pieces of my own life lay all around my feet, and I knew that nothing would ever fit back together the same way again. I was now a motherless daughter and a daughterless mother.

It would have been easy to let the darkness overcome me. To wish myself away with all the missing loved ones in my family picture. I would be lying if I said some days I didn’t want just that. Yet, my need to “mother” and be “mothered” continued. Instead of holding onto the tragedy of my dear Gabrielle’s death, I dedicated myself to finding a way to honor her legacy from a mother’s heart.

I made a point of creating a special child-friendly memorial event for Gabrielle’s friends several months after her death, and still have the tiny sparkly pictures and drawings that her friends made that day framed in my home. I created a nonprofit, Gabrielle’s Wings, Inc., which provides elementary-aged children of color in historically vulnerable communities with the kind of resources Gabrielle would have been afforded. We have proudly impacted more than 10,000 children so far in our short history.

As my grief journey continued and memorable dates, places, and holidays threatened to drown me, I stayed buoyant Instead of holding on to the ultimate betrayal of my ex-husband, I chose to hold on to the loving relationship I had with his mother, a woman whose only child murdered her only grandchild. We may not “belong” in the same picture anymore by conventional standards, but I lost my own mother in my twenties and chose my relationship with “Ma,” over the evil of her son.

I realized, in staying connected to Ma, that we do not get to choose all the pictures in our life’s collage. Some are mistakes. Some are tragedies. Some of the dark spots are self-induced, and others are impossible to foresee. You may not have chosen the last images that developed, but you can choose the lasting ones. Regardless of how things may “look,” it is still your story to tell. Among the wreckage you can decide what images no longer serve you and hold on to the things that have the possibility to bring joy.

As I searched for peace and solace at a beach resort in the Bahamas, where I spent so much time with Gabrielle, I miraculously found an image for my picture that I never could have imagined: a man who was willing to walk slowly with me through the shadows and build new joy together. A man to love. My husband, Axel, and I were married on that beach with “Ma,” watching from the front row.

I’d always wanted to be a mother. Gabrielle was born when I was thirty-nine, and I had already entered menopause when I got married again. However, Axel and I knew from day one that we wanted to start a family. It pained me that I would not get to share the “traditional” route of building a family with Axel. However, love always finds a way.

Flor, Gabrielle’s former caregiver, was at our wedding. She’d been Gabrielle’s caregiver, though we were estranged by the time of Gabrielle’s death. She was a young woman who had her own battles with darkness. A woman who I reconnected with over our mutual brokenness after losing my baby. Despite our former estrangement, we chose to focus on the common image in our life pictures: our love for Gabrielle. Flor had tattooed my Gabrielle’s name and seven butterflies across her back, and when I shared my weariness around how I could possibly start a family with Axel, Flor gave me the most miraculous gift possible: a nest to grow Gabrielle’s baby brother.

At the time, we did not have insurance that would cover any of the surrogacy process, whose astronomical cost ran well into the six figures. But instead of focusing on our lack, we leaned into love. We asked for help and help showed up. Dear friends started a “fairy godparent” website for us where loved ones could read about our story and donate towards the costs of the surrogacy. Two years later, we were able to share the birth of our beautiful son, Alexander, with his many fairy godparents. “Ma,” was there at the hospital, where Axel put our son in her arms and told her she would be his grandmother.

This year, I approach Mother’s Day as a “young” mother in my mid-fifties. I now have the power to frame my own family portrait, and that it is more than the fragments and shreds of what I had imagined my family to be. I realize that being a mother and being “mothered” can come from so many surprising and wonderful directions. I’ve learned that family is not necessarily based on lineage. It is based on love. When I stand back and look at my life picture now, with its scraps and bits that do not perfectly fit together, I do not see a perfectly straight limb on a family tree. Instead, I see family tree with strange branches and disconnected roots, but with life sprouting in strange and miraculous ways. I see beauty. I see love. I see joy.