Bonus Episode
Summary
We’re stopping by for just a few minutes this Thanksgiving to offer some love and solidarity to those for whom holidays don’t feel very celebratory. We are not strangers to loss or dysfunction and we know that grief can be a close friend this time of year. Layne reads a blessing from John O’Donahue and Jess offers encouragement to open ourselves to divine love, however that looks for each of us.
We will be thinking of you all as we celebrate in our own ways over the next few days and we’ll be back with a full episode next week!
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Find Jess at Jessica Hover on Youtube and @jess_hover on Instagram
Find Layne @enquiryco on Instagram
Transcription
LAYNE
Happy Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
JESS
Thank you.
LAYNE
We’re here. We’re here. We’ve arrived, whatever it’s going to be, it’s already in motion.
JESS
Yeah. We’ll look right at the camera. This is going to be a shorter video and we’re going to talk straight to you. You can definitely listen to this in podcast form, but we’re going to look right at the camera.
LAYNE
Yeah. Today it’s we’re just going to try and take maybe 10 minutes to show up for you guys the way that we get to show up for each other and for ourselves at a time that is meant to be very celebratory and connected, but for a lot of people isn’t always a lot of the time. People go into this going into this time feeling like it should be one way and it isn’t because there’s been a loss because there’s complications or because we don’t have what it seems like other people have and there can be this sort of terrifying feeling of not sharing the same reality as everyone else, but in truth, most of us have really complicated lives and complicated families. And I think very few people experience pure bliss and joy at a holiday and so we just want to touch base to say, like, we know that this isn’t always the celebration and the freedom and the joy and the connection.
JESS
Yeah, or it might be both. It might be an amazing week, and a really hard a key week and it’s allowed to be that. And if there’s anything I know about social media, it’s that sometimes Instagram tries to fool us into thinking everybody else has got this great their decor is perfect. Their family lives are amazing. Marriages are thriving all over America. Food is home cooked and amazing. Babies are sleeping through the night. Toddlers are dressed perfectly and thriving. You know, there’s just so much and then your reality doesn’t look like that and we just want to say – nobody’s does. That’s all just a little curated glimpse of a moment. And you also have a lot of really beautiful moments that if you put them out there, you could tell the same story. But we all know that there’s a lot more complexity to this life than those highlights.
LAYNE
Yeah. It’s complex. For me, a lot of it used to be very, very wonderful. And then for a while, it got very painful. And now there’s been a lot of healing. So it’s a mixture.
JESS
Okay.
LAYNE
But there, for me, it’s that journey of going back into sort of the past place with the past people and feeling like in some places there are ghosts and in some places there are holes. And in some places, it’s very connective, but very new. Also who I am is very different than who I was when I was in that space. And so there’s just a lot in there. Yeah. And I have I have a little blessing that I wanted to read for all of us. It’s from John O’Donoghue, who was an Irish mystic, he wrote this beautiful book of blessings. It’s called “To Bless The Space Between Us.” And there’s something in here for almost everything. I hope there’s something in here for you guys.
JESS
I’ve never had you read me a book, but I imagine this to be really magical. I think you’re the type of person I would want to read the something. So I’m glad you’re here. I’m excited.
LAYNE
It’s poetry. So we’ll see how I do. Okay. This one is entitled, if you end up loving it and want to go find it, it’s called “For Someone Awakening To The Trauma Of His Or Her Past.” And though we’re talking about something a little broader than that, I think the words are, are powerful.
“For everything under the sun, there is a time. This is the season of your awkward harvesting, when pain takes you where you would rather not go, through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place you had forgotten you knew from the inside out; and a time when that bitter tree was planted that has grown always invisibly beside you, and whose branches your awakened hands now long to disentangle from your heart. You are coming to see how your looking often darkened when you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love, how deep down your eyes are always owned by something that faced them through a dark fester of thorns, converting whoever came into a further figure of the wrong; you could only see what touched you as already torn. Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning, and your memory is ready to show you everything having waited all these years for you to return and to know. Only you know where the casket of pain is interned. You will have to scrape through all the layers of covering and according to your readiness, everything will open. May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guide who can accompany you through the fear and grief until your heart has wept its way to your true self. As your tears fall over that wounded place, may they wash away your hurt and free your heart. May Your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound so that for the first time you can walk away from that place, reunited with your banished heart, now healed and free, and feel the clear free air bless your new face.”
JESS
That’s beautiful.
LAYNE
Yeah. Just want to send you guys some love this week. I hope you have a beautiful time and the food is excellent and there are moments of poignant joy and, where you need them, really free and open grief.
JESS
Yeah, I the picture that was coming to mind as she was reading is you know when your little one is struggling in some way. And they’re crying really hard and in that they come near to you and you hold them tight. I had this experience this morning with my youngest she wasn’t feeling good. And I was in no rush to get past that because the closeness was so good. And it’s a bit ironic because I do want her to feel better fast. But I don’t want the closeness to go away. And whatever you believe about God, you’re welcome. You’re welcome to believe it here. I believe in a very loving God who desires closeness with us. And I feel like one of the ways we get to experience that, unlike the really high wonderful times in our life is when we are really craving inside or suffering inside or needing kind of that type of care when your little one falls and just needs to be held. And so I hope for you this week that you are surprised by the intimacy you feel with divine love with with the one who made you and loves every part of you. And you might experience that love through your partner through your parents through your children through a warm drink in the morning or your favorite dessert after a meal. But I hope that you will look for that in the midst of the pain you’re feeling and really find it I think that the more we look for things, the more we see them right there’s even science behind that. Look for the love that loves you a lot.
LAYNE
You know I think for me this year, because that’s all very mysterious. Yeah, this moment in life. I’m gonna take that for myself and I’m gonna hold me. Like, I’m gonna hold this me who’s feeling those things.
JESS
Yeah. Another way people say it is like parent to yourself. So rather than you feeling big feelings of sadness, grief, heart ache, missing someone who’s no longer with you, feeling like you don’t have the capacity to provide the family memories that you would love to – that’s a common thing I hear amongst new parents is, “I used to be so good at holidays and now I don’t even feel like I have the strength to wrap my brain around this or prepare anything.” Be gentle with yourself. Be the type of person to yourself that you are to the little one who cries and you scoop them up and you hold them and you comfort them and you tell them it will be okay. The way that that divine love that I’m speaking of could hit your heart and hold you is through you doing that to yourself and giving you permission to feel those things and still enjoy the week. It doesn’t have to be this huge heavy week. If it is, that’s okay. But it doesn’t have to be that. You can be held and enjoy yourself and feel all this big stuff too.
LAYNE
Yeah. And in whatever way it’s possible. We’re here with you.
JESS
Yeah. And if you are looking for community like in real time you want to connect with some other parents and talk to them even about loss, we have an online community in Very Good Mothers Club. It’s a paid membership, but there’s a free trial. You can even just use the free trial for this week if you need it, and go in there and connect with other parents who are experiencing their own sadness grief loss. Or just get practical ideas for how to make this week better. They’re in there, we’re in there. It would be great to connect with you. So we’ll include all of the information right below in the show notes and if you’re watching it in on YouTube, I’ll include it below. Is there anything else?
LAYNE
No, no. Just a happy Thanksgiving and we love you.
JESS
Yeah.
LAYNE
And you’re doing wonderfully.
JESS
Yeah, you’re doing so good.
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