well, I’ve been afraid of changing ’cause I’ve built my life around you, but time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I’m getting older too…
I’m in the middle of writing another post, catching up on the last couple of months. But this one skipped the line because it felt more important.
Things have been heavy lately. The inner work has been heavy. The person I’ve been working on becoming occasionally peeks out from behind the curtain—but she’s still learning, not quite ready yet. Since I turned 45 in February, I promised myself that the weeks leading up to it—and everything after—would be dedicated to finally figuring things out. And that’s what I’ve been doing.
This post jumped the line because today is my father’s birthday. The first one without him. And I don’t quite know what to do with that yet.
It has me thinking about last year—how I didn’t text him. I was hurt. I didn’t want to play the birthday text game anymore. Even though we weren’t speaking, he still texted me every year on my birthday. And this year, even surrounded by love and beautiful messages, I missed his.
Now I’m sitting here wishing I had known it would be his last birthday. Wishing I had just sent the text instead of holding so tightly to a lifetime of anger. Like I was finally taking a stand—“screw it, I’m not texting him, that’ll teach him.” It feels so small now. I didn’t talk to him before he died. I didn’t get to say I was sorry.
But we live and we learn, right?
If I knew then what I know now, would I change it? Yeah—probably. If I knew it would have made him smile. But I didn’t know. I was still angry. And now I’m just…sad. I’ll be okay. It’s another lesson, and I’ll take it with me and try to do better.
I recently went for a soul reading, and my dad showed up. I know not everyone believes in that, but I do. And it brought me a kind of comfort I didn’t realize I needed. I missed my dad for a long time while he was still here. And strangely, since he’s passed, I feel his presence more.
Grief is layered like that. Complicated. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have the right to grieve because we were on such different paths when he died. But the truth is, we were more alike than I ever allowed myself to see. It wasn’t until after he was gone that I let go of the anger and realized our inner blueprints were similar. At the core, it was always about love. About worth. And somewhere along this journey, I’ve learned that your worth isn’t tied to your usefulness in other people’s lives. I hope he knows that now. I hope he’s at peace with it.
I could tell you that if you’re on the outs with a parent, you should send the birthday text. But I’m not going to do that. And I’m not going to sit here and spiral in regret over not sending mine. I didn’t know better then. I do now.
My father was a good man. And today, I’ll do my best to celebrate that.
oh, take my love, take it down, climb a mountain and turn around, and if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills, well the landslide will bring it down…
Song name: LANDSLIDE/ Artist: FLEETWOOD MAC/ Year: 1975
TALKING ON EGGSHELLS 