We are getting our primary bathroom completely redone… completely gutted. While I have been wanting this to happen since the day we moved into the house (over four years ago), nothing prepares you for living in a construction zone while working from home with a 60 pound fur baby. It has only been a week of construction and I feel like our house will always be a disaster zone. Last week I conducted two important meetings in my craft closet and each day is a day of problem solving. All of our bathroom things are in the dining room. We are living in the guest room upstairs (thank goodness we have extra space). I feel completely out of sorts and want things back in order. While I know it will be worth being uncomfortable, it is not fun.

Today is 25 years since my mom killed herself. I have lived a quarter of a century without my mom. Most of the time I make progress on this road of grief , but I learned years ago to give up on the hope of this journey ever ending. While majority of the time I go on with life and honestly don’t think of my mom, there are times it smacks me in the face… there are times an aspect of her death I haven’t explored comes into light and I know the only path forward towards healing is facing it. You can say I have gotten used to having a construction zone in my mind at times. Because anyone who has gone through grief knows it is messy… chaotic.

When I was a counselor one of my favorite clients used an analogy of facing hurt, pain, anger, shame… all the things we try to avoid until they are no longer avoidable. She said she is swimming in a pool and it is full of crap. If she barley treads water, the crap sinks to the bottom. The problem is it just stays there clouding the water a little. She said coming to counseling and facing things is like she is finally swimming hard in the pool. All the crap starts to circulate. She knows it is the only way for it to get filtered out of the pool, but the process is horrible.

Everyone has crap in their pool. At times we don’t stir it up because we don’t have the ability to cope with swimming in such a mess… but then at some point we realize we are meant to live more fully. We decide we want to fully swim and not just barely tread water. So we gain the courage to face the muck. We start kicking and we keep kicking until the water starts to become clear.

So on the day after I celebrated my 44th bday (the age my mom was when she died) and as another year without my mother is marked, I decide to start swimming to face new aspects of grief. In the same way I know a new bathroom will be worth physically living in a construction zone, I know living with my mind as a construction zone will be worth it.