Flowing with the Go (17 page)

34
No What-ifs

C
oach has called me Doubting Thomas on more than one occasion. Although I have trained hard, studied the art, gone to seminars, and taken lessons, I have a tendency to question myself. I considered myself fairly confident before Carly died. I believed I could do anything. I had accomplished most everything I set out to do—athletically, academically, professionally, and personally. And then my life changed abruptly and painfully, and I stopped believing I was that capable anymore.

One of the most painful insecurities of my grief is that I have not had any dreams about Carly. Other people have dreams of her. They tell them to me, and I love to hear these stories. They make me smile . . .and they make me grimace with envy. I torture myself to tears with the intimation of not having my own Carly dreams. I ask myself:

What if
there is no truth to spirits and souls?

What if
my subconscious is protecting me because I won't be able handle the dreams, because I'm still afraid?

What if
I open my heart and get hurt again?

What if
I never find peace beneath my suffering?

What if
the fact that I'm not dreaming of her means I'm forgetting her?

What if
I have grieved wrongly, not loved enough?

What if
I'm not good enough to be loved, to heal, to continue to grow and nurture others, and allow the same for myself?

What if
I am too weak to move my pain?

I conversely have stretches of time when I am ruminating over exciting things I have been doing or are planning to do and my mind automatically goes to thinking, “I can't wait to tell Carly about this” and “Carly will love this idea.” During those moments, I feel her presence so absolutely clearly, so honestly, and so intensely that I feel at peace—a sense of calm washes over me and I know I am in a place that is good, powerful, and whole. I don't want it to end.

Then I hit the wall, when my reverie is interrupted by the other side of my brain that reminds me that she is gone, that I won't be telling her these things or hearing her laugh, asking to join me, and then starting to make plans. Those intrusive thoughts stop me midstride. I yearn to go back to that peaceful place I was in just seconds ago. I want to make those moments last longer. Those are the moments when I know completely that she is with me.

One morning, I checked my phone and found a message from Carly's friend Morganne. Apparently she and another friend, Cody, both had a similar dream that night, and Morganne wanted to tell me about it (via text, of course: teenagers!). In the dream, the girls were hanging out at teammate's house. The girls were talking together when Carly walked into the room. They all looked up in surprise, which then turned into crying and hugging. They were so happy to see her. At one point during the reunion, Morganne asked Carly, “Are you going to see your mom, go say hi?” And Carly looked at her, shrugged it off, and replied with a
don't be silly
tone, “No, I'm with her all the time.” Implying, that she's knows I'm all right and that I could wait . . .and like many teenagers, that she wanted to spend some time with her friends. Morganne sensed that Carly was checking in on them first because they were so young and confused, and she wanted them to know that she was okay, that it—what happened, the whole of the event, everything—was okay.

Of course I cried when I read this message from Morganne. I felt that nagging bitter emotional reflux coming up into my throat, “Why can't I have my own dream?”

I think about those feelings now—now that I am honing my acceptance skills with the idea that there are no what-ifs—and the doubt dissipates.

I don't have dreams about her because I don't need to dream of her; she is always with me.

Coach wants us to roll with confidence, and with that, he preaches about how there are no what-ifs. Although he teaches us everything we need to know about a particular technique, it's unrealistic to think that he can teach us every possible reaction to every action. Only we can relieve ourselves of doubt and trust that we'll know the right thing to do. When Coach is teaching, he explains to us why we make certain small movements, why a hand placement or a specific grip is necessary. The large movements are easy to see. It is the small details that are hard to see. It is from within us the self-confidence allows us to succeed at the small details, and that's what Coach encourages us to remember.

I have noticed when I am rolling well in a sparring situation, when I have the upper hand, that some opponents will start to verbally correct my moves. Are they asking themselves at that moment, “What if I can't beat a girl?” Fearing emasculation, they want to show me they are more knowledgeable and more skilled than I. Their own self-doubt fosters a blemish of denial that I might just kick their ass, so they had better save their pride.

Coach knows our various levels of skill and gives us appropriate tactics so that we feel equipped to compete. He points out that certain moves work best with certain body types, but that we should not feel limited. Every body type is different. We differ in flexibility, length, center of gravity, strength, and balance, so we must take the tools provided and make them work for us. He has reasonable levels of expectation for each of us. He just won't accept “what if.”

There is no room in a competitive mind for doubt. When I entered my first competition nine months after I started at Foster, I had little idea what I was doing. There were no what-ifs for me at that time because I did not know what to expect; I just stepped on the mat, albeit as nervous as wrinkle on Dolly Parton, and competed. I started with the leg reap takedown and moved to side control. I passed her guard. I even remembered to breathe once or twice. And I won that very first match. I didn't question what I was doing, I just did it.

Unfortunately, it was downhill from there because as I learned and became more acquainted with the skills I was up against, I did start questioning myself. For example, after that first match my next opponent was bigger than me: “What if she's stronger than me?” “What if I don't do as well as last time?” “What if I mess up?” There was doubt all-up-in-my-head. And I have lost every match since then whenever my opponent is bigger than me. I continue to work on this.

Coach is proud every time any of us just step onto the mat. He reminds us that “you learn more from a loss than from a win.” I think I'm missing something.

On Carly's last day with me, she was wearing a shirt that said “The world is pretty amazing.”

Carly's path did not include “what-ifs.”

There are no what-ifs
is that last bastion of living life to the fullest. Carly participated in and accomplished a great many things in fifteen years. Some people tell me she did this because she knew her time on Earth was short. I don't think so. That philosophy implies that she wouldn't have done all of those things if she didn't need to, if she knew she had lots of time. Carly saw the world as a truly awesome place, with exciting people to meet and wondrous places to go, with inspiring music to hear and play, with rousing games to play, and with exquisite gifts of life to share.

And because she saw the world this way, she lived without what-ifs. She lived each day fully, curious and willing. She found ways to see the positive in her experiences and move beyond setbacks and uncertainty.

She continues to teach me lessons with how she lived: that I should embrace each day as the gift it is, not because it's a stepping stone to something better.

35
Elena Anew

T
he last four years have been an emotional collage of sadness, joy, anger, hope, doubt, belief, callousness, trust, struggle, and triumph. It has been a journey to find out who I was without my daughter. The topography of my journey has brought me from the lowest of lows, across chasms of self-doubt, back and forth on switchbacks of progress toward goals that resided at seemingly unreachable elevations.

It has been a journey to find out if I mattered. I did not know my worth.

It has been a journey to redefine myself as a person who survived a tragic event and came out the other side whole.

I have people in my life who have known me since I was young, people I know from my choice to live in Washington, people I know because of Carly, and people I know who did not know Carly or me as Carly's mom. Each has been an observer and a participant, and each has played that incomparable role of assisting me along the way.

I struggled to find a new sense of balance. My family would never be the same, and so I needed to recalibrate the scales. That is hard to do with a cloud of guilt stifling you. I wore my lack of balance on my sleeve.

I remember being stopped before stepping on the mat and told to take some deep breaths. I was told that, when I stepped on the mat, I had to let everything go and be present. Training was to be a mental sanctuary, a place to clear your mind and relieve yourself of burdens.

I have not mastered this tactic, but over time, I have gotten better at it. Sometimes I would be trying to clear my mind, only to have my issues move closer to the surface. Once, I had gone to practice stressed over some inner turmoil. I had participated, but became increasingly distracted by what I was trying to let go of. The more I told myself to stop thinking about it, the more I thought about it. I was in lineup when I knew I just wasn't going to be able to keep it together, so I asked if I could leave. I went in the lobby and started to take off my gi. I had meant leave, as in go home, but that was not what Coach had in mind.

Coach entered the lobby and told me I couldn't leave—that if I left, I gave all the power to what was bothering me. He told me to calm myself down and return to the gym. I didn't have to roll anymore, but I had to stay. In a deeper way, he meant “stay the course.”

Stay the course. I would not have achieved the balance I sought if I had run away from the very place that got me on course. At the gym, I found a place where I could trust myself and others. A place where it was safe to fall apart because I knew someone would help me put myself back together. A place that would challenge me physically, mentally, and spiritually.

When I had first stepped into Foster Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I did not know that not only would I recover my sense of who I was, but I would also find myself far more capable than I ever gave myself credit for. I could achieve in spite of my grief. Even though I lost my daughter, I didn't have to lose myself. I did not want to grieve her anymore; I did not wish to be lost. In finding myself, I can show Carly how deeply I love her.

How is a journey measured when its beginning is the only definitive point a person has? Is it measured by the time that has passed? By some tangible effect: the prize, the job, the finish line? I had no choice but to embark on this journey. I didn't want to be on it, but I was. I had no goal in my crosshairs. But I did have trust. Trust in my family, friends, Coach, and Jiu-Jitsu; trust that strengthened me to ride out difficult times. It nurtured courage and promise, and over time I knew it was leading me in the right direction. My promotion to blue belt was not my goal, but when Coach tied that belt around my waist, I knew that my journey was a worthy one. And when he took my white belt and tied it in a tight knot so that it could not be worn again, I finally had a measure of my journey. My most difficult days and my struggles to simply survive were behind me, and I could not go back there again.