“I was constantly seeking a balance between mourning what’s already been lost, making space for the time and moments we still had left, and making sense of this complicated process that felt like my heart was split between two contrasting realities: hope and heartbreak.” ~Liz Newman
There is a quiet heaviness that begins to settle into many of us in .
It doesn’t announce itself with drama. It slips in through unanswered emails from an aging parent, through half-slept nights spent wondering how we will ever afford live-in care, or whether that one fall they had was the beginning of the end.
It’s not grief exactly. It’s the shadow of grief that lingers before the loss, that creeps in through ordinary moments and whispers that everything is slowly, quietly, but undeniably changing.
My mother has Parkinson’s. She lives alone in the UK while I live abroad—untethered by design, a traveling healer by choice—except now that freedom feels like it comes at a cost I never calculated.
She has started falling. Backwards. Her voice is nearly gone. I can barely understand her over the phone anymore, and every time she forgets a detail or struggles to find a word, my stomach knots.
I wonder when the dementia will get worse and instead of only forgetting my birthday, she will also forget about me: her eldest daughter. I wonder how long she can live on her own. I wonder what happens when things really go south.
And I panic.
The truth is, I can’t just pack up and move to the UK. Not anymore. Not with Brexit and visa restrictions. These days, my visits are brief, limited to a few weeks or months at a time. Right now, I’m here for the summer, doing what I can while I can.
Add to that the financial uncertainty of running a healing business
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