16 Comments

💔💔💔 my mom is also dead

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Oh I'm so sorry!

My mother's death was, honestly, a gigantic relief -- but that doesn't preclude missing her. And now that I don't have to be afraid of her bankrupting me, I'm finding myself feeling very tender toward her -- she really struggled.

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Same here! ❤️

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A beautiful piece indeed. So much to love here. That you are able to articulate so well the ties that bind our families together sometimes because, but often in spite, of who we are.

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Oh thank you Karen. I'm fascinated by family ...

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Wow, this is a beautiful piece of writing. I started reading and then I stopped everything to sit down and read it all the way through properly. Very emotional and eloquently put. It's difficult to express the complexity of people and emotions in relation to both themselves and how they affect other people, but you did so incredibly eloquently. Very much enjoyed, and happy birthday! :)

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Oh thank you Mabel! I hope you'll pass it along if you're so inclined ...

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Sending love, birthday wishes and deep appreciation.

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Aww. Thanks Garrett -- same back to you. Your post this morning was so good, and expressed so many things I too have been feeling.

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Happy birthday this week.

This is why we have chosen family. :) People who end up being our family when the biological ones aren't enough. I've finally found mine, and this year is ending up in an amazing way.

The past.... is the past. We can't dwell on it for too long. You can't change it. It's just there. The future is ahead of us... but what's most important is right now. Enjoying those moments. Each day. Finding our people and our hobbies and just living in the moment. <3

-Katie K. :)

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Happy birthday for this week. And let me say how very beautifully you have written about this. As someone who lives far from his family, your image of family and bodies once together "in a pile" but no longer really resonated with me.

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Thanks Will .... I had something else entirely on deck, but sometimes you get a surprise visitation and you just have to go with it.

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This was such a tender way of moving through in real time the feelings between birth and death, of ourselves, of others. Sending happy birthdays along to you--and I'm going to sit with that idea of belonging to the second body, the wider world, where if we're lucky, we get to choose our relations, as well as the messy belonging to the kindred of our animal body. 💜

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Thanks Freya -- it's all such an interesting tangle -- and I love the way science and theory are unpacking and interrogating the notion of the body-as-solely-individual.

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Happy almost 60th Birthday, Char!! I love the photo, love your thoughts, and mostly love you!

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I'm so glad you were here last year when it all went down -- having someone around who knew me as a kid was a huge comfort! Miss you -- but the wind is blowing already!

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