On Enough-ness & Gratitude, Mother's Day and Beyond

I’m struck by the messaging of NAMI (National Alliance on MentalIllness) for Mental Health Awareness Month this May. Like: “If someone you love is going through a hard time, you don’t need to have all the answers. Just being there is #MoreThanEnough. Learn more with @NAMICommunicate at nami.org/mhm.” Everyone is included and everyone is reassured that they are enough in situations when too often, nothing feels like enough.

Suicide loss is one of those experiences that shatters our sense of self-worth. We can beat ourselves up for years over our inadequate response to our loved one’s struggle. Can we ever believe we were a good enough parent, child, partner, friend to the person we lost? Can we ever feel we did enough to prevent the tragedy? Especially in the early years after the suicide when guilt and shame often assail us, it’s hard not to list all the signs we missed, all the actions not taken and words left unsaid. We have to wait for the storm of self-blame to subside a bit to remember all the good things we managed to say and do to try to help--and to face the possibility that ultimately, our lovedone’s act was outside our control.  

Even ten years on, I find it takes intention and practice to enter into a place of enough-ness, which is essentially a place of gratitude, a willingness to be with what is. There’s always that nagging presence hovering at the edge of awareness, reminding me of Noah’s absence, my grief, and my helplessness in the last months of his life. How can I be enough as a person, as a mother, when my child took his life? How can I ever grieve enough for this loss?

I can’t help being aware of that nagging presence, dragging me back to the deepest sadness and regret of my life. But I can choose to resist its pull when it gets in the way of living the life I have now. A full life, in spite of and because of traumatic loss.

None of this embracing the “enough” is quick or easy. Meditation helps center me in the present, connecting to the fullness of breath. Gratitude practices also help, like keeping a daily appreciation notebook or taking a gratitude walk. We can try to be open to love, joy, self-compassion and whatever grace we find as we move through grief. Over time, we have the chance to recover the sense of gratitude that the suicide may have destroyed. Even if we’re not convinced we are enough in the global sense, what about at least allowing for moments of enough-ness?

Our loved ones, when struggling with mental illness or suicidal thoughts, were enough.

Our efforts to help them the best way we knew how were enough.

Our way of grieving the loss of them is enough.

It’s often said that grief is love with no place to go. When we allow gratitude back into our hearts, we realize there are a lot of places to bring the love we would have given to and received from our lost one. As I embark this month on a trip to visit Noah’s friends, I hope to bring that love with me to share with others, along with the love Noah would have heaped on those friends had he lived.

To my fellow mother survivors: May you be open to love and gratitude this Mother’s Day, with moments of “enough-ness.” As poet James Crews writes in “Gratitude”:
[Gratitude] is the faithful companion

we have always been seeking,

this feeling of fullness

that follows us everywhere

we go, less like a shadow

trailing the body, and more

like a glimmer held in the heart

that promises never to leave.