The Honey She Gave Me

My Mother's Song

You gave me your honey, I’ll finish your song.

“I hope you have a daughter like you one day.” She doesn’t mean she hopes I have a duplicate. She means she hopes I’ll have the chance to love someone as wholly, fiercely, and delightfully as she does me. She hopes I get to see parts of me running through the world. Wild and free.

Some of us are free only because our mothers were brave.

When I think of my mom, I think of her holding back crashing waves so that I can play in the sand. Her mom suffered. Then my mom suffered. She gave me honey, hoping I wouldn’t suffer.

My job is to revel in freedom. My call is to use the honey they gave me to finish their songs.

For as long as I can remember, my mom bit her nails. Gnawing on them while tipped on the edge of the couch, or fingers squarely in the vice of her teeth while driving down the road.

Swollen, chapped edges clinging to her frayed cuticles. She’d try over and over to stop. I often wondered what else it was that she was trying to gnaw through, to chew off.

My mom has lived a nail biting life, but deserved a honey song life. She has experienced the darkest of humanity and she’s the last of her siblings alive to hold that truth. This too, is part of her song.

My mom lost her own mother many times through her life - but only once to death. “I don’t have fond memories when I think of her” she tells me. My heart drops because I could fill a library with stories of all the times I’ve felt my mother’s love, or the sweet protection of her prayers.

How can she be the mother she is without having the mother she needed?

I met her mother once. Not in time or space, but in the other realm where she was stuck. I floated back to the moment of her dying. So much pain and so much darkness. She had already decided to leave, but couldn’t find a way to say goodbye.

I held my grandmother’s hand and companioned her departure. I held her so she wouldn’t cross the threshold into God’s arms alone. I looked deep in her eyes and promised to finish her song.

It was my mom who taught my heart to travel that way. It was my mom who reminded me to be me – to sing my own song. But what about my mom’s own song? Where is her honey life?

How do we soothe the frayed cuticles that have come from chewing on growth in hopes of finding healing?

My mom rests now, and sits quietly to listen to birds. She turns her face so the sun can kiss her smooth skin. She indulges and she explores. She treats herself and asks for her needs to be met. She laughs and she plays. She holds pain, but not too long. She reminds me not to work too hard, to count my blessings, and to take no shit.

She loves and is loved. She’s decided to stay in this life despite so many compelling reasons to want to leave. Her nails are beautiful now too. Healthy and nourished. Like her.

I watch her now, not only as her daughter but as the inheritor of her unfinished story. The next voice in this ancestral song. I will sweeten our song.

This is her song. This is her honey life.

Some of us are free only because our mothers were brave.

I’ll give you my honey, so you can finish your song.

What unfinished songs live in your lineage?

What kind of life do you wish for those who came before you?

Who gave you their honey? How are you using it?

What have you inherited that you’re learning to carry with love?