The Learning Mama

My musings ‘On Grief by C.S. Lewis’

I read that when you’re an adult, your life, happiness, health, healing, etc. - are all your responsibility. Most adults heal their inner child by buying toys and doing things they never experienced as a child. My healing comes from acknowledging ‘grief’ as my unwelcomed friend since childhood.

I first met grief when my auntie Sora suddenly passed away when I was 8. I saw her sister, Mamang (the mother who raised me), wept at night, calling out to her deceased favorite sister. Auntie Sora was my favorite too, and losing her at a young age was hard but nobody checked on me. Nobody comforted or warned me that my beloved aunt’s death could change my life forever. Grief was a stranger then, slowly introducing itself.

A few years later, it was Mamang’s time, and I remember just being numb and sometimes crying myself to sleep. After all, nobody asked the 13-year-old me how I was feeling. The adults around me mourned silently on their own too. I’m not blaming them now. My healing is now my responsibility, and I’ve come to terms that my love, loss, and longing for the women who raised me, my Atlantis (as C.S. Lewis pointed out), will remain with me.

Now that I’m a mother, I talk to Apo about his feelings, and we process it together. I’m trying to raise a man, who can name his emotions and can regulate himself when big feelings arise. One day, I’ll be Apo’s Atlantis, but until then, I am his whole world - a healthy and healing safe space and not a broken one.