Life Lessons from the Departed

Hello Dearest Ones,

Until this year, I hadn’t visited that place of suffocating, inescapable fear since late 2012 when I took medical leave then went on short term disability because of overwhelming anxiety and paralyzing panic attacks. At that time, I thought most of the fear that had surfaced was a response to attempting to change careers and rebuild my life in a moment of complete and total breakdown. The burnout was so intense that I had nothing left to give to society, or to myself. I was truly living on the edge. 
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At the onset of 2025 it felt like my spaceship jumped to warp speed, and it hasn’t yet come back into this time space continuum. I’m on the other side of some worm hole at this point, having jumped through several timelines in the process. The journey has been rich with fear, trust (a new house with a loving partner) and love (a beautiful grand baby), and lots more fear. It has been a fear heavy year.

Back in 2012 I was under the illusion that the dharmic yet forced career change, at a time of intense financial and emotional vulnerability, was what had challenged my faith and trust in life. I had so much fear for my material safety that I assumed it was because I was no longer able to provide for myself in the way that I had for decades. It felt obvious that what that particular dark night of the soul was there to teach me was how to feel safe in a world when your livelihood has been taken away. And there is no doubt a central belief of mine, that I was only safe and provided for because I made it so, was up for dramatic restructuring at the time.

Now, in light of new information and experience, I realize that an equally potent catalyst for my fear at the time was knowing that my father was dying, and his subsequent death. I can see clearly now that my collapse in 2012 wasn’t only about losing my professional identity of twenty years. However, the clarity didn't come until April of this year, when my mother passed away, and I became acutely aware that losing a parent completely blows up your sense of safety in the world. The contrast, and hence the ability to see it so clearly now, is that I am emotionally, professionally and financially stable at this stage in life. My material situation doesn’t merit a breakdown or loss of trust and faith in the mechanisms of life. I am actually safe, in the most expansive meaning of the word. So why do I feel so unsafe? I mean besides the social crisis of our current administration.  

Apparently when a parent dies, likely even more when the last parent dies, they seem to take a big chunk of our trust in life with them. Temporarily, until we recalibrate, remember all of the anchors we have to this life and finally find our way through the emotional fog that is grief. I felt all these same fears and loss of trust when my dad died. And even though I could literally feel myself floating away with my dad when he passed, I didn’t realize that it was because my parental tethers had been cut. I thought I was empathically experiencing the severing of his tethers to this life, not my own.

If you have lost one or both of your parents, what did that grief teach you? With the loss of my first parent, I feel it was a lesson in self-love. I learned to love and accept myself in a critical world, as a person with a very vocal inner critic. Maybe that lesson was specific to what my father was here to teach me. He suffered from a lot of self-loathing (his words) in his lifetime and maybe didn’t want me to continue down that path after him. Or maybe self-love is just the lesson with the departure of the first parent, regardless of which one it is. Or maybe it was just my lesson.

Since my mom passed away, I have been challenged to accept and feel worthy of the love of others. I previously thought self-love was the same as feeling worthy of being loved by another human. I have long held the belief that if I love myself, I am automatically able to accept love (true, unconditional, high-quality love) from others. I now believe that to be untrue. It seems that to show up in the world authentically we have to learn to love ourselves. However, to love ourselves enough to show up authentically, allowing others to see and know us as we are and trust they will choose to love us, that is a whole new level of love. A completely different kind of feeling worthy in the world.

Is this new or modified lesson specific to losing my mom? Maybe. I can’t say for certain whether my mom felt unworthy of love from others. She didn’t ever verbalize it, as my dad did with self-loathing. There may have been indications of her not feeling worthy of other’s love, but I can’t confirm that she felt that way. Maybe learning that we are worthy of love from others is just the second part of the lesson with a parent passing. Or again, maybe that is just my lesson, and the loss of my mother is simply the teacher.

What is your experience? I really would like to know.

Ultimately, the final and complete lesson, at least for me, is that I’m being given the opportunity to tie up loose ends. To find closure with any karmic contracts or soul lessons I specifically had with my parents in this lifetime, but also soul lessons that I personally am here to learn. Is this a parting gift that parents give their children? I don’t know. Maybe the opportunity for learning is present with the departure of any connection we have that is karmic in nature. In my experience, after losing both parents, I feel I am being given the opportunity to learn those lessons that haven’t yet been fully integrated into my personal evolution. Maybe this is just what takes place for me as important people in my life transition to the other side.

With so much unconditional love, for you and myself,
Tawa

P.S. I feel inclined to offer a couple of classes starting in late winter. One would likely be a healing through writing class and the other having to do with helping us to find center, self-regulate and connect with our spirit/ cosmic support within the instability of our material lives. Please let me know by commenting here if you have any interest in these topics or if there is something else with which you are longing for support.

​​Tawa Ranes is a writer, healer and astrologer. She is in awe of the communicative and connective potential inherent in words and languages and loves to use them as an entryway into deeper understanding and communion with others. She writes in a candid voice with deeply philosophical undertones. Tawa is a leap before you look extraordinaire and the creative founding spirit behind Solar Moon Press.