Ten years ago today 26 people, children and educators, died at Sandy Hook school.

My nephew was a second grader at Sandy Hook that day. He survived, but his life was forever changed.

Today, my nephew is a senior. My son, only 3 months younger than my nephew, is a junior. He would have been in first grade that day. If we had lived in Sandy Hook instead of my brother, we would almost certainly not be sending him to school to take a math test and struggle through an English class today. My daughter is in second grade, just as my nephew was 10 years ago. I walked her to school this morning and hugged her extra tight as I watched her walk through the school gates.

I remember every December 14th.

And we are a family of survivors.

Grief and trauma touch so many of us in so many ways that are often unseen and unknown.

We were “lucky” on December 14th.

But “unlucky” on February 3, 1995, when my mother was killed in an accident crossing the street from our house.

I survived, but my life was forever changed.

Today, I am not as prolific as I have been on December 14th in the past. I am tired.

In a few minutes, I will have a call with a faculty member who has a student who lost two close family members within weeks of one another this semester. And I will somehow need to bridge a communication gap which was created by a gulf of grief. The faculty member has done everything “right” with documentation and with intended care, but the student has been struggling with grief, in ways that as a fellow griever, I feel deeply. The facts are the same, but the lived experiences, lenses, and impact differ. How do I make space for it all when my heart hurts so much, when I am so very tired?

I don’t know.

But, this morning, I received word that my latest piece, “Making Space for Ourselves, Making Space for Each Other: Humanizing Practices in the ELA Classroom & Teacher Education” was published. My writer self reminds me that part of trauma-informed teacher education is always making space for ourselves and one another, is remembering our own humanity, on days like these.

That is the best I can do.

I had dinner with my friend Cait last Wednesday night, on the eve of NCTE and we were near a store called House of Intuition where they sell crystals and candles. I was drawn to this one: Winter Solstice. It is not yet winter. I am not generally drawn to things of this color or candles in general, but I kept coming back to this candle.

The salesperson in the store said that the crystal in the candle was calling me to it. They remarked that my clothes matched the candle, which I hadn’t noticed. I turned the candle around and it had this empowering mantra, “I am steadfast in tending to my needs.”

I was similarly drawn to a small piece of Black Onyx.

The card next to the black onyx said, “Black Onyx is a stone of strength and guidance. In times of stress and loss, it allows us to maintain our grounding and not feel overwhelmed. The protective aspects of this stone take negative energy around us and transmute it into something more positive. With this stone, negativity becomes positivity, aggression becomes strength and apathy becomes perseverance.”

I typically am not one who believe in the power of crystals and candles.

And yet, I believe God (and the Universe) brings you what you need in the moment you need it, if you trust.

Oh dear friends, how I am struggling to tend to my needs. Even in the light of the obvious nature of them, I am hiding in the shadows, running from the peace and calm that God (and the Universe) wants me to have.

It has been a day after a weekend after a week after a month after a semester after a year after a lifetime of running away from the very things I am seeking.

Peace.

Freedom.

Light.

Community.

I know all of this is here for me in abundance.

But I must slow down.

I have to allow myself to have needs, to feel loss, to be present, if I am to transform my frantic pace into intentional pause.

“The Universe is providing resources and time, you do not need to rush in taking care of your needs in the dark of this Winter before the Spring brings a new dawn of possibility.”

Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday. She would have been 84 years old. It is the year of the Tiger. My mother was, ironically, a “Tiger Mother” although not in the sense that has been popularized. She was fiercely protective, strong and brave. She was brilliant, loving and kind. My mother was imperfect, but she was a model of humanity, of someone who always tried her best and supported others. She was a light. She continues to be a light to me.

I am often frantic in this time. I cannot focus. I feel lost as the light becomes less in the year and as the distance between my life with my mother and my life as a mother continues to grow. I become focused on controlling all the things. I don’t want anything to go wrong. Yet, I am acutely aware that the smallest and biggest of things can go wrong at any moment.

Maybe if I work harder, I can prevent tragedy this time. I have to believe I can do something to make things better.

This is the time when I am anything but “steadfast in tending to my needs.”

To tend to my needs, I must recognize them. To hold myself to them, I need accountability.

I need to rest.

I need to breathe.

I need to prioritize and set boundaries on work, which will, if I let it, consume me.

I need to trust.

I need to hydrate.

I need to write.

I need to reflect.

I need to hold space for myself, my grief, and my joy.

I need to listen to the ways I treat my family and make sure they are aligned to my love for them.

I need to listen to my body.

I need to feed myself even when I don’t want to eat.

I can be steadfast in attending my needs, if I let my community support me, if I listen to those who love me.

I must keep walking towards the light in this time of darkness even as my survival has been hidden in the shadows of solitude and fear.

“As industrious Autumn falls away, allow time to renew your energy. As the Sun enters Capricorn, allow its light to give you the patience to arrange and rebalance your home and sacred spaces. The Universe is providing resources and time…”

Tomorrow is the first Fathers Day since my father passed away suddenly last October when I was away in France, between my sister’s birthday and mine, with his last communication wishing me a happy birthday just a couple days before he passed.

It is the first Fathers Day where he is not alive, but it is one of many where he is not present.

The picture with my father at the top of this post is one of a few that I have. My mother and father divorced when I was a toddler, and I have no recollection of ever living with my father. He was in Asia most of my life, and came to visit once a year (or so) between the divorce and when I turned 6 or 7.

I don’t have many memories of my father in my childhood, only that once I waited for him because he said he would come. I watched out our large bay windows, as it rained hard outside.  I waited and waited, but he didn’t come.

When he did come next, my mother told him that he had no right to keep me waiting like that; they fought. The other fight I remember my mom having with him was about taking me anywhere alone. She was afraid he might try to run away with me, steal me to spite her. Maybe it was the same fight. I don’t remember.

But I do remember that I didn’t see my father between 7-16.

I deeply wanted a father who was present. I felt an inconsolable silent melancholy when father-daughter dances happened or during every Fathers Day in my childhood. I didn’t let on that not having a father bothered me. I didn’t want to hurt my mother. I celebrated my mother on Fathers Day because I didn’t know what it was to have a father to celebrate. But what I did know is that it was lonely.

My father returned to the states when my mom died, to attend her funeral. He was at my high school graduation. He came once when I was in college and I had dinner with him and my cousin in San Francisco. He came to my wedding and I invited him to join my brother in walking me down the aisle of my wedding which he did. I saw him when his mother, my grandmother died, and he came to the states. It was my son’s first birthday, now over 15 years ago. I didn’t know it then, but this would be the last time we would see one another in person.

It is strange to me that I can almost count the number of times I saw my father, in person, in my life.

I would exchange messages with my father via e-mail occasionally. I would ask about his new family in Myanmar, who I only heard about through my brother until randomly, when my sister was 12 or 13, he asked me to send books in English to her for her studies.

When the deadly government coup happened last year, I wrote him to check up on my sister and his family. He wrote back, “I’m surprised you remember that you have a family.” Channeling my mother’s rage and my own that I, his child, had ALWAYS been the one to reach out to him and had no obligation to him or his family, but cared because I loved the sister I had never met. It shocked me because he had generally been kind to me prior to this interaction, which was my effort at checking in with and seeking to help my family. I wrote a strongly worded e-mail back and started communicating just with my sister. This was my first time experiencing his callous accusations, and I made it clear to him that it would also be my last.

My father calmed down and apologized. I forgave him.

He was nothing if not consistent in his life, speaking before he thought, in ways that were hurtful to those who most loved him.

And I am nothing, if not forgiving.

In the brief period between when my sister arrived in the US, just over a year ago, and his death 8 and a half months ago, I probably talked to and saw my dad (on video calls) on a more regular basis than I ever had. My sister was used to having him around (by phone & video call at least), so we talked almost regularly. These three months helped me see my dad as a (very fallible) human being.

My relationship with my father wavered between non-existent, inconsistent, approval seeking (I somehow felt if I could be perfect enough, I could get him to notice me), and finally accepting.

My father was who he was.

And who he was is often the antithesis of all I strive to be.

But also, he is a large part of me.

And he is the father of my brother and my sister. They are gifts to me, in all of their humanity.

I loved my father, in spite of all the things, the complexities, his humanity and imperfections.

He has taught me, in his absence, so much about humanity, pride, and a deep desire to fix what is broken.

He has taught me the consequences of being unkind to those who love you, but also that even for those who are unkind, there are still those who are loyal to them, that no one is really unlovable.

He has taught me that people are infinitely complex, that they can be deeply revered by some and despised by others.

He has taught me that there can be so much good in a legacy that comes from a deeply flawed individual.

He has taught me that we can’t deny who we are, any of it, that humanity is about embracing all of who we are, if we want to be in true community.

I feel a deep sadness that there is no longer hope for further mutual repair of any type of relationship with my dad. Among my siblings, I am the one who never grew up living with my dad and spent the least amount with him. For me, there is not anger or resentment, nor is there loss in the traditional sense. There is only emptiness.

That emptiness carries forward in my life to this day. I don’t know how to celebrate Fathers Day because I don’t understand it. I am terrible at celebrating the father of my children (my husband) and his father (my father-in-law), my brother (who is a father and was always a father-figure to me growing up), or the people closest to me who are fathers. Most of these people are AMAZING fathers. I love them and honor their parenting. They have helped me reconstruct an understanding of fatherhood and co-parenting.

But Fathers Day itself still creates a lot of cognitive dissonance for me.

Like Mothers Day, Fathers Day is complicated for many people (including me). I get it and, for myself, I am working on giving myself grace as I try to figure out how to make space for all of it. I wish there was some better resolution, but for now, there is only a void, a longing, a profound and enduring sadness as I long for something I have never known, and as a daughter, now, will definitively never know.