Baking my birthady cake with mom

November 28th will be my 30th birthday. This has been a big year for me, 2020 nonsense aside. This year I started opening up myself to feeling and processing my grief in a way I've never even known was possible. I've come to learn and understand that holidays, special occasions, and life events have ALWAYS been so much harder on me because of her absence. I usually tried to cope by denying and ignoring the feelings, and ended up just overwhelmed and needing to shut down in a puddle of tears. I'm learning that perhaps while I can't avoid that big emotion and puddle of tears,  I can allow it to coincide with my joy, as well. 

This year, turning 30 felt so big and important to me; entering into a decade of true adulthood and all that will come with it, seeing all of my success and achievements through my 20s, and blooming as my full self. And doing all of that, without her to stand by and say WOW Linda! What a wonderful 30 year old you have become - well that is just incredibly sad, disappointing, and sends me straight to the couch to hide in my feelings cocoon and not come out. Ha that sounds really quite silly to see it in that way,  Grief doesn't lead to logical thoughts. At least, maybe when that one person isn't around to give that kind of unconditional love and support, you really, REALLY, need it. Maybe everyone feels this? Idk

To try and help myself feel better about the limited celebrations available at this time, I came up with a big list of activities to do to be able to celebrate a little each day on my own. On the list were things like "photo shoot with Adolfo", "French night", "Run a 5K", "Family game night on zoom", "watch Grease in costume" and "bake a chocolate cake from scratch". This list helped me focus my priorities on what is fun to me, what I actually want to do, and how I feel about prioritizing just hanging out on the couch over frivolous scheduled activities, ha.

 And then, suddenly, my birthday approached and is just 4 days away. I haven't actually planned anything, I haven't gathered my people. I've just stayed in this fragile space with all of my feelings clutched to my chest extremely tightly, until I snapped and slammed a container of tomatoes all across my kitchen this morning in a big angry explosion.  This was NOT ACCORDING TO THE PLAN. 

After gathering my feelings, letting the tears fall, and finally understanding that maybe ignoring my grief on my birthday is counter-intuitive, I've decided to take another approach. I will invite my grief, my memory of my mom, and the incredible disappointment I feel about my birthday this year to join me in my kitchen on Friday November 27th and we will bake a cake together from scratch. I will read the instructions, and my mom will be there with me as I measure and mix and bake. I will create a new tradition of baking with my mom for my birthday. I remember watching old home videos of my birthdays, maybe when I was 2 and 3. My mom was right there next to me, cheering me on, helping direct me to blow out the candles on the cake. I can remember hearing her sing happy birthday to me in one of the videos, in her funny off-key scratchy voice that was so uniquely hers.  Once, (I think) she has someone bake me princess cake for a special cake tin we picked out together. Perhaps we missed out on baking and singing together for the past 25 years, but we'll start again now. 

Stay tuned for the finished Chocolate cake to come!

Love&Pasta,

Linda