I am exactly like my mother. I have always known this- but in her absence (death) I find it much more noticeable… and that the parts of me I don’t love, that are genetically from my mother, like my thighs that have always rubbed together- I miraculously don’t want them smaller- something I have tried to do my whole life. I sound like her when I laugh, and just last week I had a coughing fit and thought to myself, “this is how she sounded when she coughed.”
I love being just like her. My mom was totally my hero. I would watch her after a shower put Lubriderm lotion all over her body, and blow dry her always short pixie cut hair with a Mason Pearson brush and Paul Mitchell sculpting gel. I can feel and smell those memories still at age 40. I traveled the world with her, as she paved the way for the artworld. She was a tablecloth-only kind of woman when we would find a restaurant for dinner, and taught me about the finer things in life. We weren’t rich and I wasn’t spoiled- but my mother was classy- I could tell through each year she was in business, she was growing in success and life got just a smidge more comfortable. These were small frameworks into the ways that I watched her, as a powerful woman, say “I am worth this and I built this…myself.”
There has not been a day, in my life as a child, teenager, young adult or adult that I haven’t known my worth. I’m so thankful for a strong mother and female figure to raise me in this way. It is because of this, I have faced, and beaten SO MUCH adversity in my life, and not once thought that I couldn’t do it.
There is a joke (and a future post in the making) that my mom, although wildly loving and wonderful, was NOT a nurturer. I would call her after a boy broke my heart, or I was having a bad day and her advice was always, “you’ll figure it out.” It wasn’t a snuggle or a margarita night- it was a firm “I know you will figure it out and when you do, you’ll be ok.”
And guess what? I’ve always figured it out and I’ve always been ok. I am the strongest woman I know.
But, right now—- at current, I don’t feel ok and I don’t know that I’ll ever figure out how to find my happy, balance, fulfillment again without my mom on this earth. I don’t know how to verbalize the emptiness I feel without having what felt like the only person on the planet that knew me— gone. I have mixed emotions and feelings about the afterlife, and heaven, and if all of that truly exists- which makes this reality MUCH MUCH more lonely.
To add to the trauma and pain of losing my mother, those closest to us, executors, trusted friends, tenants in our home- have all, really acted horrifically surrounding my mothers death-with their own agendas, power trips, opinions about who should get my mothers ashes (would you believe her longest friend tried to steal them from being sent to me? Like actually, went to Mexico and tried to threaten and steal them!).
I have spent days crying on the floor over the mess that is trying to grieve and mourn my mother, protect my elderly dad, and continue on the legacy that is Sylvia White. I’ve spent hundreds on incompetent lawyers and screamed into the air for my mommy to help me.
And then on Sunday, I tried to take a nap- and a whoosh ( I don’t have a better word to describe it) was placed into my head and onto my heart- to open up my computer and log into my mothers substack. Remember? YOU helped set it up! Perhaps there is something there, that might help feel connected to her.
And there was—-there was you…ALL.
I received over 500 emails sharing stories of my mother, even from a student she taught in the 1970s who later became an art teacher.
I read every single email. I cried reading all of them. I felt so so full, and held and loved and comforted.
Feelings I haven’t felt from those who were supposed to hold me.
I feel thankful. I feel grateful. I feel seen. I feel like all of your emails were like the most ginormous hug from my mom, and god damnit, I needed that.
I’m going to continue to share stories of the Sylvia White I knew- and tidbits of articles and career advice that I have in her archives if that’s ok with you.