Catrina’s Surrender Story
Catrina has had the most challenging 1 1/2 years imaginable with 6 major losses in her life. Here she shares her courageous story of loss, letting go, acceptance, surrender and moving forward.
She was in Graduate school when she lost her grammy. The fact that her grammy had lived her life, was ready to go and made the choice to stop dialysis care was very hard for her to initially accept. Knowing the courage it took for her to make that decision was mind blowing and accepting that it was her grammies choice was difficult to initially understand. Luckily, Catrina got to visit her grammy the weekend before she died which was deeply comforting. Seeing how her quality of life had deteriorated made it easier for her to understand. Seeing and accepting the cycles of life, while understanding that it was about her grammies journey and her choice, made it easier to accept and let go, as difficult as it was.
6 months later Catrinas mom died two days before Christmas. Even though her mom was sick most of her life and had a hard challenging life, her death was still unexpected. Here too, she was able to visit her mother in an assisted living facility three days before Christmas. Her mother was well taken care of, but hadn’t been feeling well. Her, her sister and mother all exchanged gifts and talked together for some time the night before she passed. On some level she thought that her mother must have known that was going to die. Right before leaving, her mother hugged her goodbye and held her face and looked into her eyes and said “you’re going to be ok right, you’re strong, you’re a strong girl and are going to be ok.” Although Catrina knew her mom had always been energetically tuned into her, at that moment she didn’t really understand the depth of what she was saying and said “yes mom, of course.” The next morning she passed in her room at the assisted living facility. The police were called, as they always are, to document any death. When Catrina arrived they wouldn’t let her in the room to see her mom. She became frantic, upset and finally collapsed on the floor in the hallway where a deep sense of acceptance knowing her mother was gone overcame her.
Over the next weeks and months she grieved her mothers and gramma’s loss. Layers of acceptance unfolded in various ways. Knowing that they were together and that her mom was finally at peace was comforting and helpful.
6 months after that, her best friend and roommate that she met in Graduate school died. He got very sick and wasn’t aware of the extent of his sickness and died unexpectedly. When he died there was another layer of grief, loss and guilt because she felt that if she knew how sick he was; she could have helped him. He was like her little brother and had helped Catrina in so many ways including her mothers death. She felt that if she had known she would have been able to take care of him better.
Catrina remembers feeling very lost because she didn’t have the same people in her life that she could once go to for wisdom and comfort. After questioning so many why’s and questioning God, Catrina came to know that her grammy, her mother and her friend were now at peace and to accept fully that they were gone. Knowing the reality that we’re not going to be here for very long, that death is real and that life is short, helped her understand the preciousness of life on another deep and profound level. She also saw that the acceptance of ones death is related to how we as individuals perceive life and death. That how we individually perceive and process death is how we come to accept others peoples death. Knowing that it’s each individuals relationship to life and death and that everyone is different helped Catrina to process and accept all of her losses from a place of deeper wisdom.
Approximately 6 months later Catrina had a miscarriage and shortly after, the father of the baby left her. Here again, experiencing the deep loss of a child and of someone she thought who had loved her, was utterly devastating. Around this time she also lost her cat of 21 years. This was her absolute lowest time where she was so very sad and couldn’t comprehend it all. She got to a point where she felt she couldn’t take anymore. One night in her kitchen, she dropped to her knees wailing, crying and praying to God to help her understand why all this was happening. She knew that if she didn’t let go she wasn’t going to be ok. She continued to pray for help as she was vomiting on the floor and was so very very tired of feeling this way. After some time releasing all of the holding on, of trying to be strong and of trying to keep it together throughout all these losses, something shifted. On the floor as she was shaking and releasing on a very deep level, something shifted. Her face was on the kitchen floor, she was crying and hitting the floor. She had had enough. Talking to God she said “I’m surrendering to you. I’m at your feet, I can’t do this anymore on my own, I’m giving it all up to you.” At this point she felt a breeze of something and then felt the holy spirit surround her. At that moment she fell into “that” and everything stopped while time froze and she let it consume her. Here Catrina felt complete peace for the first in a year and a half. She heard God say “Everything is going to be ok.” She stayed there and rested in it until she knew that that peace would be there always and never leave her. After that she finally knew that she was going to be alright.
The literal and physical aspect of picking herself up off the floor was another life changing moment as she stood up. She felt free and lighter as her first thought was “ok, it’s going to be ok” and knew it deeply.
Shortly after that day Catrina was outside playing with her dog in the yard. Standing in the middle of the yard while she had thrown her dogs toy, she realized she wasn’t feeling well. Talking to God, she said “God I need some more help, please show me a sign.” Right then a hummingbird flew right up to her face within inches and stayed there, staring at her. She stepped back and the hummingbird moved with her, it stayed in her face. The noise from its rapid wings and the energy from it in her face was like the hand of God energizing her. “It Woke me up, like WOKE, it energized me, it was like a slap of love on the top of my head. Like Wake Up.” She felt this energy of life, of love, of God, of the Divine vibrating through her. She had never felt anything like this before in her life and it was life changing, immediately she thought “woohoo, ok, I’m good” and everything shifted once again.
The hummingbird continues to come and fly around and visit her often although there are no flowers nor a hummingbird feeder in her yard. She knows it a sign.
Over time Catrina came to a place of complete acceptance to the knowing that all these loved ones are gone, that we are all going to die, that people are going to leave, that someday that she’s going to leave too. She continues to work on letting it all go, there’s always residual in grieving. “Grief changes over time but I’m not sure if it fully leaves you. It changes you. I know I’ll never be the same.”
“I’ve surrendered to the fact that I’m not in control and that death doesn’t really have anything to do with me other than how I perceive it. It is life and everything has an ending. Surrendering for me is handing it over to God. I think when you fully surrender all the other stuff automatically lets go, so you can surrender without fully letting go first. For me, fully surrendering first, took everything else I was holding on to away, it was liberating. I have a deeper abiding trust in God knowing he’s in control. I know that I can’t control death or anything else for that matter and when you release that holding on; it’s positive and liberating, life is easier. I don’t have the capacity to control everything and I don’t want to anymore. I have the capacity now to know that I am taken care of, I trust in that. I don’t worry anymore, it’s not in my hands and I’m more at peace with myself knowing that everything is going to be okay, no matter what happens, it’s all going to work out. All of this has brought me so much closer to God. Knowing that life is fast, I don’t worry my days away any longer and I’m at peace.” “My life is between myself and God, after all, we are all souls having a human experience. We are all connected, we are all God, we are all love.”
“EMDR has helped me tremendously to get past a lot of my losses. I feel alive again for the first time in a very long time. I trusted the process of EMDR and knowing that your mind is a very powerful thing and that you can truly heal yourself and not be stuck in a life of loss and trauma. You can move past it all and actually feel that you’re living instead of surviving this life. You can heal yourself with God, surrender, faith and trust and with your own mind as well. You can heal your mind, your thoughts and beliefs with EMDR. The combination of both of these things changed my perspective and helped me heal my life on deep and lasting levels.
Light Channel, Synesthesia Artist
Making the Invisible Visible.
