“I was standing in a pile of rubble and struggling through the grief process after she died”
My mom passed away when I was 22 years old. Living at home in my fifth and final year of college, I was coaching feral fifteen-year-old girls in water polo and working full-time at Blockbuster Video- it was not how I imagined my early twenties. While friends were partying with reckless abandon in our carefree beach town in San Diego, I was struggling to keep it together. Ten years later, as an established member of the “no mom club,” I found my strength through Malcolm Gladwell’s essay, the “Theory of Desirable Difficulty,” from his #1 bestseller, David and Goliath. Gladwell explores how “being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate.” With insightful research and masterful storytelling, he captures the true essence of overcoming odds.
He introduces the theory of desirable difficulty to show that not all difficult experiences are negative. He tells the stories of individuals who overcame extreme difficulties such as war, dyslexia, and losing a parent to tragedy, arguing that conquering fear, and surviving, is a unique gift. He explains that we often misunderstand the result of these unfortunate events. The end result, for a lucky few, is exhilaration and a deep sense of courage and self-confidence. Gladwell writes, “Courage is not something you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.” Fear is a powerful emotion; who isn’t afraid of losing their mom? If you’re lucky, she is your constant rock, the person that provides unconditional nurturing love and compassion, and you find solace in her presence.
Blissfully unaware that her death was looming, I didn’t walk around afraid that my mom’s aches and pains or weight fluctuations were a stealthy tumor growing in her colon. I lived in a comfortable bubble of mom-love that was suddenly popped with her diagnosis. I took her to doctors appointments and tried to be the perfect daughter through her sixteen rounds of chemo through what I would come to find out was the last year of her life. The thought of her dying sometimes crept in, but I felt safe in the positive reinforcement that only a mom can provide: she was going to survive. Until she didn’t.
My mom died in a hospital bed in our kitchen one night shortly after we fell asleep together watching The World Series of Poker, 15 months post-diagnosis. I called friends that morning and told them the news in a state of shock, sometimes making awkward jokes and putting on a brave face to ease the pain for them. I welcomed guests to her funeral with the same upbeat vibes they’d come to expect from my charismatic mom; then, in time, I allowed myself to feel the immense pain. Gladwell captures the feeling that, “losing a parent is not like having your house bombed or being set upon by a crazy mob. It’s worse. It’s not over in one terrible moment, and the injuries do not heal as quickly as a bruise or a wound. But what happens to children whose worst fear is realized—and then they discover that they are still standing?”
I was standing in a pile of rubble and struggling through the grief process after she died. Eventually, her death led to my most courageous moves. A year to the day after my mom’s passing, I packed my Pontiac Grand Prix full of everything I owned and made the drive to Seattle. A friend had offered me a data entry job to get my start and that was enough for me to leave the life I knew. I lived in the same house for twenty-two years in a neighborhood where we left the front door unlocked and pushed the boundaries of our “be home before the streetlights come on” rule with no hesitation.
In Seattle, I now paid my own rent and drove my own car to land my very own first corporate job. The training wheels were off. A couple of years later, I started a charity running race for colon cancer and raised tens of thousands of dollars to help people like my mom and their families going through cancer treatment. I followed in her footsteps (literally) and ran a marathon two years after she passed just to feel close to her and prove that I could. I traveled throughout the United States in an incredible job as I ambitiously worked through my grief and on myself. I even explored Europe and South America alone- with the life-changing drive through Chile’s Torres del Paine, an unofficial eighth wonder of the world.
Things could have gone a lot differently, but through this sudden loss, I felt courage in the sense that I had nothing to lose. Life without mom was and is tough. I have enough practice crying that Malcolm Gladwell would consider me a master of the craft. But where would I be if I had never experienced this loss? Would I have the capacity to understand that when things feel like the end of the world, the world keeps moving? I probably wouldn’t have done the work to become a parent to myself. Death is a part of life, and I no longer fear it or think I can control it. Gladwell argues that we as a society need people who have emerged from trauma and become stronger by their experiences. Every day, I take pride in being one of those people.
My name is Keely and I am UNCrushed.
