Alexander Ty - Things I Wish I Knew Before My Mom Died: Coping with Loss Every Day

Copyright 2016 by Ty Alexander

Published by Mango Media Inc.

Front and Back Cover, Interior Design, Illustrations,

Theme and Layout: Elina Diaz

Author Photo: Michael Williams

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.

ISBN 978-1-63353-387-5

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the daughters whose mothers were stolen by Heaven. We are now a part of a motherless tribe, and I will always fight for our sanity through my words and actions.

Table of Contents

T y has been in my professional orbit for about six years. Ive always liked and respected her and since this is a safe space, Ill admit to my girl crush (the hair!). But I should also admit that, in the past, I havent been a huge self-help reader. I feel like no one has all the answers. Except Michelle Obama. Plus, I try to keep things simple. Lifes terrifying, random and confusing, right? All you can do is absorb the punches with grace and embrace the goodness with gratitude. Outside of that, have ride-or-die girlfriends and one great vice (that doesnt hurt anybody). For me, donuts for dinner once a week keeps me sane. I balance this with carrot sticks so I feel like a responsible adult.

Tys book isnt just self-help, though. Its a mix: a memoir, detailing her personal experience with the loss of her beloved mother and an inspirational guide on how to battle through. Tys not telling you how to grieve. Shes offering up her truth and if a piece of it hits home for you, or gives you perspective, shes inviting you to take it and run. I remember when she was going through this. She was vocal about her mothers heartbreaking death on social media, and I remember being floored by her bravery. Ty didnt go around the grief. She went through it. And the loss was as intense, complicated, ecstatic, and emotionally fraught as her relationship with her mother was in life. Which makes sense. All mother/daughter relationships are complex of course that energy would carry over, even after the loss. Theres a comfort in knowing that, somehow.

Ty speaks of the relentless, shameless love of mothers. How mothers do whatever it takes to make their babies happy. Exhibit A: Im writing this at 2 am in a hotel bed next to my 7-year-old daughter, whos sleeping horizontally (as she does), with her feet shoved into the right side of my neck. Im staying super-still so I dont wake her, because her insomnia is as bad as mine, and I want her to have a full nights sleep. Ill massage Icy Hot into my pummeled neck tomorrow morning, but who cares? Lina will wake up well-rested, happy and blithely unaware that she physically abused her mother for eight hours.

When it comes to our mothers, were all oblivious. Well never know the everyday, banal sacrifices they made so we could blossom. A mothers secrets are oceans-deep. But we do know that mothers are our entry into the world, the reason were here so when they go, who are we? My entire self-image as a woman was cultivated as a reaction to my mothers. When shes gone, how will I identify myself? I cant imagine the answer. I havent experienced this loss, and theres nothing that can prepare me for it. I can only hope that I can move through it with as much dignity and honesty as Ty.

Thank you for opening up and sharing your story with us.

- Tia Williams ,

author of The Perfect Find

F or the past eight months, Ive been staring at my laptop while actively thumping the letters on my keyboard attempting to complete some kind of sentences (read: Ive been pretending to write this book). From the moment I was approached to write a book, I managed to talk myself out of all the reasons why I should write a book. Writing a book is really the most logical step for me since I do consider myself a pretty accomplished blogger (not so humble brag). Ive been doing this for six years. Ive managed to cultivate my little space on the Internet into enough income to pay for the overpriced box me and my boyfriend rent to live in New York. Ive even got a few contributors for my blog so that I can take advantage of those last minute flight deals to travel whenever I feel like it. My creative director friend will tell anyone that I am one of the best copywriters shes worked with, and yet still I feel like a fraud. I have developed a serious case of impostor syndrome. My daily writing routine involved typing a few paragraphs and then deleting them all. Id do that for about four or five hours. Then Id wake up the next day and start that process all over. I kept asking myself, Why am I even writing this book? And Im for certain that some of you will ask: what makes her such an expert?

Am I an expert?

Well, heres my story. My mother was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma and died within that same year. I found myself aggressively riding on the horns of depression. And I promise you, that ride was an epic fail wrapped in some sort of poisonous chemical that likely resembled arsenic. Somewhere along this journey, I acquired extra bodyweight equal to the size of a baby pandaexcept I was not nearly as cute. I didnt sleep. I was really close friends with 3 am.

I couldnt let a day pass without waiting up for her. I was moderately attached to my bed, at least until 2 in the afternoon. When you are grieving, no one tells you that there isnt a magical yellow brick road that you can follow to return to your normal life. No one tells you that your normal life is gone.

Because what was normal to me was gone, depression kicked in.

To me, depression seemed like a trivial experience, a defect of human nature. Being depressed just never made any sense to me. Its feeling everything but yet feeling nothing at all. And I didnt understand why you couldnt just ignore or get over all those contradictory feelings. That is until depression happened to me. Depression feels like being stuck on a huge ship all by yourself. And that ship has been parked in the middle of an ocean for what feels like months, maybe even years. And that ocean is filled with self-pity, anxiety, misery, fear and then sprinkled with a little self-doubt for added effect. Everything about depression is inconvenient for you and for me. Thats what depression feels like.

From the moment my mother realized shed rather die than fight cancer, I decided I would document every emotion I had because Im a writer. Thats what we do. Plus, my mother and I were so close. I was her Blue Ivy; she was my Beyonc. I didnt know what else to do but to write. I didnt realize that I was secretly planting the seeds I needed for this book. Now I have notes scribbled everywhere and on everything. Millions of drafts are saved in my Evernote app. Post-Its are strategically placed all over my desk, the fridge and on the mirror in my bathroom. There are bits and pieces of my experiences in different journals all over my room (because the same journal was never available when my thoughts arrived). My thoughts are even left on semi-dirty napkins stuffed in those random notebooks. Excuse me while I make sense of my thoughts for this book.

But despite all that I have been through, despite that ship in the middle of the ocean I had been chilling on, its becoming clear to me that my mothers death was not entirely damaging to my existence. At some point, I stopped being mad at cancer, my dysfunctional kinfolks and myself and realized that her death had become a series of life-enhancing lessons and gifts. Life had served me the biggest bittersweet cupcake it could find.

This book represents 153 pages of life revelations that I would not have ever known existed without losing my mother. And that fucking sucks. It sucks that I had to sacrifice so much to learn these lessons. It sucks that it took me so long to get here. And to be perfectly honest with you, Im not even sure where here is. I just know that here is better than that ship that was parked in the middle of an ocean, for what felt like months, that was filled with self-pity, anxiety, misery, fear and then sprinkled with a little self-doubt for added effect. So to answer my own questionand maybe yoursthats why I decided to write this book. I dont claim to be the expert on grief but Im an expert at my own grieving. Hopefully, you can learn something about yours from reading about mine.