Of Ladybugs and Dreams

    An orange ladybug landed on my arm yesterday afternoon as the boys and I were out in the garden earthing. I knew it was my mother visiting us, perhaps wanting to earth with us too. (Brief backstory of how I came to associate my mother with the orange ladybug: one landed on my thigh the night she was laid to rest. I was an island away due to lockdown.) She came to me in a dream again last night. In the dream I was planning out a program holding space for people through Yoga and Meditation. She was there to observe and witness how I worked. I woke up feeling once again comforted, seen and held. 

    I've often wondered whether she would have been proud of my accomplishments no matter how small and shortly after having these questions in my heart, I knew that she was because she had always been attuned to the essence of experiences. The lessons versus the grade with her words that have always guided me all throughout those highly stringent academic years-- "it doesn't matter if you get an 80 out of a 100 for as long as you learned much out of the 80." But since she passed, the physicality of grief has somehow diffused my inner knowing of how she would have been, still is proud of me. Needless to say, I want to hear her voice clear as day that she is proud of me. And not just through affirmations from my brother, or auntie or cousin or niece, that are of course no less valuable and true. I need to feel her arms hold me and hear the joy in her voice, see it reach into her eyes, crinkling their corners. I am not ashamed to say it. I am turning 43 in two weeks, and I still need my Mommy. 

    I remember a friend tell me a few years back when the writing group we established was in full swing and we were organizing a gathering of artists, writers and crafters celebrating art and life, "Basta si An, wala gyu'y makabalibad ani niya." She said so emphatically, "Nobody could ever refuse you." I remember this so clearly now and chuckle with amusement. Apparently, even in the next life, di gihapon makabalibad akong mama nako. Mommy still could not refuse my yearning for her to visit me albeit in my dreams or in the physical form of an orange ladybug. As I write this, I am crying because I realize, how very visceral her answers are. She is here with me, in the very physical manifestation of my waking and dreaming life. I feel held as she landed on my arm. I feel seen as she arrived and stayed in my dream. That I am able to write this particular story affirms and validates my deep longing to be heard by her. Obviously, she did. And she always had, and always will see, hear and hold me. 

    Earthing, planting our feet onto the earth. The boys and I were earthing to feel more physically grounded, emotionally and mentally steadfast when the orange ladybug landed on my arm. What a beautifully, mystical thing it is to wonder at the possibility that even in my mother's spiritual existence, she has yearned(?) and connected with me in the physical essence. And I only need to believe not just in my mind and my heart but in my body not unlike those schooling years that it is the real essence and not the numeric or material metric of people, experiences, places, things that matters really in this human living.