Drinking Tea with My Mom on the Other Side

For many of us, the holidays can be an especially difficult time when it comes to the empty space we feel around the absence of those no longer with us. This year is no exception. So many of us, myself and my husband included, have lost many loved ones, family and friends this past year. It seems not a week passed that we didn't hear of yet another soul moving on.

As we celebrate the closing of 2021 with a Season of Light, it feels especially important to find ways to nourish the connection we have with those who are now dancing on the other side. We remember them, and if it feels right, we can continue to be in relationship with them and grow that relationship through our openness, receptivity and love.

Here is a story about how morning tea evolved into a favorite daily ritual to connect with my Mom. She crossed over in April of this year. It wasn’t something I planned; it bloomed unexpectedly out of the seeds of our love, planted over long arcs of time.

You all know I have a seemingly inexhaustible penchant for bringing new crystal bowls into my life. (I have been known to refer to myself as a "Bowl Hoarder" at times 😆). But I also love TEA CUPS. They utterly delight me and there is (literally) a cupboard full of them in our kitchen. James thought you would enjoy seeing some of them and hearing about WHY I love them so much. I am posting here a few of my favorite cups (well, they are all my favorites). Because each one has it's own story.

There is the cup I bought after my beloved shihtzu Zee crossed the rainbow bridge. (See if you can find it in the photos below.) There is the mammajamma cup that our friend Truly made for James and me to celebrate the purchase of our new home. There is the goldfinch cup I bought with Mom at one of her favorite shops, Snow's on Cape Cod, because she and I love birds so much. Or the Staffordhire covered tea cup with the roses that Mom found for me at the Dunbar Tea Room (a place we loved going together, of course:-)). And then there is my oldest cup; the cup that she gave me before I left home for my first year at college, something I would never have thought to bring for myself. Hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands of teas and coffees and cups-of-soup have been drunk out of that cup alone.

Every morning I make myself tea (chai or dandelion or whatever else is calling). I ask myself: “which cup it will be today? The bird cup? The bluebell cup? The snowman cup?” (a long ago Christmas present from Mom) “The purple cup? The yellow flowered cup?” Sometimes my little girl wants a special cup: The Alice in Wonderland cup (yet another of Mom’s magical tea cups). She bought one of these for herself, my sister and me to make sure we each had one.

Lately, I am loving all the english bone china cups my mother bequeathed to me before she died. She collected them over the years and rarely ever used them. They sat up in her cupboard, along with some dessert plates, for use on SPECIAL OCCASIONS (which of course, hardly ever happened). My sister sent them to me after Mom passed, earlier this year. A couple of months ago, I finally unpacked them, placed them on our kitchen table and cried. They are so beautiful. Below are pictures of two of them: the yellow roses and the purple thistle. In fact, I am drinking out of one of them as I write this now. In any case, I decided that it was High Time they were used on a regular basis. So began what has become my morning ritual. Every morning, I choose a cup, fill up my carafe with tea, sit at the breakfast table or my desk, and sip my tea. At the same time, I love on my mother. I think of her. I send my heart out to her and we drink tea together. She chose these cups because they gave her so much delight, and probably because they reminded her of her lineage as a daughter of a Scotsman. I suspect they also reminded her (although she might never have actually admitted this) of cellular memories as an English or Scottish gentlewoman in some other past life, drinking tea out of gold rimmed porcelain bone china, elegant and refined.

My favorite picture of my Mom and I together, watching seals off the coast of Cape Cod

So I have my tea every morning with Mom and with the ancestors I never knew. I send them all love and gratitude that I get to be in this body, in this now, cleansing and clearing and sharing my consciousness with our family line through healing sound, uplifting thoughts, sacred mantra and prayers. How amazing is that?

It is miraculous how the simplest things in life can help us heal and give us opportunities to grow and love ourselves and each other more every day. Maybe you have a story like this to share? Maybe you have a special teacup, glass or mug or two or three? Perhaps it has nothing to do with sound; but the vibration of love doesn't need a crystal bowl or a drum or a flute. It can pulse with the most radiant light in the fragile beauty of a delicate tea cup.

Happiest of Holidays and Holy Days to you all. May your days be shiny and bright. And may love fill your cup to overflowing. ✨🥰✨🥰✨🥰