Losing Matisse – a Lesson in Spirituality by Ischa

Ischa shares with Sands her experience of losing her first baby boy, Matisse

'Losing Matisse forced me to accept life as it is, and to find peace with that.'

In January 2011 in between having a daughter and son, I lost my first baby boy, Matisse. It was my second pregnancy; he arrived early and did not survive the birth. It was especially heart breaking as I had endured months of illness clinging to the imagination of our future together. Having that taken away without reason left me in a state of shock, despair and utter lost-ness.

After the birth, distraught I asked all the usual questions, how did it happen, what do I do wrong, how could I fix it.  I felt so guilty, that somehow I had caused it or in someway didn’t deserve him. To ease the pain I started to plan. How soon could I start over, try again, and move forward. It felt good. I was in control again and the dream was not lost.  Then something happened.

My grief would not accept this pushing through. It stayed, forced me to sit and experience the pain in all its rawness. It sensed that this time I needed a different kind of meaning. It was in this moment that I began to really understand what being spiritual means. It is the choice to look for greater meaning through every situation, no matter how painful it might be.  A spiritual path is not something we choose to follow. We are always on it.

It is made up of every single experience we have passed through since birth. It is in the moment we consciously decide to evolve through these experiences that our spiritual path is revealed to us. One particular gift of loss and despair is that it is when life makes no sense that we are forced to seek a higher truth. Losing Matisse was a powerful teacher. It helped me to see that happiness is not the most important thing, nor the only path to fulfilment.

We greatly limit the human experience in the West fearing loss, grief, loneliness, guilt, anger, and desperation. We are taught to charge through, take action and move away from anything that feels uncomfortable. This denies the value of such emotions and drives us to control, avoid, resist and escape. And yet these emotions chase us relentlessly no matter how far we run, seemingly sabotaging our lives until we stop and let them in.

I have suffered many set backs in life and crusaded through them fearlessly. This time was different. I did not want Matisse to be a set back, a test of my strength. I wanted to keep him close by for the rest of my journey as an ally in life. What I discovered in my grief was the power of acceptance to bring peace into any type of human experience. Peace removes judgement, expectation and the need to know. Humans are gifted with wide range in their experiences, feelings and thoughts.

No one knows what is good or what is bad. It may feel bad to lose a baby, and to the future we may have had. To judge it as unfair, not right, and to imagine that I did not deserve him undermines his importance to my life.

Losing Matisse forced me to accept life as it is, and to find peace with that. Not to wish or want or expect things to be different. It developed in me new skills to meet disappointment with faith and openness, to not let it control me. He taught me the ultimate spiritual response is to allow my emotions while viewing every experience as a gift, an opportunity for new wisdom. I now know that in it is only on this path in our vulnerability that we truly relate to one another at our essence and that together we can grow and evolve our humanity.

Ischa

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Sands on 13 000 72637

Ischa Roberts

I have many roles as a mother, wife and coach but my commitment is always to live my life in an authentic way. I am passionate about improving the human experience and helping people clarify their priorities and make conscious choices. I support relationships to create deeper experiences of intimacy and work to transform family life. Loss has been a powerful teacher of self-discovery, forgiveness, compassion and trust and I thank Matisse everyday for gifting me with this wisdom.