“Will I get through my To-do list today?”
For years, I woke up to the cacophony of an alarm clock, my heart racing in response to this inane question, a dark cloud obscuring clear bright mornings, filling me with a sense of inadequacy.
After Saagar’s death other tormenting questions exploded in my mind in multitudes every morning. I realised that none of these were serving me – neither the lists, nor the questions. To live in this new world, I had to find a new language. I needed to select my words carefully as life invited me into a deeper conversation. If not now, when? If not me, who? So, I started crafting questions worth asking.
Every fortnight, I got together with my friends. We had met through the experience of deep loss. We explored the possible answers and sometimes admitted to the impossibility of finding any. We found there were no right or wrong answers. We didn’t worry about how the answers might sound. We found that living in a question was an interesting way of being. We started to interface with life with curiosity, in our chosen vocabulary, deepening our understanding of the experience of being human in the face of child-loss. In this space, there was no need to hide from others or us.
This January we met for the 104th time. CORe completed four years of asking beautiful questions.
What would I like to cultivate in myself and the world?
What is the gift I hold that is hidden from the world?
What is the refusal I keep postponing?
What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?
What aspect of my past am I ready to forgive, so that my heart can be eased?
What are the barriers I have constructed against love?
Beyond all notions of self – my story, my likes, my pet peeves, my body – who am I?
What is the gift I would love to receive but feel underserving of?
Every fortnight we continue this inquiry together, in a healing space called Circle of Remembrance or CORe. Please visit www.core-community.com for more information. We are an on-line peer support group for bereaved parents. Do get in touch if you’d like to join. Please share this newsletter with anyone who might find it useful. Thank you.
Author – Sangeeta Mahajan.
© CORe 2025