{"id":192,"date":"2016-01-03T11:11:14","date_gmt":"2016-01-03T16:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/?p=192"},"modified":"2016-01-03T09:58:14","modified_gmt":"2016-01-03T14:58:14","slug":"double-helix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"Double helix"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Our family had an amazing opportunity in traveling to Italy and France in the summer of 2011. While in France, we visited a couple of Chateaux in the Loire Valley.\u00a0 We were enamored by the architectural centerpiece of the Chateau de Chambord.\u00a0 It was a \u201cdouble helix\u201d, two spiral staircases intertwined.\u00a0 I share this image because I can relate to it now.\u00a0 It seems to reflect my grief process and that of the community.<\/p>\n

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It is clear to me that there are so many people holding our family. For simplicity, I\u2019m going to talk about just me now.\u00a0 I know that I\u2019m being held.\u00a0 You are keeping me in your thoughts, hearts, and prayers.\u00a0 To this end, I know that you are grieving with me.\u00a0 You are sharing my grief, and in some, I\u2019ll say magical way, it is helping me. \u201cIt could have been us\u201d, is a term that I\u2019ve heard widely since October 2nd<\/sup>.\u00a0 The teenage years are challenging at best; so many are holding on by a thread.\u00a0 \u201cIt could have been us,\u201d you say, \u201canyone of us.\u201d\u00a0 Aside from your love, it is the intense identification with our loss that you have been sharing the weight of our family\u2019s grief.\u00a0 This is one of the staircases.<\/p>\n

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The other is the feeling spiraling inside of me is that\u00a0it WAS me. It IS our family. I am mourning a deep, deep loss, as Maya left us tragically by suicide at age 15.\u00a0 While I am grieving my own loss so intensely on such a personal level, I am carrying this grief for you.\u00a0 I am the mother that lost her daughter; I am living your realization that \u201cit could have been any of us\u201d.<\/p>\n

We are grieving with one another. For me, there is a distinct difference in the analogy of the double helix staircase and my perception of our intertwined grieving process.\u00a0 The staircase was masterfully designed so that a person ascending or descending one staircase could not see someone traveling the other.\u00a0 In the double helix image that I have for me and the community, the walls are transparent.\u00a0 We clearly see one another.<\/p>\n

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Our family had an amazing opportunity in traveling to Italy and France in the summer of 2011. While in France, we visited a couple of Chateaux in the Loire Valley.\u00a0 We were enamored by the architectural centerpiece of the Chateau de Chambord.\u00a0 It was a \u201cdouble helix\u201d, two spiral staircases intertwined.\u00a0 I share this image…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gifts-since"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p720L0-36","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202,"href":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayasgifts.elisegold.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}