It’s sometime between six and seven a.m. and my son starts to root for his early morning snack. I groggily roll over, find his little mouth and feed him milk. As I nurse him, I slowly start to come full awake, taking inventory of my body, allowing my mind to take the slow process it needs to come into being in the world fully.
When the little one finishes nursing, I change his diaper as he sleeps and tuck him in close to his papa. I go to our office and pump a bottle of milk for him, as I start to check into my online world on my phone. Once the bottle of milk is hand-delivered to my husband’s nightstand, I go back to the office and come more into my body through some basic yoga and breathing. Next coffee is to be made as the laptop and wireless warm up.
Coffee in hand, I sit down to the laptop and start to work. Shortly after my daughter wakes and I stop my work to give her snuggles and then set her up to watch some videos on the other computer in our office. I settle back into work for a while and then it is time to feed her, start some dishes, feed myself. And eventually we both make our way back to the office.
I read or write as she giggles at what she is watching. I don’t know what is making her laugh, she wears headphones to try to not disturb my thoughts and process. Her giggles and bursts of laughter seem loud however in contrast to the whispering hum of the computers and each time I need to stop and smile and regroup a bit, biting back that initial response to tell her to quiet down, to shush; instead allowing her to enjoy her moments and thereby allowing myself to enjoy them too, watching her without her knowing, wondering at her beauty (outer and inner) and being amazed that we have journeyed almost eight years together, starting with her conception, and that she is such a gorgeous person after being on this journey of motherhood, despite my stumbles and falls and failings along the way.
I hear the baby crying and wait to go to him, allowing him and his father to create their own relationship of trust, of caring. Sometimes I go and “help” and other times I wait, giving them space to learn more of each other. It is a practice in letting go of the notion that I need to do it all, that it is always my job to fix things. It is knowing in my core that whether I go and help or not, everyone will be okay.
This journey as a creative, as a guide, as a mama and wife and friend and sister, can be hard. Finding time to write or read or work or play inbetween the needs of family life is a practice in patience, perseverance and passion. Creating the space to do all that I love is no easy feat some days and others it flows naturally and makes me question what makes the hard days so hard.
And of course, just as I think I have it all figured out, something comes along to change things.
This is the ebb and flow of life, isn’t it? Once we think we know something, the Universe shakes things up for us, to show us that we don’t really know much of anything beyond the fact that we don’t really know much of anything.
I’ve been coming into this quiet acceptance of this knowing there is so much that I don’t know. Beyond the acceptance I am finding a peace in it, in the not knowing. There is comfort in being in the here and now and releasing the need to know or expectations of the future. It is where I am in my own being and becoming.
Fall is settling into our lives now. The weather and light are shifting and our classes and fall routines are starting to taking root. As the chaos of summer drifts away I find myself feeling cozy and grateful for the more predictable pace of fall. I wonder how our little guy will shake that up for us, and I don’t worry about and allow it to happen in its own time.
I am preparing to guide a beautiful circle of women through the fall season, creating space for each of them to excavate, unearth, release, unfold. I look forward to the journey and wonder how those who are returning will go deeper and how those who are joining us for the first time will add to our circle; how we will guide each other into this new iteration of our own being and becoming.
And all this will happen between the dishes and the breastfeeding. Between the making of meals and folding of laundry. In the hours my husband is home from work and the moments when neither child needs my focus. It will happen because it is my love: to write, to guide, to dig deep, to explore.
Our lives ebb and flow and there are smaller waves within the larger ones. This wave of motherhood will last until my ending day, however what it looks like and how my other waves of being will be influenced by it will change and transform and become something different. I won’t always have office mates who are under the age of ten. I won’t always need to stop writing mid-sentence, mid-thought to feed a child. It won’t always be fall; winter will come, followed by spring and then summer and eventually in it’s time fall will come again.
So for now I work in the between spaces, allowing myself to feel my frustrations with this truth and then letting it drop away like the changing leaves on the trees outside our window. Finding pleasure and joy in moments of distraction, allowing them to feed me instead of starve me. Allowing for the truth, that whether I will it or not, this moment too shall pass.
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