Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Wishes and Prayers Answered and Becoming

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When my daughter was younger she used to wish upon the sun, using the logic that our sun is a star. She would alter the well-known rhyme to “Starlight, star bright, first star I see alright. I wish I may I wish I might have the wish I wish in daylight” and she would make whatever wish her heart called in that moment.

She also prays to the Tooth Fairy. After each tooth lost, all eight now, before we start to read our story for the night, she will quietly lay down on her bed, fold her hands together at her chest, close her eyes and send a prayer to the Tooth Fairy that she not take her tooth, that she understand her unwillingness to let this literal piece of herself go just yet, and could she please go ahead and leave the money anyhow. (If you were wondering, of course the Tooth Fairy always answered by complying).

To date, this sweet girl always asks before she gets a piece of candy or sits down at the computer or to watch TV. She makes sure she is “allowed” and at closing in on eight, I wonder how much longer this will last. How will her way of checking in with us change? When will she stop asking permission and instead choose to ask for forgiveness? How did we ever raise a girl concerned with rules?

Curled up close at the end of the day, or as we are at the sink brushing our teeth or at the breakfast table or randomly in the car she will say “Thank you for being the best mommy in the whole world!”  I’m never sure what I have done to deserve those words, and certainly could give you a long list of things I have done to prove I do NOT deserve those words, and yet she gives them to me, a gift straight from her soul into mine.

I am in awe of this girl child growing into a young woman. I’m not always sure where she came from, and the joke in our family for a long time was we didn’t know who her mother was. Despite all my foibles and outright failures she is a beautiful person, shining brightly every day. I’m honored to be her mama, and I hope as she grows and our relationship has its storms, we both always remember this: She is her own Self—she is not mine even though she came from me, both my body and my heart, and I will always love her and be proud of her, even when I don’t agree with her or her choices.

Because there will likely come a day when she makes a choice that worries me or scares me or worse: reminds  me too much of myself. I pray that I enter those times with grace, allowing her to be her own person, make her own mistakes or even prove me wrong with my worry or fear. I pray I don’t get lost in my own ego and judgement and that I am gentle with her, even more so than when she was an infant, even more so than I am now. I pray I always let her know that no matter what, I am her mama, I love her, and she always has a place in our home.

I pray for a life for her I did not know. I pray for a relationship between us to be one I did not have with my own mother until it was almost too late.

I know in my heart, it will be different, she and I will be different, our relationship has already been different these first seven plus years. And I breathe in the truth that I let go of the stories of how children should be raised and how girls should act and held onto my own truth of what it means to be a mama, what it is to raise a child with love and respect and compassion, what it means to raise a girl into a woman.

And so my prayers may already be answered as I look over at this beautiful girl, engrossed in a game of creation. Her gangly legs bent and her posture that of a teen already. I say another silent prayer: please slow down, please let me savor these between moments a bit longer.  Because the truth is,  it all goes too fast, even when we are paying attention.

her own self

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A Winter’s Day

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Standing in the sunbeam that forced its way through our slider door, I know the warmth of winter, hibernation and family. My boy crawling along the floor, exploring, examining, experimenting with each of his toys as he pulls them from his orange and white toy basket, wrapped in his own world of play and understanding of his world around him. My girl, curled up on the futon, exploring, experimenting, creating in Minecraft, wrapped in her own world of play and understanding of this world she is growing into.

And then there is me. Sitting, watching. In awe of their curiosity and determination. Breathing in this lesson of theirs to dig in, to examine, explore and find deeper understanding. To allow my own curiosity to take over and to seek and find what is me and mine.

I watch my son throw a toy to the wayside and pick up another. His endless exploration, wanting to taste, touch, know each object in his little basket. I laugh as he shakes one toy and as it makes noise it looks like he starts to dance. He hears his own music and I am grateful for my own cracking open so I can hear the music that bubbles up from within me.

Dancing to my own beat and shedding the story of not making a spectacle of myself. Allowing the music, my music, to fill my soul and push out the voices that tell me to calm down, sit down, be quiet, don’t move, don’t feel, don’t experience my own body, my own inner music, my own innate wisdom.

I was never good at listening to those voices for too long, though I would obey for periods of time. Just long enough to allow the volcano to build up and eventually I would crack and explode, gaining disapproving looks from my grandmother. At times my mother would encourage me, when she felt strong in her own dance and at others, when she was filled with her own fears of loss and abandonment and good enoughness, she would put all her energy in silencing me. And the cycle would begin again.

I look over at my girl, sitting quietly on her tablet, and I know the pattern I have adopted from my mother: at times encouraging my girl’s voice to be loud and bold and at others, in my weaker moments, demanding her silence and even giving the same disapproving looks of my grandmother. My hope as I sit here in this winter sunbeam is that the encouragement outweighs the demands, that she keeps her voice and dances to her own music always, regardless of my parenting failures.

As I sit and observe and reflect, I know the stories handed to me by my ancestors, and I know the ones I am passing on to my girl.  And while I am sad at what I am passing on, I also know what I am not passing to her, and I dream of the day, in thirty years or so, when she sits in a winter sunbeam and reflects on what she is passing on to her children and what lessons she is allowing them to teach her.

snapshot of a winters day

These bones

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In my bones are stories that aren’t mine. Stories of my mother’s or grandmothers’ or great-grandmothers’. Perhaps they weren’t their stories either, perhaps they were handed down to them too. Passed off as Truth, as Rules to Live By, as The Way We Must Be. Stories of what it is to be a mother, a woman, a wife. Stories of how or when to talk, what it means to be successful, how our worth is measured by others, be they by our side or not.

Stories of being a bad mother not deserving of children. Stories of not having value. Stories of not talking too much, or shining too brightly. Stories of being noticed, but only for the right things.

So many stories live in our muscles and bones and DNA. Stories given to us on silver platters lined in blood and tears.

Competition, holding down, holding back. No trust in these stories, no sisterhood. No love. These stories were not shared in the red tent or in circle around the fire while howling at the moon. These stories were born of loneliness, isolation, pain, and fear.  Always fear.

Who spoke the first story telling us we have no value of our own? Who forced these stories upon our mothers and grandmothers and aunts and great-grandmothers and all the women before them? When did these stories become “Truth”? Was it when Hesoid transformed Pandora from a Earth Mother Goddess, a creatrix of life, into the bearer of all pain and destruction in this world? Was it that long ago? And why, oh why did our mothers succumb to the fear and allow those stories to be told so many millennia ago? Why, did they take them in as truth and allow them to be  spread as a disease that grows in our being, to be passed down through flesh and bone to each of their daughters?

What will it be to shed these stories one by one? Will they ever all be shed? How can we not pass these stories on to our daughters, who are made up of half our DNA? How we can show them the value of being a girl growing into a woman? How can we replace our tainted bones with ones of life and creation and beauty?

Slowly, so slowly the layers peel back, getting deeper into these bones, extracting the marrow that no longer serves and allowing a new nourishment to grow in its place. It is messy and painful and beautiful this extraction and new growth. One story excavated, shown for what it is: a myth, not Truth unless we want it to be. And as this story rewrites and reforms into our own reality and truth and being now, we find yet another story of theirs, and we take in a slow deep breath and prepare our Self for this next procedure of extraction and new growth.

Coming into the body, into the breath, taking back our muscles and skin and bones and very being as our own. First in our body and then in our soul. Sharing, giving, melding, and still holding what is ours as sacred and honest and earth and blood. The stories come and go and the tears flow and we hear their whispers and screams to stop this process, to let the stories lie and continue to live in fear of being too much or too little and always never enough. We wrap our Self  in love and comfort, letting our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and theirs too, all know that we will be okay, that there is no wrong in digging down to our truth and stories, in allowing this regrowth; there is only beauty in coming together in circle and allowing ourselves and each other to glow and that as we own our body and being and breath and life, we will do more than survive; we will flourish and thrive and glow and truly, deeply, fully, live.

know theyself

 

Inspired by Alisha Sommer and Robin Sandomirsky‘s Liberated Lines FLASH::Amplify.

Our foundation

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I watch her. One moment a little girl, the next a young woman. She’s only seven and a half and yet her body is starting to connect with the moon and with mine. Mood swings monthly. Huge tears. My sensitive girl made more sensitive. I ask her, “What is wrong?” and the sobs wrack her body as she shouts “I DON’T EVEN KNOW!!”. Her confusion breaks me. I find my soft place for her, knowing this change won’t be easy for this girl who weeps at every birthday, not wanting to become older, not wanting to accept the next age and iteration of her life.

I find a soft place for myself. To mourn the little girl who is disappearing but not really. The moments I missed or worse, tainted and destroyed. Knowing my own imperfect journey of motherhood. Forever trying. Sometimes wondering if I’m doing more damage than good and still  knowing now, that I am good enough. Knowing she was meant to be my girl and I was meant to be her mama.

Finding my own innate wisdom, my own embodied knowledge. Allowing the wise women before me to come forth and hold my hand through this new trial. Helping me to both hold her and let her go, at the same time. Allowing myself to shed my own layers of hurt and let that young girl in me come forward, to comfort her along with my daughter.

This wisdom rising up of what it is to be a woman. What it is to own my power and strength and beauty. To know there is infinite strength in the softness, the curves, the bending.

I see myself reflected in her eyes. I allow her own sadness to burst forth. Holding space for her as I do for so many others. And yet I sometimes forget she needs me to hold space for her first, always. Sometimes she gets my impatience and annoyance instead. Sometimes I fail at this thing called mamahood. And yet she always forgives me, she always tells me I am the best mama in the world, the most perfect mama just for her. And my heart cracks and shatters at her words and I find the strength to be gentle with her, with me.

I find myself grasping for her as she giggles and pulls away. In the next moment, she reaches for me, but I am not there. This is the dance of this mother and daughter. Beautiful, imperfect and filled with love and humanity.

I root down into my own embodied knowledge, my own wisdom. This too shall pass, too quickly. I have blinked too many times and missed so much. Those moments I have caught though, with my eyes wide open… they have been breath-taking, amazing. And it is those moments that remind me it’s not the big events and once time occasions, its the every day that defines us.

The every day quiet moments. The snuggles at bedtime. The warm hugs first thing in the morning. The bowl of oatmeal, lovingly prepared. The stopping typing and looking at her when she speaks to me. Holding her hand as we cross the street. The long talks in the car as we go from here to there. Those are the moments that have build the foundation of our relationship.

So we dance on this foundation, allowing it to hold us, to keep us safe during the turbulence and stress. For each moment I know I have screwed up, there is another moment or five that I know I got right. Those moments, the ones I got right, they keep us going, they give me faith in the tomorrows to come, again knowing in my bones I’ll screw some of those moments up too, and yet I will get so many more of them just right.

 

It seems just yesterday she was napping peacefully here.
It seems just yesterday she was napping peacefully here.

Inspired by a Liberated Lines Flash offered generously by Alisha Sommer and Robin Sandomirsky. So thrilled to be writing from and for my heart again.

Life as prayer… aka breaking open

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Inspired by a Liberated Lines Flash offered generously by Alisha Sommer and Robin Sandomirsky. So excited to open my writing for my heart again.

Today. Today. Today.

I remind myself what I have is today.

Looking back is important, yes. Seeing the patterns that break us, seeing what we can change and fix and explore and transform now. And knowing we can never actually change the events of yesterday, we can only change our reactions to them today, make the repairs necessary, to ourselves, with others.

Looking forward is everything some days. Knowing this won’t last forever, that it too shall pass. Excavating and building dreams. Seeing ourselves in a different place and time, knowing we have the power to become that future self. And still knowing the only way to give birth to her is to be in today, to make the shifts and shakes we need to in these moments, to shed skin, expose layer after layer.

I slow down this morning, inspired by an email to write a prayer. And what pours out in my morning reflection is sadness, turmoil, the not knowing and feeling lost. Lost in this thing called motherhood. Knowing I’m not getting it right at all and in the same moments knowing I’m doing exactly the right things. It can make a person feel schizophrenic, borderline, not whole, exhausted.

I sit here typing these words, tears running down my face as I look over and see her on the other computer, playing a game. I want to reach out, pick her up, carry her into bed and snuggle her, for hours, for days. And so I do, I go to her and try to pick her up, but find I can’t really anymore. So I just hold her and ask her how she became so big, so grown up. And she laughs and squirms and squeals “Let me go” and so I do. Even though I don’t want to, I want to squeeze and hold her forever.

And this is how it goes. We know the hours and minutes and seconds and days pass us by and sometimes we wish they would speed up and other times we want them to stop. Just for a moment to stop, so we can catch our breath and allow it all to settle into us a bit, allow us to catch up to the world that seems to be racing by.

And the world doesn’t stop. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow isn’t quite here here. We have now, this moment, this day.

And sometimes that sucks. And sometimes that great. And that is the ebb of flow of life, of being human, of being and become, always.

I want to go back and do some things differently. The tears flow with the knowledge that I can’t. But I can hug her and tickle her and let her know how much I love her now. Because she is beautiful and perfectly imperfect in these moments. As she was yesterday and last month and three years ago. As she will be tomorrow and next year and in a decade from now.

And it is as true of her as it is of me, and of you. We are each beautiful, perfectly imperfect; ebbing and flowing; being and becoming; breaking open and shedding skin and finding our own glow and power and truth. Each moment. It’s as true of yesterday as of today as it will be tomorrow.

And breathe.

mama and her girl :: a moment captured