Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Honest Truth

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On Sunday, after seeing her overflowing Easter basket when she woke up, which included a 2-foot chocolate bunny, our daughter announced “You and daddy are the Easter Bunny!” Nick and I were in shock and asked her why she thought that and said things like “Would mama and daddy ever buy you that much candy at once??” all of which she gave a very narrow eyed knowing look to. We didn’t initially fess up to anything. We both want the magic of the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus to last as long as possible. We both enjoy the beauty of it all, of doing something extra special for our girl and not taking the credit. I hoped the conversation was dropped, with Nick and I neither admitting or denying anything.

Then in the car on the way to my cousin’s for the annual Easter egg hunt and brunch, she asked if her Daddy and I were the Easter Bunny. I again asked her why she thought that and we discussed it. She had That Look in her eye — that look that says “I’m trusting you to tell me the truth. I’m ready for the truth” and so I admitted that yes, her Daddy and I are the Easter Bunny. I didn’t say anything about the Tooth Fairy or Santa. To be fair, she didn’t ask about them and we’ll cross that bridge when we get there in six months or so.

Reality sunk in. My baby is growing up. She turns six next week and I’m filled with a mixture of joy, awe and sadness. The mystery of the Easter Bunny is solved and I realized in talking with Nick later that it was around this same age that I figured out that Santa wasn’t real, though in a very painful way, which involved my parents refusing to be honest with me and even threatening that Santa wouldn’t come if I didn’t believe.

I didn’t talk with my girl about the magic of the holidays and what the Easter Bunny (or Santa or the Tooth Fairy) represent to me or to her Daddy. We didn’t get into that conversation, however I’m sure we will at some point.

What was important on Sunday was that, when I looked in my girl’s eyes and saw how much she wanted and needed the Truth, I gave it to her. I’ve accepted that my child is both a little girl and growing into a very young woman. While only almost six, those pre-teen and then teen years do not seem so far away. The first six years of her life have been filled with Nick and me building strong attachment bonds with her, with each other and keeping open doorways for communication. The next six years will be filled with the same, as will the six after that and six after that and so on.

I’ve realized that what is key, what is most important is recognizing her individuality. Knowing that her childhood is nothing like mine. Knowing that I have learned much from the painful lessons of the relationship with my own mom. Knowing I am studying, for a career, about child development, attachment and families. Knowing I have tools and practices that were never available to my own mom and thereby knowing I will not follow in her footsteps.

My baby is growing up. She’s a child now. There’s no denying it. In the way she talks, her interests, how she can figure it all out. She’s independent, confident and has an inner spark and glow in her eyes that had left my own eyes by her age.

And while she is growing up into this beautiful person, and while she is no longer literally a baby, she will always be my baby. I will always be here for her when she wants or needs me. I will love her beyond the end of our days. I will always be on her side. She’s my girl.

One of the songs I sing to her at bedtime is You are My Sunshine (with my own lyrics). The closing line is “I love you more and more every day.” It’s true. Every day I love my girl a little more than the day before and every day I can’t imagine how I could love her more without my heart literally bursting.  Yet every day I do. Every day.

Understanding and acknowledging and accepting her individuality, her personhood has been a huge part of our parenting. Treating her with respect. Allowing her to be a child while never treating her as if she is less because of her age. Parenting this way is hard, it requires me to dig deep almost daily and face my own past, my own fears with bravery and grace and a willingness to own my shit and grow as a person. It’s a tall order and some days I’m better at it than others. Some days are filled with apologies, tears and repairing measures while others are filled with laughter, connection and joy.

And so my girl grows from a little girl to a big girl. And our journey continues…

…

My mindfulness practice has had the greatest impact on my ability to be the parent I want to be. I want to share this practice, and the tools I’ve found and developed with it with everyone who is ready to grow into the person your Soul is calling you to be. My Grounding in Grace e-course is filled with mindfulness exercises as well as reflection and soul work. And I’m very excited about the video prompts I’ve been working on for this course. Because I strongly believe that to bring peace to the world we must start in our home, and because I so deeply do not want finances to prevent a single person from taking this course if she or he is ready, the program is Pay-What-Feels-Good and I also have scholarships available. For more information about the course and to register click here. The course starts on April 9th and runs for 30 days. I would love to have you join the amazing community that is growing around this program.

 

 

A prayer

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To my ancestral mamas,

I forgive you.

I forgive you for being human. I forgive you for clinging to your own hurt, terrified and lonely little girls inside your souls. I forgive you for not being able to pass on the love, the acceptance, the connection, the beauty that you wanted for your daughters, for yourselves.

I forgive you all for thinking you were terrible mothers. I forgive you all for being terrible mothers at times. I forgive you the hurt, the pain, the loneliness that you all passed down, generation after generation, all the way to me.

I send you love. I release the heavy burden you passed down to your daughters because you didn’t know what else to do with it. I’m setting it down for us all. 

I send you freedom. All of you I carry not only in my DNA, in my blood, I carry you in soul. As I repair and grow and transform and heal, you do too.

I give to us all a beautiful relationship with my daughter. The pain, the fear, the loneliness no longer serve us. It is time to connect, to bask in the joy and beauty of motherhood, to release the fear of fucking it all up. 

I soak in your strength. I bask in your love. Together, we will start to enjoy today, to enjoy our beautiful children, one moment at a time.

 

Surrender to Hope

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I carry a pain with me that I haven’t shared here before. It’s private, it’s been a personal struggle for me and my family. It has caused many tears. Many tears. My heart aches and yearns. Several OBs, a midwife, an acupuncturist, friends, family have been through this trial with us.

It’s the trial of infertility.

We’ve been trying to grow our family for over three years now. I had a dream of having three children, each two to three years apart. We have one child who will be turning six soon. She is beautiful and precious and truly a gift. My heart aches for another.

When I hear people complaining about their children, my heart breaks. It breaks because of my longing and because these others in those moments are unable to see the beauty they have.

It can be hard to be joyful when yet another friend becomes pregnant with her second, third or fourth child. It can be hard not to grieve for myself and for the loss of the life I had envisioned.

I’ve  heard stories of women who tried for ten years to conceive and then finally did. I’ve heard stories of families who gave up and adopted and while in the adoption process became pregnant.

These stories do not bring me solace or hope. They bring up more pain and more questions of Why Me? I look at people on the street screaming at their children or at the library when I father tells his son he can’t play on *that* computer because it’s too “girlie” and I wonder why the Universe has deemed them fortunate to  have that child, but not me.

Not me who puts all my heart and soul into being the best mama I possibly can. Me who every day searches for opportunities to grow, to become a better person – all so that my child will have a healthy family, a healthy childhood.

Why me?

I had an ultrasound last week to look at my uterus and to see if the surgery I had in September and the hormone treatments I’ve been doing since then have shrunk it enough so that an egg could implant.

The answer was yes. My uterus is back to a “normal” size. My body has healed this part, and now to move on to step two of what feels like a million step process to get us to the point to make a decision about conceiving.

I’ll turn 42 at the end of this year. Statistically this is not a great age to be birthing healthy babies. I know the odds are not in my favor. I know I have other health issues that may play a role in making it even more not in my favor.

And yet.

I have hope. It’s hard to surrender to this hope. It’s hard to dive into it and open my heart to the possibility of even more loss, even more heartache. I don’t know if I can manage to tell my daughter again that her baby brother or sister has died inside mommy. I don’t know if I can explain again how I don’t know why the babies keep dying. I don’t know if my heart can take the pain of losing another child.

And yet.

Today I looked at due date calculators and thought about baby names, even though the “trying” process hasn’t even started. I have hope.

I’m scared. Scared to release my fears. Scared to dive into Hope. Terrified to surrender to Trust and Faith. Knowing it will all be okay.

Knowing our family will expand. As it is meant to. In it’s own time.

Letting go of the illusion of control. The tears flow. My body shakes.

I can breathe deeply into my pelvis now. This is something I couldn’t do a year ago. I can live in my body. I am able to focus on my present moments more and more. I see the beauty that is my life and sometimes, for a moment or two, I feel at peace with the way our life is, with no longing or yearning for what it isn’t.

And yet.

I had a vision over a year ago of our second child. Beautiful little toddler, standing next to my daughter. I hold that vision in my heart. I hold it knowing that other child is meant to be with us.

I’m in this process of surrendering to Hope. To Faith. To Trust. 

A practice. It is all a practice.

And when our second (and third?) child comes to us, it will be in her or his own time. A lesson taught to me by our daughter, that I didn’t quite learn.

Now I release the fear. I surrender to Hope. 

Truth, Love, Growth

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My husband and I have been together for coming up on 16 years. We’ve been married for almost 7 of those. We’ve had our daughter for over six of those (if we are counting the pregnancy). When we started dating we lived in separate states (he Texas, me Washington) and that lasted for our first year. He moved up to Seattle after that and we crammed our lives together (which included two cats – mine- and a small dog – his) into a little 600 sf apartment on the edge of Capitol Hill. After a while we moved to a larger apartment that also had a gorgeous view of the Space Needle and downtown. Shortly after we married we bought a house. Had a baby. And that is when the really hard times started.

Everyone tells you that having a child changes your marriage, changes your life. No one ever tells you how. Or if they do, you don’ t listen because frankly you can’t even fathom exactly how having a kid really changes your life. Those first few years can be hard even on the most stable of couples, and let me tell you, having our girl rocked our world, in both good and not so good ways.

Those first few years were filled with a lot tears, a lot of yelling. We got to a point where divorce was screamed at each other several times a week. Sometimes it was yelled in our couple therapist’s office.

It was rocky. We did make it though. Both of us wanted to be with the other, it was non-negotiable. Yet, we were causing each other so much pain. We weren’t sure how to get out of it.

We read a lot of books. We went to marriage counseling. We discovered some serious health issues. We made hard financial choices to save our sanity and our marriage, our family.

Last night my husband and I sat in our office and had a long conversation about money. It’s one of those hot topics that both of us get defensive about.

We didn’t get defensive.

We didn’t fight.

We didn’t yell.

We had a conversation about money and it didn’t end in tears. It ended in calm, and understanding. And it lead to another hot topic: Family Pictures.

For the first four years of our daughter’s life, at least once a year we would get family portraits done. These events were always stressful for me, and while my husband would try to make them fun, I would always get pissy about how he’s making goofy faces or can’t he smile right or whatever.

I had an expectation for these photos that wasn’t realistic. And worse than that, because of my expectation being unrealistic, but still wanting it, I made everyone suffer through the process.

We didn’t get formal family photos last year. We couldn’t afford them and it breaks my heart in a million pieces that we missed a year. I told my husband last night that it was a priority for me this year. That we need to afford them. I want the photos.

He was very hesitant and it led to him telling me how not fun, how agonizing family photos are for him – how I made the process miserable. I told him I know, I’m letting it go, we’ll have fun, it’ll be great.

He didn’t believe me. He didn’t feel heard. He didn’t want to fight, so he just got quiet and turned away.

I said to him: “You don’t feel heard.”

He looked at me, relieved. Ah, I got it. I need to tell him in more detail how I know I’ve made things unpleasant and how it will be different this time.  We talked and we both sunk into the knowledge of how we have changed, how our relationship has changed. How we can now feel heard and seen and acknowledged and known.

It’s been a process of three years. Three years since I walked away from my career. Three years since we started uncovering my health issues. Three years since we started putting our marriage – our family – together in a healthy, loving way.

The more I learn about attachment and mindfulness, the more I see how they are the key to approaching relationships, to approaching life. It’s a constant practice of working on myself and working on my marriage and working on my relationship with my daughter and allowing my husband the space to do the same. Practice, practice, practice.

I developed Repairing in Relationship with this in mind: Practice. Attachment. Mindfulness. Breathing in the Truth of my love for the people around me – the people who nourish me and whom I nourish.

There is still time to register for this course. I would love to share my knowledge and some of the tools I’ve acquired to deepen connection and bring those important relationships to a new level of peace, joy and nourishment.

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One of Those days

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It’s been one of Those days. You know, the kind of day you just aren’t proud of. The kind of day you wish you could hit rewind and start all over. The kind of day where you just lose it and it feels so awful.

Yeah, one of Those days, today, for me.

It was one of those days where I. couldn’t. stop. I couldn’t let it go. I kept getting more spun up and becoming more of the mama I absolutely do NOT want to be. My girl, my heart, in tears. No one being heard. Everyone yelling. No peace. Chaos. Seeking control. Trying to control. Being totally out of control.

Yeah, one of Those days, today, for me.

Eating lunch helped. I started to calm a little bit. I was able to calmly convince my girl to eat something too.

Then it slowly started up again. I wanted the house cleaned up, it was a disaster. It made my incredibly sensitive self want to explode. More with me controlling, knit-picking, shaming. More frustration. More yelling. More no one being heard. More tears.

Finally, dear gods in heaven, finally I  s l o w e d  down.

I picked my girl up, and sat with her in our pink chair. I let her melt into my arms. I asked if I could listen to her heart beat. She said yes.

I listened.

I slowed down, and listened to the most beautiful sound in the universe… the beating heart of my child.

I melted.

I held her, her head resting on my chest, listening to my heart. I held her close and now it was my turn – the tears came.

I apologized for being mean. I explained that mama is frustrated and worried and stressed about things that have nothing to do with my girl. Grown up things. Money. Food. Bills. I told her that I wouldn’t be working at my job anymore and that it scared me a little. I explained that when I get scared I get so frustrated so easily. I explained that even though I was scared, she would be okay, always. Mama and Papa would always make sure she was okay.

As my tears flowed and I voiced the truth that my frustrations had nothing to do with her, as I held my beautiful girl in my arms and remembered the beautiful sound of her beating heart, I calmed. I found center. I found peace.

I’m not sure how long we sat there. It was long enough for me to let go of some of my crazy controlling, to let go of directing my frustration with life at my girl. We got up and worked on cleaning for about a minute more and then she took out one of her workbooks and asked me to help her with it. I made tea. We worked together on her writing and then went and watched a movie. We played some online games after that.

We found our calm, our peace. We found our balance together again. No more yelling. Lots of listening. Lots of being heard.

Centering, slowly.

Repairing, slowly.

Practicing, always.

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