Life as prayer… aka breaking open

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

Falling and grounding

The leaves are settling on our deck and in our yard, as they slowly fall from the trees of our fairy forest. We have had a couple of windstorms, forcing leaves that maybe weren’t quite ready to leave their humble branch home, to move along their way; forcing them to stop clinging to what they now and to release into something new.

Some may think the leaves are falling to their death. I see them falling to their new life. Watching them sit and decompose in our yard, blending into the grass and mud, finding their new purpose, being one again with the ground.

I am seeing the amazing circle of women I am working with this fall in Being & Becoming are much like these leaves in some ways. Life has brought them to this moment in time, where they may not quite be ready to release what they think they know, yet they are letting go to become more grounded and centered; to discover who they are and want to be. I am honored that they chose me to be a part of this journey with them. I am grateful and awed by the work they do, the vulnerability that is coming forth. And I am learning my own lessons from them; releasing some of what I thought I knew, shedding another layer, becoming more grounded in who I am now, who I am becoming.

My 43rd birthday has passed. I quietly celebrated the day with my husband and then later with the him and the kids. It felt right to allow the day to softly pass with those who matter most to me in the world. I had quietly anticipated the day’s arrival, feeling calm in this new age, this new being I was becoming. Knowing that in one day I won’t be a different person, regardless of the anniversary that is marked by the passage of time, knowing that the passage of time will only reveal who I am.

I have been in a state of “pinch me” with my work, with the women I am guiding, with the families I hold space for at my internship, with my children and husband, with my friends. I have felt lucky and blessed and privileged to be doing this work and play also knowing the tears and frustration and near mental collapse that preceded this iteration of my life. It’s been almost four years since the metaphorical windstorm that formed me to let go of the life and career I was so desperately clinging to. When a layoff happens, in those early moments we aren’t able to see the rightness of it, the doors that have been flung open, the opportunity to explore and play and heal that has been granted to us. And yet, those things are all there in those early moments, we merely need to become aware of them.

Looking back seven years to the woman I was, right before and after the birth of my daughter. Knowing how she changed me, how I allowed the transformation, is a touch overwhelming. If people had told me then the woman I would be today I may have laughed at them and thought certainly they were in need of some medication. And yet here I am. The woman I never even thought of dreaming to become.

We make plans. And life has doesn’t care about those plans. When we are open to the shifting, the releasing, the grounding, our plans matter less and the being and becoming transforms into the ebb and flow of the breath of the universe. Sometimes our own breath is in rhythm with this ebb and flow and sometimes it is in discord. That is another piece of the ebb and flow of life.

As our son starts to figure out crawling and eating solid foods; as our daughter masters reading and writing and discovering her own passions and ways of being in the world; as my second to last semester of graduate school flows into the second half; I am seeing my own ebb and flow into being the woman I am now, the woman I dream of becoming. Part warrior becoming a super-heroine, part princess becoming a queen, part sage, part artist, part jester, part mother, part wife; filled with love and gratitude for those in and around my life; knowing that as I release from this branch, I will fall into my center and ground and grow into the next me who is meant to be.

stop clinging

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Here and now: Finding True North, Right Where I Am

I am sitting at my very messy dining table. It’s been over a week since I cleaned it off and it is piled high with art supplies and materials for the Being & Becoming Circle (self)care packages.  There is a stack of mail in the corner, a bottle of wine in the center and my son’s bumbo chair (yes, I know) at one end. My kitchen is close to needing to be condemned and I have dinner cooking in the slow cooker. Last night after work (!!!) I cleaned off a small corner of our counter.

I look in to our living room that has legos and wooden blocks all over the floor, right next to the baby’s floor mat (yes, I know). His jumper seat, that was his sister’s such a short time ago, takes up a large amount of space, sitting next to the cradle that he is about to outgrow. The bouncy/vibrating seat thingy is sitting in there too, taking space, but now too small for our boy, ready to be passed on to one of my best friends as she awaits the arrival of her next son. Only one of the chairs is empty to be sat in, the others filled with bags and random stuff that needs to be put away.

I breathe in this chaos, this proof of our lived life. I feel both frustration and calm as I sit here in the midst of it, writing these words, sipping my coffee. I have opened our dining room window and can hear the birds and squirrels, our creek and the quiet movement of our neighbors. As I opened the window I caught a glimpse of the abandoned kiddy pool, water now black and filled with leaves, waiting to be cleaned and put away until next year. I am reminded of the art supplies that are on our lower deck, waiting to come back inside. Reminded of how the days seem to slip by without these seemingly simple tasks being accomplished.

I am sitting with sadness that sprung up from work yesterday, my own sadness about a future that probably will, though may not, come to be. I have allowed some tears to fall for this yet to be seen future and am breathing deeply in the truth that that future is not today, not here yet. I release as much of this sadness as I can right now, being grateful for the life I have, the life my husband and I have created together, the life our beautiful children bring to us every day.

I am sitting with calm and peace and humble gratitude as I think of the women who have come forward already to do this work of being and becoming with me this fall. Some of whom started with me this past spring, others coming forward to start now. All of them trusting me and allowing me to be a part of their journey.

There are days when I can’t believe how blessed I am. Days when I think back to my younger selves and wonder how they got through, how we got to now. I smile at how 15 or 25 or even 35 year old me would have reacted to being told who she would become at almost 43. Would those past mes believe that it would all turn out so lovely? Would they believe I could find this deep peace in my life? Would they shake their heads and laugh or would they breathe a deep sigh of relief?

I wonder about the women I am yet to become. Me at 45, 55, 75, 95. What wisdom will I have earned then? How much deeper will this quiet knowing I am only beginning to feel at almost 43 run? What stories will she share? What kind of grandmother, great-aunt, long-time friend, wife will she be? And more importantly, who do I want her to be right now, even knowing that too will change as the years flow.

Right now, my daughter has come upstairs and is sitting in the chaos of our lived in living room, playing with those legos she had abandoned yesterday; wanting to share space with me and giving me space to write, to express, to observe.

Tonight I will hold space for families who have lost a parent, a spouse. It is work I am called to do and am grateful for. This weekend I will begin holding space for the women who are ready for their being and becoming work and play, keeping that space safe throughout our fall season together. Right now, and always, I am holding space for my family: giving love and gratitude, taking in the beauty and truth and reality of our life together.

And I hold space for myself. Allowing my own sadness to ebb and flow, letting its lesson of gratitude for the now be heard and internalized. Grieving the yesterdays lost and celebrating the tomorrows to come.  Finding my own true north, right where I am.

A close up of a section of my Being & Becoming vision board. Won't you come join us as we each find our own true north right where we are?

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Here and There

This month I’m facilitating a discussion in the Mama Scout Readers and Writers Tribe of the book Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson. I’m only three chapters in (reading is slow going for me right now), however I’m finding myself nodding and underlining and resonating with the experiences of these women who came before me.

In the last six months I’ve found myself having time (and energy) to devote to my writing. As my daughter has grown older, her independent play has increased and it has left me at times wondering what the hell to do with myself. I found my way back to writing and was spending more than an hour a day (sometimes up to three or four hours a day) journalling, blogging, writing academic papers, and waxing poetically about life via the written word on social media. It was certainly a taste of heaven.*

(The asterisk are the times I had to stop writing this very post to meet the needs of our family or more accurately, our new little tyrant 😉 )

That has all changed of course since our son was born a little over a month ago.  We have each had a lot of adjusting to do, and I’ve had the physical recovery from the birth to contend with as well as nipping postpartum depression in the bud. This has meant no time to write in over a month and it has been frustrating and heartbreaking for me. I have yet to write out our son’s birth story–with our daughter I had her birth story written out within a few days–** or write about how we came to his name or about how amazing his big sister is and has been since his arrival or really about anything that is important to me and that I want to get down on paper or screen.

I have yet to master the fine art of nursing at the keyboard*** (nor do I know if I really want to) and so time to me is both sparse and sporadic. Even though my husband happily feeds our son the expressed milk I supply, there are times our son refuses the bottle, only being satisfied with milk straight from the tap. This of course means I drop everything I’m doing, including writing (or eating or peeing) to feed and calm our baby boy.

I want to note I am not complaining. I love our son, and love that I am a source of both comfort and nourishment for him. I do find joy and fulfillment in motherhood and yet there is more to me than being a mom.  I am giving very real life examples of how our work as women is sidelined for our families. Our children, especially when very young, always come first. Many of us also sacrifice our own needs or desires in order to make life easier or more accommodating for our spouses–often without even discussing with our partner that we have needs or wants or are making any sort of sacrifice.

This sacrificing our self for our family is true for women without children too. Our parents come before our own needs, as do our partners, our nieces or nephews, even our cats and dogs. Or worse, we allow a job or career we find no satisfaction in take precedence over what our souls long to do. We put our own creativity and nourishment on hold, on the back burner and often never get to it.

It is culturally ingrained in us to put our own needs aside as women. Be this as it may, we do have a choice to follow that path or not. There are consequences to any choice and honestly I don’t believe in balance (as in the myth of the work-life balance). We choose our children or parents or spouses over our selves over and over without thinking about it, and we do, as individuals and as a women as a group, suffer for it. How many great memoirs or paintings or architectural or engineering designs have been lost because we have been so accommodating to others?

This is not to say there is not a time and season for everything. I know that I am  in the season of the young child (again) and this means that time for my writing will be limited, but it doesn’t mean it comes to a stand still. I am conscious of where I am in my life and where my family is. I consciously and mindfully find chunks of time here and there, pump out bottles of milk and say a prayer that our little tyrant will accept it so I can do the things that fill my own soul, those things beyond motherhood that I am called to do.

And so the ebb and flow of life continues.

It would be easy to say that I can’t write now. That I can’t focus on school or my clinical training. That I can’t continue to build my business. No one would fault me and many would say, of course, that is how life is. But I’m not willing to accept that. Yes, we have a very young infant and an older child who need my attention and love. Yes, my husband is our main bread-winner and so certain accommodations need to be made so he can work. And none of that means I can’t have time for my own pursuits. Perhaps I don’t get three hours a day at this point, instead perhaps it is three hours spread over a week. But it is still time I take for my own creative and intellectual outlet.

I invite you to do the same. To step away from the convenient excuses that life offers you to not shine, to not glow, to not be and become the person you are called to be. Set aside fifteen minutes a day to write or paint or doodle or daydream. Fifteen minutes every day just for you to do something just for you. Break it into three five minute breaks if you need to. Meditate, stretch, make yourself a yummy nourishing snack, create a quick blackout poem, read a couple paragraphs in a book or write a list of things you’d love to write about later.  Whatever it is that fulfills and replenishes you, make the time for it. Make yourself a priority.

You deserve this time for you. The world deserves to see you glow, to see you nourished and replenished. Take this summer to create the habits to support you becoming the person you want to be. Release the convenient excuses and your fear of your own glow. Step into being and becoming the person you are truly called to be.

Last week I released a program – Mid-Summer Glow – for registration. I have decided not to offer the program this summer after all, instead focusing on my writing and creating my fall program (Being and Becoming Circle). This decision is a step into my own self-care and releasing of some “shoulds” that have been circling in my brain. If you are looking to work with me this summer, you can still register for my free summer-long program Glow Wisdom by clicking here.

If you are interested in joining the discussion of Composing a Life, simply ask to join the Mama Scout Reader + Writer Facebook group here. We’d love to have you as part of our tribe!!

*Stopped to feed our son and then once he was asleep put diaper laundry in the dryer
**Stopped to feed our son and get him back to sleep
***Stopped to change our son, add time to the dryer, pump a bottle and hand son over to Daddy so I can try to focus. (and look, it worked!)