Category: Family

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Resetting

During the month of December, I felt off, not quite myself. While I remained present and enjoyed the season with my husband and our girl as a general statement, looking back I recognize the moments and days of disconnection and my own distraction. I can see how the end of the semester took more of my time and focus than I liked. I can see how the holidays, while beautiful and full of moments of our small family connecting, also brought their own stresses and pressure and distractions.

As the  holidays passed and December rolled into January the “offness” made itself even more known. For a few days I felt disconnected, discombobulated. I felt the stress of the long “to do” list for my business that I hope to complete before classes start back up at the end of the month. I felt overwhelm at the number of New Years cards I wanted to get out this week. I felt sadness from not getting more down time to myself; more time to connect with my little family; more time to connect with friends. Angsty is probably the best word to describe how I felt, however I was struggling to figure out what was at the core of the angst; what was beyond this bubbling tantrum of “I don’t wanna!!!”.

This morning, after my daughter woke me up, in those first moments of the day this angst and I-don’t-wanna were in the forefront. All I wanted to do was go back to bed, get some more sleep. All I wanted was to isolate in the dark and cry. All I wanted was to connect deeply with myself and figure out what in the hell was going on.

My husband got up and came down to the kitchen just a few moments after our daughter and I did. He too was exhausted and clearly needed some more sleep and some time to himself. I recommended he go back to bed and I would hang out with our girl for a while before starting my work day (one of the bonuses of running my own business from home: I can come in late whenever I want). He declined and recommended that I go back to bed before starting my work day.

I took him up on his offer.

I went back upstairs and curled under the covers. While I was exhausted, I couldn’t settle back into sleep. So I laid there for a while, allowing my thoughts to wander and came to realize that all this angst I was feeling was self-created. I created my deadlines for work. I created the deadline to get our New Years cards out the door. I created the deadlines to get the house cleaned and organized. I created the go-go-go schedule that kept us out of the house and didn’t allow space for relaxing and connecting.

I smiled at these realizations. Ah, I feel overwhelmed because of me. I feel angsty because I was trying to force myself back into a pace I walked away from four years ago when I left my previous career. I was feeling disconnected because I was disconnecting from those I love and value most. I glanced at the “to do” list I wanted to accomplish this weekend and decided at least half of what wasn’t done yet could be put off to next week. I breathed a sigh of relief, settled into my morning meditation, breathing in the word peace, and breathing out the word release.

Afterward, the smell of bacon motivated me downstairs for breakfast.

We sat at the breakfast table, the three of us. I smiled at our daughter’s now toothless grin and wondered how my itty bitty baby had gotten so big so fast. I talked with my husband and we connected while our daughter played with Barbies and Legos. I made myself some tea and then went upstairs to get ready for my day.

Once I was dressed, I went into the office where my husband was and gave him a hug and kiss. I then went into our girl’s room where she was playing and laughed with her, taking silly pictures of the two of us together. I told her it was time for me to leave and she asked that I stay, so I did for a few more moments, connecting with her and laughing. I went and gave my husband one more kiss and then when I was finally headed downstairs to work after gathering all my things, I saw the two of them cuddling and resting and connecting.

Ah, yes. This is our life: These quiet simple moments of holding each other; of laughing and being silly; of talking and hearing and being heard. This is our life because we chose it to be that way. We, my husband and I, chose for me to give up a career that was slowly killing me and us. I chose to go back to school to start a new career that would allow for more family time, more connection, more empathy and understanding. We choose to walk away from society’s expectations, shoulds and have-tos to create the space for calm, peace and living our lives connected to each other and ourselves.

I’m grateful for my husband. I’m grateful he offered me time this morning to restart. I’m deeply grateful I acknowledged this gift and accepted it; giving myself some much needed time to reset and look into what I needed and wanted.

I invite you to slow down this week. To sit or lay in quiet and allow your mind to wander; to give space to see where your life may not be working as you hoped and to understand why and how you could change that. Slow down, allow yourself to be.

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Myths, Personal and Otherwise

While reading for school I came across this quote:

    Our stories are not always composed by us, but come to us in powerful ways from others. If, as children, family members describe us in a particular way, these family stories often remain the same no matter how we change. What others believe about us, what we learn in school, in the media and from the reactions of strangers, define our stories.
In searching for alternative narratives about ourselves, we are often drawn to stories about others. Listening to these stories may offer us new possibilities, but if our new life stories are to fully emerge, we must also challenge the underlying myths and prejudices that limit us.”
— Ellen Pulleyblank Coffey “The Variable Tales of Life” (2007) as quoted in “Revisioning Family Therapy: Race, Culture and Gender in Clinical Practice”, Monica McGoldrick & Kenneth Hardy (eds).

This quote speaks of how our personal stories evolve, where they come from, and in many ways more importantly, how we can heal and rewrite them. It is true that community and society and our families and friends contribute to the creation of our negative myths about ourselves, and it is ironically true that through our community, families and friends we can re-write them, creating positive stories about ourselves and our lives.

I’ve written in the past about my personal struggle with the myth of the Not Good Enough or Bad Mother. I’ve struggled with this generations old story from both sides of my family. The struggle, in many ways, has guided me to being a Good Enough Mother (in Winnicott’s terms) and has led me to develop a strong and deep connection with my daughter. Most days I am in a place of peace with this story, knowing both in my head and heart that I am a Good Mama, that my girl and I have a beautiful relationship and that I am breaking a pattern and cycle and myth that was handed to me on a silver platter. It has taken every rebellious part of me to break away from what was given to me, to re-write motherhood for our family and for myself, and I honestly couldn’t have done it without my friends, my husband, or, perhaps ironically, my mothers (birth, step and adopted) and grandmothers.

Still, some days I struggle. I struggle with my daughter’s independence and free will. I struggle with her opinions and self-determination. I struggle when she has absolutely no interest in following the path I think she should follow. I struggle with acknowledging her, who she is and where she is at and accepting her wholly and encouraging her to be who she is. I struggle with walking that line of guiding her, being a present parent to help her function in life and society and squashing her individuality, her sense of Self, her brilliant, creative and sensitive soul.

It’s a line all parents walk, I believe. We have all our own shit, some of it buried deep. Those messages we were given when we were squashed, how we weren’t good enough just as we were, how we needed to measure up to some arbitrary standard, how we needed to fit in (but never felt like we really did). When our children start to express who they are, we have a knee-jerk reaction to squash, simply out of defense for ourselves, simply because it is all that we know, simply because we can’t always see the nonduality of life and how it is yes/and not either/or.

In those moments I struggle to find my breath. Sometimes I find it, sometimes I stop myself from saying some shaming thing or another. Sometimes I can slow down enough to open the space for her to be her and acknowledge my own pain and give each of us a little extra love.

Sometimes. Not always.

There are the times when the shaming words come out and sometimes I immediately regret them and start the repair work and sometimes it takes me a while to get there. This is human. This is part of my journey.

There are other parts to this motherhood journey. Myths that speak of value and worth, both financial and emotional. Myths that on bad days can break me down into a ball of sobbing tears, feeling that my girl would be better off with any other person on the planet for a mother than with me. Days that can start to eat me alive. Myths, that on good days, just piss me off and help me stand tall, knowing that today, in this moment, I am not that person, I am not the prescribed, pre-ordained bad mother, knowing that in this moment I am doing the healing work of generations.

I have a gorgeous circle of women who help me explore these myths. We guide each other on our journeys of digging into the stories that have been so deeply ingrained in us, and yet aren’t true. It is through this community of beautiful souls that the deeper healing is happening. Together we explore, we heal, we deconstruct and rebuild. We don’t erase, but we do re-write.

I have many circles and tribes, some of them intimate and in-person, some of them global and online only, some a mix of the two. It is through my circles that I excavate my myths and guide others to unearth their own. I believe that in order to heal, to find our way to joy and the present moment we need to understand what has stopped us, what pieces of our past and present, what messages from our families and our cultures, have defined us in a way that doesn’t ring true to us any more. This deep exploration of who I Am is, to me, a vital piece of our healing process.

Who I Am changes, sometimes from day to day, or moment to moment and with each shift of the tide I’m given the opportunity to explore the myths, to heal and to rewrite or embrace as I feel moved to do in that moment.

I love this journey. I love my own growth and change and I am deeply grateful for the people who allow me to be witness to their own growth change. It is a process, an unfolding and an awakening and I deeply believe that together we can heal: our Selves, each other and the world.

It is my life work, the unearthing of personal myths, guiding others while they guide me, finding our true selves and healing generations long stories of pain and lack. It is my life work, this rebuilding of relationship to our Selves, to each other, to our world. It is my life work to heal and be a part of other’s healing, to bring change and love and joy into the world. It is my life work to find and share the beauty of the present moment, to laugh deep belly laughs and to cry body-wrenching sobs and to support others in their similar yet different journeys.

I am grateful for this life and this life’s work. I am grateful for you, allowing me to be a part of your journey.

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Accepting love

The first couple of weeks after I came home from my week at school were a bit rough on my girl and me. We kept trying to reconnect and not quite making it. There were a lot of tears, from both of us, feelings of rejection and being misunderstood.

I felt frustrated because she would say she wanted to do this or that with me, state that we just weren’t getting enough time together, and then when I would try to play whatever game she requested, or the do the thing she wanted, she would get angry if I asked too many questions or didn’t do something or the other exactly as she wanted.

Or so, that’s how it looked on the outside.

My feelings were hurt yes, and yes I was frustrated because I too wanted desperately to reconnect with my daughter. I wanted to play and be silly and have fun. I put off doing housework and business work so that we could have time together.

I knew how her heart was hurting. I knew that her lashing out both had everything and nothing to do with me. I knew that her survival mechanisms were trying to protect her from further separation, further hurt. I knew that in oh-so-many ways she wasn’t really in control of her reactions–they were primal, coming up from her reptilian brain.

I persevered. It was hard at times. There were moments when I started to slip back into my reptilian brain also, times when my feelings were hurt so deeply, times when my frustration would start to get the best of me and I would start to spiral into anger.

In those hard moments I would find my breath, find myself. I would remind myself all I know of attachment. I would remind myself all I know of development. I would remind myself how her “rejection” was stirring up my own childhood wounds of rejection and abandonment and while my response was triggered by her it really had little to do with her. I would remind myself I was the parent, the adult.

Most of the time this worked. Not every time. There was repair work I did over the last couple weeks too, apologizing after cruel words slipped out of my mouth, giving lots of hugs and snuggles, listening to heartbeats, tickling and playing and finding ways to get us both back into the present moment.

Today my girl and I played a game she made up. It was something like hockey, but somewhat different. We played in the garage with a ball and some tree branches, she led the play and I followed, adding in questions and comments and saying “I’m open” or “I need to pass” on queue. It was fun and I felt like we deeply connected while playing. My girl’s eyes were so lit up and I could see how excited she was that here we were playing a game of her own creation.

This parenting thing changes us, fundamentally. I’ve shifted and adapted and grown to love play, something I once avoided at all costs. I had read Lawrence Cohen’s Playful Parenting (which I highly recommend to all parents) and I intellectually understood the value and power of play, and yet my body had so much resistance. I have used a timer to help me move past my anxiety, to put limits that my brain and body could handle, to ease play into my experience, into my body, into my heart.

As time has moved forward I’ve found myself enjoying play more and more. I’ve left the timer behind. I’ve opened myself to the deep connection my daughter and I have. More importantly I have come to accept her beautiful unconditional love.

Accepting unconditional love from another person is terrifying, overwhelming and powerful. When we are able to accept the love of another we are opening ourselves to healing our past hurts as well as opening ourselves to the possibility of future hurts. It is the fear of the the potential future hurts that blocks so many of us from accepting love and kindness from others. Fear stops us from deeply feeling the love each and every one of us is meant to feel from another or to experience the profound joy that comes with the experience of that love.

These last two weeks I have shed tears and held my girl while she shed hers. I have examined my own reactions, repaired when appropriate, owned my own shit, and understood and empathized with where my girl is in each moment. And while we didn’t play Barbies yesterday due to her own frustrations and primal defense mechanisms, we did play a rousing game of something like hockey, but not quite, today, where we both laughed and played, where we felt connected and understood. I accepted my girl’s love and she accepted mine.

This is where my growth and transformation is. In the accepting. In the acknowledging. In releasing my deeply internalized myths of not being worthy or good enough. In moving through the fear. In loving another and deeply breathing her love for me, finding joy and peace in her love.

We find our transformation in our relationships. We find love, peace and joy through our connections. We heal and repair our broken hearts by moving into vulnerability and allowing others in. We love and accept love as though our very lives depended upon it. Because quite frankly, they do.

A vision page created from the prompt "I accept." I accept: (my) Dearest Living love Jewel. Yes I do.
A vision page created from the prompt “I accept.” I accept: (my) Dearest Living love Jewel. Yes I do.

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This is the life

I’m sitting out on my deck, working. Writing blog posts, responding to emails, connecting with my tribe. It’s almost 9pm at the moment, and I’m feeling refreshed as the breeze gently blows across my skin, I hear the creek softly gurgling, a few last birds chirping.  As I look into our little fairy forest beyond our backyard I breathe a sigh of content.

We’ve lived in this home for almost three years now. This is our third summer here. We have a gorgeous creek that runs through our backyard and a little fairy forest, full of trees and green. Our actual yard is the home to both The Mudpit of Pure Joy and some lovely green ground cover as well as a large covered deck. It’s a peaceful and grounding place to be. This summer is the first time I have started to fully take advantage of it.

In fact, it’s only been in the last couple weeks that I’ve started inviting my girl to play with me in the creek (as opposed to her begging me to go down there and me saying no). It’s only been the last couple weeks that I have started sitting out on our deck after dinner to work. I’m finding the space so deeply grounding and peaceful and I’m feeling a shift within me as I connect to our home, our backyard, to nature.

I’ve always known the beauty of this space, from the first moment I walked into this yard to look at it as a potential new home for us. The first thing I saw was our backyard, hearing the creek and I fell in-love – I didn’t care what the inside of the townhouse looked like, I knew in those first few moments this was our new home. I sighed a huge breath of release and grounding in those first moments of meeting our new home, as I surrendered to the changes in our life at the time, as I surrendered to the Universe, as I surrendered to the knowledge that everything was going to work out just fine.

I haven’t savored our back yard since those first moments almost three years ago. I haven’t allowed myself to step into its beauty and let it ground me. I haven’t allowed myself this peace, this joy. Not regularly, not more than two or three times over the last almost three years.

I wasn’t ready before  now.  I haven’t allowed this peace, this beauty into my daily life before now because I was still wrapped in a cloak of unworthiness and a sense of lack. Sitting here on my deck, there is no way I can not see the beauty of our home, of my life. There is no way I cannot feel gratitude for every gift our home gives us.

It can be overwhelming, the beauty. It can be blinding. Stepping into the abundance that we are each graced with, the absolute gorgeousness that surrounds us, that is us, can feel like drowning. It is so different from everything we are ever told our life would be, our life could be, this beauty.

We get lost in feeling undeserving. We get lost in fear of losing it. We get lost in wondering why me? We get lost over and over and find ourselves constantly searching outside, beyond the present moment.

When we slow down and breathe, we find ourselves, we find the beauty. When we release the shame, the fear, we open the space for the beauty, the peace, the joy to enter. 

Coming to this place in my life, finding this beauty, accepting this absolute gorgeousness of the present moment and slowing down to savor it has taken time. It’s taken deep introspection. It’s taken acceptance of my imperfections and my humanity. It’s taken stepping into both vulnerability and humility and staying there, releasing defenses and excuses and fear.

I’m seeing the beauty that is my home, that is my life because I’m ready to see it now. Because I have done the work, gotten to the other side of the pain and trauma. I have peeled enough layers, gone deep enough into myself to see the glow from within and it’s reflection in my world.

The work is life long. It has felt like almost daily for the past few weeks, new triggers have cropped up, new opportunities for growth have shown themselves. It isn’t ironic that as I step into the beauty of my life I also have stepped deeper into understanding how the pain of my past has manifested and is still manifesting.

I’m now in the place to explore these deeper layers. I’m now in the place to not only notice, but to also accept and release. It’s an amazing place to be.

 

My view, at work :)
My view, at work 🙂

 

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Living in fear and resistance

I was sitting at the spray park, talking with a friend as our children were splashing and laughing and exploring. She was sharing some realizations she’s had, part of her transformation journey and her words were pulled right from my soul. Her words were my own unspoken words, my own unacknowledged fears and fights. Her words were her own, of her personal struggle, and they spoke of the struggle of many of us.

The struggle of motherhood. The struggle of being a stay at home mom. The struggle of being a working mom (either outside of inside the home). The struggle of the role of motherhood not being valued by society, by our families and ultimately not being valued by ourselves.

I will not share my friend’s words. They are hers, her story, her journey. I will share what it stirred up in me. What I realized about myself and my own journey in motherhood. As both a “working mom” and a “stay at home mom” and the variations I’ve lived between the two for the last six plus years.

I longed for motherhood in a way I have never longed for anything else in my life. I wanted to be a mom. I wanted a house filled with children, my own and their friends. I wanted to bake cookies and pies and paint on canvases and our bodies and have kiddie pool parties and bar-b-ques with all the families we know. I wanted a life not very different from the life I have now. I dreamed of it, I longed for it with an aching I can’t truly describe.

The day our daughter was born was transformational. To say it was the happiest day of my life is honestly an understatement. I think there are no words for those first moments when we get to hold our child. OUR child. Whether the child came from our bodies or not, those first moments of connection are indescribable. There is joy mixed with terror. Tears pour out in release as we acknowledge everything is different, an acknowledgement that we had made mentally when we knew our child was going to enter our lives, but one that our body hadn’t fully accepted until that moment, when they are in our arms.

We don’t really know how our life is going to be different. We can’t imagine. Everyone can tell us how our lives will change, but until that child is in your life, you really have no fucking clue. And that, I believe is where resistance to this role I longed for, this life I dreamed of, steps in.

I do resist this life of mine. I feel frustration with motherhood. I feel less than because I’m “not contributing” to our household. I feel uninteresting because my focus day and most of the night is my girl and caring for her. I feel angry because the dishes and the laundry and the mess is never-ending.

The Truth is, I love my life now. I love that I get to spend most of my days with my girl, guiding her and being with her and watching her. I love that I can show my love of our family through cooking our meals, through lovingly washing and eventually folding and putting away our clothes. Showing love to our home and the beautiful people who live in it by organizing and vacuuming and every now and then even dusting. I love that I get so many ways, every day, to show the people who mean everything in the world to me just how much I love them.

And the Truth is, I feel shame that I love my life so much.

I was raised to have a career. I was raised that to have value and importance in a home, one must provide financially. I was raised that “women’s work” is uninteresting and boring and ultimately not useful. That being focused on being a mom means not living up to my “potential.” Raising children and maintaining a home shouldn’t be fulfilling and if it is, one is clearly “less than.”

What a bunch of bullshit.

I know it’s bullshit, these myths and stories that I was raised with, that so many of us were raised with. I know the value of raising our children and giving them a home that is safe and filled with love. I logically know all these things and even parts of my heart knows the Truth is in the value of our work as mothers. And yet…

Yet these myths and stories run deep.

These myths and stories have been distracting me without my conscious knowing. I’ve been allowing myself to work on my business or school when it is time for me to focused on my girl. The laptop comes out and I go into a zone, or I have my phone by my side and I constantly check it. Distraction after distraction taking me away from those beautiful moments with my girl, those beautiful moments that flutter away whether I am present in them or not.

These myths and stories have been fueling my anger without me being aware. I’ve been getting angrier and angrier at the dishes and laundry and being “the only one” who picks up and cleans  in our home (another myth and story of it’s own, another Untruth). I’ve been picking at my girl and my man, saying unkind words, allowing shame to enter our relationships, shame that is coming from me.

These myths and stories have been feeding my feelings of “less than” and unworthiness and taking me away from the present moment. I’ve been seeking ways to feel valuable, important, worthy. This seeking has lead to unkindness towards friends, family and myself. I have lashed out in ways that I am not proud and in ways that honestly probably no one has even noticed.

All of us have stories and myths that affect us in ways we aren’t consciously aware. These myths and stories drag us down and prevent us from growth and release and joy. These myths and stories feed on the negative emotions they produce, “proving” their “truth.” Once we become aware however, they start to lose power.

It’s the becoming aware that can be the trick, of course. The first step is being open to change, being open to growth, being open to acknowledging our own Truth and struggles when others share their vulnerability with us. Being open to your own vulnerability, to your own pain, to the Truth that you have hurt others in the past–knowingly or unknowingly.

After the talk with my friend on Tuesday so many things became clear–the fear and resistance I had been clinging too, that had been clinging to me. I released tears, acknowledged my own deep-seated fears, shared them with my husband and let him know this wasn’t something for him to fix, it was something for me to simply know, to share. And with the release, and the acknowledgments, space was opened. Space for patience. Space for love. Space for repair–with my friends, my family, myself.

Releasing these myths and stories from our hearts, creates much needed space for the joy, the peace, the beauty of our lives to enter. Releasing opens the space for us to ground, to center.

Being open to acknowledging the stories and myths, to seeing how they play out in our lives, is the first step to our release and growth. This is a huge step into vulnerability. It can be terrifying to do this work, work that puts us in a place of acknowledging the pain we have caused others, the pain that others have caused us. However the only way to release this pain is to move through it. We experience the pain every day, whether we know it or not–it’s not a matter of avoiding the pain, there is no way to avoid it. It is a matter of moving through it so that we can experience the beauty and joy and peace that is on the other side of it.

We cannot do this work alone. This is work that is done in community, in relationship with others. It is work that requires both guidance, support and honesty. If it weren’t for the conversation with my friend on Tuesday I would not have seen my own Truth in her words. If it weren’t for the safety of my relationship with my husband I would not have been able to acknowledge these myths and stories and release them through tears and words. If it weren’t for each of you, I would not have witnesses to my journey–sharing that you and I are not alone, that through our imperfections we are all in this together.

Community. I am called to gather community. I am called to guide others in this deep personal work. I am grateful for those in my life, who I guide and who guide me. Truly, we are all in this together.