Gwynn Raimondi, MA, LMFTA

Ebb & Flow: the Ritual of Self-Care

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The last two nights my daughter and I have settled down before bed with a cup of ginger tea, some light snacks and watched an episode of Gilmore Girls. We’ve been watching GG for a while now (we’re on season 5) and she loves it (I watched it when it originally ran and loved it then too). It’s become our quiet girl time at the end of hectic toddler-centric chaotic days. Being in our new home, with it’s new set up, is giving us permission to start new routines and rituals; new ways of caring for ourselves and each other; new ways of being together.

As we settle more into our new home, we are settling back into some of our old routines and rituals, too. This weekend the office got more unpacked and out came the magazines and scissors and glue sticks and pushpins, along with the bulletin boards and blank journals. My girl and I each started new intuitive collage boards and she has been filling up her new “inspiration journal” with magazine cuttings and her own sketches.

I have been trying, and floundering a bit, to find my own ritual again with writing. Writing is my main form of self-care. Getting my thoughts out on the screen or page is so fulfilling for me and grounds me in a way that nothing else can. It allows me to empty my head so I can be more present and in my body. Stream of conscious writing allows me the space for insights and understanding, of myself, my children, and others.  I have tried many times, even before the move, to write at the end of the day, to empty my head so I can settle into sleep. And the truth is I am so depleted by the time I can get a few moments of quiet to gather my thoughts, that what I really need to simply zone out a bit: watch some TV, read a book, catch up on some blogs, text with friends. Each of those is also a form of self-care and each one helps to center and ground me in its own way, helping me to replenish and relax. They are my real end-of-day grounding, giving me that small break between the chaos of the day that has been and the chaos of bedtime that is to come. It gives me that needed time to replenish so that bedtime doesn’t end in meltdowns (mine) or screaming (mine) or tears (mine).  (It doesn’t guarantee they won’t meltdown or scream or cry, but it gives me the reserves to manage their emotions calmly and lovingly).

This morning the stars aligned and I am up before the toddler and sitting at the laptop and writing. As I was making my coffee my daughter awoke, came downstairs and got her own breakfast. We said our good-mornings and I came up to the office and started to write and then a few moments later she came in and grabbed her inspiration journal to draw in while she watches a YouTube video (or five). I am feeling this new ritual, of up before my toddler, being born and am thinking it may be time to start going to bed earlier so I can have these quiet mornings I so desperately need to start my days.

I am not a morning person, or really a night person either. I have always needed to come into the world slowly as I wake. At various points in my life I have been able to honor this, and at other times not so much. The last few days have been filled with intensity and meltdowns (mine and theirs) and exhaustion (mine and theirs) as we figure out how to function without naps during the day (over-tired toddler, over-wrought mama, over-stimulated almost-preteen). Yesterday, as I took little breaks to breathe, and then once my husband was home, a slightly longer break to replenish, I remembered again my desperate need to start the mornings on my terms, and not theirs.

I don’t have much control in the chaos of toddler and preteen life. The oddest things (to me) set either of them off into tears and frustration. I, of course, do my best to create an interesting life for the two of them, always playing with the ebb and flow of activity and downtime to meet their ever-changing needs. I can find myself so focused on creating a good life for them that I forget to create the pockets I need for my own well-being. As mamas this happens often, we get so hyper focused on creating the “perfect” (ha!) life for our children that we deplete ourselves and find ourselves unsatisfied and frustrated. This is what it is to be a parent in this modern age.

Yet, we need to remember to care for ourselves. The ebb and flow of focus on them and then on us is healthy and natural. Our children need to see us caring for ourselves so they can learn to do the same. They need to see us pursuing our passions so they will have the courage to do the same. They need to watch us set boundaries and give space for us to replenish ourselves, so as they grow older they know it is okay for them to do the same.

This is how we model self-care: not by taking care of them every moment of the day, but by slowing down and sometimes even stopping and taking care of ourselves, and allowing them to witness this ritual. It is in modeling for them this natural ebb and flow (sometimes I am focused on you and sometimes I need to be focused on me) that they learn it for themselves.

How do you take little breaks in your day to replenish and nourish yourself? How do you model self-care and self-love for your children? How do you create a fulfilling life for yourself?

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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

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.

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