Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Small Stuff, Big Stuff

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When my daughter was a baby I was in overdrive. I worked outside the home, in a job that required 50 hours of time on a slow week and up to 70 hours of my time during crunch weeks. While I was being Super Career Woman, I was also determined that I would be Super Mom too. The problem was, I didn’t quite understand what being Super Mom truly meant.

For the first couple years of my daughter’s life, being Super Mom equated to what I now consider incredibly superficial and ultimately irrelevant things. Things that in the big picture absolutely don’t matter. Things that my daughter won’t remember or know unless I tell her. Things like being determined to cloth diaper, making *all* of her baby food from scratch, only allowing organic foods to enter her body and dear gosh there would never be sugar anywhere near her. No TV either. And all her toys would be wooden and there wouldn’t be a commercial character anywhere in sight. And of course all her clothes would be made of organic cotton or bamboo.

I laugh now at how much I just did.not.get.it. How I put such emphasis on these things that have nothing to do with our relationship or connection. I overwhelmed myself doing all the “right” things, when perhaps allowing myself to be human and having faith that my child would survive to see her next birthday, even if she did play with a plastic Disney Princess tea set. I focused on the outside things, not the inside things. I lost myself a bit, thinking that if I controlled all these outside things *that* would mean I was good mama. And dear god, I so desperately wanted to be a good mama.

Fast forward to today. This morning my daughter ate Oreos for breakfast (hey, she had organic milk with them, so it’s okay). She was outside in her pool before 10am and before the temperature had reached 65F. I did manage to get some apples and sunflower seed butter in her before she snacked on a cupcake. Lunch consisted of chili cheese fritos, a hamburger patty, three green beans and then some more cookies and milk. Yep, I’m going for that Mother of Year award, Nutrition division.

I played Barbies with her today. We did some painting together. We snuggled and watched a couple of TV shows. We cleaned our living room, dining room and kitchen today, without tears or screaming. I gave her lots of hugs and asked her for help and mentioned how she always makes the shoe rack look extra awesome when she organizes it.

We had a great day.

I finally have it (mostly) right. It’s not the outside stuff, like whether every meal is fully nutritionally balanced or whether she has branded character toys, it’s the inside stuff – the fact that we played together, that we created together, that we worked as a team cleaning our home – that matters.

It was quite a process of letting go and realizing what truly matters and what doesn’t. I was guided by not only my own instinct, but also by great mama writers and bloggers. Women who have been there and done that. Women like those in the Mindful Parenting eBundle (note this is an affiliate link – I appreciate your support). Parents and organizations who know what is important for us to focus on our relationship and connection to our children and all the rest is truly small stuff that ultimately doesn’t matter.

Acknowledging growth

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I have days, like many do I imagine, where I’m just plain tired. I’m tired of constantly growing and changing. I’m tired of shedding layers. I’m tired of putting time in practices that keep me centered and grounded. I’m tired of healing. I’m tired of doing.

Days that I’m just plain tired. Days where I know deep in my Soul how my practices benefit me and also know deep in my Soul that it is time to rest and replenish and give myself space to be where I am in those moments.

Then I also have days where my practices are effortless. Where I can snap myself out of a bad mood by simply taking in a slow, womb-deep breath and then slowly exhaling, releasing the frustration and fear and anxiety that was building up. Days where things that in the past would have sent me  in a fast and anxious downward spiral of fear and stress, bounce off me as “oh well. I guess I’ll do this instead.” The days where I hear the messages my body or the Universe is sending me, where I acknowledge those messages and react to them in self-loving and world-loving ways.

Days where, when I step back, I can see the fruition of all my practices. Days where I see the joy on people’s faces when they spend time with me. Days where I am able to deeply touch another soul and open to having that soul deeply touch me.

I had one of those second days on Friday. I was having a wonderful Skype session with a participant in one of my e-courses and at the 50 minute mark, my laptop shut itself down. Completely turned off. When I was mid-sentence. At first I thought we had lost power in the house, but then quickly realized that the lights were still on  in the room, the wireless router was still blinking at me. Weird, I thought. I restarted the laptop and reconnected with the person I was talking to.

My laptop shut down again, this time, in the middle of her sentence. What the hell, I said to the Universe and laughed. I reconnected a third time, and my laptop shut down again. I took a deep grounding breath. I slowly exhaled. I said, “I am listening” and restarted my laptop a fourth time. This fourth time, once I reconnected, I asked her if she had anything she had left to talk about. Miraculously my laptop hasn’t shut itself down since.

My observation of the technical difficulties, and my reaction, is that aaaaahhhhhhh. I have transformed. If this same sequence of events had happened one year ago, or even six months ago, I would have started to spin into panic. I would have spun into feelings of worthlessness and not-good-enoughness and told myself that age old story of how I can never do or get anything right.

That didn’t happen Friday. Friday I laughed. Friday, after the third shut-down I slowed down, grounded and rooted myself, and opened myself to listening. I released my own agenda and thoughts that I felt compelled to express. I listened. To the Universe, to my body, to my client.

I listened.

I have released so many of those stories of not being good enough, of never being able to do anything right, or not having worth or value. I have found myself in these last few years in ways I never thought possible. It’s been an amazing journey. I look forward to continuing it and excited to see what transformation I will notice in October or next May, or whenever it is the Universe feels I need to know and see and listen.

I will continue to transform in expected and unexpected ways. It will be terrifying and beautiful and exhilarating and calming. I can continue my practices, continue to release, continue to come into Being. The true beauty of this is, I never have to get it right. I can continue to be human, continue to make mistakes, and know, this is part of the journey, part of the practice, part of the transformation.

Lifetime practices. Always.