Gwynn Raimondi, MA

This is the life

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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 🙂

 

Living in fear and resistance

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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.

 

 

Giving and receiving

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Today a homeless woman with three children reached out me. We were sitting in the library, my daughter playing with one of her daughters. She told me how she had left her husband, leaving her and her three children homeless and she didn’t know where they were going to get food today.

I didn’t have much to give, our family is struggling too. So many families are struggling right now. I wanted to help her though. We had some fruit in our car that we had just received. It was fruit that was supposed to last us through the week. We have other food at home though and I knew what our dinner would be, and that I am blessed to have a kitchen to cook that food in.

I pulled my daughter aside and told her that her new friend and her family didn’t have any food and that I was going to share what we had in the car with them. She agreed. I checked out our library books, went to our car and brought the fruit up.

I gave it to the mama and told her where it had come from. I told her this was all I had to give and I wished so deeply I had more. Tears welled up in her eyes and she thanked me. We didn’t speak another word until my daughter and I left and she mouthed the words “Thank you” to me again, with tears in her eyes.

My heart has been breaking for this family since we left them this afternoon. I am grateful that this mama reached out to me, and I am grateful that I was able to offer her something. I am mostly grateful for the gift she gave me.

You see, I’ve spend the last several days cranky. I was complaining to my husband this morning about how I’m so bored with the food we’ve been eating, how tired I am of cooking, how frustrated I am with the constant dishes and laundry and cleaning. In the last few days I have complained about how I don’t like our dining room or living room furniture, how our bed “needs” new bedding. I’ve been ungrateful for what I have, seeing so clearly what I do not have and wanting, grasping for more, more and more instead of being satisfied with the blessings we have.

We have a kitchen, dishes, a working dishwasher, a working stove and food. We have clothes, a working washing machine and a working dryer. In fact we have an over abundance of clothes, enough to get each of us through a couple weeks of me not doing laundry. We have multiple bedrooms in our home and we have comfortable beds to sleep in and sheets and blankets and pillows to rest our heads on. I’m in a beautiful, healthy and loving marriage and we have an amazing, healthy and wonderful daughter.

It is easy to get wrapped up in lack though. It’s easy for us each to forget all the abundance that we truly have in our lives. It is easy to see all that we don’t have, all that we want, all that we hunger for. It’s easy to tell ourselves the story of how our life would be better, happier, shinier if only we had this or that. It’s easy to sink deeper and deeper into a sense a lack, even when on paper and to others, our life looks amazing and perfect.

With practice, we can step into a place of abundance. We can see all that we do have. We can become satiated with what is, what we have in our life now, this moment. We can learn to unravel the myths and see them for what they are: stories, pieces of fiction. We can feel, deep in our souls, the abundance of our lives, even when on paper and perhaps even to others, it may not look or sound all that amazing.

I’m grateful for the family I met today. I am grateful that I was able to help them,  in some small way and that in return they helped me a very profound way. I am grateful I was able to offer them food and that in return, they offered me my Soul.