This is a shout out to my fellow single parents out there…
This shit is hard. I want to write something eloquent and heartfelt with a side of gentle humor. But I can’t really muster that right now.
And also, I’m thinking that instead of waiting for me to collect all the right words maybe you just need to hear it plain and simple.
This shit is hard.
Tears in the back of the closet so nobody hears hard. Wracking your brain for the next miracle hustle you’ll pull out of thin air to cover the end of month bills hard. Kids delivering up the brutal truth of how exactly not present you are because you’re torn in ten directions hard.
Christmas tree not decorated and panic attacks in the shower over how the hell to pull off Christmas hard. Trying to be everywhere at once hard. Coming face-to-face with your limitations and damn humanness every moment hard.
Being everything to everyone hard. Feeling alone and underwater hard. Dinner not cooked till 9 pm hard. House like a demolition zone hard. Life nothing like you wanted or expected hard. Ain’t nobody there to dry your tears so you’d better hold it together hard. Not gonna lose it till they go to bed hard.
And yes there are blessings and privileges and deep joy.
But it’s actually okay if you’re not feeling them or dwelling there tonight.
Some nights, it’s okay to let what is hard be hard without putting some forced gratitude positive spin on things.
I’m telling you it’s got to be okay mostly because I need it to be okay.
Because yes, this shit is hard.
It’s hard if you do it alone part-time and it is even harder to do it alone full time. I’ve done both and there isn’t an easy road here.
There’s a reason this parenting thing has always typically been done in pairs. A reason that extended families stayed close and sayings like “it takes a village” exist.
We are not fucking meant to do this alone.
Like most specific realities, single parenting is a reality I don’t believe it’s possible to even remotely understand unless you’ve lived it. And if you’re living it with the extra burden of financial fears or uninvolved or difficult ex-partners or medical or mental health issues (or any number of other life complications that I can’t even begin to know or understand) it becomes exponentially harder.
I’m a self-employed single mama who barely scrapes by most months. And even in that, I know all the ways I’ve got it good. I sure as hell do not have it the hardest.
But yes. Still. This shit is hard.
And I see all of you in it. In all your specific single parenting realities and challenges. And by god, I feel you deeply.
So if you’re out there tonight doing it alone.
And if it’s feeling hard as hell and even lonelier and more isolating than that… just know you’re not alone.
It’s my fellow single parents who keep me afloat on nights like this. Because they get it. They get it like nobody else can. The totality of it. The pressure. The don’t you dare drop a ball but balls are dropping all over the damn place anyway. The exhaustion. The relentlessness. The holding up an entire world (or two or three or more) all by yourself.
So if you’re having a night the way I’m having a night. I’m here. You’re not alone. I get it. I’m with you.
Sometimes just knowing that is the only thing that saves us.
Mother of Julianna Amelie Grace and Isabella Charlotte Rose
This is my motherline.
I was mothered in a way that gave me freedom, and voice, and a path of my own. I was mothered to see good, and to serve and to have faith. I was mothered to talk back, to question, to push boundaries – although I now know that this is not the easiest path.
I was mothered to forgive and be forgiven and to be forgiveness. I was mothered to work hard, and to create. To be silly and to believe in the power of the quiet kind of love, the steadfast one that does not require fanfare, but lives in the undercurrent in all the moments of our lives.
I was mothered to live simply, loving much but needing little. I was mothered by Atlantic ocean salt and rich earth and the power of family. By the grandmother who left her American city home and on the power of love came to be with my grandfather and create a family along the shores of the Minas Basin.
I was mothered to know that play trumps a clean house, every time. That the mess will wait, but the moment may not.
I was mothered in the kitchen, in the chocolate cake and cookies and bread from scratch. Through those recipes I learned the power of reading ahead and following directions. It is from spoonfuls of dough and batter to be licked that I was mothered to know that so much goodness comes before the desired result – as long as you’re not in too much of a hurry to get there. And now I sit and watch my daughter instructing another on how to properly measure flour for Mother’s Day morning waffles, instructing how to keep the wet and dry ingredients separate and I hear the voice of my own mother and I see how the line continues.
I was mothered by so many. By the stories of my father’s maternal line. By his mother who died when he was four days old, born at 32 weeks in outport Newfoundland and how he never should have survived – but somehow she gave him enough to pull him through. I was mothered by the woman who stepped in when he was ten and loved him as her own until her passing just over a year ago. I was mothered by my aunt who taught me what love and intellect and tradition and devotion look like interwoven.
And I was mothered by those mothers who walked with me in the early days – in the trenches of sleep deprivation, on red leather couches and picnic blankets sticky with juice and warmed by the desert sun as we learned in all the hard and easy ways what it was to mother together.
I was mothered by the women who trusted me to be present while they became mothers, and by the midwives who held my hands as my own babies came earthside. I was mothered by my tribe, my witches, my wild women, near and far. So many examples of what it is to be woman and mother, as true to themselves as they are to their children.
I was mothered by women who have never been mothers, and who will never be mothers. I was mothered by women who lost their babies and who lost their own mothers and who never wanted to be mothers to began with. I was mothered by those for whom this day is a blessing, or a bittersweet memory or a reminder of all that are not but dearly wanted to be.
I was mothered by books and by poetry and by the voices of activists who taught me the value of speaking my truth. I was mothered by story, by myth, by trust in all that cannot be seen. I was mothered by fire of initiation and by salt water blessing. I was mothered by the grit and the grace and the power of choice. I was mothered by mama earth herself, and I was mothered by my self. The self I was, and the self I am, and the self I have yet to become.
I was mothered by the tears and the lost loves and by the friends who held me in the night when there was nobody else.
I was mothered by my daughters, by tears and tantrums and morning cuddles in the marshmallow bed. By their fierce insistence on owning themselves, their voices, the full power of their being. By all the ways there are me, and a mirror and reflection and lineage. And by all the ways they are not me at all – but their own selves, full and complete without any connection to anything that came before. It is true, more than all the rest, they have taught me how to mother them well. That I stumble and trip and do wrong as much as I do right – but that when I remember to respect them as guide and teacher, that it is my daughters who show me the path.
I was mothered by love. And I know myself blessed.
“So yes I know how angry, or naive, or self-destructive, or messed up, or even deluded I sound weaving my way through these life stories at times. But beautiful things. Graceful things. Hopeful things can sometimes appear in dark places. Besides, I’m trying to tell you the truth of a woman like me.” ― Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water
[hr]
It’s the truth that sets you free, right? Coming clean, that’s what I preach.
I don’t always tell you everything. Did you think I did?
You want the truth of me right now? Tonight? Should I tell you that right now there is no compassionate mother in me. I am snarling and impatient and snappy. They pull me from this. And this is what compels me. I don’t want to mother. Not right now.
I’m not supposed to say that. It doesn’t fit within the selfless narrative I am called to embody.
Right now I want a shack by the beach and I want to create and I want to be fed green grapes and bittersweet chocolate by pretty girls with nothing better to do. And I want to toss back shots of whiskey at an old bar with men whose skin has been worn to leather from a life on the sea. I want to weave my way steady to the bow of a boat and let the spray encrust me with grit and the waves fill me with the sound of home. And then I want to return, to my weathered wood cottage, and turn the music up loud and light incense and candles and cigarettes and lap dance for the muse until she puts the fuck out for me every single time I ask. Because it’s hot, what I’m making, and even she – fickle as she can be – doesn’t want to miss a second of this flame.
I’m probably not supposed to say that either.
I want a bike with a basket big enough to get the food I need, and the chocolate and the whiskey and the wine and cigarettes. I want endless miles of coastline to ride along, until my legs ache from honest exertion. I want to let go of the handles and remember just how good my balance can be when I trust it.
I want a bonfire right outside my front door. Where the lovely girls and pretty man-boys cavort and dance and strip off all their clothing to tumble into the sea where the kisses always taste like salt. I want this every single night. Until even my skin is permeated with the burn-down-rise-up scent of wood smoke and sand and sea. I want to be singed with the heat of it. I want it, saturated, in my pores until my breath feels gritty and real again. Until the skin on skin gives off the heat of flame. Until even the words burn as they are birthed.
I know I’m not supposed to say all of that.
I’m not supposed to like this about myself. This selfish that lives inside. Supposed to keep it hidden. Soften it for you. Take the rough off my edges. Round out my sharp corners. I am told they are wrong. The wants. The excessive need for solitude. For life on my own terms. Not ladylike. Not generous. Not mother. That I’m not who you knew. Not who you know, even.
I don’t like it. But then I do. My wants speak to my needs which translate the terms of my survival. The compulsions of art that will drive me and put me at war and seduce me into the crucible at the center of pure creation. There’s alchemy in owning it all. Unabashed. Unapologetic. Without shame.
Oh, I know I’m not supposed to be shameless. This world, it’s got all kinds of words for women like me.
But there’s more to this than just me.
Because I have daughters. Because living on my own terms comes down to more than just my own survival.
My girls, they will know me as human. As creatrix as much as mother. As ugly and dirty and real as much as calm and patient and loving. See my struggle as well as my bliss. My unmet longing as counter to my grace. My deep rooted insecurity and my narcissism. My hard fall of tears as much the sweetness of my laugh. The way we all can storm and cry and flail and then fall into my big marshmallow bed, a tangle of limbs and heart and tears, and fall asleep intertwined, secure and at peace.
And they will know what it is for a woman like me to live in fullness with herself. To fight for it. To know she is within choice at each moment. To make contracts with self as the path to wholeness, even when this comes at great cost. To find the integrity within that space, even if that looks different than what the world would call true. To understand that even fullness can sometimes feel dark and bleak and empty.
That even regret and unmet hopes bring untold richness to what will be born. That it can be a raw and primal thing, this unceasing drive to make something from within one’s self. That great art is birthed of both great pain and great joy and sometimes directly as we navigate the tenuous space between the two. That we birth our art as we birth ourselves. Both, often, in the midst of struggle.
I think I’m probably not supposed to say that either. I’m supposed to make it gentle. Pretty it up a little for everyone.
But I want them to know well the selfish and the selfless that lives within each of us, and the delicate dance between the two. To experience the wilderness of reclamation and the surrender of relinquishment that is a part of every negotiation we will walk as women who burn and ask and risk. Who refuse to follow the rules given us by culture and upbringing and expectation.
I want them to know it’s okay to exist from the center of absolute unknowing. To live the ugly and the confused and the sad and the broken, honest and out loud. That it’s equally okay to dive into the bliss.
I want, by the very root of my life, to show them a narrative that diverges from the one this world would have them live.
A narrative that is bloody and powerful and full of heat and sweat and sex and a sweet, holy joy that is owned and chosen. And a grief and teardown that is owned just as fully. And an autonomy of self that rushes from within their goddess center, and a voice that rings true and tells the stories that will be key to their survival.
Stories that can be lived and written and told by no other voice but their own.
I cannot teach this from within a container of acceptable and predictable.
Because if they feel trapped or small or lost at 20 or 30 or 40, I hope they shall take the freedom to run for the sea and to heed her wild call. To hear the whisper through mountain top pines speaking ancient truth and knowing deep in their bones that the forest will hold their scared vows. I want them to burn sage and creosote and speak ancient incantation and call forth the goddess. I want them to splash paint on canvas under full pink moon while the coyote howl and the fire rages and to not fear the wild power that wells up from within on such a night. I want them to own their sex as holy. To know their desire as a divinity. To place a ring on their own ring finger and make promises that they will never speak to another. Unless they want to, and then I want them to do exactly that. To know it’s all in them, as it has been in all of us, all along.
And me. Their mother?
I am never more than a sliver of space from the center of the paradox. From the glorious reality of complete contradiction. Not unbalanced, no. The {im}perfect center. Point and counterpoint. I seek it others. And when I look deeply enough, I find it in myself.
I don’t want to be where I am, but I cannot be where I belong. I am always searching for home, always seeking the next idea, the next embodiment of what may be. I am broken, and I am whole.
And yes, there is an unrest there, an ceaseless searching. A wolf who comes calling, whispering, howling. She leads me to hunt and prowl and burn. And she guides me to that delicate sliver of space, right at the core, that is pure peace.
I am opened finally, to a relentless sort of hope. For that forever love that the movies try to prove to me is real. And I believe. God damn, after all this time and all this ache, I actually believe.
But I also want to be pressed hard against a rough wall by someone who has the right not to give a fuck who I am or was or ever will be. I want a family of kids and grandkids and chosen souls and a 40-year partner in crime to surround me until the end of my days. And I want to be left the hell alone – to get old and grow gray and soft with the company of books and seagulls and worn wooden floors and chipped pottery that holds my morning tea. To take lovers when I want and discard them when I don’t.
I’m probably not supposed to speak that, am I? Not supposed to honor the way they swirl together, am I? That contradiction between the safe and the wild that lives in all of us. We are to choose one or the other and not look back. If we feel a pull to that which we’ve left behind or that which we have not yet found, we are to ignore and suppress and forget. There are truths that are easier for others to bear if we commit to never speaking them aloud.
Once upon a time I silently agreed to do just that.
I cannot. Not any longer.
Tonight I feel the glow of the candles on my face and the cool of air on my back and the peace of the rain that falls and falls and falls outside. It quenches the packed, dry earth of desert and something in me as well. Taking what was hard and making it soft. Liquid. Inevitable. The way water flows. Just like it was the last time my body met another body and current met current and it all flowed into mystery. The way I move when I stop fighting my nature.
Until it’s all liquid alchemy. Wet heat. The way home.
I don’t care anymore what I’m supposed to say. This is my story. You can listen if you want. You can join me if you will.
Because these words and this life are my own. Even when I contradict itself. Even when I make every sense and no sense at all. Even when it changes from minute to minute. Whether they ring true or untrue. These things are nobody’s but mine.
And I’ve got a story to tell. And so I begin and begin and begin. Again.
My Julianna Amelie Grace. Eight years. How is it possible? We’ve sure lived some life together since then. More changes than I ever could have imagined possible on the stormy night you were born. More joy. More sadness. More celebration. More heartache. More crazy, brilliant, goofy, silliness. Transition after transition after transition. And through it all, you.
You.
You, my lovebug. My fashionista with the inimitable sense of style. My goofball. My velcro baby. Girl of big feelings and and loud voice. Drama Queen. Baby Talker. Tiny Dancer. Earth Shaker. Move Maker. Budding artist. Wise Guru. Fierce Lioness. Music Lover. My girl.
You like to take up space. In the bed. In a room. In life in general. You show up, full force, like a hurricane. Shy at first, once you warm up there is no stopping you. You’ll talk a mile a minute, your silly faces are legendary, you’ve got a story or an explanation for every little thing. You can lie with the straightest face, and if I didn’t know better, even I would believe you. I have never truly ever won a battle with you. I probably never will. The only thing more ferocious than your temper and your will is your spirt and the way you love – full force, straight on, all the way. You feel big and love even bigger.
You, my wee girlie – have taught me all I know about surrender. About reaching out my arms, turning my palms up and saying “i get it, I’m not in control”. Over and over, from the time you were safely in my womb you’ve guided me in learning this lesson. Every single day you teach me more. If there is a gift you were brought here to give me, it is that. Before you, I imagined I could bend the entire world to my will. Imagine that? How silly I once was.
Grace. It’s one of your names for a reason. You are grace personified. Even in your biggest and wildest times, when your body is shaking with grief or anger or injustice – you bring it back to the grace that is the way we love each other. Love is always the answer – how could it be otherwise with you around?
Your brown eyes tell me that you’ve been here hundreds of times already. There is nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know, and you have much to teach. I called you guru before you were born. Guru and poet and old soul. Vagabond and dreamer and traveller. You are all these things and so much more. You are so much I do not know and so much I will never know.
You are you, and damn it, but I was blessed beyond measure the day you chose me to mother you.
Those of you who have been here for a while know her as my Dear One. To many who are newer, you might have read my words and think she is my lover – but she is not and has never been, in this lifetime at least. We’ve decided that we’ve been together for at least a dozen lives, so we’ve likely been everything to one another at some point in time. But in this life, she is my Dear One. I have written more poetry and prose for her than for anyone I have ever called lover. For almost nine years now, she has been my mirror and my best friend.
It was at her kitchen table that our non-profit was founded. She was the one who held the entire weight of my nine-month pregnant body as I gave birth to Julie during a stormy summer night. As a midwife she has served women with her heart, body and soul. As a writer she has moved mountains with the power of her words. Together we have seen each other through birth and death. Through beginnings and endings and heartaches and celebrations too numerous to count. In the middle of night, when I needed to run into open and loving arms, there was nowhere I could have gone but to her.
And now she needs our help. Not for herself, but for her daughter Asia, who is engaged in a battle for her life with an eating disorder that threatens her survival. Like so many, Mani and her family are uninsured. Like so many, that means they exist one catastrophe away from physical risk and financial ruin. Like so many, right now they need help like never before.
I am going to post Mani’s words below, an excerpt from the letter she wrote to a small circle of close friends just a few days ago. Since then, the community has come out full force and encircled her is love and funds and prayers and energy. But so much more is needed. Anorexia is difficult to cure and the available treatment costs dearly. I ask you to read the full text of Mani’s letter and give what you can. For my dear one. For her beloved daughter. For all of our daughters.
Insurance should never stand between a mother and the treatment needed to ensure the survival of her little girl. This time, as a community, I believe we can make sure that it does not.
~~~~~~~~
Mani’s Letter:
I am writing to you today about my daughter, Asia. Some of you are very intimately acquainted with Asia’s situation, and some of you know nothing about it at this point. Here’s the thing, Asia needs help of the lifesaving variety, and if you are included in this group it is either because I know that you know her and love her, or that your faith and good energy/prayers/thoughts are powerful, or that maybe, just maybe you have some connection to someone or something that may help her.
Asia has anorexia, and is in the fight for her life. We first noticed some issues with her when she was in 8th grade and took her to a therapist, which led to a psychiatrist, and so on. She was misdiagnosed, first with depression and anxiety disorder, then with bipolar disorder. Her father, sisters, and I all brought up concerns time and again about her weight and eating habits. Each doctor, nurse, and therapist we spoke with dismissed these concerns. They told us that when the meds kicked in and her mood stabilized, she would eat. Only she didn’t eat.
What she did do was get thinner and thinner, more entrenched in body dysmorphia, more anxious, more depressed, more sick. Finally, after nearly two years, a couple of months ago her psychiatrist diagnosed her as having an eating disorder.
Asia is not just thin and in emotional pain, her health is in serious peril. She has a subtype of anorexia in which she not only starves herself, if she does eat, she purges. She has anxiety attacks, insomnia, her hair is thin and brittle, her nails pitted and peeling, lanugo grows on her cheeks, she has the classic “chipmunk cheeks” caused by thyroid malfunction due to the disorder, her arms and legs swell due to fluid retention, her pulse regularly registers between 40-50, and her blood pressure has been as low as 60/40. She suffers from hypothermia, her teeth are eroding from vomiting, and regularly has bouts of crushing chest pain and an irregular heartbeat.
Due to the severity of her illness, she requires around the clock supervision and her dad and I have worked together to make that happen. I lost my job after calling in so many times to take her to the doctor, therapist, grab her from school after she blacked out (she doesn’t go at all now), etc… Neither of us can remember our last full night of sleep, because we are up so often checking on her, taking vitals, making her drinking electrolytes, etc… and because we are very afraid she will go into cardiac arrest in her sleep and we will find her dead.
She is fifteen years old. Right now, she is in a short term inpatient facility, her third such stay since April. They will release her tomorrow, even though she is in no shape to be home. The psychatrist there is wringing her hands. She told us last night that although she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Asia needs intensive residential treatment, our state insurance will not cover it until she has taken and “Failed” an intensive outpatient eating disorder program. She said, “I am afraid that if you ever want her to get better, you will just have to figure out how to pay out of pocket. If she were my daughter, I would skip the outpatient, fire her current psychiatrist and therapist, and get her somewhere that knows this disease.
Today I am going to be calling every single reputable eating disorder program in the country to beg them to take her on a payment plan until I find one that will work with us. In all likelihood, proper help will cost between $30,0000-75,000. I could care less about that, though it may influence whether or not they will allow us to make payments for many years.
If you wonder why we are not utlizing a facility in AZ, it is because they are sub-par, have terrible long term recovery rates, and anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. My daughter has stated that she would rather die than eat. There are NO current treatment options that have great recovery rates after 3 of disease onset and we are on year two. The Maudsley Method, also known as FBT, has the highest adolescent recovery rate of all therapies for anorexia, at 60-80%. This is almost double the other modalities, which are not backed by strong clinical studies. So, Maudsley it is.
If you pray for her, think of her, know anyone who works in eating disorders who may have some ideas for our family, etc… I would be so grateful. She is a wonderful daughter, and I want her back. I want her to live.
I ask you to consider giving what you can. One dollar, a hundred dollars, a card signed with love, a prayer chain directed at whatever god or goddess you claim, the power and energy of the love in your heart, resources or treatment information or stories from your own life. Yes, money is what is most needed right now, but help takes many forms and comes from the most unexpected sources.
I also ask you to share this within your own network. This crazy world of cyberspace is a powerful web of connection, and when we unleash our hearts and our words and the strength of our intentions, the most stunningly beautiful things can happen. Take a moment and share the fundraising link and the story on facebook, twitter, tumblr or pinterest. If you have a blog or online space, share this post or write your own. Take a moment and leave a comment of love on Mani’s blog or twitter. Make a card and I’ll tell you where to send it. Take a stand for healthcare reform so no more mothers have to face losing their precious babies because their job does not provide insurance coverage.
Whatever you do, it will be worthy and appreciated and noticed. Even one by one, our energy is a powerful thing. But with the energy of a collective force of souls focused on the life of one little girl there is no limit to what can be accomplished. This I know with all of my heart and soul.
Eleven years ago today I welcomed you into the world. You were everything I had dreamed.
From your birth story: With a rush that was almost anti-climactic her body slid out of mine and my husband and midwife brought her up out of the warm water and onto my stomach. I reached down to take her into my arms and was overcome by a wave of emotion so powerful it left me breathless. This beautiful, perfect creature was my baby, she had been created in love, born in love and I was determined that she be raised and surrounded by love all her days on the earth. A wave of strong, visceral, fierce mother-love flooded through me. I knew without a doubt that I would lay down my life to protect this helpless little being. The journey to this point had been so long; sometimes beautiful, others times arduous, but always amazing. In an instant it was over. The past year flashed before my eyes in that one moment as I held my baby for the first time. Conception. Pregnancy. Labour. Birth….. Mother.
When you were just a wee babe, I remember emphatically saying “I expect my children to question authority. Yes, even mine”. I must have known – somewhere deep inside – that you would be you. Somehow sensed that this questioning would not be an option but, instead, the driving imperative of your existence.
You, my darling girl, question everything. EVERYTHING. You are curious and investigative and obstinate and stubborn and insist on understanding the world on your own terms. You have a great sense of personal justice, a deep ability to explain your emotions and a level of reasoning that belies your age. You have a fearsome temper, a delightful sense of humor and you are a deep as the ocean that calls us home. You break before you bend, but you have learned to pick up the pieces and rebuild yourself in a way that teaches me about the grace within the ability to be born and reborn, over and over again.
You push me to the limits of all that I know. Patience. Understanding. Logic. Love. There is nothing small about you. You are as unapologetically you as anyone I have ever met. You are impossibly loud. You are wild and crazy and fun. You can be impossibly selfish. You can be incredibly giving. You are a study in contradictions, just like the rest of us. But unlike many, you accept and embrace your contradictions. You see no reason that they need conflict. They are just all a part of you.
You reject anything remotely tinged with girlie (a dirty word, to be sure) and instead love legos and weapons and wrestling and all things traditionally considered the domain of boys. But still, if anyone asks, you respond emphatically that you are a girl. This – to you – is not an issue. You like what you like. Play what you play. Do what you do. Not once have I ever seen you question the rightness of simply being who you are. This makes me prouder than you could ever know.
You hate to write and anything even remotely sounding like school work. But when life pushes you to the edge you – just like your mama – turn to words. After a fight I have grown to expect a written note slipped under my door – sometimes full of righteous anger, other times sweetly apologetic. Almost always making me laugh at your precocious and often entirely egotistic understanding of the events that have transpired. Never failing to leave me in awe at your ability to articulate and understand your existence in this world. Although you regularly drive me to the edge and beyond, these little notes touch something deep within me, and remind me of the many ways we are exactly alike.
You are my mini-me. You, quite predictably, hate the frequency with which you are told this. At your age you can’t see anything good in being compared to your mother. But I see myself in your face. Hear myself in your words. Feel myself in your heart. We are joined, you and I, by something deeper than mother and daughter. Some complex alchemy of spirit that has been present since before you were born. It is precious to me, still steals my breath. I hope we can always reach it.
You are entering a tremendously tender period of life. Like many adolescents, you are both deeply in love with your life and frequently and tragically misunderstood. You move from painful sobs and threats of imminent runaway to hugs and kisses and ‘you’re the best mama in the entire world’. You yell and scream easily, slam doors, look as if you should burst from the energy of the emotion contained within your body. You come down quickly too, and apologize and seek comfort, always, in my arms. You once explained to me that when you are in emotional pain you can feel a giant, burning hole in your chest. “Yes baby, I know” I replied. “I know it so well”
When you were three I wrote this blog post for you. I found it again recently and was amazed at how true the words still are.
She’s all of the above and so very much more than cannot be reduced to mere words. She defines explanation, just like all of us do, complex and complicated and wondrous and fantastic. Simple as can be, yet mysterious to me – my daughter is so fascinating that my study of her is a vocation in and of itself. I aspire to understand her, yet know that I never really can, and wouldn’t really want to. As soon as I figure something out, she changes before my eyes, and in striving to understand her I get precious glimpses into the wonder of biology and divinity and human nature and my own mixed-up self.
She is Glorious. Celestial. Earthly. Spontaneous. Guarded. Inspirational. Frustration-al. She’s a Thinker. A Doer. A Live Wire. A Deep Thinker.
She is Glorious.
Yes, my girl, you are glorious. You are tremendous. A force to be reckoned with. You have grown so big, but the twinkle in your eye and the freckles on your nose remind me that you are the exact same baby girl I fell in love with one September night, 11 years ago. And every night I lay with you in bed. We cuddle, and I scratch your back and play with your hair. And you ask me impossible questions that I haven’t a prayer of answering. And when I get ready to leave, you throw your arms tightly around me, trying with all your strength to keep me there with you a little longer. It reminds me that, as big as you may have grown, you are still my little girl.
There is no clock in my room at the summer house, not even an electrical outlet. It’s one of those undetermined witching hours between midnight and dawn. I am drowsy but not asleep, struggling with the wicked combination of jet lag and a brain that has the propensity to buzz at the most inconvenient times. Finally, after hours of tossing and turning, I’ve reached that hazy sweet spot where rest is inevitable.
The cry comes then.
And I am awake, in the immediate way of all mothers roused by a piercing cry from one of their babies. I hear pain in her voice, or maybe fear. I stumble in the dark. She is just next door but there is a hallway to navigate and toys strewn across the bedroom floor.
I reach the ancient single cot she sleeps on and see immediately that she is crying and writhing and trembling a bit, but not truly awake.
Nightmare.
I slide between her sheets and mold my body around hers. The tremors stop. A few more whimpers escape and then those too are settled. Her breath returns to normal. I am left wondering, as my heart flows out of me to surround her, how much longer will I be the magic balm that soothes all?
Motherhood bequeaths countless superpowers. I can vanquish demons and chase away boogiemen and mend wounds and settle feuds and soothe fears and calm nightmares. Just a touch or a hug or a whispered “hush wee girlie, mama’s here” in the middle of the night and equilibrium is restored. It’s a magic bit of sorcery, born of the alchemy between parent and child.
But we are approaching tenuous years, she and I. Just months away from ten, she rides these liminal spaces between childhood and adolescence, innocent of what is to come. She is still far more little girl than the enigmatic teenager she will be in just a few short years. But already, lying here curled around her, my head is only slightly above hers and my feet reach only slightly below. I was taller than my mother by twelve. Will she be the same?
In the pale glow of the moon hanging low outside the bedroom window I can just make out the light dusting of freckles that covers her nose. She squirms a bit and settles in against me. Her thumb makes its way to her mouth; a residual baby habit she just can’t shake at bedtime.
She smells like childhood country summers; salt water, sweat, fresh air, fertile earth, cut grass. The scent arouses a cellular memory of my own summers here by the shore and I breathe it in, knowing that this time is finite and infinitely precious.
How many more summers will I be her magic balm? How much longer will my touch or voice or kiss be all that she needs to settle her heart or her fears or her body? How soon until her troubles get bigger and deeper than can be healed by climbing in her bed late at night and offering simple comfort?
My girlie and I have had a connection from the beginning. A way of seeing each other that defies explanation. Our hearts never fully disconnected from our time in shared space. Even in my deepest anger or most fiery irritation I feel her with a depth unparalleled, and she feels me as well. It is our biggest challenge and our most profound gift. Will it be enough to help us navigate the years to come?
I pull her closer to me, and lean in to kiss her temple, breathing her deep into my soul.
faces and shapes and lines. simple and complex. fantastical, nonsensical free flow and elaborate, deliberate worlds.
on letters, and envelopes, and the back of her sisters advent calendar. on the clipboard attached to the wall above my desk. on checks waiting to make it into my bank account. on my to-do list. on her homework.
blank space? property of another? no, it’s just an expanse of paper waiting to be filled by what spills from her brain and hand and heart.
~~~
have you noticed? i ask. she is drawing everywhere these days, it’s amazing. maybe we should find her an art class.
maybe she needs boundaries, comes the reply. yes, boundaries – so she won’t draw on things that are not hers. there is a time and place for this.
maybe, I hesitate. maybe. but maybe this is something magical. something to pay attention to. maybe we could cultivate it. encourage it. help her let loose what is bubbling inside.
like the drumming, i add. like the way she makes rhythm on the window pane, or the table, or her legs. like she’s got music inside her. that could be magical too.
it’s just doodling. everyone does it. all kids draw. and drum.
~~~
of course they do. but not all adults. we don’t all draw. we don’t all drum out the beat of our hearts on every available surface. we forget all of that and shrink into ourselves. we say we’re not artists, not musicians, not creative. not good enough.
ever ask a kid if they can draw or sing?
YES! they’ll exclaim. YES! lets color princesses on this shopping list, and don’t you hear how this bowl sounds like a heartbeat if you tap it just so. rainbow colored trees and guitars from cardboard boxes and elastic bands. lets have a parade! YES!
they are artists and musicians and dancers and dreamers and everything else we’ve forgotten how to be.
boundaries? lines to stay inside? limitations of space or logistics or equipment? too loud? too messy? not good enough? these things are the domain of grownups.
what if our real job as parents is to nurture the magic that already lives inside our children? or, just maybe our only real job is to step out of the way. they all ready know how to give birth to their own genius, if give them enough space and trust to let it all flow out.
and what if a small part of what they are tasked with here on earth is to help tease back the layers of boundaries we’ve placed on ourselves? what if they have more to teach us about letting ourselves go than we could ever teach them about reigning themselves in? what if we just relaxed and let them help us remember the days when we lived our own lives without holding back?
back when our homework doodles and our cardboard box drum solos and our living room ballets and our bath time operas were delivered with gusto and moxie and pure bad-ass belief that we were invincible. that we were enough. that we could be artists and movie stars and trapeze artists and doctors and astronauts and mommies. all at once or one after another.
let her doodle. i say. let her remind me of my own greatness. my own wonder. let her remind me to color outside the lines of my life, to forget about self-imposed limits. that I can swing on a trapeze if I want, or fly into space. let her remind me that the heart of the story is more important than the misspelled words. that I don’t need to be dylan to make music or picaso to make art.
let her doodle. it could be the beginning of magic.
(and yes, this poured out so fast that I let capitalization be dammed. it just seemed to interrupt the flow.)
It may have something to do with the two girls who lie now in their rooms just down the hall from where I sit tonight pecking away on my keyboard. The older, stuffy nose and red swollen eye be damned, is stealing a last few moments lost in the pages of Diary of A Wimpy Kid. The younger, having worn herself out with multiple water and music and nightlight and hug requests, is finally asleep.
They are the center. The space inside from which all else orbits and evolves. They are my delight, and my frustration, my deepest peace, and my most morbid terror. They are every overused cliche and every brutal truth. They are the root of my soul, the poetry of my heart, the cadence of my life. In them and through them I am filled and emptied and broken and rebuilt.
But it’s not just them. A mama’s heart is not just birthing a baby and changing diapers and carpools and homework and dance recitals. It’s the heart of all of us, man or woman, parent or child. In the spaces where we connect, where we love, where we are one. I call it a mama’s heart because that is what I know. But really, it is the healing force, the breath that flows, the purity of love and spirit that reminds us that we must all nurture, and be nurtured- if we are to grow.
I write tonight, not with intention of crafting perfect sentences or the desire to create finely tuned phrases. There will be no editing and second-guessing and ripping apart what flows organically. No, tonight I’m feeling these words onto the screen, weeping them out of my fingertips and onto the blank white space in front of my eyes. I write from the ache in my chest and the salty tears that cloud my vision. I write from the touch of my firstborn’s arms around me and the sound of her breathless voice as told about the super cool game she played in PE. I write from the feel of my baby girl as she curls her body into mine and the irrepressible giggle that is only silenced by anger or sleep. I write from the knowledge that there is nothing that I wouldn’t do, and the knowledge that even that may not be enough – that there will surely be moments where it won’t be nearly enough.
Yes, I write from a mama’s heart.
And with a mama’s heart comes a veil of empathy through which all is seen and measured. With a mama’s heart comes the inability to experience heartache from distance. With a mama’s heart comes the knowledge, soul deep, that every moment is full of beauty and blessings and potential, and yet – is just a breath or a step or a decision away from the most abject chasm of loss imaginable.
This week, here in Arizona, the news hits close to home. Terror and grief and confusion mingle with blame and rhetoric and vitriol. And beyond the politics and the heroism and the unanswerable questions, there are the people who will be forever changed by this day.
And as always, my own mama’s heart goes immediately and eternally to the mothers.
The mother who, on 9/11 – while from my sofa I watched as planes collided and towers fell and rubbed my belly, praying that my daughter would stay safe inside – was just a few hours south, pushing her baby girl into a world forever changed, and who now must live without her precious daughter in a world forever changed once more. The mother who instinctively threw her teenage daughter against a wall and took not one, not two, but three bullets without moving from her position of protective cover. The mother of two and grandmother of three who died that day, despite her husband’s attempts to shield her from the bullets.
And the mother of the man who did this unspeakable thing. She must, I think, have held him and rocked him to sleep. She must have dried his tears and kissed his owies and held his hand as he crossed the street. She must have quietly tiptoed into his room as he slept, and felt, with a heart full to bursting, that there is nothing that she wouldn’t do to give him everything in the world. No matter what happened within their family between then and now, she must have loved him with a mama’s heart. And right now, that mama’s heart must be shattered.
I am reminded that the world we live in is both solicitously gentle and unfathomably ruthless all at once. And that we can never know what life holds for us, or for our children. We can do our best. We can provide every ounce of love, feed them only locally produced organic food, drive the safest cars on the safest roads. We can set boundaries and curfews and not let them date until they are 27. We can take them to church and teach them to meditate lovingkindness and make sure they hand in their homework on time. We can send them bravely out into the world and tuck them safely into bed at night. We can lecture and teach and guide and pour every ounce love in our hearts into every single moment of their lives. But we cannot predict. We cannot guarantee. We cannot control.
Yes, I have a mama’s heart. And right now, my mama heart weeps.
We were in Julie’s room one night, my eldest daughter and I. I wanted to show her how the canvas painting she had carefully labored over for Julie’s Christmas gift was framed and hung on the wall.
I said, gazing at her masterpiece with no small amount of motherly pride, “Now it looks like a real work of art”.
Bella looked at my quizzically, wondering yet again how her mother could possibly understand so little about the world.
“Mama, every time you make something, or draw something, or paint something, it is already real art. There is no such thing as art that is not real”
And so I said that she was right, and didn’t it look nice, and once again, daughter became guru and mother became willing student.
Which is, I sometimes think, the way it was meant to be.
~~~~~~
{art is always real. all of it. even the stuff you don’t understand. even the stuff you don’t like. even the stuff that you made that you would be embarrassed to show your best friend}
that photo that you took when you first got your DSLR, when you captured her spirit perfectly but the focus landed on her shoulder? still art.
the painting you did last year the first time you picked up a brush, the one your mentor critqued to death? it’s art.
the story you are holding in your heart and so desperately want to tell the world? definitely art.
the scarf you knit for your son with the funky messed up rows? art. art. art.
the poem scrawled on your dry cleaning receipt at the red light.
the dress you want to sew. the song you want to sing.
the clay you’ve not yet molded.
everything you have made
or will one day make
{it’s all real, every last bit. because there is no such thing as art that is not real. bella said so}
I’m on my way to bed, but I leave the hall light on for a moment to tiptoe into her room. Every night I do this right before bed, sneak into their rooms one last time, my light kiss on the head a prayer to the universe to keep them always safe.
On impulse, this night, I climb into her bed and curl my body around her sleeping form. Her long legs are tangled in the sheets and her thumb has just fallen from her mouth, a little girl habit held onto only at bedtime. I press my lips to her hair and breathe deeply. She smells of chlorine and sweat and little girl summer and the plea leaps, unbidden, into my mind.
I have broken so many things along this journey. Please, please don’t let her be one of them.
And for the millionth time I make a silent promise to be better, more patient, more loving, every last little thing she deserves. My only hope that she will find herself whole at the end.
Bella and Julie in July 2007: No matter how much they fight, there is a connect between sisters…
Teachable moments. As parents we know to look out for those fleeting instances where life and learning come together effortlessly. A trip to the grocery store teaches colors and counting to a toddler, a donation to the food bank brings opportunity to discuss poverty and hunger.
Life swirls around us willy-nilly and when we pay attention and grasp the lessons as they come, we have a chance to pass them on before the moment is lost. There’s an underlying assumption that we – with the benefit of advanced years and accompanying wisdom – will be the teachers, while our children are the ones being taught.
~~~
When we wake up from a deep sleep there is often a moment where our sleeping souls and our waking souls hover separate for a moment before settling into our body. I’ve felt it, that moment poised on the brink between dreams and daylight, just waiting for all of me to fall back to earth. But there are days when the meshing doesn’t quite happen right, things don’t line up like they should, and we wake up feeling the effects.
~~~
Julie is miserable from the moment her eyes open this morning. She tantrums and clings and cries and whines her way through the morning routine. Nothing is right, nothing tastes right or fees right or sounds right. But we rush through the routine of dressing and eating and lunch packing and teeth brushing, and there’s no time to do anything but drag her miserable little self along for the ride, gritting our teeth as we go.
8 O’Clock (ten minutes from the time we need to leave) finds her lying in the floor of our hallway, kicking her legs and screaming bloody murder again (and again and again). I hit my overload point, where frustration bubbles out of me and over onto anyone in the immediate vicinity.
Julie, if you can’t stop screaming I’m going to have to put you in your room!
Bella is walking down the hallway at that point and stops to look me in the eye.
B: Mama, don’t put her in her room. You’ll just make it worse, she’ll get more upset and everything will take longer. Ugh, timeout – it’s such a… grownup* idea. You know, it’s not like what she wants is not important. It IS important.
J: What does she want Bella? I don’t know, she’s been crying about everything since she woke up.
B: She just wants you to hear her.
~~~
And so we all slow down, and I sit in the hallway with both my girls, my gurus, my teachers, and I take a moment to hear them both, to learn from them, grateful that my oldest girl knew not to let a teachable moment pass unnoticed. Grateful that she took the time to pass on that wisdom to me. Grateful that I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t hear it.
And then we load up the car – daughters and mother and backbacks and lunch boxes and slightly lighter hearts – and head on our way, my teachers and I.
~~~
What do any of us want, really, but to speak and be heard, to exist and be accepted? Even cranky, even ugly, even when we wake up on the wrong side of the bed, even when we’re pushed to our limits by things that nobody else understands. We all want someone to hear us.
It IS important.
~~~
*Please note: the word grownup must be read in a tone dripping with disgust and incomprehension – as if grownups were a separate, and not entirely intelligent, species that she is forced to deal with.
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This book is a love letter.
A love letter to those in the midst of the breakdown or a reckoning or a rise. A love letter to the wild ones, to the lost souls, to the free. To the seekers and the lovers of leaving and those intent on finding themselves amidst the rubble.
