I Didn’t Blog

Even though today is supposed to be my day to blog, to take myself out of the daily busyness and be still, hear what my True Self has to say, I did not.

Today, thanks to the Polar Vortex, my children are home from school.  It feels hard to pull myself away from them, I want to take advantage of this gift of time together.

 So, instead of gazing at the white sky and the branches of the tree outside my window, or visiting those caves in the waters of my imagination, where I feel a Wise Crone lives inside of me, I do this with my daughter:

Photo by Andrea Friedmann

It is a jungle, with a river of water running through it. Chiqui teaches me how to make pompom trees with the glue gun and a pipe cleaner. I make a berry bush of tissue paper and Golondrino contributes a tinfoil canoe.  We scrounge up some plastic animals that survived numerous toy purges, and fashion a pipe cleaner snake. We string a vine across it, and hang a monkey from it.

There are a few squabbles as we work: should there or should there not be signs of humans, who tend to destroy nature. Tempers flare, my son stomps off at my daughters’ intransigence. We come back together again, everyone’s heart softens slightly, we all give in a little.

When we are through, we put the box in the sunlight and gaze at our work with pride. We’ve used up a few hours of this long day where outdoor play is not possible.

And I am surprised that I am feeling nourished, my heart is full, running over with love and gratitude, my energy light, warm, joyful.

This? This is better than blogging!

Fully Here

My head is full of thoughts of conscious creation and of setting intentions to engage energy. I am planning a class discussion even as I am out in the world, at the post office, doing groceries. I am there, but not quite. Neither am I fully here.

 

I place an order for refried beans in Spanish, because I am shopping in that kind of a place, where I can speak Spanish to the man behind the counter. I am friendly enough, but somewhat absent, still thinking of the session that put me on this train of thought about setting intentions and making requests.

 

A voice at my side asks if I am Colombian. It is a young man, with skin so smooth, I think he can’t yet be shaving. He tells me his “prometida,” his intended, is Colombian, and he recognizes my accent. His eyes radiate joy when he mentions her. He leaves with a smile, when his order arrives, and I am left bathed in his fresh, expectant energy, in his exuberance.

 

Gratitude breaks over me, for the grace that comes with him, that remains within me, reminding me that I much prefer to be present to this, What Is before me, to this gift that is the Now, and experience this immediacy, the intimacy of what I am living and breathing at this moment. I much prefer to be fully here.

Photo Credit: Andrea Friedmann

 

 

Mortality

Golondrina has been struggling with her growing awareness of mortality. My mortality, to be precise. She is full of foreboding, warning me on almost every night that she has a “bad feeling that something is going to happen” to me. She told me once that she hopes she will die right after I do, because no one will hug her tight, in quite the way I do, after I die. I hugged her tight when she said that.

I also asked her to go inside herself and discover what Truth lies there. But I know this is the fear that blinds, and that my own, adult access to Truth is often obscured.

I tried to speak to Golondrina of my understanding of death as transformation. I told her again of my experience accompanying my Oma in her crossing: the weak, but chaotic energy before, and also the peace of it, after. Golondrina spoke to her own Grandma, who got started on that journey and then turned back.

But none of that matters to Golondrina, of course. She is concerned only with this physical form.

And I can make her no promises that change will stop its relentless course.

The only comfort I can give her is to hug her tight and whisper in her ear, “It’s a good thing I can hold you now!”

She smiles — wanly, but she smiles—  and turns to go back to her bed.

Photo credit: ©Bies at RGBstock.com

Answer For My Daughter

Dear Daughter,

Yesterday, when you wanted me to be available to you and I asked you to wait as I finished taking some time for myself, you asked me why I always need so much time for myself. I wanted to give you a thoughtful answer, and this is it.

I love being a mother. I love being your mamá.

Being mamá, for me, means that in a big way I am always holding energy for you and for our family. It means that I am always aware and alert, prepared for what you, what our family, may need (and, sometimes, want) from me. This can be beautiful, but it can also be very tiring.

Besides, in our family, being mamá means having a lot of other tasks. You know some of them. I am usually the one who makes your meals, I make sure there is soap in the bathrooms. Others, you may not be aware of, like staying in touch with your teachers or coordinating our family’s activities, or helping build a community around you. These are just a very few of those tasks. There’s a lot of them, and, no matter how much I may enjoy them, there’s really no vacation from them, even when we are off somewhere fun and far away!

I love my role as mamá. But I am much more than that. And I need to take care of my whole Self. Taking care of my Self, for me, means doing what I feel I need to do so that my soul, my heart, my mind, and my body feel healthy, at peace, and joyful as I am doing everything I need to do as mamá, as a wife, as a worker, a friend, and all my other roles.

To take care of myself, I need silence and stillness every day. I need to give thanks and pray. I need to be aware of my own energy, to allow my thoughts, ideas, my dreams to surface. I need to give myself time, to tell the little girl that lives inside me, that is part of me, that she is important and deserves my attention, too. She needs me to be creative, to embroider and make things up. I need to be alone in Nature, to listen to the Wind and feel the Earth. I need to read books that engage me, and do exercise. I need to connect with the people I love, one on one. All of that, and even more, is what I need to care for my Self.

I want you to see me fulfilling my needs so that, as you and your brother grow, you have great clarity and courage to care for your Self well, in all the ways that you need, regardless of whether someone tries to make you feel it is indulgent or selfish, so that you can feel joy and peace in the life you are building.

I need so much time for me because I love myself so much and because I love you so much. I do it, first, for myself, and second, for you. May you, too, care very, very well for your Self.

I love you, my heart, you are precious to me, always,

Mamá

©Sanja Gjenero at RGBStock.com

One View

My precious daughter tells me she feels slighted by some children at school. It’s about an item of clothing, a jacket she’d been so thrilled to find, when we got it, because it had all the important elements: it was fuzzy and warm on the inside (not just for show), it had an abundance of sparkles, and, best of all, it had a gorgeous, large-eyed cat on the front. It was perfect for her, as if it had been made to order. And now, she says she doesn’t want to wear it to school again.

My precious daughter feels slighted… and I feel my heart breaking. The day has come. I can’t protect her from the random cruelties of the world that seeks to bend her by guile or by force, to shape her to its will. She has entered an arena that requires steadfastness and fortitude even when she is tired and feels weak. And I am suddenly exhausted, and weepy.

That may be all true, I can’t be sure. But I do know this: it is my experience framing this landscape, my view describing what is in it. It is my version of this story, of her story.

And in my attachment to that view, to my version, I am blind to so many other details. I am blind to my daughter’s innate power, to that force I have sometimes, in frustration, called obstinacy. I blind myself to her wisdom, her ability to pull far back when she is overwhelmed and then creep slowly up to the edge when she has gathered her resources. My attachment could cause me to forget that she has many places, many people, to offer her safety, to reflect her wholeness back to her, without judgments. I would forget that she is not a figure in the landscape, static, finished.

If I let go of my attachment, of my story, I am aware that this is a small opportunity to grow large, for her, my precious daughter, and also for me.

©Scott Liddell @RGBstock.com

Seven and Counting

Golondrina is showing me all the ways she can count to one hundred. She tells me it would take her all of Oma’s life to count to infinity, and continues counting by fives.

I look at her, lying next to me on her bed. Her black eyes are full of sparkle. Her breath is warm on my face, and she smells sweet, of soap and damp hair. She is stretched out, but her energy… it is so much larger, and full of fire. She is so alive, full of movement, even when she lies still.

Golondrina counts slower, now, counting by twos.

And I imagine the Oma I only knew as a grandmother, an adult, at seven. What could be seen in her young, blue-grey eyes? What sparks were evident in her being? What did she share with her mother, with conviction and excitement? What made her slow down, hesitate?

Oma’s portrait, photo credit: Tommy Neu

Separation

I did not know it, but I had been going about my life holding a deep pain, a feeling of separation from someone I loved so much, they could be a part of my body. The gulf between us had grown so wide that we had not exchanged words for longer than I could remember. Nothing happened, outwardly, we never said hurtful things to one another or declared a separation. Suddenly, we were disconnected.

And I felt alone. I felt deserted. And, because I felt powerless to ask for that which must be given without request, I covered my woundedness and continued my path.

And now, unexpectedly, after so much time, this face is before me again. Without bridges, explanations, acknowledgment of what occurred, or stopped occurring.

I like to think of myself as “big enough” to let go. I preach forgiveness. And there I am, surprised that I am holding a wound and gazing on this beloved being, feeling separation and resentment.

In my mind, I know there is nothing to forgive, I know whatever happened or stopped happening is really not about me.

But I cannot feel the truth of this. My heart is hard with the effort of staving off pain.

I wonder if this is how I will remain, if this, stone-hard, is who I will remain.

But I am offered a miracle, my coach’s voice, that can speak in the tones of this person I love. I feel their pain, too. The quiet distance between us has not wounded me, alone. And my mind was right, it was not about me. Only this time, hearing the tones, my heart can feel it, know it.

And my heart can now release from contraction, softening and opening, like a bud under the sun. And there is no more hurt, no more resentment, no more fear.

I can recognize my wholeness and offer open-handed love.

The Gifts I Wish to Give

As the shortest day of this year approaches, and the beginning of the various celebrations of light that our family celebrates, as well as the new year, I am inevitably thinking of gifts.

In the midst of the showering of things we can engage in at this time of year, and the danger of valuing the gift more than the sentiment behind it, I set the intention to stay very closely connected to the joy that giving joy brings to me. This is my gift to myself.

As for my children, may my greatest gifts to them remain my deep and abiding love, and  my awareness of their essence. May they remember not only the gifts wrapped in paper, not only the gifts from my hands, but also the gentle shaping of their world, my trust in their good sense and their vibrant souls. May they retrieve joy from the hours spent cutting and pasting together, and coloring inside and outside the lines. May they feel it in the whispers of shared questions, stories, secrets. May they receive my gifts in clean sheets and Pasta-Your-Way, in countless hours reading out loud and driving to school and to classes, and the warmth of our early morning snuggles under the covers.

May my gift to my friends and my loved ones be my complete presence, bringing the whole of myself to our relationship. And with that, my open heart.

May my gift to my readers be to gently brush something deep within you: an  awareness, a remembering, a yearning, a stretching, a spark.

Breakdown and Wholeness

I am  seeing breakdown in many places around me. Many bodies in pain and dis-ease. Deaths. Hearts breaking. The Earth convulsing.

A time for tears.

I can offer no comfort. My words are lost in the gulf of emotions. I hold energy for wholeness and healing, I radiate Reiki. I extend my hand.

And I am filled with gratitude for the connections of the human heart. I can feel in my body, in the energy field around it, how love holds us up. I see how connection to one another strengthens us enough to remember… we are not alone, we are not only bodies with minds, we can prevail through pain and continue to grow towards wholeness.

 

 

 

 

On Trees

I think of Jean Shinoda Bolen writing about trees, the deep relationships people have with them, and I remember. I remember myself as a toddler, perhaps younger, lying on my grandfather’s chest, high up in a thick tree, napping together. I remember waiting impaitently for my father who was always studying seeds, and leaves, and fruits in trees all around our family farm, learning them, photographing them. I remember laughing at him in my youthful ignorance, when he planted a forest of native species, high on the mountain, wondering if any of us would ever see it fully matured. I have seen it grown, magnificent and powerful, holding the soil, gifting us with breathable air, and sharing its vital energy.

I remember the tree I sat in as an adolescent, on the overlook, as if on a throne, with a view of the entire world below me. I remember the tree that my child-self built a secret hideout under, and the grove that cradled me when I needed solitude but feared loneliness.

I remember the physical and emotional pain I felt when, before this latest conscious awakening to our interconnectedness, I had to finish off a tree that had been felled to build the house I moved into, and that had managed to survive, pushing thin branches of leaves up towards the sky, threatening to bring down our walls. Even before I remembered my knowing, I had the inner prompting to whisper my grief to it and ask its forgiveness as I cut the branches away.

I remember the first time I offered Reiki to the tree beside the home I live in now, how I felt the energy was received. And I remember the first time I went to a towering oak, seeking guidance and clarity in the midst of the overwhelm of my life. Its energy enveloped me, comforted me, and it shared with me wordless wisdom that I cannot translate even today.

So I stop today, and I honor that tree, and all trees, in my past and my present, and those that are beyond my understanding of me, on other lands, other continents. All those trees to whom we are related.