Oh just look at this. These native species, in bloom, surviving torential winds, boiling rains, frigid snow and the continual relentless creep of invasive plants. Tenacious in their hold on the little spot of earth they inhabit.
Like self-adoring thoughts holding out against the invasion of not-good-enough thinking.
Yesterday, having stayed up late the night before, I was weary and beaten down before my eyelids opened. Witnessing is the most fantastic thing, though, because it pulls me out of my immersion in the tight, constricted space that a sleepy mind insists upon, where I find it almost impossible to be kind.
Perhaps the hardest thing about sleep deprivation, which ALL mamas know oh so well, is that it jolts us back into our primal brain where all habitual, conditioned thought patterns live, central of which is self-loathing, yes? Our conscious brain, abundant with how we want to be, becomes a distant whisper.
Yet the witness saved me. I fell down the deep hole of self-hatred when I caught a glimpse of myself in the full length mirror of the library bathroom. Immersed back into a panicked state, sending out drowning texts to girlfriends, things were black and too familiar. Disconnected from myself, disconnected from my children, blind to the glory of the day around me.
Quickly though, I stepped outside of myself and looked down. Witness. Within seconds, I was free again. Doing cartwheels in the field with them, lifting our shirts to let the sun kiss our bellies. The native realization of who we really are, surviving.
And they felt the shift, devouring the aliveness I could now offer up.
I love you, mama, till my dying day. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Wonderful, beautiful, amazing, true.
Posted by: Maryam | May 19, 2011 at 06:21 AM
6512...yes yes. I have that flashback often and it is exactly what I want to remember. RIGHT NOW. It helps me shove aside so many other things to be here through this fleeting and flurried and most amazing, amazing time of my life. xo
Posted by: kris laroche | May 18, 2011 at 08:54 PM
Gorgeous flowers and metaphor.
I had this funny thought the other day that in ten years I would look back on this time period - when my children were young and adoring and adorable and I had a lot of time to be with them and loved my work even if it didn't earn much money or adult world recognition - and I would think "oh, how lucky I was *then.*" Which really translates to: how lucky I am RIGHT NOW. RIGHT NOW.
It's a practice of remembering.
Posted by: 6512 and growing | May 18, 2011 at 10:44 AM
Brilliant.
Posted by: Grandma Linda | May 18, 2011 at 10:03 AM
Lovely.
Posted by: Flo | May 18, 2011 at 09:49 AM