For several days, I've been planning to write. And yet each day, it gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do pile. So many more pressing things to do. It feels as though just when I need life to be a little more organized and efficient... what little order I had managed to eek out falls away and I'm left sobbing by the baby gait wondering when I will find my sanity again.
Resisting the lack of order. Resisting the demands placed on me. Resisting my lack of alone-time. Resisting, resisting, resisting.
And then my littlest walks up to me, pushes me back away from the gate, leans his head up against my legs, and dozes off to sleep.
I'm not sure who is more exhausted.
This is the part of motherhood we don't always talk about. It isn't cute, it isn't pretty, it isn't easy. There is nothing like caring for another soul that brings you to your knees and turns up the volume on your old "Not Good Enough" tapes.
So many of us have those. We think we've thrown them out. And then our baby stops napping. Or the washing machine overflows and you scramble for towels to sop up the mess, but you hit the bottle of nail polish and it bumps off the shelf and breaks open as it impacts the corner of your beautiful new dryer and before you can wipe up the spill it's eaten away at the paint and left an ugly, melted, mottled smear, and so every day you are reminded ... that you're messy.
At least I am.
I fought it for so long. Always wanting to appear put together. Wanting to have the answers. Waiting to speak until I was sure I was right. Needing to be voted Good Enough by some unseen jury of the heart and soul.
When I first began contemplating writing again, my urge was to start fresh. It's a pattern I learned long ago and held onto for most of my life. When something's just too messy, too hard, too painful... you wall it up, paint it over, and move on somewhere else. Pretend it's not there behind the facade and eventually... it will go away.
A part of me would like to tidy up a bit. Remove the messiness of previous incarnations, delete old posts. Start from where I am this moment and show only the "new me".
But the truth is that our real beauty is our mess. Every person is messy. Some hide it better than others. Some are so squeaky clean you're SURE they're a wreck behind closed doors... but others have perfected the "minimal mess" approach... showing you just a tiny bit... a shirt draped over a chair, yesterday's coffee mug on the kitchen counter... just enough to let you see them as imperfect but not enough to really KNOW them. Others... throw open their doors and show you around the dusty shelves, leaning piles of unread books, abandoned attempts at portraiture, water rings on the coffee table.
And those are the people we trust the most. Those are the ones we can relate to. We see ourselves in them, and we feel comfortable.
And so, in the archives, you will see glimpses of an older, younger me. Just beginning to really dig for answers.
I think of her as Caterpillar-me... just beginning to reach for answers. Searching ravenously for tools, guides, answers, herself. Slowly creating the thick, protective chrysalis around her until rather abruptly, and perfectly in line with the start of the last Mercury Retrograde of 2014, she sealed herself up to the world and went silent. Safe in her cocoon she was beginning the incredibly painful, beautiful, mysterious, awesome process of metamorphosis. Turning first into a gelatinous pool of pure possibility -- unrecognizable as either a caterpillar or a butterfly, yet working steadily toward an end she knew only by pure animal instinct. Re-configuring her very cells into the butterfly she was destined to become.
Then by sheer luck, or divine design, this new butterfly me found the tiny opening in the end of the chrysallis, and began to push back ever so slightly into the world. A nudge here, a stretch there. Tentative and sure at the same moment. Feeling with almost excruciating awareness the changes... learning all over again how to be.
And now here I am, perched on the tip of a branch... letting the blood flow into my wings. In a bit, I'll start flapping, drying and straightening before my first flight.
I have more answers, and fewer answers.
I have discovered my truth as a Key, a lightworker, a spiritual and emotional midwife.
I remain a messy work in progress. A masterpiece of imperfection.
I walk a paradoxical path.
Resisting the lack of order. Resisting the demands placed on me. Resisting my lack of alone-time. Resisting, resisting, resisting.
And then my littlest walks up to me, pushes me back away from the gate, leans his head up against my legs, and dozes off to sleep.
I'm not sure who is more exhausted.
This is the part of motherhood we don't always talk about. It isn't cute, it isn't pretty, it isn't easy. There is nothing like caring for another soul that brings you to your knees and turns up the volume on your old "Not Good Enough" tapes.
So many of us have those. We think we've thrown them out. And then our baby stops napping. Or the washing machine overflows and you scramble for towels to sop up the mess, but you hit the bottle of nail polish and it bumps off the shelf and breaks open as it impacts the corner of your beautiful new dryer and before you can wipe up the spill it's eaten away at the paint and left an ugly, melted, mottled smear, and so every day you are reminded ... that you're messy.
At least I am.
I fought it for so long. Always wanting to appear put together. Wanting to have the answers. Waiting to speak until I was sure I was right. Needing to be voted Good Enough by some unseen jury of the heart and soul.
When I first began contemplating writing again, my urge was to start fresh. It's a pattern I learned long ago and held onto for most of my life. When something's just too messy, too hard, too painful... you wall it up, paint it over, and move on somewhere else. Pretend it's not there behind the facade and eventually... it will go away.
A part of me would like to tidy up a bit. Remove the messiness of previous incarnations, delete old posts. Start from where I am this moment and show only the "new me".
But the truth is that our real beauty is our mess. Every person is messy. Some hide it better than others. Some are so squeaky clean you're SURE they're a wreck behind closed doors... but others have perfected the "minimal mess" approach... showing you just a tiny bit... a shirt draped over a chair, yesterday's coffee mug on the kitchen counter... just enough to let you see them as imperfect but not enough to really KNOW them. Others... throw open their doors and show you around the dusty shelves, leaning piles of unread books, abandoned attempts at portraiture, water rings on the coffee table.
And those are the people we trust the most. Those are the ones we can relate to. We see ourselves in them, and we feel comfortable.
And so, in the archives, you will see glimpses of an older, younger me. Just beginning to really dig for answers.
I think of her as Caterpillar-me... just beginning to reach for answers. Searching ravenously for tools, guides, answers, herself. Slowly creating the thick, protective chrysalis around her until rather abruptly, and perfectly in line with the start of the last Mercury Retrograde of 2014, she sealed herself up to the world and went silent. Safe in her cocoon she was beginning the incredibly painful, beautiful, mysterious, awesome process of metamorphosis. Turning first into a gelatinous pool of pure possibility -- unrecognizable as either a caterpillar or a butterfly, yet working steadily toward an end she knew only by pure animal instinct. Re-configuring her very cells into the butterfly she was destined to become.
Then by sheer luck, or divine design, this new butterfly me found the tiny opening in the end of the chrysallis, and began to push back ever so slightly into the world. A nudge here, a stretch there. Tentative and sure at the same moment. Feeling with almost excruciating awareness the changes... learning all over again how to be.
And now here I am, perched on the tip of a branch... letting the blood flow into my wings. In a bit, I'll start flapping, drying and straightening before my first flight.
I have more answers, and fewer answers.
I have discovered my truth as a Key, a lightworker, a spiritual and emotional midwife.
I remain a messy work in progress. A masterpiece of imperfection.
I walk a paradoxical path.
