Love For Your Life

I'm so thankful for the sweet human who taught me "There is a love of your life and a love for your life." Being with the love of my life was like living with the sun. I imagine the love for my life to be like water. 

Water's utility, necessity, and goodness are undeniable; so too is its strength. Water can exist in all three states of matter. (There's a quiet alchemic magic in that.) It can be refreshing like the feel and smell of rain, a good cry, or a shower after an especially long day. Water is precious without all the fanfare.

With the abundance of overly sweetened, artificial options, it can be easy to forget what is most needed to properly function, grow, and achieve optimal health. Necessary even at the cellular level with an ability to hold space in beautiful, awe-inspiring ways, there are moments when water quenches like nothing else. 

Distance from the sun is essential; living with water is a requirement.

Temporary Homebody

We live in a "heightened threat environment," they say. My nervous system has been activated since I was a little girl, perceiving threats and feeling threatened. Anyone who has witnessed or experienced violence, particularly at home, knows how it feels to see land mines everywhere. One wrong response, even the perception of defiance or disrespect, could trigger chaos. It was safer to be "out there," anywhere else. 

Some dwellings are heightened threat environments. It's difficult to focus on external chaos when the home and being is chaotic. Then, it all feels the same or similar. Feeling unsafe is the norm. Being unsafe is the norm.

I often assign my new desire to be home on being a parent. "Outings require so much effort," I say. Truthfully, the [varying in severity] inconvenience, annoyance, and difficulty of toddlerhood is a ready-made excuse.

I feel the heightened threat environment of the world. It whirs with the car speeding by as I clutch my 1 year old hands tighter. It's in the drunken voices of neighbors. It is on TV, phone, and computer screens. It's in the comments and newspapers. Violence visits freeways, churches, malls, schools, movie theaters, grocery stores, concerts, political rallies, golf courses, small and large communities all over the globe. 

If you feel it; if it clings to your hair and clothes like cigarette smoke; if it makes your stomach turn like overpowering perfume in an elevator, you are too sensitive. You consume too much news. You are simply not trying hard enough to be optimistic. You're too fearful. You're too dramatic. You are the rain drenching parades.

What is the appropriate response to living in the heightened threat environment of humanity? Denial? Defiance? I don't know. I only know I prefer the constructive chaos of my 1-year-old to the destructive chaos of the world in the safety of our home. 

- 09/17/2024

Hand ​in ​Hand

Parenthood can feel like a cycle of exhaustion and judgment. Caretaking and child rearing are rewarding. Rewarding is not synonymous for energizing.

I've been a parent for less than two years. There is endless acclimation and reacclimation. As the child goes through stages, so do careers, friendships, relationships, families, finances, and parents. 

There is much consensus about children changing everything. There is much judgment - from within and without - about how those changes take shape. About how long it takes to settle and resettle into normalcy in each stage. 

Life, like diapers and play areas, can be messy. It can be shitty, and, shit stinks. The literal and figurative smell doesn't linger forever, but it can take over in moments.

I seek a permission structure. I want to gift myself permission to figure all of this out. To learn my child at and on his level. To become the mother and woman I wish to be. I neither plan nor expect to parent and human without error or odor. 

I do plan to give myself patience and grace. I plan to let MJ be an individual and a child. He is so worthy of patience, grace, and insulation from labeling. I am a parent. I signed up to caretake, protect, and absorb. In a way, I signed up for exhaustion.

Exhaustion is inevitable. Judgment is unavoidable. Shit happens. We're in a leap, not a free fall.