The Writing Stick

LETTER TO MYSELF

Is your seatbelt fastened? 

You have unconsciously or consciously chosen a life of service. 

There will be perfect, tiny fingers like tree branches that reach for your face. Unimaginable smiles cast in your direction. You will be wooed like an ardent lover with your child’s immeasurable longing for you. 

In the beginning, a mother is an entire universe.

If you knew then, what you know now, would you have, should you have, could you have, stopped what trivial thing you were doing, and savored every moment of such rapturous love? 

But there will be trespassing on that love. 

Wait. I didn’t want to be a mother at 20. What is and what can never be.  

But the sight of my daughter took me by surprise. 

I was afraid to love her and lose myself in a life I didn’t dream. 

Love is more powerful than fear Lisa. 

Mesmerized, I studied the fine veins that radiated through Jenny’s skin, rose and purple river marks. Tracing them with my hand, the arduous journey of her birth disappeared, and what remained was her intense vulnerability as she took her first breath. 

Power. To bring life into the world through my body. Great power requires great responsibility. 

I remember, I remember, her fierce devotion and need for me, but was soon buried underneath soiled diapers, missing baby shoes, fevers, and backaches. 

Try to understand the natural order of things. Stay awake. There will be transcendent moments. 

The day to day churning of endless laundry, the ferris wheel of fastening and unfastening car seats. Sudden fevers, midnight earaches and milky days change within days, into a march of footsteps. Then running, racing through the house, stray socks, missing homework, hordes of meals tucked between years of unruly complexions, dispositions, adolescent commotion and teenage rejection. 

All the words that I never wanted heard by sleeping children, or partners, as I lay exhausted after bedtime. “Is this all thee is, I ask myself?” 

While I care for you, who cares for me? 

Fight not to lose your center here. Make a new place for yourself. 

You are moving through the toughest part of the jungle. Remember that violent storms bring rainbows. I don’t know how I know but you will get to the other side without causalities .. 

The leaving then returning of your children, their leaving again, is not personal, despite what I feel. 

I know that you too, will want to go, rediscover who you are, but remember the timeless pact. Part of your service is to remain steadfast, you are the guardian of a great ship. 

Motherhood is a timeless tale of courage of surrender.

Always remember that the GREAT mother is everywhere. Who is she, you ask? She is our earth and lives inside all women. You only need to call her. It is that simple, that magical. Older than the sand in the deepest center of every ocean, she holds the accumulated wisdom of every Goddess in her womb. Everything begins and ends with her. She is primordial, modern, violent, and compassionate. Her blackboard is the natural world. Rely on her teachings. Find guidance and comfort in them. This mother is peerless. She does not hide her joy, her pain. She embodies every element, like you do: the fire of your breath, the clay of your skin, the air in your laughter, the flow of your tears. For the answers to your questions reflect on her mysteries by studying nature.  

You wonder what is left in the world that is sacred. You strain against doubt, your spirit may be broken by the infidelity of others. You question the institution of marriage.. Observe the mating and breeding of the red-bellied hawks. Both the males and females build their nest together, and while the female primarily sits vigil protecting the eggs, her mate sits as well. After only 44 days their young take flight and leave the nest. Some nests are built on cliffs and the young risk death trying to take flight.

The mother is ever watchful, patient, forgiving. Speak her name. Rest on her. Protect her so that she can stay strong.

Being with other like-minded women takes me to wild, unexpected, and unprotected places. When I was young I always felt like the odd girl out. It wasn’t until I hit my thirties, that I began to feel more comfortable with other woman. I still didn’t trust many of them, and was turned off by others cattiness. Buried beneath the river of busyness of my daily life, and sheer pace and fragmentation of the 21st century, I never imagined that the salve to my sagging spirit, and the answers to the silent questions that tugged at my heart, would be found in the most surprising of places: belonging to a “Circle of Women.” Read the rest of this entry »