Breathing Space

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.
-Ivy Baker Priest

This month marks the anniversary of my daughter's second birthday, and my second year of being a mother. As I did last year, I commemorated the moment by waking at the time of her birth, and reliving the experience.

I relived the pain of my prolonged labor, the torment of those last moments. I thought I would surely die. I could not see how I could go on. I have never felt so close to my own ending, to the end of my strength and spirit.

I remember praying to God. I remember looking at the clock, watching the moments pass, and wondering when it would be over. The pain washed over me again and again and I held onto my husband as he helped me through one moment to meet the next.

I remember pushing with all my strength, thinking I had no more strength and, again, praying. I remember the disbelief as she was placed on my chest. I remember how she turned her eyes to meet mine. I remember the surprise that I barely registered her sex, after wondering for all those long months. I was so enchanted with her being that sex seemed an afterthought.

I remember the euphoria of getting to our room, of being taken care of, and having done it. Holding this amazingly perfect being in my arms, my heart breaking at the beauty of our blessing. It was over. She was here.

My life had changed forever in an instant and I was at once the same and at once reborn. I was now a mother, the heady gravity of those words becoming more and more real as the moments passed. I had become a mother. I was a mother. The feeling and meaning of those words slowly dawned on me just as that morning dawned, just as my daughter was born.

Life has a way of helping you even when you think it is hurting you. I look back at Babou's birth with a new perspective, one less shaped by pain than function. Those days of labor, of pain, of waiting, held an important purpose in preparing me for motherhood. Those thought clearing moments of pain were preparing me for change. The extreme fatigue, the relentlessness of it, created a near dream like state in which new pathways were allowed to open in my spirit. It was as though I became a vehicle, I was taken over by something much larger than myself. I was on the sidelines, my ego was out the door. I didn't realize until later that all of this was in preparation for my initiation into motherhood.

After I had given birth, when I had reentered a more normal state of consciousness, I realized I had changed. I realized that everything had changed. I was no longer the woman who had walked into that hospital. I was no longer the center of my own universe. There is something so liberating in that, in that act of becoming a part of something larger than yourself. I had glimpsed a larger picture and was beginning a new chapter of my life. As I look at my daughter today, I am still in awe of the raw beauty of life. I am in awe of the strength of love. And I am in awe of how much a child can teach you, even in one night, and in one moment.

A Catalyst for Change

We are the ones we have been waiting for.
-Hopi Prayer.

Mary Alice, again, has roused me to reply to her blog with a blog myself. I have also used the quote that she used on her blog because this perfectly, I feel, pertains to the issue. This is, obviously, a topic close to my heart.

Yes, identity is difficult as you change through life. One’s roles are always in flux and those Saturn returns (which also happen every seven years or so) are very difficult to go through no matter how diligently we have given ourselves what we needed to grow and stay connected. Change is no respecter of self-awareness; it throws it out the window to start fresh, to change. With motherhood this change is dramatic. The center of the universe shifts from ourselves to our children and it’s difficult to maintain a strong center during this shift and not lose yourself completely. The rhythms that make up a mother’s day can feel like imploding, it is such a closed and constant and personal rhythm.

That is why I started blogging, so that I could connect with others, not just my friends and family, to make friends with a larger world to keep mine open and me open in the only way I knew how within the constraints of being a stay-at-home mom. I think that this is one of the main keys to maintaining equilibrium through the changes of motherhood: doing what you need to do to maintain YOU. And that is the tricky part, making sure that you honor and respect your needs and give yourself what you need to make it through the changes intact.

Your identity will change; you are changed. I think that this is what is particularly brilliant about life: growing. Everything on earth grows and changes and so do we—we are continually called upon to grow as we define ourselves against an ever-changing backdrop that is our life--identity changes because we juxtapose our identity with life, and life is always changing.

You have to know yourself to make it through these changes. Our landscape changes and we are called to ask, what does this new backdrop accentuate in me? How does this change the way I think, feel, and act? How does this new circumstance define me? If you don’t know yourself, you will, you will have to; life necessitates it. Those shifting times when I feel like I am driving in neutral are necessary and uncomfortable. Someone once said that you have to lose yourself to find yourself and it is so true.

These defining identity issues are not unique to parenthood. Becoming a mother is just one set of circumstances that allow you to evolve and change. Evolution of self is not unique to motherhood; identity is unique to selfhood. Motherhood is just one way, one set of circumstances, in which it occurs.

My final thought on the topic is that it is much easier (I find) to get through change if you don’t take it all too seriously--least of all yourself. If life up to this point has taught me anything, it is to not take myself so seriously; to laugh at life and myself and try to go with it as much as possible and enjoy it as much as possible. I try to do this every day as much as I can. Sometimes I fail miserably, and sometimes I am wildly successful, but through it all I am myself and the more I honor that, the easier it gets. I think that there is an inner knowing, a voice inside you that helps—especially when you honor it. And I think that if we listened to it and acted on its wisdom that we would realize that we are, indeed, the one we have been waiting for…that we have been all along. That life has been slowly washing away excess ego to allow our real self to shine through and inspire others to be themselves, too. That it is not only okay, but meant to be.

Selah.

Stemming a red tide, Part II

This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head…
-Annie Lennox

I should have known that I could not change a tide as strong as a red one. Really, I think I made it mad. So I have just decided to go with it after a tearful telephone conversation with my dear sister Mary Alice. There are so many things that are on my mind and bothering me lately all at once I truly feel overwhelmed by it all. In the past year I had a baby and stopped working and this has created a space in which I am not who I was but yet not who I am…yet. I am in this very uncomfortable, fertile place that is very difficult. It is a changing place. I know it because I have been here before, that is one thing that’s nice about getting old, you begin to have perspective. When I have been in these spaces before, the best way I can describe them as going down a road and changing gears: you are still moving, the engine is still on, but the clutch is in and there is not connection until the new gear locks into place. A sort of foggy place.

In addition to starting my own family, my own parents are not getting any younger and I feel the extra need to be as much help as I can be to them. They live four hours away from me so it has been rather exhausting. Since I stopped working it is not as exhausting as it was, having to rush down and back in a weekend, and I am lucky enough that my husband’s work is on a job by job basis (he is a construction diver) so we often can spend chunks of time with them or I can while he is away. I feel the extra need to help because out of all my siblings, I live the freest life. I feel overwhelmed though.

These are the things that have been coming up for me as I have been trying to make sense of all my amplified emotions. I was thinking about it all today, just how silly the things I was upset about were and how once I get past this week all will be normal again and I will be embarrassed about how I felt and shrug it off again until next month. I kept thinking how do I validate my feelings when they are so clearly over the top and I only feel this way a few days out of the month? My conclusion, so far, is that perhaps that the symptoms are pointing to imbalances in my life that need to be addressed or at least come to peace with. A lot of it cannot be helped, this is just the time of my life and there is nothing I can say, do, or read to change it. But I think that if I just allow myself to feel as I do and validate the deeper issues my seemingly superficial annoyances stem from, I will somehow find my way.

Selah.