Learning to listen to my children has become one of my greatest triumphs to consistently strive for. Given the world I came from and so many automated switches that shut me down it is nothing short of miraculous. Truly. This isn’t black and white, all or nothing. It’s ebbs and flows. Sometimes I’m a better listener than others, but always I care enough to try and follow through with a repair.
Now I do. Yes now, because now is when I am able. I wasn’t before and that is the reality and as long as I allow space for their feelings around this we will be ok. Everything else can be figured out.
Everything else genuinely figures itself out as long as the secure attachment moorings are in place.
I guess that’s why so much of my life took so long to recover/uncover.
The Mother’s Day triggers are in full effect. It’s coming. Winter is coming. No matter how many times well meaning people instruct me to focus on this day in terms of who I am you cannot remove my pain from me, nor should you. Pain demands to be felt. If we don’t feel it, deal with it, and heal it, it spreads like cancer to those around us in the form of our treatment of them. Sigh
I’ve been going since 5 am today. I had a GI apt at 8 am. Labs are good all is well. I need to get my good and bad cholesterol a little better on each number, but total isn’t bad. I just need to exercise more and for my mental health as well. I start so many things that I don’t finish. Story of my life. And now my teenage son is struggling with this as well.
I imagine follow through is a universal problem, as well as getting our priorities straight. An art that takes a lifetime to craft, and maybe that’s the beauty of it all.
Some things however are consistent. Like how I feel when I drive onto Belmont Street and begin to see the water. Every part of my body smiles. Similarly to when I hear the piano or a vocalist that I love. Or when I feel that right touch in just the right way and every part of me sings and dances. The things worth living for. I just have to keep fighting for that.
When my writer self crafts that perfect sentence that just lands. There’s no feeling like it.
Funny I came here to talk about the pain associated with Mother’s Day and how we should learn to respond to people in a way that creates space for them, and many other things and what I find is my appreciation for beauty instead. Evolution.
I have lots to talk about in terms of life’s lessons. As I watch my kids learn them. I cut so many corners not reflecting my degree of conscientiousness, but rather my need for survival in so many areas. Can the clean up be delicious rather than the tragedy the pain sometimes makes it?
You can tell I’m busy by my scattered thoughts. I keep getting interrupted by calls for medical things. It’s a full time job by itself keeping care of a body. How does anyone even function?
For future blogging will be pool ownership pitfalls and probably more Mom shit. I mean does that ever end really ? I’m anxious. I’m anxious about a medical procedure tomorrow and the after. I’m nervous and secure. An anxious secure LOL. How can I ever be lonely when I entertain myself so well?!
I was doing some cleaning in my office this morning and I’m going over old letters that my kids have written me…. one in particular about how “you would think it’s really great to have a mom as a therapist”…. and all they want is my presence, the one thing I didn’t even have for myself. My own presence. Could it actually be a present?
Stay tuned …..