Boho Girl

“…let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.” ~ Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

A dear friend sent this quote to me yesterday. Its as if reading it gave me permission to be okay with my quiet. Most days I have a lot to say, a lot to share but most times words do not adequately express. So I’m embracing the quiet of my days. The need for less words. The welcoming of gazes and sighs, of touch and holding, of lingering and breath.

In our culture, we are so accustom to needing to fill spaces with words. I know in my life, mostly in my writings, I fill fill fill…so many words and yet when in the flesh, I am drawn to quiet. I am drawn to sitting back and soaking in the feeling of the moment, the essence.

When I feel utterly safe with someone, they experience my comfort with quiet. I have surrounded myself with souls I feel safe with the last few years and there is much more quiet and pause in my life and in theirs.

So here is a gaze for you…the utter peace and light I felt in this moment as I captured this image of myself. I needn’t share all the reasons I arrived at this place of peace. Can you just see it in me? Sigh. Yes.

What does quiet feel like for you?

The other day I laid on my bed laughing at myself with a friend. Laughter that came from my deepest places. Laughter that moved around the parts that felt stuck . I had just been extremely vulnerable with her and in my vulnerable, I knew I was taking a risk sharing these parts of myself that are achy and dark, hurty and insecure, uncertain and fumbly. My vulnerable was witnessed by her, fully witnessed and yet, I was still so very loved and seen, really seen, understood and even celebrated. In her witnessing, I somehow was able to fully witness myself. And in that moment, a sweet release of laughter came forth.

I’ve been so protective the last few years. In my cocoon, healing the raw…inviting few into my world. I needed to do this. It was not easy and quite foreign for me but somehow it felt good in my bones to be this protective of myself, of what surrounded me in the physical. I gave so much light for so long and it was time for me to surrender to the dark that was left and rest alone in it. The cozy womb of safety and ease, simple and hushed. Man, so much was revealed to me about myself while in this sacred womb. And now, is the laboring of birthing myself again…the core of me. I am surfacing gently, slowly…moving towards those spaces where I can be seen. I know its time…time for me to enter back into the uncomfortable bits of opening myself up again. It’s freeing along side stilling along side extremely raw. Stilling in that I feel so much that was once in my life has moved on from me…up and out, beyond my grasp and that is when I realize, the grasping is what needed to cease and the surrender of Trust is what needs to be present for me.

My laughter, head down on my bed, rolling to my back, stopping, breathing and laughing again was me recognizing how much my ego was finding its way through what I was sharing with her and it is my ego that I have practiced letting go of the past few years. How quickly it returns when you’re wanting so badly to fit back into a space you once were and prove to those around you that you are worthy enough to be there. But oh my dear heart…when I let go of my ego, I don’t need to belong anywhere really but h(OM)e within myself. Exactly where I am and who I am in that moment.

You see…I am writing an e-course with a dear friend and we hope to launch it by this Summer and this…this has brought me so much life because I/we have lived so deeply in what we want to put out into the world. We are still in it and it feels huge to invite others into this for me. I’ve been so protective and quiet, so to be seen again in this way…its vulnerable and frightening and yet heart stirring and life bringing to walk into this unknown.

I’m different than I was. I’m truer to myself and those around me. I’ve been deeply humbled. And the best most yummiest part is that I laugh at myself more often. Whole heartedly belly laugh at myself.

The words of my friend…

She poured out her self, abandoned her ego, and laughed. Again and again, head down, healing poured through her, and light flowed. She knew herself, knew her Love, and spread it down the bed, across the mountains, and through the portal of sisterhood, into my lap.

Mmmmm…yes.

I’ve been reveling in touch lately.

A few weeks ago my naturopath asked me to lay down and her hands made their way to my belly. I laid there with my eyes close surrendering to her touch, I felt our breath synchronize. The heat of her hand felt so so very good. So tender. I had no idea what her intentions were but that helped me practice trust and my intuition was telling me my body felt desperate for this caress. She cradled my thigh and applied gentle pressure onto the skin that protects my ovaries…my lower belly… and that is where the emotions surfaced for me. I know my reproductive organs and the muscles and skin that protect them hold so many memories, so much ache, so much need for validation that they are enough. Its almost as if I’ve been afraid to cradle them, afraid to go there just yet as I go about my life and what is in front of me. But what is inside of me there…there…is tender and needs my attention, my love, my grace…even after all these years. I’ve been a bit quiet with them.

Later my naturopath told me she was doing Craniosacral therapy. I nodded and took a deep breath, told her it felt good but wasn’t ready in that moment to talk about what had just transpired. I got to my car, sat down in silence as the rain danced across the windows and the tears spilled. So much. So much emotion in those parts of my body. Endometriosis, cysts, (in)fertility…now that I allowed myself to pay attention to the emotion that rests beyond the physical pain, there was this tremendous release. I have known for quite some time subconsciously this needed to happen, this attention, this love…but honestly, I’ve been so afraid of it. Afraid of what would happen if I surrendered to it because it feels like it would be a flood that drowned me. And as I sat there in the car releasing what my naturopath had moved around, I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t as frightening as I had imagined. It was good. So good and dare I say even a bit freeing. As cliche as that sounds (and the cliche of it has kept me from believing that freedom could really happen for me), it is true. The days following I have felt a lightness I haven’t felt in years. Something has loosened. Something has awakened.

I’ve been touching those parts more. Laying my hand there whenever I can. Sending affirmations. Touch. Healing touch. Now I feel more aware when Cedar brushes my hand with his or my husband cups my face in the darkness of night to kiss me goodnight. I feel more alive when touching and being touched.

To my ovaries, my uterus, my fallopian tubes…(laying my hands there) I love you…and you are perfect for me, so very perfect for me, so very enough.

I will leave you with a little prompt droplet to think about what part of your body needs your love and affirmations…

rock made by mccabe russell

Its a constant practice knowing this deep. This weekend it will be my mantra.

I am enough.
You are enough.

Have a blessed weekend.

Sometimes his constant connection to Spirit, to other worldly, to what is around him, to what is *in* him and his need for me to be there at every. single. moment. can be overwhelming. Exhausting. There are days when all I can do in my wee moments alone is stare, linger into nothingness or endlessness and find my breath or close my eyes and whisper that I am still here, me and these Other parts of me. I always describe him as intense on those days but really what he is, is Connected, even in his disconnectedness to people around him, he is connected to something larger and whole and of Spirit. And he just wants me there. With him. I anchor him. I help him feel safe. Heard. Understood. Seen. Calm. Believed in. What we all need, really if we admit it to ourselves.

A Crystal Child mothering a Crystal Child.

I am not used to needing to anchor anyone. I am accustom to people feeling freer around me. I am used to inspiring others to take flight. Ever moving, evolving, spreading of wings but never anchoring.

Perhaps this is the struggle I feel within, that I have felt a resistance to the past few years and not being conscious of it until now. That by me anchoring him, my son keeps me anchored. That together we are in that space to work, to own and claim and BE *in it* and not try it on and then move on to try something else, like my gypsy heart did all the rest of my years growing up.

“I’m not choosing easy. I am not choosing to raise a ‘good’ child.” I heard my friend say to me before laying her exhausted body down to sleep at the end of a very long day with her son. And it shot through me like lightning. This is it. I am not choosing easy. I am not wanting him to conform to any of my ideals. I am desiring him to be fully him, of his own mind and spirit and desires and needs. It is not me controlling him but me joining him and us teaching one another and guiding one another and working through Life on this earth together.

When I allow that surrender to come in, it breathes life into my hours spent with him on the floor, outside playing in puddles and with cars, boats, rocks, sticks, etc. Those moments where I feel agitated and bored and want to be doing something different with my time. I sit with him and share my heart with him and don’t pretend to have it all together as his mother and remember that his purpose on this earth is to heal and transform and offer people wings too. I feel so utterly honored. I feel a heaviness lift and I let go just a bit more and an ease, a relief washes in. And because he is who he is, a born sage, he looks over at me and shows me he totally gets it.

The other day, Cedar said to his babysitter when they were outside “This tree feels sadness, it needs a hug”. He feels so much. I feel so much. When I see this as Connectedness rather than Intensity, it shifts things for me a bit for some reason.

Truly, I am just now beginning to find words for all of this. I haven’t had words. I know I am going to stumble through trying to find words. I’ve been quiet with everyone, about motherhood. Sharing bits with souls I feel safe with but really even being quiet with myself about it. Because I wanted it for so long. Not because I always imagined myself a mother. Quite the contrary. I didn’t really have a strong desire to be a mother until I had a dream at age 30 about an angel child walking with me on the beach and having a very deep conversation with this child. When I woke, there was a knowing that I would be a mother to this child one day. My yearning to be a mother was born from that dream and was affirmed when I met my husband a year later. Then began our very long, emotional fertility journey to our child because that yearning was deeply rooted in me and that child spirit called to me every day.

Because of our long journey, I have carried a bit of guilt that being a mama has felt overwhelming to me. I see women having two, three, four, five and more children.  I see them homeschooling, with their children every moment, not having a second alone and seeming to just flow and ease into it all.  And I wonder why having just one child has felt like so much.

I feel a peace when I stop comparing. I feel a peace when I remember that the child in the dream who visited me long ago, whispered in my ear that he needed to be with me. I feel a peace when I trust this and allow it to be enough.

A Crystal Child mothering a Crystal Child.

Its extraordinarily awesome and beautiful, hard and achy, stretching, widening, opening and rad. I wouldn’t change anything about it except that I need to open up about it a bit more so that I don’t feel alone and all the mamas out there don’t feel alone. Its easier to share the easy parts in this safe screen between us. This is way more vulnerable and risky. I am choosing to trust releasing it into this space.  I choose to trust the pull to do so.

We all have our own stories and journeys through mothering/parenting.  This is my story.  Separate but also part of a whole we all experience and feel and see in each others stories.

Bare with me as I find my words…

I’m sitting here at the coffee shop listening to the most beautiful, soulful, haunting and heart-ache-full classical music. I wish I knew the composer. I’ll ask when it quiets down. The music led me to these images and so I share them with you here. I have no words. They were emptied when the music started. I am accepting that its okay I have no words. Lately I’ve been drawn to the feeling in between, before and after words come. The deep breaths and pauses and gazes and long sighs. These silences are where my heart pulses with soul. And they feel enough.

I wonder what story these images tell you…