I hit a pinnacle of dissatisfaction around how I've been showing up as a parent last Friday. I have been sending much of my energy into the garden with the intent of sustaining our family. I have been on an emotional marathon, and I'm tired. I've spent too many hours on the phone and at the computer struggling to find peace and presence while desperately wanting to be there for my kids.
On Friday, my kids' need for adult attention shot its peak through the fog. I could see that the conflicts between them and me and between each other were largely born of their living leaderless (my own perception), without the emotional and structural stability of a parent who could fully see them.
I have been sad and embarrassed to observe myself responding to them with annoyance as they "distracted me" in my work at both heart and garden. I have so longed for the focus to get through this patch. I rested only in the hope that I would be contributing to them in the long run more greatly by being more available and feeding them. Still, the darkness of bearing this weight between us -- my needs for responsibility and contribution sitting heavy and unbalanced, an avalanche in the making -- became so painfully great that I found myself unable to take another step forward in my own work or connection with anyone before addressing it.
I set intentions over the weekend to spend more time with them, a felt priority placed on their emotional and intellectual development. And on our relationship. I made a schedule to support this. I shook my head and wondered how I'd manage to "squeeze" it all in. I made another intention to find ease in it all, despite the appearance of scarcity.
When I returned home from an NVC workshop, I felt a new sense of spaciousness to receive them with. I found it easy to listen to each, to put down what I was working on and go to them almost every time they asked. To sit with conflicts, supporting the love between us all.
Forking a load of leaves into the pickup on Sunday afternoon, I touched a regret I had not wanted to see in my own choices about the primary relationship I've explored in the past year. The beauty, exquisite, but the pain a struggle spanning months. I have valued the meaning, the growth, it has offered. And now, as I held the price I have exacted on my contribution to the children, I felt genuine regret. I wished I had been able to find a way to meet my needs and theirs more effectively. I hope that in the future I am able to steer clear of such intense caring without a holistic and clear commitment for more.
I take responsibility for these choices. As I worked out even this much in my head and heart, wet leaves flying, I mourned that Sam sat on the edge of the pickup talking and I could barely hear him. I see now that my intentions in any relationship, in every day, drive my experience. In retrospect, I see how my lack of clarity and my fears contributed to the relationship that materialized. Now, I'm holding both sadness and a hope for the future in what I've learned.
Despite this conversation that drew me into the meta again, I showed up for my boys most of the time yesterday. I saw their relationships with each other and me turn around sharply. They jumped to do things for each other. We talked about communication without blame.
At 10:30 p.m., Sam brought his math workbook and colored pencils into the bedroom as Seda turned off her light for night. He started to work while I watched and supported, and suddenly he turned to me and said,"Mom, I'm glad that you're here, working on my math with me instead of being in bed or working on the computer." A smile stretched across his face. I put my hand on my heart and told him I was taking that in with such gratitude and care. He got up and opened his arms to me. "One big kiss and hug," he said.
As we lay in bed not long after, I expressed my regrets around choices I have made that took my attention so far from them. As I described my irritability and sadness in the past weeks, Trinidad said, "These past weeks I have been cranky, too, because I haven't been getting to spend time with you. And when I don't spend time with you, I feel like a ghost. When I look back on myself right now, I see myself as grey."
This struck me deeply. The image echoed my experience of us all, walking through the desert together. What a dry time it has been.
Calendar and Current Events
13 years ago
4 comments:
Dearest K,
I wish I could do more than lend a listening ear (seeing eye) and sympathize. It was not you, m'dear, and the reaction that you feel right now is somehow that it was you and that you could have done differently, a sure sign of a real victim and not just a person crying for attention.
Take yourself up, be your own mom, listen to yourself sitting on the edge of the pickup truck, almost too quiet to hear. You are your own mother, too. Kristin wants someone to see her and you can do that. The wheel will turn and there will be other days of rich power again.
Read "Women who Run with the Wolves," and go through the desert, along the Via Blanca.
love and hugs for that little girl,
a
Sweet Anne,
I felt it very differently, so not to worry. In holding responsibility for my own role in choosing and living my relationships as I do, I feel empowered. I could have done differently, true. At the same time that I feel regret for needs I see went tragically unmet, I also feel a deep sense of love for myself and acceptance that I did the best I could knowing what I knew at the time, being where I was. I acted in love if not clarity. I will continue to act in love and cherish clarity as it is mine. In touching the regret, I felt a surge of power in the hearing of me, the recognition of what was real that I did not want to see. Sadness, yes. And appreciation for needs met in those choices as well. A rich panoply of emotions.
I am hearing your caring and desire for me to be in my power. Taking that in. Thank you, my friend.
To be defeated, decisively, by ourselves. The fierceness of the fire required to prise from us the false accretions of our old selves is but an index of the intensity of our transformation, our need for it. As Hebrews 10:31 distills it: "Falling into the hands of God is a fearful thing." Remorse is but the Beautiful Light entering us and, for those most rare souls such as yourself, who love so very purely and deeply, its appearance is a pinnacle of soul-making, an acceptance in love that the shape of our old understanding and will has, yes, been defeated by life wanting to transform us, by the divine impulse to evolve. We and life are not as we imagined they were. Auden: “Life is the destiny you are bound to refuse until you have consented to die.” Now, out of the Darkness of our affliction, the death of who we believed we were, the intensity of our struggle begins to soften. Now, the returning light shines more fully upon the shape of our metamorphosis, life's affirmations gather impetus for us, and we are initiated into a level of meaning where streams of joy, previously beyond us, make their home.
As for coming to what you were not, by a way you were not, I settle in upon your words, "I did the best I could knowing what I knew at the time, being where I was. I acted in love if not clarity." No more is asked of us than this.
I went searching my notes for a remark I recalled and instead found this, an old celtic poem:
As the rain hides the stars,
as the autumn mist
hides the hills,
as the clouds veil
the blue of the sky, so
the dark happenings of my lot
hide the shining of thy face from me.
Yet, if I may hold thy hand in the darkness,
it is enough, since I know,
that though I may stumble in my going,
Thou dost not fall.
Well if it helps knowing that you have some companionship in your struggles..... I am here. I find great warmth and companionship from your words. I will hold your hand in darkness and we can stumble together.
Love ya
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