Regret

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.

A Box of Tissues

Yesterday, I was biking home alone from the hardware store (hoses on sale!) when I gave myself empathy around watching Trinidad say with perfect honesty to a friend that he didn't really like her, he just liked to go to her house because she had candy bars and a trampoline. It was true that he hadn't "invited" her to play. She had merged with the group because she is one of the neighborhood. And then, he was noticing that he just wanted to play with his other friends because he liked them and they wanted to do what he wanted to do.

Ouch. For her, for me, for who knows who else. I wanted to open my heart to where he was, but I was hurting so much. Really worried about his needs being met in future/present (karma, even if impersonal, will play itself out before me no doubt). Other's needs. When I came to the awareness of my sense of helplessness and deep sadness in watching someone do something what I fully expect will land as painful even if they can't see it's so, I hit the brakes and swung my leg off the bike to sit in an alley and cry.

What work is this! I would love to be able to "show" him how it could be for the both of them if he could open his heart to hold everyone's needs. In conventional parenting, I could give him a time out and a morality lecture and call my work for the day done. Except for the steaming. Instead, I sat with a sense of helplessness.

I want this awareness to come from inside him. I want it to flow in by choice, not to appear in action out of fear of what people will think or his mother would do if he "didn't." I want to give him the spaciousness to explore these more complex social dilemmas, fall on concrete if he must, and draw his own conclusions. I want to support him by being there when he falls, guiding when he asks, and holding the sadness -- his, mine, hers -- throughout.

Oh! To take that many steps away and hold this challenge, the pull at my heart! I really felt the fear and longing in my powerlessness to "control" any of this exchange in a way that would meet my needs for integrity. Ach. I sat with that. And then, more pain. Another situation is near and dear to me with an adult who is making choices that I see will likely cause/are causing pain and confusion. Again, I have a sense that I can "see" what that person cannot, and I would love to share this view, but I cannot share anything someone is not ready to see for themselves. I am no more powerful here than I am with Trinidad. Why would I think that I have some responsibility to force Trin to see when I cannot even do this with an adult?

And the pain, again, in holding the sadness of everyone all round, now resonating through the situation with children and adults, all trying to navigate, meeting some needs and landing tragically short on others. Then, to the world scope, on an adult level again, people unaware of each other's deepest needs unmet, so focused are they on their own (I am by no means removing myself from the lot here) -- major scuffles, lives lost, wars...oh. The suffering. So much sadness.

I sobbed and sobbed. My handkerchief flooded. I so wanted everyone's needs to be seen. To matter! And herein, my power grew a hundred fold. My presence stretched out before me like a hammock wide enough to hold the pain that I experienced, the pain of children, adults, all beings who, stumbling in their own blindness, crash into the hearts and lives of others.

A man emerged from his backyard and walked slowly toward me with a box of tissues. Yep. That's the ammunition I need. He kneeled beside me and told me I would get through it. I did not curb my tears. He pulled several tissues from the box and handed them to me, assuring me that he'd been there before, many times.

I'm sure he has. We all have. And when I held the beauty of the need called mattering, I cried tears both bitter and sweet, all the love in my heart for my family, the world, the recognition of this need so deeply meaningful to me that it seems to pulse in my veins. The power is with me now to hold the pain around this need not met. To recognize the need in its exquisite beauty within and without our human attempts to do our very best.

I will look for my trust in its existence and in my own ability to stay present with it all.

Illness, Forgiving, Music, and Intent

I have been ill. The cold that snuck up in the last day of planting our Community Garden took me down hard as I put in the last pumpkin and watered. All other gardening has come to a screeching halt. I found myself blue with sadness, sick, and on my moon cycle all at once. ("It's Mercury in retrograde," says Anne).

As usual, in deep sickness and healing, big stuff passed through and came round. I drank a lot of water. I laid in bed having visions between sleep and waking. My kids were miraculously independent and held by the community in turns. When I rose, I had only enough energy to write my first original piece at the piano. It took me in, dragging my feet, and set this moment to music. I called it "Neap Tide," and I find it very beautiful. It got much longer than I expected (I have to end soon... I'm going to fall through the piano bench, I thought), and insisted on offering its last note only when it was ready. Perhaps someday I'll get technosavvy and put it up on the blog!

Last night I laid in bed and invited myself to forgive all of those in my life that I hold pain around. The last and longest challenge lay in forgiving myself. I am not consciously hard on myself, but it brought tears to my eyes to send this careful attention to my heart. It feared complete forgiving and acceptance without judgment for its inclinations because it did not want to be hurt again.

My heart made a request that I support it in this effort consciously. But, do I wish to guard against opening it fully? Do I want to guard against receiving others' care, particularly in the sphere of intimate relations? No. That did not land right at all.

Then the words of Sharon Sweet, a gifted intuitive reader (sweets@oregonfast.net -- I recommend her!), offered in great transitional turmoil three weeks ago sounded once more: "Do not be afraid to ask for what you want." She reminded me to listen to what others asked for consciously and look at whether that was what I wanted, too. I can listen with care and intend to find spaciousness to really hear what they are consciously asking for, no matter the mixed signals to the contrary. What are they intending for themselves? (If mixed signals due to perceived subconscious intent, then a mix of intentions have been sent out to the Universe and all are fulfilled... am I content with my role in each and every one?)

I need not guard myself against that which I do not want. I just need to be clear about what I do want and then let the rest go. What a relief to support my heart with such ease! I just need to give myself the spaciousness to see whether and how a situation sits with my overall intention. So, I intend to live life slowly and deliciously. Chew well and swallow with care.

As I look at the journal I've kept over the past 5 months, I'm in awe at how many of my intentions have manifested beautifully. May the journey continue!

The Real Work

Yesterday, I weighed anchor on one of the most significant relationships of my life to date. ("Weighing anchor" is a nautical term for pulling the anchor up. I like the sound of it. Heavy.) Not Seda, mind you. She and I are family. This was the end of an intimate relationship, perhaps the deepest I've experienced.

I knew that I would know when it was time, and suddenly, it was time. Just like that.

I had moved through the anger of rights and wrongs, what should have been, could have been, or should never have happened. Sat with the sadness, all encompassing. I found myself largely in a place of acceptance around what it was time to do. I did not feel exhilarated or torn up afterwards.

And still, this morning, I found myself unsettled. Sad and holding a bit... to what? In talking with a wise woman friend (I'd mention her by name, but then you'd all want to be her friend and I'd never get a word in edgewise), I realized that I still carried some sadness about a piece of what I was drifting away from: the opportunity to contribute. There are so many things I wish I could share in a way that they could be received by this man. He has taken so much in that I have offered. And I from him. Could our work really be over when so much is left to be done?

"The real work comes when we take up our anchors and drift away from our teachers, charting our courses for ourselves," said my friend. "That is, perhaps, the greatest piece of learning to be done. The putting to test all that we have gained in study. We must leave the shelter of that cove, the protection of our teacher. We must find our own strength, integrate what we now understand to be true about ourselves and the world."

Such sweet relief in this! I had been subconsciously asking myself, "Have I gotten what I wanted from this relationship?" Always the answer "no," of course, or why on earth would I leave? But have I given what I was asked to give? Yes, solidly. Have I received? Yes. I have so much more clarity about who I am, what I may offer, what I want, how to be in the world. The ecstatic joy I was fully present for, the exquisite pain to hold -- all for this far-reaching gift.

When I consider that what I have given and what I have received are not, in themselves, complete in their potential for evolving the two of us, I can set my yoke aside. I am free in this knowledge to trust that each of us and all of those whose lives touch ours closely will do our own work, supported by the work we have shared. Our opportunity to craft from within a vessel that will respond to our calling and our will as only God would have it. To go forward healing ourselves at the heart of peace in our world.

With gratitude, eternal love, and deep respect.

Paying Homage

Grief comes to me in waves, and in its waters, I visit the sacred. The sensation of that wave's approach is becoming more distinct to me as I grow older. It has a sound, a pressure rising, a hue that rushes before it into my day, across breakfast dishes and spilled milk. I feel it coming like a storm, and I find myself in choice to take cover or to open my heart to it, whole.

Today, in the opening, I discovered a fear I have harbored. Is the "letting go" of what is lost to me, the acceptance of what is passed, somehow permission for that sacred experience to dissipate, to be lost? This is what I fought today in rising tide.

I held that fear at storm. So much noise and rushing water. So much hope and pain dashed against the sides of human limitations. So much love. And it came to me that in this letting go is a taking in, a harboring of that which we care for as we watch it spring leaks and sink before our eyes. As the bulk of our care goes under, we swim deeper and deeper, according to our willingness to follow the beauty of it as it descends. We witness this world falling inwards to the tide of love rising in us. Our heart rises to hold what is larger than the world we live in. It rises to hold what has not only been fully alive to us in our memory, but even "alove" -- that ecstatic presence that binds us, unthinking, to the divine.

The letting go is a taking in, drinking deeply, integrating what has been beautiful so that we may be beautiful. It has nourished us. We are changed. We grow. The letting go is only the sensation of fully recognizing what is holy so that we may pay our homage to the source itself.