Finding the True Self
It's 8 am and I tread lightly. Make a list, check it twice. Still, something might disrupt the flow. Send us catapulting over the edge & into the abyss. More mornings spent outside of my body than in it. Do not disturb, the ongoing theme. And I do not have any resentment for this. That my child wasn't easy. My resentment was always over how hard it was for her to thrive. The two of us in a puddle before noon. The lights are too bright. There is the sound of the car down the road and it's vibrating in her head a certain way. The clothes are too itchy and her processing time is not mine. I tell her we're safe and it takes so long for her to hear it that she's already crying and now these words are meaningless to both of us. "Where are you God" are not the words on my lips but the song of my soul that leaks through cells disrupted by constant chaos.
There are thousands who will resonate with this.
The ones who don't I don't consider lucky, but I have envied that peace.
I found it, too. Underneath my Mother's wings more-so than on the kitchen floor. But maybe in both spaces. I had to work hard for it. Some days more than others. Others I forgot that peace even exists and my palms bleed, nails set into flesh for hours and days.
And I do not resent this.
And I did desire something different.
Who wouldn't?
Some words for you -
"Some of the most vulnerable moments of my life have been in the unsafe container of motherhood. I had no idea that she would strip me to bare bones & then ask me to knit myself a new skin. I wonder often why nobody told me this & thus, I'm telling you. Motherhood is transformation. Period."
We cannot go this alone, beautiful human.
And so, we don't.
Held by Mother Earth, Mother God & each other.
And also, I don’t think we stop here.
Beyond the holding is the finding of self. God self, as Fr. Richard Rohr says. And in this finding, we unite with both the mystics and the sinners in continually “collapsing back into” God.
All this to say, what if it’s our separateness, perhaps, that prevents us from obtaining peace?
Stay in touch.
