Solid. Stable. True.

Sister, we both ache for this world to be more heartfelt and humble. We have found ways to survive while putting aside our disappointment about what is not. We are told we are sheep and we must be weary of the wolf.

Yet the feminine spirit is alive and well. She has been chained for too long but will always overcome. You are a heartbeat of this spirit. You are part of this greater knowing. 

Really we are timeless rays of light that can be blocked but never broken. Together we reach across the sky to release the darkness. We work as one - stronger together than we are alone.

We are the wolf.

The Hypothesis

I had it all but then I lost it.

Over and over.

Moments of clarity washed away fear and doubt.

Then, again, I stumbled in darkness.

My weaknesses only to be revealed and devoured by predators
too scared of their own imperfections.

But I am not a victim here.

I still have drive within me.

I do, I do, I promise myself I do.

Yesterday

We didn’t realize we were walking through a portal; leaving one world to find a new one. I can see it now, how everything around us is seemingly the same but entirely different. 

Perhaps my perspective has shifted and I can no longer ignore what I was putting myself through to "succeed." I wasn’t succeeding. 

Yet still I crave to contribute, to be a strategic thinker and risk taker building a world where we are not bound by hierarchy or white supremacy but rather our presence, our ability to show up.

Choose Love

I’ve been moving furniture and purging a lot of stuff lately. It has loosened my energy so much. I truly feel a lot more fluid. Perhaps that’s why I have had so many strange dreams lately. Many leave me feeling anxious or fearful about what I am doing in them - mostly experiencing uncontrollable circumstances around me. I feel scared at every turn. 

It happened last night and I woke up yelling. I knew I needed to get up and write but I didn’t, I was scared. It feels like a muse is calling out to me and I want it to, but I’m too scared to do the hard work, too scared to find out what an interaction would bring. I can’t see its face, I can’t judge it before I let it into my life. I have to trust it without seeing it, without knowing for sure if it’s safe or not.

 
My inability to trust has been with me since I was a child. It feels like jumping off a cliff or trying to fly without knowing if I really can. I anticipate disappointment, of not being able to survive the thing, so I stay on safe ground. I continue to miss opportunity upon opportunity to grow and change and become some new form of myself. 

I always say I will choose love over fear but really I choose fear again and again. Strange isn’t it: that love is the harder choice, the one that requires more courage?

The Cellular Level

We are the flowers, we are the fruit. We carry the weight of life in our bodies. It is cellular for us: the nurturing, the growing, the blooming - that is our legacy. We can’t deny it even when we try. We are given to growth, given to hope, turning our beings toward the light. There’s so much to do and yet there is no need to rush. Time is a constraint built by men. Life unfolds at rates we can’t begin to understand. It is a dance with unseen forces that encourages our presence in the moment. Over and over again we meet it with as much grace as we can muster. Sometimes we meet it with a fiery flame built on the matter of things that must be released.

Tonight

Putting her to sleep tonight, she was mad and I sensed the enormous valley of her childhood behind us. I felt a craving to connect so profoundly and the loneliness of being unable to reach her, though I was right by her side.

It could’ve been yesterday when my eyes swooned to the fresh eyes speaking to mine. We would snuggle in silence, our bodies so familiar and feeling mostly one. I still anticipate talking with a bold and brash four-year-old, uninhibited by conscience and curious to no end. I still expect to walk in on an eight year old unencumbered by modesty.

It used to be so easy to come together at the end of the day and feel light as she drifted off. We would read a picture book and then I would sing her songs. She would tell me stories. We would chat for what seemed an eternity. I would rub her back and wait for the heavy breath that signaled she was safely off to sleep. Sometimes it took so long I would doze off too.

These moments are becoming memories as I tread new ground and hit barriers of her independence. I respond with a heart wrenching immediacy to tell her how much I love her. My unspoken words are how full my heart feels in her childlike presence and how cautious I am to face her adolescence.

Tonight I am taken by a tidal wave of overwhelm. It encompasses both the plight of an overworked mother, who doesn’t have more time to give, and an underworked mother, who should be mastering so much more. I could sense all the hours I’ve wasted and all the ways I'm failing this beautiful being. Her silence signaling she is moving off on her own and I am merely on the trail left behind in her wake.

She has always been her own universe but now she expands exponentially. I can’t deny this dwarfing feeling as I calibrate my place in the new realms of her existence. I am left spinning; incessantly stroking her hair and aching for a lullaby to set it all right. Her back is turned towards me as she clutches her tattered and worn lovey.

How am I just now realizing we have been moving this whole time? Home was just a silly word that I believed anchored us to one way. We are coming and going at our own pace, all of us orbiting our singular fate.

This mother connection draws me to a ceaseless ache in my heart growing with each passing breath. I wonder will we ever again be as close as we are even now? The spiral of this journey seems to tighten as our emotional proximity loosens. My breath getting more shallow as I come to these thoughts. I could cry because I cannot stifle the growth. I fear all that we shall stumble upon in the coming years.

I keep telling myself I am the mother, I must act like the mother; and yet still I feel so much like a child in the dark.

Fear Not

Fear is the easy way out. When I choose it, I know I’m backing off a challenge. I’m sticking my head in the mud, so to speak, and with fear I have an excuse to not face the thing that I don’t want to deal with. With fear, I badger myself when something doesn’t go as expected. It is entwining, restricting, and I can’t imagine it loosening its grip unless I have the mental stamina to release it. I get caught in dark thoughts about my abilities, my weaknesses, my deficits. Fear leaves me feeling paralyzed, suffocated, as if I need something external to come save me. 

I have become accustomed to choosing fear most of my life.

When I put fear aside I feel alive, invigorated. I feel that possibilities are endless and even when I lose, even if I don’t achieve what I set out to accomplish, I still feel I have overcome. It takes more work to be constructive, to strategize a solution, and then pursue it. It takes commitment to a hypothesis and releasing ego if the answer is not right. I can look honestly at myself and course correct when need be. 

The truth is I just need to choose to save myself from my dark thoughts. I can put down the blade I’m using to cut away at my existence and with a calm hand, hold the fear like a hurt bird who just needs time to fly again. It is is an indulgence to believe I’m not good enough and to muddle in that puddle of self-loathing. It takes gumption to push aside those heavy thoughts and continue moving forward with the belief that I have what it takes to achieve my desires.