Beautiful Broken Pieces

Your little face plays host to such complex emotions now.  When you tell me you're angry, you mean it.  Your cheeks flush, your fists clench, you level your tiny little frame towards me in that bittersweet way little girls level against their mamas sometimes and you dig in for the fight.  And you feel it baby girl.  I have no idea what to do with that passion.  I thought I would have more time to search for the right answers before you would start striking me with waves of questions and 'what ifs' and 'but whens'.  

Right now I doubt I am even truly competent to answer our littlest girl's incessant pleads of 'why?'

I don't know why.

Maybe there is no right answer to why or true answer to when. 

You are still young and free enough to lash out and run and fight against me and anything else you disagree with.  When I gather you up in my arms, I try to control your fight because it's proper and correct and expected of us.  But if I'm honest my loves?  Sometimes I want to just let you be free.  

Free.

There may come another, later day when you are older and grow tired of your mama and want to break free again but please keep these lessons close.  

You're going to always be beautiful because we are all born beautiful and you are certainly no exception.  You were born honest and whole and will remain perfect just as you are.  Just as you are, as we all are.  No more and no less.  You can never be damaged beyond repair.  Ever.  Life is a long string of lessons but learning them never diminishes your value.

Nothing you do will ever make me love you any more or any less.  And just the same, you will always be a work in progress.  That's the point of this mess.  Keep working, keep pushing and most of all, keep loving.  Loving will never steer you wrong. 

   

Dirt Is Necessary

I've given up on wiping the dirt away from your faces before snapping the shutter.

Maybe dirt is necessary, maybe, just maybe, we need to dig deep enough to be tarnished with it if we're ever going to find something worth holding on to.

I watch you two lay the stones in the path you are creating that will eventually lead to the private island only sisters find and I want so desperately to smooth the way but understand that I can't.  It's your journey.  Be wild and free my loves.  Be wild and free.

Letter to My Little One

Two.  Soon you will be two.

In the early morning hours you still call for me and once settled you curl your tiny little body against me and go limp with the comfort.  I feel your tiny fingers curl around my ear and the deep, deep calm take over you.

I would sell my soul to guarantee you a life of comfort and calm.

I can't recall a single day since you were born into this world that you haven't awakended with joy in your heart and light your eyes and I will be forever grateful for that.  How miraculously lucky we have been my angel.  You light up our lives with your spirit and there is fire in your eyes.

You are eager in your independence.  You want to dress yourself, ride your bike yourself, do it all yourself.  You walk with a little swagger and smirk that we all adore so very, very much because it is the very essence of you my little wanderer.

We see you.  We cherish you.

They See You

They see you.  These little people that carry your heart around outside your body balanced precariously like a sippy cup without a lid.  They see you try and try and try until your strength gives out and crafts lead to meltdowns and holidays dissolve into sugar tantrums and the most menial of tasks to clean up the million scraps of torn paper becomes capable of shaking your belief that you are actually doing a good job.

They see all of the messy, beautiful effort.  They see you fail and they see you succeed.  They see you struggle because you don't have all of the answers right now, but for their sake you so heartbreakingly, desperately want to.

They see you.  And they love you because of all of it and despite all of it.

Let them see.  Let them see the messy, beautiful effort of it.  Because with every tantrum, every tear, every day that wasn't so hot and every day that was, you teach.  You teach that they should get up each day and struggle and fight and dream because their dreams are always valid.  You teach them that they are worthy of struggle and their values are worthy of the fight..  You teach them that because maybe there will be a day when no one else will.

You teach them that they are worthy of being seen.  They are always, always worthy of being seen.

Let them see you.  Because you are worthy, too.

The Messy, Glorious, Beautiful Truth - My Messy Beautiful

You can’t escape the truth of you.  You can shame it or bury it deep and deny it.  You can attempt to reject it.  You can smother it in white hot rage or try to stifle the breath from it but it will live on.   Your truth lives on in all of its messy, beautiful glory because it is you and you live on.   Such curious creatures we are really.  Creatures who need so feverishly to offer up love and have it accepted and yet fight so hard to conceal the vulnerable, honest places where that love is needed most.  

Truth and Vulnerability are a work in progress for me.  I conceal and I hide.  I use my decisions as a mother, a spouse, a lover, a child to build ever higher walls because I believe they offer up the safest compromise, that they offer the greatest benefit to my loved ones, because I believe that they are for the best.  I craft an elaborate fortress of decisions.  I make decisions because I want them all to be happy.  I want them to be comforted.  I want them to experience the beautiful without the brutal part.  I build for them you see, and in doing so I lock me in.  

And then the fury comes.  The fury comes fast and white and hot because I know that I can’t give them the beautiful without the brutal no matter what the effort.  And then the fear seeps in, the fear that I am as much capable of hurting them as I am capable of loving them.  The fear that reminds me of all of my past mistakes and hints at all of the ones I have yet to make.  The fear that knows all of my flaws.  The fear that rises and crashes so violently that I lean in hard against it to be better, nicer, more giving, prettier, thinner, smarter, more, more.  More.  I fight against it until I am made still and exhausted because what other choice can I have?  The fear knows enough to ask me what happens if they see past all of it and finally realize that it’s not enough?  That it was never enough?  That I am not enough.  How could they still love me then?

I am not the fear.

The fear is not my truth.

The fear can’t take away my truth.

Because the thing about our messy beautiful truth is that it can’t be mitigated by our fear.  Truth has such grace and it will rage and rage forth until it finds the fault lines in the protective walls built from judgment and humor and shame.  Truth will rage and rage to the light that exists beyond the labels and identities we adapt to entomb it.  Truth is fluid.  It's beautiful rhythm can rush forth all at once like a breach in a levy or slip by quietly.  It can find its way through the smallest of cracks in the granite, until it gathers enough force in its own time to break free from that quiet path towards the more vulnerable place in the light because it wants to be released.  I want to be released.  I want you to see me. 

And that's where the messy, beautiful nature of it all makes us come alive, I think, because the journey back to our most authentic self is so raw and rich and honest.  It is born from the messy, beautiful, glorious place of vulnerability.  And love is the only authentic thing we have to offer up.  Really, love is all we begin with and all that is left to us in the end.  It can’t be managed or compromised or bargained away by fear.  And it can’t be made safe.  Messy.  But my God, is it not so Beautiful?

http://momastery.com/carry-on-warrior

I Believe

I believe that a lifetime exists between our thoughts and our actions.

I believe that black and white and wrong and right aren't real and that peace is found in the sacred middle.

I believe that fear can only drive you to survive, and everything after needs to be motivated by love.

I believe in love.

I believe.