Finding Me.

Silence.  Stillness.  A chirping robin, perched on the branch of our weeping cherry outside my kitchen window.  Tires on pavement as a neighbor’s car putters past my home.  An overhead airplane.  The hum of our air conditioner.  Creaking walls as our house settles further into its place on this plot of land, as it has, slowly, season after season, over the last sixty years.  

For the first time since March (half a year ago), I am sitting down to write.  It is also, not a coincidence, the first morning in twelve years that I am spending with all four children in school and without a plan.  Alone.  Not needed.  Not interrupted.  Not pulled.  

Simultaneously, it feels both uncomfortable and luxurious.  

I have been so busy on the hamster wheel of life that I really haven’t had any pockets of peace since March, when I carved out a moment to put some words on paper, to be read only by my own eyes.  But, I’ve started to get texts and asks from my greatest cheerleaders on this planet, my mom and my husband, and both have been kindly, gently nudging me to write.  “You’re wasting a gift. Please write again.” …my husband texted me from work, out of the blue one day.  “So, I have felt like something is missing in my life…and I realized…it’s reading your words.”… my mom said, mid-catchup-conversation one night.  It’s funny, you never really know how people perceive what it is you share with the world unless they tell you, so it’s really so nice that my closest humans are whispering words of support.  Honestly, the reason I think I enjoy writing is because it really is a release for me.  Of course, I hope that my words or struggles or celebrations might resonate somehow with anyone who reads them… but… I think I certainly get more than I give.  Here we are though, present moment: sitting in a stillness that still feels like a dream-like state.  

So.  I’ve been reflecting a lot, these last many months, on life.  On the fleeting moments we are all gifted and the impermanence of all things.  The paths we are all on, and the speed with which we live our days and all the feelings that go along with it…

Since I’ve returned to the world in February, life has been in a nearly constant state of transition.  My incredible family of 6, who all held their breath for the eight months I was down…when I finally got back up, at last pain-free and off meds and with energy to sustain myself in their world once more, ready again to share life’s moments with them…they all exhaled, finally letting their over-filled balloons go, and their emotions zipped and zigged and zagged all over our home.  They were talking about dark things, processing their emotions and fears, and their anger and sadness and bitterness swirled around and through every inch of me.  But…. “I just want to hang out with you all again,” I’d whisper to myself. “I missed so much, I just want to step back into your life of joy that I heard from the other side of the bedroom door…”  I felt defeated.  Cheated of the happy times they all had without me… “Didn’t they miss me?  I’m finally BACK!  Where have they all gone?”  Or, on my not-so-hot-momming days, I would engage…I would click in to the madness.  I’d verbally spar or question or demand better of our people.   Or cry.  I cried a lot.  Spring sports before long were in full swing so schedules were scattered and hurried…and just as soon as I’d gotten used to that schedule….summer hit.  Pool pa-pool pool pool.  All the live long day.  Sunscreening bodies constantly.  Sweating.  Endlessly.  Kids home the whole day, big emotions finally coming to a simmer, but 11-dom, and 9-ishness, 6-life and 4-edness were, some days, like a quadruple punch to the face.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved the twinkles of laughter and joy and silliness…it was heaven to soak up those moments…but then throw in a dash of ‘tweeny ‘tude or rough and tumble boys breaking things or a splash of sassafras from the queen bee… and the hive was truly abuzz. And then…seeing people I hadn’t yet laid eyes on since stepping out of my bed and going through the story, once again, about how crazy it all was and reminding me, in the midst of someone’s meltdown and partway through a scatterbrained connection with a friend while wiping away sunscreen that was sliding into someone’s eye, that….eff….that really WAS so crazy.  How did we get there?  And here?  And then?  In a flash, swim season ended.  And we had a month of beaching and reuniting and road tripping, which finally, beautifully, at long last, zippered our family unit back up into a neat little pocket of peace.  A life of constant transition, on the road every few days, but simple daily routines, rolling down hills, playing tag, swinging on swings, collecting eggs from the chickens, climbing trees, playing the license plate game from their seats in the car.  It was just what the doctor ordered.  But then…we rolled right into fall.  Back to school busy-ness.  

And.  Now?  The Silence.  

All the while this year, my role as a parent has shifted and shimmied from absentee mother who existed in pain, to strong recover-er regaining her place at the helm of the home, to full-on distracted summer mom seeking spiritual sunshine anyplace I could find it, to lonely lady slash free bird (for two hours each morning).  A work in progress.  It’s looked different in different years of my life (usually shifting from pregnant to nursing to pregnant again).  This year felt a bit more dramatic, but it’s really the same for us all. My life this year has been an endless shift in the sands.    

So, too, have relationships shifted.  I feel a bit isolated in general right now just because of the nature of summer (August, mainly) with everyone traveling…but pool chats are not deep chats…they are rife with frenzied interruptions as you try to ensure all the humans that are borderline swimmers keep their heads afloat.  Additionally, we have said goodbye to some neighbors and welcomed others.  People I used to chat with all the time are not in my daily life for many reasons, sometimes because their little ones have moved on to different grades or schools or classes.  Friends are heading back to work.  The park playdate era is in its final hours of twilight as we slowly begin to close that chapter of my life.  

So, in the midst of it all?  I’ve been trying to find…me.   
And, in so doing, I realized that:

And…. I don’t know about you, but, frankly, I just was not placing the moments I did have into beneficial, soul-filling, passion-inducing exercises. And then I began to wonder if maybe some of you out there were also in a rut.  In a zone that needed some movement… a stir to dredge up all the alluring qualities of yourself that had fallen to the bottom of the glass over time, since changing jobs, having kids, overcoming that struggle, putting the pieces together after that loss…. All the YOU that got forgotten when you were so busy tending to other matters or people or events… it’s all still there, in the bottom of the cup.  But if you don’t shake it up or disturb it some and mix your true self back into your current life…it’s going to remain a sad little sludge of the you-you-used-to-know… and you’ll know its there because it will feel like a pit in your stomach…and that can roll into resentment and you (YOU) are setting your own self on a path that none of us wants to be on.  So instead…own it.  Reclaim you!  

I wanted to share with you some of the things that have been breathing life into my soul these last few months in the hopes that I might encourage or inspire or remind some of you that you’re worth it.  Finding the pockets of stillness that, no matter what season of life you’re in, I promise you, really are there…it just may take some awareness of desires, shifting of focus or tweaking of schedules.  And you?  You… YOU are absolutely, truly, madly, deeply, WORTH IT.  

It took me a while, I guess, to understand that deeply again, for myself…to remember that I, too, am worth it.  I want you to know, too, that I share all this with you not for attention… but really as a release valve for my soul and also in the hopes of stirring something in yours.  This quote was helpful to me in realizing that today…

I share because maybe you’re in a zone where you need a shift.  You’re feeling the desire to awaken to something new and you need a friend or a push or an invitation…. If I can be that for someone out there?  Hallelujah.  Maybe you’re like the me I was a few months/years ago and this is hitting wrong and you’re not here for it at this moment or maybe you’re not here for it ever.  That’s so okay!   If you are game, though…over the next week, I’ll be sharing a three part series of changes we have made in our house, purely as a message of love to anyone willing to receive it, and just some revelations I have made in an attempt to cultivate some much-needed space for self-love and sprinkle some good into our entire family.  I also summon you, no matter where you are in life, to hit pause on your own existence, even if only for just a minute (think of it like you’re in the middle of a FaceTime chat when service clicks out and you’re caught holding a weird face)…. No matter what you’re doing, cute, crappy or otherwise…Just. Stop.  Whether what you’re doing is pretty or noteworthy or awkward or itchy or gorgeous or embarrassing…. It doesn’t matter.  Pause.  Stop.  Take stock of your moments, your life.  I have no idea what season you’re in as you sit and read these words, nor do I know just what you’ve just accomplished or endured or survived or celebrated.  I bet you too aren’t the same person you were at the beginning of this year. And, it turns out, that’s a beautiful thing.