Sacred Hours

I should be jumping for joy.  Shouting out from the hilltops.  Chanting praise through the morning.  But no.  All I feel is a little slice of sadness coupled by a ting of holding on.  Yes, my five month old slept through the night.  Twice.  Two nights in a row.  Typically I do not speak of these things out loud for various reasons . . .I do not want other parents to worry about their own child and his or her milestones and, I confess, mostly I do not want to jinx it.  Not this.  Not the promise of consecutive nights of uninterrupted sleep. 

So why this sadness; this ting?  My husband remarked that it is a milestone and with that a moving on; a tangible growing.  Yes, it is.  And so much more.  It is deep.  Dare I say primal.  This waking with your child in the middle of the night . . . in the beginning, maybe three times, down to two, once.  Waking for this tangible human action that involves the transference of nutrients through skin...love in one of its purest forms.  Sitting or laying silently in the night darkness with this new being who needs you in such a basic way, this time is sacred.  Yes - the effects of cumulative sleep deprivation are astounding, but I would trade this for nothing.

In the complexities of the modern world and all of the millions of ways that we have collectively removed ourselves from our humanity, this is one of the rare things left that binds us and that makes it all worth it. 

Bon Bons

 

One early afternoon, after scarfing down a pre-made turkey sandwich while breastfeeding my infant and negotiating the number of bites of sandwich that my toddler needed to eat, I darted to the kitchen, took down my "tea" box and turned my back from my well fed children.  And do you know what I did (and often do) during this stolen moment?  I ate a piece of chocolate.  It was then, while I stealthily savored my dark chocolate, that I finally understood bon bons.

Yes, mothers did and do eat bon bons (or dark chocolate or M&Ms) but not in the way that the expression goes, "she is just at home eating bon bons."  This expression always conjured up an image for me of a mom lazing on the couch in the mid-afternoon eating a box of bon bons while watching a juicy soap opera.  While that sounds divine, what moms are actually doing is stealing moments to themselves and, for good or for bad, going straight to joy through chocolate.  In a day when they can hardly find time to go to the bathroom, this stolen sweet is a luxury.  For some, it could represent a little piece of freedom; for others, a risky move that gives a quick thrill; for some, it is rebellious move that is empowering; and, for many, it is a tangible moment to the self marked by the taste and smell of something that is only yours.

Turning Outward

Over the past decade or so I have learned many different techniques for turning inward.  Yoga.  Meditation.  Breath work.  Non-focused awareness.  A number of years ago, by going inward frequently, I even found this inner core of my being...this constant, unchanging orb of truth that exists smack in between my belly button and the base of my spine.  My gratitude is immense for my discovery of this source of constant love and well-being and remembering its presence during times of stress can be a life saver.

Which brings me to yesterday.  And the day before.  You see, I have been living with some regret in my heart.  I will not go into the details of why because, really, it doesn't matter.  But this regret is something else.  It completely goes against a common mantra that I adopted after the birth of Lilian, "do not, under any circumstances, turn against yourself."  Regret by its very nature is turning against yourself, especially if it gets out of hand and haunts you in the rare quiet spaces during the day or, worse, the dark hours of the night.  Regret can grow so thick that it can mask any core light that you have discovered and, worse, make you doubt that it was even there in the first place. 

And this is why yesterday, in a desperate attempt to rid myself of this regret, that I turned outward.  I prayed outwardly to the Lord.  Yes, the Lord of my childhood.  I said something simple like, "Lord God, please help me."  I started to feel a little stronger; like I could replace the thoughts of regret with something positive; anything positive.

And then I reached out to a friend.  A simple reaching.  An asking for support over the miles.  And she responded.  And, again, I felt stronger.

As I was rocking my baby to sleep, I grabbed my mala beads; the ones that I bought for myself just before Lilian was born.  I wrapped them around my wrist.  Bam, the strength continued to build slowly replacing the regret with action driven by mounting strength.

Of course, I needed to turn inward in order to know that I  needed to turn outward.  But these outward movements - to the Lord outside of myself, a friend, mala beads-helped clear a space for me where I could, once again, see my core light of strength and stability. 

Daily Mantra

A few years ago, I am not exactly sure when, I started to create daily mantras.  Rather than getting this advice from a friend or a good self-help book, this daily practice emerged from within.  Yes, I have been exposed to mantras through my yoga training and practice and I liked them enough but often the mantras that other people gave to me did not work. Or, they did for awhile, but then lost their stick.  But when I started creating my own mantras, they had some staying power and gradually began to transform my days and, yes, my life.

Like the practice itself, the mantras emerged not from thought, but from quiet.  At the end of a morning stretch and sit (sometimes very brief), the mantra was born.  It was never forced or debated, it just was like a true, good friend.  And perhaps because it came from within, from this sacred space of quiet, I had this ownership that allowed it to stick with me throughout the day.  Sometimes my mantras are short and simple like, "everything is fun," and sometimes they are longer and a bit more demanding like, "do not, under any circumstances, turn against yourself."  Sometimes too they come back around and serve me again and often I lend them to my husband who often excepts them with gratitude. 

I have thought about creating a book of mantras, but I think the more beneficial thing to do would be to recommend that you too find a space of quiet and from that allow your own mantras to be born.