Z.
She radiates light.
3ish months.`
sex. (a rant i will regret posting no doubt)
When I was contacted by Current TV last month to be part of a project involving the dictation of sex diaries in a nifty little digital-cam I asked, why?
Why on earth would anyone be interested in the sex life of an 8 week post-partum mother of three? A post-partum depressed new mother of three? What sort of sick show is this? Our viewers are just about on the cusp to commit, to marriage and perhaps parenthood. This can give them a taste of what it’s really like.
***
In glimpses here and there, for the last month, I’d share into a small digital camera. I’d go on walks through the woods when the big girls snoozed in the double stroller and the littlest one bound tightly around my front, drooling into my cleavage and I would talk into a camera while hiking up a hill. Sometimes in the car a thought would come to me and I’d pop open The Flip, knowing the hum of the road passing underneath would be heard on the recording making myself less than audible. At night I’d sneak into the bathroom and sit on the floor privately sharing my thoughts on sex. Regard less of where I was, the same thing usually came out of my mouth, before anything else: shit, I’m tired…And then I’d continue to talk but never really about my sex life because, I’ll be honest here, I don’t have one. Not really, not yet. Not in the typical penetration, body entwined with body, orgasmic kind of way. And that’s a taste of what it’s really like. I am exactly 3 months post-partum now and I can honestly say that sex isn’t the last thing on my mind, but it certainly isn’t the first, or the tenth, or the twentieth either. From 1 to 100, it’s got to be about 65 and perhaps that was obvious in my so-called Sex Diaries. At one point when communicating with the Creative Force in charge of this Current TV project, she mentioned that she was interested in quality over quantity.
For a moment there I wanted to scream: QUALITY? Like how utterly sexy it is to drink 1 cup of nasty tasting oils and a handful of pills and a million drops of tincture every morning, hoping and praying the despair and depression stay away for one more day? Sexy like having so many dirty dishes exploding out of the sink, nothing is left in the drawers and cupboards, leaving the only clean thing to cut apples is a newly sharpened filet knife? And how sexy it was to the get cut by a filet knife, blood dripping on apples, but being in such a hurry that I just licked the blood off and served it to them anyway? And the the sexy 5 small meals and 2 baths (none of which were for me), 3 loads of laundry, a trip to 2 different markets, one stop at a kids creative movement class, 24 ounces of milk production and feeding (in an array of on-the-go positions), exactly ½ hour to check emails, get a smidge of writing done, pay bills and meet with a mortgage broker (with all three kids) before finally getting to have some down time playing 2-4 year old style dress-up in play silks that smelled like someone had rubbed them with week old cottage cheese? How sexy is that? But for some real quality I better talk about the steamy hot sex I had in 17 different positions in 3 different rooms with 6 full orgasims and after we were done, we continued to have hours of afterplay that turned into foreplay and then we did it again and can you believe that none of the girls woke up to my high volume ecstatic moans or his primal grunts? Or did she want more of a realistic sense of quality; we fucked for 6.7 minutes and then passed out cold but hey, at least we fucked and maybe even a little milk squirted him in the eye…he likes that. Or even more along the lines of a full-time mother quality; I finally agreed to blow him after ½ hour of listening to his whining and begging for me to get him off and the whole time all i could think about was if my favorite pair of pants that fit where in the dryer or still in the wash.
And yet none of those sex scenes make up the quality meat in my life. Except the passed out cold part. And so that is what my month long of sex diaries was about: the truth. Personal truth is quality.
Recording almost every day for a month wasn’t easy, especially since most days I have to fight for time to take a piss in private. So what the camera will play back is the real me, my real life. And I just assume my realness has got to be quite disturbing for those who have a different vision of what living as a sexual being and a new mother is like; those who think sex lives won’t change and their libido won’t shift and their attraction to the person they used to throb for has turned into a distant pitter. I don’t know many mothers in my post partum position who are wearing garter belts to bed, holding a big old dildo in one hand and handcuffs in the other (If you are? Can I come over?) and having video quality sex let alone sex on a regular basis at all. And really, sex isn’t even close to what I want right now, it’s not what my body or soul or spirit asks for. And I am not suggesting that’s what anybody was dmeanding of me to diary about, but I highly doubt they ("the creatives" for the vlogging) got what they thought they wanted by inviting me to participate. My fantasies involve using big-people words again and sleeping eight hours straight and someone inventing a self-cleaning kiddy potty. The small bits of my life that I shared for this project were rooted in the moment, interrupted most of the time, sloppy all of the time, bags under the eyes and knotty hair, wearing the same clothes day after day, cervical cap untouched in original box: this is what my life is.Now it wasn’t always like this, it’s not like I am some unkempt prude.
I won’t go into my sexual history, but for the first 27 months of my relationship with my man we just stayed in bed full-time, and it was the kind of love that was best-seller how-to-book hot. I had fallen into a pit of hot lava love. Something about his double Scorpio nature, his drummer and sculptor hands, his tattoos, his deep sea diving, his adoration for a girl with a bottom, his ability to flip a record over while inside me, and his obvious devotion to even the most manic parts of me; I. Could. Not. Get. Enough. And apparently neither could he. We did 3 times a night. We did it 2 more times in the morning. We’d call in sick to fuck during El Nino season. We’d tangle in passion on fallen trees and at the beach, in small resorts and under the stars in a yellow tent. We did it on friend’s floors and parent’s bathrooms. We used toys and foods and fabrics and wax. We did not have three small children. I don’t even think we had a dog yet.
And now that we do have kids? What could I possibly reveal on camera that could compare to the romping of our early twenties? Or the long tantric evenings just before the kids were conceived? The funniest thing is I never had to speak (on camera) of what life was like after kids. I’d start to talk about anything sex-in-theme on camera and would be interrupted within 1 minute by a crying baby, a screaming toddler standing in a puddle of pee, or a child frantically trying to pull too small tights over their too big jeans. The camera got turned on and off, cutting my streams of thought in half and then in half again, to attend to a child. Quality thoughts turned into many small and randomd snipets; it became quantity. The quality needs to be found inside the bits and pieces of my fragmented life.
But there has been an awakening that happened for me with motherhood. And it’s good and real, too and I would be doing a diservive to myself and all mothers who allowed themselves to ripen and ruby as they became initiated.
There is a strong and not so subtle sexuality that motherhood seems to harvest. Underneath the spit-up and yellow grainy poops, the elastic waistbands that now fill the wardrobe, and the collection of “comfy” shoes on the shelf, the glam-less eyelashes looking into the rearview mirror behind the seat of the minivan and in between making almond butter banana boats, there is a cord running from my head down through my root, pulsing with a new kind of Hot. It’s raw and different, not billboard model or lingerie catalogue or Betty Page pin-up or adult movie star. It’s more like the suppleness of velvet, the interior flesh of the womb has been molded and lived in and even though it’s empty now, it’s redness, it’ spiral, it’s secret has become me. I have had something, a taste of the apple, a chance at creation, a reason to moan life forth and the guts to stand there and do it; knowing well enough I am playing the game of Life and Death but caring so much that I decide to take my turn in the endless circle. My body pulses with a purpose as the home ground, the wet ground, the growing ground, the battleground stripped with wavy scars and cascading curves. It holds breasts heavy with milk and a yoni with a faint yet lingering scent of bloody and earthy birth. And while my body expanded with motherhood, slowly, at its own pace comes back to a version of me; my ribs reveal themselves under my thinning flesh, I have cheekbones again, I can sit on the floor and get back up on my own, I lean into a backbend and fold forward and grab onto my toes. I lie flat on my stomach. It may not be hot by today’s standards, but it’s primal and it’s intuitive and its a greatly provocative to allow it to be all that it has been; lover, shelter, warrior, mother. Its not Movie Star Mother On Tabloid Cover, but my type of motherhood turns me on. It’s dirty, exhausting and it’s real.
When I smear a bit of red gloss across my lips and thread metal earrings through my ears and drop thick amber oil on my wrists, and slide my lime green aviator sunglasses across my eyes, I feel it intensely. Sometimes when I sit down to nurse my baby and milk rushes down and relief comes over me I morph so powerfully wet and nourishing and attractive and needed I am almost over fulfilled. On good days when we walk through the store with my hair a little brushed and all three kids and myself are in such smooth flow and together we hold and examine fresh ripe produce and decide what to make for dinner and maybe even nibble on a bit of dark chocolate while in the check-out line, it lives in me and comes through me and the hormones are wildy tasty, roaringly loud. When I open up and enjoy parenting, even in the thick of screaming tantrums and unacceptable kicking, I become pure energy, vibration of mother-knowledge; I hold it as my own sensual prowess. When I collapse in bed at night, a few breaths away from a deep sleep and my cold feet are wrapped around his and my face is buried in his soft back, it’s there heating us both up through to the next day. When I think about how I pushed my third daughter out with screams and howls and my nails digging into the microfiber of my couch and my head thrown , my back arched, somewhere between Hell and Ecstasy, it’s there. This is my life; and it’s all really sexy to me. But it’s not SEX.
It was easy to judge myself: my life has become painfully boring and sexually dry, and it’s unhealthy. we used to make time for sex even for a super-quickie, here and there. 34 years old and in some sort of prime and I haven’t done it in a very, very (very) long time. Why don’t we create more time for sex? Is it just the exhaustion or does it go deeper and a place we’re too scared to explore? Why don’t we decide to retreat into the bedroom and get kinky? Instead we fall onto the couch with the laptop in front of us, excited to catch up on Lost episodes? When we do get a sitter, which is so rare, why don’t we go somewhere and have sex in the minivan on some lonely forest road instead of going to the brewery to have beers and talk about our future in our new house, new music we like, writing projects that are pending, the behavior of our four year old, politics, the weather? Oh. Yeah. We just had a baby.The baby part makes it easy to release the judgments with a few stumbles and tries; we can’t beat ourselves up for having our arms full of life. I spent many years where sexual exploration was at the forefront of my relationships. Being someones partner now involves so many other passions besides how many times I cum. It involves raising children. It involves integrating into a new community. It involves just trying to stay good friends and harmonious roommates with each other. And it involves sexy moments; glances when one of us steps out of the shower, slick with water and slathered in oil, or butt smacks when he wears the silly hot pink American Apparel underwear Mia picked out for him on his birthday. It’s him looking at my cleavage while we sit at dinner and my new big milk boobs are spilling out my too tight shirt from all day nursing or watching him teach Mia and Sula the progression of ska to modern dancehall through record flipping and dancing and singing. It’s when we chop carrots together to make a soup . It involves loving my body for the work it’s done, the temple it has been for me and my children; the way it has opened up regardless of how scared I am to be truly seen. Sometimes it’s the too tight pants I wear and how the seam rubs into my clitoris, or maybe the silkiness of the shirt brushing up against my own nipples, or seeing a person whose energy makes me turn my head and suck in my breath. It’s finally buying a home on ½ acre; fertile land surrounded by rivers and mountains gives him a hard-on and certainly makes me dripping wet. Our climax is sitting late night on the couch with Z in our laps and cooing with her, nuzzling our noses in her double chin and smelling between her stinky toes. Feeling so in love with our children and landing such a lucky life, more charmed as it ages; not perfect by any means, but it is what it is and accepting that, with humor and tenderness, it’s what makes our crotches tingle. Our quality is being with our kids in each moment; experiencing the other and ourselves authentically in any way we can. It’s erotic and naked and revealing; no penetration required.
***And I am not saying that soon I won’t be one of the many people who are considered sexually active by today’s standard. These times will pass quickly and the exhaustion will fade and our time will be freed and some hot sticky night, no doubt we will begin humping again. But for now we aren’t because we are doing other things, making other things, loving in other ways. That is how it really is. I’m sure Current TV isn’t super excited for paying me to say that kind of stuff every day for a month, but I gave them the truth.
glow.
I come up from a deep vacation from all things computer. It felt good to disconnect and lay in the grass, gather tulips, travel across the country, cook meals and sleep. Now it feels good to write this, to share something dear ones have asked me to share. A new community has been born and it is important to know it exists.
***
My grandmother lost 4 of her 13 children. Two stillbirths, one random and youthful heart failure, and one she watched get run over by a drunken truck driver at the age of 9. My heart always burst and bleed when anyone spoke of her lost ones (she passed before I was born so I never heard her own mouth speak of them). When I asked my dad how his mother handled such tragedy, he shrugged. I dunno honey, that was life back then, you had kids, you lost them. There was no time for pain, she had to get us through the Depression. Even though I tried to hear the truth in that answer, my deep intuition was that nobody knew how she mourned her lost children, because nobody held her through it. She was the single mother and she had a family to feed and a store to run. There wasn’t time for others to allow her journey to be witnessed and felt. I am not saying she didn’t go on it, but she most likely went through it alone, in the silent sobs in her pillow at night, careful not to wake the children who all shared one room with her. She was expected to let those children go and move on, ignoring the process of grief, absent the vehicles of expression, without a community to hold her while she mourned. And that is sad. It is heartbreaking. It makes me want to fall back in time and hold her hand and tell her it’s okay to collapse in pain and scream for help and crack open and bleed. It’s okay to need forever.
Just about a year ago, when my new daughter was the size of a bean in my womb, I was driving from the ocean back to the desert when my cell phone rang. Shocked that I had service in the middle of that vastness, I answered it. The connection was crackling. The voice on the other end was serious, Have you been online? To Kate’s blog? I hadn’t been near a computer in three days. She had the babies, the twins were born, an emergency cesarean. My heart skipped a few beats as I calculated how early they were. Just as I was about to cry we lost reception. The wise woman came out of me and I prayed. I prayed and sang mantra. I remember that drive like it was yesterday.
Then it turned into June and it was hot. I was awaiting the phone call from Leigh, telling me her water broke so I could light candles for her and keep sacred her birthing space. I was sitting at my big blue kitchen table while the sun beat on my forehead through the wall of windows, I watched my girls play in the kiddy pool outside. Mia was covered in orange paint and washing it off her while painting more on her sister. I desperately tried to keep down my raspberry leaf tea down because my morning-all-day-all-night pregnancy sickness was overwhelming me with gags and chokes and sudden bursts of vomit. The phone rang. It was Leigh. Her voice was not the voice of a laboring woman, instead it was sound of a sister in concern: Have you been to Kate’s blog? I hadn’t but I quickly clicked there. The post The Gift of Liam echoed through my soul. She lost her son. She lost her son. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Every fiber in my body screamed, this is not right, it couldn’t be, he was just going to be tiny and someday he’d be stronger and him and Ben would be double trouble and maybe he’d grow up and just need some glasses and some help in school and oh Jesus Christ this is so fucking horrible. He said no to this side of the Universe. He had needed a bigger view of all of us, a space to surround with powerful love.
***
For months I read SatNam Baby, the name my friend gave her pregnancy journal which she was so gracious to share with her circle. Janis wrote every ounce of herself and her journey growing this third life inside of her. Her little boy and the wisdom he pass through his mamas hands guided me through my own sick and tired and emotionally wrecked pregnancy moments. Each day I’d open my email and find the words of Janis and her Star Baby. I’d feel so much better reading of her exhaustion, raising her daughters while holding life inside and keeping herself smooth and pliable. I felt her company. And also her ancient way of Just Being in her writing. If I didn’t know she was a young and vibrant woman, I would have imagined she was an old shaman, wrinkled and sun stained skin, hands kneading, sitting on a rocking on a chair and dictating her words to someone else, a student to type. She reminded me to chant my own Sat Nam, calling upon my inner truth, my infinite truth, the truth of the baby that I held within, the truth of all babies we all hold within. The truth of birthing into being.
The day I received the news, in an email written by her own hands, I began to lose hope, my faithful fire in life was smoldering. Her Ferdinand came to her arms breathless, full of heart whose beat was lost to human ears. I just waited for my own child to go. How could I keep mine when these mothers had to let theirs go? How? The reality that I had no control in life whipped me down like a tsunami. When we choose to birth we open death’s door, unconsciously inviting the Night to come through and steal away the bright morning bloom. This is to be human. And no matter what, nobody can be prepared for it, nobody can give back to those who have had to surrender a child.
All I have been ever able to do for these women is hold space for them. Never could I give advice on how to mourn, how to survive, how to laugh again at the sounds of newborn baby meows and coos. Their lives were ripped apart to shreds, an attack that no person can fathom, claws and teeth, and no doubt an unbearably slow drowning in waters of sorrow; their own tears. I hold my three month old daughter in my arms as I type, trying to balance her life and my life and these words I want to say, but mere words could never do what I want to do: take away their pain. I cannot. I fear their pain and at the same time I freely dive into it with them, hoping they know somehow, from afar, I hold their hearts, their guts, their wombs with sacred respect.
Because these women aren’t alone they have come together. Through community we learn to be true to ourselves. With love we learn to heal. With words we begin to understand. Where there is a glow in the darkness, we gather together and perhaps reveal and release in a safe space, a home space. A space my grandmother never had.
Upon my altar I give in to both my friends Janis and Kate and their sons, lost to their earthly arms but found in the hearts of many, many people. There are no boundaries in healing. There are no borders when it comes to loss. We can all imagine it, none of us want it, and those of us who have it need a place to be. I wish upon them freedom to experience and the space to share it. My world has been shaken, my heart opened wide.
Where Kate, Janis and many others hold The Glow.
So much love.
my wow.
I’ve heard so many many woman sigh and say wow that was bad. Looking back, it was worse than I thought it was. And it lasted a year. 2 years. It still hits me like a mac truck and I gave birth almost three years ago.
I’m too careful of a person to sigh my sigh now, and shake my head back and forth and say my wow in the past tense. The heavy sheet of all things not pretty seems to be gone, but whose to say what’s around that corner. I’ll give half a sigh and readily admitt it has been hard and I never expected to feel like such shit.
Why do we rarely talk about it? Prepare ourselves and our families for it? We spend oodles of time reading about pregnancy and birth before the fact, but what initiates us to handle the state of potential depression? Or is the depression the final initiator, the last test before we get our Mother of The Moment trophy?
I can hide it well. Which makes me doubt I am even worthy of the title; Post Partum Depressed. I wipe my face clean and hide the amount of effort it takes me to pick up each foot and put it in front of the other. I spend time with my family and pretend I am hadnling it all, exhausted, but centered and strong. Who wants to hear, as I hold my perfect daughter in my arms, that I feel bleak? Weak? Nothing? Fear? With moods that swing as fast as my daughter does at the playground? I am a beautiful new mother of my third daughter and I hold it all together and like my sister said when I called trying to subtly hint that I may be living in my own personal collapsable world
You’re not the only who has three kids. Think of it that way. You’re not alone.
And yeah, that’s not really what I meant. Three kids or 20, I am very alone. This is the epitome of alone.
And I suppose if while we discussed the pregnancy and all the protein we have been eating and the sex of the baby or whether or not a waterbirth would be in the plan, someone could have thrown in there: Prepare, you might feel like you’ll wanna curl up and die sometime after the birth. Have support in place. Have herbs all ready. Hire help. Call and make a tenative appointment for marriage counseling and probably throw one in there for child psychology, because with all the yelling and moping and emotional messiness, everyone around you will need professional help, too. Maybe I could have spared me girls my ugliest moments. Maybe my husband would not be so bruised. Maybe I would think all this is normal and not feel defeated.
But I never thought. Not me. Not with the homebirth and the yoga and the herbs and meditation. Not me, I paid my depression dues back when I was 21. Now I’m a Birth Warrior, A Mama in Charge. I laugh in my face, as if I am protected from this pain, this realness, this life. Reason: unknown. Source; the mind, the heart, the seed. Remedy; acceptance (and rest, food, drink, time alone).
It’s been a long time, Mama. A long time since I knew you in Arizona.
I didn’t ask her what she meant but in my heart I knew. It’s been a long time since I’ve been my old self. This one, the one who mothered like that. Not the one I have been these days. These days I’ve been the sharky thought.
But like I said, it lifts. It’s lifting. I am not ready to call it done, because I know it can creep up like the night upon dusk and in a split moment I am gone. But as I step up and out, feel life at some surface, I am beginning to think this depression I came face to face with may be the greatest teacher I’ve ever had. Ever. And isn’t that kind of beautiful?
two months
Hard to believe, my littliest love. You are two whole months old. It was just about this time in the dark of night, 31 days ago, that i tossed and turned in bed wondering how long I could ‘rest’ through those contractions. I lasted about half hour more and then I allowed the wildness of the storm that was pounding down outside come in, taking over my body-house, my heart-home. And like a force of nature, destructing everything that stood in our way, we birthed, we rebirthed, and we birthed some more. Birth is in the spring air tonight and I can feel so much life bloom back into me after a long period of allowing myself to die. I think back. Black, obsidian, lava, tidal, hard earth, gigantic pellets of hail, tiger uncaged, unleasing, blood red expression, spiral, snakes, wet. Just words that come to mind about what your birth was like. Your story is not completely told; your father and I work on it together each night we feel creative and aware, and soon we may share it with the world. Until then, let’s just bask in your beauty:
You are smiley. Empress Smiley. The smiliest of the Coven.
You have very long eyelashes. I wish I knew how to use m camera and focus in on them more. I also wish I could capture the color of your eyes. Some days they are green. Some days they are sea grey. The have a spiral of flaxen brown, bursting from the center. I wonder if they will change, yet another daughter with my dark eyes. Or will the jump into lightness and mirror your daddy? Either way we all get lost in them.
Sometimes you can be very serious. As in you seriously like to be adored and loved, admired and showered with attention. You don’t play games. You tell me what you want and when you want with just a simple look; no loud sounds, just a stare.
You truly become disgruntled with clothing. Especially anything with attached feet. You like your long toes and arched feet to wiggle in the cool air, unhindered by cotton. You are still little enough that your lower half and upper half seem like two seperate entities and not completely whole. You like to air swim (move your arms around and around) and you love to run, run, run….JUMP (moving your feet and legs and the kicking them up, like you are trying to jump).
You love just hangin’ with your big sis. She makes you coooo, and ooooooh, and aaaaahhhhhh. You also love to be hummed to, which Sula is very good at doing.
You get the most sleep in the house. Mama has some bags. Mia has serious bags, poor thing, she gets the least amount of sleep and carries the ‘grump’ for all of us. You on the other hand sleep all day, all night. You’d sleep tons if it weren’t for those crazy sisters always waking you up with tickles and kisses (I am not just saying this: your sisters ADORE you and are constantly wanting you to be awake so they can play with you.) You are a Sleepy-poo. For now. I know there will many sleepless, teething, stuck on my nipple nights, but for now you like to dream, curled next to me and your dad, and that is fine by us. We are all so busy lovin’ you up, we mostly forget to brush our hair and teeth and some days we never leave the bedroom until the sun screams at us to go play outside somewhere and have a picnic consisting of chocolate chips and apples.
You come from the Elf family, just like your mama (notice her right ear) which is great and tricky and silly and fairy friendly. I adore you; your ears, your eyes, your gums, your radiating heart. I mean, there is no other way to say it but: thank you. Thank you for coming here, to this home, this crazy, loud, wild home and accepting us, wanting to be with us. I think it’s an understatment to say that we feel blessed. Blessed. Little Dove, we love you.
acceptance.
In Zen Buddhism, the practice of non-attachment inspires that there is only now, and that nothing is forever and we can choose to create a sufferer story and hold it tight hoping that we can fix a situation or change it, attached to the outcome, or we can just accept. I like this as a practice to become my essential nature, all that I Am. This doesn’t mean I can’t manifest my life; indeed I manifest it all, even things I don’t know what to do with, situations I may not like as my teacher. My practice now it to accept all that I bring to my own table, to accept it in hopes my cravings will lighten. I might just free up some of those chains I place around my being. And so I learn acceptance.
*
I accept that for the first time in my life I am content to live where I live. I find myself searching for that familiar struggle and frayed edged longing to leave, to move, to explore more, and it’s just not there. My search for space is done. For now. And yet I find myself not knowing what to do without it. It had defined me. It’s been my partner, a part of me for so long. I accept that I am here and that I love it here, that I don’t want to move. Which really sounds outlandish for me, but it’s here and now and it is. I accept a home.
I accept that I live with a four and ½ year old and that four and ½ year olds need time, love and understanding. They need rhythm, excitement, silliness and power. They need quiet time and a shit load of running around. They need not be expected to listen all the time or sit still or to eat what anybody else wants them to eat. I accept they are a whitwind of messy goodness and pain-in-the-ass sass.
I accept that I fail my four and ½ year old. I make her cry or I cry in front of her. I choose to be impatient instead of breathing and stepping back and feeling the slowness. I accept how I mother, how I try to mother. I accept that I want to try differnt things and I accept that I toss them out after trying. I accept my raw emotion as mother, I accept that love can sting and sing all in one moment.
I accept my body. Its curve and bulge and squishiness. I accept that my sides spill like waterfalls over my too tight waistbands and I just don’t look like I looked 11 months ago. I accept that I want to look like I looked 11 months ago. I accept that my boobs point down and to even to write that makes me smile big. I accept the fat while I wait for it to leave.
I accept my yoga practice as it is; anywhere from 2 minutes to an hour each morning. I accept that I have to get off the mat 10 times during that duration to stir mush, breastfeed or burp a baby, mediate a squabble over two sisters, take an urgent pee or pour a glass of water. I accept that my Chaturanga Dandasana burns my arms and my deep twists are hindered by the extra around my midline and that my spine feels squashed and short instead of long and expanding. I accept my heart center folds in right now. For a moment I judged myself for telling my kids that they can watch me practice or pull their mats next to me and practice with me; but they cannot touch me, climb on me or yell in my face. Now I accept those small needs and that I communicate them firmly.
I accept my husband and our relationship. I accept the journey we are both on, finding space in this new land and comfort in these surrounding. Moving is up there with death and divorce as bringer of all things stressful. We’ve been moving for almost a year now, and still not totally settled. But it’s not death or divorce and I accept this process of moving as it carries us closer to home. I accept my role in turning towards my husband instead of away while we take this journey. I accept myself in those moments I need to turn away, and I accept him in his. I accept his snore, his slob and his gentle and corny way of reaching out to me in love.
I accept that I am a full time mother with selfish needs. Like putting on high heels and leaving the house and not telling anyone where I am going or hiring a house cleaner or a babysitter for the whole day or putting on Mary Poppins two times so I can write or sleep or read a magazine or feeding the kids toast for a couple meals in a row. I accept these needs.
I accept the rain as it falls when I want to take the kids walking.
I accept my budget.
I accept long hour of uninterupted sleep.
I accept fatigue.
I accept my new bed that is totally uncomfortable and I accept that I don’t like it and want a different one.
I accept that I can’t do this alone, that I need a Mother Tribe around me; a community.
I accept stinky breath in the morning from little mouths.
I accept that to have land and a decent house we will end up buying a bit out of the ‘city’. I accept the drive and the country life and the mountains and the rivers and the farmers that will be my neighbors.
I accept my laundry pile, my drawer of single socks, my pee and baby spit-up scented sofa and the rotting kale in the fridge.
I accept that while I continually process Z’s birth, I am still resentful of people, uneasy about moments, doubting my choices and wishing it a bit different. I accept the birth. I accept my feelings about it. I accept that those feelings make me uncomfortable and I accept the discomfort. This birth has gifted me deep compassion and I can’t ignore my calling to get back birth work any longer.
I accept breath and it’s need to come through to me.
I accept life force energy inside me and around me.
I accept the sun peaking through the clouds and sparkling on the cracked wet pavement.
I accept that it will be a while before I can do any work outside the house. I accept I have a newborn and this is the time to just be.
I accept abundance.
I accept long hours alone while my husband works.
I accept the cries of the baby and the wails of a two year old and the kicks of a four year old.
I accept the warmth of a small body nuzzled against my chest all night long.
I accept coo’s and gurgles and small fingers wrapped around my own.
I accept my strength.
I accept phonecalls and ignoring phonecalls, too.
I accept my raging and volatile hormones.
I accept the delicate nature of post partum and I finally accept I am not always the strong, positive natured, constantly joyful being that others around me would like me to be. I accept depression. I accept being ugly.
I accept that it takes 2 hours to leave my house. I accept it when I forget diapers and wipes.
I accept the lecture my friend and I received from the grumpy old couple at the Co-op (in another county) who came up to us to tell us our kids were too loud and that we were failing at socializing them in the proper way. Yes, I even accept them as well as my too loud kids.
I accept sickness and disease in those I love.
I accept best friends spending long hours on planes and layovers, lugging kids and strollers and carseats, to visit me.
I accept healing and that it can happen. I accept that I am a healer in my own right.
I accept my anger and my right to express it.
I accept love. I accept love. I accept love.
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I don’t attach myself to these things. They are life.
Some things are so easy for me to accept. Some things are so very hard.
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I accept these beings, their presence and their wisdom.
I accept being read. I accept writing. I accept you.
Good? Bad? Maybe.
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
The Dalai Lama
We lost it. The bid on the house. The turn of the century house in the perfect location. With the perfect piece of almost an acre of grassy flat land. At the bottom of a mountain. 1 mile inland from the water. Smack in the middle of a community, surrounded by organic farms. From the backyard you could see the Islands. And it came with His (music lab.guest space) and Her (writing lab.guest space) outbuildings. Fun. Funky. Chicken pen and rabbit hutch and fire pit kind of fun. Spectatcular sunsets and lovely bakery walking distance. The whole upstars: a child’s oasis with window seats and hidden cubbies. But it’s in the process of being someone elses home right now. I was already looking for the junked rocker to paint cherry bomb red place on the front porch and then sit on while drink a vodka and lime with fresh mint from the garden.
This didn’t happen because of a whirwind of ego and fear, and fear driven ego and negative speculation and very bad advice. This didn’t happen because of real estate game playing and niavity. This didn’t happen because of many things. And perhaps many things I can’t name or see guided this home to someone else. I don’t know much about much but I do know that I am pissed. Disappointed. And really, really sad. Living in this very temporary rental (the lease ends in 2 months and the house goes back on the market) is just that: temporary. I’d like the girls to find a home. A place to put up and easle and not give a fuck if the paint gets everywhere.
The beauty and the sustainability of this community take my breath away. The people intrigue me. And the color of the grass here is really just the most perfect green you could ever imagine. So much of my life I have been searching for this spot that I sit right now and type; the Pacific Northwest. It’s like that feeling when I first entered California, but better: the air is clean and I certainly don’t live in the car. The emotional struggle since I arrived here and it’s not because I don’t like it. I just want to ground myself and start life without thinking about another move into another house. I wanna sink those coiled roots into the dark moist wormy dirt of this earth, trust this journey even more by committing to a home, a place to hang a laundry line and build a wooden tower for the kids to climb up and check out the views. And then I found the little butter colored home at the bottom of Blanchard Mountain. And I worked my ass off to get our finances in place. And when it was all said and done, my partner felt one way and I felt another and the compromise on the bid was too low. The beginners mind was over-powered by the ‘I know everything’ mind. And both of us ‘knew everything’ and both of us know nothing.
My real estate agent called crying to tell us the rejected our bid. She is an intuitive and swore that this house was ours. She apologized up and down, listing a million things she should have done to prevent this ‘bad news’. This house was yours. This is just so sad.
And then I remembered this. It’s my mantra: Good? Bad? Whose to say, really? I mean, the house was officially below sea level and a perfect target for all my Tsunami dreams. So was it sad we lost the little Washington Starter Home that I could have lived in for the reast of my life? Maybe. But I’ll keep looking.
A wise farmer had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing this news, his neighbors came to visit him. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically. "Maybe" the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed. "Maybe," the farmer replied.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses and was thrown off the horse and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on this misfortune. "Maybe" answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the farmer’s son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "Maybe." said the wise farmer."
one day at a time.
Finding rhythm each day has proven to be a challange with three. I repel schedule and routine, but rhythm is something that keeps all of us interested, aware and present. There was only a handful of places or things the two girls and I would attempt to do outside the house in AZ; picnics at parks when the weather was cool enough. When is was scortching hot, lazy mornings at the coffee joint that bled into cozy afternoons spent next door reading endless books at the library (which probably, besides people, is the most missed ‘thing’ about AZ. Scottsdale Library is truly phenomenal). Besides being in a new place, and having a new kid, and living in a delicate and sometimes pretty dark state of mind post-partum, I have been rhythmless. I haven’t been able to figure out anthing yet. I need time to heal, process, and ease into this new life, but it’s been wearing on me, getting old, this not knowing what to do or how to get dressed. I’m getting sick of being bound by this state of indifference to sadness, frustration to anger. It’s time to crack open the paralyzing armor, or at least poke out from underneath the covers.
Today’s was good. Mia to school. The rest of us walk 3 miles to a park. Play. Walk back. Pick Mia up. Fast trip home (insist girls all wait in the car), grab no-prep to-go lunch. Head to the beach for a picnic of apples, strawberries, cheese and raw cashews. Walk to the bookstore. Cookies and tea and browse through books. Home. Play. Pull out stuff for dinner. Wait for B to get home to make dinner. Make life easy and wear Z the whole entire time, except for daiper changes. Breath. Laugh. PLay music. Watch the moon get bigger. Bath. Sing The Beatles Blackbird 5 times. Bed. Today was good. No dizzy spells or anxiety. No stuffing my face in a couch cushion and cry/screaming. No sobbing phone calls to husband or friends or sisters. No wishing my life away. No yelling. Living and trying to function so close to a birth is fragile. In our tribeless (literal) state of a culture, I honor my hard times, my depression and overwhelming moments. And I celebrate when I can slide back into my comfortable skin, the mask I know intimately and I really enjoy wearing. Happy and Mellow. Balanced and carefree. Flexible and gentle. Strong and energized, maybe even a little hyper. Silly. Dancy. Singy. I got there today. It felt fantastic and it was just normal. Me. Today I felt what it’s like to dive in and enjoy being a mother again, because the past month has been a stuggle to see the light, no matter what there have been days where I felt like a stranger in my own body, my own life. One day at a time.
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Mia cut her hair again. When one is preoccupied with a newborn one will sometimes give a suspecious four year old kid craft scissors and paper and glue for fun and entertainment and then not really pay attention to what they are doing and go do a load of laundry (okay given her history -or histories- perhaps there is no real excuse for not watching her like a hawk).
Her short side:
Her long side:
People ar very impressed with her sense of style. I request they don’t encourage it. Really. I like the cut, too, sorta mod meets Johnny Scissorhands. But please. Don’t encourage it.
Punk Rock Warrior and Berry Eater:
100%…MIX
Rewind Selectah! Don’t stop till the very last drop!
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And yes, she is learning to scratch. Her father cringes every time she puts her finger down on a limited edition vinyl and takes it for a little push and pull.
One of the two turntables is missing a slipmat (the one she is placing a Dancehall compilations called Punany. Um, yeah, she says that’s her ‘very best’ record. Anyway, I told her she couldn’t use the turntable without the slipmat. She climbs down from her DJ booth after thinking for a moment. She heads over to the sacred paper towel cupboard, pulls and rips two towels off the roll. Climbs back to her booth and figures out how to get the papertowels on to the turntables in place of a slipmat. "is this good?" she asks. "yeah it’s good" i smile at her. "perfect". The dance party begins.
B and I debated whether or not to put his gear out in the open at this house. We had a designated studio space in AZ. My feeling has always been, a child learns by watching (which she has done since she was 2 weeks old). And then a child learns by doing. "easy for you to say" he says to me. "it’s all my gear not yours." "Many a time I have let her write love stories to Cody Maverick (Surf’s Up) on my laptop, " I remind him. "Yeah, and she’s busted two computers," he reminds me.
But in the end he decided put it all out, whether it be for Mia to learn the trade, or because his cold ass is sick of making music out in the garage, it seems to be working out.
Mia’s Old Skool Mixed Tapes available upon request.
raw. beauty.exhaustion.
This month.
I can’t write. I can barely form words. I smell like a mix of B.O., espresso, and hot buttered popcorn (breastmilk poo). It takes me 2 hours to leave the house. I lock myself out. I forget diapers for one of the two in them. My shirt is on not only backwards but inside out as well. My kids teeth have not been brushed in 24 hours. Mine in 48. I have exactly 3 pairs of pants that fit. My hands look like my mothers, veiny and wrinkly. Let’s not talk about my eyes. When I don’t take my placenta pills things start to spiral out of control, just like when I forget my oils, my vitamins, food and water. When I do remember to eat and drink and encapsulate pills for a fews days, my life is good. Beauitful. Raw beauty. Stripped down to the center of all existance I have to tap at the neverending flow: Love. Because in the end, the driving force behind all this; the procreation, the manifestation, the isolation, the exhaustion, the challanging path of mother/child communication, is love. It’s all for the love.
Days are still fragile. We all transition and allow moments of melt-down, hysteria, silliness, saddness and heaps of hour long group snuggles on the floor. Chocolate chips and small cups of whip cream and sprinkles help, too. One moment at a time, I breath.
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My newest daughter’s name is Zaida Dove, as we annouced over a month ago. Since then it’s changed about 3 times. Echo Dove. Zaida Echo. Zadie Echo Dove. And finally, again, Zaida Dove and Zadie for fun. I have never had a baby whose name was so mysterious.
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Four and 1/2 might be the most fucked up age besides 21.
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Zaida is sensitive to Soy and Dairy and I can’t eat either.
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My house has never been such a mess. There are smashed blueberries from last week still on the kitchen floor. The baby’s room has turned into the Closet Room. Looking for clean clothes? Go in there and dig through the pile on the floor. We haven’t had TP in 2 days. Sula is out of diapers, not because she is ready, but because I keep forgetting to buy them for her.
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I AM NOT a bad mom because I stopped using cloth diapers on the baby last week. I am not. I refuse to feel the guilt. The laundry was fucking drowning me. Period. I’ll go back. I always do.
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I have found a wrap way better than the Moby and I never thought I’d say that. Don’t know the brand. It was a gift. Go here (www.lyonmom.blogsome.com) and ask her because she’s responsible for my new obsession. I want one in every color.
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One top of it all, we’re trying to search the surrounding 30 mile radius to buy a house on some land. I drive around in the mountains alot looking and listening to Kanye West while Sula screams for Joan Jett. It’s an ongoing argument. Her and I both get stuck on one sound and we just don’t budge. Luckily I have control of the IPOD. Nothing against Joan Jett. I mean, I’d be the mother of her kids if she’d only ask me. But I’d also do the same for Kanye, and he’s so damn literary. Hot.
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It’s official. I’m a mom. I drive a caravan. My beloved Subaru is no longer mine. I know own a seven seater/14 cup holder silver bullet of can. That thing can go fast. Kinda impressed after I got over the fact I drive a minivan.
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Washington State is insanely beautiful and I feel so blessed to be here. It is my home away from Om. And if I can figure it out, I plan on changing the subtitle to this blog from Constantly Searching For That Perfect Space to Creating Space or something like that. When I was out walking along the water yesterday I thought of the perfect line to change it to and now it’s gone, a glimpse of a thought.
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I am trying to create another blog which I hope can help lift me up and bring me wellness, a blog that chronicals my postnatal yoga (instead of focusing on the PPD, I am hoping to focus on what really works in lifting me out of tightness and into Space. It will include video, daily yoga lessons and lots of fun chanting along with my writing. The only problem is I have no time to make another blog. Or really practice yoga. So if anyone wants to make the blog and watch my kids while I practice…that would be sweet. Oh and someone to film me too. And maybe lend me a digi cam. Great. Thanks.
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I am truly falling asleep at the keys right now. All in all this past month has been heavy, raw, overwhelming, and so perfect. Just perfect. When all else gets to me, I just tap into that love, or try to. Picking up the baby and breathing her in, accepting the force that she so freely offers and hoping to give to her as well is where I find the strength to keep it going on.
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no time or energy to spell check.
Some photos of the past couple weeks….
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sisters…
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presence
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dont ya cut off mi dreadlocks…
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self portrait because i thought it was a good day…
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