hike//girl

Last weekend Chris and I hiked up Elmore much in the way we have throughout the summer: we put Wilfred down for a nap after lunch and then head out just the two of us leaving the big kids to tend the sleeping babe. When it is just us we are up and back in just over 3 hours, including time for heading up the tower as well as a snack stop on the ledges that overlook the lake and our home hillside. I have wanted to our hike our mountain all 5 of us all season long; we usually manage it once or twice during a year. I had asked everybody to be game for it last weekend and then I didn’t really follow through and so no one was really ready when it was time to go. Plus going with Wilfred generally means heading out in the morning at an hour that the bigs are never naturally up on the weekends. And so. We went without them and like 10 minutes in I was like: shit, we should have made the kids come. Dangit.

It is super fun to hike with Chris solo. Do not get me wrong. I love it. We love it. It is so much a part of how we have always found connection with one another; in the long unwinding of trail and time and stream of consciousness communication. It is the best. And still, I am aware of the time we have with our kids. And I love spending time with them in this way too. Even when we have to, almost every time, endure Maple’s process of sinking into the experience in the form of picking fights; digging her heel in; and some kind of calorie-related emotional explosion. We all know it, expect it, and it is basically the tax we pay to get to the gold of time spent together in nature moving our bodies and cracking dumb adolescent jokes with a few heartfelt philosophical deeps dives sprinkled in.

It doesn’t happen much these days. Less than I would like. And almost always now minus one. After the hike last weekend I came home determined that we would all make it up the mountain together the following Saturday. I prepped the kids well in advance, all week long giving them reminders and previews; the whole thing. We were set. It was a plan. I get Saturday morning and then y’all can have the rest however you like. And then, sure enough, Friday night I can feel Maple beginning to pump the brakes. By the morning, she had generated a complete state of inertia coupled with some convenient amnesia and it was clear: she was not coming. In fact, she couldn’t believe that I had sprung this plan on her especially on the weekend when she is of course so exhausted and in need of recovery from her week. The later entirely true. The former, well, no.

So we went us four: me and my boys. Eider ever agreeable and trying to caretake me in his own way- yes, I know, also not ideal- in hopes I suppose of mitigating his sister’s impact. And we had a ball. Wilfred ran his little duck run halfway up the mountain under his own steam and then I lugged him up the rest of the way while Chris managed most of the journey down. Wilfred is not light and we were both happily pooped by the time we made it home for lunch. Eider was a delight and it was great to connect with him and hear his thoughts on the first few weeks of hybrid school and middle school soccer. Chris was funny and steady and my best partner and co-parent possible, as ever. Still I missed Maple. A lot. I had a fine time and I loved the day and still I felt her absence and all of the fleetingly few moments that I have left to hike mountains with her while she is here. Under three years. A fucking blink.

I spent the afternoon unable to get over my upset. Hurt and disappointed and unwilling to let it go, which I gotta say, isn’t exactly my norm. I am a bit better at shaking shit off than I was yesterday. And I don’t know if it is the combination of my period, or the physical fatigue that comes from carrying a kid on your back up a mountain, or the afternoon beer I drank, or just the fucking weight of the world every day, but I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed through the afternoon and into the evening. I let go. Didn’t hold back. And sure it was cathartic which was nice but it was also a little overly indulgent and fantastical in not the most life-giving and healthy way. I was stuck in a perspective and it was dumb. Especially because I know I sure as shit wasn’t going on hikes with my family on the weekends when I was fifteen. Not even close. And I am lucky lucky lucky to have a teenage daughter that ever wants to spend time with me. I know that. But still, sometimes I wish that it could be on my terms and not only hers. That is probably not very realistic. Oh well. It turns out I am a person too and not just a mama.

I can just feel her slipping away and it fucking kills me. She is my girl. My only girl and my very first baby. She has been the grist for almost every aspect of my growth as a mom and as a person. She has tested me and tried me and forced my hand at every single turn. And it has served me. It serves me still. And there is a part of me that feels so broken, so hollow, when I think about the day that she leaves our home and sets out on her own new course. It’s nuts this feeling. I think it may be also one of the more cliche feelings in the stack too, but I guess for a reason because all roads of motherhood lead (hopefully!) to this day and it is much more a measure of success than one of loss even if it doesn’t feel that way. And you see, I can know this with my mind, but my heart has a different story to tell. It is the one that began when I first held this little girl baby in my arms and cried for most of her first few months wondering how in the hell I was ever going to be able to let her go. Hooooooooow???

Ugh. Anyhow. Tears and more tears. I love her AND I let her go. I am working on it. Even on days when I throw a fit for half of it wondering why I didn’t get my way. Healing my own childhood wounds as I go I suppose. The parts of me that needed to be mothered but didn’t know how to be if it didn’t look a certain way, and made to feel guilty for choosing me in my own teenage moments. I don’t want that same narrative with my own daughter. I can feel it, of course, just under my skin, wanting to replicate itself. And ya know what I say to that right? Fuuuuuuuuuck noooooo.

So I do my things. I practice and I pray and I sit quietly with my loud mind. I wash my face and go on walks. I read books and write things down. I try to excavate the corridors in my head and heart in hopes of some type of new insight that helps me better navigate the well-worn path of the parent. I try to do my best and also forgive myself my failings; like an inhale and an exhale. On and on. Loving and Letting Go. And I am going to hike that Mountain as many times as I can with anyone who wants to go with me and with my own self before the snow flies and the season ends.

Also this week, I have watched the growing sliver of a waxing crescent set over that same mountain most nights. As I shut the chickens in and tend a fall fire on the hilltop, I watch the moon through its still seeming course. And ya know what? Twice my girl was with me in small moments to watch that beautiful thin silver edge slip past our sight and into the night. And that is entirely what I am here for. The sweet moments when my terms and her terms meet without a plan and without an ask, in the very middle of things.

comb

Nothing exerts a stronger psychic effect upon children, than the life which the parents have not lived.

C.G. Jung 

At the beginning of August, our blueberry baby, the little who completed our constellation, and the one we collectively howled home to our hearts over the course of years and across galaxies, turned two. His August arrival shifted  my experience of the month from the bittersweet end to a too-short-season to a deep love for perhaps the very best month of the year. In August the berries are ripe, the days are hot and slow, and the swimming is fine. It is as near to perfect as anything. 

So much of me in relationship with my children is intertwined with a slow nostalgia, filled with beeswax crayons, and fairie houses, and baked apples, and pushing swings, and rolling down hills. Everything that could possibly engage the part of myself that longs for a soft smile and a fond memory says yes to my kids almost always. And when they are still so small, I try my very best to make it always yes. I am a sucker for a particular type of theme and easy contentment. In my opinion childhood should be laced with as much joy and magic as possible. It all gets difficult enough over time and childhood needn’t be. 

I think my kids are lucky in that. By no means do I undercut the raw intensity of their emotions, or mine for that matter, but I definitely try not to belabor them and rather give them space to move through as they will. I am not sure if this was always the right approach, but it has often been the one that has felt most authentic to me. Hold space but don’t create a big and binding narrative. Open up the space for everyone to be someone new in this moment than they were in the last. As they have grown and the feelings get bigger and fiercer and longer-lasting, I am more and more and more thankful that our bigs have our little to remember their own wonder and the magic at the beginning of the story. 

We each carry a little bit of this bittersweet in our hearts from the departure of childhood. I certainly do. It is difficult to grow as a parent as quickly as your kids are growing. To not get stuck in what I just learned but instead be ready to learn the next thing. Like they are. I never feel far from a wish that I could have done better by each of them. Listened a little harder, held space a little longer, seen their big feelings for as big and real as they really were. Even though I think I did ok, I am relieved to have the chance to perhaps do a little better with our last as well as allow these opportunities with him to also be a chance to apologize for, as well as forgive, my many shortcomings and especially those of the parent I once was. I made some errors that I would so love to undo if I could. Even as they seemed wise at the time, I was, compared to today, so unformed, so narrow in my understandings. I suppose I will look back at now with a similar reflection one day. Ah well. I will continue to make mistakes as a mom, even as I try my very best not to. But it is so certain it is almost stone. The stones that line the path of me as mother. 

For me there has been this interesting unearthing on this side of child bearing, in which some of my energy is freed up toward the vision of the next thing, and yet another, far more exhausted and daily part of me, is very much not. I am far too tired to be much of a visionary. Too fatigued for much follow-through. In a way, I think it makes this space much more liminal than I had imagined it would be. It often feels as though I am waiting for the slowest revelation of all. 

When I was back in Wisconsin, a longtime-stretching-into-forever friend gifted me a deck of symbols. I work with it much as I would The Tarot; drawing cards here and there, more often than not picking a daily card, and on occasion opting for a larger spread. The card that I keep on drawing over and over the past few months is C O M B. Its images are garden sage; for cleaning, clearing, and banishing; hair for freedom and power and self: and of course the comb for release and magic and exorcism. It feels like a lot and I am sitting with it. 

The other day I was taking a yoga class with Christina and she shared a quote from Carl Jung regarding his view on the purpose of psychoanalysis and it was something along the lines of working with the past not to dredge it up and get bogged down and stuck in the stories of yesterday but rather to comb through the past in a way that would reveal some deeper truth and insight relevant for our present and our future. I am paraphrasing here obviously, but there is something juicy in there for me when it comes to this relationship with memory and longing and nostalgia and regret and savoring it all as a way of moving or pulling or combing those themes forward into the rest of my life. When I think of it, or really more accurately feel it in terms of images; it is like this beautiful arrangement of color and texture and form and shape that is many things but mostly pleasing and is the thread or the tone or the VIBE that I want to be pulling forward into whatever is next. There is a way in which all of this mothering and child-rearing and partnering that has lived inside of my body feels ready to invert itself into the world in some new form. Into my next becoming. I am always and forever Mother to these three. And I know it is not the only thing but it is for me central to ALL THE THINGS; it is the ground within which every teaching, every lesson, every bit of wisdom, takes root. It is the one song that lives inside of all the others. The heartbeat drum of whatever offering there is for me to make. 

learning

When we moved from Wisconsin to Vermont in the early summer of 2019, we made all sorts of transitions and we made them almost all at once. We went from being rooted in the Upper Midwest to being almost as far north in New England as you can be. We transitioned from being a family 4 to a long-awaited family of 5. And Maple made the big shift from being an extremely independent homeschooler to an eighth-grader at the local public school. There are more changes that I would love to add to this list but these are the big outwardly facing ones. The inwardly turned ones are maybe a little more nebulous and shifty and so intertwined with the realities of COVID that they have become so implicit that it can be hard to parse out entirely. And that is not so much the topic at hand today.

In the weeks leading up to our move, one of my close mama friends made a comment in regard to the advent of Maple heading to school that went something like: ‘I bet Eider will go to school soon as well, and that you won’t end up homeschooling Wilfred at all.’ I was a touch offended at the time and yet I know where she was coming from. One of the near compulsive questions that homeschoolers ask one another is “how long do you think you’ll homeschool for” or “do you think you’ll go to school when (fill in the blank…)” or some other version of the same question. Also, when one kid heads off to school it can seem like a real break in the home education fabric of a family as children begin to move in even more directions than before. In fact, my friend is now going through her own transition as her oldest heads off to high school this fall while his younger sibs continue to stay home. I get it. I really do. It is a temptation for all parents I think, certainly, it has been for me, to assume that what has worked for one kid might indeed work for all and that the oldest in many regards is setting some sort of precedent and that the youngers are somehow beholden to the same path.

And yet we keep reminding ourselves that no two kids are the same and that what worked for one may very well be a flop for the next. It’s an exercise in repetition to be sure. Also, it’s fair to say, at least in our story, that Maple has wanted to share some of her school experience with Eider and that there has been a fair amount of projection coming from her regarding what path Eider will walk. (Even though they have never been remotely similar as home learners, outside of being dyslexic. They approach learning in completely different ways. Maple has seldom if ever, done anything I have asked her to do and instead takes her learning above and beyond all day every day, but on her own terms. Eider almost always is game to do what I suggest, and yet when he is done with that he is pretty much done. As his reading fluency improves that is shifting slightly- as noted in the way in which he consumes all things history. But, ya know, he is a 12 year old kid who likes video games and the phenomenon that is watching other kids play video games on youtube- what the heck even is that???) In terms of him following in her steps toward public school; we have chatted about it. We have gamed it all out. On repeat. Mocked up fantasy futures in our mind’s eye regarding the educational journey of each of our kids. I mean, don’t we all? But I think I can safely say at this point that I have no clue what the future holds for any of them, save a pretty solid sense that Maple will stay in public school through graduation. That’s it folks.

I don’t know if Eider will ever go to school full time. Maybe he will go to public school for high school, maybe he won’t. We have daydreamed for years of spending a part of one of our winters in Australia and New Zealand- Eider is bonkers for koalas and would love to spend some time working at a koala sanctuary. This type of trip is something that sounds much more doable as a home ed family than one accountable to the conventional school calendar. I also have no clue what Wilfred will do. I think that nursery school is important for littles and generally a marvelous experience and yet I have no idea if I will feel comfortable sending him next year even though I think 3 is the perfect age for it. Plus, I sure would love some time when he is out of my direct care. We also live up the hill from the last one-room combined classroom schoolhouse in Vermont. I love the idea of walking or biking him there from his first through third-grade years but we are weirdly not districted for it and the idea of paying for primary school is something I have a certain degree of difficulty swallowing.

Anyhow, this is a big rambling view of my mind when it comes to educating my kids, and trust me I could go on and on but I won’t because none of this is really what I showed up to talk about today. Really I am here to share what Eider and I are doing for his seventh-grade year. A little tour of the what’s what of our plan and some resource sharing as well.

A lot of thought always goes into the plan for our homeschool year, and this year that feels especially true after the shitty year he had last year. I know that so many folks pivoted to keeping their kids home during Covid and I get that for sure, but as an example of the potential of homeschooling, it really couldn’t have sucked more. At least that was our experience. I actually wish that I had sent Eider to school- it wouldn’t have worked out again because of a district thing, but this is all magical thinking anyway. So- as a part-time in-person schedule where he actually goes to be around other kids would have been so much better than the near-complete isolation of his actual year.

I know some homeschool communities were successful in podding up with one another, and maybe that would have worked for us back in Wisconsin where we were more established, but I kinda don’t think so. We have always been incredibly eclectic and have been a part of so many different groups and circles that it would have been a ton of picking and choosing I think… again, magical thinking. As it was, everything that was cool about homeschooling last year vanished. No orchestra, no nature school, no stem classes with the local kids, canceled sports seasons, no library days, no performances to attend. Basically, a whole lot of nothing. It sucked. And as so many kids did in the long days at home, Eider leaned even harder into the Xbox and tried his hardest to manage the complexities of virtual life with long boring stretches of not much between everything. Craftsbury Outdoor Center basically saved our family and our son last winter and I am beyond thankful and also super pumped for ski team for Eider and lots of days on skis in the woods for the rest of us.

But I digress! Jeez Meg. Get it together.

So! What is the plan? What does it look like for our bear this year? Well, I can tell you for certain that a ton of care and consideration has gone into the planning for this year. But I can also pretty confidently say that even so, I have no idea how it will actually go. I am cautiously optimistic. He actually is doing a little bit of a hybrid situation this year after all, and spending roughly an hour and 45 minutes 4 mornings a week at the local public school- the same one where Maple is a 10th grader- and taking 2 classes. The admin at the school are super flexible and accommodating and I feel so lucky for their open-minded support. We knew right away that we wanted him to take science at school as that is a subject that I generally outsource in one way or another and also kinda suck at trying to teach myself. But he has aged out of the local stem classes for homeschoolers and Earth Walk Village School is still on pause until Covid is more resolved and I have depended on both of those in the past for science ed support. The other class he is taking is by virtue of timing and convenience more than anything else but I think it should work out quite well. It is called expos and it is actually a different class each trimester: art and then Spanish and then technology and design. He is also on the soccer team so he will head back in the afternoons for practice with many of the kids that he is in class with in the mornings.

Interestingly enough, the principal of the middle school has shared that more homeschool kids than ever before in his experience are engaging this hybrid option. That last year didn’t work out well for a number of veteran home ed families. Makes sense. It was certainly our roughest and most depressing year to date. And yes I know that it was for most everybody, but I guess I just really want to reiterate that even those of us seasoned at spending lots and lots and lots of time altogether and at home still found it a palatial struggle. For real.

As for the rest of our coursework details, here is what I submitted to the state back in July. So, the formal description of what we are doing this year, broken down into what the home study department for the state of Vermont terms the Minimum Course of Study:

Homeschool 2021/22

Basic communication skills including reading and writing: We are using the current 2021-2022 Brave Writer Arrow, a mechanics and literature program, for reading and writing (*as well as for English, American, and other Literature). The Arrow uses living literature to teach the mechanics of writing. Spelling, punctuation, grammar, and literary devices delivered a thoughtfully curated selection of books. The website product page << https://store.bravewriter.com/products/arrow >> has an example of the workbooks that support the reading. We have used these programs for the previous 2 school years. They are marvelous.

Basic Communication Skill Mathematics: Pre-Algebra: whole numbers; integers; fractions; decimals; algebraic thinking; ratio, proportion, & percent; geometry; measurement; probability & statistics. We use Mathhelp.com for math study.

English, American and other Literature: The books we are reading this year are a part of the Brave Writer Arrow, and are piggy-backed with our Basic Communication Skills curriculum.

This year's books are:

• Amari and the Night Brothers (B. B. Alston) *note to say we are already almost through this first read and arrow and I am once again reminded how amazing this program is. This is our 3rd year using the arrows, and while he is right on the cusp of the next level of books and guides, I am pleased that he wants to stay at this level for one more year. These book selections are just sooooo thoughtfully curated and I really savor the time we get to spend reading aloud together. Lifetime memories in these moments!

• Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories (Leon Garfield)

• Before the Ever After (Jacqueline Woodson)

• Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids (edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith)

• The Lion of Mars (Jennifer L. Holm)

• Front Desk (Kelly Yang)

• Becoming Muhammad Ali (James Patterson & Kwame Alexander)

• The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden (Karina Yan Glaser)

• Show Me a Sign (Ann Clare LeZotte)

• Midsummer’s Mayhem (Rajani LaRocca)

Natural Sciences: Eider is taking seventh-grade science at Peoples Academy Middle Level this year. I believe that they are studying physical science.

I am also hoping that he will be participating in Earth Walk's Village School again this year if their programs are up and running.

Physical Education: Fall Soccer, Mountain Biking, Winter Nordic Skiing, Spring Lacrosse.

Comprehensive Health Education: We plan on having continued relevant and/or topical conversations around growth and development, autonomy and agency, consent, and emotional security. We have been resourcing the book: It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, Gender, and Sexual Health by Harris and Emberley.

Eider has also really gotten into food and cooking and we support and encourage him as he continues to explore this interest.

Fine Arts: Violin. Weekly private lessons with Jess Zehngut in the Suzuki Pedagogy. He will play in the Green Mountain Youth Orchestra when they begin again in January. Through the fall he will play with a youth strings group in Waterbury once a week under the instruction of Annabel Moynihan.

One of the expos that he will be taking at Peoples Academy Middle Level is art. (More specifically, the class is divided into three components throughout the year: visual art, tech and design, and Spanish.)

Citizenship, History, and government in Vermont and the United States: We have done a good amount of US government study as well as Vermont History in the past 2 years. Eider has a very keen interest in World History, European History in particular, as well as the way geography changes through time as nations shift and change. We are planning to use the OER Project's World History: 1750 to the Present (https://www.oerproject.com/1750-to-Present), as a springboard for exploration and study this year. We will supplement this with various History videos from Eider's favorite history youtube channel: Armchair Historian as well as podcasts such as What You Missed in History Class.

* all of this is as of yet much the plan. However, we have opted to not use the OER History program and are instead using Oak Meadows seventh grade curriculum for World History. I have never used anything from Oak Meadow before and quite honestly whole curriculums have seldom if ever worked for us in the past. Having previewed a good amount of this one though, I do feel cautiously optimistic. We shall see!

Hey y’all, thanks for reading. I imagine you only did if it was of interest to you in some way. And if not, no worries. It’s fine. But I would love to hear other homeschool fams pipe in with something about your plan for the year that you are excited about. I want to hear! Let me know!

xxx,m

two

Yesterday was Wilfred’s second birthday and despite not doing much in the way of celebrating - we are opting to wait until we are all 5 together again for the proper birthday festivities- we had a near perfect day with our littlest. We hiked a new trail, we picked berries and Freddy ate them, we found a perfect swimming pond, we napped, we made and ate blueberry pie, we sang. It really could not have been a finer day.

Summer is at its apex right now. Everything is at the height of its fullness: the heat and humidity are ON, which I for one adore; the days have a long and stretched out feeling almost like a pause in time which is simply excellent; and everyone seems to be in good cheer and heart-full and for all of these things and more, I am thankful. This might just be the very best moment of the year and what a fine time to have a birthday indeed.

Some of these quite right feelings must be in part due to the step away that I have taken from social media for the month. I have put down IG and it is such a breath of fresh air that at this moment I would love to never pick it up again. I am only 9 days in and the spaciousness I feel in my mind and in my days is just the best. I feel present and able and undistracted. I feel inspired and calm at the same time. The anxiety that I shared about in my last post here has faded into a lesson learned and I have room inside of myself to create something new for what feels like the first time in a long while. I feel settled and relatively satisfied.

I probably will pick it up again at the end of the month. It is certainly an effective way to work my work; but I am hesitant to sign back in and will most likely hatch some kind of user agreement with myself before making the journey back. I want a schedule and better boundaries. I want to keep all of this room that has opened up inside of me alive and flowing. I want to knit and write and read and swim and hike and eat and be with myself and my kids more. I want to respect my time. So, ya know. Some considerations and general regrouping as I gather myself up out of the hole that I stumbled in to.

So that is all. Here are a few pics from our day with Wilfie yesterday. Oh yes, and this fabulous piece by David Whyte called Hiding that my gal Liz shared with me at the onset of the IG break. Sums it up quite nicely. Thank Liz. You the best.

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HIDING

Hiding is a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light. Even hiding the truth from ourselves can be a way to come to what we need in our own necessary time. Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose, the snow bound internal pulse of the hibernating bear. Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother’s womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world; to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.

Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence, as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often in ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named. We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with too easily articulated ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.

Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others, especially in the enclosing world of oppressive secret government and private entities, attempting to name us, to anticipate us, to leave us with no place to hide and grow in ways unmanaged by a creeping necessity for absolute naming, absolute tracking and absolute control. Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about our selves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed. Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control. Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.

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messing up

From where we are, I can see the sun push up above the watery eastern horizon a few minutes after 5 am. By six or so, I am usually out on the deck with Wilfred, drinking coffee and watching lobster traps be hauled up by the fisherfolk out off the shoreline. I let my hands fly through as many rows as my charges will allow me to get in while admiring what an excellent coastal canine Tuti has turned out to be. She hunts for the gulls abandoned crab legs down on the rocks and carries them up to the deck where she carefully sucks out any of the remaining meat. It is incredible. Equal parts gross and mesmerizing.

We have mostly been waking up early since around the start of summer when Wilfred gave up sleeping in his blackout tent. He was feeling closed in and a little too separate and ready for a wider more light variable view. I was sad to give up the tent and the additional hour or two of sleep, but he is changing and growing. As are we all this summer.

This summer has in many ways been both quiet and chaotic. I have felt some stirrings of anxiety that have been mostly absent since a brief bout during Wilfred’s infancy and almost entirely non-existent for a good number of years before that. Same old story I suppose in that I have let some of my personal care practices lag over the last few months; my writing practice is intermittent and interrupted at best and with the variability of the summer schedule my meditation practice has been far from daily. I have also felt a massive dip in my typical positive self-regard, which is generally a steady source of easy calm with me.

I took a few risks early in the season that set me off in general. Most are worth it but some I regret and came with some serious blunders on my end and I am no fan of fumbling or of the guilt and shame that often accompany my missteps. I bit off a big chunk when I committed to putting together a retreat in Costa Rica next spring and as much as I am pumped and excited for the adventure, I had to put a hefty deposit down which meant carrying a balance on my personal credit card which I never do anymore and it stirs up all of my childish feelings around being out of control with finances. It triggers a predictable tendency toward financial recklessness. And not in a fun way.

In my fear and overwhelm, I lifted the description for my retreat from a good friend of mine who has been generously holding my hand as I figure out what the hell I am doing. I didn’t think twice about it which is so crazy to think about now, that it didn’t even occur to me in the moment that I was out of line. When she realized what I had done she was of course completely offended and felt taken advantage of, which really, she was. She had put the time and effort into designing something and I just nabbed it. Sitting with it after the fact I was utterly stunned by what I had done and had to spend some time really tracing my actions back. And it is so weird because I can totally see the source- in Beautycounter we share copy and design and all the rest all the time and it totally makes sense. In yoga- not so much. And I got my wires crossed. I feel like shit about the whole thing and hopefully, I have made it right. I don’t know. I am still as sensitive as ever it appears and take my fuck ups harder than I wish I did. But I guess that is life and regret. It just freaking is and I get to live with it and keep on trying to both own it and do better. It sucked and I feel like crap about it and I hope I am forgiven by my friend if not myself. Maybe later by myself. Maybe once my balance has been paid off and my retreat is filled and flowing.

Anyhow. It feels like more of a shit show than it probably is. But it sets off anxiety in me to be sure. I am not a stranger to having muck on my face but it never gets any easier even so. I am super thankful for Chris’s good mentorship around clear communication when you mess up, owning your shit, and making amends, and all the rest. He is the very best and I am lucky to get to lean on him so hard.

The trip back to Wisconsin at the end of June was also provocative. It was busy and full and really everything I could have hoped it to be. But it has left me feeling lonely and an absence of community in my day to day. Something that I have been slow to cultivate for myself in VT. For all of the obvious reasons. And for whatever additional reason, being on Islesford is sort of like pouring some salt into that particular wound right now. My loneliness feels a little louder than it has for a while. I am unsettled. And when I do sit to meditate I am confronted with a sense of resistance that is hard to find the origin of. It feels opaque and long of reach. But I am working to sit with it. Let it be as opposed to pushing it back or down or out. In spite of it all, I trust its passage.

Wilfred and Eider and I are headed off-island today. Eider needs to get a PCR test before the start of camp on Sunday. He will be there for a full three weeks. And for my forever homebody and best pal, this is it’s own big deal and his anxiety is also in a heightened state as he tries at once to feel his feelings and not freak out. And it is a real mix. I know some parents that would be like: well if he’s not ready, why push it? And the thing is for my little double Pisces with a side of Cancer, his emotive, super-sensitive self might very well never feel ready. And yet, as best I can discern as his mama, he indeed is ready and his wings have a big itch to unfurl and stretch beyond the confines of home and family.

It is a tough one though and he is right in the midst of it. The pulse between wanting to stay small and secure, held by his folks and his home, contrasted with all of the burgeoning desires of his own growing autonomy. I think camp will be great for that. Especially a camp with some sweet and tender Quaker values like the Farm + Wilderness composite camps. I feel good about it. More good than anxious actually. Even though it tugs at my mama heart and I am going to miss this kid more than anything. He’s got it. And I only hope he knows that I’ve got him. Even while he’s off and out in the big wide world. I’ve got him.

That is the mix of things this summer I suppose. A lot of the big and the small. In metaphor and in form. On the island these last few weeks, I have seldom seen my big kids. They have been off having their own adventures with friends and on boats and just generally off in the whole big rich wonderful experience that is Islesford in the summer. It is awesome and I am thrilled for them but I also would not be being entirely honest if I didn’t admit how envious I am of them as well this summer. While they traipse about the island, I am tethered to my small charge. Keeping him safe and entertained and napped and all the rest. We have been more often than not going on walks and picking up rocks and finding the other island toddlers and their parents on the Sand Beach in the late afternoons for digging and wading and chit chat. It is so fun. The very best. And I still feel the missing of my bigs and their friends and hearing about what they are up to and maybe getting up to a little bit of it with them myself. Oh well. Life is complicated. I love what is and I still miss what isn’t and on it goes I suppose for all of my living days. Hopefully, I will get a sail in with Maple before we leave her here and head back to Vermont next month. That would be great. The very best.

Now, off to the day. I have a walk to go on with my buddy and our wee rangey mutt. And it too is the very best. Thanks as ever for reading. Just making a practice of owning my shit and all the rest. Fessing up to my foibles of which there are many. All love.

xxx,m

thresh

This morning I took all of the kids down the hill to Montpelier. For some errands, but mostly for a moment all together before this summer is suddenly gone and I am wondering where it went and who I even am anymore. We made the trip because it has been too cold for the beach all week and also because we wanted to pick up a jumbo birthday gift for Maple and Eider to give to Wilfred while we are in Maine. It was his first time roaming around a bonafide toy store and it was excellent. The bigs won’t be here with us on his actual birthday next month, which I am seeing now may be a persistent reality and probably the downside to having a summer birthday, which is otherwise ideal in every way.

All week long I have been intermittently running around making sure Maple has what she needs for not 3 but 6 weeks on Islesford and gathering all of the necessaries for Eider’s 3 weeks at sleep away camp directly on the heels of 2 weeks in Maine. Oh yeah and getting all of Eider’s seventh-grade curricula together for the state of Vermont’s home study department to give a stamp of approval to before the end of the month. Not to mention but oh hey I will anyway Wilfred is still smack dab in the middle of a brutal sleep regression that is leaving me way too tired for any of it. I would love a moment to process our recent trip to Wisconsin - it was A LOT- and also a minute to sit with this massive transition into new territory that we are entering with the kids this summer. But I am facilitating a nap. And bedtime forever. And another nap. And trying to keep my cool. And wanting to cry. And wanting to rest. And wanting to just read a book or write or knit but no not yet. That is what Maine is for. Just. Gotta. Get. There.

If anything, Wisconsin revealed where each of us is in relation to our next becoming. Some of us are more through the process than others, and some of us squarely in the liminal expanses of the in-between. I am more clear in my role of helping the kids usher themselves through, and yet, I am still searching myself where best to land and who best to be in this new world that from every estimation I was rocketed toward sometime near the end of 2018. I think that Maple has landed solidly into her next iteration. She is clear and rooted and bright in a way that both inspires me and gives me hope. It wasn’t a smooth or albeit easy transition for her to be sure, but she is through it now and it is a relief but even more than that fuels some of the trust that I have felt a little lacking in lately in terms of resilience and rebound and personal/familial reclamation. Eider, I think is still looking for authentic purchase in his new terrain. He has been met with obstacles at most turns and even so is still in good spirits and a joy to know. But still, none of it has been easy and when I lay awake at night it is one of the things I stress over for sure.

I am in the mental/emotional fatigue and stress which I think maybe somewhat unique to folks with the big age gap constellation; exhausted in different and sometimes opposing ways in different parts of my body/mind and so unsure of what I even know to be true about an age or a stage or whatever. My sister texted me yesterday saying that her friend was looking for some tips or tricks to get her toddler to wear a mask, and saw Wilfs wearing one and was like: how did your sis get that to happen? And I was like: Dumb luck. Cuz like for real I can’t get toddlers (or tweens or teens) to do anything. Which feels so fucking true. Right now but maybe always too.

So, maybe this is a really hollow and winding public share but basically, this is where I process and that is what I am trying to do here and if for some crazy reason it helps you in any way then god bless.

Yah ok gave this a sit and moved my body cuz that’s how I do and… Oh! Wait! I can’t leave it on that note! And here is why: I for sure do not want to come off as “needing a break from...” Sure. I need a break. But really a break with. A break within. I am good at all of the self-care stuff. For real. I lean there easy enough and sometimes that is simply not enough. I need me with me and then I can be me with them. I need prayer and patience so that I can hang in the unknown and the uncertain and the unresolved with the grace that my family depends on. I have got this. And at the same time I am hungry for some clarity and some ease even when I know that eventually, it will follow. Even when I feel more ready than perhaps I am and the unfolding and the revelation are all happening at their own rate and in their own time and I am right here. Ready and tired and waiting and sad and excited and awestruck and all the rest. I am here.

(the name of this post, thresh, is inspired by a recent episode of This Jungian Life about thresholds. Check it out.)

MA

I feel like I have been nudging up closer to something lately. Whatever the piece is that it is all about. The thing that is holding all of this in orbit all these years. And whatever wisdom or insight it is that comes with the stacked lessons of all the years.

A bunch of things have been lining up sweetly as of late. Reigniting and reaffirming an inner resonance that I think I may sometimes forget or neglect or question into the periphery. I have met a couple of mothers that I feel some kinship with recently, beyond the surface connection of kids and family. Into the deeper terrain of mothering as the modality for the great unlocking of our own, as well as our shared, humanity. One woman shared some Jungian resources and influences with me and I had to laugh when they were shared again by another influence only days later. That is how it goes I suppose. What resonates, simply does. And builds its own whole vibrational infrastructure that magnetizes or repels. Or is neutral. Maybe most often is neutral actually. Which feels like dreamless sleep. Dull and typical and set on cruise.

Jungian analysis has been a particular lens of influence for many years. I have shared that here time and again I am sure. Women and archetypes and the unfurling and becoming of ourselves… But more recently I have been clued into some particular new writings on Motherhood considered through the Jungian perspective and it feels holy and fundamental all at once. Like the baseline to the forever story I have been weaving and telling in my most central heart fire.

I chatted with an old friend of mine the other day. She is one of my life’s big teachers in the ALL CAPS sense, irreverent and sacred and brave and so tender all at once. I have learned a lot from her. And even though I had been mothering for half a decade or so before she crossed over into the world of the MA, I think we are perhaps more similar to one another in our approach and our experience of mothering than most other mothers I have yet to meet and know. She and I let our children devour us. We let them do with us as they will. And we, for the most part, love it. We say things like Yes and More and Come Closer and I Will and I Do and I Am Yours and on and on. And it doesn’t make us less or compromised or hollow. It makes us sublime.

Now before I get any push back about boundaries and respect or whatever it will be, from my own swlf or anyone else, I want to be clear that I am not saying we don’t have those things. Some more than others and sometimes more than others. Sure. It is just that the tone of it feels different to me. The sacrifice and the declaration both of some different ilk than what I think I am encountering through the narrative retelling of other mothers. And what I think is maybe different is this: she and I, my old friend and me, we have let the wild animal of our womanhood loose with our children. We have exposed them to the raw righteousness of our largess and it is something that our kids feel both protected by and in awe of. And sure, when they are older perhaps a tidge annoyed by, but in a way that also makes them weirdly proud. It is unique in that it is so essential. A big mama paradox. More of me is more of me is more of me and on and on like that.

This longtime friend and soul mama on the path also has some children that didn’t stay in their bodies. Maybe that is part of why we are the way we are. Walking the shadowlands of motherhood makes you something different. But also something that, in the end, isn’t separate from any mother anywhere. We all know it in the end. Or at particular endpoints. Perhaps we don’t all choose to light that darkness up, but it is there nonetheless. As real and huge and whole as any one of us on our very best day of living.

So, we connect well you could say. I got to know her right on the heels of the loss of her first child and she was so real and raw and revealed and I knew right away that she had it going on. Living in the bright impact of the pain of parenting. And now, over 10 years later, I still relate to her attitude and approach to parenting. Put it all out on the line. Why wouldn’t we?

After talking for almost an hour, she said: hey megs, while I’ve got you here, I need to ask what you think about something- in that special way that we often save the meat of the conversation til the very end- what would you think if I had another kid? I mean, I am 42. To which of course I said: yeah you are asking the worst possible person. The only answer in my opinion is yes. If you feel it, why not at least try. I mean, thank god that Chris had a vasectomy at the start of the pandemic because I would have 100% been like, hey, why not? what’s to lose? let’s go for another! Which is ridiculous and not a big desire really. I no longer feel someone knocking, pressing, waiting, to be let through like I did with Wilfred for always until he finally made it home to me. But if you feel someone waiting… then I am all for trying. All for it. At whatever age, in whatever form. That shit is undeniable in my opinion and one better listen up, cuz otherwise the shadow mother may be pressed too hard.

All of this said even from deep in the trenches of an extended breastfeeding endurance event. We are living regression to regression right now: waking up over and over in the night to nurse, refusing bedtime from anyone but mama, and sometimes care from anyone else as well. It is an event! I am at that stage in nursing well past the hey day of the first year where I felt lean and strong and vital and well into the end of the second year where my whole body feels like goo and anything vital in the marrow of me has long since been sucked clean. Yet even so. I persist.

Because, why make a fuss? One day it’ll end just like that and the past will be just that. Past. No child nurses forever. But it may be the case that Wilfred nurses for less than the other Newlin babes and is made to wean around 2 or so. I am not sure I have another year in me. Eider was done at 3.5. Maple at just before 4. I can’t imagine that right now.

My friend said that she weaned her oldest when he was about two and half. He had a breast in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other and she was like yeah we are probably good. We can be done. Lol. It is so classic. A certain kind of toddler mayhem that is so perfectly relatable. It is mayhem. The other day someone in my fam left the chicken gate open and Wilfred wandered down there to hang with the girls. When I found him, he had smashed an egg on top of their waterer and was leaning onto it licking up the yoke. See! He’s a big kid now! Just kidding. He’s my bb and he can probably nurse forevs.

Anyway. All of it, always and forever, spins around the theme and the image and the archetype of The Mother. I mean, of course. What else? All of this attraction to a mood of nostalgia and a longing to re-member certain moments. Crystalize them in my being. They are close to the truth. But maybe not quite.

I think the real story may be more closely a longing for the whole experience. Not the good mother but the mother who lives both in the light and the shadow. The mother who sees it for what it is, but also the glittering sublime expression of the mundane. The wild mother. The one who was born of bone and prayer and is equally ready to hold and carry the weight of all the world’s babies and also build the pyre and feed it with the marrow of time.

I am getting closer to her. To the real truth telling of the mother who is all stages in the cycle. Like that. The whole universe inside the MA.

ch ch ch ch

Something about change? Some kind of constant? As is often if not always the case, I find myself reflecting on the cycles and the seasons. Where I am in them and how the overlay of the multiple phases and stages intersect, interweave, and integrate.

Soooo much feels like it’s changing right now. I imagine that that must be how it feels for so many folks after so much uncertainty, followed by so much sameness, followed by so much reorienting; each having become part and parcel of the world for the last many months. And as much as I feel myself to be at a particular point within my own evolution trajectory, I am also so deeply interconnected in those of the community of my family that it can be hard to discern what part of the cycle I am in. Is this an end? A beginning? Am I still in the middle of something? Or is it really, always and forever, the interwoven play of a multiplicity of stories, each different, none separate.

This past week or so has been mostly just staying upright and keeping on with whatever is next. Wilfred has been in a bit of a sleep regression I think perhaps triggered by some developmental leaps, both in his own being and in the fabric of his daily life, that have him feeling very clingy and mama-centered in a way that is not so typical- for any of our kids ever really. But Wilfred is shy. Maple was observant yet independent. She wanted to assess a situation before establishing her place within it. Eider has always been full steam ahead. He has almost always simply jumped right in, figuring out the who and the what entirely on the fly. Wilfred is reminding me and teaching me that all children are their own and that he needs more time and more holding before he can set his feet down into the mix. Maybe it is a result of the quiet and calm of being a Covid babe or maybe it is simply a part of who he is and I am learning to hold space for that. I think maybe I was shy? I certainly wouldn’t call myself or any of the rest of us shy today. But we have space to learn how this is with our littlest.

Anyhow, all of this was perhaps exacerbated by our recent trip to Maine which involved not only different places and people but also an unfamiliar sleep situation coupled with some freezing temps that brought him into my bed and onto my breast in a way that he has not been since he was brand new. The whole thing has all of us sleeping hardly at all and me feeling a lot like a human pacifier which really becomes a dark terrain for me before too long. We have been circling the conversation of night weaning, like forever, and I keep dragging my feet and thinking that I can manage as is knowing full well that I cannot. But… but I am so tender about ending something that we have had since the very beginning, a major chapter in our origin story with one another. It is a severing of sorts and I am reluctant to make it. With Maple, it was hard and complicated like this too, but I knew that I would have another after her. With Eider, nursing was almost always uncomplicated and easy and it really just eventually and naturally faded to grey with little effort on my end. I was hoping for something like that now as well. Oh well. No child is quite the same as the next. As it should be. Anyhow, I am in a liminal space around the whole thing. Not wanting it to stay the same, not wanting to let it go. Feels like the central path of the mama for sure.

All the while… big happenings, and yet oh-so-natural unfoldings are lining up for Maple and Eider this summer. Eider was just accepted off the waitlist for a 3-week summer session at Farm and Wilderness in Southern Vermont. We just firmed up scholarship and financing last night and I am so excited for him I can barely stand it. I also am beside myself on how the hell I am going to make it 3 weeks without my guy. I imagine there will be some rough patches for him as well but good lord that kid deserves some time away from being my biggest helper and near-constant companion as well as the opportunity to be mentored and supported and course-corrected by folks beyond just Chris and myself. I am not a great letter writer but I aim to become the very best one this summer. Like, the BEST.

Maple too is set for a whole new grand experience beyond our nest this summer. She is spending 6 whole weeks on Islesford. Three with us when we are there in July, but then she is staying on in the home of a lifelong pal of hers for another 3 weeks. If all lines up as she hopes, she’ll be working both a job and an internship and just really stepping into the next phase of independence in such a massive way. And, I’ll tell you what, she is not missing a beat. Not a pause or backward glance anywhere to be seen. This girl is READY. Me? ha ha ha ha not so much. I mean, yes and no. She has adventures to be had that certainly do not include me and I am simultaneously thrilled for her and also a little bit broken on what feels like the back end of in-home child-rearing with my eldest.

All told, they will both be away from me (and Chris and Wilfred lol) for 3 weeks, which is a full 2 weeks longer than ever before. And strangely enough, I have only spent the stretch of a week away from them a couple of times in the last near-decade. The year that they were six and three, I was gone every 6 weeks for an entire week for an entire year while I was participating in a teacher training with D and Christina down in Tucson. It was a lot, and at the same time completely fine at the time. So fine in fact that in all of this time since then I have reflected on how that really was the window and there has never been another time that it could have possibly worked again in quite that way. And maybe because of them, but most likely because of me. It was easy-ish to leave six-year-old Moo and three-year-old Eider in a way that I cannot quite imagine at another time and which I certainly don’t imagine any time in the even remotely near future with Wilfred.

Yes, every child is different. And yes, everything changes. But one sure constant is that underneath whatever yesterday’s or today’s struggle is, no matter where we are within the overlay of however many cycles we are each individually and collectively a part of, I want to be still enough inside the center of the Big Picture that I am able to keep choosing responses that inform and encourage our growth as a family and as five people. Each our own. Each united relationally. Each evolving needs and desires and capacities. So, yep yep, it is fucking hard and heart-breaking. And all of it a letting go. Even on the front end. Can you see that from this telling? The way I am being asked to live into the opposites at the same time. Holding one close, maybe closer than is comfortable, while at the same time swinging the door open so that the others can begin to range into ever-expanding fields.

Gah. So that is the story. So much is up. So much is coming. Within it, I am trying to stay somewhat centered in what stays the same. Playing, writing, creating, back bending… with maybe the one new skill this summer in the form of becoming the most amazing letter writer and care package sender I can possibly be.

some haps

MANY YOGA

Next Week // Next Month // Next Year

Whelp! I’ve got a few casual updates that I want to be putting on anyone’s radar who is interested, spanning out from here and now across ever expanding reaches of time and space. 

1. First things first: I am going to offer another weekly yoga practice in June, for an abreviated 3 weeks versus 4. It will be scaled in price to $27 for all 3 classes. Running June 8- June 22. These classes are LIVE + Recorded from my basement at 7pm eastern running roughly 60 minutes. I send out the recording within 24 hours. They are a hoot and I have loved offering them. I will be taking a break from them in July while we are on Islesford, so you know.

2. I am, with the help of someone far wiser and more organized than myself, putting a subscription together to launch by the end of June. These will be all of my recorded classes plus more added regularly. I am not sure on pricing yet, but it will be accesible. And hopefully, really appealing and incredibly awesome. And funny. Hopefully funny.

3. I am for sure going to offer one group practice- live and in-person << completed vaccinations required >> when the kiddos and I are back in Wisconsin at the end of June. Nothing firm as of yet, but thinking 2 hour practice that Sunday the 27th hopefully at the Circus Space in Mazomanie. Suggested D on that of 20 bonez.

4. These 2 little Newlin Rugrats in this pic/vid with me are heading to Costa Rica next April for a family vacation (with M + C joining us for a second week of r+r) but first we are going to offer a super casual yoga retreat in Nosara at a beautiful spot called Nalu. I am still working out pricing, but the dates are April 16-23 << yes, that’s Easter weekend >> and space is pretty limited. I will have all of the details in the next week or so and then we can start chatting deposits to save your space.

That’s all for now! Keep practicing and meditating and washing your face + hands and getting outside or seldom coming inside. High Fives and Hugs. xxx,m

nothing new: mostly

A friend of mine texted me earlier this week with a short “You should (please) provide an Instagram update with how the nothing new til 2022 is going! Or tell me. I’m curious.” After reading this, my first impulse was along the lines of: oh crap! I did make a big deal about that into the vacuum of social media back in the beginning of the year and looks like people may actually remember that I did and now I’m found out! Shit! But then I calmed myself for a moment and considered the process that I actually am in with the whole thing - which is not nothing and probably actually quite worthwhile within the lens of holding my own self accountable and actively engaging what I set out to do with relative transparency.

So here it is. First, I have to say that it wasn’t all that long before the detox of the Holiday Spending Snowball that I work so hard to avoid every year and somehow get just as sucked into every single time had loosened its hold on me and I was back scrolling through accounts of independent makers and designers and lusting after their goods in classic Meg fashion. So there is that. Maybe I just needed a detox and not to take such a bold and faultingly firm stand. Oh well. I am a work in progress.

I have, however, mostly, if not entirely, stayed close to the aim of Nothing New til 2022. With a few exceptions and I will share those here. I have been slow and deliberate with all of my purchases in a way that is both familiar yet also deeper and with firmer roots. Relatively early in the year, I realized that I needed a few pairs of undies other than my big ‘ol Shop Arqs which I love but which are also sometimes too hot for me and I had none. So I ordered some easy organic cotton undies from PACT for myself and Maple. I also recently took a friend of mine up on her Patagonia discount and picked up a xc ski jacket for next year along with some swim trunks for Eider. We recently made a summer shoe resupply which I dragged my feet on (bahahaha) thinking that I might have some luck finding a pair or two of gently used Saltwater sandals, but with no luck.

Save a couple of swimsuits for Wilfred, all of the kids’ clothes that we have purchased this year have been from Thread Up or Poshmark, which is essentially what I was doing before and am happily continuing now. Chris ordered a beautiful handmade linen nightgown for me for Mother’s Day and as a consummate nightie wearer, I am happy to have one that will last my many, many wears for a long time to come. It feels like such a treasure.

So, it has been imperfect and yet highly worthwhile and informative. I have never been much of an impulse shopper but I have from time to time spent money on something and then regretted it, and it has been lovely to be free of that this year. I am sitting with my wants in a new way and actually finding great enjoyment and satisfaction by sharing what I have an eye on with one friend, in particular, gaming it out, talking shape, talking fit, talking color, etc. That has been very fun. She also happens to be my closest knitting pal so indulging in yarn and patterns and the delight of the process has also been holding a great deal of my attention in terms of “the new.”

Another big takeaway at this moment is how much I really do love slow fashion and the whole process of creating lasting and meaningful functional/wearable art. I am super into it maybe more than ever and if someone came up to me tomorrow and was like hey meg let’s start this small clothing company I would most likely say yes… But I digress.

Oh yeah! I did get some shirts made for MANY YOGA and that was fun and entertaining. If you watch any of the copious yoga videos that I post or take any of my classes you may have noticed that there are 4 shirts in my rotation now versus 2. You’re welcome.

OK, that’s it for now! Informative? Disappointing? LMK. I am a Sagittarius after all and highly changeable and subject to lots of inspiring whims so if this isn’t the hard fast commitment you were hoping for from me, my apologies. I am into paying attention to where the energy is flowing and keeping things in alignment, even as that varies from season to season. My relationship with the shiny new thing feels pretty well in check now, even with the occasional mindfully made purchase. I am utilizing The Pause to good effect at this moment in time. I will do my best to share another update or two here as the year continues to unfold.

xxx,m

12-15

* I posted this originally over on IG. Landing it here as well as I keep in mind the sane folks who abstaining from the socials. There are a ton of great comments on the post over on the gram though… so do check it out if you like.

I am not anti-vax. I am, however, pro thinking things through, doing good and diverse and credible research, and checking the status quo. All 3 of my kids are, or have been, on a delayed vaccination schedule. It is what has felt right to me as their parent. 

In fact, I am in general a ‘you do you’ sort of a person. 

But not right now. Not in this instance. 

Never in my life has there been such a clear moment where prioritizing the whole and choosing public health over personal preferences has been such a clear solution toward managing an unmitigated risk. 

It is not time for “wait and see”. It is not time for “alternative treatments”. Maybe later- in fact, I am all for a diverse way of managing COVID once we are no longer in crisis as a global community. 

But frankly, if you are in the camp of wait and see or some alternative, I will judge you. I will most likely feel a mix of anger and frustration and grief and loss at what I perceive to be your lack of intelligence, compassion, and/or basic care for the human community of which you are apart. I will not want to hang out with you or connect much in general. You do you, sure, but that will be me doing me. That is not to say that I think the choice is easy or straightforward, but it is obvious. Even when it stirs up some big feelings. Those feelings are no reason for you to center yourself above another. Not at this moment. Maybe not ever. 

So, Maple and Eider are scheduled for their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine next Wednesday. I am so happy for them. And I am so happy to think of all of the ways that we can each take comfort in knowing that we are doing our part to end the pandemic and continue to honor human life. And I am so so so very happy to visit with all of our vaccinated friends and family in the now oh-so-near future.

BLOOD

Six years ago I miscarried my 4th pregnancy. It was equal parts mercy and gore and only 10 months on the heels of deciding not to continue with my 3rd for fear that it would sever my already tender connection to my family. But whether loss comes by choice or chance, losing is still losing, and what you are left with in both instances is everything that you had before, just no baby, which was perhaps the only pure and easy part to begin with. 

What my 4th pregnancy was teaching me was that I could follow my heart even when it clashed with its surroundings. I learned that my trust in love was bigger than my fear of rejection. I learned everything that I wasn’t strong enough to hold during my third when I was so scared of not being trusted by others that I forgot how to trust myself. 

Miscarriage is different for everyone, so I have heard once I began to ask. Before asking there was really only silence. If you have lost a baby this way, you know. No one talks about the secret pain of a lonely mini labor that leads to a mini birth that is really a mini death. Small in stature alone. I had heard that sometimes it was just a blip, something that happened on the toilet before even being sure that there was something to lose. And that other times it was a bloody emergency that left unsupported was full of peril and risk. How odd in a way, because unsupported nonetheless. 

I was the latter. So relieved to finally be moving through the motions of releasing what I already knew had stopped its living. I was ready to not hold on and also to find out what letting go could mean to me now. It was slow. So slow. Spotting for days. Followed by cramps on a crescendo of intensity over the course of a day and into the night until it was gone. Pushed from me in one big heave of rough and rugged longing. Except that it wasn’t gone. Not the blood anyway. My blood grew and grew and grew until I was dropping big grapefruit-sized blobs on the bathroom floor and my head was swimming and spinning and I was shaking Chris awake to tell him that I think we needed to go. 

The kids were at gran’s which was a gift we hadn’t understood the magnitude of when we had asked for a few days at home alone, but the hospital was still almost an hour away and Chris was so scared the whole drive squeezing my leg and asking me to stay awake. I sat still as stone, slightly reclined and trying to keep all of the blood inside of me that for hours I had been trying to press loose. 

The hospital was fine. Cold, so cold, yet with the care and comfort that we both needed. When it was all over and the d+c had cleared out the little tiny pieces of placenta that my uterus was so tired of squeezing and the anesthesiologist had treated me just right, we lay in a hospital bed trading off the calf massagers squeeze of our legs and feeling peace and peace and peace and so very empty.

It was a bright sunny spring morning, Cinco De Mayo. We left and I sat in the car parked next to the lake while Chris ran to get us creamy coffees and I called my mom to ask her to bring the kids home. They were 9 and 6. Little and not little. And once they were home, we got on with it I suppose. Imperfectly. Whole in a way that carries its own scars.

I worked on those scars for years in the care of a friend and acupuncturist who shared her plant wisdom to help me rid my tissues of the issues. It was hard. And it was also so regular. I flip-flopped over the years to every extreme and all points in between always considering and reconsidering what the marriage of satisfaction and gratitude and loss and longing could be inside of me. And obviously, there is never a fixed point for feelings like this to land and I am learning that that may be the function of forgiveness. 

My blood came back quick on the heels of both of my losses. Within 3 weeks, I was bleeding again and trying to understand how I could have possibly ovulated between then and now. How could that even be a possibility? But my blood came back, as if to say: keep going. life keeps going and you are so much stronger than you know. and there is more in store for you yet.

I am lucky because my baby arrived in spite of my regret and my betrayal and my grief. After years of full-court negotiations between my ears, but still, eventually he came. Which is an easy and obvious resolution that lessens the grip of so much of what came before. Sometimes I try to superimpose Wilfred’s face and being in my mind’s eye memory of the feeling of my other two. Initially, it works and everything is abated but if I loosen my hold in any way the image slips and he is not them at all and they are not him. Never were and never could be which is its own kind of rightness now. 

So every Spring now is marked by this memory of a long Season of Loss and Longing. And each spring I am remembering to make space in my heart for that which I cannot hold in my arms and reminding myself that I have never been and will never be any One Way. Never clean, never neat, never easily understandable. And yet something that I can love. And forgive again.

every weekend

Every weekend for most of this year so far I have been practicing once or twice with Christina and some other long-time practitioners. It is a high point in my week no doubt. It is all of the connection and enjoyment of the long and drawn-out small group practices without any of the driving or negotiating of time or duty. In fact, I have a good napper for the time being - touch wood - and the whole long stretch of it falls neatly into that window. Such a nice fit. 

Anyhoo, there is chatting, as ever. And on this day Christina was reflecting on something that she had read or heard regarding the projection of online activity having blasted into it’s 10-year forecast during Covid. When pressed for reconfiguring our regular activities, we went online. But not as we had before. Before it was per our convenience and on-demand. During Covid, it became Live and Face to Face, in real Time as a way of making Connections through Space. And it shifted how we do things. From school, to meetings, to teaching,  to telemedicine, to grocery shopping, to practicing with friends. In real-time and with (mostly) minimal delays. And we realized that we could have been doing this all along but we weren’t. We are now. And while this has some very real drawbacks which I do not want to underplay and which I very much think should and can be well addressed, I think that it is mostly full of advantage and opportunity. As coverage and access improve in the coming years I think we will continue to see all sorts of growth and possibility in socially and ecologically healthy and conscious ways. 

A week or so ago I was chatting with the local middle school’s principal and he shared with me how much they learned this past year about how big and sweeping changes are actually possible because they were pressed into making them this past year, in many instances before being ‘ready’. One thing that he said was that while he understands that the administrators need to be in the building 5 days a week and some kids need to be there 5 days a week as well, many however do not. That thriving academically and socially has a much more varied appearance for children and when given the opportunity to work in a customized hybrid, and he was seeing the potential of that thrive.

And not just that. A varied schedule with broad stretches of academically unscheduled space, gives kids not only a chance to pursue in greater detail their personal interests, it also affords them a chance to REST. In the last two years, I have watched Maple through every iteration of schooling. From home education, to full-time middle schooler, to virtual high school (which, btw, was a complete flop for her. Why? Because it was not in real-time. The Vermont Virtual Academy for the most part hasn’t caught up with the future of online learning which is NOW and is Live and in Real-Time. No longer per your convenience and on-demand. But I digress…), to a hybrid model of high school where the kids are in 2 cohorts that meet in person 2 days per week and all together virtually for several meetings on a third day. It is in this last expression that Maple is doing her best. And I could see it working for Eider too. Shit, I could see it working for me as a tween or teen. I can certainly see it working for me now. There is so much more I can say on this and I imagine that it may be a slow drip of consideration into this space over time. 

It really feels good to hopefully be moving in a direction where we can conceive of a very real reality in which we meet the needs of the individual as well as the collective. Where we teach our children as well as ourselves that we have the power and the agency to craft our lives in ways that work for us from the very beginning. And create a world in which we can curate our time from the get-go and maybe bypass or grow beyond the standardized and the fixation of average. Seems like if there was ever a time in which we were primed to make some broad and sweeping changes, now is it. 

Anyhow. Thoughts from the mat on a Sunday. And so it goes.

phonezies...

I think that I have shared here before that one of the reasons that I often record my practice is so that I can’t fuck around with my phone. Sure, sometimes I will post a clip, but more often than not once I have reviewed it I’ll delete it. But it has been for me a mostly effective way of managing the chasm of distraction that my phone provides. Especially considering that the primary time that I am on my mat is while Wilfred is sleeping, so I am already feeling like are so many things that I should be tending: ie laundry, dishes, some semblance of cleaning my house, garden prep, working one of 3 businesses, or, oh yeah, hanging out with one of my big kids. 

It is typical for me to arrive on my mat to find myself a murky soup of distraction, obligation, and guilt and my propensity to multi-task gets way too easily sucked into the shit storm of my phone. This is even more pronounced on the days in which my practice does not capture my attention, which, I am just going to be honest, is somewhere between 75-95% of the time. Making a recording is my strategy for psychically handcuffing myself to my mat while I tap into the faith that the poses will work on me as much as I work on them. Which, to be super clear, is a faith that has been grown and was never given. As Christina Sell said sometime recently: asana practice “is an exploration and an experiment, not a guarantee”. Sometimes it captivates my interest, sometimes it really doesn’t, and yet I find that the repetition of simply putting myself in the way of the opportunity of experiencing something deeply, already greatly improves the odds of it happening at all.

This still/clip is from Monday’s BBB in which I was completely distracted and full of half-ass interest through and through and thought about closing it up and walking away more than a dozen times. And even though my mind was mostly offline still my body and the actions in my body were able to find me well enough in time and space to elicit a response and an opening, and after a while even reach into some new to me sensation so that by the end the whole thing could perhaps be summed up as 95% disinterest for 5% revelation. Which actually seems to me like a profound story of success.

Anything can be a tool, until it is not. And my phone is no exception. Oddly enough I can just as easily use it to presence myself as I can to skyrocket my attention into the ethers. And so it goes. The choice is still mine, if I am willing to see it.

dream

I am pretty much living my early childhood dreams these days. Not to mention my wooly baby knits dreams… I really do think that all of the ages are great, throughout childhood - and perhaps beyond (save 18-26). In many ways, it really does get better and better as personality and idiosyncrasy and intimacy unfold and deepen. Sure, some ages and stages are significantly harder and wildly more frustrating than others, but on the whole, I believe that we mostly all get better with age. And yet, zero to three is still my total wheelhouse, forever and for always.

I just love littles. I love newborns, I love babies, I love toddlers, I love little kids. Zero to three is all about wonder and discovery and curiosity. To me, there is no more clear expression of the magic of embodiment than these early years. And yes of course it is a lot. And in moments more exhausting than it feels like I can possibly bear. (however, I gotta say way less on this second go-round than it was when I was younger, which maybe just goes to show that, YES, we get better with age!) But there is nothing, in my experience that has offered me the lived and direct experience of embodied presence that hanging out with a small new person does. They have no other way. They are Here, Now. And this is it. And in those long and unending moments, I get to choose to be bored and impatient and daydream about everything I want my life to be. OR, I get to receive the lesson from my little charge and learn how to be here, and see with fresh eyes the splendor of the light or of the texture of the grasses, or feel for the first time the breeze on my big cheeks, and listen with new ears to the birdsong from up the hill. Every moment and every day I get to choose.

And I think perhaps because by some grace I have managed to center presence in our daily lives, it is accessible to my older kids too, and they choose to learn this great teaching from our little one as well. Not always, but often. In fact, I’d probably say, daily. They look on their baby brother with as much awe and wonder and joy as he looks on them and it is such an affirmation of the certainty that I felt that the age difference didn’t matter and if anything was this immense gift to all of us. The seeming distance between our kids gives Maple and Eider the opportunity to live in the light of fresh perspective, in the magic of new and raw discovery. And for two kids in the thick of the complexity and disillusionment of growing into young adulthood where everything is either all about the future or overly hung up on the past, I cannot imagine a greater gift. As much as I really try to keep the preaching over here super casual and somewhat open-ended, I gotta say… if you are feeding yourself a story about how you missed your window, or you’re too old, or the age gap is too big, or whatever your particular flavor of bullshit may be… set that story aside and follow your heart and tell that logically minded shit to shut the f up. Stay in the wonder a little while longer and keep the door open for that fresh new person to join you. If you know that’s what you want, stop second-guessing yourself and reshaping the narrative to make more sense and to please more people. That’s never going to really work.

Yeah ok, soapbox stint complete. Cuz I also need to remember the dream right now too. I have been thinking lately that I need to be wearing all of my hats all of the time and that is often leaving me only half here and that is exactly how I do not want to be. So I am reorienting myself to the dream that I am living that I longed for and that I crafted for myself. I do not want to miss a moment of it. And that is a hard ask when I feel worried that I am not getting the shit I need to be getting done, done. Nope nope nope. And while I am not interested in giving up any of the hats, I am way keener on letting them ebb and flow. I want to honor where I am at with a little more accuracy and be ok with setting something aside when it’s time. I want to be more like the moon. More like the tides. More like my own natural rhythms.

A few months ago one of my mentors presented me with the idea of designing my life to be in rhythm with my menses, and it has been slowly taking root in my awareness since. I have always been sensitive to my cycle, but this feels like taking it to a whole new level. Supporting me in honoring my own energy in a way that allows me to place my values and priorities and dreams at the very center. Giving when it is time to give but also taking when it is time for that. Doing and dreaming when my own energy dictates as opposed to overriding my system for the sake of “getting it done”. Maybe that is the very thing that is getting better with age. My ability to perceive the way in which my care for self is also an evolution, and again, I get to choose.

I am making these shifts. I have really been digging this podcast thanks to Rachel and may even enroll in a menstruation course to deepen my relationship even further. Who knows? If that feels spacious and supportive and like something that helps me continue to center my presence for and with me and my people, then, yes. If it is another tool in my kit for staying embodied and saying yes when my wooly little adventurer insists that the entire day be spent out of doors, then, well, of course.

reclaimation

Days are mostly the same as they have been for seemingly forever around here. Getting longer, yes, but the content is still in its day in day out interminability. On clear days the sunrise still shines pink on the mountain and reminds me of both the sweet simplicity and closeness of these days, but also of the long loneliness of a long and lonely year. The kids’ activities have been tentatively taking a few steps forward, often to be quickly followed by a few steps back as new cases pop up here and there. We were planning on being off to a swim meet today in White River Junction, but Stowe High School had to go remote again last week and so, we are home instead of sitting in a car all day and cheering our girl on via some hopeful Livestream. Chris just had a nice cry about it all over our waffles this morning. Good and tender papa.

I told my family this week that they better brace themselves for all of the storytimes/ kinder music/ and toddler tumbling that Wilfred and I are going to be hitting up once we get the green light. Maybe it is sooner than it feels, I think that Chris and I can register for vaccines on April 5… so, not long. And still forever. It’s so immense y’all. I know I don’t need to mention any of that to you. In it. All of us.

Here or there, now or then, I will probably remain in consideration of the same old tropes as ever: Time and Identity. There continues to be fuel- infinite it would seem- for the fires of contemplation in both regards. I have said forever it would seem that time is a tricky bitch and it remains the same. Identity perhaps a little more ephemeral as different aspects ebb and flow, but I have been feeling this low and steady song of a parts return these past months and it has most of me in its grasp, like a reclamation. Me of it or it of me or some combination of the two. But I am had. And as I had for a long time perhaps supposed that this particular part of me had atrophied and died, I am taking it slow and noticing what I notice and doing my best to keep the whole of things alive in mind and heart.

Shortly after our 2012 move from the Coules of SW Wisconsin to another hilly but completely suburban pocket of the state, I remember driving on the beltline bypass around the capital with Chris and saying something along the lines of: it’s like we hover up above the earth here. Where we used to live nestled deeply in her rhythms and pulses, we are now rootless and separate in a new and unfamiliar way. When one of my closest friends from our Viroqua years visited for the first time, she said something along the lines of: eep! wrong habitat meg! She was not wrong. It was such a hard move for me, on so many levels. I could have never really anticipated the parts of myself that I was leaving behind and it took me so long to identify the parts of me that I was moving toward. I think compounded in some ways by the particular ages of Maple and Eider, more independent of me suddenly than they had been in our early childhood home. I was lost. And a central part of me felt, and in many ways was, profoundly severed.

I lost that farm mama part of myself. The one that tended more than a couple of kids and a funny Basset Hound. The part of me that was a part of a piece of land as well as a region and culture unified by a similar ethic to love the world slow enough to see its new growth as well as its timely decay. To make songs and art and food during her long and restful winters, and to work and play and work hard some more when the land is warm and green and the sun shines and the rain pours into all of her possibility.

As much as my intentions were good, and I set out to tend our family and our own personal postage stamp of a property, I was young and naive and didn’t yet understand the way in which the parts that live inside of us need their own tending in order to maintain their purchase within our psyche. So as I set out to care for everyone else, I lost her. I couldn’t bridge the space that had severed her from within me then to where I was now.

And of course, it wasn’t any one way and not another. It was an incredibly difficult and painful first two years in our new home. I lost a lot. We all did. Yet slowly but surely, I found my footing and reclaimed my agency as the author of my life and began to build up an aspect of myself that as of yet had gone mostly undetected. I began to teach in earnest. I had for years already at that point but not in any way that found me much identified. First in the yoga room, and then in my own home to my own kids. I taught in small and obvious ways to begin with and then bigger and wider ways as time moved on. In my own work to reclaim myself and nurture my own wholeness, I began to see the ways in which I could hold space for others called to do the same. I built up a part of myself that has become essential and in many ways central to the whole. And I am so grateful now for what was born out of what had been laid bare by that move.

When Chris and I were discussing another, even bigger, move to our new place in Vermont, he was scared that it would be hard on me in all of the familiar and painful ways of that first relocation. I assured him that it would not. Hard, yes. But in different ways that were less dangerous and threatening. And ones made much more manageable by the inner work of the past near-decade. Plus, I knew that I was moving toward something that had been, for the most part, asleep in me those many years.

It has been slow. So many changes all at once from the moment we decided to make the move, after years of deliberating, to the arrival of Wilfred, and then all of the other new place pieces and, of course, on top of it all, COVID. The pieces that once felt so tenuously placed inside me are now rooted and alive and even when they are not at the forefront of my attention and care, are nonetheless accounted for. As we settle more on this beautiful piece of land in Northern Vermont, I can feel that long slumbering farm mama - yet now maybe more accurately ‘farm and woods mama’ - standing up inside of me. I am taking deep and steady breaths of the mountain air and the confiners and the northern hardwoods that make up much of my new home. Behaviors and perspectives and rhythms long resting in me are blinking open into fresh hope and reclaimed purpose. Once again Chris and I are unified not just in a shared vision for our children, but also for the whole of us, as we live in a place that requires our shared tending.

And even as I write this, I see that it is time for me to get to it. The day is warm and bright and the sap is running and we have brand new to us evaporators to put to use today. We will clear some dead stand from the woods to build some long-burning fires and see what we can do with it all. The chickens are laying like crazy and ready for a bigger and more robust coop. The seeds for this summer’s garden have arrived and will soon be ready to set to start indoors with the help of some lights- so much later than I am used to even in the upper midwest.

We all take tending. Some parts and sometimes more than others but each in turn and often together. We are this beautiful and complex intricate weaving of trial and error, self-study and adjustment, attunement and forgiveness. It is never perfect. But may we each strive to tend it into as much wholeness and heart as we can muster. Through all of the ebbs and flows and long springs of becoming.

fifteen minutes

When Mapes was wee, and we lived in our first home in Viroqua Wisconsin, she attended, for several years, a Waldorf Kinderhaus. It was magical. In all the ways. I was wide-eyed and naive, just like my then toddler, and was easily influenced. The children’s teacher, Ms Sarah, was incredible. She was kind yet firm, patient while keeping to the rhythm, and exuded love and peace. Basically, it was the perfect place and she was the perfect person for whom the 2-4-year-old crowd could safely and freely explore the world with wonder and imagination.

At our first parent-teacher tea, I remember being struck by something Sarah shared about her own parenting. She was a single mom, her kids 7 and 9- which seemed so big to me at the time- and the kid’s dad lived in another country. That lens was important for what she shared, perhaps much more so than I gave it credit for at the time. But I was so little myself, and she seemed like everything she was doing with the children, hers included, was so right.

What she said, that has stuck with me since, is that after 8 pm, mom is gone. It is Sarah after 8. And I took it to mean, I think, exactly what she intended, which is that after that time in the evening the kids need to be asleep or at least in bed and on their way. She needed time on her own at the end of the day for herself. Of course, she did! Just as so many parents do. Just as I did.

Now, this is not a post about the wild ride of parenting Maple from 0-6 years old. I will save that for another day. It is more to say that I worked to cultivate a family rhythm in which I found ‘me time’ independent of my children in the evening. I wanted to just be Meg by the end of the day. To shut the rest of it down and do my own thing in my home. And for the most part, save the occasional illness or bad dream, I’d say I got there. For a good many years.

I don’t know how things changed for Ms Sarah when her own kids reached adolescence. It would be cool to know. But for us, everything changed as our kids, especially Maple, got older. She has always been a bit of a night owl, but once she began going through puberty she was sleeping later and spending much of the time in the day during which we were all home together, doing her own thing. I didn’t see her much during the day. Not like I had when she was little, and I wasn’t connecting with her like I used to. I began to understand why so many parents had shared with me that they loved driving their kids to activities or sporting events or whatever because they were forced to hang out. And talk.

I also began to notice that she was trying to engage me in the later evenings. Well past the time that “mom” had gone offline. It was in these late hours that she started reaching out to me in real and big ways, baring bits of her growing heart and mind to me in ways that she wasn’t ready to share during the day. I was well beyond my own best time of day, far from my cleverest and most attentive self. More selfish and tired and ready to wind it all the way down. Maybe knit a few rows, or read of few pages, and then turn out the light.

So I resisted. I pushed back. Mom is gone after 8! Remember?!

And yet, there are no hard and fast rules to live by, especially when it comes to parenting, and I quickly began to see that this was most likely a now or never opportunity for me with my daughter. And I could either shut her down or open myself up. So that is what I did. I pushed through my own fatigue and learned about everything that I could that was alive in Maple. Truth be told, it wasn’t really that big of a deal. Both she and Eider were sleeping later and later in the morning and I found easy time to myself on the front end of the day.

That is, of course, until Wilfie. Now, and for the last year and a half, it is more like we have two different family realities that overlap in the middle portion of the day. The baby is up a good hour and a half to as many as 4 hours before the bigs, and it is essentially the reverse on the other end of the day. And I am more tired than ever. More worn by 8 pm, let alone 9 or 10 than I can even express.

But Maple comes online, like really ready to engage and share with me, after 9 pm. Oh. My. God. And I want what she has to share. So bad I want it in the face of all of my awareness of the clock that is ticking on my time with my girl left in my home.

She corners me in the bathroom when I am washing my face and brushing my teeth. Earbuds OUT for a change and eyes wide and words spilling forward from everything that has grown inside of her over the course of the day. And as much as it feels like my face is literally melting off I am so tired, I rally. I am communicative with her. She knows that I have essentially powered down and there isn’t much left of me. She takes what I can give and I try to give it all. Just 15 minutes. Sometimes more if I am amazing- or I had some afternoon tea. Sometimes less if I am barely hanging on. She’s even said to me before things like: mom, what is happening to your face? or: mom, your eyes really aren’t looking good. She sees what it takes for me to stay up for her. And I see her.

Now I know that Ms Sarah was wrong. Not about much but definitely about mom being gone after 8. Cuz now I know that mom is never gone. From the moment my first kid tore into the world and until my final breath, mom is most certainly not gone. So, I will do what it takes. Even if it’s a little bonkers right now and I am burning a candle down to the nub on both ends. Even if it means fantasizing about caffeinated eye drops and long afternoon naps in a breezy beach cabana. I’ll do it. Cuz babies don’t keep but neither does any of the rest of it.

in the breaking

On Monday, Chris and Maple were run off the road by a school bus on their way to swim team practice in Stowe. They were on the Mountain Road where the speeds are slow and the hills and curves are many and when the bus overcompensated after driving over a snowbank and culvert pipe, Chris had to choose between getting hit and driving off into the opposite snow banked ditch. Many things about this incident are incredibly fortunate including degrees and angles as well as Chris’ competence and responsiveness. They are both rattled, but whole, as are all of the kids who were on the bus. They were close to flipping and landing on my people and well, thank god for seatbelts and snow.

Our old Honda Pilot, however, is a bit worse for the wear and as a vehicle that is completely paid off and has over 200K miles on it, chances are that it will come back as totaled. Such a bummer, and yet, of course, just a car. We have been taking such great care of and pride in that car these past years; replacing the timing belt this summer and feeling confident that we can get another 150k miles out of it before putting it to rest. Just goes to show I suppose.

Chris said to me on Monday night as we were licking our wounds and holding each other close that yeah turns out attachment really is suffering to which we both gave a little snicker and blink. But the message is not in resisting attachment as far as I can tell, but rather see it for what it is. It has taken me a long time to wrap my head around this understanding. That the suffering isn't necessarily something to be avoided but rather allowed in its own way. In fact, it is quite possibly in many cases a sign of having done right in having let something deep into our care and tender regard.

And I am not really talking about my car here am I? Cuz as much as that stings, it is truly nothing in the face of the wholeness and health of my people and people in general. That’s not it. I am thinking much more right now, and often, in terms of loving and letting go and growing and changing and all of it so real and so big in the face of the unpredictability of the moment-to-moment inherent risks in being alive. It’s a lot and my feelings are right up there at the surface. I keep replaying in my imagination the moment when Chris had to choose to steer off the road with our girl in the front seat and on the side that was going to take the impact. He stretched his arm out in front of her as you do when your heart is sitting in the seat next to you and you have everything to lose.

This is alive for me in my asana practice these days as well and part of why I think I get so much pleasure out of making my own self so sore on my mat. I am keeping myself right up close and often even inside of my own physical and mental discomfort working on postures and shapes and actions that are quite difficult and oftentimes provocative for me. Places where I have fear and a lot of mental chatter and that require everything of me in the moment. And it makes my muscles sore in this way that is pleasurable because it reminds me that I brought myself up to that place inside myself where I tested and grew my limits, where I loved myself even in the face of my fear, and where I learned when to wait and when to leap, and where I didn’t abandon my wholeness.

One of the ways that Christina and Sam and I first began really reconnecting this past year was in the hours after practicing together texting something like: so fucking sore. And then followed by long threads of exactly how sore and where and maybe a little bit of what. And that is fun and special but really just in that, it is mostly us saying something else entirely which is more along the lines of: we did that. I did and you did and I see you in that and I want to be seen in that too. I did something that brought me right up to my edge and that asked me to stay awake and feel my feelings. I have some skin in the game and while it surely isn’t all or nothing, there is something to lose and that is the point. It isn’t that attachment is suffering so I better keep attachment at a distance. It is instead that attachment is suffering and the suffering of having given my whole heart to it and then having one way or another lost it all, in the end, is proof of something so much bigger and grander than my small individual fears and heartache.

And that is what I mean when I consider the space inside the breaking. It is not the breaking down, even though maybe it is… if that is what it is going to take to break open. Break open to love and to connection and to the suffering that comes with whole-heartedness. I want to feel that as much as I want to feel all of my muscles fatigued from their good and honest efforts. I want to wrap it up at the end of the day knowing that I didn’t leave anything on the table. I loved and maybe I lost but I also gained and holy fuck am I sore.

a little bit witchy

I have been intending to sit down and spit some word out for days but I am full of distraction and if it’s not one thing then it’s another and yes for sure even though I love winter it really would be great to skip town to a warm and sunny beach there has to be one I can drive to from here, right?? According to the last hour of my life that I just spent looking… not so much.

Ugh. So, whatever. On and off deep Covid-Times malaise over here. A little bit of the ‘ol in and out of the doldrums. I know I’m not alone and I’ve got several text chains worth of memes to prove it.

One of the only regular outings that we have these days is to a local acupuncturist’s clinic. She is great and it does the trick in terms of a nice moment of reprieve and relax along with an all systems tune-up. I am into it. And she is cool. Classic New England. Super cerebral and matter of fact and of course has a Ph.D. duh. She’s smart and down to earth which I love and does a bang-up job of reading pulses which I find fascinating and in the words of my friend Whitney Lawless, she doesn’t have a metaphysical bone in her body. (Words referring to another body systems based practitioner and ultra apt here too.) Not that she needs to, ahem, she does a great job at what she is doing and, ahem, she has a P H D.

She just isn’t my witch doctor.

Chris and I often joke, tongue in cheek a bit but not quite, that wherever we live, after a spell we always manage to find our just right for us witch doctor, or sometimes even a cadre of witch doctors. Now, I am often- if not entirely or anywhere near always- a practical woman, and I like reason and rational and above all else SKILL when it comes to my wellness providers. If they are a skilled smarty pants with a certain hankering toward the occult then chances are they may well be for me.

And I haven’t found them here yet. I almost did, right when we first arrived, but then their receptionist stole my credit card info and they didn’t do a single thing about it other than to make sure I wasn’t nasty yelping them- which in hindsight I probably should have done. They took that root word of CULT and just ran with it in my opinion and as much as I am better off not having my raw bits in spaces with questionable integrity it was still a bummer and I am still on the hunt.

There is lots of the mystical lining the path of my family through time and straight up into the present. I can forget it sometimes in the day to day drudgery that the magic and the presence I so strive to pay attention to in each moment and in each mood is actually a hint at something maybe even more strongly woven into the tale of who we are.

I think that habits and perspectives shape all sorts of things, certainly who we become, but also perhaps who we call in and I know I have said it a thousand times throughout the years on this very same blog, but Maple is that. I think by the time she arrived on the scene I was about 8 or so years deep into looking through lenses that lived outside the mainstream so my cells had certainly turned over and she was born of that. I had her first-star chart mapped and read before she was even two and would watch her move through the world as the keen observer who stood on the edges taking it all in while the other toddlers reached in and joined and she watched.

From a time well before she was even a glimmer up until quite recently she and our whole family would visit a type of care practitioner that would, as Chris likes to say: tie and untie invisible knots of energy around us. For a while when she was 5 or so I would leave little fairy friend notes for her all over our house. I encouraged her no doubt. But regardless, she was (is!) magic.

No surprise that when she told me that she was talking to spirits with a pendulum and then she showed me and I saw some business with that pendulum that people get paid to say is happening but coulda fooled me… I started to maybe feel a little bit concerned. Something along the lines of holy shit this kid is really open and when she asks a question she is getting answers but from whom exactly and do I want just any ‘ol spirit reaching out to my kid??

So I did the most rational thing someone like me would do in such an instance… I sought out a professional psychic to help me guide and safeguard my daughter without squashing her magnificence.

This is when we began learning about shields. About how Maple could craft them in different ways, physically and energetically. Great news for someone superstitious who also enjoys crafting, to begin with. This is also when we learned that there was a coven of witches who had our house on an energetic lockdown that couldn’t be cleared and couldn’t be cured and was best dealt with by getting on out. We had been rolling around the idea with some earnestness for years but this was certainly the kick in the pants that we needed and low and behold we were out of one home and onto our next within the year. (A dark blue house, not new built, on a hillside surrounded by large rocks, just like she said we’d find.)

Then when I finally got pregnant with Wilfie, which the psychic told us would happen (but ha jokes on her cuz she said twins! or is it…. tuti???) and maple told us he was coming too because that is what the pendulum told her before we had said hey maybe no more talking to spirits with your string anymore sweetie, k? It was time to turn her sensibilities toward something else. While I was busy accelerating our departure before the advent of bebe, she was busy basically turning herself into a human energy shield for me and her unborn brother.

The first thing Maple did, was to surround the perimeter of our property with grains of rice that she had like blessed or enchanted or some such business. Then, in addition to monitoring every single one of my behaviors - I feel like maybe I shared that we called her “Bad Doula” for the duration of my pregnancy, if not, you’re welcome- she also made up all of these rituals for herself based on made-up superstitions of one kind or another. There was not a night of my pregnancy that she didn’t come and tuck me in with some kind words and a kiss followed by rubbing the belly of a small Ganesh murti that lives on my dresser. Literally. Every. Night. I don’t think I have seen that girl at my bedside once since August 2019.

She also made other behavioral patterns for herself that she would follow, some she still does. Like, she tries to mostly walk-in only one direction inside of our house. It is ridiculous. But she is amazing and I like her as-is. And, like I said, in many regards I brought this all upon myself and despite endless nonsense over the years, I don’t think I would have it any other way. Besides, who am I to say what is real and what is not. She very well may be holding something of the unseen infrastructure of our lives in the balance. Who knows?

I would be amiss to close this out without making mentions of a few key character details. First, Chris says this propensity to seek out the magic makers is not him and all me, to which I say, perhaps, but he has certainly gone along with relative gusto from the very beginning which I think makes me pretty lucky indeed. And possibly even more bold in my pursuits.

Secondly, there is no Wilfred without Maple. I have always known that. I could shake off my longing for him but never when I was with her. When she was 10 or so I had a Tarot reading in which he was everywhere, but he was all tied up with her. Like he’s coming for sure but maybe it’s your daughter that he is coming to. So, like that. She called him into being, able to feel his substance long before the rest of us. They have always been together for me.

And lastly, Maple is magic. But she is also whip-smart and rational and practical and ready to fact check my ass. She is both. And what kinda brilliance is that?

All this to say, we haven’t found our witch doctor in VT yet. We have found some truly excellent care in other regards to be sure, but I am still on the lookout for someone who is working with the whole person, including the psyche and all that is possible in time and space. Rooted in actual knowledge and experience with an inquisitive and adaptable mind. Just that. Should be any day now.

how bout a nap

Y’all, I am nothing if not ambitious and inspired. Which quite ironically, I never really accessed in myself until I became a mama which, of course, is right around when I lost most, if not all, of my creative time. Hahaha, joke’s on me. Like, on repeat. But it appears I cannot have one without the other, procreating jump-started my creative drive and I would never trade any of that for anything. Yes, it would have been cool if I could have been more like Maple, finding so much time and space to create for my whole life leading up to 28, but I did not. Instead, I often napped. In a state of emotional overwhelm and anxiety for much of my 20s, I opted for a nap on the couch for vast expanses of time that retrospect has a real bone to pick about.

Now, I could use about 3 extra hours that somehow invert and unfold from the center of each day during which I can, as I so desire, get it all done and then some. But, alas. Instead of some incredible inversion phenomenon, I pick and choose and do my best which quite frankly often doesn’t feel good enough. Turns out that having a toddler and homeschooling a sixth-grader and trying to keep a household along with multiple self-employment channels is a whole lot to juggle. Thank god that Chris does the cooking. I am often feeling like any of these things is getting short-changed at any given time and often several at once.

There are some places that I could nab some extra time from, but those are less negotiable than one might think. For instance, I am enjoying getting to do a fuck ton of yoga right now and who knows how long that will last so I am taking advantage. To say the least. I also might be well served and not so often need an emergency nap if I wasn’t waking up 2+ times a night to nurse Wilfie. But I also know that night weaning leads to full-on weaning and well, he is my long-awaited and final baby and I am willing to give up the sleep to get the time with him in my arms. It’s not for everyone, but when I weigh it all out in my head I rather try to catch a nap during the day than prematurely end this chapter in our journey together.

So today, by 10:30 am, when we had already eaten- more than once- helped pops haul wood, walked up the hill with the dogs, read a bunch of our favorite books, and dressed each other up as skunks, it became clear that instead of getting some of my work done or diving into some home education pursuit with Eider or investing some time with my writing, that I too was going to lay down and close my eyes. Maybe for 20 minutes, but chances are for an hour and 20 and yeah, it was the latter for sure today. And it helped. I am still exhausted and honestly a little defeated. I keep feeling like I am falling short on everything I have set off to do and I don’t see there being any big shift in what that looks like any time soon.

And yet. And yet… my choice. When we walked up the hill this morning I saw a snowshoe hare, white all over with black-tipped ears. And the chickadees were singing. And tonight the moon is full and shining. And we are well and together and I really do mostly believe that I can do it all, but just not every day or maybe just not these days.

xxx,m

Big sis made this cutie play dough today while I was practicing and HE LOVES IT.