One night in the bleary eyed land of early motherhood, I was totally devastated.
I wanted so many things that I couldn’t seem to have…
To sleep through the night, to feel young and healthy, have clarity on a thousand things, make time for myself…
My son was in a growth spurt, breastfeeding what I remember as 80-90 times a night 🙃
So when he pulled me awake again, I broke down and cried.
I felt powerless in a life spiralling out 🌀
I didn’t want to worry him, so I didn’t make a sound. I didn’t move a bit. I’m pretty sure I was crying in ninja mode.
But there’s no fooling children.
My infant son reached out and touched my cheek.
He didn’t look startled or scared. He didn’t even look at me.
He kept his little eyes calmly closed.
And he kept his hand on my cheek.
He didn’t say anything.
(Well, he hadn’t figured out talking yet)
But he didn’t need to.
He was calm and full of love.
He did not try to fix.
He did not try to change- himself, me or the situation.
He did not force me to talk about things I was not ready to share / able to share; because some of our anguish lives in a land beyond language.
I wondered later…
How can you be so calm when you’re source of food and warmth and protection seems so visibly distressed? When someone you love looks lost?
Maybe an older child would worry.
An adult would worry.
But safe in the strength of his baby-wisdom, my son didn’t worry.
All I saw in his little eyes was love.
And a knowing that I had momentarily lost touch with…that in the end, it’s all ‘all right’.
That we’d grow happier and healthier, if only I gave us time.
His confidence- was it in our love, our strength or our bond? - whatever calmed him that day, his steady strength helped me find mine, almost in an instant.
I haven’t gone that quickly, that drastically from 😢to 😇 ever. Not with anything from my bag of tricks.
Last year had been magical for this reason.
It was the first time I realised that everything was okay.
That it was okay to feel bad
To feel pain
To feel sick
To feel lost
That all that was okay because :
Everything changes
I’m here for the full spectrum of experiences. Negative emotions apparently don’t kill me.
And this is the biggest- All the bad I’d ever felt was me pushing against the bad.
Experiencing negative emotions, lets them move. They move through you and onward.
But when we resist them (which used to be my go to way of responding to them), they stay. They stay stuck and unable to move.
It is essentially, pushing against a wall.
Stop pushing and the wall becomes a river.
It flows to the sea.
This is the superpower I learned last year-
Feeling bad
Allowing emotions.
Feeling them in my body.
Experiencing. Exploring.
Letting them lead me…to parts of me I’d locked away.
Feeling them move and change and move on.
I’m grateful for this knowing that now lives in me.
That everything changes as long as I let it.
And that it changes even if I don’t let it, but then I waste my strength and sanity fighting.
And there,
that’s the story of how my not-yet-one-year old gave me the gift of presence and awakened a sleeping superpower.
A Little Life Update
I turned 32 this week 🥳
I’m excited about birthdays after a long time! Now, I have an accomplice ; )
We played in the mud all day and swished water on each other with the garden hose 💦
We had a great time!
Turns out I’d been celebrating birthdays wrong for a while 😁
"Letting them lead me…to parts of me I’d locked away."
😌
Happy belated birthday, Swarupa!!!!!
Happy birthday! Looking forward to more nuggets of wisdom from your little one 😍