I found this poem today at 37 Days(a soul awakening, heart inspiring, spirit lifting place that you all should visit regularly).

Most of you know how I love poetry; am touched by it and moved by it on deep, vibrational level. Reading - or rather experiencing - a good poem is an intense, transcendent journey for me. My response is visceral, I feel more profoundly awake and aware after absorbing the words than I did before. Every now and then I come across a poem that hits me as much intellectually as it does emotionally. My body tingles and my brain hums with the truth contained within the lines. This poem hit me there, deep in my gut AND deep in my head at the same time.

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don’t mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, “It’s hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there’s no one
to say what a good job you’re doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a
headache.”
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the
world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world’s heart.
There is no other art.
Alison Luterman-

Invisible work. As mothers we do a hell of a lot of invisible work. Invisible, underappreciated, tedious, fulfilling, mindless, inspiring, unrecognized, beautiful, focused, back breaking, heart lifting, meaningless, life-altering invisible work.

Invisible work so often forms the fabric of our days and knits together our increasingly fragmented experiences. It’s the way I just stopped writing these words for the third time to fill up a yellow plastic watering can so that Julie could carry on her gardening without interruption. It’s the fourth load of laundry today waiting to be moved from washer to dryer so there will be clean towels for the weekend. It’s the dried up toast crusts that I scraped into the garbage can after breakfast so I could begin the day with a clean kitchen and calm mind, and the way I ruffle Bella’s hair and whisper in her ear that she’s the bestest kid ever when I pass her in the hall. It’s the way I put off all the important things I had to do to paint my toenails orange just now, just because I knew it would make me smile. It’s the way I’m writing this while I hold the phone against my shoulder - on hold with Dell for the eight hundredth time this month, trying to fix my laptop so that I can proof photos and be outside with my kids at the same time. It’s those constant unseen attempts to balance their needs with my own commitments and desires.

Sometimes it is the invisible parts of my work, not just as a mother - but as a doula, photographer, woman - that I find the most meaningful. The behind the scenes, the scut work, the down and dirty nobody-cares-but-it-has-to-be-done work. Sometimes that’s where the magic lies, where the Zen hides out, where our most honest contribution to life is found. Sometimes though, to be perfectly honest, it’s soul weary, back breaking, boredom inducing bullshit. But somebody’s gotta do it, and so I do – as we all do - every single day of our lives.

It’s making the millionth peanut butter and jelly sandwich, proofing images from a recent photo shoot (when you’d rather be drinking tequila), untangling hopelessly tangled jump ropes, composing (hopefully) insightful and witty blog entries in the school pick up line, pushing a toddler on a swing higher-higher-higher so they can feel the exhilaration of the freefall. It’s keeping track of doctor appointments and when the mortgage is due and what the heck you’re going to need at the grocery store so you can make dinner for friends on Tuesday night. It’s all the stuff that exists between mundanities of life and transcendence of art, and it’s the achingly simple beauty of the spaces in between.

We all do this stuff. We do it over, and over, and over again. People rarely notice us doing it, because they have their own invisible work to focus on. There are no Nobel Prizes for the invisible work of humanity, no Academy Awards, no kudos’ being shouted from mountaintops. All there is is the quiet satisfaction we get from living the results of our work. The sense of rightness you get from seeing the strong, vibrant and secure children you are raising, the maybe-not-sparkling-clean-but-at-least-not-embarrassingly-dirty house at the end of a crazy day. It’s the to-do list with more things crossed off than not. It’s putting your aching feet up and cracking open a cold beer in front of a movie you’ve been dying to watch. It’s knowing that you are far from perfect, and you probably fucked up a time or two, but you got through the day and at least nobody got seriously injured…

What is your invisible work? What work “stitches up your world day and night”? Remember, even though parts of your work are invisible, all of your work is invaluable. Tell me about the work of your heart…

“I am a bad mother
I am a horrible wife
I can’t even manage to keep my house clean
I can’t breathe.
I feel panicked.
Why can’t I ever get organized?
My life is a mess.”

I woke up this morning in a state of stress from my very first waking breath. You know the kind of morning I’m talking about. We overslept. Bella hadn’t done her homework the night before, and the kids went to bed late. Jules has a cold and is feeling miserable/ is miserable to be around. The house is trashed, dirty dishes in the sink from so long ago I’m not even going to tell you out of embarrassment. Life has been way intense lately. No towels clean in the bathroom. No bread for Bella’s lunch because I didn’t make it to the store yesterday. Sam in a rush because he is working on contract now and every hour he isn’t at work is an hour he is not being paid.

I woke up on the defensive, and it went downhill from there. At one point, as I was rushing down the hallway with my head down and a dark storm cloud hovering over me, I realized the words I was saying to myself. On continuous looping repeat - over and over again – beating myself further down with every second. I was creating and sustaining my negative reality this morning all on my own – I didn’t even need any help from stressful circumstance. I had decided what mood to be in and what stories to tell myself from the second I opened my eyes.

Why?

I walked back into the kitchen and leaned on the counter, head in my hands, and closed my eyes for a moment – trying to find that desperately needed center. When I opened my eyes, I was leaning over one an open catalog (one of the veritable plethora of random merchandise pushing publications that have found their way into our mailbox in the pre-holiday push to buy! buy! buy!) and my eyes immediately went to picture of a shirt that had a spiral on the front, and the words ‘Find Your Happy Place’ in a funky font. It was self help - screen print style - sending me a message from the universe.

Indeed.

I gave a bitter laugh. Find my happy place. Ha! As if! Unrealistic, my frazzled self screamed in frustration. Can’t be done. Life is shitty right now. Too intense. Can’t handle it. Where on earth would I find my happy place in this moment? And so I continued telling myself similar stories as I went through the morning routine on cranky-assed autopilot.

“Why can’t she just listen to me?
Why do I have to do everything?
Why can’t they take care of their shit so I can actually find something when I need it?
I’m being so horrid to her, she deserves a better mother.
Can’t she stop the blessed screaming for a fraction of a second so I can freaking think?
My life is never going to feel normal again
I should be doing better than this.
I want to run away
I can’t do this.
I feel so out of control.”
All varieties of the same theme – “I suck, I can’t cope, and all the rest of them are just conspiring to make it all worse”.

Nice.

I knew what I needed to find my center – and I knew it wasn’t all that much. All I usually need is just a little time alone, with music filling my ears loud enough to block out the negative mantras that were taking over my body and mind, and enough time to replace them with positive words and to clear my heart enough to replace chaos with peace.

Five or ten minutes would do it – but finding five or ten minute’s alone in quiet during a running-late-crazy-stressed school day morning? Not gonna happen. No way, no how. Motherhood is not often conducive to spontaneous opportunities for meditation – no matter how vital it might seem in the moment.

So I did the next best thing – I put my head down and barreled through the rest of the routine, stopping for a moment to burn a CD. My beloved iPod is broken, and music is my sanity. I needed some tunes this morning more than ever. Even though it made us a few minutes later than we already were, I knew it was time well spent.

I recently created a playlist for a friend that I called ‘Songs for a New Beginning’. I made it for her, but I’ve since adopted it as part of my own soundtrack. I pulled this together quickly one evening – instinctively pulling songs at random that I knew contained the message I wanted to share with this person – hoping that she could hear what I was trying to tell her with the music.

Some of the songs I had just downloaded, only listened to a few times, but I went with my gut. These songs speak to me of comfort, solace and a reminder that the tide always turns. Music that tells me it’s all okay, and that gives me courage to keep plugging away. Words that tell me that I am good, I am blessed, to just believe. I needed these tunes today.

I managed to get into the car - a buzzing, humming, steaming mass of stress and resentment and general pissed-off-edness - popped in the CD and started to drive. The first song on the CD was Deb Talan’s Comfort. This was a song I had chosen especially to be the first song in the mix, because it said exactly what I wanted to tell my friend but couldn’t exactly find the words to express.

As I drove down my street, Deb’s sweet, soothing voice filled the car;

“And when you can’t remember a better time
you can have mine, little one.
In days to come when your heart feels undone
may you always find an open hand
and take comfort, there is comfort.
Take comfort wherever you can, you can, you can”

I meant this song to be a message for another weary heart, but instead it turned out to be a message that I needed desperately to assimilate into my own being.

I swear that within minutes I was breathing deeper, feeling calmer, in a totally different place than I had been just moments before. Yet again, music soothed my crazy soul and helped me knit myself back together again. I don’t pretend to understand why it works, so quickly and completely, but I am grateful that it does.

And so today, with the help of lyrics and melody, I work on changing the stories I tell myself. I realize the power of these mantras. I believe that I do create my own reality, and that what I give my attention to is what I bring to fruition. I know this to be true – but I am utterly and completely challenged by the in-the-moment reality of changing my thoughts in order to change my perception of my experience so that I can, in turn, change my world. (how’s that for a run on sentence?)

I need to find myself some mala beads, to wear them each day and to actively work to change my self-destructive mantras into words that build me up instead of breaking me down. I need to seek out time to meditate, to protect those quiet moments with the music that sustains my soul. I need to focus on finding the time to do 108 repetitions of the stories I SHOULD be telling myself each day. We all need to do this.

My new mantras
I will be okay.
I am loved.
It will get better.
I create my own reality.
I will not fail.
All I need is my breath.
I am soft and I am strong.
I trust my heart.
I am open to the universe.
I am me and I am enough.

Want to join me? What are you currently telling yourself that is dragging you down? What stories do you need to change? Create your own mantras and we can work together on changing our realities with the power of our thoughts and intentions. This is good, meaningful work. It needs to be a priority.

Just came across this video, circa 1977, via the awesome Birth Ecology Blog. Sadly enough, I think that if Sesame Street tried to show a breastfeeding segment like this today, there would be a big public outcry. Formula feeding moms up in arms, formula companies protesting…sometimes I wonder if we’re going backward instead of forward.

Marybeth, this one is for you and me (okay, so ignore the part about tearing apart behinds) the rest though…cracked. me. up.

This is so how mornings and nights have been around here lately. Ah - the simple peace that comes from knowing you are not alone…

I love the internet in general and the blogosphere in particular for many reasons - not the least of which is that I often I stumble across parenting and life truisms that make me go, ‘oh yea, she gets it’.

We’ve been struggling with Bella lately. Since we returned from Canada she’s been seriously out of control and Sam and I have been at our wits end. Pretty obvious where it comes from (um, home remodel, upcoming move, starting kindergarten, big trip away from her father for five weeks, etc; just a few stresses in our lives). Not so obvious how to fix it.

We’ve been wondering how we went so wrong with this parenting thing, why the universe gives kids to people like us who are so obviously not up to the task of raising a productive member of society. Still, every now and then she’ll do something so lovely and sweet that my heart contracts with the depth of my love for her and I feel guilty about how many times I’ve thought about dropping her off at the mall and leaving her there.

Then today I read this passage at Dooce, and I had to laugh out loud.

“You think you’re going to be prepared for the sheer incredibleness of such a moment, but it’s like, someone keeps setting off pipe bombs on your front porch and throwing rocks through your windows, and then one day out of nowhere they show up and mow your lawn. And you’re suddenly glad you didn’t shoot them last week.”

That could not be more exactly, perfectly, dead on how I’ve been feeling. Of course, right now Bella follows up the lawn mowing by tossing yet another pipe bomb through the living room window…but whatever. We’re working on it.

Oh yea. What she said.

Be aware - this is a hastily written vent of epic proportions…..

At the risk of sounding juvenile/hormonal - I hate bedtime. Ihateit-Ihateit-Ihateit-Ihateit. Although I love my girls, and am profoundly grateful for {almost} every moment I have them with me, I. HATE. BEDTIME.

It is 10:24pm. Julianna finally fell asleep 15 minutes ago. Bella is still awake, and has come out of the room four times in the 15 minutes since her sister fell asleep. This is not unusual. Bedtime can often last two hours or more from start to finish, and usually involves tears, threats, frustration, threats, tears, anger, resentment, tears and threats. Nobody is happy.

Clearly we’ve lost the ability to control the situation and at this point I’m beginning to question if we ever really had it.

Back when we just had Bella - our lives were guided by routine and gentle schedule. Bella always thrived on predictability, and our lives at the time allowed us to provide her with that. I was ‘just’ a SAHM, not trying to be birth worker/photographer/non-profit director. Sam had not yet gotten his big promotion at work, and so had a regular schedule of 7am-4pm, arriving home like clockwork at 4:45pm every night - when we all had dinner together. Our weekends were mainly free to rest, relax and spend quality time together as a family. Bella napped at regular intervals during the day when she was younger, and went to sleep easily at night - bath, a few books, a little rock in the rocking chair, and her lullaby CD on to fall asleep on her own.

Life now is so much more hectic. It feels like we are on the go so much that Julianna has never had a regular nap schedule. Like any SAHM, I’m trying to squeeze in all my other commitments in stolen moments between meals, and diaper changes and lego towers. Sam is under tremendous pressure at work - often coming home for dinner and heading back to work until 11pm or later. Our weekends seem filled with running this way and that, errand after commitment after ‘just one more thing’. We’re trying to juggle (financially and logistically) the remodel in the midst of all the other craziness as well. We’re overwhelmed, cranky, tired, stressed, distracted and disconnected. Not surprisingly, this has turned the girls’ day to day lives on end as well.

They are such good sports, and really go with the flow quite well all day, but at night time I really feel the brunt of all this craziness coming out. The girls share a room and a queen size bed. Once upon a time this seemed a good idea, and actually used to work fairly well. Now, however, it’s just a disaster. It seems that if one of them is tired and ready to settle down, the other is wired and ready to go (and vice versa). They feed off each other, and not in a good way. About 90% of the time, Julianna demands my presence to fall asleep (the only way she’ll ever accept Sam is if I pretend to leave and she actually sees me drive away in the car - even then there’s a 50/50 chance that she’ll cry till I come in to get her anyway). Even with me there, she often finds something to cry hysterically about these days. To go to sleep, she wants to fiddle with my belly button (“Give me my belly” she says with great authority). She pinches, pokes, prods with her sharp little nails, sometimes to the point of making it scab. And I let her, I let her because I’m so desperate for her just to settle and fall asleep.

They are both tired, so tired. I have to drag Bella out of bed every morning - she’ll sleep till 9:30 or later if I let her, but then it becomes even more impossible to get her to sleep at night. Julie wakes at 5am and I have two choices - either get up with her then for the day, or lie awake in bed and nurse for the next several hours (try as I might, I usually can’t sleep through it). And yes - if we do get up at 5am, she’s still impossible to put to bed at night. Her naps are iffy at best. She’ll often go all day without a nap - especially if we’re busy and on the go. When that happens she normally falls asleep nursing around dinner time, and wakes up screaming a few hours later…and (you guessed it) it is near impossible to settle her back to sleep. When she does nap, it’s not a long one - half an hour, 45 minutes tops.

Almost every night, at some point during the entire bedtime process, I can feel myself seething with resentment. I hear how stressed and bitter and utterly horrid I sound when I speak to them - all of my frustration being taken out on them in the moment. Quite simply, I feel like a big pile of shit.

I need to find a way to make this better, for them, for me, for all of us. We’re so far out of wack though, that I don’t even know where to start. What I do know, this is but a symptom of a much larger problem - but I’ve got to start somewhere. I leave on Tuesday for a month-long trip home, where I’ll be single parenting for the entire month of July. When we return to Phoenix Sam should already be moved into the new house, so there will be yet another transition for the girls. I really, really need to start making this flow better right now, or I fear I might loose my mind at some point soon.

Still, despite it all, when they finally fall asleep I stay there with them, breathing them in, touching Julie’s soft skin, tracing the curve of Bella’s nose, watching their chests rise and fall. I guess that is what tells me that it will all be okay.