“And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun….”

When the unraveling begins, and the world is spinning so fast you can’t tell up from down or right from wrong, there’s just no way to predict where you’ll end up when the vortex finally ceases.

When you’re deep in it, it’s impossibly to see beyond the immediacy of the moment, there is nothing beyond NOW. You know, of course, that there will be collateral damage, but even the most somber imaginings don’t have the power to pull you from the necessity of just taking one more breath, one more step, of getting through just one more day.

Step on a butterfly and change the future. Of course. If even the smallest of actions can alter the course of a lifetime, what of those that fracture a family? And what if you are the one who faced the truth, spoke the words, made the choice?

What then?

And so this is Christmas. Today I will say goodbye to my girls and send them back to the house that never had a chance to become my home. When I kiss them goodbye I’ll know that I won’t be the one to help them put out cookies and milk for Santa. I won’t be there to remind them to include a carrot for the poor overworked reindeer. I won’t tuck them into bed, and kiss them on the nose and recite from memory the familiar words of ‘The Night Before Christmas’.

I wont be with them in the morning, awake far earlier than I deem acceptable because my excited children can’t bear to wait another minute. I won’t see them open the presents I bought to fill their stockings, or see their reactions when they tear into their gift from Santa. I won’t hear their squeals of excitement or witness that gleam of magic in their eyes.

This is my eighth Christmas as a mother, and it will be my first without my children by my side. A part of me cannot bear to imagine tonight and tomorrow morning, and another part of me cannot help but play it through my head over and over again.

Last night at midnight I found myself on the floor of my bedroom closet, door closed so that the sounds of my heartache would not be heard by anyone else in the small two-bedroom apartment we now call home. Hot tears slid down my cheeks and emotions shook my body, crying not just for tonight and tomorrow, but for all the countless moments of our lives that we will not be together. Crying for the reality that my girls will forever be moving between two places, instead of resting securely in one. Crying for him because of all that he has lost in the wake of my truth. Crying because the costs are so much higher than anyone could possibly have imagined. Self pity, grief, and endless, all-consuming guilt – it’s a vicious combination.

But all that has to be put aside right now, because right now they are with me – bubbling with anticipation, ready to bake holiday goodies, decorate the tree, wrap last minute gifts. In the dark of my closet in the middle of the night it was time to let my tears flow and succumb to the shadows, but now it is time to lift my head and open my eyes to countless blessings, to hold my girls close and to bring them as much joy and gratitude and peace as possible in the hours that they are here. To open my heart and knock down walls between love past, love present, and love future and to let all of those pieces mingle and flow.

And so this is Christmas….and it won’t ever be the same again. But within the changes, within the loss, within the grief – perhaps there is beauty to be found, gifts of a different kind, wholeness hiding amidst the broken pieces. All I can do is hope.

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.