As a girl I would love to slide my feet in other people's shoes and imagine I was that person for the few seconds I wore their shoes. I imagined their stories, I felt their heart soar with joy and break when they were in pain. I felt as though I could really feel what it was like to be them if only for a moment.
Now I'm grown and I hold on to that yearning to honor the people I meet but instead of stealing time with their shoes I have learned the kind of work that not only honors the story their mind and bodies hold but empowers them to heal and become the people they dream of being.
Only sometimes will my toes sneak a peek into someone else's shoes... Only someone near and dear...
"The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense,
tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this
very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become
fully independent." ~ Erich Fromm
Mother's Day has
developed an entirely new meaning for me since leaving the family I had
known for 14 years in 2009 for the third and final time. I knew that
when I left that life to start a new one it was going to be difficult
but I no longer had a choice; I was doing what I needed to do in order
to save my life and subsequently my son's life to some degree. Little
did I know that the moment I made that decision the universe would begin
to conspire to make the death of my former life absolute and complete.
The
most challenging trial I have had to endure was not homelessness or
losing any kind of income and going to bed hungry, the most challenging
trial was losing time with my child. Although my decision to leave his
father was a very necessary one I made sure to sever our ties as completely as possible which meant no financial support so when I lost my job in
2010 I lost everything and my teenage son began to see less and less of
me.
For the past three years of being unemployed I have
remained tormented with the pain of being forced away from my son by
circumstance. Although I remain beyond grateful for his father taking
such good care of our son I have beat myself up for what feels as though
I was abandoning this little person I was once inseparable from. For 12 years
my son and I did everything together when I wasn't
at work and he wasn't at school, our bond was a very strong and close
one and then, after a year in my own place and sharing equal parenting
time with his father it was all ripped away from me and I was left devastated and feeling lost and alone.
Recently
I got a phone call from my now 16 year old and as our conversation
ended he thanked me and told me that he feels like he can come to me
with any problem or concern, he trusts me with virtually anything. In
that moment I was overcome with emotion and I realized that even though my physical presence with my son is limited my
influence and value as a mother are not. I have a teenage boy who
texts me, is comfortable expressing his affection for the people in his
life he cares for, and has learned to reason and analyze the things in
life that matter most in order to have a deeper understanding of himself
and his place in the world around him. I have a son who, despite any
personal struggle remembers how to love and communicate appropriately depending on the circumstance.
My son's father and I may not have been a healthy couple when we were married but we have always respected one another as parents and that never changed neither during or after the divorce. Our efforts show in the young man we are both so proud of and for that I'm grateful. With all my worries and concerns over the past few years I was still a mother and the lessons I have been learning he has been learning also. My experiences and how different they are from his father's experiences have given my child a depth of wisdom and I can only hope that his struggles don't have to be as extreme as mine have been because of it; but if they are, I have no doubt he will learn and become an even better person when faced with trials.
This has taught me that even when we aren't near our children and parenting them as closely as we would like, that doesn't mean our influence and very being isn't playing a role in our child's development. We are allowed to experience hardship for a reason and finding that reason may be a challenge but it's always there and sometimes it's less about us and our pain and suffering and more about someone close to us who's watching, like our children. I worked hard at being a good example and respecting my son's father even if we didn't work as a married couple. I took responsibility for my role when things didn't work out then and now, I take my lessons and I keep moving forward. Every decision I make every single day affects my son and just knowing that and holding it makes me a good mother and the validation is in the sweet messages and phone calls I get from him.
So to all of you parents out there who are missing your children and to those children who are missing a parent today I want to wish you a very special and happy Mother's Day. To the parent, don't believe for a second that your presence on this earth isn't valuable to your child, value isn't measured in the quantity of time you spend with your child but the quality and willingness to be there for them when they need you, even if it's just a phone call. And to those children missing a parent today, trust me, they miss you too, even if they have a not-so-funny way of showing it, your very existence is evidence of great love.
I don't know about you but whenever I see or hear about 'Transformation' I see amazing before and after weight loss photos or am blasted with inspirational quotes and ethereal images.
We think of butterflies emerging from their cocoons and gracing earth with their beauty as they dutifully pollinate the earth. The thing is, butterflies have the luxury of staying in their (seemingly) safe cocoon while their transformation happens and I have to wonder, do they know that they are born to transform? That question leads me to the next one, do humans know that they will eventually transform?
On some level every person has experienced transformation, at least if they have experienced the glory of puberty. I'm sure I'm not the only person who found that phase of my life awkward and uncomfortable. Maybe puberty was the inspiration for the Little Mermaid... As much as we dream about how amazing it would be to be a grown-up, once we are we find ourselves missing the times when we didn't have the responsibilities of a grown-up... at least I do anyway. Trading our fins and tail for legs isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Then we grow up and something happens in our life, either it's something we aren't satisfied with in our life or circumstances beyond our control are thrust upon us and we have to make changes to ourselves and sometimes even our external lives. I was one of those people who had a life that had grown to be beyond unsatisfactory. My marriage was more than toxic and I had become the darkest possible version of myself, I was someone I never believed I was capable of being. I didn't like who I was becoming and I didn't want my young son to continue knowing nothing but the environment he was growing up in. I wanted my son to learn that even as a grown-up there are consequences to certain behaviors. After 14 years of marriage I left for the third and final time and the things that gave me the strength to do that would probably surprise and shock you.
Leaving my marriage was not the beginning of my transformation though; I hit rock bottom before that but I didn't know what to do or where to go, I was lost and felt trapped and right about that time a woman that belonged to the same religious organization that I did at the time offered support on a spiritual, emotional, and physical level. She introduced me to Healing Touch Therapies, primarily Craniosacral Therapy and the science behind it. She was not a New Age guru, nor did she proclaim to be a "healer", she just understood the science of the healing modalities that she practiced. She had survived cancer only by leaving America and going to Greece to learn alternative ways of healing after American doctors refused to help her and told her she was going to die. Through her I learned the power of our own minds and bodies and the gift we all have within us to heal ourselves from sickness and trauma and without having to compromise your spiritual belief system or relationship with God, the Universe, Spirit, the Divine, (or whatever word offers you most comfort), but channeling it within yourself first. Religion has confused what spirituality really is... but that's another discussion for another day...
Regardless of our beliefs, we have that power within us but it isn't easy and all too often, especially in the thick of change and hardship, we want to just give up. My transformation process truly began around 2005 and I am only recently accepting that it will never truly end. I have also recently realized that I'm not the only person who sometimes feels like giving up, like everything is just too hard, and if one more thing changes... The past couple of years have had their blessings, to be sure, but the things I have been through have made me feel like a bird keeps pecking at my cocoon and to top it off, the personal work I have had to do on myself has felt like this:
We may reminisce about how comfortable certain aspects of our life were before and long to just go back to what was familiar but we know deep down we wouldn't be comfortable there anymore.
Maybe I'll be the butterfly soon and I can flit and float around pollinating the earth with my good will but for now, I'm working on appreciating the opportunity to start my life over, regardless of everything I've lost; it means I have room to start over with a clean slate! Right?
