As my girls get older and we move further away from that tender, tender infancy phase, to the phase where they can communicate, entertain themselves a bit, and generally need less from me, I am struck by how much less time we have together.
I am struck by how the days fly by and blur..
..how leaving them overnight has become a little less heart wrenching
…how I work 8 hours days largely without seeing them three times a week.
I am struck by how the identity of mother doesn’t feel as new and shiny as it once did. It’s more comfortable. It feels more like a broken in pair of Birkenstocks, instead of the new ones that you love but are giving you blisters and feel awkward.
Not all days are easy by any means, but the physical demands on my body are most definitely less. I’m getting better sleep. I weaned Maya and have stopped breastfeeding after 4.5 years of my body nourishing little bodies that came from my body. I’m not always carrying a baby on my hip. Nowadays, the carriers only get brought out for hikes.
I read somewhere that there is a big decrease in how much a parent engages with a child around the age of 3.
The ideals of that early parenthood stage start to slip. Most preschools start at age 3. Maybe another child comes into the family and attention is spilt.
Age 3 is also when children do seem to reach a significant level of independence; they can walk, talk, go potty, and put their shoes on (for the most part).
It makes sense that us, parents, would be ready to breathe a little sigh of relief.
It makes sense that we might shrug off our initial feverish sharp ideals of zero screen time and perfectly sourced nutrient dense food, as we have been sanded down by the years of interrupted sleep and the energy intensive reality of what it takes to raise kids and hold a family together.
And so, this is where I am, really noticing the shift in gears on my motherhood journey.
Motherhood is just watching a part of your heart walk further and further away from you and it is true and good on one level.
This is what is supposed to happen. Time passes and children grow up.
I can only imagine the heart breaking that must rattle your bones as your baby starts to drive a car or takes their first solo trip or moves away from home and goes out into the world, for good, without you.
Even in writing that I feel a hollowness in the lowest reaches of my heart.
I heard, again and again, from strangers and friends alike, “Oh! It goes so fast!” And I know it does.
It has been my deepest intention from the beginning to not take a moment for granted. To really experience it all; the highs and the lows. The pain and the beauty. And when things are so fresh and you are such a green, new mother, it is all so much more sensational.
It’s like when you travel to a new country and everything is interesting and different and just going grocery shopping is an adventure.
You don’t just birth your baby; you birth yourself into Mother. You get to watch their first times but you are also having so many first times; as a mother.
Right now, for me, the sensation around motherhood has been turned down a smidge.
And this is when we look back at those massively formative times and think; “Oh! They were so sweet! So good!”
Because we were really living. We were in it. It may have sucked at times but we persevered, and we were so blasted open by love.
Hard times have a way of shaping us; forming us into something new and we actually really love that on the other side. We love to feel our strength. We love to grow and expand. We love a good challenge. We need them to keep life interesting.
We say we want all the money, ease and power, but really that would lead us into a pretty boring existence.
A huge issue in our collective is the lack of initiatory experiences. We’ve got no built in grist, no whetting stones upon which to sharpen our character….except birth and motherhood. These are some pretty wild initiations built right in to the existence of the human race…if we choose to see them that way.
It feels as though I am through my initial initiation into motherhood. Me, having chose to double down, with two babies born 14 months apart.
It was not an easy time.
But it was a real time.
A raw time.
An achingly beautiful time.
I have found myself in the unfamiliar place lately of feeling… really good (knock on mothafucking wood). Good sleep. Energy levels coming back. Feeling really strong and fluid in my body.
I am watching a part of me that wants to cling to the illness, the burn out, the story of “how hard it is” because it makes me feel closer to that blasting-open-intensity of becoming.
I could so easily use the daily tasks of mothering, home keeping, running a business and serving clients, financial stress and uncertainty, cooking nourishing meals for my family, lingering smaller health stuff, to manufacture an intensity, but that’s actually not actually true.
The true intensity of an initiation is one thing. That’s the fire of alchemy. The pressure required turn coal into diamonds.
But manufactured intensity; that’s just avoidance of joy, avoidance of clarity, avoidance of slowing down and taking stock, avoidance of enjoying the fruits of your labor and the natural flow of the life and death cycles.
Manufactured intensity is the static layer of life. It’s the noise that keeps you from the nourishing, calmer undercurrent of intentional living.
It’s not actually true and you don’t need to live in it, but it does require a conscious choice not to.
Life in this day and age is always going to be busy, feel urgent, and keep you moving faster than the pace that’s true. But is that the reality you really want to give your power to?
My deepest desire when it comes to my family and my girls is still to be present with them as much as possible.
My desire is to get to know them deeply as they grow up into humans with gifts, skills, interests, and journeys of initiation of their own.
As they grow and expand their worlds, I want to remember who they are and how much joy, connection, nourishment, and beauty they bring to my life just by being exactly as and who they are.
I don’t want to collapse into the busyness of the everyday life and take for granted the role of mother and give up the intentional creation of my motherhood experience.
I am seeing how it’s going to take a little more intention for me to stay conscious here as well as a little more energy to make sure I have the space and time with my girls to tend to and nurture the relationship I would like to have with them.
This is a huge reason why I am holding VILLAGE | A Family Embodiment Retreat. I am creating and holding it because I can feel that it is actually what I desire and need most.
I can feel that I need the space and intentionality that something like the container of a retreat provides.
Our lives get so busy and it’s just hard to put down all the things that pull at our attention in a way that really allows us to be together. We could do it at home.
Hopefully we do make intentional time to be together, to connect, and hear each other’s hearts, hopes, and dreams, but there is something about removing all other obstacles to this (work, cooking, cleaning, organizing, planning, logistics) for multiple days that feels so deeply needed and nourishing to me I feel tears well up and my heart filling.
Holding a retreat, of course, is not the same as attending one, but when I feel this level of tender desire, I know it is mine to create because it needs to be created.
My family needs to create this, to bring our VILLAGE to others who are feeling this call so that we can all get that deep connection and alignment with each other that we are craving.
Attending something like this will come in direct conflict with a lot of perceived static layer concerns. “I don’t have the time!” “We can’t afford it!” “Not this year, maybe next year!”
Trust me, holding VILLAGE comes right against my logical mind (the money! the time! the vulnerability and possibility of rejection!) and comfortable ideas of who I am.
These can be compelling and maybe they are actually true for you, but my invitation, if you feel called to this retreat, is to really sit with the investment that something like VILLAGE would be in the deeper undercurrent of connection within your family.
Money can be worked out.
Time isn’t as rigid it as it may seem.
Be willing to drop below the noisy layer of the daily tasks, worries, and routines and ask: Is this for me and for us? Am I ready to choose something that pulses a few layers deeper in my heart even if it isn’t easy to say yes to?
If you are called, enrollment for VILLAGE closes at the end of August. Send me a message.
The Manufactured Intensity of Life