Matters That Matter ®

I woke up this morning feeling once again, defeated and disappointed… in myself.  For sleeping past that first light of day when the silence has so much to say. Lately I have been sleeping uneasily, often restless and wakeful. When that first call to get up and give myself those sacred moments of meditation, gratitude and grounding sounds, I choose to slip back to sleep and miss what I need to start the day. Without that life giving practice, so essential to my well being, courage and inspiration have paled, while fear and worry have come sharply into focus. Worry and fear do not fuel the kind of life that I would love, nor the work that is mine to do.     

It is time to wake up!   

This morning help arrived, through the internet of all places.  A woman, part of the Vibrant Nation community (www.vibrantnation.com) responded to the book club discussion Kristine and I are co-hosting.  (This month’s discussion is focused on Phyllis Thoroux’s wonderful memoir, The Journal Keeper. The theme is the need to UNPLUG in order to experience the here and now.)  The comment that caught my attention referred to her commitment to arise, however early necessary, in order to not miss her sacred time to herself, time to meditate, journal and read.  Her words were exactly what I needed to hear.  I am struck by the fact that when one of us speaks, we all have the opportunity to see the truth a bit more clearly.  Her words pushed me away from the computer and out onto my back porch where in front of a fire, looking out at the mountain I began again to meditate, to find a place of gratitude and to consider my next steps.   

Now, still in front of the fire, I have just read these words… 

“May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more.”

      ~John O’Donohue (From his book, To Bless the Space Between Us) 

What life would you love?

What dreams can no longer be postponed?

What did you come here to do? 

Let us all wake up!  We each, everyone of us, bring to the world what no one else can. 
 
 

Last night was my yoga class.  It is always, always, always exceptional…. in no small part to my yoga teacher Yvonne (Namaste to you… you are changing the world, one dharma, one pose, one OM at a time). Sometimes it is so hard.  Sometimes I just seem to flow through the class with ease and grace.  Sometimes it is painful in a deep and sorrowful way.  No matter which of those it is, it always teaches me. 

 Last night was exceptional to the max.  Our dharma (lesson) was about taking in  (inhaling) what we would like to bring into our lives, and pushing out (exhaling) what no longer serves us.  Exhaling those old scars, stories, tapes, fears that have buried themselves deeply inside.  There was an intensity in the room.  Some of us were exhilarated.  Others exhausted. And, some of us were in pain.  Throughout the class I could hear quiet tears flowing and at times deep sobbing. During one pose, hearing that sorrow, I caught a glimpse of something extraordinary. There was my wonderful, wise teacher, with her arms wrapped around a sobbing young woman – not trying to fix it, not trying to make anything better.   My teacher just sat there and loved a hurting woman, as she continued to lead us through our asanas.  She didn’t back off.  She didn’t get distracted.  What she did, what she helped us all do, was create a space for pain, and hurt and grief and growth. All that that sweet young woman needed, all she was asking for, was a safe place to hurt. 

 Pain is a part of life.  I think every woman alive has more than her fair share of pain. We often give more than we should, listen longer, love deeper, shore up, hold back, put off what we long for, in service to others.  What we need, what we can provide for one another, is a safe place to hurt, to express, to grieve;  just a safe place to be until we can catch our breath, and find our way to solid footing.  Sometimes pain teaches us.  Sometimes it leads us further into who we are and who we can become.  And, sometimes we can’t see any greater or higher purpose.  We just hurt.

 Let us be a safe place for one another.  Let us be a safe place to hurt.

I was blessed this Mother’s Day to share the day with my two remarkable daughters and my sweet, fading mother. As I looked across the table of delights the girls had prepared in my honor, and my mom who wept through out the entire event(she lives each moment, literally, as if it were her last) I was filled to overflowing with the knowledge that women, all women deserved to be at that table. Women who are childless, have nurtured mine as if they were their own. Other mothers have stepped in when I couldn’t find the love or the energy to carry one; a couple of gay men adopted my daughter when she was far from home and made their home hers;  my sacred husband has taught me as much about love as any human being on earth…love is love; commitment is commitment; honor is honor…It takes a village, no truer word were ever spoken. My children are who they are because we are part of a remarkable village. For anyone who felt left out on a day that is to celebrate unconditional love…well that is just wrong. No one sums that up better than Anne Lamott, goddess of truth, light and imperfection.

Why I hate Mother’s Day

It celebrates the great lie about women: That those with children are more important than those without

By Anne Lamott

I did not raise my son, Sam, to celebrate Mother’s Day. I didn’t want him to feel some obligation to buy me pricey lunches or flowers, some annual display of gratitude that you have to grit your teeth and endure. Perhaps Mother’s Day will come to mean something to me as I grow even dottier in my dotage, and I will find myself bitter and distressed when Sam dutifully ignores the holiday. Then he will feel ambushed by my expectations, and he will retaliate by putting me away even sooner than he was planning to — which, come to think of it, would be even more reason to hate Mother’s Day.

But Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path. Ha! Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.

The illusion is that mothers are automatically happier, more fulfilled and complete. But the craziest, grimmest people this Sunday will be the mothers themselves, stuck herding their own mothers and weeping children and husbands’ mothers into seats at restaurants. These mothers do not want a box of chocolate. These mothers are on a diet.

I hate the way the holiday makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dead or severely damaged children, feel the deepest kind of grief and failure. The non-mothers must sit in their churches, temples, mosques, recovery rooms and pretend to feel good about the day while they are excluded from a holiday that benefits no one but Hallmark and See’s. There is no refuge — not at the horse races, movies, malls, museums. Even the turn-off-your-cellphone announcer is going to open by saying, “Happy Mother’s Day!” You could always hide in a nice seedy bar, I suppose. Or an ER.

It should go without saying that I also hate Valentine’s Day.

Mothering has been the richest experience of my life, but I am still opposed to Mother’s Day. It perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents. (Meanwhile, we know the worst, skeeviest, most evil people in the world are CEOs and politicians who are proud parents.)

Don’t get me wrong: There were times I could have literally died of love for my son, and I’ve felt stoned on his rich, desperate love for me. But I bristle at the whispered lie that you can know this level of love and self-sacrifice only if you are a parent. We talk about “loving one’s child” as if a child were a mystical unicorn. Ninety-eight percent of American parents secretly feel that if you have not had and raised a child, your capacity for love is somehow diminished. Ninety-eight percent of American parents secretly believe that non-parents cannot possibly know what it is to love unconditionally, to be selfless, to put yourself at risk for the gravest loss. But in my experience, it’s parents who are prone to exhibit terrible self-satisfaction and selfishness, who can raise children as adjuncts, like rooms added on in a remodel. Their children’s value and achievements in the world are reflected glory, necessary for these parents’ self-esteem, and sometimes, for the family’s survival. This is how children’s souls are destroyed.

But my main gripe about Mother’s Day is that it feels incomplete and imprecise. The main thing that ever helped mothers was other people mothering them; a chain of mothering that keeps the whole shebang afloat. I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, and my own best friends’ mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life, even after their passing.

No one is more sentimentalized in America than mothers on Mother’s Day, but no one is more often blamed for the culture’s bad people and behavior. You want to give me chocolate and flowers? That would be great. I love them both. I just don’t want them out of guilt, and I don’t want them if you’re not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children. But if you are going to include everyone, then make mine something like M&M’s, and maybe flowers you picked yourself, even from my own garden, the cut stems wrapped in wet paper towels, then tin foil and a waxed-paper bag from my kitchen drawers. I don’t want something special. I want something beautifully plain. Like everything else, it can fill me only if it is ordinary and available to all.

While not every woman is a mother, we are all daughters.  Whether we had or have a good relationship with our moms… we all know how important that relationship is.  What we all long for from our moms is to be seen and loved for who we are.  We yearn to be loved purely and completely, without reservation.  We want to be loved for who we are, not who we are expected to be.  To be loved for our souls and not our successes.

So, women of the world, this mother’s day, let’s give that kind of love to ourselves and to every woman we know.  Whether you are a mother to another human being or not – the truth is, women love, nurture, support, honor, sacrifice for, tend to those we love.  We give birth… to ideas and dreams and hopes.  We create and bring new life into the world through our words, and songs, and art, and meals and jobs and professions.  In one way or another… we are all mothers.

This mother’s day, love and celebrate women for what we bring to the world.  Begin with yourself!

We honor and celebrate and thank you.

Blessings to you this Mother’s Day.

Molly & Kristine

“My most precious daughter,

If there is any lesson I would want to leave with you, it is to love yourself. Find peace with who you are and don’t look outside yourself for acceptance and love. Find it deep within you and treasure it always. When you love yourself like that, you will know the kind of love I will always have for you.”

When our publisher asked us to come up with a quote for the book jacket that we thought would speak for moms universally, this is the quote we found. It came to us in a letter from Lorea…a young mother diagnosed with AIDS. Lorea knew that the future of her 3 small children possibly didn’t include her. We chose her quote because we believe these are the words we all long to hear.

The mother daughter relationship is complicated at best. But there are those threads of insight, from all of our experiences – the good, the bad, the ugly – that help shape us into the vibrant, glorious women we are today.

So this Mother’s Day, give thanks for the wisdom you have gained in your life and that you can, in turn, impart to those around you.

Do you instantly recognize these words coming out of Jack Nicholson’s mouth? It’s that scene in Something’s Got To Give when he looks at Diane Keaton, the women he just “had sex” with and utters sweet NOTHINGS. She like the rest of us said…”What the hell does that mean?” I am sure he is filled with emotion…the emotion HE experienced and that is his way of gushing all over her with compliments, affirmations and words of love.

I can’t help but think of how men think and how women think when it comes to celebrating the person you live your life with. Mother’s Day for example…Any woman on earth would really like the same thing…check your favorites…

breakfast in bed (that you don’t prepare or clean up)

beautiful lingerie (that you didn’t pick out)

a project around the house completed to your specifications (that you don’t have to nag about)

a simple picnic (that you didn’t have to pack)

a movie of your choice (that you didn’t have to negotiate over)

hand made cards filled with love (that you didn’t have to help make)

Okay, so the theme here is that WE, on Mother’s Day, would like to be celebrated with love and simplicity and REST. Give me a day off and do the things that need doing, while I am enjoying the things you did for me. How does that sound?

ANY OF MY PEOPLE PAYING ATTENTION?