Nourishing new life - Django - minutes old...Django is 1 month old today and just as it snowed the night before he was born, it snowed again yesterday. This last month as gone so quickly, and yet it also seems as though our life as parents has been forever. Django has a strong personality and plenty to say. He is curious and gentle and wonderful and demanding. It has been a strange few weeks, in which I have come to terms with the fact that everything has changed in my life. My body, my perception of myself, my lifestyle, my communications...at first this felt like a grief but slowly I am coming to get to know this new woman (though I am finding it hard to appreciate the burning nipples that come with breastfeeding).
Poem 132
I stand midpoint along the mother-line,
held by the whispering thread.
The sun continues to shine.
Time slips by and in between
I breathe the life that connects
this mother-daughter-mother bind.
(C. Victoria Bennett, from The Eternal Note)
I am very tired and sometimes, all I feel like doing is running away and hiding in a very quiet space but then, I look at Django and he looks so beautiful and perfect and open. He trusts me to make his world safe. I know sadly from experience that you can't always protect your children and I know that sometimes terrible and tragic things happen and we lose them. But the desire to protect him, to comfort and reassure and keep his world soft and calm and warm for as long as possible - well, that wins the conflict every time.
I think perhaps that this is the most exhausting part of it. Not the sleepless nights or the breastfeeding every hour, nor the bounce bounce bounce of night-time winding...but the constant sense of giving of myself, of my heart and love, as well as of my own body, because even when I am tired, he still needs that love. And even though, if I do my role right, he will feel safe to explore the world and reach for new horizons where I can't protect him, my job is to help him to find that security within himself to feel safe, wherever he is, safe enough to dream and to adventure. Not by hiding my feelings, but by discovering just how deep and wide and wonderful the heart is. And occasionally, by finding the strength to get up and love, even when I am weary and sad.
It reminds me of the line from The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer...
"...It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children..."
So far, I can do it. And in that, I discover new horizons within my heart.
Poem 132
I stand midpoint along the mother-line,
held by the whispering thread.
The sun continues to shine.
Time slips by and in between
I breathe the life that connects
this mother-daughter-mother bind.
(C. Victoria Bennett, from The Eternal Note)
I am very tired and sometimes, all I feel like doing is running away and hiding in a very quiet space but then, I look at Django and he looks so beautiful and perfect and open. He trusts me to make his world safe. I know sadly from experience that you can't always protect your children and I know that sometimes terrible and tragic things happen and we lose them. But the desire to protect him, to comfort and reassure and keep his world soft and calm and warm for as long as possible - well, that wins the conflict every time.
I think perhaps that this is the most exhausting part of it. Not the sleepless nights or the breastfeeding every hour, nor the bounce bounce bounce of night-time winding...but the constant sense of giving of myself, of my heart and love, as well as of my own body, because even when I am tired, he still needs that love. And even though, if I do my role right, he will feel safe to explore the world and reach for new horizons where I can't protect him, my job is to help him to find that security within himself to feel safe, wherever he is, safe enough to dream and to adventure. Not by hiding my feelings, but by discovering just how deep and wide and wonderful the heart is. And occasionally, by finding the strength to get up and love, even when I am weary and sad.
It reminds me of the line from The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer...
"...It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children..."
So far, I can do it. And in that, I discover new horizons within my heart.
2 comments:
Its exhausting isn't it and yet wonderful, even when you feel that if you have to get up once more in the night you will either dash your baby's brains out or beat your own head against the wall.
You do become a new person and there don't really seem to be any rituals that acknowledge this.
good to see some new poetry flowing!
Its amazing that we seem to find this strength, but somehow we do. That's what makes mothers so special.
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