…Is how you do everything, as the Zen saying goes. And so it is with this blog, and, well…everything. Someone I consider a teacher of mine (though she doesn’t call herself a teacher since she is not yet done with her training) told me (very kindly) on our last phone call that she sees me often taking one step forward and two steps back. She’s right. I say I want to write, and then I disappear for weeks and months. I say I want to practice, and I am lucky if I remember to take one mindful breath in weeks. And yet there is this small internal voice that won’t leave me alone, no matter how much busy-ness I fill my life with and how much I try to ignore it. It drives me to the cushion, and to the page, and to this blog.

Part of the problem is that I have trouble saying what I want to say in this public forum. I have been trying to journal the experience of getting divorced, of being a full-time single parent. Yet when I journal, I feel that my writing comes out sloppy, thoughts are half-formed and paragraphs seem to have no connection to one another. That’s OK, I suppose, but when I blog, I feel more satisfied. Perhaps i t is because I try to pay at least a little attention to craft, and a blog entry feels like some kind of little essay that I can be proud of.

Yet it is difficult to write well in generalities. There is a part of me that wants to just let all the gory details loose into the blogophere. But as I was talking about with a fellow parent/blogger/practitioner friend yesterday…it just feels unethical to do so, although lord knows the blogosphere is full of the juiciest confessional writing.

It feels relatively safe to write about my experience of parenting Sami, yet it is inseparable from the experience of getting divorced from his father. The things I am most drawn to write about are the things I don’t feel comfortable writing about here. So I will write what I can, because it feels important for me to keep blogging.

This spring and summer may mark the end of my full-time SAHM career. Sami got into a great preschool starting this fall and we snagged a full-time spot. What luck! I am very aware that these next few months are precious, and I want to do something very special with them.

I have thought about taking Sami and going to India for a month to live on Amma’s ashram. But I am utterly scared shitless to do so. Maybe that means I really should do it, or maybe that means the time is not right. I am trying to work up the courage to embark on some kind of crazy adventure with my son. Yet part of it feels selfish and self-indulgent. I tell myself that I have to make sure I am doing it for the right reasons, whatever that means. Do I just wish to escape? Is that ok? Wherever I go, there I am, and wherever I am, I am still a single parent to a very spirited toddler. Does it make any sense to leave my support system behind to do something like that? What do I wish to accomplish?

The Aries new moon is coming up on April 5, and this is supposed to be the time to really assess what it is we want and to be intentional about designing our lives. Whatever credence one puts in astrology, I feel very excited about doing something like this right now. Winter is over, and I feel a light growing inside me. There is something akin to hope that is blossoming in my cells and coursing through my veins. I am tired of this moving one step forward and two steps back.

Today I affirm that I move steadily along this path of mine. Perhaps I meander, perhaps I am slow and uncertain at times, but I am always moving ahead.