This Mama’s Dharma

A friend noticed the typo that I made in my last post title, “Divorce is immanent.” I meant to type “imminent” but I was tired and not thinking. Sometimes great insights come from that not-thinking place, don’t they?
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, “immanent” means:1. Existing or remaining within; inherent: believed in [...]

I got a letter in the mail the other day stating that my divorce hearing will take place on June 12. This November would have been our tenth wedding anniversary. I have only begun to heal from the dissolution of a relationship that spanned my twenties. That, of course, yielded my son. [...]

Dear Sami,
I write to you on this Mother’s Day — the little guy who made me part of this tribe.
I remember when you first made your presence known, in the form of two pink lines that formed an “x” on the pregnancy test. I hadn’t “planned” on you but you had planned on me, [...]

Tonight, the spring wind shakes the trees outside my bedroom window. It is one of those blissfully temperate spring nights that makes me want to be full of hope. I feel summer approaching, unfurling warmth, fecundity. I long to hope, but I remember that hope can be a dangerous thing. I [...]

I am one of millions of people worldwide who have been avidly following Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle’s class on A New Earth. This week the topic was getting in touch with our “inner space,” as Tolle calls it. I am paraphrasing here, but as I understood it, it is that expansive, wise, [...]

This extraordinarily beautiful post by Karen reminded me of my own mother’s passing. She died alone, in the night, sometime between April 11 and April 12, 1996, so I never know when to observe the anniversary of her death. Every year I think I will just pick a day and stick to it, [...]

I just have to laugh at my last post and how many times I cursed in it. Sleep deprivation causes me to get sloppy with language, both in written and verbal form. I know that I need to watch the swear words in Sami’s vicinity, as he is getting more and more aware [...]

A lot of stay-at-home parents talk about that “witching hour” that their toddlers go through. I guess it is rumored to be around dinnertime when they are cooking for their spouses. I don’t really know about that any more. I haven’t cooked dinner for a spouse since Sami was about 9 months [...]

…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 [...]

Today while I was napping with Sami, I had the strangest dream. He had wandered near a large body of water and while I didn’t see this directly, I knew that he had fallen in. I jumped in after him, but could not immediately find him. Weirdly enough, I did not panic. [...]