This Mama’s Dharma

“All prayers are answered,” I remembered out loud to my friend Laila today. I know this to be true in my own life. I prayed earlier in the week to the Universe to help me regain the willingness and passion for writing that I seemed to have lost somehow. The next day my friend Zeina sent me an email that the world-reknowned poet Naomi Shihab Nye was coming to teach a master class at Georgetown University, and that I was invited to participate!

I went to the workshop and I was not prepared with a poem to read. It had been so long since I had been in the world of writers’ workshops, that I just forgot. But that was OK. I didn’t have to worry about impressing Naomi or anyone else. I sat back and listened and was totally humbled by the passion and power of the words of others. Everyone in the room inspired and moved me with poems of heart and conscience. I teared up many times. Yes, because I was touched by their words, but also because I remembered a part of me that was dying because I was slowly, systematically starving her.

Naomi reminded us during her reading that writing is really a form a prayer, and the paper is like a prayer rug. We spread out our paper, or we open a blank document in Word, and we connect with the Divine Stream within. Words are a humble offering, each letter a small sacrament.

So…getting to the Naomi Shihab Nye challenge. She talked about how so many people don’t find the time, or don’t want to make the time, to write. She suggested writing three lines a day. I can do that. There is no excuse I can possibly make to keep me from that. I’ve already written way more than three lines just now. And it wasn’t so hard.

I declare it publicly on my blog: I am committing to writing three lines a day. If it ends up being more, that’s great, but I will commit to three little lines. I am starting out with baby steps. After all, I am a creative anorexic. And as I told Laila, “when an anorexic starts to eat again, she doesn’t start with a seven course meal.”

This writing is a practice. It is a nourishing, a nurturing of the soul–and by doing that, we are nurturing the collective soul. We uncover more goodness and peace in the world and in ourselves. There is no separation between the inner world and the world “out there.”

I found myself awed by Naomi’s humility and positivity. She was so grounded and real; there was no pretension or ego in her. I felt hope just from being in her presence. At the same time, a group of visiting Tibetan monks were finishing a sand mandala, and they dispersed it soon after Naomi’s reading was over. There was something so powerful about the combination of those two things happening on the same day. I recalled a workshop with Susan Tiberghien that I attended last year where she talked about the Jungian conception of the mandala as the representation of the unconscious self. To the Tibetans, the mandala is a microcosm of the Universe. The sand mandala in particular is such a reminder of the impermanence of our creations. And yet we create, in the face of change, loss, and death of things large and small, because to create is to affirm life, and that is what makes us human.

So…I am excited for the Naomi Shihab Nye Challenge. I will try it for 30 days, and see where it leads me! I have prayed for the joy of writing to return, and I feel it resurging, bubbling up within me.

Our prayers are always answered, without exception.

I have been experiencing a kind of creative anorexia lately. And it’s time to break the cycle. One letter at a time, I need to reclaim the word! I am starving my soul, and it’s not nice.

I am busy.
I am tired.
I am overwhelmed.
I am all of these things.

But there is still time to write, and I am mustering up the willingness to feed my spirit.

Here is the beginning of a list of Sami’s growing verbal accuity — I’ll add to it as new words pop up.

As of 3/1/07:

Favorite word: Ball (sometimes pronounced “baa”
Other words: “Boon” = balloon, Puppy, Baby, Baba/Daddy, Mama, Bi’ Bir =”Big Bird”, “Ight” = “Light,” Bear, Teddy

Nonverbal communication — shakes head “no…”

As of 4/19/07:
Waffle = “Bobble”
Apple = “Bapple”
Elmo = started off as “Bobbo,” now has morphed to “Melmo”
Door = “Doh”
Says “Hi” and “Bye-bye” kind of like “Buh-bye”
Bottle = “Ba-ba”
“Boo” = “Peekaboo”
Duckie: = “Duggy”
Doggy and Daddy, kind of sound the same…
Says “cheese”
“Booty” = “Veggie Booty,” a favorite snack

And as he is working on his words, he has a lot of temper tantrums…poor little guy. I can’t help but inwardly laugh at the way he throws himself to the ground in an awesome display of passive resistance. Though of course I do feel for his frustration!!

It is one of the most wondrous experiences a parent can have: you raise your arm, extending your palm out in the direction of your child, and he in turn lifts his tiny hand and smacks your palm right back with it. The parent-child high-five. It is one of the moments I waited for throughout his infancy, wondering from time to time “when will Sami walk? when will Sami talk? when will Sami give me a high-five?” And when it happened, it was just so natural, so…how could it be otherwise? As is everything with him. It just flows.

I can’t help but feel that it was like Sami affirmed me somehow, saying in his own way, “Way to go, Mama!”

I hear you, Sami.

We had wicked fun tonight. I let down my Bad Mother trip and we chased each other back and forth between the kitchen and the living room for I don’t know how long. He laughed every time he turned the corner to the living room, and I jumped out and said, “BOO!” Every time it was fresh and new for him.

We read books. Oy did we read books. We read Chirpy. We read Slide, Already. We read that Clap Your Hands Book. We read the Diaper David book. We read the My First Shapes book. We read the Farmer Nat lift-the-flap book. I made a wide variet of animal sounds, and Sami turned the pages two and three and six at a time.

I especially like Slide, Already. It’s a tale about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It’s about this kid who is scared to go down the slide, and the other kids keep egging him on, and he keeps saying “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” He stands at the top of the slide, and when he finally says “Yes” and goes down the slide, it’s the most exhilarating experience of his life. It’s an inspiring story, second only to Goodnight, Gorilla, in its depth in the baby-preschool genre.

Sami brought me the green stuffed snake we bought from Ikea. I think it’s so funny that he understands the request, “Bring Mommy the Snake!” And he does it every time.

We rolled the tennis ball around. We chewed on a baby pumpkin. I bounced him furiously up and down on my knee to the tune of the 1812 Overture.

We played, hardcore. Then I stuck out my palm for a high-five and he high-fived me back.

I love being a parent. It’s hard as hell, I’m always sleep deprived, and I almost always feel like I’m doing it wrong. But I am so grateful, so extremely grateful and thankful and awe-stricken and overwhelmed by the blessing that is Sami. He is truly a gift from God.

How easily I forget.

I forget how fortunate I am.

I forget how wondrous this life is.

How full of miracles it is.

How each of us is more beautiful and vaster and wiser than we can ever comprehend.

I forget that everything works out for the best, in the end.

I forget that everything is always OK, even when we can’t see that.

Tonight, I am high on that high-five. I want to give a high-five to everyone I meet. I want to high-five the Universe itself.

I think it was in the Birthing From Within book that I read “Worry is the work of pregnancy.” How much so is it the work of motherhood!

I don’t just worry, though. I beat myself up mercilessly. I have a habit of thinking whereby all information is used to confirm my diagnosis of myself as a Bad Mother. I wear it like an inner badge of shame. Tonight, as I was putting a disposable diaper on Sami, I thought about what an AP failure I am. I stopped pumping at nine months, when my marriage imploded. I didn’t even let my son wean himself; I just decided that pumping and giving bottles was easier than trying to nurse. And then even pumping was too much to bear. So my son only got nine months of breast milk. That was also the time I stopped using the expensive cloth diapers I had purchased just a few months earlier. In my mental and physical exhaustion, I just couldn’t fathom the thought of washing diapers and troubleshooting stink and frequent leaks. I do wear Sami in slings, but not nearly as much as I could or should be, according to the babywearing guru in my head who is so very disappointed with me. And so on and so forth. Welcome to the troubled landscape of my mommy-brain.

I sold my diapers and my slings for much less than I probably could have got for them, because I just wanted them gone. They were palpable reminders of my AP failings.

Recently I read A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey, and I don’t know if this is one of the parts that is true or fictionalized, but he wrote about how the self-described “Fury” that fueled his self-destructive addiction may have had its roots in the fact that he had excrutiating, undiagnosed ear infections for the first two years of his life. His parents, who didn’t know what was going on, were unable to soothe his cries of pain, and that created The Fury. When we were trying to make breastfeeding work, Sami was hungry (at the time I didn’t know it was hunger–we thought it might be colic or allergies) and crying pretty much nonstop for the first three months of his life. He was basically inconsolable. After reading Frey’s book, I wondered, what damage have I done to my son?

Then I read on my due date club forum about all the things that the other one-year olds are eating. Half peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, beans, broccoli, sweet potatoes, ribeye steaks(OK, I’m exagerrating there, maybe not ribeye steaks), all kinds of stuff. My son won’t touch anything that’s not white — cheese, crackers, tofu, dried apples — that’s about it. Most of what he is served ends up meticulously smeared all over his high chair tray or flung to the far reaches of the kitchen floor. I wonder, what did I do wrong? Why isn’t my little guy eating? People can tell me that this is normal, and some kids don’t eat much in the way of solids until they’re two. But that information does not compute because it would mean that I am not a Bad Mother.

I use my son’s frequent night-waking as a further reason to blame myself. He’s unable to go to sleep without being rocked and given a bottle. That’s fine when I’m with him, but his daycare provider is complaining about how difficult his sleep routine is. (Don’t even get me started on the day care guilt!!) He wakes up three to five times a night. I decide it’s the practices of cosleeping and the giving of bottles at night when he cries. I especially worry about the bottles he drinks at night. My son’s teeth are going to be black with caries. The pediatrician says I should replace the milk with water. I am dubious. I can’t bear to move him to a crib or to let him cry. I will read yet another book, The No Cry Sleep Solution, trying to make it better, but I am not very hopeful about it working for us.

Then I remember that I cannot read or post my way to Perfect Motherhood. What I can do is accept what is. The objective truth is that my son is happy, healthy, thriving. I am the one who is suffering. While I can’t speak for him, I would surmise that his existence as an almost thirteen month-old is pretty cool for him. He’d probably like to be able to talk, but he’ll get there.

Bottom line: His childhood is not like mine was. He is not abused, not deprived of anything, not neglected, not separated from his primary caregivers in unstable, erratic ways.

He is, in a word, OK.

So here is my prescription for the Bad Mother Blues. I can feel my anxiety arise and choose not to fuel it further or to feel bad for having it. Instead of reading another book or posting yet another complaint on the mothering forums, I can listen to some music or take a bath. I can write my anxieties out on this blog and document how absurd and funny and sad it is and exercise my creativity at the same time. I have many choices available to me. I can watch the Bad Mother thought pattern and say, aha! I’m “Bad Mothering” myself again. I know that when I feel this way, what I need most is to mother myself. There is no question that I love my son, but can I love myself in the same expansive, patient, unconditional way? That is the great challenge, and the greatest gift I could give to myself and to him. Embracing my inner Good Enough Mother, and letting her shine.

I think about why so many of my New Year’s resolutions have failed over the years, and I have come to the conclusion that it is because they are always about some far-off standard of perfection that I achieve in the future, when I have magically gotten my shit together.

A self-defeating practice, to be sure.

This year, my New Year’s resolution is an un-resolution. I am not setting any goals or seeking to achieve anything lofty or praiseworthy. I am hereby jumping off the self-improvement bandwagon. Instead, I seek only this: to live in the present, to be open to the moment, to be alive and awake to each day as it unfurls itself.

One day at a time, I will welcome the messiness of my life, my extreme imperfection, my kaleidoscope of flaws, foibles, failings, and shortcomings. I will cradle my vulnerable humanness in my arms, and treat it with the same tenderness that I give my son. To the best of my ability, I will not seek to change anything or be a “better me.” I will simply practice non-judgmental acceptance of all, moment by moment.

In this way, I believe that the future will take care of itself.

…On the past year. Last year at this time, I was awesomely pregnant, filled with hope and trepidation and a 7 lb 7 oz baby named Sami. I was sure that I would not give birth for another ten days or two weeks, trying to mentally control when and how it would happen. Perhaps the frightened part of me was trying to postpone motherhood by convincing myself I would “go late.” But Sami had other ideas. It was the first of many times that life “interfered” with my expectations of how things should be.

Over this past year, I have met with such extremes of elation and heartbreak. I became a mother and lost a father. My marriage went through the equivalent of a massive earthquake, and we are now in the middle of trying to see if anything can be rebuilt from the ruins. I watched Sami grow and blossom from a baby into a toddler. When he smiles, the pure presence in that smile has the power to erase all my sorrow.

The weather systems this year have been very unstable. The changing circumstances of life manifested themselves in the extreme, and I have been shaken to and fro along with them. But I remember that there is also the part of me that wants to cultivate an inner steadiness, a gladness that is a constant in the midst of life’s vicissitudes. This is very different than chasing a happiness that is dependent on causes and conditions. It is a formidable training, but one that I wholeheartedly commit to.

Right now Sami is taking a nap, and I am listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing through the baby monitor. Intellectually I know that he has only been with us for 364 days, but it seems like he has always been here. I remember 30 years of life before his arrival, 30 years of pre-mommy existence, but those days are like a dream. My son is such a beautiful force to be reckoned with, and how I cherish him! How I celebrate the tenacity of his spirit and the power of his presence! Every day with him is a gift that is priceless beyond measure.

I have no idea what the future holds for any of us, but I know that I am a better person for being his mother. Yet I also realize that it is easy for me to get stuck in the role of Mother. I think what Sami needs most is for me to be me, beyond roles and preconceived notions, beyond expectations and projections of how I should be or how things should be. I saw the damage that it did this year when I did not live up to what I thought I should be doing — like breastfeeding, being a stay-at-home mom, and so on. It is only by uncovering the truth and giving myself the freedom to be who I really am, that I can give him that freedom as well. Indeed, my ability to be present is the greatest gift I can ever give him.

Well, this post started off as a reflection on the first year of Sami’s life, and turned into something different than I expected. But I guess that is one of the joys of the writing process — much like life, it takes you places you never expected to go!

On the occasion of your first birthday

From the moment of conception, through the nine months
That you blossomed inside me,
A holy force of nature, demanding to be born,
You became our teacher, our guru. It became clear
That we would always have more to learn from you
Than you from us.

You taught me that some things happen effortlessly,
Like gestation – my body knew what to do to grow you,
With no work on my part. And that some things require
All the strength we can muster, like giving birth.
As you descended into this world on scarlet waves of pain,
You reminded me that out of struggle come the greatest gifts.

When the milk in my breasts, despite our heroic striving,
Was not enough to sustain you, I listened and heard your message:
It’s OK to fail. We’ll find another way. If you couldn’t
Breastfeed, you would still be my mother, and I would still
Be your son. And together, we would be enough. So I let go
And I let go, and I keep letting go.

You showed me that the heart has no boundaries. It is a wide-open
Field that grows wild and free, expanding infinitely outward.
You grasped my finger with your tiny hand, and you led me
From Maidenhood to Motherhood, into new and frightening territory.
You made me believe that I could do it. You trusted me until I
Could trust myself.

You brought out the gentle Feminine in your father, exposed
His Inner Nurturer, made his heart tender and soft.
You tumbled down his walls, and inspired him
To seek healing for his wounds. To retrieve his spirit.
You showed us that is peace is not just
Possible, but you demanded that we find it, now.

And so, great teacher, we sit at your tiny feet.
We honor your courage to enter into this mad world.
To eat and to crawl and to stand and to walk and to fall with grace,
To laugh and to cry and to love with all your Being,
Holding nothing back. You remind us of that which
We had lost, and we are now reclaiming it.
We eagerly soak in your ancient wisdom,
And we are humbled that you chose us as your students.

In the beginning, I was your whole world.
A vast mother moutain-valley-ocean,
Yours to explore with your open mouth, tiny limbs,
And searching eyes, denim blue turned hazel
Turned honey brown, big as an adult’s –
Filled with the wisdom of many lifetimes
Spent standing upon the earth.

As weeks and months wore on, you set out to explore
Beyond the country of me. You put down four limbs
On the floor, dragging yourself commando style,
Belly brushing the earth like a snake. Gaining
strength, you mastered the crawl, crossing a room
With lightning speed - your mama-shore receding
In the distance.

Then you were vertical, planting two feet
Upon the earth like tiny saplings. At first,
You fell, over and over and over,
Enraged with gravity’s vicious pull.
But you persisted and stood stronger and
Stronger and stronger, until you
Didn’t need anything to hold on to anymore.
You were your own mountain, tadasana, straight
And proud and true. You befriended gravity.

Now, you are forward motion. Hesitant and stiff,
Your feet stagger drunkenly in the direction of me. One
step, then another, then another, and you fall
Into my arms, your face all smiles that wrinkle
Your nose up, your sound all laughter that echoes
From deep within you. For a few precious moments,
You are a part of me again, melting in my arms
Before setting off to discover new horizons.

This may be more detail than anyone wants to know, but I got my second postpartum period just yesterday, and it is so heavy, it feels like I will bleed forever. The blood coming out of me is so copious, so fresh, and so red, it seems symbolic of something I am shedding. It’s a literal blood-letting.

Last night I dreamed of blood. In my dream, it was the future, and there was this epic battle between a huge crowd of police and a huge crowd of protesters. The police opened fire with these hi-tech weapons and basically reduced the entire crowd of thousands to their blood. In the dream, Sami and I were driving on a road that seemed to be paved with blood for miles. The overall feeling was one of horror.

That dream seems to symbolize my path right now.

I am not capable of much in the way of positive thinking right now, but people tell me to “act as if.”

To act as if I have faith in a just and lawful universe. That’s what I’m trying to do. I have moments when I can touch into my Buddha nature and remember to rest in the Buddha, dharma, and the sangha. But they are few and far between. Instead I identify a feeling of white-knuckling through my days, as if I am on a creaky roller-coaster that could fall apart at any second. There is doubt, doubt, shame, and fear. There is the feeling that I will never recover from this, that the intensity of the nightmare will never let up–even though I know that change is everywhere and always. And worst: a fear I couldn’t name until yesterday — the fear that I will lose my mind and my husband will take my son away from me, like I was taken away from my mother when she went crazy. But I know that her story is not mine — I have a practice. I have so many more inner and outer resources than she did.

So this is what I am doing. Feeling fear and trying to intellectually rebut it. I try to talk myself out of fear and it is not working because the fear is calling out to be experienced, not cognized. I am too afraid to rest in the fear and the multitude of other feelings I have going on, but I know that is the way through. Maybe soon I can let myself feel a few drops in what feels like an ocean of suffering, just a little bit of salty spray in my face.

I feel no hope, no earth under my feet, and Pema Chodron says in When Things Fall Apart that this is a good thing. But much of the time I seem to lack the compassion that she says is supposed to get you through the groundlessness. I can feel it shimmering through at times, the compassion and the loving-kindness and the forgiveness, but it feels like a warm, fuzzy New Age blanket with not much substantiality. I know it is not New Age, it is a powerful spiritual practice…but Mara is so present in my life right now. I need to spend a lot of time touching the earth, like the Buddha did on the night of his enlightenment. I need to act as if I feel loving-kindness and compassion, to say metta with a heart of ice until my heart begins to thaw. Because it has to. Even Ice Ages come to an end.

My son, as always, is the glue that keeps me together. He has been sick with a cold and has a fever for the past few days, but he is still his same active self. I took him to the pediatrician yesterday and she said that if he does not get better in a few days, we might start him on antibiotics. Poor little guy. He was coughing a lot in his sleep last night.

My son is the one who stands and claps his hands. He gives me standing ovations, which I desperately need right now. He is a jewel, a shining light on my path strewn with blood.