and so it goes

mother’s day came, it snuck up on me ever so sweetly, and it lingered long enough for me to cuddle my lovely children. i pondered my life and past mother’s days long gone. i spent moments loving the mothers and grandmothers i am forever linked with. i felt grateful and amazed at what my life has become. i felt sorrow for the losses we carry; some for ourselves, some for our family and some for our children. my thoughts drifted to wilson, wondering how he’s doing and wishing he was feeling the love of a mother every day of his life. and then just like that, it was gone. this mother’s day left and my heart remains full of paradoxical emotions; joy and sorrow, satisfaction and longing, love and heartache.

i discovered something new about myself this year, and that is this: my heart can hold it all. i no longer feel compelled to banish the hard stuff. life is full of hard stuff, and all of it has a place and a purpose. my desire to ignore, repel and send the difficult feelings into oblivion are deeply rooted in my childhood and the care i received from people who, while they were well intentioned, just didn’t know what they were doing. it really is as simple as that. i’m very mindful with the lessons i teach my own children, as well as any children that spend time with our family. this has always been important to me, and i’ve discovered the driving force behind it was created within myself, many many years ago… the heart knows what it’s missing. i take extra care with the hearts i hold close, and when you do that you have to have room for the hard stuff.

i knew the wait would be difficult for me, and indeed this has rung true again. the wait is incredibly hard once your heart has expanded to hold another child. i suspect it’s never easy to wait for a life to join yours, no matter how it happens. there is no fooling myself on this one, so i will just hold that in my heart, along with images of a little boy who is waiting too.

"Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other." - Sojourner Truth