This is my week deserved Chai latte at the end of a long and full few days. Parenting continues to be wonderful, amazing, consuming, and overwhelming at times. Balancing everyone’s needs and the available resources is a process that requires constant attention and fine tuning. I learn things all the time. There’s a kind of cycle like the seasons. Periods of blissful happiness, times of crisis that require intense focus and effort, breakthroughs that ease the storms into calm, sunny days. 

This week’s discovery has been that Poppy relaxes in a pool. A relaxed Poppy nurses better. I am now 5 days into no serious bites while nursing, following three long swims together this week. I’m ecstatic. 

I’m also working on various art projects and thinking deeply about some amazing (paid!) contract work I’m doing in the mental health field. Trying to understand my role in the grand scheme of things; how to be of the most use, and make the greatest difference, and ethically engage with the opportunities. I feel so honored, excited and sobered at the same time. It’s a rare joy to be using my skills like this. 

I’m starting that dance of motherhood between self and other. Between the boundaries of my roles and relationships, trying to find that elusive balance – what I need to recharge and my responsibilities and joy in being there for and with my family. Who am I now? How much adult functioning can I do before I need to rest and be a child again? If I can turn myself into what everyone around me needs, how do I find my way back to self? 

I miss writing here. Sometimes it is easy to share, others I am too swamped in doing to reflect. There’s no time and no words yet, and when I try the words are wrong. The stories are someone else’s and don’t fit. Or too raw yet for words. Stories that are not entirely mine to share. And worse – I lose sight of you, who I am writing for. Why I am sharing. My reader goes from friend to stranger in my mind. This sharing becomes exposing. The extraordinary act of being human in public overwhelms rather than liberates me. I am tongue tied and mute.

Small moments remind me, like my lovely new mug from close friends. Free hugs! I have always written to people like me – struggling to be more alive. Vulnerable. To myself, 15 years ago. My friends and fellow artists and dreamers and madmen. We the brave and bewildered and afraid and amazing. I’ve so much to tell you and no time in which to say it. Life is beautiful and painful and I’m wrapped up in the daily intensity of it, exactly where I wanted to be. 

I hope you are traveling well too, in the thick of things or the quiet reflection, in grief or hope or bold new adventures. Going boldly. Being human. Wrestling with the night. Thankyou for what you do. Thankyou for being part of my story. Free hugs for you.