on forgiveness

I took a long bath tonight, I lit a candle, turn off the lights, I let my belly be almost fully immerse under soapy warm water, I threw my head back and just let the music of an old fashion italian singer songwriter fill the room.
I took a step back in time, for brief moments I was in different places I had been as a young woman. I have always loved taking a bath as a dramatic declaration of my femininity and my supposed ability to stew with my feelings. I am not sure if it was ever a sincere act or that it brought me to a deeper sense of self... but it sure made me look like it did. If anyone could just have seen me holding my Kundera book in the tub.. they would recognized how profound I was in that moment.

I was in Italy my parents' house, on a high school night wishing to be older and far away. (which surely ended up happening). I was in London, in my little apartment with a vast sense of independence spotted by some home-sickness that just gave my experience that more substance. And then I was in Kentucky, only a few weeks from delivering my son, thinking of that as a wonderful time to connect with my body, take a break... and painfully realizing that I was way bigger then the shallow tub and in the end unable to come out of it gracefully.

This collection of bath tub moments made me laugh tonight, how futile and trivial everything looks years later. How do we hold true those moments when after a while they seam to have resolved themselves?

 But then I thought about my child, my sweet 20 month old who has so many emotions and so many ways of manifesting them though his language skills are still raw. He is in the moment and nothing matters more then his emotional response to any random event. Knowing that this moment will pass and he will work through his frustration/anger/sadness can trick me into brushing them off, teach him to "get over it", while instead I am learning to stay in the moment, stew with his emotions, let them unravel.

My baby's first public full blown tantrum was terrifying, surely more to him than to me.. but as I looked for help later that day my wise aunt-in law reminded me that it is quite remarkable that children hold and show so many emotions and that you end up missing that little person who could just express so much of what he felt. My heart melted. Looking at a tantrum in this light made all the difference.

So while even tantrums, as hard and at times embarrassing as they might be, are a collection of moments that pass and become futile and trivial times in your and your child's life, how comfortable we are stewing with those moments is going to make a difference.

Women who hold the space

I look at my wrist and I see a purple ribbon, I inhale and feel stronger, more connected, grounded in my being.

Words and symbolic gestures can be a powerful thing.

A week ago I set in a circle of women, each special to me in different ways. The powerful smell of burning sage hit my lungs, filling me up and lifting me high. A poem was read, something about the fire within and the power of growing a seed. Words were shared by each woman, words directed at me. How they see me, what they love about me, what they know I will do well with and for my expanding family.

Then each of them tied a purple ribbon on their wrist, promising to keep it there until this baby comes. I see their wrists and mine linked to an open hand, the palm facing the sky, ready to receive. I see it attached to a hand palm facing down ready to release to the ground whatever it does not serve us. I see it linked to a closed raised up fist declaring presence and strength. And I see it connected to other hands, holding the space in a circle of friendship.

It's almost like you never get a true chance to hold hands and hear what your friends truly feel for you, outspokenly and shamelessly until you ask or are offered or maybe when you are gone.

I want to be more cognoscente of the power of words, deep felt words. I want to take this opportunity to speak with presence and love and compassion. To go beyond "I love you" and "you have done so well", to teach my kids that speaking from the heart and offering true appreciation is something that can be done any evening at the dinner table. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to turn my living room into a kumbaya camp but I do want to live my life giving an receiving fullness to the best of our ability.

Births and deaths are a wonderful opportunity to make us brave enough to not just accept and give true love but to speak about to it. For this I thank you, my wonderful friends and the ribbon tied to my wrist reminding me that I am not doing this alone, nor do I have to.

Love,
Silvia

I yelled at my kid

Since this blog is my confession board, a place for accountability, I need to share how it felt to do the wrong thing.

It had been a long day and I had been feeling contractions, though only 32 weeks pregnant, all day. I get a call that I have to go pick up daddy at work and I try to hurry my son out the door (this is always a good time for him to slow down), then as I get him in the car seat he starts going noodle on me and butt heads me straight in the stomach. I hold on tight, squat on the floor and let out a big loud gibberish yell directed at him! For a split second I wanted him to hear how upset and exhausted I was. I wanted him to feel bad for what he did.

Immediately I felt ashamed. I asked him sorry many times, I turned to my normal, caring, gentle self and kissed his face asking for forgiveness. He was sobbing and visibly scared, he feared this mama who all at once went from 0 to 100. I felt more ashamed.

I think a lot about this incident, about why I had the urge to show him how I felt and make him feel bad for what he was doing though he had NO purpose in hurting me.
I think about the way little kids manifest their emotions, sobbing, yelling, thrashing on the floor, going boneless, throwing stuff, isolating themselves, etc. They have no choice but to be overrun by those strong feelings and let them take over their bodies, manifesting as they will.

Sometimes we are no different.

Tantrums are just a way of making a request that the parent isn't hearing or doesn't want to hear. I felt like I was throwing MY tantrum, I wanted him to hear it and stop fighting me, get in car seat and be OK with it. Because I had a "legitimate" request I felt as if it was OK to ask him to comply. But what is going on in a kid's mind when they too feel as they are making "legitimate" requests and they are being ignored or denied?

This incident brought me closer to him, and gave me more clarity on the type of model I want to provide for him, knowing that I will too lose it sometimes.

I hope this taught him the "right" lesson. It's OK sometimes to lose control and to feel remorse when we hurt others in the process.

I can see him sometimes hitting or pushing other children when they are holding on to a toy he wants or when they are simply in his way. He is asserting his independence, his presence. I try to bring him close to me and I ask him to show me what a gentle touch looks like, he soon caresses my face and tries to do the same with the child he has hurt.

I don't know if this is the right way of handiling this but it sure helps to be reminded of how many times I am unable to go to straight to gentle touch when my sense of self, independence or safety is being harassed.

Frozen in time

Generally speaking we never turn the TV on. We read, work with our imagination, play outside, get dirty! There is the occasional TV watching at his grandma's house that I am totally for, because what happens at omah's stays at omah's and the Ipad cartoon, say once a week, when we hit the very last resort.

So, shocker, that this mama decided to spend a rainy afternoon taking Tristan to his first movie show to watch Frozen. I am not sure what he saw in it...  but here is what I saw. 

Not surprisingly Disney is still frozen in time! 

While the story does elucidate on some "new" concepts such as love at first sight is bs and sisters' love can be stronger then romantic love, and family is whoever welcomes you (rocks animals or people), Disney is still making the same old mistakes:

- I saw ONE person of color in the entire movie

- Girls never wear pants, even when they ride horses and climb mountains

-  Little girls look quite proportionate but average BMI is no longer respected once they hit puberty, their waist is still the same size as when they were 5, their legs are incredibly long and skinny and their eyes and boobs don't give out the same famished look as the rest of their body does.

- Whether that is the happy ending or not girls still search for a husband, unless they are cursed. 

- Mommy and Daddy still have to die to create a good plot, WHY??!?

- Love is either between family members or between a man and woman, enough already!

So I wonder... what is Tristan learning from this? One viewing, probably nothing, other than a big WOW effect and that buttered pop-corns are delicious! 

But I think I'd like to be able to reason with him and ask questions to which he can answer while and after we sit and watch something else. I am afraid of TV for little people who are not yet verbal enough to tell you how they feel and what they think about they see. 

I woke up at every little noise last night expecting him to have bad dreams about the evil snow man or the people trying to kill the queen. He slept soundly but I am going to wait a long time before introducing him to 2 hours of this again.