Tag: joy

Humanity

Archetypes and Mother Teresa

Lovelovemotherexpletive

yep, you read that right. I’m on day 3 of listening to * Carolyn Myss talk about Archetypes, and how we all can relate better and feel more connected when we use a common language of symbol and metaphor.  (of course, cross-cultural might provide hills and valleys, but Mother, Mother is the broadest thing in the universe, potentially, but is still Mother. Child, Warrior, Student, Saboteur, ) These are elements we have within us, not what we do to others, necessarily.

For fucksake, Mother Theresa wasn’t even a mother, and she was.  right? we dig? Its not ‘literal’, its symbolic, full of meaning that doesn’t even need to be spoken. men can be Mother, ladies without kids can be Mother. whatever.

again, whatever. So, work is slow and I’m looking into the things I love.  I love mysticism, have, do, but because I went to a Jesuit College, I studied a whole bunch of mystics, and I don’t envy them a goddamned bit.*= I mean, we’re talking very very dark trials and tribulations, some including blood and abandonment and hysteria, and super early deaths.  So, you know, not that much of a celebrity thing.

BUT, I love Mother Theresa. And I’ve been getting into the whole ‘Listening to things on tape/phone’ thing lately. it allows me to concentrate in a way that I haven’t for a very long time, almost collegiate-ly.*-

“If I ever become a saint—I will surely be one of ‘darkness,’” Mother Teresa wrote in September of 1959. “I will continually be absent from heaven—to light the light of those in darkness on earth.” *& This site

oh, man, she is my guy. (I know)

and one of the archetypes that i’m learning I have in me is that of the Innocent Child, the Magical Child… ooooh, sparkly lights and rainbows and steadfast faith and oooh, a butterfly!! its not an immature thing, or naïve, but it is a pretty significant part of me in much of my life thus far. And… every archetype has its flipside, or ‘shadow’ and the times when my child is despondent, and believes in nothing, and hides in the blanket fort, are for real.  Disappointment, loss of faith in the goodness, oh man, they swing through and knock me down.

0920191356h

I am not equating my mood swings to Mother Teresa’s dark nights of the soul. except metaphorically. **

anyhow, i’m freehanding this, and I want to stop now to go back to thinking. so, there. Oh my word, I just started to type something about how my bulletpoints below are hollow but stopped to look up what that meant literally and oh my god, guys, what kind of world are we living in?!

*I don’t know much about Myss or Sacred Contracts, or what not, but I ‘GET’ the idea of archetypes, whether we grasp them on the surface or just recognize them floating under the dock.  I just ‘get’ it.

*=my language is pretty damn funny/punny. unintentional, I swear.

*-let us now talk about the girl who is deaf getting back into ‘listening’, shall we? no? okay then.

*& I don’t know anything about this site but its where I got the quote so I had to link.

**if there is a God, and a ‘living’ Mother T, then i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m not worthy… full on face in dirt.

Humanity

what’d you do today, freelancer?

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I don’t have any work to do today. I mean, I’ve got two jobs that are on hold, or i’m awaiting a response to the last message, etc. So I really have nothing to do.  I’ve moved the sofa. I’ve got a wing chair in the middle of the kitchen now. I’ve measured something. I’ve danced. I took a bath. I’m clean and I watched a zombie show. I am keeping the chickens locked up today because there is a fox, and he has been fed twice in the past two days and hella, stop.

This:

Last night I got a text message from a mom whose kid is/was a friend of my teenager.  sometime in august some shit went down and she just heard about it now and was texting me to essentially find out about it, complain and judge me and my job as a parent.

let me be clear: my kid was part of something mean and unkind to her kid. my kid was mean and unkind.

full stop.

but I don’t really take kindly to the notion that I then get a lecture on parenting from another parent. As if my 14 year old kid is not responsible for his decisions.  Because I was upset at the text series, I looked again through his phone, talked with him about the incident yet again and when I told him that the boy’s feelings had been significantly hurt, he had remorse, again, as he should have.

AND YET, it is still not my responsibility to control his first actions.  I’ve given him a model, and earlier on, explicit directions on how to treat people.  And he made a mistake.

I do feel sorry for it, and sorry for her kid, because it sucks to be in high school sometimes. it really does. and he got hit with flung shit (not literally).

But the patronizing, and the moralizing, and the judgement that I got?  I fling that shit back and out. No.

BUT because I avoid conflict, even within myself, the anger splurted out at my kids last night.

(yelling)
“SHUT UP. I LOVE YOU BUT PLEASE SHUT UP.”

lots of fun at bedtime. guilt. anger. guilt. anger.

so I leave you with this:

a new pink sofa. free, by the side of the road, with a twin. small enough to haul around the house on a freelancing kind of day.

0916191208

Humanity

Re-arriving

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’m slowly coming back into the world.  I’m working each day and making absurd money in small bits of time. Its not enough bits yet, but this morning I made $100 in twenty minutes. So that math? You dig? shoot. And i’m not even a hooker.

I’m coming back into my intellect, with a little removal from the hectic of childcare and whatnots.  I’m listening to a workshop that a woman named Alison Armstrong gave, on Audible. Its the first time I’ve spent so much time listening to something. Her website is called UnderstandMen, which cracks me the hell up.   I have the fancy earphones which STRONGLY resemble earmuffs, so I walk around in my slippers on purpose so I can feel like some kind of Nordic Lodge Bunny. (that’s a thing, right?)

I’ve even felt my spirit stirring, as I tend my home in the tiniest of ways, here and there, attending to space in a seasonal transition.  Tending, without rush, with a feeling of satisfaction at tiny change upon tiny change. And there is the light here. And I have a new painting on the wall that Jessica Kinsella painted, and its astonishing. I’ll try and photo it when the light is right. Maybe I’ll get it in here.

Today is my sister’s birthday. It is a fantastic day to be alive, all the more so because of a day we all remember for something else.  It is a fantastic day to be alive.

 

Thank you, Shannon.

My heart is trying its damnedest to stir to full beat. My intellect and fear-based life experiences are getting in my way. But I’m trying to understand myself, and be gracious to myself, at least, more often than not. and, LM seems to be a very patient man. I’m trying so hard to allow myself to have faith in another person. Its way trickier than I thought it would be.

Jessica Kinsella painting, detail. Unwifedmotherexpletive
my photo does not do it justice. It glows. It is illuminated in color.

 

Humanity

current mood: crackhead

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Sitting in the Car- UnwifedMotherExpletivei’m sitting in my living room currently with three kids around me, all plugged into various screens, even the six year old. and i am typing, while watching Airplane.  I had them all in it with me, for about six minutes.

There are 100 things i love about this movie.

and i’m sitting on the dog’s bed*, so he is lying next to me licking my foot until i scream and get the hell out of his space.

*dog’s bed being a completely original way of saying beanbag chair, intended for humans.

God Bless Kareem Abdul-Jabar. I mean, Roger Murdock.

and then, Ethel Merman.

I’m smitten with the casual cruelty and egalitarian roasting. no one is safe. and yet, it manages to not be aggressive. how does it do that? and, if i weren’t a white girl from the country, would i still think this? i mean, its certainly offensive. but is it?

part of what made me write today was a thought that flashed through my brain while watching Elaine dance to Staying Alive. ‘I wish i was taller’.

Ok now. So, I am 45 years old. My last growth spurt was a while ago. I don’t need to be anything other than I am. ever. right?

As part of the crackhead mood i”ve been in for the past week, I’ve lost all my ground. And, a lovely friend (@hannahmarcotti) said it today, in terms of my doubt, that doubt is really an inability to be present.

and its doubt that is making me lose my ground. doubt in my own instincts, not knowing the difference between fears based on baggage and fears based on intuition, just the wild uncertainty of everything.

Gobacken Sidonna.

I’m laughing out loud, all by myself because a spear just hit a map in the background. thank you very much.

I love the utter ridiculousness of it.

and i’m whacked. doubting myself like crazy pants, and knowing that intuition is a tough one for me, and i relate it to my belief systems in marriage. . .  and i’ve got to figure out what i’m going to do with all my baggage, because i’d like to walk with a slightly lighter step.

and when one decides to look directly at a problem like this: what does it look like?

I’m going to start with some byron katie work.  I’m familiar with this process as i’ve been through it with Chakra Carol in years past.

its a thought re-conditioning sort of thing. i’m taking the kids to the Cape on Monday and I’m going to force myself to get up early and write in the mornings, and i’m dealing with this shit like throwing bricks. obvious and hard.

i am pretty damn sure its just a step in the road, but fuck it.

love you.

-uwmf

 

 

 

Humanity

In the middle of the week. (a pallet fence)

Lovelovemotherexpletive

It is Thursday. I’m going to call that the middle this week, defying all convention. but you know, seven doesn’t divide neatly on a calendar anyhow, so don’t send the hit squad, please.

Summer started here on Tuesday at noon.

Which means, for me, three kids in the house all the time, likely possibility of it being five at any given moment.  Five feels like seven, believe me. Some of this i typed last time i posted. bear with me.

summer brain is like pregnancy brain.

there is a great deal of uncertainty about things that were formerly quite absolute.  and i’ve arrived there. took a day and a half.

yesterday, on a wednesday, the loveliest man (LM) and i put together a pallet fence to protect the chickens-to-be from predators. Because, it turns out, I really like having chickens, for the comfort of their feathers, the curve of their eggs and even their confounding stupidity.  i remain uncertain as to whether god made a mistake in their pea brains, or not. but don’t tell god i said that.

i made a pallet fence.palletdetail

 

and there is much to do, to wire up the whole thing against digging critters, but it makes my whole place look distinctly farmy and delightful in a way i would never truly have expected in my life. (its sort of how i feel right now about LM in general, although he is definitely not farmy)  Its delightful, and I’m going to paint it purple. (not the LM)

Honestly, the pallet fence was so easy, i feel like i need to fence in all the things. stand em up, brace them together and you are done. chickenwire in the ground will happen in the run during the next dry day.

i’m going to fence in my kid who turns 14 at the end of this month. he’s so in it, the life, that i already miss him, and he’s here. so, a paddock it is.

i’m going to fence in the LM, because i barely know how to handle such loveliness and sometimes i need a pause to gather all my panicking feathers.

i’m going to fence in my middle E because he is growing towards 14, and is so independent and will be the crush of my heart when he doesn’t throw himself on me to hug anymore.

i’m throwing my littlest in the fence because she’d love it, the nook aspect of a new cuddle spot, and LM has promised to build her a playhouse and I’m so convinced of men being liars that I don’t want her to know about any of it. so she can never be disappointed.

i’m throwing a fence up around my heart because i’m so content that it is terrifying. chew on that one. I will have a gate so LM and kids and family can come and go.

there will be gates everywhere. and doors. and windows.

let the light flood in. leave the cracks.

sigh.

-uwmofo