After a two-year blogging hiatus, a separation, another pregnancy and another child, I have reinvented myself and I am back.
It was Mother’s Day weekend and I was not with my children. I was on an isolated retreat site overlooking the Russian River with plush greenery all around me and a small cold cabin with a cement floor as my sleeping quarters. The retreat was anchored around Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, which are to: Be impeccable with our words, to not take things personally, to not make assumptions and to always do our best. Throughout the weekend cycles of tears, laughter, creativity flowed freely as we took turns sharing stories.
By this point, we had been separated for two years. Our eldest daughter E was two the day that we split. It was not amiable. It was not gentle. It was not pretty. Layers of hurt and deep uncommunicated thoughts, assumptions, well intentioned but misunderstood ideas and pain erupted. But that’s another story for another time.
As I sat pretzel style on the carpeted floor with the women on retreat as people took turns sharing snippets and stories of their past, there is something that struck a deep chord with me. A woman covered in tatoos with wavy short blonde hair led a workshop on soul collages. She flippantly shared a card that she had created using old magazines and intuition to piece the images together and later meditated to learn the meaning of her card.
“This is my inner child, the three year old version of myself,” she explained. “That is the last time I felt truly safe and secure. After that, my parents divorced.” She went on to rationalize. “I know it is what they needed to do and I completely understand it now.” That all made sense and she did seem to be a lovely, well-adjusted person, the part that stuck with me is that it took her three decades to come to terms with that. Another woman with jet black curly hair and a perfectly round face talked about the pain of looking into the mirror and seeing her father looking back at her in her reflection, rather than her mother who had single-handedly raised her. She shed a tear as she contemplated the lifelong questions, “Am I enough?” “What would have happened if my dad would have stuck with us?” Versions of these stories repeated themselves over and over all weekend long.
On Sunday afternoon, I came home to my empty, quiet house. When the three of them pulled up in my silver SUV I had lent them for the weekend, I felt butterflies of happiness in my stomach. E was ecstatic about giving me the beautiful tin-can covered with cut out scraps of pink paper and flower-shaped stickers that we co-crafted during mommy-and-me day at her school. “Happy Mother’s Day Mommy!” she said with an ear-to-ear smile her deep brown eyes that matched her dad and her sweet pug nose that matched mine and her beautiful brown hair that was a hybrid of the two of us. Delilah’s eyes lit up and she could not wait to get out of her car seat--perhaps in part because she had been away from mama’s milk all weekend. Hector and me gave each other a fist-bump and smiled at each other. We ended up having an early dinner, going to play at a park and then coming home and filling the bike tires so we could debut our new bike and rolling pull-along stroller. The day kept going and the kids were not eager to transition to bedtime. E relishes in the times when she has both mommy and daddy with her. “Mommy, today daddy will stay and read me a story,” she declares.
“Will you daddy?” she asks. The two of us strategically snuggle with our children, who are both on top of the bed. Just as it starts to get quiet and daddy mentions that he will go soon.
“Daddy, I am hungry for grapefruit, can you get up with me?” Eventually he does. In my heart, I know that she is not being defiant. Her little heart and mind are stretching out the family togetherness time as far as she possibly can.
When the kids go to sleep, we hold hands and talk about some of the hiccups we are facing. In essence, we are two people who love our children, and dare I say it, love each other. In theory, either of us could have moved on by now, but in practice, neither of us have. We have some residual hurt--some instances of feeling unheard, unacknowledged, unloved, abandoned, held back and list goes on. We have different views of where we would like to live, different parenting styles, and the list of differences goes on and on. Our co-parenting therapist would look at that list and say that it proves that we are at the point of no-return. But during that moment of emotional intimacy with our hands touching, we played with the idea of writing a new narrative with a different (not perfect but happier) ending. What if we build on the small pieces that work and figure out a way to divvy up, cope with, work around the parts that trigger or misalign? What if we build on the foundation of our beloved children and the simple fact that we do love each other (rather than critiquing our love’s adequacy).
(Two days later-after a triggering emotional roller coaster ride) What if we acknowledge that getting it “right” does not necessarily translate to a fairy tale romantic ending, that it could be as simple as finding a sustainable rhythm for maintaining peace, harmony and healthiness for our children with minimal conflict between their parents? And finally, there’s the part where I acknowledge that I will just have to focus on doing my part, because I can only control what I do. This means trying to live out a version of The Four Agreements to show up as the best version of myself and mom that I can be without taking things personally, regardless if someone else is foregoing impeccability with words to say horrible things rooted in assumptions.
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