These tender nights.
This soul that whispers,
weary as can be.
Such love shines
upon the pavement of life.
Darlings of mine.
How they take this heart,
how they shatter the light,
that I might be the stars.
I’m an explosion of heart. Tender and soft, especially of late. Quietly contemplating, missing the people I love, whispering a subtle question to the world of nothing around me.
Where am I going, and who am I? So much of me has become new. It is a sure sign that there is no fixed identity, as much as we cling to who we think we are and tell our stories until well beyond their used by date.
I nurse a quiet hope in my heart that, someday, I will have crossed a bridge between not knowing and finally knowing life and its meaning.
Life is a journey, this much I know.
Life is a teacher, of this I am also certain.
This understanding is, in itself, a beautiful thing.
Can I let go fully, though, and allow life to happen effortlessly, and without a care?
I ask the small voice of my heart, and she smiles in response.
I know nothing of what that smile means.
Not yet, anyway.
I am tidying the mess my three children have made. Motherhood has broken me, today. It has hurt me, it has hurt them, and all because I have failed to be perfect. And so have they.
But as I am down on my hands and knees, moving toys from here to there, I understand that I am in two places at once. I am here, among the chaos, among the evidence that three uncontrollable children live here.
And I am also seven years ago, when I paced around the living room, my stomach contracting with a baby that I would never actually get to meet.
Tonight, I know the gift of my children, despite the chaos they sometimes bring.
Tonight, I understand the beautiful silence of that night seven years ago. The same silence as tonight. A silence that asked me, then, to be fully there with my baby because we deserved that time to know each other.
A silence that lives imperfectly, now, for my children.
Each and every day that I live.
For them.
Here I am again with nothing to say.
How often have I done this, since the birth of my blog? How often have I just been here because being anywhere else hasn’t seemed like an option? Many a time.
I feel as though, for a very long time, I’ve been in between here and there. Not quite knowing where here is, and not even willing to guess where there might be.
I get the distinct impression I am meant to find here and stay here, without even a thought or wondering of ‘there’. After all, when we get ‘there’ it will become ‘here’, just as today will always be today, and tomorrow will never come. (I wonder if that makes any sense at all. I am running on very little sleep. I do hope you will forgive me.)
All this rambling makes me think of a moment I had today as I sat upon a picnic rug in our yard, with my baby crawling around at my feet. In my left hand I held a large ball and in my right, a small ball. It occurred to me that without the presence of the other, neither could actually be called ‘small’ or ‘large’. The terms large and small are always relative to something else. How would I know I was holding a large ball if I’d never seen a small ball in my life? I marvel at the wonderful nerdy goodness of that.
And it makes me think of all the other ways us humans have framed our world in order to communicate clearly. What would happen, do you think, if every ‘large’ ball was just a ball? To take it even further, what would happen if every ball was nameless; just an odd sort of circular object that sat perfectly in your hands, without a preconceived idea or purpose. What might we think to do with it if its possibilities were not as clearly defined?
Gosh I’m rambling. I really don’t even know why, or what all this is about, so I will say goodnight. Goodness, I’m tired.
I hope the world is being kind to you, bloggy friends.
If not, I am sending my heart.
The sun will shine again.
I promise.
xx Brooke
Mistakes are our greatest gifts, and yet, we are buried in shame.
Do not make a mistake. Do not ever be bad.
We are shamed.
We are shamed.
We are human. Not one of us is perfect, not one.
I teach my children that their failures are the best things that could happen for them, their mistakes, beautiful lessons in how to do life beautifully.
Punishment breaks my heart. An eye for an eye, an ancient, barbaric way. And all of it pointless, in my eyes, because shame only drives the ‘bad’ underground, it doesn’t lovingly guide it to a better day.
Accepting our faults and carefully growing with them through life might work.
Shaming will destroy.
I choose the gentle way.
I choose self compassion, and compassion for others.
I choose…actually, I choose sleep.
I’m so terribly tired.
So terribly tired.
May they find the hours
of my love for them
strewn upon these coloured pages.
May their names shine with my love,
and may their eyes light
with the truth of all they are.
May these hours,
and these pages dear,
show my children that love is pure
beyond thinking.
Love is…
love
is.
Motherhood has opened my heart in both expected and unexpected ways. It’s taught me that I never truly knew concepts such as shame or guilt before, or responsibility, or disappointment, or sorrow.
And I often get down on myself when I don’t get it right. When I snap at them for being children. When I’m too lazy to be the Mother I know I can be to them.
Then there was today. Today when a situation arose that put my parenting skills to the test, and they were met and exceeded, to my absolute delight.
I have to celebrate this beautiful victory with all of my heart. I have to love myself as much as I love my babies and say: Mum, you did a great job.
I am not perfect.
But today, I was a great Mum.
Who knows what I’ll be tomorrow.
I know the words I’ve spoken are true;
they have been wider and further than the ordinary kind.
Those words of the heart that stretch across souls, here they are: truth sending forth her deepest moan.
The absolute truth is unmistakable.
I know
I know
the absolute truth.
I’m going to gift myself something beautiful, tonight.
I’m going to gift myself time.
I’ve been running on full speed, trying to be everything I can be, just in case I run out of minutes in my day.
Most days, as a Mum of three little ones, I do run out of minutes.
And energy.
So, tonight I will sit and breathe.
I’ll not need to go anywhere, I’ll not need to do anything.
All I’ll need to do
is be.
And the time starts…
now.
Love
the word
is not enough.
Love
the feeling
is infinite.
brooke-cutler.com 