Transitions are not my strong point.
I cannot tell you how lonely I feel for this blog, and this community. I just somehow cannot quite give myself permission to log on and write with so many other things that need to be done. Even though this feeds my soul, grounds me, reminds me of me. I need to remember to choose to do it anyway.
The house short sale is moving ahead: closing in 27 days.
The new apartment is a smelly blank slate, and my heart is aching as I face leaving this funky place that is so very effortlessly me. I did not have to create it, it just was. Making the apartment feel like home will take time, effort, and an open heart. I know it will be "fine", but the contrast with this place of light and air and woods and wildflowers is almost too much. I need to think of it all differently. The most important bottom line is this: I am trading this place for freedom.
There is so much to do. And trying to "do" in the swampyard of such heavy emotions? Well...
yeah.
Della is doing wonderfully except for her first barfing last night. I sat there, baby on lap, surprisingly hot barf cupped in my hands and made the choice to dump it on the floor rather than the rug. All elements of this new life.
Did I tell you I fell with Della a few weeks ago? I fell hard and fast against the wall and doorway while she slept in my arms. She stayed sleeping, and in that moment, I felt like maybe I was not a poser.
Motherhood after infertility is rife with the weirdest acute feelings of otherness, of somehow being an outsider in the world of mothers. I do not feel part of that group at all. I feel different. A weird cocktail of shame or embarrassment... Is it because I am so much older? Or because somehow it came so hard? I don't know. I do know this-- I've been too scared to even try to find a local tribe. This weekend my sister came (praise the god-goddess-all-that-is) and brought me reminders of the important things that are not things at all. We went to the lake, wallowed and breathed in fresh cooler air after a week of roasting. I ran into a beautiful woman who was in my birthing class who was there with her partner and their baby girl, born three weeks before Della. Her baby's name rhymes with Della's and we laughed. We're the only two from the class who had girls.
I looked into this woman's eyes, and felt a wave of longing and loneliness I had been ignoring: This want, so badly, to be part of a community in the real world.
In this time of so many transitions, I have really tucked in tightly, and it is hard to imagine opening up-- this vulnerability comes up with such a rush of sadness/otherness. I swear.
Anyway, in spite of me, after she got home she wrote and reached out. I hope to have the guts to meet.
I've always had fantasies about waking up and being able to:
play piano
understand linear equations
whatever
I want to know but always balk at the effort and process it takes to learn, knowing I need to be willing to be really bad at the thing I want to become good at.
I want to have community. I don't want to have to build it. I don't want to be bad at it. I don't want to fail and try again. I just want to be able to lean back into it like a big comfortable chair.
So, anyway, wow. Guess I hit on a nerve there.
Nerves.
Mine.
Anyway, I must get back to work. Sunlight is making the garden look insanely beautiful- coneflower, brown eyed susan's, purple spikey things, hosta blooms that are visited by hummingbirds...daisies as tall as I am. Lush, lovely....
Ok, really, back to work. Signing off with a lovely photo of Della a few weeks back at 8 months.
