Two years ago I was sitting across from my counselor clutching a cup of coffee with both hands while I rocked a sleeping baby in a car seat with the anxious bouncing of my leg. I was so tired, so full of love, and so lost in all the change. My counselor would suggest ways for me to do something I enjoyed, giving me a list of trails to hike (as many as there can be around Wichita Falls) while also asking specific questions to draw me out of my own mind.
“But, I can’t just go.
I can’t be in need of anything right now.”
She would roll her eyes.
I don’t know when the narrative of wholly abandoning myself and my voice as a silent expression of love and loyalty really took root in my heart, but the narratives I felt obliged to believe and apply in order to be a “good mother” were stifling me. I was rejecting all parts of who I am, minus momma. But these same narratives were entirely indicative of the way I responded to people. Especially anyone I was fearful of losing or even offending in the slightest.
They played on a loop in my mind and subconsciously fell out of my mouth and filled her little room in my defense. It’s strange what fear and shame can do to a person, to a new mother. It’s even more disturbing when you voice something you’ve been feeling and realize you are 100% not yourself anymore.
Now she had my full attention.
I remember her looking at tiny Jane and then at me and saying over and over again, “you can do both, you can be both. She needs you to be both." Until she drew me out of the fog, back to the mountain, and to the center of myself and I believed it.
Since then, those words have been scintillating in my heart, a beacon of light to return to and go forward from as I dust off old dreams and create new ones and chase after Jane and feel her sister kick my ribs and remember to stop and ask myself what I want for me, my family, my daughters.
I feel her raging against me repeatedly.
Rattling the doorknob of the room back in my heart where I’d left her,
Hoping she won’t climb out of some unlocked window
Getting us hurt again.
That she can wait just a little longer until I find a mountain
To let her roam wild on.
But she is still there raging and rattling.
I can feel her pulse quickening.
Even in a brief moment of stillness
As the sun sets and cicadas hum
And I am lost in the memory of pine trees and mountain lakes,
She throws open the door and draws me back to wild
Before I tried to tame it.
She taunts me with questions
That challenge my silence.
She twists her face in confusion
At the faded spirit she sees.
Defiant, she squares her shoulders before me.
I choose to face her this time,
Ask her what she wants.
What she needs.
I am met first with a stubborn stare.
Then, her eyes soften and instead
She tells me who she is.
An invitation to let go, to come back.
I am startled by the sound of my own voice
I haven't heard it for so long.
Expectations
Obligations
Responsibilities
"You're such a child."
The excuses pour from my mouth
And from my hidden shame.
Suddenly, my daughter erupts through the back door giggling,
Barefoot and unabashed.
My little thunderstorm.
Gasping as the wind hits her face,
Searching upward for the reverberate shrill of the cicadas,
Stretching her hands out to the swaying trees,
Dancing on the weeds and grass beneath her feet.
Of course, I am standing between a piece of myself
And a part of myself. Both a little wild.
Both free.
I look inward at my own childish face for a minute.
Mirrored by the moment, her eyebrows are raised
As she glances at me and then my daughter.
Light pools in the corners of her smile,
Collects beneath her eyelids.
I relent, turn away and follow my daughter
Differently than I would have moments ago.
You can do both, you can be both.
She needs you to be both.
| C. Leslie