Stolen heart

This morning as Lily turns 14

Lily turns 14 today. In fact, she already has ... at 1:47 a.m., to be exact. She bounced into the world rather quickly (7 hours compared to 29 with my first – I have a theory about birth experience/length and how it relates to later behavior) and mostly without the assistance of the physician, who ran in to catch her. The nurses, Lily and I did all of the work. That day and her fragility seem so far away. I do remember rocking on a yoga ball to ease the pain, that I took the epidural after careful consultation with the anaesthetist to ensure it would not re-injure a spinal wound and, 45 minutes later without breaking much of a sweat, this sweet thing was here!

She was a gorgeous, jolly baby always looking for a cue from her beloved older sister. She hasn't changed much. Except when she and I do battle, which has decreased and taught us each something from the other. No one has ever gotten under my skin the way she does. She irks me to no end, but also shows me the endless depths of love. I wrote about her on her 10th birthday:

She shows me what it's like to be wild and free. I model responsibility and discipline. We each desperately need each other, although it's hard for either of us to admit publicly.

Young Lily, busy at the computer; some things never change

In that post, I also wrote about how she whined our entire vacation that summer. That was my fear this summer, when we took the girls to Europe on a long-awaited, hard-earned trip. She was a gem, possibly because I shared the daily plan with her ahead. She likes to know what's coming. The four of us spent a lot of time together in close quarters for those two weeks. That experience eked into the rest of summer and we all liked being together. I sensed this time as ripe for that as both girls are now high schoolers and, all too soon, will be going off into the world on their own.

One of the surprisingly unexpected and wonderful gifts of the trip is how exceptionally close my girls have become. They were always cozy, but in a push-me, pull-me way.  Now, they respect and depend on each other, while each is quite independent. Lily is having the time of her life as a freshman, sampling so many activities, earning new friends and easily picking up a new language. Autumn is off to college classes two night a week as part of a post-secondary education option. They seem to be running in different circles, but after school they often walk somewhere to study or for a snack. That's about the only time they have together.

That means I see them each separately these days, which equates to less drama and more quality one-on-one. I have observed Lily grow into herself, keenly so. She is such a problem solver and always off on some creative adventure like making videos, sketching or having a scavenger hunt with her BFF. 

Lily and her BFF: Dr. Who Halloween

Under her confident smile and sometimes bristly facade lays a huge and tender heart. She still occasionally mentions the homeless woman we encountered in Chicago years ago laying in the alley: How do you think she is now, Mom?

As I have delved the past couple of years into astrology, I have grown more appreciative of her characteristics as a Virgo. A few weeks ago she asked me one of her incessant questions: "What's the most-hated astrology sign?"  I don't know, I answered, fearing it was my own. "Virgo – mine," she answered rather sadly. My wise friend Char shared an affirmation for Virgo with me that I will give Lily today. Here is an excerpt:

"I  accept deeply my keen analysis

and enquiring mind.

I accept fully my high energy

and amazing memory.

I accept fully my ability to see details,

to transform separate parts into meaningful wholes.

I am dependable.

I am precise.

I am meticulous yet practical.

I am industrious and self disciplined.

With great ease I refine, soften, and direct

my inexhaustible energies,

express my discrimination and wisdom

with courage, self reliance, and strength,

my power with delicacy and appropriateness

my invincibility with protectiveness.

I accept my extraordinary ability for self-sacrifice

and my high intuitive gifts that are rooted deeply

to my instinctive human sympathy.

The birthright of Virgo is

to pierce the Grand Illusion of Life."

Lily is ALL of these and more; she's my private wild child who has stolen my heart. Like when Max leaves the wild things, they cry:

“Oh please don't go  – we'll eat you up – we love you so!"

• Who am I close to that gets under my skin?
• Why is that?"
• What do I have to learn from that person?
• What do I have to teach?
• Where is Spirit in this relationship?


tangled hair,
but perfectly
made-up eyes

though I don't
see why

she has a natural,
wild beauty

but, I suppose,
at age 14, she's
fallen prey
to teen experimentation
and off-kilter
marketing that
says otherwise

she has to
discover these
things on her own

as I stand back
and witness
her growing
more and
more into
herself

beautifully

Listen to this post:

Rumpled skin of myself

My wolf came out the other day; no, literally she really did. On a 45-miute drive while I was taking a cat nap in the passenger seat – we'd done this same, long stretch three times in the last week-and-a-half – I had a waking dream. The kind that pops up before you know it, signaling that you were on the edge of sleep, but not quite.

Almost before it shifted to another visual, I recognized it as something to note. A yowling wolf, standing straight up, as if half human, emerging from a silken guise that looked like me. I was just shed, split in two and shuffled to the floor like a Disney-princess costume when the bad-guy seems more attractive.

I immediately sensed the wolf represented both power and anger. After journaling, I am aware she also symbolizes not playing by the rules, wildness, a natural state, animalness, beastliness and rawness.

Max and the Wild Things

The power and anger had been suppressed, but now they are out. This coincides with recent night waking as if my body is programmed for fear mode. Fear that I won't get enough done, be a good enough parent, earn enough, basically that there is not enough and I am not enough. On an intellectual and spiritual level, I know this isn't true. But, bodily and deeply imbedded, I don't and I need to learn it in that realm to release it.

A couple of days ago, a Richard Rohr meditation addressed this issue in a manner I had not before articulated:

Moving to the level of "participative knowing: is first of all a cellular experience, a full-body knowing. It is nothing you can prove merely by the mental ego. It is something you know by inner experience – by prayer, by love, and by suffering."

That hits the nail on the head for me.

This week I have been struggling, more like battling, with my almost 13-year-old in organizing her to go back to school. Organization is not in her genes and so her wolf has been calling, growling, to mine. As I explore and begin to address her resistance to organization and preference for chaos, I understand that taps into my current journey. That I have been too conformed to the world's ways that are not in sync with my nature. I have been teaching her some of the structures that constrict me and stuffed this wolf inside. She's challenging that. As a mother, I do need to guide her through the maze of living more easily in the world. Interesting books on fast minds and the hunter gene teach me that my daughter's nature is one of constant scanning and change. That she's not meant to be still and obedient, though she must adapt somewhat to survive this world. That's where I come in.

I can't ignore either of our wolves. Mine is no longer invisible and has shredded the princess facade of niceness. My wolf must channel her anger. Confess, as a wise astrologer suggested six months ago. Not repress or express. She's rebelling against old messages of sucking my stomach in or eating with my mouth closed so I don't appear uncivilized to others.

I ache to embrace this wildness that I see in my child. To own my power and creativity and surrender the old messages, patterns and destructive ways along with the fear and anger. I long to let go of the super structures that are not me. The ones that hold and hem me in. The ones that separate me from Spirit.

I want to flow, dance, be joyful and not restricted. That's all my daughter wants. We're fallible human bodies with big hearts and a spark of Divinity, that of God within. In learning to unstrap my burden of responsibility, perfectionism and attachment and give them to Spirit, perhaps that will guide her as well.

I feel like the opposite of my favorite storybook character, Max, from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Max dresses up in a wolf suit to become "the king of all the wild things." I've dressed up in a suit that constricts my wildness and closeness to Spirit. Hoping to complete the journey and return while, like Max's homecoming, my dinner is still hot.

• When has my wild thing emerged?
• What triggered it?
• What message did it bring?
• How do I identify with the wildness in others?
• How does that wildness draw me closer to Spirit?


lazily drifting
out of thought
into the warmth
of the sun, the
soft breeze and
gentle hum of
the car

hypnotic

uncontrolled
images carelessly
floating by until
one calls, grabs
my attention

the wolf, my wolf
growls her way
out of my skin

announcing her
visibility and need
to be out

now, what to do
with the rumpled
skin of myself and
the new wildness

Listen to this post:

Love letter to a wild thing

        The night Max wore his wolf suit
        and made mischief of one kind
               and another
        his mother called him "WILD THING!"
        and Max said "I"LL EAT YOU UP!"
        so he was sent to bed without eating anything.
                            – Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

I wish I'd consistently respond to my wild thing the way Max's mom does. Often, I mete the consequence, but I also ignore and tolerate until my very long fuse gets lit. And, when it does, I become a wild thing in a rumpus.

I don't know how she does it, but my youngest is a master at pushing my buttons in a way no one else ever has. I thought I was a kind, loving, compassionate, tolerant, peaceful person until this lovable furry beast grew old enough to challenge me every inch of the way: relentlessly and unceasingly. Invariably, she fuels up and pushes until one of us bursts and then – only then – can she settle, mellow and do whatever it was she was supposed to.

I've been told I give her too much power, must learn to be consistent, should create stronger and clearer personal boundaries and remove myself from the drama. Mostly, I can. But there are days that seem endless and something just clicks. I am blinded in the moment and become someone I don't recognize. My hair covers my body, my nails lengthen and curve to become claws, my voice screeches and something else takes over. I don my wolf suit when she taps the wild side in me.

Most recently, I left and walked a labyrinth trying to simmer and calm the seething. Often she blocks me from leaving, not understanding I need to retreat to survive (which may be a faulty mechanism she's unconsciously attempting to correct).

So I have to ask myself, what, exactly, is she reaching in me?

It's as if she taunts me to dredge up every old wound I have stuffed down. Every injustice. Every wrong, slight or injury. She is a master stirrer and she's dredging up my anger from the bottom. My shamanic counselor says every family has a shit stirrer. Boy, does she keep that pot bubbling.

She forces me to look deep into the underbelly, the places I have locked away or forgotten. The feelings I have numbed for a variety of reasons. Maybe because she has those feelings and doesn't know what to do with them. She's forcing me to deal with them and teach both of us.

Is she simply coercing me to express those subdued layers? To find some form of freedom in releasing them? She never holds a grudge and once she has her fit, is done. Maybe that's a lesson I could learn. To express, then completely let go. Have my rumpus ... maybe many for all of the years of suppressed anger  -- and be done.

        "And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start."
        "Now stop," Max said and sent the wild things off to bed
        without their supper. And Max the king of all the wild things was lonely
        and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.
                            – Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

After the rumpus, Max was ready to love. I think my wild one is, too.


• Who are the wild things in my life?
• What do they make me confront?
• When am I a wild thing and do I recognize it?
• What does my inner wild thing teach me?
• What is there for me to release with a rumpus?


LOVE LETTER TO
  A WILD THING

sometimes
I have
to look
hard,
very hard


and wade
deep,
very deep


to see
past the
growling,
clawing
and
snarling


of you
in your
wolf suit


and me
in mine


to the
two
beating
hearts
that are


very
connected