Without question, parenting has been the most rigorous work of my life. Physical elements are part of it -- the diapers, nursing and social planning -- but the big-huge-colossal-galactic part of the work of parenting isn't tangible, visible, or often even name-able.

It is emotional work. It is spiritual work. It grows us, stretches us, calls out the parts of us that want to emerge. ​Our greatest learning and growth can live inside our parenting, when we let them. 

Before I was a parent, I thought a parent could provide everything their child needed in terms of guidance and wisdom. Once I had a child, I realized this is untrue. While much guidance can come from a parent, each child needs more than one parent can offer. 

I've seen it in my friends' children. Eyes and hearts longing to know love from all the adults around them. I've seen it in my child, her sense of inner trust expanding when she is parented by someone other than me or her father. 

Once while camping, my daughter was about 20 yards away from me, playing with friends. From where I stood, I could see she needed something but I also knew there were parents closer to her who might help. I felt a longing. Within my chest, I hoped those parents would help.

And they did!

I felt relieved. My daughter got her need met and I didn't have to meet it. Someone whose values and ways I trusted, helped her out. Through this, my daughter grew more trusting of the world — that people would take care of her, not just her parents. 

Weight lifted off my shoulders, trust grown in my child, plus a strengthened bond between my child and that parent. Multiple wins!

Not all parents are open to letting other parents guide their children. I've had my heart gently broken by a close friend who didn't want me to connect with her child when the connection was "corrective." She only seemed to welcome me when I was coming from sweetness, affirming her child's strengths — not when I saw something unloving in her child and wanted to offer guidance. It hurt. It felt like I got cut off, not being allowed to fully express myself in friendship with her child. It felt like I wasn't trusted, or that she was scared. 

Some parents want a lot of help from others. Some want none. What I am suggesting is that we open ourselves to welcoming help. Parenting can be exhausting and it doesn't need to be so bad, when we can allow support from those willing to offer it. 

If someone guides your child in a way that doesn't feel trustworthy or aligned with you, step away from that person's guidance or ask if they're willing to hear input about your values and ways. This dynamic of giving and receiving parental guidance to other people's children is never 100% free of messes — life is messy. 

Talking with your child about the varied guidance they receive can be a great learning experience too. "Uncle Adam uses fear to try to teach you things. Does that work well for you?" for example. Or, "You feel supported by Grandpa, don't you?"

High five to you for opening yourself to receive more support and to let your child grow in his/her sense of living in village.

​I sure appreciate it, every time one of my friends leans in to guide my child. It's like a relief tattoo on my forehead! Except, it doesn't hurt. (Thanks, friends.)

Mothers hold... so much.

​I see it, I'm stunned by it, I try to grasp why mothers' work is so undervalued and... 

How the heck could it be so hard for us mamas to articulate the "all" of what we do, and hold? and...

I'm left speechless. 

But I'll find words soon. Because it's a really, really big important deal. 

Stay tuned. 

And if you're a devoted mama? I see you. I see all that you hold. You are doing the great work. Thank you. 

Dear Dad,

​It was evening.

We sat in your living room and as you do every day, you watched the evening news.

​Summer time in California meant every other story was about wildfires. Then came the reports of shootings.

When the guns, blood, police sirens and faces of black American citizens flashed on the screen, I asked you to turn off the sound because my daughter, your 7th grandchild, does not know what a gun is and I don’t want that horror present in her awareness yet.

You turned off the sound, and then it happened again. Another story about another shooting. This time you were a bit annoyed when I asked you to turn off the volume. You said, “Someday she’s going to have to learn about reality.”

And I get that you see that as reality. I’ve been through this before with another family member.

​Deep sigh from my Mama Bear heart.

This is a letter to you and to millions and millions of people in our culture who would feel the same way you did in that moment. Annoyed, like I am privileged and should be teaching my child about shootings and other violence already.

Simply put, and with love and respect for you, I have every right to differ and I do.

Just as somebody might choose to use a gun to protect their child, I choose to use my instinct and powerful voice — and my ability to select what she is exposed to — to protect mine.

Back up with me for a moment. We all get to choose what we read, what we watch on TV or if we watch any at all, where our information and education comes from… Yes?
That’s worth asking. It’s worth considering. Otherwise, we’re just going with the default. Is life meant to be lived by default?

The news most people watch comes from big business corporations. Let’s not get elaborate here, this is simple. I don’t want news that is chosen and delivered by a big corporation and I don’t want my daughter receiving news from a big corporation either. Our news comes from smaller entities that we find trustworthy. It’s a simple as that. We want to expose ourselves to trustworthy information that affirms the life-honoring values within us and teaches us how to create a kinder, more loving world. You choose your news, I choose mine.
​
It’s important to recognize that what you call reality isn’t the reality I live in. Yes, I sound privileged to a lot of people. Yet we do not all live in — we do not all experience — one reality.

We all get to make 1,000s of choices daily that culminate in different “realities.” But absolutely, and with great sadness I say, we do not recognize this freedom inherent within us. We see ourselves as imprisoned, each of us in our own way.

Life is sad and beautiful, as a dear wise friend once said.

I choose to expose my child to the violence in the world in those moments, one by one, when it is time for her. When we are ready. That’s not up to anyone else to decide.

How can we dampen the ever-sprouting, sheer joy of a child? Children are here to play, feel safe and loved.

My child is not here to fix the problems in the world right now. She is here to grow and blossom as a healthy citizen who will, one fine bittersweet day at a time, get to know the horrors of the human experience in more detail.

For now -- and may it forever be my foundation -- I teach Love.

I teach her that we all have different skin colors because we come from different parts of this life-giving, colorful planet. I teach her that when she feels pain, and when a friend feels pain, she can show love. I teach her kindness. I teach her how to communicate with her words, not with violence. These are tools she’ll need to lead to a world with less shootings to report on the news.

You are a beautiful father and I wouldn’t trade a single thing for the fortune of having you as mine. I’m glad we can share how we feel and see life, and keep showing up to love each other through it all.

​Your youngest daughter,
Jessica

Recently in a greeting card mailed to me by a wise and long-time friend, she wrote that I “more singularly identify with being a mother” than any other mama friend she has. My initial inner response was, Oh great, am I weird in yet one more way in life? Does that mean she thinks I’m boring now? Have I gotten lost in the dance of mothering, and given up on my other passions?

Within moments, my little self-doubt voices dissipated. Her words then struck me as a powerful invoking of reflection about the last five years of my life.

Let me call myself out, to begin. Curiosity is powerful in relationships and I have not yet asked this dear friend what she meant by “singularly identified”. Letter writing is a slow exchange, more spacious than talking or texts, and my next letter to her will include a question seeking to understand what she expressed from her bold, loving heart.

According to standard definitions, I could interpret what she said as this: I am more remarkably, extraordinarily, and exceptionally identify as a mother than any other mama friend she has. Sounds like a big, kind compliment, right?

My friend’s bold way of showing me love in her letter left me with a feeling of pride about how I mother. Her words felt like a spotlight on a stage where I am dancing the awkward, passionate, indescribably rewarding dance of being a mama. So that is what I will respond to here, as I know many of you reading this have your own way of shining in your very own mothering stage.

On the surface being a mother is all about playgrounds, naps, tantrums, cuddling  and a giving-up of self.

Right beneath it, there appears a mountaintop presenting to a mother some of  the richest and most fertile personal expansion terrain available in life.

It has been said our children are our greatest teachers. To actually experience this in life can be fascinating, blissful and grueling at times. We can pay money for meditation retreats and gurus, yet our children offer astounding spiritual lessons for free on a daily basis. Children are the original gurus.

And I’m up for that. My religion is Love. In this life I want to shed all my layers of fear and bloom open to what Spirit, what Love, has to offer. Bring it on, little guru.
So it isn’t surprising that life hasn’t let me detract substantial attention from this opportunity in order to “make” other things happen, since my child was born. While I’ve tried to create a stable income flow, I’ve instead seen a path dotted with seemingly random creative output, unstable income and no clear sign of what’s to come. When we are trying to force something to happen, it is a pretty clear sign that it’s not meant to happen right now. It’s just not time.

In a way, motherhood has swallowed me whole. I have allowed it, though, feeling the briefness of this sacred encounter. Years fly. My guru won’t live with me forever.

My top priority is being the mother I am meant to be. It appears the priority is my child, but equally the priority is me giving her the all she deserves… Me welcoming the extraordinary and unmatched opportunity of being spiritually stretched and widened, that she presents to me. It is about me being the fullest version of myself that I can be, expanded by the presence of a being who I love as much as, dare I say, God. Or so it feels that way.

To the friend whose handwritten words led me to this helpful self-reflection, I extend my deep thanks. You see me from a perspective I value. However clumsy and grumpy I may sometimes be, I like who I am as a mother and as silly ol’, perfectly imperfect me.

So once I got over the reaction I would have had 20 years ago: Whaaaaaat? Ohhhh this hurts, ouch, she's right, I really need to get more exercise or stop eating sugar or... which took about three seconds to move through me, I simply said what seemed true and loving: "My legs are just the right size for me."

Frankly I almost couldn't believe what I'd said. Was that really me talking, saying words of self-acceptance about my body? Who was this matter-of-fact-I'm-fine woman that I'd become?

Let me answer that question. This woman is a woman who has experienced so much culturally and self-inflicted criticism, yes mostly self inflicted, about my body that I refused to ever, no I have not ever, said one negative word about my body around my daughter. I don't talk about women's bodies as if they are to be criticized. Spending 30-something years in the pain of that world was enough. 

This is a woman who birthed a girl child, for whom I want as little of that kind of pain as humanly possible. Magazine ads and peer chatter will be enough for her to pick up on society's sick perspectives about the female body. I will not be contributing to that. 

We all get to choose our parenting style. We all get to choose what we say to our children. So many of us want our children to be free of the wounds we lived through in our own childhood. 

Will we teach our daughters to focus on their bodies' strength, on how they feel?

Will we teach our sons to respect girls' bodies, by respecting our own in front of them?

As for me, the best I can do is let the outrageously big love I feel for my daughter escalate my own process of accepting that I am fine. 

I am just fine, just the way I am, whether it's summertime and my skin is glowing, or a long dark winter where I'm pale as a pigeon plucking snow from the curb. At age 14 I had magazine covers plastered on my walls because I thought supermodels were it, and I wanted to be like them. Now, things are different. Age has freed me up. Something like that. 

Yes I know full self acceptance is a tall order. Yet I know it is worth wanting. 
​
Thank you, child, for calling forth my wiser self. May you always know your legs are just the right size for you, too. May you have no idea how many thousands of hours I've spent criticizing my own body, and especially my legs, until someday by the fire while we're camping, it feels like time to tell you that story. Dear child, may your life show you a way that is glorious galaxies beyond the wisdom of mine.