Lisa for Real

Election Reflection

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election reflection

Today’s news has been something I have been waiting for, hoping for, with bated breath. For five days, I have held my nostrils and lips tightly as webpages for ballot counts reloaded and as message applications showed my friends’ thoughts in progress.

Waiting for the presidential election results has been like watching a pot of water boil. At the start, there is no activity. The flame is bright, lit, vibrant, urging that lukewarm water to boil. But no matter how strong that flame is, how excited it is, how much it wants the water to boil, the water does nothing. I was one of the millions of flickers of flame wishing, coaxing that water to boil. An update of each state’s blue vote fanned the flame inciting even more coaxing.

When watching water boil, the first bubble, just like the announcement of the first official blue state, is exciting, momentous, but without much significance. It disappears as quickly as it appears, taunting us that the end is not quite as near as we hoped. But, as the states were tracked, finalized and announced, you could feel momentum growing. By Friday, we were at that point in the boiling where you could see bubbles forming at the base of the kettle and gradually appearing more quickly.

Today, Saturday, November 7, 2020 at 11:30PM, the bubbles finally came to a rolling boil. Today, the country let out a collective roar just as the kettle whistled.

That resounding roar was as much for victory as it was of relief. Tears fell and chests heaved, mimicking the surging and swirling of water and bubbles when there is a boil. It was all a release. A letting go of what we did not realize we were holding onto. A dropping of shoulders, an unclenching of jaws and an unfurling of fists that have been on high alert for four years. A release of four years’ of emotions with no discharge and no completion cycle – doubt, hopelessness, sadness, anger, disbelief, grief, despair, and so on. A systemwide realization that we will no longer be subjected to misogyny, discrimination, racism, bullying, lying, and abuse at the hands of the highest office in our country.

Today, the country released a deep sigh with an eye looking forward to, a heart open to and a soul willing to do the work for hope, unity and love.

Inspiration: Not that all elections aren’t significant, but this one is on a whole other level. The past four years, basic human decency and empathy have been dismissed. It has been apparent that a lot of people feel the same way as the current president. It has been depressing and has caused some to sink deeper into despair and caused some to take action. Today’s results mean that the future top down leadership will not be praising and self-servingly perpetuating white supremacy, misogyny, and discrimination. They signify a shift from the current toxic environment.
I was part of a text chain of friends tracking the presidential election. The image of watching a pot boil came to me as we were discussing the results in real time. I love writing through my experience as a way of processing and capturing the sensations that I feel. I did not want to wait to capture how I feel now and I looked to expand on that analogy into this post. When things are good, we can get complacent. One of my intentions in writing this is to remember how it felt – the contrast in experience of feeling hopelessness and then feeling hope. I know that this will serve me in continuing my activism and in not forgetting.

Today is significant

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Today is significant.

It is the last time that I will be a year postpartum.  I will never be able to experience again much of what has happened in the last 366 days. (Through modern science, we can replicate a lot of things but childbirth is not one of them.) I have tried to archive every memory of this past year in technicolor detail but I have already forgotten more than I can remember. 

It is no wonder our youngest children always remain babies in our eyes – because we want to hold onto that feeling, always.  That feeling when their tiny hand first grasped our finger.  That feeling when we saw their first smile. When we received that first drooly kiss.  When we saw their first steps. And so on. 

The final firsts.  How incredibly bittersweet they are.

They are a reminder that motherhood is a constant barrage of beginnings and endings. At a pace unmatched by any other wonderment of our lives.  Highlighted with intense highs and lows as joyfulness and sadness gleefully tag each other in and out as they please. 

As I mourn and celebrate this final first, I also examine this re-emergence from postpartum.

Today feels very different from the other two times.

Today is significant.

Through a biological lens, this current life stage I am in are my fertile years with puberty and menopause as the bookends. And long ago, this life stage would have been filled with lots of babies. This is the time of life when Woman embodies the power of Creation.

My body, having already returned to its cycles, is overflowing with intense, creative energy, but I have no desire to add to my brood. 

Instead, I feel that energy driving me to write again, to coach again, to create projects again. Redirecting my focus to bringing about the change I want to see in the world.

Just as I am clearing my bookshelf of my pregnancy and birthing books for new material, I feel my heart, body and mind re-calibrating, shifting and shimmying about to make room for my next creations and projects.

As I hold white-knuckled onto that first year of postpartum, I also feel propelled forward to a different kind of potential. Such is motherhood, a barrage of beginnings and endings.

Today is significant.

It is the start of the rest of my motherhood.

Inspiration: Every significant moment and milestone of this past year has had an echo sometimes whispering, sometimes SHOUTING, “Savor this because it’s the last time!” Today’s echo is the loudest and one filled with incredible sadness. But at the same time, I feel a need to, an urgency to, create. To create for good, for change, for me and for my family. And so here I am, one foot trying to stand firm in the land of postpartum and the other foot trying to make marks on the rest of the world.

What is wild?

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Wild is the hum of Mother Earth. Generations of chanting, dancing, laughter, and sorrow that she has absorbed into her core and has become the surround sound vibration we feel when we are in nature. The vibration supports us and reverberates through our feet into our souls.

Those who have lost touch with the peace of Mother Earth express their wild recklessly, dangerously, ferociously. They gnaw and thrash as they try to work their way back to Mother Earth’s bosom, fighting back the injustices they feel they have suffered without cause. They use their violence, hateful words, and close-minded arguments to tune out or drown out Mother Earth’s hum, refusing to hear it, refusing its support and love.

Wild also appears in those of us working our way back to Mother Earth, to our feminine, to our power. But the journey is not about provocation, about harm or  fighting or force. Our wild focuses on tuning into that earthly hum. Tuning into that rhythm of the Great Mother and seeing how the rhythm of our hearts fits into hers.

Inspiration: This piece was written as a response to a prompt in Jeanette LeBlanc’s course, 30 Questions To Bring You Closer To Your Wild Heart that asked me to answer the question – What is Wild?
I journaled regularly from fourth grade into the latter years of high school but for the following 13 years, my writing was exclusively academic or professional. I realized in 2015, my Year of Self Identity, that I wanted to find “my voice.” I came across Jeanette’s course and initially recommended it to a friend who was looking to work on her writing. While she didn’t join the course, I realized I would personally benefit from it and decided to embark on its 30 day journey.
I wish I could say I completed all 30 days of Jeanette’s course but I didn’t…even after taking it three times. But what did happen was a fire ignited in me to write again. For the first time, I felt like *I* was writing but at the same time, I wasn’t. Jeanette’s prompts go deep into the soul and lure words to appear on screen in a sequence I cannot fully attribute to myself. I actually came across this blog post in a text file on my desktop. I was not quite sure who wrote it, thinking perhaps I saved it after coming across it online somewhere. But I was very surprised to learn it was my writing and while I am proud, I’m also enchanted with what I am able to write when the muse flows through me.

Twilight Morning Thoughts of a Pregnant Mother

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miscarriage story

As I lay here at the start of another 5:00 day, I can’t help but stare at your face. My first baby. Three years later, I can still see the face I stared down at the hospital during similar hours our first night. Your eyes, your lips and your cheeks are reminiscent of that infant  but I cannot ignore how much you have grown since, the length of your body, your gangling toddler body, almost twice as big as you were when you were born.

I can’t fall back asleep because I know these are the last few months I’ll have the uninterrupted peace and quiet to stare at your beautiful face, just you and me, before your little brother comes.

Oh goodness, how I fear the change of a second child. I fear the chaos, the challenges of re-balancing our lives again and the long nights. But mostly, I fear the change for you. You only know of a world where it is just the three of us, you, me, and Daddy. The challenges will be greater for you as your world shifts from undivided attention to one where the baby will demand so much. One where you will have have to wait your turn to tell your story from school, one where you will have to play second string for just a little while, and one where I may not be able to run to you immediately when you need me and yet nor quite understand why so much has changed overnight. This is my fear for you.

But I also know change is a part of life. And you will eventually learn that too; though acceptance may be a bit further down the road. I wonder how much this change will change you. The transformation into older sibling – is it a defining life event that molds the stereotypical first born personality? The one that makes your kind supposedly better leaders and stronger? It must be a change for the better right? You’ll end up stronger and more adaptable, I hope deeply.

But really, there is no turning back. Being a big sister is as much written in your life plan as it is in mine to birth and raise this baby. This fear and guilt is only resistance to what is meant to be, another sign of my humanity and imperfections as a mother.

You will be one hell of a big sister. Your belly kisses and consideration for Baby are already indication of that. I am more confident in your big sister abilities than I am of being a great mother to two.

So as these thoughts run through me this morning, I stare at your sweet, sleeping face feeling guilt, so much guilt and also sadness as this chapter of our lives is rapidly coming to a close. I mourn it already but I also know it was never meant to last. Our family was always going to be greater than the three of us. You have taught me that already.

My guilt extends to the one of this baby. With doubts that I will be able to offer him as much of me as I did to you. Do I have anymore to give? I have heard from other mothers that your heart grows when you have another baby, not divides. That provides me comfort on this twilight morning as I let my deepest of feelings sink in.

My heart trembles still when I think of the day we were discharged from the hospital. As your dad was pulling the car around, I sat in the lobby waiting with you, my precious bundle, in my arms. I held you close to my chest, tears streamed down my face, falling onto your little hat, as I felt the enormity of our next steps. A grand release of the whirlwind trip to the hospital, your birth and our first days together. My heart swelled knowing you were here with us forever, and perhaps I hadn’t even realized it yet, but those tears were also tears of mourning the end of a chapter, one with just me and your dad. Our roles and responsibilities forever changed but we have been stronger and better from it, no questions about that.

My love, you will always be that sweet face in the twilight. I know this next step of our lives will give us more, and as our family grows, we will become even more than we are now. That makes the dawn of the next chapter promising.

Inspiration: As I head into this next chapter of my life, I am bombarded with thoughts and doubts and all sorts of feelings. Compounded with pregnancy hormones and it’s basically a roller coaster ride everyday, one where I’m holding on white-knuckled, expecting to be thrown off course any moment but relieved at the end of the day to have survived. This post is just one example of such feelings, a stream of consciousness I could not ignore as I woke up at 5:00AM for the second time this past week. Feelings are normal, processing is healthy and I choose to do so whenever such thoughts arrive by typing away in my Google documents and sharing with you here.

Where is the Love?

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16.09.02 Where is the LoveSince becoming a mom, I have shed more tears over the collective hurt that our world is feeling than I can recall.

I have felt deeply for those who have been misunderstood, raped, killed, maimed, uprooted, and hated on. We can’t keep heading this way. The world is not meant to sustain on so much negativity. We can’t sustain on so much negativity.

After watching this video, I couldn’t stop the onslaught of tears. As they slowed down, the first two lines of the song hit me.

“What’s wrong with the world, mama?
People livin’ like they ain’t got no mamas.”

These two lines show us both the problem and the solution to all of this hate in our world.

What’s the problem? Lack of humanity. Empathy. Compassion.

After having my daughter, I realized one of the most powerful thoughts of my life – that every single person on the street that I was passing, that was looking down on their phone, hailing a cab, rushing to work, or panhandling – EVERY SINGLE person comes from a mom and were once an innocent little being like my 2 month old daughter I had in my carrier. We do not start off seeing color, sex, or differences as being bad. We see them as part of life and fully accept them. At some point, that point of view is corrupted and perpetuated by a culture that perpetuates, generates and profits off of hate. We need to get back to realizing we are all the same. We all came from a womb, we all have a humanity in us, and we all, if we set aside those differences that make us our selves, are the same.

What’s the solution? The first line says it all. Mamas.

We are the answer. Our children look to us for guidance and how we raise them, how we treat others, and how we go about our lives are what will change this downward spiraling trajectory that we are on. I believe in the deepest parts of my aching heart that things will change because moms will no longer let other moms and children suffer. You may not be a multi-platinum selling artist nor a celebrity with thousands of followers nor a millionaire. Those things don’t matter so much. What matters is intention. The intention to create a world you’d be proud to leave to your children. The intention to live your day as a model for what your children will do to and for this world. The intention to create and contribute in whatever way it may be.

We are the love.

Inspiration: I first saw this video in my Facebook feed. I find many of my prompts and thoughts to derive from what my friends and family share. In this case, this was from my sister-in-law. After watching, I simply had to respond in the only way I know how. Through writing, I was able to stop those helpless tears and feel like I did my part to spread the love today ❤