Physically Active, Mentally Relaxed

Wed., cloudy, warm, rainy--the kids started plastic canvas needlepoint yesterday

Believe it or not, I like having routines. Not schedules, but routines. Perhaps it makes sense that, because I consider myself a Hearth Keeper (some of you might prefer Earth or Kitchen Witch), I would see my morning/night routines as an active devotional. Much in the same way my husband says his prayers and lights his flames, speaking his words from his heart, I prepare the way for my family to have a clean, orderly, relaxed life. By spending just a few minutes doing the daily necessities of cleaning and planning, whether I feel like it or not, whether I want to or not, this simple act of devotion to my family and my hearth, creates immediate, daily magick for my family.

After three years of living this way, Brigid enlightened me to why it's important and even more why it is an act of love and devotion to myself, to my family, to my Deities, to the energies I want to attract and bring forth in our lives. I set the calm, peaceful, clear canvas so that my family, myself included, have the ability to paint whatever we would like on it, be it chaotic, fun, work, relaxing, whatever.

But what changed after three years? Why did something so difficult: keeping the damn dishes done every.single.day, washing all the clothes, the mountains and mountains of clothes, cooking yet. another. meal. become easier, more relaxed? Is it simply viewing it as an act of devotion? I think that's part of it, and a huge part at that. There's more to it, though, that has been eluding me even when the rest has come together.

It came easily, a whisper from Brigid, while folding some laundry. Physically Active, Mentally Relaxed. If I am doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing and there's nothing else in the world that I can take care of rightnow so instead I can allow my mind to wander, relax, and just exist. I can complete the entire first half of my morning routine, all the crappy dishes and laundry stuff, in a sleep state, brain dead, not thinking it sucks, not thinking of anything really, except dream-state things. Once I start to wake up fully, if I'm doing a task, or listening to a kid read, or resting my hands on my belly to feel the baby move, it is completely acceptable, encouraged even, to not worry about the next task, to not stress over what is coming next or needs to be done, but just to take that moment and let my mind be relaxed. My hands are busy, but my mind gets a rest, to think idly, to not think, to wander, to meditate, to find stillness, to be in the moment.

"But there's so much to be done!" my brain starts shouting. I need to plan this, do that, get this done, etc. And therein lies the fallacy, the lie, the con of stress. With just a little routine, a little planning, no I do NOT need to worry about the next task. I know what the next task is because I've done it pretty much the same way, every day for three years. There's a freedom in that. A freedom to relax the mind and not worry because the dishes have been started, dinner has been planned, lesson plans are done, these are not things to stress over. Just complete this small task and if there's time, maybe another small task. Oh...that's the great thing about sticking with routines: Everything becomes a small task.

Well, except for those big tasks. But at least now I can look at those ahead of time and do them when I am ready and able. I can do just one a day. Or if I'm motivated, knock out four in one day. Or do no big tasks because I'm drinking tea and watching the birds. I'm also a thousand-fold more likely to respond without screaming when the cat knocks over a glass of water or listen more attentively to that story that my child wants to tell me. Why? Because the relaxation of the mind allows me to not freak out because I'm already stressing, instead rolling with the punches, taking care of things rather than reacting to stress.

In only 30 min. in the morning and 15 min. at night (and a few small things here and there), I am as free as a bird, mentally, to rest, enjoy, and be in the moment in my day. In small acts of devotion, morning and night, I become the Hearth Keeper, tending and nourishing the flame of my family and home. Allowing all of us to relax a bit and just flow with the day. They say "live in the moment" and "follow your bliss." My act of devotion, my purpose in life for this phase of my time here, is to set the stage so that my family and I are able to do just that. Mundane? Boring? Waste of my college education? Perhaps you might see it so. I see it as nothing less than the greatest achievement of my Motherhood career.

Addendum:

Morning routine:

• Get myself up, clean and dressed, teeth brushed, etc.
• Bring down a full armload of laundry and switch laundry over
• start coffee, start cooking if we're having a hot breakfast
• unload dishwasher (while cooking or not)
• have coffee and breakfast while "checking my stuff" (namely facebooking and email)
• Morning Brigid devotional while kids get dressed and brush teeth
• clear up breakfast, start with the school day

Night routine:

• All dishes in dishwasher
• laundry switched over, new load started?
• Kitchen tidied, living room tidied, pick up anything that goes upstairs on my way up
• Room tidied a bit, if needed
• Bed

Sunday:

• Lesson plans, school boxes (where all of their schoolwork is kept) prepared and ready
• meal plans, weekly schedule of events (including grocery shopping, major errands, etc.)
• Dear husband usually completes (and directs the kids in) some deeper cleaning on Sundays

Around the Wheel

Monday, dreary, rainy-first full week of school for the kids

An excerpt from my pregnancy journal:


We began trying for a baby at Imbolc and conceived at Ostara.
I'll carry you through Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon, and Samhain.
You will be born right before Yule.

So I conceived in late spring,
Carried you through summer, late summer, and fall.
We'll welcome you and snuggle you through the winter.

And you'll learn to sit up with the growing flowers,
perfect your crawling on the sand at the beach,
and walk on unsteady feet by the hearthfire.

When Emotions Collide

Friday, sunny, breezy, warm. Black Cat Awareness Day

Have you ever felt like you were riding the moon? So super happy and excited, your energy positive and radiant? I sure hope you have, and often. But if you're human, you've also had to deal with extreme lows, disappointments, betrayals, hurts, and sadness. The question is: What do you do when one of each of these occurs within a short time frame? How do you reconcile smiling, beaming at the good, while simultaneously feeling like your heart is being ripped out of your chest?

You might think I have an advantage at this, since I'm a Gemini and we're kinda crazy like that, but unfortunately, I think it just makes me acutely (intellectually, not necessarily emotionally) aware of these in the moment, making it that much harder to sort through.

Yesterday, we saw the baby on the ultrasound and I was weeping with happiness, seeing the little mouth open and close, little fingers extending and rubbing his/her face. I was elated, in joy, heart fit to burst with love and amazement. I've never connected with a baby en utero like this, so seeing this child thumping, while feeling it at the same time, was nothing short of a true awestruck, nurturing, Mother moment for me.

Just a day later, today, I went to a funeral for a dear friend, a classmate from kindergarten through high school, and even working together in college. We've remained friends throughout the years and his funeral was very difficult for me. I cried and felt like death itself, mourning the loss of someone who was only 32, watching his weeping family, feeling the loss deeply, as his shining light was felt radiating from another place, but certainly not from that cold, hard casket in front of us.

My collision occurred as we're sitting in the church service, mourning the loss of my friend, while the baby starts thumping around inside me, reminding me of the beauty of yesterday. Two extreme emotions and energies at the same time, both strong and in-themselves should be felt and experienced with plenty of processing and having time to be felt. Yet here they both are, pulling me on a rollercoaster.

How many times have you felt "I shouldn't be happy right now, it's not right to be happy when all this crap is falling down around me?" but inside you know that this is celebration-worthy and on any other day, you'd be dancing a jig. Likewise, we've all sought solace and comfort during the rough times, and sometimes found more joy than we expected any chance of having.

The opposite is also difficult...to be flying high awesome, just to have bad news that jolts you to your core, rocking everything and anything to chaotic dumbfoundedness. You still want to enjoy the good, but just can't now.

It eventually feels like you're emotionally exhausted, tired, numb. That, right there, is where I am now. I have had three of these huge life-changing, majorly important things happen in the positive, and three catastrophic-feeling, crushing, heart-rending things in the negative. All in the last four days. Each would be enough in my life to stand on its own and give enough to think about by itself for days and weeks.

It's not just because I'm a Gemini. It's not just because I'm pregnant. It's just life and sometimes you ride the waves as a surfer would, sometimes you are caught in the undertow, holding on for dear life, and sometimes, you would rather get out of the ocean altogether, just to sit on the shore and watch from afar. I'm tired from all the swimming, the good and the bad. I'm ready to just sit this set out for a few days...my arms are tired from too much paddling.

"I don't care how you get it out of me"

Friday, warm, sunny--finally got the Saturn all repaired and road-worthy

Last night, my aunt called me to "check up on me" and see how I was doing. She does this periodically and I'm grateful for it. We got to discussing my midwife choices, and surprisingly, she seemed to think that a homebirth with a midwife was a viable and safe (as far as birth goes) option. I'm thankful that her daughter, my cousin, seems to have influenced her knowledge and opinion in the matter. It also helps that my second child was born in the backseat of the car and my family knows I am "capable" because of it.

Over the course of the conversation, she was telling me about her birth experiences (which I welcome as my own mother isn't alive to tell me hers) and how traumatizing her first birth was--36 hours, ending in a cesarean that was poorly done, when they were still rather rare by today's norm.

She said that, when it came time for her second child's birth, the doctors told her she could try for another normal birth or opt for a repeat C-section and her response was "I don't care how you get it out of me, as long as I'm knocked out when you do it!"

...  ...

My first reaction was a deep desire to hug her and wish that she had never been through something so painfully awful. And then I felt sad that there are many women, all over the country, who also feel that birth is nothing more than a means to an end, and if you can skip it entirely, then why the hell not? The number of Cesareans is now at about 1 in 3 in the US and 1 in 2 in China and still rising. Given that doctors are less likely to allow women to try to VBAC (vaginal birth after Cesarean), combined with a pervasive ideology that women should just lay on the table and let the doctor (who knows best) tell her what her body is doing, it's no wonder we are starting to feel a backlash.

Women who have given birth naturally, powerfully, fully aware of their own bodies, are speaking out against the torrent of medicalized birth. "Of course, some women need Cesareans!" they shout, "but not all of them, not all of us!" Some of us would wish for every woman to experience the transformative, powerful, primal experience of natural birth, to feel they way the Mother felt as she brought into being from her own soul, her own Power.

When I was at the Christopher Penczak workshop, he started talking about how creating Magick is a lot like giving birth. We start with an idea, a desire, we act upon it, we draw the energies, form it, and after a lot of work, we send it out to do its purpose.

I began wondering about the reciprocal of this idea. Is giving birth a lot like Magick? Any woman who has done both will tell you with much head nodding and affirmation "YES!" I wonder what we are doing to our collective, and personal, psyche by taking the Magick out of birth. Will we discover in 20 years that our meddling in the affairs of Nature (on a whole and often without real need) has created a Magickal void? We know there are physical and psychological differences in a baby born by Cesarean and one born naturally, bacteria and hormones that are released only through the birth canal...wouldn't it stand to reason that Energetic changes also occur during this process, not only for the baby, but also for the Mother?

Any woman who has given birth naturally will tell you instinctively that the answer is definitely yes.

What saddens me is the number of women who are, and will continue, to dismiss this possibility completely, with no more than an "I don't care how you get it out of me." We should care. Mothers, daughters, Fathers, sons, Magicians, Witches, Shamans and everyone in between. Whether you've got kids or not, we should be advocating for a world that values natural birth, saving Cesareans for those rare, few times when they really are *needed* and I can assure you, it is much, much less than one out of every three births.