A shift

The last few weeks have been eye opening in a number of ways. I feel like I'm starting to stretch my wings and while I lack total grace, there's clarity.

At the beginning of April, there was a reading of a play I crafted. I think that event sparked something I haven't permitted myself to feel in a long time: complexity. I shared in this play aspects of myself I'd spent 2 years trying to ignore and as it's said, "What you resist persists." The quest I'm on tends to flow in and out of motion characterized by minimalism on one end and vicious complication on the other. Marching toward the center has been a coveted routine that I've persuaded myself is a virtuous endeavor. For a couple of years, I've been resisting any likeness of complexity as it pertains to my life and those around me. In the last few days, I've embraced the conundrum and it's both uncomfortable and liberating - complex, for sure. As with the stretching wings, I feel a little clumsy but freer.

I've been judgmental about the drama others bring into their lives, forgetting that every aspect of living is dramatic. There is a gift in seeing the drama as life itself. I've been hard on myself for not being more agreeable, more simple, more flowy - like water and in so doing, I lost my voice; I lost my way. Reading as myself in the play generated an anxiety around my desire for approval and in the last few days, I've had access to how utterly ordinary and boring that is. I think since doing the reading of the play, I've been more connected to what I consider is my voice and the vulnerability that comes with expressing it absolutely. Putting myself out there in the context of the play was really quite the mindmess and it didn't go as I'd envisioned but I was free as me and people didn't throw stones! I think that might be my new goal for communication - push the grain in public (no longer just in private) and hope that they don't throw stones (and run if they do!)

As a parent, all signs put a premium on consistency and I have spent years investing wholeheartedly in the party line. What I am realizing now is that consistency may not only be overrated but is also just plain impossible. There is no true cadence for life that is consistent. To hold fast to there being one is an act of desperation. I don't want to take desperate measures. I want to take bold, stunning and giant leaps in my life and suffer the glorious, inevitable falls along the way.

I've noticed a shift in how I approach photography of late too. I use to feel like a feedback fiend but now I feel peace in what I do such that affirmation doesn't feel as necessary. It is a profoundly new experience. I take the images, knowing that I love what I'm seeing. There is abundance in simply knowing that I love what I'm doing. The need for approval has diminished as I sink my grip into something I love. I'm finding the same phenomenon at work in my parenting. As I embrace what works for me as a parent, in the face of what others may say doesn't work, I have access to a much more fulfilling life as the mom I already am, instead of as the mom I keep thinking I should be. Instead of trying to generate a manifesto for mothering, I'm going with what actually works for me and my kids and the pressure to be perfect has disappeared. It's a new day and the tide has turned. There will, undoubtedly, be more to report as the winds change. Stay tuned.