motherhood belly fire "Motherhood is about accepting the limitations of time and energy, which stretch beyond you. Even though sometimes it feels that they could consume you. Search for and hold on to your own true self. If you lose that, what kind of mother can you be? Things are always changing no matter how much you might want things to stay the same. You could take a picture of your kids every single day and every single day they'd just be getting older. That's a fact - a heart-breaking fact - but still a fact. So seize your days and dwell in them fully. Look to your children because they know how to inhabit brief periods of time with extreme passion and for nothing more, really, than the sake of those moments. They can help you remember that, if you only slow down and let them. Feel fortunate because chances are good you actually might be." - Eliza Motherhood 110519 ... lostgirl nice needed_reminders 110519 ... unhinged i love being around children because they are the ultimate lesson in impermanence and sometimes they just melt_my_heart i've been using the last time i babysat as a touchstone lately to calm me in the midst of my freaking out. playing twinkle twinkle little star on the piano and singing along a little voice joining me and after about the 20th time clear as day but child_like all the same little quinn says: 'you're magic' i think we all need a two year old to tell us that sometime. 110519 ... nr i've never experienced this but sometimes i feel a sort of wistfulness towards it. people comment on how good with kids i am and how much i seem to enjoy hanging out with them. hanging out is the easy/fun part; all they want to do is play, and they are often creative and funny little humans. but then i appreciate having the option of going home to a child-free place at the end of the night. but do i need this option due to fear or avoidance? or is it because it's what i really want? wistfulness may be in part because it's hard to ever know for sure. 250324 ... ovenbird I was warm and safe and home when I was a child, with the parents who brought me into this world. (Do I wish they hadn’t? Sometimes I wish they hadn’t…but anyway when I was with them I was seen). When I had my own children I was sure that I would have that feeling again, that feeling of rootedness and belonging that came from being an integral piece of a family. But I’m realizing now that the feeling was hitched to childhood itself. As a child I was held in the container of my family. As a mother I AM the container and that is something else entirely. It takes so much energy to hold this space: to see my children completely every day, to know them and love them and watch all this hurt come for them while I am forced to bear witness. I see and see and see but when they look at me they only see mother and so little of all the other things I am. So there is a profound loneliness at the heart of mothering that comes from being just a little bit (a lot) invisible and as I struggle to keep the container of belonging stable for them, what I really want is to crawl into it myself, maybe with some blankets and a hot chocolate and a favourite book. And I want to cover myself in softness and be known and held and soothed. My arms ache from holding it all up. My jaw hurts from clenching my teeth. And my heart hurts from loving at a rate of 150 beats per minute every day without ever having a moment to catch my breath. 250408 what's it to you? who go blather from