Month: September 2016

Parenting teens sometimes requires a wishing well. We wish, hope, and pray our offspring access present and future prosperity of respect, kindness, and compassion. Our guidance aims toward moving targets like undisciplined arrows lacking power and conviction. We instill our values upon their impressionable hearts and pray connection between us at least leaves love as a residue. Our communications are often lost in translation, their teen foreign language comprehended by pubescent souls only like an exclusive club. To realize they are never alone in this large world of change, challenge, and unease, is our desire.

As her mother, I remain present; notice the nuances that lie beneath the surface of her expressions, the pain that lines the brow of her forehead, the ache in her heart she cannot articulate to release from her existence. The fine line between interference of her assertive independence and the support needed when a hand is necessary is a tightrope that loosens as I near its center. Balancing my role as observer and ‘catcher in the rye’ is delicate when the parenting wishing well runs dry.

“I am present,” I tell her. “Hear me. See me. Feel my unconditional love. Let me relieve the weight from your shoulders when the world upon you is too much to bear.”

Presence awakens me in the dark while an immediate desire to seize the silent, serene moments of morning with the written word motivates movement. Harsh brightness of the screen settles into wide-eyed clarity and energized momentum. While the keyboard calls from a nameless source, my fingers walk to a poetic chant, drumming gently, parading eloquently down a path of expression. My heart opens easily and offers an authentic dance across the page, dipping and flowing with grace, the keys’ pitter-patter, clattering with intended pauses for reflection. An aromatic nothingness, time’s immobility, and mind movement vacation for this moment. The now of life pauses and enlarges full of love, freedom, and peace, energized by its own reflection.

Therefore, I am sitting in the heart of presence, basking in the brilliance of the sun rising within, my inner power illuminated.

September is a month where endings meet beginnings. This stoppage and start to schedules, new temperatures, and season, invoke novel pathways for life travel. Taking stock, goal setting, envisioning an improved self orients my direction and occupies my thoughts. The roller coaster of September, mourning the loss of summer day freedom pivots quickly into the responsibility-laden leaves that alter my landscape. Chores increase, busyness necessitates time efficiency, and personal well-being often proves difficult. Without personal self-care, chaos ensues; I feel the initial drop of my roller coaster ride gathering speed by the time I reach the bottom.

My heart irks me to exit the ride and gain my bearings. Imminent death tells my rational mind I must wait the ride’s duration. The maddening short adventure contains twists, bumps, and rickety, ferocious scraping steel knocking my senses. Especially disconcerting is its furiously alarming speed. Initially short of breath, gasping for air as my stomach turns upside down with a sense of falling into empty air, a sudden bodily jerking toward unexpected directions alters my inner distress. Unable to assess my route and get my bearings while life’s intensity and destination has a mind of its own, I await the sudden brake that stops the ride. Gathering my belongings, I exit the coaster, smiling with reddened cheeks at such exhilaration. This pivotal finale meets new energy of slow, calm, and next step actions and choices. This is where endings meet beginnings.

Are you still on the roller coaster or are the next steps yours for the making?

September fosters assessment of my life’s path as the temperature cools, structure resumes, and leaves fall. I contemplate career and personal life goals, pick the fruits of my labor like a ripe apple plucked off a tree. A pause for readjustment, discovery of new pathways for change, and an action plan where opportunity awaits, orient my daily waters. Destined outcomes access my intuition, forcing me from a previous stepping-stone to the next stride forward. Momentum gathers energy as the chugging of my rudder steers and winds begin to alter course. A rhythm begins with repetitive motion until steady she rides. My sail catches full access of the wind. I embrace the alignment and connection, pushing me into open waters, gliding into opportunity, freedom, and peace. The world opens up to all that I am. It offers my sails a forceful course from which to travel. Seasons change me.