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*You can listen to the audio version of this post if you'd like to hear the details and backstory of this piece. I share about what becoming a mother has given me, and what gifts are hidden within the nurturing of our children. How through loving them in a heart-led way can heal what was unheard, and unloved within our own beings.
When a child meets his ‘No’.
I watch his little body writhe in anguish as he thrashes around on his back, shouting desperate cries about something not going the way he wants. He’s kicking wildly and violently at whatever comes close to him, sometimes me, sometimes the corner of his dresser. His eyes are squinted closed and he’s baring his teeth as wild animals do in traps. His breath is labored and by the flush color of his face, I can tell he’s beginning to overheat.
Unable to calm himself, I walked him outside to the sun-soaked deck to give him space for his eyes to clear. I find when there is no witness or wall to push against, the beast falls away. When there is no one to dance with or rather, in this case, against, we come back into the nature of our heart pretty quickly. A few quiet breaths alone under the mouth of the wide-open sky and he is washed back onto the shore of himself. He comes inside raw, open, vulnerable, and shaken, and like a permeable petal, opens in my arms. Even though I understand what he is going through I still find it hard to witness one of his tantrums, as I know too well from my own experience, that wicked, screaming, spitting thing that lives in each of us. These troubled iterations of ourselves are hard to understand let alone master.
He told me afterward he felt “there is a big NO to life, inside my body sometimes.” This I understood instantly but was taken aback by him being able to articulate it so clearly. He’s only 4 years old and somehow he is able to identify the stranger in his home trying to take over the wheel sometimes. I was nearing 30 before I fully acknowledged the “no” living in me. To this day I have yet learned how to comfortably be with my own “no”-no to life, to risking love, to becoming, to being, to having to walk and wade through the sometimes overwhelming nature of life. At some point we each encounter the perplexing paradox: our love for life meets the ineffable no against it.
I know dear sweet child of mine the world you have walked into, and I’m sorry the reality is a sobering one. The hardship is far too real to try and talk away with sweetness. I know too well the pain of “no”...I know too well sweet one. But perhaps all I can say to reassure you is that you must feel this part of you. You must leap into the divine and bruising froth of this life, for there could be no yes to life if there were not somewhere the no. Struggling as you are comes folded into the experience of life. This struggle is somehow the hand that pushes the needle forward. The gust of wind that challenges the seeds to leave the bud and look for somewhere to land on their own plot. Somehow, dearest Hugo, you will come to know your torment as the dance partner to your love. You must know the pain of refusing this love, for it somehow teaches you how to love and choose, love itself. You are alright, do not be startled. Love is hidden there, always behind the breath of fire that sometimes pushes against your back.
Thank you again for being here. For being my witness. For loving diving deep into the human experience as much as I do.
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