#Buddhism Mindfulness MindfulMothering Mother'sMeditation MeghanNathanson

[meghannathanson]

The Sacred Pause (3.9.17)

I would not say that I was, "born ready," as a mother. I came into this journey with buckets of tenderness and a deep desire to get it right. But I was in no way prepared for the profound number of layers that I would need to pull back, the conditioning of so many generations I would need to shed and the depths of love I would have to unearth to become the person I've—on most days—come to be, both with my children and with myself. Because, you see, there is a deep correlation between the two. The way that we are with others is intricately woven with the way that we are with ourselves. The unfolding of this path did not happen over night. I don't know when it happened, exactly. Somewhere between the despair of a car seat struggle gone deeply awry and the arrival at the breathtaking realization that my children were not somehow born flawed or wrong, too-loud, too shy or not developing the way that they should—and neither was I, any of those things.  

Looking back, I can see that it was the repeated turning to spaciousness, to the breath—to the sacred pause—that has been my faithful guide. It was in—and it continues to be in—those spaces that I came to connect with a truer way of seeing. In those spaces, I discovered solutions that I hadn't thought of. No one had to be wrong. There was greater compassion in those spaces, forgiveness for my children, forgiveness for myself. I found that time didn't matter so, so much. And neither did what other people might be thinking of me. I'm too hard on them, on me. Too soft. I give too much, not enough. It was in those spaces—despite their expansiveness— that I discovered the astonishing brevity of life. I saw how fleeting it all is and how precious these times really are. It was in patiently tying a shoe for the 100th time, the calm intervention in a sibling squabble, it was in the mistakes too. My heart opened more fully and love poured through me more generously because of the thousand upon thousand little present moments of awareness that added up to something very big.