The Seeds of Women

At the Beach

Girls are such a lovely way to start women.  Have you ever watched girls playing?  Have you paused to notice the casual, graceful way they move, the passionate interactions, the deep affection they have for each other?  As the mother of a daughter it is amazing for me to watch my girl grow up.  She’s 10 now… a lovely age, teetering far too quickly on the edge of adolescence… burgeoning, though not so much physically as emotionally.  Already she is a fireball of emotion, passionate, vibrant, colorful emotion which we are tempted at times to dismiss as excessive.  We do so, I feel, at great cost to ourselves.

Isn’t it true that women baffle us?  As a woman I have often been unsure of how to relate to other women.  And you men, well, don’t we baffle you?  Yet what can we say when we are so unsure ourselves of what it is about us that is so confusing.  Yet for those of us with girl children in our lives we have these little object lessons that dance through our days calling us to a new understanding of womanhood.

I believe that the reason we are all so baffled is that with the best of intentions the people in our world stifled us women when we were little girls.  Afraid of, or overwhelmed by, our words, our tears, our passion, our emotion, they helped us tone down… helped us learn how to communicate more effectively.  Or did they?  Instead did they abdicate their responsibility to learn how to understand us?  Did they make us smaller because they couldn’t handle our bigness?  I wonder these days as I bask in the company of my daughter.  I wonder as I watch my friend raise her very spirited 6 year old with a lot of courage and determination to let her be her own true self.  It is interesting to me, as I reflect on over 20 years of therapy and recovery from one addiction and another, that much of the journey has been through the layers of “controls” I developed in order to be more effective or acceptable in the world back to the core of who I am.  And before me, dancing through each day, is the gift of my daughter calling me home to myself.  Showing me in her journey the joy, and the pain, and the absolute wonder of living fully engaged with life.

This amazing young person has such courage in her relationships with her friends, both boys and girls.  She is completely engaged, deeply connected, and brutally devastated by the disappointments when others do not seem so focused.  I try to help her, of course, with many of the same platitudes that I was offered… but more and more I am beginning to wonder what service I do to her passing on the same, lame directions which didn’t really help me.  Perhaps I need to find a way to honor the fact that she, and every other girl she plays with connects deeply with the people in their lives… but that also means that they connect deeply with EVERYONE in their lives.  Thus, when they play with other girls it is not a comment on her worth. Or a statement that she is doing something wrong, but rather that they are now connected to someone else… help her see it as an opportunity to make another connection of her own.  I gave up on women, on other girls, in about grade nine, because no one helped me frame the disappointment I felt at the way relationships form and reform in a way that allowed me to move through it with my heart, though bruised, intact.  How can I do that, I wonder?  It is a great challenge to consider.

The Dawn

Woods At Dawn - Fiona Abel-Smith, UK

Early morning. Outside, rain drenched woods are coming to life. Birds call, twitter, shout – the first sign of pending dawn as the sky begins to lighten. The nights wind has calmed, yet still thrashes branches – black shapes against the light gray of the sky – lustily about. From blacks and grays the woods take shape as darkness loses it’s grip with the oncoming light. Green takes it’s place in the palate, a myriad shades. From the verdant green of the grass to the wispy green of newly budded bushes under the canopy of the trees. Morning has come, with it increasing clarity and focus. The woods teem with life seen and unseen, heard and unheard. A gray shape bounces out of the shadows at the sound of my door opening to let in the fresh air and put out the garbage – our three legged cat home from his night’s prowl ready to avail himself of a warm body to cuddle, a bowl of food, and a soft place to sleep.

Dawn ALWAYS comes. It is the truth that I must choose to remember when I am in the dark. Light ALWAYS returns, and with it vague threatening shapes become the familiar topography of my life. Sometimes in the darkness all I can do is wait – for dawn, for light, for clarity. These days I do not wait alone, my friends – the family of my heart – stay close by, keeping a hopeful vigil as we wait for the light to return to my heart.  Nor do I wait for long – the interminable days, weeks, months of habitual darkness retreat more quickly each time I pass through.  I found my way one time – one agonizingly long arduously difficult time – and each time as soon as I realize where I am I have the tools to find my way again.  Each time the turn around time is shorter, each time the darkness holds sway over my life for a shorter interval.  Now I do not even need to fight, just remember, choose, trust, look to the Light, and it is there more familiar and infinitely more welcome than the dark.  A new day, a new beginning – ANYTHING can happen.