Parts of the Whole

"Mommy's eye. Ronin's ear. Mommy's nose. Ronin's mouth." We play our new game while he nurses just as he has since birth, reclining near my heart, meeting my gaze in effortless, intimate trust.

Suddenly, gently, he pulls away and, unperturbed but clear, signs "more." He's thirsty. After he has just "nursed." I know what is happening, as it happened when Ronin was the wee one growing within me and Oak was the child weaning: my body's wisdom is redirecting resources to the new life emerging.

A sip from a cup, and Ronin is satisfied. But I can't quench the pang of mourning the loss of this precious relationship brings.

Pregnancy nausea and fear for the planet have been my constant companions today. I am learning to trust the same truths in both my immediate, viscerally physical reality of tending and creating children and in my movement through the wider world:

I am giving what I can.
What I have nourished to the best of my ability, I can release with trust and gratitude.
What I am tending may be small, even imperceptible, but requires my energy and deserves my focus.
It is okay to let things move on.
It is okay to stay right where I am.
It is okay to believe that slow work is worthy.
It is okay to treasure what is good.
It is okay to despair at what isn't.
It is okay to be as needed, and I can decide what is needed.

I sometimes wonder what I'm doing, having another child in tumultuous and unpredictable times, as so much dangles from a precipice. But then I watch my silly-giggly children slow-dance-embrace and pull each other across the floor in uproarious fun at just being who and as they are. I feel a swell of nausea, both uncomfortable and reassuring, telling my body and soul that Life prevails. I feel tears well as I sit next to my beloved sister and friend, in my comfortable home, surrounded in rain and light.

I have had to surrender what I thought was required of me just to stay alive. What I have known in that void is the rapturous disintegration of the non-essential. I've sat in that liminal space, being not one person, not two people, looking in the eyes of eternity. This is where I can return in any moment I choose, remembering that nothing is ever lost, that hope is a practice of survival, that my power is my authentic participation in the unfolding of everything.

Eyes. Ears. Nose.
Mine. Yours.
Parts. Inputs.
To the Whole.

What we truly thirst for is quenchable not by milk or water, but by the secure, loving trust that what we are doing together, if it is done truly together with least harm, will be enough. That our energy in any given direction will eventually expire. But that something new, in mystery, is always coming into being.

This is our dance, tipsy and terrifying and transformational. Turn, turn, turn. Hold on. Release. Let your heart spill over. Say it's enough. Stay. Surrender. Sing.