Some things need accepting
no more trying
no more changing
no more raging
no more pointing
no more pondering
no more wondering
Some things need accepting
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
My Mother will die
There is no if my mother dies
Only when my mother dies
Yet in my mind
In my whole being
It is
If.....
If my mother shall die one day I shall be inconsolable
Surely it can't be that some time she will not be there anymore?
Surely she is always there and always will be?
Her mortality is out of question
My relationship to my mother
Is a relationship at long distance
The phone is central
Often I catch myself feeling an urge to phone her
What urge exactly
I am not sure
It is an undefined-fuzzy-kind-of-state
A not-quite-satisfied or not-quite-right state
And somewhere, I am sure, deep down
I hope that mother will soothe me
and smooth my state
like smoothing over the crease on a cloth
I am an adult woman
A mother myself
There still is a little child inside
Looking for Mama
There have been times
I have become somatically connected to her
Over hundreds of air-miles
Above the snowy mountain tops
and across water
I felt pain in various body parts
I could not explain
Somehow they spoke of the pains
She was going through
I wonder; what will I feel when she dies?
Will a warning sign arrive in my bodily landscape?
Will I be visited in dreams?
I shall not know
For now
I am reassured
I can call her and
hear her voice
Thursday, 12 April 2012
I am feeling jealous of my husband (-son relationship)
This hasn't happened to me before. With my twin girls, our twin girls, well they had mother and father all the time, or two mothers as I used to say back then. Then they grew older and at some point they asked me 'Mami why does Daddy not cry but you do?' and differences between the two of us became somehow clearer as the girls started to look and demand for differences between the two of us. Anyhow, this all felt quite unproblematic and their calling us Mami/Daddy at the same time or interchangeably was just the reality that was ours.
It could well be that the reality of them being twins and being born early by caesarian impacted on my attachment style to them, in that by circumstances the attachment was perhaps loser and certainly had to be divided as I needed the help of my husband for us to survive. Loser also because the twins had and have each other. I often feel that their first attachment figure is almost their twin sister.
But here comes along the boy - one child - and my feelings are completely different. He is mine. He was mine from the start. I gave birth to him. He wanted just me and I wanted just him and we were this wonderful unit, one big soft ball. He has grown into a strong and still almost manically explorative toddler and booby now seems a thing of the distant past. For a couple of months now he is well into Daddy, crying when he leaves and hopping up and down when he comes back home. Daddy is DADDY in capital letters and much joy is to be had from him.
All normal and to be expected development. And yet, I feel pangs of jealousy when I see them together, enjoying each other's company, I mean really enjoying it. It's like a special bond they have that the girls have noticed long before me exclaiming 'ah the boys together'! and I go 'what do you mean the boys together????' and to their suggestions of us girls being a unit and having special girl time together I think 'what do you mean girl time?????'
Maybe it's the separation between genders that really grates with me and only marginally the jealousy of the father-son relationship. In the past if separations (I hesitate to say segregations...) occurred I always felt I wanted to be on the boys side as that seemed infinitely more interesting and free. To be on the girls side always felt subdued and somewhat adjusted to the point of deadly boredom. As a kid I mainly hung out with boys and my best girl friend was an outdoorsy tomboy kid like me.
So is this jealousy a gender thing? What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? And more precisely what gender roles have been assigned to us whilst growing up and how have we taken them on board?
I have always maintained that I felt more comfortable in male company and yet becoming a mother has attuned me to a female world in a far more impactful way than I would have ever imagined.
Clearly I am still trying to figure out for myself what it means for me to be a woman and a mother.
Perhaps the journey is about finding my way of being without falling into the gender stereotype traps.
I am born free to be who I want to be.
It could well be that the reality of them being twins and being born early by caesarian impacted on my attachment style to them, in that by circumstances the attachment was perhaps loser and certainly had to be divided as I needed the help of my husband for us to survive. Loser also because the twins had and have each other. I often feel that their first attachment figure is almost their twin sister.
But here comes along the boy - one child - and my feelings are completely different. He is mine. He was mine from the start. I gave birth to him. He wanted just me and I wanted just him and we were this wonderful unit, one big soft ball. He has grown into a strong and still almost manically explorative toddler and booby now seems a thing of the distant past. For a couple of months now he is well into Daddy, crying when he leaves and hopping up and down when he comes back home. Daddy is DADDY in capital letters and much joy is to be had from him.
All normal and to be expected development. And yet, I feel pangs of jealousy when I see them together, enjoying each other's company, I mean really enjoying it. It's like a special bond they have that the girls have noticed long before me exclaiming 'ah the boys together'! and I go 'what do you mean the boys together????' and to their suggestions of us girls being a unit and having special girl time together I think 'what do you mean girl time?????'
Maybe it's the separation between genders that really grates with me and only marginally the jealousy of the father-son relationship. In the past if separations (I hesitate to say segregations...) occurred I always felt I wanted to be on the boys side as that seemed infinitely more interesting and free. To be on the girls side always felt subdued and somewhat adjusted to the point of deadly boredom. As a kid I mainly hung out with boys and my best girl friend was an outdoorsy tomboy kid like me.
So is this jealousy a gender thing? What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? And more precisely what gender roles have been assigned to us whilst growing up and how have we taken them on board?
I have always maintained that I felt more comfortable in male company and yet becoming a mother has attuned me to a female world in a far more impactful way than I would have ever imagined.
Clearly I am still trying to figure out for myself what it means for me to be a woman and a mother.
Perhaps the journey is about finding my way of being without falling into the gender stereotype traps.
I am born free to be who I want to be.
Friday, 9 March 2012
Emotional Clarity
Recently I have been wondering about how I and perhaps we as women reflect emotions back - into the world and in particular, as mothers, to our children. It occurred to me that often the way this is done seems quite contradictory or ambiguous.
As a mother there are plenty of opportunities to be part of conversations between mothers and children, my own and that of others. Conversations in part reflect and express beliefs we hold about ourselves and our children. And language externalises that which is held inside. Which doesn't necessarily mean language names that which is inside. It's precisely the naming that can be difficult.
I often wonder why there are moments when I feel mad. I feel mad when my inner world and the outer world don't match up. I feel mad when conversations out there, the mother-child conversation, seems to be all about glossing over what is intensely felt inside and all about glossing up an image to the outside. I feel mad when society seems to be telling me that that which I feel is not what I feel.
Is this something we women and mothers have a tendency to do and a tendency to perpetuate? Say one thing, do another. Feel one thing, think another, say yet another. My inner eye gets lost in fragmented journeys, ruptures, chasms, dents and holes. And I begin to feel mad. What if, we start to aspire to emotional clarity? An inner landscape where the trajectory is clear(er) from the source of the emotion inside, to the recognition of this emotion to ourselves, to the expression of it to the outside world? So that others may have the freedom too to feel what they feel and to express what they need to express.
This seems like an important aspiration to me in particular with regards to my children. For what do I teach them if I confuse them with contradictory messages? Perhaps they grow up not knowing anymore themselves what they feel and what they think. Or they start to feel that they need to feel the same as I do as their mother and thus start denying their own feelings. Perhaps they begin to feel mad too when the outside seems disconnected from the inside. And perhaps girls in particular, will in time emulate this warped language of contradicting a feeling to the outside, thus helping to perpetuate this way of being- lost-in-translation.
It's an aspiration. It's a thought. I shall try to be mindful of emotional clarity and emotional tangles and denials.
How free and light I feel when I manage to express the feeling I have inside as it is and how willing the other seems to be in receiving this clarity.
As a mother there are plenty of opportunities to be part of conversations between mothers and children, my own and that of others. Conversations in part reflect and express beliefs we hold about ourselves and our children. And language externalises that which is held inside. Which doesn't necessarily mean language names that which is inside. It's precisely the naming that can be difficult.
I often wonder why there are moments when I feel mad. I feel mad when my inner world and the outer world don't match up. I feel mad when conversations out there, the mother-child conversation, seems to be all about glossing over what is intensely felt inside and all about glossing up an image to the outside. I feel mad when society seems to be telling me that that which I feel is not what I feel.
Is this something we women and mothers have a tendency to do and a tendency to perpetuate? Say one thing, do another. Feel one thing, think another, say yet another. My inner eye gets lost in fragmented journeys, ruptures, chasms, dents and holes. And I begin to feel mad. What if, we start to aspire to emotional clarity? An inner landscape where the trajectory is clear(er) from the source of the emotion inside, to the recognition of this emotion to ourselves, to the expression of it to the outside world? So that others may have the freedom too to feel what they feel and to express what they need to express.
This seems like an important aspiration to me in particular with regards to my children. For what do I teach them if I confuse them with contradictory messages? Perhaps they grow up not knowing anymore themselves what they feel and what they think. Or they start to feel that they need to feel the same as I do as their mother and thus start denying their own feelings. Perhaps they begin to feel mad too when the outside seems disconnected from the inside. And perhaps girls in particular, will in time emulate this warped language of contradicting a feeling to the outside, thus helping to perpetuate this way of being- lost-in-translation.
It's an aspiration. It's a thought. I shall try to be mindful of emotional clarity and emotional tangles and denials.
 |
| Yayoi Kusama - I want to live honestly, like the Eye in the Picture - 2009 |
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Soothing Oppression
breast
mother warm soft
breast of my mother
children go their lonely way
watching out for a loving bird nest
bird fly over the clouds
where home is not
fly through happiness
love body
milk white milk
licked by the cat’s tongue
red little tongue
caresses
my body over and over
caressing our bodies
our freedom
Oppression
bad someone me not you
anywhere helpless
creatures
want you badly
over there
promised attention sensation
loneliness
time after time
breath
suck in the air
sweet pure air
respiration
get rid of that horrible black stone
stone
live long
lived
life earth
under the sand
washed over by water
salted water wound
open sick
why what expects
the wound
hounded deep breath
Friday, 10 February 2012
Awakening Love
slowly
unpretentiously approaching
what could be atoned
at home
struggling for captivation
twosome dance
surrender
slowly
unpretentiously approaching
what is one
abode of origin
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