Truth is like water...
... it shape-shifts to the hands of the holder... and such is the nature of relationships too...
When two people within a relationship fail to have their own, personal, particular needs met, how can they ever hope to meet one another, in simplicity and wholeness?
Once a month, I sit to write something deeper, bigger, fuller, than the Sunday letters I pen, aptly titled ‘Hot Buttered Toast’, designed as they are to comfort and nourish. Except, the past few weeks have seen my HBTs turn into extensions of the rambling narrative unfolding in my heart.
Today, a wee line drawn… holding these monthly Wednesday ‘More than the Crumbs’ explorations as the places where the messy multitudes are held a little longer, up to the light… let us see what comes and flows when we allow things to flow out, without filter or impediment.
In my last Sunday letter… an outpouring. Exploring what it means to feel lonely within a relationship… even an ostensibly, truthfully, loving one.
Parenting is so much of the time, a process of sublimation.
This is not the whole truth, and there is much evolution and growth, immense joy and heart-bursting wonder, knit together, with a constancy of focus, awareness, holding, giving, which takes any one person from a place of personal purpose, clarity, truth, to one of re-focus… where the self becomes blurred, edges watery, and the children we hold become the new centre of our shared gravity.
I have both embraced and grieved the loss of my own self, within this maternal journey. Embraced the ego that has shrunk, markedly, showing me how often I am wrong, how much I do not know, that I am here to learn, witness, hear, expand, above all else.
Grieved at times too, the thinning of my own boundaries, which once kept my energy and mind steel-strong… the clarity of my convictions, time spent on passions and pursuits, the ability to follow a thread of thought or inspiration, to its natural fruition, uninterruptedly.
The energy, too, that comes from a day laid out in the way that best suits you and your needs. Rather than in reaction or response to the ever-changing, unpredictable, and sometimes deeply challenging shifts and needs of the two magical beings who came to share their lives with me and Mr R.
When I am at my brittlest… when I have felt all of that bubbling energy of the day, given away, until the insides have been scraped at… I lose sight of the truth of things.
I lose sight of the truth of my self, too.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to MOTHER NOURISH with Emine Rushton to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.