VRATA >>

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I’m studying yoga, and the very first day of our 10 week course, we discussed ”vrata.” Vrata is Sanskrit for vow. This word comes up often in our online studies, as well as the implications of vrata throughout yogic history. We learned that vrata connects inner intentions with outer actions, which is the essence of momentum in life and yoga. Vrata seals an intention and makes it real by speaking it into existence. There is sound value to vrata. I double underlined that phrase in my notes. Sound value. You become what you articulate because vrata gives us direction and empowers us. It has karmic weight, and therefore, has consequences.

A few nights ago, I played a song I hadn’t heard in a long time: “True Companion” by Marc Cohn. His lyrics eloquently describe his vow of companionship, and the melody is equally as beautiful as the meaningful words. The lyrics particularly struck me, but not because they are flowery. It was because they are clearly articulated. He outlines his life-through-death plan with his companion, and airily sings it into existence, giving it sound value, direction, and weight.

The word vow in and of itself has depth. It does not simply imply compliance, but rather a willful, yearning to comply. A promise that means something when you keep it, just like my blog states in a pretty pink banner. Promises are to be kept, but not by begging, coercion or ultimatum. A vow has a sacred connotation. It symbolizes the ultimate commitment to oneself, or to something that has immense meaning and value. But a vow is only meaningful if the desire to keep the promise far exceeds the notion or temptation to dissolve or ignore it.

A vow is risky. It holds more weight than a resolution or a goal. Didn’t stick with your New Year’s Resolution? Fine. Just make a new one next week and try again. Not with a vow. Vows either lead to growth and higher consciousness, or to devastation and failure. Of course the potential growth or failure can ripple into numerous beneficial or detrimental outcomes. It is the ripple that renders a vow risky. Perhaps the ripple is small, and affects only one. Or perhaps it continues well beyond the devolution of the promise, and continues far beyond the act of failure. The detrimental rippling is especially difficult if you are an empath.

Empaths don’t “do,” they “feel.” And they never stop yearning for potential growth, because with growth comes deep feelings. Feelings are like a drug. The deeper the connection, the deeper the feeling, and the empath is fed. Conversely, lack of connection and depth starve an empath. It is a living hell. Starved of emotion or of an outlet to share these feelings with takes training and practice to be able to cope. And just like any loss or withdrawal from a drug, it is debilitating. The biggest drug is of all is hope. Hope is a gift and a curse, just like being an empath is. The gifts of being an empath are the immense capacity to feel, the ability to foster intense emotions and connections simply by watching body language or by touching someone, or even just by reading or hearing something. Each instance is connected to a strong emotion that lasts far beyond than that moment in time. I not only feel the words, but carry them with me. I don’t just feel my emotions, I feel the entirety of emotions from anyone within my radar. I feel emotion connected to the lines on your face when I stare at you, to the feeling of your skin when I touch you, or to the words I read. They all hold weight. The hope drug keeps the possibility of deep connection alive and feeds me.

Thus, the curse is exactly the same. There is no off-switch. You can’t “just get over it” or forget what you heard or saw because they are connected to a strong emotion. It’s a losing battle to even try. Therefore, the gift of a vow is potential nirvana. It is real as soon as it’s spoken because you immediately bind the promise with strong emotions. Consequently, the curse of a dissolved or disrespected vow is the hollowness that will never leave you, because you can’t turn off your innate ability to feel. Strong emotions don’t dissolve just because a promise did. And that’s scary as hell.

A vow is not just a thing to do. It is an appellation of intense emotions and yearnings of the heart and mind. The vow bundles these into a neat package, just like my pretty pink banner. It’s so enticing and alluring, why wouldn’t I commit to a vow again in life? I see the potential I have, and I honor my promises. So I am conflicted. I love and hate the notion of a promise with depth and intensity. I am afraid to try and be left in the dust, loyal to my vow and starved of an outlet. So what is the solution? Make a vow to myself, and keep it. The gift of hope tells me that someday that vow will lead to a gift of light-hearted ease, coupled with heavy intense emotions—both good and bad. I don’t fear those when they live concentrically, I crave them.

So last night, I wrote a vow. It’s a promise to me and my daughters. It’s not as melodic as Marc Cohn’s, but equally as clear and heartfelt. It is direction packaged with intention, and even a little hope. As I wrote it, I thought about the fact that this vow may be the only weighty vow I make again in this life, which is a bit daunting. Nonetheless, I will keep this promise to us and come out ahead of my fears. A vrata has sound value, and is grounded by the weight of truth. Truth is clear, directional, and empowering. I vow to connect my inner intentions and outer actions, which I am speaking into existence.

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GROWING INTO ME >>

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My years are marked by wrinkles and responsibilities. They are 14 and 12. 

My skin folds when I forget to tighten my belly before I look at it. Gravity is not friendly in your 40’s. But my belly is. It gave me two children.

My hands are cracked from dishes and shoveling in arctic temps. My rings no longer fit because my knuckles have gotten bigger. But my hands hold smaller, softer, clingy fingers well—which, by the way, like to try on all of my rings while I sit and watch. 

My hair is expensive. I’m blonde-ish, which hides my gray that I pretend not to have. The silver flashes gently frame my face, like a crown of accomplishment. That crown is invaluable as my accomplishments sleep upstairs in peace.

My jokes and sarcasm have been sidelined in lieu of quiet joy, unimportant and inconsequential to most who know me. Unless you know me.

My presence is less influenced by where I need to be and more influenced by where I find meaning. Being the center of attention is increasingly less appealing, and inversely proportionate to being centered.

As my body shape shifts, so too does my soul. My body grows differently, begging for my mind and soul to stay ahead. So I silence my body and ease my mind a bit more each year so that my soul has room to grow. And it grows louder. It must grow to keep up with the hearts (42, 14 and 12, respectively). So I sit in my body as quietly as I’m capable of in any given moment, and I listen to the hearts. If my body is too loud, I can’t hear the beats, and I’m lost. My mind becomes flat and one-dimensional. And my soul leaks and slowly deflates until I grow quiet enough to repair them both. Then I can hear the distinct beats again.

As I grow into quietness, I feel more at ease and less combative with the universe. 40 is a tipping point.  It’s not a bad place, but you have to let go of the noise in order to connect the beats to your soul. Actually, 40 is the place to be—but only when you’re ready. And when you’re ready, you’ll know, because you’ll hear all the beats. I’m growing. I’m going. My soul is flowing for the beats and me.

2/6/19

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MAGIC for TWO >>

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PART 1 >> One toothless girl sat on the edge of the bed, sobbing and gasping as I stroked her head.

“But mama, please, I don’t understand. You said she lived in a far away land. Is she coming? I’m sad, is the tooth fairy real?” No more words from her mouth, she just buried her head. She hugged me and cried, her innocence dead.

Oh my child, I thought, this is cruel and disheartening.  Please, please, please, someone help me find strength for my darling. 

“Do you believe in magic,” I asked as she stared in my eyes. My question gave her pause, it took her by surprise. 

Gulp.

Breath.

“But Mama, do you?” 

Choose your words carefully, or she’ll see right through…

“Of course,” I said, to those enormous, naive eyes, “Just think of the colors each morning we rise.  The sunrise is magical, don’t you agree?  Just like the sunset, the galaxy, stars and moonbeams.”

No more words, just nodding, albeit unsure.  Her heart was revived, a bit of magic the cure.

PART 2 >> One woman sat alone after she left, unable to move from the edge of the bed.  Heart pounding, hands clasping and begging for grace, while soft drops of salt water rolled down her face. 

“I told her there’s magic, I can’t feel it! But why? I promised my heart: just one more time try…to believe in those beautiful creatures that fly.”  

The problem was simple: she, too, needed magic. But it was no longer possible to capture. (It was tragic.) The butterflies drawn to her warmth and her light all flew away in the middle of the night.

Please, please, please someone help me find strength, oh my darling. I am lost, I can’t find them, they’ve fluttered away. I don’t understand, they promised they’d stay. A small (yet grand) gesture doused her warm light. And the butterflies meant for her died there that night.  She’d fought hard to revive them and to keep them aflutter, but wings can’t be caged when they flock to another…place that is glowing, perhaps more magic there, more excitement and beauty, more warmth and less tears.

And although she’d believed and promised her toothless girl so, she’d lost something too: a magic called hope.

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DO YOU SEE ME >>

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Each night I have my girls, we talk to each other as they are going to bed. One is in 8th grade, the other in 5th. They are best friends, although they have vastly different personalities.  Our nightly ritual is to read or to look through their old yearbooks.  They love seeing how their friends have changed over time.  I usually lie on the bed next to them and just listen to their banter back and forth. The other night, my older daughter was reading something different.  She found her younger sister’s diary from several years ago–this was apparently ok with the younger one who was in the other room getting ready for bed.

She stopped reading to herself and said, “This page says to name a time when you were very mad or sad and explain why.” What she said next was something very personal to all of us. Our family changed that year and a 2nd grader’s diary entry took my breath away. I had never heard her words in that diary or in that way. She walked in from the other room and laid down on the bed next to me as if to say, “Mama, do you hear me?”

Ironically, there was a poem folded up and stuck in between those same breathless pages.  The oldest one had written this poem around the same time as the diary entry, and somehow it ended up in her younger sister’s diary.  It was called “Hello.”

She took the poem and said, “Oh I remember writing this. This is dumb. I think I’ll just rip it up.” Then, she stopped, for just a fraction of a second. Her eyes shifted to mine and immediately darted away as if to say, “Should I? Do you want to read this, mama? Do you see me, mama?” I took the poem from her and asked if I could read it. A tiny smile flashed through sad eyes, and then it was gone. The poem spoke of the impact the word hello has upon a person, as well as the meaningful implications.  She also noted that it was “the opposite of good bye.”

Do you know the times in life when you are so happy that your heart is bursting and you think, “How can my heart grow any bigger?” I love those times. This was not one of them.

This was a time that I wished I didn’t have a heart, or rather, one that felt. I wished I were heartless. That’s how I felt hearing the words from the diary and reading the hello poem. The girls needed a distraction from old feelings and quickly moved on to new topics in the diary.  I did not. I was still lying next to them trying to send them silent messages from my heartless heart: “Your mama feels you, I promise.”

Nothing about changing families is fair to kids. Just because their yearbook images reflect change doesn’t mean they get any better at dealing with it. They just get better at hiding the fact that they are still dealing. You simply must be able to live at their level of awareness and within their reality. This is a very powerful, innate gift as a mother. It may be more convenient for my heart to be heartless rather than to burst with real pain and emotion, but I can not ignore the pleas behind the poems or read the lines in the diary rather than reading in between them.  I can not simply see a smile without noticing the sad eyes behind it.

I hear, see, and feel it all–and all of those things bring me to my knees. But if my girls end up knowing what it means to hear and be heard, to see and be seen, to feel and be felt, then that is worth something. It is understanding and that means love.

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