Oil Can

January 2, 2013

I have five minutes before I need to get my daughter her thyroid medication, every day, at 7:30 am I perform this pill ritual. Then she can wake up feeling ok, and I can know, (thank God) that she is finally ok. 

It is the second day of the new year and my mind has been filled with all the things I should have done, have left undone, things that I told myself I would do, “by the end of the year” and the fear of making a mistake chases me until I stop, in a panic, out of breath, and realize that there is no mistake that can’t be undone, and that really, really, everything is ok. Just last night, in reading Awake at Work, by Michael Carroll, the author talks about the difference between seeing mistakes as enemies, rather than teachers, and it is nice to think about mistakes as teachers, as the opportunity to slow down, and re-think something, rather than something to avoid, because, they (mistakes) are, after all, inevitable. This, however does require a change in my thinking, a letting go of all that I’ve believed as long as I hold onto thinking that mistakes are to be avoided. Letting go of all the anger and fear of myself, and others and all the “mistakes” that have been made. 

I hope this to be the year that my memoir on being the mom of a teen mom, Mother Love gets published, and that I find my writing stride, remembering that I hope to leave a small dent in the world, a dent that lets people know that they can think differently, that they can change their minds, and the world opens up a little more when they do. To think that having a child young is not a mistake, but a chance to say yes to life. Not in a guilty, pro-life way, but in a real embracing of what life offers us sort of way, believing that offering us a child is one of the best things that life can conjure up. Changing our minds can lead to our heart chakra opening a bit more too. My heart chakra creaks as I move it to open, but it is necessary, and I think if I relax a bit more, it might just begin to move on it’s own, like a flower blooming, instead of being like the Tin Man, needing oil. The Tin Man, who in the end, found his heart, open, beating, blooming.