Moving Back from Mommy to Me

This morning as I meditated, my adult daughter popped her head in to ask a question, realized I was meditating and popped out. Her response, “oh” to my non-response. In my meditative state, I was still a bit torn, torn between her and me; my mama instinct to drop all for my own child. But she is grown now, all my children are grown, and I have no spouse to “return” to, no plans to make for our retirement years, so where do I go now? Back to me; and once again, I’m on the move, as I’ve noted before, change doesn’t just happen seasonally, or every year, or even in linear, measurable chunks, change is continuous, fluid, and it requires a sort of dance with ourselves, with others, with time itself. 

So how do I remain connected to that mama life source energy, how do I parent adult children? I’ve strayed from the typical developmental timeline for both myself and my children, sharing power instead of yielding it, encouraging curiosity instead of dogmatic compliance in my children and it is paying off in spades. I have read the literature, poked it full of holes and thrown away the manifesto of left brain dominance. How I ask now, do I live whole in a half brain dominated world? How do I move fluidly into a future which is full of possibility that I can only partly imagine? How do I allow my integrated hemispheres to burst forth a fertile and imagined future? Part of this imagining is having to take place also, outside of gender constructs, for if I look to the past of what women could have or are accomplishing, much of it is with denouncing their right hemisphere for the traditionally masculine left, which only leaves them once again with half a brain, half their power, disconnected from their whole, and especially their right, innate mama wisdom. 

I have focused so much of my energies on parenting, on preparing, on providing and even on cleaning up that this shift is happening slowly. Some of the shift that I’ve already created was to educate myself, to fill my head in some ways and to empty my head in others. This in-out, process, sort-through information has had the effect of a physical work out; my brain, I believe is a mean, lean, understanding machine. Now I need to get back to work on my body. The sun is out, the treacherous ice is melting and I need to walk, I need to shake out the fear, I need to connect my feet to solid ground, while I walk, getting out of my own way. Finding my future in myself, still mom, still me, still yet to be.