When You Decide You Have Value

  Sometimes it takes a lot of strength to decide that you have value when maybe that has not been the message sang over your soul from the beginning. What does that value look like? It can be so many things. However this is the best depiction I have:

It might mean that you needed the grass planted in a barren wasteland, and garden beds put in, and you had to find earth to put in the beds, and you had to plan for and then order the seeds, and then plant and water, and hope and have faith that in the end there would be beauty that would come from the process. It took so much work, and blisters, tears and pain, and in the end.... there they are ~ the very beatings of your heart in front of you and they are breathtaking.

The Summer of Flowers

 

  I tried to plant some flowers this Summer but not many came up. In the end, it didn't matter. I have been blessed with so many flowers throughout this month. Each bouquet has been incredible. This particular one, however, was so grand, so multi-dimensional, so exquisite it deserved its own post, and I was inspired to take many photos to always remember it.

Thanks Em and thanks Alanna!

Being A Mother

 All this monotony or excitement

The cacaphony of voices

I never realized

With that first exciting toilet flush

From my first child

That I would groan and seethe at all the giftings in the toilets

And flush, endlessly flush them down.

Or when she put on her first outfit all alone

And I was so happy for her

How quickly I would be overwhelmed at her array of clothing strewn everywhere

Motherhood is immense

The responsibility, the love, the bounty, the anger, the remorse, the lack and the filling

And the very first time you tenderly carefully fearfully clipped the tiniest nails,

You didn't realize the thousands of times you would repeat this

How could you?

But it settles in

What you've done.

Becoming a mother

Being a mother

Being one that loves

It is breath catching

It is everything

You cannot look away

Holding this part of your heart

Close to you

Hoping against hope you have enough

Looking into souls you loved enough, wanted enough, to welcome here

It is no small endeavour

It is the rest of your forever.

Clothes

 Every morning I roll my weary bones out

And I groan

I don't drink coffee

I'm never alone.

My children are waiting to state their needs

And I must choose to get dressed

Clothing ~ it was not supposed to be

This array of color, texture, and pressure

It was just supposed to be us

Our hair, our skin, no flaws coverings, no distractions

And as my painful skin is haltered up or in

As I face a new day

The tree just outside my window

With its' fresh dress of leaves (It is Spring)

And the Tulip in its bright vestments

Remind me of my eyes

My hair

What is actually mine

And I get dressed

And I think how funny that I think about these things

That it matters to me

And I wonder

Anybody else?

If You've Been Accused of Nagging

 Something my counsellor said to me the other day helped.

I have come to see myself in so many negative lights. There are always reasons. In this particular moment, I was talking about my nagging nature and my counsellor decided to fill me with some truth and light. She asked me if I was nagging or if I was using my voice and just not being heard. She pointed out that there was a very skewed perspective around 'nagging' in society especially around women. 

Maybe you are not nagging. Maybe, just maybe, the other person is not listening! Maybe it does not have much to do with you at all? Maybe you would not have to repeat yourself over and over if the other person took the time to see you and hear you too. And maybe, if you decide to ask, yet again, for something that matters to you, you could see yourself as honouring your own voice ~ and changing that negative narrative. You are not nagging, you are honouring your voice.

So there is that

xo

There Are So Many Like You

 If I were to see you

This is what I would say

She is a garden

A flower garden

And what have you planted?

When I see her, hear her heart,

You've planted unkind, choking things

And all the beautifulness that she has ~

The heart of the Poppy, The slenderness of the Iris, the scent of Lilac, the intricacy ~ layers deep~ of the Rose, the delicacy of the Violet, the soul of a Peony, and it goes on and on

So conversation, oxygen, sunlight of love, water, nurture, tenderness, enjoyment

You could gift her

You could really see her beauty

Rather than hurling weeds and words

That cause shrinking, hopeless pain

Oh what a master gardener you could be

Oh what a valiant kind seed sower

Oh what life you could bring forth

But over and over

You've chosen the death of love

You've chosen weeds and ignorance

And in the end

She will always tend to her own garden

Bloom beautifully if she so chooses

Be the masterpiece she was always intended to be

She'll root out your weeds with constancy

And she will bless the world

And you?

You will have lost an incalculable treasure

You will have lost the garden you could have nourished

You poor poor soul

Oh, you have fallen so far from where you could have been!

This is what I would say

As tears streamed down my face

In disbelief and horror

At the error of your ways.

Life In Picture Form

 I take photos to remember.