I just completed the Abundant Mama Project 4-week e-course (which I highly recommend) and I wrote this for one of our assignments. It is based on the poem “You Can’t Have It All” by Barbara Ras.
You can’t have it all but you can have:
This life.
The softest place of your heart, vibrant with life, exposed, thundering down the hallway, a blur of ragged laughter and bright white ankle socks, trailing squeals of “Mama” and “Dada”.
Your son’s bluest of blue eyes, as deep as the sky the moment twilight surrenders to night, widening with laughter and narrowing with mischief, peering past the flesh that grew his bones, smiling into your tender white-hot joy and electric fear, whispering “no matter what happens, this life is good.”
His tiny hand tangled into the back of your hair as it absently strokes the nape of your neck.
Joy and gratitude even on those flat days, when your skin crawls with resistance and you forget how to care for anyone, everyone, especially yourself.
The heft of bodies, one soft and round, one lean and hard, both bending toward you with fathomless adoration.
A man whose kiss ignites the same ember that has been glowing for 14 years, with the same raw urgency, every time. He claims his stake, pronouncing “I was here first” to the littlest one as you all wrestle for cuddles and hugs.
Tree frogs where there used to be crickets and fireflies. The safe suburban soundtrack: dogs barking, children laughing, leaf blowers and lawnmowers, birds chittering on the wind. Summer in April, that is until the fog creeps over the mountains and with its fingers, presses its muted melancholy into the sky, the mountains, the trees, the hollow of your chest.
This is the life you can have: stripped down, full of heart, moving, at its own pace, from moment to precious moment.
it's complicated. 