I never expected that I would look like Mom. We were so different: she tall, me short; she dark, me light. We did not understand one another; never 'got' each other. Ours was what is referred to as a 'difficult relationship', mostly because we were so different. Recently though, in photos of myself or when I catch a sudden glimpse in a mirror, I see her in my face. Very strange how I needed to live well into my fifth decade before I could accept my mother as a living part of myself.
Accepting Mom as a living part of me is odd because mostly I spent my life knowing how different we were. Yet, in my fifty-eighth year as I see her etched in my face I am understanding that deep inside my personality we are similar: I share her fear of never being good-enough. I share her 'seeker-soul' and love of new learning. I share her dry humor and wit. Deep, deep within myself her energy of Being, the energy of the woman who gave me life, continues to stir and mix with my own energy and is brought into a new kind of Being: a Beingness of Life much bigger than either herself or myself with our differences that caused each of us pain.
Today is National Woman's Day and these thoughts floated to consciousness as I was reflecting on the woman who came before me and shared their living - their liveliness of Life - with my life. Today I am aware in a new way of how four women helped create the Woman who is me.
Four is not a very large number, yet the depth, color and texture of those women paradoxically makes four seem like a very big amount. First is Mom, the woman who gave me life and then did her very best to nurture me into Being. As a mother myself I now understand the difficulty of nurturing someone who is so very different and yet so very loved: I understand the hard, sharp edges of that reality and the dark abyss of such love. What I know today is that it was love that eventually won our tug-of-war of non-understanding. Love always wins if we allow it to.
There was Gramsy - Mom's mother - with whom she had as difficult a relationship as I had with Mom. Between Gramsy and I however there was a kinship of understanding. Again, I had to live many decades before understanding that the kinship between Gramsy and myself was our abundance of creativity. It was with Gramsy that I felt an understanding of who I was decades before I could give words to describing what had intuitively connected us. Decades before I had the courage to live from my creativity and passion it was Gramsy who provided the nurturing of those seeds of my Being.
My Aunt Arlie was the third person of the Trinity of Women who nurtured me into Being: Mom, Gramsy and Aunt Arlie. Three women who were as different as personalities could be yet shared a sisterhood that, again, it took decades of living for me to understand. To my child-eyes, Aunt Arlie was the 'wild one; red hair and loud laugh are the textures of Aunt Arlie I carry with me. Gramsy had an innate dignity: my mother had innate authority and Aunt Arlie had a wildness I longed to have the freedom to live from.
A cherished memory I carry in my heart is of these three women, sitting outside with their bridge table set up over our blow-up swimming pool: feet dangling in the cooling water as they laughed and bid for hours while we children ran wild in the Michigan summer. This image lives deep in my heart where it sits with my childs longing to have what they had. That longing of childhood is a reality for I share that same deep connection of laughing-love with my four sisters. A love so fierce and deep I am aware that it is a living energy of Womanhood threading back through generations to Eve.
My friend Randy came from outside the family circle and entered my life in my fourth decade - a decade of Womanhood where I have come to believe, a 'mentor' for the next phase of living is essential. As women, in our forties most of us are completing a cycle of living where many of us have lived in 'service' to the needs and expectations of other people. I believe that the next phase of living for most women is a new kind of living in 'service' to our Spirit. It is a very difficult transition and without someone to encourage and mentor us, almost impossible to make. That person for me was Randy. Randy was a God-mother of my soul for it was from her I received the gift of absolutely unconditional acceptance of who I was.
Randy's personality was a combination of the Trinity of Women I had grown from as she carried their innate dignity, authority and wildness mixed with her audacious flair for living. Randy LIVED - audaciously, thoughtfully, elegantly, outrageously and creatively. She shared her gift for this way of living generously and in her generosity and acceptance I began to discover my own bravery and the courage necessary for living deeply.
Living deeply as a woman engages the life-death-life cycle of Seasons and embracing this cycle of living takes strength and courage. It is difficult to learn to not just cling to what is wiggling with life; it is difficult to allow what is alive to finish its course of living and die. Both living and dying is required for new life.
With two of these four woman I was given the privilege of taking part in their final days of living and in their moment of dying. With my mother and Randy I was gifted with seeing the fullness of a life as it completes it's circle. The gift shimmering within that Circle is almost unspeakable in its beauty - and it's lesson: you and your life is mulch for future life. In the ending of their life I was admonished to be aware that the gift of myself - my life - is for the future of Life. The life-death-life cycle continues in renewed growth whenever a life is lived from passionate creativity.
Passionate creativity of living. Today, as I reflect and meditate on the gifts of these Women I am aware that as different as each was in personality, each was alike in that they lived their life passionately: each engaged Life as fully as they were able to from who they were, and this is the gift of living: their 'mulch' of Living left behind. Generously and imperfectly they LIVED.
Wholeness and well-being is found in generous and imperfect living and each of these women lived their life generously and imperfectly and in so doing they created new life. And the new life they created continues to create new life even as their lives have been completed. Thank you Mom. Thank you Gramsy. Thank you Aunt Arlie. Thank you Randy.
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