I woke up with a weight on my chest.
An Election year…
Some old feelings are back again.
Some just won’t go away.
Being a sensitive person with empathy is a wonderful thing until, because of it, you absorb so much emotion that you suddenly feel crushed by its weight.
So often I feel like it’s up to me to fix it all.
Be the voice.
Be the one who WILL say…
But today I woke up so very tired from all the feeling and the trying.
I felt like I’d suffocate.
It’s been a long time since I cried at the very start of a day.
My daughter, Tessa, saw me in the recliner, blankly staring, contemplating, and she asked if I’d like company to the nail appointment she had just heard me make in an effort to distract myself.
My spirit lifted at the thought of her company.
The offer of it is a rare thing with teens.
We arrived a half hour early for the appointment, and that extra half hour meant we had time to sit in the car with our coffees and talk about a whole lot of things.
She’s getting older, and is so mature now. Some mornings it’s like they just wake up different…
Sometimes when she talks to me her voice fades to the distance, eclipsed by the way the sun looks bouncing off the gold flecks in her eyes, and her smooth face.
The sound of her soft voice with the car doors shut was a balm to me.
The problems all on the outside.
Just me and my girl in a quiet space.
There was so much relief that morning in feeling like I was talking to a friend,
and I found myself opening up to her in ways I don’t know if I ever have about feelings I possess of perpetually being on an island in this world.
Too this. Too that. Too outspoken. Brave in all the wrong ways.
I’ve been “too much” of something since I was much younger than her.
I have sat on the outside of many people’s boxes,
but I always leaned in closely to peer into them.
I have paid attention to situations, and taken in actions. (not only words)
It has led to some confusion these days when communities I once felt so much a part of now look very different to me;
A crisis of identity.
Tessa was nodding quietly as I poured the weight from the morning out before her.
At first, I took this to be slight overwhelm at the sheer volume of everything I was saying.
I talked about how I had raised her in the hopes that she would see and choose God for herself. The God I have experienced in turbulence, and in stillness.
The one of love, and creativity, of rescue, and grace,
but how sad I feel about the fact that the behavior she sees in some people these days who claim to know exactly what He wants could work to only push her further from truly seeing Him alive and gently blossoming in the hard crevices of the world.
For that whole half hour, we talked about God, and my broken heart,
And, as I bared my soul to her, something surprising happened:
I saw a light in her appear that I thought was gone forever, because vulnerability and honesty had just opened the door.
When I thought she would shy away,
instead she sighed in relief,
and I saw then that she didn’t feel overwhelmed by my openness at all.
She saw herself in my story.
She was feeling understood.
She told me that she had been confused, too.
She just hadn’t quite known how to say the words.
The conversation that followed proved she was listening and observing the world around her just as closely as I was.
She sees injustice and dissonance in it.
She, too, wants better for it.
She sees how sometimes the things we think are helping can sometimes be the things that hurt.
In that moment, in that salon parking lot, when I was just sure my day was lost,
my daughter saw me as a human, not just a mother, and in turn, I saw her as a friend worthy of being trusted with deep feelings.
Not just a girl, another strong and worthy woman.
When we got out of the car, we walked side by side in silence to the salon,
and in my heart I recognized that the weight of the morning was lifting the way a weight does when it’s carried by more hands than just yours.
There is so much relief in burden sharing;
So much strength in walking arm-in-arm.
I was not alone on the island.
I was not alone in what I was feeling.
At that moment, I pictured this piece that we have hanging on our wall at home, that is a quote by Mother Theresa, that reads:
“If you want to bring happiness to the whole world, go home and love your family.”
It reminded me that we don’t have to take everything on at once.
We don’t have to do it all alone.
Sometimes the best thing we can do to change the world is go back to focusing on what, at times, may feel insignificant;
But, big changes happen when we start in our own hearts and in our own homes.
I remembered that I don’t have to hold up the whole world all the time,
and thank goodness, because my arms are tired.
I’ve already got the whole world at home with my girls.
I may not have a voice that reaches the masses,
but I do have these quiet car conversations, and the knowledge that
just one drop can make an infinite ripple.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
