The Web of Motherhood

When I started this blog I was in the middle of being a first-time mom, and all my energy went into exploring that map, especially as it relates to my life experience with spiritual journey, and those maps.

I remember standing at a car lot with my dad, eyeing a Subaru station wagon, 1983. "It'll be good for groceries and kids," I said. He just nodded, yes that was a good, practical thought. He wanted that for me. Except I was only fifteen.

I'm a Midwest girl from the beginning and, first and foremost, we have kids. Plural. That's inside the equation before you work out any of the math. But that didn't happen for me for another seventeen years. Across that time, the role of motherhood followed all my wayward miles, stretching, opening and, finally, leapt out of that box altogether.

Driving this morning, I unwind it all in my mind and acknowledge that:

1. I am an older first-time mother to a 3.5 year old daughter

2. I am step-mother to a 25 year old woman who doesn't speak to her father

3. I am step-mother to a 19 year old young woman (different mom than the first), whom I help navigate into adulthood.

4. I am a mother experiencing secondary infertility, about the ingest drugs to force my eggs to drop, wondering how ceremony and prayer will work for my husband in the collection room of the fertility clinic.

5. I am filling out an international adoption application for a child with special needs.

Indeed, culture has changed.

I threw my red sparkly shoes over the cliff a long time ago. I don't want to go back to Kansas. What some lament as maladaption and a breakdown of moral fabric, I celebrate with curiosity. I want to be front row to experience just how motherhood is evolving.

Growing up and well into adulthood, I liked to say that my mother was 42 when she had me. The shock! Imagine that in 1967. I was the smallest baby on record, 4 lbs. and in an incubator for a month. Oooouuu, Ahhhh.

A few years ago I ordered her hospital records. She was 39 when she had me. I was so offended. That changed my story. I used that original story to upset myself about being an older mother myself: Jokes on me, now I will die young, too, just like my mother, and abandon my daughter.

Yesterday the fertility doctor told me that I could very well have another child naturally. "But my age! I've already had three surgeries! I'm high risk!" He smiled calmly and assured me older women with more complications have done just fine.

I'm not dying to that story anymore. I am putting that story to rest. Blessings for a safe journey, story of mine. Thanks for protecting me, or whatever you did for my growth.

This is my conversation about motherhood. Motherhood in a web of chaos. In the wonderful, brilliant chaos of consciousness, in a silky, information loaded network of wisdom. I am a woman, spirit in a web of form, and a changing body. Light upon light, belief and will, temporary glue. Breath and light, glue. Broken pieces in a mirror of unity. Constant change, constant repair, constant adaptation.