It's an amazing thing. To yearn to be a parent, and get to be one. I surely would have begged, borrowed or stolen. I would have helped someone else or fostered or adopted or mentored. I would have done anything and everything to parent. I remember being 16, 17, and feeling the deep maternal sense welling up within me. When I worked for so many years in Social Services, I never worked with small kids, knowing I had to save myself.
When I had one, youngish, and it was tough for us, the doctors saying it would not be possible, I imagined getting my beloved to give me another, if he were to burn out of the whole thing, so that the two would have each other. I raised my brothers and got up in the night to change them and get their bottles and dress them and protect them and help them with homework and protected them from bad things.
I worked for years running groups for adolescents and for drug treatment and parents and felt that welling up inside of me, that deep deep desire for my own, birthed or not, who cared.
I imagined even with my three that I could somehow foster, or have more, for which I thank God and my thyroid, and a rental house, limiting my nuttiness and obsession.
And now. And now they are all okay. Fine. And I am too depleted to even worry a bit about the small things. I am unable. It is fascinating dharma that I accept with my whole heart. I spent myself and got them out of swamps and bad situations and with my beloved, we did it and delivered them unto alright situations and they have grown and progressed and managed, which we hope all young ones growing older shall. That is our prayer and our mantra. Able, gifted, and making their way.
And if that is managed, any which way, well then huzzah. It's only with age that we realize the numbers of people who may have wrung their hands and stayed up nights with our own nuttiness. Oblivious at the time, we grow older, and slowly in wanders insight. Hand in hand with hindsight, making their way . Into our living room, as we fall against the sofa, leaning on our beloved, giving thanks for the live we are able to lead. And the two of them rise up, illuminating what could have been.
And , conversely, what is. The gift of it all. No swamps. No desperation. If this happens to you, with your beloved neighbor child or your client, your sibling who took quite a lot out of you to get ok. Your nephew or your adopted child or your adopted out kid whom you love like heaven itself. Or your kid that stayed with you and you grew up?
Then now it is time to give thanks. I do. I give such profound, heartfelt thanks. To God. To the Divine. To All That Is.
I say "Oh All That Is, thank you for the blessings bountiful upon my lap this day. Thank you for all that could have been the undoing, and yet was, in the end, not. Thank you for their deliverance from horrible circumstance and possibility.
Thank you, please, for them all somehow being okay." And I pray hard and sweet and long, in my deep deep gratitude. Because I know that, sometimes, it is not so; no matter your efforts or theirs. Sometimes it is a crap shoot and it all goes bad. And you struggle to love them while they fall fall further.
And you struggle to love your own life and your own efforts in this tough thing called life, and love and care for them and not withdraw , even when it hurts to see them so.
Faith is a powerful substantive thing. It holds us in good times and bad. It restores us to our clarity and vision. And sometimes. Sometimes, along with faith, comes the kids. Being alright.
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