Libido

Your sex life is not gone, it is just away. Wherever you think your libido might have run off to, it will be back. Believe it or not, the day will come when you will feel surges of passion again, when you will find your partner exceedingly attractive once more, when you will remember that babymaking is a means, not just an end. Right now, you may find it hard to differentiate between hot sex and wet sox. Quiet attempts at arousal may be no match for your snoring. As remote as it appears, the time will come when you will gladly trade hours of uninterrupted sleep for long,  languid lovemaking under a low-hung crescent moon. As outrageous as it may now seem, the phrase, “Oh, Baby!” will take on new meaning. The adults will reclaim the night. The morning. The afternoon. And your libido? Missing in action no more.

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Soup

There comes a time when only soup will suffice. Your Nana’s homemade chicken soup. That tomato soup you always had with grilled cheese sandwiches when you were a kid. Thick, hearty minestrone that you get from the corner deli. Mulligatawny, zuppa di pesce, avoglomeno, menudo, borscht. Soup winds around your bones and finds its way into every nook and cranny of your soul and warms you from the inside out. Soup is as comfortable as a bear hug and twice as soothing. It quiets down cranky children and anxious adults and gets the thumbs-up when nothing else will do. When a sandwich is too much and a salad too little, soup hits the sweet spot. Steaming in bowls and mugs, tickling noses and warming hands, soup offers pure love in every spoonful and a meal in every can. For super-duper suppers, nothing satisfies like soup.

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Forgiveness

The most important person you’ll ever forgive is you. Forgive yourself for not being the perfect mother (whatever that is!). Forgive yourself for being blinded by love (or by fear or by attraction or by fill-in-the-blank). Forgive yourself for having children too early, too late, in or out of the right or wrong marriage, or any combination of the above. Wash away guilt with forgiveness. Cleanse yourself of regret through forgiveness. If you can’t find a way to forgive yourself for making choices that now seem less than ideal, how can you imagine that others can possibly find their way? How will you move through forgiveness? Write a letter of forgiveness to yourself. Sing a forgiving song. Dance your forgiveness into the floor. Bead a necklace of forgiveness, knit a scarf of forgiveness, and let forgiveness drop out of every finger as you work. Wear your forgiveness close to you heart, where you’ll be certain not to forget it.

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Freedom

Find your freedom in mothering. Taste the freedom of leaving the high-pressure work world for time at home. Feel free enough to play and discover. To ask questions and seek answers and grow alongside your child in beautiful ways. In the company of young ones, a freedom exists that you won’t find in the adult world. Take a deep breath of this freedom. With every step of independence your children take, take a few steps of your own. Free up your thinking; liberate old attitudes and ways of being that keep everyone in the house from soaring free. Structure isn’t a prison; it’s a framework that can support you as you test out new freedoms. What tools for living free will you hand to your child? How will you help him to free up his passion? How will you show her to live her own truth? Exercise your right to choose. Flex your muscles of freedom.

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Contentment

Contentment invites you to be at peace with what is. It’s more subtle than happiness, more grounded than rapture, and accessible every moment. Contentment tells you that you have enough and you are enough and that it’s good. When you’re content, you rest in what is, instead of racing after what should be. When you find contentment, you still have dreams, but the difference is that they don’t have you. Right now, are you content? Do you feel present and complete with what this moment provides? Can you savor the apple in your hand, take delight in the child at your side and appreciate all that surrounds you – without wondering if there’s something better? Can you survey your world and feel the calm of contentment? Can you let yourself bask without reaching for more? Contentment never asks you to settle for less, simply to acknowledge there’s enough in what there is now.

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(Dear Reader, the poetry and words of Rachel Snyder resonate so deeply that I felt it important to include her on our site. This is another one of  “Cyma’s Picks.” Each week, we’ll read sample pages from her 2003 book, “365 Words of Wisdom for Women,” now out-of-print, with all rights reverted to the author, but still available in used copies on Amazon, etc. Here is the first of many meditations we will read together.)

Dare

Dare to do it differently! Dare to be the first mother to boycott standardized testing. Dare to be the last to give your okay to ear piercing. Dare to just say no to circumcision (Double dare if you’re Jewish!) Dare to say yes to nursing your three-year-old, no matter what anyone else says. Read all you can, ponder your decision long and hard, then dare to question the safety of childhood immunizations. When your mother recites her Ten Commandments of Child Discipline, dare to hug her and say, “Thanks, Mom, but I’d like to try out my own ideas.” Dare to look and feel and act ten years younger than your age. Dare to ask your grandfather to step outside with his cigar. Dare to tell the truth to first-time mothers and dare them to ignore you and rely on their own experience. Dare to create a model of mothering that you’ve never seen or heard of before. Then dare to ignore anybody who questions the rightness of that model for you.

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