I wake up and do my morning meditations. My body responds very favorably. I get this lovely relaxation in my solar plexus that I long to hold onto for an eternity. LOL I end the practice, say my thanks and intentions and then get up to begin my day. I feel quite happy and I greet the dogs who greet me with wagging tails and sweet eyes. I pet them and take them with me to the kitchen to make the tea or hot cacao that has become a habit, once again, in my life. I think about the various things I want to do, the people I want to call - I start dreaming into the day. This morning is not an anomaly, this is how I begin most days. Then, on some occasions like today, my kids come together and the bickering begins. Their bickering ends the reverie and this is both a blessing and a suffering. The blessing is that I am in a trance in my reveries and they are lovely. The blessing is that the kids show me that I am, in a way, asleep when I am thinking and planning. My suffering comes because I really, REALLY want to hold onto my plans and dreams. I acknowledge that I want to hold onto the loveliness of the pleasure and peace that I feel. I want to be able to have a thought and finish it with an action. But the bickering starts and it escalates and it's over something very stupid. I'm sorry. I'm judging this. I notice the tension in my solar plexus area. It is starting to hurt. I can feel my breathing becoming shallow and it's as if my the wide expansiveness in my brain becomes small and tight and painful. I am trying to take deep breaths because what I'm hearing them do is actually hurting me and they don't stop just because I ask them to. I acknowledge that I let this bickering hurt me. I am not always able to remain peaceful when chaos is around me and the blessing and teaching is for me to keep practicing so that I can still hold peace amongst this chaos... Each kid wants to let the other know just how RIGHT they are and the other isn't listening. It's a total bicker fest. My body is now tight and tense. I ask them to stop, to separate themselves, to do whatever is necessary to end this. I walk out of the room and they continue. I take deep breaths and remind myself that we are all more than this bickering. Their beautiful voices are, at the moment of their bickering, agitating and difficult for my ears to hear. Very suddenly, I can no longer think of any of my day's plans. It's all been interrupted and I think I have to choose how badly I want to fight to get something good in for myself. I try to take a deep breath and get myself back to center. What I feel when this happens is stress in my body and in my mind. I am bowing to the stress as the teacher that it is. I accept that this is what is happening now. I still notice the resistance that I hold because I want my morning to go a different way. This is me being honest. Thankfully a lot of the days and hours are pleasant and fun with my kids. They are great kids and I acknowledge that. I'm so grateful for them for so many reasons and I acknowledge that they have been my biggest teachers thus far. There are some moments like this one today where it is very agitating and stressful. My body doesn't respond well to the kids' bickering. In my day, if my brothers and I were bickering, my mother would come in with a rubber scraper and say she was going to end the bickering and ask us which one was going to be first. After I had kids, I understood my mother's frustrations and feelings of a loss of control. I don't condone her choices but I now understand with great empathy where they are coming from. I choose a different path of parenting for my kids. I choose the path of honesty and non-violent or compassionate communication. I raised my voice and said, "I am SO frustrated! Hearing this fighting actually physically hurts me! Please stop this fighting!" Still, I notice a rock in my gut and it takes a long time for me to calm my breathing down when they get started. It takes a while to watch it dissolve and if they don't start again, it will be good... lol I know that this is good work to do...
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It's been an hour and they have calmed down. They are working on their school work. I am breathing to relax and each moment I notice myself saying, "AAAH, this is good. There is that peace again to think and to be..." Just as I notice this, I get interrupted with a "Mom? Can you..." and a request. I breathe into this and I laugh at it, too. I know I'm not alone in this. Mothers everywhere (and fathers who are home with their kids, too) are getting constant interruptions to the nanoseconds of peace in their lives. LOL I surrender to the idea that the day is not solely my own. I bow to the jealousy that I have for Matt who gets to leave the house and go to work and I know full well that he gets interrupted with phone calls all day long... It's silly to be jealous because we are all in the same boat. I bow to the sorrow I have for not being able to see the day of my dreams, whatever that really means. I fully know that there will be a time when the kids are grown and out of the house and I'll be walking around going, "God, it's SOOO quiet in here!" LOL My kids are my most favorite people in the whole wide world and I love and choose to be with them even in the bickering. I bow with acceptance for each moment that comes to me. I bow to the understanding that for now, my days are to be present to the bickering, to the tenseness, to the moments of quiet that come in between what appears to be a lot of chaos in my thinking and sometimes in my environment... I'm also present to the great feeling of joy and happiness that I feel and the aliveness I feel in my body, whether in pleasure or in pain...