Tag: family

Mother’s Day Musings

Disney on Ice, Springfield, MA, March 2026

“Be where your feet are.”

~Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn

When do we stop mothering long enough to feel and appreciate the experience of mothering?

Blue skies, green leaves, wind coursing through. A bird’s soft whistle. And I often can’t seem to pause long enough to let my feet feel the dirt on the ground.

On this Mother’s Day, 2026, I want to be grateful for my health and my growing mental clarity.

I want to give myself the gift of spaciousness. An opening up of time. Time expanding, the ground under my feet expanding, my heart expanding.

What would it look like for life to feel more expansive while mothering? Perhaps the two don’t need to be in conflict.

May I put down the stop watch that is my mind. May I realize I’m not in a race anymore. Not unless I’m actually running, which is another goal this year!

May I stop and feel my feet on the ground. The sand between my toes. The warmth on my cheeks in the sun, all while chasing a growing child and exhaling after another “can you please say that a little kinder” or “you’re not being safe right now with your body.”

What if I could see and experience the world as though I were a child again, as though the sensory input around me was as scintillating as it often seems to be for my daughter.

What if my whole world could light up when my favorite characters skate out on ice, floating through thin air and electrifying my mind and heart.

Of course, worries and obsessions to “get it right” will always be there. But instead of beating myself up for them, what if I could start to talk back to this childhood inner critic and offer comfort and reassurance that I’m okay now. That now at age 44 these parts that still feel the need to protect me from failure and making a mistake can take a rest. That it is okay for things to get messy (literally and figuratively). That I can embrace the colorful mess that is my life and slip and slide in the rainbow of colors as they bleed together.

On this mother’s day, I wish myself and all the mothers out there a breath of solace and reassurance that we can hold two things at once… a reality packed with obligations AND an opportunity to liberate ourselves from old burdens. Instead, may we all plant ourselves in the expanding sense of space and time that is ours for the taking.

Happy Mother’s Day dear ones. And thank you, for reminding me that we are all in this together.

Life Keeps Moving

Cromwell Landing, Cromwell, CT

I’ve been struck recently with how fast time seems to move. My last blog entry was in June 2024 and somehow now we are in fall. The leaves have turned and we are getting ready for Halloween. I wish I could say I feel wiser and more grounded and settled since I last wrote, but I don’t think that would be true. I’m just as confused and overwhelmed with life as ever. (And not to mention, I’ve discovered a few more grey hairs).

One area I’m continuing to reconcile, in which I am perhaps making some progress, is catching a hold of and accepting the contradictions of life, the “both/and” mindset if you will. Just a few examples that come to mind in this particular moment…

Life is scary AND beautiful at the same time. I sit, for example, before this breathtaking fall landscape in Cromwell, CT AND brace for a world that feels more polarized and full of spite than ever before, particularly in the run up to our elections.

Raising my daughter is getting harder and easier at the same time. She is becoming more and more independent AND has the energy of a jaguar on steroids, which seems to rope us in constantly. She resists us whenever possible to proclaim her burgeoning truths. I can remember myself at this age (4 going on 14) and I don’t want to squash her light. (Mine is still coming back on!)

I’m exhausted at the end of most days AND have the yearning to run a marathon, swim a mile or climb Mount Kilimanjaro. It’s a constant push and pull of contradicting and perhaps complementary desires.

Our family recently returned from an epic adventure overseas, celebrating my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. It was the first time I traveled this far in well over a decade and I was reminded of my 20 something self who only saw adventure and travel in her future. I admittedly feel most myself when traveling. The further I go, the more connected I feel to myself and the universe. To break free from the monotony of daily routines, packing lunches, cleaning, being online from 9am to what feels like bedtime, etc. Travel is the epitome of perspective building for me.

While on our trip, we start in a small seaside European town and I receive a lesson along these lines that I’m still digesting. On our first evening in France, straight off the airplane, my mom and I go into town to try and purchase a new stroller after we leave ours mistakenly somewhere between the gate and baggage claim (the first of several things lost on this trip). The highlight, for me, during the excursion is dappling in my broken, very rusty, once fluent French. Once we successfully secure a new stroller, we find ourselves unsuccessfully trying to wave down a taxi. So we get on a public bus back to the hotel, jet lagged and overstimulated.

However the next day, just as we are about to board the ship, I realize my wallet is missing. We search everywhere. I assume I have been pickpocketed and proceed to ride the waves of resentment off and on throughout the trip. To my utter surprise and amazement, while scanning my emails on the plane back home I find out that the wallet has been discovered! It was a good Samaritan from the local French bus company on that very first night who found the wallet, sorted through it, found a business card and emailed me to come retrieve it! While I unfortunately can’t get back there in person (yet), I’m hedging my bets that it gets returned safely to me in the US. What are the chances! And how can I reframe when I next start to feel that victim mentality/resentment start to build up about what feels hard?

The world is so big AND yet so small at the same time. We are but small microbes and photons floating in the universe and yet, when we choose to, more often than not, we find some commonality with the strangers we encounter.

My challenge upon returning home (and perhaps for all of us), is to live into each moment with even 1% more of the energy I have when traveling. To see people and places around me, with all their hues and personalities. To not give up on my potential to keep growing and stretching when life feels hard, and to keep looking for where the water meets the shore…to see the waves, as we did on our “boat trip” (as my daughter calls it) and to know that we are all part of a vast ocean of life. We must keep moving, because we have no choice AND because we have the privilege and ability to do so. Blessings for the journey. Shabbat Shalom. And may I be with you all again soon.

Southern France, after transatlantic flight