I’ve struggled with being the mom that gets on the ground and plays. If I’m really being honest, I don’t think I’ve ever been great at playing in general. As a kid I shied from organized sports, partially due to being an arts kid but also because my deeply rooted insecurities, the size of my body, my lack of knowledge for the game entirely, how I felt slow on the come up when they explained directions. I remember wanting to play soccer, the time I thought I was signing up for boxing but really it was wrestling and my mother made me follow through because it was already paid for, and the time someone tried to teach me to ski and screamed at me for not doing it right. It’s not that I never played. There was tag and hide and seek. Afternoons that rolled into dark skies while riding bikes. Creative play for me has always been more crafting, baking, cooking- something with an outcome, and I have felt disconnected from parts of myself and my kids when I can feel myself getting uncomfortable wanting to get on the floor and play make-believe. There are a slew of reasons as to why some pieces of play have felt inaccessible but that isn’t what this is about. It’s about the parts I am good at, the parts I relish in, the parts I get to explore more, and the parts where I let our community fill in the blanks.
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The work of healing your inner child and generational trauma is work. Work that leaves me feeling disoriented, scared, lonely, tired and hopeful. The days when I don’t feel like I can do the work for myself, I do it for the kids and Anaya, wanting to understand my own self more deeply, more intimately, to do a better job of course correcting my own actions and showing up for them. Part of having access to safety for the first time in your life is actually trusting the safety itself. I’d like to tell you that when you feel safe that everything immediately feels better and not only is that not the case (for me) sometimes it can actually make things feel worse because it’s not what your body and brain are used to.
That’s a casual 33 years of lack of safety we’re out here trying to undo. Anyways- Halloween decorations.
Are you still with me?
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