The homemade pizzas came out perfectly. They don't always. Sometimes the dough rises too much, sometimes it doesn't rise enough. But this time, it was perfect.
The movie selection came without conflict. It doesn't always. One wants a comedy, while the other wants action. One wants a movie we’ve seen 10,000 times. The other wants something new. But this time, we all agreed, and it was perfect.
The perfect family movie night – a hard-earned treat after a long busy week. Until I went ahead and blew it. He just wanted to talk to me - my son, my 13-year-old son, wanted to talk to me - but… it was 10 pm. I was exhausted. We’d already talked so much that day. I wanted a minute to myself. So I snapped. Then I instantly regretted it.
Although I know full well that regret and guilt come hand-in-hand with motherhood, knowing this never seems to ease the sting of feeling it.
Ugh, what kind of terrible mother are you? You couldn't have given him just 10 minutes? Don’t you know how lucky you are that he wants to talk to you? Don't you know that in the blink of an eye he won't want to talk to you at all? Why did you do that?! And why did you have to go and mess up such a great evening??
Although this level of berating may seem a bit excessive for the crime, regret knows no bounds when we feel like we have f*cked up.
The fact that we do fail so fantastically over and over again as parents, gives us the opportunity to let go over and over again. Letting go never happens just once. It is a constant, constant practice.
Letting go is hard. The past is, well, it's with us all the time. It happened, we were there, we lived through it; it was real. But that’s the thing - it was real. It's not anymore. The only thing that’s real is right now. The only place we can live is right here. But living in the past is so much easier! It runs on habit. It runs on auto pilot. It does the bloody work for us! Easy, sure, but much more devastating and disrespectful to the life we do have now, and the life that we’re so lucky to have left.
Of course, this is not what I’m thinking about after barking at my son and ruining our perfect movie night. But it's all of these little mistakes and mess ups that provide the opportunity to practice so that we can let go of the really big whoppers: wasting 20 years I could have devoted to being a writer. Waiting 10 years to really deal with the pain in my shoulder; now it's gotten so bad I don't know if it’ll ever heal. Not following my intuition when my son was a baby which led to a permanent head tilt; something that could have so easily been corrected with a couple Physio sessions will now affect him for the rest of his life. (That one will haunt me forever.)
But the present moment doesn't care about 20 years ago, 12 years ago or 2 days ago when you yelled at your kid. The present moment is wide-open offering nothing but love and acceptance. Meditation practice isn't about sitting still and peacefully every day: it's about learning to sit in the agitation of life’s messiness and your f*cked up-ness long enough for you to realize that underneath the mess and after all of your mess ups, there is still, always, only, Love.
I hope this week’s guided meditation will help you feel into that Love and remind you that, no matter what you did or didn’t do; said or didn’t say; where you went wrong or didn’t go at all, you are whole and good and beautiful and lovable exactly as you are right now.
Don’t forget to join me for our next Full Moon Group Meditation on Thursday Oct. 17th at 10am ET!
Click HERE TO REGISTER
I would love to practice with you and share energy together as we let go of what needs to be released in October and make room for what’s ready to come next!
much love,
Carolyn 💞
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