Feeding people has always fulfilled me in a meaningful way. In high school, friends came over to my basement for a New Year’s party. It wasn’t my style to go out and buy snacks, I wanted to offer them homemade cookies. The cookies didn’t turn out real well but I had already enjoyed myself in their baking and presenting to my friends. As a nurse in the burn unit, feeding people remained fulfilling for me and became professionally relevant. Burn survivors require huge caloric intakes to rebuild their tissues. Watching and encouraging my patients to eat, assessing the empty dishes on their tray, and then documenting their intake was easily the highlight of any twelve hour shift for this nurse.
Now I am a mother. Oh the glorious experience of feeding the baby from my own physical body. Choosing foods to eat myself knowing that this magnificent body will transform those foods into rich, nourishing food for the baby. Aaaahhhhh, so satisfying. Baby has grown well and is nearly 6 1/2 years old. Lately there has been deep satisfaction every morning as I lovingly prepare his breakfast. It starts first thing when I get up in the dark, quiet house, child sleeping peacefully in his bed. The yellow ceramic pot where the oats have been soaking all night in fresh, whole milk - that comes out of the cold and sits comfortably on the warm side of the cook stove. Wooden spoon stirs the oats, milk, and butter. Pot will heat slowly while I go take care of myself by meditating for 20 minutes. The routine of the yellow pot shines brightly in my heart as one of the infinite joys of being a mother to my child and receiving personal fulfillment in feeding him. Lately its been cornbread muffins for breakfast. We baked them together, the child and I. He gathers the measuring cups and mixing bowls, measures the baking mix, mixes in the milk and eggs, and even butters the muffin pan. Baking has become an immensely rewarding activity that we share together. All the better when we’re baking something meant for his own breakfast. The muffins turned out well and he prefers them with great slabs of our homemade butter, which again, is so satisfying for me to watch him eat butter first thing in the morning. I love to think of his body being wrapped in nourishment, growing and developing perfectly. First thing I do now when I get up in the dark, quiet house is get a large chunk of butter from the cold, putting it on his plate at the table to soften while he sleeps.
I love to feed people, especially the child. He makes it extra fun with his honest exclamations of how delicious he finds the food. These generally come after the meal is complete, as the child naturally sits in silence while eating. This time of year there are birds to watch on the deck, pecking at the block of lard that sits waiting for their enjoyment. Early on I noticed that generally we eat at different times in this house, but I wanted to share time with the child so I intentionally sit down next to him while he eats. It has become a sacred time for me. A time of worship and healing.
As the 47 year old woman that I am, its hard to be quiet and its hard to hold still. I want to feel comfortable with silence. I want to feel peaceful in my body and sit still, not needing to release anxious energy by fidgeting. I want my kid to remain free of many of the things that I struggle with, so I want to demonstrate to him how mama can sit still and quiet, feeling content and peaceful. Intentionally joining the child at table has become a sacred time of practice with my teacher.
Most mornings here see the child and I at table quietly watching the birds while he eats the lovely food that fulfilled my heart’s desire in its preparation. Child’s father behind us at the computer watching videos with headphones. It is a lovely way to spend mornings here on the farm. All this routine and pleasantness has naturally evolved, each of us following our own unique flow.
After the good breakfast and time together, I am in the living room writing or messaging friends on the computer. I hear the father standing over the child telling him about the weather, trying to get him away from the computer, telling him repeatedly that he needs to eat a good breakfast. The child says nothing.
After knowing what I know about the child’s morning, having experienced everything that we shared together, while the father sat a few feet away in the same room staring at the computer, and now to hear him tell the child he needs to eat a good breakfast, that is very confusing.
In the moment, I received it as a personal assault on everything I hold dear around feeding the child, and also as incredibly arrogant and rude to tell a child with a belly full of his mama's good breakfast, "you need to eat a good breakfast". My intention in writing this is to claim the freedom, claim the clarity I received yesterday following my reaction to this comment and my subsequent recovery from the reaction. What happened yesterday broke open something that needed to come out into the light and writing is soothing to my soul as it heals from years and years of being a human.
Taking his comment personally, becoming offended by his words demonstrates the habit of mind that is being healed. I was raised by a woman who was constantly offended, who lived in perpetual defense of herself against imagined attack. Vulnerable. That's what I was taught. You are vulnerable and you must defend yourself. You are justified to fight back, using any means necessary, to preserve yourself against these mean people. Fear. Living in fear of annihilation. Playing the "oh poor me" card any chance you get. Living as a victim, using anger to cover up the fear. It is only a habit of the mind. There are cute little neurons in the brain that just fire, that's what they're meant to do. My mother was raised by a fearful woman who criticized people and complained angrily to numb herself against fear. My grandmother was raised by the same kind of woman. It probably went back farther than that, but I know from stories and my own experience that this is the line of people I come from.
I am done with it. It ends here, with me.
I take responsibility for my neurons now. I am consciously, intentionally forming new habits of the mind. I'm not trying to avoid the old habits, I'm just replacing them joyfully and determinedly. Things are different for me already, I've seen great results in my reactions to people and my decreasing level of anxiety, my new found experience of peace and contentment.
I believe in co-creation and I understand how momentum works. That morning with the good breakfast was the perfect storm. The man that uttered those words nearly exclusively lives in a vibration that attracts unkindness, and the two of us have 10 years of momentum behind unpleasant exchanges. I sunk down to his vibration with my old habit of being offended and together we rode the momentum of the past.
"you need to eat a good breakfast" to me sounded so much like he was saying:
I don't value your mama. I don't notice or even care about how she takes care of you. I don't notice what goes on in this house and anything that your mama may be doing is not important, not relevant. Because I was raised to get validation from people and not God, the infinite source of perfect Love, it has been easy for me to be crushed. I was taught by my mother, my aunts, and the movies I watched that a woman is fulfilled by a human man and doesn't really become relevant in our society until she has secured one man with a ring and a public display of commitment where the woman wears a big, poofy white dress. The woman then has the rest of her life to criticize and demean this man who must stay loyal to only her, regardless of how she treats him. I learned that she is justified in her unkind ways towards him because he can never treat her well enough and he can never do enough things for her to make her happy. My dying neurons kicked in and fulfilled their electrical duty of firing off an old habit of attack in defense of annihilation. This fulfilled the father's vibration attracting unkindness and the whole thing was carried bouncing along the river of momentum. La - dee - dah, here we goooooooo.......
The newly embraced and much practiced habit of recovery from these episodes felt so good. Breathe, know that all is well. Let go of shame and guilt because they only intensify and prolong the yuck, and because co-creation and momentum are real. Move past guilt right into acceptance. That happened. And right now I am calm and quiet, in a new moment. Receive from the infinite source of Love, what clarity can there be from this particular exchange? It was easy to see what I don't want and so now turn openheartedly towards what I do want. I want to be kind. I want to respond to any condition, to any person, with kindness. I want to keep hold of my peace. I want to recognize my need to release energy and I want to release it in healthy, comfortable ways. aaahhhhh, that feels better, ok, thank you.
It became clear to me that when I heard "you need to eat a good breakfast", he was not saying any of the things I imagined. He was saying: I'm uncomfortable and my style of dealing with uncomfortableness is to talk, to fill empty space with words, to boss people around and tell them how to live and what to do. He was saying: I have watched videos all morning again and my body is stiff, my feet are cold because of the poor circulation I am perpetuating by sitting in this chair for hours each day and I will numb myself to my own discomfort by talking, by telling another person what to do so that I feel important. There's no reason to be personally offended by any of that. Let him work out his own junk in the way he has chosen to work it out.
None of what he says needs to matter to me. It will be nice when I share space with someone who takes care of themselves. It will be nice to share space with someone who desires to know what goes on in their own house. It will be nice to share space with someone who is fulfilled from the infinite source of Love and so has some pleasant energy to share with other humans.
This all needed to come out and now its out. Bottom line, I am responsible for my own joy and my own pain. I am not responsible for anyone else's joy or pain. I have found the infinite source of Love and I go to that source daily for replenishment, for fulfillment. Moment by moment I know how to tap into the eternal source and I will continue riding the upward spiral for the rest of my joyful human days.
