Beautiful Failure

Risk failing at something beautifully, wholly, and truthfully rather then never having attempted such feats at all.

That’s been my little mantra for the last few months.

Most of us expend so much energy scared to just TRY that we never even know the feeling of “accomplished failure”.    And that feeling can be full of light and hope and freedom.   I’d rather have a list of attempts than of “never tried’s”.

And I’ve also realized that perhaps, if we just stopped boxing in our “to do’s” and “wants”, and “hopes” with so many boundaries that we’d perceive success much more intuitively and that it would feel more authentic.

Instead of:

• Lose 20 lbs in 1 year
• Run a marathon by Spring
• Start own editing business
• Travel to all 50 states
• Get engaged by 2012

We’d have:

• Lost weight/get healthier/feel stronger/breathe deeper
• Run
• Start a business
• Travel
• Allow for love

Voila!  It wouldn’t matter on what timeframe we achieved those, the open-endedness of such lists allows for breathing room, allow for Life, allows for hibernation and periods of intense bursts of energy and will power.

Because of who I KNOW I am, my lists have been mostly open ended for the majority of my adult life:

• Graduate with a degree (took about 8 years)

• Transition to vegetarianism (took 6 years from first wish)
• Run a mile (besides the awful, forced miles in P.E. class, finally did on my own accord at age 25)
• Catch someone else’s baby (took 1 year from first wish)
• Quit my corporate job (took 2 years from first wish)
• Learn to snowboard (took 2 years from first wish)

• Marry Jason (took 6 years from first wish)

• Have kids (took 8 years from first wish – but only 6 months to “try”)
• Travel to Italy (took 6 years from first wish)

———————————————————————

Recently, I decided that dang it, I was gonna attempt to practice yoga at some point each and every day.   Just a nice, light stretching for my body and expansion of the mind.

So, on an afternoon when both of my girls are miraculously napping,  I grab the heavy window curtains and slide them across the tension wires to reveal a spot of sunlight on my bedroom floor.  I roll out my purple mat smack dab in the middle of the rectangular sun spot.   Finding a comfy pair of paint-mottled yoga pants, I slip them up and over my child-bearing hips with a deep breath.  Enjoying Pandora as my musical backdrop,  I ease down onto the mat in a sitting pose with palms up.

I gaze easily at the scene outside my window:  breaches of the palo verdes bouncing in the breeze, wild lavender bushes – never pruned – bowing.  I am almost unsure whether the blueness above is sky or sea.   I sense the brief season of Autumn is upon is.  The sun toasts my skin.

With a deep inhale, I decide I owe it to myself to welcome and cultivate stillness of mind and body.  I’m going to simply hope for some nice minutes of deep relaxation and if yoga poses come after that, then BONUS!    Three breaths into it, I hear stirring in the room where the girls are napping.

Instead of rolling my eyes, I let my lips form a smile.

A non-emotive “Of course”, is all I allow myself to whisper.

My mind calms and messages about the magic of the universe being to swirl.  I do not understand them nor attempt to.    I allow my neck to fall and stretch, muscles being pulled like a rubber band.

My eyes remain closed as I hear Indigo traipse into the room.  My breathing deepens.

I open my eyes to meet Indigo’s oceanic gaze as she sits on the mat and smiles.

My body casually drops into child’s pose and Indigo climbs on my back.

The door to the other bedroom squeaks open again and in moments Kaia joins us.

The energy is the room is raised notches above peaceful and thus my practice ends about five minutes after it began.

———————————————————————————————————-

That, two months ago, was my last attempt.  I’ve failed to incorporate the daily yoga practice and yet that one attempt left me feeling like I jumped in wholly and truthfully and failed in the most beautiful way.

It felt liberating to open the door and let a gaggle of expectations fly on out.

I believe that there will be so many other feats that I will delve into with success.  Who knows, maybe today I’ll try again.

But if I must fail, I hope it feels as truly, deeply delicious as that afternoon.

What have you failed beautifully at?

What have you dangled your fingers or toes or heart in front of, but never immersed yourself in for fear of failure?

What do your wish-lists look like?

“The Hunter” aka Baby M

“She would give them order. She would create constellations” – Thomas Pynchon

August 29, 2009

Born at home, a sweet little Virgo.  His mama, a dear friend of mine, magically became the tree that I’d written about just weeks prior in a poem to her.    Her feet rooted, her arms transferring the energy of birth to the walls she pushed into.

It is in your blossoming and swaying

that you appear to dance, rooted to the earth…

You stand grand like a lone Elm on

the edge of the wilderness, silently prepared

to cycle through rebirth. ready to shed your leaves

convene with Winter’s shadow and wait for the blooms of Spring

Earlier, I’d joined her as she smiled and quietly conversed, folding cloth diapers in her spacious bedroom.  Between surges, we snapped one quick photo of her ripe belly.  Soon, the surges hushed her, and I followed her steady breathing out and stood silently as she braced herself on her bathroom counter.   Down she would sway, into a deep dip, with each wave of contractions.   Down with her breath, down with her body, down down down her baby slid.   Her lips pucker gracefully with each breath.

In between a surge, she graciously instructed “Here’s my chapstick, and here’s the birth kit and towels, and here are the cameras.  I’m telling you this before things get too intense”.

Before long, it was time to fill the bathtub and she peacefully sank into the warm water as if it were her lover for the evening.   There, with a singular candle as the only light, her body flickered and moved, mirroring it’s flame.   Her hair was silken, as charcoal black as the night sky.  She had just had it styled that afternoon, as surges began to wax and wane in her belly.

Her daughter – born almost two years ago in this very same room – joined the labor party.  She read books and rode around in the Ergo on her Daddy, keeping a watching eye on Mama.

“Should I call the midwife now?”, I asked kneeling beside the tub.

“Yes.  Yes, I was just thinking that.  I think it’s time”.

The sun rose over the mountains as she moved out of the tub to the bed,  smiling between surges and giggling at her daughter’s antics.   She told me later she felt a sense of peace during this time, knowing she’d be holding her baby soon.

She found the doorway and stood alone inside it’s threshold, cradling her belly.  Short in stature, she became a towering goddess of light and strength;  a pillar.    From my spot on the floor, I snapped some photos as her husband soon supported her from behind.

The waters that held her son were strong and healthy, remaining intact until three minutes before her son was born.

And sometimes we all want the strongest things in our life to give way, to break us open so that we can be reminded of the fortitude and resilience of Life and Birth.   So that we can howl at the moon as we ride the waves, cursing the fiery sun, screaming out the years and wounds.   We need to be able to release, to know that birth, life, and death are all transmutable.

And thus began her howling call, her “singing over the bones”, her begging to be released.

“Soon”, whispered the midwife “Very soon”.

In the long and narrow water closet, a midwife, a dad, a doula, and a mama crouched.  With her moans, her son emerged into his Daddy’s hands and was pulled immediately up to Mama’s chest.

And at the moment of his birth, as I stood behind her to steady her, some of her amniotic fluid tumbled on my bare feet.   I still recall its warmth, perhaps made even stronger by a visceral memory from Indigo’s fluid on my own feet as she was born.  It didn’t bother me.  In fact, I felt honored to be a bit united with the magical, sterile stuff of life.   The mama cooed and snuggled her son and was almost instantly ready to walk to her bed to nestle in with her StarBoy.

Not long afterwards, the room was silent in reverence as she birthed her placenta, which was later lovingly used to make “Tree of Life” placenta prints and then ground into the most incredible dark chocolate hearts by her midwife (I would love to try to explain the blissful honor I had of being offered some of this chocolate and then ingesting the PURE energy into my body.  So much energy it reverberated down my spine and through each chakra.  The energy of 10,000 chants in 200 languages simultaneously.  I would love to explain it, but words do not suffice and I already sound overly crazykookycrunchyhippy).

His Daddy asked us if we’d noticed the Orion constellation, and I commented that I looked up at it as I pulled into the driveway that still, perfect evening.

Though there were two, unspoken names in the running, he was yet unnamed.   The midwife commented “Oh, he has wild eyes!”.

Mama giggled and nodded knowingly, saying “Well, I guess we have numerous confirmations of which name we should pick”.

Max Orion

Max, like in “Where the Wild Things Are”.   Wild Eyes.  Max.

Orion.  Born under the clear display of that celestial body, one his Daddy had gazed at a few weeks prior on an overnight vision-quest in the mountains of New Mexico.

She lives as she births, and births as she lives.   The sunlight broke through the curtains and we all crawled atop the mattresses and smiled for this photo.

I smiled and smiled, for a multitde of reasons.  For the knowledge that two of these women have had my own birth blood and fluid on their hands.  For the mandala paintings above our heads.  For the giddyness that she added a boy to her family.  For the way her daughter watched in safe arms as her brother was born, with an expression on her face that make me think she totally remembers this gig.   For the honor of holding her hand, rubbing her back, smoothing her lips with chapstick, and listening in the other room as she spent time alone with her man doing the work only she could do.

Her daughter and new son lay upon her chest nursing and snoozing.   A picture of life-giving motherhood and nurturing.  A snapshot of birth.   Almost too normal to believe that a first breath of life just occurred minutes before in this very space.

We later reminisced and remarked on the poem again, how much of it rang true.

“Your baby guided me”, is all I could think to say to myself.

And she said with a breathless sigh and radiant eyes, “This part, Leigh, this part is like when you were behind me holding me and my fluid fell onto your feet.  We were intertwined…”:

As the Equinox approaches, and day and night become

equal lovers, let me be a sister tree to you

Lean on my truck, for I can carry you

Hang from my branches, for they are sturdy

Let the soft earth beneath me be your landing spot

Let my roots intertwine with yours as a reminder

of this sacred woman’s work that you do with grace

and that we share with honor and joy