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It’s my Birthday!

Celebrating ME

….. O mothers everywhere everyday at any age but especially today at 69

It is the practice of mothers to measure success in the accomplishments, lack there of or behavior of their children. as if when we nurture them, we nurture ourselves vicariously.

It is rare that we want to allow for our success in that we might honor giving space and time to what it is we want to do. Who do we wish and long to be? To give ourselves fully to a moment…. be it creative, play, pleasure, if we are in a place where we truly have choice and so we exercise life, symmetry, and oh yes beauty.

What a dear guide calls the “generative story of our time” . What are the wise and gentle voices we allow in our heads and hearts? Are they kind?

While I am happy and grateful for the lives of my progeny and ancestors, today I celebrate me, Weird Elder holding space and light and JOY for the gratitude I feel at this moment. Forgiveness and and compassion for all the choices and places I found and continue to find my self with both regrets and misunderstandings and angst and the habit of self-flagellations forgot having done it not anything right.

Today I feel accountable and responsible for me. The part that is mine, especially the part that is shared. My good intentions.

If my child, that aspect and part of the relation and connection that is me; the coupling that is hurt and harmed and whole. I hold us both well and healed in this moment. I grieve and groan the pain of loss, despair and disappointment. I embrace the painful part that is birth and starting all new ventures and showing up without good intentions without knowing or having full control of the outcome.

Today, as I close out the sixth decade.. I leave and look forward to LOVE.

If for any moment you want and desire for this moment: when you are grateful, more than enough and you surrender to the peace of what it is ..

We surround you with love and peace and the place to sit a moment and just wander and wonder and rest.

As if a special veil was lifted, with new moons, mercy, and grace and lots of snow. I can see many things that were not always visible to me today. Pretty snow, pretty light coming from dark spaces, winter and dawn of possibilities. Is that birth day, reflection and grace, circling back and remembering my own mom, and hers and hers and hers.. as I do my own Daughter and hers and hers.

In lieu of a purse, or earrings or a meal out and about. I got a gift of the happy birthday song sang at the bedside from my son as he woke me.. and yet and still another song of poetry brilliant from my daughter. great and unexpected gifts and treasures.

Happy within me…joyous and free… stories of what we leave behind and remembered for and more than that it is a mighty mighty mighty good day, the day you were born and the womb space you rode in on… the breath and blood of life circulating.. we thank her for the ride..

Do you post your birthday cards on the fridge? Do you look in the mirror and wonder if you see yourself as others see you? I remind you to tell your story. put it somewhere, you or someone is watching and listening right now.

BIRTHDAY BLESSINGS for the MOTHER from the DAUGHTER

…

Sunday’s around three,

When the breeze hits the trees,

And the leaves pass by…

Your energy is felt

Your hands, the miracles they’ve dealt

Your aura…Free and unapologetically.

A humble servant.

A midwife of many.

A lover of life.

A giver of plenty.

A dynamic beauty who stands her place.

A light to such darkness.

Such power.

Such grace.

The bearer of joy and rivers.

A method for so many.

I wear her on the outside, but I also have her in me.

Happy Birthday Mom!

https://jacqueline-laughlin.medium.com/happy-birthday-771b417939bd

Seeing the Generative Story of Our Time Transcript

Reclaiming Our Bodies Our Selves

Today was my grandmother’s birthday and I thought so much about legacy and how we are shaped by our stories and the people in our lives. I wrote a memoir about the woman I was named for and I so grateful and committed to listening and sharing the gift of conversation with our Elders and Wise Women who showed us how they did it.

While I am passionate about oral history, I was unprepared for how much both listening and telling my story might affect me.

Who did we welcome in to our lives at just the right moment?

Who made a difference?

Do you know any women who nursed their little ones?

Do you wonder about healing your relationship with your mom and the people in your life who may want to support you?

How do you show up for yourself?

What would bring you great JOY!

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The “Price is Right” is My Favorite Game Show

There are some things I do daily. Some things happen weekly; biweekly, monthly; bi-annually; you get the picture, they are on the calendar, a regular practice. Somethings I don’t have to remember, they just occurred. There was some security in that knowing something would happen in spite of me, or because of me.

Every other Tuesday, I would get paid a set amount. There was some comfort in knowing that. I thought it provided some measure of control I thought over my life. I could plan things at least I thought around my spending. The regularity of that check made me do or not do a lot of things.

Until I nursed a baby, I don’t think I had an activity that occurred regularly that I allowed “control” to be given so freely and lovingly by someone else as an extension of me. TNTC (too numerous to count). Why would I count? That’s about how often you might nurse your little one some days.

Surrender if you will if you can… I just sat down, or lay down, or refused to move or to do anything else. Allowing little else to take precedence over that five or ten minutes to at least to take the edge off. And then maybe a bit more time when needed or without watching the clock. Just till done, till the next thing called or we felt better.

It wasn’t scheduled, this “nursing on demand” thing. We just had to be willing to show up for each other… I called to my little one when I felt full. My little one called to me when feeling near empty or hungry, or lonely, or curious, or just when something smelled yummy, or new or whenever.

What might you be saying by now does this have to do with the “Price is Right” ? Well I will connect the dots for you. I love the Price is Right because I get to vicariously witness people with such excitement and joy. They hear their name called and first with initial disbelief, it then registers , they mean me and the announcer gets louder and calls their name again and beckons them to come on down. They are usually crazy ecstatic! Running or moving gingerly, slowly, or great deliberation; they make their way down and bid on the prize. From that moment on it doesn’t quite matter whether they get the price right or win the game. The joy and possibility is there and tangible and folks are jumping and excited when it means they mean me and I have something excited to look forward to…

Some people associate watching the game with others, my grandmother watched and I sat with her and we shared a snack. She was very reliable about the cuddle time and the snack. We also watched a program long off the air now called “Queen For A Day”. I can relax easily into that memory from time to time. However most often, I just like seeing people happy, total strangers especially full of hope and expectation. It is absolutely contagious. It makes me smile.

I find that if I schedule my day around the Price is Right and I hold that time from 11AM to 12 Noon weekdays. My day just goes better. Watching a game show is not a quick cure for postpartum blues, or worry that won’t go away, or even a good substitution for a nap. But scheduling time for pleasure and joy reliably is a good spiritual practice. Something I learned from watching those amazing women around me who cared about me and for me.

Maybe I just won’t answer the phone, or I will sit still a minute and not multi-task. Or maybe I will actually play along with the game and guess the prices and wonder why they listened to someone else in the audience instead of relying on their first instinct and best intuitive judgment, but I rarely come away sad, after watching the Price is Right.

Do you have something you do that you can schedule in or spend time with that will give you infectious joy and confidence in yourself and the world and most folks around you?

Palms, Passover, Passion! Breastfeeding365.com

Many traditions celebrate the coming of Spring; but there is nothing like a birth, or the restoration of a life thought dead and dormant to signal Spring. Breastfeeding365.com is finally here!

Nursing a baby for a year or more is quite an accomplishment. It is not the same as bottle feeding the baby your breast milk. Making a decision to stay close to your baby and maintain the connection through the fourth “trimester” despite all odds is quite frankly epic! Experiencing long physical separations as a part of the mother-baby couple, no matter how legitimate the reason is traumatic to mothers. Most mothers literally suck it up and move on, but that doesn’t mean there were no consequences. We are changing the way we treat women first and foremost by listening to what they have to say about what happened to them from their perspective.

A few years ago, I didn’t even know what a blog was. Now I read many blogs and use this personal blog as a way to support the women who want to nurse their babies by sharing our experiences. I discovered a while back that writing daily was an essential spiritual practice for me. It helped me to focus my ideas, illuminate my passions and I quickly learned it was one of the best ways I knew to connect with women who had a secret so they would no longer feel isolated and alone. We healed by talking to one another.

Sharing that experience with other women and attempting to put those emotions in to words is to preserve the recollection of what is it like to have a profound attachment to your baby. These genetic memories are ancient, and occur on a cellular level. Feminism can be defined in the many diverse ways of a woman’s lived experience.

I was surprised to learn that many women had no experience with even seeing a nursing infant. Nor could they explain the complex tangle of feelings that occurred when pregnancy and lactation quickly and abruptly ended. Child rearing, like child bearing was in danger of being seen only as a medical event with little mention or concern of the lived experience of women and their families. Nursing a baby was primarily looked at as beneficial to the baby with no mention of the mom and heaps of guilt if you decided that you couldn’t or didn’t want to nurse your baby. Pediatric recommendations of nursing your baby for one year took no account of how that might occur for women in their current role and space.

Nature provides many examples of mammals (live birth-warm milk) tending to the needs of children, nursing mothers, and the family. We are the only ones that can express those feelings as a part of our legacy. Have you nursed a baby, yours or someone else’s baby for one year or more? We want to hear from you and hear your story. Sharing across the miles, and generations as part of our human family.

Many women have no mother, grandmother or elder to learn the stories of nursing their babies. We can introduce ourselves to one another and keep those memories alive. What would you like to see happen on our brand-new breastfeeding365.com website? What questions do you have? How can we help you share your story?