Make A Wish

A generation of women trying to break generational cycles WHILE raising a new generation of strong women. Are you tired? I'm tired.

It is 3:57 am. I wake up for my morning routine. 10 minutes of meditation, 20 minutes of morning pages. An hour of writing something in a Google Drive document that makes me feel like me. Like I’m more than just a cog in a wheel. Spinning into overdrive. Making lunches, dinners, pancakes, loading dishwashers, pawing dried batter out of mixing bowls.  Mediating squabbles, mitigating damage of the world on my children: tick bites, poison ivy, eyes swollen shut against milkweed. Youtube, taylor swift, my own shit. The leftover meatloaf of my own projections. Imprints from an upbringing that left dents in my upper thighs. Trying to raise strong women in the scant silences between time-thickened headscreams that sound a lot like:

WHAT WILL THEY THINK?

The capitalistic filter we bust up our highest selves to percolate through the fine tooth mesh of. 

I write to feel like I’m getting somewhere. Only to realize I’m not. I’m still here. Still shearing off the unruly to fit within the Rubix cube of understanding. Trying to explain myself to anyone who’ll listen. And for what?

At 4:05 in the pitch black of meditation and juniper smoke, India appears on the couch out of nowhere with her face next to mine and I jump six feet in the air. She chuckles wryly. Pleased with herself. My inclination that we are descended from a long line of trackers is further reinforced. Also, we saw the new Ghostbusters movie yesterday so my fear factor has amplified to markable significance in the last 72 hours. She can’t sleep so I pass her the clean couch blanket, but am also annoyed that my small ask of time has been meddled with. I scrape my pilot G2 across thick gridded paper as quietly as possible. Modifying my impact, again, to accommodate. It occurs to me that the resentment I feel has precisely nothing to do with my daughter. I continue to write and edit. Ten minutes later Isla pads in. A bad dream. I scootch myself closer to the armrest and scrunch my feet further underneath me to make room for yet another ethereal in my predawn routine.

There is so much I want, need to do. And not enough of me to complete the tasks. And  I’m running out of time. Someone will steal the book idea if I don't get it out to publishers soon. Someone will join a different all-women writers group if I don’t market better. My kids will turn to mush if I don’t get them into sports three years ago. My parenting will turn to mush if I don’t start enforcing laws. My face will turn to mush if I don’t start wearing hats or giving a fuck what I’ll look like in 20 years. 

I can’t do it all. But maybe if I put enough energy into panicking about it, the gods will smile down upon my wreckage and grant me three wishes. 

The first of which would be to permanently remove from my psychic lexicon:

WHAT WILL THEY THINK?

Once this wish is granted…

the rest will take care of itself. 

Photo by the ever-talented Amber Michelle, author of Seasons of Sobriety