If you create anything at all, you likely will understand the sense of risk and vulnerability woven into the act of creating. Whether you are trying a new recipe or writing new words or exploring a new medium for your art or even a new brush for your paintings. No matter if you are spinning clay on a wheel or baking cookies for a neighbor or knitting from a pattern you saw months ago and are trying to create for yourself. Whatever creative act you might dive into, you likely have experienced the intricately connected thrill and trepidation you feel when you take those first steps on your project.
For me, that experience can also be layered with wondering how my words will sit with the one faithful reader I have in my oldest teenager. While my youngest at times will hover over my left shoulder, perched on the arm of my chair and skim through a few words, my oldest daily opens this blog and reads through every word, absorbing them as the encouragement they are intended as. Where my youngest enjoys helping me settle on the photos I include with some of these posts, my oldest processes and responds to the words of these posts with her own thoughts and reflection; they don’t always line up with my intentions.
Still, I look forward to showing up at my keyboard carrying each of my girls in my heart and mind. Considering and reflecting upon their presence from day to day remains a reminder of what matters most in my life and encourages me to be the best version of a mama as I can be. It can also bring to mind the places I fall short—the times I am too grumpy or too emotionally weary or when my words are too sharp. None of this is intended, and while I am sure both girls are mostly aware of this, I know there are times when they wonder if they are the cause of my shortness or my grumpiness.
Rarely are they. Too often it is the outside world exerting its expectations or pressures on them or me that causes me to curl my hands into fists and feel a desire to protect me, or them, or all of us. But it takes only a few moments of considering these two remarkable young women, of thinking about the day that has passed, and I am returned to a state of gratitude and strength and, of course, joy. Over the past eight months as I’ve focused on this blog and in my life on the myriad reasons I love my girls, I have come to realize truly how easy it is to choose to love someone. The more you choose to do so, the easier it becomes.
Perhaps that is sometimes why the cynicism or lack of understanding in the world and even in the people closest to me hits me with unanticipated force. That is one of the greatest sources of my grumpiness and it comes because of disappointment and unmet expectations. Truly I wrestle with why others don’t see the world the way I do. Why others don’t see my incredibly intelligent and creative teenagers the way I do—their awesomeness, their strength, their resilience, their curiosity, their joy, their kind & tender hearts.
Today, as a new week dawns and I play back recent days, my mind overflows as much as my heart with images of my girls’ smiles, their joy, the way they embrace the days we inhabit. I hear their laughter and I carry their wisdom, their insights, close to my heart. I revel equally in their silliness as much as in their perceptions, their insights, of the world we also inhabit. It is easy for me to count myself blessed because of these two amazing young women, for they fill my world, my life, my days with beauty and possibility and love. My life is better because of them. Together, every day, we are creating a life of endless possibilities. And truly, what could be better than that?