Beauty of Innocence

I know that many people have seen beautiful Luiz explaining to his mother why he wouldn't eat octopus. But if you haven't please go watch it now. And if you are emotional like I am grab a box of Kleenex too, because its going to make you cry.

I cried while watching this mostly because I should sleep more and have wild hormones but the other reason is because Theo and I have very similar conversations all the time. 

The first time was when Theo was just a little tyke, and before Maxx was even born.

While shopping in a market that had fresh lobsters for sale Theo (then just 2 years old) asked me, "Why are these Lobsters here Mama?"

To which I responded hesitantly, "Because my love, they are going to be bought by someone who would like to... have them"

"As a pet? Do they have other pets too like a kitty or a dog?"He asked curiously.

"No," I crouched down and held his hand. "To eat, everyone needs to eat and some people eat lobsters."

"No, you can't eat lobsters Mama, they need to live. I like them alive. We can't eat them." His face was now scowling at me to reinforce his point. I picked him up into my arms and told him I loved him. We finished our shopping and Theo remained thoughtful and silent.

Over the next few days I found myself explaining to Theo several times about the cycle of life. I felt like Mufasa in Lion King explaining that life was beautiful because it was balanced in a way that energy is recycled in many different ways through out the earth. 

Then I went home to deliver Maxx and my grandmother was sick. So sick we called hospice and brought her home to be comfortable. Theo and I spent many hours by her side with my sister and mother. Family filtered in and out of the house and what I began to notice was they rarely touched my grandmother. Spoke to her, sat by her side but never created that contact. Theo though had constant contact, you could see the relief on his face when he found her hand. He didn't see sickness, he saw his great grandmother that spoiled him rotten with her love. I didn't want him to be frightened by death, so we spoke about it and I began to explain again the cycle of life. You know the one we all learned in biology 101, that all energy cannot be created only recycled, except in toddler terms.

When she finally passed away, I told him what had happened. He was thoughtful and asked who would eat her. Its a good thing that we were at home and not in public or it might have sounded weirder. But I knew exactly what he was asking, what was going to happen now? I explained that now that grandmas soul had left her body, we would bury her body and that in turn it would feed the ground, to feed the grass, to feed a cow or bunny or some other animal that would be eaten to feed another animal and so on.

Now I realize that in the cemetery my grandmother wished to be buried in there are no free range grass fed cows but there is grass and it helped him to understand that she wasn't entirely "gone". "Gone" is a scary aspect for a toddler, and I knew that it would help him to know that there are other ways for her to still be here. I explained that she was mostly now living in our hearts and memories but that GG's body was playing a large role in keep our lives balanced. 

My now four year old is an advocate for life. He won't step on ants, he screams for me to not hurt the spider if I'm trying to move it back outside, and most of all he understand that death is just a part of living. 

Children are born with this beautiful open clean canvas of a mind. What I would really like to paint for my children is life is beautiful, all parts of it, even the scary ones. So that they can be beautiful people that will change the world. 

How do you deal with death and and heavy conversations like this with your babies? 

<3 

Dan

swirly thoughts

I’m a little crazy.

I pray. I know most people don’t know I am a spiritual person. But I keep it fairly low key only because I don’t want to shove my beliefs down your throat. I believe in a higher being that for lack of a better word I call God. Its not the God that is preached about in the religion I was raised with, it the one that I have come to find in my life over and over again.

I see this being in the birth of my children, in the power of my body as a mother; I find this being in the sequences that occur right before death, in the science that I study everyday.  

My gut/intuition/inner voice leads me to this being for whatever reason and I have no problem listening to it. I am absolutely okay with the fact that it may turn out that this being is all in my head. For now it keeps me peaceful, provides me an outlet; and yes carries me in times of need.

So anyways I pray. Not always in the conventional way like kneeling before bedtime or in church hands folded and eyes closed. I am a mother to two boys that on most days run rapidly from one catastrophe to the next. In my home a kneeling person is usually me searching for the missing item that my oldest cannot be without. No, I usually have my prayers in my head, almost always a quick prayer of thanks for these beautiful disaster children. Even when they are hungry, sleepy, and screaming I find myself listening to that intuitive feeling saying be grateful that you know how to handle them while they are hungry, sleepy, and screaming. Be grateful that they only scream when they are hungry and sleepy. Be grateful. Be kind. Be humble.

But while I was in a dark place in my life I found writing out my prayers were the easiest way to deal with the emotions I was wrestling with. I was glad when I read the book Eat. Pray. Love that someone else was as crazy as I am and also wrote out their darkest prayers. I was also glad to see that apparently God was writing back to Elizabeth Gilbert as well as me. This is where my confession comes from.

I was reading back through my prayers and though at the time I didn’t see the response it was there. Plain as the sun in the sky, a response was scrawled across the page in my untidy writing. And goose bumps rose on my skin while tears swam in my eyes.

Forgive.

Holy fuck. After a long prayer written out seeking anything to make my darkest days turn to light I remember writing it out the last thing on the page meaning to continue it with something else but stopped. It shook me to my core to see there on the page the answer I had so desperately needed.

There are probably a good few of you out there thinking, “I don’t get it, Dani has lost her marbles.” Maybe I have, but something in me just clicked when I read that word, and it further opened my eyes to the world. I will never be able to explain the feeling or connection I feel with the rest of the world. I may never meet another person that physically aches for the mistakes human kind isn’t learning from. But I will be able to take this feeling and connection and use it.

I don’t care if this was just me writing, and my subconscious’ neurons firing madly trying to pull me out of a deep rut for self-preservation. My heart felt touched and my mind was blank except for the fact that this was the God I knew, simple, loving, and guiding.

Even for a crazy lady.