Belonging is Built
I find myself outside at three in the morning unable to sleep, hot, tired, angsty. I had an iced tea in the middle of the day but it feels like it might be more than too much caffeine. I sit on the edge of the pool with my feet in the water as the dogs wander around me trying to figure out what we are doing at this hour of the night.
Tim and all three of our sons are asleep in the house. I should be snuggled in a deep sleep too because we are all together for the first time in over a year, and yet, I’m awake sitting by the pool.
My back hurts so I lay down on the edge of the pool on the towel I have folded up to sit on. My legs bent as I stretched side to side, almost falling into the water as my legs moved to the right. I laugh at myself and stand up and move over to one of the chaise lounges just a few feet away. I guess if I’m going to be up I should at least be comfortable.
As I lay there a shooting star lights up the sky and I wonder about wishing on it, but this is my wish, all of us together. Is it wrong to push my luck and wish for more?
I have a book deadline approaching and I wonder if I really have anything to say about helping moms to feel heard. I wonder about the chapter about my sons and if the part of the story I’m telling is mine to tell. Ever since the mommy blogging years, I have been careful about sharing what is mine and allowing them to tell the parts that are theirs. As I lay there, tears start to fall from my eyes–I’m not exactly sure if it is because my eyes are tired or if I’m sad. I continue to go over the words and the ideas from the book and I think that no that chapter won’t work because I don’t have it figured out. And then I am reminded that the book isn’t about figuring anything out. It is simply about finding spaces and places where you feel heard; where you build community around you.
Do I have that with the boys? Do they see me? Do they hear me? Are they a part of my community?
Maybe. And maybe not quite yet.
As we navigate the space of adulthood together, we are faced with the opportunity to change our patterns. In a way that was never allowed or realized with my own parents, I’m seeing exactly how we go from parents of little boys with hurt feelings and big ideas to adult men with dreams and lives that are more fully theirs than they will ever be mine.
And yet, they still want to belong to a place that serves them well.
What I realize in those early morning hours is that I want them to know me, yes, but I want them to know themselves too. I want them to grow into the people they are becoming without feeling that they have to leave us behind to do it. And as they continue discovering who they are, I wonder if we can continue discovering one another as well.
They know me as their mum, momma, mom. They see me as a teacher, and as a leader. Over time, I hope they will come to know me as a friend, a mentor, and eventually a mother-in-law, a grandmother.
I find my way back to bed and sleep for another couple of hours and awake to a day filled with family activities but before we even leave the couches one of them says something about me that might be a pointed jab or an innocent comment and I realize in that very moment that belonging isn’t about knowing everything about you. It isn’t thinking that everything you have to say is right. It is listening and interacting, it is challenging, and loving, it is disagreeing and teasing, it is having the hardest conversations and asking the most painful of questions. It is evolving and changing.
Belonging is built.
Belonging isn’t something we find, it is something we build. And remodel. And change and adapt.
Even when it feels good. Especially when it doesn’t. It isn’t static. It isn’t a place we can go back to. It assumes we will be curious and kind and provides a foundation for when we are not. So yes, a chapter about the boys, it gets to be in the book because they are my chosen herd, every day in every way, even when we aren’t together. Even when we miss each other both truly and deeply and in ways that hurt the others. Because you can miss someone when they are not with you, and you can miss their points, their feelings, their dreams even when you are together every day.
Belonging means you show up again and again as you are and the people around you adjust and adapt and learn with you. Belonging doesn’t mean that you never have conflict or disagreement, it means that when you do, you have a path back to each other.
