I've been thinking lately, about balance. How do I, mother of three, wife and lover, intelligent person, church volunteer, writer, teacher and student, fit in the role of midwife to my teeming schedule, not to mention the brainspace?
I painted this a few years ago when I was trying to wrap my head around being pregnant with my third child, with a toddler in one hand and an increasingly frustrated (see that hand on her hip!) preschooler in the other. Plus writing, helping, teaching, learning--I needed more hands and felt precariously balanced on the pedestal of "doing it right".
A dear friend noted that I'd painted myself as a Hindu goddess, who, I learned, is a fighter with ten arms. Her name is Durga and I enjoyed reading about her, especially the bit: "Durga manifests fearlessness and patience, and never loses her sense of humor, even during spiritual battles of epic proportion." She's sometimes called "the invincible." Inspiring, no? And she isn't balancing. She's dancing.
Thanks for use of this photo by Flickr user jessicatesty / CC BY 2.0So how do I balance? I don't suppose I really will. I'm not a goddess. I will fall sometimes, and run out of hands to do everything. But hopefully I'll get back up and dance again.
You might want to think more about dancing (an active, kinetic verb) than balancing (a static verb). I've heard of walking as merely controlled falling. When we learn to walk we don't try to get each position in the walking motion held "just so", and in fact we can't because some parts of the walking motion are not balanced. However, when in motion the action feels very natural. (I might mention in passing, that learning to walk takes a bit of falling down before the motion becomes natural.)
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Love,
Dad
balance as a mom? huh, not so much! good post!
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