230305 grounding, twenty thousand steps

Mar. 5

When you are having an emotional thunderstorm and the electricity is sparking, you need a lightning rod to draw down the energy and calm you. 

You might be crying, or raging angry, and it feels like a storm. Someone who loves you can be your lighting rod or ground. A speaker at a long ago La Leche League conference wisely said, "Children need loving most when we are the most "unloveable"." * Children have not developed calming skills and personal touchstones to bring them to earth. They most need a loving hand when they are being their most challenging. Help your children, and each other, learn to reach out to a lightning rod - a hug, a sit-down-have a cup of tea, hold out your hand. There is a strong physical component to finding grounding when we are in storm mode. It may mean going outside to breathe, to stand on the earth. It may mean asking for a hug, (or offering) even though you don't want to give in to a hug. Give in and let go. 

At a later time you can revisit your "hurricane" trigger, and figure it out. The emotional storm is important. It is a force of nature and has meaning for us and those around us, but it can be brought down to words; healing can happen and forward momentum restored. 

* That's what love is - it's in the giving of your self when someone you love is in need. Love is a sort of promise that you commit to with the words. That's the only way it makes sense to me, that love is in the doing. Maybe this is something understood by everyone that I just missed, but when people say I love you on tv or in books it seems like a statement of the self, not a vow to the other. An emotion felt rather than a statement of action. I'll still feed you when you're sixty four. (from the Beatles song) It's being your best self for someone. Especially when it's hard! 

"That I would be good, even if I did nothing.", says Alanis Morissette. That you will love your child the most, with your strongest self when it is the most challenging to do. " ....when I'm not myself, .... when I m overwhelmed. "

At sixty-something I still am overwhelmed and break down, lose my cool. It is a constant learning. For a six-year-old it must be frustrating and scary.

*****

Twenty-two thousand steps today, yesterday twenty-five thousand. I walk. Rocky is restless in the mornings and murmels, and in the evenings too, sometimes, now that I think of it. So, out we go, rain or snow. I am learning which roads have sidewalks, and beginning to know some of the trees. I meet dozens of dogs and their people. Rock does not like the wind, I think. It seems, often, to be windy, when he is unsettled.

I am walking much better, and must be stronger than I have been in years. (Well, two - it seems like ten.) Today I am walking in the snow. The number of steps is the same, but the effort and the distance covered are so different. 

Mumma Yaga