Intention & Abundance
Thoughts for the Holiday Season
As I write this it is 5.40pm on a Tuesday in December. It’s been dark for at least an hour and feels much later than early evening. Our Christmas tree is (finally) up, it’s lights the sole thing illuminating our living room on this early winter night. My daughter is asleep in her baby rocker, providing me some quiet and solitude. I stare at my daughter as she is gently rocked, watching her small movements and listening to the tiny squeaks and noises she makes, trying to imagine what a 4-week old might dream about.
This, I think, is it. All I want, forever. To cuddle her and watch her grow, to get to know every centimeter of her. I feel in this moment that if I could re-absorb her, I would. But that privilege has passed, she is now out in the world learning to be her own person apart from me. And while, as a sleep deprived new mom, the thought of her independence has appeal, it is also devastating. I begin to wonder if mothers ever see their children as separate from themselves, or if, having carried their children for so many months, they will always feel physically connected to them. Because I know that when I look at my daughter I don’t so much see ‘her’ and ‘me’ as much as I see ‘us’. I want her close to me and physically miss her when even my husband watches her for an hour or a day- it feels strange to not be near. And this in turn makes me wonder how I will, as her parent, be able to foster her independence so that she can grow into whomever she wants to be, wherever that may be. There is a poetry here, in this tension.
I begin in this moment to realize that these days with her are numbered, the days to not be busy, to need only worry about me and her, to have unencumbered cuddles. My 12 weeks of maternity leave already a third gone. I also realize that already there are times when these small moments feel all too normal, mundane even. Moments where my boredom from being cooped up at home overtake my sheer wonder of her, of this baby that took me almost two years to conceive. When I catch myself not in awe of her - of her little fingers, wide eyes, big yawns, and ceaseless kicking… I force myself to take a beat. I do not want her to be something that falls into the background of life because of its normality, its daily presence. Because when we forget the small things that is when we also forget to be grateful and are at risk of losing sight of the complete magic of life - all its goodness, even among the badness.
Winter is a good season for these tiny revelations, for looking inward, for recognizing these bits of our life we’ve put on autopilot or have ignored completely. Not just because of the new year and the resolutions around the corner, but because we can use the darkness and quiet of the season to take a real assessment of our life, ourselves and our surroundings. To use this time to ensure we are still making not just an effort, but the right effort, toward who we want to be in the world and where we want to go.
In this vein, I attended a winter solstice candle light yoga session recently, we moved slow, stayed comfy and took in the darkness of the season, using it as a place to contemplate, to shut out the outside world and look inward. At the end of the session the instructor asked us to think about our intention for 2024 and decide on a word - or three - we wanted to take with us into the new year, to use as a type of mantra throughout the year. My first word was, un-ironically, “intention”. In 2024 I want to live life intentionally in every moment, to the best of my ability. Which includes not letting the quotidien things of life become mundane. And while this includes living intentionally with my daughter, it is also about bringing intention to other aspects of life to create a life lived purposefully. This might look like putting more effort and intention into cooking daily meals, more thought into my connections with friends and family - how and how often I choose to connect with them to keep these relationships alive. It could be how I intentionally choose to decorate (or declutter) my home… you get the idea. It’s a theme that can run across all areas of my life to bring more presence and purpose into every aspect of it.
My second word, one I did not think of initially, but took from another member of this yoga circle, is abundance. In the same way it can become easy to live life without intention - on auto pilot - it can also become easy to live life in a mindset of lack, as if life isn’t providing enough. I want to banish this feeling of ‘less than’ and live in abundance. By which I mean I want to recognize the abundance that already exists, rather than focus on what is missing. This is not to deny the pain and hardships of life as they come, but to not let those hardships steer the ship. To not let hardship become the default mindset.
In the Liturgical Year ( a book I recommend to anyone wanting to live life within seasons, whether they are religious or not) Joan Chittister writes,
“Happiness requires choice all the time, It requires learning to choose between what is real and what is fleeting, what is worthless and what is worthwhile … [to have a life with] meaning, we discover, has nothing to do with what is outside of us. It has to do with what we have come to see within our souls”
So in this final season of the year, these dark days beg us to ask the questions - How are you spending your life? What is guiding you? And where is it leading you? And in the waiting for light to return, in the solitude and darkness, we have the time and space to prepare ourselves for the gift of that light, the coming seasons, and how we want to spend our time in it.
For me, this is to spend the new year living with intention and Abundance.
Heather xx