Defeat Can Be Sweet

My life, of late, has felt like it’s asking me, again and again, to admit defeat. To sit down and say, finally, I can’t fix this. I can’t do this. I can’t change this. I can’t figure this out. I can’t make this happen.Motherhood is humbling me in ways I never thought I could or would be humbled. I had a lot of ideas about the kind of mother I would be. I had a lot of ideas about what was the wrong kind of mothering and what was the right kind of mothering and millions of little judgements in between. I had ideas about how my children would look and how they would be. But these are just ideas and not, in the slightest, my reality now. What being a mother has taught me is that mothering is a minute by minute experience. It’s not something you can do with ideas. It’s something you do on the ground, on your knees, baby step by baby step. It’s felt like I am fully tapped out of all the ways I used to force and push and fix my life along. I just can’t do it anymore. The “fixer” in me is truly dying. The word defeat came up strongly in a session I had this morning.“What does defeat mean to you?” she asked me. On the surface, I could feel my whole body want to push it away but deeper down I felt myself open and melt. From my hard, stony exterior, I wanted to say something like, “I will not be defeated! I cannot be defeated!” A competitive side of me swooped in. The part of me that thinks life is a tug of war, some sort of game that I need to win. This part of me thinks mothering is as aspect of the chess-game-of-life and my children are the pawns. But the interior, deeper thing in me is getting more powerful as the shell drops away. The need to play the game of life this way at all, is falling away. The need to compare where I am in my life to where others are in their lives. The need for my mental ideas about how my life should be, to be true. The idea that the way my children are means something about me.Feeling these beliefs loosing their foothold in my system feels like more pure energy just got injected into me. The Truth is, defeat can be sweet. And right on cue, this Rumi quote came to me: “You have been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender.” Surrender is admitting the defeat of the ego. Surrender is not a passive pose.Surrendering is not laying back and letting the world pass by you.Surrender is choosing to actively participate without being attached to the outcome. Yes, I will mother my children as best I can, moment by moment. And, I will not attempt to mold their behavior to be more convenient for me. Yes, I will work and serve my medicine in the world. And, I will not hold tightly to what I think that means about me. Yes, I will participate in life. And, I will not demand life bend to my egoic wants.Yes, I will play the game.And, allow myself to be defeated when it’s true.FED is closed, but I have added another offering just for my substack subscribers. I won’t be offering these on social media for a little bit and I will only be doing 5 of these on a first come, first serve basis initially. These are the 3 ways to work with me right now. * HOME BODY sessions | one hour with me guiding you into your body as your home + 15 minutes of digestion $222 | Message me to book.* 1:1 Alchemical Journey | 12 months with with guiding you to connect to your most resourced self during big life transitions eg divorce, motherhood, death, etc. | Message me to book a free connection call about this.* 1:1 Nourishment Deep Dive | a 90-min 1:1 session with me where we will go over your health history, current eating habits, symptoms, and health goals and I will come up with a personalized plan for you to implement. You have to be ready to really make some changes to your diet and lifestyle. | $444, Message me to apply. | There will be an option for one or two follow up sessions to tweak things or answer questions, after this as needed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe