Oh so many heartbreaks in a human life. How do we do it? How do we keep living with broken hearts? How do we ever resolve them? Forgiveness? Strength? Moving on?

Honestly, I've learned so much about tending to heartbreak lately. Certainly the current state of the world gives us all fodder for heartbreak work. It returns us to our smallest selves, our vulnerable and soft places. These places are not aligned with the "just do it" mantra of our society... the encouragement to just keep going... to not pay attention to the stuff that bothers us. But, one thing I do know, is that if we don't tend to our heartbreaks, they accumulate. 

Tending opens a soft space for being... like laying on the couch with a million blankets, wrapping up in a comforting gentleness, a bit like being held like a small child. Yes, to tend is to hold gently. It is to be with, to sit down next to something or someone and hold their hand. It is not to fix, or to advise. The wisdom of tending gives space to the heartbreak to do its work. To lead the heartbroken through the landscapes of grief and anger... arriving at a hill with a bit of a view... a place that provides context. 

It takes time to make this journey, and tending is the attention we give that liminal space so that we can find our way through. This is deeply important work. the tending of heartbreak. 

I have always struggled with the concept of forgiveness. And, I can tell you that I've only every found genuine forgiveness (or anything that could look like it) on the other side of tending to heartbreak. 

Tending takes showing up again and again, for things that feel like nothing... sitting under the tree, lighting the candle, or sorting stones. Tending is being with a process at the particular place that it is, and allowing it to run its course on its own time. This is hard. It takes longer than you think it will. It moves at the pace of the natural world. And it cannot be rushed. 

Tending is also one of the biggest gifts we can give to one another. It builds relationship because it moves slowly and is done one small bit at a time. It creates reliability because it requires us to come back over and over. And tending creates connection because it is based in care and devotion. ​

Sometimes I notice that more than one of the Landscape of Mothers archetypes will address whatever I'm turning over in my mind. This fall, as is common at this season, change seems to be at the forefront of people's minds. If we listen to the land as we move into autumn, we can learn about how to release, how to let go, and how to grieve. Several of the Landscape Mothers hold ways of being with change, because the quality and tone of it can be so varied. This encourages us to inquire into what nuance of change we are experiencing in our internal world as we see the seasonal change happening in nature.
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Oh this is so good... I love it when the days get a little shorter, encouraging me to my bed just a bit earlier. I thrive on getting good rest. 

I love how things slow down after a frantic summer of launching ourselves into travel, gatherings, adventures. I appreciate reclaiming my own inner pace... which is always so much slower than the pace at which the world moves. I stop pushing myself through all the excitement of summer (and honestly, I'm not really good at it... summer is not my most aligned season).

Autumn makes the invitation to really settle in and notice the spectacular change of colors, the beauty of the seed pods, the way nature is preparing for her own down time. I feel like I see nature better when the light gets down to a certain angle, when it's not so intense. The play of shadows and light always gets my attention... it's so like life, isn't it? To have both things, right there together...

​Songbirds gather in groups in which they somehow manage to balance cohesion with crowding, following with leading, and safety with access to resources. They exhibit a grace of these qualities of togetherness + space.

What does that look like for humans? I think, often, we assume that it’s people we need, and while that might be true, for a lot of us with past trauma, people feel dangerous. I didn’t have what I needed to navigate safe connection with humans.

Instead, nature… the earth, trees, the ocean… they held me. I connected to nature first. I saw in nature so much of what I was trying to figure out. But it was opinion free. It was simply a reflection of one way nature has solved the problem.

So, if something is weighing on your heart, and you want some feedback, but people feel like tricky business… ask a tree, or a river, or the spider building a web attached to your trash can (seriously… some of my best advice has come from spiders).

​Be willing to sit and see what’s there. Join the songbirds and notice what you notice about how they communicate together, how they forage together, how they move together. 

Sometimes nature conveys her brilliance in a huge understanding, sometimes in a tiny thing we ponder for a long time, sometimes in such a subtle way that you never realize that you received it. 

Today I’m imagining my flock of songbirds… the ones who carry and hold and love me… often from afar… and those I carry and hold and send love to when they need strength and I have it to give. 

If it feels good to a part of you who needs soothing… know that I care… truly. I am way out on the edges of your flock of songbirds, singing up your name to energize whatever it is you’re asking for today.

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We don't know what we don't know. And the things we learn early in our lives, we often don't question because we get taught so much... and so much of it unspoken... about how relationships and love and connection and meeting needs works. We just absorb these lessons and sometimes we don't realize things could be different. Especially if we spent a lot of time alone as kids. 

And not only that, we swim in the waters of our cultural assumptions and traditions every day, and many of those reinforce the lessons we learn from our families. Which is why it is important to create spaciousness in ourselves... to back up from the things we think we know... so that here, as adults, we can fact check them with our own senses. Do we believe what we were taught? Do our cells resonate with a gnosis (an inner knowing) that feels like "what we know to be true" really matches our inner felt sense of it? 

The Sun and Moon Mother is the archetype in the Landscape of Mothers who embodies this spaciousness. She is the Mother whose gift is Wholeness. She knows it takes a little room to figure out what belongs to us. She can help us find it.

By spaciousness, I mean, creating more room in both time and space. This invites us to slow down, take a breath, and step back mentally from what is squeezing the situation (what is keeping us feeling righteous and right). 

Lots of mindfulness focuses on this space... taking a breath or counting to 10. If we use this technique in conjunction with intending to settle into our own values, we make room to see something differently and know ourselves relative to it.

​We make room to truly listen, observe, and understand the roots of the issue. And, it so happens, in that space we can also find our truth. I think back to a situation with a friend where we got stuck in a discussion that was hard for us both. In retrospect, I think it would have been helpful if I'd had the spaciousness to step back and formulate in words that my struggle was rooted in some of my basic safety needs. I suspect that hers was too. We never did recover from neither of us having the spaciousness to step back and assess what we were needing. 

My "stepping back" practice is Metta. To the best of my knowledge it is a traditional Buddhist prayer that I believe has been modified through the lineage I received it from. Saying the words is only part of its healing properties for me. 

The other part of it, the part that knocks around in my bones and creates spaciousness, is that, for me, it is about softening toward myself, wishing myself well, amidst the chaos and mistakes, and nourishing my inner child who fears judgment. The prayer goes on to acknowledge the humanity of everyone around me... and wishing those people well too. It refocuses me on my values of compassion, kindness, and respect. 

This is the healing... coming back to myself to meet the difficulties out in the world. Then I can have my own back in any situation. I can know my needs, I can rise to meet any struggle from my own solid ground. And this is what restores trust between me and my inner child. She sees that she can trust me to hold her carefully, to defend her where she needs it, and to always have her wellbeing at the center.

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I wanted to move onto a big piece of property so that no one could cut down trees without my knowing and approval.  I was adamant that this control over my environment was critical.  Truthfully, it just makes things feel safer, doesn't it?  To think we have control?  To be able to predict the possible changes so that you can get used to the idea?  To not have things happen that you don't choose? 

When we double down on control of the situation, I think that's when we tend to really lose control. Life is made of the shifting and changing of everything. In general I don't like quoting dead white men, but I think it was Heraclitus that said "the only constant is change" (or something like it).
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When the world is swirling and feels ungrounded and the emotions are up it seems that the result is usually falling into some sort of distraction... social media, game apps, bingeing on TV. The more tired I am, the more likely I am to use this technique.

And I also know that when I choose myself instead, and turn to the practices that nourish and protect my inner self, that's what really helps me weather the storms.  That's what really takes care of me. Those practices make a little more space between me and whatever is going on. I can usually find a breath there... one that soothes my bones and unravels my nerves. A breath that reminds me that I am not what is happening... I am still myself. 

When my daughters were 2 1/2 years old and 8 months old we moved into a new house that had birch trees growing just outside my bedroom window. Over the years, when the trees would broadcast their minuscule seeds over the yard, a seed would land in the garden bed outside the front door and it would begin to grow. This only happened three times in the 12 years I’ve lived here. So I saw the sprouts as magical and I potted them to be replanted in the yard where they could grow tall.
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I heard somewhere that, in magical traditions, birch trees were thought to confer protection to children. This made me feel that no matter how many times I felt like a failure of a mother, the birch had my back. The unchanging presence of the birch mirrored back to me the persistence required in parenting... the inevitability of bumping into my own wounds and fears... that I could still keep going in the face of struggle.
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The hardest part of parenting for me has been the ways in which I’ve grown up with my children. As they’ve grown, I’ve bumped into the wounds I experienced at those ages. That’s the difficulty... reparenting myself by showing up differently than I was treated when the wound is so active. Oof.
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Motherhood (probably parenthood in general) invites us into broaden ourselves to encompass more inner ground, to have more access to ourselves. This is a practice, an opportunity to devote ourselves to this stretching and reaching and gnosis. This invitation to fully explore the inner landscape of who we are and who we can be.

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​The Ocean Mother is the one who holds all of the things that we ignore, don’t tend to, or left behind because we didn’t know what to do with them.  It’s a lot like throwing things we hope to never see again into the depths of the sea.  But, the psyche, and the ocean, don’t work that way.
 
We get the opportunity to address these things again, the wounds, secrets, and shames of the past.  This can make the Ocean Mother feel daunting and enormous.  It’s why it can feel like she could swallow you up.  But it’s important to remember that we have control of our process (most of the time) and we can simply go to the shore and let the Ocean Mother lick our toes.  Small steps…  little bits at a time.
 
The Ocean Mother asks us to learn to make enough room in ourselves to hold all of the complexities and paradoxes of being a real human.  In many ways The Ocean Mother is the antidote to the dichotomy of Good Mother / Bad Mother. 
 
How to begin to hold more “this thing” and “that thing” in our lives… even though those two things feel at odds?  Step one: acceptance of things as they are.  Not in a doormat kind of way, or a collapsed and throw-your-hands in the air way… but as a willingness to be in the tough place of feeling torn between two things.  The desired outcome is to let both things be true, even if both of them being true simultaneously defies logic! 
 
The more I’ve let myself stand in this place, two things have happened.  One, is that I’ve become much more tolerant of myself and others.  And the second, even though I was originally fearful of stepping out of the logical place, as if I was giving up all ability to steer the ship, I actually found a lot of clarity and sense of knowing my own truth when I was willing to stand in the “in-between”.
 
So, what if, instead of falling into “this side” versus “that side” in daily life, we were able to tap into the rhythm of the Ocean Mother and allow ourselves to just flow back and forth between them until we found what we needed?  What if the "answer" more like a bridge than a place?