Be Patient
Patience is a virtue most children haven't learned yet. Yet, as an adult - I too lack patience at times. Mostly with my own self. How about you?
One of my favorite poems goes like this…
“Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”
Be patient (with yourself), Rainer Maria Rilke writes in 1903. And I can think of nothing more wise on this long road of making here a little more like Home.
A mid-summer meeting
The last time I sat down to write our Hope Notes, I was considering how we thrive in the everyday world where motherhood (humanhood) meets faith and mental health (and summertime special needs parenting). Now, over a month later I am no longer thinking about this. Instead, I am on the seemingly endless course of learning patience with myself.
The longer I stay out here - back home and finally by the sea - I'm noticing things. Big things. Including the importance of “who I am” that reaches far beyond a vehicle of service to my children, partner, clients…
There is a version of me that yearns to be known. She always has! But often she lays weighted beneath the mountain of life and experiences I choose (and don't choose) to bear.
I've met this version of me out here on vacation and in pauses time and again.
But in my everyday? Not as much.
Are you in a similar life space?
Are you here, now?
More than mom
I believe that you and me, we are more than mom dear friend.
We are more than our ability to mother any human, be it our own flesh and blood, foster and adoptive children, our parents, spouse, the world…
And because I sometimes don’t live this way, I need Rilke's words. I need patience.
and play…
(recently on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast, I was struck by the words offered of how play relieves depression - and it’s stuck with me)
and words like these from my most recent long-time-coming read Wild by Cheryl Strayed…
"I never got to be in the driver's seat of my own life... I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I've always been someone's daughter or mother or wife, I've never been just me."
How many of us are never just me?
This thought - it’s made me think about later this summer when we’ll begin to strip down our identities in Moms for Mental Health’s third season.
Starting next month, we invite you to both our virtual and in-person Mom Pods.
From worth to identity, this will be as deep of a dive as you allow it to be. Registration is presently free, with a maximum of six members in our virtual pod and twelve for our in-person (with breakout groups).
As I have found in my travels, our Abba-Mother-Father-Papa-God does not want us to go this course alone. And even if our intentions are good (a reprieve from a too-much-too-busy life with just our own little circle of humanity by our sides), something will probably happen that brings us back into community.
Or perhaps as Therapist Elaine says, something will always happen.
(Thus far she's been right.)
Be patient with yourself
Be patient with yourself loves, if isolation has been deemed safe. Of course, of course! be patient. But also, consider this invitation to life with us this fall, here in our twice-monthly newsletter, or on social media…
We are better together than we could ever be apart.
Do you agree?
I can’t wait to dive into life and our More Than Mom journey with you, precious soul.
Sending you love, prayers for Divine patience, and gentle hugs.
Always, always.
J.
Jennifer Magnano
A snapshot of our summertime adventures. My wild, my mild, my partner, and I fly thousands of miles each year to soak up this time on our precious Cape beaches. This year has been one of the hardest such adventures for me, as I navigate my own identity - being capital “L” Loved by my God regardless of my contributions to the world. (Contributions which became endless as I mothered x 1000 over the last year. Did you experience this too?) Which makes me even more honored to invite you into our inner circle as we share insight and breakdowns and breakthroughs with you this fall - all from myself and a tribe of incredible humans (get to know them here).
Truly, I can’t wait.
See you soon, good human. See you soon.