Home is a Place
This was the last time.
The ending of a thousand moments.
The final time we would curl into each other this way.
A moment captured by his father who hummed of how much he loved seeing us soft skinned, in the afternoon sun, like this.
After 2.2 years my breastfeeding journey with Omar has come to an end. I fed Rumi for the same amount of time, so after almost 5 collective years of breastfeeding my body’s message is clear — it is time for this chapter to end. There are no more babies coming in. This is us. Our family circle, complete. I am relishing in how good the clarity of that feels while acknowledging all of the confusion and heartache that pathed our way here.
I don’t mind the ending of things. In fact, I find myself renewed by them. When I became a mother 6.5 years ago I gave myself to it fully — at home, full time, feeding our sons, laying the solid foundation upon which they would build their lives. At home, I became a willingly participant in the death of all my worn out ways. All of it, a deeply considered chapter written by the ripening our of parental hands. One born of instinct. One that we protected time and again. One that I will cherish forever as our years together mature, arch and bend.
I am grateful for the wondrous ways in which our sons entered the world. Grateful we have allowed ourselves space as a family to establish safe and loving rhythm. Grateful for the brave new bud emerging in direct response to another returning to earth. Being at home and feeding our sons for all these years has enabled parts of them, parts of me, parts of our belonging to each other that I’m not sure would have enabled without it.
In awe of the intelligence working through every layer of life and humbled by our capacity to breath life into form, I see that motherhood awakens a sensitivity that dissolves distraction and deepens the understanding that life longs only for life.
Everything widens in the most exquisite of ways when we give ourselves fully, trust in the unfamiliar lines of change and remember that home is a place that becomes us and lovingly beckons, when we have strayed.
