LOVE

I like your description of your new workplace.  Will you be counseling people one-on-one?  Your schedule already has me confused!  But it sounds exhilarating.

Thank you for your comments on my parenting.  I read books about tribal peoples and attachment parenting, extended nursing, the family bed...I read Mothering magazine.  It all helped me to follow my instincts.  My pediatrician convinced me to let me two-year old cry it out in order to train her to sleep without me before her brother was born.  It broke my heart.  I sat on the floor outside of her room and cried, too.  She didn't know that though.  She only knew she was alone.  I gave in and decided to do it my way, the humane way, but not until the next night, I think.  I still don't understand why I was being obedient to someone who wasn't even part of our family, who did not passionately love my baby.  I regret that night so much, but maybe that was when I gained the strength to say no to authority.

We need to stop and think about what tears mean.  I know of a little one who was taken to day care for the first time as a toddler. The first day he was curious, and patiently waiting for his parent.  When he went back the second day, he broke down and sobbed.  They couldn't understand why he was so good one day, but not the next.  I knew immediately.  The first day was a novelty.  The second day he understood that they his parents had given him to the institution, that life would never be the same again.  But when young parents are forced by this inhumane system to work, we can't talk about it.  The already feel guilty.  And there is so little choice.

I wonder, too, about this inner drive we have to survive.  I have seen animals as well as humans in terrible pain, or crippled, or being abused, and yet we survive.  Why do we want to be here so very much?  It is beautiful here, if we are left alone by the pathologically greedy and competitive to enjoy - but we're not left alone.  We suffer.  Yet we don't want to leave.  Or we want to leave, but are too cowardly to do ourselves in...I don't know...Or maybe there's and endless source of hopefulness in our souls - maybe somebody will see me, maybe somebody will love me.  Maybe that is why we stay...

I wanted to share an Emmy note.  Our new Emily has become our Emmy-Emmy.  She has become sleek and comfortable.  This weekend when we had so much company arriving, she started barking at someone.  I asked her to stop, I told her to stop, then I bent over, quickly, to let her know I was serious.  She immediately dropped to her knees and cringed, eyes closed.  It shocked me.  She was waiting to be hit.  My mind worked quickly, and I knew I had to stay bent over her, very close and scold her, so that she would learn that I will not hit her.  But it broke my heart to see her cringe.

Yet she wants to live.  She wants to be loved and accepted.

Love is the answer...now we have to figure out all of the questions!

Who do I love?

Lots of people, and you are one of the dearest to my heart!!

Clare

PS - In our mutual admiration society, here, I always noticed how for beyond you went to figure out what your kids needed and to get it for them...