Lilac Trees

and recent musings

The air smells deliciously of lilacs.

It’s amazing how much better I feel when the weather gets warmer. Suddenly I am human, suddenly I have ambition, suddenly I am alive.

To have spent the winter in the Northeast this year is something that I’m proud of. It takes grit to get through a Northeastern winter—no matter how many locals say that it was mild this year.

But as we approach the middle of May, I wonder how much more of this chilled soggy Northeastern spring I can take. Frankly, I’ve been feeling like I’m unraveling lately and I’m not quite sure what is to blame. But I do know that it’s partly due to this dreary weather. It’s been cloudy and grey most days and it’s always this time of the year that I deeply pine for the Mediteranean ocean. My other home. It’s always right around now that I distinctly remember this one day that I ran to the shore in Herzilya from my home. The day was so hot. I ripped off my shirt and my sneakers and socks and ran into the waves. The sun set and I stood there, the ocean lapping at my calves, taking it all in. Somehow I knew that this was a moment I’d want to remember in deep detail forever.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about how women’s lives rotate on a 28 day time clock while the whole world runs on a 24 hour one. And it’s because of this that women tend to be so out of balance. I’m angry about this. I feel myself talking about my cycle more, and noticing my friends talking about it more too. We are waking up. We feel the return to our feminine power in our bones and it can no longer be ignored. My whole body flushes with blood because without me asking, I have been living in a constant fight mode to conform to this world. No wonder we all have anxiety. Last week I bled and I had no desire to get out of bed. I laid there feeling the weight of my body and the world on my chest. I didn’t feel like doing the work, to continue building what I’ve been working so hard on birthing right now. I’m exhausted. And my feet are not on the ground. Dan took me out for tapas and as we drove home the sky turned the most brilliant indigo with red streaks running through it. It was 8:30 in the evening and the light brought with it the promise of summertime. When everything feels better and ok and lighter and joyful. Childlike.

I was texting with a friend a few days ago and she said, “I need an adult to help guide me through life” and I agreed. Sometimes we just need a mother figure. And this morning I finished a chapter of Women Who Run with the Wolves that speaks to the time when we cross over from adolescence to woman and we are asked to let go of this “hovering” mother energy. We have to fly off the edge of the cliff and become our own mother. In order to become, we must trust our inner path and intution without looking over our shoulder for the advice we once lived by. But I think that somewhere deep down we all yearn to be held, rocked to sleep in a warm towel as the waves crash onto the shore, the song of seagulls in the breeze and the sounds of jovial conversation emanating through our mother’s chest onto our temples.

Right before enjoying that vividly beautiful spring sky, I saw the first lilac tree of the season in bloom. I couldn’t help myself, and was sure that we pulled over so that I could take a moment to admire her beauty. Another foreshadow of mirth, I hoped. I picked one cluster of lilac flowers, twisting them apart from the tree at a supple branch. I was grateful. I sniffed the blooms all the way home and placed them lovingly at my bedside in a little jar of water.

My biggest goal for myself right now is that I can continue to find joy in these little moments and trust. Sometimes when we are late bloomers, we spend more time in the bud. We wonder when it will be our time to trust our way forward. I am emerging, again, from my cocoon in a way that I’ve never experienced before. My joy is in this reemergence and I am learning who I am. What is her texture?

Winter was long, but it also fed me. It taught me my last lessons in the shadow-like darkness of the cocoon.

I received a weighted blanket and yesterday I used it for the first time, laying it over my body. I fell asleep there, feeling safe. I’ve been talking about this a lot, but I finally feel like my body is acknowledging the grief I have been holding on to for a bit now, and it is time to purge. I am no longer shaming it or making it feel small or insignificant. Because all grief is valid, no matter what bigger grief is being held on a pedastal in the world. There always will be something.

And the thing is, there’s no such thing as big grief or small grief, there’s just grief. I wonder why and how we are all still chugging along with the grief that many of us collectively hold. I ask myself often, “How should I live now?” In what way do I hold my body, make and grow friendships—where do I belong in this new body?

So I’m in this process now. Of learning what it means to no longer be an extrovert. What it means to navigate resentfulness for time passed and deep misunderstandings thrown violently and carelessly at my identity and what it means to hold space for living like in a truly feminine rhythm that is celebrated and supported and not disempowered. What do I want to become?

It’s spring, and last week I discovered a robin’s nest below our deck. One day there was one tiny egg, the next day three. The mama bird sits on them every day, fleeing to the trees every time I come down the stairs with Oli. She is nurturing new life here. Rebirth.

I am rediscovering life in this way. I can feel in my chest the firey voice of my wild woman that no longer can be nice and tame. And sometimes it shocks me what she says. But I’m here to listen now, to follow her lead.

Let’s see where the path leads.