health in a year of drought

Tropical trauma - that's what this year in the Philippines feels like - for me personally. I was here the same time last year yet it feels like I landed in some foreign country I have never been - alien territory. 

I've been harping about the fact that the weather in the Philippines is so extreme we only have El Niño or La Niña conditions and all its dire options. 

high tide - Punta Bulata, Barangay Cauayan, Kabankalan

As an aging child of the seventies and proud boomer, I find myself particularly and personally challenged. Before May 24th's day long hard rain, we had not had anything like it since December. Too long a dry spell for our island home of Negros. 

maturity & mortality

Motherhood has been an elusive enigma all my life. What is motherhood? What does it mean to be a mother? It varies from individual to individual, from personality to personality, from experience to experience. 

Motherhood is all about feelings we hold in our heart of hearts. The love we feel. Towards our child, towards our mothers, towards our ideal of mother. Approached through our own lived experience and the stories we believe we live through. 

Issa & Mahala, New Year's Eve 2010

The joys and difficulties, complex and layered relationships, the sacred bond and dreams. 

I am labeled a single parent but am I really? My child and I grew and developed - surrounded by an ever morphing village of family and friends, strangers and carers - all part of our lives then and now. 

Parenting has been the most challenging experience of my life. The uncertainty, the conditioning, the expectations, the tears - hers and mine.

Every day I think, I can’t do this. Every day I think, there’s nothing I’d rather do. Loving this being who isn’t mine but of me.

It is effortless - it is love made manifest - immediate, indestructible, infinite. It is pure magic.

Yesterday, she hugged me so tightly and I hugged her back, so tightly. In that moment I felt indescribable gratitude for the fate that brought her into my world.

She is my magic too.