Button Pushing: This little thing is pressing me into the hardest, most complicated, most unloved areas of my personality. She's working on me. She's asking for integration. She's teaching the truth of not judging myself for all the things I am not. She's bringing her whole tool-bag-- screaming and crying and laughing and smiling. She's promising I'll get better if I just allow her to show me how.
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[My back is in spasm. I could feel it getting weaker and the pain getting stronger over the past few days. This morning I bent down to pick a tulip and felt a pop. A tulip lit the fuse.

We're having a lot of trouble with Bea. She's back to sleeping like a newborn. She's having back bending meltdowns. She's standing up, army crawling, and talking all the time. She is making her YESes and NOs veeerrrry apparent. And the mom who shows up after 4 hours of sleep each night, dealing with hour-long meltdowns and fussy fits, is a person I am desperately trying to avoid. I don't like her. I have labeled her a bad mom. And I want to be liked

Working with my chiropractor today on spatial awareness, we went over the areas of my personality that I like and the areas that I dislike. Then we moved to the areas of my personality that other people like and dislike. And there it was...the pain. Deep in my body. Lodged for a lifetime. Right in my gut and wrapping around to my low back.

The spasm seems to be a marker. I avoid going to those shitty places of my personality that I've tried to bury. Those places where I've learned to unlove because when those sides show their face they get a pretty negative reaction from the people in my life.

My kid needs all of me. My kid needs me to bring all of myself to her without judgement about what behavior is right and what is wrong. It hurts to think that I will just pass this bifurcation on to her-- teach her that she has to hide sides of herself to comfort others.

And that is the blessing in her breakdowns. So we all had a couple good cries today. We talked to mom friends who said the most liberating 3 words: THIS IS NORMAL. We slept.

My Buddha is a crying, teething, crawling, shitting 8 month old and I love her for pushing me there.