hmmundy

[hmmundy]

[hmmundy]

It’s the silence of these walks I’ll miss the most. Your steady breath and occasional sighs. Maggie’s pant and pitter patter of feet catching up. The birds in the trees and the occasional branch breaking under my foot. But a silence that allows what’s always been there to be heard.

We’ve broken free from rigidity in the place where it is quiet enough to listen to what I already know.

There is still worry here. And doubt. But it’s easier to put it down in the mulch and dirt. To breathe the deepest breath I’ve taken in a week and say “yes, thank you” to all of it. The way it’s testing me and expanding me. And softening me and fortifying me. And leveling me into oblivion.

You sleep and I walk. There’s no outcome or prize. Maggie is just happy to be here.

I wonder what your life will look like. And if your body will remember what it felt like to be held in this way. I send prayers to your future self and love to my past.

You tried your first blackberry here. You touch the trees with gentle curiosity. You never protest the carrier when you see the trees in the distance from the parking lot.

We’ve seen an owl twice. You love to look up.

Meditating and writing are hard to come by, but we can always walk.

My shoulders start to feel the ache but the slow rise of your chest against the blades softens the tension. A feeling I know I’ll long for someday.

This perspective is a gift of my own healing. To know what I have when I still have it. To trust what I have and the goodness in it. To relinquish happiness as the goal in favor of the trust in my ability to feel it all and move through each moment, season, doubt and changing state with grace. And as I write this and feel your breath on my neck I look down to see an owl feather at my feet.

I get a little stronger each walk. You continue to grow almost unnoticed to me until I see a photo or touch a long piece of hair that seems to have come from nowhere overnight. Each day I lift you and it feels the same as the day before. It’s devotion that allows this type of strength to form, to allow this depth of transformation.

Love not discipline or self punishment. An unending well of devotion that allows me to wake each night and walk every morning.

[hmmundy]

Theo ✨

[hmmundy]

trees becoming their strongest in autumn. Because they aren’t bearing fruit or producing leaves, all of their energy is pushed down into the roots. So what externally appears as death, is actually the catalyst for new life.

[hmmundy]

This is written 11, 26, 18.

And the subject is on mothering love. Hello, my friend, my sister, my example.

I'm sitting on a balcony on Cayman Island and right at this moment, writing an essay about

the word mother. What that word really means. How it's less to me, a fixed identity,

we can be or not be and more an energy we can offer or not offer. The essay is about how some of us who can check the box mother never really learn how to offer mothering love and how others

of us who don't check the box harness it and offer it widely and wildly. The essay is about how

much better off the world would be if we gathered up mothering love and used it like a floodlight instead of a pointed laser aimed only at the few we've been assigned. As I'm writing this essay on the balcony, my sister just sent me a text that says, gee, Oprah's mother died. She was 83.

I wanted you to know. I just got that text a minute ago.

I would never presume to guess what your relationship was like,

how complex it was and is to be your mother's daughter. What your feelings are this week,

what your feelings have been or will be. I just wanted to say

that you are my example of how to gather up mothering love

and use it as a floodlight to illuminate and warm the world. You are my and the world's best example

of grace which means that we can somehow give what we've never even received. I don't know much but from everything you've bravely say and kindly don't say. I've gathered that you didn't get

the mothering love you deserved and needed as a little girl and a grown girl. To me,

that is what makes you a miracle. It is a miracle that somehow you took the broken pieces that

she put in your hands, all of them and you spun them into gold and opened your hands wide

and offered that gold back to the world, which is not just a gift to the world.

It is a gift directly back to your mother because you worked with what she gave you

ensured that her legacy through you is gold. With your help, your mother's legacy is gold.

What a gift. If there is a heaven, she can see that now. She can see that her miraculous daughter

somehow somehow turned her offerings to gold. God bet she's amazed and grateful. Well done

good, faithful, miraculous badass servant in your corner forever.

[hmmundy]

Heart centered

Creative

Service

Where do these three come together in an expression a divine love

[hmmundy]

And today it all became clear.

Trust the goodness in your life. You are safe to relax into the ease. You can trust your knowing.

Healing and peace be with you. And also with you.

[hmmundy]

he died 2 months to the day after I was born. I had never thought about what that must have been like. One to two kids and losing your dad all in the span of a quarter.

[hmmundy]

Tears in the ears.

Preverbal. Unbearable. Take in the energy and story that you are a savior. Something outside of me will fix me.

And in turn live that story out. I’ll take care of everyone. And something outside of me will fix me.

[hmmundy]

“I honour your Gods,

I drink at your well,

I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place,

I have no cherished outcomes,

I will not negotiate by withholding, and

I am not subject to disappointment.”

[hmmundy]

It is deadening. It is what I’m meant to excavate and let go of. It it intertwined with a lot of stories in my world. What’s on the other side of it?

[hmmundy]

Everything that we don’t know has the potential to control our life.

 This is at the root of the desire to excavate. Period to bring light to the darkness to befriend the ghosts and get to know them. To explore with curiosity and gentleness

[hmmundy]

Deeper healing. To serve more freely. Without the fear

[hmmundy]

I am OK with you admiring me a little less so that you can love me

[hmmundy]

I am safe to be perceived by the world in any sort of way.

[hmmundy]

Hawk medicine

[hmmundy]

Thanks chani.

Don’t be timid. Don’t back down. Don’t let them get away with a moment of it.

To love a Scorpio is sometimes a test of one’s endurance. And a test of one’s ability to dive deep. If you can prove to them that you are a match for their intensity, you might catch a glimpse at the depths of their heart. Scorpio is known for its ability to be a fierce and formidable foe. Famous for its resilience, loving a Scorpio is loving the paths that will bring you to the edge. And back.

Scorpio loves all the way through. Into the mystery and back again. Into the misery and back again. Into the suffering of becoming and back again. With that kind of commitment, they will only be willing to work with you if you prove to them that you won’t abandon them. Why put in all that hard work if you aren’t worthy of receiving the fruits of their labor?

Wary of betrayal, Scorpio can take its time deciding who is worthy of their secrets and their powers of regeneration.

To be loved by a Scorpio is to be transformed. To be loved by a Scorpio is to have the stealthiest army on your side. To be loved by a Scorpio is to be in on the joke that life is just a dress rehearsal for death. To be loved by a Scorpio is to be focused on. Held together through every falling apart. Relentlessly devoted to.

Loving a Scorpio is helping them let go of what doesn’t work. Helping them know that opening that deep reservoir of emotional energy might require many moons in therapy. But if they stick with it, they will access a powerhouse of healing the world so desperately needs.

-Chani Nicholas