Resolving to Blend

"Seeking balance - which feels like we're teetering on the edge, straining to ready ourselves - is not the goal. Instead, let's resolve to blend. Writing, family and work aren't isolated elements but moving parts with constant overlap that can inform, support, and even enhance one another." ~Nicole Gulotta, Wild Words

I have always said "something's gotta give", as I've juggled writing, dancing, work, a social life, my health, and now motherhood. I throw my energy and focus at one or two things, knowing that whatever I've turned my attention from will suffer. "Balance," I say, "it's all about balance", choosing to see the teeter totter of the scales as balance in action. In reality, constantly letting something slip feels like perpetual failure. Now that I am a mother, I cannot afford this hop scotch approach to life. My daughter must always come first. Does this mean that all the other areas of my life must suffer?

Gulotta is reframing this for me, giving me hope. Blend, she says. The idea that looking after my baby to the best of my ability could possibly "inform, support, and even enhance" my writing - and vice versa - is mind boggling and exhilarating. Can dancing also enhance my mothering? Could writing inform my social life? These paradigm shifting words were only in the introduction of her book. I paused at the beginning of chapter one titled, "The Season of Beginnings" in order to reflect on how apt her words are at this time in our lives. I feel as if she has a window into my life, right down to her observation of stirring the cream in her tea, munching on pumpkin bread to sustain the breastfeeding life, and drying the baby's bottle on a special drying rack that looks like grass.

Beyond the eerily similar details, the cadence and simple poignancy of her words are speaking straight to my soul. It is as if she has read my journals and is responding to me with a love letter called Wild Words. To believe this book is written for me would be absurd and narcissistic, of course. But I can't help but be awestruck by the relevance of not just her words, but the way in which she weaves them.

Our little family is indeed in a Season of Beginnings. Or perhaps more accurately, a Season of Transition. In the last 9 months since our little one arrived earth-side, we have experienced almost every possible life change. With a new baby came a two job losses, launching our business, a death in the family, another job... and then loss, a decision to launch another side gig, and the plan to move not just houses, but cities in the next few months.

Amidst all of these external changes is our ever-changing baby girl. She is consistent in her joy and exuberance, but she is growing and learning and developing at warp speed. It is as if she is mirroring the shifting patterns of our lives with her own; letting go of old habits and reaching for new and greater things. Literally and figuratively.

In these special moments of watching her pull herself to standing, or inspect the detail of an object with rapt attention, I am struck by her undivided presence, and I am reminded that I can only be one place at a time. I can move from place to place, from moment to moment, but I am only ever right where I am. It seems obvious, but this is not how we live. We are doing one thing and thinking about another. We call it "balancing".

But what are we missing in the present moment when we juggle in this way? Perhaps Gulotta's exhortation to blend is about being present. After all, how else can we expect to inform or enhance one area of life with another if we are not truly experiencing those areas? I wondered at the beginning of this essay how motherhood could inform my writing, but now I realise... it already has.

So here is to new beginnings, to embracing transitions, relishing in change and basking in the present moment as often as we possibly can.

"Let's resolve to blend."