Four-letter words don’t offend me. But the one four-letter word that I have battled with is: rest. 

When it comes to that four-letter word my natural inclination is to resist it with the ferocity of a toddler being told to take an afternoon nap. 

What is it about this seemingly innocuous word that sets off the stubborn two-year-old in me?

I’m not sure if I’ve figured out all the answers to that question, but I’ve figured out some.

Last week our little pack of two humans and two doggos spent five days far from the crowds; maddening and otherwise. 

We discovered this wonderfully unpopulated 28 hectares of nature some years ago. It’s a rustic retreat where we start each day with a bit of mountaineering down to the clear river that borders the property. The four-legged pack members morph into mountain goats as they bounce from one boulder to another, tails in the air and noses to the ground - absorbing the criss-crossing stories of the veld.

The rocks eventually spill out onto river sand and, while we’re still navigating the last of the rocks, the only evidence that we have dogs are dusty mirages dancing above the path - followed by the sound trail and echo of a plop and a splash telling us they’re swimming in the river.

After a few minutes of them swimming in the natural pools we follow the path that meanders next to the river. They disappear into the surrounding bush proving that they take “bundu bashing” literally. 

Rest or Work?

Leading up to our time away my husband and I were aware of the mound of work we were leaving behind, so we started to plan what work we were going to take with us. Luckily we course-corrected two days before we left; deciding to rest and recuperate so that we could make a renewed, energised charge at the mountain of work when we got back.

We almost fell back into our old habits, but we were really grateful for the complete downtime.

For most of my life I’ve had the energy pattern of a toddler - manic activity followed by collapse. I used to say that I was only aware of my energy tank as “full” or “empty”, nothing in between.

Mid-life, burnout, and a bunch of life skills I was lacking, eventually led me to a point where I was evaluating my life and decided I needed to change the way I was living. I took a sabbatical to figure out how I was going to do things differently moving forward.

Part of that exploration and figuring out how to manage my energy tank led me back to the word rest.

I love words and I love fiction. Reading is more than escapism, it’s meeting new friends, travelling to the past, the future, different worlds. But the most powerful story that affects my life is the narrative running in my head.

The sabbatical kick-started an exploration of the stories I tell myself on a daily basis. 

The Archaeology of Personal Narratives

Some of those myths and legends are so old that it helps to work with a narrative archaeologist - like a psychologist or life coach. Telling our stories, talking, in a therapeutic space is a powerful experience because it shifts the tales living in our subconscious to our conscious mind. 

And when that shift occurs, it brings the storyline to our awareness, where we can work with it, evaluate it, decipher its meaning and choose what the meaning of that scenario is going to be in our future. This allows for a shift in perspective to take place. Shifts allow us to move forward.

When I allow myself to consider different perspectives I open myself up to the possibility of seeing myself, my role in the plot, the meaning differently. In this way we liberate ourselves from remaining trapped in the same old story. 

Think about it, stories are being imprinted on our brains before we even understand language - parents, siblings, extended family, genes, family trauma - these are all buried within and affect us, consciously and unconsciously.

Overlaid onto our biological and emotional plot lines are the cultural histories we are born into. It’s a real mishmash, and we just keep adding to it as we journey through life.

Stories have meaning, and we give meaning to the ones that we’re told and interpret them based on a million filters. It’s not so much what we’re told, but what we perceive that we were told.

The Parable About Preparing A Roast

There’s that lovely parable about a young woman who learns to prepare a roast by watching her mother. When the woman prepares a roast for her new husband she cuts off a choice part of the roast before cooking it. Her husband asks her why, and she tells him that’s the way her mother taught her to do it. On investigating this further, questioning her mother about the origin of this method of preparation, she finds out that her mother’s roasting pan wasn’t big enough to hold the entire roast. That’s why her mother was cutting off a portion of it!

Sometimes we act in ways that don’t make sense when we question it further. However, often we are so accustomed to the behaviour we continue in the same vein until something or someone makes us question it.

These tales are codes running our programming.  Unhelpfully, we can’t just reveal our source code. It takes some investigating. Luckily our behaviour gives us clues. Our beliefs, our values are all held in what we tell ourselves. Our actions are ultimately based on these beliefs which originate from our interpretation of these stories.

So, for me, I had to look at my toddler-like behaviour and ask what am I telling myself about rest that makes me resist it? 

Coming From A Long Line Of Strong Women

Something that was recited to me regularly was that I come from a long line of strong women. I also describe myself and my friends in this way. On closer examination I realised, that at some point in my life, I started equating being a strong woman with not having to rest.

When I say that out loud it seems ridiculous. But somewhere  along the way that’s the meaning that I attached to that description - or part of the meaning I attached to it. 

When I realised that I believed that I also realised that I didn’t believe that! Maybe it’s more accurate to say that when I held that belief up to the light it didn't stand up to scrutiny.

Logically I know that I’m a human being, and we need rest. Otherwise, sleep deprivation would not be a form of torture.

The stories we tell ourselves aren't necessarily based on logic, they’re based on the meaning we give them. Logic doesn’t have to feature in the fantasy world of our unconscious.

If I was boarding a flight and was given the option of a pilot who’d been flying non-stop for 24 hours or a pilot that was refreshed, clear-eyed. I’m not going to tell myself the pilot who's been flying for 24 hours is in the zone. I’m going to bench that guy in favour of the fresh mind, the rested body.

So why wasn’t I treating myself that way?

I wouldn’t think of the pilot as weak or not strong. I’d think the rested person was better prepared and ready for the job. So why wasn’t that applying to me?

Mid-life Crises?

I’m not sure that I’m a fan of the term mid-life crises. I think I prefer midway evaluation point because that’s really the gift of this life stage. A point to evaluate how and why we operate the way we do and course-correct, if we want. An opportunity to learn new skills, to do some life maintenance.

Okay, so the infamous they say that realising you have a problem is half of the solution. The next step is changing the behaviour. 

I think I’m a fairly intelligent, logical person but even once I knew that my behaviour was based on, not only an illogical belief, but one that I don’t even believe any more, it was still hard to change the behaviour. 

And that’s the challenge of the mid-life evaluation. I had been doing it this way for such a long time. That underground neural pathway that said strong women don’t need to rest was well and truly rutted in my mid-life brain.

Every time I realised that little train of thought was chugging along its usual path, I’d have to slam on the brakes and say, “no, no little train you have to use the new tracks, the new thought pathway”. Over and over and over and over again.

The motivation that kept me coming back to slam on the brakes, and work at a new direction, was that I knew that my old behaviour was no longer working for me. I knew where continuing in the same thinking, and acting on that thinking, led. It led me down a path of exhaustion and I had consciously chosen to move away from that because I wanted something better. I owed it to myself to find a new way, a new endpoint, a new result. 

A mantra that I use over and over again is “you didn’t take a sabbatical and dismantle your life just to recreate the same structure again!” It’s not the dramatic shift of direction that would work for everyone but one of the pay-offs for me was having that mantra to hold onto.

Moving From Insight To Changing Behaviour

So changing behaviour. That brings me to another four-letter word that I wrestle with: redo.

When I face an issue or problem it is my MO to immerse myself, dive in deep and thoroughly explore it in order to overcome it. I am not a fan of redoing, relearning, revisiting. These I resist. I have a small temper tantrum, before I pick my emotional two-year-old up and jump into the fray again.

I’m a fan of the inspired insight, the awesome aha moment, the euphoria of Eureka! The redo I could do without.

One of the things I’ve noticed in rereading my journals is that when I redo I gain further insight, greater understanding, more nuanced skill. 

If you’ve ever sanded wood you’ll know that you start with a coarsely gritted sandpaper. When you run your hand over the wood it feels better but as you rework the wood with the ever-increasing finely gritted sandpaper the texture and smoothness improves. That’s how I view redoing now.

The Importance of Redoing

Gaining a new understanding is great, but it’s the redoing that develops the mastery - the mastery of self. It’s continual recalibration that is brought about by the doing,  and the redoing.

I now view myself as an instrument and as I journey along my life my understanding of self improves, the way I work with myself gets better, I raise my standards - I’m refining myself.

A few weeks into our sabbatical my husband and I were driving to go on a hike, and he turned to me and said, “I’m afraid I’ll never want to work again”. My immediate, insensitive response was to laugh.

After I had gathered myself, I explained to him that I thought that was highly unlikely based on his history, work ethic and his personality. He had worked since he was 16, while he studied, started side hustles during his school holidays when he was a teacher and started his own business while having a full time job.

I explained that I thought the greater danger was that when we started working again we’d quickly get into our old habits of overworking.

We continued our discussion during our hike, and we discovered another interesting belief that we both shared. We regarded ourselves as hard workers and part of our resistance to the word rest was that somewhere, in some way, we equated rest to being lazy.

As we explored this belief we realised that part of considering ourselves to be hard workers was about proving ourselves, and that we’d internalised that as part of our identities. We also realised that we no longer needed to prove to ourselves, or others, that we were capable of hard work - we now knew that. 

Additionally, it was our old way of thinking. We were now more interested in, not only, working smarter but feeling better, being well-rounded, inspired, fully functional people.

Learning to Rest

Again, even though we’d had this insight, we both battled with the word rest. What we discovered was that it was easier for us to encourage each other to rest than it was to accept that it was okay for us, as individuals, to rest. 

This resulted in us entering into a pact. We loved each other, understood the benefits of rest and when we needed to take time we would do that - and in doing so, in treating ourselves well, we were giving the other the permission, the license and the encouragement to do the same. So now we saw taking a break ourselves as a way to support the person we loved most to do that same.

We all have these narratives running on loops in our minds, and sometimes we need to revisit them and evaluate if we still attach the same meaning to them that we used to. A shift in perspective may enable us to see ourselves not as the victim of our lives but as the hero.

The stories we tell ourselves, have been told to us, are powerful and determine how we see ourselves, our world and our beliefs in what we can achieve, feel and be. Change the story you tell yourself, and you’ll change your life.

Are The Stories You’re Telling Yourself A Cage?

That tape playing over and over again in your head can be a cage, or it can be a stage. 

Change the soundtrack and make it the recital of your own choosing. It’s just a story after all. Start writing the one you want to live.

Let’s be less concerned with living the dream and start living out our dreams. If we want our dreams for our future to be different from our current paths it requires us to have the courage to take charge and be the authors of our own lives.

I don’t know about you, but when I get to that third stage of my life I’d like it to be different from the first two acts. Not because the first two acts weren’t thrilling but because in the stories that I love, the arc changes, grows, deepens when the main character develops into the hero they were meant to be.

One of the features of middle age is an awareness of how much time has passed and how quickly it’s passed. At first this can be terrifying, but it is also an invitation, an opportunity to evaluate what we’re going to choose to leave behind so that we can focus fully on what’s important to us moving forward. 

It instilled in me a commitment to making the next cycle Cathleen-centric. To learn from the past, and action those lessons in my present, so that my future will be the story of MY life, not some unconscious myth that was imprinted on me before I had a voice, a choice.

Fixating On A Particular Narrative

The line my husband and I had started to fixate on before our trip away was “we have so much work to do”. Resting allowed us to reframe that narrative. 

Having so much work to do was just part of the scenario. That we would work better after relaxing was also true.

Picture that saying putting your shoulder to the grindstone. When we do that our view is limited to what is directly in front of us. We can’t see ahead of us, to the side of us or the progress that we’ve made.

I’m sure you’ve had a problem that you can’t solve, but when you walked away from it and engaged in something else the solution popped into your head. Like when you get great ideas in the shower.

When we rest, let our bodies and mind unwind, play, it provides space to allow creativity and solutions to flow in.

Fixating on one thing is like plucking only one string on a guitar. We have many strings and the harmony of our life is better when we play all the strings - do different things. In doing this, we activate our full capabilities, bring our full selves to each endeavour.

Reframing the narrative allows us to see the whole picture.

Nature’s A Great Reminder That There’s Time To Rest

One of the benefits of resting in nature is that nature is a constant visualisation of ever-evolving cycles. Reminding us that there’s a season to our world, our lives. Time for work, time for rest and a time to redo, undo and just be. Be present, enjoy this moment - the hoot of the owl in the darkness, the cries of the jackals that accompany the setting sun, the dome of the starred night, the early bird song that calls forth the rising sun.

Like the bonfire we built every night to protect us from the winter chill and meditate on the flickering flames, rest is the wood that feeds our fire  to charge again.

When I was 5 years old my family travelled from the inland town we lived in to holiday with relatives living in Durban; a coastal city. Every evening my dad would excitedly tell us kids that we were going swimming in the sea early the next morning. 

My dad would wake us three kids in the dark. My older sister would choose to remain in bed and my older brother and I would accompany my dad to the beach. The routine became that once we got there my brother would decide to remain on the shore.

The beach was deserted. No holidaymakers and their umbrellas and cooler boxes. No frenzied sporting activities, no smell of coconut tanning lotion and melting ice cream. 

The navy blue sea and inky sky seeping into one, making the horizon an imaginary line. The cold grey, blue ocean tones only ruptured by the whipped white foam that indicated where the arching, rolling, crashing waves were breaking. 

Plunging In

At the water’s edge, my dad told me that we were going to swim beyond the breakers.  I had to do exactly what he told me to do when he told me. I only had one request, “Don’t let go of my hand, daddy.”

We ran in, my little hand engulfed in his, our warm bodies swallowed by the icy watery beast. Quickly my body was buoyed and, as my dad strode forward, I followed, tethered to his hand, kicking and swimming to keep abreast of him. 

As we entered the choppy, bubbling aftermath of the bigger waves my dad would pull me up to keep my head above the water. We forged deeper into the blue. Quickly he too was lifted, feet far from the sand, as we faced the sliding walls of water now towering over us.

Facing the Breakers

As the closest mountain of water started to rise, seemingly to engulf us, my dad would tell me to take a big breath. Then we plummeted, blind, into the dark depths beneath the swirl. Eventually emerging on the other side, spluttering and wiping our eyes to see the next challenge ahead of us. 

Again and again, the whale of water rose imposingly over us. We plunged, kicking with four legs and swimming with two hands, locked into his promise to not let go of our connection, as the sea breached behind us.

As we navigated through the breakers we could not see beyond them, all our energy and senses focused on surviving the onslaught of water barrelling towards us - diving deep to avoid, as much as possible, the churning powering each wave.

Breaking Through to the Other Side

Ultimately our saline baptisms paid off and we’d emerge through the last breaker, bursting, exhausted, gasping, often gulping mouthfuls of salty liquid to discover we had made it through to the other side. The drama behind us and calm before us. An almost endless stretch of blue from us to the curved outline of the horizon.

The crashing thunder of water now replaced by the gentle swell and fall - the meditative breaths of the sea. Swimming towards the horizon, to put some distance between us and the breakers, it was now time to rest, lie back and float while being lulled by the quiet and calm. Spreadeagle, relaxed, head back, ears below the waterline, our ragged breathing slowed as we floated in silence, secured like otters.

And then it was time for the main event. The sun started to escape the horizon. Bathing us in its glow, warming us, painting the sky and reflecting its artwork on the surface around us. We were lying in a living kaleidoscope. 

Submerged in Neptune’s womb we witnessed the birthing of a new day. The best day - a holiday.

Twenty-five Years Later

Twenty-five years later, far from the sea, on a dark, dramatic, highveld stormy night I found myself sitting in my therapist’s office as she told me the story of The Skeleton Woman to the soundtrack of pelting rain and explosive lightning.

The Skeleton Woman is a story from “Women Who Run With the Wolves” written by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. It is also a story about the sea, the sea of life and relationships. 

A metaphorical story about expectation, disillusionment, skeletons, vulnerability, magic and what we do when we encounter them. Do we dive deep? Do we return to the shore? Do we stay and battle the breakers? Do we break the connection?

Stuck in the Breakers

For me, there have been many times in my life where I have remained in the breakers, unable to swim beyond. Bashed, dishevelled, disorientated, cycling in the push and pull of drama. At times I’ve confused dramatic and passionate.

Although the oceans are vast, and the breakers are just a small part of that, they often pull focus. When you’re caught in the up and down it’s difficult to see beyond them.

In relationships, if the connection is broken, the trust destroyed, you can easily lose sight of each other. If you can’t both dive deep, the force of the wave may break your bond and spit you out onto the shore.

Breakers are part of life but remaining in that turmoil is exhausting. 

Beyond the breakers, you are buoyed, held, soothed, elevated. There’s time for rest, recuperation. Time to be mesmerised.

In the midst of the breakers, there is much happening but not much progress being made, nothing is achieved beyond survival. Breakers can break us down.

Breakers Are Representative of Many Things

There are many situations that keep us in the breakers, a toxic work environment, relationships where the person is afraid to dive deep, move forward, people who create drama, us creating drama. It may even be that we were born into a family whose relationships stay in the breakers and that makes us think that’s how relationships should be.

Remember “Finding Nemo”? In that Pixar classic, Marvin reminds Nemo to brush up against the sea anemone so that he’ll become immune to the toxins. 

If we remain in toxic environments, whether it’s our workplace, friendships or romantic relationships - spaces that break us down - we are not immune like clownfish, we become poisoned. 

It’s difficult to see if we’re surrounded by people living in the breakers because we tell ourselves this is normal, everyone is going through the same thing. But should you be?

Spinning Through Toxic Cycles

A cycle I found myself going through when I felt exhausted from toxic environs was to take a break. When I was feeling stronger, better, I’d plunge back in only for the cycle to start churning again, leaving me exhausted. I’d tell myself I just needed to work harder, get through the next breaker and it would be better. But struggle doesn’t calm chaotic waters. Striving doesn’t dilute toxicity.

Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that being stuck means there’s no movement but being stuck can also be a loop, a cycle, spooling in and out of the same dramatic wave over and over again. Sometimes stuck is frenetic energy, lots of activity but no progression.

At times what’s required is grabbing someone’s hand and diving deep with them. Deeper into relationship, into intimacy, into vulnerability, into exposing the skeletons in our emotional closets, into exploring the unknown.

Other times it’s exploring our internal depths, our own poisonous natures, the inner spaces where we harbour anemones, enemies, our internal critic and discovering the mesmerising magic within. Learning to swim beyond the breakers churning inside us, finding the quiet calm inside where our breath swells, expels, where knowing dwells so that we can feel our connection to beyond the breakers in us, to beyond the breakers outside of us.

Laughter and Tears

When I arrived that evening, years ago, at my psychologist’s door, wind, rain and leaves swept in with me. In greeting I said something funny, I can’t remember what. The force of laughter threw her head back and laughter rang out. 

Later, as we settled in, bathed in the golden glow of a lamp, she shared the story of The Skeleton Woman with me. Her mellow voice contrasted with the whips of lightning and booming thunder outside. As she spoke, salty tears gently ran down my face. When the story concluded she said, “do you know that you always make me laugh before you allow yourself to cry?”

So, true to my nature, let me share another element of my childhood memory with you.

One morning, when we were thoroughly settled into our swimming beyond the breakers routine, between waves, my dad said to me, “darling, daddy’s going to let go of your hand for a moment because that last wave tried to steal daddy’s swimming trunks!” 

I’m not going to lie to you, in getting beyond the breakers you may lose a thing or two - including your swimming trunks. 

Sometimes we have to let go of what we don’t want to get what we do want. If you want to be in a relationship you’ll need to let go of being single, if you want nourishing relationships you’ll give up toxic ones, if you crave depth you’ll have to say goodbye to the surface for a while.

But remember that letting go also leaves us lighter, both hands-free to swim further and grab what we do want with both hands.

As Nemo’s friend Dory tells us, “just keep swimming.”

Thank you for reading. Have you experienced the tumultuous energy of living in the breakers? Have you broken through beyond the breakers? I’d love to hear about your experiences. Please share them in the comments below.

Today is Mother's Day in South Africa and other parts of the world.

I, myself, have chosen the childfree option. Not a perfect term but one that is growing in society’s vocabulary.

My choice means that my personal narrative is not reflected back to me in the Hallmark cards or popular cultural narrative.

The first time I had sex, I used 3 different types of contraception. Perhaps part of me was grateful for all the options available to me that weren’t available to millennia of women before me. 

There’s that calculation that someone sat down and did about how many people had to exist for you to be here. That may be true, but let’s not romanticise it too much. Many, many, many of those people had no other option than to be mothers. 

I believe it was during my final year of high school, in English class, that we were required to do an oral. I attended an all girls school and wanted to speak about something relevant to my audience. I chose to speak about the history of contraception and how the oral contraceptive pill works.

My brother was studying pharmacy and provided me with the pharmacological info and the physiological impacts. I included little known factoids like it can result in additional ear wax being produced.

My English teacher stood at the back of the class. Taking questions afterwards was an interesting experience.

In my early twenties, I saw a t-shirt that had a pop art cartoon character on it. She had her head in her hands and the thought bubble said. “OMG! I forgot to have children!” 

This delighted me. To me, it was an acknowledgement that there’s so much to do and be in the world and this t-shirt encapsulated those options for me.

Later in my twenties, a friend’s mother, who had four children, told me that each child was the result of a different contraceptive method that failed her. She loved her children but felt she didn’t have the choice of a different life option for herself.

My maternal grandmother was a midwife and had 10 children. My mother loved telling the story of how she was being wheeled into the delivery room and told her doctor that her mother thought she wasn’t ready to give birth. 

The doctor asked, “and how many children does your mother have?”  When my mother told him 10, the doctor started removing his gloves and sent her home with the comment “your mother has more experience than I’ll ever have!” Turned out my grandmother was right.

My mother felt that being a mother was the most important thing any woman could do. I feel differently.

There are many reasons why I chose not to have children. I will not share them here. Not for any other reason than I expect you to respect my decision. I will not participate in justifying it so that it may, or may not, make it a more digestible decision for you.

It frustrates me how people will insensitively barge into asking women why they don’t have children. When I witness this happening I wish my family and friends (who have walked a path with infertility) would just let the asker stew in their blunder. Instead, they often rescue them by providing more information like: I have many children in my life.

And infertility is just one of many obstacles and complexities that may be encountered in deciding whether children are an option or a possibility.

Just as I am more concerned about your capacity to love, rather than who you choose to love, I am more interested in your ability to respect and accept my choice than I am in fulfilling your need to know why. 

My choice is in no way a reflection of your choice. If you’ve chosen to have children, I respect that. I hope your choice makes you happy. I’m happy with mine.

We all come from mothers. Good, bad, beautiful, ugly, flawed mothers. Let’s be cognisant of the fact that not everyone’s experience, relationship and feelings are the same about their mothers or motherhood.

Just as there are many journeys to motherhood - biological birth, adoption, surrogacy, fostering, IVF and probably a host I’ve forgotten - there are many paths away from motherhood too.

On my more militant days, I want to wear a t-shirt that declares “MY choice to be childfree means I’m leaving a better world for YOUR children!”

I’m not for a moment suggesting that women shouldn’t share their struggles or ease with which they’ve journeyed to motherhood or away from it. I just think it should be their choice to share, or not.

If you have the perfect mother and the perfect relationship with her then, seriously, write a book because people need to know that. Again, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t wonderful mothers out there or that people don’t love them. I’m merely surmising that most of us have imperfect mothers and imperfect relationships with them. 

Of late it’s been difficult to believe, but in theory, we evolve. Part of this means that our mothers lived in a time, space and society that we can’t fully understand and was probably very different to our own lived experiences. 

Amongst other things, this can cause a generational disconnect. Just as we may not be able to fully grasp the life our mother lived, she may not be able to fully understand our perspective.

And as we ourselves age and, hopefully, evolve our perspective, relationship and judgement of our mothers may shift as well.

Many of us have chips, broken bits, from less than ideal familial circumstances. We may carry wounds because our parents are/were flawed and maybe didn’t have the emotional capacity that we needed and desired. Our inner child may cower when we encounter circumstances that mirror our trauma. 

Some of the most important personal work I have done is mothering my inner child. Whenever I experience an emotional tantrum or pain I welcome her onto my lap in a soft hug and let her let it all out. What does she need right now? How are we going to meet her needs now, and in the future? How are we going to make her feel safe, loved, valued and whole?

I reparent myself. I remother myself. I give to my inner child what she couldn’t get then. I often remember the wise words of Maya Angelou and I do better because I now know better. I now know how to parent myself. I have the tools. I have the capacity. 

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

― Maya Angelou

I have options, knowledge and skills that weren’t available to my mother. I chose to use them.

My husband and I have an IT business. A few years ago I started referring to myself and my age as Cathleen version 4.6 or now 5.2. Fifth decade, second year. 

Learning, growing, changing, not just ageing, upgrades my software - my operating system. But, no matter what version I’m on, my inner child is always going to be the core software or legacy code, that all the other versions are based on. If she’s not okay the software cannot be stable, cannot function optimally.

It doesn’t matter if I have the most tricked out hardware. If my operating system is sluggish, full of bugs and viruses I don't perform well. 

In a way, my sharing on this blog is an act of sharing my code, making it open source. 

Taking care of that internal little girl is my most important job. When she’s taken care I am more whole, less broken.

The broader concept of motherhood and the mothering archetype, to me, is about comfort, support, safety, nurturing, growth, learning, loving, sustenance, sustaining. We all have the potential to develop these qualities in ourselves. And when we do we become more loving individuals - to ourselves and others.

Whatever the state of your relationship is with your mother or your children, I hope that you have united the mother and inner child within you. The world, your world, my world will be a better place for it.

If what I share adds some benefit to your life or touches you please hit a like button, subscribe, share or comment.