when you are a mother without a child ::

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if  only you could see me now. 
i stand outside you; i am trembling. 
i curl my toes inside the earth.

so many of you mamas, you don't know how i live through you. i see your babies and i smile here in the dark. i read your stories. i blow kisses and wipe my eyes. i'm a thousand fierce kinds of tender, and will you let me hold her while you sleep? we will snuggle gently, and i will read:

:: 

oh my dearest love,

source: pinterest | petite biet

did you know you were a dream of mine? you, with your enchanting eyes and sunny smile, i named you Someday and tucked you into my heart. you're going to grow me up, aren't you, little one? teach me all the secrets of life? yes, i know you are.

we name all of our dreams Someday, don't we? we cradle them ~ you ~ in our arms and leave no place on your sweet baby head unkissed.

but maybe i put too much pressure on you, darling, to be for me what i needed to be for myself. i said i would let you live all free-and-free-spirit, but you know? maybe i entangled you with my need to be a free spirit of my own, to feel starlight against my face and dangle my feet off the sides of the moon.

i said i would teach you that grace is not found in black and white, but maybe i needed to learn that grace is not found in black and white. i said i would let you dance to your own rhythms in life, but maybe ... just maybe i needed to sway to rhythms of my own. i wanted you to be a beautiful life-artist, fully alive, chasing light with every fiber of your being. but maybe instead i needed to come to life, be a wild, with-abandon-beautiful artist flinging love into the sky, all light-chaser and dark-dweller.

and maybe this dream of you showed me how.

i thought i could heap upon the altar of you all the nurturing, nourishment, healing, wanting, and tenderness that is within me to give, and then i wouldn't be a lie. i could match your hunger to my fullness and redeem my own starved heart through yours so i wouldn't stand here filled to bursting, and aching with it. is that it? did i dream you into being, not for the sake of your own sacred living but instead, to heal myself? will you forgive me, love? i soak up your grace like a desperate garden and a story spills forth ...

:: once upon a time, a little girl lived within a speckled forest. she loved her forest;

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long fingers of warm honey sun slipped through towering pine and spilled across her feet. every day she explored her world to the rhythms of a mysterious song which always flowed around her.

her path had many stones. the pretty ones which sparkled like amber and amethyst, and the smooth ones that felt cool in her hand, she gathered into a special place. but she tripped on the rocks, the heavy jagged boulders that sat in her way. whenever she fell, the sun disappeared, the trees grew dark, and her skin became cold and etched with scars.

sometimes, she'd sit in the dark as her skin wept into the sand, and she'd pull out her secret collection of stones and hold them up to the sky. it was then she could see them blink with light kept from the sun, as though their hearts held promise of something beautiful to come. and as long as she could see the light, her soul stayed alive.

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maybe you were the beautiful one to come, holy little dream child, even the someday-dream of you. this letting go is hard, but i think you let go of me, first? and as i make my graveyard a garden i breathe to you these sacred words in a healing kind of promise:

We never cease to be with child. Those of us who have birthed, and those of us who never have. We may make spaces within us for all of humanity, for their dreams, their stories, their hurts, their lives. Do we not, over the years, line our lives with the stretchmarks of love?

The privilege of carrying a soul is always ours. We may choose to never let our wombs languish empty. Always we may open and welcome another person to find nourishment and comfort within the empty places we have made just for them. ~ ann voskamp

and, sweet angel baby, just so you know, i'm not sad anymore. i've learned to listen and i've learned to sing, for dark and hollow spaces have a song all their own. this love-lined womb of mine will birth life, again and again, even if you, dearest, never come to be.

i will keep pounding out my sacred warrioress path, and you will go the gentle way of dreams.

 :: And we of empty uteruses still swell, making ourselves homes. ~ Ann Voskamp ::

source: tumblr

:: this post is dedicated to my friend elora who is currently raising funds to adopt a motherless child. ::

linking up with sarah's practices of parenting: