TGIF :: Postcard from Nosara on Forgiveness

Weekly drop #42 || Inward facing + an excerpt from my memoir

5:32 am. Unedited. That’s (full) moonlight.

“Hope this finds you filled with inspiration and peace. You seem to be inward facing lately and working on your big visions” a dear friend texted this week.

Indeed.

I am writing from where the jungle meets the ocean on the west coast of Costa Rica, immersed in wild and vocal nature (monkeys, birds, insects), teachings (esoteric, neurobiological, and heart-based), and friends (young, old, all seeking). This morning started pre-dawn on a moonlit corner of the shared cafe area (photo above). I am here for a range of reasons, one being an exploration of a deeper awareness that started last year in emerging from what I now refer to as “my breast cancer chapter.”

The teachings come in waves. A talk on the science underlying the Enneagram. A breakfast with my beloved friend Lama (Tsultrim Allione), exploring the tension of parenting while tending to our own needs (among other juicy topics). Two hours of precious dharma talk and meditations with Jack (Kornfield), another teacher and friend.

Yesterday his theme was Forgiveness—of others and self.

He noted:

“If you can forgive, be with what’s difficult, it becomes a doorway.”

And the nuance is that forgiveness of self is as—if not more important than—forgiving others. And in each case, the primary beneficiary, is actually oneself. We’re lighter, more present, more open when we forgive. Jack continued:

“Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past.”

The meditations sparked memories of perhaps the most poignant moment of my ClearLife journey, that time in my first year clear when I realized I’d been a pretty vacant mom while caught up in my various difficulties and dimming behaviors. I capture the experience in a chapter called “Oh Shit, the Kids” from a memoir I spent four years writing.¹ Below is a lengthy excerpt, mildly edited for brevity.

It is the story of reframing motherhood from dutiful and rote to textured and divine. It includes shame for not getting clear sooner. I plant seeds of forgiveness (that thankfully unfurl and blossom later). I let it in when my young son thanks me for the changes I made, for him, finally “breaking the family tree.”

My friend is right. This is an important “inward facing” time of sorts. And given the substance of this share today, a bit ironic that it feels fleeting, essential, and selfish, at once.

☆

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Context: 2018, Year One Clear

In that fourth month of clarity since the new year, everything slowed down like a movie with plenty of quiet long takes, opportunities to notice the little things—the time on the clock, which way the breeze blew, whether the napkins were folded properly. Frustrations with my shifting social life were waning as other reflections grew more meaningful, such as carefully considering how to connect with a loved one in need or how to best support the kids in adjusting to living split between two homes. These thoughts consumed my attention in guarded moments of silence and solitude. 

I took one day at a time. After years of leaning on alcohol’s reliable but short-term softening, fuzzing, fuck-it muscle tuning effects, navigating life without it is like going back to the age before the drinking started and trying to figure out the complexities of an adult existence with the capabilities of a teenager. Making things worse, the twin hounds of shame and regret nipped at my ankles incessantly. 

I even spoke out loud to myself at times: I can do this. I am clear. It’s going to be okay. Nothing is perfect. It’s supposed to be hard right now. Everything is impermanent. How did so many years as a mother slip by, my surfing clumsily on the surface layer of this experience? Haunted by assumptions and fears of what friends and acquaintances thought about me and never said, I imagined gossip about my over-commitment to my Silicon Valley tech career, comments like Well of course their marriage didn’t work out, and judgment about how frequently I traveled away from my sons and then stacked the weekends with social events and babysitters. Where were the kids in all this?

Amplifying my shame and embarrassment, failure was at times a given. The only way out was through. To find my footing and overcome my trepidations, I spent time with parents and kids who inspired me with the way they related to one another, including several with a teen boy involved (a chapter that was right around the corner for me, and I wanted to stay close through these landmine-filled years).

Families and parent-child relationships with a visible bond of love, trust, and fun fascinated me—families in which the kids confided in their parents and seemed to be developing and experimenting (as they should), but not going off the rails as I did as a teen with excessively risky evasion and rebellion.

“What is it that has allowed you to stay so close with your kids, even though the tumultuous teen years?” I asked my hairdresser, my cousins in LA, and a coworker. Listening to stories and perspectives from these parents, and sometimes their kids, about what made their relationships so close, real, pathways to a new way of stepping into this role started to reveal themselves, invite me into a new way of relating to my sons, embrace me. 

In my own childhood of optics over authenticity, it never felt safe to share the awkward stuff. My parents had recently separated, and my dad had moved out when one evening after dinner, dishes were cleaned and put away, Mom asked if she and I could sit down for a moment. I sensed she’d planned this conversation, which made me a bit nervous. Now, sitting side by side in chairs at the kitchen table, in a rare moment of true eye contact, she pinned me with her invasive gaze and asked, “So, you and your boyfriend. Are you two, well, making love?”

“Yes, we are.” I smiled, hoping she could share in some of my experience, mostly excitement, but a bit of overwhelm, too, as I had been discreet about this development. 

Instead of another question, a smile, or some other sign of warmth that I found myself hoping for in that moment, she exclaimed, “Oh Cecily, but what will people think?! Don’t tell anyone. You might get a reputation!” 

Suddenly my cautious hope for a connection between us, and frankly a little advice on some of the details, was sidelined as I found myself in a state of shame for making a wrong decision (Was it too soon?) and defensiveness (“Yeah, I haven’t told anyone yet… of course I’m treating this all with a sense of mature discretion!”). As a result of this type of exchange and the consequent secrecy, by the time I left home for college, my teen years were a clunky assembly of layered secrets and half-truths told to others (and myself). “I’m spending the night at Jenny’s house,” when in fact a group of us were going to party in the city, planning to be back to a friend’s house by dawn, when her parents woke up. Or “We’re going to go on a hike today” when in reality a group of ten or more of us were meeting at a trail head then spending the day under a large oak tree high on excellent local weed. 

The only people I went to for advice about the big life decisions of that era—such as whether I should go to the out of state college or the superior university a short drive from home, get a credit card, keep or sell my car before moving—were fellow seventeen-year-olds who were smoking a significant amount of pot. Even then, I promised myself that there was no way my kids would be declined a request for some loving candor and occasional advice from their mom.

As the weeks passed, I deepened my awareness around both my failings and my future role as a mother. I did my best to be more vulnerable and present with my sons. It was awkward and I made mistakes (assuming they were mature enough for certain movies, oversharing about dating decisions, for example), but I was real with them and I allowed them the space to be completely open and honest with me too.

My goal was to open our flow of communication so it was clear the three of us could talk about anything. 

One evening during this time, starting to lose my patience with the daily routine and the boys’ lack of pitching in with chores around the house, the helpful-happy-mom-façade cracked. There was homework to do, a dinner mess to clear, laundry to get out of the dark basement, a bathroom to put back together after all three of us had bathed, and a growing pile of sports gear, jackets, and shoes piled at the front door (which meant in our living space, given our tiny cottage).

“Kids, can you please help out? Mom can’t do this all by herself.”

Neither of them looked up from their games. Leaning against the door jamb of the bathroom, my knees slowly bent, allowing my body to crumple into a ball on the floor.

Then tears. 

Big eyes. Silence. They seemed shocked, maybe even a little scared to see their mom cry. Soon they were both at my side, petting me, like I pet them when they are sad.

“I could just use a little more help around here sometimes. It’s a lot for just me. Can you pitch in a bit?” 

It was clear that my vulnerability startled them, but it also seemed to seed a step in our growing a bit closer, for they saw that moms also have feelings and need a little support sometimes. They became a lot more helpful around the house after that.

These openings of vulnerability on my part gave them permission to do the same. Soon conversations included more intimate revelations, confessions about fears of the dark, nervousness before speaking in front of a group at school, awkward moments around friends’ older siblings, and other details that paved the way for a new intimacy between us. Sadly, I was aware that I’d missed out on many years of this kind of connection, bond, in getting to this more present and less calculated version of myself.

2 years later, 2020, while SiP. Photo credit: Amy Perl Photography

Most important, priorities were rejiggered entirely. The kids became, with certainty and mutual awareness, the center of my life. They were going to be at home for only so long, and I had them just half the time, so our time was precious, and I finally started treating it as such. The home office got a lot more use as I commuted less, as I let my employer adapt, eventually realizing I was almost as impactful in my role by spending one day in the office as opposed to four or five. There were no more regular babysitters, and we found ways to enjoy real time together in the evenings—games, art, the occasional movie on a computer monitor propped up on the coffee table (I didn’t have a TV in our little cottage on the hill). Together, we allowed space for silly and fun things, like breakfast for dinner and five-day-long Monopoly games that took up the only table surface in the cottage for an entire week. We watched half a dozen Pixar and family Disney movies together, start to finish, without the distraction of intermittent chores or phones, carving out a few minutes toward the end or during breakfast the next day to talk about the storylines and characters, what we noticed, why it mattered, the lesson, and then examples of how similar storylines might be found in our own lives. 

I adjusted my meetings schedule so I could always walk to my youngest’s school to pick him up, on the way home, taking our time to stop and explore the nooks and crannies of our street, the things only kids see, like ant hills and lizard tunnels, personalized license plates and dropped coins, and answer the beautiful questions kids ask: “Does the earth ever spin the other way?” and “Did you like art when you were a kid, like Xander?” and “Do you like to work, Mom, or do you work because you have to, like Sarah’s mom?” 

Time with my sons shifted from taking care of them to spending time and growing with them. Instead of putting breakfast in front of them and retreating to the bathroom to get ready for work, I did my best to make sure I was mostly ready earlier so we could together sit and eat or chat about silly things—why the Pop-Tart frosting is so inconsistent, why one likes fruit and hates vegetables and the other prefers the opposite. I told them each their birth story in incredible detail, including how I felt throughout my pregnancies and what it was like to meet them for the first time. I let them stay up late to go through an old trunk of family history, laying their findings on the floor next to our tiny but potent heater. 

We engaged in lengthy bedtime meditations or “body scans” to lull us to sleep with physical sensations of gratitude or light in our hearts, sometimes visualizing healing for minor injuries collected through their days as active boys (or in my case, invisible pains I’d collected since my own childhood). 

In easing the white knuckles of scheduling and control that had characterized my first decade of motherhood, a spaciousness and sweetness emerged that allowed for a new kind of love to blossom among us. My sons had their own rhythm, and together we settled into a way of living together that had a harmony about it, an ease, and plenty of joy in between school, work, chores, and other daily routines. I let myself notice the details—that Tenzin preferred a ten-minute snooze before waking while Xander was a get-up-and-go kind of guy, allowing me to wake them in a sequence that allowed their days to open with ease. They knew they were heard, or not, the same way we do as adults. 

Putting a task down and listening with what I think of as “full body eye contact” invited the other to keep sharing, keep populating the safe space between us with bits of himself that could then seed a deeper share later, or provide a bit of familiar shelter when an issue related came up, even months later. The calmer, less controlled time together meant really deep and even more extremely silly conversations during card games, extended bath times, or long drives to the mountains. And often, we just let each other be. Quiet spaces, still spaces, safe spaces—they nourished us.

My fears of unscheduled time together waned, and in fact, became intentional, a regular refuge in which one or the other could seed a moment with their own ideas, questions, revelations. This mom went from just there to present, anxious to patient, filling time to together is enough. 

In slowing down with our loved ones, being there for them in new ways, an evolution that, in my case, only followed slowing down myself and allowing myself to be there for me, tensions dissolved, yelling stopped altogether, doors didn’t slam, and there were no more angry tears. We still cross each other from time to time, and I am a firm parent about rules around their safety, health, and wellbeing, but gradually, a tense mom dragging around a heavy bundle of dependencies, secrets, and insecurities started evolving into a steady mom, a present mom, an open mom. I was becoming a mom who was herself learning how to love without a tight grip, live without tedious control mechanisms throughout my days, allowing for the kids to unfold at their own pace too. After years of regular battles, especially between my oldest and me, when I’d need to establish firmly that I am the boss, my temper eased and his respect for me grew. The terrain among the three of us smoothed out in a way that let us move forward with more fluidity and less fear of what bumps we’d be overcoming next.

This opening into a new state of motherhood, and later relationships altogether, has been the single greatest outcome of living clear. My only regret is not making these changes sooner.

Memory has a way of seducing us into a story we wish were true or framing us as a victim with no punishable ownership of our outcome. A child of a master spin doctor, incessant self-questioning has sparked my wonder of whether the entirety of 2018 was imagined, dreamed, concocted. Reminding myself that I was crystal-clear sober throughout has helped me build more life weight on the foundation of that time.

Years later, as Tenzin and I walked in the towering woods near our new home, a bigger retreat-like house up in the forest above town, just after his tenth birthday, we came upon a butterfly, a symbol we’d together determined over the years was a way my mom said hi to us from time to time.

“Mom, look, Januni² is here.” 

“She sure is.” I opened my hand upward beneath the space in which the butterfly danced, a gesture of holding without touching or scaring her. “Hi, Mom.”

We walked a few steps as I tried to imagine her with us, wishing I had memories of walking in nature with her as a kid. We didn’t really do that.

“She’d be so proud of you, Tenzin,” I said, “particularly of how gentle you are with nature, and the way you relate to dogs. She loved dogs. Cats, too, actually.” 

“Thanks, Mom,” he said. “I’m happy you broke the chain. I think she’d be proud of you too.” 

Perplexed, I paused and looked down at his open face absent of any tension or pinches, awash in the genuine conviction of a child for a point I didn’t yet understand.

“What chain, honey?” 

“You broke the family tree, Mom. You changed the family chain of drinking, so none of us after you will have to do that.” 

I stood there, feet planted on the soft earth, feeling the gentle breath of the forest around us. I looked down at him, searching his face for some emotion, question, relief, but saw nothing other than the perfect simplicity of a child sharing something they’ve noticed in a way that only kids can.

“I guess I did.” I took a slow, long breath and cupped my hand at the base of his head, right where his soft hair hit his neck and gave him a long blink, our own gesture of “thank you.” Then, we kept walking.

☆

Epilogue… I continue to be humbled by the journey of motherhood. I make (a lot of) mistakes. I struggle to balance tending to my desires and needs with those of my sons. Knowing how tightly to hold them, now teenagers, is the current exploration. Yet I love the messiness and honor it now more than I did when I wrote this story. And I remember the beauty lies in the imperfections, everywhere.

Guiones Beach

“The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

-Wendell Berry

Love. ❤️

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Miscellaneous….

Thank you… for your feedback, engagement, comments, and notes, all appreciated drops of fuel as I continue this work. And an extra thanks to you subscribers! 🙏🏼

Sangha Saturdays… The next in-person version will be Saturday February 24th at 9am PT in Mill Valley, CA. RSVPs required. The next Zoom version is March 9th at 9am PT (missing February due to travel conflicts). If you’d like to join either, please indicate your interest here and you’ll be added to the (anonymous) calendar invitations. 📆

On Perseverance… I met a wildly successful contemporary author this week. More than a dozen agents rejected her work before the right one picked it up and sold it as-is. A reminder to keep going for the obstacle-facers among us :) ⚡️

Blue Spirit… is the name of the retreat center from where I write. I hope to offer The Eight Awarenesses here someday. 🎋

1. It is printed and bound for a few dear ones, but not “published” as I work on the “how to” version of ClearLife (The Eight Awarenesses) I will be offering first.

2. The name we use for my late mom, their grandmother.