after Christian Aldana Matcha makes morning. The birds visit the rosemary, & I tell them Lola will return in two days. I separate the years by its shape & I am surprised at my strength. For I swum to its lowest hues, still found my way to surface. The god to whom I pray was once a girl who broke stride during a race to help another. A girl who knew grit. The god to whom I pray was once alone, hands on blue leather nodding to a white coat and transducer. This god, no longer girl, is still here. Not only here, but knowing joy. I watch the trees sway to my laugh at four, sixteen, & twenty-seven. All these years it took to remind me I’m not alone. I hold his hand, & then mine. Tomorrow, I’ll wake & make matcha. Tomorrow, I’ll know I’ve a life well-lived.
Birthdays can be a complicated holiday. For my family, in particular, there are plenty of birthdays in the month of September. And much like my fellow daughters of an immigrant household, I have a mother with trauma that she does not realize she has and is unwilling to explore and heal.
The trauma I see in my mother is trauma I see in myself. With her, myself, and my sister is a deep maternal wound. My mother’s mother is a flippant woman, self-serving and non-committal. And when my mother sought comfort and presence, my Lola Baby was not there. An example: my mother, nineteen, brought her two-week-old infant to the hospital for an emergency surgery because of a hole in my diaphragm. My dad and his parents were there. My mother’s parents stayed home and prayed that I would survive. To them, these prayers were enough. But to my mother, she is again and again abandoned.
And even now, after undergoing cochlear surgery, my mother is longing for her parents. But they are elsewhere. They travelled to Portland, Oregon to be with my cousin and her family. To no fault of my cousin at all, but this does nothing to quell my mother’s deep sadness and loneliness.
And to compensate for this, my mother declares the entirety of September her own. It is a September month-long Libra season. It is for her and her alone. And I see this as her inner child acting out in the hopes that this tantrum will give her what she ultimately wants: her mother’s love and affection.
This September, Avery Campbell started a September Abundance Challenge. For day 5, he wrote: “brag about yourself in the mirror for five minutes.”
And while I couldn’t bring myself to do that physically in front of a mirror, I thought about how I can praise and be grateful to myself for even a short while. I wanted to write an ode to myself and learning to love myself in its entirety.
It helped that I did a freewrite the day before:
Matcha makes morning. The birds visit the rosemary & I tell them Lola will return in two days. I separate the years by its shape. I watch trees sway to my laugh at four, sixteen, & twenty-seven. All these years it took me to remind me I'm not alone. I hold his hand & then mine. Tomorrow, I'll wake & make matcha. Tomorrow, I'll know I've a life well-lived.
I knew in the moment I wrote this that it wasn’t complete. It didn’t have the personal emotion to make it universal. I write to be understood. I write to be heard. To be seen. This draft was not the complete picture.
But I am fond of it because it was born in the car beside my partner taking in the sights of a Sunday morning in San Francisco.
I separate the years by its shape & I am surprised at my strength. For I swum to its lowest hues, still found my way to surface. The god to whom I pray was once a girl who broke stride during a race to help another. A girl who knew grit. The god to whom I pray was once alone, hands on blue leather nodding to a white coat and transducer. This god, no longer girl, is still here. Not only here, but knowing joy. I watch the trees sway to my laugh at four, sixteen, & twenty-seven.
And it is to this girl, this god, that I praise. I look back upon myself as a child and adolescent, and I’m so, so proud of her. I hold her within me, and I tell her that she is safe. All of me that lived and grew are safe within the adult that is me now.
And on this day, my twenty-eighth birthday, I ask you look within yourself too. Have you sung your praises?
What makes you, you? How do you love yourself in the present?
How can you continue to love yourself?
Good post and 🥳 Happy Birthday! Seeing our life from a perspective of a scared, vulnerable child is scary. There will be times where we are largely unaware of how deeply our emotions dominate us. I dealt with this with a female friend of mine for a long time. And I also did, but with a different kind of pain. Recognizing and embracing her inner child, as a form of stillness, little by little soothed and relieved her difficult emotions. She forgot the roots of her pain, and is suffering because of it. She's okay now. She told me that embracing roots made her heal little by little.
Thanks for sharing. Your story shows the deepness of childhood.
happy birthday to you, Keana!!!!!!💜❤️🩹💘 i loved reading this. just wow. sending you hugs & praises!!!!!!🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 thank you for reminding me we are gods🧸