Weather the Storm

by Gloria Gonzalez

I’m writing to you to apologize.  How could I know when you were born that I would do the one thing I swore I’d never do?  Allow these dark storm clouds to crash through your childhood as they did mine.  I thought I could protect you from it.  I thought we could only go out on blue sky days when the sun, strong and strident, could dry up any potential rain.  How foolish and naive I was to think I had that kind of control over myself or you or the weather or anything.  I’ve grown up so much in these last ten years since you were born, and I desperately want you to know how sorry I am for my inability to shield you from the storms.

Not that apologies are good for much.  My words can’t change anything.  I love words, love to hear them whispered in my ear, love to shout them from mountain tops, love to swat them back and forth like tennis balls in a debate.  Words are powerful.  They can alter our perception of reality if we let them, but ultimately they are useless.  Words, like our feeble human minds, cannot contain the vastness of the human experience.  Our soul cannot be expressed in words.  And so, I realize the irony in using them to try to communicate to you the profound regret in my chest when I think of what you’ve endured these past ten years.

Please don’t misunderstand.  I never hit you, never spanked you, never shouted hateful things at you.  From the outside I look like an excellent mother, but you and I know better.  We know about the rumble of thunder in the distance.  We can feel the barometer drop in our blood.  Our cells register the dark clouds creeping in before our eyes sense the darkness overhead.  It is a wordless knowing.  When we try to speak of it the words seem to dissolve in our mouths before they are formed.  How do you speak of something no one really talks about?  We don’t.  Our eyes say everything.  Your eyes flood with fear and mine with preemptive regret as we brace ourselves for the next downpour.

You may be wondering how I know so well what you’re experiencing.  It’s simple really.  Where do you think I learned how to storm in, flood a room with untamed rage, and leave everyone in it soaked and shivering?  My father, of course.

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Growing up a mile off of Galveston Bay, in the sweltering armpit of the southern United States, you could say I know hurricanes well.  

And it wasn’t because I would sit on the bumper of my dad’s tan Chevy Malibu parked in the garage and watch them roll in.  I remember my mom would urge me to come in, but I loved the electric charge I felt when the winds picked up and tossed the tops of the trees around like dancers.  The wind seemed to lead with such power and confidence and the trees followed so gracefully.  Watching their dance, I always identified most with the wind – forceful and strong – but oh how I hoped to find someone someday who could make me feel like the trees.

And it wasn’t because I slept with one in my childhood.  I was five years old when Hurricane Alicia blew through our small town, knocking out our electricity for days.  The heat and humidity were suffocating.  My mom gathered all five of her children into the living room where we slept in our underwear.  With the window open, our living room was the only place in the house to get a cross breeze.  Alicia curled her thick air around us that night and breathed us to sleep.

No, I know hurricanes intimately because my father was one.  I never knew what cluster of thunderstorms formed in his childhood to create the swirling storm that was my father.  Like Alicia – he was a category 3 hurricane.  He wasn’t violent and devastating enough to be a category 5.  We all recovered from our childhood just as our small city recovered from Alicia.  Both caused significant destruction and altered our landscape, and my siblings and I still talk about them both to this day, but we are alive, recovered, and no one we know was killed.  

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Do you know how rain begins?  It begins when water vapor attaches to a speck in the atmosphere  – could be dust or ash.  It condenses, naturally, because it’s cold up there.  It’s so cold that it often freezes, forming tiny crystals.  If these crystals get heavy enough, they fall to earth.  During the descent, if the air remains cold enough (32 degrees F or colder), we get snow.  But, here in Texas we usually get rain.

My mom grew up in Texas.  Born and raised.  With her snow-white skin, blonde hair, and ice-blue eyes, you could say she is as Texan as they come.  But, she is Texan by birth and looks alone.  She is not the hot-blooded, fiery tempered, wild woman of the west that the stereotypes might lead you to believe.

I do remember a time when my mom allowed her rage to ravage our home as well.  My older sister got the worst of it.  The oldest child always does.  It takes parents a little while to figure things out.  By the time I was in elementary, my mom had learned that if both my parents stormed uncontrollably, we would all drown.  

My mom learned to cool her atmospheric temperatures so that her precipitation fell as snow.  She was caring and loving and supportive, but only up to 32 degrees Fahrenheit.  After that she would freeze, shut down.

I remember once, I looked over at her during one of my father’s tantrums.  She looked in my direction, our eyes met, but she did not see me.  There was no wordless exchange, and it felt like abandonment to me.  She possessed inside herself a cellar where she could escape to during his storms, but she forgot to take us with her.  In her shelter, she couldn’t see the violent rotating column of fear swirling inside my soul.  I guess it makes sense.  The dry-cool of her cellar was the perfect place to maintain her low temperature.  She had to do it, you see.  She had to snow, or the house would flood.  

You question things like I do.  So, I know you’re asking yourself, Why didn’t she just take you kids and leave?  She didn’t have to stay.

It’s true.  And, quite honestly I begged her many times to do just that.  But, she couldn’t.  Fear, I believe, was the culprit.  It usually is.  I spent most of my life angry at my parents for the damage they caused.  But, then I had you.  

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I lived my life under the heavy gray clouds of a tropical depression.  In those clouds I held all the pain, the terror, the anxiety, the distrust.  To most people, anxiety and depression don’t sound like comforting things at all.  But, when it is all you know, when it is more reliable than anything else in your life, anxiety and depression can feel full, warm, and yes, comforting.  It became my security blanket.  Always with me.  I fell asleep every night with it wrapped around me.  Woke up every morning to its warmth.  I felt regulated under this cloudy blanket.  I felt safe.

Ten years I tried to get pregnant.  Ten years of unexplained infertility.  Ten years of my body proving to me, month after month, that there was something seriously broken in me.  My depression increased rapidly.  No amount of medicine could cure this.  During the darkest days, I was a raging Category 5 hurricane, ready to take my own life and end all the suffering.   

But life always finds a way, doesn’t it?  You were born a hot-fiery sun.  You burned with such energy!  You were beautiful.  Practically perfect.  I know, I know.  Every mother says that.  But, if you knew how many people stopped me to admire you as a baby.  They could see it – the light you brought into this world.  Everyone could.  My eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness of cloudy days and I was not ready for your blinding intensity.  It took me a while to get used to you.  I was afraid you’d burn away my blanket of clouds, leaving only smoke and ashes.  Then who would I be?  How would I protect myself?  I clung to my anxiety and depression all the more.  

Cause and effect make the world go ‘round.  It was inevitable, really – basic science.  That your intense heat and the moisture in my clouds would create the exact conditions of my childhood.  That the thing I tried hardest to protect against would come to pass.  

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Your baby brother was born a blue sky.  Calm and quiet.  Serene.  Thank God.  A blue sky is the only thing big and beautiful enough to stand next to the sun.  My heart had never been so happy.  Look at what my body helped bring into this world!  The perfect sky.  Those early days with the both of you were the most beautiful days of my life.  I made visitors uncomfortable with my tears of joy.  How could I not weep at the beauty?  We were a beautiful day.  We were the calm before the storm.

You are so bright, so intelligent, so observant.  Nothing, and I mean nothing gets past you.  You saw it right away.  You saw how people’s eyes averted from your intensity and shifted to the soft blue of your brother.  Even mine.  This burned you.  You raged with jealousy over it.  You had been the center of my universe and now my attention was on your brother.  

Looking back now, it makes sense that you were jealous and simply acting out as any 3 year old would, but when I saw you hit your baby brother with such force, my thunder shook the house.  Your heat, my humidity.  We had ourselves a perfect storm.  Your brother hid in the background, and waited for it to pass, waited to be seen and noticed again.  He was there all along, of course, but neither of us could see him.  We were too busy reacting to each other.  

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And react we did!  Over and over and over we stormed.  Where had my perfect sky gone?  My tears of joy were replaced by tears of pain and fear.  What had I created?  How could I make this stop?  I read every article.  I sought every expert’s advice.  I asked everyone I knew.  How are you doing this parenting thing?  How are you not drowning?  

I was drowning.  You were drowning.  We were all drowning.  Nothing motivates you more than watching your children drown.

Like my mother, I learned to control myself.  God knows all my attempts at controlling you were failing miserably.  But, I didn’t want to freeze you out by turning cold and shutting down.  I had to find a better way.  So, I learned to sit through the storms.  I could no longer watch from the shelter of my garage.  I had to go out in it and let it drench me.  I did this by learning to meditate.  I learned to be aware of my rising emotions.  I learned to breathe through them.  I learned to pause before speaking.  I learned to be honest about my feelings and speak them instead of reacting.  This was the beginning of my healing.  As I began to heal myself, our relationship naturally healed.  My clouds started to dissipate.  Your sunlight was visible again.  We could enjoy the clear blue of your brother again.

I don’t want to breeze past this step of healing.  This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.  Harder than giving birth to you, and your birth lasted 20 hours without an epidural.  Let me be clear, I’d give birth 100 times if it meant I could avoid facing my own thoughts, fears, and emotions.  Face a hurricane?  Sure!  Wade through flooding waters?  No problem!  Face myself?  Hell no!

But, I did it.  I did it for you.  I did it for your brother.  I did it for me.  I did it for your father.  I do it daily.  It is a constant practice.  I’m getting better at it, but you should know it never gets easy.  My knee-jerk reaction is always to hide under my cloudy blanket, turn away from my thoughts, my feelings, my fears. Turn away from you.  Now, though, I try to remember the storms and the flooding and the drowning and I stop myself.  I sit.  I breathe.  I pause.  I watch them pass and dissipate.  I am learning that my job as your mother is not to shield you from the storms, but to teach you how to weather them. We talk about the storms now.  You and I.

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What I want you to know is this:  My parents did the best they could, and I am doing the best I can.  But, I always want to do better.  Isn’t that every parent’s goal?  To try to do a little better than our parents did for us?  I’ll save you the trouble, in case you ever decide to have children of your own.  I’m not certain there is such a thing as “better”.  Quite honestly, what I see all parents doing is just trying to find the most important thing they felt was lacking in their childhood and then work tirelessly to make sure their children don’t also lack that thing.

My parents put their heads down and trudged through the storms of my childhood with a singular focus – they tried their best to give us what they never got.  And that is my hope for you, my son.  That if you choose to have children one day, that you will do your best – just as I did for you and my parents did for me.  That you will identify the one thing you felt you most lacked in your childhood and work tirelessly to give that to your children.  That you will forgive me, as I have forgiven my parents.  If you’re angry at me now, you have every right to be.  I expect it will last a long time.  And then one day, just as sure as the weather changes, you will feel differently.

Anything worthwhile that I’ve accomplished in life, I’ve accomplished by taking baby steps. I invite you to join me on this journey, one baby step at a time.

In the early months of 2020, the pandemic hit and suddenly I had a lot of time on my hands. I thought that if I got my certification to teach meditation it would legitimize all the practice I’d been doing off and on since I was 19.

On a whim, I signed up for the course. Suddenly, I was meditating more consistently and more purposefully than ever before. Just in time, too. I was going to need the skills I learned in meditation to face what came next.

This photo was taken just days before my panic attacks began. I had already struggled with anxiety, depression, 10 years of infertility, natural childbirth, becoming a stay-at-home mom, codependency, divorce, becoming a single-working mom, and feelings of unworthiness. But, nothing could have prepared me for the panic.

I describe my panic attacks as a living nightmare. Death felt close, certain, and inevitable. Death felt like a bully. At the most random times, Death would come to me and ask me if I was ready. Torturing me. Teasing me. I’ve been dealing with bullies my whole life. First, in my childhood home. Later, in my own head. I knew how to stand up to a bully. I knew how to fight back. I wasn’t ready to die and death wasn’t going to win.

Except… fighting back is EXHAUSTING. I’d been doing it my whole life and I was tired of fighting. Meditation taught me to sit with discomfort, so instead of resisting and fighting Death, I sat with it. One sleepless night, after hours of a heartrate in excess of 100 beats per minute, I was completely spent. I realized I had lived a good life and had no regrets. My children knew I loved them and they had family that could take care of them. So, I sat there in the dark, observed my fear around Death, and surrendered. This was the beginning of my transformation.

Meditation, like anything else in life, can be as simple or as complex as we want to make it. Let’s keep it simple (for now). I like to say it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1) Sit.

2) Observe.

3) Surrender.

But, of course, as we look more closely at each step things get more complex quickly. Questions start to arise immediately. “Why do I need to do this? How do I sit? How long? What do I do with my hands? Am I supposed to count my breaths?” Then, the judgments join in. “I can’t focus! I don’t think I’m doing it right. Meditation is not for me.”

Each step could be a book in and of itself, but here’s the most important bits.

1) Sit.

Be gentle with yourself when starting something new. Find a comfortable sitting position. A chair, a meditation stool, a meditation cushion, or just sit flat on the floor. Sitting up with a straight spine is ideal. It is normal for things to feel a little uncomfortable at first, but it’s important to be comfortable enough to want to come back to meditation. Play around with different positions and see which one feels best to you.

If sitting for meditation feels like torture, try sitting for just one breath. “One conscious breath is a meditation,” Eckhart Tolle so wisely said. If you can sit for longer, go for it, but most importantly, we don’t want to force. Gentle is the way.

There are many ways you can position your hands. Just let them rest for now in a position that feels good to you. Hand position is not that critical.

Don’t worry about counting or controlling your breath for now. Just breathe normally. We can experiment with breath later.

2) Observe.

Notice your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations without judgment, criticism, or the desire to control.

Pull back emotionally, and try to oberve like a scientist what is happening inside you.

If your attention is pulled away by worries, to-do lists, or relationship problems just notice and gently bring your attention back to you and what is happening on the inside.

Observe without judgment, gently return your attention when it wanders.

3) Surrender.

Likely, what comes up in meditation won’t feel good at first. It is why so many people dislike sitting in silence with their own thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. It isn’t meant to necessarily feel like bliss, although that is often the expectation most people have when beginning meditation. (Bliss is possible through meditation, but I’ll discuss bliss and joy in another post.) Peace comes when we surrender. So for now, let’s learn how to surrender to the discomfort.

When discomfort arises we resist it with our bodies, hearts, and minds. We tighten our muscles, we tighten our mental resolve to push through it, and we close our hearts to it by wishing it away. Surrendering is learning how to relax, allow, and love what is.

Start by physically relaxing the body. I like to start with my shoulders and jaw. It helps me to visualize my muscles melting like butter.

When our muscles loosen, it is like our mind relunctantly agrees to allow it to exist. This is a huge step, and usually about as far as anyone gets. The next step is the most difficult.

When we open our heart to the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that cause us discomfort and pain, when we love what is*, that is when we surrender. To create space for this discomfort we need to see that the pain and discomfort makes sense, that it is here for a reason, and it just wants to be seen, acknowledged, felt, and heard. When we do this our heart naturally opens. This is where we find peace.

*I am NOT advocating that we stay in an unhappy, unhealthy, or abusive relationship or work environment. This is referring to the mental suffering we cause ourselves by resisting reality. What happens on the inside of us is our responsibility. What happens on the outside of us involves others and that complicates everything. Heathy boundaries are game changers.

When we were small someone taught us to take care of our teeth, but when did someone teach us how to take care of our minds? I liken brushing our teeth to meditating. It is a small, but important practice we can put in place to help maintain our health. Best of all, we can do it all by ourselves.

Anytime you start to worry about how to do meditation, just ask yourself, how do I brush my teeth? Someone taught you the basics when you were little and you’ve kind of taken it from there. Some people brush starting with their back molars. Some start with their front top teeth. Some people brush their tongue. You might sing a song while you brush to make sure you brush long enough. Regardless of how you brush, it is likely that you’ve made it your own. Do the same with meditation. Get the basics (see blog post Demystifying Meditation), and then make it your own.

We never mention brushing our teeth as an item on our to-do list because it is so embedded in our routines. When we’re complaining about our busy, stressful lives we never begin like this, “Omg, I’ve had such a stressful day! You won’t believe how busy I’ve been. First thing this morning I had to brush my teeth, then the baby started crying and I had to clean her up because she had an explosive diaper…” This can apply to meditation too. If it becomes just part of your routine, it won’t feel like another to-do.

You can spare 5 minutes each morning to sit, observe, surrender or even to just breathe. Play a relaxing tune that lasts 3-5 minutes. When the song is up, so is your meditation. Make it a routine. If we only brushed our teeth when we got cavities, it wouldn’t really be very effective, would it? The same goes for meditation. If we meditate only when things are bad, we’ve missed the whole point of meditating.

Make your mental hygiene as important as your dental hygiene. Keep it simple, keep it short, but keep it in the routine.

When we were born, we were natural scientists. Curious and ready to explore! We wanted to touch and try everything! Until society told us over and over and over again in a million different ways, “No. Don’t! Do this like me.” Humans want so badly to save our young from the struggles and pain of living in a dangerous world by teaching them what to do or not to. What to avoid or not avoid. “Just listen to me and I’ll save you a lot of trouble.”

I’m guilty of doing this to my children. Especially my first born. After nearly 10 years of infertility I didn’t want ANYthing to happen to my baby. I tried to protect him from everything. But, in reality I was trying to protect myself from watching him suffer.

I’m not sure there is any one thing that is as pervasive and as detrimental to our evolution as this one very human act that is done out of love. What this actually does is it pulls us away from ourselves. It takes us out of our bodies, our passion, our focus, our intentions, our exploration and it makes us focus on what other people want from us.

I’m beginning to believe that most of the suffering I’ve endured in my life has been because society successfully pulled me away from myself.

A big part of my meditation journey has been unlearning this habit of looking outside myself and remembering how to listen on the inside. How did I unlearn and remember? I experimented, just like a curious child. I tried anything I felt pulled towards and observed my mind, body, and spirit’s reactions. Did it feel good? Did it feel bad? If I change this one variable, will it make it feel differently? Do I want to keep experimenting with this? Is this experiment so painful that I need to move away from it all together to protect my health? Why am I feeling this way? Why do I always come back to this story? What if I try this instead? What would happen if I tried this?

Giving myself permission to experiment and to not beat myself up if my experiment failed is how I returned to my true nature. My emotional development now had the room it needed to continue its stunted growth.

I’m inviting you to give yourself the same permission and to apply it to everything you do. Apply it to meditation, yes, but also apply it to your job, your sleep, your diet, your exercise routines, your relationships, your thoughts. You are a natural scientist. This is your life. Experiment!

I love meditation. I love coming to my mat first thing in the morning, sitting in the dark, lighting some candles and incense, wrapping myself in a warm blanket and settling into the silence. It is such a comfort for me. It is one of my favorite ways to feel that invisble energy that flows through all living things. It connects to me to everything and most importantly it connects me to my unique vibration, to me.

It’s important for me to explicity state that while it is one of my favorite ways to feel this connection to myself and to everything around me, meditation is just one of the many tools we can use to feel this. I don’t want to give the impression that meditation is the “only” way or the “best” way towards healing and connection. Just as we would not want to depend solely on one person to meet all our needs, we also don’t want to expect one tool to be able to do all the jobs.

So, what are some other useful tools we can use? To answer that question ask yourself, “What leaves me feeling lighter, energized, and connected?” It may not always feel pleasurable in the moment (like running) but what leaves you feeling alive?

I’ve found that for me things that include movement, expression, rest, and connection make me feel the most alive. Take a look at the activities below and ask yourself which ones appeal most to you? How often are you making time for them in your life?

Our bodies need movement. What movement(s) do you prefer?

Dancing, walking, running, swimming, biking, playing a sport?

Our hearts need to express themselves. Which form of expression(s) do you prefer?

Writing, painting, speaking, singing, building, sewing, knitting, gardening?

Our minds and bodies need rest and care. Which form(s) do like to indulge in?

Napping, hot baths, massage, cuddling, cooking/baking?

Our hearts and souls need healing and connection. Where do you find it?

Meditation, chanting, friends/family, talk therapy, group therapy, reading, church, retreats, nature?

Let’s keep as many of these tools in our tool bag as we can. The more opportunities we have to feel alive, energized, and connected the better!

We are born light.

What do I mean by that?

We don’t weigh much at birth, so we are light to carry. We are physically light.

We are pure and unconditioned and so our inner light shines through. We are a light in this world.

But, that is not what I mean.

We are born to carry, and what we carry is light when we are born. However, we soon begin to carry whatever the family we are born into decides to put into our containers. For as long as we are able to remember, the things that we’ve been carrying have always been with us. It feels normal, natural.

Awakening to the realization that we did not choose the things in our containers, that people put thoughts, ideas, stories, and traumas into our containers before we were old enough to walk away or say, “No, thank you,” is a little discombobulating.

Learning to sort through what is in there, getting rid of what no longer serves us, and learning what we do want in our containers is a life-long journey. Just as our homes need regular cleaning and de-cluttering, so do our minds.

Meditation is the practice of listening on the inside, so that when we look inside our containers and ask ourselves the famous Marie Kondo question, “Does it spark joy?” we can hear the answer.

What do you carry? What do you want to let go of? What do you want to add?

I learned to make friends with the anxious part of me. Anxiety and I are friends now. She visits from time to time and we chat. I listen. Like a good friend, I reassure her that she is loved and wanted and that there is nothing wrong with her. I tell her that I know how much she cares. This usually soothes her and then she’s takes her leave. Probably to go curl up on the couch with her cats, watch her favorite rom-com, and take a much needed nap.

Peace and I, on the other hand, have a much more complicated relationship. I’m not sure Peace can really be depended upon and trusted, ya know? She seems so flighty and inconsistent. Here one moment, gone the next. I’d like her to stay around a little longer, have a nice long chat with me, like she wants to be here. Peace never seems to feel completely at home here with me. I suppose I could try to create a more inviting space for Peace to rest in when visiting. And, I suppose another option would be for me to understand that I cannot cling to Peace anymore than I can cling to Love. They are free spirits. I suppose I could learn to appreciate it when Peace is present, knowing that just like Anxiety, it won’t stick around for long.

I am the mother of two boys who have very different ways of being in the world. My older son lives in his inner world of thoughts and feelings and my younger son lives in the outer world of the body and sensations. As their mother, I want to see them both happy and getting their needs met. I also want to meet my own needs and tend to my own happiness. Oftentimes, it feels as if trying to meet everyone’s needs and making everyone happy is just impossible.

Usually, when I find myself feeling pulled in three different directions, I take a deep breath, and remind everyone that my priority is getting all of our needs met. I also remind everyone that there is enough time in the day for everyone to get a turn doing what makes us happy. Then, I usually offer a plan for the day. My sons will chime in with suggestions or changes, and I listen. I adjust when I can and explain when I can’t. It isn’t perfect. My older son is less likely to budge or compromise and my younger son and I are, so it makes for things being unbalanced sometimes. It’s messy, but it is life and we are learning.

What I’ve found is that all of this happens inside of me too. I have a little family inside me that pulls me in at least three different directions. These different parts of me have different (sometimes opposing) needs and it is maddening trying to meet them all. But, when I take a deep breath and remind myself that just like with my external family, my internal family can find a compromise or take turns, it relaxes me and I feel capable of meeting everyone’s needs to the best of my ability.

Let me give you a tangible example. There is a part of me that is afraid to get into another relationship. I like my alone time and the security that comes with not having to depend on another human (who always seem to let me down). I call this part The Teenager. She craves independence.

Then, there is the part of me that doesn’t want to spend my life alone. There is something truly magical about sharing simple moments with another human that you just can’t get when you’re alone. I call her The Child. She doesn’t want to be alone. She needs others for her survival.

Then, there is the part of me that wants both of The Teenager and The Child to get their needs met. She doesn’t like this chaotic feeling of opposing wants and needs. She feels called to solve the problem. I call her The Parent. She can see the bigger picture, she loves everyone, and sometimes she is confused as to how to make everyone happy.

What I’ve realized is that just as my older son will sometimes dominate and not compromise when we come to an impasse in my external family, so too will The Teenager in my internal family. I’m currently working on finding more balance between all the parts, both externally and internally. Little by little, I’m teaching my external and internal family to be patient. Everyone is learning to trust that they won’t be forgotten or neglected and that everyone will get a turn. It is extremely healing.

Now, who is the one observing all of this that is happening inside of me? That is who I find when I meditate. I call her The Observer. She is consciousness. She is awareness. She is presence. She is attention. She is love.