Time is never time at all You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth And our lives are forever changed We will never be the same

Believe in me, as I believe in you, tonight!  Ahhhh Smashing Pumpkins are totally part of my age 15 wildly emotional angsty magical soundtrack.  In fact, I'm listening to the 90's station on Pandora and it's like a time machine.  They're playing Gin Blossoms now, also firmly imprinted in my heart and mind.  

Isn't it funny how everyone has fond recollections of the music from their youth, claiming that "they just don't make music like that anymore"?  I have a theory.  I think because our emotions are so heightened, we are becoming aware and our hormones are in full bloom, and we are experiencing so many new and wonderful things, that the songs we associate with that time of life resonate more deeply with us.  We subconsciously link them to that gloriously treacherous time in our life and they make us feel good.  They remind us of what it is to feel ALIVE.  When our emotions were still raw, like nerves exposed.  Before we learned to cover them up.

Don't get me wrong, 90's music IS great.  Well, some of it (anyone remember "Barbie Girl"?  Yikes).  I just think I'm especially partial to it because those were the most emotionally charged years of my life.

Hmmmm.  I totally forgot what I was going to talk about.  Then again, that happens pretty much every day so I'm used to it.  I just go with the flow.

Oh, speaking of going with the flow!  So, yoga.  Yesterday I was surfing YogaGlo for a video.  I decided to try a Hatha yoga, and it moved soooooooo slowwwwwwwwwww and I did NOT like it at all.  So I went to my 30 day yoga challenge video, and guess what?  It was RESTORATIVE yoga!  (You know, like, lying down, moving slow, being quiet, long holds).  I just couldn't escape it!  I was frustrated.  I wanted to work OUT.  

Well today, I woke up feeling this grimy yucky film of heavy GUILT surrounding me.  Of course, I'm premenstrual and I know this.  But all I could think of was my son when he was little, and I kept replaying all those memories that always haunt me.  I tried to do it as a witness, simply observing and asking myself what it all meant.  

I hurt so deeply inside as I remembered him asking me to play with him, me telling him to go to his room while I was out on the couch with Noe, and him walking dejectedly back, alone, with his head down.  Or the times I had been up all night partying and was too tired to even make him breakfast.  Lying next to him in his bed pretending to watch TV but really falling asleep.  

Wherever I go, whatever I do, I lug this guilt around like so many heavy suitcases.  I don't know how to absolve myself of it.  Now I find myself trying to overcompensate, which isn't good parenting either.  I'm so afraid to do anything to make him sad because I feel like I still owe him so much.  But all the love I pour into that bucket never seems to erase the pain of my guilt.  I realize we are not punished FOR our "sins", but BY them.  There is no hell, not a physical location that I will burn in eternally for being a bad mother.  There is only the searing fire of shame eternally attached to my soul as a result of what I did.  But even as I damned myself, somehow I must have the power to redeem myself.

I looked for a class on releasing guilt and found one instead about releasing blame, which I decided would work.  It was a slow-moving, long hold, introspective, restorative class.  This time I didn't fight it.  I embraced it; it was obviously what my body and spirit needed.  There came a part where the instructor had us put our index fingers on our solar plexus and open.  She said that is where we store feelings of shame, and blame.  Once again, I found myself bursting into tears on my mat.  I felt such an enormous release.  As the tears flowed down my cheeks I just stayed in that moment, head back, eyes closed, trying to forgive myself.  My son has forgiven me.  What else do I think my self-hatred could accomplish?  Why do I feel the need to continuously torture myself over my mistakes?  Why am I the only one who can't let go?

I also made some headway in the class as far as the resentment I carry toward certain people in my life.  I am not responsible for them.  I can not control them.  I can only control me.  

I'm thinking about watching a documentary now.  Okay have a good day!

*I had to come back to share what I just found in my news feed on Facebook.  Oh, the synchronicity!!!
I couldn't paste the screen shot.  So I copied and pasted:

Family Tree Therapies

Let us forgive ourselves for parenting "mistakes", misdirection or misinformation…let us embrace today, who are children are and all that they are to become from THIS day forward….children forgive so very easily….

http://www.handsfreemama.com/2014/03/11/if-you-really-really-knew-me/

I read it and cried my way through it.  It was exactly, EXACTLY what I needed.  

"If you really knew me, you would know I have trouble forgiving myself for the mistakes of my past. You see, I missed a lot of important moments in my children’s lives due to my distracted, perfectionistic, hurried ways. And when my readers write to me and say, “I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Is it too late for me?” I tell them, “It’s never too late. Today is a new day. This journey is not about yesterday. It is about today and the critical choices you make today.” That is what I tell my readers. That is what I believe with all my heart. But yet, I cannot offer those same forgiving words to myself.

And then I took it one step further:

If you really, really knew me, you would know that I’ve apologized to my daughters for the impatient, unhappy, perfectionistic drill sergeant I once was and for the hurt that I caused … but when they wrap their arms around my neck and say, “I forgive you Mama,” I can’t quite allow myself to accept or embrace their forgiveness. I must keep punishing myself."