I can't be bothered getting any don't have any batteries for the girls' cameras, so am reusing old photos. In case you were wondering. In case you noticed.
Too much stuff coming at me these days. Great stuff, bad stuff, bewildering stuff. It feels like I am spinning from one piece of information to another until I can't be sure anymore where I am and which way is up. Stop world, I tell it, just for one minute, so I can get my bearings.
It never does.
There are two things I am coming to understand. One is my increasing, almost physical, need for turangawaewae. A place to stand. An internal foundation. So that no matter where I am in the world and what is happening, I can say: these are my people and here is where I belong.
The other is more difficult to explain in so many words (come over for a coffee, let me tell you all about it) but comes down to the fact that spending my adult life trying not to rocks boats and make waves, to keep myself small and unnoticed, has been an enormous mistake. Huge. For myself, yes, but more so for my children. I have always suspected that one of these beautiful kids of mine was outside society's norm, and I have recently been told that this is even more true than I had imagined. They need me to stop feeling it is somehow my moral obligation to keep other people from being upset (because the world will fall apart if somebody doesn't like me - pathetic, I know, and more true than I can say), otherwise they might not get the chance to grow into the person they were created to be. We need to forge a new path, this kid and I, with no certainty of a safe destination, and it terrifies me.
But okay. So be it.