The girls go back to school tomorrow, and mentally I am preparing myself for the school gate question, ‘How was your holidays?’
Because my answer is something like this, ‘Beautiful and scary, peaceful and stressful, idyllic and insane.’
For the first week was spent at an idyllic location where we explored and enjoyed our time together as a family. The second week was overshadowed by a random accident that meant stitches for my youngest. With the accompanying blood, panic, and tears.
We spent the first week of our holiday encouraging our kids to take more risks. And the second week checking on them every single minute in case of another mishap.
And yet in the laid back, holiday zone of the first week, there was conversation and there was arguments; there was genuine connection and there was total misunderstanding.
In the second week there was the same.
The moments in the hospital waiting for the doctor, were those of chatting with my little girl, and listening to her reading develop. I was stressed, she was hurt, but we were both fully present with each other. It was a brutiful moment as Glennon Doyle Melton calls it.
… life is equal parts brutal and beautiful. And/Both. Life is brutiful.
Please understand, I am well and truly knocked about by this brutiful two weeks. My mantra of ‘fear or faith’ in particular, is taking a severe knocking when my kids are involved. Oh there, I choose fear every time. For that is the path of safety, the path without hurt or pain.
And yet as a family we have had a real strong two weeks of bonding, enjoying each others company, being there for each other, and having conversations about hard things. It has been brutiful, and while I wouldn’t want to live some aspects of it again. I also wouldn’t want to lose what we have gained by walking this path together.
Living this brutiful life the best I can,
Jodie
PS – for those that are wondering, little miss had her stitches out yesterday and is recovering quickly. It may take a little more time for her mother!