Flying on a rock through space

Letting myself be human even if that means I'm "just" a stay-at-home-mom: Updates and anecdotes from our little corner of the world.

Heartbeats started as an email to friends and family, a way to connect and share reflections during a new season of grief and motherhood. Today’s letter is a return to that more intimate invitation. I hope you enjoy a little peak of our life behind the scenes!

Borrowed apples

“Blame it on the dog, your dog took the apples!” A group of neighborhood boys laugh and run past our house with handfuls of red fruit plucked from the ground below the trees in our front yard. I smile to myself as I buckle Noah in the car seat, pretending I don’t see. 

This overheard moment of childhood delight and innocent mischief feels so pure.

There’s an element of ease and relief, a welcome lightheartedness to this season I haven’t felt in months. For the first time in a long time, I’m writing because I want to, not because I should or have to. Sitting on the porch in my newly purchased Egg Chair (a steal from FB marketplace), I feel like a Queen. Like I can let my guard down for a little while. 

My new favorite corner of the house.

How are you? What’s new in your world? How are you experiencing this season of life? I’ve missed these more personal letters. I think of them like the little missives exchanged during the holiday season with a family photo or two.

Flying on a rock through space

The other day I was talking to a friend about the intense paradox of being human. “It’s really quite unsettling,” I admitted, trying to find the right word to describe what it’s like to be flying on a rock through space while experiencing all of the joy, pain, and wonder mixed together in the same bag.

Unsettling might be another word for uncertain. For how little control we have over our external environment and how frightening or liberating that can be, depending on the day. As a new mom, it’s something I consider and worry about all the time—where does my responsibility to Noah begin and end? 

How can I honor my desire to protect and keep him safe knowing full well that job will become impossible with time? Where do I draw the line between my choices and another’s when the consequences are entangled? If we’re all intrinsically connected, yet possess our own agency, how can we make sense of all this cause and effect?

Forest walks and camping trips, cherishing these moments together.

Perhaps it’s one of the challenges of being born in this era—the feeling that everything is our fault (from climate change to genocide) yet feeling so ill-equipped to do much beyond keep our heads above water and hold on for dear life. 

Re-imagining the village

Earlier this morning Prasun and I dropped Noah off for his first day of a local Mother’s Day Out program. It’s only two half-days a week but it feels like a big milestone. Maybe he sensed it because we were all up most of the night, nervous systems frayed, hearts aching.

Sitting next door in an overly air-conditioned coffee shop, drinking a hibiscus tea infused with bee pollen while obsessively checking the childcare app, I can’t help but wonder if this is really it. If this is the best we can do for ourselves and our babies.

In the absence of community-centered living where tasks like cooking, cleaning, and childcare are shared among trusted family members, neighbors, and friends, how can we make up the difference?

Taking it all on ourselves isn’t sustainable, either. We need farmers to grow our food, caregivers and teachers to help educate and support our babies, counselors and doctors to help us maintain our health. Yet often these relationships feel transactional at best.

Paying for the goods and services required to meet our basic needs rather than developing long-lasting, interconnected community resources feels cheap and honestly, ineffective. Focusing so much on virtual interactions versus physical moments of intimacy is starting to wear thin.

My only consolation is a hefty dose of self-compassion and the belief that I’m truly doing my best within the limited constructs of mothering/caregiving in our modern society.

Hands in all the honey jars

A shift I’m trying to make is to lower my expectations and create more space for flexibility and presence. Last month, I randomly picked up a book promising to help burned-out mothers (hello, me) figure out better ways to time manage and do less. While targeted towards women who are mothers, this book is about so much more— trusting our internal rhythms and cycles, and listening to our body’s ebb and flow of energy. Treating our to-do list as a sacred conversation between ourselves and Spirit, rather than a frantic brain dump of impossible demands.

I inhaled this book during my trip to Boston. I borrowed it from the library but I’m ordering my own copy ASAP.

Without realizing it, motherhood initiated an unofficial inquiry into how I work, rest, and create.

For the first time since I was sixteen years old, I’ve not had a paying job. No one is organizing my time or telling me how to manage my daily routines. Add a screaming toddler into the mix and there’s certainly an aspect of coordinating his needs with mine, but for the most part, nothing besides our little family unit is influencing how I move through the world.

It’s been glorious and extremely difficult. 

Last week I was adding some stories to my Instagram and I realized just how many projects I’m currently trying to manage and invest my time in. There’s the Nature Journaling Workshops, an in-person monthly tarot class, a virtual open mic poetry event this weekend, my new job at the bakery, and the ongoing query/revision process for my novel. Not to mention the daily tasks of laundry, shopping, cleaning, cooking, taking Noah to swimming lessons, and trying to cultivate meaningful friendships in a new community. 

It’s a lot. 

For the first year or more of motherhood/entrepreneurship/creative living, I’ve treated myself like the worst kind of boss—I’ve set unrealistic expectations, overcommitted, compared myself to my peers, and tried to outperform beyond my capacity, desperate to prove something (to what or whom, I’m still unraveling). 

It’s as if my nervous system had a teenage driver behind the wheel—speeding up and then braking abruptly only to experience the whiplash over and over again. 

But something is shifting.

I’m integrating ways to trust my body and pay attention to my energy and capacity. I’m letting go. Clearing my calendar. Releasing myself of expectations and commitments that no longer feel in alignment with how I want to show up for myself and you.

I’m giving myself permission to operate outside of the “always on,” reliable, dependable, “grit your teeth and bear it” way of being. 

“Welcome the conflict,” my husband gently soothed when I shared with him that everything feels pretty messy right now. “It’s good to be uncertain,” he said.

Fertile ground, I replied with a sigh. 

So. I’m letting myself be human. Even if that means flaking out on commitments while I learn how to harmonize with my inner knowing. Even if that means starting something and not finishing. Even if that means it takes me twelve years to publish my book or write the next one. 

Even if that means I’m “just” a stay-at-home mom. 

I hope you’ll let yourself be human, too.

In the woods and in my element.

All my love,
Mariah 

P.S. I’m thrilled to be co-hosting a poetry open mic with the lovely

Emma Campbell

this Sunday from 11:30-12:30 pm EST. Join us for free to hear some spoken word or share your own.

P.P.S. The rest of the summer might look a little different as far as monthly workshop offerings and tarot events. If you’d like to receive a one-on-one tarot reading, reach out to me at thebarefootbeat@gmail.com for a 50% discount. 😊

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Heartbeats is a community for artists, caregivers, and messy humans who believe in the power of generative storytelling. By financially contributing to Heartbeats you are saying yes to collaboration, connection, and creating sacred spaces where we can heal, learn, and honor each other with care. Thank you for your presence here. 💞