(Originally published on substack here.)

Axel, our oldest child, has started sneaking into the candy. He’s always been an early riser, but these days, he gets up even before 6, tiptoes down our creaky staircase and moves furniture around so that he can reach the highest shelf where we keep the good stuff stashed. Hershey Kisses my mom sent us two Christmases ago. Pretzel sticks dipped into a jar of Nutella. Chocolate bars, especially if he finds one with whole hazelnuts in it, but he’s not too picky. He helps himself to whatever he can find. Then he’ll plop down on the sofa with the remote control. The kid is not even 7 yet. And he knows better! We are not super strict parents, but we do have boundaries.

I wasn’t prepared for this yet. I thought rebellions started much later. But mostly, I didn’t realize that my children’s rebellions would bring up such strong reactions in me, that they would ask me to revisit memories I honestly would have preferred not to in order to understand why they trigger me so.

Because Axel is just being a kid.

And kids come here to teach us things. Whenever I stop and really tune into my children’s spirits, I understand how they’re constantly striving toward wholeness. Not just in themselves, but in everyone around them. It’s innate. All you have to do is watch a baby develop, or watch any kid trying to master the next skill. Or notice how a child will try and regulate the entire family’s nervous system whenever there is any tension. Adults resist it because it reveals all the places and ways in which we’re not whole anymore. It can bring up feelings we don’t feel safe to feel. And challenge what we believe about ourselves and life. Children are still close to the heart of everything we have forgotten or had to leave behind in order to survive our own childhoods. And when their drive toward wholeness is not shut down by us, it’s one of the most powerful things I’ve ever experienced.

When I tune into Axel’s spirit, it is one of unending wonder and curiosity. He’s the baby who started walking too early. Who figured out how to break all the childproofing locks within 24 hours. Who wants to know how to do everything now, understand everything now. He’s also my first love. The one who brought a pulse back into my rock hard heart. The one who began to guide me back home to myself, which has been a very painful process at times, and how often I have blamed him for the pain rather than thanking him for it. This way, mama, he squeals, showing me the way. Axel continues to be my life guide. The one who I’ll go the way with, and for.

Then Bastian arrived like a ball of light. A soft, warm glow. Since the moment Bastian was conceived, he has asked me to trust myself. If you’ve read his birth story, you’ll remember that he was almost aborted when I was just a few weeks pregnant. Doctors believed I had cancer instead of a baby in my uterus. Cancer, cancer, cancer, they kept saying. Life, life, life, I kept feeling. I fought hard to delay the abortion procedure for a week or two and then still had to demand an ultrasound before they swept my uterus. That’s when they could finally see it on the screen — the thing I’d known all along — a wild fluttering, like a new butterfly on its speeding wings, a tiny body that was just a big ole heart. Bastian teaches me over and over again to trust myself, and trust life. 

And then there’s Rio, my peace. He’s still a baby, but I believe he came here to teach me slowness. I can’t even walk too fast with him, he gets fidgety when I do. Slow down, he reminds me. Stop all the grinding, hustling and bustling. Just be here. Someone one said that a third baby is like a dessert, and that really feels true for me. Dessert is something you savor. It is the thing that satisfies those last, lingering places on the palette. You slow down and maybe close your eyes, enjoy every morsel. All is well. That is Rio’s message. He truly makes everything well with my soul.

Before becoming their mother, I never feared death. In fact, I often tempted it. Invited it. I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, but I was so disconnected from my body, so far from my purpose in life. No matter what I did, I couldn’t convince myself that I deserved love – a belief I’d formed early in my life that nothing had been able to transform. In fact, I’d sought out experiences to confirm my unworthiness, because it was just easier that way. Love was not to be trusted, ever.

Until life entered my body, took over, broke me apart, loved me fiercely, no matter what, and I loved it fiercely back, no matter what.

For me, it took motherhood. It took going to places in my body and soul that I’d never dared before. Birthing them and rebirthing myself, passing through that ring of fire, becoming that ring of fire. It took blood and organ, the re-setting of every bone in my body so I’m now a new form. It took the warm flesh and bones of a new life in my arms, his swollen eyes opening to the light of day, looking right into mine. One by one, my children have done some deep work in my soul.

Am I turning motherhood into something spiritual now? I suppose so. I suppose because children are still close to the spark of creation, to the divine place where we all come from. Also, they’re still so close to what is wild. Like the brown bear I once met in the mountains. That was a spiritual experience. Like jumping into an ice cold lake. That does something to the spirit more so than the body. Like the family of deer who live in the patch of forest just behind our house. Also the forest itself – all of the wild, ancient kingdoms there – and its miraculous capacity to regulate us on every level of our being. Kids are only once removed from this wildness. They still know what’s good and right.

And then mothers… we who have traveled to that brink of life and death, perhaps multiple times, and walked that transcendent plane for however long it took in order to bring those lives down. With our animal bodies and instincts, we nourish them into childhood and beyond. Mothers know things deep within that are only revealed in this sacred season of life. If we are open to being that kind of mother, of course.

It’s quite similar to being an artist, I think. Artists, too, live and work in a place beyond the mainstream, translating the incommunicable, making the unconscious conscious, creating things that can break through barriers and seep into the core of humanity. I’ve had a lot of creative ‘babies’ in my lifetime, and they’ve also come with a rollercoaster of emotions. In a similar way, art and motherhood have asked for everything. They’ve required me to integrate the role into every level of my being. Become a mother. Become an artist. And after giving my all, to then surrender.

Is this what propels me to write about motherhood? Because believe me, I don’t want to. My brain says, Do not write about motherhood. It’s like politics. Ridden with triggers and contradictions. You could lose friends. Remember? You could lose all sorts of things. Yes, yes, I know, I know. But maybe I won’t lose myself. 

I just took a break from writing to feed my sourdough starter. Pulling it out of the fridge, I wondered what would happen to it if something happened to me. Would there be anyone to feed it, use it, keep it going? Would the kids remember the thousands of loaves of fresh sourdough breads we’ve mixed, stretched, folded, baked, torn, shared? Would they remember the sourdough pizzas on Friday nights? The sourdough pancakes on Sunday mornings? The sourdough chocolate cakes I’ve made for their birthdays year after year after year?

Taking care of the sourdough starter is ingrained in our family rhythm. I have memories of each kid sitting on the kitchen counter covered in flour. Even Rio loves to sit there and hold onto the spatula with me as I stir. Axel is now even able to help. There are times when it’s all rushed and I send them upstairs to get on pajamas instead. “But I want to help you, mama” they say. And sometimes I say, “Not this time,” because I’m hurrying. I always regret it afterward though. So I try to tell myself, this could be the last time they ask to help. If I keep saying no, they’ll stop asking. I don’t want them to stop, as inconvenient as it can feel at times.

So make space for them, I remind myself, and love them as only I can. Though they can drive me to the edge of madness at times. Bastian screaming his lungs out for half an hour because I won’t give him chocolate cookies ad infinitum. Axel with his wish for nonstop entertainment, lest he turn into an aggressive bulldozer. Rio baby is still as sweet as can be, but his days of being a kid are coming. Let them be kids, I tell myself gently. Love them now.