Memorial day weekend found me on the nature path with Norah, my friend’s 5 year old daughter. We had read a pamphlet about how to tell the difference between the vegetation eaten by rabbits and deer. By looking at the angle of how the leaves and branches are broken, we could tell whether bunnies or Bambis had wandered through. It was fun to stoop down and walk that path with that new perspective.
Every few feet we would proclaim: Rabbit! Rabbit! More Rabbits! Deer!
I never realized how broken the forest is. She looks so lush and full but close down, she is trampled and snapped and broken.
She is a mama, giving it all to feed her babes. Stripped of her sweetest leaves, her most tender branches. She willingly offers them up to keep life living. But she looks so whole, so put together, so complete. if it wasn’t for the looking so closely, we would have thought she was bursting forth with green, overflowing with abundance. We wouldn’t have known about the broken parts. Yet, there, in the shadows, if we look closely we see it, stripped branch after stripped branch. Little bare and frazzled parts. All because she cared. She offered herself up.
We too are mothers broken out of that same love. To the outside we may appear completely complete, all together. But we are frayed and frazzled and stripped of our most tender leaves. We give everything to nurture those we love. We give because we can. We open ourselves up to be chewed up: By our children, by our spouses, by our friends. We bear it because because we exist for them.
But all that giving, well it leaves us a bit broken. Most of us would never trade it for any price. We love to love, even though it leaves us a bit frayed. And selfishly we do it because we know.
We know what I saw is also true. That those bushes that were broken last week, are growing stronger. Where one branch was sheared, two strong supple green stems have appeared.
We allow ourselves to be broken, because it feeds our loved ones. We allow ourselves to be broken because it can push us to grow in new directions. We allow it because it is part of being human, of being a woman, of being love personified.
