Imagine, like John Lennon, but more, like Her.

Imagine, like John Lennon

But, more, like Her.

Imagine. No really, I invite you to imagine; someone walks up to you at the grocery store, or in the woods, or on the sidewalk and says, “Hi! What’s your name?” What’s your first gut reaction?

Is it, “What does this person want from me? Why does this person feel entitled to speak to me, can’t they see I’m trying to hide here?” or is it, ”Wow, someone is interested in me!?”

Now, either way, with hesitation or excitement, you answer, and then they say, “Would you like to look at the world for a moment with me? Would you like to play ball with this fruit, or touch this tree, or watch the cars go by with me? Together, we can stay and see a while.”

Now, what’s your reaction?

Most likely it’s “Actually, I’m moving along, I’m on a mission that doesn’t make room for engagement, connection or spontaneity. Thanks, but no thanks, maybe another “time,”" and that time you know, will never come.

Then that person waves and says, “It was nice to meet you, I hope to see you again!”

Likely you’ll feel grateful that that person saw you, but relieved that you’re walking away without owing them anything, giving them anything, or feeling the discomfort of connecting for a brief moment with someone you’ll likely never see again.

We all talk about wanting the world to be a better place, but when “better” shows itself to us, we’ve all got something “better” to do.

This person, is my daughter, who faces the disappointment every single day, of still having hope in an alive world that feels confronted by her aliveness. Not comforted, by it, confronted by it.

Every single day, she attempts to connect with people who look at her like she’s an alien, and you know who she thinks her only real friends are; her invisible alien friends and her angels.

Every single day she says, “I asked them if they wanted to play, but they don’t want to play with me.” Every single day, I see her confused and disappointed about what she’s doing wrong, in a world, that’s just not right.

Today as we walked by a woman who briefly engaged me the best way adults know how, Hayven grabbed my hand and asked, “Mommy, what’s her name?” I told her I didn’t know.

She said, “well next time, you better ask.” And every ounce of my soul melted into tears without shedding one on my skin.

The world we speak of, as I was in a rush to get my children warm from a chilled hike up the mountain, on my way to something “better” than the spontaneity, and genuineness of connection, was right there at my finger tips, and my angel of a daughter wondered why I let the moment, and that woman pass without finding a way to lovingly engage for more than a hurried pass-by.

We’ve sent Hayven to two preschools this year, and sadly, not even over protectively, just common sense-ically, pulled her out of both. Both times the adults expected my circle of a child to become a square to fit into the environment rather than formulating an environment that fit her. Who she really is, where she really is, on the inside.

Many people may say they don’t have the luxury to make these choices. Most people aren’t in tune with their kids to even notice because they’re too busy with work or just bodily maintenance that they wouldn’t have been on the floor engaged in their child’s world long enough to have the opening where their child shed a tear and said, “Actually Mommy, I’m not ready for kindergarten. My teacher told me I didn’t do my number right and so I can’t go to kindergarten because i don’t work hard enough but it’s really, really hard for me.”

I had a monster of a teacher in first grade, if you’ve read Imperfectly Sane, you know this. My mother kept me in that classroom though every single morning I puked and had diarrhea before school and the doctors told her all of my symptoms were stress related. I was also frequently seizing. Four kids were pulled out of that tenured woman’s class that year but my mother told me as I pleaded in constant tears not to make me go (the woman smelled my fear and used it against me like a shark trailing blood), “you’re going to have a boss that hates you one day, you better get used to it now.” I was fucking six years old. I didn’t learn, at all. I couldn’t. My stomach always hurt, my mind was always focused on how to hide in order to avoid this woman’s wrath, and i went home to the same kind of environment that told me I was wrong, and the world was right.

Even still, as I made the executive decision to pull Hayven out because rather than that teacher using that moment to actually teach her how to do it right, she shamed her, standing above her, for what she did wrong, my mother said, ‘Maybe it’s not them! Maybe it’s her!” Also, I never did have the boss.

Oh, the rage as I pointed and pounced on her energetically with my tongue, “And, I’ll do my damndest to never, ever let her grow up feeling like what you just said is true. Because it’s fucking not!”

We live in a society where children are prepared for adulthood, prepared for the next phase, rather than met in the phase that they are, offered the opportunity to explore themselves and the world in it, and Hayven’s disadvantage thus far has been that she’s bumping up against kids and a society at large that’ve already been broken in by authoritative norms, that usually require fear and shame to do the whipping into submission.

I know there are places that exist that are a spiral that my little love will fit perfectly into. And I know that it’s so damn hard to face the reality of being unwelcome, but its good information because the welcoming, is so much sweeter when she’ll inevitably find the earthly angels who’ll greet her with open arms and meet her where she is.

And today, she taught me, that I, in all of my something better to do’s, need to be the adult, not only for children, but for adults, that I get so mad at the world for not being for her. To the woman in the woods with four kids trailing her who briefly engaged me, “Hi, I’m Stacy. What’s your name? Would you like to stay a while with me? And maybe next week, come back again? I’ll make time for you. Thank you for seeing me.”

Someone said under one of my posts once, “You should know yourself before having children. There’s something wrong if your children are your teachers.” Well, I not so humbly think that woman is an asshole because the world isn’t perfect, and it isn’t perfect because every generation before, not only didn’t know themselves, but they believed that belief, so what if it’s more true that our children have not only better answers, but better questions and if only we’d sit with them long enough to ponder their world and actually apply the grace they bring into it, ours, would be far better?

Imagine all the people, living life in peace, just like my sweet little Hayven does.

On a side note, it’s quite hard to raise a circle in a square society, hence me losing my shit on her this morning. But, when we came back together, both of our nervous system’s shot, we climbed the mountain and I explained that rocks are the bones of the earth, and that I believe the trees are the nervous system of the earth, and that on our walk, they were helping us, and of course, my fairy baby said, “Yes, they are, not everyone is nice to trees, but we are, right mama?” And together…we came back to love and found a way to share “our” world, one that isn’t just mine, and isn’t just hers, but “ours.” Along the way, she taught me yet again, not “how” to love, but reminded me to “show” it.