Instincts Rarely Come With An Action Plan

In fact, they seem notoriously obtuse and impossible to pin down.

So, as a person who really thrives on action plans and concrete doable tasks that lead to quantifiable results, this is, how to say, unsatisfying.

As I lay on my chaise, head cold ablaze, I heard my mom’s voice say Up, Up, Up or Mud, Mud, Mud.

We have been talking frequently.

And she feels very comfortable being much bossier now that she’s gone.

Her directive was in response to my mostly rhetorical question about whether or not I should go for a run. I thought at the very least I could count on her, NOT an avid exerciser, AND my loving empathetic mother, to say, No, honey, you rest.

“Up, up, up.” She repeated.

“But I don’t feel well,” I argued out loud with her spirit.

“Or mud, mud, mud,” she replied, which I took to mean I’d continue to be stuck in the kind of lost and muddled space I’ve been in lately.

“I have things to tell you and you listen best when we run,” she added as the incentive she knew I needed to get my butt up, pop some more Advil and hit the road.

When she set her mind to things… they happened.

If she wanted ten tons of furniture moved and my dad was away, we rolled rugs and used socks under the feet of armoires and consoles. And it happened! If she had a vision, she’d find the resources to make it happen.

So now, when I get the opportunity to hear any vision she may have for me, I take it.

It is an unexpected, gratifying irony that she is more able to help me now step into the woman I want to be, than she could have while she was here.

Before she would comfort, support, love and console me.

She was my fiercest protector. Now she is out there pulling me onto emotional ledges and showing me I can fly. She is taking me under her wing but showing me that I have my own.

And they are stronger and more beautiful than I can imagine.

Now, she shows me what it means to be a warrior of love, a wild braveheart.

I don’t know how it works for other daughters of deceased mothers or children of deceased parents or for that matter anyone who has lost anyone dear to them. Whether they still talk often. Whether it is often funny.

I can feel her wanting me to get a lot of things right. Before too much time goes by.

To get certain things that she didn’t.

So our relationship right now is deeply loving but fairly intense.

That is, I guess, who she was here too. So perhaps the relationships continue on they way they were. But something is sharper now– more poignant– more crucial in her absence.

She often gives me messages inside images.

This morning as I left for my run, she said she’d send one down right away and she did. A large maple Autumn brown leaf with white disease all around the edges fell from the sky into my hand.

It is never immediately apparent. We play a guessing game.

Am I dying from some terrible disease? No.

Is there something wrong with my thinking about the boys or work or our home? No.

I don’t know what this is though, I said to her, kind of frustrated.

That’s IT, she said.

You can know something is wrong without knowing why. Instinct requires listening and trust. Not back-up.

Follow THAT path.

Leave the details at the door.

If you listen for what your instinct is telling you the details present themselves.

Our family life is amazing. But more and more lately I can feel the pull of a new adventure, a new chapter, a pilgrimage of kinds.

I like to know. To be large and in charge. But my creative birthing process is never a terribly straightforward or predictable thing. And what iteration the canvas of creation takes is never not clear to me, until it is.

Absurd and obtuse, I know.

And yet isn’t that how it all works? We don’t know until know. There is some shakiness in between, if not anxiety, if not, for those more control-oriented of us, full freak-outs.

I have trouble remembering but a, grateful for my mom’s reminder that instinct is indeed the high road.