There are so many momentous ceremonies scattered throughout the years of my life and many were touching, poignant, moving, challenging, beautiful and memorable.  One stands out as one of the most powerful, life-changing ceremonies of my life.

For the first ten years of my mother-years I was able to be a full-time mother.  I had been a teacher before starting a family but was able to be teacher, mother, companion and general flunky for a young family for those years.  Of course, I needed and wanted adult companionship and meaningful community-focused activity to keep the balance.  Consequently, my life was busy with a wide variety of responsibilities, activities, challenges and all that goes into being who I was in those years.  Yet, I did not see myself or what I did as anything special or valuable.  If anything, I saw myself as seriously imperfect, never good enough and always striving to be "better,"  whatever that meant then.

I made a weekend retreat with a group of women sometime shortly before my 30th birthday.  In those years I was active in a local Roman Catholic parish and the retreat was conducted at a center founded and conducted by a religious order whose sole purpose was to provide place and services to conduct retreats.  The retreat master for this particular retreat was a relatively young Jesuit priest.  I remember little else of that entire three-day interval outside the final ceremony. 

We closed the retreat in the early afternoon of a beautiful autumn afternoon with a ceremony honoring each of us individually, a time focused on the reality that each of us is a beautiful, valuable person, not for what we do but because we are.  We express who we are through what we do and how we relate.  The priest invited each of us to join together and he blessed each of our hands, symbolizing how we show the blessing of our beings through what we do with our hands and our souls. 

I have often returned to that moment when he touched my open hands and opened my spirit in a new way.  I began to understand I really am "good enough" and I began to realize I am valuable, that what I did then and what I do now is beautiful and good.

The person with whom I have the most open relationship is my youngest, Maggie.  When she was younger people asked me if I had cloned myself.  Of course, I always took that as a compliment and do even more so now because Maggie is an incredible person.  She is, most definitely, herself - not a mini me.  (For one thing, she's several inches taller than I am.


I never question whether Maggie will accept me as I am and loves me no matter how flawed I am.  It is wonderful to know I can show the reality of my brokenness to Maggie and have no concern that she will criticize me for not being perfect or slender or whatever. .    From her I have learned there is a purpose for everyone, no matter what the circumstances contributing to their very existence in the world. 

More than any other description, now that Maggie is an adult, I would say she is my best friend, one who always is and will be "there" for me, as I am for her.

Money isn't important beyond supplying needs and a few little wants now.  I want only to have enough left to cover whatever expenses there are to send me soaring (compost me, please --- that's more green).  What I want more is to leave a sense of compassion, integrity, strength of character and understanding of each who know me knowing his/her self-worth, courage to live with authenticity.