She almost never gives me unsolicited advice. It was one of the things that I loved about her. Occasionally, someone will ask me how my mother and I navigate living so close and being so involved with each other's lives and not fighting. The answer is simple and it is a singular word, respect.

I could hear him walking towards my room and pulled myself from the dream state that I had been lost in. The door opened quietly and he walked towards the bed. 

“Hi baby” I said softly.

“Mumma, I need you” he said.

I slid from between the warm sheets and blinked my eyes as I tried to wake up. I followed him out of my bedroom and down the hallway towards his room.

I was lying on a mat at a workshop allowing the content of the course to move through all of me. As I lay there breathing and feeling everything that my heart, mind, body and spirit had to say I looked up and noticed him sitting on the couch not far from me. My focus shifted from myself to him as I watched him, at first gently and then intensely.

“Ugh” I said in a whiney voice.

“What?” he asked.

We had just gotten out of the shower and I was getting dressed. I had forgotten that I had thrown my favorite bra out just the day before because it had broken. 

“I don’t have a bra” I said while I looked through the bra options that I had in our room.

Picking you as my mother was one of the best decisions I ever made. I don’t have full memories of everything that happened before I came here to be human, but I have the deepest knowing that I hand-picked you. I could have picked anyone, but I picked you and I will pick you again. 

I was easily able to identify that I was mad, that wasn’t hard to determine for me. 

“I am mad” I stated clearly. But there was more to it than that and I knew it. It was one thing to identify the anger but what was the other emotion that was with the anger that I was feeling?

She broke out into giggles as she bit part of the mozzarella stick and played with the remaining bite between her lips. She looked from side to side, trying to show her food to anyone who would notice. The remaining bite sat gently between her lips as giggles exploded from her body.

“Don’t tell your wife” I heard her say in a whisper despite the fact that his wife wasn’t anywhere around. I was in the same space as them and couldn’t help but overhear their conversation. The woman had been telling her friend about a family friend who was going through a divorce. 

“Ok, I won’t” he responded awkwardly. 

“It is just that she is really judgemental and I know that she won’t even try to understand their situation” she said. 

You see, I am just not that girl. I am not the girl who you go to see when you want gentle energy. I am not the girl that you go to when you want to go an inch deep. I am not the girl who you go to when you want to avoid yourself and your bullshit. I am not that girl. I never have been that girl and honestly I can’t see that I ever will be that girl. I am the girl who you go to when you want to change your life.

I took some deep breaths, recognizing that I was ungrounded. I locked eyes with him as an attempt to stand grounded but it didn’t work. While my eyes stayed locked with him my energy drifted far from my body. I realized that I had been speaking but had paused mid-sentence and now couldn’t remember what I was even speaking about.