Gratitude Practice 2020 Day 115: Superhero Cape Creators, Mend-ers and Attach-ers

A few years ago, while shopping at a nearby fabric store, I walked pass a bin of fabric remnants and found the perfect bundle of bright blue shiny metallic glossy delicate floaty fabric. Instantly, I knew I had struck gold and this leftover scrap would work perfectly for a much needed superhero cape for my imaginative little lady. After a bit of very crude pinning and sewing my girl was zipping, zooming and and "flying" all over our house. Success!

This silly little cape gets a lot of play in our home. Once this ragged scrap is tied around her neck our girl just stands a little taller, leaps a little farther, acts a little bit bolder, finds her voice clear and strong and we love watching this happen every single time. Sometimes, this cape provides comfort, sometimes shelter and protection, sometimes it brings courage and safety and without fail it always generates a boost of increased confidence. It's been worn year round throughout our home and yard, at the park, to the grocery store, to grandma's house and truly compliments all outfits and occasions.

Not long ago, a tearful Sarah Kate brought me her beloved cape reporting it had a few growing rips, some concerning snags and a sizable tear near the bottom. Our weepy girl, with a hearty amount of worry and experiencing an appropriate amount despair and concern she sincerely asked if these unwanted holes and broken parts could be fixed and if I could show her how to "knit" it all back together. As you may imagine, my metaphor loving head and heart exploded realizing all of the far reaching applicability of this simple exchange. I lovingly replied, "Of course I'll help you fix your superhero cape...that is what Mama's do best."

This year marks five years of being Sarah Kates mom. Forty four years of being EmilyAnn's daughter and twelve years being one of Melinda's daughters-in-law. Today, I am nothing but grateful for the mostly sacred and sometimes treacherous practice of loving other that is called frequently called motherhood. Grateful to these three women who are teaching and stretching and loving and changing me....both when it's easy and not so easy to love me.

Grateful for my dear girl friends, my former roommates, my neighbors, and for my beloved Brown Paper Packages who remind, and life, and inspire and correct and relate, and see and listen and keep me accountable.

Grateful for my coworkers, my hardworking team of professional do-gooders and kid wranglers and for the patience, wisdom, and creativity. For the unfailing guidance and friendship of my professional mentor, Kim....thank you for hiring me several time, for looking past my entire twenties and most of my thirties, for your careful guidance through my forties and for believing in and investing in me for so many years.

Grateful for my brilliant nieces and nieces-in-law for their courage and creativity and potential and hopefully outlook as their future is very very bright.

Grateful for my dear sisters-in-law for their companionship, for their resilience, and solidarity and determination and faith...for their stewardship and willingness to co-mom our kiddos and love both the men in our lives and our shared believe in families.

Grateful for aunties and grandmothers and life long besties. Grateful for strong female writers, researchers, healers, advocates, change makers and thought leaders. For those I both know in real life and for those who I feel like I know through the written word. Grateful for those actively engaged in this sacred cape building, nation building and people building work.

So, today I am most grateful for the army of women who helped me find and anchor my very own super hero cape. For those who have loved me, supported me, inspire me and helped me find my voice, my place and myself. Grateful for those who have, who are now and who will in days and months and years to come...are teaching me how to mend not just my own cape but are teaching me how to help other mend their own capes. Quite often this day is hard and tricky and complicated and I've certainly felt all of those feelings over the years. Super grateful that this year there is peace and calm in my heart and I believe it has everything to do with the tiny human that calls me Mama. Together we are teaching and helping and healing each others capes and I could not be more grateful.