Surviving the Newborn Stage with a Sacred Pause
Surviving the Newborn Stage with a Sacred Pause
Das Rush returns to talk about seeking small moments of spaciousness after sleepless nights
In this post, I’m revisiting my conversation with the writer, mindfulness aficionado and parent Das Rush, in which we talked about the role of meditation as an anchoring ritual during seasons of change. They invited me, as well as readers here, to take a “sacred five” – a practice that has helped them to navigate their first sleepless nights as a new parent.
May their notion of a sacred five, explained below, be of benefit to us all this August — a liminal time in which some of us may be savoring the last days of summer, shifting mentally into fall mode already, or simply trying to shine it on through an extra month without reliable childcare. May we all find five minutes today to just be where we are. Not perfectly “present,” per se, because I think that’s often a tall order. But in a place where we are willing, just for now, to start again, imperfectly.
Das: I once had a yoga teacher who said, “Religion is giving people answers, and spirituality is helping people sit with the questions.”
Now as a parent, that is even more real. There’s a need for community, traditions, and foundations. At the same time, there’s a real recognition that I have to be careful of the traditions and rituals I choose, because embedded in many of the rituals I was given are core values and assigned roles that don’t work for me.
For me a touchstone of parenting is to check that my rituals are ways to sit with questions, rather than prescribe answers.
Mindfulness isn’t just about creating moments of self-care for me as a parent. It’s a day-to-day way that I’m aiming to turn up and be present with the messy and physical reality of caring for another human, who is currently tiny and vulnerable.
In parenthood, I’m seeing that I find a rhythm and then that rhythm kind of gets disrupted, and I have to find a new rhythm. And that process of finding and losing the rhythm just gets exhausting. At the same time, it’s also the most basic and fundamental thing you learn in mindfulness and meditation. I will never stay centered. I will constantly wander off course. The whole practice is endlessly becoming aware that I’ve wandered and returning to center. As we talked about earlier, as Ursula K. LeGuin says, true journey is return.
In parenthood, I’m seeing that I find a rhythm and then that rhythm kind of gets disrupted, and I have to find a new rhythm. And that process of finding and losing the rhythm just gets exhausting. At the same time, it’s also the most basic and fundamental thing you learn in mindfulness and meditation. I will never stay centered. I will constantly wander off course. The whole practice is endlessly becoming aware that I’ve wandered and returning to center. — Das
Now, what is that center? For me, it’s a pretty simple definition. It’s being in my body. I am a trans dad, and I’ve sometimes described the experience of being trans as seeking to exist while the broader society tries to evict you from the home of your own skin. Finding that home anyways, taking joy in that home, and making that home a place of rest and imagination and curiosity and love, is what I’ve come to see as the most revolutionary act I can undertake.
When I can do this, I turn up in the world in a way that ripples and resonates and flows. And when I can’t, my practice is to breathe my way back home. That is also where I think providing a loving home for my family starts: being at home in my own body. Mindfulness is how I do that.
I’ve sometimes described the experience of being trans as seeking to exist while the broader society tries to evict you from the home of your own skin. Finding that home anyways, taking joy in that home, and making that home a place of rest and imagination and curiosity and love, is what I’ve come to see as the most revolutionary act I can undertake. – Das Rush
Right now, I'm taking a lot of mindful morning walks with my child in California. Part of what I love in summer in Sonoma is the early mornings, because there’s this bit of coolness, and a fog, and then and the sun slowly burns away the fog. It’s what makes it such a fertile region for things to grow. Any good gardener knows that during hot seasons, you have to rise early, to use those cool foggy hours to water and tend the plants. Water the plants in the midday and the moisture on the leaves will shrivel them. That garden-tending has become part of my ritual with my little one. The light's really beautiful, and often there is a little bit of spaciousness, in this moment.
This is not always possible for me. I went through such a crunched space this week. The thing I can tap into is that when there's those moments when it feels like it is all coming down at once – your kid won’t go to sleep, the house is a mess, you are hungry, you have work messages to reply to – is just that awareness. That acknowledgement of: “There isn't spaciousness.”
I remember thinking, in our 20s in Korea, how much it felt like those things would always be there. I think there was a lot that I took for granted in the freedom of movement and travel I had been having, and the freedom and effortlessness, and some of the creativity came from that. Now I realize I really do have to cultivate that. If I want a life that's creative, I have to carve it out actively, often against the ailments of age, and the demands and responsibilities that come with middle-age.
This happened recently, when, after that crunched space, I found that all of a sudden we had a nanny for two days, and I was like, “Oh my God, what do I do with my days?” I drove out to Point Reyes, wandered into the National Seashore, went for a couple hikes, went over to Sebastopol, and sat and wrote in a cafe. I just kind of let go of trying to achieve something with my writing. Instead, it was like, “Let’s just get back to our practices.” For me at least, that's why they're there. That’s where the meditation is. That's where the creativity is. I know that with the things that inspire me, I just have to prioritize them as best I can.
I don't know if anything more than parenting gives us this level of, like, Taoist practice, or mindfulness practice, because everything changes, and it changes very, very quickly. And you don’t always know when you’ll have time and space and when you won’t.
So, that’s my challenge to you, and anyone like us who feels like they don’t have spaciousness right now: Can you give yourself five minutes a day?
They don't have to be pretty. They don't have to be anything. Just five minutes a day where you stop the speediness, and you're just able to be still. What does it look like to take a sacred five in the middle of a really, really busy set of days?
Some additional questions to ask yourself here might be:
What would it look like to bring the kind of curiosity and questioning that you bring to listening to others, to listening to yourself in the next week, even without the spaciousness?
Can you be curious about who you are in those moments when it's not spacious? When it's tight, when it's cramped, when it's messy, when there's too much happening all at once? When you're frazzled, when you're at the end of your rope, when you're too tired to function—who are you then?
What does it mean to just hold that person?
These “sacred five” moments may not bring peace, but they bring opportunities for integration. For slowly returning to your life, and integrating this new part of who you are, and the responsibilities that come with that.
For me, mindfulness is the space for that work to happen, in the body and in the soul.
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Love this reminder, as I think it applies to so many of us (it certainly does to me): “Now I realize I really do have to cultivate that. If I want a life that's creative, I have to carve it out actively, often against the ailments of age, and the demands and responsibilities that come with middle-age.”
Such a lovely and relatable read- thank you for sharing!