Intentional Solitude

The Old Man's going turkey hunting for 5 days and I will be alone, juggling daycare, work and The Kid. The Old Man works every weekend so I'm used to being alone with The Kid on weekends, but I get to see the Old Man during the evenings.

Every Saturday morning I feel sort of a panic when I realize I'm staring down the barrel of a long weekend alone with The Kid. I make no apologies for this panic. Any mother with a two year old understands that it is nonstop brain focus just to make sure that the child is fed and changed and entertained. The brain doesn't get a break. There is a severe lack of adult human interaction. I get bored. So I'm really panicked thinking about these 5 days. The thing is, I will have evenings to myself, a couple of hours each night just for me after The Kid's in bed.

I crave time alone... it's like sex or chocolate or really good wine or Tavi. But when I'm faced with time alone, I panic.

I read a section from Women Who Run With the Wolves by Estes tonight (pages 292-296) about "The Practice of Intentional Solitude."

In order to converse with the wild feminine, a woman must temporarily leave the world and inhabit a state of aloneness in the oldest sense of the word. Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one.... That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one. It is the cure for the frazzled state so common to modern women, the one that makes her, as the old saying goes, "leap onto her horse and ride off in all directions."

Truly the only thing one needs for intentional solitude is the ability to tune out distractions. A woman can learn to tune out other people, noise, and chatter, no matter if she is in the midst of a contentious board meeting, no matter if she is being stalked by a house that needs to be cleaned by a bulldozer....

LOVE that bulldozer house cleaning line....

If you have ever been the mother of an insomniac two-year-old, you know how to take intentional solitude.

Why not just go with the flow and embrace the time alone and play with The Kid? I will try it, although I'm strung tighter than a piano wire and going with the flow is not something I do well.