You are all that and more

It is never too late to live authentically you
(not to achieve some perfection but to find peace and wholeness).
It is never too late to accept love and grace in your heart,
(not to be a "good Christian" or "perfect person"
but to connect with the One who created you
and has loved your every cell ever since.)
You are loved! Adored!
Nothing can change that or take it away...nothing.

You are all that you imagine yourself to be
And you are all that you have yet to discover
You are no more and no less than a child of God
An essential thread in the tapestry of the Great Spirit

Blessings on you,

Julie
© 2008 Julie A. Bonde

A Mother and Daughter Longing

On July 31, 2008, a few days from now, is my mom's 90th birthday. She died last year in June, shortly before her 89th birthday. Also on July 31 of this year, I will be flying with my husband to visit my sister and her husband. In honor of both occassions, i wanted to share these pictures of my mother, Camilla, and I at the beginning and the end of our lives. (the first picture was taken on the day of my birth, after an extremely difficult labor at the Clinique des Soeurs in Tananarive, Madgascar) Also included are two poems, one from the mother's perspective and one from a daughter's at the end of her mom's life. Here's to you mom! I love you forever!

The Mother’s Longing

I long for you to be happy,
To find your heart filled to overflowing with gratitude and joy,
To find your body filled with love that bursts through your pores.
I long for you to find peace,
To trust that even on bad days that I will always care,
To believe that even when you fail, there is hope,
I long for you to know the truth,
That my love for you is real and complete,
I long for you to look at me and see how beautiful you are,
Because you will be there in the sunset, the sparkle of the dew, the glowing fire,
I long for you to find your dreams inside of you
And your hope in me.
I long for you my child.

© 2005 Julie A. Bonde

(this second picture was taken of us 3 years before mom died...
as she declined with the dementia)

Dear Mama

I don’t remember

the moment of my birth
But I somehow know the feeling
It was in your arms I first knew
The immensity of Love

available to me
Through your eyes I found beauty
Became curious about the world

Yet, in my budding rebellious years, I didn’t like you
I didn’t know you, we lived 700 miles apart
We were from different generations
We lived in separate worlds on the same island
You knew nothing of my complex nature, my thoughts,
I knew nothing of your history and your strength,

How sweet it was then that you chose

to live near me in your aging years
With Dad gone, and you living nearby at last
I found the mother I had never really known
And learned a much deeper kind of love from you then
For in you I found a kinship in sorrow and longing for home and family
And I learned to love myself and to take pleasure in knowing you
Our relationship is no longer measured only by our differences.

As the years passed and we inevitably changed roles
from mother to daughter, daughter to mother,
The feeling of acceptance from those first moments sunk in deeper
I can see the deep joy in your eyes and smile
in the picture taken right after my birth
And hope when you look in my heart,
you will find a similar feeling in me
In spite of the hard emotional strain of your degenerative dementia
It was more than a privilege to know you and love you to the end

So thanks for that first hug and first kiss
And the final hug and kiss goodbye
For the first and final lesson of loving each other and ourselves
Through differences and pain, over the distances and close up
For the piece of God’s grace that you brought to me
Just by being my mama

August 3, 2007
Written by Julie A. Bonde
Shared as part of Eulogy for Camilla’s Memorial Service.
©2007 Julie A. Bonde

THE VOICE THAT CALLS US HOME

We walk in a vast inner wilderness
Far from any oasis of ordinary life
Wandering seemingly alone
Searching for the path
The connection to the life
Which chooses us
But the wind, the warmth of the sun
The sand giving way beneath our weight
Reminds us that there are other forces
Besides our own
And the whisper of the love in our hearts
Tells that there are other souls out there
Searching for us and with us.
We cannot help but steer towards that voice
The song which calls us toward home
To the people and places
Where we can at last take rest
And find peace.

7/26/07
© 2007 Julie A. Bonde

Mother and Daughter

Mother and Child
Such delicate, intricate lace,
Woven from the finest of threads
with utmost care for pattern, function, and beauty,
Up close it is just a blurry tangle of knots,
If only we could break free of the sticky web of it long enough to see the beauty
Without actually losing the connection,

Such intimacy, such sacrifice in the name of love,
Such understanding and such strangeness,
We are part of the same thread,
yet there seems to be only a miniscule fiber that is our common ground.
And how can we ever celebrate the miraculous design we have created together if we can never step back far enough to see the whole of it.

You are my daughter and I am yours,
As you grow, I am
learning all the lessons of my childhood over again,
I am your mother and you are mine,
As you grow, I seek to fulfill all the childhood needs that were missing in mine
And I hope to discover the new soul that you are creating in you.
It is difficult to separate myself from a work of art that I have tended to for nearly the whole of my adult life and yet separate we must.

I must again become the adult I began to be when I was your age
I must learn how to be who I am without you
You must continue to grow into the person you are finding
You must learn how to be who you are independent of me

We will always be threads in the same tapestry,
Connected forever by DNA and stories, colors, shared history, and the struggle to break free of each other.
I will always feel the tug to draw you back to me, to hold you one more time in my arms and remind you that I celebrate the day I brought you into this world.
You will never be able to completely forget me as you discover the part of you that is me.

No matter what or where or how, no matter good or bad or horrendous, no matter war or peace or unbelievable success,
You and i
Will always be what we were in the beginning
Mother and child.

© August 4, 2005 Julie A. Bonde

A Word Diet

My husband says the emails I write are too long…that I should never ask more than 3 questions or make more than 3 points if I expect to get a response…yikes!! That means I’ve got a lot of cutting back on words to do!! So here’s a few attempts to be brief…:o)

Love you on a (word) diet
You
Me
Magic
Mysterious connections
Overlooking difference
Forgiving doubt
Creating joy
Encouraging growth
Amazing
Me
You
Love
© 2008 Julie A. Bonde

Half
Half a friendship is only one
Ignore one half of a friendship
Whether the person ignored is you or the other
You end up without a friendship
© 2008 Julie A. Bonde

Who saves whom?
She walked right past all the slime
Looked right through the grime
Reached through the darkness
Grasped the desperate hand
And found her self saved in the process.

How could she then reason it made sense to later walk away,
And let go of the hand that had saved her?
© 2008 Julie A. Bonde

The profit of friendship
Smiling
Gotta smirk in my soul
Know that it’s because I like who I am
That I like who you are when you’re with me
When we’re together, we know the secrets
The idiocies that make life so silly
You can’t help but have a smirk
In your soul
© 2008 Julie A. Bonde