Tag: parenting

before

On By Amrita Skye BlaineIn awe, children, Love, Musings, parenting, Poetry, spirituality, suffering2 Comments

before
1974

before—
sunshine centered
on me
my life, my curiosity,
my need

unintended,
you showed up at dawn
screaming, so skinny
five weeks too soon
I recognized your eyes

enormous, innocent,
squinty in first light
they locked on mine—
you knew too much
you knew what was up

after—
white coats, stethoscopes
windowless hallways
cardiac cath lab and blood
fear clutched my bones

mama-grit flared
your eyes made me—
you broke me
am I grateful?
fifty years on, the sun

2023 ©Amrita Skye Blaine
I’m writing a poem a day. These are drafts—not final versions.

shearing

On By Amrita Skye BlaineIn awe, children, Daily reminders, heart, joy, kindness, memoir, Musings, Non-duality, nonduality, parenting, Poetry, stories1 Comment

shearing

1995

the snips and burr
when she sheared
his mane, curls
wanting to dread,
he surfaced
wide-eyed
from all that hair—
it lay in heaps
at his feet

staring at the piles
his teenage angst
washed away
he said to me,
I want the birds
to have it to keep
their babies warm

hung in clumps
on the fence, we
watched it bleach
from mahogany,
blaze red
to almost pink,
and wondered

four years later,
the corvid nest
tumbled from a fir—
the boy, now man
pointed, look!
threaded through
the sticks
lining the lair
his hair

2023 ©Amrita Skye Blaine
I’m writing a poem a day. These are drafts—not final versions.

my memoir has been published!

On By Amrita Skye BlaineIn Awakening, memoir, Truth, writing17 Comments

My book, Bound to Love: a memoir of grit and gratitude has been published! Both the paperback and Kindle versions can be found here, at Amazon. Other digital versions can be found at Smashwords.

Usually my posts here have a different flavor, exploring nondual understanding. The memoir chronicles the pressure cooker journey that drove me toward unwrapping this deeper truth. Perhaps, without my son Thom, I would not have. I am very grateful.

Front cover with white text justifiedThe memoir won first prize in the Pacific Northwest Writers Association 2005 contest under the name Blood Bond. That was a very bad time to market memoirs, I discovered, because of James Frey’s betrayal of the form in A Million Little Pieces when he exaggerated his personal story, and was exposed.

I let my manuscript molder on my computer for seven years, then pulled it out and walked it through two more critique groups.

Bound to Love is the true story of a single mother who encountered and navigated a complicated nightmare for any parent. My child, the only child I could ever bear, was born with a life-threatening congenital heart defect, and suffered a more brutal health diagnosis soon after. Walk with me as I birth the courage and grit to meet Thom’s compounding challenges.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2015