The sacred patterns of the people we love

I’m doing some really cool stuff at this year’s Women & Power Conference at the Omega Institute October 6-8, including a live recording of my new, yet-to-be-announced podcast and a storytelling session with some of the women I admire most in the world, like Esther Armah, Hannah Drake, and Vivian Kurutz. Intrigued?! Come! I would LOVE to meet you.

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“This idea of repetition ... is not the full and absolute truth, but it is the nearest possible approximation of the truth.” -George Gurdjieff

In third grade, I noticed a new girl at recess. She had freckles spilled across her nose and a big gap between her two front teeth, Umbro shorts and Converse high tops. She seemed strong, but a little lost. I sat down next to her on the wooden plank circling the sand pit and said, “Hi, I’m Courtney Martin. Welcome to Steele School.”

Yes, I’ve always been me—nerd, noticer, welcomer. In any case, that little girl turned out to be my best friend of over 30 years now, Megan. She’s strong as hell, loves nothing more than a good meal and a great time, opinionated (sometimes even bombastic), loyal as they come, and courageous in just about every way (though has a hard time showing people her softer side).

Me and Megan. Don’t worry - not my real social security number.

About two decades after I sat next to her and introduced myself, I gave birth to a baby girl—my first daughter, Maya. By the time she was one-year-old, Maya was already telling me which clothing she was willing to wear. As a toddler, she instantaneously knew which color she needed for which part of a drawing and would let you know. As she got older, she kept traveling this path of self-possession so resolutely that I was left stunned on the sidelines. I would say to people, “Maya knows exactly who she is and what she wants. We sort of just need to get out of her way.”

In other words, I gave birth to a different, but related, version of my best friend. They appear to have the same emotional infrastructure.

And it’s remarkably different from my emotional infrastructure. They instinctually know what they want at all times; it often takes me hours to sift through all the noise in my body to land on a preference. I wear my sensitivity on my sleeve, in public; they are sensitive in private (sometimes only inside of themselves, but deeply so). I have many people I love, trust, and talk to about how I’m feeling; they prefer a small, fierce circle flanking them.

Isn’t it amazing the way life throws you these emotional eternal returns?

I’m just coming to realize that I studied the interworkings of Megan for three decades, and now, a decade in to mothering Maya, I have so many insights about her motivations and mirages. Screw all that generalized parenting advice out there; I have an expert on-call.

Megan and I were reunited recently and I shared that Maya was going through a tough transition at school over some very dirty martinis. Megan said: “Ask her if she’s okay three times?”

“Really?” I said. “Won’t she feel like I’m badgering her.”

“Maybe, but it will take that many asks to get her to open up. Trust me.”

Back at home, biking after school I shouted, “So how was your day at school, Moo?”

“Good!” she said, zooming into the driveway at top speed.

Then as she settled into the couch for her after-school show - “So school was good?”

“Yup.”

At dinner - “So you had a decent day at school?”

Quiet. Eyes fill with tears. The real story emerges.

1, 2, 3. Just like Megan said.

Maya and Megan, winning at life.

“Don’t assume she doesn’t need your nurturing and guidance just because she’s strong,” said Megan.

My own words echoed in my head: “We sort of just need to get out of her way.”

I’m not, and never will be, a Mother Hen type. I like to send my kiddos out into the wide world and let them learn from real consequences and find the helpers everywhere. But I have been a little more assertive on behalf of my strong girl. I have been steering her in little ways I never knew she might feel steadied by.

This is a love letter to Megan, obviously. But it is also a love letter to the magical way that life works if you look for the echoes. We only get to live one life, but within that one life are so many sacred geometries—time folding back on itself through those we love, one generation picking up a story where the other one left off, our grandfather’s belly laugh in the tiny body of our niece, the identical handwriting of a mother and daughter who spent much of their lifetime apart. And if you really tune in, you feel that it’s not just genetic; it’s some strange cosmic choreography of relationships writ large, the way they define our days here on earth, and interweave with one another even when it makes no logical sense.

My best friend and my daughter are not the same person. Of course. But they share some emotional infrastructure that is core to who they both are and how they move through the world. Here I am, moving alongside them both all these years, two of my greatest gifts, and I get to learn from their symmetries, love them both even better than I might have if I hadn’t seen their overlaps.

One of Megan’s sons is basically her dad, dead a couple of years now, but alive each and every day through Coleman’s swing of a baseball bat and easy smile. My husband has his mom’s exquisitely attuned eye, but applies it in the world in a totally new and surprising way. My dear friend and neighbor, Sarah, has a bunch of similarities to my own mom; watching her mother makes me love my mom even more, because I get to experience it as a peer rather than a daughter. My paternal grandmother, who I never really knew, wanted to be a writer and never got to be; here I am, typing away, hoping these words make you see your people’s strange group dance differently.

We are each unique (a fact that still blows my mind if I settle on it and try to truly take it in), and yet, we are all part of these sacred geometries. Nature is full of such patterns—spirals, meanders, waves, tessellations, and cracks. Our loved ones are, too. Thank goodness for the relational learning curve and second chances.