Two-Take Exchange

"Hello everybody! My name is Aubree, and I am the writer of the 

Akashic Aisles: The Basement View blog. 

My good friend and author of Bad Word Mama has graciously agreed to be the other half to the whole that is the Two-Take Exchange. As part of this image-inspired blog-swap, she and I will take turns choosing an image that moves us in one way or another, and we will each write something about it (having no idea in what way the other found inspiration in the very same imagery until we make the actual swap). 

And THEN, we will each post the other's "take" on our respective blogs. Sounds fun, right? 

IT IS!!

Below, is my "take" on the chosen image for this first week's swap. 

To see how Bad Word Mama was inspired by the same image, please visit 

The Basement. 

We hope you enjoy reading our Two-Takes!"

Lay your troubles upon her like a veil.  
She will hold them until you are ready.

The foundation of entire worlds can be seen in the hard and distant antiquity of her eyes. 

Her concern weighs as much as her celebration, anymore.  She can't afford to fail, and yet failure is promised.  Always the focused Giver, she fears that her triumphs will become mere shadows that only sometimes float across her face.  

She weathers the assault, because she has a warrior's spirit.  She has a warrior's spirit, because she must.  And when the ruined and forgotten fall before her, she becomes the will of the wind: sweeping them up in a gust of remembrance, making them new again. 

Her pain has become a crown, forged by the fiery abundance of Love...a fragile crown without pomp, without jewels that glitter for attention.  Those jewels, she gave away - willingly - upon hearing that first cry and knowing that the kind of love that aches from intensity is now her kind of Love.  Wanting to be ever-present, she realizes - in an instant of heartache and wonder - that her protective measure will inevitably suffer limitation by another's design.  Her reach is long, her gaze holds longer, and there is not a collective - nor solitary - thing that can outlive her touch.  But the world must turn, and life must speed along, and the nest must succumb to the elements.  Alas, her greatest triumphs will take flight into a harsh and unforgiving sky.

She has to hold on, while letting go.

She is a home, a truth, a soaring knowledge.  She is a mountain, unmoving in courage.  She is a star of polarity, balancing the scales.  She is a belief that bends.  She is a cloud that takes the shape of all things hopeful when the day has become desperate.  Cleansing and shaping soft structures: she is sand and surf.  She is the seasons; she is the Sun.  She is all things in, by, and of Creation. 

So much more than a fertile womb: She, is a Mother.

I wrote this in dedication of all mothers that know what it means to love so intensely that it hurts, and trust me when the memory of the child I once was openly declares that a woman that gives birth does not automatically become a mother that loves. However, Life made up for what my childhood was so severely lacking, and it turns out that while writing this, I DID have a loving mother to think about: one that supports and forgives and worries incessantly and tries to understand and tries not to judge; one that not only keeps the nests that her own children outgrew inside the lovingly assembled shadowboxes of her mind, but that also helped to build the nests for the next generation...her grandchildren. She is the supreme example of motherhood, and humanity. She is my husband's mother and my son's grandmother. She is my utmost example and inspiration.