{"id":2079,"date":"2007-10-19T19:36:30","date_gmt":"2007-10-20T02:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2007\/10\/19\/the-day-is-long\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:39:11","slug":"the-day-is-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2007\/10\/19\/the-day-is-long\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day Is Long"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been awake since 4 a.m. I don’t have the energy to write much about the kind of day we’ve had. It’s humbling to helplessly watch your child who cannot tell you what’s wrong as she screams, sobs, and suffers for hours, and the only recourse is to witness and provide companionship throughout. I cannot fix this.<\/em> Somehow, I need to accept this and put aside my discomfort, to turn my attention in empathy toward this little being, to stop focusing on how all this makes me feel. It’s an invitation to practice tonglen<\/a>… motherhood as a spiritual practice (I know a great book about that<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I thought we had discovered routines and methods that would work. Today proved me wrong. I am being challenged in ways I may someday understand enough to describe. Until then, I’ll let Karen’s words stand in for me:<\/p>\n

Colic arrives just as you begin to think you have a grasp, a handle, a way of living in the new world. It tears that grip away from you. It steals every ounce of optimism, every hopeful conclusion. It shreds every fix and remedy. It leaves you with nothing to try or trust. Nothing but time.<\/p>\n

Colic is the last thing you expect to give birth to. No one wishes it on anyone. But in its own ravaging wake, it leaves a gift. That’s the gift of not knowing. Not knowing when or how or if. Of surrendering to futility. Of succumbing to the tears. Of accepting the certainty of nothing but another day, and a different ending.<\/p>\n

Everyone always outgrows colic. But I’m not sure anyone ever outgrows colic. Least of all the parent.<\/p>\n

–Karen Maezen Miller, Cheerio Road<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been awake since 4 a.m. I don’t have the energy to write much about the kind of day we’ve had. It’s humbling to helplessly watch your child who cannot tell you what’s wrong as she screams, sobs, and suffers for hours, and the only recourse is to witness and provide companionship throughout. I cannot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,16,30,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motherhood","category-nature","category-quotes","category-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4096,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079\/revisions\/4096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}