Love the Mud

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Love the Mud

I don’t want to read another book

or listen to another podcast promising

a better life, the road to happiness.

I just want to love my life as it is—

the cobwebbed corners and rumpled bed,

my sweaty yoga mat still unrolled

across the floor, the color rubbed off

where I rest my head each morning.

Let me love the orderly and the messy—

my unwashed and salt-stained car,

the cracked planter left out in the cold,

the regret that still fills me years after

my mother’s passing because I wasn’t

there at her bedside when she died, because

I didn’t do more to save her. Let me

be like the butterflies, sipping from mud,

dung, and carrion, drawing nutrients

from actual blood, sweat, and tears—

a different kind of nectar. Let me stay

in love with my sorrow today, with anger

and fatigue and every fruit fly rising up

from the sweet and rotting compost

I forgot to take out.

We all have those days when we’d rather stay immersed in a heavy mood, letting the soil of sorrow grow in us whatever it must. But it often seems that our culture is geared toward helping us escape such feelings, with books, podcasts, and other media promising us our best life through a series of specific habits and practices. Even I am guilty, at times, both in my life and in my writing, of trying to uplift others when they might just need to feel the pain they are given on a particular day, without trying to fix or reframe it. I was feeling this way a few weeks ago, weary of all the voices trying to make me a better person, teach me how to build the life I want. What if today is all there is, and what if aliveness to that is gift enough? What if our personal difficulties, when we agree to enter and feel them fully, provide just as many nutrients as the sweeter moments of life we prefer? All of this occurred to me because a poet-friend of mine, Robbi Nester, pointed out that butterflies also sip from the mud. I had seen this happen with my own eyes, especially around bodies of water, yet the image nevertheless startled me as a possible metaphor for my own need to draw a different kind of nectar from the regret and grief I was experiencing just then. I looked it up, and sure enough, butterflies engage in a practice known as mud-puddling—feeding on wet soil, rotting logs, dung, and other dead things. Some species even find the salt and amino acids they need from blood, sweat, and tears. If a butterfly has ever unexpectedly landed on your arm, they were likely sipping salt from your sweat. It seems such a contrast to our usual idea of these beautiful, transformed beings, how they must “mud-puddle,” giving us permission to do the same, to love our sometimes messy lives just as they are, embracing those parts of ourselves we’d rather turn away from, trusting that they too have something to teach us.

Invitation for Writing & Reflection: Begin with my phrase, “I just want to love my life as it is,” and see if you too can welcome all the so-called messiness of your life right now, alongside the sweetness. Does “mud-puddling” among butterflies hold any resonance for you, and if so, how?

If you enjoy these free weekly emails, please consider making a donation here, or become a member and support this offering on a monthly basis.

Book Tour!

Please join my husband, Brad Peacock, and myself as we head out on tour for our newest book, Love Is for All of Us! If you are able to come to a reading, please introduce yourself, and don't be shy. I'd love to meet you. You can pre-order the book (out May 6th!) wherever you buy your books, or purchase signed copies from our local indie bookstore, Battenkill Books, here at this link. Hope to see you soon!