03/03/2026
Excerpt from my upcoming memoir, The BabyDoll Chronicles 🌹
In Winter, I Build Both
My father taught me that structure keeps us safe.
He was a man of measurements.
Blueprints.
Wiring hidden inside walls that carried current without being seen.
If something was built correctly,
it would hold.
Safety, in his world,
was engineered.
My mother taught me that aliveness was art.
Not just paint on canvas ~
but music playing through open windows,
dancing in the kitchen,
driving to unplanned destinations,
salt air from the ocean in her hair,
travel itineraries folded into handbags,
tennis matches under bright sun,
friendships that stretched across decades.
decadent dinners around the world.
Aliveness, in her world,
was motion.
• Air
• Skin
• Fragrance
• Sensory awareness
• Movement
That’s my mother’s inheritance.
• Backbone
• Precision
• Integrity
• Steadiness
• Self-reliance
• Structure
• Systems
• Containment
• Craftsmanship
• Reliability
Thats my father’s inheritance
My father gave me the ability to:
• Assess a problem without dissolving
• Build something that holds weight
• Stay steady when pressure rises
• Create frameworks others can stand inside
Freedom and agency came from the space my parents gave me.
I never had to choose between intuition and structure.
I grew up in a house where the refrain was simple:
“It’s your life.
Live it according to what you want.”
They did not hover.
They did not enmesh.
They did not manage my becoming.
They stood back.
The opposite of entangled.
Freedom was assumed.
Space was given.
And in that space,
I learned to build my own architecture
and my own pink light sanctuary.
Now I arrange my entire life in pink light.
Not accidentally.
Not as costume.
But as orientation.
Pink in winter.
Pink in business meetings.
Pink when I walk the garden.
Pink when I sit at my desk and wire my days together.
Structure and softness
in the same breath.
Today someone complimented my pink outfit.
They saw color.
They did not see the philosophy.
I build beams you cannot see.
And then I hang roses from them.
I have a deeper connection to nature
because no one stood between me and it.
To animals
because quiet was not crowded out.
To people
because autonomy taught me how to meet, not cling.
My father taught me how to make it stand.
My mother taught me how to make it smile.
I never had to choose.
In winter,
I build both
~ Sue Waldman
Sacred Rising Wisdom™
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