Friday, August 30, 2013
Secrets Shared #1
At the top of my list of secret wishes is the now no longer a secret wish to have a day just like the characters on Glee. A day where every event is punctuated by a song that tells the story. A day with synchronized dancing and the perfect moments captured with a long, high note. I want a Glee day.
Opportunity
I have held 3 professional jobs in my life. Two of them at law firms (the last of which is where I truly grew up and I have nothing but love for), but my all time favorite job was with a smallish non-profit doing programming work with high school clubs. In all honesty, I did the Administrative stuff for these groups, supporting the programs by running a smooth ship and keeping the details dealt with. I loved it. I got the job because I had left my first law firm and started my graduate program at GWU. One of my professors was working there and needed an intern. I volunteered, because what the hell else was I going to do? 3 months later, they asked me stay and hired me on full time. It was the single most organic method of job creation and it worked so well because it was built entirely based on matching my skills with a need that they had.
Now, I find myself again at the point of wondering what I'm going to do. I'm still on the board of my MOMS Club and will be until next July. I'm starting a local chapter of Camp Fire with a dear friend, but that's for the kids. I'm volunteering at the school, but that's not really for me. It's just something I feel like we have to do as parents. So I found myself questioning what I'm going to do for me. What am I going to do to make my brain tick.
In the vein - do you know that the single most difficult part of being a SAHM is the complete brain boredom? Taking care of kids is a whole crapload of constant motion, but not much thinking is involved. They don't require much thought. In fact, I have over-thought much of this job just because I'm brain-bored.
So that's why I decided to get involved with an organization that is just beginning in our area. This group of people got together about a year ago and decided to work with a local church to provide a hot meal once a week to the homeless people in community. They have had huge success, and have found surprising need. They are now working toward moving away from the church and have incorporated as Our Place - a separate soup kitchen. They are a few weeks away from submitting for their 501(c)(3) status, they are looking for space and plan to spend the next year renovating. They envision a space that serves 1-2 meals per day, every day. Eventually growing into a full-service organization that works to help in all areas that people who are facing homelessness or hardship. It's a great organization and it perfectly matches my areas of interest. I am appalled by the class-warfare and find it incredibly sad that such a rich county exists side by side with such extreme need. I want to help.
I've joined the Grant Writing committee. I picked this committee because it, first, gives me practical experience in an area that I don't have. It's good for my resume. It's networking and skill building. But, mostly, I joined this particular committee because it's going to stretch my brain. I've never done grant writing. I'm excited to do a job that has a deadline and an outcome. I'm excited by the prospect that my work could produce some of the revenue stream that allows this amazing organization to get off the ground.
I'm mostly excited to have something to do. Something that isn't dishes or picking up or food prep or child rearing.
Now, I find myself again at the point of wondering what I'm going to do. I'm still on the board of my MOMS Club and will be until next July. I'm starting a local chapter of Camp Fire with a dear friend, but that's for the kids. I'm volunteering at the school, but that's not really for me. It's just something I feel like we have to do as parents. So I found myself questioning what I'm going to do for me. What am I going to do to make my brain tick.
In the vein - do you know that the single most difficult part of being a SAHM is the complete brain boredom? Taking care of kids is a whole crapload of constant motion, but not much thinking is involved. They don't require much thought. In fact, I have over-thought much of this job just because I'm brain-bored.
So that's why I decided to get involved with an organization that is just beginning in our area. This group of people got together about a year ago and decided to work with a local church to provide a hot meal once a week to the homeless people in community. They have had huge success, and have found surprising need. They are now working toward moving away from the church and have incorporated as Our Place - a separate soup kitchen. They are a few weeks away from submitting for their 501(c)(3) status, they are looking for space and plan to spend the next year renovating. They envision a space that serves 1-2 meals per day, every day. Eventually growing into a full-service organization that works to help in all areas that people who are facing homelessness or hardship. It's a great organization and it perfectly matches my areas of interest. I am appalled by the class-warfare and find it incredibly sad that such a rich county exists side by side with such extreme need. I want to help.
I've joined the Grant Writing committee. I picked this committee because it, first, gives me practical experience in an area that I don't have. It's good for my resume. It's networking and skill building. But, mostly, I joined this particular committee because it's going to stretch my brain. I've never done grant writing. I'm excited to do a job that has a deadline and an outcome. I'm excited by the prospect that my work could produce some of the revenue stream that allows this amazing organization to get off the ground.
I'm mostly excited to have something to do. Something that isn't dishes or picking up or food prep or child rearing.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
My Love Note to Connor
Dear Connor -
I wonder if you will ever know what it was like to watch you come out of your Mommy's uterus all blue and droopy. Your first warbly, weak cry made my heart stop. Watching them whisk you away to the corner of the room, having to turn to your Mommy unsure of what to say. Listening for every word the doctor said, anticipating trouble and wanting with all my heart to lunge for you, as if my love alone could prevent any problems. Of course, you were okay. They cleared your lungs, warmed you up and monitored you. I got to touch you for the first time when you were all hooked up to all kinds of machines, but I could touch you. You pursed your lips, you squinted your eyes and yelled loudly when the nurse cleaned you.
I knew then the answer to the last remaining question I had. When I felt my heart plummet when I didn't hear the rebel yell at birth, I knew that my love for you would be no less than the love I have for the child I carried in my body. I carried that question with me through your Mommy's entire pregnancy, secretly wondering if love like I had for the child who grew inside of me could be replicated with a child I didn't grow. I worried that, having the comparison, I would feel the difference.
The answer is that I didn't then and I haven't any day since. From the moment I saw you in the OR, I knew you were my son. Your beautiful face burned itself into my heart and you become a part of me. My love for you is limitless in all ways and, if there is a difference, I can't tell what it is.
My sweet, sweet boy...you are the love of my life in so many ways. You are gentle and generous and sensitive. You play hard, but love even harder. You give so much of yourself to those around you, caring what people think and how they respond to you. You are precise in your choice and use of language and you are so damn funny! I love how you make me laugh.
Next week, you start Preschool. You begin the journey of truly moving away from us and into your own life. You will have a part of you that exists without us and you won't share it all. I wish I could go with you. I wish that I could sneak into your backpack and be there to kiss you when it gets hard for you. I feel so protective of you, so scared that something will happen and you'll look for me, but not find me. These things are the irrational fears of parenting and not a reflection on your true abilities, because you are so ready. You have all the tools to go forward and begin blazing your own trail.
Someday, you might read this. If you do, I want you to know that there could never be any other boy for me. You are, since the moment you came into this world, my Prince Charming. I am so happy that I get to be your Momma and that I get to stand by your side or at your back as you take this world and make it your own. I hope that you know that my love for you is as steady as can be, a sure place you can always land. My boy, you are the child of my heart and I couldn't love you more.
Love Always,
Your Momma
Next week, you start Preschool. You begin the journey of truly moving away from us and into your own life. You will have a part of you that exists without us and you won't share it all. I wish I could go with you. I wish that I could sneak into your backpack and be there to kiss you when it gets hard for you. I feel so protective of you, so scared that something will happen and you'll look for me, but not find me. These things are the irrational fears of parenting and not a reflection on your true abilities, because you are so ready. You have all the tools to go forward and begin blazing your own trail.
Someday, you might read this. If you do, I want you to know that there could never be any other boy for me. You are, since the moment you came into this world, my Prince Charming. I am so happy that I get to be your Momma and that I get to stand by your side or at your back as you take this world and make it your own. I hope that you know that my love for you is as steady as can be, a sure place you can always land. My boy, you are the child of my heart and I couldn't love you more.
Love Always,
Your Momma
Sunday, August 25, 2013
MichFest
I should probably start this journey at the place that is occupying all the free space in my head right now. The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival has become my mecca. I am going next August for the first time and I can't stop thinking about it. I'll move on eventually until it get closer...but for now, I'm all sucked in. I want to go so badly and the anticipation of another year to wait is all-consuming.
I'm not sure what it is about this event. I've known about it my entire life. My mom is my first and best example of a living feminist today. I was raised in a home full of women in all different stages of their lives. I saw her work her ass off and make shit that everyone thought was impossible happen. I learned, from such a young age, the power and strength of women and I loved it. I have always loved being a woman. I never carried the institutionalized shame that so many people carry. That is not to say that I haven't lived with it through periods, but even when I was mired in the drudgery of female reality, I knew that I always had the strength to get out of that if I chose. I have always known my strength and it's because I was raised listening to my mother sing Ferron and Chris Williamsom and Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin. I grew up with women at my back, women leading me forward and women who never failed to catch me and prop me back up.
They went. My mom and her friends went. And they talked about it. I heard about MichFest.
I went to college and immersed myself in women. I found my first home outside of the my mother in the women's studies department at UMF and I met women who still awe me and help to define my view of the world. I learned, again, what it meant to be strong and to take control of my voice and to decide how to use it. And there was always MichFest. I always wanted to go and could never afford it.
So now. Here I am. I'm not a kid anymore, I'm not a college student struggling through and finding my way. I'm a woman, I'm a mother and I'm so ready to claim that power and let it change me.
Maybe that's the magic of it all. Maybe I just want it because I'm ready to be changed and I'm ready to open myself up to the magic of a shared experience with women who want the same things as me. Maybe I'm just excited to be in a space where I am obligated to be only what I feel in the moment, where my sole responsibility is to myself and my journey.
I'm not sure what it is about this event. I've known about it my entire life. My mom is my first and best example of a living feminist today. I was raised in a home full of women in all different stages of their lives. I saw her work her ass off and make shit that everyone thought was impossible happen. I learned, from such a young age, the power and strength of women and I loved it. I have always loved being a woman. I never carried the institutionalized shame that so many people carry. That is not to say that I haven't lived with it through periods, but even when I was mired in the drudgery of female reality, I knew that I always had the strength to get out of that if I chose. I have always known my strength and it's because I was raised listening to my mother sing Ferron and Chris Williamsom and Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin. I grew up with women at my back, women leading me forward and women who never failed to catch me and prop me back up.
They went. My mom and her friends went. And they talked about it. I heard about MichFest.
I went to college and immersed myself in women. I found my first home outside of the my mother in the women's studies department at UMF and I met women who still awe me and help to define my view of the world. I learned, again, what it meant to be strong and to take control of my voice and to decide how to use it. And there was always MichFest. I always wanted to go and could never afford it.
So now. Here I am. I'm not a kid anymore, I'm not a college student struggling through and finding my way. I'm a woman, I'm a mother and I'm so ready to claim that power and let it change me.
Maybe that's the magic of it all. Maybe I just want it because I'm ready to be changed and I'm ready to open myself up to the magic of a shared experience with women who want the same things as me. Maybe I'm just excited to be in a space where I am obligated to be only what I feel in the moment, where my sole responsibility is to myself and my journey.
About Me (continued)...
I ended my last post about me with my children. It seemed appropriate to stop there because so much of who I am is about them. My time is spent caring for them, or preparing to care for them, or cleaning up after caring for them. My heart and mind is consumed with them, their plans, their daily strife and pleasures and with helping to pave the path of their lives. It's the largest defining part of me.
But, of course, it's not all of me. And while the rest of who I am is smaller and often takes a back seat to raising young children, it's also the loudest part of who I am.
So second in my definition of me would be my wife, K. She and I have been loving each other for nearly 16 years. Our meeting anniversary, which was have always celebrated as the moment our love took shape, happened in October of 1997. I was 18, she as 22 and we were way to young to have any idea what to do with the intense love we found in each other. It was so sudden and completely inconvenient. We lived in different states, we had well-defined plans for the next few years of our lives and she had a girlfriend. None of these things stopped us, despite our trying to prevent all that happened. We were on and off, hot and cold, in and out. Except, when the day was done and the night hit that dark, quiet place, it as each other we craved and nothing, ever, had changed that. We built our friendship in the early years, because we were long distance for 5 years. We lived in the same geographic location for a year once we both graduated and then finally moved in together 10 years ago. We began the process then of matching our lives to our hearts and we braided all that we are together. There is no yours and mine with us...it is ours and we are an us. I am not always happy about this, and neither is she. We are honest in our trials and we mean it when we say there are days, weeks...even months...where we nothing more than to cut the ties and run far and fast.
But we don't. And that is the heart of the definition. I married her. I stood in a foggy grove last year and promised her all of my tomorrow, and despite whatever challenges may come, I meant it. I'm not sure what could break us after so long, because each time I think we are broken, we renew. I don't know what is about her, or about our love, but I'm in.
And this is where it gets hard. I can easily define myself in terms of them. They are at the very, very heart of me and without them, I am not me. And yet...there is always, and has always been, a persistent voice that reminds me (sometimes forcefully) that I am more than the lubricant and stability in the lives of three other people. There are parts of me that exist, and would continue to thrive, without them. The voice under it all that is uniquely mine that nobody else touches or defines. It is this voice that I think truly defines ME, but it is hardest one for me to honor. I don't think that is an unusual phenomenon. What I do think is unusual is that I acknowledge it, and don't apologize for it, and attempt to make space for those parts in an already full-to-the-brim life.
How do I describe those parts of me? How do I tell you about my humor, which is sarcastic and often dances on the razor edge of acceptability? Do I tell you about my stubbornness or my drama? Do I share that I have huge insecurities about my body, but I am completely in love with it and how it has taken me through 34 years? Do I talk about my love of sex, all things sex, all things deviant and dirty? Do I explain my love of risk-taking and the darker side of my personality that demands attention some times? Do we talk about my politics or the fiery passion that erupts every time elections roll around? Do I share with you my complete lack of filter and how much I love that about me?
I don't know where to start. I am intense. I never feel something weakly. I'm either all in or I'm not interested. I like to know the dirty details, the nitty gritty. I love other people's stories and I love hearing other people's perspective on my life. I take what others say to me and roll it around, see how it feels. I listen and offer opinions. I truly love and care for the people in my life. Once you are inside the inner circle, there is nothing I won't do for you. I am selfless to a fault and I try to offer my best to the world, even when it is not returned. I give gifts, I cherish my friendship and I enjoy the little crushes that develop when I meet truly interesting people.
I don't believe in monogamy, but I live by the rules of monogamy because my marriage would fail if I did otherwise. I am not religious in any way...at least not in the Christian sense of the word. I don't believe in God and I am not afraid of death. I think the most interesting people I meet are those who look the part but live differently...with no other definition than that. I am not interested in the image projected, but rather the person under all of the fake bullshit. I seek out real and crave honesty.
What you'll get from me is probably too much. I am a bull in a china shop, and I am unapologetic about that. I also struggle from time to time, worrying that I am too much and I secretly fear that most people would rather have me out of their lives rather than in. Sometimes I hide behind my own bullshit because it's easier than standing in my truth. Sometimes I hate me.
There is always a split in my life - there are the things I do and the things I feel and think. Often, these things don't match up or the crossover happens in weird and seemingly disconnected ways. I think that a stranger would look at me and see a nice, heterosexual, youngish mother with lots to do. I hope they would see my smile and feel welcomed into my life. I hope they would notice my warmth and my openness to new experience. Mostly, I hope that when those strangers become friends and then close friends that they would see the gritty, hardcore, drama-loving, woman-adoring lesbian under the facade.
I often feel like the best parts of me are lost in the requirements of my life. I always feel anger when I feel that way. If there is area I struggle with, it is this. It is in the honoring of who I am outside of the family we created and support. I struggle with accepting that I will fail them sometimes and with knowing that it's okay to choose my needs first on occasion. I don't do that well.
My last definition of me is you. I am changed by the people I choose to keep in my life. I listen to the people around me because I trust that you have something to offer my life. I truly believe that we have something important to bring to each other's lives or we wouldn't have met. So share your truth with me. I'll share mine.
But, of course, it's not all of me. And while the rest of who I am is smaller and often takes a back seat to raising young children, it's also the loudest part of who I am.
So second in my definition of me would be my wife, K. She and I have been loving each other for nearly 16 years. Our meeting anniversary, which was have always celebrated as the moment our love took shape, happened in October of 1997. I was 18, she as 22 and we were way to young to have any idea what to do with the intense love we found in each other. It was so sudden and completely inconvenient. We lived in different states, we had well-defined plans for the next few years of our lives and she had a girlfriend. None of these things stopped us, despite our trying to prevent all that happened. We were on and off, hot and cold, in and out. Except, when the day was done and the night hit that dark, quiet place, it as each other we craved and nothing, ever, had changed that. We built our friendship in the early years, because we were long distance for 5 years. We lived in the same geographic location for a year once we both graduated and then finally moved in together 10 years ago. We began the process then of matching our lives to our hearts and we braided all that we are together. There is no yours and mine with us...it is ours and we are an us. I am not always happy about this, and neither is she. We are honest in our trials and we mean it when we say there are days, weeks...even months...where we nothing more than to cut the ties and run far and fast.
But we don't. And that is the heart of the definition. I married her. I stood in a foggy grove last year and promised her all of my tomorrow, and despite whatever challenges may come, I meant it. I'm not sure what could break us after so long, because each time I think we are broken, we renew. I don't know what is about her, or about our love, but I'm in.
And this is where it gets hard. I can easily define myself in terms of them. They are at the very, very heart of me and without them, I am not me. And yet...there is always, and has always been, a persistent voice that reminds me (sometimes forcefully) that I am more than the lubricant and stability in the lives of three other people. There are parts of me that exist, and would continue to thrive, without them. The voice under it all that is uniquely mine that nobody else touches or defines. It is this voice that I think truly defines ME, but it is hardest one for me to honor. I don't think that is an unusual phenomenon. What I do think is unusual is that I acknowledge it, and don't apologize for it, and attempt to make space for those parts in an already full-to-the-brim life.
How do I describe those parts of me? How do I tell you about my humor, which is sarcastic and often dances on the razor edge of acceptability? Do I tell you about my stubbornness or my drama? Do I share that I have huge insecurities about my body, but I am completely in love with it and how it has taken me through 34 years? Do I talk about my love of sex, all things sex, all things deviant and dirty? Do I explain my love of risk-taking and the darker side of my personality that demands attention some times? Do we talk about my politics or the fiery passion that erupts every time elections roll around? Do I share with you my complete lack of filter and how much I love that about me?
I don't know where to start. I am intense. I never feel something weakly. I'm either all in or I'm not interested. I like to know the dirty details, the nitty gritty. I love other people's stories and I love hearing other people's perspective on my life. I take what others say to me and roll it around, see how it feels. I listen and offer opinions. I truly love and care for the people in my life. Once you are inside the inner circle, there is nothing I won't do for you. I am selfless to a fault and I try to offer my best to the world, even when it is not returned. I give gifts, I cherish my friendship and I enjoy the little crushes that develop when I meet truly interesting people.
I don't believe in monogamy, but I live by the rules of monogamy because my marriage would fail if I did otherwise. I am not religious in any way...at least not in the Christian sense of the word. I don't believe in God and I am not afraid of death. I think the most interesting people I meet are those who look the part but live differently...with no other definition than that. I am not interested in the image projected, but rather the person under all of the fake bullshit. I seek out real and crave honesty.
What you'll get from me is probably too much. I am a bull in a china shop, and I am unapologetic about that. I also struggle from time to time, worrying that I am too much and I secretly fear that most people would rather have me out of their lives rather than in. Sometimes I hide behind my own bullshit because it's easier than standing in my truth. Sometimes I hate me.
There is always a split in my life - there are the things I do and the things I feel and think. Often, these things don't match up or the crossover happens in weird and seemingly disconnected ways. I think that a stranger would look at me and see a nice, heterosexual, youngish mother with lots to do. I hope they would see my smile and feel welcomed into my life. I hope they would notice my warmth and my openness to new experience. Mostly, I hope that when those strangers become friends and then close friends that they would see the gritty, hardcore, drama-loving, woman-adoring lesbian under the facade.
I often feel like the best parts of me are lost in the requirements of my life. I always feel anger when I feel that way. If there is area I struggle with, it is this. It is in the honoring of who I am outside of the family we created and support. I struggle with accepting that I will fail them sometimes and with knowing that it's okay to choose my needs first on occasion. I don't do that well.
My last definition of me is you. I am changed by the people I choose to keep in my life. I listen to the people around me because I trust that you have something to offer my life. I truly believe that we have something important to bring to each other's lives or we wouldn't have met. So share your truth with me. I'll share mine.
About Me?
I decided to start blogging again about a month ago. I created my little blog, read back through some of my old blog posts from previous blogs, and opened up a new window to start typing away. And I sat and stared at the blank page for a bit before deciding that I was going to update my "About Me" page. That should be easy enough for me. So I opened it up and I started typing...and I realized that everything I wrote focused on mothering or wifery or homemaking. And all three of those things make up what I do and make up the three most important people in my life...but they are not me.
So I stopped. I walked away, or was distracted away, and vowed to return after mulling it over for a bit.
A month later, I've returned. And I'm still not sure I can write the description, but I'm going to try.
I am a mother first. In all the roles I play in my life, I am a mother first and always. When my daughter was pulled from my womb, I was changed. My life focused into a single point and all that is me become something different. Prior to birth, Bailey represented a dream. She was the person I imagined holding when I was 7, the embodiment of every dream I had ever had about what my life would be when I was a grown woman. She was not real, yet. My perspective was clouded by a lack of realism and my understanding of parenting was formed by the "Parent's" magazine I read religiously each month and by my own distorted vision of how a person parents. We lovingly created her nursery, purchased her clothes and loudly proclaimed our refusal to force her into a gender identity.
And then she was born. Instead of my natural delivery, Bailey was pulled, via c-section, from my body after 2 1/2 days of attempting labor. Labor never really started for me. Our 10.9 pound child came from my body bright red, screaming bloody murder and wired with intensity and drama. She has never, ever stopped using her voice loudly...and 6 years later, I hope she never does. She changed me. She leveled every expectation I had, destroyed and then helped me rebuild the mother I have become. She quickly dispensed of the idea I carried that mothering was something to be defined and something within my control. When my body betrayed me and threw me into a dramatic and nearly life-ending post partum depression, it was Bailey who stayed present through it all. Her constant presence, more than anything, forced me to let go. I learned, within three months, that all I had thought I knew about myself as a mother, about the job of mother, about the love I would feel, the fear that would haunt me and the sacrifices I would make was all crap. She was, and the job was, more than I knew and so much different than I expected.
I struggled. Deeply, horrifically, fearfully struggled. I am not ashamed anymore to admit that I didn't like it. I was afraid that I would harbor resentment toward her, because all the changes were not good. My quality of life decreased, and the part of me that closely and jealously guarded my space and my autonomy was pissed as hell. I didn't blame her, I didn't blame me or my wife or the decisions we had made. And without a way to process or blow off those intense and entirely unexpected feelings, I turned them inward where they became so toxic that I become suicidal. Medication helped, but it was mostly time that brought that under control. Time is a parent's best friend.
When Bailey was only 9 months old and when I was not far enough away from the trauma of her birth, I convinced my wife it was time for another child. We wanted them close. We wanted our children to grow up together and it was the last remaining vision I had that the reality of parenting had yet to shatter. I dreamed that another child would fix what has broken in so many areas of my life. I tried, and failed, to get pregnant twice. After the second attempt, I made the first really good decision of my life as a parent and I told my wife I did not want to carry another child. She stepped up and it was her body and her experience that would carry our son. We were pregnant three months later.
Again, from almost the start, the illusions proved to be fake and it felt like my life exploded into insanity. My wife was sick from almost the beginning; so sick she was medicated for 17 weeks to keep food in her belly. She was weak from the physical toll, exhausted from managing her own emotions and her reality, and completely and utterly distracted by the enormity of a decision to undertook without knowing how completely it would change her. I was shocked into another version of parenting truth...one in which I did 99% of the work while my wife grew a child. Bailey, no less of a force for intensity and drama, was walking, talking and creating chaos every where. We both worked, we both lost our minds.
And then he was born. We were complete. Our son came into the world much like he lives it. He was quiet at birth and struggled for his first breaths. He sought my wife, as all newborns do, and was happiest at her breast. Through Connor, I knew love like I had never known it in the first months of Bailey's life.
I have no illusions anymore. My children have torn to shreds what I thought I knew, and what was rebuild in the gaping hole of my expectations was a truth so solid and important...that nothing else mattered, ever, as long as I chose to love them. Everything else was detail and subject to change. Eventually, I left my job and took on the role of stay at home mother. I have been doing that for 3 years and 8 months. Bailey is 6 and starting 1st grade. Connor is 4 1/2 and starting preschool. I have time that I haven't had for years. Again, I am changed.
I am a parent first.
More later...
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