Perspective

It's been almost a year since I lasted posted.  Time goes by so fast.  To let you know what I've been doing, I recently graduated from Utah Valley University, as in May 1, 2015.  And I've just accepted an English-teaching position for the 2016-2017 school year as an 8th grade English teacher, and I'm really excited about it.  It's crazy because I've been working so hard to complete my Bachelor's degree that I haven't really done anything else.  I've kept to myself because I've been so absorbed in academic pursuits that everything else just took a backseat.  And also I've spent a lot of time considering what I want this blog to be.

I'm in a very different place in my journey as a birth-mother than I've ever been before.  I've been an activist for adoption awareness in my own way, but I feel like my vision and perspective have shifted.  When I first found out I was pregnant and I took a hard look at my life I realized that I had wasted so much time floundering about and wasting my time on unimportant pursuits.  And as a result there was no way that I could provide for the child I was going to bring into this world.  And that realization came about over the course of my entire pregnancy with Baby Boy.  The day that I finally came to terms with the fact that I would be selfish if I chose to parent him knowing that I had no way to provide for either us was the day that I promised myself that I would create a future so that when I did become pregnant again I could provide for that child.  And that's been my focus.  And through all of that I have a better idea of who I am and I know what I want for my future, and it's happening for me.

This blog has been such a huge emotional outlet for me.  I love the adoption community and I always will because it's within this community that I found my voice.  For the first time in my life I realized that it was okay to say what I want to say and share my experience.  I will always treasure that and all of you who have supported me and been my friend.  And I'm going to continue to share my voice through this blog.

Something has been on my mind the last month, since about mid-April.  It's probably silly but I also can't shake it so I'm going to talk about it here.  It's Birth-mother's Day.  Why do we need a separate day?  Truly, why?  Did you know that the founder of Mother's Day wasn't ever a mother?  It's true.  Her name was Anna Jarvis and she loved her mother so much that she wanted to commemorate that love by inspiring a national holiday to commemorate the love for all mothers, and to ceaselessly show her own devotion to her mother, endlessly.  

Commemorate, that's a good word.  It means to honor, memorialize, and celebrate.  When I think of the word memorialize, I think of paying tribute to someone as a way of honoring them.  I wonder if that's what Anna meant when she inspired this national holiday.  In 1914 Mother's Day became an official holiday.  Anna Jarvis later became disappointed in the commercialization of Mother's Day.  For her, the idea for a day honoring mother's was born out of the recognition that children did not honor their parents, and that all that a woman does goes unnoticed and unrecognized.  Her mother served the family, her husband, and the community with selfless service and was never recognized or appreciated for it.  As a young child Anna swore that one day all women would have the opportunity to be recognized for the selfless acts they do for the benefit of others.

Now I recognize that Birth-mother's Day was born out of a need to create awareness, to educate the broader community, and to honor and remember.  All of that is very important and I acknowledge this.  But I'm concerned that it is beginning to become too commercialized.  Anna's drive to advocate for a day for mother's was born from a prayer her mother gave; a very sacred experience.  My experience to place Baby Boy for adoption was also born from a sacred experience.  It's sacred, in both cases, and many more.  To commercialize on the sacred is wrong.  If it's for awareness sake, then yes that's important.

But more important is that a woman who was never a mother inspired a day for mothers.  And now this day has become a day of stress and self-comparing to other women who seem to do "it" (mothering) better than you/me.  I don't think there needs to be a designation because we are all mothers whether you are an adoptive mother, birth-mother, hopeful mother, whatever.  One woman should not have one way designated for her because of the legal type of mother she is.  We have all sacrificed something great for the well-being of another, and in that light we are all incredible mothers.  To the women out there struggling with infertility, I'm sure mother's day means something very different to you.  And that's my point.  The day shouldn't be something that sets a person apart or that puts them in a different bracket than someone else, and that's exactly what Birth-mother's Day does.  We need to stop comparing.  I am an Other Mother, that doesn't make me less of a mother than a woman who parents her child because I sacrificed and did the best for him that I knew how given my circumstances.  And for women who are waiting on the results of fertility treatments, or for women who are waiting for a placement to finalize, you are also mothers.

I hope my message is coming across clearly.  From the perspective of a feminist, which I consider myself to be, the last thing we need is the compartmentalization of women into categories for the sake of commercialization.  Mother "A" gets the traditional flowers and chocolate because she's a mother-mother, meaning she didn't place for adoption, whereas Mother "B" needs a special trinket from a specialized online store that specializes in gifts for birth-mothers because she's an "Other mother", and for women who aren't mothers, who don't have a child to prove their maternal instinct, well...

Do you get what I'm saying?  Mother's Day shouldn't be about commercialization, and why have 2 types of mother's day for the different types of mothers, when a mother is a mother whether or not she's had a child yet, or adopted a child yet.  Distinctions are made legally, and I can't resolve it within myself that within this adoption community that I love that distinctions are being made among powerful women, important women, life-altering and beautiful women.  This is just my perspective and so I'm not saying it is the only perspective.  But not everyone gets recognized on Birth-mothers Day or Mother's Day because the world fits us in a mold, or they don't know about the Saturday before Mother's Day and it's significance to birth-mothers.  And I've seen birth-mothers feel "less-than" because they aren't acknowledged and that's why we need to be careful.  Our self-worth and importance is not attached to a day that is commercialized.  We are powerful because of the difficult decisions we make.

Monogamy and Keriah

This is weird because I have marriage and death on my mind at the same exact time.  And there is some anger in there as well that I have not been expecting.  I've known birth-mothers who have hated and bad-mouthed the birth-fathers of their child and I never understood that.  I haven't really spoken much about Baby Daddy on here, in detail.  And, quite frankly, I don't know if I'm going to.  We'll see.  For a long time I felt pity for Baby Daddy.  And to this day, I don't even know if he is alive.  And I don't know if I even want to know.  So, there you have it. 

Scratch that.  I just spent the last hour-and-half trying to locate him.  The last electronic imprint I can find on him is from 2010.  I also found his mug-shot from 2006, which was 2 years before I met him.  When I knew him, I didn't know he was a criminal.  I didn't know of his criminal background until he cheated on me and left me for another woman whom was already married... and pregnant with his child, it turns out.  As if that isn't enough salt in the wound, it turns out she was 3 weeks further along in her pregnancy than I was when I found out I was pregnant.  She ended up mis-carrying due to her meth use.  I learned all of that from his mother when I was seven months pregnant.  He wanted to come back to me, I told him where to go, and that was the last time I ever heard from him.  I never told him I was pregnant.  That's where I'm at right now, emotionally speaking.  I never expected to feel these feelings of anger towards him.

I am frustrated that I can't find any information about him after 2010, but I'm not frustrated for me, I'm frustrated for "my" little boy.  I hope Baby Boy will never have a desire to look up his dad, but if he does, I'm sad for him that he will most likely be led to a dead-end.  And I'm relieved that he will most likely be led to a dead-end, and sometimes... it's horrible.  Sometimes, I hope that dead-end is that his dad has passed away.  And then I feel pity again for Baby Daddy that if he is gone from this life, that he left it never knowing the beauty and light of "my" son, whom he helped to create.  And then I hate him.  I've never said that on here.  I hate him for his lies.  I hate him for his manipulation.  I hate him that he used me so poorly.  I hate him that he misled me.  And then I realize that not all the hate belongs to him, because at that time in my life, I thought that to love someone was to trust them... and I trusted him way too easily.  So, there you have it.

What do I tell Baby Boy if he ever asks about his dad? 

Then there is my job.  I work in the field of divorce.  I see divorce every day, Monday-Friday, and an occasional weekend when I have to take work home with me.  The type of work I do, I am a microscope to parents who are involved in extremely high-conflict divorce cases and who can't co-parent together and in attempts to emotionally injure the other parent, they use their children as ammunition in their war against each other.  Sometimes I find myself wondering, "What if I had told Baby Daddy?"  And then I go to work, and that question is answered as I navigate and negotiate between warring couples and advocate for their children.  My little boy... it scares me to think what his life could have been like. 

Marriage is a curious thing to me.  I want to be married so badly, it's unreal how deeply I feel this hole inside me that will only ever be filled by companionship of a husband and our beautiful children.  I'm no where near that, and that realization tinges and tingles my eyes with tears of frustration that I push back because I'm afraid to let them loose.  I have this fear that lives in the back of my head that keeps telling me that marriage doesn't last.  And that fear is mostly correct, 50% of marriages don't last.  But, 50% do.  And I want my future marriage to be part of the 50% that lasts.  But, how does that work?  And that's when the fear in the back of my head whispers loudest.  I don't trust men with me and I don't want to. 

What I want is to trust one man with me, just one.  And that man, I know he's out there and I know he is looking for what I have to offer him, and I have a lot to offer him.  But, it's getting harder to find him.  I'm not the only single girl who has noticed this.  My roommate and I talk about it all the time.  I just want something real.  Someone who can be real with me and not leave me questioning his motives and whether I'm "doing" our relationship "right", and whether or not he's going to leave me; that's my biggest fear, is to be left.  Does that make sense?  I don't know what I'm doing.  I know what I'm not going to do anymore, and that's all good to know, but when it comes to dating, I have no clue what I'm doing.

What I do know is that I've got to figure some things out about myself still.  I've come a long way, but I haven't gotten "there" yet, wherever "there" is.  I think "there" is a place where I'm content.  Content in a way that is secure.  It makes me think of Keriah.  I don't know how many of you are familiar with Keriah.  I don't know a whole lot about it, I've just been reading up on in.  From what I understand Keriah is part of Shiva, which is a week long mourning period in the Jewish culture that first-degree relatives (mom, dad, sibling) observe at the death of their loved one.  At the funeral, the mourners rend/tear an article of their clothing and they wear this same garment for the whole of Shiva.  It's believed that the practice of Keriah is rooted in a more ancient tradition of tearing at your hair and clawing at your skin during mourning, which from what I understand is forbidden in Jewish law.  But the idea is the same, it's a visual representation of extreme sorrow, while also allowing a mourner to show their anger and sadness in a physical way.  It's quite beautiful, really.  It seems honest.

I think that I'm going through an emotional rendering right now. 

That's an interesting word, "rendering".  It can mean a translation to something else.  "Translation" is also an interesting word with spiritual connotation, but the basic meaning is a change from something to something else, a transition.  I'm in this emotional bog right now where I am transitioning.  I recognize how far I've come and I'm implementing what I've learned and I'm so grateful for it all, but I also realize that there is further to go.  Baby Daddy... I've never felt anger towards him and I do now, and I think that my anger is more honest than my feelings of Zen towards him were because there was no enlightenment in my lack of anger then.  It was fake.  I didn't know how to feel about him.  I was trying to figure out how I feel about me. 

The fact that I feel the way I feel when I remember him tells me that I've got to tear through and remove the part of me that is still hurt.  I can't carry that kind of baggage into a future with a good man. 

I don't know if I've made all these connections effectively enough.  Keriah is about honesty.  It's about transition too, I believe.  It's facing the fact that you hurt and it's letting the hurt be known and seen and felt, and over the course of Shiva, experienced.  And then the mourning ends and you move forward.  I don't know how much of this anger is straight anger or masked sorrow.  That's the thing about grief is it can take a while to sort out what is what.  It's taken me nearly 4 years to realize that I have all of this inside me and that it is directly connected to Baby Daddy.  It makes sense.  It wasn't just Baby Daddy though.  It was all the guys who came before him, too.  None of them were "keepers".  I was desperate for marriage and an identity because I had no clue who I was.  I know better who I am today.

It's hard not to compare all the men I've dated.  They were all scumbags.  Truthfully, they were emotionally and physically abusive scumbags.  Today, I know a couple of guys who aren't scumbags, they are really great men.  And one of them I really want to see what will happen with because he's great.  I've talked about him recently on here.  I don't know what he thinks of me.  He's hard to read.  And I can't help but recognize that I'm probably really hard for him to read, as well.  Heck, I find myself hard to read and I'm me... so, there you have it. 

This post seems really depressing, or maybe not, I don't know.  I'm emotional right now, so it's hard to gauge how it comes across.  What I do know is that I'm not the woman I used to be and that's good, and it's also sad because I lost a lot of innocence.  But I'm stronger now than I ever was and that's a good thing.  I don't know how I will ever answer the question about Baby Daddy and that's not good enough for Baby Boy because every person, at some point in their life, wants to know where they came from.  I will learn how to answer that question because I know it will be important to Baby Boy and he deserves to know if he ever wants to know.  What I do know is that the confusing emotions I feel right now about Baby Daddy are more honest than I've ever allowed myself to feel since I met him and it's uncomfortable, but change and transition usually are, and so I'm doing it right. 

Revelation

“In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.” 
― Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart

Time has been on my mind lately.  Not just time, though, but also how things change.  And how in some instance time moves faster than a mountain storm in the spring.  You know, the kind of storm that you are desperate for because it washes away the last of the snow and you know that just behind the storm is the warmth?  I love storms in the spring.  Time moves the fastest when what you are experiencing is the easiest.  And the flip side of that is true, as we’ve all experienced, that time moves the slowest when you are in the most pain.  It’s in the moments of the most growth that a lifetime can be lived, the same moments that are the hardest to bear.  

I've been reminded lately of someone that I used to be.  I acutely remember the first year after Baby Boy was born.  I was a mess and I was afraid to let others see me that way.  I was more concerned about preserving the feelings of others and not scaring them with my feelings than feeling my own feelings.  Everything I felt was so confused that to even let my thoughts wander a brief moment felt like I would be drowned from the inside.  I was afraid of everything.  I didn't trust anyone.  And when I did, I put my trust in the wrong people and only more pain ensued.  It felt like the whole world was a giant injustice and I wanted to fight against all of it and so I let myself be angry.  And the source of all my anger was my fear and my hurt but I didn't want to face it because it hurt too much.  I felt abandoned and like I abandoned my baby.  Try and wrap your mind around that.  I hated myself.  I hated love.  I hated happy families.  I hated God.  I hated religion.  I hated anything that made me feel.  I lost myself in my work for all the wrong reasons.  I didn't want to be left alone.  I couldn't stand to be alone with myself because it was when I was alone that I had to be in my own company and I didn't know what to do with myself.  I smiled at the world for their benefit because I didn't want pity and so it was easier to pretend only pretending made me angrier.  I felt desperate in everything I tried to do.  I put so much pressure on myself and if I fell short of the ridiculous expectations I set for myself then I hated myself even more.  I was mean to myself.  And I believed that all that I felt (all that I've explained here) was my punishment for the rest of my life for my indiscretions against God.  And so, I resolved to just survive.  Basically, I set myself up to fail.

It’s been nearly 4 years since “my” little boy was born.  It’s been nearly 3 years since after that first year away from him.  It feels like a lifetime.  And I’m not the same person that I was during that first year.  This post is for the new birth-mothers out there and anyone else who feels like they've lost themselves.  To the birth-mothers particularly, I remember what it feels like to hear the cry of your child in the middle of the night, only to wake up and find that your child isn't there.  I remember what it feels like to feel like you are losing yourself in a grief you don’t even know how to begin to understand.  And I can tell you, that you will find yourself.  One way or another, you will find yourself. 

I think I've found myself, most of me anyways.  It’s been a long time coming.  I don’t necessarily know how it happened either because it hasn't been a smooth process.  What I do know is that trying to find myself has been a constantly active choice.  I've slipped up more than once (there was actually 2.5 years of constantly slipping).  It’s been frustrating and has felt hopeless at times.  And then something shifted and all of a sudden “it” was obvious, but still without a road map.  You just “know”.  You catch yourself in your patterns of negativity and you realize that there is a different way to do things and so you start there.  I think that one thing that people forget about the grief cycle is that it is very much a cycle and there is a rhythm to it.  And each rhythm for each person is as unique as our fingerprints.  I finally figured out my rhythm.  Once you figure out your rhythm, the next step is to actively decide whether or not you are going to let the negative part of the cycle consume you, or if you are going to consider and recognize how much softer the blow “this” time around feels.  And it does get softer.  I promise it gets softer.

I am stubborn and my stubbornness, for a long time, was something that I used against myself.  Now, I use it to help myself.  I’m compassionate.  This is something I've always been and I allowed it to be used against me (not actively allowed it, but naively and truly not knowing any better).  Finally one day I decided that I would protect and advocate for myself like I protect and advocate for others.  What does this mean?  It means that I can still be compassionate towards others but not at the expense of myself.  Another thing I've learned is to accept what “part” of a mess is mine and not the whole mess.  I still get in sticky situations with people, only now I don’t apologize for their part of it, only my own.  I think it’s easy to use our bad experiences as crutches to life.  It’s easy to tell ourselves that we can’t do something and believe it because believing in our weaknesses is always an easier alternative to fighting for the sacred “something” we find every excuse not to go for.  After placement of Baby Boy, I found every excuse not to do things.  And now, I’m trying to find the reasons why I should do things.  It’s such a simple thing to say, and a lot of you out there are probably thinking, “duh.”  But, for me this was a huge understanding.

There is no recipe for finding yourself.  I truly wish there was because I think there would be a lot less hurt in the world.  Who do you want to be?  The only difference between that person and who you think you are now, is yourself.  As much as I wanted to believe for a time that the “thing” holding me back was the choices of those who used me or hurt me, what I finally realized is that it wasn't them.  Granted, they weren't helping me, but I was allowing “them” to use me.  I now realize that I command the caliber of people I allow in my life.  Old habits die hard, but there is a reason why habits die off. 

We've all been given one lifetime to live, but in the course of our one lifetime we adapt to time and circumstance too many times to count.  And the choices we make in the most desperate of times are the ones that shape our future.  And in that way, our one lifetime can become several.  And that’s a beautiful thing if you think about it.  Our circumstances, our sorrows, our angers, our hurts, our destruction's, our negative beliefs, none of those have to be the life we choose for ourselves.  And it’s in this way that within our one lifetime we can live as many lifetimes as we choose.  The choice is yours.  You have control of it.  You command your life.  If something isn't working for you, you have the power to change it.  No one says you have to live the life you've been given by circumstance or bad choices.  You can make your life what you want it to be.  If you told me this four years ago, I wouldn't have believed you.  Four years ago, I would have told you all the reasons why that truth (making my life what I want it to be) didn't apply to me.  But, four years later, out of my greatest paradox (my greatest sorrow and achievement) I can tell those of you who are struggling with serious hurt and sorrow, that this truth- making your life what you want it to be- most definitely applies to you.  All it requires is for you to believe in yourself the way you believe in others.  That’s where it starts.  That, an patience.

The God of Love and Fear

I just finished watching "Then She Found Me", which is a wonderful movie.  It's rated "R" for language.  It's got Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Bette Midler, and Matthew Broderick in it.  A main theme in this movie is adoption, from every angle.  Another theme is infertility.  And another theme is divorce and relationships, every kind of relationship, between families, lovers, etc.  Another theme that surfaces is God and religion.  It is a beautiful movie.

I haven't been religiously active for years now.  There was a brief moment last year that I went to church consistently.  It lasted 5 weeks.  This blog post is not about what issues I may or may not have with religion, because quite frankly I haven't figured it out yet.  I support my family and friends who are active in their religion.  I am excited when my nieces and nephews participate in religious ordinances because it is important to them and I love them, so I support them.

There is this part in the movie where one of the main characters experiences a miscarriage after great difficulty getting pregnant in the first place and then begins the process of going through fertility treatments because of her difficulty in getting pregnant.  Her birth-mother is at the appointment with her and the doctor wants to get started with the treatment and her birth-mother says to her daughter, "Do you want to pray?" and then at the doctor, "That's what she does, she prays a lot."  Her daughter says she doesn't want to pray and this surprises her birth-mother who then asks the doctor if she could have a minute with her daughter.  The doctor and assistant leave the room to give the patient a minute with her mother.

The birth-mother then starts asking her daughter why she doesn't feel like praying.  The daughter gets defensive and gets up to leave the room to get the doctor but the birth-mother won't let her by.  Holding her daughters hands she asks her for the fifth time, or so, why she won't pray at the most important moment of her life?  Her daughter responds by saying something like, "Why would I trust this moment with someone I thought was..." and she stops.  With tears in her eyes, crying a heart broken cry that we've all experienced at some point in our life, she says, "I thought God was loving and good... I had faith."  At this point, I'm crying because watching this movie and seeing all that this character has been through, a lot of it relate-able, it was hard not to cry.

Her birth-mother responds, "What if God is difficult?  What is He is awful?  Even complicated?"  Her daughter looks into her eyes and whispers, "like me."  And the connection is made.  This hit me hard.  I know I've discussed religion on here before.  The topic of religion is delicate and complex.  It's a delicate place to be in when you know you've sinned, but from your sin comes your life's greatest accomplishment.  How do you justify those feelings?  It's also scary to consider trusting to someone else, anything else that could be remotely as important to you as your life's greatest lesson.  And so, you just kind of go through life trusting yourself with yourself.  I'm talking about being a birth-mother right now.

I could sit here and say that the reason I don't go to church is because the bishop I spoke to after I placed Baby Boy for adoption didn't handle it very well and punished me further after I had just made it through 9 months of spiritually self-refining fire.  I could.  Religious figures always make for a great scapegoat.  I could think up a dozen issues I have and place the blame elsewhere instead of owning them as my own insecurities about religion.  But really what it comes down to is that I once had faith.  I once trusted that God was loving and good.  Maybe that's ridiculously cliche for me to say.  I mean, of all the scapegoats there ever were in the history of mankind, of course I'd be angry at God.  There is no originality in that one.  I get it.  And maybe it's selfish of me to feel like I deserve a break.  But, we've all been there.  So, clearly there is enough judgment to go around in a situation such as this.

I had a dream about a baby girl the other night.  I was holding this baby girl and she had raven-black hair.  She was tiny.  And I loved her.  I could feel my love for her and it was radiating and I knew she could feel it too, even though she didn't know what it was, except that it felt safe.  My entire dream consisted of me looking down into the eyes of my baby girl and being so proud of her.  She was tiny and she was mine.  Do you know how badly I want that?  It hurts bad.

The main character of the movie ends up praying.  She is Jewish and so her prayer was sung.  She translates it for her birth-mother afterward because her birth-mother is not Jewish.  Translated, the prayer meant: "Listen, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Listen, O Israel, the God of love and the God of fear are one."

To be human is to be a paradox.  If it is human nature to be a paradox; to be awful and wonderful, to be complicated and simple, to be difficult and effortless and if we are to believe that we are creations of God, then wouldn't it make sense to believe that God is infinitely more complicated than we are?  This is a huge thing for me because I have felt so much guilt about my anger towards God.  And the fact that I feel guilt makes me even angrier.  But, God created emotion and emotion is confusing.  We know joy because we've felt sorrow.  We know love because we know anger.  And He created it all, so knowing that, I know he can handle my anger and desire to shut Him out right now.  It's complicated.  And this post could offer great offense to some of you out there; I realize this.  But, if I am being honest, I don't feel safe in religion right now.  And I don't trust God right now.  And that's okay because God is merciful and He can handle my anger towards Him.  Not many beings can handle this kind of anger, but He can.  He can handle it because he is the God of love and fear.  He knows the delicate difference between the two.

Where Do I Even Start?

(giant exhale).

The weird thing is... I can't stop thinking about weddings.  I'm not engaged.  I'm not dating anyone.  Right now I'm working on figuring myself out because, in the wise words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "We must be our own before we can be another's."

That doesn't stop me from constantly thinking about weddings.  And that's another weird thing is... I've never thought about weddings like I'm thinking about them now.  I was always the kind of girl who just wanted to elope because, why bother with all the drama and details, when it should just be about you and the one you love?  I'm learning now, that my thinking that was a little selfish.  I'm not judging those who choose to elope.  The closest I ever wanted to come to a formal wedding was when I considered going to the court house and being married by a judge... simple.  White dress, the man I love, the wedding rings, a couple witnesses, the marriage license, a few spoken words from the heart... and then your done.  True, for me, the focus was always about what came after the wedding.  My own family.  My life with my husband and growing our family together.  That's all I've ever wanted and that's a worthy dream to focus on.

Here's the part I never thought of... how important a wedding may be for the other person involved.  The opportunity to share with everyone you know, the love you have for the person you are "binding" yourself to.  A celebration of your joy in your choice of companion.  A time where everyone you know and care about enough to invite, comes and welcomes you off into the new phase of your existence with the one person you've always hoped to find, and have found.  Those are really important things.

I almost that once.  I'm not talking about with baby daddy.  What I had with him was all lies and betrayal.  I'm talking about another man that... has already taught me so much in this life by his example, alone.  He wanted this big wedding with elaborate... everything... and I was so intimidated by all of it.  I warmed up to it, for him because it was important to him.  But I was scared of the "bigness"... of being noticed... of being recognized... I don't know how to explain it.  All I know is that now, the "big" and very public wedding is all I want.  It has nothing to do with the decorations or the location, or the theme... when I say "big", I'm not talking about inviting an entire city of people I don't know.  It's about the joy.  I want to share my joy with those I respect and appreciate are in my life.  I want them to be a part of the ushering in of "the next step" in my life.

This is all a jumbled mess.  I'm just barely starting to sort this new part of me out and, quite frankly, I don't know what to make of it.  While I am a feminine woman who is soft spoken and trying to live as graceful a life as possible... I've never been the sort of woman who willingly shows her delicacy... and it's something I'm learning the balance of right now.  For too long I've been stubborn and closed off... I'm opening up now, and this is one of the weird unexpected things that is surfacing and it's very new to me.  It's giving me ideas of the theme color for next year, but I'm still researching it so I won't unveil it just yet.  But, this has been on my mind enough lately that it was important to me to share it with you all.  Here's to letting whatever comes next in life to unravel on it's own terms.

It's Been a While

I feel bad that I haven't written for a while.  Things have been really busy for me.  A new semester started and I am in a Creative Non-fiction writing class, an Intermediate Poetry writing class, and an Intermediate Algebra class.  The combination of these classes means that I barely have time to sleep.  Also, I am tutoring 5th graders in reading at a local elementary school.  I'm trying to get other areas of my life in order as well, and so I've just had a lot of different things competing for my time.  What I've realized is that I need to include making time for writing on this blog, because this blog is an outlet for me.  It's a way for me to connect with people I care about and who care about open adoption.  My lack of writing doesn't mean that I haven't been thinking a lot about what I would write about.  And as usual, what I want to write about is hard to explain, but I will definitely try my hardest to say it.

My poetry class and my creative non-fiction class have really pushed my limits as far as writing and the construct behind writing.  I've always felt like I was an "okay" writer of poetry, but this class has shown me that... there is a lot I didn't know.  Ironically enough, I was more worried about going in to my creative non-fiction class because I didn't know what it would involve (this genre of writing is hard to define, therefore my hesitancy), but it's proven to be the class I am doing best in.  As for math... I have nothing pleasant to say about it.

The semester is officially half-way over.  And for the 8 weeks that have passed, I have been living in the land of memory because I've had to write a personal essay that was just critiqued in front of my entire class 2 days ago.  Not all of it has been pleasant.  For the next 7 weeks, I will continue residing in the land of memory, because I have another entire-class critique the week before finals.

I've been dealing with some other things on top of the stress of this semester.  Something I haven't written about that I am going to mention right now is that back in April of this year I decided to separate ways with my family.  I'm not going to go into the details of this decision on here, but I feel like it is necessary to let you all know because you all have been an important part in my growth and healing after placement, and honesty is important.

Simply put, this year has been hard.  The decision I made in April, I made because I felt like I was disappearing.  I can't describe that feeling.  I was caught up in so many people's extreme emotions and I was trying to make it all better for everyone involved, and what it was doing to me was erasing me.  It was at this time that I started considering that maybe I had a severe mental health disease because I didn't trust anyone, especially myself.  So, I did something for myself.  I shut myself off from all the confusion and I have been working through the confusion ever since.

I've been sorting through the confusion of my life and I'm better for it.  For as hard as this year has been for me, I'm grateful for it.  When you have people from every angle whispering insecurity in you and you lose your voice amidst all of the anger, that's when you begin to disappear.  I cut off all the noise and I'm better for it.  I'm more at peace with myself.  I'm more secure in myself.  I'm happier.  I think that's hard for certain people to hear because they don't want to believe it, but it's true.  I have a focused idea of where I want my life to go now and it's not competing with the whispers of everyone else.  Sometimes I still hear echoes of the whispers because of the actions of others' and how they are still affecting my life in an attempt to gain control, but I know how to ignore them now, and I'm better off for it.  Those people know who they are and I know how reading this post may make them feel, but that's not my problem anymore; it belongs with them.

I've been afraid to blog because everything I do right now is being analyzed by people who I really don't want to have contact with anymore.  But, this is my blog.  And these are my feelings.  And I will not stop expressing them.

On that note, I'd like to share a poem I came across that I've been thinking about over the course of this semester so far.  It is by Wislawa Szymborska who just recently passed away.  She is a woman of Polish descent who survived the Holocaust.  She has a beautiful way of expressing vulnerability and strength at the same time and I appreciate her poetry for that reason.  Enjoy.  The meaning is left up to you, that's the beauty of poetry (it is something for everyone); I already know what it means to me.

Under One Small Star

My apologies to change for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage, 
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space, 
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
the labor heavily so that they may seem light.

-Wislawa Szymborska

Soul Food

Today I'm getting spiritual.  I don't think it necessary to declare the religion I associate myself with because it doesn't matter.  God is God and he loves his creations.  Whether you are Buddhist, Wiccan, Catholic, Baptist, Vegetarian... a Lawyer... we all believe in something bigger than us and whether you worship a llama, a cow, life as life, a fierce God, a loving God, a God-like father, nature, or money, that thing that you believe in that is bigger than yourself, it makes you strive for something more.

I am Christian.  I am a Christian who has a close relationship with nature and loves open spaces.  What does that have to do with anything?  I don't know, I just thought I would share that with you.  Where I'm going with this post is I've been feeling like I need to post a blog, but every time I've logged in to do so... I sit at my keyboard for a portion of time and my mind is blank.  I just sit here, hands poised upon my keyboard, staring at the screen... and nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  So, I thought that instead of setting out to write something inspiring and world-changing, that I would just let you all know what's going on in my life.

I'm attending a group alongside my personal therapy and in my group, a thought has been shared a couple of times by the facilitator that I wanted to share here.  It's been the one thing that has been primary on my mind lately.  She was quoting another source, which I can't remember, but she said, "Sometimes we confuse who we are with where we are."  That's a pretty profound thought to me.  I think the "where" in this quote can be reflected on in different ways.  When I initially heard her say this a couple of weeks ago, my initial thought was that I feel like I'm in this "blah" kind of place.  I've lost a lot of motivation in certain places, and yet I'm completely motivated in others.  "Where" can be emotional, it can be physical, it can be mental, it can be cosmic... it can be spiritual.  This begs the question, "Where am I in these places?"  

--Emotional:  I'm a bit hurt.  I'm a bit gun-shy... "gun" meaning shy of trying anything new and "shy" meaning, scared crapless.  How is that for eloquence?  I'm angry in one emotional sphere, and hopeful in another, and the common thread between those two places is that I'm ridiculously cautious in moving forward.  But, frightened is not who I am.  And that's the point.  I look back at the experiences I've had and not once to I see a frightened girl-child, but instead I see a determined woman who will see "it" (the experience) through and she does it with a grace and strength that I've never claimed as my own before.  So, while I'm gun-shy at life, I am determined to follow through with what is important to me and I will not give up until I find resolve and peace.

--Physical:  This is the main part of the "blahness" I've felt.  I've lost a lot of motivation in my personal weight loss.  Having said that though, looking back on my previous attempts, I don't know that the desired outcome was one I truly believed in.  Part of that lack of faith in myself and my desired outcome was not for the lack of constant support I received from people in my life, but it was in my not believing in myself, and my confusing who I am with where I am, "where" being this belief that I was undesirable if I didn't "fit" a certain mold, and that mold varied depending on whom I spoke with, but I feel like I finally have a better grip on who I am for me.  This is what I know:  I am here.  I am alive.  I am strong.  And that's enough.  The fact that I exist is enough to be enough.  I hope that makes sense.  Where am I?  I'm in a world where sexiness is defined in rather unhealthy proportions, whether that is physical proportion, or mental/emotional/social/spiritual proportions.  Who am I?  A girl who finally realizes that I don't have to be 120 pounds to be taken seriously as an active and valuable part of this Universe.  The fact that I exist is remarkable in it's own right.  Who I am is a woman deserving of happiness and a long life of health and joy.
-Mental:  this used to be a scary realm for me.  It was very muddles and confused.  I think the mental and the emotional are twin cousins... yes, twin cousins, they are immediately related, while still maintaining complete autonomy from one another.  I've kind of talked about this before, but the best way I can summarize it is where I was was confusion and a need to be what other's wanted me to be, at the sake of not becoming who I know that I am.  I am beautiful.  I talk about things that are difficult to talk about.  I can relate to any kind of person because my mission in life is to love and promote love... not physical love, but that kind of love that is unconditional.  I get it, some of my decisions frighten others, but I wouldn't be who I am without having taken any of the risks I've taken, and I wouldn't change them for the world because I know more about love than a lot of people claim they know.  That battle- that confusion of being told that you are wrong in who you are and the way you live your life- that alone is confusing where you are with who you are.  I see complicated and worthwhile where other's only see bad.  I see something deserving of a second, or third, or fourth to tenth glance, where other's only see something not worthy of time.  Because of this, the way I see things, I've been told for the longest time where I can make better decisions, and how to better live in accordance with the ideals of those telling me I'm doing "it" (life, my life) wrong.  And for the longest time I thought something was innately wrong with me.  Do you know what the definition of innate is?  It is "belonging to the essential nature of something."  Essentially, it is something that is natural to the thing it belongs to, so in context to what I just stated, for the longest time I thought that I was made of only wrong.  Where am I?  I'm in a world where perceptions rule and each perception is as unique as the person viewing it.  Who am I?  A loving human being who believes that life and love are worthy of taking risks, and what other's deem as a risk, is only viewed as a opportunity to me.


--Cosmic:  Where am I?  Earth, one of potentially billions planets that can sustain life.  Who am I?  Life worthy of living and so small in comparison to the Universe around me that my actions should not even peak on the radar of people who are concerned with their own existences and living the one life they will ever experience here.  I'm not saying I don't believe in life after this place, because I do, I'm saying that we will ever only know this life in this format, in this way, the way we are living it now... once.  Only once.  So, should not the focus be to live our life for ourselves and the way it feels right to us, instead of how other's believe we should live?  It's a s simple question.  Rhetorical, even.


--Spiritual:  This is where it gets religious-y.  Where am I?  A place meant to challenge me.  A place where I had to come in order to learn the spiritual concepts that only this place could teach me.  A place I chose to come when I new how everything would play out... a place I chose to come when I had the spiritual knowledge to know the end from the beginning... I still chose to come here.  Who am I?  A being much braver than I give myself credit for.  A spiritual child who, through my own sorrow and loss and sacrifice, understands my spiritual connection with my Mother-in-Heaven better than I ever thought I could.  A person who strives to know everything there is to know about love in it's highest and most noble form... and I chose to learn that here.

It is said that "The worth of souls is great in the sight of God."  Knowing this answers a simple but completely necessary question.  Who are we?  We are souls of great worth.  That's easy to forget when we compare who we are to where we are, and there is a major difference.  You can never do enough to change a core feeling about yourself that has been embedded in you for who knows how long.  We literally have to retrain our thought patterns that feed our core beliefs.  And this retraining has to happen with every breath.  With every breath we have to remind ourselves of who we are, and not base who we are with what is currently going wrong in our lives, which is the where.  That's hard, but nothing worth having is easy.  I'm an awesome lady.  I have a lot of love to give and who I am is a lot better than what my current hardships cause me to believe I am.  And that's something worth remembering every second.

Loss, We Meet Again

I've been thinking for about 35 hours how I want to talk about what this post is about.  Let me start off by saying a recent experience I had caught me completely off guard.  I bought a cat last Friday.  A cute little, big eyed baby kitten.  I named him Ellipses, which is plural for ellipsis, which is what is used in grammar to signify that you are not using a full quote, and it also suggests that you are withholding information, it is also used when a sentence dies off without finishing and while alluding a sense of hesitancy... it is signified as three dots (...) and I use it a lot in my writing.  So, yeah, that's what you get when you are the cat of an English major.  His name was either going to be Ellipses or Comma; either way he wasn't going to escape the English nerdom that is my life.

This little kitten... I love him.  The shelter I adopted him from thought he was about 13 weeks old, but it turns out he was between 6-8 weeks old and tiny as can be.  I had him for 53 hours before he died from feline distemper.  I don't know if you all know what that is.  Basically it is related to the parvovirus found in dogs.  It's a virus that attacks the white blood cells in the cat so it is unable to fight it off and it eventually overcomes the neurological system and is 99% of the time fatal.  It can be contracted en-utero or through other cats that have been subjected to it.  With how quickly it overcame this sweet baby kitten, the vet believes it had already been in his system for at least a week before I adopted him.

In the time that I had Ellipses, he was... well, the vet thought his occasional vommitting was related to transitional difficulties.  Cats can be extremely finicky when it comes to transitions and this little baby was too tiny to have been taken from his momma and then to go to a shelter and then to be adopted... he had been through a lot of transition and that alone can cause vommitting in a kitten.  He and I spent a lot of time cuddling and when we weren't cuddling, he was vommitting and the pressure with which he would dry-heave was so body shaking that it would throw him back a little each time and so I spent my time holding him securely in one spot so he could get it out, while rubbing his back to soothe him.  The day he died he was vommitting about every hour from 3:30-4:00 in the morning on.  I started to get concerned when he became lethargic and stopped drinking water.  He stopped walking around too.  By the time I got him to the vet, he had lost motor function in his legs and couldn't even stand but would roll over on to his back involuntarily.  

I held him as he was fading.  I held him on his back over the warm blanket (his temperature was dropping and he was slowly becoming hypothermic) and I rubbed underneath his chin as he tried to keep his eyes on me... but he was losing his ability to focus... if he could even see at all at that point.  He wanted so desperately to be able to stand and walk around that he started to panic and I said my goodbyes and I handed him over to the vet to put him... down... or out of his misery, however you want to define it.  

Obviously I didn't expect him to die when I adopted him.  Moreso, I didn't expect to bond with him as quickly as I did.  But I did.  He was so vulnerable and tiny and unsure about the world that he relied on me.  And... that brought back a lot of memories from my time in the hospital with Baby Boy.  I fell in love with this little kitten.  And saying goodbye to him... I wasn't expecting all the raw emotion that saying goodbye to Ellipses would bring up from the day I left Baby Boy in the arms of a social worker.  

This weekend... needless to say was the second worst and most rewarding weekend of my life; the first being the weekend I delivered Baby Boy and then placed him for adoption.  I had a panic attack at the vet's office, in the bathroom while they put him down.  To go into complete details and maybe I shouldn't- but what the heck- I wasn't allowed to go back with him because it would have been too traumatic.  You see, he was so tiny that they couldn't inject the euthanasia into his veins, so they had to inject it straight into his heart.  They made him comfortable at first so he wouldn't feel anything, but doing it that way is so sudden that it can be traumatic for an owner to witness so they don't allow them back to witness it.  

Obviously, there aren't a lot of connections to be made between Baby Boy and Ellipses.  Baby Boy is thriving... and Ellipses is no more.  Baby Boy is human and... no matter how much of a cat lady I'm turning in to... Ellipses was not a human even though to me, he was baby-like.  But the striking similarities in all of this is that I was only in both of their lives for a short time and they both taught me more about love than I've learned on my own in my nearly 28 years of existence.  

Thought shift: sometimes I question God.  Don't get me wrong, I know emphatically that there is a God because I've experienced blessings that are too sacred to ever question and so I don't question the existence of God... rather, I question the whole process that is religion and Deity and trial and tribulation and... all of that... a lot.  I know that I have a sort of say in the direction my life takes and that life, in general, is not pre-determined and that none of us are pre-destined for any grand scheme; we all have a say in our actions and our decisions.  But, I don't want to know Loss anymore and that's where I get hung up on whatever God's divine plan for me may be.  This weekend was too close for comfort to the sacred memory that is Baby Boy and it struck me that... anything... anything can resurface those memories and it will always be that way... and that's kind of exhausting to think about.  And... I mean, that's just it, there's nothing more that can said about that, I guess.

Do I regret Baby Boy for the loss I endured?  I don't regret anything about him.  I would go as far as to say that I don't even regret his dad (though I still dislike Baby Daddy strongly) because without him, Baby Boy wouldn't be here and without Baby Boy being here I would never have known his light and his parents would never have been blessed with his addition to their family.  Do I wish that I had waited and created Baby Boy with another person?  Yes, deeply.  The man I love and who loves Baby Boy... he is a great father to his children and so I don't doubt for one second that he would have been a brilliant father to Baby Boy because I know he would have.  I took a risk with Baby Daddy and it didn't work, but I was blessed to have known an angel in Baby Boy and to have been a part of his life for a short time and I don't regret that for one second.  He taught me about love... the real kind.  The selfless kind that changes your world if you are lucky enough to have ever known it.  I may not be an active part of his world, but for the time that I got to spend with him... it was worth it.

Now the other question.  Do I regret Ellipses?  Nope.  When I placed Baby Boy for adoption, there was this part of me... it was the survival part of me that closed off the maternal part of me in order to survive the decision I made.  There's really no other way to say it; I couldn't have made that decision and decided to stay in that active maternal place at the same time.  So, I shut it off.  And while I'd like to think that I've still been a kind woman towards others since I shut that part of me off, there was this other part of me that was scared to really open that closed off part... to ever fully open that part of me again.  I didn't realize how scared I was to love someone so completely again and so... I've convinced myself for a long time that I've completely opened my heart up again to the world and the opportunities that may await me.  But, the thing about convincing is that when you're doing it, the thing you are convincing yourself of doesn't exist.  So... as much as I wanted to open my heart up and trust again and love again and laugh freely again and be easy in my skin again... it was a show for the most part.  There were some very genuine moments but they were fleeting.  

And then I adopted this baby kitty and he needed me and I needed him and it was easy to open up to him because he was so unassuming.  And... that was curious to me and that's when I realized how closed off I've been.  And so in a long about way of saying it, I don't regret Ellipses.  And that plan of God's... I don't understand it, but I'm trusting it more.  If my only purpose in this kitten's life was to give him a lot of love and a couple days of comfort outside of a dirty animal shelter and to cry over his loss, because regardless of how tiny he was, he was important; if that was the whole point of me finding him and loving him, then I can live with that. Just like Baby Boy, if I wasn't supposed to be his active mommy and I was only supposed to know his spirit and his life through carrying him to term and loving him and his companionship for nine months, just to hand him over to people who love him just as much as I do; if my only purpose was to learn of that kind of love, then it was worth it and I can live with that.

I don't know how else to look at any of this.  As much as I don't want to know Loss anymore, I'm understanding that it is essential to our human growth.  If we allow it to, Loss can teach us more about love than it ever could about hate and that's the balance of loss.  Yes it can kill our souls and breed hate within us, but only if we allow it to.  But also, if we allow it to, it can grow our souls to where we long to be and where we will experience the most powerful of love.  That may sound hokey and a bit hippy-like, but I believe it.  Loss, if you allow it to, can teach you more about love than anything this world has to offer; especially reality t.v.  It's true.

As it stands, I'm going to get another kitten.  I'm looking into one right now that is being fostered and he's so precious and I can't wait to meet him.  I'm not going to let my heart close off again, that's for sure.  It's open now and I like it.

Truth is, Mistakes are Necessary

I've been on this reading bender lately.  And I'm loving it because I am reading things that I want to read and that are still completely out of my realm of "typical reading".  Right now I am reading a couple of books by Mark Nepo.  I'm only 4 poems into his book of poetry titled Surviving Has Made Me Crazy.  I've never read anything like what he has to offer, never in my life have I read such pure truth learned only at the hands of difficulty.  If you guys want to know more about him, you should read up on him.

I want to share one of his poems with you.  It is titled "The Mistake", and it goes:

The wind had been knocked out of me
and doubled over, I looked like I was asking
for something.  It was then that someone
passing by offered me something precious,
which I managed to hold briefly before
dropping.  And when I dropped it,
it fell into someone else's hands
and she was so grateful.
She called me kind and generous.
She couldn't thank me enough.
But it was only a mistake.
I felt compelled to admit
that I had merely dropped
something precious.  At this,
she put what I had dropped down
and took my face and said, "Don't
you see?  Even dropping what is precious
is a gift."  It made me cry and while
she rocked me, what was precious
rolled toward a bird who fluttered
over it.  It finally landed at the feet
of a small child who hugged what was
given, what was dropped, what was a
mistake, what was let go in order to hold
someone lost.  The little one just hugged it
and turned to her mother in awe, shouting,
"Look what I found!  Look what I found!"

This poem is beautiful to me and I cried when I read it.  There are different reasons why I appreciate this poem.  From a writing perspective, I appreciate its ambiguity, there is no clear understanding of what the precious thing is and so the core of the poem, the something dropped could be so many different things to so many different people, and for that it is more resounding in its universal impact.  Secondly, I love the enjambments, which is how each line ends which really effects the breath of thought and how it is spoken and delivered.  But mostly, I love the message and what I get from it.  It will be different for you, I imagine, but for me it was quite powerful.  To me, the meaning of this poem conveys and idea that there is more to trial and loss and sorrow, even if none of that was sought out.  And why would any of that be sought out?  It wouldn't.  I don't know of anyone who thinks to themseleves, "Self, I could really go for a life-altering downer right now, what do you say to that?!"  Self, go for it and make sure it hurts you big time and will be felt for a long time.  Yeah, people typically aren't like that.  But stuff happens.

Things happen in life that you never see coming and it leaves you... frightened and broken, and that's kind of the point.  You've heard me say it before, and I'll continue saying it, hurt/trials/sorrow grows us for powerful change that we are meant to experience.  Oftentimes, it feels as though we are lucky just to survive these moments of life-altering impact.  I've felt like that for the longest time, myself, that I'm lucky to have survived the soul-trauma and hurt that comes with placing a child for adoption.  Outside of my life-altering placement of my first child for adoption, I've lived through some other pretty heart-wrenching experiences and the culmination of all of them together has left me quite frightened and unsure of moving forward.

This poem made me think of all of these difficult moments/experiences differently.  I wonder about this "thing" that he was given and then mistakenly dropped, only to want it back, but not regaining it again, only to still be better off in a way that isn't easily expressed for having lost the thing he let go of, and that brought so much joy to the life of another, a child.  I get the feeling that the voice of this poem still misses, very much, the thing he accidentally let go of.  And it wasn't easy for the voice of this poem to let this thing go, but it was never fully his to begin with, and in letting it go he realized that in letting go is as much of a gift as the experience was in the first place.  And what he let go of isn't just forgotten, but it finds it's place in the heart of another and the memory of the previous "owner".  I think it's the combination of these understandings that the poem ends on a joyful note which gives you the sense as a reader that the voice of this poem is alright with what happened and that this "mistake" of letting go of what he initially had no intention of letting go was not a mistake, but something that just happened... something that he had no control over, but that just happened.  I'm sorry if I am rambling.  I get real nerdy about analyzing poems... it's why I'm an English major, truth be told.

There's another story in this poem I feel.  And I believe that the other story is in the fact that sometimes it takes losing what we value most to understand the true beauty of what we had.  And that sounds like a total bummer, but I think that this other narrative is followed by the suggestion that what was lost can be regained with the purity of new eyes or new understanding, as the child who claimed the precious gift that was lost by the person who let it drop from their grasp accidentally.  Once this person lost what they treasured, they realized what they missed and regained it with new appreciated understanding.  The "new" being represented by the child.

I could honestly keep going, but I'll stop.  I just want to finish this post by saying that I no longer feel that that things we lose sight of in life and that escape our true understanding and leave us with uncertainty and fear about what's to come... I no longer believe that these moments are meant simply to be survived.  But rather that they are gifts as well.  The "mistakes" and regrets of life are not a curse to the one feeling them, but they are a gift to teach us what we value as most sacred.  And while we experience the difficulty of this lesson, the experience is a gift in itself because, never again, will we live each moment of our life in an experience with such obvious clarity and true understanding.  And it's for that reason that we should be grateful for our hardships because they make what's important completely clear.  And really, what we feel in the pressure of the difficulty... it really isn't too far away from the peace.  I would go as far as to say that they are one in the same: confusion and understanding, fear and peace, hurt/anger and love, sorrow and joy, despair and hope.  It is in the experience of one that we find and better understand the other.  And there is balance in all of it, even when balance isn't readily found.

Babies on my Mind

It's interesting. I am so baby hungry. Truth be told, I've been baby hungry since Baby Boy was four or five months old. Motherhood is a complicated thing... beyond that "birth-motherhood" is an even more complicated thing. As a birthmother, you take joy and pride in your creation... the most beautiful creation you've ever accomplished... but you observe from a distance. My eyes are watering right now. I can't describe in words what my heart feels. My son is beautiful and perfect, but he is no longer mine. To be honest, I'm surprised by these feelings. And, I think... I know I've mentioned it in previous posts that... when these feelings hit is anyone's guess. And these feelings are hitting me again and they've come out of nowhere.

This time isn't like the last time these feelings struck. The last time they hit, the emotion was easy to recognize because it was pure sorrow mixed with quiet reflection. This time... it's confusing. I want a baby really bad. But, not just to have a baby. I'm not taking on, or promoting, the ideology that if I had a baby my life would be perfect and no longer filled with "the stuff of life" that makes life sometimes difficult to swallow. A baby is not a fix all. I want a baby because I want to start my family. There are children that are meant to be with me and I want to get them here. Just as Baby Boy was not meant to be with me... there are children who are meant to be with me and I am so excited to meet them and be with them. It's just a matter of timing. I've never been good with my life's timing and I've learned that a lot of it is based on patience... and I'm more patient now than I used to be. But patience is still hard to digest when you know the beauty that is to come.

I am in love with an amazing man and he is in love with me and we often talk about our future family and how excited we are to meet our children. He is wonderful. This is the same Mango I've always talked about. I am a lucky girl to know his love. Together, he and I are going to create a beautiful family... but, it's going to take some time and patience to get there. We are both working on our individual stuff with a united front for a common goal. That common goal is marriage to each other and it's going to take some time and that is fine. I've got time. I don't know what the common thread of this post is. I've just been sitting in my office at work today and the only thing I can think about is my future family.

I stood at the window and let the warmth of the sun flood in upon me and it was wonderful; it was the first solid stream of sun Utah's had for weeks now and it was greatly appreciated. And as I stood there, I imagined this little girl with long hair and she is shy and her presence is like the warmth of a ray of sun... peaceful, enveloping, and quiet. And... it sounds crazy, but that little girl is mine. She's mine. I can't describe how I know this, but I do and I can't wait to meet her. It's going to take some time and that is fine. I can be patient when I know that the outcome is as beautiful as the sun. I am baby hungry, but this time I'm going to do it right.