Perspective

My spirit daughter is over two years old. Someone I hadn't seen in longer than that,  delicately asked how all that had been for me.

Looking back, I can quickly admit that I am a happier person because of the perspective I've gained.  I'm happier than I've ever been.  I'm honestly grateful for the experience.  Loving Brynn, and experiencing that deep sorrow, and exposing my most desperate self has softened me. I have been largely freed from worries. I survived what I thought I could never survive.  So I will survive it all, until I don't, and then it won't matter. 

Until Brynn died, I was unsure that people could really communicate with the dead.  But now its undeniable.  She is with me.  I hesitate to talk about it, because its hard to understand until you've experienced it.  Years ago, I would have thought the suggestion to be unchristian.  Here's how I can best describe it.  When Brynn died, the top of my head opened in direct connection with heaven.  I moved closer to heaven, and heaven moved closer to me.  I just know now.


Last night Noah was taking my tea cup to his mouth and making sounds with it, then he'd put it to Shane's mouth, then my mouth, and around again.  I thought about when I bought that mug, an earthy blue, that it reminded me of the baby I carried within, a most serene being.  Its my Noah mug.  I thought about how happy my then me would be to see this sight, the three of us, laughing and playing with it.  My happy, adorable, children with bodies that I can hold, cheeks I can press mine against.  I don't miss one moment like this.  Every moment like this makes me grateful.  This perspective is Brynn's gift to me.

I am an unemployed single mom, with one ghost baby, and I'm completely in love with my life.

When we See What we See

Weekends can be tough for the single parent.  It feels like everyone else is having family time.  Some days, I want to have something family-fun to do so badly, it gets overwhelming.  And, I really must take care not to add any unnecessary whelm to my already overwhelmed brain.

A few weekends ago I thought of the herring run.  Every spring, adult herring swim from the ocean upstream to make babies in fresh water by the droves.  They often jump out of the water in their enthusiasm for the trip.  It's an event that draws a nature-loving crowd. 

We had been sick.  The swine flu took us down one by one, recovery was sloow.  I was out of work for two weeks, which, indirectly cost me my job.  I did not see that coming.

So there I was on a Saturday morning, having hardly left the house at all for the past month, and really wanting to leave the house.  Someone on facebook mentioned that seagulls were hovering around the watershed in middleboro, hoping to catch some herring, so that was it, we jumped in the Grand Caravan hot on the trail.  By the way, I love that name for a car.  Grand Caravan.  How regal, how caravanny.  How Grand!

Well, we stopped at one place first.  None.  I drove on into Plymouth, I knew the place that never failed to reveal herring.  Fail!  I pushed the sit and stand stroller with my gigantic child and baby the length of the river ( I have a feeling "river" isn't the correct technical term).  Then we returned to the herring hot spot.  We maybe saw a handful of blurred fish parts.  Not enough to impress.  Shane was annoyed. 

I love being in Plymouth, and I was so happy to keep pushing my heavy children up the street to an awesome little coffee shop called Kiskadee for some hot chocolate and pastry, as consolation prize.

The Grist Mill, aka herring run hotspot, was on the way back to the car so we decided to stop one last time.  I was enjoying the pace of the day, and that everyone was still happy just wandering, doing nothing, really.  Nobody was whining or wanting to leave.  This felt so significant to me.  And then, we saw them.  Hundreds. We could suddenly make out that every ripple in the water was actually a fish.  There were so many fish, we had previously seen their outlines as little waves.  Now, I could not find a space in the water without a fish in it.  I was overcome.  There's a lesson here for me.

We see what we see when we're meant to see it.  Could it be that, without a job or its income, there is an overabundance all around, which will make itself available to me in God's time?  Could it be, that through all of the difficult change our family has undergone, I may have failed to notice all the blessings connecting themselves to us?

I recently read to Shane the story of the fishermen whom had been fishing all night and had caught nothing.  Exhausted, they humored a man they had just met named Jesus, who told them to put the nets back in the water.  And they caught so many fish the nets were ripping apart!  I'm on that train.  This is my story.  Wait and see, my friends.

Wind in the Willows

I was reading to Shane tonight.  By some sweet circumstance, I got Noah to bed earlier and it was just Shane and me.  This fact made me giddy, its far too rare a seen nowadays, and the simplicity of earlier years flooded me with nostalgia.

Before school.  Before I worked.  Before Jimmy's injury or layoffs.  Before a 2nd and 3rd pregnancy, before the death and the birth of a new sibling.  Before our marriage ended.

Shane and I would snuggle in my bed in the middle of the day and I would read him The Wind in the Willows.

He asks me tonight why it has that title.  I read from the last sentance of the first chapter, where Mole was relaxing in his boat, just listening to the wind blowing through the willow trees, sure that he could make out what the wind was whispering.  I explain that it was a simple and peaceful time, when there were no other cares but to listen to the sounds of nature around you. 

I feel a lump in my throat.  We have been through some hard times.  Times that have taken us so far from those innocent days.  Through it all, I kept going, what else can anyone do?  But tonight, maybe mostly for Shane's sake, I feel a sadness wash over me.  And I long for that simple time every once in awhile.  Reading books to Shane under the covers in the middle of the day.

Forgiveness

Yesterday was Forgiveness Sunday in the Orthodox Church.  Its traditional for the entire congregation to form a receiving line, so to speak, each member asking forgiveness in case they've done anything to offend the other.  It is so beautiful, though  I've been too shy to attend one of these services for a long time.

One of the questions that keeps resurfacing for me since the beginning of the end is Whose to blame?  I'm a responsable person.  I like responsability so much, that sometimes I take it all for myself.  Whose to blame? I sit around and think about all the things I could have done differently.
The power of forgiveness, is that when we focus on it, then it doesn't matter at all whose to blame.  We are both forgiven.  I wish I could inject this message into every region of my heart and mind.  I will, eventually.  It is in my highest and best not to blame.  Not my husband, not my parents, not myself.  But to forgive my husband, my parents, myself.

The power of forgiveness is that it grants the freedom to move forward at quantum speed.  I feel weighed down by my inability to forgive myself, just in general, but I will keep my focus there until it is acheived.  Because I can see that being weighed down with blame isn't good as a parent.  I see it affecting my function as a parent.  I see it affecting my child.  And I will not lose one more member of this family. 

So, I will work to forgive as though my life, and stronger still, the lives of my children depend on it.  Because they do.

The Gift

In his book, The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz says a lot of crazy things.  Really wise, spiritual things, but so far out, so surreal.  As I read, at times my mind feels lost, but once, my eyes trailed on a group of words that felt like they were just for me.

       If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you.  If the person doesn't walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her.  Walking away may hurt for awhile, but eventually your heart will heal. .. But if you are truthful with yourself, you will save yourself a lot of emotional pain.

Oh, it hurt for awhile.  I think about some of the phone calls I made over the summer, and I have to laugh.  I was freaking out.  I was sobbing to new friends and old.  In public.  Sometimes it isn't pretty, but, being unashamed of how fallen apart we feel, diving into the wreck, so to speak, speeds up healing. I speak from experience.

I do believe that its all a gift.  Jimmy and I were in love, and we both put a lot of effort into the relationship.  Life threw us a few, more than a few curve balls, and things slowly crumbled.  A choice was made, it wasn't mine.  Even so, I'm grateful for what he was able to give.  I forgive, and I ask his forgiveness.  It stung unbelievably, but my heart is healing.

I went to a birthday party last month. I love the parties that Kerri throws for her girls. The pinatas are something I'll always remember. They are paper grocery bags, stapled together, with a colored print-out of the party theme taped to it. We made musical instruments out of paper towel rolls. Down home. Anyway, I was chatting with a mom whose also one of Kerri's nearest and dearest, assuming she knew about my latest crisis. We talked about having more kids, and somehow it became apparent that she didn't know. After we talked about it for awhile, she said something that I knew to be true as well. She said she could tell I was lighter. I seemed light. I feel light.

Taken Me a Long Time to Get Back Here

I like confession.  I love it.  It's a useful and beautiful tool we have in the Orthodox church.  There's no penance.  Just, before God, tell me what is on your heart. 

During my most recent confession, my priest told me that this, confession, was actually a requirement for someone in my position, in order to, I don't know how he worded it, but get back "in" because my marriage has ended.  Marriage, he said, is a state of grace, and you are no longer in a state of grace.

Funny, it felt to me like the opposite was true.  In fact, talking to my mom over Christmas, I used that exact phrase to explain why I was doing so well, accomodating, forgiving, forging ahead.  Mom, I'm in a state of grace, I said.

I had gone to confession in April, the day Jimmy told me our marriage was over.  I went to confession as a way of taking full responsibility for my part in the failure, to own up to all that I'd done to drive him away.  In the months that followed, I blubbered, I begged, I took the boys to give him space, time to think, time to miss us.  Nothing changed.

When he moved out in August, I was in crisis.  Overwhelmed by the feeling of rejection, triggering deep insecurities, ones that told me that there was something inherently wrong with me that rendered me unable to love and be loved.  Equally overwhelmed that I had no job, no income, and two little ones to house and feed. 

Thus the healing began.  My home is a more peaceful place, a more beautiful space, and I am thriving.

 I'm going to write about my life here, in this blog named for my daughter.  And it will bring honor to her.  Anything that is pure, from the heart, true, and shares with others so that we all feel a little less alone, honors her.  Honors us all.

Transition Stage

Bear with me as I mount my soap box here.  I've always wanted to write an essay entitled "How Laboring Naturally Better Prepares You for Motherhood."

Now I would say it just plain better equips you for life.  Here's why I think that's true:  You can't numb away your pain all the time.  This seems to be the way we try to do it.  We mask our pain with anger, we take anti-depressants or self medicate.  We run away.  Well, I personally feel that I have learned a thing or two by just letting pain hurt.  You learn that the only way out is through..  And you learn that you do get breaks, and eventually there is an end to it.  I'm not going to lie, it HURTS so freakin bad.  So bad.  So bad that I enter a place in my mind that I've never been before.  That you can only get to through immense pain.  And the door that opens remains open, granting wisdom and confidence whenever needed.  Yes, you become the rockstar you always thought you might be.

The greatest lesson for me in feeling the pain of labor is the truth of the Transition Phase.  You can't bear the contractions anymore.  You feel hot, you feel like you're going to faint.  Like you are dying.  Like you can. not. go. on.  That's the phase!  And when you feel these things it means you're almost there.  Trust me, when I'm in this phase I don't care that I'm almost there, I want to turn back, I want to stop, I would like a mallet to my head please.  But you can not possibly stop.  Your body won't stop.  You have to push through.  And push you will. 

Mothering little ones, that's all I've done so far, I liken to being in the trenches, in the front-lines. It's hard. Ridiculously hard at times. It's lonely. It's exhausting. It can make you feel totally inept. And you can't quit. You need to find patience. I can't find it. You HAVE to find it. You have to pull from every resource you never knew you had.  Whenever I feel that way, I trust that this means my break is on the way.

Have you ever felt the transition phases of life?  Maybe you're moving and you can't pack one more thing into one more box.  Or there is a situation in your life that is unbearable and you see no solution and you're panicked about it.  I recognize that now as meaning I'm almost there.

I am truly grateful for the privelage of birthing three precious beings, and the wisdom and strength I've gained through feeling all the pain.  I have to believe, I'm holding on to the possibility that feeling all of the pain in life without running away from it, will lead to feeling all of the joy that a numbed mind would not have access to.

I wanted to add something here, months later.  I can see how any type of birth experience prepares us for motherhood, as long as it doesn't go as planned, is much more intense and painful than we imagined, or in any other way tears our previous notions to shreds.  Birth is at its best a humbling experience.  I am so grateful I got to experience it three painful times.  The power of a body thrusting out is just, there's no word for it.

ever after

i've wanted to post earlier.  my hands have been full.  Noah is the easy baby I always imagined him to be, but he is still a baby, and requires hands to hold him, change him, feed him, rock him, and hold him some more.  He has healed the wound a great deal.  It's a strange thing to say, and unless you've been through grief it may not make sense, but I don't feel ashamed of our story anymore.  Not that I felt shamed for anything that happened, but that, I guess a better word would be embarrassed.  It's not as embarrassing to say my daughter died, whilst holding my baby son in my arms.  The story is not as tragic.  It has a happy ending.  It is way, way better.