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foraging…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

This summer is speeding by, which should feel a bit mixed-blessing, but also feelings are weird right now so nothing is hitting quite normal. That’s ok. I think the most important part is we realize and admit it instead of holding expectations for ourselves based on the perception of how things used to be–how WE used to be…

This past month had me officially quitting the daily drinking of coffee, upon waking. Maybe it’s my fibro, maybe it’s just stress or age… it could be anything really, but this daily cup is no longer good for my body. (ha! was it ever great for my health?) I miss it, because I truly enjoyed it. That being said, I have begun drinking iced coffee some afternoons, and I love that. Adapting how much milk versus coffee, flavor, etc. It has been an adventure. It isn’t every day, but it is definitely the pick me up some afternoons really need!

As I was processing through the whole coffee debacle, (my enneagram wing 5 really shining through here) I had several friends recommend mushroom coffee. The glowing recommendations coupled with the delectable descriptions– elements of a sweetly spiced chai, or the creaminess of a nutty cocoa. By my opinion, it is like none of these things. It wasn’t a good fit, for me. That being said, if you’re a mushroom coffee lover and you have some advice on how to make it incredible, I’ve read the health benefits and am willing to try again.

July also played out as the third month that I’d be dealing with the unexplained arm/nerve pain. It has, at times, been very debilitating. I’ve had doctors say it’s fibro. I’ve had physical therapists say it’s a sleep injury. Pretty much everyone is shooting in the dark with guess, but the likelihood is that its related to my second vaccine dosage, otherwise entitled Long Term Moderna Arm. Good times. (Disclaimer: I am still very much in favor of vaccines, and do not doubt that this is a complication due to combined issues from fibro and the shot.)

Because of the previous issue mentioned, sleep has been in micro doses. Can one micro-dose sleep? At any rate, my schedule is all out of sorts.

I also used July to practice making Instagram Reels (on the fence), working on my manuscript and progressing that journey, and finding opportunity for more connections.

As we step gracefully into August, I’m wondering if these next thirty-one days could be where the real magic lay. I am a super big nerd when it comes to oddball holidays, so I thought I’d share some fun things about the days ahead.

  • This is Admit You’re Happy Month. {Listen, please allow yourself to be happy when you are. Also, please be honest with yourself when you aren’t. Happiness is neither to be expected or required. This is stupid.}
  • It is also Romance Awareness Month. {I mean, What?!?!}
  • Both Picnic and Peach month. {I can get behind these}
  • National Eye Exam Month. {Interesting that this is scheduled along with romance awareness and seeing your happiness. Hmmm.}
  • Today, August 1st, is Friendship Day! Yay! It is ALSO International Forgiveness Day.
  • 2nd- Ice Cream Sandwich Day {YES, PLEASE!}
  • 4th- Chocolate Chip Cookie day {just a few months ago was chocolate chip day. Could be combine them and give a day to something more rewarding maybe??? Just a thought.}
  • 5th- National Underwear Day. {*crickets*}
  • 8th- International Cat Day
  • 9th- Book Lover’s Day
  • 10th- Lazy Day; National Smores Day
  • 12th- World Elephant Day
  • 15th- Relaxation Day
  • 17th- National Thriftshop Day
  • 18th- Bad Poetry Day
  • 19th- National Potato Day {Idaho REPRESENT!}
  • 25th- National Banana Split Day
  • 26th- Women’s Equality Day and National Dog Day

Some thoughts… PERHAPS we should have less food days (though they are delicious) and lazy/rest/nap (that one was a different months) days and just educate people on how to rest, take care of themselves, balance priorities, etc. Most of these days are just ridiculous or funny. Lighthearted and worth celebrating, perhaps… But keeping a focus on these things that truly matter.

Moral of the story: Grab an ice cream sandwich this month. Write a note to a friend. Take naps, read books, and listen to your body. This is how we live our lives, love our lives, admit we are happy, and celebrate US.

Also, go get your eyes checked…

the shame game…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay2 Comments

Have you ever sat frozen, macro-focussed on a certain predicament in life and wondered if this is who you are now? This is, in fact, how I’m living these days. As a chronic illness warrior, I’ll be honest- I’m not feeling very warrior like, these days. I keep reminding myself that this is a season, or that I should get over it because others have it worse. Do you do that too? Do you shame how you’re feeling by minimizing it? I have the terrible habit of this behavior, but as my husband has been struggling with some health issues I am finding I’m especially sensitive to his actions in that form.

With him it is a lot of “it’s fine… I’m fine”, and with me, my inner dialogue comes off a bit more like get over it, there are people literally dying of some terminal disease. Toughen up… Let me be clear, both are unhealthy behaviors. I can look at my husband’s life and trail exactly where it came from. With me, it has only been in the past year that I’ve really developed any clarity. You see, this negative (hateful) dialogue ran rampant with my miscarriages. It raged in my mind when I was hospitalized with tumors. It has coarsed through most of my life with this hip disorder. It is the voice I hear with every migraine, my hysterectomy and bout of uterine cancer. It was my constant companion as I was thrown into instant menopause at 24, and that trainwreck took assault on my endocrine system.

This is the voice… As of late, this voice is the loudest with my fibromyalgia and RA. It likes to remind me I should be healthier than I am, thinner than I am–more active than I am. It likes to guilt me into taking evening walks, even though the walk to the end of my block yesterday had me sobbing and certain I’d never make it home again–Intense pain so violent that vomit follows. This god-awful voice encourages me to make plans that I cannot possibly manage, and hold expectations suitable for a healthy person, which I can not meet. The voice is the very voice of shame, growing with me for most of my life.

And this time around, I see that for what it is, and I’m trying to out-voice it.

When I was a teenager I had horrible menstrual cycles. The bleeding was beyond heavy, the cramps were violent and the children’s home I lived in did not believe me. They took no effort to find out if anything was wrong, they simply declared I was fine. When I was 17 and had one of the most medically unusual miscarriages the team of doctors at our local hospital had seen, that same children’s home (where I no longer lived) went out of their way to make sure I knew they knew I was lying about that too.

When I was twenty-four, and underwent an emergency hysterectomy after a decade of heinous periods and a myriad of massive reproductive health issues, these same staff members emailed me to ask why I continued to lie about this part of my life and why couldn’t I just let it rest and be honest. (Ironically, years later in a protective conversation between them and myself regarding my sister, they would ask why I was so untrusting of their motives. What could I possibly have against them? When I reminded them of a few key incidents surround this very topic, they could not be bothered to remember them. They also assured me that, since they couldn’t remember, these things had never happened. The truth is that this voice of shame that long ago bore itself into my brain, always minimizing my conditions is their voice. It is theirs. It is the voice of the adults I trusted, when I was a kid… the voice of the adults who decided I wasn’t worth truly caring about– I wasn’t worth advocating for and I certainly didn’t deserve a healthier quality of life.

Chronic illness is so complicated, all on its own. Making it more complicated are the voices of a handful of people whose apathy weaseled its way into my psyche. These are the things I am seeing…

I asked my doctor if this immense level of pain is who I am now. Nearly six weeks ago it was deemed an injury, but as therapy and time have progressed, this seems to be less and less likely. Is this who I am now? My doctor said it just might be. I have examined the things I want to do that I may never get to… I have given thought to the griefs that come along with the acceptance of such things. I may have no control over my body, the levels of pain or the longevity of difficulties, but I do have the ability to diminish the voice of shame ready to loop.

This pain may be who I am now, but this voice (THEIR voice) is not.

{In other news, the Rainy Day Collective Podcast is back with season four and here’s a direct link to the new episode on Spotify!}

the best of things…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

Inspired by Emily P. Freeman, I’m spending a little time with her reflection questions and considering what I learned this spring. She asks the following questions:

What was your favorite photo from May?

As the season unfolded it became clear that the normal spring we craved wasn’t just going to happen. March faded into April and so many of us sat waiting for it to feel the ways in which we’ve believed spring should feel– and it never did. In the realizing this, with May came accepting that we had the power to choose a new way to approach spring-mentality. With that, here in Pennsylvania, also came a lot of rain.

Rainy days are rejuvenating, but rainy days in the month of May are special. They carry with them a sort of life-giving magic.

Name a thoughtful moment in May.

I stood outside a closed window, in the middle of some bushes and landscape rocks, peering through at my mother. She sat slumped, vacant, in a leather recliner. She could see me, I think, but mostly I believe she saw through me. Through me, beyond me, into something that I could never reach. She couldn’t understand we were there to visit her. For over a year she’d gone without the loving embrace of someone who cares about her.

When I’d visit I would try to brush her hair, and rub lotion on her cracked and aching feet. Most of the time she knew what was happening, but sometimes she did not. Que the pandemic. I’ve only seen her “in person” twice, both times with a pane of plastic or glass between us.

This time, seeing her catatonic and missing, I had to wonder what the next time will be like. Will there ever be a time when I run a brush through her long, grey hair again and she knows that I am her daughter?

i just don’t know.

What’s something you look forward to in June?

My dear, beautiful friend is coming to visit and I cannot wait! She and her precious babies will be in my house. We will laugh face to face and it will be so unfathomably glorious!

8 Things I learned this spring…

  • My body does not heal or grow by my mind-designed time table.
  • I am most at peace with God outside of a “church”. I’d been teetering there for awhile, but finally I surrender.
  • I need to force myself to read more.
  • More about where the land I live on originated. The Native American history is something we all need to intentionally learn about. I’m trying.
  • Different doesn’t mean bad. Sometimes new and different can be better, and sometimes it won’t. Even so, holding space for the different is almost always a good idea.
  • I don’t have to do all of the things.
  • It is important to me that when it comes to publishing my work, the publishing and representative relationships I form are sensitive regarding the topics of inclusivity, mental health, abuse and sexual assault. I will not hand my work over to a publishing house, in exchange for royalties, who may choose to publish someone who contradicts those values. This was a huge moment for me.
  • My body may not look like I wish it did, but she has carried amazingly difficult burdens. She has been through so much physical pain, almost since her very beginning, and it is my responsibility to love every ounce of her.

manic car rides…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

George Strait twangs on the radio, my mom beaming as she sings along. I dance in my seat only because, though I’d rather be listening to Michael Jackson or Madonna, the truth is that these types of nights are always my favorite.

Her window is cracked open an inch or two, though she flicks her cigarette in the center ashtray between us. The speed gives us just enough wind to send more ash swirling inside the car than landing in the tray. I press myself tighter to the door, while still dancing. I hate that she smokes. I hate that the other kids make fun of the way my clothes smell, I hate everything about her smoking at all. Bigger than hatred though, is the consuming joy for nights like this. More than my hatred of her habit is my need to make her happy.

The silhouette of New Mexico life stills all around us, frozen shadows beneath a billion stars. I know no other night sky than that of the desert, so I don’t understand how unspeakably beautiful it is, but one day soon I will. My eyes will find their home under different skies and I’ll etch these night drive memories into the crevices of my mind.

Mama turns the volume louder, pressing the pedal harder and the faster we go. As I squeal, she smiles to herself congratulatory. She moves her smile to me and I follow its trail all the way to her eyes. This is the mama who loves me, the one who wants me. Already a sliver of sadness creeps in at the thought that like a flash she’ll be gone and the other mom will be home.

I am six years old, and then I am seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven.

It ends there then, I’ll be off to new skies.

Happy mom, loving mom comes to wake me late into the night, when I least expect it. She whispers “let’s go for a drive!” all at once, I am filled with untameable joy.

The gift of nights like this includes the quiet world beyond our windows, the possibility coming to life in the beam of our headlights and this mother of mine. This version of her is my best friend, my life line, the person I love with every piece of my soul.

Tammy Wynette comes on the radio and mama’s angel-voice melts right in, mingling both voices so that I will never hear one without the other, no matter how old I grow.

Stretching on the asphalt before us, the bulbs guide us to eternity. Her eyes seldom leave my face. I can see it etched in her beautiful face that she is happy now, proud of herself. Perhaps she is proud that I’m her daughter.

Are you proud, Mama?

She croons, singing straight to the center of me. I want this night to last forever…

trusting the journey…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay2 Comments

I sit here typing these words at forty-five years old. Forty-five… How did that happen? I still feel seventeen inside, barely treading in too-deep-water and wondering when I’ll be able to stop pretending like I’ve got this whole thing under control. I also, admittedly, feel about ninety-two, or at least how I imagine ninety-two to feel when a body is achy, chilled and worn.

In truth, at forty-five, I guess I’m caught somewhere in the middle.

Many years ago, I expected I’d have it all figured out by the time I reached today. Finances would be set. Big life things would be set. All emotionally healing and duress would be behind me. Weren’t we taught by example that these middle days were more like floating life’s lazy river than drowning in the water-rushing-deep end?

I thought so, anyway.

Then my thirties came, and my forties, and I began to realize that all those years ago when I looked up at the adults in my life, they were just treading tired water too. When a once-good friend was depressed over turning forty, as I crossed into thirty, she miserably said that older friends told her it got better then. I encouraged her but left the truth we were both thinking, unspoken: It wouldn’t get better, it would be old.

Old.

The truth is that those in their thirties tell the younger ones it gets better, and it does. The same goes for forties to thirties and fifties to forties… And, at forty-five, it’s fair to say I think it’s true. I mean, flexibility, health and joint pain may not get better- but inside, it does.

How we see the outside– what we’re willing to accept, and tolerate. What we will no longer settle for… As souls, we feel better.

When I thought about this idea of a time in my life when I trusted the journey, my mind came up blank. I sifted through memories of baskets I’d placed all of my hope/faith in, and how each one of those baskets kind of failed. There is this sad little pattern of that sort of thing, within my forty-five years. I’ve tried not to dwell on that, but I’ll admit it doesn’t really encourage me to go all in on faith/hope/trust, when it comes to chapters in my journey. So, I sifted and I sorted even more, looked even harder. I have always been a woman with faith, though that faith has significantly morphed, mutated and changed over the years, so surely I could find some time when I’d trusted the journey…

And that was it: the journey.

While many aging-breakdowns happen at thirty, forty, fifty– mine happened at twenty-five. At twenty-five years old, I had crumbled. With my therapist, I climbed out of that chasm acknowledging that I had a life and it could be the life I chose. I chose to be a wife. I chose to chase motherhood. I chose to be a writer. I chose to help women heal their traumas and choose their lives too. Up close, with a macro focus, it wouldn’t seem like I had much faith (or success really) with those choices… When I step back though, and take in the journey of the past thirty years, I am awed. I chose marriage. I chose to chase motherhood. I did all of the things. Some of them worked out, and some of them blew up in my face. Some days found me sitting in a bathtub covered in pills and vomit, choosing to live despite trying not to. Some days found me overwhelmed and running, and other days found me standing tall and ready for the fight.

Some days… Some moments… Even though I had momentary lapses of surrender and worn exhaustion, the fact was that I did not give up. I moved forward. I embraced choices. I made plans, wove dreams… I trusted my journey.

Back in March I shared the trailer for the film Finding You, which releases on Friday May 14th. In honor of the release, I am giving away a $25 Fandango gift card. I know it might be a little anxiety-inducing to think of going to the movies, but I also know that as things continue to become safer, it’s time that start adding life-moments back in. A free gift card might that nudge you need!

To Enter:

  • Leave a comment on this post by Thursday May 13th at NOON EST, telling of a time you trusted the journey.
  • Leave a comment on the coordinating Instagram post by Thursday May 13th at NOON EST, telling of a time you trusted the journey.
  • Share it in your Instagram story or on Twitter– you MUST tag me (@rainydayinmay)

Your name goes in the drawing for all things… Meaning if you comment both places and share stories/tags on each day, you could technically get ten chances to win. I mean, I’m not going to tell you what to do, just saying you COULD do that. ;)

Let’s hear it… when is a time that you trusted the journey?