adoption – Page 4

The Wednesday Podge…

Published on June 13, 2018June 13, 2018 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay7 Comments

Hello and happy Wednesday to you!

I wasn’t sure if I’d be doing the Hodge link up this week, to be honest. I’m “nursing” a bit of a mysterious back injury and coming down off of a spring cold, which my husband generously shared…

One would think that a writer, suddenly forced to stay as “down” as possible would suddenly have so much time to work, but this is the first time I’ve been at my laptop since Saturday, and I think I was probably paying a bill then, not writing… The moral of this week’s story is that I am nauseated from the pain most of the time, and pretty miserable. There hasn’t been any reading, any writing. It’s a little sad.

If you’re new to this and you’re wondering what in this world this Hodgepodge thing is all about, every Tuesday six questions are posted over at From This Side of the Pond, and on Wednesday those of us participating answer them, link up and then visit one another. I’ve “met” some very lovely writers like this, and it is fun to participate when I can!

1. What happens to the mail at your house? I ADORE handwritten cards and letters, and still have a few friends who share the affection. Those gems are treasured, by me. The majority of our mail is garbage, and since we live in an area without recycling- (I know the controversy around it all, anyway) the junk just gets tossed.

2. Something you always splurge on? Any guilt associated with the splurge? Oh! This is a great question… Hmmm. I always have money on my Starbucks app, even though I don’t particularly like their coffee. Sometimes I spend a good chunk of time, in a day, out and their refreshers and teas are a nice treat. With the app I earn points towards free drinks… No guilt associated with the splurge as much as just habit. I also spend money on skin care and make up. Actually, even more than these things are blowouts. IF I HAD MY WAY, I would get one a week. They are HEAVENLY, but I tend to get them when I can. It is a splurge indeed, but it also makes my life easier. I do feel guilty, sometimes, because it seems indulgent.

3. There are many, but what are two important questions you think every bride and groom should ask/answer before they plan their walk down the aisle? One- “You know yourself better than anyone else, should a day arise when you suddenly seem to believe you never loved me and you want out of our marriage, what do you want me to say to you to anchor you in and bring you back down to reality?” Two- “What are off limit or uncomfortable topics for you?” Because partners NEED to be able to talk about everything…

4. What’s the best advice your father ever gave you? My foster dad probably gave me a lot of great advice and wisdom but there isn’t one particular thing that stands out.

5. Your favorite movie where a father features heavily in the storyline? I really love the movie Frequency. it has been a long time since I’ve seen it though, so while I remember a father weight, I’d have to say that my absolute favorite movie that features heavy fatherhood themes would be Elizabethtown.Being a girl who was raised without a father, and with a super abusive/unhealthy father figure until I was 12 and went into foster care, it’s not a subject I really relate to. This is probably pretty evident in these choices… (I also really love A Love Song for Bobby Long which is a pretty obscure father film, but it stands out for me.)

6. Insert your own random thought here. This weekend, on Father’s Day, my beautiful grand-daughter will turn 2. My mother just turned 71 last week, and on Monday my little sister turned 39. My older daughter turned 28 a few days ago. While none of these are the typical milestone ages, I find myself feeling really overwhelmed with these numbers. Perhaps it is that I am away from that sweet baby girl, my daughter and also my sister. Maybe, even though I can see my mother any time I want, Alzheimer’s has kind of taken her away too. Maybe these life celebrations just feel increasingly heavier as the distance between us feels overwhelmingly permanent. Thankfully my daughter will be here this weekend and I get the chance to love on her with a bit of a belated birthday love…

Fly, Fly Away…

Published on June 8, 2018 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay6 Comments

www.rainydayinmay.com

Five Minute Friday is upon us again, and this is where I’d love to put some clever remark about time going so quickly- especially with the writing prompt for today! The truth is that, for me, this week has seemed to last forever… If this is your first time seeing a Five Minute Friday post, our lovely host Kate gives a writing prompt, we free flow write for 5 minutes and then link up with others. Now that we all know what’s happening here, lets begin:

This week’s prompt made me cringe a little, to be honest. I am a little surprised that I reacted that way.

As the word danced around my mind I saw, in slow motion, the transition it took. From my distaste for flying in air planes, to the unwanted summer pests that grate my nerves. My mind began to play, like a jukebox paid by suggestion, the Foo Fighters. As if bleeding slowly, through it all, a remorse seeped in over the lack of funds available to buy the airline tickets I really should buy.

A trip to the Southwest to see dear family friends… And endless supply of tickets to Seattle to spend time with my son, his beautiful wife and their captivating little daughter…

She turns two next weekend, and though I adore her and feel so absolutely blessed to be her mimi, I daily grow to despise this distance between us so much.

This, of course, brings me to time.

Time flies.

Long weeks aside, it truly does… A baby born turns two and the minutes I have spent with her are nominal- and she doesn’t even really know my voice.

And this makes me sad…

Does my time pass quickly on the current of sadness? Sad songs, sad distance, sad news, sad expenses, sadness over the growing list of things I truly desire to do, and do not.

Does the flow which is joy driven move more swiftly, or is it easier traveling that way, to savor and take the lovely in? Perhaps the sadness is just easier because it is more honest? I imagine that raft is simpler to board.

And maybe I just have attention deficit, unable to stay on one track, to focus on one aspect of this word which I am tasked to write today- instead a parade of perspectives fly with the speed of light, through my mind.

{Fun fact, which made me smile- Black and Blue Bird, a new song by Dave Matthews, came on while I was writing this. As I was typing the words, he sang the speed of light. These are the little God-nod moments which I tuck into my heart to carry with me.}

Thanks for stopping by! On Fridays I put out a weekly email. The writing is a bit more personal and I share a list of the five things I really loved this week, along with some exclusive content/news that will only be shared there. It is one of my favorite parts of friday because the interactions that happen with my subscribers is the best! If you don’t get my Friday email, you absolutely should! AND, for subscribing you get a free guide to embracing your story and a self-care guide! It’s a win/win, plus it helps me connect with you, which is why we’re here in the first place, isn’t it??

(Speaking of personal… Episode 6 of the Collective podcast is live! We’re chatting with Maegy as she shares her journey through being adopted, dealing with attachment issues and transitioning into being a mom and wife. Authentic and beautiful, our little Collective community is so glad she shared!)

The ugliest of secrets…

Published on May 18, 2018 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay20 Comments

There are so many things… layered things deeply woven within my journey as a wife, as a woman and as a mother. We are subconsciously trained, here in this culture we call home, to look at the beautiful, well put together women and wonder What’s her secret? While also bristling internally about the knowledge of what our secrets are.

I may not know what hers is, but mine- Mine is ugly. It does not lead to put together, it does not lead to beauty.

My secret is the shame attached to every single element of my real, genuine life. My motherhood, daughterhood, marriage, sisterhood… On and on. You tell me a story about your father and then ask me about my own dad. I smile and relay the information, while the secret part beneath the surface that remains unsaid screams the truth- I don’t really know my father. My dad isn’t actually even my dad. He’s someone else’s dad. He loves me, I love him, but our lives are different circles of things now and though we exchange and annual something-or-other, we are pretty separate and that is ok. What ownership do I have of him? None. Fatherless and unvalued, there in lies my secret shame.

Your sister is your best friend, and now you’re asking if I am close with mine? I have several sisters but am close with two of mine. Sisters are the best! Except, gurgling just beneath my horizon there’s more. There is a defect within me, there must be, and the reality is that they aren’t really my sisters. Not beyond the word anyway. I have no one real, that is mine. Shame.

My marriage of twenty-five years, what’s our secret? It hasn’t been perfect. There hasn’t been faithfulness. There hasn’t always been stability, honor, honesty, love… Ease. If you only knew…

Shame… Shame eats away at the fact that my children are not from my womb, shame lives in the many words and perspectives who’ve challenged my motherhood and questioned its validity. Oh, Hallmark of consumer driven holidays, do I deserve a Mother’s Day nod, a celebration, am i even a real mom at all? World, which reiterates over and over a woman’s purpose is to bear children- and Very beginning of the Bible which explains a woman’s curse will be painful childbirth- who am I? What am I?

My secret is shame. My truths, the REAL truths, they silence the shame. For awhile anyway- but it always comes back. Today- today I see it for what it is.

Shhh, between you and me, tomorrow I may forget again…

(this post is in participation of the FMF prompt on Secret. to see more, visit the link.)

Published on May 3, 2018 by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

When two young, married kids learned the hard way that starting a family wasn’t an automatic given, life turned harder than either of them had imagined possible. Through miscarriage, bouts of infertility and a traumatically failed foster care adoption, hope became this certain thing they each believed did not belong to them…

Anyone who knows me, or us, knows that this is our story. This is also the story of so many other couples. Maybe a few details would be different but the key elements- the vital heartbreak and hopelessness- that is the same… It was that journey, the one which felt the length of centuries, but was really only the length of seven years, which set the stage for our actual parenthood. When the foster babies we’d believed were the answer to so many Please, God, give us a family prayers were taken, my husband emphatically and protectively decided that enough was enough. He was done, we were done. No more hopes mutilated, no more trying to have faith that my achingly empty arms would soon be full… No more.

And so, fast forward about five years. We had very hesitantly signed with an adoption agency. It was all an awkward and cautious dance, really… Within ourselves, with those around us, with dreams and ideas, prayers, and especially with each other. It is often talked about how the loss of a child is seldom something a marriage survives and I am here to say that infertility treats a marriage the very same way. There are just genetic ways that women tend to process, cope and grieve which often seem foreign to a man. This is also true from men to women.Those times when a couple need to draw together, often leads to them pulling far apart. Immersing ourselves back into the family journey, no matter how delicately we tiptoed, was a terrifying attempt. We were each so jaded and scarred from the time before. Just as we were both settling in to that same-page way of things, and trying to move towards whatever path this adoptive journey led us- a call comes asking us to consider taking a four-year old little girl. She’s unsafe for other young children to be around. She’s been hurt. She’s aggressive and reactive. She’s coming from every imaginable trauma. Please, please take her. Now.

The past bites us viciously when we least expect it. Carnal instincts are there, within us, no matter how hard we suppress them. When you unite a mother with a child who is a viciously shattered, wounded little bird- something happens. I never knew how protective I could be. Would be…

Our adoption of that little girl took far too long. With every investment of thousands of dollars, the path would only lead to an unscalable brick wall, closed-door and the urgings of another avenue followed by double the dollar signs. She was four when she came home to us, and thirteen when a judge finally made us a legal family. For nine years we were bled dry, gave birth to debt and lived in a constant state of fear. Hope sometimes speckled our lifelines, but mostly we waited for the big-bad-whatever to ruin everything we were fighting for. With each closed-door, we would have the talk…

What if it doesn’t work out. What if someone takes her. What if we never get to adopt her. What if? What if? What if? The seeds which had been planted when those twin foster babies were taken, as I lay a mangled mess of salty tears and agony on the floor bloomed, and they bloomed vibrantly. We’d flee. We’d run. We would protect her at all cost, no matter what came her way. We’d face prison. We’d find the money and hire someone to make sure no one from those who had hurt her would ever have the chance again.

There were a lot of frustrations. There were season upon season of sleepless nights. There were a lot of Oh gosh, it’s happening- this is it, type scares. I grew far too familiar with the feeling of blood running cold. I grew far too comfortable with the idea of doing what I “had to”, even if what I had to might be wrong. My ethical compass, typically solid, grew blurred when it came to our little girl.

Thankfully, I never actually had to make the decision. Even now, years later, when I look back I realize I have absolutely no idea if I really could have gone to such extents… What I am certain of is that I gave up everything and devoted my life to give her love and keep her safe. I also know that there is no way I could have made it through even a month of that journey, much less nearly a decade, without a solid faith. God has never promised me that he’d hand over anything and everything I asked for, but what He has given me is a peace when peace seems impossible, and a quiet security and strength when the world around me raged in uncontrollable stormy chaos.

I shared this story as an experience about a relevant time, in my life, when I struggled with my moral boundaries and what I knew was right or wrong, for me. This post is in partnership with the film Wraith from writer-director Michael O. Sajbel (One Night With the King).

Wraith (rāth) noun: a ghost or ghostlike image of someone, especially one seen

after, or shortly before, their death

Something’s very wrong in the Lukens’ house. After living uneventfully for years in their historic home, the Lukens family have

somehow awakened a ghostly presence. Who is this frightening spirit and why won’t leave their 14 year-old daughter, Lucy, alone? Everything changed when Dennis and Katie Lukens discovered they were pregnant

again. Expecting in your 40’s is always high-risk and dangerous, so when the Lukens

decide all options are on the table – including termination – the unexpected starts to

happen. Sinister forces are now conspiring against the family. But is this eerie,

wraith-like spirit actually trying to haunt them…or help them?

Wraith is available on all VOD platforms and Blu-ray/DVD May 8

This is forty-two…

Published on March 28, 2018 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay2 Comments

Yesterday my youngest daughter turned nineteen. At nineteen she represents herself, to us anyway, as the authority of all things, and that’s pretty normal. At nineteen, lifetimes ago, I am sure I did the same thing. Adulthood is still new, the real complexities and woes of it are yet to really hit home. In most cases, the biggest “grown up” problems you’ve had to face are pretty nominal in comparison. At nineteen we know more than we’ve ever known so naturally we feel pretty wise…

Forty-two is completely different. I woke up this new age, and yet don’t feel very different. While nineteen seems so long ago, (and in a galaxy far, far away) with it is that feeling of knowing or understanding anything at all. I literally have nothing figured out.

Nothing…

One year ago yesterday felt like a car accident. One that I should have seen coming, but didn’t. While an adoptively rocky relationship with my daughter had always been so much, it wasn’t until that day, last year, when it really hit me- we will likely never have a real relationship. It was devastating to finally acknowledge that this child whom I had given up so much for, and invested so much of myself in, wasn’t genuinely invested in me at all. I know there are so many friends saying Misty, come on… You should have known. But I didn’t. I feared it. I worried about it. I honestly believed that if I loved her enough, forgave enough, did enough that one day it would be enough. And then I had to realize- that day wasn’t going to come.

This is forty-two… waking up, one year later, having seen the fruition of that. Having to come to terms with it, grieving the loss of what I spent my motherhood lifetime hoping would be the family I ached to have. Pushing aside the this is not fair feelings that bombard me when holidays, milestones (and yes, even this birthday), come around… It is no coincidence that Let Go chose to be my mantra for this year of my life. I am brutally learning to let go.

Letting go of the dreams of my home filled with my children and my grandkids. Letting go of that next phase it seems like everyone else experiences, of whole-healthy families coming together for the important moments… One year ago today I still dreamed this fantasy (for me) possible, today I know it is not. This is forty-two.

I do not know a single person who fought as hard to be a mother. I have three amazing kids whom I love INCREDIBLY, and not one of those relationships came easily. In each situation it was like I had to push against the world, just to make it so. Somewhere in the back of my (human and needy) mind I knew that I was fighting to bring together the family that I had spent my own youth begging for. And I tried. I did do my best, despite the vile stories floating around that someone wants people to believe about my motherhood- I do know I did my best… But it wasn’t enough. Not enough to have that family I thought I was making. Not in the way I so deeply wanted anyway.

And there in lies the miracle of it all. I wanted… I didn’t need it, even though it felt like I did, (and still honestly feels like I do). I deeply, desperately, cravingly ached for it- but it was never vital. Letting go… This is forty-two.

Looking back at the opportunities I set aside and sacrificed and feeling like now I am so far behind, but not too far behind. It may be harder now, but still possible. This is forty-two.

The journey from forty-one to forty-two has been perhaps the most brutal of them all. I am tired, weary and emotionally feel done. This added challenge of letting go is trimming my heart in ways which I was both unprepared and are long over due. With the good-bye to forty-one, I send with it the tiny fragments of innocence which had remained.

Just because we desire something, that does not mean it will happen.

Just because we love sacrificially, with everything we have- does not mean they will love us back.

I could fill this list with a thousand lessons learned throughout this year, but the most important one (for me) is that I am ok. I do not need the things I thought I needed. I will also no longer accept the things I might have then. Someone is either all in, and willing to make effort or they aren’t. These things are not my responsibility and there is nothing I can do to motivate them for more. I do not need to prove myself to motivate anyone to find me of value, and those people I value have had me demonstrate such in infinite volumes.

Having feelings for someone does not equate to love. love requires selfless action, intent, honesty and vulnerability.

Apologies are nothing without the actions of love.

The age limit on achieving anything is societal and not reality based at all.

Those dreams and desires our hearts are built on, aren’t real either. Gravitating towards them will not make them so. Sometimes things are just really impossible, and being real about that isn’t pessimistic. Lying to ourselves (or anyone else) “optimistically” is still lying. It isn’t encouraging. It isn’t comforting. Well, maybe it is comforting in that way that you feel super sad so you eat an entire pan of brownies and a pint of ice cream. As the sugar-drug soothes, you might feel balmed… Not too long later though, you’ll either be crouched over a toiled puking your brains out, or wish you were. Not better at all. False hope, the little lies we tell ourselves because the truth is to bleak- this is the very same thing. The outcome of such dishonesty only makes us all worse off.

I am done dreaming about my future. I am done imagining a full life, of a house filled with love and laughter and the people I care about. Dreaming up the vacations, holidays and the dinner parties and all of the things I was so certain this stage of my life would be filled to the brim with. These things belong to so many other mothers and grandmothers, but not this one. Not this time. Thousands of tears have been shed over such things, but nothing ever assured me that was the place in which my motherhood journey was headed, and it’s time I let go of the emotional energy holding on to that and just move on. Whether I was not enough, did not do enough, or whatever the reasoning- it does not matter… This is forty-two.

I walk through life in a near constant headache, with a chronic illness on my back. I love some of the songs and films I have loved before, and many I do not. I enjoy doing a lot of things that I seem to never do. I live a daily life that resembles nothing I ever thought it would- and that’s ok too. This is forty-two.

I have to admit I am closer to the end, than the beginning, and there are days when I question if the end is significantly closer than I’d like it to be. That is grim, and maybe where the thoughts of this age tend to drift. I don’t know, I’m new here…

I am drawing closer those good things & people who reciprocate my time and effort, and releasing my grasp on those which don’t. It seems cold to the ones released, but I just don’t have enough strength to be the majority any more. This is forty-two.

It is honest, it is different. It is ugly and motivational. It is lonely and self-assured. It is lessons learned and ignorance with a whole lot in-between.

To celebrate this birthday I will run a few errands, drink another cup of coffee, turn my phone to silent and keep my eyes looking forward. At what, I do not know. Where I will be at forth-three I have no clue. I have hopes, but they are like clouds which change shape and drift away. I won’t pretend to have it all figured out, and I will finally admit that I have no guarantees. I spent forty-one years of my life crippled by the fear of isolation and a solo journey, and now I see that I’ve been riding this horse alone and I am ok after all. This is forty-two.

None of my favorite bands have songs named for this age, unlike 41. None of the books I am drawn to offer solace for this stage. This stage, for me, isn’t the same as it is for others. We each have our own stories and I can no longer hide my eyes from my shaping tale, simply because I had hoped and prayed for something different…

This is forty-two, and that is ok. I am ok. All false (destructive) optimism aside, I am moving forward and each lesson is a stepping stone for something real, and real is far better than an imaginary bliss any day.

I am ok.

I am not sure any birthday before had me sitting deep in the saddle of that knowledge.