Category: family

The implosion of life vs. land mines…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay7 Comments

When did my life become so much mine?

I realize that is going to sound like a ridiculous question to some of you, but a few of you will absolutely get it. I spent much of yesterday doing prep work for our 26 acts of kindness and one of the things I’m doing is baking. I loathe to bake. I have a wonderful kitchen, beautiful baking supplies and time to do it. Less than ten years ago I never loathed it, in fact I think there was a time I loved it. I loved to keep the jar full of baked cookies for my family, and I loved to bake breads as well as desserts and things for others. I became a pretty great cheesecake baker, (the one thing I allow myself to brag about) and then somewhere along the way I just suddenly admitted or decided (I’m not really sure which it is, honestly) that I hated baking…

And now, now I rarely do it.

In fact, if it’s not something I love to do, I rarely do it. Even if it is something I enjoy doing, if I’m not in the mood to do it, I don’t. I love to cook and try new things but for the last few months 99% of our meals are rehashed (easy) recipes that are tried and true. I tell myself there is nothing wrong with that because my family loves them, but that’s not entirely true. There is something wrong with it because it’s lazy.

I feel exhausted all of the time, and so my excuse for everything is “I don’t feel like it.” I plan on baking, or trying a new recipe, or making a project, or rehashing that chapter in the novel- but then I don’t feel like it, so I don’t. The end. And suddenly months, and months and months have passed, I’m still in this uninspired, unproductive funk and see a string of opportunities missed. And it isn’t just baking, its photos taken (something I used to take thousands upon thousands of) or new things tried (something I never do anymore.)

Partly I blame 2012. If you were around here, or in our lives then, you know that was the year that really zapped a lot of life and goodness out of our family. I know I’ve struggled with depression, as a result of that year and the extreme stress/traumas of it. I’ve done counseling, tried medication and am left with realizing I need to pull myself out of my pit. {I’m not discrediting ALL depression as being “that simple”. I’m saying mine is.} I know where I am, I know where I need to be. How to get from here to there though, feels as overwhelming as hell… So I don’t try, because I don’t know how. Months and months and months pass.

I don’t know everything. I’m not an expert at much of anything, but I know that in this very moment I can go downstairs and put on some music. I can tie an apron around my waist and I can make some cookies. Do I want to? No. Maybe the problem all along has been that I’ve grown to accustomed to focussing on what I want or feel like anyway. When I put a ring on my finger and became someones mother, it wasn’t about me anymore.

Spreading kindness…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay5 Comments

sandy-hook-ribbon

Back home, in Boise, everyone is posting on Facebook and Twitter about all of the snow the weekend brought them. I’ve been texted and emailed photos of kids playing and building snow friends. We have snow here, but nothing like it seems most others stateside have.

As we’ve only been in Michigan for 9 months, I’m still a bit awe-struck with just how much our lives have changed. Just around the corner from another major holiday, life sort of screams the obviousness of it. Self pity once again sets in, but then I remember this exact week last year and all forms of self-pity stop.

On December 14, 2012, I was stocking stuffer shopping while Genny wrapped up a Science lab class. I had just gotten in the car and was headed to wait for her 8th grade lab to get out when my NPR station started broadcasting about the Sandy Hook shooting. As reports came in about teachers barricading their classes in bathrooms, or other teachers laying their lives down as shields for innocent children, my heart shattered. Through the window I could see a class of laughing 7th and 8th graders taking sheer pleasure out of learning, while flooding the air around me was unimaginable agony. Just over a week before the day most children deem the most magical day of the year- parents lost babies, children are scarred with images of best friends bloodied and gone forever. Christmas ruined, December ruined. Life altered and never, ever, ever the same again.

There is so much evil in the world. We hear about it all of the time. We decided, as a family, to try to be a kindness. Are we perfect? No. Do we fail? Sure. But we try.

Last year we successfully (though it was a STRUGGLE) managed 26 random acts of love/kindness in memory of those 26 lives taken in Sandy Hook. It was such a memorable, (emotional, rewarding and honestly, a little difficult) experience that we decided to continue the tradition as a part of our Christmas advent season.

It doesn’t cost much to spread love and be kind, and it costs nothing to remember… But to the world, who sometimes forgets too easily, it can be more meaningful than we could ever imagine. Will you join us by spreading kindness and love this week?

The ugly truth of adoption…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay6 Comments

In the media lately there have been a lot of stories about heinous acts of child abuse. Each story feels a bit worse than the last, and my heart aches for these kids and what they’ve gone through. I ache for them because I’ve parented and loved hurt kids whose childhoods were marred, scarred and pretty much obliterated by selfish people whose cruelty out lives their humanity through the shaping of these kid’s lives…

There was one article though, that really struck a chord with me. Before I address the parents or the Pearl’s book, let me reiterate that this little girl was adopted. I imagine most people who read this and be unable to comprehend why someone who wanted to go to the trouble (and extreme expense) of adoption would wind up abusing (or in this case murdering) their child. Those same people may even question whether people who could do that (adopt then abuse and eventually murder) were just sick individuals, wishing to torture a child.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with this: there ARE sick people who adopt and foster kids with the intent of hurting them, just like there are sick people who have their own biological children with that intent, and just like there are those same types of people who steal other people’s children with the same wicked and evil intentions…

HOWEVER- I do not think this girl’s parent’s fit that category.

There is this beautiful spotlight put on adoption and what an amazing thing it is, in this country. There are beautiful agencies with designer waiting rooms, and hundreds of books. The month of November is national adoption month. Celebrities adopt children from all over the world and it’s this beautiful example of something so amazing and non-racially unifying. People cry and the general consensus is that adoption makes the world a better place.

We have news spots for foster kids waiting for adoptions and foundations talking about all of their children waiting for families. There are organizations talking of orphanages on foreign soil, so full of children who just need love.

Here’s the ugly truth about adoption: these kids don’t JUST need love. They need a whole lot more than love. And these parents? They need a lot too. They need unconditional love, support and understanding. They need for their friends to keep calling, and loving on them, even when they don’t understand. They need for the general public and church members to not sit in judgement because their adopted children don’t just blend right in. These parents need people to listen to them, to hug them, to offer to help out. These parents need people to get to know their kids and to form a community of love and support for their whole family…

But more often than not, this isn’t what happens.

Friends do stop calling, because they just don’t understand. People do judge. They see the kids as bad influences for their children because they lie, or steal, (or worse) and the parents always look exhausted and frustrated. Somehow these types of people don’t fit in the happy idea of what a lot of people want their schools, churches, social circles and communities to look like so they are shunned in subtle (and not so subtle) ways…

Once celebrated for adopting, the now isolated and broken parents are at the end of their ropes emotionally and mentally. Abandoned themselves, they have a child (or children) who has the manipulative IQ of an adult mastermind, who underhands them at every corner, and has worn them thin and bled them dry. Desperate to regain and heal their family, they turn to books and professionals. Books like the Pearl’s book…

Like a dehydrated man dying for thirst, wouldn’t he go for the poison out of ignorance, if it was there and he was desperate and he believed it would save his life and quench his thirst?

The solution isn’t to wait until children are dead, and punish the hell out of parents. The solution is not to regulate even stricter adoption laws. The biggest problem is the middle… it’s the preparing the parents for the reality of what it will look like, with these kids, and then supporting the hell out of them through both the beautiful and the gritty and disgusting moments… The sad reality is that even the number of mental health professionals equipped to help are so small in number, and so astronomically expensive that they are out of reach. What other choices are left, but turn to crazy people like the Pearls, who are exploiting broken and desperate parents with their sadistic propaganda?

Alright… this was long. If you hung on, until the end, thank you… It’s something we really need to know about it and learn about and FIX. We do, the people… So we can save families, lessen the power of people like the Pearls, and stop things like this from happening… Because here’s what I can tell you, and I know this FIRST HAND- there are desperate and broken families out there and they need us to stop judging them, stop ignoring them and just LOVE and embrace them before it’s too late…

actual self-awareness…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay4 Comments

Yesterday was one of those rare days where there was but one choice, to slow down…

Gen was home sick, from school. After a grueling session at physical therapy (which I’m taking for an old knee injury that has reared it’s ugly head after I strained my IT band something fierce) I was deep within the thralls of a migraine. It was blustery and rainy out, misery was all around.

As my meds began to take effect, I remained still and decided to curl up and finish a book I’d begun reading last week. (Catching Fire. Yes, I’m likely the last person in the country to read it, I know. It was deliberate. The first one depressed my beyond belief.)  Gen also decided to curl up, steaming tea in hand (her affliction was less head related and far more of the throat/nose variety) and plant herself in front of Jane Austen movies. When she grew weary of old English dialect and empire wastes, the remote guided her to the Hallmark channel for Christmas movies.

And just like that, our rain turned to snow.

It was eerily magical really…

The two of us love made for tv Christmas movies. We dvr them and will gorge on them incessantly until the 26th, when we’ll begrudgingly admit we’ve had our fill. I keep hearing complaints that they shouldn’t be on yet, but to those of you hating on this reality- there are lots of available (non-festive) channels… As far as those of us CM lovers go, November first is fair game. Hate elsewhere please, until after Thanksgiving anyway… Then come on over and indulge with us! We have popcorn and cocoa, with homemade marshmallows too!

Anyway, I’ve veered off point, by my obsession with low-budget holiday cheese.

The snow was beautiful. Really beautiful, in fact, because we were warm inside. We had an endless supply of mugs filled with steaming tea. We had a pot of homemade minestrone soup and fresh biscuits. We had blankets and heat. It was poetic and beautiful and though we commented on how lovely it was several, several times, not one time did I feel grateful for one of those things. Not once was I thankful that I wasn’t out in the snow. (I will clarify, I did utter many, many prayers of thanks that my headache had broken) Not once did I feel overcome with the reality that on that Veteran’s day, as twitter and Facebook status’ across the country boasted of snow- did I think about the thousands of homeless veterans without soup, mugs of steaming tea or Christmas movies.

Yesterday afforded me no choice to slow down. Even so, I still had choices. I still choice to think about me. I still chose not to be grateful for the small miracles and blessings and beauties. All in all, it was a lovely afternoon/evening and as my head hit the pillow I did thank God for it, but next time I’m forced to take things slower, I need to try a little bit harder to really be more aware…

Pants on fire…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay2 Comments

Longevity in relationships isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. The older I get, the more aware of that I become, even though I have to be honest- I just don’t understand it… I keep people in my life. I don’t make a habit of cutting them out, or throwing them away. The one exception would be a couple of bad-news high school friends, and my low-life step dad. That’s it. If I have ever “cut” someone out of my life, there was a really raw reason.

Also, as I’ve grown older though, I’ve realized I don’t have to be the only one to maintain a relationship either.

The other night, Chw and I were talking about a few instances of people who we deeply love, that have alienated themselves from us over the past year or two. It’s pretty hard not to feel deeply wounded by the personal rejection of these situations. One in particular has been down right heartbreaking and debilitating. As we discussed these different people though, (there are 6 over the course of 3 years) we found the only commonality were lies. Each person had lied to us, a lot. Each time, though the person was aware that we knew they were lying (because we said as much) we never got angry, judged them or anything of that nature. Even so, the result was complete division/abandonment on their part. Each instance hurt us, hurt our family- though one (possibly two of them) completely decimated our lives…

It’s been awhile. Time has passed. I feel like I should feel better, but I don’t. Why? Because I’m not one of those people who loses people. I love people. I literally journeyed through an emotional hell to become a mother and save my marriage. I fight for the people I have. No element of my family came easy. I love my people.

It’s interesting that in each situation the persons deceit worked that way. Whenever I’ve heard that “lies divide”, I always assumed it was referring to the lack of trust causing division, but it’s almost as though the liar distances themselves. Senseless tragedy if you ask me. People also love to say “no one loves a liar”, but I believe no one is just one thing. Not just a liar, or a thief, or  __________…

Anyway, This has been on my mind lately. Of course, with the holidays around the corner and just the general every day moments… Life is really just hard sometimes isn’t it? I wish reassuring people that you love them was enough, but clearly it isn’t.