Category: Life

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…

the realm of impossibilities…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

This is currently where I sit.

I have been given this opportunity and everything about it feels just right. Well, almost everything. There is one (pretty huge) thing that is keeping it out of my reach. Breath catching in my chest, for going on eleven hours now, I keep thumping my mind to *think think*, as if a solution is right there–if only…

If only I could find it, create it, imagine it, dream it, realize it, discover it, _______________________ it.

The irony is that the problem is actually a little triggering.

In an entirely unrelated plan of the evening, I attended a Masterclass tonight which guaranteed some incredibly successful things would happen, if I followed steps A, B & C.

GUARANTEED.

I can assure that such things would not happen. And here’s the thing, it isn’t that I’m being negative here, it isn’t even that I am being a realist– though to be fair, I am a realist. For example, I do not navigate within a world where I could market extremely high dollar content to hurting women for a steep price. I just don’t. Could I create high dollar content? Of course I could. Is my time valuable? Absolutely. This fine line I straddle though, reminds me that in staying authentically true to myself, I cannot attach unrealistic price tags on a journey that everyone deserves.

Is it true that the alternative then would be burnout? Failure? Underachievement? Ruin?

I don’t know…

I clearly do not know how to take that “next step.”

I clearly also do not know how to find the path from today to the opportunity I mentioned before.

I woke up this morning, a little girl on Christmas morning, excited for the possibilities of what was coming my way… now I’m about to lay my head on my pillow feeling torn and, to be honest, quite helpless over both scenarios. Hopeless. Not the dramatic-sigh kind, just the tired cry kind. The sort of hopeless that looks a little bit like a school yard kid asking the teacher why everyone else seems to be able to master swinging high, which you just can’t seem to leave the ground.

This might be where the triggering comes in.

Some people are natural born leaders within a world of deep pockets who can afford to lay down boat loads of green for what they are selling. If that is their genuine path, that’s lovely. My path, and my integrity do not allow me to decide that a rich person’s trauma and struggle are more worthy of my time than a poor person’s, or even a middle class person’s. It isn’t that I am better than that leader, nor they are better than me… it’s that we are different. We are all different.

Different.

Capable. Worthy. Different.

I’m gazing out my window tonight, through the darkness towards that sliver of moonlight. I’m straining my eyes to see dots on the ground, illuminated, and connecting my in the direction of what’s right… to the how.

I don’t need to answer the why, I’ve known that since I was seven years old.

chasing normal…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

On Saturday evening we had friends over for dinner. We ate my husband’s special Chorizo Tacos (this man is incredible, I’m telling you!) and played some really fun games. There was laughter intermittent with deep discussion. It was all so normal, triggering moments of memory from the Great Before, while also feeling not normal at all.

That last part is tricky.

As our friends readied to leave, just after midnight, one of them hugged me and said “Let’s not wait a year to do this!”

A year.

The last time we’d seen these two beautiful souls, who live minutes from us, we were at the wrap of 2019. In context, that feels like insanity. Last year lasted so many eternities that the thought of having not seen these friends since BEFORE that is unfathomable. It is almost like we saw them, some weeks passed, we hit pause and then they came over for tacos.

How do we measure life within that pause?

In hugs?

I have hugged my husband a billion times. I hugged my dear friend Maggie several times, back in October. I have hugged my sweet friend Amanda everytime I’ve seen her, which feels regularly, but in all actuality may only equal 8 or 9 times within that year. And then, then Saturday I hugged Ashley and Jessica.

It would seem the span of pause is measured more in isolated conversations, mentions of the virus, bizarre weather patterns, deep self-realizations, and face masks.

We are heading out of town next week where face masks and hugs will be a plenty. I love to go and am so stir crazy, yet the thought of being somewhere else is giving me anxiety. Is it safe to go?

Let’s be honest, it is fair to also ask if it’s safe to stay…

My husband is vaccinated and I’m awaiting my turn. While I wait, I long for sun on my face, adventure and a life lived. Within this paused space of isolation, it is clear to see the toll life has taken on my body and my health. Autoimmune illness has had its way with me, leaving me crumpled in the corner, used. Something has to change, and that chase is what I’m here for. Whatever lies at the end of this new quest for anything other than this, will likely not look like anything that came before- and that’s ok. Changes happen, we evolve.

I am different now, just as life is different.

Even so, I’m ready to step outside and look for normal. My laces are tied and the sun is shining, wanna come?