Category: Misc.

to a close…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

As January comes to a close I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned… As the clock brought us into this new year, it was with cautious optimism that I greeted 2022. Usually, New Years Day holds big Monday vibes and anyone who knows me knows that Mondays are my favorite, but this year I only felt tired.

I learned to choose fun in the everyday moments, and while I’ve likely learned this lesson before (and will again) somehow it rang truer.

I learned how essential it is to embrace the extra effort that is creativity. To try new things, even if I’m not good at them. This played out in the form of digital drawing on Procreate, making homemade sugar cubes for tea, and painting my first small canvas. None of them were perfect, but each one breathed a sense of life into me–the very thing that dancing with creativity does.

I was reminded of all the loss we’ve had in recent months. My mother-in-law has been struggling with her health since September and so I sent my husband across the country to spend some time with her. It was here where I learned that life–or in this case, SNOW–will hit the hardest when we are alone. During this time of being snowed in, I once again reconnected with fun. I did at-home spa treatments for myself, as well as the dog and cat. (I imagine you can guess which one was less than thrilled and which one loved it.) This was also when I learned to ask for help when I need it instead of insisting on being the helper.

As I seem to every month, I learned more about my writing journey–this forever quest towards something… Align is my word of the year and already these lessons I’m learning are bringing me more into alignment.

For this I am grateful.

hello january…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

You may have been a member of my Umbrella membership-based community last year, and if you were–I hope it was a fun experience. The whole plan was kind of a “play along” while I beta tested some ideas, and it was an adventure! I learned a ton (as I hope to do with all adventures) and made the decision to revert back to a Patreon account, applying what worked while also factoring in what was missing, and what I have the bandwidth and capacity for…

I know Patreon intimidates people a little, I get it…

If you’re here though, reading my page, then I’d love for you to give yourself this little quiz… And if, at the end, you’re curious–click the link!

Umbrella

Additionally, this month I’ve rebranded and relaunched my monthly email. This is going to be the place for the latest news about upcoming projects, author releases, collaborations, Rainy Day Collective Podcast announcements, courses, resources, freebies, and so much more! If you haven’t signed up, you can do that here! There is A LOT coming along, you won’t want to miss it!

I love every opportunity to connect with readers, so thank you for being here and showing you! I know this new year isn’t off to the best start, but to be honest–you make things a whole lot brighter!

xoxo

M

written in the cards…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

In the back of my mind, as I navigate the waters of grief and the immense amount of things this calendar year has held, I’ve had the pressing reminder that I need to begin working on our holiday cards. The truth is that I really love writing out these cards to send to loved ones. I especially love receiving them. (then again, I’m a sucker for any form of mail that is neither bill nor junk) Anything that nods at connection will likely be a favorite for me.

Even so, I’ve been dragging my feet…

In most years past, I’ve had my gift shopping, decorating, and cards done by the last weekend of November. This is not true this year.

My tree sits illuminated and decorated, while everything else lives in shambles. Autumn prints framed on our ledges, the super-soft pumpkin throw pillow tossed on the sofa. The tubs of Christmas decorations sit cold, just inside our sunroom. Untouched.

It is like our home represents the hodge-podge in-between state my heart has been dragging for weeks now. If I were to say these words aloud, so many would reassure me that grief looks like this–and I get it. I work with clients navigating grief and trauma, I really do understand. This might feel a little like that, but it’s different too.

Something other than the loss of my mom. Something bigger than the impending loss of my only other close relative. Something other…

Finally today, amidst an annoying customer service call due to an overbilling, I sat down to write out our holiday card list. Thumbing through the address book I haven’t opened in a few months, I began to see it there–

The accumulative reasons for this state of purgatory I’m suspended in–beyond the continuing pandemic:

loss.

There are nine people on our fairly small card list, who I won’t be mailing cards to.

Nine people whose names to erase in my address book.

Nine.

Nine people I wrote to, this time last year, oblivious of the fact that would be the last. The cursor of our relationship blinking, blinking, and then gone.

Gone.

Nine gone, and the number seems incomprehensible.

And that’s just it–maybe I simply haven’t caught up with the gravity of it all yet. When I realize, of those left on the list, how many have also lost people, buried pets, lost jobs… We may be the ones left, but this list of card recipients is stitched together of the damage left from this brutal year. I’m finding myself quite unprepared for the words to fill cards of happy wishes and joy-filled thoughts when we the wounded– the left behind– haven’t quite gotten it figured out yet…

moments…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

these days find me in Michigan, suspended in time. Michigan has always been funny to me because, at least in the small, suburban town we lived in, change and growth happen but also they don’t.

So much of it lives frozen.

Back in Idaho (my real home) growth plays out like explosions of development, extravagant new neighborhoods, and a continual flow of new residents migrating to the Gem State. Every visit feels like the first half is devoted to comprehending the changes with the last half being a little dedicated to mourning the loss of farm land and nature.

Michigan isn’t like that.

It is the same gray skies. The same odd people, speckled a bit here and there with genuinely good souls. It is the same restaurants (mostly), same shops, same traffic lights and imbalanced feel. The same.

Within that suspension is my reason for being back–my mom…

My mom is living in her last days. This path began with her unresponsive, the hospice team certain she’d only last a few days. Then, when covid restrictions allowed for (finally) in person visits, it seems the hair brushing, foot massages, and in person reality reached deep inside and pulled her back.

She’s still dying, but that journey has become more than a matter of days, and those days have begun to look like laughter, silly stories, precious memories, and old school karaoke performances. Some days she eats and drinks nothing, other days she downs three glasses of apple juice in a matter of minutes. It’s unpredictable.

On one hand, I want to be by her side as she goes. If she keeps this revival up, that won’t happen, and I’m really sad about that. I don’t want her leaving alone, feeling abandoned, even though I’m not even sure either of those things are where she’d be. On the other hand though, I am DEEPLY loving these moments with her. As her hands and feet ombre into deeper shades of blue, I continue memorizing how they feel in mine. When her Alzheimer eyes find me, recognizing the girl they see, I feel myself hanging there in that lifetime that exists between us.

She was never the perfect mom, but she has been my mom. For better or worse, I’ve never lived a second of this journey without her breathing somewhere, beneath the same moon as me. Even though the last several years have felt like this eternal grief of losing her to a disease ravaging her presence, she was still here. (until covid restrictions anyhow.) But now, now…

I can’t even begin to process it.

And so, while I am sad that it is looking more and more like I won’t be by her side at the end, I am so thankful that I’ve been here collecting these moments.

To be honest, I am also terrified to leave because I want all of the moments.

a surviving memorial…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

I did some dumb stuff as a kid. Now, looking back with the wisdom of a full-grown human, I’m sure that I was looking for attention of various kinds…

I was really young, perhaps six or seven, when I–in a fit of anger over being locked in my bedroom–decided to stick a metal hairpin into an electrical wall socket. Not only did this act blow the power of our single wide trailer home, but it melted my thumb and forefinger flesh to one another, the hairpin painfully sandwiched in the middle. The pin shaped scars lived to tell their story in my fingerprints for decades…

I’ve already shared my old, weather worn couch and rattlesnake story. No need to go back there here. *shudder*

Throughout late middle and early high school I did the worst of it. Like many girls my age, I was in pursuit of not only parental love and attention, but the attention of boys too. A boy’s attention warranted the sort of popularity that my naive self had determined was most validating.

I wanted to feel valid…

I also, having arrived at this point in my life from a foundational origin of childhood trauma, took my pursuits for love secret steps farther. Cutting, carving into, and burning my body primarily. Punishing this self for the ways in which I saw it had failed me. Fingers down throat, diarrhetics, deprivation of hydration or nutrition–of enjoyment… As bad as those choices were, they weren’t the sort of dumb teen stuff I am referring to.

I’m talking about vegetable oil and sunshine!

Together.

This body lathered in cooking oil while laying out with friends… peaceful afternoon naps in the cozy sunlight where I barbequed my flesh to the point of black, blistering char. The swimsuit criss-cross design became the ornament of my skin. Twenty years later my back still shown that X. Now, nearly three decades after that brilliant summer habit, while the difinitive lines have faded, the freckled clusters of scarred open spaces still tease that the kiss of a shape may live on forever…

There’s the scar on my nose from tumbling stubbornly down a hill…

The painful, cystic deformity I will live my entire life with because I insisted on wearing size 5 1/2 shoes, while my feet naturally filled a 10.

The scars from childhood– both living on the surface of this shell but also veining deep into the inside, have shaped me. They’ve taught me to walk with caution, to show myself grace, to actively love this body… to try and send love out into the world.

Some of the scarring stems from the consequences of my stupidity, but also from the recklessness of others. They stay with me, altering my person in seen and unseen ways. I am neither the melted flesh of my careless choices, nor the result of cruelty rained upon me.

I house the remnants of what was– I am the relic…