It took 9 years, past our divorce, for me to face that you were the love of my life. Maybe we just weren’t good together. I don’t know. When it seemed like you not only stopped loving me, and touching me, but also liking me- I didn’t know what to do.
I couldn’t put words to the feeling, for so long, but today I can:
Imagine living, while your heart beat far outside your body.
Maybe I heard that in a lyric, or a movie somewhere. It sounds way to profound to come from me. Perhaps I watched it, on the tv one night, and thought “yes, that is it! That is how I feel. That is what it was like.”
But then I would have turned to the total absence of anyone, and realized that even though I knew- I had lost.
I had lost you.
What was it, about me, that you could no longer love? Was it that I wasn’t younger?
I kissed a colleague, and you left me. Unwilling to work it out. His kiss, though electric and exciting, hadn’t ever felt like home.
Like you.
My entire self was reaching, somehow, for you, but though your body was sleeping beside me, you’d never been farther from my reach.
I tried to tell you those things, but you were so walled up from hearing the words I spoke, that you couldn’t hear me.
My love, you are remarried now, and finally a father. This is something I could not give you, and because of your new wife’s ability to, I will forever believe in the worthlessness of me.
I am working on it. Working through accepting. I’ve always been better with numbers than words, and the math is that I couldn’t grow our family, you pulled away and shut me out. You looked for me to mess up, and when I did, you tossed me out. You replaced me with a non-faulty woman, and in the end got everything you’d always wanted.
I guess what you had wanted was a family and a wife who could give you that. That had never been me.
You will forever be the love of my life, but I have long since set you free.
As a part of a new, limited micro-series entitled Post Script, launching under the Collective Podcast, I will be sharing anonymously submitted letters, written by women within the community. Each week that a mini-episode launches, a coordinating post, containing the letter, will be here…
Hello, how are things going for you? Hope everything is well. Things here are good. I just need to say some things. It may not sound like what you want to hear but it is something I have been needing to tell you for awhile now.
I feel like I have given you chance after chance to get to know me. You keep throwing it away and I only wish you could understand how that makes me feel. I realize that just because one is related to you biologically doesn’t at all mean they have to accept you. I just can’t comprehend it, though. I mean, the fact of the matter is I am your child. Does that even mean anything to you?
I want you to be part of my life. You say you want me to be a part of your life but do you call and check in or write? I am sick of always having to be the first one to do it. I know maybe I may not be the ideal child to have, let alone raise, but a mother is supposed to love her children unconditionally.
I will not give up on you. You will always be my mother no matter what, and I have never blamed you for leaving me, actually, I thanked you. I know I wouldn’t be alive today if you hadn’t walked out. I’m not intending to make you feel guilty or hurt, but when is it going to be the time when you are going to face the reality that sometimes we make bad choices but we have to live with them and deal?
I think that you are doing a wonderful job raising the rest of the children. I just wish you had five minutes to spare for me. For as much as it may be worth to you, I do love you very much.
P.S. I would hope that you would just think about this and consider a relationship.
Today, February 17th, is Random Acts of Kindness Day. While it is so easy to become one of those bandwagon criticizers who bags on things like this, I wanted to take a minute to talk about some quick facts, and then share a list of some of my favorite RAK ideas…
There is a variety of people, out in the world, who say that performing Random Acts of Kindness is SELFISH, if you’re doing it for attention or to make yourself feel good.
This is a fine line to balance. On one hand, you have the TikTok contributors, who video themselves helping others (often in really unrealistic or large ways), and I do morally have a problem with this. It feels gross. If you’re handing a homeless person $400 while filming them, and using the dialogue “I saw this guy on the street so I’m giving him FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS and it will change his life! Here you go buddy, it’s yours. You can take it!” It is belittling, exploitive AND not at all generous. You look like a *insert a hundred different expletives here*, and you need to stop. Period.
On the other hand, if you have a photo of your kid and the fire chief posing with the plate of cookies you baked, on Instagram, that’s amazing. Sharing the kindness we have isn’t necessarily looking for attention when our hope is that it could inspire others to spread kindness too. We need to talk about our generosity, and let it spread like wildfire. It comes down to intent…
Now… to quickly address the selfish because it makes you feel good debate:
Everything makes us feel something. EVERYTHING. Every single day we should aspire to feel good. To feel good about the things we’ve done, the choices we’ve made, etc. How we feel impacts our actions, and our direct treatment of others. How we feel can have a LONG REACHING IMPACT, far beyond our feelings. Ripple effects are REAL.
There is no crime in feeling good about something…
While it is my sincere hope that we strive for true kindness every day, I’m going to focus on TODAY. Below is a list of some of my favorite RAK ideas. (And, if you receive my monthly email then you already know that my podcast, the Collective Podcast, has deemed the 20th day of every month, this year, as an Acts of Kindness day. Small gestures really can change the world…)
A donation to amazing organizations, fighting the good fight. (like Rescue Freedom, fighting in the trenches agains human trafficking)
Leaving children’s books in hospital waiting rooms.
taping baggies of coins to hospital vending machines.
full-filling wishlist items for underprivileged classrooms.
donating time at shelters, throughout the year, instead of just the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season.
covering someone’s drive-thru order behind you.
purchasing a gift card, when you dine out, and handing it to someone entering the restaurant, as you leave.
buying a meal for homeless people.
better yet, sharing a meal with them and listening to their story.
sending pizza, or donuts to night shift first responders.
leaving beverages and treats, in a cooler, for delivery drivers OR
a note to ring for warm beverages, (or local coffee place gift cards)
mowing an elderly or disabled persons lawn. (or cleaning gutters, etc.)
picking up litter.
keeping random gas and coffee gift cards in your car, for when those “needs” arise.
used book donations to nursing homes and senior centers.
donating used clothing and housewares to women’s shelters and programs helping women rebuild their lives.
expanding your view of the world by hearing others stories. knowledge develops empathy and empathy paves the path for kindness 100% of the time. (The Collective Podcast EXISTS for this reason)
Adopting a foster family, through organizations like this.
There are SO MANY other ways to give… I’d love to hear yours!
(Just a reminder, you can listen to the Collective Podcast here. Please consider joining our Patreon community here.)
Today is February 10th, which happens to (oddly enough) be National Umbrella Day. If you’ve been around me long, you know that this girl LOVES all things umbrella. Today was made for me!
The other thing I love, (honestly, more than umbrellas) is the joy that I have in engaging and being a part of this beautiful community of women that has blossomed out of the Collective Podcast. I consider myself so blessed, every single day! Just last night, I fell asleep thanking God for this gift of knowing these AMAZING women. My life is honestly better, because of them.
I am really passionate about supporting others. If you are on my email list then you certainly got an earful, on this topic, in February’s note. (eyeful? earful? Whatever…) The bottom line, in case you missed it, (and why? You really should sign up, you’re missing out!) is that we should be supporting our artists and creatives. The internet is filled with content, like blog posts, photos, inspiration, podcast episodes, videos, etc, of these people who pour pieces of themselves into this content FOR FREE, simply because it is in their blood.
In our blood.
In MY blood.
It takes actual hard work to put these things together, and since they are passion projects, there is no paycheck sitting there, come friday.
Moral of the story, support your creatives! We all NEED beautiful things around us, and we will definitely see a lot more value in our investment if we offer it to them, over the big box, corporate greed. Just a few reminders, and some suggestions…
These are both ways to support me, without it costing you much.
Listening the podcast will not cost you anything but time, well spent, and it helps TREMENDOUSLY! Subscribing, rating and sharing it is so helpful! We all know women who can benefit from the stories, experiences and community of others…
I also have an Amazon storefront, and JUST added three fun shops for spring and Lit lovers…
Beyond me though, there is the Personal ShopHER Directory of women who own small artisan businesses. Have some shopping to do? Continue looking there first!
These are all AWESOME ways to help support me as I write and continue to move forward, connecting with and empowering women within the Collective community- sure. But, we all know creatives- from indie authors, to painters, photographers to musicians. Dream along with them, and help them create big! Each and every person, in this world, needs a team of strong believers supporting them and helping them out! As we watch the news and feel overwhelmed with the sadness around us- this is one practical and easy way we can make a huge impact for change.
I am an enneagram four. It is literally NOT in my wiring to follow a trend. Growing up, seeking love, I might have dabbled in a music or apparel style only to get all cringy when I realized I simply could not commit. All of those weird 90’s kids, angsty and flannel clad, wearing our docs or converse, listening to music that made us FEEL- we were the real kids in America… The kids who didn’t want to follow the pattern, or color inside the lines. Most of us were Fours, only we didn’t know what that meant then. We found confidence (usually) in our need to find our own rhythms, and we found immense value in accepting all of the other “freaks” who weren’t trend followers either. We also, I’ll admit, still likely felt as though we were on the outside, always looking in; on the brink, but never really belonging…
When I was a young wife I developed a deep affection for Classic Pooh things. They were artistic and obscure little trinkets, hard to find, with steep price tags, when we did stumble upon them. Just before I turned twenty-three, a trend was emerging where every adult woman in the world wanted Disney store apparel themed in Classic Pooh. Dish-sets emerged, followed by entire kitchen ware collections, and household decorations, of the gently sketched little bear and his friends. Honestly, I was lived. Ironically, I was also on the verge of a shift, so as much as I may have wanted this trend to matter and wound my consistent strive for individuality- it didn’t.
When I feel in love with that sweet little bear, I was in this stage of my life where I deeply wanted a baby. In the way that I have always designed and decorated a room, within my mind, I imagined a nursery filled with unique little treasures featuring the gang. Those classically drawn images represented all things innocent and nurturing. They seemed to embody a heart full of aching, and my desperate need to hold my baby in my arms. As time passed, with each miscarriage I endured, the room filling my mind became more intentional. Whenever I’d stumble upon a new piece, I’d buy it, whether I could afford it or not. These were the things that I could do to control my shattering spirit. It wasn’t ever about Disney or trends, or anything other than the symbolism of something imaginary come to life- something cuddly and so incredibly love-able. My heart’s desire…
My seventh miscarriage had me so incredibly disheartened with doctors. It was the 90’s, and while women’s health medicine is still filled with frustration and horror stories, that decade really had this special way of making a woman feel like a complete piece of crap when she managed to have any fertility problems at all. (I have horror stories. I have small surgical procedures in a hospital hallway, by an eager (almost giddy) male doctor, while I was given no anesthesia or pain killer… I have football sized blood clots slapping onto a hospital floor, with a nurse saying “well, that happens! Hopefully the baby is there so we can be done with this and you can get some rest.”, I have promises of how I “definitely will not be losing this baby”, from the experts, while I sat miscarrying 3 hours later. The brutal times were significantly impacted, for the worse, by the medical industry of the time.) Each loss experience was completely different from the others. It is one of those bizarre, indescribable things… And so, when that stick showed a plus sign, in the autumn of 1998, I swore I would not see a doctor until I knew I was halfway through.
You see, in that same way that I was attempting to will God to give me a baby by creating a space for said baby to live, I was needing to blame someone for the lack of babies, thus far. The doctors seemed like the obvious common denominator in each messed up instance. No one would argue that they were not to blame for some terrible things. All of the people consuming my support network, at the time, would also wager that these doctors really did not care about me, my vagina or my future motherhood. The ambivalence with which I was handled was sickening… So, I blamed the doctors and I stayed away.
I ate saltines, took prenatal vitamins, and relished in the mornings I spent on my knees over the toilet. Everyone loved to reaffirm that the morning sickness was a good sign. The breast swelling came once again, the only consistent symptom with my pregnancies before. We slid gently into 1999, and my baby bump was slowly rounding. I had made it, I knew. This was it, finally. We found a highly recommended specialist, for at risk pregnancies, and I reluctantly agreed to see him. (By my rustic calculations I should have been 19-21 weeks along.)
It turns out that hormones are an odd duck. I wasn’t pregnant. My baby bump was a lovely nerf-football sized tumor, which had consumed an entire ovary and made a gigantic mess in my entire uterine area. The rise in some sort of something (this is how well I get science) had convinced my endocrine system that I was pregnant, and so symptoms mimicked pregnancy. It all sounded VERY Twilight Zone and I just knew the doctor was lying, and had disappointingy joined the big conspiracy against my babies, but eventually had to realize this was true. On a Wednesday night, in late January, I downed my first every peach bellini, and the next morning they sliced me open to bring that fat tumor into the world. I lost all of one ovary and a portion of the other.
Then March came, and I turned twenty-three. We had a big party, with a lot of friends, and I wore a denim Winnie the Pooh jumper as we paid a 90’s arm-and-a -leg for glow bowling. My white stitching was radiant beneath the black lights and while our beautiful friends were celebrating that I was alive, I wanted nothing more than the opposite. The doctor had said I could try and have a baby in the following year, but that the condition would happen again, and next time I’d probably lose everything. He had been encouraging, and internally I questioned how I hadn’t already lost everything. I didn’t understand how each bloody puddle that I’d sat broken in, upon ice-cold tile floors were so insignificant to everyone else. Hadn’t they been everything? Hadn’t those little heartbeats at least been something? The world was encouraging. Everyone acted like this had somehow solved the mystery of why I couldn’t carry a baby, and suddenly all roads pointed to a child of my own. I knew they didn’t. I knew that it was over. I couldn’t celebrate. I couldn’t find the happy, there within my inadequacy. I couldn’t have anything to do with that silly old bear again.
Just as the trend swept the nation…
I am an enneagram four. I feel things deeply. I process. I grieve. I march to my own rhythm, never following a trend. I, by nature, feel like an outsider aching to be a part of something. I couldn’t have a baby.
I got swept up in the fastest growing trend among American women…
I am an infertility and miscarriage survivor, and this is my story. One story, lost in the sea of millions.
(On the Collective Podcast this week I come together with four other brave women, vastly different in their own stories. They share their journeys and unexpectedly we find there, despite our differences, the commonalities of of both shame and hope. We find real. We would love for you to hear these stories. This is a safe space if you feel the need to share your own. Here is the link and it is episode 57.)
rainydayinmay.com 