Category: writing

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.

pressure… {fmf}

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay4 Comments

I had a conversation this week with a fellow childhood sexual abuse survivor, and we talked about raising children. While she was able to have her own children, I of course could not. What I found fascinating, in our discussion, was the same internal pressures had remained. While I was a foster turned adoptive mother, this intense pressure to CREATE AND BE BETTER for the kids in my care, was debilitating.

Not having a context for what a normal, healthy family should look like, I constructed ideas based on the opinions and insight of professionals, books and statistics. So often, as complaints would rain down about this, or that, I would respond stating that this child was so lucky they had parents who loved them, their needs met and ___________. The reality was that while I had known a childhood that was not at all like the significantly better one I helped design for them, they had also known something far worse. In so many ways, we didn’t stand a chance.

I was killing myself, inside, trying to be the difference.

There is a lot of unhealthy information attached to adoption and foster care. Promises that love is enough, or that children are resilient. Listen, children ARE resilient, but so is trauma, and trauma leaves scars.

No one picks up the megaphone to share about the pressures placed upon both the parents and the children.

It was an odd comfort to know my new friend had felt these same pressures within her natural motherhood journey. A reminder of the scars that trauma leaves…

A realization that pressure traumatizes too.

{This post is an exercise within the Five Minute Friday writing community. To read more, go here!}

the chicken or the egg…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

I was part of a writer’s workshop over the weekend which centralized around the philosophies of Virginia Woolf. One of the chosen exercises encouraged us to take a favorite short tale and retell it with more flowery, poetic, and meandering writing. A later exercise asked us to remember a time when we fell in love with a favorite book. We were to mindfully bring ourselves into the action while describing details about the book, day, moment, emotion, etc…

For the first task, I chose The Little Red Hen, my beloved Golden Book from childhood. When the time came for the second task, my mind was still on The Little Red Hen track. I wanted to record the exercises here for one day- for something. I don’t know why…

~

The crimson feathered hen’s heart ached at the decisions her dearest loved ones continued to make as they allowed her to do all of the work while expecting to reap the rewards. Each of them, the hen included, shared the same dream.

She was drained tired but knew the warm, white bread would be worth it.

Wings in mitts, the hen reached into the brick oven and brought the steaming loaves out, “These smell like heaven!” the hen exclaimed with a satisfied sigh, while the mental countdown began as to when her friends would show up expecting to fill their bellies. Her gentle heart hated to deny them, but she knew it was for their own good. These friends needed to learn the value and sacrifice found in hard work…

~

Was it the first time, or simply a time? Had my mind followed the words a thousand times before, their story not quite sinking in, or were they exploring the tale, brand new? Either way, their meaning settled upon me like a dawning.

Criss-cross legs on the floor. Bookshelf Papa built looming over head, books piled high on shelves and stacked low on carpet, surrounding me.

I wanted to reach into the pages and let the weary hen rest in my arms.

Muted rays of light attempted to flood this space beyond my tiny, tin framed bedroom window, as salt-tears traveled down my cheeks for her, the tired hen. Those friends should help her, and do their share. Of course, they cannot share in the bread! I raged angry and protective, appalled at the injustice of it all.

I would sit in this same spot, with these same pages, for years to come. Even as a middle school girl, loving boys and carrying life’s heavy luggage, this hen held space for me… and I for her. To this very day, one-million lifetimes later, this sweet hen’s story still wounds me. She was so tired and yet they would not see her. She gave and she gave, those around her only chose to take and take and take… Even me really, holding her story and tracing her pages, those deep red feathers giving me far more comfort and friendship than anyone had bothered to gift to her.

I loved her.

I am her.

is it because I foresaw it then, or did the engraving of this hen upon my small-girl-soul direct my path?