podcast

the shame game…

Published on June 24, 2021June 24, 2021 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!}

four…

Published on May 13, 2020December 16, 2020 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

Growing up a little white girl, among a see of hispanic children was both hard, and it wasn’t. I mean, it WAS hard because I always felt like I didn’t fit in. Adding to that the fact that my mother was a smoker and the kids at school always made it a point to acknowledge that I was a Gringo, and stank. It also wasn’t hard though, because it was what I knew. I had no alternative to compare it to.

Childhood leaves us with the funnest memories, doesn’t it?

When I was a teenager I was living in a fundamentalist group home in (then) rural Idaho. Life was the sheltered sort, with the exception being church and youth group at a local “city” church. A mojority of the normal kids at church, living in their normal homes, going to normal schools and eating normal foods thought us group home kids were freaks. To be honest, their parents also saw us as dangers. It was an isolating and pretty scarring existence.

With this package deal attached to my early life development, there was also the personal feelings (SO MANY FEELINGS) that I had about NOT fitting in. Not feeling a part of things, sure. I had essentially been abandoned by my family and lived a daily life of rejection, so those feelings made a lot of sense.

I also didn’t WANT to fit in.

While everyone was listening to what was hot and trendy, following the current of what they believed kids our age were supposed to do, I teetered there, unsure.

Did I follow along, accept and finally achieve belonging?

Did I go with my gut and follow the less worn path of obscure movie tastes and worn out sneakers?

The struggle was real.

I believed the struggle would eventually subside as I matured into a woman, beyond the angsty years of teenagehood. I was wrong.

That eternal quest to belong equated itself with my sense of personal worth so deeply. Knit by (what I believed, at the time) the rejections, abuses and abandonment thematically designing my life, a melancholy hopelessness settled into everything I did.

I went into group home care in 1988.

I walked through that gate and into the real world in 1993.

I became a wife in 1994.

In 2017 I learned that, on the enneagram chart, I am a four.

Fours have big feelings. Fours are creative and artistic. Fours ache to fit in, but also want to dance to their own rhythm. (and their own, non-trend decided tunes) Fours are (likely) the 90’s emo kids. They are the ones not regularly depicted on screen, in film and television because they happen to (probably) be the real life people writing those characters and creating that art.

I embraced my four.

I connected with other fours.

Knowing these things, having these explanations, it’s like the comfort of filling the gaps I’ve lived with, unwhole, for my entire life. It also forces me to see where my flaws lie. The how’s and the why’s.

I am able to know “ok, these are things I’ll do when I’m at my emotional healthiest”, and “these are indications that I need to work some stuff out, because I’m struggling.”

So many times we’ve humorously mumbled about life not having an instruction manual, or people not coming with a guide.

Guess what? We do.

That is literally what the enneagram does for us.

Plainly put, it is EMPOWERING.

Owning our truths helps us with one another too. For instance, I know that if someone on my team is an enneagram two, they will be prone to saying “yes” and people pleasing. Knowing that, and asking a lot of them anyway would be exploitive and selfish. Additionally, being married to an enneagram nine has helped me realize he isn’t passive or apathetic, he is simply prone to not cause ripples. At his unhealthiest, this can be dark and explosive. Knowing these things helps me love and respect him the way he deserves. It helps me see all of him, and love him.

If you don’t know where you’re at, or want to learn more, I strongly recommend the Road Back to You, by Ian Cohn. Also, in this week’s episode of the Collective Podcast, Abbey Howe is hanging out and chatting random ennea-info with us. Her youtube channel Enneagram with Abbey is super fun and informative. (As is Ian Cohn’s podcast!)

p.s. three…

Published on March 20, 2020December 16, 2020 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay

Dear Mom,

Although we are friends now, we haven’t always been in this place in life. When I was growing up, you were distant. Not distant in a way that I couldn’t see, hear or touch you, but you just had somewhat “checked out” as a mom. Being the baby of six kids, I always felt like maybe you gave birth to me but just didn’t want to raise another child.

As I got older, I learned that you didn’t have the best upbringing yourself, losing your birth mother at a young age, having your father say he couldn’t care for his children so putting them in foster care (which ultimately tore you away from most of your siblings, except one sister), then being adopted and raised by a mother who wasn’t the best suited for the job.

All of that made me realize you had some baggage to deal with. Maybe because of that baggage you just had no idea how to really be a mom. But then as I got even older, I learned of some things about you that probably led to you also not being a close mother to me during the formidable years.

I learned that you were raised Mormon, but broke the rules and got pregnant in High School. Because of that you were forced to leave that comfort and the support of home, you moved into a place with your boyfriend and started a family. The two of you were married and had 4 children together. He was a traveling sales man, leaving you alone to raise the children by yourself. I think this took a real toll on you and you got involved with another man and ended up pregnant. Although you attempted to hide this from your husband, he knew that child couldn’t be his. So he divorced you, so once again you were alone raising children, but now you are also pregnant and raising children.

When your “baby” was a little over one, you met a man (who would ultimately become my father) and began dating him. The two of you eventually married, when your youngest child was 2 years old. When your youngest child was 4, you gave birth to another child (me). I am not sure if I was a planned pregnancy or if you were giving your husband a child he wanted. But either way, you never seemed ready for another child. Even reading back in the baby book put together for me, the comments you wrote in the book are shocking. When the book asks you to document what you thought when you found out you were pregnant, you wrote “I hope this is the last”. When it asks what your first thoughts were when you first laid eyes on me, you wrote “its a girl”. I would’ve hoped your answers would have been a little more enthusiastic.

You and my dad filled your lives with lots of alcohol and partying. You would also get involved in the “Swinger” lifestyle, hosting parties at your home. These parties were often full of food and alcohol and lots of people, while us kids were told to go to the basement and stay there until we were told to come up. I remember venturing upstairs once, because the smell of the food was just too tempting, and although I didn’t “see” anything, to this day I can remember the panic on your face as you tried to scurry me back down to the basement. It wasn’t until I was much older that I found out from one of my siblings that you guys were Swingers. Then I started piecing all that together.

My point here, Mom, is this: I know you love me. I know you genuinely want the best for me. I now feel like we can talk about anything and you always have good advice. It has taken us some time to get here though and although you played a bigger role (being a more mature, motherly figure that should have been your role) I also take some responsibility in keeping us from a wonderful relationship for all those years.

Love you!

p.s. two…

Published on March 13, 2020 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay1 Comment

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.

p.s. one…

Published on March 6, 2020December 16, 2020 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay1 Comment

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…

Mom,

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.