Category Archives: Women

Beach Bodies

Posted in Women by

I haven’t really been writing a lot recently. More accurately, for awhile this winter, I was writing a LOT. But it was freelance work that resulted in me being paid money, which you have to admit takes precedence over writing a blog that hardly anyone reads.

But aside from that, what I have mostly been doing in my free time is exercising. I’ve been taking classes at the gym with my friends, getting strong and having kind of an awesome time doing it. Like, I have actual, discernible muscles in my arms. I can do a push up. A REAL push up, with my knees up and my nose all the way to the ground. I’ve been squatting and planking and even doing a class with the word “turbo” in it.

The reason why I have been exercising so much goes all the way back to last year, which I refer to as The Year of Pestilence. After spending roughly half of the winter in my doctor’s office, she finally sat me down and said, in a nice doctorly way, that my immune system is shit. She put me on vitamins and supplements and probiotics. She also told me that regular exercise is key to building stronger immunity.

This suggestion felt a little unfair at a time when I had gone from running half-marathon distances to being barely able to wheeze my way through a mile. But I took her advice and I made it a priority to be regularly active.

At this point, I can’t really comment on the effectiveness of regular exercising on boosting the immune system. I am currently on a break because I am battling bronchitis. Again. I can hear the rattling in my chest as I write.

But here is what I can say about exercise: it makes you stronger and more fit. It is good for you emotionally as well as physically, especially if you do it with friends. It’s a good thing.

We certainly hear enough about it, especially around this time of year when “bathing suit season” is looming on the horizon.  Everywhere I look, someone is pushing a 21-day this or a 30-day that. Words like “new you!” and “transformation” and “life-changing” are only outnumbered by words like, “Get a beach body by June!” and “YOU can have THIS body too!”

You can have “this body,” (someone else’s body, in point of fact) if only you take the following steps. You can “sculpt” and “tone” and “food system” yourself to an idea of perfection embodied by someone else.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong in encouraging and helping people to be fit and to eat healthfully. We need to care for our bodies if we want to keep them around.

What I find so disturbing is the message that we should be so dissatisfied with our own flesh that we need to force it into someone else’s mold.

Because here’s the thing. You won’t ever have any body but your own body. You are what you have right now. You can work to make it stronger and healthier. But at the end of the day, it will still be the same body that has brought you through life from the day you were born to this very moment. That is something to rejoice in, not reject.

And I think the message that we need to transform our bodies, that, with work, we can reshape ourselves into someone else’s proportions is a dangerous one.

Because, why should we strive to be what someone else is? Why aren’t we good enough in the skin we have? And who is it, really, who gets to decide what a “perfect” body is? Why does the message always have to be that we need to make some sort of fundamental change to be our best?

When I see these claims — that the perfect body is hiding somewhere under the skin I already have, that all I have to do is carve it out of myself — I get frustrated, not motivated.

I also get angry, because these are the messages that my daughters are going to grow up hearing. Their little bodies, perfect in every way, amaze me every day with what they can do. And someday they are going to hear the message that those bodies aren’t good enough. They are going to be told that they really should be striving to have the body of someone else, someone who is, ostensibly, better than they are.

I’m not OK with that. I made those bodies — those bodies are miracles. And it really bothers me to know that someday — in the not-too-distant future — they will be made to feel as though their bodies are less than miraculous.

I also know that the loudest message of all will come from me, and how I treat my own body.

So from now on, my “beach body” will be me, wearing a bathing suit, on the beach. It will be the same body that I take with me on runs, the one that carries my children up to bed, the one that I have relied on all my life. Sometimes, it will be strong and fit. Sometimes, it will be rattly and sick. But whatever it is, it will be mine.

In action: Plus-size model Robyn Lawley (far right) is joined by other curvy women in a new swimwear calendar retaliating against society's obsession with super-slim bodies - here the bathing beauties strike a pose for July

These are bodies. They are on a beach. They are beach bodies.

My Two Moms

Posted in Children, Family, Parenting, Women by

The other day in the grocery store, my daughter asked me to tell her, again, how it is that I have two moms. This question is hard to explain to a six-year-old even in the best of circumstances. But in an extremely crowded Wegman’s on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, while trying to maneuver a cart and a child through the turkey aisle, it was damn near impossible. But still, I endeavored.

In what was probably the most crowded location in our entire town at that particular moment, I stopped to explain one of the most complicated aspects of my existence.

“The mommy who carried me in her belly, your Nana,” I told her “was too young to take care of a baby. And the mommy who raised me, Grandma Michele, who is in heaven, was old enough to take care of me, but she couldn’t have babies of her own. So your Nana gave me to your Grandma and Grandpa, so that they could take care of me instead. But they all loved me very much.”

That story is about as deep as you can go with an elementary schooler. But even in the midst of the chaos and my own distraction, I was very aware of what I was leaving out.

I didn’t mention how hard I always knew it was for the woman who gave birth to me to have had to let me go. I didn’t tell her how the only time I came close to crying right after she was born was when I thought about what it would have felt like if I’d had to give her up to be raised by another woman.

I couldn’t tell her how, although I always saw my birth mother as a hero, there were times when I couldn’t help but wonder how she could possibly have left me behind. And I couldn’t tell her how, despite the incredible  love I have for the family I know as my own, I still wondered — just sometimes —  what it would have been like to be a part of a family of people who were related to me by blood.

I couldn’t tell her how fiercely angry I feel when people suggest that the mother who made me her own wasn’t my “real” mom. And I couldn’t explain how the joy I felt when I met the mother I’d lost at birth didn’t lessen the grief I will always feel for the mother I lost forever.

I couldn’t explain how incredibly fortunate I felt when the mother who gave me life was one of the first people to meet my daughter after her own birth. And I couldn’t explain how much it sometimes breaks my heart to see the genetic stamp of my adoptive mother on my cousin’s kids and not my own.

And I don’t think I will ever be able to explain to her how, even though I have been blessed with the love of two mothers, there have been moments in my life when I have felt motherless.

There is so much that I can’t explain to my children right now about the reality of my family history. Adoption stories are always complicated, and the fact that I lost the mother who raised me just muddles things further.

But in spite of the complications, it is a story I like to tell, and one that I think is beautiful.

Because even though there is so much I can’t explain, there is so much more that I won’t have to explain.

I won’t have to explain how aware and deeply appreciative I am of the love my mothers had for me and of the sacrifices they both made on my behalf. Because those gifts, which came to me doubled, are now mine to grow and to give to my own children.

I won’t have to explain that family is so much more than sharing a genetic bond, because by the time they understand what it means to be related by blood, they will already know how little those ties matter when it comes to love.

And I won’t have to explain how much love is capable of overcoming, how time and distance and loss and sacrifice only make it more powerful, because the one thing that is clear from my story is that love was behind it all.

This is love.

This is love.

* * *

November is National Adoption Month. Although I tend to shy away from Awareness months in general, I’m glad adoption is something people are talking about.

I have heard people describe adoption as something that always comes from loss. And in a sense, this is undeniably true. People who are adopting are often, though not always, doing so because they cannot have a child any other way. And people who are giving away a child are always losing a part of themselves. Adoption is not an easy option.

But adoption is also a gift of love, in the best sense of the word. It isn’t always the best choice, but when it is, adoption enriches the lives of everyone it touches and it creates a legacy that lasts for generations.

* * *

As Thanksgiving approaches, I am aware of how much I have to be grateful for. Above all, as I am every year, I am thankful for the story of how I came to be, for where I was planted, and especially for the love that made me who I am.

And if anyone who is contemplating adoption reads this, let me share one final story with you, one that my grandmother told me many times over the years.

My grandmother had a terrible time when she was in labor with my father. The birth was so difficult, in fact, that her doctors told her she would probably die if she tried to have another child. She was devastated because she’d always wanted at least four children. So she asked my grandfather if he would consider adopting. He said no, because he just couldn’t fathom being able to love a child that wasn’t his own, especially after having a child that was.

30-some years later, after my parents had adopted me as a six-week-old infant, my grandmother came across my grandfather holding me. She used to say that he looked up from me to her and said, with awe in his voice, that he couldn’t imagine loving anyone more than he loved that baby in his arms.

Adoption is easier than you think it might be.

 

 

 

Locker Room Bodies

Posted in Women by

Between my return to running and my daughters’ swim lessons, I have recently been spending a lot of time in women’s locker rooms. And during this time, I’ve observed a few things about the locker room subculture: Mainly, that the older women get, the more confident they seem to be in their own skin — and in nothing but their own skin. Also, women who exercise together talk to one another. We talk in the showers and in the toilet stalls. We talk while toweling off, while adjusting our undergarments, and while applying deodorant. We just talk.

Once, while I was dressing my three-year-old after her 11 am swim lesson, an elderly woman wearing nothing but beige underpants started a conversation with me about modern methods of preschool swim instruction.

“My granddaughter in Ohio puts life vests on my great-grandkids when they swim in their pool! I just don’t hold with that kind of nonsense,” she told me. “You just throw ‘em in. That’s the only way they learn! They don’t use those vest things here, do they?” She paused for a moment, and then continued talking. “Don’t mind me, now, I just have to blow dry under my bosom. I find that they get a bit chafed if I just let them air dry.” And sure enough, she lifted each breast, waving the hair dryer underneath and around it.

At that moment, the thinking part of my brain froze completely, leaving my socially awkward self without a working filter. Words came out of my mouth. I started describing in detail the horrible sores my daughter got as a newborn from her diapers and how we, too, had to blow dry her private bits whenever we changed her. My elderly friend just looked at me funny and finished her blow drying.

Why yes, I did just use the word bosom in a sentence. Does that make you uncomfortable?

“Why yes, I did just use the word bosom to refer to my breasts. Does that make you uncomfortable?”

* * *

I don’t do very well with locker room talk, mostly because I am shy around naked people. So when I find myself in a crowd of women in various stages of undress, I tend to do a lot of quiet observing. And in addition to noticing how freely other people seem to behave in a situation that makes me distinctly uncomfortable, I have noticed something else as well.

The women I see in the locker rooms are fit. They work out. They swim. They pump their bodies and they Zumba and they lift. They are active, and they are real.

But none of them – not one of them — possess a body that would be featured as is, with no retouching, in a fitness magazine. There are curves, and lots of them. There are smooth and generous curves, wrinkled curves, and lumpy curves. There are bodies with angles and planes, and there are bodies with definition and obvious strength.

These are beautiful bodies, but not one of them resembles in every particular the tanned, toned, impossibly long and lean examples our media gives us of what women who are “in shape” look like. And yet, these women are the most genuine examples of what it means to be living a healthy, active lifestyle.

It would be easy for me to give in to the temptation right now to rant about how the media flaunts utterly unattainable standards of what women’s bodies should look like. There is no question that the images of what is perceived as the definition of feminine beauty that we see in print and on screens are rarely anything other than airbrushed, elongated, and enhanced images of women whose profession is looking beautiful. It is hard not to get angry that these false images have so much power in our society.

But I am not going to go that route. Because we women are smarter than that. We are stronger than that. We are better than that.

We don’t need the glossy pages of magazines to tell us where our beauty lies. We have the power to decide for ourselves what it means to be fit and healthy — and beautiful.

Images are just that – images. They are as deep as the paper they are printed on, and last as long as the time it takes to scroll past them on your computer screen. But we are real. We run, and walk, and dance, and lift, and stretch, and we have careers and we mother children and we tend to relationships and we live. Above all, we live.

Some of the women I see in the locker room are marathon runners who wear double digit sizes. Others are tiny and toned, with a padding of extra skin around their stomachs as a reminder of the fact that they made another person. Many of the women are elderly, with bodies that will never be firm and young again. All of these women inspire me. And even though they probably don’t realize it, all of these women are beautiful, in their realness and in their strength.

 

Stupid Girls

Posted in Children, Important Issues, Women by

I was flying solo last night while my husband was out of town, so I decided to take the kids to Chick Fil A for dinner. We ate and then the girls went to play in the playground area while I finished my dinner and cleaned up our table. After a few quiet minutes of peaceful time to myself, I was startled by the noise of my older daughter bursting through the playroom door. She rushed over to me, indignant, but also clearly suffering from hurt feelings.

“Mommy!” She shouted, “This boy just said that I am a stupid girl! He said I was singing my song wrong and that he didn’t want to play with me because I am just a STUPID GIRL!”

I was pretty angry. I followed her into the play area and had a little talk with the boy who had upset her so badly. I explained that what he said about my daughter was untrue and that it had hurt her feelings. I told him that he could help make it better by saying he was sorry. But even though his big brother was backing me up, the little boy was unrepentant.

So I turned the conversation over to my daughter instead and we started talking about all the things that are true about her.

“You’re not a stupid girl at all,” I told her. “You are a very smart girl. You are a smart person. And you are funny, and fun to be around, and really, really creative.”

“Yes,” she said, “and I am nice and imaginative and I got two prizes in camp today and I am a good big sister.”

But even though she knew all those things to be true, the insult the little boy had thrown at her still rankled. She couldn’t let it go. She brought it up repeatedly last night and it was still bothering her this morning.

And every time she mentioned what had happened, she always said the same thing: that she was upset because the boy had called her “a stupid girl.” She has been bullied before by another student in her class, and while the experience was very hurtful, she never dwelled on what the child from her school said to her as much as she did on being called a stupid girl.

***

My daughter had a new experience last night, and it was one that I always knew was coming. For the first time in her six years of life, she was exposed to the fact that there are people in this world who add the word “girl” to insults with the goal of making them more offensive.

The little boy who said those hurtful words was just that – a little boy. I know he probably had no real concept of what he was saying. Insults get bandied around playgrounds like balls at a tennis match and most of the time the words kids use to hurt each other are empty of any real meaning. This morning my younger daughter was mortally offended when my older daughter made eye contact with her and said “nah-nah nah-nah.” She sensed the intent to insult, even though the words her sister used were nonsense.

But still. There was something more to what that boy said, whether he was aware of it or not, and my daughter is perceptive enough to have felt that there was an extra barb in what he said.

Because it is undeniably true that in our social lexicon, the word girl – and all of its synonyms — are often used to convey criticism.

“You run like a girl.”

“You fight like a girl.”

“You kick like a girl, throw like a girl, hit like a girl.”

“You cry like a girl.”

These are not generally meant as compliments.

During football season, when people want to denigrate a member of the opposing team, they come up with memes of players in tutus and post them all over Facebook:

Oh, I get it. It’s the whole whiny little girl thing. Ha! Ha, ha. I’d forgotten how funny that is.

We imply that men are weak or cowardly by calling them pussies – and we’re not referring to cats. Men who are strong and imposing are “manly men,” while men who are more meek and subdued are “girly men.”

Even among women, when we say someone is “girly” we aren’t remarking on her strength of character, or her intelligence, or on the fact that she has the body parts required to build another human being. We are implying that she likes shopping, and pampering, and makeup, and pretty things.

The implied negative connotation we have connected with the word “girl” is prevalent enough that Always – that’s right, the feminine products company – has released a video highlighting just what people mean when they use the term “like a girl.” It’s worth watching.

***

My daughter got her first taste of this social phenomenon last night, but thankfully she still doesn’t understand just how deeply rooted it is in our culture. The truth will dawn on her eventually. My hope is that, when it does, she remembers this: that she is the only person who defines who she is. And that what it means to be a girl — or to do something like a girl — means nothing more or less than to be her best self and to do what comes naturally to her with courage and confidence.

And one more thing – you know the song my daughter was singing that the little boy found so annoying? It was my daughter’s cover of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. It went like this:

Twinkle, Twinkle, you’re my star
And I love just what you are.
Up above the world so high
Like a heart up in the sky.
Twinkle, Twinkle, you’re my star.
And I love just what you are.

When it comes to being her best self, I can’t help but think that she has a pretty good start.

 

 

 

 

Flaunting Failure: My Messy Beautiful

Posted in Children, Motherhood, Women by

Like most people, I don’t really enjoy bragging about my failures. I recognize them, and feel what is probably an excessive amount of guilt for having them (I’m not Catholic for nothing), but I prefer to keep them on the down low. They are not my favorite topic of conversation.

So it was as astounding to me as it would be to anyone else when, a few weeks ago, I found myself emphatically, almost eagerly, telling my daughter that I make bad choices and really big mistakes every single day of my life.

“Mommy is, like, a huge failure, sweetie!” I told her brightly. “I mean, I told Daddy to shut up this morning! That was really bad! And I yelled at the dog because he ate grass and puked on the new carpet, and then I yelled at Daddy again because I had to clean it up! And I forgot to pack your lunch that one time — remember?! I forgot it and I didn’t bring it until lunchtime was almost over and when I got there, you were crying in the cafeteria line? That was a really bad choice that mommy made.”

There was that time when my house looked like this.

There was that time when my house looked like this.

I stopped there, because the flow of my thought process was moving toward previous boyfriends and hangovers and tattoos obtained in foreign countries, and that whole lunch incident really was blemish enough on our mother-daughter relationship. We have plenty of time for all of mommy’s more spectacular failures to make themselves known.

This overflow of honesty might have been excessive, but it was not without purpose. Because it was in response to my baby girl sitting in the bathtub sobbing, wailing that she “wanted to be good ALL DAY and not just SOME of the day because you, Mommy, ALWAYS make good choices and NEVER make bad choices.”

How else could I answer her? I don’t always make good choices. I do make really big mistakes. I am never, ever perfect ALL DAY.

My daughter is on the Autism Spectrum. For the most part, her differences manifest as odd but charming quirks. However, there are times when the world becomes too much for her.  She has a certain rigidity to her expectations from life, and when life doesn’t conform to those expectations, she becomes overwhelmed. When she becomes overwhelmed, she becomes defiant and angry. And when she becomes defiant and angry, she begins to feel guilty, which leads to more defiance and anger until it all comes crashing down and she is empty but also somehow devastated by what she sees as her failure to be good.

That’s a lot of feeling for a five-year-old.

My heart breaks for her when she starts to fall down the Autism rabbit hole, and when I found her crying in the bathtub that night it was shattering to see that, this time, she was tumbling down because she was comparing herself — negatively! — to me. And it made me think.

I don’t like to broadcast my mistakes to the world at large, and I really don’t like to broadcast my mistakes to my children. As parents, we feel compelled to serve as an example of the kind of people we want our children to become. We want to be their heroes. And I think a lot of times, we strive to hide our faults from our children in order to meet the expectations we set for ourselves.

But the thing is, I don’t want, or expect,  my children to be perfect, or even almost perfect. And I don’t want them to grow up to become the kind of person who feels that perfection is expected from her. I want my girls to try new things, to succeed sometimes and to fail sometimes. I want them to know how to own up to their mistakes and to try to make things right. I want them to be able to forgive themselves for not being what it is impossible to be. Above all, I want them to know that they are both messy and beautiful, and wholly — overwhelmingly — loved. And they will never learn any of those things if I don’t teach them.

* * *

I have written before about losing my mother at a young age. It was hard to lose her. It is still hard to not have her. These things are true for anyone who has lost a parent. But one of the things that makes losing a parent when you are young especially difficult is the fact that you never get to know her.  She is always as she was to you when you were a child: perfection, and everything.

My mom would have been a hard act to follow, no matter what. One summer, she spent 6-hour days at the pool with a portable chemo pump delivering toxins directly into her bloodstream so my brother and I could enjoy our summer. She once fell and broke her neck in the morning one day, and that evening she showed up, neck brace and all, at a fashion show where I was modeling First Communion dresses. I have to bite my tongue on the F-word when I stub a toe, but breast-turned-bone cancer never even elicited a “damn my life” from my mother.

As far as I can remember, my mom was as close to perfection as a person can be. She never had the chance to prove otherwise.  I have spent much of my life feeling as though I will never, ever measure up to her — and now that I am a mother, I know that’s not what she wanted for me. It isn’t what I want for my own children.

* * *

So many of my parenting decisions have been made based on my desire to have the mother-daughter relationship with my girls that cancer stole from me and my own mother. Mostly, these decisions have had to do with being together — just existing in the world with them —  as they go through life’s big and small moments.

But behind all that is also my desire to be real for them. For us to grow together as a family, and to know that we love each other always, unconditionally.

And that night with my daughter, when her world was crashing down around her because she wasn’t good all day long, reminded me that sometimes, showing your children your failures also means that you are teaching them how to love themselves and others.

* * *

 This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!

messy-beautiful-700b

 

 

 

 

 

 

They Love Us Too

Posted in Children, Important Issues, Motherhood, Uncategorized, Women by

Last week, a dear friend of mine shared a beautiful tribute to her father, who passed away several months after her wedding, shortly after she became pregnant with her first child. She wrote:

“Today, on what would have been my dad’s 74th birthday, I remember the song I picked for the father/daughter dance at my wedding: Forever Young, by Bob Dylan.  I shared the song with my dad a couple of months before the wedding, and when he heard it for the first time, he teared up.  He understood why I chose it – not only is it a wish from him for me, but also from me for him.  We practiced dancing a little bit that day in my parents’ living room, and looking back I’m so very happy that we did.  By the time the wedding day rolled around, cancer radiation treatment had left my dad unable to stand without support.  Dad and I didn’t get to dance at my wedding, and a little part of me is sad when I think about that, but more so I am grateful that he was able to be there at all.
So, Dad, this one’s for you. 

I thought her post was profoundly touching, and not just because I knew her father — who was a good, kind, immensely intelligent man — or because I know how it feels to regret what you could not do with a beloved parent who has been beaten down by cancer.

What moved me the most was what she said about the song she chose for her father/daughter wedding dance — that the words of Forever Young were not just a wish from him to her, but also from her to him.

Bob Dylan’s Forever Young is a song whose lyrics can bring even the most unsentimental parent to tears. The first stanza alone has everything you need to feel both heart-swellingly hopeful about your child’s future and crushingly nostalgic about the childhood she will inevitably leave behind:

May God bless and keep you always.
May your wishes all come true.
May you always do for others,
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars,
And climb on every rung. May you stay forever young.

Of course these are the things every parent wants for her children.  We want them to follow their dreams, and to be righteous and brave. We want them to be loved, and to know truth, and to find joy. We want them to be young, forever. We want them to have everything in the world that is good.

But my friend took this point further and reminded me that these are the same things our children want for us, their parents.

I have written before that the best thing we can do for our children is to be there, beside them, as they walk through life. But it is also important, for us and for them, to remember that —  behind the tantrums and the defiance and the smug know-it-all-ism of their early years — they both want and need their parents to be content and fulfilled. They want us to be strong, and healthy, and as young as they remember us to be. They want good things for us, too.

Our children, particularly when they are young, don’t often show us that our welfare matters to them. I’m pretty sure that if you asked my three-year-old, she would say that her greatest hope for me is that I forever provide her with goldfish crackers. Or that I forget the word “nap.”  My five-year-old would like me to concede with prejudice that I am not, in fact, the boss of her. I feel certain they would neither acknowledge nor express any lofty aspirations for me. But I think our children feel a need for our happiness nevertheless.

* * *

For the last few months, I have been battling one rough winter illness after another. I had antibiotic resistant strep throat for four weeks back in December, which led me to discover some minor, though temporarily worrisome, heart problems. Then in January, I picked up the norovirus at Chuck E. Cheese, which knocked me out for eight solid days. I am currently winding up another course of antibiotics for a sinus/ear infection and bronchitis. It hasn’t been an easy winter, and I haven’t been my usual self.

While all this was going on, I noticed that my five-year-old’s behavior at home had been getting increasingly worse. She was being contrary, oppositional, and having massive meltdowns at the least provocation. I was overwhelmed, and I couldn’t figure out why she had picked the time when I was at my weakest to bring out her worst behavior.

But eventually it dawned on me. She was reacting to my illnesses. It was because I was at my weakest that her behavior was it its worst. I wasn’t well and she was worried about me. I wouldn’t have argued if she had shown her concern in a less challenging way, but that’s how my girl rolls — when life pushes her over her limits, she pushes right back at life.

* * *

Our kids love us and need us to be there for them. They also want, and need, for us to be well and happy*. Our wellbeing affects them — but it also matters to them. They can’t find their own contentment if we haven’t found ours.

And if we do our job right, one day, our children will want everything for us that we want for them. That is a big and beautiful thought, and I am so thankful to my friend for reminding me that the love and concern we parents feel for our children is reciprocated, and powerfully so.

This one’s for you, CHW. And yes, Dad, this is my way of saying I love you, too.

From the Forever Young Book, by Bob Dylan and Paul Rogers

From the Forever Young Book, by Bob Dylan and Paul Rogers

*Read more about our right to be well and happy at These Walls Blog, by my friend Julie.

We Are All They Need

Posted in Children, Holidays, Loss, memories, Motherhood, Women by

Today is Janurary 6, my mother’s day. It became “my” mother’s day 23 years ago when my own mother, after a nearly eight-year battle, lost her life to breast cancer and when I became aware of how vitally important a mother’s presence is in the lives of her children.

For many years, whenever January 6th arrived, I thought about my own losses. A first, I missed her with every nerve; I felt flayed and exposed to a host of things that were beyond my understanding. Gradually, my piercing grief was replaced by a longing that was no less intense, because it contained the realization that with each passing year I was separated even further from her.

But now that I have children of my own, when January 6th rolls around I find myself thinking less about my own losses and more about what my mother lost when she died.

She was so beautiful.

She was so beautiful.

Parenthood is a future-thinking endeavor. When we first breathe in the newness of our just-born child, we look forward, far forward, to decades of moments with that brand-new baby. Yes, we marvel at their smallness, their freshness, their perfection. We revel in the tiny yet immense gift we have been given. But we also envision what that baby will be like as a child, and as a teenager, and as an adult. We see them on birthdays, on holidays, at graduations and weddings. We see their children.

We plan to be with them until they are grown, and to experience life with them after they have reached their potential as adults. We don’t plan for our relationship with them to end when they are children.

When my mom died, she didn’t just lose her own life. She lost her life with her children. For her, my life and my brother’s life, intertwined as they were with her own, ended when we were eleven and six.

I can’t even imagine how painful it must have been for her, when she finally accepted that the end was near, to know that she was about to lose her future with us. That she would miss all of the moments of our lives, big and small, for the rest of our lives. That she would never know us as adults, or meet the people who would become important to us as we matured. That she would never, ever, hold a grandchild in her arms.

As her daughter, and as the mother of my own children, it breaks my heart to know that this face…

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…and this face

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…are wholly unknown to her.

When she knew that she was dying, she also had to know that she was letting go of a million moments with her children. That the past was all she would ever have with us. She must have experienced the kind of pain that pray I never have to face.

***

This is not going to turn into one of those “enjoy every moment with your child because you never know how many you have” posts. I could go there, but I’m not a hypocrite. I would wager large sums of money that, when my children are grown and gone, I absolutely will not be longing to re-experience the prickly-hot feeling of panic spiked with shame that comes over you when your five-year-old is publicly behaving like a spoiled toddler, while your toddler is running in circles like an untrained dog smelling distinctly of eau de poo. There are many moments that I won’t miss.

I’m not even saying that we moms (and dads!) should be doing anything differently. If anything, I am saying we should all do less, or at least that we should worry less about what we should be doing. Because if I have learned one thing after 23 years of being without my mother, I can tell you that what I missed, what I craved, was her. Her presence. The knowledge that the world contained her.

I didn’t need any extras. I didn’t need perfection. I would have preferred to have had her healthy, but to have had her at all was a blessing and, as I have learned, a luxury. To have had her, just as she was, was enough.

And if just having her was enough, then it follows that just having us, their parents, is enough for our own children. The fact that we are in their lives, that we are actively loving them, is enough. Our flaws and imperfections and mistakes do nothing to lessen the impact of our mere presence. Isn’t that a freeing thought?

What I am saying is that the sum of moments that we have with our children is probably the best thing that we, or they, will ever have. And that if we are able to look forward to a future of these moments, when we and they are all present together in this world, then we are damned lucky.

Not So Blurry After All

Posted in Random, Uncategorized, Women by

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Don’t Rape.

This week, social media and online news networks have been dominated by statuses, shares, and stories about a raunchy music award show performance in which a virtually naked girl just out of her teens had virtual sex with a much older man singing about “blurred lines” for a target audience of teens and tweens.

People were outraged. Mostly, they were outraged by the overtly sexual performance of a girl who had been in the public eye since her childhood. Those who spoke out against the much older man performing alongside her did so only in reaction to fact that the girl part of the duo was taking the brunt of the disgust. If he had been on that stage alone, I doubt anyone would have taken any extraordinary notice of his act. After all, his song about a man pushing, and pushing, and pushing a reluctant woman to have sex with him against her better judgment has been dubbed by radio stations far and wide as “the song of summer.”

***

Meanwhile, another story is breaking, though with much less ado. This story is about blurred lines too. Except that legally, technically, actually the lines aren’t blurred.

In this story, we learn about the sentencing of a Montana man who was convicted of legal, technical, actual rape. This man, a teacher who was over 50 at the time, had sex with his 14-year-old student — a girl who killed herself at the age of 16 while this case was still in court.

The rapist pled guilty to one count of statutory rape and was offered a deal – if he entered and successfully completed a 3-year treatment program for sex offenders and met a few other conditions, the charges would be dropped. That was in 2010. By 2012, he had been kicked out of the program for failing to comply.

His case was returned to court, and prosecutors requested a 20 year sentence with ten years suspended. The judge handed down a sentence of 15 years, suspending all but 31 days of it. With one day of time served, this convicted child rapist will be serving 30 days in jail for his crime.

This sentence is outrageous, infuriating, and yet another example of the injustice that runs rampant throughout our justice system. But it’s not the worst part of this story.

The worst part of the story is the judge’s reason for his sentence: because the girl this man raped, the child who is now dead, the child whom he never even met, was “older than her chronological age” and therefore “as much in control of the situation” as her rapist, her teacher, an adult more than three times her age.

So, in other words, according to our judge, the lines between rape and consent are blurred. If a girl – who is legally, technically a child – seems older than her years, then she isn’t actually a child.

Never mind that a person in a position of authority and trust engaged in sexual intercourse with minor less than one-third his age.

Never mind that this girl was so emotionally unstable that she eventually committed suicide.

Never mind that the case was back in court because the rapist was violating the terms of his sex offender treatment program. The victim’s outward appearance, the way she expressed herself, the way she responded to sexual overtures made her appear older than her years. The attitude and behavior of the victim were mitigating factors. It wasn’t “real” rape. The lines were blurred, and now a sexual predator will pay pennies on the dollar for his crime.

***

There are shades of gray everywhere in life. There are extenuating circumstances in most crimes — even in this case. This man may genuinely be ill. He may have been a victim of sexual abuse himself. He may benefit greatly from treatment and contribute meaningfully to society.

There are shades of gray everywhere, but there are also solid, defining lines. And rape is surrounded by one of those lines. Rape is rape; the person at fault is the rapist. If a woman is raped while walking alone in a dark ally, it is no less a rape because she “should have known better.” If a woman is too drunk to say no, she wasn’t “asking for it.” If a child comes off as sexually precocious, the adult who has sex with her is no less to blame because she “seemed older than her years.”

As I am writing this, I keep thinking — but everything I am saying is so obvious. Of course rape is rape. Clearly it is.

Except that it isn’t, not for everyone. It isn’t for our judge, who after apologizing for what he said in his sentencing, justified his sentence by stating, “Obviously, a 14-year-old can’t consent. I think that people have in mind that this was some violent, forcible, horrible rape. It was horrible enough as it is, just given her age, but it wasn’t this forcible beat-up rape.”

Obviously, it was a rape. But it wasn’t, y’know, a rape rape.

How ‘Bout Them Apples?

Posted in Children, Motherhood, Women by

appleI have lots of treasured memories about my paternal grandmother, but one that sticks with me the most is of her frequently saying, “how ’bout them apples?” I remember it having different meanings, dependent on whether the phrase was prefaced by “well” or “so.”

“Well, how ’bout them apples” was an expression of surprise — like, “Well, how ’bout them apples? Krista cleaned her room!” Alternately, “So, how ’bout them apples” was tacked on when she said something challenging, or something she knew my brother or I wouldn’t want to hear — like, “No you can’t have more crumb cake. So how ’bout them apples?”

She said it often enough that my little brother picked it up at a very young age and added it to his arsenal of phrases that he would pull out at the most inopportune moments. One time when we were at the mall, he saw an undressed mannequin, pointed to her breasts, and shouted, “How ’bout dem apples, grandma!” He was triumphant; I was humiliated.

“Dem apples” have been in the media a lot recently. They always are in the media, everywhere, relevant or not. But this week, they have been in the media for their actual purpose — feeding our children. Today is the last day of World Breastfeeding Week.

I wholly support the idea of advocating for better policies (for breastfeeding and just about everything else related to motherhood in America) and greater public acceptance of an act that is as natural as it is necessary.

But in addition to encouraging our (ironically) breastfeeding-phobic society to be a little more open-minded about mothers using their bodies to feed their babies, I would also like to see, in our community of mothers, a greater appreciation for the fact that, as mothers, it is our prerogative to decide how best to nourish our children. And, more importantly, to accept that other mothers, who might choose differently from ourselves, are doing the best they can for their babies — and for themselves.

Breastfeeding is hard. It’s hard when it doesn’t work the way you wanted it to, and it’s hard when it does work. I say this with the authority of someone who has experienced the extreme ends of the breastfeeding spectrum.

My older daughter absolutely refused to nurse. After a somewhat tumultuous pregnancy, she was induced at 37 weeks when it became clear that she was “failing to thrive” in utero. She weighed 5 lbs, 1.2 oz at birth and quickly dropped to 4 lbs 12 oz. Although she was healthy, getting calories into her little body was our primary concern. But she wanted nothing to do with me as a food source.

In the hospital, I tried everything. We used a syringe to squirt formula into her mouth while trying to get her to nurse in an attempt to pique her interest. Nothing. The lactation consultant hooked me up to a device that fed formula through a tiny tube taped to my chest, thinking that maybe if my daughter didn’t have to work so hard while nursing, she would take to it. She didn’t. They brought out other nursing aids and devices, all with the same result: complete refusal.

For six weeks, I tried to get my daughter to nurse. My husband and I came up with a tedious schedule, during which I would try to nurse her, with little success, then feed her pumped breast milk, then pump for the next bottle, again, and again, and again. It quickly became too much, both for me and for her.

I spent the next three months trying to convince my daughter to take my milk from a bottle. It was easier, but she was never an enthusiastic eater. She was, however, a devious eater. By the time she was four months old, she had developed the habit of drinking heartily from the bottle while letting a stream of milk pour out of one side of her mouth. That was the feather on this camel’s back — I had worked hard to make that miracle juice, and she was just spitting it all out. I just. Couldn’t. With that. Anymore.

Early on in this sojourn, I gave up reading books and articles from breastfeeding support groups, because the advice they gave always seemed to imply that women who struggled to breastfeed just weren’t trying hard enough. This implication was shattering. I already felt like a failure — as a mother and as a woman. Hell, I felt like a failure as a damn mammal — even mama pigs can nurse their young. I was exhausted, frustrated, overwhelmed, and valued myself as being on par with a crustacean. The idea that I should somehow have been doing more was the outside of enough.

These feelings of failure continued for about three years, until my second daughter was born. Unlike her big sister, that girl took to nursing like a cat to cream. She nursed enthusiastically, all day and all night. By the time she was eight months old, she was nursing every two hours during the day and every hour at night. That’s right – she woke up hourly. I slept in 20-minute increments. I was exhausted, frustrated, and overwhelmed – but at least this time I had elevated myself from bottom-dwelling sea creature to dairy cow.

My younger daughter is now two, and she has never taken a bottle. She also has not stopped nursing. And again, my choices in feeding my child make me susceptible to whispers of disapproval. Every time my walking, talking toddler latches on, in the back of my mind I replay every criticism I have ever heard – or made myself – of women who engage in extended breastfeeding. “It’s excessive.” “It’s unnecessary.” “It’s weird.” But whatever it is, it’s my choice, and I have made it thoughtfully.

Breastfeeding is hard. Not breastfeeding is hard. Being a mother is really, really hard. Your children are constantly challenging you, and society is constantly judging you.

But being a supportive friend to other mothers – those we know and those we don’t know – really isn’t that hard. Not when you think about how vitally important that support is, both to mothers and to the children they are raising.

So as we mothers remind our society that breasts actually are for babies and not just car commercials, let’s also remind ourselves that, when it comes to breastfeeding, an act that is so ageless and natural can also be stressful and heartbreaking. Let’s honor ourselves for the choices we have made, whatever they are, and let’s honor other mothers for the choices they have made, even if those choices are different from our own.

Our greatest strength is in each other. Let’s not forget that.

Discovering You, Discovering Me

Posted in Art, Children, Individuality, Motherhood, Women by

When I was younger I loved to color in coloring books. It was one of the few things I actually did carefully. I selected the colors I would use before I started. I traced the black outlines thickly, to ensure that I would stay within the lines. I shaded my pictures evenly, almost expertly, at least for a child working in Crayola. I was so particular that I would finish off each masterpiece by rubbing the crayon wax with a tissue until the colors were smooth and shiny. It was ART, and I took it seriously.

So when my older daughter was about 2 years old and she excitedly encountered her first coloring book in the dollar aisle of our local big box store, I was thrilled. I bought it with a new box of beautiful, unbroken crayons – one of my favorite things ever — and hurried home.

But things didn’t go the way I expected them to. My daughter’s initial excitement had been stoked by the full color pictures of Elmo featured on the front. The black and white interior was a letdown. Her interest was revived by the stickers she found inside, but it only took her about 30 seconds to plaster them on her arms and face before she was ready to move on.

At the time, I chalked it up to her age. Two is pretty young for artistic endeavors, after all. But three years have gone by and her interest in coloring books has remained pretty much the same, something that, for a long time, I found confusing.

Because this kid loves to draw. She loves to draw so much that a bucket of markers and a stack of computer paper have a permanent home on our kitchen table. Inspiration for a new picture can strike her at any time; one must be prepared. She draws at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She often deserts her toys mid-game, struck with the idea for another picture.  She draws pictures of the stories she makes up throughout the day, and everything she draws, from people to raindrops, has a purpose or an explanation.

The fact that she is so artistic but yet is so little engaged by an artistic activity I always enjoyed mystified me. Until a few weeks ago, when she made the obvious answer clear to me.

She was sitting at the table, drawing as usual, when she stopped and said —

“Mommy, I’m drawing my world. Everyone has a world. This is mine.”

It hit me like a shove in the chest. Of course the kid doesn’t want to color someone else’s pictures in someone else’s book. She wants to make her own pictures, for her own book – for her own world.

***

The I Love You House

The I Love You House

It’s funny how much we parents want to see ourselves in our children. We yearn for that because when we see ourselves in them it signifies that we are as much a part of them as they are a part of us. And they are a part of us. They enter our hearts and our hearts can never part with them again.

But they don’t belong to us. And they aren’t us. When we think we see our quirks reflected in our child – we’re wrong. What we see is wholly, uniquely our child, a person who has never existed before and will never exist in another context ever again.

Looking for ourselves in our children is a mistake parents will probably always make. When you create something as miraculous as a human, and when your love for that creation is as deep as a parent’s love is for her child, it’s inescapable. It will cause conflict between ourselves and our children, just like it did between us and our own parents.

But it will be OK, just like it always has been, as long as we are listening when our children tell us that they are coloring their own pictures, for their own world.

 

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.”
And he said: Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. ~ Khalil Gibran, On Children