An Open Letter to My Daughter When She’s Grown Up

I grew up with the idea that woman are meek, fragile, damsels in distress, the princess in a tower who’s prince kisses her in her sleep and everything is sunshine and roses.
I grew up with Photoshop enhanced models telling me to wear this or be uncool, magazine covers touted “10 Best Weight Loss Tips” and “Lose those love handles!”
Now that I am looking back, I see my mother in the middle of it all, going back to college for yet another degree, typing late into the night, the glow of our bulky computer, the dial up internet helping her on her way.
I see her working overtime.
I see her missing whole chunks of the day with us at work again, then class, then home making handmade dinner for the 5 of us.
I didn’t see it then, the echoes of my peers and media bouncing around my head. Self conscious images reverberating back to me.
Too short. Too fat. Bad skin. Old clothes. Gross. I saw myself as gross and I know I’m not alone in having this experience of soul crushing, vastly distorted self awareness. We suffered silently together. Each picking away at ourselves in the mirror each day in our own ways. Pinching cellulite and attempting to tame poofy hair with endless hair spray and bobby pins. Dressing too grown up or covering ourselves in oversized clothes.
Is it right for children to feel this way? Does every generation have this awful phenomenon of self loathing and deprivation of love and worth? How could we not see the good at work around and within our lives? Maybe it was because we were so hyper focused on every detail of ourselves?

I can’t travel back in time to deliver some self esteem to my younger self, or redirect my attention to the strong, successful, intelligent woman in my life, but I can give that to my daughter.

Baby girl,
I hope you are confident. I hope your ego is inflated so high that you rise above the lies society will fill your world with. But not so high that you lose yourself within the clouds.
I hope that you walk into a room with your head high, shoulders back and know that you are going to make it through anything your day throws at you.
I hope wear black. I hope you wear bright colored lipstick and experiment with crazy colored everything. I hope you go through each phase having a blast discovering what you like to wear and who you might enjoy growing into as a person.
I hope you stay curious and research everything and anything that pops into your head even as some around you may laugh at school or reading, I hope you stay deep within a pile of books and relish every new nibble of information.
I hope that when you are brave enough to approach your crush, no matter how it goes, the possibility of rejection does not crush you.
I will build you up so high that no one will be able to knock you down.
I will build you and your brother up to be kind and aware that his actions and words matter.

You can get through this baby girl, I’ll be right there with you.

Sway. A Poem

Swaying gently

With you on my hip

You’re a drink of life

And I’ve had a sip

I have never

Seen someone so pure

Your eyes aglow

You love me too, of this I am sure.

I am not a good internet friend

It took me a few years, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I suck at being a good friend in certain situations, very specifically on the internet.

It’s simple, I can’t connect online to someone the way I would in real life, for more than the most obvious reasons.

My typing style comes across harsh and emotionless without the additive of a millions emojis. My message response rate is abysmal, my conversation attention span on comment threads even on my own posts is maybe a good ten minutes worth and I move on. I ghost people like a pro without even meaning to. I am a horrible internet friend.

Honestly, I’ve almost lost friendships that are going on there second decade because I can’t not sound like a narsasstic smug little twit whilst talking about literally anything.

In person, even from a nonbiased stance, I would say I’m a pretty warm, approachable person. I have a wide array of humour, I have a loud and funny laugh, I talk openly about anything with an open mind, shit I’m okay in person.

I think trying to maintain personal relationships and friendships solely online is dangerous and deceptive because it often brings about the promises that we are all far too familiar with. “We should get together soon!” We say, every few weeks, and then months go by, and then you realize they’ve had a baby and gotten married and you still haven’t hung out yet.

Just go see people! That’s what I’ve learned today. Hell, chances are you leave your house occasionally, call or text someone and go see them! Meet for a coffee on lunch, there is no excuse not to have a lunch coffee with someone, it’s like 30 minutes of your day and Lord knows you’re gonna get a coffee anyways. My point is, I’m going to make a point to see one friend a week, even for a few minutes, and regain the real connections I’ve been missing out on a striking out with online. I miss my friends, and they deserve the actual me, not emoji faces and empty promises.

Here’s to fixing friendships!

I’m scared already. 🍷

Asking Questions, Gaining Knowledge and Connections.

I feel like we often miss out on a lot of learning experiences and lose out on opportunities to make deeper personal connections with those around us.

We could so easily add more substance to our day by stopping to ask questions. Whether they be simple and basic like asking how someone’s day is going, or taking a moment to ask a family member or friend about a specific time in their lives or insight on something that is important to them.

“What was it like in the military?”

“What was it like going to college in the 80’s?

“How is your newest project coming along?”

“What was I like as a baby?”

Asking questions that go further than the common “How are you?” Which does have it’s place in the world but is often overused and unsincere, can bring a sort of emotional tether between you and another person. Asking questions that are uncommon or potentially personal can spark ideas, give inspiration to maybe research some thing that interests you, finish your own project, or great gratefulness. We overlook the fact that every single other human has a life and world just as intimate and complex as our own. We overlook that every person has a past and has experienced things that we have not and may never experience. It’s easy to forget that we are collectively one world, but still individual entities that live amongst each other without hardly ever interacting. There is so much to learn from the people in our lives and those we have not met yet. We should be actively seeking out answers to questions, we should have sincere curiosity about the lives of those we love. The barrier of unasked questions is what keeps it easy to feel apathy but do nothing. It makes it easy to move passed those walking by us without seeing the potential of friendships and knowledge harbored within those people’s minds. Sit down and talk, text, email, reach out and don’t be afraid of being questioned in return. It’s time we connect in a world of cold disconnection.

I am a mother first.

Why does everyone assume I want a “break” from my children? Why is it invitations to see a friend are almost always followed by “dad can watch them” or “do you have a babysitter?” “Let’s go ____!” Insert something completely incompatible with having a child with you. WHY?

I do need a break occasionally, but a night out bar hopping or at a party is NOT a break for me, those activities fall more into the “I miss my kiddos, I’m so dehydrated, can we leave at 9” category. Why can’t we get together to have a play date, why can’t we sip wine while our spawn hang out? Why do I need to pass my babies off onto various other people in order to be active with you? When my youngest is older, I would love to go out for the night and go on an adventure, but most things that I like to do can be done with them or while they are asleep. Barn fires, cookouts, games, cards, gossip, don’t make me call my mother to watch 2 kids please. She’s got 4 million jobs and is tired.

I WANT to be with my kids especially when something fun is involved. I would love to have you over when they are both asleep for the night to play cards against humanity and swear and have adult time, why is it an expectation that I send them away to do things?

Every now and then my oldest goes to one of his Nana’s (or as he calls them, Ba and BaDos) house for the night on a weekend, while my husband and I stay home with the baby and watch grown up shows on Netflix and have a drink. Why do I get eyes rolled at me when I mention this to fellow parents? My daughter is 7 months old, exclusively breastfed (no, you can’t watch her for an hour and feed her baby food) she wants me, to be with ME. No Nana can’t take her for a few hours while I get my nails done, “she’ll cry but she’ll get use to it” NO. HELL NO. I am her parent. I am who she is crying for, I am her comfort and her food and her momma, I will not pass her off to cry at my mother’s house while I indulge. I’m sorry, but that is not how I mother my children, if you can, good on you, but I cannot, and I wish I could find my tribe, anyone who would say the same and not judge me for it.

Finding Purpose in the Mundane.

What do you do when your life has seemingly no purpose other than to carry out the domestic art of parenthood or participate in the work/home rotation that goes round and round with no end in sight.

What do you do when your goals become clouds of smoke wafting about in the rafters of your mind, dissipating slowly, fading more and more with each load of laundry, in the washer, in the dryer, in the basket, gold, hang, soil, repeat. Any bit of your self put out with the wash. 

As everyone does, I had dreams at one point, as a child I wanted to be an architect, I sketched hotels and clubs, homes and B&Bs down to the last piece of crown molding in countless notebooks. That dream molded into a real estate broker, a painter, a teacher, a gymnast, an inventor, then I became a mother, and my lofty dreams formed into something new. My old goals remained there, in the hollows of my memories, but a new goal took the forefront and that was to be a good mum. And I believe I am, most of the time anyways (we all do our best) but really, who am I? I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Do you? Where did the time go? Where did the architect go, the rolling gymnast, the kindergarten teacher? Why did I let them leave, to be replaced by a sink full of dishes and an unused college degree. 

When all is quite, and my babies are sound asleep or focused on a new Lego invention or block tower, I drift into the hope that maybe there’s something more I can offer still. Nothing in the world could ever be more important to me at this moment than being a good mommy to these kiddos, but I am a mother, and simultaneously an ambitious woman. I can be both things, anf I believe most of us are. There is a hunger there that will never truly quite no matter what we feed it. Nothing can stop that part of us that wants more, reaches for knowledge and experiences, for power and friendships and the things we have been deprived of while doing our present duties. 

Round and round we go, the things we do in the space in between are important in there own way. Diapers need to be changed and driveways shoveled, tiny handprints scrubbed from bathroom mirrors and car tires rotated. All of these mundane daily tasks are needed and make a positive mark in the timeline of our lives as we find ourselves. They give us temporary distractions, excuses to delay the future and sometimes change we aren’t ready for. I hope that someday I’ll know what to do with myself to quell the need for what boils down to a desire for an official title, a job label, a career, but for now, I will rock my babies and scrub the baseboards and dream of what I want to be when I grow up. 

Overcoming Trauma

Trigger, this post is about abusive relationships.

 I find everyone has a secret, some dark history, some hidden shame, some mistake they feel has only marked them and they wish for nothing more than for this mark to stay hidden.  But every now and then someone shares their secret and finds that someone else shares the same shame.  No matter your secret, I am sure more than anything else that there is someone, somewhere, who carries the same weight you carry. Shed the idea that you alone suffer in this shame.

This is me,  sharing mine.

Three years ago, almost to the day, I left an abusive relationship that lasted five years. I am newly 27 years old and I am ashamed to say that I spent 5 years of that time being torn down by someone I loved, and who I believed loved me.

I went into the relationship already broken, with the mindset that the treatment he displayed was normal. My step father drank, he stole money from my mother’s wallet countless times, he yelled and hit things, he would back me into walls and spit in my face. This was normal. This is what men did. What example was I given to think otherwise? With the exception of my first boyfriend, I fell into a cycle, the cycle. The cycle of abuse. My second boyfriends mother would hear us screaming and would yell down for me to agree with whatever he was yelling about so he would stop. Because submitting myself to him and telling him he was right even when he wasn’t was better than defending myself.  Normal, it must be, why else would she not stop her son’s behavior if it weren’t ok?

And then him, my third boyfriend. him. Five years I put up with continuous cheating, check ins, curfews, isolation, screaming matches at all hours of the day. Because that’s what boys do.

NO.

NO NO NO. NOPE.

I broke that cycle. The day I realized my son was growing up in a home that would teach him that this was normal. And something in the back of my mind was whispering that it wasn’t normal, none of it was.

We got away. I packed my Subaru with what it could fit, left all of my furniture, dishes, my babies changing table and the tv, and I left. It was scary and rushed and hard but I did it.

I had to change my phone number and literally not contact him again, I blocked ALL of his friends and family online. I locked my profile down. I moved again and again and I got away from him and his version of “Normal”.

A year later I met the man that would become my husband and he has a different idea of normal. His normal is kind in all situations, forgiving and warm, open hearted and full of laughter. This is my new normal. Sarcastic dad jokes and family meals at a dinner table in our cozy home. This man is helping me break the cycle by showing a new normal to our children. One of calm and light.

The hurt is still there, still lingering and I find that I still get triggered from certain phrases and arguments with my son. Some scenes from movies make my heart clench as some dormant fight or flight response kicks on. I still react out of fear to things my son does or says and it is a constant work in progress to identify triggers and stop myself from falling into the pattern of emotions and reactions that were my old normal.

I have a long way to go before I am ok, before the trauma truly feels over for me but I’m working on it, I recognise it and I have named it. Abnormal. Abuse. Because that is what it was and that is not normal and that will never be ok.

1 in 4 woman are or have been in an abusive relationship, I imagine the numbers are even higher if we were taught what to identify as manipulation or isolation control from our partners, emotional abuse, narcissism, and projection. These are all things that I learned first hand and could still not identify for years.

We need to do better in changing the norm. This post is the first in a series I will be writing on abuse and how to handle and identify it.

Stay safe and reach out if you need to!