Archive for the 'truth' Category

31
Oct

Some Days It’s All About Jesus

By Redsy 4 Comments
Categories: Because of God, truth, writerly and Reds

Well not Jesus exactly — but his representative. After years of working in the public sector as a financial analyst, non profit type, I now realize that despite the hype nonprofits are no more family friendly than your average corporation. In many cases, they are less likely to pay well, offer health insurance, or sufficient personal time off to deal with the daily goings-on of child-rearing.My current boss regularly argues that homeless people are all bums, Democrats are socialists and people who are poor just don’t work as hard as he does. Yet he is the best boss I’ve ever had…

Read More …

And don’t forget.. Strollerderby is hiring! More information here…

Day #22

27
Oct

Spill Baby Spill

By Redsy 7 Comments
Categories: truthmotherfucker, truth and Reds

There many outlets for people to use as safe confessional spaces on-line: Her Bad Mother’s Basement, True Mom (and Dad, and Bride, and Office) Confessions, Real Mom Truths and others.Leaving aside all the good reasons to hedge about the whole truth and nothing but (respecting privacy, avoiding causing pain to loved ones, acquaintances who might read etc. etc. etc.), confessing provides the balm that many of us require to lighten our existential load.

MammaLoves and I are hatching an idea about offering an alternative confessional space for you and for us…. whether funny or shameful or bedroom or office, or nursemaid or park ranger…. A place to adopt a persona, or claim another… to express the unexpressed.

The universal desire to be known, seen, understood, is one deeply held, sometimes unknowingly by each of us… And when your blog is no longer a place for you to explore those things, when your friends are far far away… there is often no rest for your sinning head, buzzing brain, and beating heart… no place to share your poetry, your works in progress, your naughty pictures…

And so we’re going to endeavor to help all of us refuse the dying of the light. Refuse “…the stiff procession to the grave, letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.” (Anne Sexton)…

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Day # 18

13
Oct

Soft Revolution (or Yoga Can Bite Me)

By Redsy 12 Comments
Categories: project life change, truth and Be Merry

Personal change (revolution really) often gets foiled by this feeling of despair that I’ll never get where I’m going.. I’ll never feel rested enough, peaceful enough.. never anything enough. How could I get there from here? But then, something simple happens:

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I tell the children that Mommy needs her alone time during shower and I lock my door. I. Lock. My. Door.

–thereby granting myself this simple gift — a peaceful time for personal ablutions and reflection usually overrun with breaking up fights, answering questions, and administering begged for lipstick swaths on sweet ruby lips.

What if they’re right that it all boils down to these small moments — these very small but crucial gifts to ourselves. Showers, reading time, walks (alone) to the mailbox.. help with preparing dinner. Wouldn’t that be miraculous?

What if peace and serenity didn’t require 5 days of silent meditation, ashtanga yoga practice, and vegan diets, or vows to never lose one’s temper? What if perfection (or near-perfection) wasn’t even an approximation of what was required?

What if we all vowed to do THREE SMALL THINGS for ourselves, out of love (not guilt, or resentment, or anger or exhaustion, OR oblivion) every single day. Would you could you for yourself?

#4

12
Oct

I Don’t Love You Anymore…

By Redsy 11 Comments
Categories: project life change, truth, Be Merry, Reds and Blues

The evening’s dread approach no longer finds solace in thoughts of you… your chill clean sweet release.. your thoughtless escape from all the hurry-scurry. You’re no longer a friend, a secret buoy, a kind invisible force to bring peace. You’ve not taken everything from me yet, but I know you will. If I follow you where you want me to go — to a land of more and more and more…. to a place where just one is never ever enough, I’ll lose everyone I love.

But still it feels like a loss. A huge terrifying loss. Without you, I’m so much less than I dreamed I’d be. So much less. When a beloved friend visited this week, she who is still so free, I sobbed for the way I used to be. Before marriage, kids, jobs, life… How far below joy I’ve fallen.

Rebuilding and crafting change and renewal from this tangle of addiction and craving is so much harder sometimes than at others. When I realize how much I relied on you to get me through. How asleep at the wheel I’d become.

The novocain is wearing off now. I’m girding myself with new people and meetings and new rituals. I’m starting over, every day… Hoping to replace oblivion with real loving (self) kindness.

There are others like me… many others. Other women who are trying to love and reconfigure their lives so there is more joy, less hassle, less dead air ….

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Whether it’s alcohol, or work, or sex, or kids, jobs, mortgages or in-laws… many of us have neglected to find anything more than mere pittances for ourselves and we’ve completely and utterly lost our way… Remember those wild hopeful girls we used to be? Let’s find them again. Together.

#2

02
Oct

Protectionism

By Redsy 7 Comments
Categories: Midlife, truth, Be Merry, Boobies and Every Mama Needs...

One thing about going to meetings with other people in recovery, you certainly are given plenty of food for thought. Sometimes it’s a bit much, but then it’s leavened with laughter and hearty joking and all is well again. There was much discussion last night about one of my greatest challenges as a mom: fighting the tendency to protect my kids from all pain and anguish. Since I can’t even bear it when they say they’re hungry (for the fifth time after they declare their dislike for dinner), I have a long slog on this one…

Last night a woman shared her recent news: the father of her kids (who are in their young 20’s) has recently been diagnosed with brain cancer and has only weeks to live. She shared the hell of watching her children grieve and being unable to take the pain away. I sat there completely immobilized by fear. If I cannot stand watching the girls get their feelings hurt, how would I ever bear something this terrible? Nothing like borrowing trouble to keep one in a constant state of anxiety and angst.

One of the seasoned codgers weighed in with this gem: We are here not to protect people from their pain, but to help them sort through it. To love them and support them on their journey — but not to take that journey away from them. And I felt my shoulders drop, took a deep breath, and thought “yes.”

I drank too much and too often largely to kill off all the huge feelings — the unmanageable feelings of motherhood — personhood — and it’s a common story in the Halls of these meetings. Sensitive people cannot stand what life presents them, so they slowly try and douse the emotions –not realizing they’re also making joy and happiness impossible as well.

Looking around the rooms at the faces and listening to the stories, I’ve never felt so included… so represented by similarly afflicted spongy hearted wanderers.

What about you? What’s your philosophy of protecting your loved ones? Karen asks this question over at Strollerderby today

#15

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Meanwhile, have you checked out the League of Maternal Justice yet?

16
Sep

Mother Plucker

By Redsy 28 Comments
Categories: truth, girls girls girls and Every Mama Needs...

When I became a mother 5 1/2 years ago, I had the usual trepidations (twin pregnancy, a very humbling experience), but they were primarily related to identity and large asses and careers plummeting. The worst that happened (single parenting, sick babies, loneliness and isolation) was only terrible on reflection. These challenges occurred in a tunnel of daily-ness, determination, and survival, the kind of struggle that is blessedly free of time to realize the pit one’s in.

And the fierce love, Mommy the Lionheart person who emerged… I liked her. She was a tough chick with something to fight for, with a whole nest full of innocents to protect. Protect!! … Finally a purpose for all that argument and verve and intensity.

Little by little, the thought would pass through my tired busy mind that they were changing me, protecting me. I would swiftly dismiss it (I didn’t want to be one of those parents — the ones that use their kids energy and love to feed themselves). So I muscled along, determined that this love would be one-way, sacrificial, selfless. It was my crowning glory, my most secret pride (that I loved my children more than myself, that they were better and more deserving than I)…

But this sacrifice (even this quiet fierce kind — whose outside appearance was “those annoying kids” to my friends, but at home was “can I get you anything else, honey?”), took a measure of me, and killed it, broke it. And even while there was an inside thought that this was as it should be, there was a wild girl inside that wouldn’t have it. That wouldn’t couldn’t live this way. So I drank. Too much. Too often. Until “occasionally” became “daily”… until “for fun” became “because I need it to get through…”

And so I’ve reached another crossroads of Motherhood— the best thing I’ve ever done, will ever do. I want to give my daughters my whole self, my full standing up tall singing self. To do this, I need to reclaim some pieces for me… so that these, my most beloved daughters, the most precious girls, will learn that to be wild and free AND a mother is possible. Is necessary.

So I’ve decided to give up my beloved glass(es) of evening wine. For my daughters, but mostly for myself.

Because I want to believe we mamas can be wild and free, without aid of any substance but our loving tough hearts, and big big dreams…

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Motherhood - It Changes You

01
Sep

The Truthfulness Project

By Redsy 25 Comments
Categories: truth and Be Married

As we get older, as our lives become more complicated and layered with friends, family, children, work, homes, it becomes easier and easier to stop telling the truth. Many of us turn to blogging in order to find and express our true selves in a way we are too afraid to venture in real life. The smiles and weather-discussing and mama-shop-talks are no substitute for deeper relating, even with our spouses, those we are supposed to be closest to in the whole world.

And that’s the crux of the issue: As we grow older, as I’ve gotten older, my list of ways I’m supposed to be seem farther and farther away from what I truly am. This disconnect, between the inner and outer person grows into a dead zone, a covering up of the passionate heart, the filming over of dreams and zest for life. Is this what a midlife crisis feels like?

For some, the moment of truth - the realization that one’s life is becoming an out-of-body experience - comes during the 23rd hour of work on the 7th day of the week. For others, when they realize their family is not their family after all, but a poor substitute… something less than they deserve. Still others, fight the inner fight truly and deeply and face inexplicable sorrows along the way.

When other bloggers are honest about their struggles and self-doubts, it always strikes me as so beautiful, so courageous, so heartening. But isn’t it funny how we can pour out love on others and leave only a small pittance for ourselves? Deep breath. Here goes:

My Truths:

1. I focus on my children so that I don’t have to focus on my faltering marriage and on my less than super-mental health.

2. I sometimes drink too much in order to vault myself to another space — one less rife with self-doubts and haunting questions about love and fidelity.

3. I neglect self-care in order to make sure I work hard enough so that my children will have what they need. I’m an outspoken advocate for my women friends getting what they need, but often do absolutely nothing for myself.

5. I am loved deeply and needed by many people, but I do not have a significant relationship in which I feel truly understood and in which I feel free to speak my mind.

6. I dream of having a happier lust-filled primary relationship and I’m petrified I might not be able to get there from here.

If buying a camaro, growing a pony tail, and getting a young girlfriend is a male version of a midlife crisis (cartoonish but still), what is a woman’s version? Angst and 1pm glasses of wine? Seems like a rip-off to me. I’m going to have to do something about that…

-Rachael

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