Porch lights, power outages and all that shouldn't be real

So, it's a strange morning. I find myself recovering from what feels like a very long night. Whatever sleep I got seems to have evaporated, and I feel so exhausted this morning that I could burrow under covers and not come up for air for the whole day. Late pregnancy is a contributing factor, I'm sure.

I had intentions about today--not energy, but at least intentions. My husband mentioned his plans this weekend to tackle the last details of preparing our home for our daughter's arrival. I obstinately intended to tackle as many of those details as possible myself today to lighten his load so I could squirrel away every little sliver of time we have left just the two of us to cuddle, wax nostalgic and just be. It didn't matter that subconsciously I know that for every task I think of to take off his list, he will replace it with two more that he didn't think he would fit in because he anticipated I would contribute less to the scope. It's not that he would question my good intentions, but more that he knows that I am physically drained by this pregnancy and I often accomplish very little that I hope to.

As I watched news events unfolding about my hometown on social media yesterday and last night, I thought I would find a way to squeeze in some deep thinking about the world and what everything means.

I went to bed thinking I would write today, and thinking I had a straightforward pattern of thought with which to form everything. This morning, I find myself feeling a sense of surreality and concern that with my chopstick mind, everything I am thinking about is just this unhinged stream of consciousness that I can't properly assemble. 

It was a night of strange dreams and odd circumstances. In my early years, I frequently had nightmares--bordering on night terrors. I remember multiple occasions having dreams so vivid that when I described them, my mom thought the things I was talking about had actually happened, and on at least one occasion, it drove her to knock on our neighbor's door in the middle of the night to confront her about things I dreamed she had done. It was crazy.

Over time, I think my brain rewired. These days, I very infrequently remember anything I dream about. Periodically, I have dreamed of things that happened to me growing up, and other horrible things. Those are always rough nights. I think the rewiring is a defense mechanism of sorts. Somehow my brain doesn't allow me to remember many dreams, because, possibly, if I did I wouldn't be able to leave as much of my past in my past as I do. Even on my best days, I probably don't find myself able to leave as much behind as I wish I could.

I had a strange dream about giving birth to my daughter last night--the only one I've had so far. People have told me that they don't remember the pain of childbirth and that this is Mother Nature's way of allowing women to repeat the act in spite of the pain. All I know is this morning, I wish I remembered more about my dream. I had other dreams too--lots of porch lights in all of them. One of them was a weird, almost survivalist type dream where the world had come unglued and I found myself completely terrified that there was no place safe, and that no person could be trusted not to cause harm. In this dream I remember looking to my husband and being filled with fear and saying the words "I am terrified that there is no one in the world that I can ever trust, and no place that is safe." Even in my dream, I knew that I was just placating him when I hastily clarified that I felt that way about everything except him.

The truth of the matter is that even in the real world that isn't a dream, but those hastily added words are very much true. I do find myself trusting in very few things, people and places that aren't associated with him. I feel compelled to say that--first because it's true and secondly because I so pointedly said that it didn't ring true in that dream.

Aside from the dreams, our power went out in the middle of the night, and while the pitch black and even more profound silence should have made it all the easier to sleep, the systematic checking into why and trying to take care of it that is the very nature of my husband proved as disruptive as all the dreams. And there were also all the visions of porch lights to which my mind kept drifting.

As I am sitting here this morning, trying to regroup and straighten my thoughts from the night, I am watching talking heads blather on about some "games" thousands of miles away, imminent weather events along our eastern coastline, fashion and nonsense that isn't any more news than if Justin Bieber will eventually be deported for all of his antics (which I think are strategic). And as I watch them, all I can think about is a family in the town in which I grew up--a family that will never hear their little girl's voice again. They will never get to hold her again. They didn't even get to say goodbye.

Maybe that's why my brain is so out of sorts this morning. I think about the night my husband drove from Kansas City to Joplin and arrived to find a place filled with chaos and destruction. Within a week, I found myself there and I could take in the visual inventory of the scene and understand much of what had impacted him so deeply. But I wasn't there the night it happened, and it wasn't my hometown. As I sit here this morning, now two weeks away from my due date, I wonder, is the kidnapping and murder of a 10-year-old little girl "my Joplin?"

I haven't cared about my hometown for years. It's been a place of bad memories, lost family and friends, and no hope for me. Until yesterday, the only recent additional considerations were the closing of my favorite Chinese restaurant due to health code violations that I am sure every other Chinese restaurant in town is guilty of too, and the fact that yet another person in my family failed to surprise me with their inability to make even the smallest effort to care about my family and me.

There's not much I can think of in the way of redemption for this town--at least not in my heart. And yet, when a former classmate virtually invited me to turn on my porch light last night to honor the memory of that no longer breathing and playing little girl, I quietly did so. This morning, as I watch the bobble heads of morning television laughing away and bantering about things that are going on all over the world, there's no mention of porch lights on in the middle of the day in Australia. There's no mention of porch lights on in all 50 United States and multiple other countries all over the world remembering this little girl. I find myself confused by it all.

As I flitted through Facebook posts this morning, I ran across one post regarding a petition that demands the perpetrators of crimes like these immediately face castration and the death penalty. I am a hardcore liberal and I have a very hard time with the death penalty. Theoretically, I do believe in "eye for an eye." That probably comes as a shock to those who know me and my liberal leanings so well, but in truth, when you have been "harmed" it's easy to justify the vengeful heart so fervently supported by this Old Testament phrase. The only problems I have when it comes right down to it is that I know there are innocent people in the prison system and innocent people on death row. I also know that even the most truly guilty often sit on death row for dozens of years while perpetual appeals attempt to save them. And unfortunately, I don't believe the crimes that truly merit the death penalty are deterred by it.

I'm not a psychologist. I am not an expert of any kind when it comes to profiling monsters. But I believe monsters are not built with the same brains that the rest of us, or even common criminals are built with.

A thief knows that stealing is a crime and that they need to work not to be caught. They know that there are consequences they wish to avoid, and most of the time those consequences are just dealing with the bad end of the law. Occasionally, thieves go too far in their pursuit of whatever it is they are stealing and there might be casualties. They may indeed cause bodily harm to someone.

I don't believe monsters think that way. I think the only consequences they are equipped to consider are when their master fantasies fail to meet their expectations--when their ultimate fantasy of destruction and death doesn't fulfill every twisted desire they craved. That's why they often repeat their efforts--in pursuit of the perfect fantasy fulfillment.

It may be that this is at least part of the reason I consider myself to be an agnostic. You hear people say things like "It's not our right to play God," when it comes to the application of punishments like the death penalty. I understand that phrase, and it's probably true. But I can't reconcile God "playing God" and allowing the creation of monsters, and I am not interested in any of the arguments that believers have for why it happens and why we should all soldier on and have faith in spite of it. I believe all monsters should be put down. I believe no monster can be altered to safely exist anywhere. My worries about the accurate application of the death penalty in every single case is the only thing that gives me pause. I don't care about the idea of deterrence, because in the case of monsters, I don't believe they can be deterred. I believe that if they say they are reformed, it's only so they can go back out into the world and resume their fantasies. They cannot be altered by anything.

So what's the answer? I don't know.

We moved to Arkansas about six months ago. Very recently there has been a public service announcement airing on local stations about the number of traffic-related fatalities that take place in my new state each year. The premise is that someone is talking to "the man (or woman) on the street" about how many fatalities occur in Arkansas every year. Everyone guesses wrong. Apparently the number is around 500. The interviewer follows up by saying that the state is trying to reduce that number, and they wonder how many traffic-related fatalities the state should try to reduce the number by. There are various answers, ranging from numbers like half and more ambitious numbers like just 100. The final question is how many traffic-related fatalities the individual would be willing to accept in their own family. Every person unequivocally answers "zero." No one would be willing to accept even one traffic-related death in their own family.

It's a moment in which the message is clear. How can we think it's all right for someone else to accept a terrible fate we are unwilling to accept ourselves?

And a message like that magnifies the idea that none of us goes through our days anticipating that something horrible will happen to us or to someone in our families. None of us is prepared to lose a loved one in any kind of event. And no matter how aware we all might be that the world isn't as "safe as it once was," we still live our lives with the unconscious thought that these are things that happen to someone else.

It's sobering, and I know my friends that often worry I filter the negative in the world more slowly than the positive, so it has a greater opportunity to impact me, will cry "doom and gloom." It's true. This is a little doom and gloom, especially as I try to joyfully prepare for the arrival of my own little girl. I don't mean for it to be doom and gloom. Truly. There's a lot to be so very happy about.

As the last month or so of my pregnancy has sped away, I have found the hormonal waves that occasionally hit me sweeping me down a river of tearful anxiety and concern about changes that may or may not come to be in a marriage that is more solid than it has ever been, and my ability to be everything my daughter will need or want. I know all of it will probably be fine, but we can't always control what we are thinking and feeling in the moment.

My mixed up brain this morning struggles with weird exhaustion, a seemingly disconnected world caught up in Vodka and makeovers, the further degradation of a town my soul thought it didn't need to mourn, and a family that has lost a little girl.

The demons associated with what may come after my daughter arrives aren't real. Life will continue to move forward with love and joy in my life. I know that.

As for the other demons wound up in dreams, porch lights and my hometown--I sadly think those are all real. I think as sure as a chunk of my husband's hometown was swept up and swirled away by a storm almost three years ago, in the last 48 hours, a chunk--or maybe even all that was left of mine got swirled away as well. I will recover from that loss, because I have long been recovering from a lost sense of an unreal home. In essence, I got a head start on "losing" my hometown many years ago. Luckily, with the construction of what my husband refers to as our "Nation of Two" and the building of our own little family, there are fewer holes for me to fill.

But as full as my own life is about to become, I can't imagine the hole left in the family of that little girl. And I can't help but think of the toll that must be paid every time the rest of us discover that there is a monster in our midst. They are so well concealed from us, and almost always in plain site. I don't know how there can be a better way--a way where nobody has to pay the price of such discovery. That is the biggest hole of all.

And I love him.

So, I find myself in Northwestern Arkansas in the midst of another round of winter weather. I'm nearly 36 weeks pregnant, and suddenly I also find myself feeling in many respects, everything that really needs to be done has been done to prepare for the next phase of life. We have purchased and put together almost all of the necessities for bringing Willow home and getting her off to a good start. And we just ticked off the last must-do on my list--baby bump photos, both shareable and non-shareable.

I have respectfully been listening to, and occasionally ignoring the kindly advice of others, and frequently protesting that I am fearless in the face of becoming a new mom.

The truth is, last week, I did find myself fearful and profoundly consumed by it for about an hour and a half. I wasn't afraid of keeping Willow alive or knowing what to do for her. I think I will be able to keep her alive, and I know that I will just have to learn everything I need to do for her as we go along. What frightened me was thinking about the last 21 years with my husband--18 of which (almost) we have been married. It sounds like a long time in some respects, and in comparison to how most people play this whole starting a family thing out, it is a long time to be together--just the two of us.

But it still occurred to me that this time of just the two of us is coming to an end. It's a happy thing, of course, because we wanted Willow so much (and of course we still do). Even so, it's amazing what you fail to recognize and appreciate until you see it drawing to a close. And with the challenges of the last several years, we have become so much closer and stronger than I knew possible. That's not to say that the previous years weren't important or good--they were, but it was all so different. I think there were times that we forgot to be as close as we should have been and we let other things and people fill in spaces we didn't know were there. When push really came to shove for us, we were reminded of how much we needed each other, and how little the rest of the world really understood or mattered in the scheme of that need. Even though the hard times we have faced were so hard that I would never find a way to be grateful for them or want to relive them, I finally know the purpose they served. They recreated us as a couple and made us stronger than I could have ever imagined. But the other thing they did was make us incredibly close.

The day before we learned Willow was coming. An ending and a beginning in many ways.

In my moment of mourning for the time of just us coming to a close, my fear wasn't about the trips we won't still be able to take, or the concerts we won't be able to go to, or the other silly things we won't be able to do. The fear was that somehow, in the midst of this gigantic change, I will be swept away with all the things with which new, tired and struggling moms get swept away with, and in spite of my best intentions and efforts, the love of my life will get pushed to the back seat--that I will fail, and he will not have as much of me as I want him to have, and as much as he deserves.

And right about now, people in the know are protesting, "Yes, things will change for you, but they will change for him too, and you both will adjust." I'm a smart woman, and I do know this, but caught in a hormonal drift, all you know and care about is what you feel. And as I sobbed nearly breathlessly for an hour and half, and I find myself doing the same right now, nobody's wise words or logic really matter to me.

When I realized in the fall how deeply my life and my friendship with Jeph had changed, it became an urgent matter to me for him to know how much I depend upon him and love him so much. I have no regrets or sadness about the quiet of my new life. I don't find myself fidgety or lonely. It's because this love has filled all the spaces I used to allow other things to creep into. That's not to say I don't love and care about my friends, but it's different now. Jeph is my very best friend, and my person--my one person that I can't be without.

As we have entered February, and Valentine's Day is on the horizon, it occurs to me that most years, I write some blog about how you should show your significant other how you care for them everyday. Then I usually go on some rant about commercialism and blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to do that this year. I still believe those things, but I also know that sometimes it's hard for people to do what they should be doing every single day--for many reasons. And if you need a day or an excuse to open up and tell someone you love how much they mean to you--take it. It's good practice for when you figure it out and realize that you should do it every single chance you have, and in every way that you can.

I never expected to be eight months pregnant and so changed by a love that I have been a part of for more than two decades. I'm sure that the excuse of hormones and pregnancy could be the underlying "blame" for this profound difference in my emotions, but in so many ways, I have never felt this way before. I have never been so deeply in love before, and I have never been willing to be so demonstratively so.

I am grateful for his amazing understanding and acceptance of all of the challenges the last eight months have brought to me physically and emotionally--all while in the midst of trying to face so many obstacles and challenges of his own. I am aware of everything he does to show he cares, even when in some of those moments I am not appreciative because of my own issues. I am aware of how important this love is, not just to the two of us, but to our daughter as we raise her to know what love really is and what we hope her life will offer to her as well.

We don't always learn. We don't always get the opportunity to fall in love with the love of our life all over again, and more deeply than we did to begin with. But every single day, we have the option to love our people the best way we know how, and maybe the more we practice--even in small ways, we get better, and we learn to give things we didn't know we were capable of giving.

It's about five hours until he will be home. I know that I need to get over the hormonal shift--every bit as strong as the shifting of a tectonic plate--and remember that as much as things will change, I will have the only person in the world that I want right there as they do, and he will continue to love me just as much as I love him.

Magnificent--U2

"Who" will we make her?

So, I think it's important to preface this post by saying that I am not afraid of motherhood, or the immediate challenges that will befall me in a few short weeks. I have a reasonable sense of what I assume is a normal amount of anxiety associated with any new job, but I am aware that this is a full time position from which I cannot resign, and I have willingly signed on.

Now that we have that out of the way, I feel I can talk about what I am here to talk about, and hopefully I haven't given anyone the impression that I am shaking in my boots.

I had the opportunity to get out for lunch with a friend earlier in the week. She has an eleven-year-old daughter, with whom she enjoys watching "The Bachelor." I watched the show for one season years ago, when the man in question was a guy from my home town. I couldn't help but be curious. At any rate, as the season began this time around, my friend and her daughter quickly noted "who" each of the twenty-five women vying for this man's affections would turn out to be. In the course of discussing this, my friend revealed that it had made her think of "who" her own daughter will be. And as a result, it got me to thinking about what a giant responsibility it is, as a parent, particularly a mother to have a hand in "who" their child, particularly their daughter, will turn out to be.

My friend believes that I am at a giant advantage due to the benefit of additional years and wisdom associated with becoming a parent later in life. She asked me what I want for Willow as she grows up. While in my heart, I hope that most people want the same things for their children, I know everyone defines those things in very different ways. I mostly just want for Willow to grow up knowing that she is loved and supported, no matter what path she chooses for herself, and that she will find a path that gives her all the happiness in life that she desires. Some folks might answer the same question by saying that they want their child to get a great education and to be successful and productive.

Maybe the answers aren't really that different. But I think they probably feel different. After living a while, I realize that what I want now and for the rest of my life is very different than what I wanted twenty years ago. And maybe that does make me a fortunate mother.

My friend voiced the idea that young mothers are usually just at the cusp of trying to figure out who they are in life. How, therefore, can they have a handle on helping a child figure out who they want to become? I think it's a valid question, but it's honestly one I never thought of before.

I often think of friendships and people I have known over the years. We all know people, and have known people at many different stages of their lives. Women are very different people at different ages. Most of us go through a "mean girl" stage at some point, and we fail to have compassion for others. Some of us are so caught up in finding career and financial success that we forget to make lives that fulfill us beyond that new purse or apartment we must have. Still others of us spend so much time celebrating our youths that we overlook the value and comfort of making a home and settling down.

Fair or not, the people around us decide "who" all of these choices make us. Maybe it's not fair for me to say it, but I don't think that men are judged in quite the same ways as women. I think men are viewed in a much more narrow and black and white sort of way. I don't think that makes how we raise boys any less important, but I do think that within the very deeply carved grooves of our patriarchal society, the paths are so greatly defined and marked that if we are seeking to follow tradition, the way is well lit. It's only when we seek to support our boys--our children--within any construct they choose--traditional or otherwise--that we face greater challenge. As a wibbly-wobbly, touchy-feely mom-to-be, of course, I think that leads to the potential for much greater reward for all involved as well.

It is probably also unfair that I would use the women on a "reality" show to form an argument that it's more challenging to grow up as a girl, and inherently more challenging to guide a girl along the path than a boy. After all, there is so little that is real about about these "reality" shows. But stereotypes exist for a reason, whether we like it or not. Out of twenty-five women on a reality show, there probably will always be someone who is a "plotter and schemer." There will always be someone willing to use her womanly gifts to turn the man's head. There will always be the wallflower who can't seem to get in "the game." These shows are built around finding or "inventing" all of these characters in order to make the show more interesting and enticing. Otherwise, why would so many people watch?

But each girl's life is her own reality. As parents, we are just as responsible for creating a world within which they build that reality. We can only give them the plot of land, the tools and the materials. I know what I want for Willow. I'm pretty sure her dad wants the same things. We will have a hand in "who" she becomes, but undoubtedly that "who" will evolve and morph throughout her life.

I hope that she will have good friends and be well-liked by others. Life is so much easier when you have that. But more important to me than that is that she is a friend to herself and that she like herself. In the darkest times in life, sometimes you are the only person you have. I hope that she will have good vision, and that she will be able to see things for the way they really are. We spend a lot of time as women telling ourselves many harmful lies, because we are unable to see the truth about ourselves, and those around us. I hope that she will have self-confidence and stand up for herself when she needs to. I think teaching her courage will be the hardest thing, but the most important thing we try to do for her. How do you teach someone to be brave? I hope her daddy will help me with that one.

I'm not afraid of my new job, but I respect that it will be the most significant job I ever do. Being a hand that helps to create a person is a huge responsibility. There are lots of terrible people in the world. Jeph and I have always said that we didn't want to be parents unless we made the effort to create someone who in some small part makes the world better. It doesn't have to be "better" on a grandiose scale. Sometimes the world is just made better by a person who takes time to smile at a stranger, or help someone carry a heavy load.

We can't know "who" Willow will be yet. But maybe we are starting to know "who" we want to be for her. At the beginning of the day, that's really the best we can do.


Original of the Species--U2

Just do it--resolve to feel good enough

So, it's the first full week of 2014, and not surprisingly, everywhere you look, there's something to see regarding New Year's Resolutions. Most of them revolve around getting fit and losing weight.

I'm in a pretty good place this year. I've unexpectedly lost over twenty pounds, and in the last two months of pregnancy, weight loss is not even on my radar just now. But as I see all the commercials about exercise and dieting, I know that there are a lot of people out there who aren't facing the year feeling okay with themselves. And that's what really frustrates me about this time of year, and how companies prey upon those of us who really struggle with weight and body image.

Every time I see the Curves commercial with Jillian Michaels, I just want to scream. To me, it's just about the worst. I've never been to a Curves before, but when they initially opened, my impression of their business model was that these were facilities in which the average woman who wants to get in shape and feel better about herself could walk in and work out without feeling like she was a fat slob. In the current ad campaign, there seems to be only one woman in the commercial who has a body shape that is even close to what I pictured--and frankly, if I was at her fitness level, I'd probably feel pretty damn good about my body.

What gets my ire up most about this commercial is the mindless drumbeat drone that the only way that you can be happy is if you are thin. My answer to that is that the reason why we can't be happy unless we are thin is because people like Jillian Michaels keep telling us that we can't be happy unless we are thin. The fitness and weight loss industry makes their dollar by making us feel miserable about ourselves and any accomplishment we may have achieved because we don't have a six pack. Some of them might make the argument that it isn't about the way we look, it's about health and feeling good.

I'm not going to try and argue that being overweight is a healthy lifestyle. I know that it's not. One of my biggest fears about becoming pregnant was that I was already overweight, and any weight I might gain would put my health and my baby's health at risk. It's only a weird twist of "morning sickness" and fate that I have managed not to gain a single pound. I'm not even excited about the twist, because I have truly missed my food and any sense of normalcy about eating and diet. It's not what I planned or hoped for.

Over the years, I have watched people I care about struggle, beat themselves up, and starve themselves because they want to achieve some "ideal." I've been frustrated for them, especially because most of them have already achieved greater fitness than I can ever imagine for myself. I've also watched people closer to my own situation struggle and fall back multiple times. I relate to their sense of failure and defeat. I've definitely been there, and even though my current situation is different, I know that after my daughter gets here, I will remember that I am still heavier than I should be, no matter how much I've lost.

When I see the commercials for weight loss products, services and scams, I am more determined than ever to find every possible way I can to teach my daughter that you can't live your life for a number on a scale, a clothing tag, or a caliper. I hope to teach her about living a balanced lifestyle. I'm not going to hide the television, but I want her to know the joys of running in the grass and riding a bike too.

There has been so much talk in recent years about helping women and girls feel better about their body image. It makes me crazy that for all of that talk, the images of über sculpted women in next to no clothing far outweigh the images of the average woman who is just doing the best she can, and trying to live some kind of balance in life.

It all makes me feel like we can't win. Just trying to be as healthy as we can--mentally and physically--isn't good enough. And because it's not good enough for everyone else, it feels like it shouldn't be good enough for ourselves. It's one of the things I have noticed more, and been so disappointed with in human nature during my pregnancy. It seems like some of us just naturally seek to judge others for not doing "it" (whatever "it" is) their way. Whether it's how to have and raise your child, how to be successful in your career or relationships, or what it means to be healthy--someone always thinks their way is the only or best way.

I wish everyone who hocks a pill, a piece of exercise equipment or a nutrition system for weight loss could spend one moment in the shoes of the person feeling inadequate and insecure because of their bodies. I know some of those folks actually have been overweight and struggled too, but it seems like they forget how it feels. They forget how much they might have benefited from someone accepting them, loving them and thinking they're beautiful--just the way they were.

It bothers me that we live in a world where it is more acceptable and even more desirable to change everything about ourselves physically and otherwise to be valued than it is to offer each other understanding shoulders, acceptance and love. I'm sure it's an idealistic view, but when I think about the women in my family lineage and how so many of them have been pear shaped and all kinds of other not-so-desirable shapes, I want my daughter to grow up feeling that her shape is perfect--whatever it is, and that she doesn't have to turn herself inside out to be worthy of love--whether that love is from someone else or just from herself. I want her to grow up in a world where we don't voyeuristically watch others struggle with weight loss, body image, personal hardships and missteps to line the pockets of networks and companies that profit from the misfortunes of others. It doesn't seem like a dumb thing to wish for.

If you have to turn yourself inside out to be worthy of something, how real can that something be?

Just the Way You Are--Bruno Mars

Keeping the real peace

So, we've just gotten through the time of year during which family gathers and celebrates the warmth of the season. And most of the time, hopefully, that season is truly warm, and not a hot mess.

I think it can easily be said that every family has its dysfunction. Most of the time, we are all doing our level best just to "keep the peace" and go along. It's kind of what's expected from mature adults. Sometimes everyone walks away from the holidays unscathed, sometimes not so much.

Life in general is an awful lot like that, and usually, the dysfunctions and challenges we face with family and friends leave us with one simple choice: do we just go along, or do we choose to be who we are at the risk of upsetting the apple cart?

I grew up, as most of us did, in a household where the expectation was to keep your head down and not make waves. While I could arguably say that my household carried these ideals to an extreme, they aren't uncommon expectations. We're all expected to behave ourselves and not make trouble, and most of the time, I'm pretty sure that's a noble pursuit, or else we would all be in the midst of a lot of turmoil most of the time.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I think that some of us have spent so much time bending over backwards to avoid conflict with everyone else, that we tend to lose ourselves, and I'm not so sure that's fair or even as beneficial to the greater good as we are raised to believe.

I face this issue every holiday season, and I usually start thinking about it by the end of September. Since commercially we seem to nearly skip over Thanksgiving and go straight to Christmas, it's pretty hard to avoid thinking about the inevitable sooner and sooner every year.

My mom and I haven't spoken in almost four years, and I have a handful of relatives whom I work very hard to simply avoid for reasons that are deeply important to me. My break with my mother stems from the realization that, unfortunately, she just has a very toxic effect on me and has a habit of being very self-centered and vicious. It's difficult. As for my aunt and her children, I find it very difficult to be around them, because it usually means that I am witnessing them suck my grandmother completely dry.

It makes November and December especially difficult. Riding the "high horse" isn't something I do to intentionally make things hard or out of fun. I've had to find myself "in the saddle" because, sadly, I have tended to want to believe that I can "fix" things, and I am always proven even more sadly to be wrong. It took a great deal of my adult life to understand that you can't fix people, they have to want to fix themselves, and most of the time, they don't see anything wrong with how they behave, so why would they change a thing?

And since I can't stop trying to right the wrongs, I have often found that I allow myself to be harmed in the wake of those wrongs. I finally decided that I valued myself more than I valued the peace that came from just going along. It's actually quite hard to put yourself first. I feel guilty about it every year, because it means that I don't spend the holidays with anyone in my family, however limited they may be. I'm not loud or obstinate about it. I'm quiet and evasive. I haven't found a better way. This year has been no different.

As the birth of our daughter quickly approaches, I fear that all of this will become even more challenging. I have no doubt that our lack of contact hasn't managed to prevent my mother from knowing that my husband and I have relocated, and that we have a baby on the way. It would be nearly impossible for me to conceal these things forever. The question already has been raised whether I really intend not to talk to her about Willow. The truth is, she has been so toxic and hurtful, that I don't intend to talk to her about anything, least of all the precious little human that I would gleefully do anything to protect.

But it isn't really fair. All of this strife and avoidance means that I won't be able to as freely share our daughter with my grandmother, who was such an important part of my own childhood. I won't feel secure just dropping her off to spend a weekend playing in the kitchen or getting into mischief with the woman who would happily stop to pick up every box turtle between my home in the city and her house in the country. It makes me sad. And understandably, she doesn't understand the reasons why I stay away, and why I became so protective of myself. Until you've been very, very harmed by someone you trusted and loved, it's an impossible thing to relate to.

This year has been a very different one for me. I started off deeply and emotionally "in the red." Months of being battered and bruised by loss and turmoil led into more months of being battered and bruised by loss and turmoil. I've talked about it, but it bears repeating. I became the kind of person that not too many people wanted to be around. I lacked the wherewithal to find my own sense of grace many times. And without always realizing it, I was hurtful. It hasn't changed anything about the relationships I harmed, but the only pride I take away from this time period is that I take responsibility for who I was and I accept, though with sadness, the bad feelings I cannot change.

I like to think that's the difference between those of us who are toxic for a time, and those of us who can never see themselves through anyone else's eyes and are toxic at their core. I never expected anyone to shift or be different on my account during my toxic time, I was just too consumed in my own storm to find a way out.

Since realizing that there are people who have the ability to cause me immense damage, it has always been my choice whether to put myself in their paths or not. I've never been the person to be avoided, and I've never been in a position to observe when someone else is choosing how to get out of the line of fire. I understood why I had to "leap" out of harm's way, but until I recently saw someone else I love very much make a similar "leap," I didn't really understand what that sometimes means.

On the one hand, it means you just aren't willing to accept being abused by someone else, even if making that decision isn't the most comfortable choice for everyone else around. But I think there's a more important meaning--I think it also means that you have reached the point where being true to who you really are is more valuable to you than promoting a false peace. I realize it's not a fair price for everyone else in the mix to pay, but as someone who has been faced with that price for so many years, the person choosing is the only one who can say whether it's worth it or not.

I can't make the choice for my grandma that my aunt and her sons not continue to take advantage of her. I have to respect that she aids and abets their poor life skills and inability to support themselves, but I can choose whether I want to witness it or not, or have my child be a witness to it. I can't make my mom understand that being around her is exactly what I would want to do if she wasn't fixated on making herself the center of attention through hurtful and terrible actions that she can't ever take back, but I can choose not to allow myself and the family I am making to be the victims of what she has to offer.

They aren't easy choices. Life frequently doesn't give us easy choices.

I am fortunate. Though still a very tumultuous time, my own storms started to abate halfway through this year, and it is my great hope that all of the happy things that have presented themselves as the clouds finally cleared hold a lot of promise for the next year. Whatever the case may be, there is one thing I do know: out of all of the hard time, the peace that's returned to my life isn't the false kind. It isn't the kind that comes from people around me compromising themselves to accommodate me and my lashing out. It's the kind of peace that comes from having a handful of people who loved and understood that I wasn't going to be in that horrible place forever, and that I needed them all the more. It's the kind of peace that comes from owning who you are at every moment, no matter how terrible you may sometimes become when you find yourself in dire straits. It's the kind that comes from understanding that some people needed to protect themselves from me, and respecting that, even though it's hard.

So, while I believe that peace is a worthwhile pursuit, I suppose I can only accept the real thing. And sometimes the realest peace is the peace that comes from choosing what's right for oneself, over what appears to be right to everyone else.

It's time to begin, for real

So, there's no question I should be doing something else this morning. As we embark on our second move in just over three months' time, and Christmas looms, the next several days promise to be incredibly busy. I should be bubble wrapping something even as we speak, or at least putting something into a box. But as cable and the Internet will also be going away for the next couple of days, I thought I would take a little time this morning to put some words into a box.

While in general, this year has been a tumultuous one for my family and me, we find ourselves ending on some high notes, to be sure. Life gave us an "opportunity" to relocate and restart in a way that may not have been very welcome, but sometimes positive change doesn't come in a beautifully wrapped box with a ribbon that is too pretty to pull apart.

We started the year in "the winter of our discontent" to be sure. It's not as if 2013 was the beginning of hard times for the Blanchards, but I think we would both say that our faith in everything around us, except perhaps each other, was at an all time low. Things, especially hopes and dreams, seemed to be coming to an end left and right. I don't think we were always cognizant of how powerful the overwhelming sense of hopelessness had become in our everyday lives.

With the sadness of losses we could not calculate, failures we could not face, and unraveled relationships we could not rebuild, I never imagined that there was any hope of anything new coming our way. But almost six months ago today, I was proven wrong.

I had most certainly given up hope that there would be a little Blanchard to run around our home, but when we least expected it, or would have thought it a fantastic time, hope shifted. We were three weeks into Jeph's desperate job search, I was getting ready to start a new work situation, and our future was anything but certain. I guess that's when things could begin again.

Probably one of the few "angelic" moments in her little life.

In spite of the timing, and all of the crazy things that had happened, and were still happening, when I realized a baby was on the way, I somehow knew everything else would be all right. Suddenly, every sense of fear and uncertainty I had was erased. I do understand that I should have been scared shitless, but we had lost and given up so much, I guess there was just part of me that understood nothing was really up to us any more and we just had to go where life was taking us.

When dramatic things are happening, and redetermining your path, you don't always have time to understand or process them. We relocated three hours south of where we were at the beginning of September, and have found ourselves in one of the quietest places in existence. We have both been very used to a lot of noise. I assumed that I would have major adjustment issues--after all, for much of the last decade and a half, I have been a "runner" and "escape artist" when it comes to life, and now I live someplace that I finally don't feel like running or escaping from (and let's face it, during this pregnancy, I have hardly physically felt like running or escaping were plausible options most of the time).

Toward the beginning of our third month here, we finally started to feel like we should settle in, and we found a place to put down some roots. As we worked to buy our home, to start the process of furnishing it and making it a place we would be able to have company and raise our daughter, it started to occur to me that it was a very different feeling than I had experienced before. We had bought a home before; we had bought furniture before; and we had thought about the future, but not in any realistic or concrete way. When I look back at the last time we did these things, it's almost as if we were "playing at it."

As we circulated in and out of furniture stores, sitting on sofas and debating the merits of this or that purchase, all the sudden, I felt like we were just starting our lives together. That's a weird feeling to have at nearly forty-two, especially given the fact that we have spent the last twenty-one years together. This is hardly a "new" relationship. But as we have chosen every stick of furniture, as we have considered paint colors, and even whether or not to put a rug beneath our first real dining room table, a new relationship is exactly what we have.

Every part of our existence is indescribably new.

As a stay at home house Frau, I have a lot of time to think and reflect. I've probably spent more time thinking about this than I should, because occasionally I feel flashes of guilt about where we are--not in the sense that we are in a bad place, but that we were so busy doing other things that we never got to feel this newness in our lives before now. Maybe all of our running, traveling and doing had very little to do with how long it took us to get here, and this is just the natural order of things for us. We have always been odd by comparison to those around us. We have always approached our path very differently than everyone else our age. We have always done things our own way. People have frequently looked at our lives through green lenses, not realizing that we were looking at things through a kaleidoscope, not really knowing what direction we were going or what color we would see next.

There are more than a few things to be said for certainty and stability. I think we ran and escaped because we were afraid to make the wrong choices. That's probably the number one reason why we waited precariously long to have our daughter--leaving it to the nearly impossible last second. What if we got it all wrong? The fall out wouldn't just be on us--it would be on her.

In the last few months, as I have had time to be pregnant, and I have had time to think, I have become more acutely aware of my mortality than any time in my life. I am safer and more secure than I have ever been, and yet I am finally becoming aware that the thread has two ends. I think about our daughter and worry about being there for her for enough of her future to give her everything she needs. I worry about having enough of her myself. In one moment, I have not felt so young and new in forever, in the next moment, I have never been more aware of my age and its limitations.

Always before, I worried that choosing to have a child for the sake of having a child was a selfish thing to do just because you were trying to stick to a timeline. Now, I worry that choosing to wait until there was no time to waste was equally selfish.

What I expect to be norm.

Through technology, we have had the ability to see our daughter multiple times in the last several months. I already have memorized the shape of her eyelids, her lips and her nose. I love her grumpy expression as much as I love her serene sleeping face. And I assume when she looks at me for the first time, every new and old fear I have will be put in perspective. It's not for me to decide how she will view this new start in life that her father and I have made. It is for her father and I to love her everyday without thinking about how long we will have with her, and to hope that when she looks back on the time, she will think whatever that time has been, it was all well spent.

Ordinary Love--U2

Sometimes things have to get real hard to become real simple

So, in recent years, a lot of people have started to talk about things like "simplifying their lives" and "and getting back to basics." I've come to assume they mean things like downsizing homes, offloading responsibilities, cooking foods from scratch or only wearing earth tones. I never really thought about what these things might mean to me.

I haven't made it a secret that the last few years in the Blanchard household have been kind of tough, and that a lot of unpleasant, and unexpected things have happened. We certainly haven't been the only ones, but when you're in the thick of it, you frequently walk through your existence with blinders on. You can only take on so much, and when your plate is full of your own stuff, you start to be very choosy about the stuff from other people you can deal with, even if you care about them very much.

I would completely own that I reached a point where I was so overwhelmed by the complications and pain in my own life, that I found myself no longer able to fit anything else on my plate. I know that I lost friends as a result. It's not something I'm proud of, and I have found myself thinking about it more than a little bit lately. It's hard to reach out to people who are done reaching back. And in some ways, I have come to realize that these losses are the collateral damage of a war I was neither equipped to fight, nor successful at. Sometimes, things just can't be repaired.

A few months ago, I left a job I had been doing for fifteen years. I had been wanting to leave for a long while, but would never give myself permission. It brought a lot of unhappiness to my family. I had worked very hard, and I had been raised to believe that if I just did a really good job and worked very hard that I could achieve anything. That was naive, and it perpetuated a deep feeling of resentment when that belief was proven wrong. It was difficult to accept that in many situations, relationships are more important than values and work.

As the months that preceded my departure leveled more personal disappointments, my professional disappointments were also more difficult to ignore. My husband found himself looking for a job in a different location, and I found myself expecting a child and not even remotely interested in looking for the same work in a different place. I no longer believed that I could give what the work deserved, and I knew that many days, I was barely floating along. It's hard to accept a sense of failure in yourself, no matter how real or unreal that failure appears to others.

We ended up moving to a place where I know one or two people, but I spend most of my time at home with our dog. I have a handful of dear friends and a couple of family members who check in on me regularly. Until this move, I was used to talking to people all day long. It wasn't always easy. I'm an introvert by nature.

In the few months since our move, however, there is one person I see more often than ever, and whom I miss more whenever he isn't around--my husband. I knew that with his traditional schedule and with my very non-traditional schedule that we didn't spend much time together over the last fifteen years. For a great many of those years, I found myself to be a "runner," always looking for something to do and someplace to go. I found it very difficult to be satisfied idling. In retrospect, I think it's because in my free time, I was alone with myself, and I wasn't really happy in my own company.

When our lives truly reached the point of unraveling at the beginning of the summer, something in me finally realized I had no choice but to just let go. It was really hard at times. I'm not the kind of person who likes to admit that I can't change certain things--especially the minds of people who came to believe that I wasn't worth salvaging. What I didn't understand was that like any time that happens in life, there would be people who remembered, or learned who I was at my core and they would find something in me worth valuing no matter how hostile and "feral" I had become.

And even if there hadn't been anyone else, there was always Jeph. He came to be the only person who knew who I always was. He became the only person who accepted me at every single moment--broken heart and all. It was probably because (even though he wouldn't use the same words) his heart was broken too.

When we moved away from so many things and people we knew, I had no idea how I would adjust to being at home by myself so much of the time. Of course, there was the relief that I had finally allowed myself the decision to let go of something giant in my life that wasn't really working, but what would it be like to just hang out everyday? It is surprisingly simple.

A few weeks into this "experiment," Jeph came home from work and in one of the worst weeks of my pregnancy, I broke down. It would probably amuse most people to know that this break down was over food--specifically not being able to eat it, and getting sick cleaning up after it. I know he thought it was something more. He looked at me very pointedly and asked if I was really okay being here by myself so much of the time. Without reservation, I told him I was.

Other than knowing myself well enough to know how truly introverted I am, I also have come to know that the reason I am okay is because through some weird stroke of fate (or strokes, given all of the pot holes in life's road that we have come across), I finally have everything I ever needed.

No, I don't have an income, and I am slowly, but surely scraping the bottom of what I earned in the last weeks of my work. I may get out of the house once a week. I hear from a couple of people just about every week, usually via Facebook or text. And the only person I see everyday is Jeph.

But all of that is okay, especially the last thing--I get to see Jeph everyday. It seems that while everything else in my life seemed to sort of unravel, we are the one thing that became stronger. And in the months ahead, when I will be at home with our new daughter, and be even less able to get out and about, that one face I see everyday will quite simply and basically be even more important--if that's even possible.

Wild Honey--U2