hopeful romantic

Oxford dictionary defines romance as: a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love, [and] a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life. 
Wiki defines it as, well, never mind. Wiki is wrong. 

"remoteness from everyday life." yes. that's it. 

Nothing in that definition is exclusive to a relationship of two people who are married/dating/lovers. In fact, nothing in that definition excludes a person who is alone. One of my most romantic moments was in fact shared with no one. I was Rome in 2011. My mother had recently passed on, allowing for this trip. I was caught between mourning and joy, standing in the Eternal City. It was summer, and it was hot. The water was cool and inviting. For a few moments, it was just me, the water, and my creator. I was surrounded by people- mostly strangers- and the photo capturing the moment was taken by someone I knew. My three-month-old baby was nearby in a stroller. But the feelings that swelled up in me and glued me to that spot, celebrating that moment was all mine. It was indeed romantic.

My favorite scene in the movie 'The Father of the Bride' is a discussion between Spencer Tracy and his soon to be son-in-law. The bride, played by Elizabeth Taylor, had come to her father in tears, ready to call off her wedding because her fiance' bought her a blender for a wedding present. How could he be thoughtless, buying a kitchen appliance for her for a wedding present? How romantic is that?! Then there is that moment went the dejected young groom-to -be explains in an almost panic that he bought that blender thinking of how much she likes smoothies. He wanted her to always have what she wanted, and he wanted to be the one to provide it. Suddenly, a blender looked like the most romantic gift he could have considered. 'An excitement associated with love.'

The most romantic thing anyone ever did for me was line the floor of a shower room of a garage with brown paper, so that I could shower in an auto garage and still feel like a lady. I was rushed after two trips to the emergency room with two different children, a photo shoot, and being the only witness for a bride in a convalidation ceremony. I had no time to get home to clean up, and my dear friend made the best of a difficult situation without me asking. He had in the past made me feel loved, and shown his romantic side on many occasions, but that simple layer of brown paper covering every surface of the shower room made me feel like a princess.

When a good person  loves you, he will take time to listen to you. He will focus on your face and your words as you speak, and you will feel safe.
It becomes romantic when he stops what he is doing- what he is engrossed in- puts his tools down, looks you in the eye and either with his eyes or his words tell you that nothing else can come to his mind except what you are saying.  
A loving friend will say, "come over when you are finished with your errands and we'll have coffee and catch up." 
It becomes romantic when you arrive to find that she has drawn a bubble bath for you in her oversized tub, has surrounded the tub with candles and poured wine waiting for you, and says, "the next hour is all yours to be alone. I'll watch your kids." 
Loving a child can mean spending your lunch hour with her, listening to her talk about her latest playground escapade, or her first break-up. It becomes romance when you turn off your cell phone, pour her drink into a wine glass, and be sure to have her favorite cup-cake for desert. You lean in and focus on her eyes while she talks. She feels the mystery of a mother's (or a father's) love that isn't the everyday feeling she gets she you wash her laundry.


We all need romance. Those who are married, those who are single and celibate, and yes, even priests and religious need romance. Some of the most romantic people I have ever met were priests and nuns! When love is elevated to "out of the ordinary", anyone can feel the mystery of excitement of that love and it becomes romance. G*d created romance, so why would He keep it from any of His beloved, reserving it only for couples? "Thy lips are as a scarlet lace; and they speech sweet. They cheeks are as a piece of a pomegranate, besides that which lieth hid within. .... Thy lips, my spouse, are as a dropping honeycomb, honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments, as the smell of frankincense." [Solomon's Canticle of Canticles,4:3,11] No one could argue the romance and yes, eros! that fills the pages of this book of the Old Testament.  It's no wonder that so many of the saints would go into what was called an "ecstasy" when praying! There is praying.. and there is romantic praying. I worship a very romantic God. 


Although in the past I have loathed the coming of Valentine's day, thinking of it as merely "singles awareness day" and thinking about the romance not in my life, this year, I am filled with a mystery of the love that I have been blessed with from my Lord, my friends, and my family.
I have learned that having romance in my life is up to me. It's my responsibility to seek it out, to even create it for myself and for my children, and to recognize it in the beauty of creation that surrounds me. It is up to me to pull out moments in an otherwise mundane day and with G*d's grace, seek a feeling of excitement and share that with the people around me, whether it means getting out the good china to serve the peanut butter sandwich to my daughter, or dropping everything and inviting my son to sit in the large patch of clover in the yard to hear about his day. 

Maybe this is why I'm truly happy and can say I like who I am for the first time in my life.
 

lady in red

It happened. For the first time since my divorce, I heard that song on the radio.

My ex husband always said it was "our song", but I never really thought it was.  I loved the song when it was first released, but something about it made me want to keep it for myself. Maybe it was because I always knew something was lacking in the way he saw me. Maybe it was because he was always in the band when there was dancing and so we never danced "cheek to cheek".  Maybe it was because he called me a lot of things, but "lady" wasn't one of them. Maybe it was because some of the lines reminded me of how he wanted me as an "escort"- ie: arm candy so that he wouldn't have to go alone to events where his co-workers came in couples. But still, he referred to it as ours whenever he heard it. I came to not even like the song out of resentment.

I can usually recognize an 80's and early 90's song by the third note of the tune. It's a game we play in the car, in which I'm the only contestant but the children get a kick out of seeing how long it takes me, and if I am correct, before the title appears on the digital read of the dash or the lyrics begin. This song was no exception; in fact, I think I caught it from the first chord.
As soon as I heard the chord, I froze and I had to catch my breath.
My first reaction was turn it off; I did not need a flashback while I was driving. I experienced one of those flashbacks from my marriage this week. I don't even remember the trigger this time, but I could hear the name calling in my head which spiraled into self degradation. When this happens while I'm driving, the only escape is to pray aloud and/or crank up the radio. When the radio is the trigger, that leaves me with one option.
This time, however, I left the radio on and sang along. I listened to and held on to every word and the smile that started on my face from the sound of Chris DeBurgh's raspy voice slowly spread to my heart. And by the end of the song, I was holding on to every word and feeling every chord..
and 'he' wasn't there. Not only was there no flashback, but there was no thought of Tom at all. In my mind I was on the dance floor, and he wasn't.

But  I can see myself dancing with someone. This man and I create our own rhythm, as he patiently awaits my next move as only a gentleman can. In my imagination, the lover with whom I am dancing loves me for who I am, not just for whom he wants me to be for him. He sees no one else in the room. He's not dancing with me so that others can see us together; he's dancing with me because he can't imagine a life without me. He breathes me in as he looks into my eyes, seeing me for the lady that I am.
And as the melody fades on the radio, the song becomes  my song, ready to be shared.


Lady in Red

funny Valentine

Champagne, a candy heart that says, "Let's kiss" and a red rose.
Candlelit dinner, soft jazzy music playing ....
I lean over my dinner..

....and laugh with my daughter who is sitting across the table from me.
Valentine's day has never been one of my favorite holidays. I have had two memorable ones. One was in high school when my friend, a local radio celebrity, heard me say that I had never had a boyfriend on Valentine's day. He showed up after my play rehearsal on the night of Valentine's day with a box of chocolates, flowers and a Valentine card that wouldn't fit through his car window.
The other was when I received a basket of live flowering plants and a card that tugged so much at  my heart strings that I can't part with it even if this man never speaks to me again, as it contains a prayer beseeching God to show me that I am worthy of being loved - a sentiment which I believed  for a while.

Up ahead on the beltway I could see that the traffic was bumper to bumper. The exit was clear and the service road traffic moving so I made my choice, and exited right.
Two miles later I was bumper to bumper with other cars on the service road moving more slowly than the beltway, and there I was fuming with my choice. About twenty minutes later, a firetruck approached me from the rear. I moved over, allowing it to pass by, but as I tried to regain my place in the traffic line,the driver of the sedan behind the truck not only lurched forward preventing my entry, but laughed at me and gestured antagonistically with his arms. 
Already feeling emotionally weak, I let his actions get under my skin and rattle me. However, I didn't let loose with the sobbing tears until I saw what the driver did at the next traffic light. This man, the same man who was not only rude to me a tenth of a mile before but looked me in the eye and mocked and laughed at me, put down  his window and handed money to a man standing on the corner holding a sign asking for help. I wasn't crying because a stranger was rude to me. I cried because of the memories this stranger awoke in my head. 
I spent twenty-five years with a man who could call me vulgar names until I was crying on the floor and then take his coat off and give it to a homeless man the same afternoon. Seeing how generous he was to others made me think that I was the problem. I knew he had goodness in him and wanted to be kind, so when he was unkind to me, I thought it must be my fault. I believed it had to be because of something I said or did that caused him to behave the way he did. Of course it wasn't my fault that my former spouse could not control his rage or his abusive tongue. I know that thinking I deserved it is neither constructive nor even true. But I don't yet have a new truth to replace the voice telling me I am at fault when things go wrong.  I am like a child who has learned a language badly, with mispronunciation and bad grammar.  I know what I'm saying is the wrong way to say it, but I have no one with whom I can practice the correct way and so I'm stuck speaking it wrong. No amount of telling me that the words I'm saying are mispronounced will help me; until I learn the language the way it is supposed to be spoken and have someone with whom I can practice, I feel like a bumbling fool, wondering what I said wrong, or what I did wrong that caused a relationship to end, or made a person walk away and how I can fix it.

I keep that Valentine card  in a drawer. Although looking at it from time to time and thinking about a time of being loved makes me smile, the words of hope that were once so meaningful to me are now simply printed letters, no different than rules of grammar of a language I am still trying to learn.  I think about my beautiful Valentine date, my daughter, and at times I just want to keep silent, and not speak at all because she is still learning this language, and I'm afraid she will pick up my mispronounced words and my bad grammar. I know it's my job to teach her the true beautiful language that is our mother tongue, but years of bad practice has left me mute at times and a cruel teacher at others. She recognizes the bad grammar, as I do. She also knows how it's supposed to sound, how it can beautifully flow from the tongue. I only hope that she hasn't heard so much of the damaged language that she won't be able to speak it when she finds her own Valentine, and that her card will be much more to her than a book of grammar to be tucked away in a drawer.

kintsukuroi

It was for my sixteenth birthday that my parents bought me that mug. It was big and white, and on it were my name and a rainbow. The mug followed me to college, and into my adult life.  I don’t remember how many years into my marriage I was or how many children we had, but I remember vividly the feelings of fear, of dread and of shock rolling over me very ordered, yet seemingly at once as I watched him pick my mug up from the counter, hold it in the air, and- as I begged him not to- slam it down on that counter and watch it shatter into  many, many pieces.

I think I remember that he was instantly sorry. I’m sure I remember not caring how sorry he was at that moment. It didn’t matter; the mug was gone, I was going to forgive him, and then convince myself that whatever I said before he robbed me of the memento of my sixteenth birthday was what caused his outburst, and therefore I was responsible. Taking responsibility every time he broke something or frightened me was the only way I could convince myself that I should stay. After all, I knew I  would be able to change, but I could never change him. I swept up the broken pieces, and I threw them away- along with all the other things he broke in anger over the years- and tried to start over as if I was never hurt.

One of those things we veterans of domestic violence share in common is that we celebrate any act of non-abuse as an act of kindness. As long as we have days, weeks, or even months when there is not a violent outburst, we convince ourselves that our significant other is good to us. And when they are good, they are very, very good. Then one day we realize that non-abuse is not good enough. We decide that we don’t want to ever confuse again a normal act of humanity for an expression of kindness. We sweep up the broken pieces one last time… but this time, instead of just tossing the porcelain into the garbage, we stand in front of the mirror, we see the hurt, and make a commitment to go deep, dig that hurt out, and replace it with something beautiful.

What has happened to me is not my entire story. How my spouse treated me, or how many things he broke- including my heart- is not who I am. My response, and the choices I make are now my story.

Someone once told me to love like I’ve never been hurt- to love with all a whole heart instead of with a broken heart, and to give myself  as someone who doesn’t know what hurt feels like.

No, I am going to love like I’ve been hurt very, very deeply. Because I have been wounded,  I know how far is the depth of my heart. The pain went deeper than the love the first time around, and now that I have gone there, and allowed those wounds to heal from the bottom up, my restored heart is stronger and more capable of loving and giving than it ever was before it was broken.

The Japanese have a tradition of repairing broken pieces of pottery by using gold to fill in the cracks and spaces between the porcelain. The result is a stronger vessel that is less likely to break again. The repaired vessel is also considered as beautiful, if not more beautiful, than the original with the strands and veins of gold showing on the surface.
This art - this necessary practice - in a world where something precious cannot be replaced nor simply thrown away is called “kintsukuroi.”

I don’t want pity for my past. When people look at me, I don’t want them to see how I was broken by the abuse or the trials or the sorrow. I want them to see only how I have been strengthened and restored. 

faith and value

The sure sign that we consider it cold outside.
Right now we have one warm room in the house.
It's a wonderful kind of warm. It even smells warm.
But not the dry smell of a heater when it comes on the first time in the winter, but of wood smoke and autumn. It will get down to thirty-five degrees tonight, so I'm going to try to get the stove very hot before going to bed. The fire will be out by morning, but I'm hoping for enough hot coals to restart it before the children get up for Church.

The temperature is expected to climb quickly back up to the seventies this week, so we'll have time to get more wood cut for the winter. My oldest son was able to get a pretty good stack started with an ax.

 But the remaining will get done faster with a chainsaw.

Before the mobile home next to us was bought by the present owners, the tenants living there took it upon themselves  to start clearing the fence line on my property. They assumed it was an easement between our properties, but the truth is the entire line of trees and brush was on my side of the property line. I pulled up in my driveway one day to find them tending a large bonfire made of hardwoods from my yard. I stopped them before they burned this tree, but it's been laying in the yard ever since, waiting for us to get the chainsaw working. Once cut and aged a few months, it will keep one end of the house warm a few weeks.

We had the wood stove installed the first winter we lived here. When searching for a home, I was drawn toward the houses that had stoves for heat. As it turns out, we settled on a house without a stove, but also without a heat source for part of the house. After much research and store searching I bought the largest stove I could afford and had it installed. Who would have thought there are people who make a living selling and installing wood stoves in south east Texas?

Our first winter, I purchased wood. The man who installed the stove referred to me a man in the another town, and I had to pay a pretty penny. Later that same winter I was able to get a load free from another man who had removed a large oak from a yard and allowed my children and me to gather the smaller pieces and fill the back of my Suburban. I admit I was concerned about the next winter and what it would cost in wood.
When the next winter came, a friend loaded up my truck with wood he had purchased for me, without telling me. Soon after, he lost a tree to a storm, and he cut the tree for me and kept us warm all season. I felt protected and cared for. This winter, we have enough wood  left from this tree and from our property to keep us warm all winter, once we get it cut to fit the stove.
I have been told that faith is a gift. I have prayed for this gift, but it eludes me. I profess the Creed willingly, but under the veil I wear to Mass is always a bit of doubt.
After two winters of wood being provided, I have no doubt that we'll continue to be warmed by our stove in the future, but I'm not sure I'd be so confident if I had not already had two winters of provisions. Sometimes, it's not my lack of faith in a higher power, but my insecurity in my own worth that keeps me from believing that all be well.

For twenty-five years, I heard "you can take care of yourself" with regards to everything from filling up my truck with fuel to walking to it in a parking garage late at night in the fourth largest city in the US.  Not only was my basic need of feeling safe and protected not met, but what I heard in his words, "you can take care of yourself", and what I felt every time I walked alone to my car in the dark was, "you are not valuable enough for me to be concerned about you or take care of you." Not valuable enough in the eyes of my spouse- in the most intimate of human relationships. If I didn't feel valued by my husband with whom I'd spent all of my adult life, how could I feel valued by anyone?
I've learned that yes, I can take care of myself, or, at least, can find people to help me get things done. 
But the idea that I am worthy  to have my needs met -even by the One who created me-  is taking a little more time for me to learn.
As time goes on, and as I receive love from others, I am learning that it was not my lack of worth that prevented my former spouse from valuing me, but his own inadequacies. But as my spiritual director recently told me, my biggest wounds are not what has been done to me, but what my reaction is, and only I can control my reactions.  Getting out of that relationship was the necessary step that stopped me from receiving the message from my husband that I'm not valued.Clearly, I don't need him to fill my truck, walk with me in the dark, or chop wood for my winters.
It's now up to me to allow my heart to be loved and heal, and trust God to take care of the winter cold.

the luxury of feeling

It hit me this week and it started to soak in. My son had cancer.
Of course this is old news. Seems silly to get 'hit' by it now, but, I did.
He's been in 'permanent' remission for a year and a half. That means for a year and a half he has had no spinal taps, no infusions, no daily chemo-pills, no port-catheter in his chest. After almost four years of steroids, he no longer takes them every weekend. His anti-cancer regimen now consists of seeing the doctor every two months for a check up and blood labs, and taking care of his health by eating right and exercising. When he gets a fever, we don't have to go to the emergency room; he simply rests until it passes, like his siblings. He is completely normal as far as we can tell, but suddenly, I realized how sick he was.
I don't think I had time to really think about it. I know I didn't have time to feel it.

Part of having a child with cancer was knowing other parents who had children with cancer. Every time we were in the hospital for infusions, or with fever, I would meet a parent who had a child who was sicker, or who had lower chances of survival. Perhaps her child had a tumor that couldn't be removed, or his baby had spent the first six months of her life there on the 9th floor.
Her child was dying and not going home from the hospital, so my son's 80% chance of survival made me one of the lucky ones.
His child was getting radiation again, so I wasn't about to complain about another series of shots in the legs.
They had to drive from another state, so I couldn't talk about being tired, or complain about driving the 90 mile round trip to the hospital three times in a week.
Besides, it wasn't about me.  His cancer was never about me. And there was always someone else who had it worse, so I put my feelings aside.

During  the forty months of treatment, my son's father attended two outpatient visits. I was the primary caregiver; for whatever reason, he couldn't do it. This worked for me. I often wished he was able to support me, or at least ask his family who lived locally to help me, but he just checked out emotionally. I did what I needed to do. It came naturally to me. Taking care of my son was my instinct and it brought me joy to be able to do it.  But that doesn't mean I always felt strong. One late night after more than two years into it, I spilled out some of my feelings about my day at the hospital. It was a rough day. I vented. I felt bad. I was tired. I complained. The word he used was 'bitching' and he told me to stop. I asked him to just listen. I asked him to love me, by listening. He said he was loving me. He said it was "tough love" and that was what I needed. I never tried again.
I already knew that because I was the only one, I had to be the strong one.  I couldn't even talk about it, or even feel about it. 'Strong' was all I could afford to feel.

During the last year of the big guy's treatment, I officially became a single mother. I became close friends with someone what told me he could see strength in me, and was drawn to my ability to handle my stressful situation. I was at the beginning of my legal divorce, houseless, taking care of my son as well as four others, and yet I was cheerful and optimistic for the most part. He saw a strong woman. I didn't feel strong, I felt tired.

Fast forward to nine months after my divorce and depression clobbered me. I was seeing a therapist from the women's shelter, and she suggested I see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist offered meds, and I told her I would think about it, but I really didn't want to go that route. My plan was to get back to eating right and taking my vitamin D  and exercising as well as having more spiritual directions and frequent reception of the Sacraments. 
I turned to my friend and made the confession that in truth I wasn't strong, and I wasn't able to handle the stress. I was no longer cheerful and I wasn't always optimistic. In short, I wasn't the girl he thought I was. I told him  that I was considering taking medication for my depression.  He assured me that he still saw that same girl, depressed or not, on medication or not, even if I couldn't see her.

I decided to not take any medication for the depression, and my therapist agrees that I made the right choice. I've taken more time in self-care and have been vocal about my depression, reaching out to a few close friends who know of my situation. I've been able to avoid that downward spiral that landed me in the psychiatrist's office.
 Maybe this full circle is why the cancer suddenly hit me.  Maybe now I'm ready to feel all those things that I didn't have the luxury of feeling while living them. I do believe though, that it is there as a cancer mom where I find who I truly am. 
That was me in the waiting room alone while my son was in surgery getting the catheter placed in his jugular for chemo-therapy. That was me holding his foot and maintaining eye contact with him when he stopped breathing during one of his treatments, and that was me running as fast as I could, trying to keep up with the trauma staff as they raced his bed to the emergency room. That was me counting pills every morning and night until he was old enough and rehearsed enough to do it himself, and that was me waiting again on the same surgery floor when the port-catheter was removed at the end of three and a half years.
There I was, living every moment, telling myself that 'strong' was the only acceptable feeling because there wasn't time for anything else and because everywhere I looked there was someone who had it worse.

I can see how getting "hit" with the memory of son's diagnosis as if  it were just happening is an opportunity for me. I now give myself permission to feel the hurt, the scared, the tired, and the lonely. In doing so, suddenly those feelings don't seem too overwhelming. More importantly, they don't contradict the strength that is always in me even when I don't feel it.

memory

I washed my hands and noticed the ink that remained on my left palm. I scrubbed  until only a small blur of one of the babies' names was left visible.
Two tiny boys lay in the bassinet earlier in the day, one with "A" written on the paper-like sheet above his head, and the other with a "B". The nurse told me before I went in the hospital room that they were not named. I asked the mama if she had named her sons, and she nodded and answered while looking at her husband's tear stained face, giving me the names of "Baby A" and "Baby B".  I wanted to make sure, because at sixteen weeks gestation the babies might be confused one for the other, that I provided photographs of each baby to her mother and that years from now she would see the difference in each of her sons. I took a pen from my purse and wrote A and B on my palm with their corresponding names.
I asked Mama if I could touch her babies. I asked her if I could move their tiny hands and feet and tucking a blanket under each I posed them ever so slightly, being cautious to not move them too much. I captured the image of  "Baby A" with feet side by side and "Baby B" with his feet crossed.  I check my f.stop, and my shutter speed, and I adjust light, and I set to work as if I'm in some sort of studio and not in a cold sterile hospital room. Distracted by the pain and by the crying and the empty arms of the family in the room,  I hear my shutter click,  but my mind doesn't seem to be controlling much of it.
I know I didn't take enough photographs. I know that many of what I took aren't the quality due to any client whether they are paying me or not and I'll toss those out. Of course in this case I am not getting paid, yet I feel I owe these parents more than anyone who would hire me for a photo shoot. For these parents I'm capturing not only images, but the only memories they will have of their children. That is all they have of these babies: memories.
As soon as I get to my truck I think of the all the things I didn't do, and all the photographs I didn't take. I think of what I should have done differently, and what I could have done had I given myself more time and the craft more attention. Now that my vision is hindsight, I can focus and think of what I could have done with that shoot, but I won't get another chance to gather visual memories of those twins. I'm there as a photographer, sent by Now I Lay me Down to Sleep to capture images of babies who won't go home so the parents will have portraits of them, to have visual memories of them. But my heart wants to give more- to comfort broken hearts and hold trembling hands. I want to listen to these mamas talk about what they had planned and what they are feeling. I tell every mother of the babies I see that her baby is beautiful and perfect and fearfully and wonderfully made.
When I began volunteering for NILMDTS more than eight years ago, my reason was to provide portraits for families who would not otherwise have them. Now I feel as though my camera is my pass to be with and give comfort to parents who are grieving. My heart is in it one hundred percent, but my head isn't always in full gear as a photographer and this time I leave second guessing my ability.
As I leave the hospital, I misjudge the distance between another truck and my rear bumper. Fortunately, neither bumpers showed any evidence of my carelessness, and so I take another deep breath and back out flawlessly.  But I'm still kicking myself about the what I didn't do in that hospital room. I wonder when- if ever- my head will be fully engaged in a shoot again instead of allowing my heart to lead me, and I'll stay focused on the posing and the shutter speed and the aperture....

 And I wonder when- if ever- my mind will lead me in any part of my life again.
The past three years have been me trying to adjust to life as a single parent and taking care of a house without a partner. There was not time set aside for my heart to heal; life continues and demands that each of us keep moving forward because there are doctor appointments, and bills to pay, and repairmen to call, and relationships to work on. When I have time on my hands I think of what I've done or not done these past few years .... I think of what I should have done differently, and what I could have done had I given myself more time .... and it becomes so easy for me to focus in hindsight on the mistakes I made. My wounded heart was engaged one hundred percent, but my head hasn't been in full gear. I know there is no re-wind button and second chances don't come around. If there was, and if they did, I could make a list of incidents in my relationships in which, if given another chance, I know I'd make different choices, and respond differently to the people I love. I can see so clearly now the mistakes I made, and I've learned from them, but I'm not satisfied. I can't change the memories once they are made and I can't go back and change the images of me  already captured by others based on my past behavior.


It's been a few days since the shoot, and the ink is completely washed from my palm; the names are memories. I have a few beautiful images to send to the parents and I wish I had more, but even if I had ten times as many, it wouldn't be enough. Images- memories- can't replace holding a child and watching him grow.  I believe that the parents will cherish the photographs with the memories of their babies in their hearts though. I know that the love I put into capturing the images of these babies is almost tangible when I look at them. And all I can do is hope that it is enough.

instinct

"You have not lost your instincts. Somewhere deep inside you still have them."

I felt as though someone had sucker punched me when I heard those words from the woman sitting across from me, looking straight at me, as if- knowing I could not do it on my own- she was attempting to find my instincts for me and pull them out and lay them in front of me. I could see my own helplessness reflected in the empathy on her face.

The punch in my gut came from the sudden realization that I had not been drawing on the instinct put on my heart by the Creator- the part of a woman that makes her the receiver of unconditional love.  I had suppressed that natural instinct each woman is given to respond to the care of a man who guards, protects and cherishes. Instead, out of necessity to protect my own peace and the little people placed in my care, I had learned to react. I learned to ignore, cover up, forget, and accept things such as angry and violent  outbursts, name-calling, public manipulations, (the kind that trapped me in a corner leaving me to either give in quietly or invoke a loud argument and draw embarrassing attention to my family) and other forms of gas-lighting that suppressed who I could have been. I learned to balance and defuse each situation with counter manipulations in order to get out the door and make it to Mass or to the extended family gathering without children crying.  As these reactions became my nature,  instincts were not only buried deep, but forgotten.

And then she told me the instincts were still there. And I wept. Did I weep at the realization that I had suppressed the instincts? or the hope of finding them? or the fear of not being able to ....

I question the motives of others. With my separation, came a mistrust. I thought I couldn't trust another [man] but then I did find one I could trust.
I felt safe for the first time in my adult life. And yet I second guessed myself in everything. I was more comfortable within my skin than I knew was possible, yet because I feared another loss, I clung too tightly.  After pushing him away with my insecurities, with my need to be rescued, with my obsession with his feelings, with my need for total involvement,  I figured out that the person I couldn't trust was myself. 
As much as I had been controlled and manipulated over the past twenty seven years, I hadn't realized how I much I had become the emotional architect, as I tried to make every step and every turn perfect, as I tried to convince this person that I could be everything his heart desired, and everything he needed in a woman.
As I type, I weep and I feel my insides turning up from my core...

I have had the fear that I won't get another chance at happiness (or romantic love), not only because of my age and my station in life, but because I don't know how to receive unconditional love.
I KNOW how to live my part in a healthy relationship. I know what it takes. In my mind, I can orchestrate the lines, the steps, the entire part.
But the leading man with whom I danced for more than a quarter of a century never took dance lessons; he wasn't taught the right steps. So as I attempted to follow his lead- as the woman is created to do- I had to watch every step as to not step on his toes, and as I tip-toed around the dance floor, I lost the grace and flow that was planted as a seed deep inside. Then when the new leading man stepped out onto the dance floor and took my hand in his, I stumbled around tripping, trying to anticipate the next step and be ready on the right foot. He said over and over again, "Relax, just be you." So badly I wanted to just follow his lead; "I know this dance! I do!" but my feet wouldn't listen and in one moment I stood still not moving, and the next I tried to take the lead,  and I pushed him right off the dance floor.

Then the woman sitting across from me reminded me that I am the child of two people who were deeply in love. They were not perfect and their marriage was not perfect. But because of them, I do have instinct- somewhere inside of me is the ability to respond and receive love. I didn't learn all the right dance steps from them. Lord knows they stumbled on that dance floor more than once. But he loved her, and she responded with graceful steps.
Linda, listen. It's deep inside of you. You have this dance inside of you. The music was your lullaby when you were a little girl. The score is written on your heart. Listen, and you will dance again.

dancing with scapulars

I grew up in a mixed marriage home. That is, with a marriage between a Catholic woman  and an unbaptized man. My mother was devout, and made no compromises to her faith. My father was devoted to her. He treated her like a queen  and referred to her as a saint. She served him with respect, loved him dearly, and prayed for him daily (perhaps more often than that)
My father agreed that we children would all be baptized and reared in the Church. We were catechized, received the Sacraments at their appointed times, and my father was there to witness and support us. As grandchildren arrived, he made his way back to the church for the occasions of their baptisms as well. He remained a silent supporter for fifty years before he was baptized into the Christian faith less than a year before he died.

I made a promise to myself at a very young age that I would not marry a non Catholic. I didn't want to sit in the pew 'alone' with my children, going solo as I led them on their spiritual and religious flights. I sensed a loneliness in my mother when she prayed, and though she never nagged, never begged nor pushed, and never put my father down, I knew she wanted him with her on her own spiritual journey. I couldn't know that he was with her all along; they were just on very different steps. I made far too many assumptions.
With my resolution to marry only a Catholic, I made this demand on my boyfriend at the age of 19. He satisfied me by being confirmed in the Catholic Church a few weeks before the wedding. I thought I had what my mother had been lacking all those years. I should have been more focused on what she had. I would have noticed that long before my father became a Catholic Christian, he obeyed the one command Paul placed on the men of the church regarding their wives: "love her."

During my marriage to a man who attended Mass regularly, prayed the rosary, was on his knees morning and night and volunteered for the church, I never felt the love of Jesus through him. On more than one occasion, he told me I needed to earn his respect, and if he was not able to love me or make me feel special, I was determined to have his respect.
As time went on,  I dressed more and more modestly. I covered my shoulders. My skirts got longer and I never wore jeans in public. I was careful to behave as a lady at all times. I tucked my scapular in my high neck blouse and did everything I could to 'earn' his respect as his wife. If he didn't respect me, at least the world would see me as "respectable" and see the respect I had for my husband and my marriage.

Near the end of my marriage, he saw me dance. He was surprised at what he saw; we had been married twenty-four years at the time, and he didn't know I danced. I remember being self conscience. Maybe that's why I had not danced in his company in twenty-four years.

The seeds of the love that  Christ has for me were planted long ago by a man who had no [visible] relationship with Christ, by the way he loved his bride. Those seeds lay dormant for many years as I worked at pruning myself more and more until I was cutting off fresh growth. I now know how lucky and blessed I would be if I could capture the heart of a man who could love me like my father loved my mother. I will not be won over by religiosity [again] but by self-giving love.

I'm dancing again. I'm dancing more, and more. I dance to strengthen my body and my soul. I am not afraid to bare my shoulders as I was for so many years.  The body created for me and the soul that is growing within it are a package deal. I am fearfully and wonderfully made inside and out, and I believe that I am deserving of respect because of that and that alone.

And as a reminder to myself and to all who look at me, I continue to wear the scapular.
Even when I'm dancing.

and the tide rushes in

and it flooded over me and made me want to sprawl out on the floor of my therapist's office and cry like a baby..
Healing is not what happens after you grieve. It happens while you grieve.
It continues on after you think the grieving is over, then grieving happens again... and you feel like you're starting over, with the healing, and the grieving....

And she only sleeps when it's raining.
And she screams and her voice is straining. (3am, Matchbox Twenty)

We talked about grief, we talked about loss. We sit at the table and share, and grieve, and some of us heal.
The man across from me talked about the loss of time with his wife. He talked about the loss of happiness he [thought] he had with this wife. He talked about the loss of love.
She talked about the loss of the life she had dreamed of with her husband [who walked out on her.] She talked about the loss of pride when she sees her daughter run to the arms of her ex-husband [who cheated on her... but they can't tell a five-year-old]
He talked about the loss of plans had made with his wife. He wants her back. He would take her back in a second; he waits for her. He will not move-on.
I don't grieve the loss of the marriage I had. I am glad to no longer be in that marriage. But I do grieve.

I began grieving the loss of the marriage I dreamed of as a young girl as I stood in the back of the church on my wedding day. By the third day of the honeymoon, I was grieving  the loss of the marriage I still hoped for when I left the church. Then I put the grieving aside and I moved through day to day to make a life for my children. I dug a hole in the sand, and I buried the pain in that deep dark hole, and I created a life around the joy of my babies, and the pleasures that came [and went] during those twenty-five years. Now I mourn the loss of love, and the time I wasted-- and every moment I waste making mistakes in new relationships because there are pieces of me missing, buried in the sand.

I built up a hold on the sand, protecting the pain I had buried. I needed that fortress to be a strong mother and to be a good wife.  After the separation, I added to my fortress  in the guise of sharing my story, talking about what I had done, what he had done, what was said, who was hurt, how it affected me and made me who I am. This was all part of moving forward, I thought, building up the sand, making the walls thicker.

Then the waves of healing and grief came in and washed away the fortress.  My story of what I had endured wasn't protecting me anymore. And then I hear something; I have a bad dream, or a memory. Or maybe another relationship ends and it hurts....
Another wave comes and washes away a layer of sand. It washes the sand back out to sea, and the water calms, leaving the sand looking cleaner and smoother and I think I can rebuild. And so I attempt to start over, building my castle- my new life.

As the first two years of separation went by I felt weight lift off my shoulders. I actually grew a half an inch since my divorce, and my shoulders have become physically stronger.  My friends tell me I am emotionally strong, and they tell me I am beautiful, and they give me confidence. They want to see me build the most beautiful sand castle for myself and my family. And so I begin. I start over in a new house, begin a new job and read the right books, and I work-out, I dance, I exercise and I pray, I do all the right things... and I build a new relationship. I start building my new castle on the clean, smooth sand that has been washed and healed... with that pain buried deep below the surface..... If I just keep working and bringing in new sand, and I put in all of my energy and all of my love and everything that I have learned from my experience, I can build the most beautiful castle anyone has ever seen!

Another wave comes in, but it's bigger this time-- and it takes my half-built castle with it as it retreats back to the sea. And before I can catch my breath, another wave comes in and it's stronger, MUCH stronger, and it hits that same place on the sand that had been smoothed over, but it hits harder, and it cuts into the sand like a knife, taking out with it the sand, the shells...and it rushes down in to the hole and it digs out a bit of the pain I had buried.. and I feel the cold, salty, cutting water go deep, and I wish it would stop while at the same time I scream, "please, just get it all! Clean it all out this time!" but it doesn't, and it washes back out to sea.

I am taking a short break from building right now. I am leaving the sand bare, open to the waves that come, washing away the pain, digging deep into the sand built up over more than twenty-eight years. But as I take a closer look at what those terrible, beautiful waves are doing, I see that with each surge, they not only take with them what I built and what I buried, but they leave new shells, and little bits of treasure on the shore- all the stuffs that, if I give it enough time, I can mix with the sand making it a stronger and more beautiful material for building than I have had before.

perspective

hello. my name is Linda. I am a survivor of an abusive marriage.
this is my story of healing.

I thought I was through the tough part. I thought I was near the end of the process. I now know that my healing is just beginning.
I am writing to share, to purge, to be able to look at myself with new eyes and to maybe help another person.

In a span of five years, I endured the loss of my seventh and eighth babies to miscarriage, my son was diagnosed with leukemia and is now a veteran to 40 months of chemo-therapy, my husband was arrested for domestic assault, we sold our house- the one I designed and which I birthed four babies- leaving my children and me houseless but for the kindness of friends who allowed us to live in their homes over a four month period, we bought a broken-down 'fixer-upper', my daughter was diagnosed with moderate to severe OCD and placed in treatment, I was divorced, I totaled two Suburbans within six weeks of each other breaking a rib in two, was bitten by a venomous snake, and within a three month period various children had one broken bone, and twenty four stitches.

But this is not the story of where I have been or what I've been through.
This is the story of where I am going, how I get there, and who I become.