The Very last Post for (Ex) Mrs. Living the New Dream

One day you will be an old woman. Inside her you will be hidden, the one who looks at you now in the mirror scrutinizing daily the curves of flesh you think are not smooth enough, or straight enough to be loved. Your eyes may look out onto a plane of the world that has not been changed by time and yet it will be something entirely foreign. Because on that plane, that same revolving earth and water and air, the future won't be a horizon to reach for. There won't be that powerful deception of days to come to make a change or set straight a path gone awry. This old woman, who you will be, the world will see, and won't look on you in the way they do now, either. You as you know yourself to be will be as foreign to the world as the lands you had hoped to roam. Maybe her bones will ache or disease will be hers to own like a trait. Will her fingers, that are your fingers fail to grasp at things, a pen, her mind, a word? She will be glad that the storms of her life have passed, like your mother has said of her own aging. Or if she is still like you are now, will hope for something to burn again in her to make her press onward, upward to relieve the desire. But then again her energies could be spent by noon, on a good day. She will rest and never find fill of it. Could it be that she will choose to look back in her minds eye and having told her story so often and precisely by text decide that she has had her fill after all? Or will the ache of what was not done or could not be fixed spread, acrid in her belly? Will the lungs that feel flattened by heart-break and robust when laughing today, be weak vessels, paper-thin walls, waxing and waning severely just to summon a response to a simple question like, "do you feel alright, honey?" Inside then, will the feverish child in you who demands to know why, stand up and try with all it's might to straighten the bowed back or smooth the folding skin by sheer will alone? She will carry inside of her a world unseen, like always. She will recognize that her life has been much of this. She, having ingested the insides of many books, hoped to have the insides cling to the linings of her insides like nourishment, will know that the language heard in the silence of the mind is rich with the power to keep you in that unseen world. She will be thankful then in that day, tired as she is, that you took the time to carry on the never-ending work of building the mind. Because this old woman, who you will become, and are every day becoming, even though you cannot imagine you will ever reach her, will be there ready and waiting. She won't forget you like you so often forget her. She will remember you as you are now so make sure when she thinks of you she is thankful for what you have built up in the storehouses of the soul, of the heart, regardless of the needless pain you sent her to endure while you had strength. Never mind that she will think, because she will know that youth is always that way; a bright light but a flickering one, and it makes it hard to see with any real clarity the truth of how things will be. Instead, she will, like you always do, look to what has come to pass with the same gentleness you cared for your babies. I only wish I could meet her now, this old woman. I wish we could meet in a small cafe and talk together like old friends who have much to catch up on. The time will come when your steps today will finally but quickly catch up with her slower paced ones. One day you will be an old woman, but today you are just a young woman typing words on your laptop while your daughter watches cartoons, before you pick up your son from school, and run through the frenzy of every day activities that make up this life you so messily lead. 

Revelations

I've written before about that soul stirring experience of feeling connected to your true calling. I usually refer to it as the fire in my belly. That delicious energy that courses through you and makes you feel you can do anything, just anything if you could harness it for long enough. Unfortunately for me I tend to let it slip away and instead I'm awash in the pervasive mistruth that it can be done later and it won't fade. 

I had this moment of clarity today. Some refer to it as the ah-ha moment, connecting to source and what have you. I felt it like a lucidity so bright and crystallized I was in awe of it. I have been plagued with this wishy-washy non committal attitude towards almost everything in my life. I saw it in my writing-- this constant battle of what I want verses what I have, and a struggle of spirit to determine if I should continue along certain paths I discovered were laden with landmines aiming to destroy my goals. 

But it seemed so simple today. When I finally decided to stop being afraid of making decisions! Just like that the agonizing doubt that felt heavy in my chest vanished like vapors into the sky.  Isn't it true that sometimes the easiest truths to recognize are the hardest to digest? I don't want to be a girl so paralyzed with fear of what could've been. Or what will be. Maybe its generational or societal. How many of us question and doubt our steps maybe our whole lives through? Who's to say that whats be found on the other side of uncertainty isn't the stuff of magic? Here's what I'm suggesting today, whatever is stopping you or calling you, answer it with as much of that fire in your belly you can harness. Maybe it's a career change, a move, a muddled love affair or just a choice to be yourself for once.  When you commit to finally doing what your heart has been urging you to do all along everything falls away that was holding you back and when it's finally given a chance to grow wings trust me, you'll soar. 

Stuck In a Moment

Here I am again. Shame-faced and sheepish, trying to reconnect with an abandonned love. It's not that I forgot about you, because how can anyone forget what makes their heart beat faster and slower at the same time? It's just that you see, things get in the way. Things like responsibilities...friends...family... Things like, anything that will keep me from having to face you again. I knew I'd get back to you somehow. It just took me a while. Two years to be exact. Now how can that be? How many moments have there been in those hundreds of days that I didn't once stop to visit with you?

 I was in the skies sometimes in those last two years. Even then I didn't give you just a moment of my time. Travelling and landing in places I had told you I would see one day. My belly filled with meals of feelings of belonging and knowing. I met my family who's brown eyes reflected my own dreams, in Curitiba, Brazil.The barbed wires were hardened like the hearts of those on those cold streets. They kept warm with the flea lined coats of stray dogs, and I envied them, for being so close to the people I had never known I missed.  Over rickety bridges with my train pass in hand-- and crossing borders I carried thoughts of you,  by the red dirt paths that blurred as I rode past them in Foz de Iguacu. The mist of hundreds of water falls lifted me and I was floating. Beside me stood an aunt, a friend, a soul mate I had to wait to meet until I was ready. Together we laughed like calamity and drank cane juice on the side of the road. We shared our longings for love and I never even mentioned you.

Vibrant and alive I danced on the streets at night to the strum of  guitars playing to my heart beat in Barcelona. Struggling to breathe I searched for signals to connect with a home that felt worlds away. I smelled lavender in the air and it was like a sign, and it lead us to our hostel and I was home in my own skin. There must of been a moment that I stopped and told you all of these things? I must have known I would never remember to tell you everything, like how Madrid was hot and the sun shone down on me as I stepped out of the metro into the new side of me. Or how hibiscus drinks made my eyes swim and my heart swell. 

I drank in sunshine and ruby red wine on the grassy hill of the Sacre de Couer. I stood above the long road that freed my spirit, Champs de Elysees, high on an Arch of Triomphe, triumphant. And yet you would not know any of this or any of the soul stirring adventures that have come and then sadly passed. How could I have stayed away so long?

Here I am again. And here you are again: an empty canvas to challenge me, thrill me and at times mock me with my fears of failure. How thankful I am to have a love that will always allow me to return.

A Cautionary Tale...

Lately, or always, I have been questioning some or most of things I face in my life.

It occurred to me on two separate occasions recently that no matter how hard I try to pursue a "normal" life as a twenty-something girl, the more that notion is ram shackled when I am rubbing elbows with said Norms.

I didn't see it before, just how hard I was pushing, wanting to prove to others that I wasn't behind and that I wouldn't be playing catch up for the rest of my life because of becoming a teen parent. My convictions and strive I think were generally fueled by this must-prove-them-wrong mentality. I kept going to school to finish and obtain at least one degree, my Associates. Just in time for my peers around me to be graduating with their Bachelors degrees and moving on to working 9 to 5 jobs and living with best friends turned roommates. I didn't buckle then. I fell in love and pursued building a family, a quick engagement and one elopement later, I was married with baby number two on the way. Congratulations people will say, you're so blessed others will say as they smile, all the while thinking, better you than me my dear!

Its a harsh reality, that, in becoming a parent so young I have a lot of setbacks in my life. I have a lot of dreams that I cannot commit to right now because my own youth is being shared with making lunches and potty trainings. Sometimes it feels like I'm window shopping for a life that would've been different. Does it hurt to admit this? Of course. Would I be lying if I said things were going as planned when I got pregnant at 19 and all was fine and dandy and I was just keeping on my cheery little way? Absolutely. What is getting me stuck though, like a quadruple knot you can't work out no matter how hard you tug and negotiate the string, is this pestering idea that I will someday "catch up" with life and be on a level plane with those that had their youth all to themselves, the hours and months they were allowed to explore, or be lazy, to drink or study all night, to travel for weeks at a time and to simply try out different lives until they get it right before the huge responsbility of parenthood is a part of it.

I was registering for classes at Lesley University for the upcoming spring semester when so many interesting classes caught my eye. I jotted them down excitedly planning my week nights and study hours I would need to complete them. I looked at my expected requirements for my degree plan and...I didn't need to take any of them. My classes that had transferred from BHCC filled in all the little spaces with numbers proving I wouldn't be expected to sit through those classes I was eager to be in. Now I know it sounds silly to not immediately be grateful to be a few thousand dollars richer for not having to take those classes but something in me registered in that moment, that no matter how hard I try or how well I do, I will never have that four year experience with the school I so earnestly sought out when I was still in high school. It's just one more thing on the list.

So before this gets too depressing let me interject something enlightened and gracious. My son is the light of my life. He is brilliant, he is funny and at five years old is the most popular kid in his school, and I'm not exaggerating. I found this out when we arrived to school slightly later than usual and he literally got a round-of-applause as he entered the classroom. He's such an old soul and so astoundingly kind that the only time I can remember him lashing out in a violent way was when he pushed a chair out of place, about a quarter of an inch.After which he promptly fixed it and stomped off to his room, upset I'm sure about something along the lines of not getting a third cookie. His little heart holds so much love for the people around him and his nightly prayers consist of asking God to never let any animals die and to help his classmates have happy lives. What he understands about life sometime is frightening, the matter of fact way he explains his living situation, one of the harder things about having two parents that aren't together would take the maturity of a well adjusted adult to grasp. He always forgives. His passion for basketball and learning is never deterred by anything. When I'm feeling down, I tell him he is amazing and good and loved and intelligent and what a wonderful life he will have when he is grown. Last night he told me he will grow up to be a scientist and basketball player. He said he will travel the world and he will learn all the math problems that ever existed, "Like 4+4!" he said happily as he grinned with his newly lost tooth adding to the precociousness of it all. He is worth every battle I face with my thoughts. And he is only one of my children! I would need an entire book to write all of the amazing things those two individuals bring to my life.

The other thing that happened that made me see- and it was like when your windshield is splattered suddenly with puddled water being pushed through by another car and your wiper clears it away, but just before you can see again, that moment of complete obscurity and instant scariness of what could happen in those seconds that you were blinded, was when when I sat with our family at a restaurant, my favorite, Border's cafe in Harvard Square. I sat down, excited to get started on those deliciously hot and perfectly salted chips, and looked around. I know I was in an area with mostly students. I know that most students will not have families to tend to at dinner. But the sudden apparentness of it all, the sheer contrast of my life next to theirs, literally a table away, they sat happily chatting, the ease of conversation when you are not distracted by crying two year olds and picky eating five year olds. I felt uncomfortable in my skin, embarrassed almost, as I had to peel away my two year old from interuppting two young guys trying to enjoy their fajitas in peace. I felt on display, like a Cautionary Tale. The perils of irresponsible adolescent choices and their consequences. I'm sure my husband felt it too. We joked about it and half heartedly said we just weren't cut out to be carefree young adults. Both of us I guess used our freedoms a bit too freely when we were just teenagers, and now look at life through different lenses, those that at times are tainted with harsh realizations of our mistakes but then again, rose colored with the blessing of being able to love our little family in the midst of hecticness that comes with piecing together your life and what's to come.

In those moments of clarity, when I have to face the could've beens and almost like a person who is insulted to their face by something they are already insecure about, I get this indignant fiery push to just go harder, earn more, get more, be more. And then when it fizzles I have to really face something, I have to admit to myself and others that it's not just hard sometimes it is just..different. I am different. My life is different than I always expected it would be. That's give or take 16 years of rememberable years of expectations. I am now only in my sixth year of living an altered life path. I don't know how long it will take to catch up with new dreams, new expectations and the letting go of the anticipated. I do know that so far, it has helped me to steam roll the limits of what I thought I could do. I can be grateful for that. I guess I am learning that being happy won't be about everything being perfect in all areas before I can be content.

I guess I am figuring out that there will always be something lacking, something pulling at my heart saying not yet, you're not there quite yet.

Looking On the Bright Side

In lieu of having my own grand awakening and discovering a way to simplify life, I have succumbed to using daily reflections ( and I do mean books titled Daily Reflections) and motivational quotes to guide me and keep me focused. I am missing a very important outlet in my life and even though I don't know how I will ever balance it into my lifestyle I do know that there's something lurking beneath my conscious level that has started to poke its ugly head through to my routine.

I started noticing that my wishful thinking has taken on a life of its own. I'm not just dreaming of travel anymore, I'm constantly seeking out cheap flights while I'm at work and creating lists of the places I need to step foot on before the age of 30 while I cut up the kids' chicken nuggets for dinner. I get emails sent directly to my phone from travel websites luring me with their seductive offers of far away lands for discount prices. With shaking hands I open the images to let my already corrupt brain take in more fuel for my hazardous thinking. I mentally calculate dates for travel and sometimes use the calender device on the site to let my fantasies become closer to reality by seeing a plausible date and time when I could make my journey to the enticing locales.

I am not being reasonable and I know this. I am doomed to live an unfulfilled life if I don't get the hang of being a full time parent and free spirit at the same time. My kids unfortunately would be doomed to never knowing a consistent parent which could very likely wreak all kinds of havoc on their own development and future relationships which frankly I just can't have hanging over my head.

I get that life is a struggle. I get that these things make you stronger, those that don't kill you, as it is. And that at the end of every storm comes a rainbow; so on and so forth. Notice the heavy influence of common wisdom often found on quote websites? For whatever reason, be it mood swings, PMS or being "in a rut" I can not in a sane sort of self controlled manner endorse these sayings and not only do I not agree with them, I would like to punch them if they were physical beings. I would enjoy seeing a cardboard cut out of these cheery expressions so that I could irrationally soothe my annoyance by demolishing them with my bare hands.

I don't want to be told all the things I already know. I want some sort of magical windfall of grace and acceptance for my role as a parent and wife. I want to want all the things I already have and not keep longing for this other life that coexists like a ghost limb making me feel off-kilter. Don't get me wrong, or do- I don't care, the fact that I love my family is not diminished by the fact that I need time to discover somethings about the myself and the world at the same time. I want to do both and because I was blessed with a child so early in my life the two tend to overlap. There are many things that I could say about how wonderful parenthood is but that isn't what I blog about. I want to write about all of the other stuff that gets pushed into the close with the rest of the mess in the chaotic life of being a mother. I'm speaking to the uneasy feeling of whether you are truly happy and if you will ever be okay with in the future being referred to as so-and-so's mother. It scares me into tears some days. It threatens to break me in half when I play the mental tennis of dreaming verses facing reality. I want to say that I have learned to look on the bright side of things but its not true, not yet anyway. From where I stand the argument that starts with "well, at least" doesn't sound so appealing to me. It reminds of a place, maybe like at the bottom of a pile of clearance merchandise at the Dollar Store. Not exactly the metaphor I'd like to gauge my life on.

Albeit, not my most lighthearted sentiment- here's to the search, here's to the struggle, and here's for those of us that are stronger for living through the struggle, and looking for that rainbow even if it's still raining and learning to pick our battles even if we're losing the war with ourselves. Tomorrow's a new day after all...look on the bright side.

A Paradox of Minor Proportions

Before I started thinking about how I would write this new entry I was fixated on finding the perfect title for it. This came to mind because no matter how perplexed I may be at the time of writing, in the great scheme of things it really is of minor proportions. I am now facing a new dilemma of sorts. faced with the prospect of actually catapulting my life in the direction of my dreams and in fact, almost all of my dreams, I have a newfound sense of guilt, and doubt.

I have been at the starting point up until now. All previous experiences; heart aches, losses, failures, pursuits, have been tied up in the place of my childhood. I'm moving on to a new plane in my life and I can feel it, in my bones, in my opinions, or lack of them I should say, that I am perpetually growing up. In becoming a parent, and in not having things pan out the way I imagined they would I was given an opportunity to reset my way of thinking. Previously so sure of everything, being thrown into a world where I was not the first priority while still trying to find my way made me see how little I understood anything at all. And now, six years into that journey I am finding out that every year I know a little less.

I have been chasing these dreams of travel, of study, of creating a life that is nothing short of extraordinary every moment of every day for as long as I can remember. I know trauma plays a huge role in that fierce desire to live and thrive where no one could imagine it possible. I think it's a trait found in most resilient souls. The deep need to avenge a bitter past with a bright, impossible future. But now I see that it lay just ahead of me, no longer a distant blurry vision of intangible things. I am counting down less than thirty days time until I return to my home country of Brazil. I am returning to school in the two months that follow that adventure to pursue the line of study I feel I was lead to complete.

And I have the strangest sense of guilt. I never imagined, being as close as I am that of the feelings that come to play when you are reaching your dreams, head soaring among the clouds, that such poisonous guilt and corrosive doubt would be along for the ride. Sometimes in the quiet of the night it strikes me in the deep cavity of my heart walls, a pounding pain that spreads and makes me lose my breath. Questions of what I am capable of. Wondering if all that lay ahead of me are years that keep changing my perspective and not for the better. Fear that I will lose the eternal optimism and instead have it be replaced by cold, hard realism. In Paulo Coelho's book The Alchemist,that genuinely affected my life in the utmost positive way, one character in particular always haunted me. It was a man who had Mecca in his line of vision but only in his mind's eye. He was busy doing life instead of living his dreams. He was every day adding to the clutter of his life with more and more work. He knew he would never see his Mecca. But it became enough for him to dream of it. To have it untainted unperturbed by what reality could to it; figuring, bad weather, family becoming ill while he was away, or worse, the loss of his security in his work and home life, he would simply never go. I felt kindred to this character. I felt like most people were this character in life. And I felt a strong need to prove to myself that I could in fact be a follower of dreams and push past the disparity of doubt that can really encumber you from doing it.

But like I said, every year I know less and less. Once brazen and sure, now I'm anxious and afraid. What if I am making the wrong decision here? Sure its only a few weeks away from my children, but what if in the wake of my absences their lives are changed as well? What if I invest in this education only to have it collapse around me some perilous decade to come? All the questions I busied myself not to have to answer suddenly came flooding in with all the joy that had first taken up my whole heart. Can I say with any certainty that I will push ahead and continue to be a dream chaser? Well, if I could be certain about that, I would need to be much, much younger. So maybe as a solution I will hold onto my youthful hope. I will press ahead even though the years ahead of me threaten to rob me of the very things I hold dear. I will go on blindly yet with eyes wide open and pray that God lead me by green pastures and beautiful things both in pain and in progress, so that I might let my soul be buoyant within me for always and God Willing, bring some joy or hope to the lives of others around me by doing so. Blaze the perpetual path if you would.

To Become A Mother

To Become A Mother
When it is least expected
Least acceptable
Least convenient
Least conceivable
Least reasonable
Least affordable
Least responsible
Least of all and least of all
Least wanted or ready to become a Mother

Is like stepping through a portal that leads you away from
Who you used to be
Who you would've been
Who you would've liked to become
Who you thought you were
Who you never thought you would be

And it takes you to
Where you ought to be
Where you are needed
Where you must provide the way
Where you least expect it
Where you can never return from
Were you are changed forever
Where love has a face and laughter
Where you can watch it sleep and grow
Where you learn about life
Where you begin a legacy
Where you find your way
Where you start to live

An excerpt, of an excerpt.

...A million sharp points splinter in my chest. I struggle to catch my breath. I watch the world go by but not through regular sight. I feel it in the pit of my stomach; a place that though is in the center of me feels like a long lost memory I once had in a place I only visited once and have never returned to. I am at once drowning in a sorrow that is too strong to do anything but submit to it. There are no body parts you can flail to over come it. They can only show resignation with their tears or not at all. There are people who live like this aren't there? They live in silent battles so deep rooted, too deep down in that cavernous pit of their bellies to push up to the top of their tongues. Colliding with teeth and lips is an impossible feat for these sad small words. Instead they live in the dark, and mold to it. Becoming the lining of where it resides. Consuming it's owner. Sadness is the strangest companion in life. No one on the outside can see it except for when it's imprints mark the space outside of our eyes and around our mouths. Our bodies doing the work our words cannot. Blanketed beneath the weight of sadness, it does not warm you but it does not let you slip from it's cover either.





I was asked by a substitute teacher in the 6Th grade why I was reading such a sad book in class one day. It wasn't unusual and it still isn't to catch me reading whenever there's a quiet moment, somtimes even at a long red light. Anyway, at this particular time, I was reading Izzy Willy Nilly a fictional story about a 16 year old girl who loses her leg as a result of a car accident. At first and for a long time I felt embarrassed at his remark. As I got older and the more books I read I realized finally that the reason I like such sad books is because they are some of the most poetic, inspiring, time-stopping stories I have read. I decided I want to write like that. I want to know how to say things that people will read and have that feeling of recognition in them that cannot be explained nor denied. I feel it in my bones that I could do this. I am waiting for my story to come. In the mean time I write short stories. I am still looking for a place to share them but I think it's a blessing that I cannot yet. I still need practice. Thank God for blogger! Here at least I can feel that release that comes with seeing words as they manifest on the screen by the work of my own hand (or finger tips, whichever.) That's all I have for now...I'll keep you posted.

Working Mama!

I have found myself an amazingly perfect job. I found a place where I feel passionate about how I will spend my hours there every day. I can only describe it as having found my niche. (spellcheck?) I feel fully present here in my office, and when I'm venturing out on home visits. I am feeling so blessed lately to have a job AT ALL and even more so one that I absolutely adore.

I must admit that my first week, when I was feeling so lost and confused by all of the paperwork thrown at me, not to mention the 2 case loads, I was wondering why I had ever wanted to work again in the first place. I contemplated my decision up until the night before I started working. I was fearful of leaving my daughter in daycare, I was feeling guilty of not being able to spend that time I had felt Leila needed one-on-one with me now that Christian had started school. So I prayed. I prayed that if it wasn't meant to be then God please intervene and make it impossible for me to do so..

Instead I found affordable day care where I know Leila feels at home within just 24 hours of actually looking at sites, and my friends and family have come together to make the responsibility of picking up Christian from school a smoothly orchestrated transition . All of the worries, and doubts I had were quickly swept away.

I have always worked in child care and it's nice to be on the other side of the services provided and dealing with the grown ups this time around. Although, I admit going into the preschool classrooms and getting to see the children for whom we invest so much time and effort for is one of the better perks of the job. I am amazed at how well suited I feel for this position as a Family Advocate. I am not however amazed at how great God is. I know this job is a blessing.
The moment I stepped foot inside stay-at-home-mom's home and recognized in her eyes the elation to simply have another adult in close proximity to talk with, sit with and entertain --I knew for sure my time at home, my experiences and frustrations at feeling as though when I not working or going to school that my potential was if not being wasted then at the very least dwindling away into a far corner of my mind where I stuff "some day" plans were all used in his plan to show how marvelous and complete, and sovereign God is.

My new, incredibly witty, sassy, supervisor told me the other day that one of the reasons I was hired was because in my interview I told her I felt God had lead me to this opportunity.

In the world we live in, where the mere mention of any sort of religious, faith affirming or even just too damn optimistic outlook can get you slapped with a law suit of some kind and barked at as being politically incorrect, I realized I was taking a risk even mentioning being a person of faith. Instead, it landed me a job. A really good one that I am proud to do.I do not endorse using those words in all work places but it was just something that to me felt like the right thing to say, especially when this line of work calls for you to have a little faith if not in God then at the very least in people.
I feel that intense energy, that pure drive when I know I'm making a difference in someone's tomorrow. I sleep so soundly at night that not even my active dream world can keep up.I am altogether happy, and it is altogether in thanks to the many people in my life who have supported, encouraged and recommended me for the very job I have today. And so in conclusion, God is good. And more than that, God has been good to me. I hope I can continue to lean on my faith and my friends as I make my way into the tangled web of human services and social work. Thanks for stopping by!

In Hindsight..

There are a lot of experiences in life that you can not feel the full extent of until some time has passed since the experience itself. There is so much to be said for people who can learn their lessons quickly, or better yet the people that just "know better" ahead of time. I'm not one of them. I have always learned my lessons the hard way. I don't intentionally do so but my nature drives me to it. I have often felt I am a strong person, still, I don't feel the need to test my strengths with heavy-weighted issues.



I am learning that often times, I will not learn my lesson until much time has passed and sometimes not even the first time something goes wrong. When a certain traumatic event, or overwhelming period in my life has come to a close I can finally look at it with fresh eyes and see so many of the things I had missed there before. Sort of like watching a psychological thriller more than once to get the full effect, or anything you might have missed the first time around.



Haven't we all been there before? Hasn't everybody gone through something, maybe in a relationship in which only hindsight gave us the true light of what was really going on before our eyes that was for some reason not clear to us at the time? When I think about it in these terms, hindsight can be very..annoying. I wish I could not see now, the things I had never seen then. It stirs up emotions laid to rest, like fallen leaves by the wind.



I think we should have hindsight to thank for our growth, and for our continual acceptance of others. We can so easily call somebody a 'fool' for the decisions they make, the way they speak or act and really, we are not so much more inclined to wisdom than anybody else just because we think we are. I think if we were to realize how often we played the fool ourselves, we would be much slower to slap such a condemning label on to anyone. I remember, not one of my proudest moments growing up, as a seven or eight year old kid having the type of serious discussion only children can. My neighbor and I were playing in our communal stairway, a luxury only kids who live in a building can understand the importance it plays in your socializing time. As usual we were complaining about our parents and somehow we started talking about dads. My friend didn't live with her father and ironically (only in hindsight that is) both her and her sister had different fathers. For some reason-- maybe my two languages were to blame or maybe it was only pure innocent arrogance I can blame it on, I started telling her that if her parent's were not married then he wasn't actually her father. I can see now that I was just a child, confused by the different types of families that existed but back then I had also misconstrued the idea of the nuclear family as being the only kind there was.

Flash forward fifteen or so years: I have two children. Both have different fathers. Coincidence? I highly doubt it. I believe in my higher power. I believe that we learn the lessons we failed to learn the first time through our own sometimes heart aching experiences, the second time around. To sum it all up: never be quick to call someone else the fool, to label them something so permanent in this elastic, ever changing life. Everybody is not done yet. Whether homeless, pregnant and single, divorced, in recovery, on welfare or even just struggling with weight. Not one element of struggle in life is subject to only one "kind" of people. Never be naive enough to believe that one day, your hindsight won't show you something condemning you once thought of someone else in the not so pleasant manner of having you go through it personally. In essence, be kind to yourself in others so hindsight won't feel like such a blind spot.

Majorly Undecided

I was reading my blog over, happy to have a real live blog in the first place when I skimmed over the side panel and read under my picture, the one of my son and I at my Commencement from BHCC and directly below it, there is a very meager, skinny, slim, small amount of words describing Yours Truly. This bothered me for the past few days. It made me think of the movie The Runaway Bride. It may cost me to admit I'm a Julia Roberts fan, as I have recently learned some people just can't stand her as an actress, but I love this movie and I think she did a phenomenal job in it. Really, I did.

What I was thinking about was when the ever handsome Richard Gere comes to town and after a week or so of getting her to warm up to him they eventually fall in love. He makes it clear to the heroine of the movie that the reason she cannot commit to someone is because she does not clearly know who she is.

I am not single. I have never run away from an alter. I've never even walked up an alter, I eloped. I think this could still apply to me though. It was starting to really get to me that although I can unlike Miss Robert's character name the way I like my eggs (sometimes in a hefty omelet other times scrambled to perfection) I don't really know what makes me tick. I know that I like to read, and write. I live to care for my children and dream every day of travel.

More than these things I think there are some fundamental basics I am not as sure on. I went out with a friend who I have not seen in a couple of years and when we went to order food at the local burrito place, she knew I would probably want something steak filled and overloaded with all the delicious things you can have rolled into a tasty portable wrap. Why was I looking at the menu then, deciding what I wanted while she rambled away my "usual" order, including extra salt on the side? It's like I have been a total outsider on the experience of knowing myself. I have this weird feeling sometimes like I am not really in the present.

Ever since I was a very little girl I kept expecting to wake up and be in "real life" We would be driving down the street in our old Toyota and I would ask from the backseat, "Mom, am I going to wake up now?" I think my parents thought I was a bit strange compared to my mostly silent brother, but I didn't know why I always felt like I was in some perpetual dress rehearsal for life.

When I was in high school I was for the most part on the verge of failing out. I was not stupid, I was simply unmotivated and frankly, couldn't see what the big deal was. My junior year of high school I was grounded for the first time, ever. In order for me to leave the house I signed up to take the PSATS. I wasn't totally up on what all the fuss was about that test either. All around me there were flashcards and panic stricken kids flying around every where from the cafeteria to the nurses office looking for some secret blue print for how to pass the imposing exam. And so on the morning of the PSATS instead of using my parent's twenty dollars to take the "stupid" test, I used it to buy my friend and myself some breakfast. Looking back now I see that I was on a pretty bad path of self destruction, especially considering I allowed to do whatever I pleased. And more importantly I look back and think, who was that girl?? Wasn't I entirely present through all those half baked decisions I made? I totally backed them up with convincing arguments such as, if you're smart you'll always find a way to make life work out the way you want it. I can't believe I was ever so brazen at just seventeen. Was it the arrogance of youth? Or something else? Maybe I had carried that childhood notion that the friendships I made and the experiences I had were not really happening via live time into my adolescence.

The next year when my world of care free living turned up side down and I became pregnant, again it was like it was happening to somebody else. Once I accepted what was happening and started to feel excited about baby showers and future birthday parties, the time flew. And the next thing I knew I was the mother of a one year old boy. I watched the videos of my baby showers, with my swollen belly and even more swollen face, and I didn't see me. I mean, not just because I was short of hideous my first time around preggers, but because everything I saw myself do seemed orchestrated, and feigned and like it was coming from someone else. Are my hormone levels dropping here or something? Am I the only one who has ever looked at her life and thought, that couldn't be me, could it?

Every year when I was in elementary school, at the beginning of the school year I would look back on the previous year and determine where I had matured. Maybe this year I won't switch friendships so quickly. Next year I would look back and decide that the following year would be one of solitude and self searching. I was a very intense twelve year old. But when I look back on my pictures, read the little scraps of notes I find in my keepsake box I find that I was pretty consistently the same girl: a bit of a wise ass, who loved to be surrounded by people.
I can't put into words to feel like you are missing yourself at the very moment but it makes me think of a silly poster, one of those inspirational ones they put up in schools to make kids think about life that said: dear me, I went out looking for myself, if I should return before I am here, ask me to wait. I thought this was ludicrous at the time. I read it and reread it but couldn't make sense of it. Now I get it.

Maybe I will wake up in three years and read this and think, who was that? Maybe that's something I can come to anticipate in my personality. Sort of like I'm realizing I may never be Suzy Homemaker considering I can only keep my room let alone house neat for no more than three days a month. Maybe this is an archival growing up, learning to wait for myself when I think I am already there but not really. I am the girl who will be slighted, or offended but not realize it and not think of what to say back to that person for another two months. I am the girl who still has the thank you notes I wrote out five years ago for my son's very first baby shower.
I also hold on to every birthday card I have ever gotten. I still have dried carnations from Valentines Day in 8th grade. I cannot see the importance of dusting, over finishing the last really good chapter in a book.
So instead of This is me, it's more a process I'm finding of, Is this me?

For all Content and Purpose

I have decided to invest time and effort in my process of becoming a better writer by blogging once a week. Although my number of followers is modest at best I still feel I owe it to them and any others passing by to get down on this visible medium, if only mildly interesting, at the very least a consistent blog. You see I am coming to terms with the fact that I am a dreamer and although all of my dreams may not come true I will still actively pursue them. Even if it means making sacrifices to do so. Like living paycheck to paycheck, or raising my children for part of their lives in a country where the language spoken is not our own. I am willing to take big risks with the hopes of big rewards. Making the decision to follow my dreams is as serious and concrete as deciding to have a second child. Because more than the fear of failure is the fear of the sadness I know would follow me all of my days if I simply don't try and follow my heart. Since being a writer is up there on the list (alongside world travel and changing the world) then in the position I am I can do no more justice to that desire in me than to write weekly for this newly endeared blog of mine. Hate not small beginnings, the bible says. This is just the start.

I have one of the most self motivated, productive and uncontested most impressive friends who has lived a total of about a thousand lives by the age of 23; whom is constantly telling me in more eloquent words that her secret to success is having a plan of action. She is an expert at living the dream. She has taken risks and gone out on all sorts of flimsy limbs to soothe that inner voice in her heart. She is the first person in my life to have shared the experience of that fire that burns in the core of you when you are really passionate about doing something. She knows how to really live life. A talent I suspect she has had since she was very, very young. Always the president of this or that club, activist in the making since the age of 12, She is one of my Heroes. So of course this blog in particular is a salute to her. And her audacious and intimidating levels of achievement.



I am figuratively stepping out into an unknown plane of creativity and I can only ask for advice and guidance from any and everyone who has ever been in my shoes. Like the title says, I will be writing for Content and Purpose. In my attempts to have a blog I can proud to post I think writing (at least) once a week will help me choose the things worth sharing and leave out all the riff raff. Hopefully. The tricky thing about wanting to be a writer is that you can sort of write about anything. In the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron she encourages all of her students of her workshop to write morning pages every day. Three pages of whatever comes to you. Because she knows, that when channeling your inner artist you have to clear the static. So I will use that practice in between posts, to hopefully try and eliminate ramblings... Kind of like this one.

According to Christian author, Philip Yancey, sometimes feedback as negative as it may be is a must for you as a writer. I want to hone my craft so that it is as natural as breathing. I don't care if I am told that I am cheesy, hopeless and have too many run on sentences. I probably am and I know I do. I have never been able to cut my word use down like an economist might cut down their spending. It takes me too long. Almost as long as choosing what to eat at a restaurant; I simply cannot deal with all of the options. So,bring it on people. Bring it on. I promise to bring nothing but my most honest and sincerest experiences to the table in return.