mom

As I laid down and waited for sleep to take me to tomorrow, I heard a child in the parking lot below,

“Hey what does the car tell you?”

shuffle shuffle his little feet went –

“Hey, hello?! What does the car tell you?”

shuffle shuffle his little feet went –

“Mom!! what does the car tell you?”

He so deeply wanted his mom to answer the joke. Her silence was an exhaustion he did not understand. The tenor and the pleading sound of the word ‘mom’ made my psychic cackles go up – I felt for her. He had probably been telling this joke all day and jokes like it for days. She hadn’t tuned him out, but just wanted 20 seconds of silence.

The word mom. Mom. Mom.

It’s a monolith precursor of asks and needs and wants – a monolith of demands and expectations that never seem to pause. It’s often a child’s first word and the word that turns every unique individual woman who has a child into a martyr servant-being for at least 18 years. Even if your life’s quest is to be a Mother, the constant, intensity of the chant of needs will become exhausting.

The thing about the word ✨Mother✨ is that it takes away the woman who you were- sometimes even before you had truly become her. As soon as this title is placed upon your shoulders the world believes it has a right to criticize and speak down to you – in addition to the criticism and juvenilizing that happens to women for merely existing – as if you cannot be trusted to care for your child in your best intentioned manner. As if your choices, background, experience, education, or any other aspect should be up for judgment much less condemned by strangers; women who have chosen not to have kids, or men.

As a mother, your mere existence is questioned at every turn. You are criticized within an inch of your life, but honored one day a year with a Hallmark card and a box of chocolates. Oh darling! Being a mom is a Gift!

The word mother is not lifted up as a goddess term in our culture, but weighed down into a diminutive caretaker. Mothers are rarely praised for what they give their children, which is the best years of the first chapter of their life. Often mothers later feel obligated to give years beyond the best of their youth, thieving from the greatest of the wilding and free crone years. Mothers are expected to give everything and yet people say, “Oh but you can do it all … of course you can have a career … of course you can finish school … of course you can have time to write.” And YES that can all happen, but in order for it to be balanced there has to be support and boundaries and not everything will get a mother’s full attention. Mothers can do it all- but that doesn’t mean they can do it all perfectly.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the tears may fall.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the jokes will not be heard.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the world can become too loud.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the wine may flow.

When mothers are exhausted and just done they may need to simply rest, but the world does not embrace their need to take rest.

Next time your the mothers in your life seem to be fading, do not wait for them to ask for help- that is not something we are good at. Next time a mama is fading, step in and offer to drop off dinner, ask when you can pick up a kid for a few hours, ask if they need help grocery shopping so they can spend an hour doing nothing.

Next time you hear a child hollering for a mama’s demand driven attention just let the mama know they will be ok – they don’t have to provide the punchline to every joke. More importantly they should not be the punching bag of society’s criticism.

displaced, of sorts

I am not in the right place. I don’t mean I took a wrong turn and will be late for lunch or showed up at the wrong building for a doctor’s visit.

No, it’s the constantly nagging sensation that I’m in the wrong space. Instead of feeling anchored and stable, though all signs indicate I am, I feel like I’m floating in my life – unmoored within a forgotten bay with an eddy current being all that keeps me from moving toward elsewhere. It’s a sense of not belonging – that there’s something I just can’t attach to here because my attachment point is somewhere else that I haven’t identified.

It’s not the need to run. It’s not that I don’t want to face something. I am content in myself and my general life; rather, it’s this intangible sense that I’m simply in the wrong place. However, at this juncture in life I must keep remain in the eddy that is my daughter and I’m not going to leave her. She will be finishing high school soon and on her own journey. I don’t know where she’ll choose to go or what will happen but then I will have time to find my right place and who knows that right place may not actually be a place at all. Instead, it may be the momentum of the open road. The thing is, while I’ve been in a relative homeostasis for the last 17 years, I’ve never imagined being in a place and having all of the accouterments of permanence around me. To my heart, the world is my home and perhaps that’s why I feel as if I’m in the right wrong place. It’s not that I am presently in the wrong place specifically, but more that being in a specific place for an extended period of time does not compute with my nomadic psyche. As with all things, though, only time will tell and until that time I will continue to grow and think, interact with and experience life. Until the next chapter begins, I will continue to enjoy this interesting life and have as much fun as possible in this cosplay of a person who lives the repetitive nature of the day-to-day.

wily life

I have been in a holding pattern. A bit of the blues have had their grippy way with me and my writing has sunk from the surface. I was doing so very good at writing everyday and getting work transcribed and then I tanked. I never know when it will happen or why and often don’t realize it has happened until I look up and realize a week or three has passed. This time, I caught myself, the weight of a new day holding me in bed – the sadness and anxiety to overcome in simply sitting up. Making deals with myself to get up, go pee, put slippers on, feed the dog, boil the water, portion the coffee grounds … stepping through each step of my morning with the pressure of a drill sergeant. Sometimes I wonder if I am not one but two, simply because there’s part of me that won’t feel capable of moving and another part that is screaming orders and demanding action. I experience both and move forward as one. This is a strange and wiley life. 

Next Chapter

“You will require a new level of integrity within your life, which will transpire into better boundaries and a more stable foundation” – Pivot Year

I’ve always been both an early & late bloomer. I was thrust into being an adult from the age of 8 when my father suddenly died and I felt I had to be responsible for helping keep my mother remain as sober as possible so she would be around for me and my sister. Of course, this wasn’t explicit and it’s hard to explain to those who haven’t experienced it – it’s just a survival instinct that you embody. As the eldest, I just did more and learned to fill in the spaces because one parent vanished and I instinctively knew another parent could as well so I worked to keep things as stable as possible and to be available for my mom. That being said, mom was emotionally absent, for the most part, and we survived by cobbling together cues on how to cook food, manage school, and navigate social interactions. If I ever was overwhelmed or sad my mother would tell me to sleep on it and I’d feel better in the morning – I learned to cope through avoidance and diminishing my feelings. 

We had an aunt who loved us fiercely, but after we moved from Texas to Colorado that lifeline was gone, save letters we would send back & forth. The Colorado move happened when I was 14 and my sister was 11. That’s when we really began being on our own for most intents and purposes. That fall I convinced my mom to let me travel to NYC on my own for a week. Her semi-boyfriend encouraged it, saying, “All flowers bloom in their own time.” I took that to heart and mom seemed glad to let me go. By the time I was 16 I’d begun periodically living on my own and had backpacked solo in Europe, twice. At 19, I had completed just shy of 2 years of college and enlisted in the Navy – letting my mother, who was off bicycling with a boyfriend, know via a phone call. My sister was finishing her junior year and maybe just off at summer camp, best I can recall. 

While I launched myself into the world as early as I could, I never took the time to look within or rather to claim what was within and follow my heart – there was no time for introspection in our home and I kept chasing my tail for decades. Even though my mom was emotionally vacant and I knew from a place in my gut that she’d never know how to support me emotionally, I so badly wanted to be seen by her. In the end, I waffled and wobbled through life until I found myself sitting, still unmoored at 50, unwrapping what I get to be in this next chapter, who I am now, and all that I’ve been. My longest role has been caregiver – first to my sister & my own mother. Later, as mother to my daughter. 

The role of mother – perhaps the most important yet least valued in our culture and I don’t mean that in some trad wife way, but that mothers are not honored for their sacrifice and diligence. It’s an expectation that the mother will simply Be There for their child and I made the expectation my identity. I did not demand that her father step up because it never occurred to me that he wouldn’t, until it was too late and I found myself resenting him for not being more engaged in her life. He had her half the time, but never actively engaged in ensuring all the details of life were covered. More precisely, I got there first. I took action- I wanted to be fully present for her while giving the best I could of life experiences. He was an available dad and, in truth, that’s solid.

When we were still married, he once told me, “If you want someone who is ambitious, we should just get a divorce now.” I replied that I’d be happy if he’d just finish projects around the house. But with thirteen years of reflection, he was correct. If I am to have a partner, I need one with ambition. That being said, my ambition was funneled into my daughter, which brings me to where I sit, 17 years later, wondering What Next?

There is no book on how to be a “Good Mother” and every single experience is different. We can only do what we feel is best, and no matter what our choices, our children will likely seek therapy. I watch my own daughter move through the world and I witness the success of my efforts. I feel validated for the sacrifices I made, the lack of career tributes are fully accepted when I watch the tribute that my daughter has become for the world, because let us not pretend she won’t be a tribute. All of her joys, successes, hardships, dreams, goals, and her soul itself will be chewed on by the world. It has already begun – that is what each of us is in truth- a tribute to the world we are part of in all ways. And the world, for me, has been focused on her for the last 17 years, but it is now time to begin a return to me.  

My focus, for the first time in my life, can be completely about the second half of my life and how I will begin to fall in love with life once more – not that my life hasn’t been good – but it’s been a buffet of taking care of others who I perceived as needing me and in that being “needed,” I failed to allow myself to be the main course. I am so excited to no longer be an option within my own life, but to be the Main Course in my decisions. 

sometimes the journey is shit

“Toxic” gratefulness negates the journey we are on – some things in life are just shit and maybe you don’t need to be grateful for the shit, but for the ability to keep moving forward. Accept the moment, live in it fully, with dignity. Recognize the obstacles, even on the slowest roads there can be speed bumps, and then look past those obstacles to a future where you can be grateful for your resilience. Build a life that allows you to sit in the moment you’ve created and embrace with a joy of self-reflection that acknowledges you survived some shit.

Accept the now – there is shit in the world and there is beauty – they co-exist – do not let either consume you – move through both with centeredness. Do right by those you meet. Navigate around those that block your joy/journey. Do not fear calling bullshit on bad news shit stirrers.

Present the present …. give love now.

To Be

If you are unable to sit in the stability of simpleness – a simple life – there will be no satisfaction in more. If you are not grounded in your core, more will never be enough, different will never satisfy, because your nervous system has not learned to be still. Once simply being is a place that doesn’t make you anxious, you will be able to step into new levels of growth because you will see there is not starting over or failure, but simply rebirth and completion. Simple does not mean less, but rather simple means To Be.

american empire

During my trip to Guadeloupe, I’ve noticed an influx of American products, music, knock-off products, and radio transmissions of American sounds. I notice this whenever I have traveled out of the country, but Guadeloupe was the first country where speaking only English was a communication barrier (but patience & effort to speak French got me through) so the juxtaposition of American influence was more acute.

Even if you never travel out of the country, there must be a recognition of the influence of the American Empire. Let’s not be pedantic- though our government theoretically controls only our land masses and territories- American corporations have snaked their tendrils into every far reaching point of the globe. Though I’ve only encountered two Americans while on this trip (my seat mates from Miami to Pointe-à-Pitre, I’ve heard and seen reminders of my home culture multiple times everyday.

Even while people I’ve talked to are disturbed by the current administration, there is no lack of excitement to practice English and every time I say I’m from Texas I am asked if I know cowboys. There is a general fascination with the America that Hollywood has packaged for easy consumption.

It is an understatement to say we have our generous share of social & economic issues, and I feel I am more ‘woke’ and aware of social difficulties had by a great number of people than some Americans might be, but for folks from less industrialized places, America remains a gold star standard for a quality of life people fantasize about living. It holds aspirations of success that people believe can only be achieved in America. Our country is an intoxicating poker game.

Meanwhile, I see people here with limited employment opportunities, having to mange water consumption in ways that would destabilize us, limited air conditioning, conservation of power (always turn lights out, only plug refrigerators in during certain hours)- but they have something we are missing. They are in community. There aren’t tvs blaring in every cafe (people can’t afford the electricity), people sit outside and talk into the night. There is a hitchhiking culture unlike anything I’ve witnessed. They rest in the afternoons and children play openly without the distraction of iPads and phones. Here people are connected to each other and that is a next level aspiration they don’t realize we are lacking amidst our seeming abundance of resources – much of which is taken and derived from the far reaches of the globe where people live with abundances we’ve dismissed.

hot baths

I love hot baths maybe more than is sane-

Hopefully they never give me a brain aneurysm –

If they do, then please cremate my body and it would be amazing if ashes were spread around the world.

But I’ll be dead.

So if you want to use spreading my ashes for a world travel opportunity, go for it. And if you don’t, that’s okay too, because I’ll still be with you either way.

And let’s hope that the brain aneurism thing ever happens, but if it does that’s my ask.

food for death

Women were invited to receive aid at a U.S. run GHF (Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) food distribution area, “Tomorrow, during our morning distribution at our Saudi Quarter location, women only are welcome to come and receive a food box. Our local staff will direct women to a designated area where each will be given a box. Men should avoid the location during this time.” The welcome was intervened by Israeli soldiers who opened fire on the women. This is not the first aid station massacre, since May similar attacks have killed over 1,000 starving people and, as of today, negotiating teams have been recalled from Gaza ceasefire talks.

Palestinian women were told to go to U.S.-run aid sites in Gaza. They were killed and beaten instead, eyewitnesses say.

Meanwhile in U.S., we (the media, social and so-called news) are obsessing over the Epstein files instead of taking any action to protect vulnerable people- ANYWHERE. Those damn files are doing more harm than good- they are a DISTRACTION. Sure, open them and find out what we know – rich men have been abusing girls & boys. Epstein is dead & there’s another pimp who has picked up his work – s/he just hasn’t pissed off anyone enough yet to have their cover blown.

Meanwhile, starving women, mothers with babies, are being lured in for food, then beaten & executed in Palestine. “Distribution of death,” said a woman Raghad Abu Odeh who went to the aid station organized by the American group GHF (executive chairman Johnnie Moore, an American evangelical leader and businessman). Her father had been previously shot at another aid station.

While people are being murdered as they try to get aid and the fires around The Epstein Files are being fanned. While the fans are hot, let’s all remember that child marriage remains legal in 34 states- with no minimum age in California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, & Louisiana, and 15 in Kansas. 16 & 17 in most other states. Unchained At Last is an organization that provides

Let’s remember, concentration camps are being built on American soil and filled with people who are guilty of nothing but being born non-white. Along with immigrants, who are guilty of nothing but crossing a border to seek a better life and often taken through severely brutal means while pursuing legal channels of citizenship, now U.S. CITIZENS are being swept up at a more frequent rate.

And while all of that continues to happen and the media focuses on The Epstein Files, an executive order has been signed to restrict services for the mentally ill and homeless population under the guise of “ENDING CRIME AND DISORDER ON AMERICA’S STREETS,” effectively allowing for non-consensual institutionalization of mental illness: “Federal agencies must promote the expanded use of civil commitment for homeless individuals with serious mental illness or substance use disorders, including by seeking the reversal of judicial precedents and termination of consent decrees that obstruct institutionalization.”

And mothers are being murdered in Palestine for picking up food that is offered at aid stations.

But sure, let’s get those Epstein files opened. Maybe then, with just a Mary Poppins snap, all child predators will be locked away and we can focus on systemic change to protect all vulnerable populations, and food will be delivered without fear of a death sentence.

sixteen returns

I was contemplating all the things I contemplate when I masturbate. The places I’ve been, the things I’ve done, a couple of the people I’ve done- because they’re only a couple that really turn up in the darkness of my solitude- and amongst all of those thoughts 16-year-old me came roaring through and mad-as-hell.

Suddenly, we were back together on a train in 1991 and heading into Athens, Greece. She looked at me and said, “What the fuck happened to you? We were going to see the world, learn languages, fly planes, embed into war zones. TELL THE STORIES. Where you are today … that is not US, but I am stuck with YOU. I did not sign-up for the bullshit life your decisions have made for us, but there I am- sitting with you in a fucking office- day after day- feeling blood pressure and cortisol spike.”

“I get it. I don’t want to be there either, but Arwen is my heart and I can’t live all those dreams things until she’s launched.”

“I love her too, she’s my kid too and she wants the adventurous life you HAD, but better. SHE said it. So why did you fuck it up? Why did you stop being free and living your adventure?”

“I fell in love a man who had potential.”

“Was it really love,” it wasn’t a question, she knew the answer.

“We know now it wasn’t … it was hope, but it felt like what I thought love should feel like. I fell into the arms of what-if and potential felt safe.”

“You/me/us. We were the ones with potential. We always made our-self safe. You let us down.”

“I am fully fucking aware, but I love my kid and WE will get to launch soon too. The dreams never stopped, they just got delayed.”

It was enough to calm the 16-year-old that still sits within my heart. Her dreams will come true.