Tag Archives: health

CHD, CHD Awareness, Heart Mom, life lessons, loss, Open Heart Surgery, parenting, trauma, Uncategorized

my heart.

Two years ago today, I sat in a small windowless room at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as a pediatric cardiologist, a stranger, sat down and began drawing a picture of a heart. It was my daughter’s heart. It was imperfect. It was broken. I listened as she explained that at some point at the beginning of my pregnancy, my daughter’s heart never finished forming the way it was supposed to. She told me about the surgery needed to fix her little broken heart. She gave me statistics and survival rates and asked if any children in my family had suddenly and unexpectedly died. She probably talked for five minutes, but it felt like an hour. I sat there with my thighs stuck to the plastic seat, trying to take it all in. I tried to pay attention but only heard half of her words. Grace sat beside me the whole time. So there I sat, trying not to cry or scare her. Finally, the doctor explained the logistics of the surgery. She told me that the surgeon would have to saw through her sternum to get to her heart. Then, she said they would have to stop her heart to perform her surgery. This was my breaking point. Fat tears started running down my cheeks and filling up my mask. 

Grace, who had been playing a computer game while we talked, looked up at me and said, “Mommy, am I going to die?” At that point, I didn’t even know how to begin to answer her. I didn’t know what questions to ask, and I didn’t know how to explain this in a way that she would understand. A week before, we celebrated her 7th birthday. She was healthy then. She was whole. Her heart was fine. Now, she was weeks away from surgery and recovery that most adults don’t have to endure. A summer already altered because of a global pandemic would now be filled with medical tests, surgeons, doctors, and lots of time in bed, inside, away from friends. 

Somehow, despite ER visits that included chest x-rays, three bouts of pneumonia, and dozens of visits to the doctor, no one had ever noticed her murmuring heartbeat. Somehow, despite all of the extra ultrasounds due to my “geriatric pregnancy,” no one noticed the large hole in her heart. Somehow, her body, though struggling, had continued to survive. Three weeks after the appointment with the cardiologist, I was sitting in the hospital hallway waiting for the call to tell me that her heart was beating again. Then they called to tell me her sternum was pinned back together. Then, we began the healing process. 

I went through all of the motions of this like a numb machine. Worst-case scenarios swirled through my brain on a daily basis, even when she was “in the clear.” Eight or nine months after her surgery, I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed sobbing, seemingly out of nowhere. I tend to stay on the positive side of things and focus on all the good, but in reality, even though people constantly remind me that she is ok, I have spent the last two years fearing something else will go terribly wrong. The trauma of that day is still with me, and I am allowing myself to feel that trauma and sit with it.

Someone once said that having a child is like having your heart walk around outside your body. When you are told that heart may cease to exist, and she has become your whole world, it feels like a vice squeezing your chest and stealing your breath. Unfortunately, that feeling remains long after the threat is gone and your child is well again. I have learned from fellow heart moms that this is common. We worry about every rash, splinter, or blue lips when our child comes in from the cold. The slightest fever in our child can send us back to that small windowless hospital room where we learned how fragile life truly is. So, be patient with us and know that two or five years still may not be enough time for us to feel okay about what happened. Like grief, trauma is an unpredictable beast with its own timeline. 

“After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.”
~Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

The repaired sternum
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belonging, CHD, CHD Awareness, faith, Heart Mom, homeschool, imagination, kintsugi, life lessons, loss, Open Heart Surgery, shame, Uncategorized

Kintsugi

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery and filling the cracks with gold, silver, or platinum. This repair shows that the brokenness is part of the history of the piece instead of some reason to throw it away or hide it. It celebrates each crack by filling it with precious metal. The piece often looks more beautiful as a result of this process.

Shortly after her seventh birthday, we found out that a part of my daughter, her most precious part, was broken. To repair it, the surgeons would have to further damage her tiny body by breaking through her sternum and stopping her heart, cutting out a part of her pericardium, and using it to repair a large hole. Much like a broken piece of pottery, she would forever have a crack down the center of her chest.

Shortly after her diagnosis, a friend sent us a Kintsugi kit. We opened it and looked at it, but my daughter wasn’t ready to do anything with it. Today, as part of our homeschooling, we watched a video about the art of Kintsugi and talked about how we are like that broken pottery. We opened the kit and pulled out the two beautiful whole bowls. Using a piece of cloth, we smashed the pottery with a hammer. We took time to look at each piece and see how each one fit into the other to create a new bowl. We glued the bowls back together and sealed them with gold.

Through this process, we talked about times when we felt broken. We talked about how sometimes we feel like all those broken pieces just lying there on a cloth. We talked about things in our life that make us feel new or better. We talked about how music, art, family, our dog, cuddling, and our hammock are our gold paint.  These things help us feel whole again. I told my daughter that we could look at these broken times as part of our history and recognize that they are not weaknesses, but the things that make us stronger. She said her surgeon made her stronger with stitches. She said she’s lucky because she only has one crack and the bowls have cracks all over.

This discussion led to us eventually painting her scar gold like the cracks in the pottery. She looked at it and smiled. She loves her scar. She asked if it could always be gold and I replied, “It is even if you don’t see it.”

My daughter is seven. Deep discussions don’t happen much. Even today, we only touched on the significance of the art we did. My wish for her is to remember it. I want her to see gold beaming through her skin like sun rays bursting out of her chest every time she looks down at her scar.  When she gets hurt or fails or life just knocks her down, I hope she finds her gold paint, puts herself back together with it, and realizes she is stronger and more brilliant every time. I hope she never feels shame when things go wrong, but instead sees the lesson that comes from breaking.

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” 
~ Rumi

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Bad Ass, CHD, faith, Going Solo: Single Parenthood, Heart Mom, Open Heart Surgery, parenting, Uncategorized

the surgery.

“I wish God would let me be born again so I could be born with a whole heart and be a normal kid. I wouldn’t have to get this surgery and I could just play tomorrow.”

 

This is what my 7-year old daughter said to me the night before her open-heart surgery. It was, as my dad would’ve put it, a preachable moment. As instructed, we had just washed all of my bedding in hot water and dried it extra long to remove any germs so she could sleep in my bed that night. We then scrubbed her down with prescription pink foam soap, cleaned her nose out with a prescription gel, and swished a strong yucky mouthwash in her mouth. It felt like I was preparing her for the slaughter. 

Isabella asked me if she could sleep in my bed that night. I usually encourage her to sleep in her bed, but all I could think that night was whether it would be the last night I would have with her or not. The “what ifs” were screaming in my brain and the complications and survival rates the doctor had discussed with us were on a continuous loop. You hear about people having successful open-heart surgery all the time. When it is your seven-year-old child, however, it is hard to remain optimistic. 

That night we both laid in my bed looking at the moonlight coming in our window. Neither one of us got much sleep. The 5 am alarm came fast. We packed our car and drove to the hospital. Bella was silent on the drive in except to say how beautiful the city looked during the sunrise. When we arrived in the parking garage of the hospital, Bella asked if we could just sit in the car for a little longer. She told me that she was scared she might wake up during the surgery. She was scared that it would hurt. I held her tight knowing I may not be able to do that for a while. 

We went up to the cardiology floor of CHOP and went into the reception area. There was a huge fish tank there and Bella went running over to it. She laughed at the fish and described each one to me. After I registered and told her it was time to go in, Bella said, “I just want a little more time looking at the fish. I’m not ready.” The nurse told her it was time and she cried, “I’m not ready. I need more time.” I assured her that we would still have time before the surgery and convinced her to go back with us to the pre-op room. I wasn’t ready either. 

In the pre-op area, I was instructed to cover Bella once again in pink foam, wipe her down, and dress her in a hospital gown. My hands shook as I coated her body with the stuff and I worked hard to hold back tears. We found a movie for Bella to watch as we waited. My mom joined us here and arrived before the surgeon came in to speak to us. 45 minutes before the surgery, they gave Bella a medicine to calm her down. It quickly took effect and she began laughing and yelled out, “I think I can do this! I’ll be asleep the whole time. Hahaha!” She then quickly fell fast asleep. This was before anesthesia was ever administered. 

Isabella’s surgeon came in and introduced herself. She was kind and gentle. She talked about loving animals and hearing that Bella loved animals too. She described what she would be doing and about how long everything would take. She assured us that a nurse would check in with us every hour to give us updates. Meeting her put me at ease. She was the right one to do this. I sent up a little “thank you.” 

When it was time, the anesthesiologist came to introduce herself(another woman, hoorah!) and let us go with her as she wheeled Bella to the OR. Though Bella was already asleep, my mom and I gave her kisses through our masks and watched as they wheeled her off. My heart pounded and my chest hurt as I watched her go. 

Due to COVID, the regular surgical waiting rooms were closed. My mom and I sat on a bridge that connected two parts of the hospital and looked out on the street from the sixth floor. It connected the CICU where Bella would be after her surgery and the CCU where she would be after her time in the ICU. As promised, the nurse called every hour with updates. The first call came to tell us that the surgery had begun. The second call was the hardest. They stopped her heart and put her on the bypass machine. While I appreciate and marvel at modern medicine, nothing is reassuring about the fact that the heartbeat you’ve heard since it was in the womb, that heartbeat that sounded like a symphony, was stopped. 

I thought about that first time when I was only a couple months pregnant and my OBGYN turned the monitor on my belly; that moment I heard Isabella’s heartbeat and realized my new purpose in life was to protect it against all odds. The cardiologist told me that this defect happens in the 4th or 5th week of pregnancy. As the surgeon was repairing the defect, I tried to remember what I was doing during those early weeks of my pregnancy. Did I even know I was pregnant yet? Did I do something that caused this? My entire pregnancy and for the last 7 years of Bella’s life, they’ve told me her heart was good. How did everyone miss this? It just didn’t make sense to me. And when you’re child’s heart is stopped, these are the thoughts going through your head. There is a desperate plea for answers. 

Isabella’s heart was stopped for just over an hour. It seemed like forever. I eventually turned my headphones on and began listening to Kirk Franklin’s “My Life is in His Hands.” The lyrics start, “You don’t have to worry, and don’t you be afraid. Joy comes in the morning, troubles they don’t last always.” Admittedly, my faith has taken a beating since my dad died. It is nearly numb and nonexistent if I am being completely honest. However, when your child is having open heart surgery, that faith returns fast. It is quite possibly the only thing that held me together that afternoon. And for some reason on this day, it was old Kirk Franklin and Fred Hammond albums that got me through. 

The next call I got was to tell me she was off bypass and they were finishing up. Her heart was beating again. She was breathing on her own. I took a huge breath. It felt like the first breath I took in days. After another two hours and two phone calls from the nurse, we got a call saying Bella was in her room and asking for me. I took another huge breath. She was done. I looked at my mom who broke into tears of relief. 

As we entered Bella’s ICU room, I saw her tiny 42-pound body in the huge bed with what looked like dozens of tubes and wires coming out of her. It was like I was seeing my baby for the first time. She looked so helpless and frail. She kept trying to open her eyes but she couldn’t open them. She let out little moans and asked for me. I took her hand, crouched beside her bed, and, through tears, sang her favorite, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” We had a long way to go, but she was still with us and she was more beautiful than I ever remembered. It was at that moment that she became my hero and a true heart warrior. IMG_4874

Stay tuned for her recovery story……

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Bad Ass, faith, life lessons, Uncategorized

Mangia.

Tonight I was struggling. So much is going on in my life so fast and I was trying to process everything in a somewhat coherent way. I scrolled through my phone and called a few people, but I only got voicemails. We moved to this city four years ago and have built up an incredible village of people who support us through good and bad, but tonight I needed someone different. The stuff I am dealing with is deeper. I’m aching at my core and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I am so lost about who to call and talk to about this. Then I remembered a time before when my panic attacks led to blackouts and life seemed like more than I could handle. I remembered who got me through heart monitors and death, unplanned pregnancy and big break-ups. It was that family I had created once, the family who called me Wilky.

At one point in my life, I started each evening walking into a dark and empty restaurant. The only sounds I heard were coming from the kitchen where fresh herbs and vegetables were being prepared with extra precision and care and fresh burrata and mozzarella were carefully crafted while spanish music played in the background. It was food preparation that took hours and was truly an art form. Each bite of food in this restaurant created a memory. It was to be savoured and enjoyed like an Italian Opera. It was not mass produced or created elsewhere. No. This food, these masterpieces, can only be found in a still small dining room in the heart of Pennsylvania.

That time of setting up before guests arrive was my sanctuary. My coworkers and I would prepare fresh whipped cream, dressings from scratch, and a fresh batch of sangria filled with crisp apples and juicy oranges. Silverware would be checked and double checked to be sure it was perfectly placed on the crisp white table cloths. Marinated olives would be stirred and hot Focaccia would be pulled from the ovens and placed on the cooling racks, filling the room with the smell of sea salt and rosemary. Candles were lit and small jars would be filled with dark green Italian olive oil. Every night brought new and exciting guests and experiences, but the set up was always the same. Like the routine of a liturgical church service, it was a holy process for me.

A shift in this restaurant often meant constant moving on my feet for 7 or 10 hours, but I never noticed, even when I was nearly 8 months pregnant. Our job there was to create an atmosphere where guests could come and forget everything else in their life. Or perhaps it was to celebrate the good in their life or share the sorrow. It was not a place to get a quick bite. It was a place to come and stay awhile and drink good wine, specially crafted cocktails, and the most incredibly prepared seafood, game, and exotic vegetables. It was a place where we took the time to learn about our guests’ lives enough to become the guests at their weddings and parties. It was a place where the desserts were so delectable, guests were talking about them for days and asking us to make them again. It was a place where professional upscale guests would be caught licking the bowls of their nero pasta because dammit, it is just that good! Guests left feeling like they had just visited family in another land.

I flourished in this environment. There is joy that comes in serving others and guiding them through an experience like nothing they have had before. There is joy that comes in creating a cocktail that perfectly fits their description and helps them forget any troubles they had in just one sip. There is joy that comes in working as a team to bring this experience to several hundred people on the busiest nights of the year, sometimes in masks and costumes. There is joy that comes in memorizing a menu in Italian or Spanish or knowing how to describe the difference between 20 different dry red Italian wines. There is joy that comes from serving the food of the most talented and creative chef many of us will ever experience in our lifetime.

The real joy, however, came at the end of our shift. Most nights, we would say goodnight to the last guest, clean the dining room, and then sit at the bar and have our own glass of wine. We shared stories of the night and stories of our lives. No topic was off the table and advice was always given with love and understanding. This was the life giving part of our day. This was our confession booth, therapy couch, and late night phone call to a friend all wrapped into one. These people, this family of mine, got me. I belonged there. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I felt like I truly and completely belonged with them. We fought sometimes. We judged each other sometimes. We disagreed often. In the end though, we pumped up the music, moved the tables out of the way, and danced it out. No matter what happened between us, we were always able to end an evening with dancing and laughter: pure joy. There was nothing a little Aretha Franklin couldn’t fix.

We recently lost a family member and his name went by as I scrolled through my phone. That tightness in my chest made me long to hear his voice and talk to him about what I am going through right now. He would know exactly what to say. He always did. I can’t talk to him. I can’t sit at that bar with those people and talk to them tonight or dance out the pain that life brings, so instead I decided to listen to Nina Simone while I drank too much wine and reminisced about a group of people who I love and miss dearly.  

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Going Solo: Single Parenthood, imagination, life lessons, parenting, Uncategorized

snow day.

My morning began with my daughter dancing on top of me at 7am to Jazmine Sullivan while wearing a princess dress. I looked out the window and honestly couldn’t understand why the school district decided to cancel today. There were some flurries, but the roads were just wet. One of the downsides to working from home is that a “snow day” just means you have to spend the day trying to get your work done while your 4-year old runs around the house like a crazy person and uses you as her personal jungle gym. Every time this happens, I end up getting irritated with my daughter and the two of us end up in a screaming battle.

From about 8-11, I tried my hardest to get as much work done as possible while the television entertained my daughter. I had her help me assemble gift bags for teachers to occupy her, but by lunch time, she was getting pretty restless. We ate lunch and I continued to try to get work done. She was literally climbing the walls by 2pm and I was wondering if day drinking was kosher in this situation. By this time, the storm was dumping snow on us at a rapid rate and it was clear that this was a justified snow day and I would have to shovel at some point. I closed my laptop, dressed us both in multiple layers, and said, “let’s go play in the snow!” Bella’s eyes glowed with excitement and we headed outside with toys, salt, and a shovel.

She  immediately started running up and down the sidewalk in the snow, eating snow off our neighbor’s motorcycle, and catching snow on her tongue. I began shoveling the heavy wet snow and commiserating with my neighbor. She looked over at Bella who was laughing and chasing snowflakes with her mouth. She looked at me and said, “You know, I can’t remember the last time I caught a snowflake on my tongue.” She put down her FullSizeRender (7)shovel, looked up at the sky, and opened her mouth. A snowflake landed on her tongue and she closed her eyes, smiled, and savored it like it was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. I stopped shoveling. I looked at my beautiful daughter running down our beautiful snow covered street. All I could hear was her laughter. I looked up to the sky and opened my mouth to catch a snowflake. A big fat wet snowflake hit my tongue and another went right in my eye, temporarily blinding me. I let out a teenage giggle and stood there, in the moment, and took in the taste, sound, and chilly air.

While my mind told me to go back inside and do more work, my heart decided that there was more fun to be had in the backyard. Bella and I finished up the shoveling, salted the sidewalk, and ran through the house to our little backyard oasis. We ate more snowflakes, built a very sad looking snowman, and laughed about the possibility that there might be yellow snow on our new snow friend’s back. Our dog barked in agreement(guilty little canine). Once the snow got so heavy that we could barely see each other, we decided to go back inside.

Inside, we assembled four puzzles, danced around the living room, played with our cat, and ate pizza and oranges. At dinner, Bella looked up at me and said, “I just love you so much.” And that was it. That is when I knew for sure that I made the right decisions today. Snow days have almost always been stressful. I always choose work over Bella and end up only getting annoyed with her. Today a switch went off in me that changed that. I put us first. I decided to live in the moment and to take in the blessing that a day together can be.

At bedtime I read her a couple books and sang the three songs we sing every night. She sat up and said, “Mommy, you left your phone downstairs!” I smiled and replied, “You know what? I don’t even care.”

Happy Snow Day! May we all have many more days like this to come.

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Losing Dad, Uncategorized

grief is a jerk.

Today I was driving down a tree lined suburban street. The weather was perfect, the sun was out, and it was still morning. I pulled up to a stop sign and an older gentleman waved to me to indicate he was about to cross in front of me. I smiled and waved him on. I watched him as he slowly walked in front of my car. He was tall, handsome, and probably in his early 70’s. He was wearing white socks pulled halfway up his calf and white sneakers. His face was wrinkled from years of smiling. He was exactly what I imagined my dad would look like today. And grief, that sneaky little jerk, made my heart swell up and tighten my chest and made the tears burst from my face. The ugly crying began and I lost control. Just like every other time grief sneaks in, I was completely unprepared for his visit.

When you lose someone you love, people start talking to you about the stages of grief and even giving you books about the stages. They make you think that you just have to 

FullSizeRender_3work your way through each stage and then you will be good to go. I feel like the stages of grief are more like the stages of cancer. The moment my dad took his last breath I felt a dull ache in my chest. From there, things inside just started rotting little by little. It didn’t effect just one part of my life, it slowly crept into every inch of my being. We had more than three years to prepare for my father’s inevitable death, but we could have had twenty years or one day. It made no difference. Just like there is no preparation or warning to what happens to your body after childbirth, there is also no way to prepare to lose someone. Like cancer, grief is this little ass hole that just goes around hurting innocent people and flipping their lives upside down.

We are closing in on 6 years since we lost Paul Wilcox. I honestly don’t feel any better about it. You can still find me crying, “It’s not fair!,” when I look at slideshows of my dad. I still hear his voice and that contagious laughter. I still want to wake up and find out it was all a dream and see him walk through the door. FullSizeRender_1I still want to see him lift up my daughter and swing her around the room or even just read her a book. I still have moments of shock, denial, and bargaining. I still see sweet old men with their socks half way up their legs on a hot day and burst into tears. The stages of grief keep looping around. There is nothing final or linear about them.

Grief is hoping you never have a wedding because the thought of walking down the aisle without your dad is too much. Grief is buying figs at the store even though they are

FullSizeRendertoo expensive and you only kind of like them, but they remind you of your dad’s fig tree. Grief is watching your daughter blow out birthday candles for the fourth time and still wishing your dad was one of the people standing there singing to her. Grief is finding it hard to go to church because you can’t go there without thinking of your dad and all those Sunday mornings of him standing in the pulpit. Grief is wishing you had asked more questions or taken more videos or spent more time listening back when you had time. Grief is wishing you had said “I love you” just 10 more times.

The best explanation I have heard to explain this unfortunate part of life is that losing someone is like losing a leg. You do learn to walk and run and dance again, but you do everything differently now. You still feel pangs of pain from time to time and you still long for your missing limb and reminisce about the days when you felt whole.  

No matter how grief hits you or no matter how long it stays, I pray you let it do it’s thing. Even when it is painful, it reminds us that we once loved and loved deeply. We loved someone deep enough that even years after they are gone, we still remember that love and long for it.

 

dad fishing

“Down the middle drops one more
Grain of sand
They say that
New life makes losing life easier to understand
Words are kind
They help ease the mind
I’ll miss my old friend
And though you gotta go
We’ll keep a piece of your soul
One goes out
One comes in”

~Jack Johnson

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gardening, imagination, life lessons, Uncategorized

Wick. 

For the past few months I have been going out to my garden in the evening, digging a hole, and filling it with food scraps. I try to go out at dusk when I still have a bit of light but am less likely to be seen by my neighbors. I am pretty certain many of them already think I am a little strange(an introvert in an extroverted neighborhood), so seeing me dig holes in my yard to bury the ends of my carrots and used coffee grinds would not help my current status. A while ago I read about the benefits of burying compost in your garden to improve the soil. I wrote an entire curriculum on composting for grad school, so I am not new to the concept, but I’ll admit I never thought of just digging holes and burying it. My soil is in bad shape, so I figured, “why not?” 

My garden, or backyard, is half the reason I bought my house. I want to live in the city, but only if I can have a piece of earth to play with. I lucked out finding a house close to center city, but not too close, with a yard that is the same square footage as my downstairs. I want this garden to be happy and healthy and full of flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruit trees. I want bees and birds and butterflies to make their homes there. I want my daughter to grow up with a green thumb and a love for the outdoors.

When I moved here, the yard was full of waist high prickly weeds and random tools and trash left over from the remodel of my house. The first time I saw it, it was pouring rain and it looked like the yard had been neglected for years. I instantly fell in love. I looked at my realtor and he immediately knew as well as I did that this was the one. I looked at that muddy weed and trash covered yard and all I could see were the birds and butterflies dancing through the lush and healthy garden. I could already smell the lavender and fennel.

My first few months with the garden, I filled 10 or more bags of trash. Broken glass, rusty tools, parts of railroads, statues, dirty diapers, and a variety of broken toys and christmas ornaments were on or sticking out of the top layer of soil. I pulled all of the weeds and pulled them again when they came back. I had days when my arms were covered in scratches from thorns and the stench of old trash filled my nose. I threw out some of my gardening clothes and wore through 4 pairs of gloves. My daughter was strictly forbidden to enter the garden I so desperately wanted for her. By month six or seven, most of the weeds stopped coming back and grass and clover started covering the yard, random morning glories popped up, and birds started coming to my feeder. Still, the yard was mostly bare and after heavy rains, more trash would come to the surface and I would fill more bags with pieces of glass, plastic, Styrofoam, and metal. Sometimes I would come in crying and feeling hopeless that I would ever have a good healthy garden.

The thing is, I grew up watching and reading The Secret Garden knowing that you should never give up on a piece of earth. In the story, Dickon shows Mary a bud in the neglected garden and says it is “wick.” That is, it still has life. It is worth reviving and it will blossom again. Much like The Secret Garden, I heard stories of my yard once being lush and covered in rose bushes by a previous owner who is now gone. I like to think that she also once dreamed of a little piece of heaven in the backyard and the life that is left here is a little piece of her.

 

Each hole I dig is 8-12 inches deep. In some areas of the garden, I dig up a bucket full of soil with little else but happy worms and bugs. However, in some parts of the garden, I have uncovered entire foil chip bags, whole water bottles, tennis balls, plastic bags, whistles, broken glass, and coins. I get a little sick to my stomach at first. This trash is so deep, the only explanation is that someone along the way was literally burying trash. It wasn’t healthy kitchen scraps they buried, it was pollution. I think of my rural gardens growing up; rich clean Central Pennsylvanian and Alaskan soil. It is beyond me why anyone would want to tarnish that which gives us life. Why would they want to fill it with, well, poison? Then I remember that redemption always comes. It may take forever, but it comes. As sad and gross as it is to pull trash from deep beneath my soil, there is great satisfaction in sifting through it and replacing it with fresh watermelon rinds, eggshells, and avocado peels knowing that doing so with gradually clean and feed the soil so worms can prosper and my little piece of earth can produce and thrive once more.

 

 

And yes, there is a lesson in all of this that has not escaped me. My garden, once again, is mirroring my life. I am pulling out the rancid, poisonous things that haunt me and making room for fresh new life to spring forth. I am finding what is still wick and nurturing and caring for it so it will bloom again.

 

“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done–then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.” 

~Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

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Bad Ass, Going Solo: Single Parenthood, life lessons, Run Momma Run, Uncategorized

back to life. back to reality

Five years ago, I would have been ashamed to post this photo. While 4 miles is no easy task, the time it took me to complete them tonight was about twice what it used to take me to run four miles. Tonight I had to run, jog, and walk to get there. Also, due  to toddler difficulties, I had to do it on a treadmill. Again. After 10pm. Five years ago, I ran at least 5 miles 4 times a week and 10 or more on weekend days and biked the 22 mile greenbelt around Harrisburg at least once a week. But this isn’t a story about a runner who is trying to win a race or be the fastest or show people how good I am at running. This is a story about someone coming back to life. It took me three years to slowly fade away and it will take time to come back.

After I had my daughter, I got back to running, lost more than all the baby weight, and felt absolutely amazing about life. Then, for reasons that made sense at the time, I decided to move to Philadelphia. In many ways, things have gone well for me here. I bought my first house, I found a job I love and fall in love with more as it grows and changes, I connected to a church community and a parenting community, and I began building a village for my daughter. But some of the reasons for moving here turned out to be empty promises and were emotionally difficult to deal with. In the last two years, I have almost completely stopped running, my diet has been completely out of whack, and I have let depression win on more days than I’d like to admit. I turned down social invitations choosing to stay home and secluded instead. My body and my overall health has suffered as a result. Some friendships have suffered as well. I focused so much on who I used to be that I forgot to become her again-in a new improved state. And worse, I forgot to enjoy who I was at the present, double chins and all.

About a week ago, I realized that my daughter would be four in a month. Four. She is starting to recognize my behaviors and even imitates them sometimes. She recognizes when I am sad and she asks me about it. I want her to see the best me that I can be(hokey I know, but it’s true). I don’t want her to start imitating the me who sits in front of another episode of Scandal while eating a block of cheese and drinking a bottle of wine. She deserves to know the me I was 5 years ago when I found out I was pregnant the day after I ran a half-marathon in Nashville. The excited, giggly me who did not give a fuck what anyone thought of me. The me who did my thing, painted horrible paintings, but loved them, the me who laughed obnoxiously out loud multiple times a day, and the me who ran everyday because it was the one thing that made me feel my dad’s presence. I want her to see the me who at 35 found out I was pregnant and was going to become a solo parent and just said to myself, “OK Bek, let’s do this!”

On Mother’s Day I was still up at 11pm taking care of a messy kitchen and a sink full of dishes. I caught myself smiling. I realized just how wonderful things really were. I was standing there in MY kitchen, in MY house, washing dishes from my incredible daughter. I was overwhelmed with gratefulness for everything in my life. When I was running that half-marathon 5 years ago, I never would have imagined that I would be standing in a kitchen I owned washing dishes from a kid I had. The excuses I have used to avoid life have only clouded my view of the wonderful life I have been gifted.

That’s all it took to make me decide to get back to it. I promised myself that I would run, jog, or walk at least 2 miles a day for two weeks. At the end of that two weeks, I will make a new promise. On Sunday morning, I will be running my first race since that one in Nashville in September 2012. It is a 5K and I am already a little scared. The thing is, I am also excited. Bella will be with me in the jogging stroller the whole time. And soon, she will be running beside me. And even if I am the last one across the finish line, I will still celebrate and be grateful that I am able to complete 3 miles and do so with my daughter right in front of me cheering me on.

I leave you with an excerpt from Jen Sincero(an incredible author who I highly recommend) that I have been focusing on this week.

“You can’t see the silver lining through victim goggles.”

“Have faith that you and the Universe have created everything for your growth and be grateful for it. No matter what. Get practiced at making gratitude your go-to. Notice the 8 trillion things around you at all times that you can be grateful for, and feel into the grateful expectation for all the things coming your way. The good, the bad, the ugly, The salsa stain you just got on your new white shirt, become a gratitude machine for all of it.”

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Going Solo: Single Parenthood, life lessons, Uncategorized

shame.

In the last week, I have been filling out registration forms for preschools. My daughter’s school unexpectedly closed and I have been scrambling to find her a new school. Doing this requires filling out parent information and sending in copies of her birth certificate; the birth certificate that reads, “Father: Information not recorded.” This is what a birth certificate says when a baby is born in a hospital and the father is not present and later does not claim the child when the state sends him paperwork to do so. It took six months for me to receive my daughter’s birth certificate while we waited for this process to happen. I feel shame seeing this again. A birth certificate should be a happy thing, but somehow this one makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong.

Typically, I feel like I am like any other parent for the most part. Like any parent, I work hard, try to do the best for my daughter, and have good days and bad. In school or play groups, I am usually the only solo parent, but I only think about it if I see a list of parents and students and my daughter is the only one with one parent on the list.  Aside from these tiny moments, I feel like the joys and hardships I feel and experience are the same for most parents.  But when a school application is in front of me and the whole page titled “secondary parent” is blank, I tend to be overcome with shame. It is not sadness or loss or a desire for pity. It is this deep seated belief that I have somehow wronged the world and wronged my daughter. It is a belief that there is something wrong with me and that has always been wrong with me to make me so irregular. I am somehow unable to have a normal relationship or a normal job or simply live a normal life. And, now I have brought an innocent child into this strange abnormality.

Growing up I was the third child. Somehow I was raised in the same house as my siblings, but always did things and lived my life differently. I didn’t have a relationship in high school, I went to three very different colleges to finish my undergrad degree, I moved around and traveled and basically could not sit still in life. I always admired my siblings. They seemed to have traditional college experiences and lives and got married and had children and stayed at jobs for normal amounts of time. If our lives were puzzles, theirs always seemed to be complete and mine always felt like it was forever missing pieces. There was always some messiness about my life. This carried out of my home into my friend circles as well. I always felt like my life was somehow different and weird and not “normal.” When I found out I was going to raise a child alone, I remember thinking, “God, can’t I even do parenthood normally?!” Instead of just accepting this as being who I am, or even celebrating it, I have always felt shame about it.

Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writers, became pregnant when she was 35 with the child of an old friend, who upon discovering she was pregnant, became angry,  walked away, and made it very clear he would not be in the child’s life. Her story is so parallel to my own, that literally dozens of people have suggested I read her book, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year. The book is beautiful for any parent to read. I laughed and cried and was overjoyed to hear an experience so much like my own. In it, she addresses shame in the most perfect way,

“I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn’t good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I’d told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different. The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. The third rule is that if you can’t get over it, you must pretend that you have. The fourth rule is that if you can’t even pretend that you have, you shouldn’t show up. You should stay home, because it’s hard for everyone else to have you around. And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.
So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.”

Shame is not something others can make you feel. Your friends and family can possibly cause you to feel guilty about something you have done, but I believe shame is self-inflicted. It is something we believe about ourselves. It is not the feeling that we have done something wrong but that we ARE something wrong. It is debilitating and, quite frankly, a lie. If we truly believe that we are made in the Creator’s image, then shame should never even come into play. Each one of us has this piece of the higher being within us and that should be greater than any inadequacies we feel.
My struggle with shame is my own. It is one of the biggest ways I have wronged myself and those around me. Being a solo parent or having a gypsy spirit or not being able to function in a relationship may be a little different, but it is not wrong. IMG_3491As a parent, I don’t want my daughter to ever feel this shame. As weird as she is, or unconventional, or totally “normal,” I want her to just love herself and be proud of the amazing little being that she is. This desire for her makes me more aware of the fact that I need to “get over it, show up for my life, and not be ashamed.” I truly believe when any of us can be ourselves, embrace our quirks and differences, and celebrate those things that make each one of us unique, we will be able to free ourselves of shame and genuinely live our lives.

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gardening, Going Solo: Single Parenthood, life lessons

the good life

At church today, we talked about “the good life” and what that is to us. Our society defines it as more things; a bigger fancier house, an expensive car, jewelry, gadgets, more money, just more. And it’s never enough. We are told our life will be better and we will be happier if only we had….fill in the blank. It leaves most of us constantly wanting more and not noticing the abundance that already exists in our lives.

As I walked to my car holding Bella’s hand and watching her count the cracks in the side walk, with a nice breeze as the sun was setting and clouds were rolling in, I thought about what the good life means to me. I don’t have a fancy car or a big house or lots of money or a boat or, well, whatever it is that is supposedly going to make me happy. We have a small but nice house with wonderful neighbors and a back yard full of birds, butterflies, and green.  I have a good job, but it will never make me rich. It will, however, provide for me and my daughter and will allow me extra time and extra weeks off to spend with my family. It is also a job I look forward to going to everyday and is full of colorful, wonderful,kind, and supportive people. I have a daughter who came into my life unexpectedly but who fills each day with smiles and laughter and wonder. I have an incredible family and friends who are beyond what I could have ever hoped for. After not going to church for more than five years, I recently found one that feels like home and where I feel like I can just be me and it’s enough. On Friday night, Bella and I went to a thrift store and picked out dresses and old VHS tapes. We went home and put on our new dresses and twirled around the living room while watching an old Disney princess do the same. The laughter and happiness coming from my child was intoxicating. It was the best Friday night I’ve had in a very long time. It cost me $7.

IMG_3448So, though a nicer car or a bigger house would be great, I have to say that I think “the good life” is really all those little moments with the ones we love that fill up everyday and cost us nothing. It’s a roof over our heads and having enough. It’s having a job that makes us happy. It’s little fingers and little toes and big toddler smiles and belly laughs. It
is art and comedy, and dancing. It is something we already have. If we forget that or miss it while we are seeking out the material things that are supposed to make us happy, I think we’ve totally missed the whole point of what a good life really is.

–written on April 19, 2015

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