illness
loving being lost.
Most of the women in the current dance session have heard me speak of my neighbour Betty. My wonderful, strong neighbour named Betty who woke up on Friday February 3rd, walked the few hundred feet from our homes to Broadway Avenue on her way to work, and was struck by a speeding vehicle. We joke in our culture when speak about cherishing life because "one day you could be walking down the street and get hit by a bus." Well, this is what happened to her. Not only was she struck down in her 68th year of life, but the assailant kept driving, leaving her alone on the snowy, frozen winter road. Abandoned. Left. Lost.
What you might not know about this Woman is that she has the determination, grit and mental strength of a ferocious lioness. Having lived next to this wonderful lady for almost a decade, it didn't take me to long to see that her beautifully kept home and blooming flowers pots and gardens were the product of a disciplined and hard-working human being. It was this strength of character that made me want to share a bit of Betty in the MommaGO-GO class the following week. Even though we are tired with our small children, I think it's good to be reminded of our blessed circumstances and that day in class we dedicate all of our hip-shaking to Betty! She is never one to pass up the opportunity to find something good in every situation. Even while my heart was hurting for my Friend, I knew the best thing I could do was to pass along a word of encouragement to the moms around me.
Over the years it was not uncommon to end up chatting over the fence, getting to know one another. Then the babies came. Our babies. Betty came to meet Charlotte in December of 2006, bearing the gift of a pink bunny with the word "BABY" written on his large rear hopping foot. If you've ever met our daughter, you've likely met "Conky Conejo" [spanish word for rabbit pronouced coe-nay-ho]. Her childhood companion, Conky, is the gifting from a kind neighbour delivering a cuddly toy for our new baby girl - and he has been the steady joy in her life. He comforts, entertains, cuddles and accepts all physical challenges she presents to him. It's not uncommon to find Conky in a predicament that involves being stuffed into small containers, wrapped in ribbons or being thrown from heights that would make any human faint...and he takes it all in stride.
Back to Betty...
She currently faces months of rehabilitation and has gone from 68 years of physical freedom to being at the mercy of her caregivers while she recuperates from this massive violation to her person. From her own mouth and those of our neighbours, we've all struggled to understand the how and why of these circumstances. Such a tremendous challenge that produces moments where all seems lost for this wonderful woman I've grown to care about. And you know what, I cannot do a darn thing to change her physical circumstances, not one. So I've done the best that I know how to do which is to stop in, give a hug, listen and then take the remnants of those visits and pray for my friend.
Now to you...and me...
Betty has raised her children, and they are with her now, by her side, caring and providing. And how did a woman raise such children? Let me tell you, the hard-working, big-hearted habitual way of living began for her many years ago when her children were small...and these are the little snippets that she's given to me as a young mom. She's never once made light of my fatigue or the demands that I face in rearing small humans. She's been empathetic, encouraging and always has a kind word of story reflective of how she made the best and continues to make the best out of life's challenges.
So we come to loving being lost.
Experiencing feelings of loss, discomfort and pain is hard; quite frankly, it is terrible. But what I'm realizing is that we cannot know these pains unless we've come from a place of safety, comfort and joy. To be removed from pleasure and peace temporarily is not the end of life as we know it...it's a measuring stick.
There have been many days where I've felt lost in my mothering journey, overwhelmed by the responsibility and constant care required by these tiny human beings. Then I see Conky Conejo and remember my Friend Betty...telling me to hug the kids lots and just enjoy the simple things with them. Kids don't need expensive toys or fancy trips. Give 'em a box, a plastic container, a spoon and a pot, if they're happy playing with 8 plastic straws then by all means, let them do it. Give yourself a break, take a moment to breathe, and let that lost moment pass you by. Below is a pic of the kids in a little tent Betty gave us a couple of years ago. Someone was about to throw it out and she thought of my us and said it was a perfect little play place for little children. We use it all the time!
While increasingly rare these days, I have had several moments (even a period of several years following the birth of my daughter) where I was convinced that my parenting had become so weak, ineffective, almost neglectful and/or damaging to my child...and I would despair. I would lose all hope for any health or love remaining for our future relationships. It was lonely, embarrassing and a dark place to travel and an even darker place to live in.
As it turns out, it is a path well known by many parents. This journey however, is not one we want to share with those around us. Unlike a rewarding and pleasure-filled trip to a tropical climate, arriving to destination "lost" is accompanied by incessant internal dialogue laying blame, fault and pre-determined failure. "You SUCK! You're ruining your child! What a LOSER you are! Can't you do it better than THAT?" That's what we tell ourselves, or at least I did. I referred to myself as a garbage parent. My life was past recycling, past being "someone else's treasure" - just a heap of waste with no functional use in my given environment.
I'm learning something though, that couldn't be farther from the truth. On a particularly down day a wise and knowing friend told me that she didn't think I was stuck in a valley. In fact, she believed I was wandering a familiar path from mountain top to valley AND, here's the clincher, I was meeting other people in those valleys. Revisiting former "lost places" is not the landmark site of permanent failure, but rather a place to stop, look around and perhaps meet others who happen to be in the exact same place!
While depression, grief and loss are heart-crushing, I cannot help but believe there is inherent value of being able to relate to another fellow human being. Allowing another person to see a glimpse of normalcy maybe even hope in their private chaotic state of heart and mind makes those dark days worth it.
There can be no limit to the worth of a kind word or an encouraging hug. I'm determined not to let my past hurts go to waste. Carrying the burden of shame for my "lost places" is like trying to drive home from a holiday on a flat tire and a bent rim. You might get there, but it will be painfully slow and can often cause more damage to the whole of the vehicle. Repair costs go up and often take longer than initially expected. The frustration of a bad moment or an event is painfully dragged out. Rather than tough it out until you "get to a better place" its wise to stop, take a moment and ask for help. It doesn't mean the pain or problem goes away, but you've got someone there to help alleviate and minimize the damage.I've also learned that when I extend kindness to others it has shown my children a vital survival skill...we need other people in our lives to support and encourage us. And as a parent that has been "lost" many times, it is a great reward to see the fruits of kindness and compassion being grown in a home where I once saw nothing but barren, empty landscape.
This was brought to my attention again as Betty uttered the same words a couple of weeks ago while lying in her hospital bed, waiting anxiously for her body to recover. One thing I’m sure of, with a strong heart and mind like that, she is sure to come out of this stronger than ever. Please be encouraged today Friend!
~Kirsty
cravings.
This is about pregnancy, childbirth and the days, months and now years that have passed since the arrival my children. I had cravings, but not the kind that involve the stereotypical pickles and ice cream of pregnancy. They were soul cravings. They were cravings of abolishing fears that had gripped me for as long as I can remember. Cravings that I would be the kind of parent that would be able to instill health, self-esteem and wellness in my children's lives. At the time of my first pregnancy, I did not believe I had satisfied these cravings.
In a prenatal class the instructor asked, "what are your fears about giving birth?" Instantly I thought, tearing my perineum and having stitches in my crotch. I've spoken quite a bit about this in other birth-related writings, but here I want to go a bit deeper. This simple question posed changed the course of my life forever.
With the help, experience and knowledge of my childbirth educators, I began to uncover real and tangible methods to prevent tearing of the perineum during vaginal delivery. WONDERFUL!
Afraid of tearing.
Don't birth on my back.
OK, I'm NOT gonna do that.
and maybe TMI, but FYI, I birthed in alternate positions and I did NOT tear...
Next set of fears...ummm...that's a bit more tricky, doctors...and ummm...hospitals...dealing with this was much more difficult as there were no regulated midwives, only private practices and we did not have the money nor was I particularly interested in midwifery care at this point. That was a world away in my mind.
However, in this same prenatal class I began to look more carefully at my fear of medical environments. Now to be honest, I have a much more expanded version of this in my personal birth story of the day our daughter was born, but for this post, those details do not need to be expanded upon...and also, I'm not quite ready to share it publicly.
There was in my lifetime, a series of physical ailments that I suffered from as a young child into my early adulthood: immensely long headaches often lasting for days at a time, crippling stomach pains, heart and chest pains that would affect my ability to breath and function and an overall longterm feeling of lethargy and exhaustion. While I did share some of these with my parents, usually I kept to myself and just became used to living in this uncomfortably strange state.
As a young person, you lack the ability to understand that your own life experiences may be entirely different than those around you. I wrongly assumed for many years that living with physical pain was the average experience of children and teenagers.
When I was sixteen, I began dating a handsome and gentle young man and it was in spending time with him and his family that I started to uncover that my view of the world was skewed. His home was so peaceful, he was so kind and in getting to know him more, I discovered that he could wake up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the day. I don't EVER remember feeling like that. NOT ONCE. I began to feel like a bit of an anomaly as I entered my early adulthood.
It wasn't long before I began to explore the strange state of my physical exhaustion and all attempts to find health were met with more unanswered questions. I specifically remember a Doctor prescribing Ativan and telling me to place it under my tongue. At the time it seemed like the stupidest thing, how would sticking this little disolvable tablet in my mouth erase years of exhaustion? Well, short story, it didn't. And neither did any of the other prescribed or suggested treatments. So I gave up.
It was shortly after highschool ended that I threw myself into my dance career. Being in the studio was the first time I experienced any type of physiological peace. After classes my eyes would sparkle and I would feel awake and alive. It was quite simply, the most effective treatment to the sleepiness I had known my entire life. It was beautiful and liberating and addictive...and it kept me alive as I began to unfold the roots of my seemingly odd existence; I had been molested as a very small girl by an extended family member.
After what felt like a failed attempt to disclose my childhood sexual abuse to a loved one, I shut down that part of my brain entirely...that is when my chest pain began to increase. I remember having a friend over late one night and I began to experience such intense pain that I thought my heart was seizing. Yelling for my parents, they called an ambulance, which must have been a horrible moment for them as we lived about 25 minutes from the nearest city. I kept crying at my Dad saying, "my heart hurts, MY HEART HURTS," and it did, but not my physical heart...it was the heart of my soul collapsing in on itself.
That night was a turning point for me. In the end my parents cancelled the ambulance and drove me into the local hospital where they could find nothing physically wrong with me other than what could only be described as an intense anxiety attack. But I knew. I knew without a doubt that my body was screaming to me, "start. start now. there is an end to this pain, and it will be hard, but you must start now. start on this very night" And I did.
I never told a soul what I discovered that night...my body was fearfully and wonderfully made and it had been speaking truth to me for years until I was mature enough to see what was in front of me. I was about to begin climbing a mountain with seemingly endless, painful, exhausting pathways that would take me to it's liberating peak. From this peak I clung to the knowledge that upon reaching the summit I would see clearly that there were thousands upon thousands of survivors that had created the tread to the peak and were well on their way down the other side of the mountain. Conversely, there were thousands upon thousands who were behind me, some still lying at the base of the mountain, perhaps still to young to understand what had brought them there in the first place. For those behind me, I pray.
Childhood sexual abuse.
What a shameful dirty secret we harbour in our culture...but have hope, there have been and will continue to be people who will speak the truth about these things.
Coming back to the original title, cravings. You see, one week before delivering my daughter I realized that I had been listening to a song titled, "Charlotte" and in it was the devastating story of a woman set on the wrong path. That name coupled with those lyrics were a small grace as I was just days away from holding my very own Charlotte. It was in her first four years that I would battle my final demons of childhood sexual abuse.
The desire to birth my child naturally and without the slightest intervention didn't come from a "best for baby" or "vaginal/intervention and drug-free births are superior" perspective, although I do believe it can be one of the most beautiful ways for baby and mom to meet face to face first time: alert and awake with less emphasis on the often uncomfortable postpartum physical recovery. The birthing hopes I had stemmed from years of counseling and battlling with sheer determination and grit to seek health that I could pass along to my children.
It upsets me to no end when there is criticism of how people choose to birth. Instinctively, I believed that a key part of my survival and recovery was to birth my child in this manner. You must remember, for years I lived in physical pain and sought to abolish it, but in reality, it was that pain which held the key to my freedom. It pointed me in a truthful direction. While I lived with many discomforts, I came to embrace physical pain as a crucial stepping stone in my healing journey.It took almost 30 years to uncover this about myself. Victims of sexual abuse (and possibly other forms) come to believe that their needs, thoughts and instincts are of little value, but as parents, we come to learn that following these instincts can be our greatest parenting tool. Parental decisions are the foundations upon which our children's futures are built. We hope we've given them the best before we have to release them into the challenging and often intimidating world from which we've tried to protect them.
As I experienced profound healing, so might others experience vital victories in welcoming their children in other manners. There are women who require full epidurals as their body memories are too great for them to experience physical waves of contractions. There are those who request cesarean birth as the trauma they experienced vaginally is too crippling. And then like myself, there are those who go on to choose homebirth for subsequent births. These were not decisions made strictly with emotion or intellect, but it was a culmination of the many complex facets that accompany and challenge the birthing practices we have in our current culture.
The homebirth of my son three and half years later was a beautiful event. It did take some time for me to provide my husband with the real reason I felt so compelled to birth at home. Aside from the fact that this was my second smooth and extremely healthy pregnancy, there was a much deeper reason I wanted our son to make his arrival in the quiet safety of our home. For years I had battled the painful memories and often tortuous reality of how sexual abuse forever changed my life. I was blessed and able to welcome a new young gentleman in the same corners of my home that had been my battle ground against the demons and memories born of an abuse experience. A new generation of males had been born in my bloodline, this was a fresh start for me. Rather than feel deconstructed by a man, I was going to have the honour and privilege to raise up a young man with the help of my loving husband and alongside our sweet girl.
As an aside, my son was born a couple of weeks early. He quickly and efficiently entered the world on July 4th, 2010, better known as Independence Day. It was an important victory for my family and one we are forever grateful to have shared with our beloved friend and Doula and the care of two local midwives.
I respectfully ackowledge that we are a rich, rich country and it is with relative ease that we have access to tremendous care in our childbearing years. It is no small feat to beat death and preserve life. Medically speaking, this has been done triumphantly time and time again. But might I challenge you to consider the a task we have yet to fully articulate and embrace, and that is finding other successful methodologies for preserving and protecting the mental, emotional and spiritual side of life as well. I cannot speak to numbers or statistics, but I think we are all aware of the cost to our system in dealing with mental health issues. There is in fact a cost to treat these very real conditions, and they are no less important to our societal health.
Just recently I spent several hours in the local ER (seeking help for a constipated baby) when I watched the eye-rolling of the nurses as they wheeled in a young woman who was a "repeat customer" experiencing yet another anxiety attack. There are still so many stigmas attached to mental illness and we as a society are struggling to find longterm solutions.
What do our women need in order to make their first days as mothers better? What impact do our local birthing options have in the longterm health of our families? Why do we continue to try and separate the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual aspect of health during pregnancy and birth? These are important questions that require thoughtful answers.
While I accept the grand importance of considering the baby's experience in birth, we must also be compassionate to embrace the mother's and fathers who are to raise them. Our families deserve a good start, we will be in better health as a whole if we remember the value of nurturing parent's as well. It is not selfish, nor is it wrong to advocate for birthing options that take into consideration the importance of wholistic health and wellness.
I often wish people would think twice before contributing comments to an already divisive and greatly misunderstood area of societal health. These are life-changing moments and they deserve the utmost care as we all seek to find solutions to the wide array of needs within in our communities.
A couple of months ago my daughter and I had the privilege to attend the Cirque de Soleil Immortal tour. One of the numbers boasts a hot air balloon flying over the crowd as Michael Jackson sings in the backgroud, "have you seen my childhood?...." Driving home Charlotte tells me this was her favourite song. "Where did his childhood go Momma? Why was he looking for it?" Let me tell you, that was an interesting conversation...and it makes me so grateful to be at this stage of my life. I can answer my five-year-olds question with sincerity and joy. She also asked me the other day, "are we rich Momma?" to which I replied, "absolutely Lovie. We are rich and I have all that I could ever ask or hope for!"This is a photo from our night out and at my feet stand two of the most important people I've ever had the pleasure to know. What you don't see in this photo is the years of hard work, counseling, grit and determination to find value in myself. I did it for me, and my children are the beneficiaries of this hard work. Women need to know that it's not only okay, but it is vitally important that they take care of themselves as well. Peace within the home is not something to be underrated, in fact, I wish it was valued on the top of the list. The pathway to that peace is not something to be determined by societal trends or top-ranked "steps to wellness" but rather, I believe it is a deep-rooted desire and instinct that we all have within us to live a life in which we can love and be loved. Your needs matter, and it's okay to take a moment to consider what those needs are. Grab a hot cup of coffee, take a deep breath and think on that for a quiet moment. Warmly~Kirsty
i'm gonna...nevermind....
[proud moment as cheering commences...Woman tackles to-do list with gusto, verve and abandon]
Business open!
Registrations coming in!
Blog post ideas stirring!
and just like that, all non-essential list items fell to the wayside.
I donned my usual 'home for four straight days' outfit and hoped that a new client wouldn't show up on my doorstep to drop off payment. Don't laugh...it happened a few years back...at the exact moment my husband and I were digging through a rubbermaid container while being half-dressed in old dance costumes preparing for a murder-mystery event set in the early 1900s. I was wearing a low-cut baby-blue lyrical dress with a lacy curtain tied around my waist while he was wearing skin-tight black spandex leggings which were supposed to be the underlings to a previously-historically-masculine pair of balloon-type pants. I think the client was more embarrassed than we were - and I honestly wondered if she'd withdraw her registration!
It's OK, she and I are facebook friends NOW, and it's a laughable memory..NOW. Sooooo anyway...with my hideous apparel and increasingly stiffening hair, the week went by and I looked upon my brood with mostly love, sometimes agitation, and cheered for small victories. I had that one crowing moment of pride when I realized that had I been "on my domestic game" and put away the gift bags and tissue paper from a couple of presents my friend had dropped off earlier in the week, the children would not have had their favourite toy from this round of self-assigned home confinement...
but really, all of this just to say, my to-do list didn't even get looked at other than to do move it to the wayside to avoid becoming an impromptu nose-wiper or chewing item for the baby and we're all alive and on the mend!
Thank God it's Friday!!!!! Happy weekend everyone!