Mask

I am walking, and I find that I am smiling...for some reason. I think it is just being outside, in the sun, breathing in fresh air. It invigorates.

I think about the mask workshop I took in NYC, and how there was a woman in the class who was always smiling. "No one is that happy", I thought to myself.

I've been thinking about that workshop lately. It was 2012, and that was the first time I died.

My grandpa had just passed away, I couldn't get home fast enough. I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

I picture myself in front of the class, both hidden and exposed by the wearing of this mask, trying my hardest to send out my heart. My energy, right from that spot smack in the center of my chest, out and over the sea, to a loved one who had just left, as the assignment required.

Stretching. Expansion.

I look up as I walk, I'm always looking up, to see what's above, what messages are in the sky. My constant, to remind me that life is still big.

I think about the time I stood on a Hawaiian beach, observing a father teaching his toddler how to surf, my writing of this observation, and the realization that there are so many ways in which to live life, and parent a child. This child of the waves teaching me a lesson in expansion in that instant.

It has never left me.

There is a new corner of the world, just every few miles.

Endless possibility at our feet.

I keep walking.

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The women we don't speak of.

I've been thinking about this for awhile. This is probably one of the most personal entries I could ever write. The internet and social media is saturated with mommy bloggers. Women posting about their pregnancies, and what they're learning as they set off on the journey of new mom. It's a club you don't belong to until you become a mother yourself. Babies. Toddlers. Everywhere. Women sharing jokes, and advice, and parenting tips among themselves, all able to relate to each other. This isn't hard to find. You're probably a click away from finding one now.

Then there are stories of women who tried to get pregnant, but weren't able to. There are blogs and articles dedicated to infertility. There aren't as many dedicated to this side, but they're out there.

Lately, I've found myself asking the question, "what about the in-between?" There is a group of us who lie in the haze of the middle. The group of women currently trying. We are floating in the grey area, without belonging to one category or the other. It's a strange, anxious, and superstitious place to be. Half of the month you may be sure you aren't. This is either a hopeful or hopeless phase, depending, I've found. More on that in a bit. The next half of the month you are with, and without. You proceed accordingly, but what does that mean? You may treat yourself as though you are, but if you find you're not, it's back to square one. 

This is the hardest place. It's hard not to be frustrated. To scare yourself by wondering if something is wrong. To put pressure on yourself. The emotional roller coaster is constant.

I find it spills over into many aspects of my life. It obviously affects what I eat and drink, but also my mood, and what activity I may choose to do on a weekend. It affects conversations, and how social I may feel. You must dance around your conversations and plans because you don't yet know yourself. You can't plan something months ahead since you have this priority, yet you don't know for sure, and you don't know when. You can't really talk about what you're going through, so you try to adapt as best as you can to this new existence where it all revolves around trying. A couple of weeks of extreme hope, and a couple of weeks of extreme disappointment. How I'm going to behave that month purely depends where you catch me. I'd say sorry, but I'm not. My husband, my well being, and this future family trumps everything. That's why this is hard. 

When you tell someone you're trying, in hopes of some support, you wish you hadn't more often than not. Even other women, and women who are mothers, seem to forget that before they had their babies they too went through this fragile, sacred time. A time that will be short for some, long for others. 

They ask you when. When hurts. It's impossible to know. If only we had control of what month we could get pregnant. What month we'd like a baby to be born. If only. Some know you're trying, but ask when anyway. Some make jokes. Some tease you that you are, or going to be soon, when they don't know what you've embarked on, and what you've already been experiencing. I've already written about the insensitivity of this for YoU Mag (Are you pregnant yet? Page 13) . You don't know your ultimate outcome, and what if (god forbid) you end up falling in the can't category?

Why aren't there blogs or articles dedicated to us? Who live in half hope, half disappointment each month? Who don't yet belong to a can or can't category? Who buy expensive test after test, heart pounding as we wait for the result. Who are dying for this to be the time we get to tell our husband, "I'm pregnant!" Who can sometimes power through, with faith that it's just not our time. But who sometimes spend the day crumbling, fighting back heartbreak, sure it's never going to happen. Those days, and very well the days that follow, I retreat from the world. I feel I have failed. Again.

I know I'm not alone, and I'd sure like to hear the words of others who get it. We're our own club. There is more to it here in the club of trying than I'd expected. It's definitely different than life before. I'm no longer a woman existing as I did before we decided to join.

I am reluctant to write this. This means letting even more people in on my most personal plans. But I'm in the category of women that we don't speak of, so I'm speaking about us. I'd like to meet my others. This is it's own club and I'd like to know where my women are that exist this way each month, emotionally exhausted, and wondering when it's finally going to end. 

~DM 

My wish for you.

My wish for you:
I wish for you to have love.
To keep searching if you haven't found it yet,
and to never settle.
To experience a love that comes easy, 
and not force a fit because you wish it would be so,
or you've told yourself you're running out of time.
I wish for you to follow your truth to love,
because that's where it leads you. 
Every time.
I wish for you to release a love,
if it isn't the right love.
It is a hard and ultimately selfless act
to cut the strings
and free them to seek their love.
I wish for you to love someone more
than you love yourself, or a career.
I wish for you to be relieved, home, made whole, by love.
To be freed and enhanced.
I wish for you to wholeheartedly believe that you deserve love,
that you are perfect and worthy
of love just as you are,
That love is not selfish and does not
have to be conditional.
It should fill you, not deplete you. 
And if it is, and if it does, then it is not IT. 
Keep seeking.
Miracles happen every day. 

Make Room

I planned to do some kind of year in review blog, but I'm not sure how to approach that one this time.  I was a word alchemist this year more than ever.  At least publicly.  I translated my guts to the page time and time again.  Many of those times I felt as though something else was speaking through me.  How do I fit eternity into one post by a certain date? What I can best say about my journey of 2012 has already been said.  By Rumi, of course.

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
~Rumi 

That says it all, but here's my attempt at a bit more:

This was the year.
This was the year I saw death.
It racked my bones and broke them to dust.

I said goodbye.  Loss ran rampant over me more times than you'd believe,
even if I told you about each and every one of them, The Losses.
At times so big, so shatteringly big, I am in awe of my survival.

My heart broke.
Again.  And again.  And again.  Ba boom! 
I got a new tattoo.
I am.  I am.  I am.  Ba boom! 
It was the worst summer of my life.
It was the summer of animals.
It was the summer of running.  Anything to keep moving.

This was the year my limits were lifted.
I saw my confinements clearly.  The invisible labels and restraints only I had placed.
I saw them lift.  Like a shutter, up they snapped and dissipated.
The one great gift death and death alone can bring.
There he laid, there I sat.  There they went. 
This was the year I saw with my own eyes we are not our physical bodies.
I am not my weight, my height, my hair, my age.
I am all, and all is me, and always has been, and always will be.  
I am enough, and you are, too.  You are another me, I am another you.

This was the year of the soul.
The only thing I'm now sure of.
My eyes deceive me, my body betrays me, but my soul...
My soul has never led me astray.
I was let out, I transcended.  I saw heaven.

Psychosomatic as it may be,
I experienced my Uncle's sickness for months when he left.
My heart hurt and my hands went numb for my Grandpa when he was gone.
My imagined fear let out, I went on a six week artistic sabbatical.
I gathered up all I could to add to my Big Life.
To expand myself and bring it back to keep.

This was the year of The Winter's Tale.  A sad tale was best for winter.
Hermione found me and gave me the ultimate healing,
and Shakespeares words patched me back together.

Death came a second time.  Nobody told me how greedy Death is. 
The rug pulled out from under me and all my comfort shattered once again.
I spiraled in when it should have been out (but deep down this time I knew better),
and so I saved myself one sunday night.
Promising myself that even though people always leave me on the weekend,
Monday I can chose to come back to life and throw myself even deeper into the opposite of fear.

I will chose.
I will chose to give my moments Meaningful Shape.
I choose the better story.

I will respond to you, soul.  To the call from the stars.
To the Athena's before me, and Comsic Alchemists who follow,
I will pave your way with a golden story in which you'll remember you're not alone.
You've been here before, and will be again.

There is only hope.
There is only forward.
And I am free.


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