<-insert Xena's warrior cry here->

I need to talk about just how messed up I was up until not even a year ago.

It amazes me that I could be an inspiration to other people, such a help to other people, while simultaneously hating myself.  It amazes me that I was so out of it, so off-balance, that the only self-worth I could garner came from trying to please everyone else.

This face about sums it up.

For context, in case you haven't read my earlier blog posts, let's summarize my childhood with a single word: abuse.  Let's summarize my young adulthood with another word: rape.  Okay, I can summarize my life up until November 2010 with one word: victim.  Or, survivor.  Depending on how you look at it.

Becoming a mother was the beginning of healing for me, though things got a lot worse before they got better.  In June 2008, at the age of 27, I found out I was pregnant.  At the time, I was in a co-dependent "friendship" with a woman who conned me out of $14k over the course of six or seven years, who was also mooching off of me, living in my apartment with her then-boyfriend. 

I discovered my unplanned pregnancy the same week that I was laid off from my job, high school teacher, the thing I had always wanted to be when I grew up.  I had just started a new relationship, but was impregnated by a different man, the only "friend-with-benefits" I'd ever had. 

The moocher "friend," a woman I trusted and loved with all my heart, took off a few months into my pregnancy, leaving me a 10 page letter about what a horrible person I was and how sorry she was for my child because she was sure I'd be a horrible mother.  My baby's sperm donor had no interest in our child.  My boyfriend started treating me like crap early on, but I had already broken the lease on my apartment and moved in with him.  I felt helpless.  I felt trapped.

Don't we all look so happy together?

I tried to focus on the positive.  I had my heart set on a happy ever after...with a misogynistic deadbeat who sexually assaulted me every single night for two years - and I didn't recognize it as sexual assault until last month, when a friend who had read my memoir called it what it was!  I kept making excuses for my ex, to myself as well as to my friends, until the night he left me and my one year old son penniless and homeless, in November 2010.

Hello, rock bottom.

I was an exceedingly lucky homeless person.  I didn't have a home for a few months, but I always had a bed to sleep in, people to help me search for work and to watch my son while I searched, people giving me whatever they could spare, even if it was just love and support over the internet.  My son and I never had to sleep on the street, never went hungry, and never went without knowing that we were loved.

It still amazes me how empowering an experience it was for me.  There were dozens of people helping however they could, many of whom I barely knew, all cheering me on, encouraging me, telling me I could do it, pushing me to prove to myself that I could.  I couldn't let myself fall to pieces or give up, because I had a precious toddler depending on me.

It probably goes without saying that I was depressed as all hell during all that.  I was so scared, and so angry, but I suppressed all my negative feelings as well as I could.

Holding it all in was killing me.  The optimistic, light-hearted, playful, affectionate, nurturing woman I had been locked herself away in some hidden corner of my heart.  I felt like a hollow automaton, just going through the motions, doing whatever I had to do.

My love for my son, and my determination to give him the best possible start in life, kept me from killing myself.  My beliefs about positive, conscious parenting drove me to seek out methods of self-healing so I could be the best mother I could be.  My spiritual path and experiences provided the tools I needed to put myself back together, piece by piece, and pure Divine Love provided me with a home in the last place I ever would have thought to look.

In this home, I am loved, supported, valued, and given the space I need to heal.  Gratitude really isn't strong enough a word to express how I feel.  I truly am blessed beyond my fondest dreams.

Now, having finally learned to love myself, having finally healed to a point that I feel like a whole new person, no longer either a victim or a survivor...now I have too many friends suffering the same kinds of crap I suffered.

My inner warrior princess is shrieking her battle cry, ready to throw her chakrum and cut through all their chains, if they would just hold up their wrists at the right angle.

I want to help.  I want all that I suffered and all that I've learned from that suffering to help others, to empower them.  I wish I could just hold them in my arms and overwhelm them with self-worth, confidence, and determination to make their lives even better than they can imagine.

But I can't.  I can't make anyone feel, think, or believe anything.

All I can do is offer my unconditional love and support, guidance when they ask, and keep praying that one day soon when they look in the mirror they will see themselves as the beautiful, loved, powerful beings that they are.

But...dammit, people!  Life is too short to waste on misery!

If he's laughing, he's listening.

My seven year old nephew screams at my two year old son, then runs into his room, slamming his door.

One night, when this happens, I’m not in the best of moods. I yell through my nephew’s closed door, asking him what’s wrong. He ignores me, and I get angry, but he’s not my kid, so I feel powerless and resentful. Meanwhile, my son is crying his heart out, banging on my nephew’s door, trying to get in. Angry, frustrated, exasperated, I pick my son up and bring him into our room, calming him down and distracting him.

My nephew learns that his behavior is acceptable. More importantly, he does NOT learn an alternative behavior. As for me, I don’t finish cleaning the kitchen or cooking dinner because I’m so angry and exasperated, leaving everyone more hungry and more frustrated for hours.

A different night, the same situation happens, but I’m in a good mood. I immediately distract and entertain my son, and then talk to my nephew to find out what’s really wrong. He is too angry and resentful to listen to anything I say, so I finish cleaning the kitchen and cooking dinner. Two hours later, I finally get my nephew to smile, and I have an epiphany so obvious I should have a lump on my head from where the “well DUH” stick struck.

My epiphany was simply this – if he’s laughing, he’s listening.

Kids learn from every single thing they witness, but what they learn depends on how they see the world in that moment.

Every moment, every thing we do, or don’t do, teaches our children, but how our children feel colors their lenses.

That’s why it is so important to parent consciously – so we can be aware of what we are teaching, and what we grown-ups need to learn, as well as how our children are feeling and what they need help with.

When kids feel resentful, angry, or hurt, they can’t be considerate or patient. Positive and negative feelings can’t occupy the same space at the same time. But you CAN nullify one with the other. You can be patient with your child, and considerate of his needs, and thus help him let go of his unpleasant emotions.

The three P’s of Effective Parenting (according to me,) are Positive, Present, and Patient.

You have to be in a Positive space yourself. You can’t teach positive behavior with negative behavior. It’s just not possible. No, really. Think about it.

You have to be Present – if you are thinking about stuff you need to do or things that already happened, you are missing what’s going on right now. When you do one thing with your hands while your mind is elsewhere, you mess up, you lose things, you get confused. It’s like typing a text message while applying mascara and driving 55mph down the freeway…a disaster waiting to happen. Be present in everything thing that you do, and you will be amazed at how much calmer you feel, how much easier life is, and and how much you’ve been missing out on.

Patience is a requirement for effective parenting. You have to be patient with yourself, because you are going to make mistakes, and you are going to learn things that will totally change the way you see your kids and your role I their lives. You have to be patient with your kids, because they don’t see the world the way you do; they don’t have the experiences that you do, and even when you experience things together, I guarantee you that they got something different out of that experience than you did.

Getting back to my epiphany – if he’s laughing, he’s listening. If he’s laughing, he’s in a positive state of mind, he is present in this moment (not thinking about what went wrong in the past or what he wants in his future,) and he is patiently waiting for you to make him laugh some more…which means he’s receptive to learning. While he’s laughing, I have the opportunity to slip a lesson in there with the joke. As long as I keep the mood light and fun, he’ll keep listening.

Next time this scenario repeats, I plan to be present in the other room so I can see what exactly is setting my nephew off. I plan to be patient with him, and positive overall. And hopefully, I’ll have another epiphany and figure out how to solve the issue. Wish me luck!

Confession time...

I've been feeling pretty ashamed of myself since last night.

Ten years ago, while I worked on my MFA but before I started my eight years of thesis hours (no joke,) I had a couple of classes, one fiction, one poetry, in which we volunteered at the local homeless shelter and taught some of the "residents" creative writing techniques.

We learned a lot about life that semester, about pedagogy, and about human nature.  The couple of months I spent homeless, I got to hop from a bed in one friend's house, to a bed in another, while people I knew and trusted watched my son and other friends drove me around town helping me search for jobs, aid, and more permanent shelter.  I had a whole posse of mamas watching my back, all peers, most of whom I barely knew before all this happened, and thanks to them, my son and I never had to sleep in a shelter, or beneath the open sky.

The people we taught that semester were not so fortunate.  They had no real friends or generous acquaintances to help them.  They had no family, or their families turned their backs on them.

That semester, listening to these amazing people tell their stories using the techniques of storytelling and poetry that we taught them, changed me forever.  Perhaps someday I'll be able to better describe it.

The thing that stayed with me most after that class was my professor, Terry Thaxton's, lecture about how many homeless people are treated as if they are invisible.  All they want is for someone to SEE them, to recognize them as human, as beings deserving of acknowledgement, respect, and compassion.

And then, last night, I was busy trying to write and organize at Starbucks, getting the Moody Mamas Support Network going on Facebook...totally ignoring the homeless man who came in and sat on the couch across from me.

When he was walking past me, his hand hit one of the chairs and my table and he said, "ow!" then, "Sorry!"

I threw a half-assed smile at him without taking my eyes off my computer screen as I typed, and muttered, "No problem..."

He stopped and stared at me for a long moment.  At the time, I thought he was trying to see what I was typing, and I turned my back to him ever so subtly more.

After that long moment, he sat down, commenting loudly to himself about the food he had in a bowl smelling bad, he definitely needed to throw it out, good GOD that stank, definitely bad, stinks stinks stinks...

I was getting irritated because he was distracting me, so I picked up and went home to finish writing in the car.

It wasn't until after I went to bed that I realized what happened, and what I'd done.

That man so desperately wanted someone to see him, to look him in the eye, to recognize that he was there.  I'm actually crying right now because I feel so bad that I was so absorbed in my own world that I couldn't even spare him a full-on smile.

This isn't him, but he looks similar.  I think.  *hangs head

Next time I see him, I'll make sure to look him in the eyes and ask him how he's doing.

Even if it means giving up some of my writing time so he can talk.

I owe the world that much.

Letters to My Younger Self - Three Rules to Live By

Dearest youngling,

Listen to the words of someone who's gone through things you will hopefully never go through.  I'm going to lay down some ground rules for your life.  If you follow them, your life will be a million times more wonderful than mine has been.  This is just the first three...more will definitely follow!

Rule Number One: NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR YOUR FEELINGS.

Your emotions are the mechanism your spirit uses to tell your mind that something is good or bad for you.  If you feel good about something, trust that.  If you feel bad, something is wrong.

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about your feelings...your feelings are yours.  They are your private language with the part of you that is also God, the part that loves you unconditionally and wants you to be happy and healthy.

No one gets to tell you how you should feel.  Which leads me to...

Rule Number Two: NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL.

No one makes you mad.  No one makes you sad.  No makes you feel dumb.  Thinking that others can make you feel gives others power over you.

But that 2 year old made his mother mad, you say?  Does a 2 year old really have power over a grown woman?  Only if the grown woman decides that the 2 year old should be in charge!  You are responsible for your own feelings; and pretending otherwise is making yourself a victim when you should be the hero.

So if you feel angry, accept that you feel angry, and find the real reason why.  You aren't angry because that person said something mean.  You are angry either because you are afraid that person is right, or because you feel out of control and want to control the other person.  Which leads me to...

Rule Number Three:  YOU CANNOT CHANGE ANYONE EXCEPT YOURSELF.

If you are not happy, figure out what's wrong, and change yourself.  You will never find another person who can make you happier than you can make yourself.  You know you better than anyone else ever can.

You can't make another person care about the same things you care about, but you can find other people who are more like you.  You can also examine those things, and see how important they really are to you.

You will change throughout your life.  The only constant in this universe is change.  So you have to decide whether you are going to change for the better, or for the worse.

Love,
Someone Who Wishes She'd Known These Things Decades Ago