<-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!

My Birth Story (Excerpt from my thesis, "Birth of a Mother")

My Birth Story – Excerpted from my memoir, Birth of a Mother

Me as a newborn with my proud parents.

     "I spend a couple of hours in the tub, alternating positions from reclining on my back to squatting, to lying on my tummy, getting restless. My three hundred and twenty pound body does not fit as well in the deep plastic tub as I would have liked, and I start letting my legs hang over the sides to stretch my calves and feet to keep them from cramping.
     As endorphins and other hormones flood my body, relaxing me, opening me, and preparing the way for my son's entrance, I want nothing more than to go to sleep. After every rush, I relax against the tub and close my eyes, feeling like I could start dreaming if I wasn't afraid I'd drown in the meantime.
     The nausea hits me without warning. Then my entire body feels flooded with restless energy, even though I simultaneously feel heavy and unable to move. The sensation suddenly morphs into feeling like my body is about to split into two, or explode. I remember from Gaskin's books that just before the pushing phase, mothers “transition” into it by experiencing feelings ranging from nausea and discomfort to panicking and losing confidence in their ability to survive the birth. To relieve the tension, and head off the panic, I facetiously announce, “Well, this must be transition, because I feel like I'm going to die!”
     As Kelli and Maggie burst into laughter, Kelli's assistant, Kristie, walks into the room, also laughing. “I knew she'd make me laugh as soon as I walked in the door!” she says, grinning at me.
     I appreciate Kristie's presence in the next moments, first because she rubs my feet while Rose puts a cold washcloth over my eyes, and Maggie has me sip more juice from a straw. Transition passes, and my body moves itself into squatting position without my conscious effort, and with the next rush, my bellow turns into a grunt, and I find myself pushing.
     Kelli looks up from knitting my son's hat and stares at me a moment, before asking, “Am I going to finish this in time?”
     My laugh is cut short by another rush that ends in pushing.
     I'm vaguely aware of my sister running around, helping the midwives and encouraging me, following their lead. I hear her telling the men in the other room that they need to watch the way they feel or think, because I might pick up on their worry or tension, and my heart overflows with love and pride for her, but I am too far gone in labor-land to tell her so.
     The urge to push is relatively weak at first. I roll onto my side, my other side, to my hands and knees, squatting and leaning over the tub, and squatting and leaning back against it. The last three positions feel best. A couple contractions even find me on my back, because my legs are cramping, and my feet are wrinkled and numb, yet throbbing. Someone rubs my feet and calves at some point, which feels like a wonderful release of blocked energy.
     After pushing for what feels like twenty minutes, Kelli checks me with her fingers, and finds a little bit of cervix still holding back my son's head. She pushes at it while I bear down, and it's much easier to figure out what muscles with which to push when I can feel her fingers. We get the last of the cervix away in that fashion, and the endorphins are making me crave sleep again. I hear myself saying, “a nap would be heaven” after every contraction, and finally, I decide to move back to my bed so I can rest between pushes without inhaling water.
     In a flurry of activity, all the ladies run around me, moving the birthing stuff back into the bedroom on the other side of the house, while Kelli helps me out of the tub. I notice my birth team blocking view of my body from the men as we make our way through the house, and feel like that was thoughtful of them, though I couldn't care less about being seen naked right now. Before I went into labor, I had a birthing outfit picked out, but once labor really started, naked was the only way I wanted to be. I am no longer ashamed of this large, incredible body, the body that conceived, housed, nurtured, and protected my baby as he grew.
     On the bed, I discover that lying on my side makes the contractions hurt, so for the most part, I stay in the chest and knees position, which lets me rest between contractions and almost sleep. I feel so out of it that I can't figure out how to sustain the pushes to move my baby out.
     I become frustrated, and the sound of the men talking in the other room distracts and irritates me, so I ask Rose to shut the door, not realizing that Dolphin is standing in the hallway.
     Kelli says, “How about we move you to the birthing stool, and let gravity help?”
     I stare at her like she's speaking in tongues for a moment, and when my foggy brain finally deciphers her question, I say, “Okay.”
     The birthing stool looks like someone turned a rocking chair on its side, but cut off the chair part, and then cut handles into each end of the curved runners. It's sturdy, though, and gives my birth team much more room to help me. Maggie and Kristie help me spread my thighs as far as they will go, and Kelli kneels between them, while Kristie contorts herself on the floor with her head under my butt to keep a hot compress against my perineum with one hand, and wipe away fecal matter with the other. They are all my heroes, and I am grateful at the matter-of-fact comportment of these experienced ladies, keeping me confident in my most vulnerable moments.
     On the birthing stool, with Kelli's assistance, I finally figure out how to push effectively, and then how to sustain it. I ask Kelli to use her fingers to guide me, so I can focus on pushing against them. I smell clary sage oil punctuated by occasional whiffs of my own feces at different points, and feel impressed all over again at how efficient the ladies are at keeping me clean and the floor and bed covered. I am so grateful that I feel so comfortable with them that I can poo on them and not feel bad or embarrassed about it.
     They know I can do it, and encourage me over and over. Incredibly attentive and intuitive, they know what I need and want before I do, half the time. Rose is also a huge help, just by helping them. She becomes an active member of my birth team, even though she's never witnessed a birth before. I could burst with pride for her.
     […]
     In the last fifteen minutes, the pushing urge becomes all consuming. I grunt louder and longer than I ever have before, pushing until I think I can't possibly push anymore, surprised when my body adds an extra, stronger push at the end of what I thought was all I could do. My throat is raw and I taste mucus from the grunting, as if I'm coughing up phlegm rather than vocalizing as I move my baby's head down my birth canal.
     I don't feel the infamous “ring of fire” when he crowns, just an itchy, stretchy feeling. My birth team sets up a mirror so I can see his head, but my glasses are still in the kitchen, so I reach down and touch him instead. His head feels like a slimy hairball, and I almost laugh, but suddenly, I can't think or do anything but push. My body totally takes over. His head comes out, and Kelli wipes his nose and mouth, then turns slightly to put down the cloth, whirling back around just in time to catch my baby as he shoots out of me, seconds after crowning. I almost laugh again at the wide-eyed expression on Kelli's face, which is the only face close enough for me to see without my glasses.
     But then she puts his warm, slippery body on my belly, and I cradle him to me, and the rest of the world ceases to exist. His head is covered in short brown hair, looking darker in the birth gore. His eyes are dark and almond-shaped, his nose flat and round, his lips full and perfect in his scrunched up, beautiful face. He could be any ethnicity in this moment. He is the entire human race, the past, present, and future. He is the entire universe, my universe, the overwhelming precious answer to every prayer I'll ever make.

Beacon

During a lovely, fun, feel-good Litha celebration with the other ladies of the house (resident males were on the road, playing video games, and taking an incredibly late nap,) I prayed for inspiration and creativity among other things.

And here is the first poem I have written in many months, nine months I believe, composed mainly in my head as I watched Elmo in Grouchland with my toddler. :D



Beacon
by Ashley Rae Curran (if you steal this, invisible faeries will cause malfunctions in all your electronics until you repent and give credit where it is due. Just so you know.)

Though layers of darkness
block the stars, the moon, the sun;
though the fat, the lies, facades
drape like salted bandages over festering wounds;
though doubt, shame, hate
reflect in every window, every mirror;
I choose to be a beacon,
radiating love without limits,
guiding the willing towards the light;
offering hope,
for peace, for joy.