Monthly Archives: January 2012

Unfixable Things

“The wake up seems to be developmental, you’ve tried everything to try and eliminate it and it looks like we are just going to have to wait until he outgrows it.”

This one sentence touched off a downward spiral inside of me a couple of days ago. It was written in an email from the child sleep expert we hired back in November to help us with our infant son. Every night, since he was four weeks old, he has cried uncontrollably before going to sleep. This used to occur in the middle of the night. The sleep expert did help us to correct that, thank God. Now, the crying happens  at a more reasonable bedtime hour, or when he wakes up 45 minutes after he’s gone to bed. Thus far, nothing this expert has suggested has helped us to stop the crying and thus, she wrote the sentence I copied above. Every night since then, has felt more and more hopeless.

Since this whole thing started months ago we have tried everything; every swaddle, clothing fabric, room temperature and sound. We have attempted pacifiers, bouncers, mobiles, routines and shushing techniques. We have consulted our pediatrician, Google and yes, spent hard-earned money on an infant sleep expert. As for my own coping mechanisms, I have cried, screamed, hit things, tried accepting it and have even done yoga in the middle of the night to calm myself down. I am not happy to report that I’m still doing all those things.

As I type these words he is screaming his poor, little, adorable head off. As I type this, it’s 10:30pm and he’s been like this since 8:30pm. We have no idea what is wrong and we have no idea how to fix it. The last two hours have been a series of futile attempts at doing so. Now, we have just left the room for the last time to let him cry because that is all there is left to do.

I have only been a parent for 2 years and 8 months. In that relatively short time one of the most painful things I have had to do is stand by and let my child cry; to feel utterly helpless in the face of their pain.

I can’t fix this and perhaps I’m not supposed to. Perhaps this experience is a precursor to the painful parenting moments ahead when I will have to stand by and let my child cry. Right now, I don’t know why he’s crying, but in ten years it might be because a kid made fun of him at school or he wasn’t picked for the kickball team. In twenty years it might be because someone he loved hurt him or he lost a friend. In 30 years it might be because he’s scared of life, or maybe he’s sitting in a dark room holding his own crying child, and crying.

Whatever it is, each time my heart will break along with his and I’m fairly certain it will not get any easier. Perhaps this time is helping me build the strength I’ll need to to stand by the next time he needs to cry and I can’t fix it.

I know in my head that I can’t magically heal all the things in life that will end up hurting my children, but could someone please tell that to my heart.

The Human Metamorphosis

butterfly in hand

met·a·mor·pho·sis [met-uh-mawr-fuh-sis] noun, plural- A profound change in form from one stage to the next in the life history of an organism, as from the caterpillar to the pupa and from the pupa to the adult butterfly.

The life cycle, or metamorphosis of a butterfly is simple: larvae, caterpillar, pupa, adult butterfly. A butterfly is a rather simple organism. The more complex the organism, the more complex the metamorphosis. Human beings are the most complex organism on the planet and therefore, our metamorphosis isn’t so straight forward.

Throughout our lifetime we are forever transforming. It starts with a tremendous outer growth. In 40 weeks a single human egg cell can grow into a 7lb baby. My son is 5 months old and he literally looks like a new person every week. My toddler grows out of her shoes every four months. As adults, the different cell types of our bodies are shed, repaired and regenerated sometimes daily. Scientists estimate that we regenerate almost every cell in our bodies every 10 years.

As we get older the outer metamorphosis slows and (hopefully) the inner metamorphosis accelerates. As we settle into our bones and make peace with our bodies our minds start to expand. For better or worse, we are familiar with the way we look on the outside. As we get older, we feel the need to become just as familiar with the way we feel on the inside. It’s not an easy or simplistic growth chart.

Many of us who are in, approaching, or have already experienced our 30′s might have noticed something happening in this peer group. I call it, The Great 30′s Shake Down. It’s that time in life when people start to splinter off into groups of like-minded people. They also get divorced, downward spiral or commit to a career path or faith. It’s the cycle in our metamorphosis when we tend to step back and ask… “What is it that I really believe?” And if your life isn’t all that you’d imagined it to be (and let’s face it, it rarely is by the time you reach your 30′s) or perhaps a little scarier than you’d imagined, you start to ask yourself, “Is this all there is?” That question is usually followed closely by “Oh God, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, PLEASE don’t let this be ALL there is?!”

These questions are the beginning of the inner metamorphosis.

Some people get scared at this process, and rightly so. It’s a hard and winding road toward discovering your inner world. It’s full of wrong turns, detours and obsticals. It’s not only difficult, but it’s scary because there are demons to slay and pasts to make peace with along the way. It takes a fortification of the gut that many people don’t yet know they have in their 30′s. For many, this process is prolonged until their 40′s, 50′s or unfortunately, maybe never.

Many will decide to put their faith in something that millions of others have put their faith in. They put their faith in something outside themselves where thousands of other’s have claimed they have found all the answers. And many of those thousands will have found what they were looking for but not unless, and until, they searched inward, too. The journey to discovering of your inner-self can only be found inside YOU.

This inner journey, if you’re willing to take it, unlocks your purpose in life. It unlocks the purpose of life. If you think I’m talking about a state of nirvana wherein all your problems blow away on the wind well… I am… and I’m not.  You can certainly find that happy place, but it takes years and years of practice to maintain it. The inner journey is never-ending, like a spiral into and out of everything. It is the last frontier in our modern world and it knows no bounds and has no limits. It’s a journey worth the effort, but might I suggest taking some Pepto Bismal because this metamorphosis isn’t for the weak constitution.

I am still on this journey. I have had mere seconds of understanding the depth of what I attempt to write about here, but those seconds have clung to me like a promise of wings.

If a butterfly isn’t allowed to break through the chrysalis by itself, it will never gain the strength to fly. If you’re willing to build the strength it takes break through your own cage, the payoff is as wonderful, as simple, as liberating and as beautiful as a butterfly.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasures you seek. ~ Joseph Campbell

A Lesson in Love

Orgainzed Closet

I organize my closet based on sleeve length and occasion. Every evening before I go to bed I pick up my kids’ toys and put them in their assigned spaces and then I make sure the sink is clear of dishes. Clutter makes me cranky, but clean, neatly folded towels on the rack make me smile on the inside.

I wasn’t always like this. I used to have to wade through piles of dirty laundry to get to my bed when I was in high school. The inside of my car in college was a veritable trash recepticle. It seems the older I get, and the crazier life gets, the more I like to be in control of my Universe whenever possible. Therefore, me and the label-maker are tight.

I guess they call this a Type A personality. If Type A means that I like my environment to behave in orderly, predictable ways and I dislike being a victim of my circumstances, then yes, I am VERY Type A. I will go to great lengths to maintain the fragile illusion of control that I have over all the things in my life. So much so, that I have developed a three-point strategy to handle difficult situations when they arise. It consists of answering three questioon.

1. What part of the situation is my fault?

2. What can I do to fix it?

3. What is God trying to teach me so that I can make sure it doesn’t happen again?

Those are the questions I couldn’t stop asking when I was about to get fired from my job last year.

From the time I signed the contract on my first, salaried, sales position in 2000, up until I was suddenly being fired from my most recent sales position in March of 2010, my professional career had been nothing, if not, remarkable. I do not say this to be boastful, I say this as a relative truth. In ten years, I worked for three companies wherein I was promoted four times. I rarely dipped below the top 10% of my peers and I was the #1 sales rep in my respective division, twice. In my last year, I was #5 out of 130 reps and was awarded to the Circle of Excellence which consisted of a diamond necklace and an all-expense paid trip to Grand Cayman. Undeniably, I worked hard for all of these things. Logically, you could ascertain that I was also competent at my job. This is why I had a hard time answering the 1st question: What part of me being fired for alleged “incompetency” was my fault? For a long, long time I had no answer to that question. Because in my typical, controlling ways, I refused to be a victim of my circumstances.

After many months of hand-wringing and denial, I came to understand that in this instance, I was a victim. The reality was that someone, for whatever reason, decided I no longer fit into their idea of a team member. Apparently their idea of a “team member” didn’t consist of competent people, but rather gender specific ones. That same person had the power to impose their will and they did, vehemently. I had the power to hire an attorney and I did, vehemently.

Oh how I would love to expand on the details of what happened, but frankly, I’m not entirely sure how much I can say. Get a few cocktails in me and that might change, but for now (and for legality’s sake) I will not go into it. I will say this though…  I had a good attorney and a year later, the matter was resolved out of court. End of story… wait…

… now… end of story.

As for the answer to the second question: What could I have done to fix it? Well, MUCH to my Type A dismay, nothing. Short of selling myself to the devil, I tried. In the end, fixing it was far beyond my abilities to control. It simply was, what it was, and therefore, it must have happened for a reason. Hence the last, most important question: What was God trying to teach me through all of this?

Had what happened not happened I would never have willingly quit my job. Despite my giant list of responsibilities and financial obligations I also kinda liked what I did. Sure, there were plenty of things I didn’t like because let’s face it, they call it “work” for a reason, but I reasoned that if I had to work, THAT’S the job I wanted to do for a variety of reasons.

Of course, in some utopian suburbia wherein Lululemon yoga pants grow on trees and Starbucks coffee cost $1, I’d LOVE to be a stay-at-home-Mom. I’d LOVE to watch every moment of my kids’ childhoods while knee deep in diapers and covered in non-washable marker so long as I get to go to Hawaii for a week every year. Sign me up for that shit! Sadly, for most of us (me included) it’s an either/or world and no matter how much I might have wanted “or,” my husband (and our checking account) were firmly in the “either” camp.

And yes, deep down I have always LOVED writing; but there would be plenty of time to fulfill frivolous, secret dreams when I retired, right? All I had to do was squelch the creative fire in my belly for say… 20 more years??

Yes, all things considered… I did like my job… but I did not love it. And that’s what God wanted me to know.

He wanted me to know that liking is not good enough and that what I love is also what I need. He wanted me to know that what I love, is far more important than what I like and that “or” is sometimes the only option. He loved me so much that he wanted me to know that love and loving are usually the answers to everything and “liking” is only for Facebook. I also learned that what I spend my time loving is all that really matters in this life because it’s true what John Lennon says, “Love is all you need.”

Even so, I still wipe down the appliances twice a day believing that I can control my Universe. But now I also know that my Universe is controlling me and if I follow the love, I’ll see those smashed cheerios on the floor not as a symbol of chaos, but a sign that I am where I belong, home.

Home

For the first 23 years of my life I lived in the quintessentially Midwest town of Kansas City, Missouri. For the last 6 years I have lived in the Northwest with my husband, and for three years before that we lived in the South. But Kansas City is where all my family and every one of my dearest, longest, bestest friends live to this day. My roots in that town are as plentiful and deep as the many potholes in the roads and although I haven’t lived there for almost ten years, sometimes I still (absentmindedly) call it “home.”

If I’m being honest I moved away all those years ago because I felt like I had to. At the time, there were too many people, places and things that reminded me of a person I no longer wanted to be and I wasn’t strong enough to change in spite of them. Changing, for me, meant leaving it all behind; erasing my old way of life and starting over. I had to physically remove myself from a place that held too many memories, temptations and excuses so that I could become someone I did want to be.

At first I was homesick, or rather, I suffered from withdrawals. I came home every 3 months back when flights were cheap and I was the only passenger. It was a weaning period, really. Without fail, each visit I would end up making someone mad. Either it would be a friend that didn’t understand why I didn’t want to do the same things I did before or a family member who didn’t understand why I did. Many times, it was me that left disappointed because I failed (once again) to rise above something when I knew better.

Eventually, the trips became once every six months and now that I have two small children, I foresee a once a year journey… if that.

My hiatus from this blog has been because I of an eight day trip to Kansas City wherein I took both my children for the first time… by myself. Let me remind you that my daughter is 2.5 and my son is a mere 5 months of non-sitting, non-sleeping, breastfeeding chubbiness.  Several times in the airport and on the plane I was given a look of pity and more than twice I heard the phrase, “You’re a braver person than I.”

“Brave or stupid.” was my usual reply.

Not to be Captain Obvious, but it was HARD. It took days of planning, plotting and packing. There were car seats and cribs to arrange for and blankies, binkies, baby baths and breastfeeding supplies to think about. To tell you the truth, I’m not real eager to do that again… or maybe never… or at least until no one is feeding off my body and everyone is partially verbal.

Frankly, the hard part was not just because the number of passengers has changed, it’s that since the last time I was there (10 months ago) I have undergone the biggest change. I have come into my own in many ways AND I added another small person to my list of responsibilites which comes with its own new perspective and maturity.

Today, I am so much closer to being that person I was trying to be all those years ago that I have outgrown nearly everything that kept me tethered to my past. Most of the people in my life have embraced me with open arms and have even reminded me how much they love and miss my presence. It is a warm and validating feeling. But there are others, ones that are closest to me, that have gotten angrier that they can’t count on me to be the person they have always known me to be.

And through this, I have learned something about myself. I have learned that home is not the physical place where you live or were born or even contains your family. Home, for me, is where I feel like the best, truest version of myself; where I am allowed to be the person I have always wanted to be and I’m also allowed to change if I need to. Where I’m accepted and treated with compassion for not being the best version of myself everyday because it is always understood that I am, basically, good.

There are people in Kansas City that make me feel like I’m home when I’m there and when I walk through my own front door in Seattle, I know I’m home… because “home” is a state of mind… and isn’t it all, really?