Gratitude, the Collective Cup

“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

I can not stop watching this video.  I found it on Brene Brown’s blog, where I was seeking solace from a very difficult morning…needing a bit of inspiration and a lift in spirit.

I needed to find a place of gratitude to reset myself.

What an instant spirit boost… it worked after the first view, but I like to be extreme about everything, so I have, of course, watched it about ten times.  Ok  fifteen.   Well, maybe more like twenty.  

What an amazing experience for these kids.  I love the amazing feeling of community and interconnectedness that washes over me just watching the video.

There is something transformative about participating in something so collective and beautiful.  It is a reminder of our unity and wholeness, Continue reading

Unimaginably Hard, Inexpressibly Beautiful

“I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you. Truly, deeply, seeing you.”

 -Dr. Brene Brown

The other day I was at a birth… my client had decided to get an epidural and I was sent out of the room while the anesthesiologist placed it in her spine.  I sat in one of two chairs in the center of the labor and delivery wing, and a strange woman who had been haunting the hallways for the past four hours plopped down beside me.  She informed me that she was waiting for her surrogate to have her baby, a moment she had been waiting for her entire life.  She was wringing her hands, her anxiety palpable.

“Are you a mom?”  she asked.

“Three little girls,”  I said, smiling warmly, I tried to surround her in my calm energy, bring down her distress with my own breath.

“Is it hard?”  she asked a few quiet minutes later.

“Labor?”

“No, being a mom.”

I squeezed her quaking hand.  I told her it was hard.  And marvelous.

“How?  How is it hard?”  she persisted, trying to gather her motherhood in her arms so she could greet her new babe with all of the secrets in hand.

I was called in to my client again before I could give her an answer.

Continue reading

Gratitude: the Back Float

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Wow.  Have you ever had one of those weeks (or two or three or forty in a row) where all of those cliché sayings like, “When it rains, it pours…” and “The shit’s hitting the fan” and “That which does not kill you makes you stronger” are appropriately running through your head?

Not the truly devastating stuff… not the real monsters like a death in the family, or a life threatening emergency or the end of a marriage.  But mid-level crap and madness that are stress inducing and eat away hours of your sleep.  The junk that makes you alternately lose your appetite and then eat a whole pizza at midnight like you are a 19-year-old college kid?

Stuff like that, peppered with ridiculous moments that seem to add insult to injury…since your brain is occupied with the mid-level madness, you don’t realize you are pointing the non-stick spray at your face and not the hot pan while making your kids’ breakfast (yes.  It happened.)  Or you begin dropping things constantly and repeatedly (never the car keys, always the iPhone).  Then you bend over six times in a row before successfully picking it up, making you look like you are doing some ridiculous dance in the cross walk of Target while everyone waits for you.

The moments that kick up that stress level until soon, every word you utter brings tears to your eyes?

Well, that sums up my last few weeks.  A stressful event happens, I freak out, I deal with it, I wake up the next day having talked myself down through a night of sleepless agonizing.  I begin my day feeling much more stable and ready to carry on…and then something else happens.  And slowly, I begin to unravel.   I will try to get some advice from a friend about the day’s non-emergent, mid-level flavor of the day crisis and suddenly I am desperately wiping away insistent tears on the kids’ playground at school.  It seems like a terrible over-reaction to the issue at hand…but  the culmination of it all at once that threatens to take me down.

Having these experiences has seriously challenged my ability to write a Gratitude post.  Something I committed to doing weekly and have been failing to meet the mark.  I am drowning here, people. Continue reading

Open Me

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Birth is a powerful force, uncontrollable and raw.  It brings us into our most primitive, simple forms.  The design of our bodies, the synchronicity of our composition.  It is a compact, intense and potent experience…our whole life collapsed into a single moment.  The moment we become.

Become a living, breathing expression of our soul.

Become a mother, the soul inexplicably and forever tethered to another in the most cosmic and physical sense.

 

I have spent many years searching for the latent and omnipotent meaning behind this soul-altering experience.   I have also been searching for something.   A lost part of my spirit.A way to turn ON the dead parts of me that I have shut off and let die.

I have been aching to define it, give it words, give it LIFE…give birth to this need for the something I can’t even outline.

 

Recently, I have been drawn into working as a doula… a woman who is hired to support a mother during labor and birth.  I have moved into this work with a powerful sense of purpose…there is something here for me to learn.

 

To see.

 

To experience.

 

I need to be here, doing this.

 

Getting into the work has been exhausting.  Emotionally and physically draining, and challenging my patience and communication skills constantly.  I teeter on the edge of quitting, turning tail and running, cutting the stress and expectation and difficult  relationships loose and being freed from it all.  But I stay.  Because there is something here, in this work.

 

Something that I am meant to do.

 

What is it?  What is birth meant to teach me? Continue reading

Stripping down

When worn properly, the garment provides protection against temptation and evil. Wearing the garment is an outward expression of an inward commitment to follow the Savior.    – (First Presidency letter, 5 Nov. 1996).

The garments must be worn day and night.

Mormons are allowed to have sex, (married of course) swim, and shower without the garments, but they should be immediately worn again, as soon as possible.  The prophet and the first presidency of the LDS church are all old men in their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.  They are not about to advise women on the pleasures of wearing garment bottoms and getting a period, or having a baby. We figure it out.

They make maternity garments, (belly and boob pouches!) and nursing garments (the boob pouches are designed with flap, to give access to the breast once the nursing bra comes down).  They come in different fabrics, and necklines.  I found them all to be drastically uncomfortable.  I was painfully sensitive to lace, and even the simplest styles had trim that rubbed me raw.  It was always hot, even in the winter months, wearing an extra layer under my clothes.  I hated the way the fabric bunched up around the underwire of my bra, and caused my bra straps to slip around.

I hated sleeping in them, I hated golfing in them, I hated never being able to undress or dress in a locker room at the gym.

But, despite the physical discomfort, I wore them diligently, faithfully.  I tried so desperately to embrace the life of a married mormon woman.  I read material about the garments, their sacred nature, the blessing I would get from wearing them.  I taught young, impressionable preteen girls about the importance of wearing temple garments.  I told them how sacred and special they were.  I left the church on those particular Sundays always wondering if they recognized how resolved I was in convincing my own heart.   I wanted my new husband to see me as a valiant, faithful woman.  I wanted Heavenly Father to validate my efforts with a boost of faith.

 Visiting the Oakland Temple

After our daughter Carly was born, we moved to California.  I became pregnant with Lydia just six months after Carly’s birth.  As I  fed and cared for one baby girl, and grew in my womb another.  My spiritual crisis flourished, growing as fast as the new life inside me.

 

Garments are worn as a reminder of the covenants and oaths taken inside the temple.  They are to serve as a constant reminder of who you are, what your purpose is on earth, and the morals and standards you are striving to live.  They keep you dressing modestly and behaving accordingly.  Putting the garments on your body is like dressing in the armor of God.

These were the true reasons the mormon underwear was hard for me to wear.

 

It was an oppressive,  constant weighing reminder of who I was – a latter-day saint (LDS).

 I would step out of a shower in the morning and stare at the blurred outline of my body in the fogged up mirror.

 I was disappearing.

I pulled the garments on, and the woman in the mirror became visible as the fog cleared.  She looked like all the women in my life…my mother, my grandmother, my aunts and cousins, my ancestors.

 It felt like chain mail under my clothes.

 My underwear was immutable evidence that I was trapped, encapsulated in fraudulence.  I hated when Rick would see me in them each day, knowing my garments were a reassurance for him that I was doing it.  I was complying with the temple promises.  It felt like a bold face lie.

I wanted to fall asleep at night, his skin and my skin unsheathed from our armor…my raw self and his.  But it was against the rules, to spend a night sleeping in our bed, holding onto each other without the barrier between.

The lightweight cotton was becoming so heavy, I could barely get dressed in the morning.

 

It seemed that each passing day, as my belly grew larger, so did my discontent.  I had managed to avoid buying maternity garments while pregnant with Carly, eeking by with my regular sizes and the nursing garments afterwards.  But this second baby, fast on the heels of the first, changed my body quicker.  The garments became uncomfortably tight, rolling up over my abdomen.  Rick would ask me almost daily if I had remembered to order maternity garments, and I would always respond with, “tomorrow.”  I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

 

I had respect for the garments, for the people who wear them, for their sacred and spiritual meaning for my loved ones.  And there came a point where I could not put them on.

 I had outgrown them.

I only had a month or two before Lydia would be born…  I sat on the edge of my bed, Carly calling for me in her crib, and I could not put them on my body.  I stopped wearing them.

 Rick began to ask about it as gently as he could, and I would shrug it off, as if I simply forgot. Both of us knew forgetting was not possible.  I could feel his fear building as the force of our spiritual storm began to build and take shape.   I would try to be nonchalant, tell him, “tomorrow,” and almost gag on my words.  His disappointed eyes and my guilt filled me up like wet cement.

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In that last month, Carly, with her imploring blue eyes, would lift my shirt and pat my bare belly, press against me.  She would squeeze my fingers and leave wet kisses on my cheeks.  My daughter.  My little girl, watching my every move.

And inside me grew a fierce and fearless Lydia, straining against my insides, running out of room, ready to come into the world and become.

 

And… there was…me.

 

A burgeoning woman who knew that the time was coming. The moment where soon, I would no longer be able to hold myself in.

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In the green of a blooming spring, amongst the awakening world, it happened.

I gave birth to us both.

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The Neverending Story

“What I’ve started I must finish. I’ve gone too far to turn back. Regardless of what may happen, I have to go forward.”
― Michael EndeThe Neverending Story

I’ve been MIA, I know.  I have a million legitimate excuses for you.  I have three kids, and it’s summer.  We’re making memories.  Building castles.

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Finding treasures.

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Having sleepovers, with serious bedhead consequences.

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Letting watermelon drip from our chins.

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You know, summer stuff.

 Also,  I witnessed a woman birth a beautiful baby boy, and become a mom (wipes tears).  I had to recover for a week after skipping a night of sleep to see this baby born.

AND… I had a birthday, and turned (gasp) 35.  Yep.  And my hubs had a birthday two days later, and he turned (much bigger gasp) 38.  And we went to the beach.  Twice.  Which was marvelous, because it helps me appreciate the beauty in where we live now, rather than shrivel with homesickness.

And we rearranged the bedrooms in our home to give each girl their own bedroom…Carly and Lydia have their individual space now, and my creative haven has been dumped into a massive pile of plastic bins in the attic (sob) and replaced by Stella’s Minnie Mouse action figures.

 

But.

 

Also.

 

I posted about the magical underwear, and have been waiting to be struck down.  I have been going through some sort of big, dramatic, face-your-fears panic.  I had an excruciatingly awkward, heart-beat-through-your-chest phone call with my mom.  Where she really stepped up and tried to be understanding.   And said in not so many words, “If you must, you must.”  And.  “But its so sacred.”  And “What is coming next?”  And that question has me curling up in the fetal position right now.

 

 It is a moment of true recognition, how hard this is going to be.  It certainly is not unreasonable, my mother’s fear.  Her hesitation.  And my parents are trying so hard to love and support me.  But I know that I may cause them pain, create tension in their lives, make things even more challenging in their family relationships, point out parts of my life that were not-so-great and stir up guilt or anger in them.  It’s big…a  huge, life-swallowing , monstrous FEAR in me.  And it’s so… public. Surely this crippling fear is not original to anyone setting out to write memoir.  But whew.

 

On the way home from the beach, on my 35th birthday, my kids watched The Never Ending Story in the car.

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A movie I could recite almost word for word.  The Rock Biter. The secret place in the elementary school attic.  Morla. The swamp of sadness.  Is the sound track playing in your head right now too?

Rick was driving, and I stared at the road ahead, grappling with the demons that have me in this dead stall.

The fears that threaten my ability to just keep moving.

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  And in the midst of my reverie, Lydia calls out from the back seat, “What did she say?  What?  I can’t understand her!”

 

Immediately, my mind brings up the scene… I see the Empress, sitting on her broken rock, floating in oblivion, her pearl quaking against her forehead delicately, her eyes red rimmed…

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“Bastian?  Why don’t you do what you dream, Bastian?”

 

I paused the movie, and translated her rung out cry for my eight year old, then backed the movie up one scene so she could watch it again, and hear her plea.

 

“Bastian?  What don’t you do what you dream, Bastian?”

Go ahead.  Play out that scene in your mind.  Any child of the 80s can.

 

There’s nothing like a giant flying cockerspaniel-dragon to snap you back into your life.  Bring you back your dreams.

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I won’t be chasing anyone into a dumpster anytime soon, but I will continue, despite my serious anxiety.

Because the Dream is so much better than the Nothing.

Watch it. You know you want to.

Skivvies and Damnation

“Ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into [God’s] presence. To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality.” –   LDS President Boyd K. Packer

I better just get the underwear thing out of the way.  I am not sure that the necessity of special  underwear in order to find eternal salvation is something I can just zip on past.   It’s a topic that needs addressing.  Not just because people in general are fascinated with the idea that mormons wear secret underwear, (they do) but also because it was certainly a huge part of my overwhelming unhappiness as a mormon woman,  and a painful hurdle to overcome.

 But.

I dread it….writing about this part.   Because it’s absolutely sacred to the mormon population.  And while I will poke fun, be irreverent, and unafraid to talk about the church’s darker, more damaging side… it is not my intention to hurt or disrespect LDS people.

I don’t believe in the church anymore.  And the secrecy surrounding many of the beliefs and teachings were damaging and hurtful to me, and many others. There is so much secrecy, and so much fear in talking honestly and openly about real experience.  There is no safe forum for mormon people to express their feelings of doubt or fear or disagreement.   I have been filled with much hesitation to share some of these more sacred elements out of respect for the LDS people, out of my desire to not feel hated and condemned by them, my own family members especially. I squirm in my seat as I write this.   It has taken me a long time to arrive here, to this moment when I believe that I deserve to share it, to own it, to call it out, just as they will spread their message and try to find people to blindly follow their faith.

 I will share the sacred parts…  the temple, the underwear, with intention…not to desecrate something holy, but to own my story and shed the shame and propensity to hide behind propriety at the cost of my soul, my spirit.  It is all I can do.

 l love mormons.

I was one.  I am married to someone who was molded and shaped into an incredible father and husband by the LDS faith.  I was a fifth generation mormon, and almost all of my ancestors and living relatives are still faithful LDS people.   Mormons are some of the most generous, caring, loving, and thoughtful people you will meet.  They are resourceful and energetic and loving and they will bring you a casserole and a pan of brownies, help you move, jump your dead battery on the side of the road, or visit you when you are sick  without pause or reciprocation.

So.  Deep breath.

To start with the basics, yes, mormons do in fact wear special underwear.  Mitt Romney?  He wears the undies.  So does his wife.  Any faithful, active adult member of the LDS community with a church resume like the Romney’s must wear the garments, or they would be deemed unworthy of holding those important church positions.  Children do not wear garments…you must be 18, found worthy, and go through sacred and very secret rituals and ceremonies in an LDS temple in order to purchase and wear garments.

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-Denver, Colorado Temple.  The temple I first received my garments.

Mormons believe the underwear is absolutely sacred and is not supposed to be shown to others or spoken about to outsiders.  The underwear is worn to keep one modest, serve as a reminder of the promises made to God, and when worn faithfully and correctly can be protective.  There are hundreds of stories floating in mormonland and even shared over the pulpit about people who were physically protected in accidents or fire by wearing the garments.  These are the stories that confirm the notion to outsiders that mormons wear “magical underwear.”


Mormon underwear is all white, a symbol of purity.  The men wear a basic white shirt, and the bottoms look like white boxer briefs but the legs are lengthened to a few inches above the knee.  There are secret symbolic markings embroidered into various places on the bottoms and tops.  The markings are small, white and not very noticeable.  The women wear tops that look like tank tops with capped sleeves.  They come in a variety of neck lines, but they all come up high enough to modestly cover indecent cleavage exposure.  For women with bigger breasts, the tops are sewn with boob pouches, of sorts, so that the top will fit smoothly over all the skin.  The catch is, women must wear the sacred garment under the bra.  Ladies will understand the supreme discomfort that this may cause the well endowed LDS.  I don’t care how smooth you try to make those boob pouches, they are simply not good enough to prevent bunching, puckering, and movement of the bra in all the wrong places.  The bottoms look like white spandex, that go down to a few inches above the knee, to prevent scandalous immodest flashing of the upper thigh.  The female garments have the same markings as the men…  a strange phenomenon of equality within the faith, not often replicated.

Thankfully, the design has changed over time, as they used to be one-piece numbers, with long sleeves, long pants…and a crotch flap. These beauties may still be available for worthy purchasers. Awesome.  The one-piecers were a piece of history my mother loved to remind me of as we commiserated about the hot misery of those boob pouches. And despite our shared discomfort, the sacred power of those garments held tremendous control over our lives.  The influence the underwear has in daily LDS life is hard to articulate, and the guilt and perceived wickedness over letting them go was immense.  The decision to slip on a pair of good ol’fashioned bikini briefs caused almost paralyzing anxiety at times, paralleled only in my emotions now, as I let go to the fears associated with writing about the underwear.

Releasing that fear was a challenge, when I am going to burn in hell for writing about this.  Actually, I don’t think most mormons believe in “burning in hell.”  Hell is called outer darkness, and is rarely spoken of.

I have come far enough to have let go of that belief, the idea that the kind of skivvies I wear is important to God, or a measure of my worthiness as a human being.  Can there be a heavier weight, a more taxing exercise, than a continual critical measuring of self worth?  The memory of that measurement still makes it hard for me to breathe, it presses in on my throat, my voice disappears.

Floating out here in the “outer darkness,” I feel so much lighter.  And I marinate in this idea:

We are all worthy.

Always.

The worthiness is brilliant and it’s still flowering within me.

The projection of strength, faith, and sacrifice is paramount in the mormon community, and even within the family circle there can be a thick communication barrier.  It’s a barrier that still snakes it’s way through me, coiling around my darkest places, the most raw fears.  I know that LDS people will feel disrespected and offended by the things I write here, about my own personal experience as a mormon woman.   I see the fear in my mother and father’s eyes when I tell them about the things  I will write here, for the world to read.  For their family members to read. But their discomfort it is unavoidable,…inevitable, if I am to accomplish what I have set out to do…to find my voice and be unafraid to use it.  That voice has been bound and gagged for too long by the remaining vestiges of mormon unmentionables.   I have set out to peel away the layers of my self, to discover what is underneath, and scrape that away too.

When all the layers are gone, the only thing remaining will be what is at the core of us all.

God.  Love.

My hope is that my willingness to be raw, naked and condemned by people I love will help someone else find the God within themselves too.

I will send this small nugget of release into the blog-iverse with the promise of more details to come.  The next layer must come off.  I’m just going to catch my breath first.

To be continued.

Gratitude bites

Change is the very basis of our life, not to be fought, to be welcomed and tasted, to be seen for the gift it truly is.
~ Brenda Shoshanna

Well.  It’s sunday.  I have just returned from a glorious trip to my beloved Colorado.   People, Colorado is heaven.  There are no words, for the beauty, the glory, the loveliness of my home state.  The air…it is so dry, light.  As in not wet.  The horizon, it is so open and full and distant and colorful.  Not a green tunnel.  The houses, they were so large and spacious, the plumbing, the roof tops, so… vivacious.

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Yesterday, we flew as a family of five, a family containing a three-year old person (God Bless Us All) from my glorious Colorado after a long visit,  to our home in Connecticut.  I proceeded to apply every ounce of any people pleasing, energy-sapping, procrastinating, doubting, lonely and fearful energy to the road ahead, as we bounced down the runway.  We arrived home, and instead of breathing in our home, taking in the charm, the soft light, the artistic nuances, the brilliant color, the fresh familiarity and promise… I picked a fight with Rick, pouring every particle of fear and heaviness that the months ahead will hold for us into making him feel inadequate, making our home look rundown, making my spirit feel small.

Not good.

It is now that gratitude is necessary. In the moments when gratitude bites, and everything feels impossibly fickle.

A year ago, we moved here.  That word, moving, does not capture what we went through. Or maybe it does.  Move.  Ing.  Movement.  Motility.  Mobility.  I know that many, many people in the world experience this excruciating transforming, called moving.  From the old, to the new. The fossilized, to the green.  The roots were dug up, and we found ourselves in pain.  To be dug up is painful.   It was an acknowledging, that our lives needed new movement, as much as we resisted that change.

We arrived here in the northeast a year ago.  I found myself facing monsters, unearthed from a vault I was no longer able to keep locked.  The August air here was as thick as my fear.  My daughter became ill with a bewildering affliction.  The cracks we had spackled over and repainted in our marriage became fissures threatening to render us in two.  The acknowledgment of my powerlessness was paralyzing, the idea that I was not strong enough, capable enough to withstand a “silly move” across the country filled my body with cement.  I found myself facing a spiritual crisis larger than I had ever known.

I fantasized about walking out of my life.

I found myself weeping into a cardboard box, with a new and passionately destructive mantra:

This is not my life. This is not my life.  This is not my life.

I shocked myself with the depth of my misery, my weakness.  When you choose to move, change, transform something in your life, every problem that has not been addressed, every injury, every insecurity…it will rise to the surface, reveal itself to you for acknowledgement, for repair.  And it did.  Viciously, and without pause.

Apparently, I had been standing on a volcano of suppression, and it erupted at our taunting…our invitation, by moving our family to Connecticut.  I am still in the process of digging out.  We hit our one year move-iversary and while things seem more familiar here in Connecticut, the repeat seasons, the fact we have spent an August here before… the humidity, the rainstorms, the unpacking of suitcases, it floods back to me in giant waves of panic.  Like post traumatic stress disorder.  My scalp has been itchy as the memories barrage me (did I mention that we all got lice during our move?)  A certain sight or smell or taste will trigger a powerful rush of memory of my misery just a year ago.  The site of the weeds in the yard, growing taller than me.  The organizational nightmare of our garage, still housing trashed cardboard boxes. Or the smell of wood smoke wafting from the eighty-four year old chimney after a rainstorm. I am randomly overcome with the remembering of my absolute undoing.

Two days ago, at my parent’s home, we had a dinner with the people closest to us in Colorado. We ate and drank and reminisced and took pictures. The kids made messes in the dress up box and turned dinner into a combined game of duck duck goose and musical chairs.  Periodically an adult would snag a child and trap them in a hug without their permission and the impending close to our visit would loom larger.  And then we said our goodbyes.  Again.

I wiped the tears of my children  with the palms of my hands, I buried their heartbroken sobs into my belly and rubbed their backs and soaked in their sadness.  I kissed my nieces and nephews and hugged my brothers and sisters just as we had last year, on the front lawn of my parent’s house.

Yesterday, we hugged Grandma and Grandpa in the early morning chaos of the airport and flew back again, to the place where the moving must happen.  It is happening now, as I write this, with a lump in my throat.

As we made our final descent  yesterday, I held Stella’s dimpled three-year old hand in mine and felt the airplane speed up to meet the fast approaching ground, and then slow…speed up in a burst, then slow again.  It felt choppy and unpredictable as we dipped lower toward the ground.  I was afraid we would land too hard, the inconsistency would prove to be a danger to our arrival.  Despite the unsteady approach, the ground seemed to rise up to meet us, and we eventually bounced to a roll, roared to a lull, and found ourselves safely…Home.

There has been changes, monumental, and minuscule, in our movement from one place to the next.  But mostly, the change is in the mantra, which has been unearthed from the rubble so far.

This is my life.  This is my life.  This is my life.

And the universe will rise up to support me.

Today I am grateful for:

-a family worth missing

-the softness of Stella’s hand

-the healing properties of spackle

-the reassuring step from the threshold of an airplane on to solid ground

-movement

Bottoms up, Sister Poulin

Freedom – Our True Essence.

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After the decision to leave was made, after we let our intentions be known to our bishop, after I began an honest and open investigation of the place I had centered my life around…

Rick and I stood together, muddling through day-to-day life. But it was a life that had lost it’s definition, and our marriage had lost it’s boundaries, and our parenting had lost the written manual.  We were still hiding from most of our loved ones.  We lived in California at the time, and my family lived in Colorado, Rick’s in Vermont.  We did not need to tell them quite yet, about our radical decision.  The ability to secretly flounder our way through those first terrifying months was a factor so gratifying I was both weak with relief and completely wild with the task of hiding the chaos that we had unleashed in our lives.

 

We had to redefine everything.  The names we go by (Brother and Sister Poulin), what we ate (I still love green jello and funeral potatoes) what we drank, and where to charitably contribute now that 10% of our income was not being poured into building more churches.  We had to take a look at the kind of art we hung on the walls, the kind of cheap summer t-shirts I filled my cart with at Target (hello tank tops!!!) and even the kind of underwear we wore.  (It took me 8 years to buy ANYTHING white again).*

Most importantly, we had to discover what we would tell our children about God and their divine nature, what life is all about, what happens when we die, and who they really are… after all, my stories had just turned to ash in my hands. Luckily, they were still so little, just twenty months old and five months old. They had no idea what was happening to us as a family, though they surely felt the shaky trepidation that filled me countless times a day when the question “what if I am WRONG?” rose in my throat like a bubble and burst in my brain, sending waves of panic and visions of outer darkness (mormon hell).

As babies, they surely sensed my rage and deep sense of betrayal as I explored my entire past, my heritage, the doctrine … with freedom and a more open mind, and found things that made me question every conclusion and idea I had ever had about the nature of Heavenly Father, the prophet Joseph Smith, and all of those Book of Mormon stories.  I thought I was just leaving our religion, but mormonism is a culture.  A way of life.  Of thinking.  Of filtering the world.

To lose one’s cultural roots and orientation along with one’s definition of God and the purpose of life was a process, not a simple matter of walking away.

Several months into our life outside of the chapel doors, I was aching to share my fears with someone, but Rick remained adamantly opposed to talking about my research.  We did talk a lot about the rules that had been governing our lives.  Mormons live by a very long list of rules. They undergo interviews to determine how compliant they are, and whether they are worthy enough to enjoy certain blessings that are tied directly to eternal salvation. Chastity, paying 10% of your income as tithing, and following the Word of Wisdom are crucial for earning entrance to the celestial kingdom (the highest degree of heaven).  Additionally,  there are a more complex list of cultural rules that are tiptoed around and wrestled with in mormon life.  Rules about tattoos, body piercings, the color of shirt the men wear to pass the sacrament, length of hair and facial hair for men, dress codes, the kind of t.v., movies, books, music and magazines you enjoy, the language you use, the activities you engage in on Sundays…. it goes on, and on.

Together, we began to pick through this pile, sorting what stays and what goes like a giant garage sale.  It was tedious, and the discussions left us squirming and scared.  After a several months, drinking alcohol was brought up.

I had very little experience with drinking in my past, before we had met.

My parents told me my whole life that alcohol was sinful, it would destroy my entire life, and if I took one sip I would certainly be an alcoholic, since I had a few in my family tree. I would unleash a demon that could not be tamed if I broke the Word of Wisdom (the code of rules that includes a forbidding of coffee, tea and alcoholic beverages).  Mormon people can not marry in the temple if they do not diligently follow the word of wisdom.  It is a strictly enforced rule, and people follow it because it is an easy choice… go to heaven, or have a latte.  I was absolutely terrified of alcohol.

Being the stalwart rule follower, I had not had a drink of any kind until my 21st birthday.  My boyfriend at the time slid it across the bar table at me.  A Killian’s Red.  On that same afternoon, Salt Lake City was hit with a destructive tornado, right in the heart of the city. A tornado in the Salt Lake valley surrounded by enormous mountains was an unheard of weather phenomenon, and the mormon girl in me shuddered as I sipped that first beer. It was a sign.

 

Rick on the other hand, was a seasoned pot head back in the day.  As a devotee of the law, this knowledge always shocked my innocent mind.

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His stories of graduating from college and moving to Lake Tahoe with his buddies in order to engage in a year submerged in skiing, video games and surrounded in an ever-present cloud of skunky smoke made my head spin in confusion.  When Rick would talk about his past, it always left me completely mystified.  I had only known the mormon version of Rick, the return missionary. His “before the church” Rick stories did not merge with the man I knew. At all.  I felt like he was making it up entirely.  The disconnect seemed so distinct, I simply could not understand how a pot smoking ski bum could also be my straight laced math-geek husband who wrote me hand written love letters, went to four hours of additional church meetings on sundays (regular church service is three hours long) with a smile on his face, and made sure we never watched a rated R movie.

Rick grew up with beer in the fridge and did not think twice about it. He probably had the same perception of it as I did with caffeinated sodas…a can of pepsi was an adult beverage in my childhood home. (A lot of mormons will extend the Word of Wisdom to caffeinated beverages of any kind, but this delineation is left for personal interpretation).

Rick never really liked drinking either, which is why weed had been his choice activity in those pre-mormon days.   But Rick had given up his pot, alcohol, and coffee, to be a mormon man (amongst other things not related to the word of wisdom). He did it happily, and enjoyed the changes it brought into his life. He told me he never missed it, longed for it, or felt tempted by his past.  It is obviously a more healthy way of life, to be free from addictive substances, and it was no problem for him to leave it behind.

 

Our long discussion ended one night, when Rick put a six pack of Killian’s Red down on the couch between us, and we stared at it silently.

Do we dare?

Fear made my heart pulse in my throat as he handed me one.  It felt necessary.  Like swinging an axe uncomfortably close to an appendage in order to break the chains.  A shedding of controlling beliefs, an opening towards our own ability to choose. The most recent material I had read in my research of the church fueled my boldness.  I would not let a church sitting on that newly unveiled foundation control me. We each picked up a cold bottle from the cardboard carrier, clinked them together in the world’s most awkward toast, and headed into purgatory with a few cool gulps…

 

A Killian’s Red. (Ew).

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We each drank one.  It felt scary to put the unopened bottles in the fridge next to the bottles of breast milk and applesauce.  It felt like we were already raging alcoholics, as I buried the empty bottles in the garage with the dirty diapers.  We went to bed, Rick still wearing his garment top as we lay together.  He leaned over and kissed me, and I tasted it in his mouth…the Killians Red lurked there, under the toothpaste.

What have I done?

My brain screamed…I have unleashed an unpredictable monster!

Mayday!

Mayday!  It’s Pandora’s Box!  Evil!

Danger!

 I know mormon Rick.  He was a guy I chose to marry.  I did not know the Rick that existed before the mormoness.  And I had asked him to strip away those mormon pieces. The armor will come off, the rules and regulations will be chipped away…but I did not know what I would find there.

What if he becomes someone completely unrecognizable to me?  A stranger?  A stranger I can’t love?

What if I became a woman unbearable to Rick? If I lost control of myself entirely and was unable to make these choices for myself?

We kissed, and he tasted cryptic.  I pulled off his mormon garment top to touch the real man beneath that cotton barrier, a part of me vowed to pour that evil beer down the sink first thing in the morning. The other part of me, only a tiny bit stronger, softened into the fear and the mystery and freedom of becoming something new. Or perhaps, we would not become something new, but simply discover what we were underneath… once the fear was shed.

*Active, devoted mormon adults wear unique underwear.  You must gain a temple recommend, be deemed “worthy,” and go through a secret ritual in a temple before wearing the underwear.  The underwear is referred to as garments.  It is always white, and considered sacred.  Both men and women wear garments, and by design restricts certain kinds of fashion, including sleeveless tops. You must be worthy and wear the garments at all times except to shower, be intimate with a spouse, or swim. in order to enter the highest degree of heaven.

Gratitude Sunday

“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.” — Tony Robbins

I am heading into my last week of vacation with friends and family in Colorado, and so I am a bit behind with my posting…but I made this gratitude pledge last week and I am sticking to it!  True confessions, I haven’t done it with my kids this week, but I tend to give myself a lot of leeway on vacation.  On vacation, the kids can pick whatever cold cereal they want in the cereal isle, eat ice cream for dinner at least once, go to bed too late, and eat out of grandma’s red licorice drawer.  So, the daily gratitude has not been introduced, they are too tired and hopped up on sugar to think straight.  (Me too…Ahem).

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We are spending the day with this lovely couple, our besties, Shannon and Dean.  We took this picture a year ago on their anniversary, where they threw us a goodbye party at the park.  Today we are helping them celebrate their little girl’s 4th birthday.  Finding good friends is like dating… some friendships are short and intense, some come and go, wane over time, or grow apart.  And some friends are for life, till death do us part.  And today the knowing we have this kind of friendship fills me the gratitude.

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So, we’ve moved.  To the northeast.  And it was so, so hard.  If you are reading this blog, you will hear more about this.  After a year of being in Connecticut, the grief and overwhelming disorientation is waning a bit and I can see some of the beauty and fun that we will get to enjoy being in a new part of the country.  But one thing I miss is the amazing horizon and views.  Living in Connecticut is like being in a green tunnel.  You can’t even see the gas station when you exit the freeway.  I miss this gorgeous distant view of the mountains and surroundings.  The ability to see more than a few feet away.  And, let’s not overlook my sweet not-so-little girl, still game for a good snuggle and huge hug.

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A note one of my girls wrote Rick for Father’s day…I will insert myself into the message…a glowing endorsement of our parenting skills up to this point.  Gotta be grateful she has such a positive spin on her childhood so far!

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Not the greatest in pictorial skills…but are tantalizing pictures of licorice really necessary?  Actually, while I do like red vines, I rarely buy them unless I am missing my mom.  She loves it, and has a drawer full of it in her kitchen, on road trips and vacations she always has some to pass out, and she has no trouble throwing out half a bag to open a fresh one she has stored in the cupboard.  Delish.

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We did the Warrior Dash last year.  There is a huge mud pit you have to swim in under barbed wire, and I was pretty grossed out peeps.  I have all kinds of sensory issues.  The idea of having to touch a terra cotta pot makes my skin crawl, so submerging in mud…not my gig.  Thank goodness I have someone to push me out of my comfort zone, because it ROCKED.  The whole experience was so fun, Rick is trying to convince me to do the Tough Mudder next.  But, live electrical wires are part of that experience…and I don’t know that I am ready for defibrillation while fully conscious.  When I feel like getting fried, I will be sure to let you all know.

That’s my five gratitude highlights this week!  What are you grateful for?