Archives for March 2018

April on Quora: Cheaters, Pregnancy, SAHM, and Marrying Bipolar

March 27, 2018 by

I have to tell you, as the first post to catalog my answers over at Quora, I don’t know about how I am doing the titles. I mean seriously, look at that – “Cheaters, Pregnancy, SAHM, and Marrying Bipolar” – really? This could be a trash afternoon talk show.

But it isn’t. I think you’ll see by the answers.

Why can’t I leave my husband when I know he won’t stop cheating?

One of two things are true. Either you don’t care that he cheats or you do. Either answer is fine. It’s your vagina. You are grown and are allowed to do with it what you want. It’s your marriage. You are allowed to exist in it the way you want. That isn’t anybody else’e judgement call. You’ll find lots of people who expect you to live your life according to their expectations. Those aren’t your people. I would be careful what advice you let into your headspace. The last thing you need are other people assaulting your worth.

However, from the way you stated your question, I am going to assume you do care and you would rather he didn’t.

You can’t leave him because you just don’t want to leave him. And because no one is likely to tell you this, that is just okay. You may want to want to leave him, but you aren’t there yet. I get it. You probably didn’t meet him and marry him the same day. It is fair deciding you don’t want to be married anymore takes time too. Take the time.

In truth, you may not even want to get there. Many marriages survive infidelity. Many don’t. Guess what? None of that matters because we are talking about your marriage particularly and personally.

We all have the capacity to be a strong, fierce. amazing people. Whether we decide to act within that capacity is a constant choice. Some days that is easier to harness than others. That’s just okay.

The question I would ask you is what did you do today to love yourself? How did you honor your greatness as a person? In what ways did you do things that felt in line with who you are at your core? That’s where all the answers are and that’s where the path to your best life is.

What should I buy my wife as a gift for the birth of our first child?

This answer is going to probably found by paying close attention to her pregnancy journey. And if I am going to beg you not to judge, or protect her from allowing others to judge, her coming into a new momness. She is entering into the most supportive, wonderful, potentially vicious group on the planet.

If being the mommy is super cool to her, a gift that reflects that would be special. Think something that would be appropriate on Mother’s Day.

If she is feeling a bit overwhelmed, think about something that would bring her comfort. The spa idea is great, just remember she won’t be real capable of enjoying that fully during her recovery.

If she is feeling a bit taken over, a gift that is specifically for her would probably be well received.

Whatever you decide on, remember that she was your sexy, desired, loved wife first. In fact, always remember that and make sure she knows that’s still what you see.

Delivering a child is the most beautifully gross thing ever. I came out of each of my deliveries feeling like the strongest badass on the planet. I also felt gross. My body looked and did less than stereo typically attractive stuff in the process of bringing each new life into the world.

The truth is honoring and loving all the parts of her, being in awe of what she is doing, is the best gift you could give her. But something in a pretty wrapped box is an excellent idea. Just the fact that you thought enough to ask the question suggests you are going to do just fine. Congratulations to your family.

Can a stay-at-home mom be fulfilled?

Outside of some rare characteristic, I believe all people have the capacity to be fulfilled.

The journey to finding that usually starts with a reframing or a solid truth acknowledgment of the question in the first place.

Your question – Can a {insert personal label or characteristic here} be fulfilled?
Answer – Yes

The flow chart next step is, “Do I currently feel fulfilled?”

That is where the magic starts.

I can only assume your current answer is “no.” Otherwise, there would be no question.

As a people, we are inundated with assaults to our authenticity. Moms are, in my opinion, the toughest hit targets (For the “Other” Moms) In that collective, it is easy to lose sight of what we actual feel in exchange for what we think we ought to feel.

Capacity for fulfillment happens when we understand that achieving it comes from the sum of our whole, not a sliver of ourselves to which we have attached a label. Especially one that is, by nature, temporary.

How is it to be married to a bipolar person?

It’s the same as being married to anybody else. Seriously. I’ll explain.

Rarely are people blessed with perfect health throughout their lives. If your spouse has high blood pressure, cancer, hemophilia, diabetes, whatever, they have to take that into consideration with their diet and medical choices. That is exponentially easier with a higher rate of success when the spouse is supportive.

Communication is key in a marriage. You have to talk, understand, be patient, assume the best intentions, remember that you love the person standing in front of you.

Boundaries are essential. Regardless of condition, we are entitled to create and maintain boundaries concerning how we will and won’t be treated as people. If you are married to a person who tests those boundaries often, you have to make a decision on whether the relationship is a healthy one. This truth does not change based on a diagnosis.

All marriages have characteristics that make them different from other marriages. But in all of them, it takes support, communication, love, boundaries, effort, and intention.

Filed Under: The Thinking Chair Tagged With: , ,

Finding New Inspiration Writing on Quora

March 26, 2018 by

Look, I get it. I am super late to the Quora game on this one. The truth is, I wasn’t paying attention to the game, didn’t care that there was a game. So I missed this one. Honestly, I would play here even if I wasn’t writing again.

I know, I am getting ahead of myself.

Quora is a question and answer website that has been available to the public since 2010 and currently is estimated to have somewhere around 190 million users (told you I was late to the game). I can’t describe the site better than they can so here it is:

The heart of Quora is questions — questions that affect the world, questions that explain recent world events, questions that guide important life decisions, and questions that provide insights into why other people think differently. Quora is a place where you can ask questions you care about and get answers that are amazing.

That’s the background on the thing. So here’s what happened:

I alternated my audio between Ann Patchett’s fiction work Commonwealth on Audible and Gary Vaynerchuk’s podcast. I finished Commonwealth and was so late to the Gary Vee game (again) that there seems endless material. I needed another book.

I always have to be careful when I pick books. My mood so affects the variety of title I settle on.

Anyway, somehow or another I came across Jordan B. Petersons, 12 Rules for Life.

As an aside, I am only on the second rule and I am hooked. He had me at the lobsters in Rule 1. Seriously, this is a great read.

Peterson mentions Quora in the first few pages of the book. I become intrigued by the narrative. I pause the audio and sit down at the computer. Within the hour I created a profile, asked a few questions, offered a few answers, and exercised great discipline to stop there and get back to my schedule.

It is an amazing site if I can remember to time block, prioritize, and retain the words I put there. It suits my need for direction and focus. I just scroll through questions, wait until I see one that triggers an emotion. Trust me, you won’t have to wait very long. The topics cover everything you could imagine…seriously, everything. Then I click the answers, evaluate whether or not I have something to add, and proceed accordingly. It’s ordered with just the right amount of chaos, it’s functional with just the right amount of drama. It seriously sparks all my words.

So you’ll see those posts pop up here. I am not quite sure how I’ll do that yet. What I do know is that I am not making the same mistake I did in the beginning with TAT and not cross posting stuff into a place where I can archive it for myself.

Additionally, I think some of the questions are great conversation pieces. And, while I have a pretty fair amount of confidence in what I think when I think it, I am open to the idea that there is a perspective out there that I haven’t considered. That’s where you come in. And the wider my perspective, the greater my capacity for empathy. And, I am becoming increasingly convinced that empathy is a cornerstone of my happiness.

Filed Under: The Thinking Chair Tagged With: , , ,

For the “Other” Moms

March 21, 2018 by

I’m just not that kind of mom.

Even as I said it, I knew that it was both true in the context of the conversation and that I wished there was a different way to explain it. I really wished it didn’t have to be explained at all.

While I understand the mom role naturally changes, I have felt an accelerated shift for myself.  The children are getting older the way children do. They are becoming more self sufficient. They are beginning to have their own pre and new adult situations. Situations that, while somewhat similar to my own coming of age, have enough notable differences to be nearly unrecognizable.

21st century parenting, my friends, is not for the weak.

Next school year will find the baby in middle school and two more high school graduations. My Pinterest feed suggests that I should be an endless fount of tears and runny mascara.

I am not.

Our children are co parented and loved by multiple sets of people. My Instagram and Facebook wall suggests that I should defend my position, stay in my lane, feel guilt over the situation to begin with, and celebrate the putting of oneself first.

I do none of these things.

I am just not that kind of mom.

I am a mom advocate. I absolutely love moms. All different kinds of moms – young, old, helicopter, tiger, free range, formula, breast, co sleep, cribs, empty nester, adoptive, birth, borrowed, stay at home, working, organic, boxed, single, attached, woke, tired, balanced, frazzled, together, hot mess, bowed, laced, legging, designer – whatever. I. Love. Moms.

Outside of being a kid, I am of the opinion that being a mom is arguably one of the hardest things to be in cyberspace. I am hard pressed to think of another group who’s collective is, by nature, amazingly personal and infinitely varied, while simultaneously expected to live up to a complex set of changing, unattainable, and contradictory rules.

To this end, I am becoming super comfortable giving the whole “good mom/bad mom” idea a big “whatthefuckever.”

I have known since the early days of my motherhood journey 21 years ago that, while this little creature was completely dependent on me at the moment, it was neither the way it was going to be, nor the way it was supposed to be for long. This child was, and all the children that came after her were, going to leave me. They, if I was ever so lucky, were going to grow and want, and do, and be. All that would come with a change of phone number, a change of address, and a roof and mailbox that were not mine.

In the meantime, these creatures were not programmable. I could not order them according to specifications. They were not given to me to create in my own image. God had already done that. They came into this world people in their own right. It was my job to provide them the safest, healthiest, resource rich environment where they could feel the freedom to learn who they were in their own skin. I failed routinely. I still fail. But that’s part of the deal too. I cannot be perfect and my children cannot be perfect. In our flaws, we feel grace and compassion for each other. We are in this thing together.

Because of this awareness, I have never felt an ownership over my children. They do not validate or define me as a person. I am infinitely thankful for them. I will defend them with ferocity and would sacrifice my breath happily for theirs. But that is because I love them unconditionally, not because of some uterine relationship I may or may not have.

My mother and I are extremely close. We always have been. I also have always had a variety of strong women in my life who love me and I love in return. My mother never restricted those relationships, made me feel guilty for loving another, or suggested that she felt threatened or betrayed – because she wasn’t. Nothing about any of those relationships changed who she was and who I was. What those relationships did do was give me more experiences, more confidence, more perspective, more love, more more.

I was also able to see a bunch of women mommying differently. Not right, not wrong, just different. As I joined their ranks, I saw more variety, more emotions, more preferences. What I have only come to realize recently is while the outside looks different, I think the source is the same.

Mommies love their babies. And we know, on some level, they are going to leave us and be their own people. The emotion that creates in each of us is different because we are different. I don’t cry on the first day of school. That’s not because I don’t care, it’s simply not an event that makes me feel that kind of way. I know moms who are completely distraught on the first day of school. I love that. It makes me feel better when I think about the time the baby, who I knew would be my last baby, lost her first tooth and I sat on the floor and ugly cried.

I don’t get all up in my feelings when my kid makes a poor life choice. I don’t feel like it is a personal reflection on me or my parenting skills. I do get irritated when they play stupid or become overly self-deprecating and I scold myself for not having more patience. I use my strength in one to encourage moms who are feeling less than and my weakness in the other to remember I am thankful for the moms who mommy different and have my six.

We are all the “other” mom. We are all that kind of mom and not that kind of mom. We are tasked with one of the greatest responsibilities on the planet and that path has an infinite number of options. Sometimes I am not super sure I took the right turn at Albuquerque. But today, I trust myself and I trust my tribe. And I am thankful.

Filed Under: Chrysalis, Family, Parenting Tagged With: , ,

No Lobby, No Money, No Relationship

March 1, 2018 by

Our little town, like so many other towns across the country, found itself investigating a threat left on the wall in one of the bathrooms at our high school.

I was angry. Irritated was probably a better word. I learned about the situation via Facebook. Postings led me to the local police department’s page. It was evident that the information had been circulating through the community – kids, schools, law enforcement – since the previous day.

From the school proper, I could find nothing. No email, no text, no post. Parents get regular texts from the schools – late buses, fundraisers, events, etc. But nothing concerning this. I responded to the Facebook post asking if there had been updates, if anyone had heard anything from the schools and was there any information on why they had been silent. There had been nothing, but many parents felt the same way I did. If we had not checked social media, if our kids hadn’t said something, we wouldn’t have known one thing about the threat to the school.

I made the decision to keep my children home. All of them. It made me feel better to be able to look at them all day while the school and the authorities figured out what they were going to do. Do I think they were in actual danger? No. I trust the work and, more importantly, give a shit of our police force. Have I been wrong before? Lots. It’s just a few days of school and it made me feel better. I was good with a bit of extra.

For the record, the school did send out the “there has been a threat identified and the school system and the police department are handling it” notification – an hour after I would have normally dropped my kid off at school.

Mid morning I was contacted by a local television news reporter. She saw my comment on Facebook and would I be interested in meeting with her for an interview on the parents’ perspective. I originally agreed. She would find someone to talk to, might as well be me. After a lot of thought, an unsuccessful attempt to contact the school principal for guidance, and a successful attempt to hash it out with a friend, I declined. The reporter asked if I was concerned about anonymity. I obviously am not. I am concerned about being, at best, useless and, at worst, harmful.

I explained to her that I didn’t think I was the right person. I didn’t really know a whole lot except what had brought about my frustration (the time of the notification). And even that, I doubted but admitted, may have a good reason. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know anything except I knew where my children were and I was super thankful for social media that morning. In a highly emotional situation like this, what could I possibly add that was of value in a news segment that would be short, constructed by someone other than myself, and out of my control when edited and produced? Nothing. I just wasn’t interested.

But I decided I would write about it, if only to sort my own thoughts, document the events, and maybe start a conversation that goes further than the divisive 24 hour news cycle flag planting and party protection.

Let me be clear. The loss of life is tragic. I can’t even begin to imagine. I won’t even being to imagine. The idea rips my heart out. I don’t have any answers, I only have wonders and opinions. I happen to think that’s an okay start. I am smart, thoughtful, and fallible. I am far from a perfect mother and I do not have perfect children. None of that is lost on me.

I am not discussing guns per se in this post. If the conversation afterwards goes in that direction, I am fine with it. It is a topic I rather enjoy. But as long as gun ownership remains inextricably tied to violence among our children, the children lose. They don’t have the lobby or the money to gain priority in the discussion. They are merely used as pawns on both sides of a debate that is exploiting their position as cherished and expending them as emotional capital.

I am not discussing mental health as a diagnosis or health care accessibility. Mental health is supremely important and has been bastardized as a buzz word by those who care little about health and more about excuse, justification, and vindication. Healthcare, a natural follow on to the mental health discussion, is important as well. However, I refer back to the gun paragraph and you can substitute “healthcare.” The truth is the same.

I am not discussing parenting, the lack thereof, the definition of a snowflake, who’s momma needs to beat who’s ass, which church prays the best so that God will come down and fix it, which video game, movie premiere, actor, rapper, heavy metal, satan worshiper, or Elvis, sent morality into the toilet, screentime, organic foods, role of teachers, the competency of the police force, school uniforms, family dinner time, reading time with children, organized playdates, bad moms, absent fathers, failed education system, the current or past administrations, or helicopter, tiger, free range, attachment parenting strategies.

Then fuck April, what are you going to talk about?

I am going to talk about understanding nothing happens in a vacuum, it isn’t just one thing. It is dangerous to ignore the damage we are allowing our children to shoulder while the grown ups fight about god, guns, discipline, and government, feeling better and all comfy in our righteous indignation.

One of the most eye opening and soul crushing things I did yesterday was read the hundreds of comments posted by folks concerning the threat at our school and schools like it. They ran the typical gamut of all the things I said earlier that I am not talking about. If I were to believe what I read, my little town is filled with torches, pitchforks, and people who believe that the systematic forcing of religion solves all woes. What I actually chose to believe is that parents are simply scared for the safety of their children.

It also became clear that there were two distinct camps present. The Everybody Sucks group and the Circle the Wagons crew. Everybody Sucks had plenty of blame to go around – the school administrators, law enforcement, parents, etc. Circle the Wagons defended these same entities at all cost and offered them up as blameless and holy, unable to be questioned or considered. Both evoked the cause of the children on their behalf. Neither acknowledged that they both had value to bring and ideas to learn. We were all looking for one thing, one reason, one virus that we could cure and make the whole thing go away. Most of us were not engaged in discussion. That’s not the way any of this works.

Look, I am well aware that every single generation has claimed differences from the ones before and after it. “Back in my day” is a thing because it is a thing. That’s called life. That’s called progress. But if we continue to insist that all kids today need is a good dose of everything that we got back in the day, we are deluding ourselves.

Seriously, unless I got to keep all my knowledge and experience, you couldn’t pay me to go back in time and be a teenager again. However, I would do that shit for free and with bells on before I would agree to be a teenager today.

This is just my personal experience but I can’t imagine it is so very different than most. We had cliques, popular kids, nerds, dolts, mainstream, outcasts, over achievers, slackers, jocks, and all the rest – just like the generation before and just like the generations after. We had the rumor mills and bullies. You got talked about. Everybody got talked about. Some folks got picked on. All of this happened in the confines of our community. This happened to your face or close behind your back and the fire eventually died because honestly, kids attention spans haven’t changed much. You got to home, hide in your room, maybe ditch school, let the shit die, and then go on about your business. Maybe you had to take it to the next level and meet in the DCT parking lot after school to knock each other around a bit. And it sucked because you’re a kid and you don’t know all the things you don’t know and growing up is just hard.

Today, there is no quarter. There are no geographic borders. There are no identifiable whispers. The onslaught is relentless. One thing, one misstep and your kid in Tampa is getting harassed from snot nosed teenagers in Spokane. And it never goes away. It gets shared and reshared and retweeted and reposted and instead of people getting bored and the fire fanning out, these kids are working in time zones shifts to stoke that sucker so that it stays ablaze.

The expectations are higher. That prank you pulled when you toilet papered the teacher’s desk? Super funny in your little town. But what do you have to do to compete with the 5 billion YouTube videos watched every. Single. Day. And sure, you teach your kids that competition isn’t important, that the internet is a virtual playground of fiction and bad ideas. But they are children. I can’t begin to tell you how many bad ideas happened when I was a kid because one guy’s truck did a thing and so the other guys had to figure out what to do next.

The ability to find the thing that makes you special is harder. And teenagers need to feel special. It was hard enough to achieve that in a school of a couple thousand. These kids are now trying to figure out how to make it when they are in contact with hundreds of thousands. As parents we do the best we can, but we have been sucked into the same damn thing. Every mom I know has had that moment where she has compared herself to the chick she found on the internet and spent days questioning if she was even worthy of a uterus. How do we expect our children to do any better?

Being a kid is just harder. That isn’t anybody’s fault. It just is. As such, being a parent is harder. Again, no fault, it just is. And there’s no handbook for it because our parents never came close to anything like this. My mother thanks baby Jesus in earnest that all her children are already grown. That woman is one of the best mommas on the planet and even she doesn’t want the job today. She is a great listener and we talk about stuff, but she will be the first to admit she has no real advice for me because she has no clue where to begin.

Nobody is discussing the fact that we are the first generation of parents that are tasked with both navigating who we are in relationship to all the technological advances while simultaneously having to raise children to be able navigate it as well.

And the truth is, the adults aren’t doing it very well. We are real assholes online. From dogging the mom’s outfit choice to the dad smoking while waiting in the car line, and all manner of judgement, name calling, rhetoric engaging, bullshit memes, and satire articles posted as fact and proof, we are a generation of cyber assholes.

The problem with that is that there isn’t a kid internet and an asshole adult internet. It is the same internet and our kids see us. They see us unable to engage in intelligent conversation. They see us resort to bullshit made up facts, rumors, and irrelevant character assassination. They watch us judge people we don’t know and assign motives to people we have never had a conversation with. They watch us. And they imitate us. And they hurt people.

Our children are dying trying to find real connection, real belonging, real fucking real. They aren’t mature enough to understand the nuances of fact and facade. They aren’t experienced enough to separate the genuine from the charlatan. They are looking for us to show them how to create real relationships. But we are so busy protecting our scared cows and condemning those who don’t think exactly like us, that we have forgotten how to do it ourselves.

Look, I am not saying we are bad people. We aren’t. We’ve just forgotten how to have conversations or that they are even important. We have forgotten that thoughts go deeper than a headline, bumper sticker, or squirrel meme. We pimped out our MySpace and got the idea that somehow substituted for having coffee with a real person.

But I have faith in us. I have faith in our ability to build relationships that accomplish positive progress. And I really believe in coffee.

Filed Under: Current Events Tagged With: , ,