WHY I DECIDED TO GET A HYSTERECTOMY.

Prepare for a long read, folks. I don’t want to omit any details in case anyone needs this particular information. Two weeks ago today, I got a hysterectomy. I want to share my experience because in my search to prepare myself, I found few personal accounts to draw comfort or information from. I’ve done a lot of research over the last few years leading up to this. I was hell bent on trying to naturally treat my symptoms and have learned much about the female body and cycle in the process. I was able to lessen the severity of my suffering via several alternative methods but ultimately it wasn’t enough. I’ll address my theory as to why later on.

First off, a little personal background on my own biology. I’m 43, have three kids ranging from 5-11, and I’ve had heavy periods since I began menstruating at the age of 12. My best description of heavy for me would be the need to wear an overnight pad and a super tampon at once. The technical definition is filling a pad or tampon within an hour.

Fast forward to last year. I began to have inexplicable digestive issues. I’ve always been a healthy eater and never overweight. I eat my veggies and avoid foods that have proven problematic for me (dairy, soy, caffeine, nuts, eggs). My sensitivities tend to show up on my skin, via eczema (which I cured through the removal of dairy), mild psoriasis on my scalp (which I cured via the removal of eggs and nuts), and acne (which I cured via the removal of soy and caffeine). Some of you may check out at this point because changing your diet isn’t fun. Unfortunately, natural healing doesn’t involve many quick fixes. I have a mental image of my inflamed body that leaves me disturbed enough to maintain willpower on this front, and I typically feel really good when I make the right choices. I try hard not to have all of my fulfillment come in the form of food. Having said that, I’m not a total party pooper and love me the occasional good pizza or burger. Back to the digestive issues. I started having severe stomach pain if I ate more than one meal and one snack per day. My solution was to fast until 1:00, eat lunch and then have a snack at 4:00. If I ate too much or things just didn’t sit right, I was up all night with what felt like trapped gas. I’d wake in the morning in the same state and that would last until I ate lunch. I stopped being able to have bowel movements without a laxative. Using laxatives consistently is unnerving. They can wreak havoc on your stomach and cause a dependency. Given this, I limited my laxative use to twice per week, in the form of Smooth Move Tea, which meant I was only pooping 2x per week. I could tell that my BM’s were shaped weird, flat on one side. To me, this indicated that something was pressing on my rectum. 

My periods became heavier with frequent clots larger than the size of quarters (this is the threshold for abnormal). The clots were consistent every time I used the restroom and often in-between. The heavy clotting began three years prior to the indigestion. My research at the time led to “estrogen dominance.” This is a very common phenomenon that most women (and a lot of men) are experiencing, even menopausal women. High estrogen is caused by excess weight, crummy diet, and smoking. In addition, there are estrogens all over our environments- pesticides, hormones in meat, beauty products, cleaning products, plastics, soy, and our drinking water. Water has residual hormones from all the women who use hormonal birth control or hormone replacement therapy. When they urinate and flush, that water gets processed back into drinking water and the filtration process does not remove hormones. Gross. Estrogen dominance doesn’t necessarily mean that you have too much estrogen. It can also indicate that your estrogen and progesterone are out of balance. Estrogen and progesterone have an inverse relationship when imbalanced. When one is high, the other is low, and vice versa. There are multiple ways that our estrogens can result in that imbalance. You can have low estrogen and still be estrogen dominant because of lower progesterone levels (as is the case for many post-menopausal women). Excess estrogens feed all of our uterine abnormalities- clotting, fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, polyps, cysts, heavy periods, painful periods, etc.

There’s another really important cause of excess estrogen and low progesterone, and it’s something a lot of us experience all the time, especially during this pandemic! Stress. The adrenal glands not only create cortisol (the stress hormone) but also progesterone. When under stress, the body foregoes progesterone production in favor of cortisol production, so even if your estrogen levels were alright, the lowered progesterone will create estrogen dominance, because remember, it’s all about that balance! Note- this will disappoint many of you, but if you aren’t sleeping well and you’re a coffee drinker, you’re likely creating too much cortisol and thus estrogen dominance. Try decaf or discontinue coffee for one week per month. Caffeine builds up in our systems over time. Give it a minute to work its way out. Telltale caffeine issue- waking during the night and not being able to fall back asleep. It doesn’t matter if it’s one cup at 6 A.M. If you’re having sleep woes, listen to your body and be kind to it. Krill oil supplements can help with PMS and painful periods, in addition to restful sleep. Taking krill and magnesium together before bed can do wonders for a good night’s rest, estrogen dominance or not.

Signs of estrogen dominance are: 

Heavy, painful periods

Clotting

Bloating

Weight Gain

Fatigue

Hair Loss

Night Sweats

Anxiety

Brain Fog

Irritability

Decreased Sex Drive

Irregular Periods

Worsening PMS Symptoms

Difficulty Sleeping

Mood Swings

Whoa, right? Note, these are symptoms of many things, so don’t assume, see a doctor (holistic preferably), do your research, get a Dutch test, bloodwork, etc. My symptoms were heavy, painful periods, clotting, bloating, brain fog, fatigue, hair loss, decreased sex drive, and worsening PMS. Of course, being constipated causes a number of those. In addition, heavy periods can cause anemia, which I’ve struggled with since I was 12. That alone can cause fatigue, brain fog, hair loss, low blood pressure/dizziness, etc. It’s important to note that as counterintuitive as it may seem, anemia actually increases the flow of your cycle. You’d think your body would know to hang onto blood when you’re struggling with anemia, but it does the opposite. If you’re loopy, dizzy, and tired, get your iron levels checked. It’s a simple, inexpensive test any doctor can order.

When I determined that my clotting was due to estrogen dominance, I got to work trying to determine how to decrease those estrogen levels. I’d already removed all sources of environmental estrogens from my life years prior, aside from drinking water, because who’s going to invest in a whole house water filtration system that removes hormones? I did a lot of things but I’ll only list what worked. I began a supplement called DIM (dinndolylmethane). This is a compound naturally produced by the body when you digest cruciferous vegetables (think broccoli and brussel sprouts). DIM digests excess estrogens from the body. It does not take away the good estrogens or too much estrogen from your body. There are actually several types of estrogens, good and bad. DIM removes those excess, bad, environmental estrogens. With the amount of estrogens in our environments and modern diets, you’d need a hell of a lot of broccoli to do this naturally. I already ate a shit ton of broccoli on the regular and I was still passing large clots like nobody’s business. The first month I took DIM daily, by month’s end, I had zero clots in my next cycle. Impressive results. My breasts also got larger and perked up to their pre-breastfeeding state. Equally impressive. You’re already on Amazon, aren’t you? Before you start downing DIM like TicTacs with dreams of porn star boobs, let me share some must know details about it. First of all, our excess hormones and environmental hormones are excreted via our bowel movements. If you aren’t pooping daily when not on DIM, you likely already have a hormone imbalance. But when you’re turbocharged sloughing off excess estrogen, it’s imperative that you poop every day. If those feces don’t make their way out of your system in a timely fashion, you will re-uptake those hormones. Whaaaat? I know. Shitty, literally and figuratively. So, do not take DIM unless you can poo or are willing to figure out how to get things moving. Suggestions: buy a natural fiber drink supplement. I like Bellway. Drink half your body weight in water, in ounces. Example- if you weigh 100 pounds, drink 50 ounces. Add 8 ounces for each cup of coffee, tea, or workout. Add 2 tablespoons of freshly ground flax seeds (use a coffee grinder, pre-ground are often rancid- read: inflammatory/unhealthy) to smoothies or coconut yogurt. Add a probiotic to your diet, kefir, and kombucha. Have a few tablespoons of sauerkraut or kimchi with your meals. Less red meat, more veggies and leafy greens, berries, chia seeds, healthy fats, etc. If you’re already doing all of these things and you’re still constipated, you need to see someone. That was me. I’ll go into what was going on soon. At the point in time when I first tried DIM, I was not constipated. I had one negative symptom from the DIM and that was tender breasts at the time of ovulation, for one week. This was something I’d never experienced before. It concerned me enough that I discontinued DIM after that month. I was worried that while fixing one problem, I may be inadvertently creating a different one. I’m still not 100% sure what caused this. Sore breasts can be a symptom of estrogen dominance, low progesterone, and high progesterone. As soon as I went off of DIM, my clotting returned. My breasts continued to be sore during ovulation but over time that dissipated, as in over the course of several months. When taking DIM it’s also important to take Calcium D Glucarate. This will help prevent you re-uptaking the sloughed off estrogen. Don’t skip it. I’ll share my favorite brands of these at the end of this article. (And, yes, my boobs have stayed 1 cup size larger and perky, even after discontinuing DIM).

Back to a year ago, right after COVID started and our lives got turned upside down. This is when my stomach issues and constipation began. I can now look at this and recognize that stress was the likely cause of my initial onset of symptoms, stress that caused more severe estrogen dominance than I already was experiencing. It’s interesting to note that I have a number of friends whose periods became outrageous as soon as COVID began. All stress, causing those adrenal glands to make cortisol instead of our beloved progesterone. I honestly enjoyed lockdown and have felt blessed to have this time with my children, but that doesn’t mean that toggling back and forth between their different school curriculums and my various businesses wasn’t stressful. Stress can be part of a happy life too. If you’re a mom, you’re stressed. And if you aren’t, congratulations. Write a book and tell us your superpower. I’m a smartass and also estrogen dominant. Anyway, the digestion issues had me self-diagnosing. My assumption was that I was growing uterine fibroids that were pressing on my rectum, causing the trapped gas and infrequent BM’s. Sounds logical, right? I decided to finally go to the doctor and get some confirmation. At this point, I’d eliminated gluten and sugar from my diet as well. I was hungry people. And nothing was helping. I was very anemic, dizzy every time I stood up, crazy low blood pressure (90 on a good day), brain foggy, exhausted, etc. My supplements were mass quantities of iron (which, BTW, totally don’t help in the constipation department), vitamin c, b12, magnesium (hoping to help me poo and sleep), zinc, DIM, Calcium D Glucarate, vitamin d, krill oil, and laxatives. I still felt like shit. I got an ultrasound which revealed adenomyosis. This is caused by….wait for it… estrogen dominance. No to fibroids, but yes to two uterine polyps. Adenomyosis is the name for a condition where the blood cells that grow inside of your uterus (the ones that produce the blood you lose during your cycle) start growing in your actual uterine muscle. They continue to produce blood within that muscle, which pools up in there, thickening your uterine muscle and creating even more blood loss. In addition, when you have polyps or other things growing inside your uterus, it can’t contract down efficiently and you end up with more blood loss during your cycles, clotting, etc. Adenomyosis may create an enlarged uterus, but not always. Some people will have no symptoms. In my case, it was enlarged. That was coupled with a tilted uterus (which you can be born with or can happen during childbirth, it can also self correct, who knew?) and it was indeed pressing upon my rectum. Follow your intuition people, do your research, and don’t take no for an answer. I had to go to four doctors to get down to business about this stuff. Adenomyosis, unlike fibroids, endometriosis, polyps, and cysts, is not curable via lifestyle changes because the blood cells are already growing where they don’t belong. I may have been able to reduce the swelling, but let’s face it, I’d done literally everything, given up all the things. The only thing left to do would’ve been to desert my family and move to an ashram. The stress of three kids under one roof during a time that you can’t let them outside to play because the neighbors might get COVID on them, is not taking leave no matter how much I meditate or do yoga, and who wants to do any of that when you have a belly full of week old shit?

Doctor number four listened to me, heard my interventions, heard my desperation, heard my aversion to taking any birth control (this is the number one traditional treatment for all things uterine and is known to cause breast cancer- no thanks), heard that I wasn’t interested in ablation (because 50% of women ultimately need a hysterectomy after undergoing it), heard my crazy diet and symptoms, and recommended a hysterectomy ASAP. My anemia levels, despite constant supplementation, were getting lower and lower. I just couldn’t keep up with the blood loss. Severe anemia is hard on your organs. It’s a lack of oxygen to all of your body, including your brain. I was going on 30+ years of this ailment. We both decided that the time for being a naturalist had passed, and we should get that lil’ bitch of a uterus out. Of course, I was nervous, not about the surgery, but about whether or not this would fix my digestive issues. I wouldn’t know for sure until it was said and done. I was terrified that I’d be altering my body forever and it wouldn’t be worth it, scared that I would have no idea what to try next if this didn’t work.

It’s been two weeks, as of today. I had laparoscopic surgery and retained my ovaries. This means my body will still produce the necessary hormones, and I will not enter menopause from the hysterectomy. I had three very small incisions, which I already can barely see. My uterus, fallopian tubes, and cervix were removed. Recent research shows that there is a reduced instance of ovarian cancer when the fallopian tubes are also taken. Keeping the cervix is unnecessary and creates more healing because they have to sever it. My vagina was sewn shut at the top and stitched in place to prevent future prolapse, via the scar tissue the stitches will create. Sex will be the same, orgasms will be the same. I’ve had an orgasm but no sex since the surgery (can’t do that until 6 weeks post op)… the orgasm was same as it ever was- all good, friends. 

A quick description of the surgery recovery. I had it on a Thursday, no reactions to anesthesia or pain meds (oxycodone). I used oxy on days 1 and 2. It was a goddamn dream. I slept away the pain. I stayed the night and went home the next morning (highly recommend this if you have needy little ones at home, I’ve still got an intermittent co-sleeper/snuggle buddy and didn’t want to get inadvertently kicked in the stomach). I chose to discontinue all pain meds on day 3 because I was anxious to see if I could go potty without a laxative. Day 3 and 4 were uncomfortable due to being med free and there was painful pressure in my pelvic region when I walked around or sat up. On day 5, I woke and had turned a major corner. I felt like I hadn’t even had surgery and my energy levels were stellar. I didn’t need to lay down or nap and had no pain. Note that I’m a weirdo and have a high pain tolerance. I take really good care of myself, coupled with an anti inflammatory diet and a can do attitude, so no guarantee that your recovery will mimic mine. I did notice that if I was too active, bending etc, I would have light bleeding. If that happened, I’d go lay down for an hour. Fast forward to week 2- I feel great and would never know I had surgery. You can’t lift things over 10 pounds, vacuum, or workout until 6 weeks post op. I resumed all normal activities, outside of those, after day 5. I’ll go back to work, doing hair, on week 3.

Here’s my take away. Please advocate for yourself. Before you get your uterus taken out, try a lil self-love. Know that even without your uterus, you can still be estrogen dominant and have some of the aforementioned symptoms. If your ovaries are in there, you still need to aim for balanced hormones. Remove those estrogens, take the DIM, and clean up your diet. I believe that if I hadn’t had adenomyosis (which I’m convinced I was born with due to the type of bleeding I’ve had from the onset), I could’ve healed my way out of this. I did have success, via supplements and diet, with lengthening my cycle. For a moment there it was 25 days with 7 days of bleeding. I was able to push it to 28 days (like clockwork) via the use of DIM and a curcumin/ginger supplement. Ginger has been shown to reduce flow by up to 40% if taken during your period. I can attest to this. My periods went from 7-9 days to 5, with only 2 of them being crazy heavy. That was allll ginger and curcumin. Everyone has different ideas about what constitutes a heavy flow based upon their own experiences. I personally was soaking a tampon and pad combo every hour for those 2 heavy days and having accidents during the night if I didn’t get up to change my tampon and pad/use the restroom at least 5 or 6 times per night. If your flow has changed significantly, go get checked out and take ginger with DIM, even if you aren’t having a technically heavy period.

Post op success: I’ve pooped every damn day since I had that surgery! Every morning like clockwork, which is how I used to be in the good ole’ days. Zero laxatives necessary. I can eat three meals per day again with no indigestion or trapped gas sensations! I can sleep all night without stomach pain keeping me up. I had lower back pain when I used to sleep on my tum. I now know that it’s because my uterus was pressing on my back. That’s gone. My iron levels will take a few months to raise… who even knows how I’ll feel then! I’m currently not experiencing what would’ve been another Godforsaken period right now. I can leave the house without shooting pains down my thighs, feeling like my uterus is going to fall out, or having to wear all black to camouflage an accident.

Sometimes you have to know when to just do the damn thing. I’m not a quitter but the idea of another decade of this had me throwing in the towel on trying to fix it myself. Heavy periods, long periods, painful periods, irregular periods, etc, are all indicative of hormonal imbalances. Our hormones have such a huge impact on our daily moods and bodily functions. Please have the self-love to do yourself right and know when you’ve done all you can. I follow a lot of holistic M.D.’s on social media and the guilt over feeling like I’d failed kept me from seeking help sooner. I still believe in natural remedies. Try those first and then do what needs to be done if they aren’t effective enough.

Angi

Note: I have zero medical training. Please talk to your physician prior to trying any of these things.

Fave Supplements:

DIM- Pure Essence Labs Breast D. It has Calcium D Glucarate in it already.

Vitamin D

Magnesium Threonate

Krill Oil

Vitannica Iron Extra (avoid supplements with folic acid- stick with methylated folate- google MTHFR for the reason why). This iron has methylated b12 and vit c in it already. They are necessary for absorption. Note: Do not take iron with caffeine or calcium, they block it’s absorption. Do not take iron if you are not diagnosed anemic. It is dangerous to have too much iron in your system.

Ginger/Curcumin combo pill

YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL.

I stare out the picture window at the gentle, trickling water. Lush, emerald green pine trees closing in on it, with nothing but blue sky serenely peeking through the needles. Well groomed flower beds with fresh bark flank the perimeter of the house. It’s perfect, and I know I can’t have it. I’m crushed.

But also relieved.

Because I don’t know what I want. Or maybe, more accurately, I don’t know what I don’t want. I want it all. And yet, I still try to argue my husband into making an offer on the drive home.

The elusive “they,” which is a conglomeration of many writers and speakers, told me if I could dream it, I could do it, have it, be it. Just picture yourself living the life you desire, every day… think good thoughts… it’ll come. Caviar wishes and champagne dreams.

Woman, having it all.

I’m not sure I’ve manifested anything yet, other than a major sense of FOMO frosted with desperation and lingering discontent. Although, I did pray for big boobs all through elementary school. They don’t tell you that you need to keep praying for them to stay after pumping out and breastfeeding three kids. Now I wear training bras again.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy the current state of my life, but I’m so busy picturing what it could be, I often feel an emptiness billowing beneath the surface- trapped by my own constant state of yearning. Disenfranchised by all of the “successful” people, the books, the podcasts, chirping in my ear about what’s possible. Why shouldn’t I be able to bring in millions of dollars in passive income? Tim Ferriss… I simultaneously love and hate you. You’ve created a couple of insatiable monsters named Sean and Angi. 4 Hour Work Week my ass.

In spite of feeling at peace in a way that I never had before, I started a business 6 months ago. Why? Because of the pressure to perform, to hit big, to be impassioned, and to immerse myself into something/anything. To add to our family income so that we can do all the things. You know, travel the world while we churn out a few email responses each day to keep the bucks flowin.’ I won’t go into the human aversion to stillness. That’s another blog.

I’ve learned a lot from this business. And I’m grateful for all of it, but the problem with owning something is that it’s never enough. There’s always a next step. It’s like taking a test in college. Post exam, you’re totally relieved for a day or two and then you remember you have to study for the next one. That vague sense of relief gone as quickly as your celebratory beer. Nothing is going to grow itself. What are you willing to do to get there? How many followers are enough on Instagram? How many staged pictures of your faux life do you have to post to win a sale? How many new products do you need to come up with to be fresh enough to satisfy the second long attention span in today’s world? How many heart emojis are adequate to express appreciation of a comment? I don’t want to think about this shit. It feels incredibly trite and inauthentic. But, that’s the buy in, the trade off for the alleged American dream at the end of the tunnel.

The “Tim Ferris conundrum,” coupled with the infinite level of pressure to perform while simultaneously feeling like a failure, because it will literally never be enough, has turned me into a certifiable nut job. There’s always the next new thing to keep up with. What you’re left with is a desperate housewife who feels like she can’t control a damn thing, right down to her own kids, cuz can anyone??? After gaining weight from eating too much kale, because I’m 41 and that’s my life now, I went grain and sugar free for one month and then keto for 2 more weeks and weighed more afterwards than when I started. I've been doing an intense weight training program for 45 minutes per day, 5x per week for 6 months and there is literally no perceptible difference in my “progress pics.” F progress pics, btw. My baby stopped napping a year ago, and I haven’t been alone for more than a few minutes since. So, basically my body, my business, and my children have decided that I can’t be trusted with myself, and they’ll make the decisions for me from here on out.

I think this must be what a midlife crisis is. And, the kicker is that I don’t actually have a problem, aside from those 7 pounds, which are more of a nuisance than an actual problem. I don’t want to buy new pants people. Well, I do, but not bigger ones.

The real problem is me. My thoughts. My expectations. My lack of feeling in control. My unrealistic longing, and Tim Ferris. Goddamnit Tim.

I have a lovely home, in a lovely neighborhood, in a lovely town that people come to for vacation. My children are happy and healthy and relatively complication free. My husband and I are solid and in love. I’m healthy and strong and get to stay home with my 3 year old except for a random Saturday or two. My business could go away tomorrow, and we wouldn’t be worse for the wear. We eat organic food and take a cool trip each year. Life is fucking good.

I just need to let it be, take my paws out of everything and breathe easy. I need to let this be enough, to take respite in the adequacy, because while I’m busy upping my game, my kids are growing at lightning speed. The sun is shining outside, and I’m not basking.

We live in an age of possibility and if we can’t contain it, we’ll be destroyed by it. While we make vision boards and picture what could be, what is takes leave. The moment, the only time we own, no longer belongs to us, because we’re in a faraway place plotting and scheming about how to be “better.”

It’ll take some mental exertion with lots of checking in and personal accountability, but let’s flip the world the bird and want what we have while keeping our ambitions manageable. Save the daydreaming for the millennials. And Tim Ferriss.

-Angi

(I’m sorry for those of you who don’t know who Tim Ferriss is. He’s an amazing, brilliant, childless, 40 something year old man with more business savvy in his pinkie than the rest of us have in our whole bodies. He’s filthy rich, uber driven, and penned the book “The 4 Hour Workweek.” In spite of my constant jabs, he’s incredibly impressive, and I wouldn’t undo any insight I’ve gained from him. Everyone should read his books.)

I SURRENDER.

Control is a funny thing. It masquerades as something that it’s not, allowing us to feign safety in an unpredictable world… but what if we surrendered to each moment? How would we feel? How would our lives change? If you didn’t get anxious about the things that could happen, would they escalate or evaporate? If you didn’t try to step into each situation but instead leaned in, would your world crumble?

I could tell you to step off, but that would be classic pot callin’ the kettle. I’m not one to have text book anxiety, but I like to be a bossy pants. Leaning in is not among my special gifts. I step in with my actions and my mouth, on the regular. I’m mama-bearing everyone in direct vicinity because my level of faith in others to do it quickly, efficiently, and cutely is slim. And, I know a lot of really weird shit that other people aren’t/shouldn’t be interested in but sometimes comes in handy. Having said that, I’ve been making major efforts in this department for a year or two. It’s finally starting to surface in my behavior and not just my head (that takes time, right?!). My unsolicited advice has nose-dived and my internal motto is “not my circus, not my monkeys.” If it isn’t done quickly or cutely or even at all, it’ll be okay. I’m saving my energies for those who mirror them, but that’s the next blog…

I recently finished “The Surrender Experiment” by Michael Singer. He’s also the genius behind “The Untethered Soul.” In a very teenie tiny nutshell, he essentially vowed to take his cues from the universe. He didn’t actively make too many decisions, other than those based on intuition, and more or less said yes to every opportunity that came his way, even when it sounded utterly unappealing to him. This wasn’t saying yes doormat style, he wasn’t giving his neighbors daily foot rubs. This is the type of “yes man” attitude that has to do with life opportunities. He didn’t actively decide anything that he wanted, he just followed the path laid before him by God, the Universe, whatever… whomever. He followed each road to fruition with diligence and integrity, putting his all into what presented.

And you know what happened?

He got more than he ever could’ve dreamed… everything he thought he wanted and then some. Not that money is the measure of content, but he happened to become a billionaire to boot. And all he thought he desired to do was meditate in a one room, windowless cabin in the middle of the forest. Alone. Forever.

He got his meditation, err cake, and to eat it too. Read the book. It’ll come together. The story is too amazing for me to do it any shred of justice in a mere paragraph.

So, the moral of his story, the one I’m trying to incorporate, is that God, Jesus, the Universe, the flow, is a miracle worker. It made you, right? It made trees, oceans, flowers, puppies… and we’re questioning its ability to guide us? That’s tomfoolery in its highest form right there. We’re doubting that God has a plan for us? Phooey. God has a plan for pine cones. She has a plan for you. If you think you can do better, fine… but when’s the last time you made a puppy… or a pine cone? When’s the last time you orchestrated a thunderstorm or a snow fall… If you’re a mama, you managed to grow a baby or two just by eating and sleeping. Straight up miracle.

So give it up… to God, Mother Nature, whomever. Stop worrying about Trump. Stop worrying about the clunky noise your car is making (me). Stop worrying about your weirdo relative. Stop worrying about your bank account (me again). Stop worrying about your kids when they aren’t in your arms. Just stop all of it and breathe. You were never meant to take it on. It’s not for you.

Your job is to listen. To observe. To respond… with faith in the intricate flow of your life.

So, today, I’m not going to scour Craigslist for a car I don’t have the funds to buy or try to strong-arm my husband into any of my hairbrained schemes for becoming a traveling family or Airbnb hosts (dreams, people). I’m going to believe that Sean will join my bandwagon if and when the time is right, and that the car or the money or the Uber will arrive exactly when and how it should because the stars aren’t currently aligning, and it’s not my job to step in and rearrange them. They’re perfect and beautiful just as they are, lighting the sky when it’s too dark for us to see… but maybe we aren’t supposed to anyway.

-Angi

ODE TO A MOTHER- Claiming Our Stories.

With tremendous effort I was pulling off an A in public speaking. I was determined as a grown woman and a mother of three, to prove I was a capable student for the first time in my life. No one in that classroom knew I didn’t feel the least bit grown up. The magical transformation from insecure-people-pleaser, to self-assured-no-apologies adult, had passed me up. If anything, I felt incapable of claiming the attributes that I had earned with age and experience. I had know idea how to interpret my authentic life as a personal power. I just knew how to hide it.

That day was no different, especially considering the circumstances that I alone knew. It was of no consequence; I was living in the same uncomfortable skin I always had, regardless of what happened. I told myself, ‘stuff it down, it’s your superpower. Just tell these people why community supported agriculture rocks, and pretend you’re fine. You know the drill…’

I inserted the thumb drive that contained my colorful PowerPoint presentation. I took a deep breath and turned to a classroom full of faces. I said “Good morning…” and than I choked. Organic veggies where the last thing on my mind. My eyes welled up with tears as I attempted to form my next words, but the truth forced its way up and out, “...I can’t do this.” My professor looked confused. He urged me to continue, reassuring me I could. But I walked away from the podium. I yanked my thumb drive from the computer and grabbed my backpack as I headed toward the door.

“Emily, if you walk out on your final you will not pass this class.” But I kept my head down and walked straight past him and out of the classroom. Later when I emailed him, I was grateful for the final grade he gave me. He understood my inability to function that morning; not many people have an affinity for public speaking after finding out that their mother has just been arrested.

I had grown accustomed through my childhood to all the terrible things I overheard about people like us: we were lazy Welfare recipients, getting rich off of hardworking taxpayers, not contributing to anything in society… worthless. I looked at my shoes while people glared at us in the checkout line at Goodwin’s grocery store. My mom ripped our food stamps from the allocated stipend the government gave us each month, and presented the paper card that identified her as a bonafide failure of a human with kids. We took our peanut butter, milk and ground hamburger meat and left the curses of my mom behind us as she ushered us out of the store.

We walked home along the same roads, laden with plastic grocery bags banging against our bodies. My mom had owned a car once, but I was too young to remember. I was used to walking. My big sister shifted the weight of groceries uneasily; terrified someone from school would drive by and see her this way. I can recall how often heads turned back to get a better view of my beautiful mom; her tight blue jeans, laced up boots stomping through puddles, a cool green eyed glare and a flashing white smile.

She was young and beautiful then; the recipient of breast implants (a Christmas gift from my ex-stepdad), accompanied her unblemished skin and petite body. People often marveled that she had kids at all, especially the stupor of suitors that followed in her wake wherever she went. The assistance she received from the state was billed to my father. He made a life for himself elsewhere with whatever was left over. My step father had left when I was 7 but not before leaving his marks on my mom. I imagine that many women are welcomed to a world of poverty and single-momdom this way. The odds are forever stacked against them

The many homes we lived in through my childhood were hardly ever our own. Turns out the cash aid for a family consisting of one single mom with two dependents, doesn’t stretch very far. We lived with whatever boyfriend of my mother’s would put up with her and her “baggage”. It never lasted long. We lived in over 15 houses from the time I was a 2nd grader up until middle school. On the rare occasion that the rent was cheap enough for us to find a rental of our own, we would be so far from town that it was impossible to function. Without a vehicle, we hiked a heavy distance to and from the school bus stop. We ate the free lunch and later piecemilled dinners together with whatever was left in the fridge. I had only one friend whose parents would allow her to even come to the various houses we lived in, and I am proud today to know someone was there to witness what a wild world we made for ourselves.

Did my mom use the money and the food stamps to buy nutritious food and toilet paper? Did she pinch pennies and save so we could have a better future? So she could get a car, and than a job, and eventually wean us off the government's breast?? Of course not. She threw that money away when she had to: for dance lessons, for donuts on my birthday, for a new outfit from MacFrugals. She took us out to dinner on Saturday nights at the Big A for hamburgers with french fries, and gave us money so we could spend warm days swimming with the rest of the kids at Lake Gregory. By the end of the month we were packing our belongings into trash bags, my mom plucking butts from the ashtray outside and pacing back and forth with a short stub of cigarette hanging from her mouth. She would frantically glance up the street until Tom, Dick or Harry’s vehicle came into view and shuttled us off to a new place.

Getting rich off of welfare meant my mom slept through depression for a good majority of the day. We watched the same 5 VHS movies on a daily basis and filled the gaps in between with Nintendo. School attendance was often optional. When I couldn’t stand the dark, quiet pushing down on me inside, I took long walks through the winding hills in our mountain town, trying to get lost, knowing she would wake up and be sorry that I was gone. But I always knew how to get back home in the end. And I always wound up missing her first.

By the time I was in high school, many things had changed. My mom had given us a baby sister; a widowed mother, infant in arms, she could have fallen apart, but she didn’t. Through the support of her family, she won a court settlement of $60,000. This was for the removal of her ruptured silicone breast-implants. She wasted no time in pulling up her bootstraps. She moved us away from that god-forsaken town and purchased an old, faded blue, Ford LTD. She paid rent on a house for a full two years and moved us in. She got a job working nights at a local coffee shop. She took her wisdom of poverty and established a division she named “Special Projects” through the local church. It was a charitable cause that focused on assisting single mothers and getting them back on their feet.

That short time that spanned the life of what we called “mom’s boob-money’, was about 3 years total. During that time, I was given the greatest gift of my childhood; the opportunity to see who my mom could be. She wasn’t lazy. She wasn’t a low-life, dependent of the state. She didn’t pop out kids to collect a fatter welfare check. And she definitely didn’t choose the circumstances that had left us miserably poor for the majority of my life. Given the opportunity, she thrived. She helped other people that she knew were struggling like we had. She became a roll model for me for the first time.

But the effects of silicon in her bloodstream for the past 10 years, had taken its toll regardless of the riches it bestowed upon us. There were still days she couldn’t get out of bed. She had planned ahead and after waiting on a list for section 8 housing for more than 2 years, we were accepted. We moved into an apartment and my mom became a real welfare queen, paying rent that was $28 a month. She worked limited hours as a waitress, and spent the majority of her money medicating the pain she was daily living through. She had been diagnosed with Lupus, and than Reynaud's Syndrome and later, some kind of throat condition without a name. She kept medicating to get up and going. We knew that her good moments were sponsored by uppers, and that days of darkness would follow.

I moved out at the first glimpse of 18. My 4 year old sister spent a great deal of her childhood bouncing between my older sister’s house and my grandma’s. Eventually, wherever she was when she was away became more of a home than the places my mom was living. It turned out my mom couldn’t come up with her $28 rent. She was back to couch-surfing. Life got harder and so did the drugs.

It seems crazy now, but it was hard to feel sorry for her. It was even harder that day as I fled the college campus, cursing her name as tears ran down my cheeks. She had kept collecting the meager Welfare allotted to her as if my little sister were still a full time dependent. She owed the state the money she had unlawfully collected. She had been trying to apply for social security, trying to get a correct diagnosis, trying to keep living while the world, and her family, and even her daughters, slowly gave up on her. She was cuffed and taken away in the parking lot of her public defender.

We couldn’t pay bail. I was terrified my mom would show up to her trial date in an orange jumper, cuffed, without legal preparations. She would be dressed, playing the part of convicted felon in front of a judge who was yet to determine if she was even guilty. All praise be, a shitty X-boyfriend ended up paying for a bail bond to get her out. She would later be acquitted of all charges, but not until the stress and mental fatigue had pushed her half into a grave.

In the last years of her life she was diagnosed with scleroderma. It’s not a well known disease. It’s fatal, causing chronic and painful hardening of the skin and tissue. She had been dealing with this illness, and misdiagnosed since I was 10. Turns out Welfare queens don’t get the best medical coverage.

I realize that many people have made it through harder times than these; that single-momdom and welfare don't always end with tragedy. But in hindsight I see that poverty had it's clutches on us in ways that we could not have broken free. I spent my youth trying to defend my mom against the judgments of well meaning middle class Americans: “Why doesn’t your mom just… get a job...stop sleeping all day...spend less time worrying about that boyfriend…?”  I hear the same comments about specific groups of people today and I quietly cringe.

There are so many people in this world that are just trying to make it through the day.  I witnessed my mom live an entire life this way. I got a glimpse of her looking to the horizon, and making expectations for herself but it was too late. A lifetime of dependency, of willfully being a victim of her own means, and unwillingly being a product of poverty, led to her young death. I will always carry a sadness with me that she died in a state of ruin. But her absence has taught me that our story is one to own. It is pivotal that I examine it, and inspect what we were, as opposed to what I thought we were; or what I allowed other people to say we were. I am a bigger person when I claim this youth of mine. It fills me up, so that I no longer meet every obstacle with a “fake it ‘til you make it” philosophy. I am good enough, just as I am. And so was she.  

-Emily

AGE OLD DOGMA- Chances are You're Inadvertently Slighting Your Child.

“Mom, I’m hungry.” “No you’re not, you just ate dinner.”

“Mom, I’m cold.” “You’re fine, you have a jacket on.”

“Mom, I’m scared in the dark.” “There’s nothing in your room to be afraid of.”

How many times have you uttered one of those phrases or something similar? Chances are several times… today.

I didn’t think much of my “go-to” responses to my children’s pleas until I read a parenting article that turned everything on its head. Per usual, I can’t remember what the hell the article was or where I read it, but the fundamental directive stuck.

Those exchanges probably look relatively harmless, but the underlying message being sent to your child is, “You don’t know how you feel.”

How many of us, as adults, suffer from an inability to decide what is best for ourselves? We turn to others for guidance or enter into complete paralysis when faced with a choice. Many of us (me, me!) languish in decision fatigue- we weigh all of our options, spending hours researching, afraid to pull the trigger and realize later that we’ve chosen poorly. ( I mean, what if I don’t look at all 565 pages of rugs on Overstock? What if the best one is on page 565??) By the time we’ve invested umpteen energy we are “fatigued” and overwhelmed, with compromised judgment for deciding anything at all. 

We are the product of this type of parenting, through no fault of those who raised us. They were simply doing what they were taught via their own childhood experiences. Should we really trust the self-knowledge of a four-year-old anyway?

Yes and no. The importance of our responses has less to do with the actual thing occurring and more to do with what’s being intimated to our child via what we say. Two things are unfolding: We’re disregarding their ability to know themselves and their own feelings, but we are also devaluing them. If every time you expressed that you were cold, your husband responded to you with, “You’re fine, you have a coat on,” you’d go ape shit on his ass after the second time (more likely the first). You’d feel about the size of a crumb after a couple weeks of being consistently discounted.

Imagine how our babies feel. (Heart currently breaking.)

Does this mean that I have to cater to my child’s every whim? No. It does mean that instead of glossing over his thoughts and feelings, I should take a moment to listen and discuss. If he says he’s hungry 30 minutes after dinner (five minutes if you’re River), I can say something like, “Okay, I hear you. I understand you’re hungry. I noticed you didn’t eat much of your meal. Do you think that might be why you’re still hungry? Would you like to finish your dinner?” To which he for sure will reply, “No, I’m full of my dinner. I want a banana.” I’d then have to let him know that at our house we don’t have snacks if we haven’t finished our meal. Same outcome, different approach, and it maybe took an extra minute. But, he felt heard and his feelings were not ignored. In short, he recognized his value.

Life is busy. It's easy to fall into the habit of treating our children’s requests like nuisances when we are rushed and trying to accomplish more than we can handle. We love them SO much, and we’re doing all of this business for them, but we don’t want them to think that they are nuisances. A shift in response can make a world of difference in the confidence of your now child and future grown-up. The little things count for more than we can often imagine. Deliberating over a rug is a relatively harmless offense, but the consequences of a child who doesn't have faith in her own ability to monitor herself can be devastating, as a wee one and as an adult.

During childhood, I remember being as unimpressed with my parents' alleged acumen as my children often are with mine, assuming I had all the answers and feeling extremely frustrated when told otherwise. I can also identify with, at times, feeling like a dismissed and insecure child as an adult. We’re all souls of the same size, mature upon arrival, housed in bodies of different statures, controlled by brains of varying development and just looking for love, connection… acceptance. Reminding ourselves of that innate sense of being and our mutual desires that bind us together, big and small, is an amazing way to behold our children through a more empathetic lens, offering them the respect that they, like us, not only yearn for but wholeheartedly deserve.

-Angi