FOR CRYING OUT LOUD- Sometimes you need to lose it to find it.

In the movies, a woman gets her feelings slightly hurt. She lets her sullen lips quiver and her large doe eyes fill with tears and that’s all it takes to trigger a response of complete remorse from her lover. He’d gladly right all the wrongs that led to this point if she would only not cry. Embracing her, he begs for her not to shed such sad tears, and she is comforted and pretty music plays.

In the real world, a woman cries every time she tries to convey a thought of displeasure about her predicament as housewife/mother/teacher. She knows damn well she has cried over this same topic before and feels like a fucking lunatic because in her mind if she could just communicate it the right way this time, maybe her lover will see that she isn’t just a huge bitch face, and understand that she does get to the end of her rope some days, even when she isn’t premenstrual, and all the emotion packed behind a response to that one, little, unintended, negative comment, leads to a performance of anguish, where she surrenders herself to the tears at hand and ugly sobs face down on the bed like a toddler throwing a tantrum, completely warranting the demeanor of her husband, who patiently sits back and waits for her to work through it. No pretty music, just the gurgle of snot as it is wiped away on the sleeve of the pajamas that she’s worn all day.

So what did you gals do this weekend?...

I am not proud to admit that I did the above. I wish like hell that I didn’t take the heavy of the household and throw it at my husband’s feet like a whiney wretch. I try to look back through the week and see where things started to go wrong but it all feels like a bad Alice and Wonderland remake at that point: a collection of sharp words exchanged over shirked responsibilities, the pieces left over from whatever consistency unraveled, resulting in the proliferation of child-rearing-mayhem, the dark descent into spouts of spousal silence, and then it’s off with her head cry-fest.

I make solid attempts to set my family up for success; we plan, and list, and dream, and then John and I pump the kids up with whatever viable enthusiasm they can muster, and make a pretty good run of things. You know the list: studies, chores, responsibilities, hobbies, extracurricular activities, social lives, family time; It’s an all-in kind of life around here. And that is just the kids. John and I make every attempt to lead by example; bettering ourselves and enjoying our lives. After taking care of four kids though, sometimes what we have left for ourselves feels measly.

Inevitably, we both fall prey to the inconvenience of continued effort; bad choices made in an attempt to secure selfish time to one’s self, or simply to relish in a moment of immobility, face to the phone, a “fuck Y'all, all y’all, Y'all don’t like me, blow me” aura descends. My own inability to champion all the things that I think I can, sours into resentment. And if I leave it unchecked, I stop communicating. I stop reaping what diligence manifests; extra time, rest, relationship growth, individual growth, and instead scramble to get the bare minimum done, still half-assing all those other goals. I absolutely can not get back to even without asking for John’s help. And that’s usually all I needed to do to begin with.

When I hit rock bottom, I realize he isn’t there with me. And I get so fucking sad because I know that I haven’t trusted him to carry the weight that I am feeling. I think he won’t last carrying around resentments or being burdened by all the needs of this household, but I clearly cannot do it either. Then I just miss him so bad, I cry. And I’m such an ass, what I want to say is “I need you more right now than I usually do.” but instead I blubber, and incoherently try to pass the blame.

Earlier that day, the quote on Mindful + Mama’s Instagram, by Jen Sincero, had me all ‘resigned woman-emoji’, hand over her face in despair: “So often we pretend we’ve made a decision when what we’ve really done is signed up to try until it gets too uncomfortable.” Angi!! I felt like you could see my self-loathing, victim induced, bleeding heart!

So how do we make our endeavors last? Well, after taking the long way around to get there, I communicated. The “responsibility chart” that had been mostly ignored for the past weeks, got revamped. We acknowledged that there is no guarantee that we will successfully enforce all these color-coordinated intentions without a separate clause holding the enforcers themselves accountable. I tuned it up a bit before drawing everyone’s attention back to it. We had a family meeting so we could praise the little-beings for what they had done right, before slaying them for all that needed improvement. Here’s what went down:

John and I humbly took our fair share of the fault for the family’s combined reluctance to toe the responsibility line. Clearly, we are fooling ourselves if we expect a chore list to parent for us.

Each family member has been assigned a day of the week to maintain the area in our home that accumulates the most mess. For us, this is the backyard. Deciphering who created what mess is a headache in and of itself. We’re striving for an alternative to the fights that occur between siblings when asked to clean up. Our goal is to have them realize there is less work involved for all of them when they regularly clean up after themselves. Fingers crossed it’s not a complete crash and burn.

We also committed to an allotment of 90 minutes of face-to-phone time per weekday. This is for all of us and begins anytime after 4:30 pm. Chores and studies have been completed by midday, and the intention is to provide them with ample free time, void of any expectation to have internet access. A healthy portion of time before bed will be available for us to act as a family; maybe spread the joy of words over a game of Scrabble, or work on my personal patience affirmations over a lengthy game of Life.  

Before enjoying dessert and a movie on Monday night, we will check in with how everyone is feeling in regards to the new rules of the house. This will give us a forum to correct behaviors and give gratitude to those making an effort. And then we can end on a high note by stuffing our faces with Ben and Jerry’s.

Ultimately, I just need to know that I have John’s support. Shit can get real uncomfortable, as long as he is right there with me. This is the guy that supported my body and choices through four homebirths; he knows a lot about uncomfortable women. I have complete faith that we will continue to maneuver the adventures of family life, even if it is done one ugly cry at a time.

-Emily

THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Daniel Day Lewis to be played by a Tampax)- Embracing the Beauty of our Female Cycles.

 I am on the brink of having a woman as a daughter. My 11-year-old has passed into the realm of breast buds and mood-swings. She is asserting her independence daily; stretching her long legs out to see if the same old boundaries still apply. She is asking for opportunities where we can choose to trust her, and then pushing us as far as she can to see if we can still be trusted to be there. One day soon she will bleed from the most sacred of her body parts. What could possibly go wrong? I went through this same thing. All women did, and we have fond memories of that time right… right?!... shit.

There isn’t a lot of positive confirmation in the whole period department. Typically, our moms didn’t say the right thing, or they said nothing at all. We tend to simply chalk up the failures of our mothers during this time as a phase we lived through. We turned out alright, so will our daughters. Maybe.

Let’s be honest, this ‘day and age’ cannot be depended on to represent a healthy version of what a woman is. Unless we are hiding our girls under rocks, they have seen (or someone has colorfully described to them) Miley Cyrus riding on a wrecking ball. Family movie nights have relentlessly depicted the one right way for a woman to have a body. And, any two-dimensional coming-of-age idol that they may desire to imitate has been put through the sexually objectified wringer (with no objections). Such is life.  Heap on the weight of every trite observation that is made about pubescent girls in our society, and get on with the journey.

But what if we could offer them more? Who is to say that you cannot rewrite the best version of this experience, the one that you wished you’d had, and give it to her? What would it take? Go back to 12 years old you. It’s that gangly time where you made strange fashion choices and your close-to-full set of adult teeth looked too big for your mouth.  You were on the verge; an old favorite Barbie still stashed in a drawer, alongside a journal full of magazine cutouts of Keanu Reeves’ face. What would it have taken for someone to empower you for the transition ahead?

If I could rewrite that chapter in my life, I would have my mom speak proudly about the things that were to come. I felt her apprehension about what my body was doing like a shameful punch in the stomach. There was no getting out of it, I was turning into a woman. It was going to yield a crabby disposition, uncleanliness, and pain. And, oh by the way, “I’m so happy for you.” What the fuck?

I can say now, with complete wisdom, that she didn’t lie to me. All that jazz was true. Patience is sparse, blood is messy, and cramps hurt. The message from my mother and society was to accept it and then pretend it’s not happening for the rest of my life. Cover it up. Be a woman. What I wanted to hear so badly was, “Yeah, it’s hard. But it’s important and this is why…”

Becoming a woman means that your body will now remind you of what is most fundamental. Even if you want to forget, each month, your body will urge you to look inside yourself. Every message that we are berated with about being a beautiful, clean, untarnished, desired body, is thrown on its face by the cycles of womanhood.

The beginning of many women’s cycles starts with bloating and the discomfort of uterine tremors. These contractions assist in the shedding of the uterus lining, but they also effectively cause you to clear your schedule, slow down, and say “no”. I have learned that writing “just say no” on my calendar, during the first days of my cycle, is one of the best ways I can love myself.

There is nothing like a period to get you in contact with your body.  Whatever parts of you, that you’d rather ignore, demand hands-on attention.  I was using tampons before I was fully aware of the anatomy of my own vagina. That seems a little crazy, considering the logistics. With the progression of time, the blood that returned each month drew my focus to a place that no one wanted to talk about. Staying hygienic and tending to my menstrual needs guided me into having a relationship with my own body.

Surprise, surprise…  it wasn’t until after childbirth, that I understood the significance of fertility. Now as a mother of four, I covet those feelings that arrive with the release of an egg. I am passionate and creative with a force. It is this phase of my cycle that I love relating to the moon. When the albedo glow of the sun reflects back at us as a growing crescent, we too are able to construct new things, to grow into new ideas and give our energies to these endeavors. We wax like the moon, creating a literal new life within us,  or manifesting expressions of the life we lead now.

I couldn’t find poetic evidence that I wanted to scientifically connect us as women to the lunar phases. The electromagnetic forces that control our ocean tides have not conclusively been found to affect our ‘lady-tides’. However, our moon plays a vital role in circadian rhythms. The sun’s energy that reflects back to earth in our night sky does have an effect on our melatonin levels. This hormone doesn’t just make us sleepy, it also regulates our cycles! Boom, connected.

As our body’s hormones subside, and we prepare to expel the unfertilized egg, the world tells us that we are unbearable. I remember the first time my mom blamed my emotions on my period. I felt enraged that someone would tell me that I didn’t know how I felt like my own feelings couldn’t be trusted. PMS is a fucking superpower. Not allowing your body to slow down and rest? Cramps take care of that. Refusing to physically connect with “shameful” parts of your own body? Nothing a repeated bloody crotch won’t fix. And last but not least; Denying your self-worth? Not standing up for yourself? Pretending it doesn’t matter?? Post Menstrual Stress will dump those undealt with uglies right into your lap. The tears and angst come out like a torrent of unresolved disputes, and everything you stuffed away during the past 25 days has “better out than in” written all over it.  

When day one of my cycle comes, I don’t say “Gee whiz! This will be fun!” but I do have a deep respect for a process that has reconstructed my view about the woman body I live in.  I figured a lot of it out on my own, and that’s okay. I know now that early conversations about our bodies lead to young women who value sex in a safer way. Knowing our self-worth creates a clearer picture of what we want (regardless of what he wants). This kind of self-esteem, to speak our minds, is a virtue we can learn as girls.

I can’t wait to tell my daughter to trust her woman-self; her growing, changing, communicating body is a marvel. We know how to handle a fair share of shit. And, I can’t imagine that would be half as possible without the wonderful mechanisms of our menstrual cycles.

-Emily

GOOD WOMAN- Challenging the Stereotypical Definitions of Good Men and Women.

Like anyone else, I have idealized the occasional Hollywood face. Depending on the storyline, or character, the actor or actress may have the power to creep into my heart and nestle into the corners of my outlook on society. Case in point, me crying through all of The Force Awakens because Daisy Ridley was a fully clothed, bad-ass, female Jedi, cast as the main character. This Star Wars movie even passes the meager “Bechdel” test;  two women, whose character names are known, speak to each other about something other than a man. Oh. My. Gawd. If you’ve never heard of this test, you will be disheartened at how many of your favorite childhood movies don’t come close to passing it. The incredulousness I felt about the portrayal of a strong woman character was lost on my 10-year-old daughter, who thankfully lives during a time when women and people of color are cast as heroes and heroines on the screen.

For me, the magnitude of fictional characters has transcended beyond the limits of amusement. During my formidable years, I yearned for that black dad off of The Cosby Show. He came home every night, didn’t yell, had money, and was clearly adored by his family for his sense of humor. The show made me have amicable feelings, ones that I had to rearrange upon hearing that Bill Cosby had a looooong line of women declaring him a rapist. I wish that I could say I was raised an informed feminist, but I wasn’t, and I felt pity at first for the fictional character I knew, played by a real-life man who did insanely wrong things to real women. Breaking up with Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K. won’t be nearly as hard.

While ranting and raving about the significance of having our entertainment craftily entwined with our worth, I have come across plenty of dismissive glances. Leave it to the budding feminist to tear apart our leisure ventures and turn pleasurable lounging into an activist movement. The caricatures that two-dimensional women are portrayed as seem to be the “phantom” that Virginia Woolf claims “is far more difficult to murder than a reality.”  Yes, women are set at some disadvantages in life, but obviously, we have the capacity to construct ourselves separately from the images that Hollywood portrays of us… right??

The contagious empowerment of the woman voice is ablaze across all social medias right now with definitions of what a good man is and is not. “Toxic-masculinity” is being passionately discussed alongside the explicable difference of healthy masculinity. Testosterone that knows no bounds is scary. “Good men” know this. And I have to stop here because it struck me that we own this phrase, “good men” and know it well and can speak of it without assuming audacity. But damned if I can’t clearly imagine a bunch of men throwing around the expression “good women” without clearly defining what that is.

I challenge you to ask yourself even, what is a “good woman?” Is our quality defined along the same guidelines as men; loyalty and bravery? Is each sex admiringly sorted into the confines of JK Rowlings Gryffindor-house definition? (I regress to admit Harry Potter is a huge Bechdel-test failure…) A good woman is pulled apart by differing definitions of what she should be.

I know intrinsically what a “good man” should be. Aside from the very obvious, obtaining consent before performing sexual acts… a good man is loyal to his family and partner (if he has them) or, at the very least, to his friends. If he is loyal to his country, that is coined as ‘bravery’, which is narrowly distinguished on the big screen as brandishing a weapon and slaughtering opposing races in the name of glory, guts, and God.

But the flesh and blood ‘good man’ is brave and loyal in many other ways, like: learning something new, humbly facing humiliation, assisting the weak, or acting selflessly for the common good. A good man’s strength is displayed by his quiet ego, he listens before he speaks, and is naturally generous with his time and possessions. I could go on and on because I graciously married a living example (insert emoji with heart eyes here).

It is easy to proclaim a man “good” for having the attributes of a mother; sorting dirty laundry, making meals, changing a diaper or wearing a baby. Can the same be true for a woman who hustles like a stereotypical dad; dependably providing for the family, making individual sacrifices to forge a profitable career, keeping the bad day at the office confined to the office, relinquishing free time to be spent by the desires of the household...? Not likely.

Before you tell me that a good woman “fears God and submits to her husband”, I ask you to read some Naomi Wolf, or Carol Gilligan, then we can talk.

“...reclamation of moral authority could well lead women to make lasting social changes along its lines, and have faith to call those changes God’s will.  Compassion might replace hierarchy; a traditionally feminine respect for human life might severely damage an economy based on militarism and a job market based on the use of people as expendable resources. Women might recast human sexuality as proof of the sacredness of the body rather than of its sinfulness, and the old serviceable belief that equates femaleness with pollution might become obsolete.”

We, as women, are depending on one another (finally!), as a collective force, to challenge very old and wrong ways of thinking. The ‘here and now’ momentum that has given way to women speaking out against sexual harassment, male-entitlement, and toxic-masculinity, is setting the stage for a universal definition of a “good woman”. I see her holding up her head high as a living example for girls. She proudly has a body and speaks without shame about the functions of that body. She “can show you how to be strong, in the real way” (“Steven Universe” by Rebecca Sugar) and be a HERO to both girls AND boys. She can influence other women by embracing their unique differences, and still cherish what we share as human beings living in feminine vessels.

This week I hope to stop and appreciate the attributes I see in women that define them as “good”. We are often narrowly described as beautiful by many standards, but let’s “speak beauty when we see it” by broadened standards. Speak strength, even when butted up against failure. Speak support and community over judgment. Speak a love for yourself. You are the living embodiment of what a good woman can be.

-Emily

EMPATHY AND CARPE DIEM.

My youth was once a pleasurable state that I couldn’t imagine not having: firm butt cheeks, righteous displays of self-centeredness, cute boobs, unclaimed ownership to a world of messes that I didn’t make and had no responsibility to fix, smaller pores ... you get the point. Being young is a pinnacle of robust time, where the world seems to celebrate you or envy you, both are desirable. And, in retrospect, I fully enjoyed it all while completely wasting it. But that’s okay, I couldn’t have known then what I know now (cue Rod Stewart).

Life is becoming increasingly valuable to me. There is a word for this. I learned it a couple of years ago while sitting in a psychology class that I wouldn’t have given two shits about when I was a teenager. Generativity is “a need to nurture and guide younger people and contribute to the next generation.” This feeling extends to people outside of the immediate family, and according to this savvy guy Erikson, begins at about age forty.  

I think, for some, this growing obligation to the world at large stems from becoming a parent. There is a crazy amount of empathy that runs through our veins on any given day when we are doing normal mom stuff. We’ve already cried over long-division, had our first crushes dis us, been mortified over wetting the bed, or frustrated by an elusive pair of shoes that always disappears. Kid problems. How often do we check back in with the little person we once were, to help our own children navigate their current feelings? Everyday. Aaaand ... sometimes not at all.

The flip side of being a selfless, lifter-upper of dashed children’s hopes is when you are being an exhausted, overworked, time restrained, probation officer of children who, for the love of all things holy, cannot make decent choices on their own, and you slam the uncleared breakfast dishes into the sink like the Hulk and cry over your lost liberty as a human who once didn’t have to bend over backwards to make the world go round. Crazy as it sounds, in this outlandish moment, you may feel brief empathy for someone else entirely; the person who raised you. It's an angsty empathy, but nonetheless, you might come across the vague feeling that you once caused someone this much grief. In that moment, as you hover over the past, an understanding hits you in the face, and you call your mom and tell her you love her.

Generativity had me at 25 and pregnant. The thought of being a mom was like whoa, and the only thing to do was know more, and not a minute too soon because Haven came out of the womb asking questions. In her articulate, tiny voice, “Mommy, what’s rainbows doin’? What’s waterfalls doin’? What’s ladybugs doin’?..." Her way of asking me to explain the world. She relentlessly (and thankfully) made me the way that I am. The great pursuit of knowing things has led me to fall helplessly in love with the people of this world.  

I hope that the full force of my generativity will unfurl like a superpower when I hit forty. I have an insatiable appetite to learn all the things, and then tweak the recipe for knowledge into something palpable for a generation of humans who were just like me and couldn’t see the delicious world spread before them like a buffet of empowering ideas. (Really dedicated to this eating theme) I hope to serve some food for thought to starving minds. That sounds like a pretentious thing to say, but who cares. It feels like it might be a calling, and a really loud one. My family is making sacrifices to allow me to continue going to school. And, it’s time consuming and challenging as fuuuuuck. And, every step of the way I am envisioning how I will share what I have learned.

The biggest detractor in my quest to learn is that tangled trap, the inter-web, the time suck of all time sucks. I go to check a message on my phone and lo and behold there is a brief pause when the kids don’t need me.  Suddenly, I am filling that vacant moment in between servitude and support, scrolling through beautiful pictures of other people’s lives on the internet. And then damn! There is no time left to do that thing that you had hoped to do, that elusive “filling of the cup” that you keep reading about. Nope.  Someone has just barfed in the hallway, and there are no clean towels, and you just burned the pancakes. Go.

This last week I was graced with the presence of my brilliant Aunt Judy. She is a fifth grade teacher, whose class uses iPads for a majority of their work. She related the time we spend on media to a progression of stages:

Scrolling through pics on Instagram, trolling comments on Facebook, feasting your eyes on a lovely Pinterest, or getting riled up over a tweet; these are all step one- ‘input’. How many hours a day do I spend inputting an activity that is ultimately mindless?

Step two is to ‘process’- to critique or analyze what our eyes have glazed over looking at. If there isn’t anything to contemplate about step one, get out of there! It’s a trap! I kid, but seriously, keep this leisure activity to a minimum. Asking questions about the content we give our time to is vital.

And finally, there is step three- ‘output’: turning all that thinking into something, choosing a cause, a conversation, a manifestation original to your own self. Think Henry David Thoreau here, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”  

As a mom, it’s superfluous to say there is just too much to do. The tiny blips of free time that we carve out for ourselves have got to be used to serve us. Back in 2009, just after I had birthed my third baby, I was engulfed by the social media of MySpace. I felt seen, finally. All this selfless, lonely motherhood stuff, could be acknowledged and commented on. I could express myself to people while wearing pajamas I had been comfortable in for three days straight, crusted breast milk down the front, and my hair a greasy mess, but who cares?! I was beautiful in that pic I just posted. But, I felt like shity-ass MySpace was stealing every little break I got. And, by the end of the year, I had erased it and bought a ukulele.

In a couple of days, I could play three chords and sing along. Proud singer and song-writer, these are the lyrics to that first jam:

Screw you MySpace

I can play the uke

And still have time

For the Bo and Duke

Practice when they’re sleeping

And early in the morn

Not much time for Mama

When the babes are born

Screw you MySpace

I can play the Uke

And still have time for the Bo and Duke.

I have continued playing this song like an anthem when I need courage to pursue the things I love.  Our lives are worth leading. We are doing a favor to future people, by cultivating our passions. Only then will we have the ability to set little fires under the tiny asses of future generations.

-Emily

LIVING UNDER A FALLING SKY- The toll of social anxiety.

It hit me like an anvil, without warning. I was a typical 15 year old, in the midst of enjoying football games and sleepovers, and playing on the JV soccer team. My high school years are both foggy and painfully sharp. Every hour of every school day was spent with my heart racing, one cheek to the desk at all times, in an effort to cool the heat radiating from within, alternating cheeks, depending upon who was sitting on either side of me, head down, in hopes of going unnoticed.

The fear of being called upon was more than enough to incite the blood flow. And then, when it actually would happen, the reaction was so extreme, everyone had to look, trying to reason how someone could turn that red without an implosion. It was so physically painful, by the end of the school day, my body was exhausted and my head throbbing, all I could muster was sleep. The stress my body and mind endured is now incomprehensible to me.  

Erythrophobia, also known as a “fear of blushing,” not to be mistaken with social anxiety, this is an actual extreme social phobia. The fear is self perpetuating- the more one anticipates blushing, the more it will manifest. Eventually, the relation of time between thought and physiological response becomes non existent. Every minute of each day, year after year, it occurred in all situations involving any other human who would witness the rush of blood and inherent shame that traveled together, like old war buddies.

For years, it seemed the only logical answer was to never leave the safety of home. Or to die. Literally, two options. Then there is the rare and extremely irrational option that I elected- get knocked up and have a cute baby, so everyone will look at said baby instead of me. A distraction, a diversion- yes, that’s the answer. Never mind the stares and whispers I’d have to endure as a pregnant teen. This logic suggests just how desperate the situation was for me. Depression and anxiety had robbed me of clear thought processes and a level head. And, so it was, the answer to all my worries- Cassidy, born on the fourth of February, 1997, the second semester of my senior year.  

It was a lonely place, and social anxiety wasn’t yet the overused, common household term that it is today. Teenage depression was thought of as grunge era angst, trendy and fabricated. Flannel and sadness, for looks.  

I was semi comfortable in my skin when outdoors, free from the confines of my classroom/ pseudo jail cell. I lived for those few hours in the day I spent alone in my room, where I was safe from the endless pairs of eyes and the possibility that they may glance in my direction.   

Time passed and the nightmare of high school faded. Teenage love, that promised a lifetime of thrills, gave way to heartbreak and addiction. The hopes and dreams I didn’t know I had all came to life for me one day, hinged on a unheard of, brand new pharmaceutical entity, advertised and gobbled up by people looking for an escape from the angst that is anxiety. Paxil was fresh on the market. Until this point, how to give a voice to my struggles eluded me. But there he was, that red faced, sweaty, shaking little cartoon, hiding behind furniture, while the voice over asked viewers questions that shook my soul.

“Do you feel like everyone is looking at you when you walk into a room?”

“Do you search for the nearest exit?”

“Does the thought of speaking in public make you contemplate suicide?”

“Does your heart feel as though it may fall out of your ass?”

Undeniably, yes. How was it possible? All this time, I’d never spoken to anyone of what I’d experienced, and there he was, an animated oval, bouncing on the TV screen, spilling my innermost secrets, during the prime time viewing hour.  This was my answer. This was my new faith. This little pill would put to death every monster I’d been running from for the last six years. I was 21 now, armed with a prescription for synthetic confidence, and nothing was going to get in my way.

I could pen a generic autobiography about the life of a single mother party animal from this point. I will spare you the details of my parenting failures and just tell you that my daughter has grown to be an amazing young woman, in spite of my selfishness (thanks Gram and Pop). I will tell you I relied solely on a medication that I knew little about and consequently became indifferent to the poor choices I made. The only regrets I have are in relation to those I hurt.

I’ve been free of any anti anxiety/anti depressants for eight years. The withdrawals from an SSRI are a nightmare in and of itself, which speaks to how much of a mind altering effect they can have. I empathize with people who truly need them to function, but useage doesn’t come without a price. I can say discontinuing my daily dose, after nine years, was like waking up from a state of semi consciousness. I do okay without medication. I initiate friendships, I do lunch dates, preferably on a patio, and as of this last year, I let my clients face the mirror while styling their hair, so they could actually see me during our conversations. I’ll probably never opt to speak in public, but I’m okay with the that.   

I was recently chatting with my sister and teenage niece, while the kids played on the living room floor. The topic of feeling anxious in front of an audience came up, as she regularly sings on stage. I decided to briefly share my experience with her. For the first time ever, I told someone, face to face, that I had a very real, life altering, fear of blushing. Of course, the mere thought of it brought the fire. She chuckled nervously. I forced myself to sit through the discomfort and face the shame that once upended my life, aside from a quick glance in the mirror to see what I’d really been hiding from all this time.

To my surprise, it was just me, I was still me. Blood vessels inflamed, but still me.

We continued our conversation, and what once would’ve sent me into a tailspin, was just a fleeting moment. The shame of feeling ashamed was gone.  

I’ll never understand why I got stuck and fixated on the fear of a flushed face. I could do some more mental laps, lose more sleep, and probably never produce a solid conclusion. Or, maybe I’ll wave goodbye to the fear that once determined how I perceived myself, let it slip away in that rear view mirror and just be proud of the girl who’s had to figure out how to face the world.

With my cranium and sense of self intact, I walked out the door a little bit taller that day.  The sun shone bright, and for the first time in years, the warmth of my cheeks was a sensation I welcomed. My face was hot as it bared the sun, but I was no longer dodging fragmented pieces of a falling sky.

-Shelley