fashion clothes

Does anyone else feel constantly disappointed in humanity these days? I fight my propensity to be cynical with every ounce in my being at times, but there is just such an abundance of "I'm so offended right now" in this world that it is an uphill, often losing, battle.

Something that seems to be getting worse every day to me are the mommy wars. I'm not talking about the wars about whether it is better to work or stay home (let's all just assume, incorrectly, I might add, that every mother is ever afforded that choice in the first place), it isn't about whether formula is perfectly fine or breastfeeding is right. It's not about the usual suspects, this most recent war.

Nope.

This war is about cupcakes.

Really.

I'm not kidding.

The newest variety of the mom war has Pinterest written all over it, accented with handmade bows and custom outfits.

Let me explain.

Some people are crafty. Some people were born crafty. Some people become crafty when they have kids. Some people actually enjoy making 50 cupcake toppers and coming up with awesome decorations for parties. Some people actually bend over backwards to make special cakes and adorable invitations. Some people loathe it but do it anyway because they want to do it for their kids.

An actual cake I made. Haters gonna hate.

Some people can't do it, either because they just aren't crafty or don't have the time/energy/extra money to drop on making tiny cupcake flags. Some people buy cakes from the store and packaged invitations and their kids have amazing birthday parties. Some people keep celebrations small and at home. Some people forget until the day of, then hustle to get it together at the last minute. Some people always forget goody bags. (totally raising my hand on several here)

Why does what someone else does or doesn't do for their kids have anything to do with your parenting?

It shouldn't.

It doesn't, in reality. It quite literally has nothing to do with you.

It does, though, or at least it seems that way, because every time I see a friend post something kickass she did for her kids on the book of face, someone has to come along and crap all over it.

It seems like someone always has to tell this mom who is just doing something cool for her kid that she is making the comment leaver feel inadequate as a mother.

Always.

You've seen it.

Why does my kid's birthday cake make you feel inadequate?

How does anything I do in my family have an affect on your self-worth?

It shouldn't. This isn't a contest. There is no winner for best-mom-ever, but there are definitely losers...and as long as we're comparing ourselves to each other, we are all losers.

I've written before about this, about how I truly believe that we are all different as mothers. We all kick ass at something, we all go way over the top when it comes to our kids about something. Whether your something is birthday cakes or homemade pancakes or notes in lunches or bedtime rituals or whatever it is - we all are totally awesome at something.

And we all suck at something. There is some aspect of parenting that we all hate, that we all loathe with every ounce of our beings. There is something that no matter how many times we have tried, we are terrible at.

And it is all okay.

Seriously.

We live in a world now where the response to feeling inadequate about our parenting because of what someone else shares on Facebook or Pinterest has resulted in mom shaming, hence the comments being left on all things awesome. It's even gone so far that mom fails are now a thing.

And they are. We all screw up. We should be as willing to admit the times we forget about a lost baby tooth or yelled at a kid purely out of frustration or tried that new Pinterest recipe and it was an abysmal failure as we are about the things we did right.

But that isn't how social media works. Social media, for most people, is a platform for the shiny and happy and perfect and positive. All that is great, this is true, but the shiny and happy and perfect and positive is only part of the story of our lives as parents.

And none of it has anything to do with anyone else.

I joked (sort of) yesterday about how I am starting to feel like I need to make a gigantic IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU sign and staple it to my forehead.

We, as a society, and especially as the mothers of the children of the next generation, have got to stop taking everything so goddamn personally. We have to stop believing that what anyone else does is a reflection on our triumphs or failures as people, as mothers. We have to stop making other women feel as though the things they do for their kids make us feel bad.

We have to stop.

Because it is not about us. It never was about us, it was about their child. For the love. We don't get to insist that it is about us simply because it makes us feel bad.

There is a moral imperative here. An absolute crisis of conscience going on, and it's one that we are modeling for our children. We need to support each other, celebrate the gifts of our friends, support one another when things aren't shiny and happy and perfect and positive.

We need to stop making other women feel bad when they have done something they should be proud of, something special for their families, something important for their children.

And we need to do it now.

I'll make my ridiculous birthday cakes. You do whatever your thing is. We can high five each other instead of snarking, honest.

Let's do that instead.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Princess Celestia My Little Pony Rainbow cake to make....

Hair, hair everywhere. What's a man to do?

For as long as there have been humans, there has been an abundance of hair. On heads, on chests, on arms and legs, and yes....down there.

I must include a disclaimer here so that I don't get a bunch of hate mail over this post, and/or totally gross out family members. If you don't want to read about sex, penises, balls, happy trails, vagazzling, tweezing, waxing, chafing or rubbing, stop reading now. I mean it. Like right now.

Last chance.

I'm not kidding. Go.

Okay, now that we're done with warnings and disclaimers, let's get on with the business of the day, manscaping.

This topic came to me as a request from a fan. Someone I have known, quite literally, forever. He's a dude that needs some questions answered. He knows that I can't refuse a challenge, so here we are.

Since at least 4000 BC, people have been removing hair from their bodies. Razors were invented sometime around 3000 BC. Prior to that hairs were plucked out using shells. (I'll just let you think about how awesome of a process that must have been for a moment.)

Facial hair is the hair most commonly and historically removed for men, leg and underarm hair for women, though some cultures have long dictated the removal of pubic hair for women. Oh, and just in case you are wondering, if you search bikini waxing on Wikipedia, there are pictures. I've linked it here for ease of use. You are welcome.

Though the removal of pubic hair is nothing new, the widespread societal expectation of female removal is something fairly recent, at least in this country. Sex and the City didn't just bring back day drinking, it urged women everywhere to get their tingly bits waxed.

And the world rejoiced.

It's a trend that hasn't seemed to let up, though every so often there are stories that pop up alleging that waxing is on the way out, that women are embracing their pubes again, that the moral center of the nation is encouraging growing it long and strong to rebel against the horrors of porn. And so on and so forth. Then vagazzling becomes a thing a few weeks later and we all realize we're still going to be shaving for a while.

So, women have been doing it a long time...what about the men? They've come over to the smooth side too.


I could get into a lengthy explanation about chest hair or leg hair or any other hair, but we all know that's not why you're here. You're here for the naughty bits. Unless you are a porn star, swimmer, model, elite cyclist or runner....you probably aren't shaving your entire body bald because you have to. You're shaving it either because you want to or because someone told you it looked good.

Little secret here. Ready? Most women I know actually like chest hair as long as it's not unwieldy and doesn't fan out too far or stick our of the top of your shirt. Feel free to trim it up, but don't shave it all off. (Also, feel free to discuss among friends, ask your significant other what they prefer, choose to ignore them if you like to be a bear, whatever....however you get your freak on, I'm good with it.) Whatever you do, leave a trace of the happy trail. Please.

Don't do this.

In researching this post, I've been fortunate to have many male friends willing to tell me their stories. Some go full 70's bush, refusing to shave anything below the neck. Some use clippers to tame their body hair, but refuse to shave with an actual razor. Some trim pubic hair only, leaving the chest hair alone. Some were even kind enough to tell me they shave the pubic hair on top but leave the ball hair alone. And then there were the bald boys who go for it all, clippers first, then razors.

Every guy does it a little differently, and they all have slightly different reasons.

Some started during puberty or very shortly thereafter. More than a few started in college. Some started at the request of a significant other. One guy I know started when he found his first gray pube. True damn story.

My only word of caution is this, ladies....if you have been married a long time and your husband has been hairy the whole time, then suddenly decides to shave his balls, worry. Middle aged men don't often just wake up one day and start doing this unless there's a reason, at least not from the stories people have told me.

What are the reasons for a guy to shave his junk? (for the love of all that is right and just in this world, if you are related to me and haven't left yet, go now)

1. Sex. Really, this is the main reason. Let's just be honest about that. I don't have a penis, but I can tell you that sensations are heightened in the nethers when hairless. I assume it would be the same for a dude.
2. Oral Sex. It's just better. And your partner is probably more willing to go there if things are tidy. No one likes getting hair in their teeth. Cough. Cough.
3. Illusions. There is a thing, referred to as the "optical inch", reasoning goes a bit like this: if the bush is trimmed back a little, the trunk seems longer and thicker. 
4. Cleanliness. Hair hangs on to sweat, and let's get one thing clear: balls sweat a lot. Sweat stinks. Less hair, less place for sweat to fester - less smell.
5. Looks. You know you've stood in front of a mirror and admired it. If you say you haven't, you're lying. If you are a guy and try to tell me you haven't at least attempted a helicopter, I'm never believing another word you say.
6. Because someone asked you to. Okay, so maybe this should be the main reason.
   
    

Courtesy of my good friend, also possible story contributor, The Musings of Munch, an earworm for you, sung to the tune of Miley Cyrus' Hoedown Throwdown. Wax it, shave it, epilate it.

In the world of the internet, topics run in cycles. One week, everyone and their brother is writing about bullying, the next week it's gun control, then it's breastfeeding or yoga pant controversies. Right now, it seems that there are more stories about marriage being posted and spread around like wildfire.

I read most of them and shake my head.

I have actually laughed out loud at a few of them, particularly the ones written by newly married people who claim to have it all figured out.

I've been married over fifteen years now,  and have been with my husband for six additional ones before then. Even with all of that, I would never attempt to tell you that I have it figured out.


Here's what I have learned about marriage, most of it the hard way.

- You have to be flexible. Marriage is like any kind of relationship between two people in many ways. To be sustainable, you have to be flexible. Sometimes you need more, sometimes you give more, sometimes you take more, sometimes you are forced to do more. It's hardly ever equal in terms of the amount of effort expended or needed because life is never predictable. Get used to it. Over the long term, it should roughly balance out so that one person isn't always the giver, the other the taker. There has to be some balance, but it's really only possible in the long term. On any given day, the scale is probably going to be tipped one direction or the other. This is part of life. Get used to it.

- You can't keep score. If you've been giving more lately, it's probably because your partner needs more, not because they are just a selfish asshole. (unless, of course, they are a selfish asshole, which I will address later in this post) If you're worried about tallying up what you give, if you're keeping a mental tab open and waiting to cash it in, if you're building resentment against your partner, it's fairly safe to say that you aren't ever going to feel validated. Are you doing things for your spouse because you want cosmic credit for it, or are you doing them because you are supporting your partner? Ask yourself that question before you get pissed off at them.

- Be clear about your expectations. No one is a mind reader, and passive aggression is a tool for manipulating people, not a component of a healthy marriage. Whatever it is that you want or need, say it. Deliberately. Don't hint at it. Don't silently hope they'll figure it out. Don't beat around the bush. If you don't tell someone what you want or need, you don't get to be frustrated when they fail. It's not fair.

- Marriage isn't about you or them. It's about both of you AND this thing you have between you. It isn't about what you want or need all the time, just like it can't always be about the other person, and it can never just be about the marriage because that ignores the truth that a marriage is a legal construct between two people. Once you have kids, it's about them too. There is give and take in any relationship, there are compromises and sacrifices that need to be made for the benefit of the marriage or family unit. Everyone has to be willing to make those sacrifices. If there is a breakdown in communication, if one person suppresses issues, it will eventually effect everyone. For a marriage to survive, you have to be willing to think about the consequences of your choices, not just for you, but for them, and you must be willing to alter your behavior accordingly. You are different people with different philosophies, different approaches, different goals...they will not match up all the time.

- Fight fair. That not keeping score thing comes in here too. You will have disagreements. There will be conflicts. If you drag every shitty thing they have ever done from out of the closet, you're not fighting fair. If you drag other people (usually their immediate family) into it, you're not fighting fair. If you aren't being honest about what is really bothering you, you aren't fighting fair.

- Listen. I cannot stress this one enough. Put the phone down. Get off the computer. Turn off the television. Remove all the other distractions from your life and just listen to your spouse.  Hearing what someone is saying is not always the same as listening.

- Respect your individuality. If he likes to fish and you can't stomach the thought, tell him to go with a buddy or a brother. If you want to spend all day in the park taking pictures, but he wants to do something else, go without him. No couple shares all the same interests, and there is nothing wrong with having interests totally different than your partner. Do not give up the things you love. Don't force them to do it either. Do what you love, even if you need to do it alone. Stay passionate about your hobbies. Do not sacrifice who you are to be part of a couple. Likewise, don't sacrifice it to be a parent either. You may need to trim back or alter the way you engage in the things you love, but don't give it up. Stay true to yourself.

- Marriage is work. Hard, ugly, awful work. Sometimes it just plain sucks. There will be times, for sure, that divorce will seem like a better option. I've filled out those papers more than once, myself. When you first get married, most people do it for love and hope and the future and all things optimistic. It's idealistic, it's the stuff of dreams. If you're lucky, you can ride that high for a while. But know this truth - the high always ends. Always.

- When marriage gets hard is when it matters the most. I cannot stress this enough. Everyone can do the better, richer, in health times pretty easily. The worse, poorer, sicker times, not so much. Life is filled with worse, poorer, sicker, and how you weather those times will be far more indicative of whether your marriage will last. Crises have a way of bringing people together or pushing them apart. Remember that you didn't just sign on for the good stuff, you agreed to be there for each other even and especially when it's bad. I can tell you from experience, the sicker is probably the hardest, particularly if you are dealing with any kind of mental illness. Living though cancer was a piece of cake compared to dealing with depression, PTSD and anxiety in a marriage. You will find that what started out about love will evolve and that there will be many times in your marriage where love is wholly irrelevant. Marriage isn't about love...not in the long run. Love won't keep you together. There has to be more.

- Own your shit. Both of you. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone makes bad decisions. Everyone does things that hurt their partner, sometimes as an unintended consequence, sometimes on purpose. Everyone. You are not immune to this, nor is your spouse. This will happen, of that I will give you a 100% guarantee, no matter how totally blissfully happy and in love you may be right in this moment. It will happen. What you do afterwards matters more. Don't lie, don't cover things up, don't minimize it, don't deflect blame. Don't. Own your shit. Admit it when you screw up and hurt them. Apologize and mean it. Learn from your mistakes and don't do it again.

- Counseling won't work unless you do the work. Being habitual, showing up for appointments and going through the motions isn't enough. Unless you are committed to working on improving your marriage, nothing will change no matter how long you are in counseling. In fact, it'll probably get worse. I know from experience. Far more important than marriage counseling is individual therapy. The vast majority of problems within a marriage come from unresolved issues that one person has going on. Or that they both have. Fix yourself first. Until and unless you do that, marriage counseling is a complete waste of your time. We tried marriage counseling for a while. It was an abysmal failure. We both had other things to deal with individually, and are still working on that.

- Don't be a selfish asshole. We are all selfish at times, we are all assholes at times. It's part of life. If it becomes more than occasional, you need to take a step back and re-evaluate what you're doing. Take a long, hard look in the mirror. Strip it down and get ugly with it. If you are even for a moment contemplating an affair, ask yourself why and be totally honest about it. If you're blaming your partner, I can promise that you are wrong. It is never the proper way to deal with unhappiness in a marriage. You will, unequivocally and without doubt, make everything worse. If you are an alcoholic or drug user, you are kidding yourself if you think it doesn't hurt anyone else. If you have depression or other mental health issues going on and don't seek help for them, you aren't just damaging yourself, you are hurting others. If you are rationalizing any of this stuff right now, stop it. This isn't just about you anymore. It's no one else's job to fix you, and even if they wanted to, they can't. Fix yourself...you're the only one who can.

- Things change, people change. Whoever you are married to now isn't the person you married all those years ago. People evolve. They change. You change. Relationships must as well as a direct consequence.

- Remember why you married them. Sure, it's hell being married sometimes, but you did this for a reason, right? Woo your spouse, even when you can't stand them. Tell them you love them, even when you hate them - those two emotions are most definitely not mutually exclusive. Kiss each other goodnight, even when you've been screaming at one another for hours. At the end of the day, you chose this person for a reason. Try and remember that.

I leave you with this. I've seen things, you guys. My marriage is far from perfect, but it's closer now than it has been in a very long time.

My husband likes to steal my cell phone and change my ringtones when I'm not looking. When this song came out, he set this as his ringtone on my phone.

Because he knows just how perfectly this describes us.

He's not wrong.

This post might be a little TMI for some people, but so be it.

I'm known for telling you guys things that most people wouldn't admit out loud, so there.

Anyway.

I'm not enjoying my female-ness at the moment.

Or on a fairly regular, cyclical basis for that matter. From what I hear from my lady friends who are a bit older than me, it's only going to get worse from here on out.

Which is awesome.

Not.

I'm on the pill, the heathen that I am. I've been on probably ten+ different incarnations of the pill in my lifetime, but never had to deal with the crap that I am dealing with now. I get the most bizarre abdominal cramps like every three weeks. Not just lady cramps, like all the way up to the base of my rib cage. Then I want to curl up in a ball and hide from the world for three days or so until it passes.

Usually, of course, I can't do that because four kids.

Occasionally, though, I do force myself to sit down and wallow in my misery. I usually spend most of that day consuming whatever chocolate is in the house (even the semi-sweet chocolate chips - don't you judge me, dammit) and watching some movie that I should not watch because it makes me cry like a little girl ordinarily, but when I feel like this I ugly cry with dry heaving and snot bubbles and everything.

Freaking hormones.

Lord.

Ah, flowering.

I have wondered aloud to a few friends recently why this shit only seems to get worse the older we get. Why is the beginning of menstruation this beautiful flowering moment where girls are transformed into women who can have babies and do all this awesome stuff...but by the time you're solidly in your mid-30's, you no longer have the foggiest idea WTF is going on in your body and you occasionally hate everyone in the house? Even the dog? Yes, even the dog.

Admit it.

Sometimes you hate the dog too.

Why?

What happens to us???

Why do we tolerate it being referred to with romantic notions like flowering when what is really happening is that we actually lay a goddamn egg, then if we don't magically turn the egg into a baby with some help of a man, we get to bleed for a week???


What is romantic and beautiful about that???

Not a damn thing, that's what.

I can honestly say that I've never frolicked in a field on my period. I may have gone to the beach or the pool with my friends reluctantly, but there was no confident volleyball playing happening. No sir. There were shorts over swimsuits and constant string checks when the shorts had to come off. You know what I am talking about. God.

Being a girl can suck it.

Sure, making babies and having babies and nursing babies is cool as hell...but the rest of the time? Like the 70% of your adult life you aren't going to be doing those things?

Being a girl can SUCK IT.

SUCK IT.

Why are there all these books dedicated to helping teenage girls navigate the wonderful world of womanhood, but there is literally nothing out there to help us figure out what the hell happened to our bodies this time?

Why?

Riddle me that.

I can't curl up in a ball on the couch and watch Steel Magnolias today as much as I want to laugh at Skeeter, then cry when Shelby dies, then ugly cry after the funeral, I can't.

I have too dang much stuff to do today.

Besides, I got a bag of mint dark chocolate bark in my fair trade box o'free stuff this week and it's got my name all over it. Which is good. We're out of chocolate chips. Some raging bitch ate them all last month.

You can buy it here. You know you want some.

This shit might save lives today, you guys.

Who am I kidding?

It will save lives.

For real.

Princess Kate Middleton is in labor, as you'd likely know if you've turned on a television or been anywhere near Facebook this morning. I want to believe that the paparazzi will allow her and her husband this time with privacy and discretion, and I have to hope that the cameras won't chase them all over town when the baby emerges, elbowing each other for that first picture.

You have to wonder when being famous automatically meant that you consented to being followed by total strangers 24 hours a day, to having flashbulbs go off in your face at every opportunity, to relinquishing any sense of privacy.

Obviously, I make the argument that it shouldn't. I don't just make that argument, I also refuse to buy tabloids because when you buy tabloids, you are encouraging that very behavior.

Anyhow, I wish them calm and peace, joy and love on this day.

It also got me thinking.

I've been thinking a lot about babies lately.

I had a bit of a revelation in a therapy session a few weeks ago when it comes to my experiences with pregnancy, childbirth and parenting newborns.

My first pregnancy was a true miracle. I've never been so happy in my life as I was then, feeling as though the entire cancer diagnosis and all that had led us to this moment. Then it ended in the middle of the night in a medically forced labor two days after an ultrasound told me that the baby had died.

My second pregnancy, a miracle as well, but a cautious one now because the joy was gone, ended in shock and panic when he came too early and was whisked away to the nicu and intubated. The pregnancy had been easy, and he was an easy baby once we got past all that, but those were the scariest 9 days of my life.

My third pregnancy, mostly uneventful, ended in an anticlimactic birth in a room full of too many people and cameras, but with a baby girl who was healthy. She would soon develop nightmarish colic that would last well over six months.

My fourth pregnancy was hell, from the moment of conception. I knew I was pregnant immediately and was sick within days. I lost so much weight and was so dehydrated that I needed IVs more than once. Towards the end of the pregnancy, I developed an irritable uterus, which basically just meant that I had contractions almost constantly. For six weeks. Then I tripped chasing one of the kids and strained every ligament and muscle between my knees and my chest. In excruciating pain, contracting constantly, I was just happy when it was over. And she was the sweetest, easiest baby. I developed PPD that was almost border lining on psychosis. It lasted over a year.

At this point, my therapist stopped me, knowing that I still had one child to discuss, and she pointed out something that I had never considered.

You had to combine all four of them to get one good experience. To get the joy of pregnancy, an easy pregnancy, a good labor and a healthy happy baby, all four of them had to be grouped together. Something bad, very bad, had happened each time, and I had never really allowed myself to think about that way.

Instead, I always just sort of felt like something was missing but couldn't make sense of it.

Even though I am a doula and help other women work through their experiences all the time, my own weren't making sense to me.

I can see it now, though.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, my fifth pregnancy was easy. He was early and tiny, but perfect. He was a good baby, but he was also not planned, and that fact set in motion an entirely different set of events that would tarnish all the memories that could have been good ones. That should have been good ones. I've written before a little about how, purely as a coping mechanism, I don't remember most of it. What I do remember acts as a trigger for my PTSD. My own child, a trigger for something that he had no fault in.


I know that it may sound odd, but as a woman who has been pregnant five times and who has four children now, I don't have many good memories of those moments in my life. Just playing the numbers, you would think I should.

I became a doula in the hopes of helping other women build those memories, but every once in a while, I wish that things had been different for me.

This is the part where I ask you not to lecture me about being grateful for what I have, because I am. I'm fully aware that society, women especially, expect and almost demand that we only remember the good pieces, that we never talk about the bad experiences because they mistakenly think that it somehow diminishes our love of our children. It doesn't. It just makes our experiences as mothers more real, more genuine, more honest.

I wish and hope for other women to have what I didn't.

And as much as I hate to admit it, sometimes I'm a little envious when it all happens for them.

Good luck, Princess Kate. I hope another chapter in your fairytale comes true today.

I'm not going to lie to you people because that's not how I roll. The last week or so has been rough around here. It seems like there are few lulls in the drama around these parts, and those lulls never seem to last very long when they do show up.

Also in the past week or so, we've watched a lot of movies. Some were escapist, transporting me to a different world entirely. The older I get, the more I like those movies, because they're so far out there that there is no way to tie them to reality. Maybe that is why I find myself watching more and more science fiction type stuff. Even if it's entirely ridiculous, at least it doesn't stab me in the heart.

Then there are the other movies. The stab me in the heart movies.

Last week sometime, we watched Silver Linings Playbook. I've heard the book is better, but can't speak to that personally since I haven't read it yet. If you haven't seen it yet and want to, you might want to stop reading. I'm usually far enough behind with watching movies that it's safe for me to write about them, but there's always going to be someone who tells me I'm a spoiler. So, if you're going to read this then tell me I am a spoiler, just stop now.


Anyway, it's a good movie. We had to watch it in pieces though because it was so emotionally overwhelming. I don't know how I would have done if I had watched it in a theater.  Bradley Cooper's character has bi-polar disorder, diagnosed after he completely loses control when he catches his wife cheating on him and almost beats her lover to death. He ends up in a psychiatric hospital until his mom goes out on a limb,signing him out to care for him at home.

He won't take his meds. He thinks he's fine. He is obsessed with exercise. He is socially awkward. He is totally preoccupied with trying to win his wife back, restraining order and all. There are scenes in the movie that were so painful for me that I had to avert my eyes, the worst being the one where he is tearing his room apart looking for their wedding video.

Then you get to know his parents more. Mom is a fixer. She is the glue in the family, and her main currency is information. She tells people what she thinks they need to know, she hides the rest, because she wants to fix things. Dad has OCD and a pathological gambler. He wants a relationship with his completely messed up son, but wants the relationship that he wants, not the one that his son is capable of having or wants with him. Mom is a fixer, he is a forcer.

Goddamn apple trees. It's one thing to have to deal with them on a daily basis, but seeing it play out before your eyes is overwhelming at times. We all get our crazy from somewhere, and we don't usually have to look too far to find it.

Jennifer Lawrence's character lost her husband and her life spiraled out of control. She's heavily medicated too, but seems to manage her emotions a little better. Even if they are ugly at times, at least she's aware of them. She has anxiety, she's depressed, she's acting out, she's lost. Then she finds a guy who's even more messed up than she is. It's a match made in dysfunctional heaven.

Good lord.

One of her lines in the movie is me, completely: I do this! Time after time after time! I do all this shit for other people! And then I wake up and I'm empty! I have nothing!

I cried buckets after that movie ended, the kind of crying where your head hurts for a few days afterwards and you end up dehydrated. Seeing so much mental illness crammed into two hours, so much of it the illnesses that exist in my own tree, was too much. I want better for my children. I'd give anything to help them avoid some of the things that have happened to me.

Doing that means taking long, ugly, hard looks in the mirror. Confronting it all. Dealing with it. Having awareness of it. It means you can't pretend it's not there, you can't wish it away. You have to suck it up and deal. You have to.

No other option but to face it all, or you are doomed to take the repeating cycle for another generational spin.

Then last night we watched This Is 40. It's a comedy. It's by Judd Apatow. There will be fart jokes, right? He likes fart jokes. It will be funny, right???

Parts of it were hilarious. Like holy shit there are people following me around with cameras and they know what happens in my house and they put it in a movie hilarious.

Parts of it weren't funny at all, and I found myself crying too many times to count. I asked my fans on Facebook what to expect yesterday, and some of them warned me. Some of them said it was just stupid or that it wasn't very funny. I think I envy them a little, because they just aren't there yet. I shouldn't be there yet. I'm not 40, but according to this movie I'm at least that old.

Financial crises, people who run away from their problems, mouthy kids, insecurity about getting older, the threat of the younger woman, addiction, unplanned pregnancies, an accident prone husband, trying to find connections with parents who aren't very parental....all of it.

Pete: Did you ever think marriage would get easier?
Barry: No, it gets harder. Much harder.

A-freaking-men

Check, check, check.

Is this really what happens when we hit mid-life?

Does everyone go through the same shit eventually? Is it that universal?

Why am I so lucky that I get to do it all years or decades before everyone else?

I'm a little bitter this morning, forgive me.

I'd like a refund on my youth, it ran out long before the warranty was up.

Thanks, Judd.

I think the next movie I watch will need to have robots or aliens or talking animals in it. This is getting ridiculous.

Mother's Day is upon us. As a doula, I've been blessed to bear witness to many women as they became mothers, as they harnessed all their inner strength, as they fought for the births they wanted, as they held their children for the first time.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and it has been since I was a college student reading book after book after book about how much things have changed in health care. It wasn't until I was a laboring mother in that system that I really saw it though, and it wasn't until I became a doula that I knew there was something I could do about it. With my hands and my heart, I have the power to help other women reclaim maternity.

If you talked to 100 women and asked them to describe their experiences with pregnancy and childbirth, there's a good chance that you would hear 100 very different stories. Some of them would be triumphant and inspiring. Some of them would be anything but. Too many of them.

The truth is, pregnancy and childbirth don't belong to us women the way they should. They haven't for a very long time. For any discussion of why maternity is as messed up as it is today to make sense, we have to talk how and why we got where we are.

Since the dawn of time, for as long as women had babies, they have had help.

That help came from other women, most of which had birthed children of their own. Midwives. Without formal training, they learned the craft by hands on experience. They were skilled in breech deliveries, they were skilled in the use of herbs to assist with labor, with bleeding, with nursing. They understood that pregnancy and childbirth were and are a very normal, natural part of the human condition - a requirement of it, in fact, in order for society to perpetuate itself.

All that began to change in the early 1800's with the development of hospitals and the invention of forceps. Men began to push their way into birthing rooms, claiming they had new tools and procedures that would make labor better. By mid-century, more and more women were giving birth in hospital settings with male doctors and fewer with midwives, particularly in urban settings. Hospital births were more expensive, a privilege of those with money, and the perception quickly arose that they were therefor better.

Though the thought at the time was that the hospitals were safer and more advanced, the truth is that they weren't. Obstetricians began demanding women employ the lithomy (laying on the back) position for pushing, primarily because it made their job easier - even if it's not the one most women would naturally gravitate towards. It decreases the size of the pelvic outlet and makes the delivery process longer and harder for the mother. In addition to changing the mechanics of labor, the use of forceps and episiotomies skyrocketed, again for the ease of the doctor. All this must have come with some benefit of better outcomes, right?  Wrong.

Maternal deaths went up as disease spread far easier in hospitals, doctors moving from one patient to the next without realizing that unwashed hands were a perfect vector for illness.  Puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever started killing mothers at alarming rates. Women were also increasingly likely to suffer from sepsis because of the surgical interventions.

Even still, the profession pressed on, declaring their superiority over midwifery. Male doctors pushed for a monopoly on childbirth, and gradually the practice of midwifery was outlawed, even though there was no actual evidence that medicine was better. In fact, the evidence was to the contrary.

By the turn of the century, women just came to accept that births occurred in hospitals. Twilight sleep was frequently employed, leaving the women with little or no conscious memory of the birth. They arrived at the hospital in labor, were drugged, and eventually woke up having given birth, usually with large episiotomies.

Families weren't present, women weren't even conscious. Birth had become an automated process that all happened behind closed doors.

Those women, the ones who were drugged and had their children ripped (sometimes literally) from their wombs?

They are our mothers and grandmothers.

In the matter of a few generations, women lost any real connection to what labor is supposed to be like. It went from a normal part of the human condition, attended to by knowledgeable women, to a medicalized process where mothers were at the mercy of the industry.

Add in the more recent additions of elective inductions and pitocin (the devil's contractor is what I call it) and you end up with countless women who were told that their bodies couldn't labor right, that they failed to progress, that their uteruses were overstimulated, that they needed c-sections. Tethered to machines, kept on their backs and drugged, it's no wonder their bodies didn't cooperate.

This is not what labor is supposed to be like.

And yet, it is. More than that, it's what we've come to believe is normal.

I cannot even tell you how many women I have talked to as they tried to work through what happened. Who break down when I tell them that what they've experienced is real and legitimate and it's called birth trauma. Who didn't realize that they didn't have to go along with every intervention. Who feel like their bodies have failed them. Who are hesitant to ever go through it again out of fear. Who didn't feel empowered to ask questions, to ask for time, to say no.

It breaks my heart.

One of my favorite clients and dearest friends was one of them. Her first delivery had been traumatic. Induced, it took forever for the induction to work. Starving and exhausted, she got an epidural because she couldn't handle the artificial contractions anymore. Then one thing after another happened and she eventually delivered her son in a drama filled urgency of interventions. One of those if we can't suction him out with this push right now, we're rolling you to the OR for a section kind of endings.

She felt defeated by it all, and I remember how scared she was that it would go that way again. She called me in tears when she found out she was pregnant with the next baby. I told her that it might happen again, but that it didn't have to. That things could be different. That I could help her.

Her second pregnancy, with more complications than the first, ended in a dark hospital room one night. Music playing in the background, calm surrounding us. She had to be induced, there was no avoiding that, but I was there to help her work through the pain. She ate. She drank. She breathed. She went into the deepest recesses of her mind when she needed to gain clarity and peace. She pushed for only a few minutes. No vacuum, no forceps, no episiotomy, no c-section, no drama. The baby was healthy, she was healthy. It was beautiful.

I'm pretty sure she felt like she could conquer the world that day.

~~~~~~~~

As women, we need to help each other feel that way.

Women need to be taught that their bodies almost always know what to do. They need to learn to trust their instincts.

We don't have generations of women before us to teach us these things like we used to, so we need to relearn it all. Then we need to share it with other women. We need to support each other.

Pregnancy is normal. Birth is normal.

It is not a medical emergency unless it is.  It is a necessary condition of humanity.

Complications happen, yes, but not all the time and not to everyone. For those women and their children, often the only safe route to birth is surgical, and for that option we will be forever grateful.

Birth is not something we should be afraid of.

Knowledge is power. Experience is important. Having someone there to support you is vital.

Women should be there, helping each other, whether the births happen at home or in hospitals, whether with midwives or obstetricians, whether for the first time or the fifth time.

We need women who've done this before. Who can tell how dilated you are just by watching your body language. Who can find the place where you keep your tension and release it. Who won't rush you. Who can whisper the words of encouragement in your ear when the doubt sets in. Who will remind you to focus. Who will tell you that you are strong and beautiful and capable. Who will tell you that you can do this. Who will get you through each contraction by promising that it's one step closer to meeting your baby. Who will sit in the hushed silence with you as you wait for the first cry. Who will shed tears of happiness with you. Who know what a miracle birth is, no matter how many times they see it.

Pregnancy is beautiful. Birth is beautiful.

Let's take it back.

Let's take it all back.

One pregnancy at a time.

A few months ago, my husband sent me an excited text message. Somehow or another, he'd learned that Sonia Sotomayor was coming to Denver to speak, and that the event would be open to the public. He sent me all the links, which told me that we had to wait a few days to try and get tickets, after the students had been given the opportunity to request them first.

The day tickets became available, we both jumped on the website when it opened up, as though we were trying to get tickets to the playoffs or something.

He knew how much I wanted to see her.

Who wouldn't want to see her???

(Okay, so I'm a legal news junkie, a huge fan of historical firsts and not at all normal...but then I've never claimed to be.)

We got tickets, and I was immediately giddy with anticipation. How often do you get to see a Supreme Court Justice?

Many years ago, before we left California, Antonin Scalia spoke. At the time, I really had no interest in seeing him, primarily because I tend to disagree with most decisions he's been a part of during his time on the court, but more because I knew that it would be difficult if not impossible to get tickets because he tends to draw a large and passionate crowd. Looking back, I know that I should have at least tried to see him.

My oldest son asked if he could come with us, and I was a bit hesitant at first. I warned him that it would be long and probably boring in parts for him. Told him that he probably wouldn't get most of the references she would make. Then told him that he could come if he finished all his homework, put on a nice shirt and combed his hair.

Inside, I was bursting with pride that he'd even ask.

His sister wanted to go briefly, until she realized that she'd probably get bored. Sitting still just isn't part of who she is.

We drove down to Denver last week to pick up my husband and head to the campus. We'd been warned in advance that no bags or purses would be permitted in the building, but people are stupid and oblivious and always seem to think that somehow they'll be allowed to bring their stuff in because they are special.

All that meant is that the security line took forever. The Secret Service and US Marshals aren't a very forgiving group, and aren't going to be talked into letting anyone bring stuff in that they aren't allowed to. After almost an hour and a half in line, we finally got through the metal detectors.

You know I laughed at the piles of purses abandoned on the ground, while I simultaneously cursed all the purse owners in my head for making the entire process take longer for everyone.

Anyway, we got in. Barely. She had already started speaking by the time we cleared security.

I walked into the gymnasium to see this.


Yes, we were that close.

She was talking about her childhood, about being raised in the projects in a home where Spanish was the predominant language. About struggling in school until she made a conscious effort to learn English, realizing that the only way to success was through education. She talked about how her cousin, close in age to her, turned to drugs and died of AIDS in his twenties, and how growing up in the kind of childhood she had gave her an equal chance at either fate. It's only out of resolute stubbornness that she is where she is today.

I had a feeling that she would talk about living with Type 1 Diabetes, and waited with baited breath for the moment that someone would ask her about it. She was diagnosed at 8 years old, twice the age my son is now. Though he's not yet fully diagnosed, he very well may end up spending the rest of his life dealing with this condition.

She spoke about how she learned from a very young age that things were just going to be different for her. She had to be more aware. She had to take better care of herself. She had to be present in the moment, she had to remember what happened in the past and she had to always prepare for the future. Rather than being angry or frustrated at the disease that so often altered her life, she chose to embrace it as a child.

It is a part of who she is, but it does not define her.

I stood in the gym, tears running down my face. Here before me, this woman who'd lived almost her entire life with the very thing my son may have, and she sits on the highest court in our nation. If she could do that, he can and will be able to be successful in whatever he wishes. We just have to make sure that this disease isn't allowed to tell him otherwise.

I know there are a few T1 moms who are reading this right now, so I'll just give you a moment.

When asked what she thought the most important Supreme Court decision is, her answer was quick and precisely what I thought she would say. Brown v. The Board of Education. She elaborated by saying that although that decision to end segregation in schools was pivotal, what was more important is what people did with it. The changes that occurred in towns and cities. The changes within individuals. She talked about the importance of equality and how our society must continue to strive towards it.

She closed the event by talking about how essential it is for people to be involved. To use their talents to help their communities. To take part in society. To be active members. To appreciate civic responsibility. To not sit idly and complain, but actually to take steps to effect change. To expose injustices. To do it better.

And that's when I started crying for the second time.

When the formal interview was finished, the Secret Service tried to usher her quickly off stage. Being the security nightmare she must be, she refused. She grabbed the microphone and told everyone in the room that if they'd sit down so that her handlers calmed down, she'd come say hi.

To all of us.

And she did. She walked up and down the bleachers. She stopped and talked with people. She posed for pictures. She smiled and thanked everyone for coming.

The area we were sitting in meant that our section would be the last she would visit. So we sat. And we waited.

Then this happened.


She walked right up to my son, shook his hand and asked him his name. Asked what grade he was in, and if any of his classmates had any idea where he was right now. She told him that 6th grade was really important in her life, as it was the year she realized how important it was to push herself to achieve at higher levels. She asked him what classes he was in, and he told her that he's in the advanced math class, the advanced writing class and is directing his first movie for a school project.

Then she looked at me and said, "Good job, Mom". She reached out to shake my hand.

As she turned to move on to the next person waiting, she glanced back at him and told him to keep it up. The world needs smart kids, the world needs him.

A grin spread all the way across his face, then mine.

She is a living, breathing piece of history. She is a model of conquering a disease that hits too close to home.

She is an inspiration.

I asked if any of my fans had topics they were interested in reading about this week.  One comment, left by a friend of mine, struck a chord.

When you think of a woman who has it all, the family and the career, there is so much more behind the scenes than most people realize.

Organization, coordination, the requirement of other people to fill in the gaps seamlessly, is all necessary.  Having it all isn't easy, primarily for one reason.

It is, simply put, impossible to be in two places at once.

Women cannot be kicking ass and taking names 80 hours a week in boardrooms, and be wholly present for their families all the time.  It's a physical impossibility.

The women who seem to balance it all, and I count a few of them as close friends of mine, who can stand tiptoed on the top of the scale, constantly shifting and adjusting, aren't just talented and smart and resourceful and flexible.

They're also lucky.

Some of them are geniuses.

A few of them have created their own work environments after learning the hard way that the conventional wisdom which dictates a firm line between work and home isn't often feasible once you have children.

Once kids enter the picture, most women want that flexibility.  Need it.  Crave it, like a deep maternal instinct wearing heels.

Society, for the most part, has started to evolve in ways that push towards that flexibility, although if we are being honest, it's easy to see how short the United States comes up in the maternity leave department, among other concessions to allow for families.

Telecommuting has become more and more popular, and often results in a more productive workforce than one chained to a desk all day.  Job sharing has become more common.  Some companies allow for flexible hours to allow not just mothers, but fathers, to leave work early for t-ball games and dance recitals.

These benefits haven't just helped women, they have helped everyone, even those people without children.

These benefits wouldn't have come, however, without women asking for them, demanding them, forgoing the inflexible male-dominated institutions and starting their own businesses.  

The retraction of these benefits this week by the CEO of a large company rubbed me the wrong way immediately as a step in the wrong direction for all employees, but for women in particular.

New Yahoo CEO, Marissa Meyer, has banned employees from working from home.  In the online world, which has been one of the most flexible industries in the nation, she wants all her employees in the building, all day.

The most confusing part of it all, aside from the obvious reputation the industry has for relaxed environments, is that Ms. Meyer herself is a new mother.

A new mother who was back at work less than two weeks after giving birth.

I obviously do not know Ms. Meyer personally, but I have to wonder why she is so insistent that every single employee of her company needs to give up all their flexibility just because she says so.

She may want to be in the office all the time, but why start requiring it from legitimately productive people accustomed to a flexible work environment?

Is she trying to justify the fact that she sees no need to be home with her own child, a fact that she was raked over the coals for in the media when it happened last year?

Is she unaware of the studies that have shown time and again that people are both happier and more productive if given the option to work from home at least occasionally?

Is she really a 70 year old man masquerading as a new mother?

Forgive me, but I can't figure it out.

I can't understand why anyone, particularly a woman with an infant, would decree from the mountaintops that having a work/life balance is unnecessary.

Why is this woman standing on the glass ceiling, telling other women that they may become successful under her leadership only if they are willing to forgo everything else in their lives for work?


Have women really come this far to be pushed back down by one of us?

She's not doing anyone any favors here, including herself.  Soon to be leading a disgruntled workforce, she will face a lot of backlash from this decision.  She may start having a mass exodus of good employees.  This has been a hot topic in the media already for days.

Marissa, go home.

Kiss that baby.

Stop thinking like a CEO for a few minutes.

Think like a working mom instead.

Those two statements independently carry a lifetime of worry, but when placed in proximity to one another, they terrify me.

I live in a world where these things don't just happen to other people, to other women, to other daughters.  They happen to me.  The mere idea of it happening to my girls makes me choose my words carefully every day, and dictates my actions more than anything else at times.

I'm doing the best I can to hold the hand of a friend as she starts on down this road, not as the sufferer, but as the parent.  I try the best I can to convey what it was like when I was in that place myself, knowing that the distance, clarity and maturity of my years has allowed me to understand it far more than I did when I was in it.  I try my best to help her understand, so that she can do her best to help her little girl.

And yet, I know that it still resides within me, this tendency.

My name is Kelly, and I was could still be anorexic.

I've written about it before, but for a different reason than what moves me to do it this time.   I was in a different place then, and the voice was different.  Since then, I've struggled with it again.  I've fought it back, told it no, urged it away.

When other things in my life spun rapidly out of control, I found myself controlling the one thing I could.  

Again.

Anorexia, you see, has almost nothing to do with where you fall on a BMI chart, though many falsely believe it only affects people who are already underweight.  It has nothing to do with how attractive someone is.  The body image portion of it, while huge and oppressive, is simply a way that the underlying problem manifests.

The root is a feeling of helplessness, of loss of control.  Anorexia is what some people, usually young women, will do to their bodies to try and regain control of something tangible.  It manifests as a body image disease because often one of the only things that anyone can control in life is what we put into our bodies, what we force our bodies to do.

Most people diagnosed with anorexia also suffer from depression, and a significant portion of them also fit the criteria for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

It becomes overwhelming quickly, invading every piece of what you do and who you are.

My struggle began when I was 14, though in reality the groundwork was laid years prior.  I was a perfectionist, terrified of failure.  A type-A control freak. I was an early bloomer, I was at the mercy of genetics.  Practically blind and covered with horrible acne, I felt ugly.  My life was full of typical teenage drama, laced with troubled family dynamics, and I felt more than a little bit lost.

I needed knee surgery, and the trip down the slippery slope began.  I put on weight after the surgery because I was in a full leg brace for months.  I started taking pain pills far more often than I should have just so that I could push myself in rehab.

It became an obsession.  I wrote down every single exercise I did.  I added more every single day. I got up early and ran every morning.  I ran again after I pretended to eat dinner.  I was proud of myself when all I'd eaten was some lettuce.  The weight started to fall off.  I powered through the pain in my knee, ignored the asthma I knew I had, even if it left me in a pile on the sidewalk gasping for air more than once.  I refused to let myself stop.

People noticed.  Boys paid attention to me.  No one seemed to realize how or why I was changing, just that I was.  I savored the attention, but it only pushed me more. The thinner I got, the worse I felt.  I considered each pound lost a victory, but never enough.  It was never good enough.  I was never good enough.  It didn't matter what anyone else said or did.  My image of myself had become completely distorted.

I started fainting, developed horrible migraines.  The headaches were so bad that I was evaluated for a brain tumor by a doctor who congratulated me on my weight loss, ignoring what the possible reason could have been.

The day I woke up staring at the spinning ceiling in church, I hit the wall.  It had to stop.

I spent 20 years fully able to fight it back, and have spent most of those years carrying too many pounds on my frame, but living with myself.  Loving myself.  Setting the goal to be happy and healthy, and not tying my worth as a person to a number on a scale.

Until last year, when it reared it's ugly head again.

I realized last night that I hadn't admitted that out loud to anyone.  Not even to myself.

This experience with my friend, my trying anything I can to help her, has forced me to be honest with myself again.

Anorexia is not something that ever completely goes away.  It cannot be solved or remedied.  A new wardrobe won't fix it.  A boyfriend won't fix it.  A great education won't fix it.  A great job won't fix it.  All the other measures of worth in the world can mean nothing if the voice in your head tells you again that you aren't good enough and you start listening.

It can be managed though, with the right support system.  With people who understand that it is a mental disorder, not a physical ailment.  With people who don't engage in negative self talk about the size of their butts or their latest fad diets.  With people who don't objectify and idolize the images of beauty that the media tries to convince us are the only acceptable ones.  With people who don't minimize this real and damaging condition.

Women of the world, I beg of you, we need to do better.  For ourselves, for our daughters.

We need to reject the idea of the perfectly toned fountain of youth.  We need to repress the airbrushed images of perfection that pervade our magazines.  We need to pull our children and ourselves away from the fun house mirrors ever present in our society, the ones that tell us we are too short, too tall, too freckled, too wrinkled, too fat.

We need to recognize the warning signs of eating disorders and take them seriously, not pass them off simply as phases or normal teenage behavior.

We need to do the best we can to instill in our daughters (and sons) that they are beautiful, that they are worthy.  We need to teach them to make healthy choices, to be active, and we need to do those things ourselves.  We need to be role models.  We need to love ourselves, love our bodies.  Forgive our faults, embrace our curves. We need to say these things out loud, when our children can hear us.  We need to believe it, we need to teach them.


It has taken most of my life to find peace with this body I inhabit.  Sometimes the voice in my head wins, but most days I do.

I hope every single day that my girls find that peace without ever having to go through this.  I try the best I can to build their self confidence, to teach them to embrace their bodies, to make them see their inherent value and beauty.  And I know that even with all that, they could still struggle someday.

To my friend, I am here, and I will help you in any way that I can.  I wish you, and that beautiful girl of yours, peace.

It is estimated that 1% of American women suffer from anorexia, 3-4% from bulimia.  Approximately 10% of those diagnosed with eating disorders are men, the rest are women.  These disorders have been documented in children as young as 7, and people in their 70's.  Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder.