Session Three

An essay. A Thursday in April. 

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey there, welcome back to Cedar Sessions. Today you're in for another essay. This one from a Thursday in April. I hope you enjoy. As I rounded the corner to my street after a morning walk, I caught a woman snapping a photo of my house. I say caught because when she turned, she felt the need to say, I just love that house. I didn't want you to just think I was taking a picture. Well, she was, but I responded with, that's my house, in such delight, because I too love the exterior appeal of my house. It feels a little hidden among a city neighborhood. The dark green paint we chose a few years back tucks it perfectly into the trees when spring is in full bloom. Like a sanctuary removed from the city hustle. As it turns out, she had been in my home. The prior owner, a beloved mentor. She spoke of a day when she was in the kitchen with Joy, the previous owner, who was making homemade pasta, dough strewn over kitchen drawers pulled out of makeshift racks in the galley kitchen. I never met Joy, but from what I knew, I could close my eyes and see it. She was a creative, an art cultivator. She had created a home that was meant to be a sanctuary. The light pours in the east-facing kitchen window each morning, begging you to rise with the sun. The backyard filled with beautiful trees, plants, greens, that to this day, nearly ten years later, still brings an unusual number of birds. So when the woman shared about the pasta, I could see it. I could feel the presence in the home, the warmth of what it means to make your own food in a home calling for creativity. Again, I think of Joan Didion, the image of a woman in her home creating. Though somehow I doubt Joy smoked. I'm writing this time outside in the backyard described above. I feel a simultaneous deep connection to create in my home and to be deeply embedded in the outside world, to bring the art to life in a way that lives beyond these walls. People are talking a lot about women right now. Well, women are talking a lot about women. How expectations of a woman would never be put on a man. I feel the rage of the women rising right now. The quick rebuke of, would you ever ask a man that question? Particularly around a woman's success in work, the underlying tone of the unfairness of it all. I wonder what is hoped to be achieved with the rage. When the rage is questioned, it tends to become more inflamed, followed by some dialogue around how rage can be a catalyst for change. I've had my own familiar relationship with rage. It was internally consuming for a solid 10 years of my life, a humming undercurrent to what I believe believed I deserved, and how unfair it was that I wasn't getting it. As if someone else should give it to me. Someone else should give me the job I want, the money I want, the happiness I want. And then I find myself delirious in my suburban, realizing what I chose and subsequently created. I don't want people to ask me the same questions they ask a man. To me, that question is a gift because how I do it is far different than how any man would do it. And in truth, that question is exactly what we have been asking for. Though many may put this reading, this listening down just for whispering that. But haven't we? Many, not all women want the blue suburban life and the life of purpose and career. They want them simultaneously. They want them together. They want it, they pursue it, and they internalize guilt around how they have to show up in either of those pursuits based on something completely external to themselves. The questions that create the responses similar to would you ask a man are exactly the questions women are asking themselves. And the rage is actually self-directed rage at ourselves for not fully leaning into what it is we want to do that we have to put it outward and inflame the external systems with more blame. Are the systems wrong? Sure. Are they set up against our success? A lot of the time, sure. But do we choose subconsciously or consciously to reinforce those systems? Yes. I imagine my own response that in fact there was a time where I thought I was pursuing my career and building a family, and in actuality, it was all shit. That I woke up one morning and realized that I had missed year two of my middle child, the shame and rage that rose in me then, the anger around the system that was so fucked up that I had no choice but to sacrifice my mothering. I realized then I had a choice. And it took me another two years, roughly, to start to start doing something about it. Two years later, I was with my therapist, the one who told me that perhaps my true love would be my purpose, or something to that effect, when I accepted my choice, that even if the alternative seemed hard or unclear, I had chosen to be exactly where I was. I chose the job, I chose the husband, I chose the house, I chose to have a kid, and then another one, and then another one. The rage that came in that moment was big because it was fully and decidedly with myself. And not the kind of judgmental rage that we like to say is from generations of societal oppression. Rage that came from knowing I had a deep power in me and I chose to quiet it. Just as suddenly relief flowed. If I had chosen before, I had the power to choose differently now. It's a funny realization this moment. One that comes when you have reached a pit and can simultaneously hold gratitude for your own power and forgiveness for how you've kept it quiet. I'm quite sure I wept. Growing up, I used to proudly proclaim that I never cried. I didn't even cry with the birth of my children, a mark of a true warrior. My mother left my father when I was three months old. He subsequently spent the next 15 years of my life visiting periodically, in between stints and jail, of course. At 15, I decided to write a letter that he was missing out, that my mother had raised me, and despite him, I was doing quite well. I had big words, big emotions at 15, so I'm unsure exactly how it came out, but I know I felt proud of my work. I sent it to jail. A few weeks later, on my 16th birthday, I received a birthday card in the mail from the Florida State Penitentiary. One of those cards with the insert meant to make it more decorative. On the back flap of the insert so that it wasn't to spoil the sentiment of the birthday, he'd written, I'm impressed with your letter writing abilities, but not with the content of the letter. Happy fucking birthday. I never spoke to him again. And with that, my tear ducts were closed with gorilla glue and I hardened like a rock. At 35 years old, a day or so before Christmas, I found out on Facebook that my father had died a year prior. I had been off of Facebook for a solid decade and decided to go back on because some influencer had me believe that expanding platforms would be useful. Well it was. I logged in and saw that my father had died. I also saw that two years prior he had friended me on Facebook. How's that for irony? I went for a walk and for the first time, outside of a few alcohol-induced emotional drainages, I sobbed. It said that when you stifle your grief, you stifle your joy. When you shove your grief into a corner, it takes up real estate for when the joy wants to come in. It can only come in partially because your grief is in there, telling you don't feel too much, or I'll get bigger. And wasn't that the truth? I had been stifling my whole life. The uncontrolled laughing and the suburban was everything bubbled up. The I had been drifting through the better part of my adult life as if it was happening to me. With the mentality of, is this all there is? A few days ago I shared something with a group of women that I had kept deep in my gut for nearly six years. After my second child was born, our nanny unexpectedly passed away on her annual trip home to Bolivia for Christmas. In retrospect, it was likely COVID as three months later the world locked down. I quit my status climbing job in healthcare, sick with the idea that there was no one to care for my babies. My kind boss created a part-time remote job to help me through just weeks before everyone went remote. I could have kept my job, I thought. Though in retrospect, it was meant to be the nudge to get me out of a path I had chosen based on everyone else. During the next 18 months, I spent time holed up in my house with a toddler and a baby, while my husband was just barely two years into his own business. I had remote teaching jobs that supported financially and sucked the purpose life right out of me. I was also finding myself pregnant with my third child. So one day, I broke. Rage consumed my entire body. I picked up my two-year-old, stomped into her room, and put her on the bed with more force than I should have. In my mind, I replay it as close to a throw, but I know it's my own deep shame and grief over the entire time rather than the actuality of the moment. I immediately went to my room terrified. What had happened? When had I begun to lose it? It turns out I was finding it. Finding everything in me that had stayed quiet, that I hadn't shed a tear for, that I had chosen for everyone else, finding who I was meant to be in this world. I shared this with the group of women as it had come into my mind the night before when the same sweet girl, now eight, was losing it after a day of school, screaming, yelling, crying that would have sent my former self into a full-on, overstimulated meltdown, complete with a stop crying. In complete peace and calm, I sat on her bed until it passed. She didn't feel that great. A girl who she wants to be friends with hasn't been the kindest. And she was a bit hungry, or hangry, as I like to say. I recalled an image of myself as a child being told to stop crying. Of course, my tear ducts withered at 15. The entire experience gave me a bit of a high that I had gotten here, that I could see my sweet girl, that I could see myself. I wish I could tell you I immediately became the mom of the year after that moment years ago with my oldest, but of course that would be bullshit. And in truth, I don't wish I could tell you that because we know that that's not how this thing works, this journey, this experience. When the switch flips, it's not like the light goes on full blast. It's like you've switched the light on with a dimmer, and the dimmer wants to stay on low. I can tell you from that moment forward, every explosive rage moment was had on the way to my bedroom. So even if they heard it, the physicality was not felt. And then I started apologizing. God, did I hate apologizing. Asked my husband, and there was a good portion of our relationship where I could lawyer my way out of anything. I'm still pretty effective, but have found that apologizing is one of the most underrated communication tools we have. Right there next to forgiveness. Apologizing is arguably much easier to come by. I apologized and I meant it, but I began to notice a hollowness that followed each apology. I'm sorry I yelled, baby. Mommy is so tired, and I should not have yelled at you. Oh hi, shame, guilt, and judgment. I began to tire of the apologies, their frequency that I actually said out loud, why am I doing this? Because you need to forgive yourself came sailing into my brain. It was one of the first times in recent history that I had paid attention to my mind with curiosity. Where did that come from? Was that me? And ultimately, yeah, you suck. Which of course was exactly the point. I did not suck. As much as these paragraphs highlight a dark time in my life, I have always been a good mother. I have always seen my children for exactly who they are, an extension of me and very much their own human. When someone asked me who my middle child resembled, me or her father, I responded, she looks like herself. So the because you need to forgive yourself, that came from somewhere deep. It came from looking like myself. Forgiveness is a hard thing, particularly of ourselves, because we tend to focus completely on the act that requires it and forget about the 50 things that came before. I've since learned that the rage is a signal. A signal not that the outside world is off, but that I'm not listening to myself, that I'm not nurturing myself, that in all likelihood I'm not loving myself. It took me some months before I started telling my husband I could no longer sit home without a real job and a purpose, that I needed to be out of the house, that we needed to consider childcare. Ultimately, that's how I ended up interviewing for a job back in corporate health care at nine months pregnant. I delivered five days later and went promptly back to work after 14 weeks of newborn life at the beach. Sounds peachy, but that's when life, or rather, my emotional body really began to go to shit. In the depths of my brain, I wondered what the hell I was doing. I contemplated what divorce would look like, and I woke up five months in, too tired to get out of bed for two weeks. My PCP called it mom burnout. Love that from a male. I was 34 years old and had spent over a decade in healthcare at that point, and everything I had subtly picked up on about how it failed people, particularly women, came plummeting towards me. I knew the system, and I had to call and call again and ask for the test I wanted and get rejected and end up finally with my OBGYN misdiagnosing me with an autoimmune disease. In fairness, without really digging, it did kind of look like one. And I'm forever grateful that she listened to me and that I began to listen to my own bodily wisdom as a result. But what unfolded was four years of unraveling my health, and all of the times I didn't listen to my body. Literally decades of it. I had always considered myself relatively healthy, though as I take stock of my health prior to this, it is a bit laughable. Royal Farms chicken isn't exactly the picture of health for a pregnant woman, but hey, cravings and grace. But as I began to realize how completely blind I'd been to my body outside of judging its fluffiness, I began to realize and recognize my own power. This predating the suburban episode, I don't know that I recognized it as power so much as curiosity and something I could be a good student for. I was always an excellent student. Through middle school and high school, I carried mainly straight A's, except for science. It wasn't really my thing. So naturally, I would go to nursing school. I loved being a good student. I loved the teachers thinking I was great. I loved being helpful and I loved getting good grades that showed success. Even better, I loved running for some school office, student government president, nursing school president, whatever could showcase that I in fact was worthy. And so when I took stock of my health, I recognized it as something I could learn, something I could get good out. Turns out it wasn't just my habits that were degrading my health, but my complete and utter refusal to assess my energetic, emotional, and spiritual body. Spirit gets a bad rap. As a lapsed Catholic, I totally get it. I mocked anything resembling a spiritual belief and could be found mocking the hashtag, hashtag blessed, by throwing up my two-pointer and indexed fingers, imitating the hashtag like a gang sign. But it was this part, the spirit, the energetic functioning of my body that needed reparation, that needed attention, love, even just a little bit of acknowledgement. Alright, that's it for today, guys. I hope you enjoy the episode, and I'll see you in the next session.