A New Year

What will this new year hold?

We will elect the next president as a nation. This is heavy on my mind lately. I know whom I am for but I fear whom others I know will choose. I am frightened for our nation. I know many others are as well and the funny thing is, people who completely disagree with my political view are frightened, too. I hope that we can come together soon and be the United States of America once again.

I will graduate from College. I'm excited. I started this journey when I was 17 and restarted it when I was 27. I'll finally receive my Bachelor of Arts in Public Administration (barring anything unforeseen) in May 2012 at age 32 (on my 32nd birthday in fact!). A lot of work has gone into this degree and I hope it pays off!

I will start graduate school. ACK! More school!! I must be nuts!

My baby will turn 4 and my big girl will (I think) officially be a "tween" at 11 years old. My kids are growing up too fast!

What else? Obviously, I hope that everyone I know will have another birthday. I hope my sweet husband and I get to take a vacation or two...he deserves it for all the  support while I do 101 million things and I could sure use the break!

I want to face this year excited and impassioned for all the things I want to accomplish! Right now, though, I'm putting one foot in front of the other with some trepidation (GRE on January 2nd, anyone?) and with some excitement.

I hope you new year is the happiest yet!  

Happy New Year!!

What's the Deal with Santa Claus?

What's the deal with Santa Claus? Is he an elf, is he a man, is he a myth? (That was my best Jerry Seinfeld impression. Please hold your applause...or rotten fruit...until the end of the post.)

Living in a house with a couple of smallish children, we have a lot of Santa Claus talk these days. My parents even sent a cute little message from Santa Claus to my son-a video of Santa talking to him...cute stuff!  Both my kids still believe in Santa Claus. My daughter (10) is crazy into Elf on a Shelf these days even. My son is learning about the whole thing. You ask him what Santa says and he says, "Santa Ho Ho Ho!" But then I think he's also a bit confused between Santa and God because he asked if he could talk to Santa in the sky the other day. He asked Santa for a Slinky Dog from Toy Story. We never actually took him to see Santa; he just asked him in the sky. Maybe this could work to our advantage-Lazy Parenting 101: teach your child they can talk to Santa like God and avoid the lines at the mall!

We also have been big into watching Christmas movies on TV this year. I like to watch the cheesy made-for-TV Christmas movies on channels like ABC Family and Lifetime. My husband watched part of one with me the other day and said, "What is this!?" I call it mind candy. But my son and I have been watching Polar Express a lot. We have the book and read it every year with my daughter. I had hoped to read it to my son this year but I can't find it! Anyway, the movie got me thinking.

There are three main kids in the movie. One is the main character, a little boy from a small town who is unsure about the existence of Santa. The other two are a little girl and a poor little boy, both of whom believe in Santa. The poor little boy is drawn in shabby clothes and says things like "Christmas just never works out for me." You get the idea that maybe he didn't get anything from Santa last year. He gets very excited when he discovers a neatly wrapped package for him from Santa.

I've been working with a group of people at my job lately trying to connect low income people in our community with people who can help them. We're not, for the most part, trying to be the help-just connect them with it. But in doing this, I've come much closer than I ever have before to poverty on a pretty wide scale. There are people in my community who will not have enough to eat tonight, who don't have a place to sleep tonight, and whose kids will not have gifts from them or Santa this weekend.

I don't write this to ask you to give them presents. If you do, great! But I wanted to write this blog post (I've been busy-sorry about the no posts for most of a year thing, assuming there are any readers to apologize to!) because my heart broke for those kids...and for the kids who will get something from Santa but don't realize other kids won't. All over the world, both kinds of kids exist. The kids who will have gleaming, new toys under the tree from Santa believe that every child in the world will also get a present from Santa. Maybe that's good: Santa is equal opportunity, no discrimination there. But it's also bad. They assume they will get gifts. They are not aware of the poverty and the hunger and the want of the children who will not get presents from Santa this weekend.

And what of those children? Will they think they're bad? Will think it is their fault the presents aren't there? That's what we tell them and the songs and TV shows tell them: you will get presents if you are nice and none if you are naughty. Is this what society also teaches? That if we are good and work hard, we will get rewards but if we are naughty and lazy, we will suffer. If we are in want and poor or hungry, it is because we did not work hard enough or didn't do something right.

I don't believe it. I don't like the thought of the child wondering what they did wrong to not receive presents from Santa and I do not believe that the only way to be poor is to be stupid, lazy, or bad. Does Santa just perpetuate this attitude?

If Mama Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy

Alright, hang on to your seats. I'm going to tackle a really really controversial subject today. I need to start this post by warning any sensitive readers that I did include some strong and somewhat graphic language in this post-though no cussing or crude sexual content (one sexual reference)-use discretion. I'm also not sure I would recommend this post to a pregnant first-time mother...maybe wait till after you deliver.

First, I want to say something to the lawmakers in this country: Quit treating the women of this country like we are naughty children who don't know what's best for us. Stop assuming that we all lead lives like those of your closest acquaintances. Don't make the mistake of believing or encouraging us to believe that the men in our lives are all honorable and would never put us in a compromising situation.

I grew up Southern Baptist-devoutly Southern Baptist. I was staunchly Pro-Life...no exceptions. My view on abortion is not so clear-cut these days. That's right, I'm going to talk abortion-feel free to click away now if it's too much for you.

I still believe life begins at conception. 

I still believe if you find yourself pregnant and don't want a child, adoption is the best option. 

BUT I now find it audacious to think that I can make such HUGE decisions for another woman-I just can't. 

I've mentioned it a few times, but I lost 2 babies very early on before my son was conceived. Losing them at about the age that many early abortions are performed has driven home to me just how difficult the decision to get an abortion must be. It's also driven home to me how sad it is when it happens. I hate the thought of someone choosing to end those babies' lives when I (and women like me) have suffered so greatly wanting a baby. But who am I to force any woman to choose otherwise?

I need to begin with that I loved my pregnancy and enjoyed it immensely (and that is sincere).I threw up very frequently while I was pregnant. From 8 weeks till I was in labor at 40 weeks, 4 days, I got sick at least once a week. And in the beginning, it was at least once a day. I was put on medication to keep me from throwing up so I wouldn't get dehydrated. I had a friend who was hospitalized to have fluids because she couldn't even keep water down.

There is no way to know from pregnancy to pregnancy, from woman to woman, who will get morning (ha!) sickness and who will not.

I gained 60 pounds during pregnancy. I was hot and I couldn't walk normally. I couldn't sleep for much of it. I was pregnant for 4 days longer than they said I should be and I didn't go into labor on my own. I was in labor for 28 hours. I threw up, had to be put on oxygen, and had my stomach muscles clench tightly over and over with contractions with less than 60 seconds in between. I finally had to go into major surgery with no more notice than 20-30 minutes. I had major abdominal surgery where they cut my stomach completely open, moved any organs in the way, cut open my uterus, and removed my baby. I was then in surgery for another couple of hours while they removed the remains of the pregnancy, sewed me up and replaced my organs. I was on painkillers for months afterward. I didn't hold my baby until he was over 3 hours old. I couldn't move or get out of bed without serious pain for weeks. I had to return to the doctor at about 5-6 weeks postpartum to have sterile gauze shoved into my gaping open incision with a long q-tip...without prior notice or pain medication. I had to have this done twice a day for weeks (though I learned to take pain meds 20 minutes before starting). My husband had to inflict this pain on me. I had to care for a tiny infant, often by myself, during all of this. 

My birth and postpartum experience were not typical. Neither were they that rare. But I didn't know ahead of time that all this would happen. 

But I chose to risk it...because I wanted a child so badly! I can NOT imagine going through all of that without wanting my son...or without having him there to make it all worth it. I am NOT saying that abortion is ever actually justified. I'm just saying you are asking more than you know-and I think more than many of these men would be willing-of these women. Women who were raped or their relative impregnated them, young girls, women whose mate deceived them or forced a pregnancy on them, women who already have more mouths than they can feed, women whose birth control failed them....after these situations, you would then ask them to endure all of the above? That's more than I can do.

But let's say you're comfortable asking that of a woman. You're comfortable forcing HER to go through all of that to suit your morals (which I don't happen to disagree with...but who knows if she does). 

Wouldn't it be better to prevent the pregnancies to begin with than to try to force her to not end it once it happened? The results of pregnancies which are forced on women are almost always unwanted children. How awful for a child to feel unwanted! How awful for a child to be abandoned. How awful to know that your mother thinks of her rape, or her father forcing her to sex, or any other horrible situation every time she thinks of you, your gestation, or your birth! Every child is a blessing...but not everyone believes that. And certainly not every parent/adult treats every child that way. How many children are abused or neglected because they were not wanted? How many children grow up to commit suicide-if they grow up-because they were not loved? How many children live in poverty and are hungry because their mother can't afford to feed them? How many children know the shame of their parents being ashamed of their very existence? I don't know numbers. But one is too many for me.

But you are determined to take away even that option. You don't want her to even have access to affordable or free birth control. You would rather tell her to keep her legs shut. Who are you to determine another person's sex life? Maybe she tried to keep her legs shut but the stronger man pried them open. Maybe she is too young to even know what that means. Maybe she believed her partner was practicing birth control but he was not. Maybe she is married but struggling financially. Maybe she is unhappily married. Sex is a human need and it is profoundly unrealistic to just believe that people are going to abstain from it as a group for prolonged periods of time. We were created to make more people...it's part of our make-up. It is part of what has made our current way of life possible that we are able to control when (to a certain extent) that happens.

Financially, it is so much cheaper to pay for the prevention of a pregnancy than the result (whether that's abortion, pregnancy, child, miscarriage, adoption, etc). 

Women know enough, by in large, when we are ready to have a baby-when we make enough money (or our partner does) to support a child, when we are willing to be unselfish enough to give to another being so much, when our bodies can handle pregnancy and childbirth, when older children are old enough to handle becoming a sibling, when our relationship is at a good point to nurture a child. We don't always get it right. But we are the ones who have to be sick, hot, heavy, miserable, in pain, etc to get that child here. Shouldn't someone trust us enough to decide when/if to do that?

I know some people will never understand this. I know that men will never fully grasp what it is to have a child. I think it would behoove the male legislators of this country to look around them and notice that not many women legislators or constituents are supporting the recent anti-abortion legislation. It is not because we hate babies or don't believe in life at conception. It is because we trust our sisters. It is because we know, sometimes with the wisdom of motherhood, that there are other ways to prevent abortions without asking these women to go through so much physical hardship-preventing pregnancy chief among them.

And women, it was vocal women speaking out who began the common usage of  birth control in this country. It was women who forced society to realize that a woman deserves to be able to plan and decide herself how to handle her fertility. It is women who can make these men realize now that they canNOT take that right from us now. It is women who can make them realize there are better solutions. It is women who can stop the condescension and patronizing of women by men who believe they know better how to deal with this issue. It is women who need to take back our place as equal citizens rather than letting men demote us. Let them know that if "Mama" ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!

Mother's Day

I have been pondering this post for days now. I honestly still have no idea what to write. This topic is close to my heart in such a painfully intimate way.
When does a woman become a mother? This woman who is just like any other woman, walking around, doing her usual activities suddenly becomes the center of a person's universe, or she suddenly has someone else at the center of hers, or both. It can shift everything about the woman. It is earth shifting in a tiny, focused, huge way.
But when does it happen? Does it happen when egg meets sperm? Does it happen at the first roll or jab of infant in womb? Does it happen at first breath, first tiny cry? Does it happen the first time a child utters "mama"? Or the first "I love you"? Does it happen at the bang of a judge's gavel declaring it so? Does it happen with an exchange of rings? I can't answer this question. Becoming a mother can happen in so many different ways! I have become a mother in all of the above ways with the exception of the judge's gavel.
I first became a mother when a beautiful golden haired angel twirled me around her tiny pinkie finger. She cemented it I think the moment she took my face in her hands and told me “You’re a good Mama Karen.” I gained some legal title of (step) mother when her daddy put a ring on my finger but she and I know that our bond was forged long before that day. I became a mother again a few years later when a tiny, tiny person took hold deep in my body as happens everyday for all time. This person and I never met but he or she made me a mother in their own way. His/her sibling joined the first about a year later. I became a mother in yet another way with the grasp on my heart and body of yet another tiniest of persons. He grew and thrived, though. And with each new milestone-that first popcorn flip, that first jab of hand or elbow, that first rolling motion, that first pushing me away when I smooshed him from the outside-he more firmly grasped my heart. With every moment of his life, I am more a mother and more forever his. I was the center of his world for so long-maybe I still am. He has been the only baby in the world for 2.5 years. Every moment has new meaning because I am this little person’s mother. Even now, I know that my words will fall so short of telling you how he has changed everything.
But I feel like I’m leaving something out even still. Because I don’t know how to express that for 2 years before my son ever came into being in any manner, I was a mother. My daughter made me a mother in my heart even before that but my angel babies made me a physical mother somehow. And as I think about the incredible joys that only my son has brought me, I can’t help but remember that dark time. The times when I thought no pain could be as soul-wrenching and gut clenching as that. The times when I knew in my deepest heart that I would never know the joys I live now, that I would never hold a child of my own flesh. And the reason I never will forget that time and never can is because I know so many women hurt in this way still. My heart aches for every woman who has seen a double line and then no heartbeat, for every woman who has taken a blood test to find her body no longer registers as clinically pregnant, for every woman who has experienced the pain of labor and pushed a dead infant from her body, for every woman who has watched her child take their first and then last breath, for every woman who has walked into a fertility clinic, for every woman who has not had the money to walk into that clinic, for every shot or pill taken, for every ultrasound without a happy ending. Infertility in its many forms robs women of motherhood’s joys and I want to say that these women are still mothers. If you know a woman struggling with infertility (and I include miscarriages and stillbirths as well as secondary infertility in that definition), please in some way remember they are a mother, especially on Mother’s Day. It may make her cry but even a simple note or flower or “happy Mother’s Day” may make her feel less invisible.
I can’t make it a downer post, though. While my heart aches for those unfulfilled mothers, my heart swells with joy and just knowing I am so blessed. Because I am a mother but I also have mothers. And I have THE best.
My mom is incredible. She has the voice of the sweetest angel, she cooks the best Southern comfort food and guilt inducing food, she keeps a beautiful home even when she’s so busy she has to schedule time to breathe, she paints and draws pieces worthy of display in a museum, she is brave, she is ambitious, she is stubborn (this is a good thing, I promise), she is hard working, she is loving. She has been through hard times and beautiful times and I am so thankful she is enjoying life now. When I think about my relationship with my mom I think of homemade playdough, of mopping the floor just because I loved to do what she was doing, I think of cheerleading and mission group, I think of A&P flashcards and cooking dinner on my own. My mom and I have been through a lot together. I feel I have a bond with her unique to just me and her because she was home with me while my siblings were at school (I am much younger) and because she and I had to make it on our own for a while after my biological dad left. Some of those memories are so bittersweet they make my heart cry but at the same time draw me closer to my sweet mother. I love to watch her now with my son. She has delighted in his every moment and I feel such kinship with her watching her love him almost as much as I do (hey, I AM his mom) and knowing that she was in my shoes my lifetime earlier.
My mom’s mom is another mother I have…a grandmother. And Sunday is a day to celebrate her as well. My grandmother is in some ways now only half a person. She enjoyed nearly 61 years tethered to one of the greatest men who has ever lived and she is learning how to survive without him. I am proud of her for doing as well as she is. I love her dearly. She can show me a world I can only imagine or read about because she lived in it. She is a link to my past, to my history. She dotes on my babies and I feel such a warmth just to sit with her and hold her hand. I feel honored to live in the home she shared with my grandfather for half of their married life. I feel their love and their joy and their legacy each time I walk through my own living room.
When I got married, I became a legal mother of sorts to my sweet daughter but also I gained another mother. I have the world’s best mother-in-law. She is kind and nurturing. She is the personification of a warm hug. But she is also real. She has never been afraid to cry. I have seen her hurt so deeply and I have seen her claw her way out of a pit into the sunlight. I am so proud of how far she has come in the time I have known her. She is meeting herself again in so many ways and finding blessings in it. She has blessed me in ways she doesn’t even know. She also raised this man to whom I am joined and she taught him to treasure me and my children. I am so grateful for her.
For not being sure of what to write, I realize I became wordy! I mostly wanted to give this post as a gift to my mothers in my life and maybe someday to my children. I also hope that those mothers and those who have mothers who read this will think on it and find joy and gratitude. Please let your mother or a mother figure know you appreciate them this weekend. Please hug a mother-even if she is only a mother in her heart, especially if she is a mother only in her heart. We are so blessed to have this relationship of motherhood…both to give and to receive. Happy Mother’s Day!

Signs?

I'm in the middle of a transition. I can't talk about it in detailed terms right now but it will be public information soon enough. I'm exploring possibilities. Today I had an exciting (?) coincidence happen today that made me feel like maybe, just maybe I'm on the right track. I got an email from a woman that my school advisor had referred me to. It was a forward of an email that he had sent to her. It had been sent to him by a woman I have worked with on environmental issues. It concerned the advisor, the environmentalist, and my former Spanish teacher. These people are part of my life for VERY different reasons. They have come into my life in very different ways in very different times. And now I had an occasion to send an email to all of them at once...about an opportunity. Who knows if it will pan out? I'm not even sure if it should pan out. But it indicates to me that maybe I'm on the right path. Exciting stuff. Kinda scary stuff. I'll keep you posted.

Life Has Wrinkles You Didn't Even Know About

Elephants have wrinkles, wrinkles, wrinkles
Elephants have wrinkles, wrinkles everywhere....

I watched my mom and my two year old son singing this song with the motions a few days ago. My son patted his legs along with his grandmother and pointed to the appropriate body part and then turned in a circle and even sang a few of the words. On the way home, from the back seat I heard, "wrinkles wrinkles wrinkles". It was adorable!

I had no idea. I had no idea my son could dance and do motions on cue. We "dance" and "sing" such as it is with a two year old ALL the time. But this was prescribed movements at a pretty fast pace. And I thought it was developmentally beyond him.

But he does this to me all the time. He surprises me. I didn't know I could give him instructions and he would follow them until I saw his daycare teacher doing it. I just didn't even know to ask!

Life is this way sometimes I think. We're living our lives, wrinkles and warts and all and wishing we could do any myriad of things differently. We are in our little boxes that we've been in for years. And wishing our boxes were a different shape or size or that we didn't have one at all!

I want to share a secret with you today: Your box probably isn't even there. It's a figment of your imagination. It's a result of not asking.

Sometimes we just don't even realize an option is open to us. Maybe it's working from home. Maybe it's a different job altogether. Maybe it's your spouse giving you more compliments or taking out the trash. Maybe it's your child being more grateful. Maybe it's taking a class or two. Maybe it's something even bigger. But you have to ask first.

My son has apparently been able to sing and do motions and I just didn't know to ask him to do it. You have a world of opportunities open to you that you just don't know to ask for. You've already assumed they're off limits for you. They're not.

So today, dream. Think of what it is you aren't even considering an option that you really want. And then ask for it. Try for it. Maybe you are the only one holding you back! (And then I'd love to hear about it if you'd come back and let me know!)

To Care or Not to Care

That really IS the question. It all comes down to care or not. What kind of nation do we want to be? What kind of individual do you want to be? Because right now it's what we're deciding.

At the core of what we are talking about is just being a human. If you are human, you will get sick or you will at some point have pain or suffering that can be treated/alleviated/lessened by the modern technology found in allopathic medicine. We as a society have eradicated so many former killers from our midst simply by improving health care. Where pneumonia used to be a death sentence under any circumstance, an otherwise healthy person can easily survive it with proper care.

Yet that care does cost money. People demand to be compensated for their time, skill, and resources...as they should. But on whose shoulders does the responsibility for that compensation fall? On the patient simply because they are human? No other modern product or innovation affects us as deeply and profoundly as modern medicine. No other product or innovation is as closely tied to our survival and success as individuals and as a society. Because of this unique aspect, it should not be considered as just another commodity to be traded but rather as a right for every person just as it is our right to breathe and bleed. It is our right to expect that other humans would not withhold from us the very remedy that can mean life or death, pain or suffering. Because sharing that remedy is at the core of what it means to be human just as much as our breath and blood are.

I can't help but think of the Good Samaritan. I heard it mentioned on a video the other day that the Samaritan paid everything for the stranger out of his own pocket. Whether you believe the story to be history or parable or simply a good work of fiction, it demonstrates the power of compassion. If you came upon a sufferring human being, would you cross the street? Would you ask to see their credit report? Or would you help them or find someone who could?

This is why I care about the health care debate. This is why I am appalled that it is even a debate. This is why I am saddened to hear so many of my fellow countrymen and women decrying an effort to get us one step closer to this right...to compassion. It is not a subject we can or should detach ourselves from and analyze subjectively because at the heart of the discussion is our very humanity. Because the question really is: To care or not to care?

Living Positively...or some other new age hippy stuff.

I've been noticing a trend lately online. It's possible I'm slow to the game. Or that it's just the things I'm reading. Or that it's the phenomenon of noticing those things that are forefront in your mind. But it seems like everyone is on this positive living, happy in the moment, find your inner self, discover your truth, live courageously, be zen kick.

I could say this is all a bunch of hippy new age stuff. But if you know me, that would just make that statement funny...I AM pretty hippy new age!! And, honestly, when I write about it, that is the first thing that comes to mind. But when I come across it and I read about it, I devour the words. My soul soaks it up like crusty bread and that last drop of delicious soup. That light of recognition snaps on and I inwardly perk up my ears. I get where these (mostly) women are coming from. I'm looking for the same stuff.

Ten years ago, I would have said dismissively and arrogantly that these people are just looking for God and they don't know it. But I honestly don't think that. My disillusionment with the religious establishment (that's a whole different post!) aside, I don't believe it's a soul's longing for a Higher Being or a Meaning of Life that's at work here. I'm not positive what it's all about. But I feel it. I feel that longing for more and that inner knowledge that there is more...and I'm going to find it.

For me, my more has whispers of helping others and tinges of succeeding for the sake of succeeding. There's a hint of I'll-show-you-world and a sprinkle of I'm-going-to-be-someone-I'm-proud-of. I want to be the people I admire. And the people I admire are making a positive difference in this world. So even if I never reach my goal and touch the prize, at least maybe I'll have made a positive difference somewhere.

But I know for others, their more is something else. Maybe it's being a mother. Or maybe it's being a teacher. Or a doctor, or a nurse, or an astronaut. Maybe it's running your own business. Maybe it's graduating from high school or college or graduate school. This is what I do know, though: You should go for it. You should do everything in your power to get your more. And while you're at it, live this life to its fullest, drink it to the last drop and live out every other new age hippy philosophy you can get your hands on. I know I'm going to.

Life Lessons From a Country Song and Walt Disney

I just heard a song today that took me back. Songs do that so often for so many of us. This particular song took me back to almost 8 years ago. I was getting divorced from my first husband and had a rare girl's night out with some friends from high school. We went to a local club and this song came on. We all sang at the top of our lungs. Not because it was a new song at the time...it was already 7 years old by then. We sang with it because we were remembering "back in the day" in high school. The ironic part is the song is about nostalgia.

As I listened to the song, though, it took me back to the time at the club singing on the top of my lungs with my girlfriends. I only still talk to one of the girls that was there. She was a dear, dear friend from middle school on. We really only have contact through Facebook now but it's enough that I know generally what's going on in her life and she in mine.

When we were kids, she wanted so desperately to be a marine biologist. She loves animals. And she could have done it and would have been awesome! She is really smart. She is currently teaching pre-k in a small town near where we both grew up. She is married and expecting her first child soon. I'm so happy for her and I know she is happy with her life. But at the same time, I can't help but wonder why she isn't a marine biologist. Is it because her family life required her to take a bigger role in her sisters' lives? Is it because she had a serious relationship at the time she started college so she stayed close to home instead of traveling to a coastal city? Is it because someone along the line discouraged her? I may never know.

And of course, when I wonder all this, I'm not so much wondering about her or her life goals and dreams as my own. I think about why I am where I am now and why I'm not fulfilling what I wanted when I was a child. I'm working on it but there are days I feel like my late start is hopelessly late. I wonder if my commitments to my family of origin and my family will deter me. I wonder if my location and ties to it will stop me. I wonder if someone along the line will dissuade me.

Please don't misunderstand me. I LOVE my family (both of origin and my little family of my husband and 2 children) and don't regret having them in my life at all! But I do wonder if I couldn't have been further in my life path by this point if I had had my head on straighter. And honestly, I think my husband has provided some of the stability and comfort in which I've been able to figure out or remember what I want to do when I grow up.

But on days like today when a song takes me back, I think of the dreams of childhood and wonder how possible they still are. I read a quote on a kitschy plaque this weekend that was a quote from Walt Disney. It said:

If you can dream it, you can do it.

And I want to believe it. I've got big dreams, guys. Now to prove I can do it.

I know there have to be so many others like me out there who are just going with the flow in life but have finally realized what they want to do in life. Please find a way to follow your dreams. I'm telling you now that if you can dream it, you can do it!

Angry Eyes

I woke up angry today. 

After I dragged myself out of my warm bed this morning and settled my son in front of Arthur with a banana, I headed to the bathroom for a shower. While I take my shower, I normally listen to either public radio or Pandora (if you don't know Pandora, go there now...then come back to finish reading this. I don't want you to miss out on Pandora!). This morning, it was Pandora. But my instrumental only station that was on was not going to cut it. So I switched to Alanis Morrisette. I was surprised by me! My Alanis Morrisette Pandora station is my angry station. If I'm mad at the world, or mad at my husband, or mad at my family, or mad about something at my job, or just plain mad, I listen to Alanis.

I have NO idea what I was angry about.

At first, I tried to figure out why on earth I'm angry. I still couldn't tell you. Maybe it was just my precious boy trying to wrestle me before I had even thrown the covers off (he is ALL boy! sheesh!). Maybe it's just that I'm not a morning person (never have been). Maybe I had a bad dream. I have no idea.

I decided it didn't matter why I was angry. I also decided it was a good thing.

Right then and there, as I shampoo'ed my hair, I decided to embrace the anger. Sometimes we all need to get a little angry. As I'm typing this, I'm still listening to the same Pandora station-my angry station. I want to hold on to it today. I don't want to carry a grudge or take it out on anyone. I want to use it in a healthy way. I want to direct it at injustice, at the things I want to change, at the things I need to change, at the things I've been meaning to change. I mean this on a broad scale of wanting to make a difference in the world. I want to change so many injustices, so many times when people are needlessly hurt. I want to make strides toward goals that could help change these large scale injustices. But I also mean this on a personal level. I want to change the bad habits I have. I want to change the way I feel about my physical self but also the condition (health wise) of my physical self. I want to stop procrastinating or being lazy. I want to live every second with purpose. And anger is a powerful motivator for all of this!

So in this season of resolutions, I am angry. I don't want to make a vow or resolution or promise. I just want to be mad. I want to feel this emotion and act on it in a positive way. I want it to be the rocket fuel that propels me forward. I am taking this world on and in the eyes of Mrs. Potato Head on Toy Story 2, "I'm packing [my] angry eyes...just in case!"