Translucence Is Sexy As Hell.

Originally posted January 23, 2014

I wonder if God is real.

I don't want you to tell me she's/he's/it's not.

Please don't.

Please let me discover the realms that lay beneath the visible.

Please let me, without chiding, see what I need to see.

I will not become delusional.

I will not become a preacher.

But I might just become more content.  Less edgy.  More translucent.

I might become more of the core of what I already am.

I might just walk around like that, all core.

I might.

I wonder how much of my thinking is based on what I think you think of me.  

I wonder why that is.

I wonder why it's frightening to not know everything, to question it all, the huge and the tiny.  Why we sometimes need to have our opinions set before the question's really been asked.

I wonder where I'll end up, at the end.

I wonder how I'll have spent these many days.

I wonder if I will have seen.

I wonder if I will have stopped and known: that God is probably sitting at the core, waiting to give a greeting.

I wonder if I will become light.

I wonder how to unpack it.

I wonder how it is.

Where you are.

I'm in here.

*E

Yes, I'm Lonely. But Do I Need To Be?

Originally posted June 16, 2014

There's a post making the rounds on Facebook right now. The title drew me in - "Are You Lonely, Mama?"

My initial response was, "Yes! She's going to be talking to me, I know it. I'm lonely a lot because being with little kids so much can make you feel alone and, sometimes, a little bit crazy. She's gonna get it!"

And the author was totally speaking my language. This right here? I LOVE THIS: "Sometimes, I go to Target and walk around just to have interaction with people outside of my house. When I'm out with the boys and I look up from the chaos long enough to see another mama doing the same things I'm doing, I just want to run over to her and say, "Are you lonely too? Do you want the same things I want? Do you struggle with the same things I do? Will you judge me for failing? For being scared? For wanting to run away from my kids? For forgetting to put shoes on the oldest and a clean diaper on the youngest? Can we be friends? Am I freaking you out? I don't care. HOLD ME."

I love this so hard I would almost pay someone to do this to me in Target. Because that right there? That's as real as it gets. I LOVE HER.

And then I got to this: "Mama, I know that you're lonely too. It's OK. Just remember that this is a season and it is the most sacred season you will ever have the honor of experiencing. This is the time when your babies need you and want you and enjoy having you around. This is the time when they will cling to your legs as you try to leave the house without them and run into your arms when you come home as if you'd been gone a lifetime. You will never be more loved and wanted and needed than you are right now... in this moment."

I felt a little bit abandoned by my new friend, like she'd abruptly turned down aisle 12 and I was still standing, alone, in aisle 10. Because I knew where things were headed next: into Embrace This Phase Of Life Land.

I know - they're little, they're growing up, they love us now in a unique and impossible-to-maintain-forever kind of way. I so, so get it. I have two kids, and I can already feel things shifting with my six year old. She's not wanting me in the same ways anymore. More importantly, she doesn't need me in the same ways. I am a self-described Big Time Feeler - I feel all the feelings all the time, and so this fleeting phase she describes, I not only get it cognitively, I feel it in my belly.

And yet, when I later read this paragraph, I thought, "Wait a hot minute.": "When loneliness creeps up in your heart and you start to feel sorry for yourself and wish for something other than what you have right now, fill that emptiness where your social life used to be with baby belly laughs and movie nights and pillow fights and silly songs. Don't let temporary loneliness steal this season of your life."

Because I don't want to fill all of the parts of me with my kids. I just don't. I don't want to give up my friendships for my kids. Yes, mothering can be lonely - but we don't have to willingly keep it that way.

I'm an introverted over-thinker, and so making close female friends is really challenging for me. Girls scare me most of the time, and so, especially in early motherhood, is was easy to become lonely and isolated. But early motherhood was also the time when my lonely isolation made me completely burnt out, resentful, and sad. My life had become too much about my kids and not enough about remembering that I was more than a mother. Which is not me saying that my role as mother is unimportant or insignificant - that's preposterous. But it is me saying that I haven't yet figured out how to be a loving, kind, patient, fun mother - how to be the kind of woman I want my kids to emulate - without maintaining slices of my former, pre-mother self. And solid friendships are a part of that for me.

It's okay to feel sorry for yourself when you realize that kid music has replaced your music. When your child clings to your leg even though you're just going to grocery store for your half hour of alone time and you're leaving said child with their other parent. When you feel sad about how lonely you are because parenting is isolating and friendships are hard to maintain. Parenting is exhausting, rewarding, frustrating, exhilarating, full-to-the-top, and lonely. It is and/both. And, I think, we need to maintain our own personal and/both to remain fulfilled.

Instead of forcing ourselves to embrace our loneliness more fully by over-sentimentalizing the fact that our kids will one day grow up, I think it's okay to instead say to our partners, "Look. I need to get the hell out of here tonight because I'm sad and lonely and I need to hang with my girl to feel more whole. Thanks for doing bedtime. Isn't our kid the best one in the world? I appreciate you. G'bye."

I, happily and willingly and with abundant doses of love and kisses, give my kids a whole lot of me.

But I don't need to give them everything.

*E

Why I'm Scared of Real-Life Humans, And What I'm Doing To Say F That S.

Originally posted June 19, 2014

You know what I love?  This space.  How it functions.  What it means, the intention it takes for you to come here and read, and then comment! and then share!?  I mean, it's just too good, the love I feel here.

But here's some truth, too: part of why I love coming here and writing for you - part of the reason it works so easily - is because you're not in front of me.  You're over there and I'm over here and I can write things and you can write things and we can read each other's things and I can truly offer you my whole self  for the moments it takes to read your sweet and hilarious and supportive and challenging and loving comments.  I can then continue giving you my whole self for the moments it takes me to respond.  I feel you in those moments, I see you, and I genuinely try to connect with you.  I love this kind of interaction, which is probably why blogging has become so progressively fulfilling for me; we've been able to develop this little community that I truly love and care about, without all of the stress of real-life-ness.

Because, people, hear this: real-life-ness stresses me the hell out.

I've always been socially anxious.  I didn't realize this until recently, and when I realized it, I was like, "HOLY SHIT HOW DID I NOT REALIZE THIS UNTIL NOW?"  In third grade, I once sheepishly asked the most popular girl in class if she liked me.  In the two seconds it took her to answer I thought I might die. "Yeah, I like you," she said and I then thought, "She doesn't mean it."  Because she probably didn't.  Because Big Feelers like me (and maybe you?) are out of place even in third grade.  Because putting people on the spot can make them uncomfortable.  Because that doesn't stop me from putting people on the spot.  (For the record, I quite like being on the spot.)  Because sometimes the truth feels shitty.

What I'm saying here is that making friends is kind of excruciating for me.  I used to drink a ton of booze and then let my 'real self' come out, the loud and funny and obnoxious (and stumbling and sometimes puking) self.  I'd feel like a d-bag the next day, sure, but I had moxie - I could puff myself up with loads of faux confidence, making the parts I could remember from the night before seem totally on purpose. 

This was a reliable way to make friends in college, but now that I'm a real grown-up who's sober, shit's getting real.  I can't relax myself with a couple of shots of tequila before new people come over for a cookout.  I can go to a bar and drink lemonade out of a martini glass - I can play the part - but in terms of physiologically altering myself to make the excruciating awkwardness of adult socialization more palatable, I'm outta luck.

What's made this whole thing even more strange is the fact that we all have online personalities now.  There are people we adore on Facebook - them with their wittiness and cute clothes and funny one liners - and then we bump into them at the coffee shop and it's all, "Um, hey, uh, you went away last week, right?  How was it!?"  We're "in" each others lives because our lives are splayed open for all to see online, but taking that shit from the screen to the street is stress-inducing.

There are a few woman I really, really want to know right now.  Like, I already know that I love them - that's a done deal.  (I tend to fall in love with people quickly - read more about that here in point #2.)  But I don't know them yet.  I know that they're funny and smart and real, but I haven't hung out with them enough in real life yet for things to feel normal and easy.  Right now, the lens through which we see each other is tinted social-media-colored - we like each other lots based on our carefully-crafted tidbits.  These carefully-crafted tidbits have been enough for me to know that these chicks are the real deal, that they're My People - like I said, I already love them.  But we haven't seen each other all the way yet.  They haven't seen me parent.  They haven't seen me when I have nothing to say.  They haven't seen me struggling over how I look in a bathing suit even though I know better than that.  And they haven't seen me at my worst, being judgmental and curt and icy and woefully insecure.  

And that's what scares me so much.

Because will they still want to be my friend?  Will the Facade Of The Tidbit be washed away?  Am I a narcissistic buffoon for thinking I've presented an online version of myself that needs to be preserved?  I mean c'mon - just get the hell over yourself already, Ballard.

But I've decided that I can't simply let these women slip through my rapidly-aging fingers.  I can't hide inside of this blog or my Facebook wall or my mostly-pretty Instagrams.  I have to put myself out there, fear and all, and hope that the people who've said, "Hey, wanna be friends?" really know what they're getting into.  I mean, they're adults, too, so I should give them the benefit of the doubt.  Also, it wouldn't hurt to keep in mind this glaring truth: I'm still gonna love them once they've shown me their real-life selves. So, theoretically, I should assume the reverse to be true.  The alternative - making online connections that hold zero water offline - isn't an option for me.  That shit feels fake, like we're creating personas for ourselves instead of simply being people.  And I can't hang with that.  

So hear this, ladies: YOU DON'T SCARE ME ANYMORE.

Also: wanna be friends?

Love you already,
*E

Can We Talk About Something Else For A Sec?

Originally posted June 28, 2014

The other day I was scanning my Facebook feed for a sec before going into the bathroom to wipe my kid. The glamour, I know. And all I could see - truly, the only words that popped as they moved up up up my phone's screen - were parenting, kids, mothers, activities, and childhood.

You guys, I can't.

I'm exhausted.

I surrender.

When did I become so flat? So singularly focused?

And can we please, for the love of all that is good, talk about something else for a minute?

I can't even remember what I used to talk about before kids. When someone asked me how I was doing, I probably relayed a tidbit about work or where we were living at the time. I may have mentioned where we were headed for the weekend or started a conversation with, "The other day on NPR I heard...". Now? Every time someone engages me in small talk the first thing I almost always say is some variation of, "Oh, we're mostly good! The kids are great. They're happy, getting big," aaaaahhhhhhhSTOPIT. I'm sure my kid-less friends, if they even bother reading me anymore, are probably thinking, "JESUS THANK YOU," as they read this, momentarily blissed out and hopeful that the next time they see me I might be interesting again.

Because I have to say it: parenting is not the kind of big deal we make it out to be. Important? Yes. A big fucking commitment? You bet. Sometimes stressful? No doubt.

But does it really require us to become so solitary in our focus? To lose interest in prioritizing the things that matter to us? To obsessively handle and manage every single detail of our and our children's lives so that the whole thing doesn't fall apart?

Come on.

I'm not going to launch into the The Way Things Used To Be argument here, but we all know that we're currently parenting in a completely different paradigm than parents before us. It's a given. Things are different now, yes, but I think things are different largely because we're simply allowing them to be. The nonsense Mommy Wars; the Pinterest Moms vs. The F You, Pinterest! Moms; the Free Range Parenting vs. Helicopter Parenting - all of this exists because it gives us something to cling to. If we're This Kind Of Mom, then we have an identity that's been prescribed to us and then, thankfully, we know where we fit. We've chosen sides in a fake battle, roles in a pretend play, and now everyone is expected to stay in line.

Really, I think we're just a whole bunch of gals who'd really like to be seen as women who happen to have children. You know, like the old days. We want to drive our compact minivans around town with our music up loud on the shitty car speakers. We want to be allowed to have gorgeous, perfect days with our kids. And we want to learn from and improve upon the shit days as best we can. But what we don't want? What I don't want? Is to continue pretending that the fact of my motherhood is the only part of my identity worth discussing.

My intellectual and conversational world has become so narrow because I want to relate to you. Most of us have kids, and because we're mothers and fathers in this modern parenting world - in which the children become the central feature of our lives - it's simply an easy place to start. Too, I often find myself trying to find my humor again through parenting chit chat, poking fun at my kid-messy house, boasting about my son's unforgettable style, or commiserating about never sleeping enough. These are the ways in which I've tried to say, "Hey, me, too. We're the same, pretty much, you and me."

And I never ever want to turn the tools for relating off. Ever. Relating and connecting through common experience in a truthful way - in a way that tells the whole story without glossing it up for primetime - is the single thing that can shift us from a world in which things look perfect into one in which we're all just simply living our very real, common lives alongside each other. If you want to talk to me about your kids PLEASE DO. I want to hear about your real, honest experiences all the time. All the time. All the time. (Got it?) And yet I can't turn a blind eye to the fact that I've been using this one facet of my experience - the fact of my motherhood - as a conversational and relatability crutch. And that I'm ready to again become more steadily multidimensional.

Because I am a woman who likes Vanity Fair and creating paper art and growing kale and eating Velveeta-based queso. I'm a woman who desires a meditation practice. I am a woman who wants to debate the merits of style vs. spirituality vs. swearing vs. public writing forums on a porch while you drink wine and I take a couple of drags off an American Spirit. I want my kids to remember the sounds of raucous laughter through the vent in their bedroom floor on the nights we have friends over for dinner. I want them to see me reading thick, musky-smelling books.

But mostly? Mostly, I want them to hear me being an actively thoughtful, intelligent, purposed woman. And I don't feel those things when I unthinkingly rely on them for conversational fodder, when most of my brain-churning hours are spent figuring out how to parent better in order to be as close to perfect for them as I can be while being realistic about the fact that I can't, in fact, be perfect.

It's exhausting.

Instead, I want to talk to you about clothes and books and the aesthetics of Anthropologie vs. IKEA. Maybe we can discuss the latest trashy celebrity magazines. Maybe I'll want to talk about learning to garden or how nervous I am to begin meditating. Maybe we can have a swim at the river in the most gorgeous summer evening light, our kids playing happily in the sand, growing weary with the weight of a happy childhood. Or perhaps we can talk about the realities of grown-up-hood that we never saw coming.

I want to add dimension.

I want to be more whole.

Which will, naturally, envelop my children into me in ways I can't yet understand.

Which will make us all more whole.

More knowingly loved.

More round and full and each other's.

And that?

I'll wanna talk about that.

*E

Why I'll Never Not Be A Contradiction.

Originally posted June 29, 2014

Today I got to do a really special thing.  I sat around with a bunch of people at the meeting I first went to more than a year ago.  I sat among the folks that first heard me utter the words, "...and I'm an alcoholic."  Today I sat next to them and across from them and I read aloud the words, "...grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." 

Today we sat out in the sunshine.  It was hot and as picturesque as any New England town you'll find anywhere.  I was too hot in my pants.  And people were speaking, showing strangers their insides, and over and over again I heard stories from childhoods long past. I heard stories of hurts that started young and never healed. And I looked at these people, so very beautiful in their raw and brave human-ness and I thought of my children - yes, the ones I want to stop constantly talking about - and I thought the thoughts that brought me to a letter that needed writing.

My Children,

I can't remember the last time I gave you all of me. It might have been when you were inside of me. No, it was after that, it was at least three years of me giving everything to you, my girl. I didn't know how to be both a woman and your mother, and so I focused on the thing I loved more - you - and I did that.

And then, a few years in, it was you, my boy. You grew inside of me. I felt you there right away and I knew you immediately. I wanted you and trusted you and felt you in there, knowing your way around, and I knew that you were the very thing I needed.  You came and I said thank you to the Universe; straight away, you knew me more than anyone.  

I've been thinking about the things that cause us to struggle. About how I need to be constantly in control, correcting and modifying our lives to fit inside of something that feels how I want it to feel, instead of simply crouching down and looking into your eyes and giving you every single bit of me until you're so full you say, "It's okay, Mama. We feel good now. We feel full. We're saturated with you. We feel it.  Thanks."

I keep hiding away from you - in the bathroom, in my frustration or sudden silence - because I'm scared of getting lost again. I'm scared of not knowing where the middle is.  I'm scared of becoming Only.  But today, in that safe and holy space, I knew we'll be okay when I surrender, when I become courageous enough to change the things I can, when I stop thinking that everything else will fulfill me more than presence.

I know the difference.

I know better.

And I know that loving on you just enough to satiate you, so I can go be alone, isn't really loving you. 

It's me being selfish and calling it something else.

It's me not knowing how to find a middle place, where I can have my needs deeply met while also fully meeting yours.  

And oh goodness, do you deserve all of the love.  I know this because you continue to give me all of yours, day after day, no matter if I've been disgusting with my tone, selfish with my time, and confused about how to best support you in becoming whoever you are.

And yes, even though you don't belong to me, even though you belong to the world, even though you will go and I will stay and then I will go and you will stay, even though all of that - I will now become a fierce competitor for the very hearts of you.

Because love.

Because us.

Love,
Mama

I was heartbroken today when I took an honest look at how little of myself I've been willing to give my kids lately.  I've been incredibly focused on my work.  I've been exhausted by the incessant busyness of life.  And I've become incredibly weary of parenting anxiously; I simply want things to flow, to work, to be easy.  

I didn't know I was living in a blind spot.  

That my long-term struggle with finding the middle was beginning to polarize me from my ability to give love like a waterfall cascades - endlessly.

I just didn't know.

It's complex, isn't it?  I'm certain that The Best Version Of Me is a well-rounded, self-defined woman.  I am also certain that The Best Version Of Me gives her children every bit of grace they keep giving her.

It feels crazy, this.

But maybe that's just the way this thing goes down, all crazy and love and confusing and clear, all of it, always.

I seek clarity through words, and often find solace in seeing what other folks have to say about the walk along the path.

               Some honest-to-goodness wisdom from the television set.

                                                                                                     Illusion vs. truth.

               It's not destruction.

Revealing my hidden parts to myself today was unsettling.

I felt undone.

I still do.

And so I will go wash my face and straighten my sheets and maybe try to pray again.

And I'll get up in some hours and clear my eyes and my heart and, well, you know what comes next.

*E