Saints Jude and Simon

Today is the feast of Saints Jude and Simon.  These apostles of Jesus Christ share a feast day.  I'm sure there are good reasons for this, but I am not aware of them right now.

I didn't know they shared a feast day.

When I named my little first saint in heaven Jude, it just seemed like the right name for him.  He was, I thought, impossible...so long prayed for...so hard fought for and loved.  And just like that, he was gone.  His name is Jude.  

The twins were unnamed for long time.  Naming your unborn children who you will never meet on earth is emotionally draining, to say the least.  But they needed names, and the names came to me.  Simon and Celeste.

Our latest little flower (in July) was Veronica.  She who imprints the face of Christ.

I knew that Jude's name day was coming up, but I was shocked when I started seeing the name Simon with his.  They share a name day.  How amazingly cool is that?  

A few paintings

 I did a few watercolor paintings for a swap-bot swap.  I am loving this hobby!

First Sunday in the Octave of Miscarriage

Everyday is a different set of emotions, and we shouldn't expect to see it as moving forward or backward.  Emotions simply are.  We accept them, feel them, respond to them, and process them.  Doing otherwise may damage us in the long run.  

Yesterday was a pretty good day for me.  I latched onto future plans and started planning for some videos I want to make about miscarriage, to help others.  I am not an expert on anything except my own expirience, and if I can be of any help, I want to.

Today I'm not feeling as good.  I'm more inward focused and with drawn.  I feel the buds of anger forming in me, and of desperation.  I want answers.  I have no answers about why this keeps happening to me.  There must be some reason, other than being on the older end of motherhood.  I have had a lot of testing done and it was all completely normal.  My doctor set an appointment for July 29th.  I have no other contact with him before that.  Apparently, its now too dangerous to come into the office anymore, so I have to do a video conference with him.  This COVID nonsense is getting so ridiculous when you can't even see your doctor for him to help you stop having miscarriages.  

I just want some answers.  I want some hope.  I feel like he did nothing to help me other than throw some progesterone at me.  Surely there is something more that could have been done?  

Church isn't even a blip on my radar today.  I am angry at God.  When we found out we were pregnant, we got in the car and went straight to mass and got a blessing for our pregnancy, in Latin, at the altar, with tears streaming down our faces.  It was wonderful and hopeful.  And it didn't make a bit of difference.  

The world seems to be falling apart around us.  And within me, falling apart.  I know I must keep going, but it's so very hard.  I'm so sad and angry.  I wanted this baby so much.  I see pregnant women complaining about being fat and tired and it just makes me want to scream.  Why does God give me babies in the first place and not let me keep them?  Why are we told "God knows what's best for us" and then I am to assume that it's best for my babies to all die?  Is it bad theology, bad interpretation, or just bad in general?  

Someone told me that suffering is a mystery, and not something to figure out.  Good, because I can't figure it out.  I don't think I'll ever figure it out.  

Writing to this lovely rain track - check it out.  Very calming. 

Perfectly folded

In the evening, as the sun starts to think of sinking a bit in the sky, the breezes get a tiny bit cooler.  The cicadas are singing their unmistakable song of summer.  Families are starting to settle into dinner and watching TV together.  And a heaviness descends on my heart.  It starts small; almost imperceptible.  Then it becomes a few blinks of a headache, a fatigue, a "I just need to lie down for a bit".  Then, before you know it, hours have past, the sun has gone away, and my thoughts are hopelessly tangled up in despair.  Thoughts of "what if..."

"...maybe I should have stayed with my old doctor".
"What if I had started progesterone a few days earlier?"
"Should I have stayed on the paleo diet?"
"I did have a glass of wine last week..."
"Maybe this was my last chance."

Thoughts are invisible, but they are heaviest things in the world.

I see flickers of health in me, mentally.  But sometimes it is crying or acting crazy.  Or writing bad words over and over in my journal.  A lot of times it is avoidance, or transferring my feelings onto obsession with some unrelated thing - "I need to find the perfect PopSocket for my phone!".  Or "I need to read about the history of human interaction with sloths".  Today was "I need to organize all of my quilting fabric into perfectly folded five inch stacks.". 

All of this is an attempt to gain control over some small aspect of my life.  My heart has been drawn and quartered, I think, because I can't feel much today.  Not much at all.  Except a dull, heavy pressure. 

I want to fold myself into squares in lovely rainbow order.  I want to be organized and have my life put together.  I want to make baby quilts for my own babies, not just other people's babies.  I want all this stored up love to be tangible. 

God has taken my joys.  I do have a few more left, but they are small compared to my children.  So I focus on the tiny things - the mundane and meaningless things, because they are in my power. 

Another Loss

It's really interesting to me how I'm always too scared to announce that I'm pregnant, for fear of it failing.  When it fails, I'm okay with writing about it.  So guess what I'm doing today?  

I still have never announced officially that I'm pregnant, not any of the three times I've been pregnant in the past year.  I was always of the conservative mindset that you don't announce until the end of the first trimester when the "danger was mostly passed" (lol).  Now that I've been pregnant three times, and never gotten past 10 weeks, I cannot conceive of being past the first trimester.  I was talking with my husband yesterday, before I got the utterly shocking phone call that my HCG had plummeted, and saying that it's so hard to be hopeful because I literally cannot imagine having a huge belly at this point, or seeing a heartbeat on the scan, or taking a baby home.  It's a foreign concept.  

Pregnancy to me is like playing Stella in "A Streetcar Named Desire", which I did.  It's putting on a pregnant suit and taking it off a few days or weeks later.  It's acting.  It's not real.  

But the devastation that follows it is real.  Whew momma, is it real.  It's lying in bed, silently crying and scrolling though Twitter while I emo tweet what I'm feeling and delete most of them later on.  It's messaging a few select people who I only talk to when I'm trying to get pregnant or losing a baby.  It's seeing babies in public, at mass, the store...wherever, and feeling my heart rate spike.  It's the endless pregnancy announcements that feel like a lead weight in my stomach.  It's watching myself become a more and more bitter and angry person every time it happens.  It's seeing myself rapidly age in the mirror.  It's having to go back and tell a few people that my pregnancy will no longer be an issue in their plans.  And then the actual miscarriage - curled up with cramps as my body goes through a tiny labor, canceling plans because "I'm not feeling well", and having to put on a brave face to a world that didn't even know I lost yet another child.  

This isn't a fun post to write or read.  But I must get my feelings out.  COVID-19 and the ensuing societal political dog-and-pony show have taken away my coping mechanisms.  I need to GET AWAY, but where?  Everywhere has restrictions.  I can't go visit my friends in New Mexico or New Orleans because there is nowhere to go once we get there.  Restrictions, distancing, capacity limits.  Places closed.  Quarantines.  The political implications aside, wearing a mask is chipping away at my sanity.  I need to be FREE right now and it is a very visceral set of chains to me.  I feel the world is closing in on me and it's hard to breathe.

I stopped being open with the world years ago when the politics started heating up to the point where people couldn't disagree and respect each other.  Now that I've lost my jobs, my income, all of my babies, and my social life...I'll probably start writing here a bit more.  (I hope).  I need community even though I'm an introvert.  I need people to talk to.  I need support.  I have the best husband in the world, but the weight of all of this is too much to bear.  

Choosing Positivity

For a "deep" person like me, people who were bubbly and positive always seemed shallow.  As a depressed teenager, I was full of angst and classical music and nights were spent in a candle-lit bedroom pretending to be Desdemona or Juliet, or maybe Eponine from Les Miserables.  The real and important people were always depressed or fading away from life, and the fake shallow people were happy.  I know now that this was just a way for me to deal with my own depression and trauma from childhood abuses.  It's pretty clever how kids can survive so much.  

If you have been reading my blog, Twitter, or listening to my online rants for any length of time, you might know that the past year has been an

absolute beating for my husband and me.  Starting in July of last year with our first pregnancy after a year of trying ending in miscarriage a few days later, to our second miscarriage over Christmas/New Years, to this ridiculous pandemic, to me losing most of my income and being laid off from the gym, being passed over for a wedding, everyone else being pregnant but me...it's been quite the year.  

Now I have a bit of hope brewing.  I'm not fully ready to share, but it's come to my attention that what I think, speak, and settle into actually have some bearing on my life and well-being.  Just sitting and marinating in my own thoughts and feelings needs some direction, because my "default" is definitely negativity.  

"Choosing Joy" is no longer a happy platitude.  It's a freaking hard task for me!  It is something I have to take elementary school type steps to approach.  As for now, I'm just choosing to say "I am grateful _______ and I'm choosing to enjoy rather than worry".  It's good medicine.  

The hardest thing is to remember that this doesn't make me shallow, and that depression isn't "deep".  

Get a hold of life.  Do hard things.  

UnSocial Media

Lately I've come to more belief what I've suspected, that social media is mostly toxic to our culture.  

Yes, I know I'm one to talk.  I'm addicted just like you are.  But I'm trying to step back from it.  The days before Twitter and FaceBook were so much freer and more innocent.  People listened to each other more.  It wasn't a manhunt for wrongthink.  Blogging was how you expressed your ideas online.  

Maybe I'm just getting old and decidedly uncool, but I miss the days of small online communities.  Global contentedness of everything online is just...toxic.  It's an overused word, but it's best to describe the way things are.  

The sad reality is, if I weren't connected on FB and Twitter, I wouldn't interact with many people at all.  I so wish to be in a blogging community.  Do you know of any?  You probably even found this post through social media, which is the irony of it all.  

I want my blog to be more than meta posts about blogging or social media.  What do YOU like to read about from blogs like mine?  Leave an actual comment and let me know. 

Holy Anger

Hello friends,

Has anyone else been just too lazy or depressed to do much writing? 
I know I'm not the best with keeping up blogging.  Since the days of Xanga, I've gone downhill in that respect.  Social media micro-blogging has made our attention spans shorter and not in a good way.  I'm not immune to this, though I'd like to be. 

I figure time spent away from social media could only be good for me now.  This "pandemic" is really getting us down.  We feel trapped, locked up, controlled, depressed, lazy, etc.  (Not the royal "we"...people I've talked to have told me such things).  Life goes on in a daze, and we go from day to day just marking hours awake and asleep, with not much end in sight.

My personal struggle has been that there isn't much to look forward to.  I have gone from BIG plans...baby on the way...two babies on the way...to nothing.  Not even a normal end to the school year with recitals and all that.  I've watched my pregnancies suddenly end and other people have their first, second...and third kids around me.  And me, nothing.  I've been passed over in more ways than these...friends and family.  It seems I've been forgotten sometimes. 

I know that I'm not forgotten.  I have a holy anger inside me.  I used to think that was automatically bad.  I believed that any negative things I felt were bad and that I was bad for feeling them.  (Cue Alanis Morisette's "Thank You" in your head)  I am learning to embrace ALL of my feelings, instead of just the good ones.  Learning to express anger and not stuff it down.  Heck, if I stuffed all my anger down at this point in time, I'd explode. 

We walk a fine line between expression and tempering our tongues.  I do like the phrase "holy anger".  Maybe it's just vanity, but I want to explore this some more.  Anger can do things besides destroy, if we use it well.  I realize I cannot avoid these feelings, so I must choose how to spend them.  There is power in that choice. 

You wasted your ferility

Hello again!

I am going to write about my miscarriages a little bit.  If that offends you or you'd rather not read, consider this your warning.  Nothing gross will be discussed.

In case you missed it:  I have now had two back-to-back miscarriages.  The first was the very last day of July.  The second was the very last day of December.  Both were different.  Both were awful.  I am not healed yet, either physically or mentally.  I am still registering as pregnant on the HCG test, which is like a gut punch to see every time I get blood drawn.

I have shared about my miscarriages a bit in a few Facebook groups in I'm, and on Twitter and Instagram.  I haven't shared on my Facebook timeline.  I'm not completely sure why, but I just feel like being more private because of the wider audience and number of acquaintances I have.

One FB group is a group of INTJs.  INTJs are personality type on the Myers-Briggs assortment of personality types.  They tend to be analytical, able to discuss things with more thinking than emotion, and introverted.  Fun fact: Mr. Darcy is often typed as an INTJ, for people who are into that sort of thing.

We were discussing dating, waiting for marriage for sex, and standards in general.  The discussion from a few girls who are now into their 30s ranged from being horrified by the low number of good men there seem to be left in dating pool.  Some said they'd prefer a virgin, since they'd saved their own virginity for marriage.  A few said they wanted a virgin but have given up finding a guy who had waited.  Some said they didn't care.

I interjected, as my dumb self often does, my strong opinions about this matter.  I think everyone should have high standards, and that NO one should settle for something less than they want.  I say this realizing I didn't get married till my 30s, knowing full well that this kind of time spent brings years of lonely nights, sadness, depression, and feeling hopeless about finding a husband.  Believe me...I know.

I also pointed out that in theory, we shouldn't have a different standard for men than women along the lines of virginity.  I was able to wait for marriage to have sex.  Why can't a guy?  I'm not talking about non-Christian guys.  I'm talking about boys raised in church by good families.  Sometimes it's like sex was so taboo that no one ever talked about it...and the excuse is "well, I knew deep down it was wrong, but since no one ever talked about it I did it anyway".  If you know me, you know I hate this with a passion.  People should talk about things, especially things that will affect the rest of their lives both emotionally, physically...could bring a child into the world, or give them a disease.  Freaking talk about it! 

Some incredibly cruel person (a man with something like 18 kids) decided to tell me that my standards were too high.  He said that I could brag about waiting for marriage if I wanted to, but that he had to bring up the obvious: that I "wasted my most fertile years waiting for a virgin guy to marry".  And that my miscarriages were a sad reminder of that.  I had "gotten what I wanted, but now had to pay for it". 

I was livid.  I have never in my life had someone be this cruel to me about two of the most vulnerable things I can think of.  1.  My being single so long and marrying later in life and 2. Having my first three children die before birth.  I was so upset that I was shaking.  He did eventually apologize, but I ended up blocking him so I will never have to interact with him again.  (He's a Christian by the way.  Teaches marriage prep at his church.  I hope that's not part of his advice!)

So the issue is this:  Everything is a trade off.  I know this.  But can we really expect people to live holy lives if we tell them that they must hurry to get married so they can have lots of kids?  Or on the flip side:  If we wait for someone who truly connects with us on both a romantic and godly level, is it worth not having as many kids because of it?

I was a very damaged person.  I had no sense of who I was or how to relate to men.  I dated men over and over who were extremely talented and impressive on paper, but who couldn't stand up to being a good man in a relationship with me.  I wasn't attracted to the right type of men.   I was in therapy for years to help myself overcome my childhood.  In the end, I think God got around my barriers in spite of myself.  None of this was my fault and I tried desperately to be emotionally healthy because I knew I wasn't.

Was I "wasting my fertility" by doing this?
What kind of mother would I have been?  What kind of wife?  I am almost positive that marrying an earlier match would have ended in a terribly heartbreaking divorce.  So what then?  Was it just not God's will for me to have children?

Three things I take away from this:
1. This guy is an A-hole.  No one should say things like that.  To ANYONE.
2. I did the best I could.  People around me are doing the best they can.  If someone is trying, give her credit!
3.  God is a God of surprises.


That last one is the best.  God is sometimes sneaky.  My marriage is living proof of this.  (Gosh, I love him).  Maybe I'll have a child, yet.  If I do, it will be a miracle.  Not because I was good enough, or was a virgin till marriage, or got married young or old or was in the church or out of the church.  But because God is good.

God is good.

That's all I have to hold onto, so I'm holding on tight.

For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come; it will not delay.

Habakkuk 2:3

Blogilates 2020 Challenge Day 6

Guys...I have anemia and I did this workout.  I felt like I was gonna die or pass out on camera.  I probably shouldn't have done it.  But I did it anyway, and figured it was worth the upload.  Form is all over the place.

Do you work out when you are sick?  It's a good idea to listen to your body and not push too far.

Blogilates 2020 Challenge Day 5

We have hip dippers and star abs.
Do it!  Go Go Go!

Blogilates 2020Challenge Day 3

Day 3 of the #2020Challenge

20 reps of each move

1. Plie Squats

2. V-ups

I included a modification for the 2nd move!

Blogilates #2020Challenge Day 2

Arms and Abs!

I include the modification for rollups.

Vulnerability and Friendship

I'm on some weird meds right now.  Don't ask.

But they make me stop and think about things from a little different perspective.  I get mushy and affectionate and have a desire to tell people how much they mean to me.  I was thinking, today, about what my New Years Resolution should be, if I have one at all.  I don't normally have one, or I do just a general "work out more" or "take more time to read", or something of the like.

But I realized that I want to have friends, and to be a friend to people, but something always holds me back.  I know that I'm an introvert who isn't great at just going up to people and making friends.  But it's more than that.  There is something there, something I have not thought about very much.  And today, while on these weird meds, I've been thinking about it.

I am terrified of rejection.
Great fear for an actress, right?
But really.  I realize that I have had this my entire life.  In junior high I was friends with several good girls.  As girls do, someone invariably will betray or stab someone else in the back emotionally.  It happened (happened in a sketchy, abusive way that my school covered up.  Maybe that's another vulnerable post for another day).  In high school I had this major inferiority complex.  I remember looking at other people and thinking "they have something that I haven't got...that I won't get...that I don't even understand".  I thought these people were worlds above me.

I really didn't have a firm grasp of reality.  This can happen when you have a Borderline parent who changes the rules; moves the goalposts.  Or makes you doubt what is real, in a very literal sense.  It's what we know as gaslighting - when someone makes you feel crazy for the things they are doing.  I tried very hard to make sense of this world in which I lived.  I didn't do very well, and retreated into mental fantasy as only a teenage girl can.  I was into musicals and plays, operas, Shakespeare, art...Europe...all fantasy versions of these things were I made a palace in my mind.  A place I knew how things worked and what were the rules.  I knew what was expected of me, and who I was.

But I didn't know who I was, especially when I got to college.  The world was so different to me, and I was terrified.  I'd never been around drinking or sex or danger.  My college was in a bad part of town.  There were vagrants and sometimes murders.  There was normal sex and degeneracy happening around me.  I was terrified.  I rarely left my room.  I retreated into fantasy, again.  I had a few friends but not ones I spent much time with.  When I transferred to a new school...the Christian university, I expected things to be better.  They weren't.

I was so alone.  I was so angry.  My parents got separated and divorced while I was in college, and my world shattered.  If I had thought that I was confused before that, I was blissfully unaware of the level of confusion that comes from divorce.  I retreated into fantasy again, but this time a darker version.  I got into things I shouldn't.  I spent way too much time online and in chat rooms.  I wanted friends so badly, but I was burned and rejected by people at my Christian university.  No one "got" me.  I was angry that no one reached out when I was hurting, so I pushed people away even more.  It was a very lonely, angry time.

I also had no idea till recently that I suffer from anxiety.  I thought everyone was nervous all the time like I was.  I wanted things to go well, to not walk funny or say anything weird.  I seldom felt at ease.  I was uptight and put up walls to protect myself from failure, and this doesn't make friends.

(Man, am I really writing a post about how I had no friends?  Lol...)

Anyway, I think I'm doing much better now, as far as anxiety goes.
But have two miscarriages and you will realize that you can't retreat into fantasy forever.  You need connection with real people.  You need human warm.  I have the best husband in the history of the world, but I need friends as well.

But there's that...thing again.  That fear of messing up.  Fear of someone seeing me cry.  Worry that things will be weird.   Worry that I'll be stabbed in the back again by a Christian friend.  I'm afraid of being known.  Being an introvert, I'm not good at small talk.  Do people want to talk about Victorian corsets and why the TSA is a terrible organization?  Or why Anglican Chant is amazing for psalms?  Naw, they want to talk about TV shows, right?

Who knows?

I will TRY my best to be available, vulnerable, and fun.
Maybe have some confidence in myself.  Maybe believe people when they tell me I'm funny and that they actually like being around me.  Maybe I'm not so bad after all.  Maybe the childhood parent voice saying "you're not good enough" should retire in 2020.  Or maybe it's my job to make this happen.

I'm saying that I want to try.

Blogilates 2020 Challenge Day 1

I am taking on this challenge to start the new year, even though I'm going through a miscarriage right now...these are easy workouts and I just want to stay moving.  I would love for you to join me!  Here is the graphic:

The challenge is 20 days and is only two moves per day.  It's pretty easy and should be short and sweet.  I will be making my own videos, but Cassey's video on Day 1-7 is here...

Day 1-7 #2020Challenge 


Here is my Day 1 Video!
No makeup, no workout clothes...messed up the reps, but who cares?  Jump right on in with me and get moving to start the year right!