It was a young man looking clearly into my eyes this morning.

Back from a successful 3 months at boot camp, being forged into a United States Marine. Completing a month off to see family and friends over the holidays. Now having the final Dad-breakfast of this chapter of his young life, before heading out tonight for advanced training and a career going who-knows-where in coming years.

It was a young man across the table. So short a time ago, a little tow-headed boy. Now, a strong-jawed Marine, quite a sight when in his dress blues. We looked into the future together, with both confidence and excitement.

For years, we held him close…with the ultimate parental goal of finally letting go.

And as we had a last talk to cap off this stage of the father-son relationship, it was a young man who was thinking responsibly. Aware of his duties, and of the needs of others. Someone for whom I always felt deep love, but now, another, very profound sense was emerging.

Respect. Mutual respect.

This boy had given us a run for our money. Growing him up was definitely not a trouble-free process. There was heartache and grief. But underneath all the teen folly, a young man was lurking, ready to shed the cocoon and fly.

We’re at the launch pad, and this one is fueled up and ready to go. It’s lift-off time. My heart is oscillating wildly with more emotions than I can even identify. My keyboard, even now, is stained with tears.

Go, David - Go. May God bless you.

Love, Dad

It’s Wednesday morning. I love Wednesday mornings.

For now, anyway. Sometime next year, I’ll probably hate them. But I’ve come to accept that such duality is part of my life as a mother. It started at the very beginning. When my son was born a little more than four years ago, I hated motherhood.

After the colic and the breastfeeding struggles and the sleeping through the night struggles abated at about six months, I settled into a love-hate relationship with motherhood. Life was way better  than newborn-hood, but I still missed my pre-parental life more than I liked my present.

Between a year and 18 months, a period when I got a new job and we found reliable child care that we’re still with, the scale tipped toward the love end. So much so that the idea of a second child was broached, mulled and then manifested.

Said second child was born 11 days before first child turned three. We did not experience the alleged “terrible twos,” but three put me right back on the cliff of motherhood. Multi-round daily battles of will with my son poised me to plunge back into the abyss of regret and resentment. I was walked back from the edge only – to my abiding amazement – by the second child.

She was darling. She was sweet. She took naps. There were no breastfeeding struggles, no hours-long evening crying jags. My second maternity leave was one of the happiest times of my life.

And I felt guilty.

Parents are supposed to love their kids equally, right? Favoritism is unfair, breeds sibling rivalry, keeps therapists in business, etc. etc. etc.

So I tried to hide that I preferred her. I tried so hard, and since she was easy to handle and my son’s behavior – especially potty training – was all-consuming, I didn’t even realize how disproportionate my attentions became over her first year.

Which brings me back to Wednesday mornings. Wednesdays are one of my days off and until this fall, I spent them home with both kids. But my son started preschool in September. He goes Wednesday mornings, giving me three hours alone with my daughter.

One of those first Wednesdays, I realized I didn’t have to hide my preference. Since my son wasn’t there to see it, I could snuggle and kiss and coo and babytalk his sister as much as I wanted. (Plus there’s the fact that she’ll still take a morning nap, giving me precious writing time.) As I let it all flow out, I realized how much I’d choked myself back – in the name of fairness to my son.

How fair was that to my daughter?

But before succumbing to yet another wave of guilt (you do that, too?) I managed to somehow scramble up to a higher perch. Surveyed from above, I could identify my motherhood pattern. Call it duality, a pendulum, yin-yang, a see-saw, call it whatever, but it is a fact of my life as a parent. Now that I’ve experienced this pattern repetition, I’m no longer all that concerned with the conflicting rhythms between each child or each day, and forces that push and pull me toward one one or the other. Now that the three-year-old battlefield is behind us, it’s shifting already in the pleasure and gratitude I feel being with my finally four-year-old son.

It’s taken me four years to learn, but my norm is to yo-yo both between the kids, as well as between deep contentment as a mother and nagging, grass-is-greener thinking about a different choice. To fight it or wish it away is to deny myself. To realize it, accept it and say it publicly here is huge.

Gotta go. Less than two hours left this Wednesday morning.

I was at an industry conference (Blogworld Expo), coming down with the flu, when I was confronted by someone who didn’t like something I had blogged about on one of my personal blogs. The person accused me of lying, but then kept asking me for more “evidence” and examples to prove I wasn’t lying. Finally, in what was most likely a moment of anger on their part, they asked:

“Aren’t you on medication?”

“Yes, I replied evenly. “Of course, you know I am. I blog about it openly.”

“Well, it must not be working. You obviously have a problem,” they said. After that, I tuned them out. The conversation had disintegrated into petty meanness.

I couldn’t believe it. Someone actually used the fact that I was on a low dosage of an anti-anxiety medication for treating post partum depression against me because they didn’t like or agree with the things I was saying on my blog. And they said this to me at an industry conference, no less.

That’s when it hit me: Post partum depression is still grossly misunderstood and - like any form of depression or mental imbalance - is regarded as shameful and the “root of evil.” So I thought I’d blog again about my year of silent screaming - and loud screaming. The year after my daughter was born.

I had a good pregnancy, my 5th in 2 years and the only one that held on for 9 months.

I had a horrible labor where the highlight was being given Ambien after over 30 hours of laboring to “help me sleep.”  Despite my concern that it might not be a good thing for me, I was told it was fine and safe. Then I proceeded to hallucinate for hours in the middle of the night, hitting myself and talking about the many people standing in my room, watching me. My husband had to hold me down to keep me from hurting myself. Scenes from the movie “The Sixth Sense” come to mind as I retell this.

I had a horrible breastfeeding experience after the first night in the hospital when a nurse gripped and twisted my breast so callously, causing swelling. I ended up with double mastitis (infection of milk ducts) within a week of giving birth. Nobody believed I could have double mastitis so early into attempting to breastfeed so it went untreated. When I eventually sought help from a lactation consultant, she actually took photographs of my breasts because she couldn’t believe how bad the infection had gotten.

My daughter refused to breastfeed. To her, breastfeeding meant pain, blood, mommy crying and near starvation. I was devastated. I pumped breast milk for my daughter for almost a year after that.

I knew I’d have sleepless nights in the first week after giving birth, but I was so exhausted a month later that I was starting to hallucinate, this time without sleeping aids.

Then the anger started.

I screamed. I ran around the house screaming. I cursed. I threw plates full of food into the air or at the walls.

Once, I ran out of the house screaming with car keys in my hand, and my husband had to chase after me and carry me back in the house.

Another time, my husband took our infant daughter into another room while I was freaking out, and I proceed to follow him screaming that he can’t keep her away from me, that he can’t take her from me.

Looking back, I can’t imagine what my husband was thinking or feeling. To this day, I try to get him to talk about it so we can keep working on healing all those deeply-placed wounds. The fact that he stayed with me is a true testament of the power of love.

Six months into this hell, my mother finally told me something I had never heard her talk about before: she thought she might have had “something like this” when she gave birth to my sister.

She told me that she felt like she was screaming inside, but nothing would come out.

I asked my dad about this. Did he remember?

He said that he used to say my mom was “climbing the walls.” So he would take me and my baby sister out of the house to give my mom some “quiet time.”

My mother also revealed that her mother may have had “something like this.” Apparently my grandmother used to scream. Just scream and scream.

I vowed that when my daughter grew up and contemplated a family, I would tell her to keep an eye out for signs of “something like this.”

This. Post Partum Depression.

After nearly a year pumping breast milk, I decided I had done what I could and stopped. My health practitioner was relieved.

“Now we can finally treat you,” she said then referred me to another practioner who said she wanted to put me on medication.

No way, I said. I was in the Tom Cruise camp that this stuff could be treated with vitamins, natural remedies, exercise.

I cried. I pleaded. I said I feared for my life and my sanity if I were to go on medication.

“That’s the depression talking,” she said simply.

I eventually agreed to try the lowest dose of the medication that day.

That night, I finally really slept for the first time in almost a year.

That next week, I could no longer feel the screams inside.

That next month, I realized how much pain I had caused my family and how much I had to make up to them.

It took me a year to warm up to my daughter who was so distant from me at first that I couldn’t even believe I was her mother. I had to admit that during her first year of life, I wasn’t really her mother. I was a jumbled mess with an out-of-whack hormone cocktail surging through me. I was red hot lava. I was anger.

I think it took my daughter an entire year to forgive me in her own instinctive child’s way.

It took me even longer to forgive myself or actually to realize that I wasn’t to blame in the first place.

I’ve stayed on the medication - still at the lowest dose - and feel “normal” again, whatever that means. In my life, it means that I can think straight, be productive in my work, and bond deeply with my husband and daughter.

And I no longer feel the screaming inside.

What more can we do to break the taboos around post partum depression so women can seek help without shame and more readily support one another?

Three years ago, I was a was single, driven career girl, with an even grasp on the corporate ladder and a swing in my step.  I had a new car, a new town home condominium that was spotless with everything had its place. I shopped at Saks, had “mani-pedis “with my gal pals and relished sushi lunches with fabulous friends.  I worked out five times a week for two hours and was getting back into good shape and good health.  Dates included lingering conversations over meals and movies — as well as the occasional candy and flowers.   Give me just a minute to say, “Ahhh.”

Fast forward to today!  To start with, I am now married to a great guy.  On Friday, our little boy will be two years old.  TWO!  One…Two!  Wow, they grow so fast.   Today, I work mostly from home running my consulting business.  My husband quit his job 18 months ago to stay at home with our son  and pursue ministry work.   So, here we are together… with our ball-obsessed dog, Maggie.   Snug as bugs in a rug.  Life is very different in this new place.  Very good, and very different.

As I have chatted and tweeted, laughed and cried with my other, now married gal pals — especially the ones with children — we have come to an agreement over the nature of a few, key changes in our lives.  My dear friend, Ann, encouraged me to share some of our thoughts with you here.

The new sexy: Hubby doing dishes, laundry and then vacuuming

The new “moo-moo” Yoga pants and a hoodie

The new workout: Picking up toys

The new mop: Calling the dog to lick up mess from floor

The new clean: Dishes out of the sink, everything else stuffed in a closet

The new gourmet: Anywhere kids eat free

The new sushi: Peanut Butter and Jelly cut into triangles

The new sleeping in: 8 am = Heaven!

The new Ann Klein: “Finale Clearance” (say this with French accent)

The new splurge: Expensive shampoo and conditioner

The new mani-pedi: Taking a hot, uninterrupted shower

The new good hair day: CLEAN

The new favorite outfit: Anything that FITS

The new dress up: Wearing a bra

The new date night: Staying awake through the END of the movie

The new foreplay: Kicking off the yoga pants

The new gal bonding: Half -completed thoughts uttered in between shouts of “NO, <insert child’s name> No biting!”

The new teething ring: The dog’s ball (builds immunity)

The new promotion: Transitioning from Pampers to Pullups

The new fabulous: Absorbing each new beautiful word my son says

The new sunset: The peace that comes after bedtime

The new romance: Knowing my husband loves me — even in my yoga pants

In short, life is good.  It’s not always easy. It’s often hard work.  I’ve learned to let go of control and my own “standards” and desire for order.  But in doing so, things have developed a curious order of their own.  I have been released into a life I’d only dreamed of.   It’s a life indescribable… and one I call, “The New Happy.” Memories of the old life aside, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I recently wrote a post about contrast and how we need it to define things, i.e. we can’t name ‘cold’ if we don’t have ‘hot’ to compare it to. But, now I’m wondering what to do if the contrasting and defining object is a moving target.

Here’s the thing: I don’t know how big I am, or how small for that matter. Literally. I’m shocked by the mirror and the scale. I’m shocked when things are too big and when they’re too small. I’m shocked when I see pictures of myself and I come up to everyone’s chest. I’m shocked when I see my reflection and I seem larger than I expected.

As a result, I don’t trust any of it and I go about my days having no idea what I look like or how my body actually fits into space.

And, really, why should I? This is a case where the contrasting target is moving. AND, this is a case where the physical is heavily influenced by the emotional and intellectual self. For reasons feminine, cultural and uniquely circumstantial, my size and my perception keep changing.

• In high school, I was popular, successful and an athlete. I was larger than life, but my body felt small.
• In college, I was invisible, drowning with an eating disorder and unhappy. I was terribly insignificant, but my body felt huge.
• As I entered adulthood, I was told to be independent and strong, but society and its magazines were reminding me not to get too big. I was confused and yo-yoing, my body didn’t know which way was up.
• As I became a mother, I urged my body to grow in order to support my babies as they came to be and as they continue to need my protection, time and attention in this world. I am expanding rapidly, my body feels like it isn’t my own and its borders are too far away to see.
• As a wife, I need to pull those edges back in to ‘me’ so that I can feel my woman-ness. My body feels conflicted and exhausted and totally bent out of shape.
• As a writer, speaker and blogger in the context of this blog and a few others and in my immediate community, I receive insanely wonderful connections and feedback. My brain and heart feel big.
• As a writer, speaker and blogger in the context of the world and social media, I’m just tiny. Little fish, big sea.

When I look at all of this, I see that the common thread here is relativity. It’s similar to the fact that I still feel 17, but my birth certificate says I’m 36. I mean, really? Is that true? What’s true?

I’m not sure there’s a way to escape it. But, I’m certain I can’t let it color my forward motion. If we sat around all day and thought about the 300 million people on Facebook, we would never join or think it could be a successful social media tool - and we’d miss out on connecting and sharing with old and new friends. If we thought about the millions of other writers that are out there - either getting published or struggling with rejection letters - we would never type another word.

Why do we look to the outside to define our size or simply who we are? Why would we look outside when outside is constantly changing and insecure? Huh. Maybe that’s why we’re so insecure.

Hard to pin your edges on something that moves, expands, shrinks and bends, isn’t it? Maybe it’s the inside - that still thinks it’s 17 and perfectly sizable that needs to be the touchpoint. That way, at least, it’s always up to us, the magnitude of the space we take up in the world.

Originally posted on Writing Roads

Image credit: Steph & Adam

Two coming attractions at the movie theater are based on books that both my girl and I have enjoyed reading - “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.”

“Where the Wild Things Are” was a book that I read in my own childhood and a fellow bibliophile I used to work with (thanks Leslie) made sure my child got the chance to read it, too, by including it in a baby shower gift. The “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” book came a little late for me, but my librarian mother introduced it to my girl and she and I both enjoyed it.

Now, bringing a book to the movie screen has always been fraught with danger. Everyone who has read a book has their own ideas about how the characters look, so casting can get a lot of fan input or backlash (Tom Cruise as Lestat anyone?). Storylines often get changed to meet a perceived desire of audiences to always have happy endings (think “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “The Scarlet Letter“). Sometimes entire characters are dropped or added, which frustrated me in “Angels and Demons,” despite the fact that I can understand things need to be edited sometimes to squeeze an entire book into a couple of hours of screen time.

That difficulty of making the in-depth short is probably the most common cause of changes that frustrate book lovers who see the movies based on them. But what of short childrens’ books that need to be expanded to make them long enough for a movie? Does that make it any easier for adaptation? I’m thinking not based strictly on my own mixed feelings about these two new movies.

It appears that they have expanded Cloudy primarily by adding a story in front of the story - giving the audience a tale of how the food first came to fall from the sky in the town of Chewandswallow - and I think this will work nicely.

But, from what I can tell from the fantastic Wild Things trailers, the 10 sentences of the original story are getting a lot of filler in between them - thus potentially changing the story a bit more. The live-action attempt at The Grinch Who Stole Christmas tried doing both and I don’t think the results were very spectacular there.

Obviously aware that I’m not the only one a bit leery of this, the studio has made a point to include original Wild Things author Maurice Sendak in many publicity events and he has been reporting saying the “Wild Things Movie Will Be Okay” as well as promising the “Wild Things Movie Will Be Dark and Controversial.”

Hmm…

Either way, I will probably see both movies. Not needing an excuse to watch kids’ movies, after all, is one of the perks of this mommy gig, right? And, while I will definitely enter the Wild Things theater with trepidation and concern that the book will never read the same for me again, I bet this trailer makes you want to see more, too.

(The Arcade Fire song on this Wild Things trailer really helps inspire a sense of wonder and the desire to see it - too bad word is it won’t be in the actual movie.)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Childhood Memories Coming to a Theater Near You (firstbook.org)
• Watch This: Maurice Sendak Talks ‘Wild Things’ (cinematical.com)
• Dave Eggers’ 300-Page Storybook Adaptation (mediabistro.com)
• Jonze And Sendak Meeting Like Something From A Spike Jonze Movie (cinemablend.com)

I’m an inadequate mother. There, I said it. And I have to say that I feel a sense of relief saying it out loud or at least out in the open on a very public blog. I’ve felt this deep, burning inadequacy often in the last three years since my daughter was born, but I feel it more and more as I fail to properly navigate the twisted paths through parenthood.

Tonight, my husband is out of town, and my daughter refused to go to sleep. I decided to make things fun for her and to let her snuggle in “mommy and daddy’s bed” for a while, maybe even sleep there with me. I even let her watch a little movie in bed after her regular bedtime to make it extra special. I thought that would be a cool mommy thing to do.

The whole thing backfired on me. When I said it was time to go to sleep, instead of a compliant child, I had a toddler meltdown on my hands. What was I thinking? Of course she’d be overtired if I let her stay up past her bedtime. Why hadn’t I anticipated the errors of my ways? And why did I think my idea of cool mommy was even remotely suitable for a three year old? But what the hell do I know?

I don’t know, and there’s the rub. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, a devastating realization for an overachiever who has been good at just about everything I’ve put my mind to do. But not motherhood. I throw my heart, soul and brainpower into being a good mom, but it always seems to backfire on me.

For some reason, I’m not getting the memos on what to do when she refuses to go potty, refuses to eat her dinner, refuses to go to bed. Intellectually, I know she is testing the waters, testing her power as a little individual. I don’t know how much is too much discipline or how little is too little. I don’t want to crush her feisty little spirit, but I can see how this could happen all too easily.

Tonight, after carrying her kicking and screaming into her bedroom when she utterly refused to go to sleep in my bed, I listened to her screeching and howling. Then she came out of her bedroom and back into mine.

“Go…to…bed,” I said in measured tones.

“I don’t want to go to bed,” she sobbed.

“Go…to…bed…now…or I’ll carry you back in your room and shut the door.”

“I don’t want to go to bed in my bed. I don’t want to go to bed in your bed. I want to go to bed in the living room. On the sofa,” she told me.

The living room? Was that okay to do? Was I giving in too easily, I wondered, as I followed her to the living room and tucked her blanket around her as she curled up on the sofa. She wanted to go to sleep in the living room. I returned to my bedroom exhausted, overwhelmed, feeling like I didn’t know what just happened or why. Certain that I just committed Mommy Sin #1285 and creating some new problem by not making her sleep in her own bed tonight.

Then I had to laugh through my own tears tonight as I read Steve Woodruff’s post about Father’s Day, and how men can feel inadequate about being fathers. Who are the parents who don’t feel inadequate most of the time? Or what I really want to know is who are the ones who do, and what denial pill or happy sauce are they slugging down? I want some.

Am I the only one who feels at any moment I might get fired from this mommy gig?

This post was originally published on Writing Roads, but then I got to thinking…what about my daughter? She’s three. Do I want her to grow up in a world where Angelina Jolie is touted as an acceptable feminist icon? Hell no. Do I want my son, also 3, thinking this is the epitome of being a worthwhile woman and what he should desire? Hell no - again. So, I’m posting it here as well…

Dear Naomi Wolf,

I’m really a fan of your work. So I’m quite confused by the article you wrote about Angelina Jolie in Harper’s Bazaar where you declared her the new feminist icon.

One of your reasons? Because she had escaped the Madonna/Whore debacle. Interesting? Did she really? Was she ever a shoe-in for the Madonna? There isn’t enough ‘orphan’ in China to cover those tattoos. Sorry. (I have three tattoos myself, I love tattoos, but the Madonna - last time I checked - had none.)

Escape the image of the Whore? Um. Last time I checked she had an affair with a married man and then told everyone about it in a magazine. You wrote, ’she managed the almost unheard-of task of turning the home-wrecker label into a wholesome, family-friendly triumph.’ …………….. Sorry for the pause. I was busy. Throwing up.

Is this a joke? Who decided that she triumphed and who the hell called it wholesome? I think what she did was horrid and unforgivable. I’ve never caught her face on the front of the tabloids and thought anything but, ‘Ew.’ She did something wrong. She hurt at least one person, badly. And because the media decided to spin it one particular way, she triumphed? Naomi, you say it yourself: Maddox was photographed playing squeaky clean football with Brad Pitt, the father figure, and by Annie Liebovitz loving his mother. This was not a triumph - but a well-played, well-moneyed PR stunt.

I don’t care how much good she does in the world, you can’t really erase that, can you??? Maybe you can note her change or congratulate her for doing good things - but call a spade a spade. I beg you.

Then, you claim that because Santa Angelina (as Perez likes to call her) got her pilot’s license, she’s chosen “the classic metaphor for choosing your own direction.” Oh? What about a race car driver like Danica Patrick? What about Secretary of State like Hilary Clinton (I mean, she travels all over the world!)? What about an artist? What about a writer? I can think of dozens of professions that involve choosing your own direction. Boldly, even.

You also declare that ’she took for her own pleasure the male seen as the most desired of the tribe, Brad Pitt.’ Not to me. I’m a George Clooney kind of a girl. And there’s something so barbaric in your word choice…but I get that you meant to do that. You want us to see her as the cavewoman clubbing the man and dragging him back to her cave. You succeeded, I just don’t find that alluring, praise-worthy or as a desirable behavior.

Maybe this is my favorite part of your article:

“Yes, she is conventionally beautiful: Bosomy and wasp-waisted, with that curtain of hair and those crazy pillowy lips, she is an obvious male sex fantasy.”

Hello? Naomi? Are you even in there??? You, yes YOU, the one that wrote The Beauty Myth. On what planet is Angelina Jolie ‘conventionally beautiful’??? Her boobs are huge. She looks anorexic - whether she is or isn’t, her bones poke out and there is no meat on her. She’s 34 years old, has carried three children in her womb and her stomach is non-existent and those boobs stand up without stretch marks so far as we can see. Her lips are, as you say, pillows - meaning overstuffed (and I’m sure they’re natural, they do seem to exist in her childhood photos). BUT MOST WOMEN DON’T LOOK LIKE THAT.

If I remember correctly, you wanted to liberate us from thinking we needed to idolize that male, sexualized, impossible to attain ideal! Just because some women, or the majority according to your poll, think she’s hot doesn’t make it okay. Why do you think they find her attractive? Doesn’t this beauty myth play a role. Wasn’t your theory that women are pressured into taking on this idealized concept of the female body? By men?

I read your book a long time ago, when it came out in 1991. And it meant so much to me. So much - as a woman who was struggling with an eating disorder, who had just found herself plopped in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog masquerading as a private, New England college, who went on to struggle and survive, who was proudly among the first small group of women to graduate with a Women’s Studies major.

So, my feminst icon? Well, she used to look a little bit like Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, Billie Jean King, Sylvia Boorstein and my fourth grade teacher, Holly Tetlow, all rolled into one. But the more I read your article, the more I realized that my icon is so much more. She’s new women I meet doing amazing things, female authors that are writing their hearts out, mothers that survive the loss of a child, girls finding their voices, she’s my friends, she’s my family. And she’s me - on my good days and on my bad ones.

We are more universal. We’re a grab bag, really. As diverse as our needs and wants on any given day. But, bottomline, my icon is real. She’s here.

Live and let live. I don’t know Angelina Jolie and I don’t pretend to just becuase I can read about her life in People magazine. But, I do know my icons, idols, role models and fantasies…and they look, act and exist nothing like Angelina Jolie.