There is absolutely nothing written anywhere that says Moms who carry clean wipes and organize with twist ties and “label-able” baggies are better than Messy Moms. Yet, on many occasions, I have pondered this. Yes, life would be simpler if I were a more organized ziplock baggie-type of Mom, but would we be a happier family? Show me the studies that prove children raised in organized environments thrive and flourish and I might consider (though at 49 I am pretty sure it is far too late) changing my ways.
Like Carrie Bradshaw, each morning I awoke to a boutiquey trail of shoes down my steps and to the front door.
I mean, it isn’t as if nobody saw this coming: when we were dating, my husband recalls the “trail of shoes” in my little pink house – I liked it that way because I never knew what kind of “shoe mood” I would wake up in. Some people simply need to see their stuff to feel comfortable.
This is cozy. A bookshelf would be “cold” and uninviting.
Ask any other Clutter Mom how they manage to run an organized household around so much “stuff” and you will get the same answer: “I know exactly where everything is and it makes perfect sense to me.” Just not anybody else!
To me, THIS is organized.The first time I took baby Isa to visit my parents in St. Louis, my car was loaded down with so much baby gear (to improve her intelligence at 3 months), my Dad asked “Where’s the BABY?”
My kids are teenagers now and my family pretty much knows “I Yam Who I Yam,” and they take responsibility for organizing their own stuff. In addition to my proclivity to create clutter, I also have disastrous handwriting. So much so that, on many occasions, my children would come home from school claiming the teacher accused them of “forging your Mom’s signature” on papers she had sent home. Sigh. For years, Isa re-wrote my grocery lists for me.
Instead of making life more difficult, I think my messy-leaning-habits have created a sense of acceptance, tolerance and love in my household. Put THAT in your labeled baggie and twist tie your opinions, ORGANIZED MOMMAS!
Because my children and household are F-I-N-E with their Messy Momma. I may not be able to whip out exactly what my children need at precisely the right time from my purse, like other Moms, but my kids always understood my struggle with organization and everybody managed to get by.
If you are reading this and have perhaps been feeling badly about your lack of organization, I urge you to to think a moment about whether anybody in your family would be happier or better off but for your personal failings. I always found the Organized Moms to be a tad boring, myself. And THAT’s how we ROLL………..
Yesterday it became official: After 20 years of marriage, I am officially 31 pounds heavier than I was on my wedding day. But I am too busy getting sober, raising teenagers, losing my reading glasses, finding myself, and holding on to the time I have today with loved ones to really give a damn.
Another thing became official in the last week: my husband believes in the regular “God Winks” I am receiving from my Dad.
I have had some really awful moments in my struggle for sobriety these past 156 days – and Daddy always appears at just the right moment, in the form of a feather.
Mike witnessed it as we gazed outside his office window anticipating the start of the Kansas City World Series Parade last week: out of the blue, a single feather gracefully frolicked in the wind and made its way to the pavement just beneath us. He looked at me with wonder and said, “Dickie’s here!”. Yesterday, I was feeling like a little kid again, preparing to meet a new friend and try a new AA meeting, and wanting to just go home and hide beneath my covers. I ran out to my car before my friend met me for coffee before the meeting to look for my phone: a single feather lay just beside my car door (it was NOT there when I arrived a few moments earlier). Dad was reassuring me, “Go ahead and go to that meeting. You need it.”
I’m holding on and letting go to everything and everyone these days, it seems: my beautiful teenagers; my youth (and former figure!); things that used to matter but really don’t anymore; my dreams of who I wanted to be and reckoning with the reality of the time I have left to fulfill them or make new ones.
Grandma Rhetta gets a BIG hug from 5-year-old Mario for the beautiful quilt she made him.
I am still thrilled and sometimes even enraptured by the journey of life – including the scars I carry as a mid-lifer. It’s wild to ponder the things that matter more to me now that I know I don’t have a lot of time on this Earth. I care more about being gentle and kind than winning, at anything. I worry less about deadlines and more about resilience and protection (social work lingo that I love!). We live among the wounded and I want to be a healer.
Sally Wilcox. my dear friend, passed these along to me when my family was treated unkindly in a small town. She became a Deacon in the Episcopal Church very late in life and never shied from “sticky” situations. I will always cherish Sally, these earrings, and the brief time I had with her.
I guess the trick to living a life of Grace after 50 is to know when to hold on and when to let go. I cannot be in this state perpetually! Luckily, I have had some pretty wise friends share their wisdom with me along the way.
Remember the movie, “Fried Green Tomatoes”? I picture myself often as the character Kathy Bates plays – Evelyn – that awkward midlife woman, pathetically hanging on to a shell of her former self until she meets Jessica Tandy’s character – Ninny – the older woman in the nursing home who shares the story of her relative, Idgie, in segments for Evelyn, and gives her the gift of strength to prepare her for old age. I had a friend like Evelyn in Winfield, Kansas. Her name was Sally Wilcox and she was a writer. She volunteered to write an article about an old dairy house on our land adjacent to a neighborhood development. Mike and I saw beauty and grace in this old structure. Our neighbors saw blight. They wanted it torn down, we maintained it had Historic value and submitted to the City’s requirements that it be boarded up.
Who would have thought that a historic dairy house would be the “mountain we chose to die on” in our small town experience? We learned a lot, thanks to Sally.
The dairy house was designed and lived in by a relative of a well-known architect from the region. Louis Caton, a musician, lived there for a period of time and was a known local artist and musician. We romanticized the past and the things that transpired in the old dairy house but to the neighbors, it represented a hatred they carried for the former developer of their neighborhood and broken promises. It was ours but, in the end, it was not. Our fight did not matter because the neighbors won the right to tear it down, after all. Looking back, I realize the dairy house was just a symbol to Mike and me of something beautiful we had found and wanted to “tend to” for our children. We imagined a future for them in rural Kansas and all the cool things they might get to do with this beautiful barn like structure set beside a wooded canyon that many children, including Osage Indian children and pioneer children, had played in before.
But maybe we held on to the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong reasons which now, ultimately, does not matter. But I cannot stop thinking about the twinkle in Sally Wilcox’s eyes as she interviewed us and published the article in the local newspaper about it. In all her wisdom, Sally thought the fight was worth it and she liked us, unlike our neighbors! One afternoon before a public hearing about the condemnation of the dairy house we were forced to attend at the City, Sally gave me the earrings she wanted me to wear bearing the words: “People are no damn good.” I will always love her for her strength and courage and carry with me the memory of my very own “Evelyn,” who helped me confront one of my first ugly midlife battles over WHAT to hang on to and WHEN to let go.
So, here I am, almost 50, getting feathers from Dad and remembering a brilliant older friend who gave me many gifts of wisdom. In their own ways, they both sustain me as I daily weigh what’s worth my energy and what’s not.
The year was 2000. It was August. Kansas City was experiencing an epic heatwave, 30+ days of 100-degree temperatures. The air was thick with humidity and, at my house, the sound of Barney’s voice and anticipation of the arrival of my second child. My first child was only 19 months old. She was really, REALLY, into Barney the Purple Dinosaur.
Weighing in at 207 pounds, my 5’4″ frame was struggling to keep up with Isa, the energetic toddler in love with Barney. We established a routine that my 3rd-trimester, overly fatigued and aching body could maintain: Up at 7 for Barney and breakfast; Walk or play with friends until 11; Nap until 1; Drive huge Ford Expedition with Blaring Air Conditioning 1 mile South to Sonic for “in-car picnic” of grilled cheese and milk shake; More Barney until Daddy got home at 6:30. To say it felt like hell would be an understatement. To comfort Isa during times when Barney and Baby Bop were not on tv or Mommy could not “find” the video, she had a stuffed version that sang the infamous “I love you” song and also said “Bye Bye.”
Fast forward 6 years. My two children, now 7 and 5 years old, are not that “into” Barney – they are more obsessed with Sponge Bob and those twins living in a hotel with their singing Mom on Disney channel. Though he still lives, the once-cherished stuffed Barney now belongs to our boxer puppy, Tango, and lives in the backyard.
Parents everywhere empathized with our total disdain for the Dinosaur with the Annoying Voice. One friend even told his little girl that she could not watch Barney on tv for several weeks because he had been in an unfortunate car accident and was “banged up pretty bad”!!!!
On a cool Spring evening, I was scooping puppy poop in our yard for the umpteenth time. It had been very rainy out and Barney, now Tango’s best friend, had seen better days. I was certain it was his time to go. Thus, with little more ceremony than slamming his lifeless, once-beloved, purple body in the same plastic bag with my dog’s poop, I bid Barney a final, gleeful farewell. Then something very suspicious and spooky happened: this symbol of torture, maimed by a puppy and hugged to death by 2 toddlers, rose from the poop bag and uttered one final phrase: “Bye Bye!”.
Barney got the last laugh. He is a very clever dinosaur.
Isa came running from wherever she was playing when she heard Baby Bop’s band!
“You cannot have feelings of superiority and not an enemy make. The same occurs when you would make yourself inferior, and you are always making for yourself a place at one of these extremes. And all this effort and conflict arises simply from your insistence upon being separate.” (ACOL, C:14.3)
Most of us have been caught in the trap of feeling inferior or superior to others, and we suffered as a result. Our feelings of inferiority gave us many moments of sadness and dejection. Our feelings of superiority were often compensation for the inferior feelings—when our ego had had enough of feeling dejected.
Was there any truth to any of this? Absolutely none. We are neither inferior nor superior to any other human being. All of us are, truly, created equal.
It is a particular desire on the part of those on the spiritual path to feel better than others…
I told my counselor today that this summer I allowed myself “permission” to just sit quietly (a lot!) and rest, reflect and heal. When I decided to get sober this past June, I had no idea that I would feel emotionally drained for so long – the exact opposite of what I was expecting.
We overuse the word “balance” like we do “love.” It is a commitment and daily effort, like love.
Ironically, for me, the clearer my mind becomes, the less I seek the chaos that was once my life – am I now addicted to peace?
Talk to anybody who has been in recovery for more than a couple of years and they will nod in complete agreement and understanding and say, “the longer you are sober, the more you will enjoy a quiet life.” The trick is learning how to quiet the things that once stressed me emotionally without alcohol. This must explain my present state of fatigue, I am like a child learning to ride a bike without training wheels.
Thus, the subject of today’s blog: How does one successfully “recover in community,” with normal deadlines, stresses, demands and all sorts of other messy obstacles life presents? I began my sobriety without any kind of in-patient treatment, so I have been “hanging out there” in community trying to stay sober and keep my life going for five months. It is tiring. I wish I could say it is thrillingly exhilarating – the gratitude I feel each morning for a new day, a healthy and loving family, and my sobriety is comforting. But maintaining it all makes me well – TIRED.
I am still in nurture mode with 2 teenagers
Doing what is best for my 2 very different children without the influence of alcohol is certainly much easier and more enjoyable! However, some days it feels like I don’t have as much to give as I’d like. My body, mind and soul feel tapped out because all I can do is just “be” and “love.” Is this enough??? I see other parents (whose sobriety status I am not aware of) really “managing” their kids’ lives and this clearly is not what is happening under my roof. And the gnawing question I have, now that I am sober is, “what’s the difference between the way I loved drunk and the way I am loving sober?”. Or anything for that matter. And I think the answer is caring and feeling versus numb and complacent. I think my body hurts and my spirit feels tired because it hurts to feel and process one’s thoughts in healthy ways all day long, especially when you are responsible for young adults.
Recovering in Community works best in the company of a safe friend
When I talk about these fears and feelings to my non-sober friends, I kind of get blank stares. Other addicts know exactly what I mean. It’s what makes us all different and interesting, right? So I continue to make room in my life for AA meetings, conversations with others who are focused on their recovery, and living a day to day life that is healthy, balanced and aimed at giving my family the right kind of love – without cheating myself. That’s enough for one person to handle. And that, my friends, is how I am attempting to “recover in community.”
Lately I have been on an inner journey. I won’t say I have “neglected” housework, but let’s just state for the record that I am blissfully tuned out of my immediate visual surroundings. Nobody in my family seems to mind. Clothes get washed, dinners get served and eaten, pets are not neglected, Fall decorations are properly appointed. Outwardly, everything seems “normal.”
What started out feeling like a mid-life boycott of mundane chores has now become – well, more of a daily meditation on the essential. Gratitude for all that we have been given tops my list of essentials. When my eyelids pop open in the morning and the awareness of feeling whole and not broken by alcohol, ugly words spewed to a loved one the night before – I breathe deeply and thank God for the blessing of one more day. Whatever I choose to do with that day, my underlying goal is LOVE.
Is a clean house essential to love? No. Right now, at 49 and managing a life with 2 teenagers, a husband intent on planning the sunset of his career, and a boatload of aging siblings and Mother whom I love – I give myself permission to LOVE FIRST, clean second. I used to think I was getting lazy because I did notice the slowing down. This coincided with my sobriety, which began almost 5 months ago.
The whole point of sobriety is to NOTICE, EXPERIENCE and CHERISH the good. This requires slowing down (at least for me) and focusing on NOW. As much as I love and enjoy these new feelings, it is true my standards of tidiness which were low to begin with – have gotten a little lower.
Nobody is complaining. So I must not be lazy.
When I am an old woman I will remember the sunsets I watched, not the floors I mopped.
In less than 6 months, I will be turning 50. For the first time in 30 years, I will celebrate sober. A little over halfway through the journey, sometimes I feel regret that I waited so long to discover inner peace but also many days I feel upset that I can’t party like a rock star anymore! Maybe that feeling will fade as 120 days rolls into 200, 365 and more. More time of living in the present and fully engaged.
In many ways, my newfound sobriety has brought me back full circle to the things I have always loved, especially COMFORT. I am a homebody (though this is surprising to many) who loves my couch, family, warmth of the sun or a roaring fire, homemade meals and simple pleasures.
I think the bare-boned honesty it takes to admit one is powerless over a person, place or thing brings with it comfort and liberation – so really, I have just come “home.”
I choose comfort over cutenessI want my tea, not my Malbec
I realized I had accepted my “lot” as a “recovering alcoholic” when I found myself daydreaming about having a pair of Birkenstocks and a good tea kettle. Chuckle and snort, though I may about this, the darned truth of the matter is: I AM HAPPY WITH MYSELF!
There are messes our family must deal with left behind from my years of selfish self-medicating, at the top of which, of course, is my habit of overspending. But, my God! 4 months ago I could not have stayed clear-headed long enough to even research where our money was going much less devise a plan to resolve it.
A good friend is helping me re-vamp my resume, too. THIS would never have happened when I was drinking. She cannot believe I don’t have any “professional” self-esteem. I can’t believe there is someone out there that sees something I can’t see, but I am willing to dig further, to consider some truths about myself and put myself in the ring of competition for whatever rewarding career awaits me next. I must do this, not only for myself and my family, but because things are going too well to just sit on my couch (as much as I love it!) for the rest of my life.
Push Push Push. I think I can until I know I can – the Little Engine that Could. This is me at 49, a little war-torn and rough but loving the journey and thanking God every day I wake up sober.
For years our family slept together in the Master bedroom- pets and all
Just going through some old photos this morning and found this gem and HAD to write a quick blog post. This is 2008, our daughter Isa was 9 and her brother, Mario was 7. Those were our pets, Tango the boxer and Boris the cat. We lived in a beautiful 5,000-sq ft home on 34 acres. At bedtime we might as well have had a studio apartment! For at least 2 years, this is what the “family bed” looked like. Mike (my husband) would sigh when the lights went out and quietly say, “There are ALOT of beating hearts in this room.” I loved it!
As Dad got “grumblier” about the situation, Isa would type “contracts” for him to sign designating a specific future date when the “family bed” situation would cease – but she always “filed” for an extension!
Fast forward to 2015: both children are normal (okay, that’s debatable!) and sleeping in their own beds. But they have memories of many nights in our “shared sleeping quarters” watching movies, talking, laughing, playing with the pets. Some people think this is nuts and I do sort of get their point. But I am SO GLAD we did it. It gave the children comfort when they needed it and we have lots of fun memories to look back on….especially after they flee the nest, which I am dreading, of course.
So, my advice to parents of young children struggling with the bedtime routine: give up! Enjoy being together now. I know there are all sorts of studies now encouraging “the family bed” but I don’t know where they are or what they are saying about the benefits. I know my 1950’s-era parents thought I was the WORST POSSIBLE type of wishy-washy parent while this was going on. The 7 of us were sent marching up the stairs at bedtime with 1 “regulation size” cup of water and ordered to SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP! Anyone who dared get out of bed and tiptoe downstairs again had better be ready for the WRATH of my DAD!!!
At one point, tired of the “charade” of pretending to resist my children’s nightly pleas to sleep on my floor, I just gave in and bought 2 air mattresses at Wal-Mart for the Master Bedroom floor. In my opinion, this was one of the best investments I ever made.
After months of vicious attacks involving videotaped conversations portraying Planned Parenthood employees selling “baby parts” on the black market for profit, our country’s budget is nearly stalled out as right-wing Republicans call for “investigations” and threaten to shut down the government. This is not the first time women’s rights have been under attack, nor will it be the last, because we live in a misogynistic culture. Even though I live in a mostly upper middle class white neighborhood, I see signs of it each and every day among affluent women – grown women who choose to dress, speak and live according to “norms” and standards that a male-dominated culture has established for them – and they don’t even seem to notice or mind. Well I do.
“Pipe Women” by Fox Photos on Getty Images
To be clear, I think abortion is a tragically sad thing and I assure you, nobody that has one is thrilled about it. I have seen many women experience gut-wrenching self-examination and heartache as they consider their alternatives when they find themselves pregnant before they are ready to raise a family.
For them, abortion should be a legal, accessible, safe procedure.
Cutting federal funding to Planned Parenthood clinics only restricts access to many important and life-saving services that women, mostly poor, desperately need: cancer screenings, sexually transmitted disease screenings and treatment, and birth control, to begin with.
Engaging in campaigns to change women’s minds once they have decided to have an abortion is both ineffective (even though the Pro-Life movement can always drudge up examples of a select few unborn they have “saved” outside an abortion clinic) and harassing. It is also deeply egregious to assume that a woman who chooses to terminate a pregnancy has neither the will nor the capability to consider all her alternatives.
This quote by Madeleine Albright really pertains to the workplace. I don’t even know if she is pro-choice. Nonetheless, I feel moved to share it in this context because it is shameful that any woman would presume to bully a sister rather than support her in her time of deepest need and possibly shame. To those women (and men) I say this: It does not matter whether you believe life begins at conception or not: are you going to raise the unwanted child?
“I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”. — Sister Joan Chittister, Catholic Nun
Even though adoption exists, even adoption experts report that there are barriers to a pregnant woman choosing this option that go beyond just the accessibility of the choice: shame, fear, lack of financial and social support, psychological inability to cope with carrying a baby to term and then losing it. It takes a very strong person to carry a pregnancy to term knowing that at the end there will only be heartache and loss. Those women that choose this option/path are to be praised. But we cannot all emulate them. That’s the fact.
So, today, I join millions of men and women across the country in simply asserting that Planned Parenthood is an important organization – especially for women – that provides many critical services to the poorest among us and that, dismantling it by restricting access through funding or any other means is just wrong. Abortions will continue regardless of whether they are legal and safe. Shouldn’t women live in a culture that supports choice and promotes safe, affordable, legal access to reproductive services? I think so.
My world is full of those if then statements. If only I did this then I’d be better at this. And so often motherhood is linked in that if then equation and most of the time it’s with me sitting on the falling short side of the scale. So then when others tell me words about me being a good mom, well, I just don’t even know how to deal with them. In fact, oftentimes if someone tells me that I’m a good mom tears will pool in those very exhausted eyes of mine.
Cheeky Street 