We need moms who talk about it.

I can’t tell you how many mom-related “S.O.S.” signals I’ve sent over the last decade.

Why make one five minute phone call when you can send eight text messages in a row from a Dunkin Donuts parking lot about how you’re going to absolutely lose it on your kids when it’s only 11 a.m. on a Tuesday??

Friends who listen are the lifelines you never realized you couldn’t live without until you wanted to know you aren’t the only mom who has thrown a box of graham crackers across the kitchen because of undiluted frustration and exhaustion.

It’s texts sent at three a.m. even though you know they aren’t awake, or at least they shouldn’t be, but you know they’ll write back at the crack of dawn when their feet hit the floor. It’s conversations spent staring into the rings of your coffee cup as you try to put all the aching you feel into words. It’s having the person whose couch feels so familiar, so safe, you can spill your ugly guts on it and know you’ll be held in quiet confidence.

I’ve tried to funnel my thoughts into words when they feel so tangled it doesn’t seem like they will all come out.

I’ve talked about how scared I was.

How tired I was.

How depressed and anxious I have been.

How unfulfilled I felt.

How detached I felt.

I’ve talked about wanting to cop out of whatever it was I had committed myself to when  I just wanted someone to humor me and tell me it was okay to quit. I’ve lamented over why something happened to me. Why one particular thing or another needs to be my particular burden. I’ve asked a listening ear how exactly does a person parent well while they try to scrape up their shattered dreams and expectations from the pavement?

I’ve talked miles around people’s heads. Sometimes, about the same things over and over again.

And every time I think I’m charting some unknown territory when sharing my fears and failures, I realize I’m surrounded by moms who have walked similar paths to me already. Every time I think, “this conversation, this admission will be the one time someone says they don’t understand. This will be the one that changes how this person sees me,” I’m amazed at how wrong I can be.

I’m amazed at the willingness of some to “go there.” To talk it out. To listen and reserve judgement. To share their own battered hopes and dreams in quiet trust, with the hope of reaffirming someone else’s story that seems to be coming undone at the edges.

I get what it’s like living in this social media saturated world. There are many people out there who are so brave. Who have shared their stories on large platforms, thinking that if it reaches even one person who needs to hear it, then they will have done something akin to moving a mountain: they will have loved someone enough, even a stranger,  to reaffirm to them that they are not alone.

The older I get, the more I write, the more I grasp how much I play things really close to the chest. I realize just how much of myself I don’t share because there’s always the invisible tether of self-consciousness attached to me.

The more the years tick by, the more I work to shed the weight of expectations and decide what I actually really want to care about. Even if I don’t blast every part of me as loudly as I can, I resign myself to thinking that perhaps one day, every secret shame and hurt can be used for something greater than myself. If I can be as brave as the person who reaffirms me, then I’ll be learning how to do something right.

I’ll get there.

So many out there feel the same way. They just might be quieter about it than others. We might just have to look harder to find them, but they’re there.

They might not share every cog in their stories in 800 word posts, or from their seat at Bible study. They might not lay it all out there, at least not right away. They may even seem detached or removed, running cool instead of burning hot. But, oh. Their heart? Their heart beats fast and true and holds an ocean of secrets.

Sometimes, the ones who can change everything with their story are the ones who grasp the hand of some hurting heart sitting across from them, look them in the eye and say, “me, too.” They might just be the ones we never see coming, and sometimes the most common miracle we can experience is the kindness of another.

None of us are perfectly nailing this motherhood thing (or this living life thing.) We are all broken in some way.

For so long, though, many of us have sat longing and lost behind the veneer of motherhood. Wanting just one person who understood the immense sacrifice, the trials, the hurts that come with raising a family to reassure us that we weren’t weak at all. It just really is this hard.

We sat waiting to be understood. Many of us still are. Worried it will cost us something to say, “I didn’t know it was going to be so hard. But I feel alone. I feel scared. I feel detached.”

We need the brave ones, even when they’re quiet, even when they are still a little scared, even when they are the ones you least expect.

Who talk about how they went to counseling. How they take the little white pill every morning.

How they had the most terrifying and vulnerable conversation with their doctor after circling “almost always” on a paper quiz after giving birth just weeks before.

Who drop off casseroles with no expectation of even needing a thank you.

Who answer the phone when it isn’t convenient, and open their doors even when their home is messy, but at least there is a clear path to the sofa.

Who pour cups of coffee or wine and absorb the shock waves of another who is angry, hurting, lost or broken.

Who talk about their child who died.

Who share about their broken marriages.

Who talk about being ashamed.

Who break the silence of infertility.

Who challenge the stigma of miscarriage.

Who open up about their grief.

Who say, sometimes, they think about what might have been if they had made another choice, even if they wouldn’t change anything about their life.

The people who change the world are the people who share the scars of their own world.

And let the light in.

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t be scared when grief settles in.

If there is one piece of advice I can share with someone who is grieving, it’s this:

The worst thing you can do is wait for your grief to pass.

 

Just months after the week I lost both my grandfather and my father, I was careening toward an emotional break. 

Looking back, I’m not sure where I ever came up with the notion that grief is tidy and immediately transcendent. Or that the world was counting on me to just get on with my life.

When the sun would set and my house grew still each evening. When there was finally nothing else to do to avoid reality and nothing to distract myself with, another me would emerge. The me that felt like she was floating because she believed she was filled with nothing. It felt, more than ever, as if the tethers that bound me to this world were thread thin.

Exasperated with my inability to function in any normal capacity, I wondered why, when I was armed with optimism and a faith-centered outlook, my sorrow hadn’t yet turned a corner. I tried to force a peace with what happened. I was lying to myself.

No matter how much I tried, though, my days were spent slogging through silent misery. The more I tried to correct course and steer the ship, the more scattered and chaotic everything felt. 

What I thought I was doing was carrying on. What I was actually doing was trying my hardest not to face my grief. I was hunkering down, waiting for the storm to pass. When in actuality, grief is not a storm. It doesn’t spin and howl, and then move on. 

It settles in.

It’s like a volcanic eruption that changes the course and landscape of everything forever. It’s like a quiet cosmic shift. You have to find a way to live in a world that’s been leveled. In a world that does not entirely, if at all, resemble the one you knew before.

Signs of grief will always be there. You have to find a way to not allow grief and bitterness to have the final say over what really matters. Over what you do next.

Two years later, I still find myself startled from being triggered by seemingly insignificant things. I now live near the hospital my father died in. Most of the time, I drive past that brick and glass building, and don’t think about that day. 

Other times, I remember the sterile hospital smell and cold tile floor like I’m standing in one of the hallways. I remember that day and try not to go crazy. I try not to stay there. 

For so long,  I clung to the memory of my life before. I desperately wanted to stay there, in the place before everything spun out of control. I thought moving on meant I was forgetting and letting go of the people I loved. That I was ceding some ground to tragedy.

I tried to compartmentalize everything. I fought to keep my grief contained so it wouldn’t swallow everything. It felt like a blackness that would taint everything. Grief was the name I wouldn’t dare speak.

And if I could separate everything then I didn’t risk losing everything.

It wasn’t until I realized grief went by other names that my guard could come down. It was another form of love, trapped love, and something I couldn’t avoid or I would lose so much that mattered to me. I realized grief didn’t dwarf any of the joy or diminish the good things I had to hold on to.

If anything, it magnified them.

When I let my walls down and grief enter into my broken parts, when I faced it, I finally realized its true purpose. Because there are some things grief cannot touch. And those happen to be the most important things. Things worth fighting for and savoring. And they stand tall in the face of the bleakest sorrows we can imagine.

 It allows me even now to save myself when my heart breaks over and over again.

If there was one piece of advice I could give to the grieving person, it would be that the worst thing you can do for yourself is to wait for your grief to pass. For you to put your grief away.

Grief is terrifying. It can feel like some unnamed specter that always hovers close. And it does. Grief is now what reminds me of all that I have, all that I once had.

And when I finally asked for its real name, its name wasn’t grief.

It was hope.

 

 

 

 

Bueller? Bueller? – An about me post

It’s been a while – and no, I’m not trying to sound like a Staind song….

 

I realized this morning that I have added quite a few followers since the last time I did a post like this. And seeing as how one of my favorite people has reentered the blogging world, *waves frantically at Jess*, it has inspired me to press refresh over here.

My name is Ashley! I’m so glad you have found me over here in my little corner of the web.

1.) I have been blogging for over a decade. I am a member of the generation that bridges between Gen-X and millennials. I’m old enough to remember hardly ever using, or needing for that matter, the internet, but young enough to have adapted to a wireless world. I started writing book reports in school using the card catalog in the school library (I miss the smell of those), but by the time I was in college I was searching the internet for subject matter, and also Homestar Runner. I’m not sure how many followers I accumulated over on Live Journal, but eventually I put down the proverbial pen for a good long while. I picked blogging back up again when my second child was born and I began my new journey of stay-at-home-parentage. Seven years later, I’m still here!

2.) I enjoy photography quite a bit. It’s something I’m trying to become more proficient in year after year. I’ve gotten a few paying jobs out of it, and it’s truly something I love doing. It’s a privilege trying to tell someone’s story, and capture who they really are. Also, I wanted to catalog the memories I have made with my children. They are mostly tolerant of the camera at this point, but I want the head of whoever invented dabbing on a pike.

3.) The stuff that informs my writing? It’s a conglomeration of many things. For so long, it was parenting. And my faith. The past few years, I’ve taken a hard left because that was what life required of me. My father passed away not quite two years ago, and the last few years have seen me sifting through the wreckage of the life I had before descending into unknown parts. I have learned that grief is not the end. Life can, in its own new way, pick up where you left it. You just have to find it again. 

4.) Who am I as a person? I am a corn-fed Maryland girl at heart, and it has taken me nearly thirty years to accept that fact. I love how unassuming Maryland is.  If I told you to think of small town life somewhere, you’d probably be quick to think of picturesque and quaint little New England towns or the sleepy countryside of Tennessee. Everyone seems to breeze over Maryland but that’s okay, it’s like a magical secret. At least, the Eastern Shore of it feels like that sometimes. I’m tied to water, not necessarily to the ocean, but the thought of moving further inland and being landlocked scares the peons out of me. But quiet, misty countryside is also in my blood, and for me, the Eastern Shore of Maryland has both. So I will fight to the death to stay here. And also, the Redskins are our only team.

I’m the kind of person who might be carrying around a bag of powdered donuts in her oversized purse. My favorite food in the whole wide world is sushi. My favorite music is a mashup of everything from The Beatles to Chris Stapleton. I am the kind of person who will throw open the front door and welcome you in, but who has to warn you to step over kids toys and not mind the crumbs all over the dining room table before I throw a plate of food in front of you. But I just as much enjoy an evening at home on the couch or a day with the covers pulled up to my chin – which hardly ever happens.  I prefer Dr. Pepper to most any wine, not that I’d turn down a glass of wine. I can be overly competitive at times, which means I’m not always the best example of how to be a good sport to my children. I am an animal lover, and grew up with a host of chickens, cats, dogs, horses and even a baby Canadian goose. Oh, yea, and a deer which my family rescued, but I’m told that’s illegal so it didn’t happen. I also love to buy the same shirt in three colors. There should be support groups for that. 

5.) If you haven’t gathered already – I am a mother. I have three children, ages 9,7, and 3. They drive me insane, and make my world so much bigger than I ever thought it could be. I have been home full-time for over seven years, and some days, it is the greatest thing in the world. And then other days, I white-knuckle it until the husband walks in the door. I home-schooled my older two children this year for the first time ever, and am spending the summer recovering from having to remember how to reduce fractions. I consider our school year as having been a success, so I’ll give myself high fives for that any day.

6.) Speaking of husbands, I am married to a tremendously wonderful one. Rob and I have been married for almost 13 years. In fact, it will be 13 this month. Which just seems wild. 13 and a half years ago, some guy I had only met once (and who I thought was cute, but don’t tell him I said that) messaged me online. He was currently serving in the military and was deployed, but thought that maybe when he got back home, we could spend some time together. I agreed, and when he got home we met up to watch Napoleon Dynamite as our first date – after picking it out at Blockbuster (!!!) – and we’ve pretty much been inseparable ever since. We got married about six months later after a long distance courtship, and yes, I know exactly how crazy that sounds. But I married the guy who puts the leftovers away late at night before heading to bed. The guy who takes the trash out for me. The guy who always insists on pumping the gas even when I offer. And the guy who makes me laugh and my heart sing. I am so lucky.

7.) That said, I also married a guy who happens to have the best family ever, and who also knows how to renovate a house like nobody’s business. The first home we ever owned together, he spent the better part of a decade renovating. Seriously, it took ten years. And then when it was done….we sold it and moved to another house that, guess what, needs work done to it. We enjoy comparing the before and afters, but not always so much the process. But what is life if not a process. An extensive process. And lots of work. But little, fleeting but necessary joys?

 

 

So, that’s me in a 1,000 word nutshell! I am so glad you are here. Tell me more about yourself. Do you and I have anything in common? Tell me about yourself.

Thank you for reading!