Category Archives: Bits About Life

Finis

I had no business looking at houses back in 2010. We had just moved into a little, rental home tucked in between a blackberry alley and the bustling highway. There were several months left on our lease before we could entertain the idea of becoming homeowners.

But I was on the prowl. I knew the lifestyle I wanted to have and exactly the neighborhood in which I wanted to live. It was the only time I can actively remember WANTING to live downtown anywhere. And it was all because of the church that I knew would become the epicenter of our communal life.

So when I saw the little yellow house with green shutters and a white picket fence pop up on my search and recognized immediately the location, my skin literally tingled. I already knew. Whether it was God, kismet, or just low blood sugar, the feeling in my entire body was certain that this was the place we would be living. It was to be the first place wherein I could finally put down roots. Our days of always packing up and moving around with the military were at an end now and I was longing to find a place into which I could settle and plant a garden and feel HOME. This was my chance.

Knowing the seller’s agent from church, I asked her to walk us through it immediately. A bit taken aback, but pleased with the immediate attention, she allowed us in. They were still in the staging process and the previous homeowner’s girlfriend was sheepishly trying to get out the door with paintbrushes and overalls when we got there.

I was in absolute love walking through it. Beautiful coved ceilings and original hardwood floors impressed me a little. But what sold me was the lifestyle of being half a block away from the church, in walking distance to the library, and across the street from the small, community park that was about to get a brand new upgrade. It was an enviable opportunity for the kind of lifestyle that Catholics everywhere often dream of.

We didn’t even have an agent. So we requested that the seller’s agent to find us someone and get us the paperwork quick. Had a home inspection done by our good friend (my now husband) who very quickly realized that I had very little interest in hearing about all the problems the house had (being built in 1905… one can just imagine) because I was already mentally arranging bedrooms, building bookshelves, and serving oatmeal to my children around the dining room table…

I ended up giving birth to two of my babies inside of that home. The lifestyle was everything I dreamed it would be. Imperfect and challenging at times, but gloriously wrapped up in this bubble of an existence afforded to us solely by virtue of where we lived. I would get up in the mornings and wake the children; the boys would walk down to the church by themselves about 15 minutes ahead of me and the babies so they could serve daily Mass. I designed and implemented careful curriculum plans to attend to after our morning devotions. I’d haul laundry up and down the steep basement stairs. We’d eat a basic lunch. The children eagerly waited for the tiny Catholic school to get out so they could join their friends for one of the thousands of pickup football games in the park… it was the kind of thing that has now become an anachronism of America’s yesteryears… we had it there on that particular street because of that particular parish. And I never once took it for granted… it was much, much more than just a home.

During the vile process of dissecting and dividing up our lives in court during 2017, I lost this house. It was during a very ugly trial and my ex-husband’s attorney was pushing and badgering about how this home was a “zero asset”. They cited all the issues with it and talked about how it would be impossible to refinance or to get someone to buy it.

And I was exhausted.

It was the most expensive exhaustion of my life and one during which my attorney at the time failed me greatly by agreeing with me to just let it go and move on. Through an outpouring of love and benevolence of some family friends, I had already been offered a secure and stable housing situation and that was all I cared about at the time. I had been so eroded during the nonstop harassment and legal bullying for the entire year that I just wanted to be left alone and couldn’t even think of the financial implications this would have on my future.

Pushing hard enough and long enough, he won the house in its entirety.

The injustice of it crept into my awareness over time as the imminent trauma receded just enough to where I could finally eat lunch without being prompted and think beyond the next 48 hours. I took out extraordinary amounts of loans to be able to put myself through grad school. The child support awarded to me was such a pittance that it was critical for me to be able to get a job that would support myself and my seven children. Being out of the workforce for 15 years in service to my husband and family had not prepared me to be in a position to be financially secure without that education.

Those loans haunt me today. And it is a wretched thing to think how they could’ve been paid off twice over by the rightful equity in our home that I deserved to share.

And that gall is mine to swallow.

Lord, I reject this bitterness and pray to be filled with your grace!

In a couple of weeks, this last piece of continuity in my children’s lives will no longer be ours. And yes, I say ours because despite no longer having my name on it, the home has always still felt like it was mine too— on behalf of my children and the life I had tried to preserve for them with such stubborn hope.

The house has been sold. My children will no longer experience that city, that parish community as their home. Just the place they used to live…

The youngest ones won’t feel the significance of it the way my middle and older kids do. They have always called it “Dad’s house.” The memories of Mom in that space are very few for them. But my presence is still there. I’m there in the high, hallway bookshelves I insisted be put up.

The hand-painted panels that still got used next to the window AC long after I was gone. The green floral curtains I made still hanging from a bedroom window. The large letters I painted up on the attic wall where I went to write and cry when life was falling apart. “Courage, dear heart…” The Free Little Library sitting on the front fence;
it was the first in the city. And I am in that…

Mostly what aches is that the sale of that home is one last nail in the coffin of the Life that I used to have. And that my children used to have.

I want to offer all the pious, happy endings now— reference the silver linings and fresh starts and real pockets of joy found in our life here and now. Because that stuff is real. But I would only be writing them for my reader’s benefit… in an attempt to make you feel better because the discomfort of sad tales is too much for many people.

For me, sorrow is so familiar that it feels like home to me. Not that I seek it or willingly dwell in it or catastrophize my circumstances to bring it on… but just that I am comfortable hurting.

So I want to leave this grief right here illuminated by the votive candle that words can sometimes be.

I cry with my children.

I hurt with my children.

And I seek the courage to praise God through these tears and forever.

Proof of (a) Life: The Photography Conundrum

Portrait of an HSP

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I don’t have more mirror neurons than most of you. Mine are just more active. As screen monitors race for higher and higher definitions of the perfect picture, my brain already has them beat with an amplified, laser-sharp user experience. I perceive and feel subtleties, shifts, and nuances in the environment and in people within seconds of entering a room. Lights. Sounds. Smells. Tastes. Touch. Life is very, very vivid to me. I’m not an empath. That’s different. That’s a pseudo-scientific phrase. Rather, I am part of the 15-20% of the population that is a Highly Sensitive Person— something that can be scientifically measured in brain imaging. And I didn’t know this about myself for a long time. I simply felt like an alien in this life.

Here’s the thing: I live in a world that is designed for the 80-85% of Others who have typical sensory processing. Additionally, there is a neurological difference in how my brain responds to dopamine (I’m not a fan of being recreationally terrified (e.g. carnival haunted houses), poked, tickled or publicly praised) and how my sensory processing has been impacted by recent, traumatic life events. The acuteness of my HSP trait has increased in recent years…

My gift is that this makes me a kick-a** therapist who is able to identify and name someone’s psychological and emotional difficulties that may not be overtly expressed. I feel their pain with them and for them. I am able to give them a way to articulate their own experiences and assist them in integrating this as part of who they are in a coherent way. The HSP gift also gives me an extremely valuable, social multi-tool to keep in my back pocket when I need to assess a party scene, practice attunement, and be aware of motives and movements that may be imperceptible to others. Some people believe that HSPs are also able to tap into creativity more powerfully than others, which makes sense if we are constantly “above and beyond” (for better or worse) in experiential depth of processing.

This gift has a shadow side… the side that the world focuses on as a deficiency. The world can be very overwhelming for me. Mothering, in particular, is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do just because of the constant sensory stimuli. My startle response looks like a cartoon cat jumping in the air—I’m not being facetious. It’s extreme. A child can knock a stainless steel bowl onto the floor and if it’s been a long day… the sound will send my heart rate through the roof and I will end in tears. Someone shuts the door with normal exertion, and I might wince. The sound of a chip bag being rustled with too long will feel like nails on a chalkboard. A child wants to sit on my lap and stroke my cheek and it might take all my willpower to not overtly cringe at the frustration of being touched at that moment. I’m constantly asking for voices to be lowered, constantly trying to regulate my autonomic nervous system, and constantly retreating to my interior world because it’s so very loud out there. My hearing is fine; but sometimes in loud or busy places, I don’t register what people are saying to me because I’ve ran so far off-grid into my own mental wilderness. This is not generalized anxiety. This is sensory overload.

Some days are harder than others. And there are things I can do to improve my own situation, such as exercise (which makes a noticeable difference in my energy and coping skills), keeping my nutrient levels stable, and making sure I have designated moments of solitude/silence to recharge. But ultimately the task is mine to accept that trying to understand the differences in people with Sensory Processing Sensitivity is not going to be easy for those who don’t have it. And the task is also mine to remember that just because the inevitable logistics of mothering are inordinately taxing on me, does not mean I don’t love my children fiercely.

If any of this is useful–if maybe this is something new that helps you name why you are… particularly you— I’m glad. But ultimately, I’m writing this out for me: to validate my own experience. No one else can do that for me. I can’t find a comfortable home in this world, because well… it’s loud. Busy. And probably smells obnoxious. I’m writing this out to come home to myself. To unpack the boxes of my own memories and knowledge of who I am and how far I’ve traveled to get here. To string up lights with a truth that isn’t relative, but that is refracted on a plane that is uniquely mine. And to paint the walls of my soul with the kind of peace that nothing in this world can take away from me.

In Memoriam…

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The story of this death began when I was 17 years old. I was smart and driven, but without any other notable talents that would’ve distinguished me from any other smart, driven teenager searching for college scholarships at that time. I had started working at a young enough age, delivering newspapers on my bike (or out of Dad’s van for those early Sunday mornings) before moving up to selling shaved ice at local festivals and then beginning my “real” jobs in retail. But there was only enough money to pay for my car, insurance, gas, and trivialities. Not college. My family ethic and understanding at the time was that if I wanted to be educated beyond high school, I had to make that happen for myself. And I wanted to go to college more than anything. I wanted to teach… but in some unconventional way.

As a senior in high school, we were required to formulate a year-long project that was supposed to be a sort of capstone to our studies. Despite being an outstanding student and winning some academic awards, my senior project was on the failure of public education itself. Mildly precocious, I must say. Still, I did some community service tutoring an underprivileged kid or two and then presented my thesis which damned the school system in front of a panel of 3-4 teachers and the school principal. I received the highest grades possible and promises of a job down the road if I kept up my passion. Uncanny. But academia itself was still my goal.

My scholarship efforts weren’t yielding a lot so I started flirting with the Air Force. I walked into the recruiter’s office— less than a mile from where I now live— and introduced myself: “I want to go to college and I want to travel.” No problem. I took the ASVAB and scored high enough that the recruiter squashed my “errant” interest in photography and steered me towards linguistics. My subsequent scores on the DLAB settled it: I was going to be a linguist. Exhilarating! I stayed awake at night dreaming of learning Russian or Farsi and parachuting into dangerous territories to translate important, intercepted communications. Which countries could I sneak into? What kind of weapons would I get? How awesome am I anyway?!?! I mean… what else could a girl (ahem… like me) want? This career step would all serve me very well with my ultimate life goal. And what was this goal? To find a man, get married and have a happy, suburban life? Hardly. It was to get multiple degrees and then travel somewhere foreign and exotic where I’d teach the local bush children how to read. So I signed into the Delayed Entry Program, began processing at MEPS, and encountered a medical speedbump when I mentioned something about hypoglycemia. They wanted documentation. I left intending to resolve this.

Very shortly after this, one of my guy friends I had been hanging around with kissed me. Shock. Thrill. New feelings. And it was at this point that my life pivoted with such force as to cause my dream to nearly vanish in the fog. I never went back to MEPS. I got wrapped up in someone else instead.

Fast forward a couple years and I’m now 19 years old, in Port Hueneme, California staring at two pink lines with my brand new husband by my side: “Wow, I guess I’m a mom now.” God was inviting me to vanquish my pride. I needed it.

Becoming pregnant was exhilarating in an entirely unexpected way. I never planned on being a mother. (Indeed, it wasn’t too long ago that I never even planned on getting married!) But life is a mysterious thing and there I was. And happy to be there. Most of all, I felt genuinely excited to raise this little human (“Please God, let this be a boy.” It was.) Before he was even born, I welcomed new, domestic dreams to replace the Hollywood Spy Fantasy I had put to rest. My young husband deployed to Guam shortly after our wedding and I grew swollen with cold, fried chicken, salt and vinegar chips, and this child. I planned for the days to come. I knew I wanted to homeschool. I began envisioning what that would be like…

In those early years before kids, I did some things to fill this teaching itch. I volunteered at the Oxnard Public Library as an Adult Literacy Tutor, where I taught ESL adults how to read. It was very meaningful. Then I became a budget counselor with the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society and taught little workshops to servicemembers on how to create a budget and Plan for Baby. I remember bringing a teddy bear and cloth diapers to one class and showing the group how easy it was to do cloth diapering and excitedly creating graphs that showed how much money they could save. (Most yawned and just waited impatiently for me to finish so they could get their free swag bag of gear.) Then I taught first grade catechesis at the tiny chapel on base (St. Joseph the Worker, ora pro nobis!). After my son was born and doing some volunteer work, I decided to work on finishing my bachelor’s degree. Then Baby #2 was announced (“Please God, let it be a boy.” It was.) Towards the end of this pregnancy, I traveled down to Malibu for several days at a time to do some training on Infant Massage. Got certified. Taught that to a couple small mother’s groups. I began my early learning exposure with my first son at this time, walking around the corner to the tiny library and making sure we were at the bilingual story hours. He used to know a smattering of Spanish. I was intentional about teaching it to him… once upon a time.

We moved back to our home state while Baby #3 was growing inside me (“Well God, I got my way twice so I will accept very happily now, a boy or a girl.” Another boy. Cool!) I began homeschooling in earnest up on Whidbey Island and my husband allowed me free reign on deciding how to go about doing this. I researched and researched. I devoured curricula guides and gorged myself on books about the philosophy of education. Utterly fascinating! I was influenced by all the greats: Charlotte Mason, Dorothy Sayers, John Holt, Ruth Beechik, Maria Montessori, and on and on… I began to formulate ideas on what kind of teaching I wanted to do. I felt so alive and right when I was in this mode of thinking. I knew I was gifted with the mind and opportunity to do this well. And it provided such purpose to my life as a mama.

After I got my BA, my own children were still quite young, so I took on a temporary side job with a particular homeschooling company teaching 11th grade World History, which could be done from my home; papers were sent to me and I graded them. I had phone calls with students on a regular basis. It was fun. During this time, my father began homeschooling my youngest brother in his middle school years. And Dad consulted with me on how how to go about doing this well. This was Ellie’s jam. So, I designed a 7th grade curriculum for him with delight.

But my own children?

That was where I was very eager to begin in earnest.

After my first daughter was born and we moved a bit south, I began to focus in and formalize my free-spirited kindergarten efforts. I joined and eventually led the homeschool group at my parish. I designed a unique curriculum for each of my children every year, carefully noting their needs and styles of learning. I attended conferences and workshops on education. I read books and more books and more books. I scoured internet forums. I grew bleary-eyed reading about pedagogy and reviewing literature. And I was abundantly happy to do this. I was fully alive and fully me during this period. I could teach my children the gentle glory of nature walks and journaling, introduce composers and teach careful copywork, while simultaneously weaving in logic and grammar. I designed entire lesson plans around community events or liturgical feasts and once created an entire tour of the world, using the alphabet and picture books. For a while, I helped the boys produce and publish their own family newsletter. We played games where logical fallacies were identified. I had people send postcards from every state in the nation to my boys. Piano lessons were on schedule for a while. It was brilliant. We allowed the quotidian rhythm to rock us gently. E.g: daily Mass (where a couple of my boys were probably altar serving), coffee, oatmeal, nurse the baby, Morning Basket (mythology, Latin, music, art, or poetry), Math, Writing, Reading, Lunch. Quiet Time…

And my children had the best books. I mean that. I had learned to develop a sharp eye for quality literature (“living books”) and was able to devote lots of time to thrifting around and filling our shelves with beautiful, wholesome books, which as some of you may know, was the whole catalyst for me to start my children’s book blog “BiblioZealous”—which morphed into what you see here today. It was all very good. It was all very right.

Make no mistake, I’m not romanticizing these days. My children rebelled and resisted as any do. I was tired a lot. Second-guessed some of my decisions. Agonized over not doing enough. Dinner was sometimes rushed, behavior issues were a struggle, and the housework suffered. I wasn’t a Pinterest mom. But I was one woman showing up, every day to something noble, meaningful, and true. While my marriage may have been difficult, my identity was very rooted and secure in the virtue of this endeavor.

Many parents choose homeschooling because they want to protect their children from the immorality found in public school. Some do it because they feel obligated to do so for faith reasons. Some want to do it to enjoy an unstructured lifestyle where you can vacation in October and not have it be a problem. None of these were my primary goal exactly, even though all factored in. I wanted to homeschool because I wanted to bring the world to my children and I wanted nothing but the best for them. I wanted to set fires in their minds and hearts wherein they would love learning as much as I did and and I figured that I was the best person to provide this for them. It was as simple as that. Despite the foibles and flaws in my domestic environment and in my own self, I was good at homeschooling. And it was good for my kids.

I struggled a lot during these years… psychologically and spiritually. There were some really dark days with some really clear causes, but that’s not the story here. The story here is about what gave me structure, purpose and meaning through it all: raising and educating my children.

* * *

As my marriage began its most rapid nosedive in 2016, the strain became too much for stable homeschooling. We enrolled the kids in brick and mortar schools (the details of this are another tragedy for another time, but suffice it say that it involves emergency court hearings, splitting of babies, and many tears spilt at initial parent-teacher conferences from pain and jealousy that someone else was teaching my children how to read) and I started working as a restaurant hostess while my baby was forced through weaning at an earlier age than he was ready.

Homeschooling was definitively over; And I was helpless in watching this iteration of my identity breathe its last while other professionals took over in the academic formation of my children.

* * *

There has not been time to fully feel this weight of this; there were dragons yet to slay. For the next 4-5 years it seems. Battles. Crises. Trauma. Court. Devastation after Devestation. And a warrior can not properly reckon with her grief until she is finished fighting for survival, shelter, and security. So the grief waited. Seeping through the walls of her soul. Manifesting as disorganization. Irritability. Numbness. Depression. Confusion. Anxiety. Name-what-you-will…. Grief absolutely must complete its cycle and will show up in covert ways until it’s allowed the time and space to be overt.

Today, I am in a grieving season. My dragons seem to be mostly dead… though the ground still trembles here and there and sometimes I see wisps of smoke emitting from unknown caverns. Like a dormant volcano perhaps…

But in the meantime, it is time to do the work. For me, this means doing a proper memorialization of what was lost.

Mothering has not come natural to me the way it seems to for some others. I am mildly awkward around kids who aren’t my own. I don’t feel a natural desire to snuggle up with other people’s babies. And I’m not a particularly fun and bubbly person that children gravitate towards. Still… I know how to educate. And I have loved my children as fiercely as any parent has. Despite my long list of shortcomings, I have given up so much for my kids to be where they are and have what they have. I don’t take a lot of shortcuts and indeed, my life is quite a bit more difficult than it has to be because of my refusal to capitulate on some aspects of my children’s formation.

So being a divorced, working mom whose kids go to ‘real school’ has not been easy. Just the opposite. There is of course, the hampster wheel of all the driving around (so much driving around) and forced attendance, homework (*shudder*) and balancing their needs with my work, our family’s needs and my own needs—all by myself (albeit with a very loving and present support system here, Deo gratias). But it’s been difficult in existential ways too. In this chapter of my story, reclaiming my joy and purpose as a parent has been very challenging. Homeschooling was the heartbeat of my mothering. It was integral to how I even conceptualized being a mom! And there has not been an intuitive way for me to recalibrate in this life I now live, without a husband and separated from half my kids. These youngest four children of mine are fortunate to attend a private school. I recognize this and am grateful for it. (My oldest three have been mucking through the bowels of the public school system hours away from me and I struggle to find ways to stay connected to their learning. Again… this is another agony for another time.) Still. STILL… this experience is something like watching people feed your kids crackers and cheese whiz when you have an entire cornucopia of nourishing foods which could be offered to them instead. Adding insult to the dusty, injured cornucopia: I am expected to cheerlead my children through the (comparatively) impoverished education they do get. Because that’s what good moms do. So it seems.

My books. Requiescat in pace. I gave away most of our school books and have only kept those treasures of literature that are too agonizing for me to surrender. Some of them will absolutely never be read to or by my children. This is a fact. And the books haunt me from the shelf. But I can’t let them go. I allow myself to be haunted because the alternative feels even more painful. Maybe this is okay. There’s not one right way to go through this. And I sense that I’m trying to strike a balance here, which feels healthy…

I swallow my internal frustrations with our school lifestyle a lot, with the rushed mornings and inane busywork they bring home a lot, but I do try to muster up some encouragement and interest when they demonstrate some glimmer of eagerness about sharing a science fact or art lesson. They’ve each been blessed with good teachers. (I suppose if one is eating saltines and Cheese Whiz, at least it is being served with dedication and love.) And I am utterly thrilled when I catch them staying up late to read for fun… not all is lost.

But it is important for me to name what was lost. It’s only by doing this and properly honoring The Good That Was— that will allow healing to ultimately happen. There will be new connections made. I will broaden my experience of what it means to be Mother and I will eventually settle into this life. I will laugh more, get lost in my own head less, delight in my children more frequently, and allow the grace of God to infuse my vocation with new meaning.

Grief, when all is said and done, is a testimony of love. And above all else, I will continue to love my children in the space where I am entrusted to do so.

Getting Real about “Doing the Work.”

2020 in Books

Unanswered Questions

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Further adventures in a tale told out of order…

I cross-examined the father of my children in the court-room last week. I wonder how many women have ever had to do that. There were lots of objections by his attorney… some were sustained, but others were—gratifyingly— overruled. The most beautiful thing about it was the absolute confidence and freedom I had in facing him alone. So much has been taken from me already, and he has already gotten nearly everything he’s asked for in this particular action. This produces a deep, deep freedom for me in having very little faith in the justice system and thus being able to speak my truth with almost nothing to lose. He can run laps around me by way of having extra money and time to spend on lawyers and litigation. But after appearing in court more than 14 times in the past four years, begging the ear of multiple attorneys, advocates and one especially wonderful paralegal… I’m now able to speak and write in broken Legalese. It’s sometimes filled with procedural blunders and it will always lack the quintessential, smirking dialect typical of some natives. But this doesn’t phase me the way it used to. I am not afraid. Bring me your condescension. Bring me your soured, volatile ethics. Temporal battles don’t scare me anymore; I know where my victory is… and it’s not of this world.

The difficulty is that I was not allowed to “relitigate the past” according to the judge. Bother. As so many damaging precedents have already been set on deceptive, styrofoam foundations, this is quite a blow. I had hoped to shed light on the current issues by highlighting (just some) of the internal contradictions in the history of the testimony presented against me. Alas, opposing counsel objected to this line of questioning under the grounds of “Irrelevant.”

Well.

I did not realize that Truth was invalid currency here or that establishing Credibility had an expiration date. Be it so.

Stat crux dum volvitur orbis…

At any rate, for the sake of posterity, and even if the family law system isn’t interested in following up on matters of integrity, I would like to leave here some of my “irrelevant” questions that remain unanswered:

1. In 2017, you testified, under penalty of perjury, that I was mentally unstable and tried to prove to the court that I was crazy:

Why didn’t you seek to ask the court for a psychiatric evaluation?
Why didn’t you seek a restraining order or supervised visits with our children?
Why didn’t you go on to inform my university where I graduated, Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling that they were making a great mistake?
Why didn’t you warn the Department of Health who licensed me or the National Board who certified me as a therapist that I might be a danger to my clients?
What is your opinion of my mental stability now?

2. In 2019, you testified, under penalty of perjury, that I was physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive to our children:

Why didn’t you call the police?
Why didn’t you seek a restraining order or supervised visits with our children?
Why didn’t you try to protect the youngest children from me and only want full custody of two of the older ones?

These are grave, life-altering accusations.

These are mind-boggling anvils thrown at a woman who had already been discarded into the middle of the ocean.

Do we live in the world where words no longer matter??

Yet… I am grateful.

Yes, you read that right.

Without these past four years, I would never have known that I could develop the strength, skill and stability to swim in such storms.

Thank you sir. May you be well and find peace and growth of your own in this life.

—Elizabeth Rose, MA, LMHCA, NCC

Writing to Know How I Think

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Some things need to be said. And they will be said. But the time is not yet.

I will not write what is happening, but just pluck through snippets of how I feel. Doing this assists me in moving through All The Things with clarity and completion. If you can tolerate vagaries and shadows of thoughts… rather than a linear narrative, read on. Writing is something I can control.

I feel as though I don’t know how to interface with the world right now. I am in pain. I am wounded. Deeply. And this requires me to show up for myself and look me square in the eye and say “I see you. I know you. I hear you. This is real.” That’s my responsibility. The covert nature of what is happening creates a fog whereby most others are unable to understand. And even if the veil does get lifted soon, many will look away in discomfort. I accept this.

In the meantime, I own my breath. My body. My thoughts. My soul. There is my freedom. There is my peace. No matter the circumstances surrounding me, that interior dimension is beyond a threshold whereby only my Divine Lover is invited to cross. He weeps with me there. But He is also, quite simply— there: embodying the fullness of joy which can only be properly experienced when it was born of sorrow. I can still laugh. And mean it. Thanks be to God.

It is my responsibility to not transmit this pain onto others, intentionally or unintentionally.

I alone, am responsible for its transformation. For my relationship to the pain.

There is meaning here.

And I am noting once again, a reset of my threshold of delight. Today I walked—no, sauntered!— to the mailbox halfway down my block alone. It was like a mini-vacation. My office has air conditioning. What good fortune! I dedicate myself to important work, an honor! My house is appreciated and loved by my children— I am the wealthiest woman in the world! And there are a few who have remained by me in the most tumultuous years of my life and have proven themselves to be True Blue, in spite of myself… a staggering gift.

Having been knocked down, over and over and over again… with no end in sight… I will still move through this. Having an internal experience that is hidden or misunderstood in the bustling world is not something I want to resist. I want to welcome this.

I will kiss the ground in the terrain of my soul and walk with courage down unknown paths.

DOMINE Iesu Christe, Fili Dei vivi, miserere Mei, peccatricis…

This is just a note to folks who wonder why my account is inactive on Facebook and can no longer be found on Instagram right now.

Despite privatizing all my accounts and blocking certain users and being extremely judicious with how I engage in social media, it’s not currently safe for me to be active there. My profile has still been monitored and innocent posts used against me. My children and I have been secretly videotaped at least twice that I know of, and my life is under scrutiny by a man looking to distort any scrap of fodder possible in a quest to tear me down.

The truth of my situation is extraordinarily strange and uncomfortable to believe and I’m not interested in using my energy to try and convince people of what has been happening.

But in the meantime, I have to burrow deeper into what elements of privacy I can retain and cling to the solace and blessings that can be found in the shadows of Gethsemane.

Thank you for your prayers.

Hope Springs Eternal

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Looking out my kitchen window this morning made me drop the dish I was washing and gasp. My raspberry plant had suddenly grown— or I suppose it was just being seen for the first time in months— and the tiniest of white buds were making an appearance. Running outside to verify what I was seeing confirmed the marvel.

This is the ‘botany of hope.’

This is literally post-traumatic growth.

My raspberry is older than I am, see. As children, my siblings and I adored the raspberry patch my parents cultivated for decades. That spot of the yard was both a hide-and-seek place and a fort-building place and a peaceful place of poking at bugs and stealing mom’s berries, leaving evidence rather obvious on our lips and hands. Some years back, against my protests, my dad decided to cut down the tall evergreens and mom pulled out the raspberries to make the front of their house more… I don’t know… appealing or contemporary or open… or something I can’t really understand. In 2017, my sister-in-law (much more of a wizard with plants than me) gave me a tiny, 5 inch baby remnant of the raspberries she’d kept aside in a cheap, disposable plant container. I was grateful but dubious, assuming I’d kill it.

That plant sat outside in my driveway for nearly two years, sitting on top of a plastic grocery bag in its generic plastic holder. It endured rain and hail. Windstorms. 14” of snow. Reduced to just a bare stick or two for a long time, I ignored the plant as life did not cease its punishment during this period…

Then my aunt came over last year and asked me to please love it. I simply had to put in the dirt and sunshine… it would be fine.

I didn’t believe her. The plant was dead to me. While it symbolized “roots,” I had already gone through my mourning and moved on.

But, there was a still moment in early 2019 when I bought a couple planters and attempted, through my feelings of intimidation, to grow some produce. The bell pepper failed. The cherry tomatoes briefly performed but died early. The lettuce was underwhelming. The carrots were stunted and deformed. And the radishes were eaten all through by ants. My 40 year old raspberry plant grew a shoot or two of green but nothing. Returned to sticks over the winter. It was confirmed: I’m a gardening failure. Or at least… I have a lot to learn still.

But here’s this! My raspberry of glory! It’s almost two feet tall, healthy, beautiful and has a history infused with deep meaning for me.

I am hoping to return to my roots this summer… and it will be such a joy to return this raspberry to its native land with me.

This plant makes me profoundly happy. And I genuflect at the mystery of it all.

The Bleeding Pelican

… because the fool can't remain silent.

Category Archives: Bits About Life

Finis

Proof of (a) Life: The Photography Conundrum

Portrait of an HSP

In Memoriam…

Getting Real about “Doing the Work.”

2020 in Books

Unanswered Questions

Further adventures in a tale told out of order…

Writing to Know How I Think

This is just a note to folks who wonder why my account is inactive on Facebook and can no longer be found on Instagram right now.

The truth of my situation is extraordinarily strange and uncomfortable to believe and I’m not interested in using my energy to try and convince people of what has been happening.

But in the meantime, I have to burrow deeper into what elements of privacy I can retain and cling to the solace and blessings that can be found in the shadows of Gethsemane.

Thank you for your prayers.

Hope Springs Eternal