Invisible Women

Maybe it's just me and my hormones. It's likely just me and my hormones - but sometimes I truly think I am the invisible woman. I guess most moms probably feel that way. Whether we work outside of the home or not, many times much of the home-front management falls on us. But what happens when we can take on no more? What happens if one of the many balls we juggle comes crashing down?  $%*& would break down...that is what would happen.


Since becoming a stay-mostly-at-home mom at age 38, I have had some serious adjustments to make. I no longer have the pressures of getting up and dressed 'nicely' for work (though I do need to invest in some yoga gear that isn't full of holes at this point), or even to wash my face or hair before heading out the door for school drop off in the morning. I no longer have a boss (or six as I did at one point when I ran a small PR business and had several clients at a time), or co-workers. I no longer have a career-oriented to-do list, professional development opportunities, lunches with clients, late nights at work, and I certainly don't have to stifle what happened at the office when I am around my kids.


While those things sound taxing and are likely the norm for most of my family and friends, it is no longer for me. I am a professional turned loose. Ha! Some days it's exhilarating. I can remember dreaming for the day I could be home with my kids. I'd workout at the gym everyday and my kids would happily go into the gym nursery and there would be no mystery illnesses caught from all their public toy sucking and window licking. Right? Wrong. I would have time to research and make delicious home-cooked meals and finally begin to dive into the world of nutrition the way I have always wanted. Right? Wrong. I would be more available to be my older boys' ever-energetic cheerleader, tutor, mommy-of-the-year. R-I-G-H-T?  WRONG. I would be so refreshed from the lack of work-oriented stresses that I would be a PEACH to come home to in the evenings. Just ask my husband... it's a N-O.


I have found that mothering four boys is simply the most important and most difficult job I've ever had. For an extroverted non-homebody (is that even a word?), these walls tend to close in. The clutter seems so overwhelming that I can't breathe and I tend to snap easier than ever before. I tend to notice EVERY. SINGLE. MESS. and can't focus until it is clean. Did I mention I'm a bit OCD? I'm not kidding...it's a real thing for me. It definitely helped me in school and in the workplace, but at home - yikes.


My twins sleep through the night mostly. And by mostly I mean sometimes. Oye. I have never had babies that slept through the night when others' babies did. This would be the one time that I would have liked to keep up with the Joneses. INSERT YAWN. I haven't slept through the night soundly in about 4 years. That's not an exaggeration. From Rowan being a toddler (he's newly 7) to my parents needing 24/7 care through their illnesses and sometimes because I simply needed to be near them (I'd wake up in the middle of the night and drive over) to ensure they were all right, to my twin pregnancy insomnia, and now the FIRST 12 MONTHS of having a baby (times 2)...this gal is tired.  This gal is punchy.


Being a mother can be lonely. I never knew how lonely until I stopped working. I always thought it was so funny when parents would say they craved adult interaction. I get it now. There are days I don't speak for an hour or more (that's changing as the twins communicate more) and certainly don't speak to an adult for 8+ hours or more. There are days when there are NO ADULT CONVERSATIONS. Lots of hellos and goodbyes, but no depth. My husband comes home, wiped out from work, and he is pretty quiet. Enter me trying to get his attention and talk. It doesn't always go the way I hope. I go to bed alone quite often because he is being super dad and reading his third story to Rowan and falls asleep too. Why do humans need sleep?!


So much of motherhood is invisible. How I did all that I do now while working full time - I don't know. I think I must have thrived on what I could make possible. I could clean my home in 30 minutes. I could cook dinner in 30 minutes. I could drink so much caffeine that I most definitely could not fall asleep in 30 minutes. Now, everyone has their own lives and it appears mine exists to ensure theirs go well. That's ok...I WANT them to go well. But there are definitely cracks in this stay- at-home gig that you can fall into and it's not pretty. But even if I fell, it would probably take 8+ hours to find me because...THERE ARE NO ADULTS AROUND.


Occasionally I find myself texting my husband the list of things I have accomplished so that he never questions what I am doing. I'm fortunate to have married someone who would never question it...but I feel like I need to validate my existence at times - or to explain why it looks like a tornado hit at 6:30 p.m. when he walks in the door, when at 2:45 p.m. it was quite clean and organized.


Lately I've picked up a few activities to hopefully bring in a little income and help me take baby steps toward a career in wellness - someday. When people learn what I'm doing I get one of two responses:


1. How nice for you - it gets you out of the house (what this feels like "Oh, Carrie! You colored in the lines! Good job"
2. Must be nice to only have to work a few hours a week. (what this feels like: "You privileged, silly woman. You don't have a real job and don't have to have one. You certainly don't know what WORK is."


I can't win, I tell ya! The fact that this house is standing (TALL and strong I might add), that we have renters in our rental and all things landlord handled mostly by me, bills are paid (except I REALLY need to put Hargray on autodraft - woops that last payment was late), kids are organized and doing what they need to be and disciplined when they are not, dinner is made (and while I'm not a great cook, I'm learning more and more), house is mostly clean and the laundry is mostly washed (I really like the word mostly), that my yoga students seem to return each week, that I'm even able to carve time to think about side jobs, and that my friends still know my name if I press them...I guess I'm doing all right.


While I look to my family to notice the things I do and appreciate them, I sometimes expect it too much. It usually happens when I begin feeling invisible and taken for granted...and then I threaten to go back to a 9-5 and hand it all over to them...and they don't believe me. Ha. They know this is the best way for our family to function emotionally, spiritually, financially - but maybe not mentally! I swear these boys think I am superhuman.


So cheers to all of us invisible women who make the world go round. Maybe someday we'll get to sit down, put our feet up, and eat those bon bons people think we have stored.

The Thrill is Gone

When you're young, life seems endless. Mortality isn't really part of your everyday thought process when there is simply too much to see, do, and experience! When you're 15, 30 seems light years away, when you're 20, 40 seems impossible. I haven't reached 40 yet, but it's just around the corner. For so much of my life I fantasized about my future, about the possibilities of life, about what I could and would become. Proving myself to myself and others meant everything. Life was fun, exciting, and magical, until it wasn't.

If you're fortunate enough to have strong relationships with your parents, then losing them abruptly and very close together (mine were both gone within 9 months) is likely to stop you in your tracks. That is how it was and is for me. The noose wrapped around and squeezed me just enough to remind me that I was an inch away from losing them, losing myself, at any point. My life went dark, my heart got heavy, and my brain thought faster than ever. Mostly they were thoughts about how to help, how to fix, and how to save them. My heart was so heavy and the lump in my throat so large that I could only think and do and not concentrate on feeling. When they left (dying still hurts to say), I felt as though someone had beaten me up and left me on the side of the road to slowly bleed out, and I was just waiting for the pain to subside...for anything to numb that forever ache.

The death of my parents and the loss of my relationship with my brother through it all caused everything that was to simply no longer be. The back-to-back care-taking of my parents(there are so many things I never thought I'd witness or have to participate in terms of care), the funeral arranging, the estate managing (I'll never forget feeling like I was a little kid in that lawyer's office) kicked most of what I had alive inside of me out, stole my breath and my joy, and aged me far beyond the physical. Hollow is the only word I can seem to describe my state most days.  My structure is here, but my bones whistle the sounds deep loss. I'm emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually worn thin.

At the moment life doesn't have the shine it used to. Perhaps it became dull when cancer entered our family and ate my father alive. Life doesn't have the laughter it used to. Perhaps it was choked out when my mother couldn't catch her breath and was put on a breathing machine for the rest of her life. She died breathing a wretched death rattle and altering between gray and ghost white - while I was powerless to change any of it. I simply watched the life drain from her body.  Life doesn't have the assurance it used to. God doesn't seem so close when you look for answers, comfort or signs of life after death and get silence. I really thought that in times like this, God would look different, would feel different. Perhaps I thought a ribbon of light would direct my every move, every word. Perhaps that night when I threw up an entire bottle of red wine and stumbled through my front door from simply trying to drown the pain wouldn't have happened if He had just shown up and told me it would be ok. Perhaps...perhaps He would have used my parents to show what He could do and heal them.

It's been two years after my father left me and I can now look back and see the supernatural strength provided, the grace and mercy He had on my relationship with my dad. I get it now - but I still don't want to.

There are many moments when I feel completely selfish. Did I somehow think I'd escape loss? Did I at any point think life goes on forever? Babies die everyday, people die from the most wretched diseases and living conditions every second of every day and here I am, still mourning. I can see it from a bird's eye view. I can see myself going about my day and trying, always trying, so I suppose that is a good thing.

There is simply now. I am a mother of four boys, each in a very different life stage, and I find myself thinking about my own mortality and watching the clock...wondering if I will be around longer than my parents were and if they would escape the raw ache I feel. Certainly it would be easier if my parents died at 85 or 90 instead of 65 and 66, right? Eh, probably not. Where is my faith to get me through? Where is my God? My faith is my hope that all will be made right someday, and I know that God is there, but perhaps He truly is a little further away than I'd like Him to be right now. Perhaps that's my own doing or simply just my perception, who knows.

I am determined to try to live the best life I can with the most quality as I can, with my family filling my days and my heart. I am a changed woman and seem to find that dressing in Teflon is a lot easier than wearing something sheer. There are days when I grin and bear the memories of my parents' escalation to their final moments and other days I simply drip tears at the thought of their suffering.

Everything about life is a challenge when your heart is broken. The Nothing calls to me daily. It wants me to sink into the mud, but I keep reaching up, because any other direction isn't living.

This is the blog of a crazy woman. A woman crazy for truth, for love, for feeling and BEING well. The topics will likely be as varied as my moods, so I apologize in advance for the roller coaster (not really). More than anything, this blog is likely to be therapeutic for me, because I truly believe we all have THE RIGHT TO BEAR LIFE.