Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Leggings and Listening

Many of you have heard of a company that sells clothing on a direct sales platform, wholesale to the consultant who sells it for retail. I was first introduced to this company by a member of my downline team, who decided to join the clothing company last winter.
Now, the business model is such that there is a limited number of pieces cut from any particular print of fabric. So it makes the product appealing because of how unique the pieces are. It's mass-production but limited due to the choice of materials. There is a definite draw to it because of the uniqueness. Along with it comes some level of crazy but that's going to happen no matter where you go anymore.

I could talk about the cut of the styles, the fabrics, etc. if you're a fan, I don't need to explain it. If you're not or you never heard of it, all I can say is you need to put your hands on it and wear it to comprehend it. I can't do it justice with my words. It's midnight and I've been busy, so the pistons are shutting down quickly here. But I will tell you the clothing is COMFORTABLE. Seriously, I almost crawled in bed wearing one of the dresses a couple weeks ago.

I was talking with a friend and it occurred to me there was more drawing women to these clothes than the rare find prints, the extreme comfort, the versatility, etc. In the past many years, dare I say over a decade, clothing for women has become more insulting to our intelligence (sizing and fit issues anybody?), more revealing, and mothers across the country are begging the question: "Why do retailers offer skimpy clothing for our daughters, but our sons can find the same standard clothes?" Just do a handy internet search of your own to find any number of blogs and articles lamenting the double standard in what is offered. We have shorter and shorter hemlines being offered to both women and girls. I can't take my daughters shopping without having to nix most of the choices, or stipulate that a camisole must be worn under something because of a fault in the design that doesn't meet our dress standard. And to be clear, we are not horridly strict here. Our girls and I have long femur bones, so it's even more difficult to find shorts that cover where we deem that they should. We have curvy parts that require extra fabric to dress those areas. It's not an option to allow otherwise. We don't do sheer and see-through where a swim team bathing suit would cover. We don't even need to discuss necklines, do we? If I can see cleavage from my vantage point, I am not comfortable wearing it. It's that simple. The way I move, and doing the kind of work I do, that kind of neckline puts me at the edge of sharing parts of me that I do not wish to share.

The revelation I had this evening was that this company is such a draw to women because they offer clothing that fits a variety of ways, is versatile, fun, and here's the biggest thing - it's MODEST. None of these pieces are excessively short, low cut, or scant. Yet, when I wear the pieces, my husband swoons because they flatter my figure, and he thinks it makes me more beautiful, and even sexy. It might be that I'm also insanely comfortable in what I'm wearing, and not tugging, pulling, or checking for exposure. If I have to fight with my clothes, I won't wear it. I fight with enough other more important stuff in my world. The things I wear aren't a priority for fighting.

Women have an option versus the ones offered in stores, and they are voting with their dollars. I'm sure the big box retailers are surveying the landscape and discerning why their bottom line is affected. The reality is that they have been failing us for many many years, our complaints have fallen on deaf ears, and now that we can find something they don't offer and we've been wanting, even begging them to provide, we are taking our business elsewhere.





Sunday, July 3, 2016

Shocked at Mass today

There was a family in the pew behind me at Mass today with a small child and a baby who I'd guess was about 14 or 15 months old. The little guy had a noisy couple of minutes and dad was trying to quell the noise. Then someone came over to them, stepped into the pew and chastised them. I couldn't make out everything being said. But the family responded by getting up and leaving in the middle of the Mass. I was not expecting that reaction.

I'm going to skip my commentary. It's well known with a simple search of my blog my thoughts and they have not changed.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Pastors, your Mother's Day stuff is nice and all buuut....

I have friends who skip church for Mother's Day because of you.
After being told she's less of a woman by people who were supposed to be on her side, your decision to have mothers stand and be honored or prayed over by the congregation has driven her decision. Even 50 some-odd years later, my father still grieves the loss of a child, and then the other loss 30ish years ago. My FATHER, a man, who is supposed to apparently be stoic and push aside *his* grief. My own husband is having a difficult time of it himself. My best friend's grandmother had a loss in the 60s, and the doctor was anything but compassionate toward her. She told him to never say that crap again and he was not to return to her room. He returned the next day with more of the same junk, and she threw a bar of soap at his head. She is 50+ years out from that loss, it still burns with an indescribable ache, and she was one of the ones who suffered in silence all these years. Women like her are why I have my big mouth and why I refuse to keep it shut.

So, pastors, get creative. Get compassionate. Get your congregation involved. Get them talking. Get them to understand the pain. Get them to show love to the women with empty arms, even if they also have full ones.

I will keep it simple and share these links with you, because they say it so much better than I could or would. 

http://www.messymiddle.com/an-open-letter-to-pastors-a-non-mom-speaks-about-mothers-day/
http://www.messymiddle.com/Beyond-the-surface-of-mothering

I am NOT saying skip the celebrating of mothers. I am saying shift a couple gears and rework it. I'm saying that while you're celebrating mothers in May and fathers in June, that you plan for October to honor the reason parents grieve too. I'm saying you've got noble intentions, and there is room to make it better. Believe me, word will get out that you do something awesome for the moms-of-a-different-sort, and you will build your community and have a group of women who are going to wrap their arms around newly-grieving families so that they do not suffer in silence like my friend's grandmother and countless other women, or like my father and husband.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Putting yourself in someone else's shoes

In an online loss support group, someone shared that they were told by a guy that nobody chooses to experience loss, but they DO choose how they respond to it. He just failed to comprehend how we simply can not just not-cry when there's a reminder. I suggested she put it in terms a guy who has never experienced a loss, or held a sister, wife, mother, girlfriend, or other female in the throes of grief over losing her child would understand. 
"Tell him to imagine getting punted in the nads so hard they may never recover, and he’s not allowed to cry, yell, double over in pain, wince, or even blink twice about it. He still has to go to work like normal digging a trench to lay conduit, or climbing a ladder to paint a vaulted ceiling, or pushing a lawnmower. And that he isn’t allowed to respond to it at all. He can’t even talk to his doctor, significant other, or minister about it. And then add to it, all his buddies tell him to man up and suck it up buttercup, it’s just a kick in the nads and he can still have sex." 

I'm sure watching a few episodes of Jackass might be a fair start in getting someone like that to gain any insight. Somehow, I suspect people like that will never get a clue till life slams them in the back of the head with a clue-by-four.

Sunday, March 6, 2016

How a mug & spoons help me manage my grief and my life

The day I went to the ER for a suspected miscarriage, my husband wandered the hospital halls after the ultrasound to find food, and stopped at the gift shop. Once we returned to the room after the scan, and the medical staff exited, I told him I did not see a heartbeat on the screen. He claimed hunger, which I knew was true because I heard his stomach growl, and it was well past his usual lunchtime. He came back a while later with a cafeteria cup (probably containing sweet tea) and this mug. He was trying to cheer me up and be a little funny. Unfortunately, the mug stinks at keeping coffee warm enough for very long, and it has a chip in the rim from someone else leaving it in the van. I pulled it from the cabinet for sentimental reasons. I didn't want it broken in circulation. To me, it is more than *just* a mug. It is one of the very few tangible items I have connected to the very brief existence of our Francis.


In the Healing After Pregnancy Loss group I joined, we talk about spoons. It is related to the blog post about The Spoon Theory. One day, I was feeling frustrated with the poor reconciliation of my to-do list versus the got-it-done list. My upline director suggested I change how I view the spoons. Instead of using up the spoons, decide how to spend them and what kind of investment will be to spend them. I had a HUGE moment of AH-HAAAA!

I went to the box of plastic cutlery, and I grabbed a handful of spoons out of it. I then found a sharpie marker that actually wrote clearly and worked. I labeled the majority of the spoons. I did leave several blank for those days the grief visits, the stress plays hard in the day, the work of the day wears on me. But the others, I gave a name. As I use a spoon, I turn it handle up in the mug.

  • Crafting - because I haven't done any in a long time, and it is something I want and need to do. Most days my brain just can't fire the pistons correctly for the simplest of knitting though. It's there when I'm ready for it.
  • 31 - I have two of these for my business, so that I intentionally touch my work daily - one for the fun stuff, one for the must-do stuff.
  • Schlepping people - I have to get people places on time and some days, it pulls a lot out of my resources to do it. But it has a name on a spoon because it is a must-do and it helps my family.
  • Reflection - time at the end of the day to journal and end the day on a positive note.
  • Time with my spouse- probably the most important spoon in the bunch. He is incredibly busy and stretched, and we must connect regularly so we avoid drifting in opposing streams.
  • D.W.O.P.S. - Dealing With Other People's Stuff (or the expletive as it were). When it's not just a friend venting, and you find yourself  getting sucked into it. Or your kids are just at each other's throats all day and you're wearing thin of hearing it or refereeing it.
  • Morning - Mornings take a bit out of me because I'm not a morning person, and there's a time crunch, and coffee isn't always hitting the brain fast enough. 
  • Self Care - bathing, grooming, even getting out of my pajamas on those heavy-spirit days.
  • Home Care - because a tidy space blesses everyone, and some days I struggle to even move a dish to the sink or dishwasher.
     


This is how I sometimes have to manage my days, and manage my grief. I'm a visual tactile person, and some members of my family do not always comprehend the burden on my soul or how it affects my ability to be the matriarch of my household. They can look at the spoons and see how many are available with the handle still down. I have reached a point that I don't need to use the mug of spoons to manage my days as regularly, but it's a gentle reminder to me that life must keep moving, and that there is space and spoons available to allow the grief to visit me for a few minutes, and spoons that are an investment in my life and that of my family.
This coffee mug is not just a silly mug to me. It was a gift from my husband, an attempt to demonstrate his pain to me where he can not articulate it, and his way of sharing humor to kiss my heartache that exists in a way he can not touch. This mug holds a value to me that only someone who has grieved a heavy loss and holds a tangible item related to that situation can fathom. To the rest of the world, it's *just a mug*. If you have a loved one who has such an item, please be respectful about it. When you treat it as an ordinary object, while it has special meaning to them, what you do is disrespect their grief and mourning. Every loss is difficult, regardless of the circumstances. Losing a child though, is a suffering that is more than a loss of the life, but the future that life would have had and the role others would have played in the child's story.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Horror and heartbreak

Please keep my family in your prayers. As I sit her mourning my own loss last summer, and the due date that never came, a relative of mine is mourning the tragic loss of both parents in different ways this past week. I am completely stunned, and my heart breaks for this branch of my family, suffering so very much. Prayers for peace to come to those left behind and for the eternal repose of the deceased.
If you are able to help them bury their matriarch, please consider helping in what ever amount you can.
https://www.youcaring.com/sheena-martin-macnulty-529729

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

I shouldn't

I shouldn't be sitting here drinking this wine.
I shouldn't be able to fit into this pair of pajama pants.
I shouldn't be able to walk normally.
I shouldn't be able to move without worrying about my hip dislocating.
I shouldn't be able to move my arms without whacking my engorged breasts.
I shouldn't be able to see any part of my body from the midsection down to the floor.

But I can, and I am, and I do.

I should've been a shuffling, waddling, fat husk fielding a million questions.
I should've been using a plastic bag on my driver seat to get in and out of my van.
I should've been worrying about choosing a name.
I should've been reconfiguring car seats.
I should've been having heartburn.
I should've been having insomnia.
I should've been excited and nervous.
I should've been worrying about juggling a toddler and a newborn.
I shouldve been perhaps even actually holding a squishy new baby.

Instead, I am forging a new normal that doesn't include any of that.
Instead, I regularly find myself counting how many spoons I have left to get through the rest of the day.
Instead, I found myself having the sensations of a phantom pregnant belly as I laid in bed this afternoon.
Instead, I cry in the hot shower as I look down and see my frame and body all the way down to my feet.
Instead, I am staring at my fertility awareness app on my phone, and seeing that the only thing due this week is my menstrual cycle - and *not* my baby.  Oh, mind and body, you are cruel playmates this week.
Instead, I'm praying to get through the next week without as much heavy grief as I had nearly 7 months ago.
Instead, I am sitting here, mournful and sad, completely depleted of energy.
Instead, I am drafting plans for an annual collection for a charity in honor of Francis' due date that never came.
Instead, I carry the weight of a heavy heart of miscarriage and feeling alone in my grief event though I know I am not.
Instead, I am finding myself comforting other mothers of angels in their journey, just as others walked with me in mine. It is a supremely sucktacular sisterhood have to join.
Instead, I argue with platitudes intended to comfort when all they do is cut deeper and sharper.
Instead, I fight with myself to find silver linings, hidden graces, and the what-ifs that I couldn't do if I had continued that journey.

Instead, I get to say things like "If a girl has to endure the suckage of mourning the loss of a child, she deserves the kind of love and support I got."

And instead, I know not everyone does. And they shouldn't get anything less than I received.