Ripe

by Valerie Gillies

Here I am, sitting at the computer trying to write something coherent, while inches away my thirteen year old is melting down at the prospect of the first day of school tomorrow…

I am breathing. Deeply. Slowly. Trying to plant myself in a solid place as the door slams and the tornado comes and goes from my room. I refuse to be swept away…

Outdoors, it is a stunning evening. There are actual, real life pumpkins in my otherwise barren vegetable garden. While I rued the loss of my tomatoes and chard to deer, the vines crept around, secretly fruiting under enormous leaves. Those big, beautiful pumpkins are now turning orange…

My life is ripe. I have gone enough distance to know that the unpleasant noise and distraction of this evening is merely that. And if I can wait it out for a very short while, the chaos will give birth to opportunity…

Autumn is the season when I re-set my life. To my children, as with my earlier self, transitions are accompanied by more fear and anxiety than hope and anticipation. Without my noticing exactly when, the scales have tipped in the opposite direction. I now find times of change to be the easiest in which to do things differently—sort out, discard, clean up, and begin…

I always knew that I wanted to be a mother, but at age 34 with a diagnosis of PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) and not yet married, that dream was still out of sight. 

I knew that getting pregnant would involve some medical intervention, but I didn’t think too much about it because I was not ready to be a mother.  When I met my future husband, Alan, we both knew that children would be part of our future.   One year later I was married and one step closer to the whole fairy tale.

From the time I learned I had PCOS, at age 28, I knew that getting pregnant would require some medical help.  Alan and I talked about our family options even before we were married.  Adoption was always on the table, but I felt that I needed to at least try to get pregnant.  I found a great fertility specialist and enthusiastically started treatments.  […]

“For years I was on the outside looking in, watching friends juggling their time, wiping little noses and strapping small folk into car seats. I felt for them. sometimes, wondered if they felt they’d lost their sense of who they were – the marketing director, the linguistics expert, the party girl, the intrepid explorer, the physiotherapist. Some seemed to get low craving a previous existence, looking wistfully out over the tiny crockery piled high in the kitchen sink or chatting late at night about how they didn’t feel very “me” any more. Now, I’m part of the club, I’m one of them, only I feel that I’ve found the missing part of me, the piece that makes me truly ‘me.’

I’m a mother and I cherish, relish and grasp every moment. I want to shout it from the rooftops and leap for joy every time I hear the sound of little feet dashing down the corridor towards me. Every night time, “Mummy” warms my heart, whatever the time.  I am me: Ellie, writer, researcher, marketer, Springsteen fan and most importantly and above all else, MOTHER. And it’s the absolute heart of who I am.” – Ellie Stoneley

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“Before becoming a mother, at age 39, I would have said “no.” I would have been wrong. As my ‘mama bear’ self immerges, the defining elements as to why I am where I am have come into vivid view. Passion and purpose are now braided together. Engagement in efforts to make a profound difference for my children now and in the future, is what drives me – not professional achievement or career status.” – Maureen O’Neill-Davis

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“The most defining role a woman can have is […]

The Wilderness of Motherhood

by Lora Freeman Williams

….One of the deepest wounds of my childhood had been that I learned I did not matter. My hungers and desires were a burden to my mother who could barely feed and shelter me. My noise disrupted her already scattered thoughts.  My observations didn’t fit with her twisted ones, and she told me I was wrong.

And so, in order to survive, I had agreed with her. I hid my hungers from even myself; I became quiet to avoid disturbing anyone; I kept my thoughts to myself because exposing them just exposed me to ridicule.

And in this very early time of Isaac’s life, my little spark of life got so low and small and so critically essential to my child’s well-being, that I began to protect and nurture it. I took my precious little time alone to write an essay or two about what I was learning. I started to notice that some people actually gave me more energy than they took, and I sought them out. I learned that sucking up the happy moments of my life was a balm that healed the wounds of my youth, and I allowed myself the freedom to do that.

I learned to pay attention, even in the inevitable miserable moments of parenting, because my presence with myself and with my son fed us both. I learned that I could be kind and compassionate to both my son and to myself in the middle of the pains of life, and one step at a time along the path, I practiced doing that…….

“Yes. Yes, I would absolutely do things differently. I would not have gotten married and, therefore, would not have had my son. The challenges are sometimes so great for me, that I do think they outweigh the blessings I can currently count. I’m sorry to say this, because I know the past me who so yearned for a baby couldn’t imagine ever having turned into the current me who regrets. But, so she did.”- Anonymous

“Yes. Despite the fact that I think that anyone should be a mother at any age she wishes to, knowing what I know now, I truly wished I’d started earlier. Hindsight is easy….” Anonymous

Were you to live your life over, would you do it differently?

Dear Reader: At the request of the writer, we have changed all names to protect the family. This is the story of how love cannot conquer all and, how, for traumatized and dysregulated children and their families, love alone rarely conquers anything.

Joy and caution are equally stirring in me as my bright, creative and angelic nine-year-old daughter, who struggles with several conditions associated with complex trauma, is expected to return to us – to her home and her family, after seven hundred thirty days, away.

You might think she’s been in residential care or in a group home all this time, participating in a variety of intense beneficial therapies and family therapy, but that’s not the case. Our then-first grader was taken by a local service agency, based on what we believe are contrived, exploited claims – all in the name of  “safety and protection.“

If our family can be taken down this devastating, erroneous path, no family is immune. […]

The Things We Do For Love

By Joely Johnson Mork

I spent a big chunk of my 30s and the beginning of my 40s living in upstate New York. It was an old boyfriend who first summoned me to the Saratoga area from Philadelphia. We thought we could rekindle our once-soulmated high school romance by my joining his grownup life, but that spark sputtered out not long after I arrived. Instead, I wound up single again at age 36, with a new personal vow that I would never again move my life to follow a man.

After that reality check of a breakup, I found my way to the nearby city of Troy, where I finally discovered real work and connected with a sincere group of friends. It was also where I met my husband and (eventually) gave birth to my son.

Unlike most women I know, I never expected to marry or have a family. Growing up in a broken home and something about practicing the “engaged detachment” of yoga since the age of 18 had led me to feel pretty distant from those very human goals. But I did get married, and the man who ultimately changed my mind about that is younger than I am by more than just a few years. On a crisp September wedding day, I am proud to say I was still holding it together at 39, and he was a very fresh-faced 26. The great majority of the time, this age difference has no effect on our marriage or on our lives. But then, not long after our fourth anniversary, a recruiter made a phone call, and […]