Oh Brother Where Art Thou is one of my favorite movies of all time (I’m a big Odyssey fan, too, so it’s not a surprise), and the soundtrack is also my favorite.
Tonight, we watched the episode of Marvel’s Echo that used the song “Down to the River to Pray” by Alison Kraus. It’s my favorite song on the soundtrack. Of course, I had to listen to it again twice, actually, and it made me cry.
I miss my dad. I miss my mother-in-law and my father-in-law. I don’t talk a lot about my grief, but it’s always there, hanging out. It comes in waves.
Anyway, I was listening to the song and started thinking about my own baptism and when my oldest was baptized. It was Labor Day weekend in 2011. I don’t talk a lot about my faith because, honestly, to me, it’s a private thing, but in 2011, I was baptized for the first time along with my oldest kiddo underneath Honey Run Covered Bridge.
For those who don’t know, my husband and I got married nine months later at Honey Run Covered Bridge. His dad was our officiant. His mom recorded it, and she and my oldest were our witnesses. I wrote our vows, and we said them. Then we went and had lunch at a local restaurant.
Honey Run Covered Bridge burned down in November 2018 in the Camp Fire. I am crying as I type that. Many lives were lost in that fire, and I still hurt and grieve for that and the impact it had on Paradise, Magalia, Concow, and other communities close to Chico, California. There is weight in those words. I talk about it as much as I talk about my faith, which is not often. I knew some of the folks who were lost in the fire. I know people who lost everything in that fire.
Circling back to my baptism. Pastor Dave asked me if I had promised to try to live a life like Jesus? I said “I do.” And he smiled and said, “I know you will.” Then I was dunked. When I surfaced, I thought, “I should have asked someone to take pictures.” There are no pictures, but sure enough, my oldest and I were baptized in September 2011.
Anyway, I was thinking about this, listening to the song, and thinking about how I told my dad about it, and he was happy and thinking about how hard I worked at rebuilding a relationship with my dad over the years since he got sober, I think it was 2006 when he told me he’d received his 1-year chip – after I’d told him that I couldn’t have my kid around someone who was going to be drunk all day every day. And I was thinking about how much I miss him when there is a journal entry from when I was 12 saying that I wouldn’t cry if he died. Boy, was that a lie. It’s probably the biggest whopper I’ve ever told. There hasn’t been a day in the six months and eight days since his death that I haven’t cried, haven’t missed him, haven’t wished he was here.
My grief, it’s like my faith. I don’t like to talk about it. Like Honey Run Covered Bridge, my father and mother-in-law are gone. While she didn’t pass away until Christmas, she retreated into dementia when my father-in-law passed away. The last year has been the hardest and most emotional in my life.
But wait, you might say. Your mom died too, didn’t she? In summer 2022. And you would be right. But I’d grieved her years before her death. That’s not to say I don’t still cry sometimes. But she was toxic. I’d cut contact in 2014 when I realized that so long as I continued to have contact, I wouldn’t be able to work on my fawn response to trauma – the people pleaser in me. My mom was controlling and narcissistic, and I wish I could say good things – I mean, she kept me alive to reach adulthood. She was an okay mom when I was a kid, though even then… I suspect she had Munchausm by Proxy. She liked the attention she got from me being a sick kid – and I was a very sick kid. When I became a teenager, the clampdown was worse; she’d befriend my friends and cut them off from me at her will.
There’s a whole book’s worth of things – honestly probably two book’s worth of things – my mom did to my brother and I… that people probably won’t believe, and that’s fine. It’s unbelievable. The point is, I looked at my infant daughter, thinking, “My mom told me I’d understand when I had kids. When I had my oldest, I didn’t understand; she said she meant I’d get it when I had a daughter, and now that I look at this second tiny perfect being who reflects only love and the divine itself, I really don’t understand. I went spiraling into a deep depression, wondering what was so fundamentally wrong with me that my own mother would want to destroy my life. Then, in October of 2014, I looked at my baby; I’d been struggling with the worst post-partum depression I could imagine, and I decided to cut contact. I told my husband, “I can’t get mentally healthy so long as I’m talking to someone so toxic to my very soul.”
Then, I grieved my mom. I read the book I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy just this month. There are some parallels. I was never thin enough for my mom. I, too, had disordered eating. I still have to be very careful about exercise and restrictive eating. At one point, size 00 was too big for me and would slide off me. The more people pointed out how thin I was, though, the worse the disordered eating got. I would look into the mirror, and I would see every single thing my mom pointed out. See, when you’re not eating a lot and are malnourished, your belly might become distended. So my mom would often, after I had my oldest, accuse me of being pregnant when I wasn’t. I just was only eating one very low-calorie meal a day.
My mom was livid when I quit modeling and acting. That was her dream. Not mine. I was a Seventeen cover model semi-finalist (quarter-finalist?) in their competition the year I was a freshman in high school. I didn’t place high enough in the end to be in the magazine, but I ranked. I wanted to be a “normal high school kid” was the words I used with my therapist to try to explain to my mom what I wanted.
Thank God for therapists. My mom fired her when she told my mom that my depression was situational and not chemical. “The only thing wrong with her,” my therapist said to her in front of me, “is that you are entirely too controlling. You need to allow her to grow up.” My therapist, after I left my first husband, started talking about red flags. I asked her what to do if my mom had those red flags. My mom wouldn’t take me back to therapy after that. I hated graduating from NIU and leaving my amazing therapist there, who was free with hugs, validation, and reassurance. I would still see her if her office didn’t limit people to 12 weeks… well, that and the whole graduating thing.
Thank God for not-my-mom moms, too. There have been so many. I collect not-my-mom moms like some folks collect shoes.
That brings me to my point. The whole saying “yes” thing. I was reading Shonda Rhimes’ Year of Yes, and the following passage really resonated with me.
Losing yourself does not happen all at once. Losing yourself happens one no at a time. No to going out tonight. No to catching up with that old college roommate. No to attending that party. No to going on a vacation. No to making a new friend. Losing yourself happens one pound at a time.
Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes Location 1414
I look at myself in photos and in the mirror. I hear the physical therapist (did I tell y’all I need my knee replaced? I seriously messed it up, and it has bone-on-bone arthritis. I don’t know the person looking back at me. In my mind, I’m still the person who runs across a room and leaps on a bed just because. But in reality, if I tried to do that, I’d hurt myself even more than I already am.
Shonda’s Year of Yes wasn’t about always saying “yes” to others. It was about saying “yes” to the things that scared her and pushing through the fear and the resistance. As a lifelong sufferer of generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, and ADHD, there are a lot of things that scare me. There are a lot of things that send me into sweat. Since leaving grad school, the first thing I said “yes” to that scared me was stepping up to lead a Girl Scouts troop. My anxiety brain said to me, you’ll drop the ball. You’ll let kids down. And I mean, you’ve never camped before. How are you going to take kids camping if you’ve never camped?
Friends, I have camped, done outdoor training, learned to kayak and canoe, and passed the small craft safety certification. I also overcame my fear of blood that held me back from being a biology/pre-med major and passed the first aid/CPR/AED certification. I learned how to shoot an arrow and got my archery instructor certification. I did it for my little girl who also has GAD, OCD, and ADHD – and has severe social anxiety, though she works on it. I looked at her and saw how good Girl Scouts had already been for her. I stepped up and did the scary things. And wouldn’t you know it, Girl Scouts has been a really good thing for me, too.
But then, the pandemic happened, and I stopped saying yes. I started to re-lose myself—as Shonda puts it, one no at a time, one pound at a time. I kept up with Girl Scouts. I kept doing things there that pushed me—not just because of my own kid but because I had a whole troop of kids who needed me to do so. But the pandemic, my kid’s sickness, and then a high-risk pregnancy that had me on bed rest, then getting COVID multiple times, then all. The. Loss. The losses mentioned in this post are just the surface. I also lost my best friend’s parents. Friends. Folks I worked with. A dear friend and former mom-who-isn’t-my-mom lost her son, who wasn’t much older than my oldest kiddo. It’s been a lot, dear reader. And I’m still only scratching the surface.
Worst of all, I almost lost my younger brother, and his health condition means I can lose him at any time. I am eternally grateful for every single reply, every single conversation, every single laugh with him. But that’s all a post for another time. Growing up, he was my best friend. I hated having to move away; I hated the part of cutting contact with my mom, which meant I was cutting contact with him. That part was like sawing off part of my arm.
I’m ready to start my year of yes. I’m ready to own shit. I’m ready to get all the stories in my head out of my head and into stories, novels, and poems for you to read. I’m ready to stop hiding myself behind things.
I’m ready for “yes” and all of the scariness that entails. I have faith that things will turn out well.
