Circles of Hell

I just sent this to my mom about this blog post: http://www.dooce.com/2012/10/22/after-school-special

If you haven't read anything by Heather Armstrong (Dooce) I strongly recommend her blog. I've followed her for over 10 years and think she's brilliant. She's certainly not for everyone but her voice speaks for many and she brings attention to many great topics from depression, parenting, 3rd world issues, and the wonderful lives of dogs (or those of humans with dogs). In any case, her post regarding her 2nd grader's homework is one of honesty and worth sharing!

Mom,
This is a post by a blogger I read regularly and have for over 10 years. She’s a year younger than me and is raising two daughters while juggling the responsibilities of parenting and working from home. She’s a brilliant writer though somewhat unfiltered and crass at times but has been named as Forbes Magazine’s 26th most influential woman in media. See: http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/14/most-influential-women-in-media-forbes-woman-power-women-oprah-winfrey_slide_27.html What I most appreciate is her perspective and honesty. This is a post she had recently (today I believe) and I thought I’d share it with you because…well, it’s true.

Also, you should know that she’s a former Mormon but her mother is still practicing so that should help you through the Celestial Kingdome reference. It’s their Heaven and they have multiple levels of heavens to reach according to their actions here on Earth (Terrestrial Kingdom).

I have felt the pain she writes about, will continue to experience such pain, and if there is an example of redemption on Earth it’s certainly when your own children enter parenthood. My message to you is this: Mom, please enjoy your redemption, a heaven of sorts for you. For me, there’s a circle of hell involved but that’s another writer though he was never honored by Forbes but was probably referenced by them often.

Love,
Angela

Who needs Hallmark when you have the internet and can reference Dante? And really, what are the odds any Hallmark card would cover material like parenting as well as a parent with a mommy blog?

State of Our Union

Today is our second anniversary and in my role as First Lady, I feel I should offer a “State of our Union” address. In the last two years we’ve faced challenges, fought our way through life sometimes together, sometimes individually, and sometimes against one another but in the end, we’re better as a team. We’re better together and we’re better today than we were two years ago. We have much to work on, much to improve in our lives and a path that dictates we’ll do it together and be just fine.

From our humble beginnings two years ago, we can reflect back on living in another home, having another career path, and another way of living. We can celebrate successes at having faced down issues with family members, issues with his ex-wife, and issues with raising the girls. We survived his ex-wife’s fake cancer; we overcame her efforts at ruining the girls’ academic success, and quashed her attempts at ruining our marriage. Each time we faced down her challenges, we grew from the experience and we became stronger together. In many ways, I should thank her for the success she has offered our marriage. Maybe I’ll do that…

The girls are stronger today and better adjusted than two years ago. We’re still working through some stuff and facing future challenges as one grows in her confidence and the other continues to exert her independence. God help us, someday they’ll be teenagers! So far, they’re on a good track and we’re giving them a good life. Our marriage has benefitted from the world we’re creating for them and because of the life it’s offering our family and our marriage. We’ve surrounded ourselves with a wonderful community of friends who want to live well, provide for their families, and experience happiness each day, each moment possible. We are better for having our friends as role-models, having their families enrich our lives, and having this social structure for our family.

We live in a new home that is the first place we can call “ours”. The girls have a space that is clearly theirs and is reflective of them as little girls. Matthew began his time in the world in this home and has a space that will grow and change with him. We will build memories within the walls of this home and will look back at the time in this home as wonderful and memorable. These walls protect us, give us stability, and envelop us as a family.

Mark and I each have different jobs than we did two years ago today. I actually HAVE a job with a wonderful company that allows me to make a difference in the world each day. We expand our family to include many of those in the company I work for and the Hobart family helps enrich our lives. They contribut to our lives with the making of memories, offering of opportunities, benefits (YAY!HEALTH INSURANCE), and certainly the peace of mind in knowing my job will help provide for our family. They are supportive of the girls’ education, of their growing faith, of our family, of Matthew’s development, and they are supportive of our marriage. Ultimately, they are a part of the life we are building and without them it wouldn’t be as rich a life.

Mark’s new job is providing in ways we never expected. He’s found his niche in route sales and is very successful in his endeavors. He works long, hard hours but is fulfilling his role as father, husband, and provider. Mark is giving himself so much in the work he’s doing because he’s working toward things he wants more than anything. He’s making a life for the girls, for Matthew and for me. We don’t have much and we work hard for each thing we have but it’s well worth the effort.

Looking forward, we have new dreams, new goals, and new ideas for the direction for our lives and for our family. Overall, it’s an improvement in what we thought we wanted, in the direction we thought our lives would go, and ultimately an improvement in the life we live together. I await each moment anxiously and with giddy enthusiasm for the memories we’re creating each day.

In all, I think the state of our union is wonderful, tumultuous, exciting, challenging, fulfilling, warm, humorous, and overall it’s pretty remarkable! I know today that we will have a successful term that is our marriage, our life together.

Postcards from the Edge

This is a series of excerpts from an email with my oldest and dearest friend (edited for content and personal material). I've known this friend since we were eleven years old and when I moved away from her at fifteen, we began corresponding. Today, I still count her as my dearest friend, the one who knows me best and one of the people in my life I can say is a soul mate. We were meant to be friends (thanks to her fortitude) and our friendship has grown and flourished even with the absence of geographic proximity. For years, we wrote letters back and forth and the letters usually required additional postage. To say we wrote volumes would not be overstating things. It's been a long-standing joke that we should put our letters to one another together into a book so this is an incarnation of that dream. After this email, she wrote a brief thank you for how this email helped her along. I look at my words to her as the small thing I could do - the thing you do for those you love, the thing you do for your friend to be there for her, to support her. I am now sharing that very special thing with the world because this friendship is one of the most valuable and important things of my life so sharing it makes it even better.

"Let me just say, as frustrating as marriage is it is so much more difficult with step-children. I can say that being in the midst of it and I think it might even be harder on Mark than it is for me. I wouldn’t wish this [step-parenting] situation on anyone but the sad reality is that at our ages, everyone has likely already had children so if you’re getting together with someone it’s just part of the deal. I think the worst part of being a step-parent (for me) is the lack of control. While you’re loaded down with responsibility, you really have little to no say in the bigger picture. Mark doesn’t really understand this because he usually defers to me with regard to decisions and feels I’m the one making the decisions but ultimately their upbringing and care is not my call. That’s the difficult thing to manage since at best our household only has them 50% of the time and we’re basically at the mercy of their nut-job mom."

I can call his ex-wife/the girls' mother a nut-job because, a.) I'm the current wife and b.) she faked having terminal, stage 4 cancer in hopes of getting my husband to come back to her after SHE divorced him and he married me two years afterward. So - she's a nut-job BECAUSE YOU DON'T DO THAT if you're sane.

"Just don’t give up on marriage. It’s not worth it. Your family is worth the effort and the challenges that marriage offers. It’s not an option – marriage is hard and it’s challenging. Just stick with it and get past the challenges. Those bumps will bring you closer through the shared experience and the euphoria of having gotten through rough patches together. It’s never easy and as easy as it might seem to go off on your own (my little fantasy) the reality is that it is a very lonely place and that having someone there WITH YOU to bear witness to the life you’re living, that’s pretty special. Finding someone else is even more of a challenge. It wouldn’t be better it would just be different, a different set of challenges. Want to consider divorce? Before you do, definitely read as much as you can on remarriage, step-families and the like. It SUCKS. There’s just no other way to describe it except maybe messy, complicated, and ugly. "

"I don’t mean to get on my soap box; I’m talking myself through this as much as I’m talking you through it. I think part of my resolve is that I just heard from a dear friend and she’s getting a divorce which I find heartbreaking. I don’t want that for her or her 3 girls. I don’t want that for anyone. She’s handling it like a champ but I just can’t imagine how life will look for her moving forward. I’m reminded that as much as some of my days suck and as much as I want to choke Mark sometimes, I really am living the dream. Could my dream be better or different – SURE! But overall, I have a husband I love and who loves me, I have step-daughters who are pretty special and sweet (mostly), and a beautiful baby boy. I have a nice home, a dog I adore, a job that I’m thankful for and makes me feel as though I’m doing something good, I have a church life, friends, and time with my family. THIS is the best my life has EVER been so I need to be more gracious and thankful. If I’m not happy about something I need to get over it and figure out what it is I want and make that happen because wallowing in my displeasure won’t do a damn bit of good. "

"Just remember, parenting isn’t a perfect art. We aren’t given instruction manuals for the children. You do the best you can and you should be okay with the decisions you made. There will always be another way, another side, and another outcome that could have occurred. Ultimately, you created the life you have and I do want you to be okay with it. It’s YOUR story – YOUR life and it’s yours to cherish so do so. Your children will reflect back on their childhoods and remember very special moments with you. They won’t remember your outbursts or moments you lost your shit. Trust me – I had a mom who lost her shit ALL THE TIME but I don’t remember those moments. I remember she did freak but I don’t recall a particular time or place. Let that comfort you. I don’t hold it against my mom because I do understand she was doing the best she could and sometimes you just lose your shit. I knew this before I had step-daughters. Life is hard and it’s harder when you’re “the Mom”."

I'm so thankful or this life, for a mother who was flawed and told me it was okay to be flawed as long as you do your best, and for having such a dear friend who still needs me as much as I need her.

Married Life

At the suggestion of the best writer I know - I'm back to writing when I can, hopefully waiting less than a year to add a post. The following is part of an email I sent to my oldest and dearest friend, who inspires me to share my thoughts in the most expressive way possible. I feel liberated when writing to her - I feel like she'll understand me more than anyone ever could and knowing that I'm able to speak with my writing in ways I can't any other time. I had years of practice because we wrote volumes of letters to catalog our lives as teenagers. My how frightening it is to think that all those experiences are documented. Anyway, this is what I wrote after having a moment to think of how life has changed for me.

"I blame you and every other girlfriend who married before me (so all of them except Nichole). YOU DID NOT TELL ME the drama of married life is SO MUCH GREATER than the drama of single life. I thought it was called settling down, not "You'll never again have time for yourself but you're stressed out all the time and you thought you never had money before yet somehow you're now making ends meet but still stressing over money and it just will never end and someday the kids will grow and boy do they grow and they don't stop growing no really STOP GROWING DAMMIT but they eat and they grow and use enormous amounts of toilet paper and fingerpaint with yogurt on the underside of the table and the whining ohmygosh the whining just never stops and the butt wiping is never ending and I can't have time alone in the teeny-tiniest bathroom in the whole entire world fits one small adult, two oversized children, and one large labrador and I can't stand always peeing with three pairs of eyes on me and..." I could go on but I have a cramp. :) BUT you just didn't tell me. I blame you all! You just kept it this big, fat secret and waited. You all just waited to have the last laugh as I longed for this life and you thought "OH, you just wait..." and here I am.

Happy but without money because it's spent on everyone else and unable to pee without an audience."

There's so much truth in this brief rant but more than anything, I'm thankful to have this life, for my husband, the girls, and for my dear friend Becky. She inspired me when we were kids and now as an adult. She's now inspiring two beautiful little girls and one very fine young man.

My guess is she does it while peeing in front of an audience too.

Renovation

I've taken some time off from writing...almost a year in fact. I like that my last post was one of gratitude and posted on a conspicuous date 9/9/09. In the time since my last post, so much has changed and I found so much surprising and that began a series of thoughts.

I was pleasantly surprised that my writing was - at the time - quite elegant and accomplished. Out of that came some feelings of having let myself down, or in a small way, let myself go intellectually because my thoughts today don't have the depth, insight, or intellectual capacity as it seems my writing did then. I'd like to think that moving forward in life means improving you each day and becoming a better version of yourself. For me, it seems improvements in one area have come at the sacrifice of another.

So while I have not taken measures to improve myself intellectually, I have improved myself emotionally. I have expanded my support system and love in my life exponentially. I have become reacquainted with family members, introduced to new family, expanded my friendships, and found great love in and from life in my partner and his two little ones. Yet, I find that I have done little to improve myself at an intellectual level.

I'm still unemployed and while it takes a tremendous amount of time (seemingly wasted thus far) to find and apply for jobs, I haven't kept up enough with current events, news, or even with bloggers I love as I once did. I now skim the Google Reader headlines rather than dive into the New York Times, Washington Post, and BBC Online, reading all the articles I could in a given day. I've pared down my list to a handful of people I read regularly but could do so much more with those smart and interesting people out there with something to say and knowledge to impart on the world. I need to open my life to that again and enrich another area of my life so there is something for all my loved ones. I want there to be something for those I love to find interesting, respectful, and honorable within me so that I can know I am giving something to them as well. I can know that I am enriching the world myself and not just a blob taking up space in this part of the world.

In the last year, I have not read many books, found a book inspiring, or even read a novel for pleasure. I have read several books, one of which was Game Change http://www.amazon.com/Game-Change-Clintons-McCain-Lifetime/dp/0061733636
and found it interesting but that it changed my life or perspective very little. I've read a few history books and well, that's probably as boring as it sounds. This isn't who I am! I love books and reading and all the things it can provide you with insight into life through others' experiences, imaginations, or just a snapshot of a time, place, or person that you'd otherwise never know.

I guess I'm at a loss for how I've been apathetic with myself, with personal improvements, and with my life overall. I've allowed the daily ephemera of life to take over and become the priority rather than having the priorities of my life firmly in place. In all it's not bad, I've truly focused on my love, his girls and my home which in the end is the greatest investment for myself and my future. I just question if I've done enough and in gauging it today - I say no.

So...the question I need to ask is: what am I going to do about this? Today, the start will be to think about where I am, where I want to be and find that fine line linking those two places. Wish me luck!

Gratitude

I've been quiet for a while now because of so much going on. You would think that might provide fodder for writing but instead it creates a bit of chaos in my mind and the thoughts are a little scattered. I'm finally feeling out of limbo, closer to the place I'm going to settle. I don't mean physically settle, though that is on the agenda, rather a settled place mentally so I can feel as though I'm contributing to the world again. A job would be nice for that but until the chaos is gone from my mind I doubt the job front will be tremendously productive.

I'm amazed at how blessed I am. I'm lucky enough to have had things work out in a way that I lost my job, a job for which I excelled at performing when allowed to do so. A job that caused the most misery I've ever faced and caused me to question all that I am. What I found in facing down that beast is that I'm a better person than I had previously credited myself, I contributed so much to the KC community, and the patrons I served were appreciative. I added something to their lives and they valued my character. They cared and that saved the memory of that very miserable time. It overpowers the dark memories and creates a silver lining to that cloud. I am thankful for all they offered me and for their continued support.

Family has also shown I am loved. I haven't been actively engaged in their lives for far too long, or my own life for that matter. I believe this was in part, due to the fact that I became accustomed to the absence of family and for the responsibility you have to be a participant within a family. It is a tremendous responsibility and one for which I hold very dear today and moving toward tomorrow. As for not engaging in my own life, I have no idea why I became so complacent but I suppose it was just easier to put things on hold than to deal with all the changes I faced. I am thankful for all my KC family have given me with support, comfort, and a place to always call home. I am thankful for my blood relatives and for all they're sharing, for the love they offer, and for the kindness of the warm embrace in the lives they want me as a participant. They want me engaged in their world, a part of their lives in a very intimate, warm, & loving manner. It is unconditional love and exactly what I need.

Finally, I am so very grateful for my friends. My friends...I feel I am the luckiest girl in the world to have the most compassionate, loving, and amazing friends everywhere. I have those from my distant past who have stayed with me over so many years, those who have been part of my recent past and got me through the most difficult years of my life, and those who were part of my past and now are part of my present and future. Some have reached out to show they care and want happiness for me and sent me off with sadness but knowing our friendship is not bound by proximity or geography. Others, have welcomed me home with open arms, words of encouragement, and with expressions of how I've been missed and the excitement to have me with them again, today. I don't know how I could have asked for more or be a luckier girl than who I am today. For all these things, I am so very grateful and want to recognize it all today because to appreciate all that I have today will make tomorrow even more fulfilling.

James Taylor knows You've Got a Friend

I've taken a vacation from my life of late. No reading relevant news material, no keeping up with most of my intelligent sources for mental stimulation, no blog posts since August 3 but worse, I was snapped back to my reality today when I found that I've apparently vacated my friendships as well. These have likely been neglected far longer than a mere 3 weeks as my reading & writing but likely neglected far, far longer. I have not offered of myself, kept in touch, nor provided the very foundation of anything relating to my friendships. In my own preoccupation with my personal crisis (pl, cri-CEES), the complicated matters of the recent move, unemployment, and of the pending move back to my hometown after 12 years, I have neglected the most basic of friendship responsibilities. I've stopped being a friend.

To add to the shock of realizing what I've done I also had to reflect on the fact that I have cried to myself, complained, and had multiple pity-parties over how my friends have forgotten about ME, seemingly because of my pending move back home. I thought they had abandoned me and found instead that I have likely abandoned them through my own selfishness and self-absorption.

I think the most difficult piece to all of this is not only realizing that I have let my friends down and not been the best person I CAN be for them (and for myself) but that it took seeing someone I can only describe as an arch-enemy and former-friend, who turned on me in the most horrible of ways, has in fact maintained the friendships I have failed. AND – this enemy is a GUY!

Let this serve as a life-lesson for me because now, more than ever, I will rely upon good communication and BEING A FRIEND to MY FRIENDS as the sustenance for my future. It will be the thing to carry me through and I can only thank my lucky stars that I found this failing in myself early enough to take heed and step-up my own acts. I need to BE a friend to be WORTHY of those I call my friends.

To you all, I thank you for your continued friendship and patience when I’m an ass.