A Wounded Healer

There's a subtle yet powerful difference between seeing a doctor who, without so much as a second glance, writes you a prescription, and the one who actually sits down and empathizes with you (and who may or may not then offer you the same prescription). 

I saw a total of three counselors and two different psychiatrists in my initial journey to overcome emetophobia before landing (by complete happenstance) on the site of my current counselor/clinician. At first, I was wary of contacting her.  Slightly jaded, more than a little bitter, and hesitant to pay another several hundred dollars with potentially marginal results to show for it.  

But then I read her story.  And it was different.   

Her words painted a picture of someone who had been exactly where I was right at that very moment.  Someone else who had once- perhaps hundreds of times- thought that this was as good as it was gonna get.   Living life on the sidelines.  Front row in the cheering section but never dancing down the court.  I wondered if maybe marginal results were all I could ever expect and hope for.  Maybe I should settle and be content.

But this wasn't her narrative.  I dove headfirst into her blog that night and ravenously devoured her articles with a renowned sense of hope.  It was the first time in years that I could see myself on the other side of this thing.   It's now been 16 months, and to say that she has done what no one else could have done for me is an understatement.  Yes, she's a registered clinical counselor.  Yes, she specializes in CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy).  Yes, she's done years of research and works with clients and therapists all over the world.  But in my personal opinion, none of that mattered nearly as much to me as the fact that she had recovered from the same phobia I was currently living with.

She knew the fear I spoke of because she had lived with it for twenty years.  She not only had survived it, but beat it.   She is a wife and a mother.  She "got it" in a way that my other therapists couldn't.  As sympathetic and tactful as they tried to be, they just couldn't put themselves in my shoes.  And for so long, that's all I really needed.  Meds are a wonderful tool to get you from point A to point B with less damage than if you hadn't had them, but I can honestly say that there was no amount of Xanax in the world that could've worked this out in my soul.   

She and I meet once a month now- mostly as a touch-point, and it seems we spend a good portion of it talking about things that don't necessarily relate directly to the phobia.  After our session this evening, I found myself a bit tearful as I talked with Jake about our session.  Never has it been so apparent to me the need for these "wounded healers."  People who have "been there, done that."  Those who are willing to expose their own scars- no matter how deep- for the sake of helping to heal someone else's.  And it was tonight, that perhaps I realized for the first time, how fortunate I am to be surrounded by so many of these types.

My husband.

My close friends.

My women's group.

My online mama friends.

They have offered out-stretched hands to me time and time again, not only reassuring me that I wasn't alone, but in doing so, making themselves vulnerable as well.  Have you ever held out your hand to someone and had it rejected?  It stings.  It's embarrassing.  It makes you a little more reluctant to offer it a second time.  I am in no way deserving of second chances.  But I've been offered them, nonetheless.  Hell, I've been offered 962 chances.  (At least).  There's something almost transformative though, about hearing someone say, "I know exactly how you feel," or "I went through the same ordeal."

Until you've been through a divorce, you don't know the sting of that separation.

Until you've been through a marriage that's seen the devastation of a porn addiction, you don't know the demons that are lurking there.

Until you've struggled with infertility, you don't know the heartache.

That doesn't mean you can't still offer a shoulder to cry on.  (I've always believed that shoulders are pretty overrated, with the exception of this one role). ;-)  What I think it does mean, is that the dark days we have endured (or will endure)- when we find ourselves bruised, beaten and bewildered- are always for a reason.  That reason may not become apparent to us for another ten years, so maybe this requires us to trust in a bigger picture.   If you think about it, our world is chock-full of wounded people.  Pain exempts no one.  And when it comes down to it, there are really only two options: be jaded, or be empathetic.

My scars are still a bit tender.  And they absolutely, positively cost me something.  But tonight, I was reminded that they might, in fact, be my best attributes after all. 

 

How Low Can You Go?

It's never a good sign when your daughter is already crying before she sets foot in your room at 6:25 a.m. Ella had clearly gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Which reminds me, I'd like to meet the person who coined the phrase, "the wrong side of the bed." I'd like to point out to them that in our house, there isn't such a thing as the "right" side of the bed anymore. There hasn't been one in almost two years, and probably won't be one for another fifteen more. So there.



And thus began our Wednesday.



Trying to be the optimist, I thought, "well, maybe it can only improve from here."



It didn't.



It still hasn't.



But at least now there's silence. It's almost deafening. Nap-time was once again preceded by a tantrum that would make even a New Jersey housewife jealous. I shut the door to her room, locked it, and walked away, bracing myself to go for the long haul with this one. I figured I might need some help steeling my nerves so I sat on the couch and mindlessly shoved several thin mints into my mouth. (Ah, comfort food). Upstairs, I heard Ella's room being ripped to shreds. All of the Melissa & Doug food being hurled at her door. Books being torn from bookshelves. Brobee's muffled voice singing about a party in his tummy, so yummy, so yummy yu-- a thud, and then silence. (Poor Brobee). In this relentless battle of wills that is the two's (and so I hear- the three's and fours....), I may have momentarily won the battle, but the paranoid and insecure side of me often wonders if I'm just one step closer to losing the war. I wonder if she knows how defeated I feel. I wonder if she knows that, with every instance of me losing my temper or placing her in her room to "cool off," I worry that I'm inadvertently chipping away at her beautiful, fiery spirit that on most other days, I envy for myself. Oh, I complain about changing diapers, wiping noses, and picking up dried, crusted strawberries off of the floor every day, but I'm actually quite good at those things. I could do that until the cows come home. But this whole thing of taking it upon myself to raise another human being to be a kind, compassionate, loving, and disciplined individual? Some days, I don't know how that's going to turn out. (Meanwhile, I'm sure it's written in the "How to Be a Successful Mommy" manual that they gave me when I left the hospital with her, but oddly, I haven't been able to find it since we got home...)



I was reminded of the study that was published a few years ago which found that the happiest place in the world is, quite surprisingly, Denmark. (I know, I know- I still can't believe Disneyworld didn't make the cut...) The Danish people, sandwiched in between their seemingly better-looking neighbors- Sweden and Norway, with their mediocre weather, and self-proclaimed heavy smoking/drinking habits have consistently made it to the top of the happy list because they seem to excel in something that we American's have always struggled with: setting the bar low and keeping it there. It's also entirely possible that most people there truly don't give a rip about what others think. It would make sense that if you aren't expecting too much (either from yourself or from anyone else) then who cares if others are impressed or not?



If you stop and think about it, it's actually quite brilliant.



So today, I don't care that my daughter has not had any clothes on since 7:30 a.m. I'm picking my battles carefully these days, and that's not one I care to fight. She has also eaten her weight in Craisins today, and if you're good at math, you'll figure out, that's a hell of a lot of Craisins. She'll probably be pooping Craisins until her 3rd birthday, but again, not my battle. There are worse things she could want to eat.



I may have started today (and many others) with an expectation bar that was several notches higher than what it should have been. And the reasons why it was set high to begin with are actually quite irrelevant at this point. Bottom line: some days, it's enough to make sure your kids are fed and aren't sitting in their own crap. Nothing more. You may not be able to get a shower or get makeup on. This is why God created baseball caps and deoderant. You may not even get them dressed. Bonus points if you do. Triple bonus points if the outfit actually matches. Also, don't expect them to act like normal, civilized human beings. They're irrational, narcissistic, and bi-polar- at best. Of course, I'm not advocating that we should all wake up each morning with a giant chip on our shoulder, but perhaps, if we decide that, as parents, anything above and beyond the mere basics is just icing on the cake, we'll find ourselves more pleasantly surprised instead of just plain exhausted.


Maybe. One can hope, right? So, how low can you go...?

You Might Be in the Two Week Wait If...

Almost all women have been there at one point in time or the other. Some have been there more times than they'd like, and it's an all too familiar, torturous place. In many cases, it's planned and meticulously calculated. Other times, a woman realizes her math skills were a bit off or perhaps there was an, ahem, "malfunction" and boom, there she is again. Then, of course there are those lucky few who seem to bypass it altogether when, one day, they're sitting on the couch or at their desk and suddenly they think, "hey...wait a minute...wasn't my period supposed to start a week ago?" A trip to the bathroom confirms their suspicions, and lo and behold, they've blown through the 2WW without any symptom obsessing. How nice is that?


But no matter the circumstance that got you into the two week wait (other than the very obvious one), one thing can be certain after you get there: you will obsess over your body and every little symptom. And if you thought your body was mysterious before trying to conceive, you ain't seen nothin' yet. So, for a bit of levity, because I know several women who may in fact, be hanging out in this purgatory for the next little bit (no, not me, I promise).... a list:


You Might Be In the Two Week Wait If....


1. Upon discovering a new symptom, you immediately google it to see how many other women have experienced it too.



2. You might, however, be embarrassed for anyone to see what it was you just googled. Lucky for you, they probably can't understand forum-speak. Ex: BBT spike w/POS OPK on CD 21 but EWCM on DPO 4. WTF??



3. If you've been charting to conceive, you may find yourself playing with your chart, making it look all nice and triphasic. And then, ultimately, you go back and delete all of the temperatures and put in the ones you really have. And it's not nearly as pretty.



4. You continue to obsess over possible symptoms and get excited about the fact that your boobs are beginning to hurt. You periodically check to make sure that they still hurt by pressing on them when no one is looking. If you're out in public and fear being viewed as a perv, you simply pretend to get a chill and hug your forearms across your chest. (You're welcome).



5. Every bathroom trip requires a 5 minute exhaustive inspection of the toilet paper. I'll leave it at that.



6. Upon feeling a wave of nausea, your first instinct is to think, "YESSSSSSS!!!!" And then you find yourself praying that maybe you might dry heave a couple of times when you brush your teeth, just for good measure.



7. Everywhere you go, you see baby bumps. Bumps in Target, bumps in the ladies restroom, bumps waddling down the street in your neighborhood. You swear, you've never seen this many of them when you weren't waiting to find out if you were going to have one of your own.



8. Out of habit, you accidentally refer to your husband as "DH," and your period as "AF" when talking to the nurse on the phone.




9. You have a collection of pregnancy tests under your bathroom sink: IC's to dip when the urge strikes, FRER's for backing up the IC's, and digitals (aka "the big guns") for backing up the FRER's. But rest assured, your husband will not believe you're actually pregnant until he sees the one with it spelled out nice and pretty. Don't even bother asking him to look at lines.



10. Yes, you're only 5 dpo, but that's not too early to get a line on a test. Right? I mean, it could happen....right?







So, if you found yourself thinking "OMG, I've done that" while reading at least half of the above, congratulations. You're not weird and you're not alone. You just might be slightly obsessed. And we (as women) get it. No need to feel bad. We all just want our bodies to stop messing with us and give it to us straight.


So whatever answer it is you're waiting for, I hope you get the one you want in a few (very long and drawn out) days. ;-)

It's the Little Things

It's 8:15 on a crisp, clear, Saturday morning. The kids are away at Grammy and Pop's and thus, I went to bed entirely too late for my own good last night.

"That's okay, I'll sleep in tomorrow," I thought.

And like clockwork, my body woke up a few minutes after 7. And it wouldn't go back to sleep. My bladder was on the verge of bursting and I was ravenous.

I think I pleaded with my bladder in some kind of a lucid dream. Have you ever done that?

No...don't make me get up. Go away. Stop filling up with pee. Just let me sleep another 20 minutes. (Not entirely different from how I plead with Ella to just let me lay there for a few more minutes when she bounces onto my side of the bed every morning. But I have a stubborn daughter. And as it turns out, an impatient bladder, as well).

Then it was my empty stomach and the burning, ravenous hunger pangs. Oh, for the LOVE. It seemed my body was sabotaging any attempt I made to drift back to sleep. And so I got up and deliriously stumbled first to the bathroom, then downstairs to the coffee pot. Always in that order. I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that the days of truly good sleep are over. They ended back when I was maybe around 18. Right before I went to college and stayed up late studying and practicing by week, and lost sleep on the weekends in the name of having a social life. Then it was marriage, and my sleep was okay for a while, then pregnancy...and well, the rest, they say, is history. I might be able to salvage a few good years between now and menopause. But my guess is that good sleep will become increasingly chemically-induced, or happenstance. Alignment of certain planets and such.

But I sit here with a cup of french roast and although I'm awake a good two hours earlier than I would like to be, I'm savoring the quiet living room. Relishing that I'm not hearing Dora's annoying, repetitive voice. Breathing in the fresh citrus scent of the new candle I bought, rather than the stench of a freshly squeezed diaper bomb. I went out with a group of fantastic girls last night- one of whom happens to be a dear friend (and who also happens to be getting married NEXT WEEKEND). :-) And even though I only had one glass of wine, I'm surprised that I feel pretty rotten this morning. What's up with that?? I wistfully reflect on the stamina that my 22 year old self had. Where on earth is that intestinal fortitude I had in the midst of vile hangovers- the kind that got me through playing exams, juries, and 8 am classes when a night of drinking seemed to magically resolve itself by 11 a.m. or noon, at the very latest. (This wasn't always the case though, as I learned the hard way one time that's it's never ever EVER a smart idea to drink an entire bottle of cab sav the night before an 8 a.m. clarinet playing exam).

Here it is almost a decade later and this girl right here can have two (ish) glasses of wine and fall asleep in her own puddle of drool on the couch at 10:30 pm, then still somehow feel as though she got hit by a semi the next morning when she's trying to dice up bananas and mini-waffles for her kids. (I mean seriously, why can't they get their own breakfast??) ;-)

I'm not even sure where this post is going. I think I'm just enjoying being able to sit and write without being interrupted. Perhaps the silver lining of the cloud that is my inability to sleep in, is the opportunity to expand my definition of "rest." And for today, it takes the shape of a single blog post, written start to finish in one sitting, in a quiet living room.