Every election is important. Voting can change your life as well as the lives of those around you.
In a democracy every voter has a say in the things that are important to each of us. Our votes can hold our elected officials accountable and if they are not representing us in the way that is best for our communities, we the voters can remove them from office when we vote in the next election.
Our lives are impacted by the policies enacted by elected officials. What they do in office affects our lives – especially at the local level. What happens in your town, city, or state impacts everyday life. As many say: “You can do politics or politics can do you”. Your vote is your voice.
As taxpayers, our vote gives power to the people who will spend that money. Vote for those who will spend it in a responsible and efficient manner that benefits all who live in the community.
Right are not guaranteed. There are many rights under attack right now. The right to vote is diminished through misinformation, suppression strategies, gerrymandering, election intimidation, and voting restrictions To protect the right to vote, we must participate in elections at every level of government.
Your Vote Matters. Voters of every age bring diverse perspectives that affect generations to come. Voting is an opportunity to affect the future that we all share together in our communities, our states, and our country.
Who Can and Who Cannot Vote?
USA.GOV is an official website that lists all the requirements for voter eligibility.
if you are a US citizen who will be 18 or older by Election Day, you are eligible to vote.
Create a Voting Plan
VOTE.ORG is a non-partisan effort to make voting more accessible for all Americans.
VOTE.GOV is an official website of the United States government where you can find answers to common questions about registering and voting.
VOTE411.ORG provides personalized voting information based on your address.
See what’s on your ballot
Check your voter registration
Find your polling place
Discover upcoming debates in your area
Verify voting rules in your state – (because some are still trying to make last minute changes to create confusion and chaos and making voting harder for some groups).
“Young people had one of their highest turnout rates ever in a midterm and shaped results across the country.
DEMOCRACY DOCKET Marc Elias As the founder of Democracy Docket and Partner at Elias Law Group, Marc Elias is a nationally recognized authority in voting rights, redistricting and law. In 2020, Marc led the historic legal effort to protect voting rights, winning over 60 lawsuits against the GOP’s efforts to suppress the vote. As Republicans continue to mount aggressive challenges to voting, Marc continues to fight back in court and on Twitter.
LVW.ORG The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization working to protect and expand voting rights and ensure everyone is represented in our democracy. We empower voters and defend democracy through advocacy, education, and litigation, at the local, state, and national levels.
Founded in 1920, the League was a merger of the National Council of Women Voters and the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. Referred to as a “mighty political experiment,” it aimed to help newly enfranchised women exercise their right to vote.
ACLU.ORG American Civil Liberties Union mission statement: The ACLU dares to create a more perfect union — beyond one person, party, or side. Our mission is to realize this promise of the United States Constitution for all and expand the reach of its guarantees.
About fifty years ago, a classmate encouraged me to join her at a local gym for a gymnastics class. I spent the next three years committed to the sport until I got too big after puberty. Like most Olympic sports, participants dream of going to the Olympics to win a gold medal.
We spent hours in the shallow end of the pool creating beam routines. We listened to hours of music to find the perfect clip for an optional floor routine. My choice was “The Sting” aka The Entertainer by Marvin Hamlisch – and let me tell you better really love the song because you, and everyone else in the gym, is going to have to hear it many many times. My body took a beating. My hands were torn by the uneven bars. I actually broke an ankle during warm ups for a state competition but the trainers just taped it up. It wasn’t until ten years later when I twisted it again that they asked if I could have broken it ten years earlier.
Olga Korbut was the star of the time. In the 1976 Games, Nadia Comaneci would be the first ever to score a perfect 10 and do it 6 times to eventually win 3 gold medals. I have been a fan of gymnastics ever since.
Last night Simone Biles won gold and Suni Lee took the bronze in the individual all-around competition. I’m certain most have heard the stories of both of their journeys to return to the Paris games. My brief stint competing as a gymnast gives me some insight to the almost impossible set of circumstances it requires to make it back to compete in the Olympic Games.
Astounding.
Simone Biles and Suni Lee NAOMI BAKER/GETTY IMAGES
Each time the Olympic Games come around I am excited to watch the opening ceremonies. This year did not disappoint. I traveled to France last summer and saw and heard about many of the preparations. I was especially excited to watch the parade of athetes in boats on the Seine River.
I enjoyed every moment of the Opening Games. The creativity and symbolism woven throughout the presentation was engaging and the final lighting of the torch with a nod to the history of the air balloon aviation was unique and forever memorable.
DAVID GRAY / AFP
What give me chills about the Olympic Games, is that for just a few days, every couple of years, the world comes together to celebrate athletics. I find myself cheering for athletes of all ages, from all countries as they live their dream of competing with the best of the best in their sport. It is a global moment. It reminds me that I am a just one of billions of global citizens living on this beautiful planet.
For decades the party that stood for conservatism – that was guided by The Constitution was the Republican Party. I don’t think I am the only one that agrees with Senator Mitt Romney that:
I voted for the Reagan/Bush ticket in the 1984 election. It was my first eligible election and I didn’t really know what I believed. Besides that, I had no understanding that a vote could have lasting impact that could last for decades. Knowing what I know today, forty years later, I would probably take that vote back and… I have a variety of rather pale excuses for that vote.
I grew up in California and attended a private university in Southern California that offered sorority housing points for joining The Young Republicans campus organization. (Just being honest).
As a Business Administration – Marketing major, I was a “Neoliberal in Training”.
I was not “adulting” yet so I had no life experiences to shine a light on living as a financially responsible citizen in the real world.
I was not an informed voter.
After working in the business world, I went back to school and earned a teaching credential. I married and we began to work toward the American Dream of owning a home and starting a family. The American message was to be a “rugged individual”and then show off your hard work as a consumer with name brand products. We had the privilege and support to start a small business that is flourishing thirty years later. I wrote about “Gaining Awareness of My Opportunities”.
In 1992, I began to educate myself about policy and I researched candidates as best I could (without the internet). At that time, I was a registered Independent. I didn’t vote party line. I voted on issues and the platform positions of those who were running for office. I followed my paternal grandfather’s advise about voting:
Read. Inform yourself. But in the end, sometimes you just have to go with your gut.
John Hillman
The 2016 election awakened me.
I was a Never Trumper even before he ran for President. His presence in the media through his various bankruptcies, divorces, and business practices made him unlikeable in my mind and not a serious person for any federal leadership position.
With his lack of any civil service experience and his misogyny and name calling during the primaries, I was surprised and shocked that the Republican Party made him the nominee. It did not matter who the Democrats put forth, I would be voting against Trump. As the campaign continued, it was becoming obvious that there was a support system that was moving away from the conservative values of the Grand Old Party (GOP). He was beginning to say things out loud that allowed others to change and morph away from civility. I saw a movement away from common sense and a slide toward accepting “alternative facts”.
I figured out early on that something was manipulating social media feeds and sending people down rabbit holes of disinformation. I deactivated my Facebook account because there were things I didn’t want to see on the feeds of my friends and families as they became more and more entrenched and angry.
When he won the electoral college count, I was disappointed, but not shocked. As I had done before when my candidate did not win, I accepted the outcome and hoped the winner would be successful because then it would benefit everyone. That didn’t last long. As I suspected about him, he showed his true colors at the inauguration. I suddenly feared for women’s issues – especially the right to make healthcare choices with their doctors.
I was called a hysterical alarmist. “Roe will never fall”. I wish I had been wrong.
All Americans have lived that presidency, COVID, and the January 6th Insurrection. I saw it all with my own eyes, live on TV. I cannot unsee. I have read extensively. I am informed.
I choose to “go with my gut”. I remain a Never Trumper.
In 2020, I moved to Arizona. I registered as a Democrat. With all of the women that had run during the Democratic Party primary race, I started the research for my first term paper after returning to grad school. Early in the campaign season, I was initially drawn to Senator Amy Klobuchar and met her at the first political event I ever attended. Once Harris was the VP nominee I began reading Kamala’s books, listening to her past campaign speeches, watching her Senate moments, and reviewing her hundreds of Senate Bill proposals and combed through her Congressional Record. When someone told me I was going to find myself on the wrong side of history I replied: “I will proudly wear the t-shirt”.
We are 100 days from Election Day, and I believe that:
Vice President Kamala Harris has more conservative policy positions than candidate Trump.
I respect Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney even if I do not agree with every one of their policy positions. I value what they say and share, because they put country over party and spoke truth to power.
In Adam’s Substack essay, “Trumpism Isn’t True Conservatism: Even He Says So”, I am reminded that I agree with many conservative positions and historical ideologies. Here are some of the points presented by Kinzinger:
Conservatives favor free markets.
Trump calls for sweeping tarriffs on imports. Trump is transactional for himself and has made promises to cut taxes for corporations and billionaires that support him.
Conservatives are for freedom.
Trump has promised troops to halt protests. Trump will not protect Reproductive Rights.
Conservatives support free speech and the freedom of the press.
He harasses reporters and in his past presidency wanted journalists prosecuted for leaking stories from his staff.He has attacked and diminished truth by calling it fake news.
Conservatives believe in the three branches of government and the balance of power.
Trump attacks the courts who do not support him and seeks to control Congress.
Conservatives believe in limited government.
Trump wants to expand his authority in a multitude of ways with the support of the authors and think tanks of Project2025.
Conservatives believe in “conservation”…of traditions and institutions.
“Trump has no respect for the wisdom of his forebears or the traditions that hold society together”. He seeks to make the DOJ his own “police force and law firm”. He has no respect for the rule of law and believes he should never be held accountable for any of his actions.
Conservatives believe in democracy and are anti-authoritarian.
Trump longs to be a dictator and he has said it out loud in a television interview.
MAGA followers call themselves conservatives but they do not know the history of the party or the policy programs of former GOP Presidents. Kinzinger reminds us that:
Abraham Lincoln fought to end slavery as well as protect and preserve democracy from Confederate oligarchs. He put into place a temporary income tax. He instituted the land grant program to give every state land for higher education and he opened federal lands to those who wanted to settle the West.
Theodore Roosevelt created the national parks to conserve our natural lands. He broke up monopolies to protect and conserve the free markets. He created the agencies to inspect food and drugs to keep citizens safe and healthy and he promoted irrigation and hydroelectricity to stimulate the economy.
Dwight Eisenhower expanded Social Security and when the Soviets launched Sputnik he proposed financial programs to support all scientific research efforts to match that program. He promoted high quality education and funded the interstate highway system.
Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to conserve land, air, and water. He went to China to open up free trade relations and worked with other international leaders to negotiate and reduce nuclear war, as opposed to Trump who wants to isolate us from the rest of the world and abolish our NATO relationships.
Ronald Reagan saved Social Security from bankruptcy. He worked with Democrats across the aisle. Although he reduced regulations, he didn’t try to diminish the federal work force or take away experts in the fields to run the government.
The Presidents Bush in honor of Eisenhower and Reagan, promoted education and philanthropy. They were supporters of our allies in NATO. “Unlike Trump, they believed America should engage with the world through diplomacy, trade, and treaties”.
The MAGA movement has replaced the GOP. The Republican Party of just a decade ago is no longer. This was especially obvious with the multitude of missing participants at last month’s MAGA convention to nominate the 2024 POTUS ticket. Not a Bush, Cheney, or Romney in the crowd. Only a handful of former Cabinet Members. No former Speakers of the House. No Mike Pence, the former Vice President that he basically gave away to the rioters who wanted to hang him on January 6th. His choice for running mate this election is the most unqualified elected official – besides Trump himself the first time he ran for office.
“[Trump] has grievances , not governing philosophies or ideas”.
stuart stevens
In the conclusion of his Substack essay, Kinzinger notes an interview with CNBC that asked Trump about the upcoming four years if he was to win the presidency and Trump replied, “I’m not a conservative…”
Who is Trump running against?
Kamala supports breaking up monopolies that are elevating prices for record high corporate profits and not allowing free market competition and innovation. She believes in the freedom to make choices for your own body, to love who you want, and practice your religious faith in whatever way you choose. She supports freedom of the press and free speech and rejects book bans. As former prosecutor, she believes that no one is above the law and that this nation is based in the rule of law. She supports the balance of the three branches of government and has been outspoken about the need for ethics reform of SCOTUS. She is strongly outspoken against the Project2025 blueprint to expand the government into a form of authoritarianism that strips a great majority of Americans of their freedoms. This all sounds very rooted in conservative minded values.
In her first advertisement after becoming the presumptive nominee she stated:
We choose something else. We choose FREEDOM. The freedom not to just get by, but to get ahead. The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to make decisions about your own body. We choose a future where no child lives in poverty, where we can all afford healthcare, where no one is above the law.
We believe in the promise of America…
#We CHOOSE KAMALA
Kamala Harris will fight FOR THE PEOPLE to CONSERVE DEMOCRACY
I will vote for a future that gives every citizen Reproductive Freedom.
I have written about my experiences to exercise my Reproductive Freedom here and the long road to build our family of three kids through infertility treatments, failed IVF, adoption, and a live birth in my posts “Angelfish ONE, TWO and THREE“
Reproductive Healthcare supported me through multiple non-viable pregnancies in the 1990s. My eight miscarriages and ectopic pregnancy REQUIRED medical assistance – which is being denied to childbearing individuals and families today in multiple states across the USA. Without my “abortions”, I would have most likely lost my future fertility or my life – and would have unable to give birth in 2002 and/or parent my three children today.
The experiences lead me to declare this truth:
Forced pregnancy in not risk-free nor does it guarantee a healthy child after gestation.
I’ve met multiple women who have had long term chronic health issues as a consequence of becoming a mother. One eventually needed a kidney transplant and now the medication is shutting down her muscular system and she is trying to find support to parent that now 11 year old son. I know multiple women who now have the auto-immune issue of Hashimoto’s since giving birth. The maternal mortality rates continue to rise at an alarming rate in this country and especially in the state of Texas since the 2021 Abortion Ban enacted prior to the fall of Roe.
As of March 2024, there were no clinics providing abortion care in the 14 states with total abortion bans in effect at that time. These states had 63 clinics in 2020. Those missing clinics are no longer there to provide ANY healthcare. There is a rise in maternity care deserts across the country.
Abortion bans and other restrictions imposed or enforced after Roe was overturned have led to a surge in people traveling from states where abortion is banned or heavily restricted to seek care in states where abortion is available.The share of all abortion patients who traveled out of state for care increased from 9% in 2020 to 17% in 2023. No one should have to pay to travel away from their home or family to receive reproductive healthcare.
Some 55% of people who obtained an abortion had previously had at least one birth and Some 41% of people obtaining abortions had an income below the federal poverty level (FPL) and 30% had incomes between 100% and 199% of the FPL. This is an economic issue as well as a healthcare issue but it in my opinion it is a human rights issue. Every human body should have the right to make decisions about their own body and financial freedom.
There have been ripple affects as a result the Dobbs decision. The repercussions of non-abortion related reproductive healthcare as well as the lack of financial support from states that are basically mandating forced pregnancy are disturbing.
Fortunately a few states have rallied to put reproductive rights on the November 2024 ballots. Every eligible voter of every state should have the opportunity to have their voice heard about Reproductive Healthcare and freedom to make choices about their bodies.
Introducing the Lingua Franca x Judy Blume Forever Tees!!
Banned Book Awareness Week 2023 is finishing up tomorrow but the problem grows. With the rise in restrictions being placed on classrooms and libraries across the country, I am making a weekly pledge to share titles that have made an impact on my life until we see a change in the United States of America. (I struggle to even write the country’s full name since I never imagined this could happen like it does under the dictators of autocratic regimes past and present).
This is not a few controversial subject matters, this has become an all out censorship movement.
The number of public school book bans across the country increased by 33 percent in the 2022-23 school year compared to the 2021-22 school year, according to a new PEN America report. “Banned in the USA:The Mounting Pressure to Censor” highlights the disproportionate number of bans occurring in Florida — where over 40 percent of all book bans took place in the 2022-23 school year — and shows how state legislation and coordinated pressure campaigns from local groups and individuals have driven mass restrictions on access to literature.
Although all the data is alarming, the most obvious is the rise in reported censorship and the increase unique titles being targeted since 2020. Some of these 2,571 books are award winning books that have been utilized in classrooms for over fifty years.
“This is a dangerous time for readers and the public servants who provide access to reading materials. Readers, particularly students, are losing access to critical information, and librarians and teachers are under attack for doing their jobs.”
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom
For more than 40 years, Banned Book Week has hoped to shine awareness and provide “support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular”.
The theme for Banned Books Week 2023 is “Let Freedom Read.”
As the ALA announces, “When we ban books, we’re closing off readers to people, places, and perspectives. But when we stand up for stories, we unleash the power that lies inside every book. We liberate the array of voices that need to be heard and the scenes that need to be seen…”
Let Freedom Read Day is October 7, 2023 and we can do these things (download PDF below) in 5, 15, 30, 60 minutes, and more. “Take at least one action today to help defend books from censorship and to stand up for library staff, educators, writers, publishers, booksellers, and readers!”
Instagram Post #1 features Judy Blume banned books. Growing up in the 1970s, very few of us lived in households that had open conversations about puberty and sex. These books were my lifeline to making sense of my changing world and opened conversations with my peers (and the adults) around me.
Liguna Franca believes Judy Blume’s work is important too and they created a t-shirt with 10% of the proceeds going to PEN America.
I’ll be wearing mine tomorrow!
Support these Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2022
Since I turned 50 almost ten years ago, I declared on my past birthdays that “I’m not at the Halfway Point … yet”. As I moved past living to 114, 116, 118 I finally said to myself that 120 years seemed like the number. My upcoming 60th birthday, this August, may just be my Halfway Point.
This is not totally unreasonable. I have longevity in my family. On my paternal side, my grandmother, Pauline Martin, lived into her mid-90s. My grandfather, John Hillman got robbed by ALS but his mother Imogene lived to 100 years and passed in 1972 weeks after her landmark birthday. On my maternal side, Walter Shollin lived to 98 and never went to the hospital until days before he died and Tessye Dean lived to 94 and survived four cancer treatments until the last time around she never really recovered her strength.
I had some fun with a phone app called: “Lensa”. For less than $20, during a 7 day free trial, I uploaded photos of myself and then the Artificial Intelligence creates images. This past month, I have been putting the final touches on my Masters of Arts Thesis for Rhetoric Writing and Digital Media Studies. I thought that I’d be using these illustrations to weave into the final written report but I took it in another direction. I have also been known to procrastinate in the middle of big projects, and this was a fun diversion.
In my first round with the app, the uploads were recent pictures and it picked up a lot of my Tiger Stripes (aka #MyWrinklesAreMyStripes) but all the themes (Egypt, Medieval, Space, Nature, Avatar) were so much fun I decided to see what younger pictures of myself would generate. They say the more you load the more accurate the AI will be to your likeness. I can state that some looked like me and others were not even close.
But In the midst of all of this, I discovered that I am at the tale end of a Saturn Return transition. Lots and Lots of synchronicities happening with all of this (like my Masters Program ends on March 7, they day that Saturn leaves Aquarius for Pisces – and a Virgo Full Moon about an hour before that). 🤩
If you want to know your own Saturn Status, CLICK HERE.
A really basic Saturn return recap for those who are not familiar: We are all born with our own personal Natal Chart with the exact locations of the sun, moon, planets and stars in specific locations within the sky. I was born on August 19, 1963 with Saturn in Aquarius. It takes Saturn about 29-30 years to come around full circle by shifting about every 2.5 years. I had this aha moment the other day that it sort lines up with the Archetypes known as the Triple Goddess and many refer to them as Embracing the Maiden, Mother, and Crone.
I have added two more archetypes to my life journey: The Queen for this stage of my Elderhood and then after the Crone, I have added the Earth Citizen introduced to me by Ilchi Lee. After I had made my declaration at my 59th birthday I stumbled across his book, I’ve Decided to Live 120 Years when I attended a weekend retreat at the center he built called Sedona Mago. A very fun serendipitous moment. He built the 120 Steps Experience on the property. I don’t want to give too much away except I did note that my age at that time was 58 and there was a turn in the road before climbing the ascent to 120 years.
Ilchi Lee calls the first half of life the Cycle of Success, where we do all that is required to build our lives and the second half is the Cycle of Completion when we live the life we were born to live.
Ilchi Lee stresses that you can extend your life way beyond what most of us have accepted as our biological age limit, even up to 120 years. But the real question is, can we have not only a long life, but also a fulfilling one? Lee’s answer is a resounding yes, and it starts with the power of choice, a practice of self-reliance, and most importantly, a greater sense of purpose.
I am also learning a lot about Carl Jung’s Individuation Process. The concept of individuation is the cornerstone of Jung’s psychology and the reflective work we do as we mature.
Our life is like the course of the sun. In the morning it gains continually in strength until it reaches the zenith heat of high noon. Then comes the enantiodromia: the steady forward movement no longer denotes an increase, but a decrease, in strength. Thus our task in handling a young person is different from the task of handling an older person. In the former case, it is enough to clear away all the obstacles that hinder expansion and ascent; in the latter, we must nurture everything that assists the descent
Carl Jung: “On the Psychology of the Unconscious” (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology P. 114
The 120 Steps Final Destination: Earth Citizen
Here’s my own age breakdown of the Saturn Return with some very fitting life moments:
Birth to Age 29 – MAIDEN (I married at 27 and threw away the contraception at 29)
Age 29.5 – 59.5 –MOTHER (My youngest just turned 21 years old last week) = 1st return
Age 59.5 – 89.5 –QUEEN (I literally begin this phase in less than a week) = 2nd return
Age 89.5- 117+ –CRONE (I’m letting my imagination run wild…) = 3rd return
My 4th return of Saturn will begin on February 16, 2081 at the age of 117.5 and if it lasts the 2.5 to 3 transition years it usually takes, I will be about 120 years old and will reach the archetype and status of EARTH CITIZEN. I graduated from High School in 1981.
The MaidenThe MotherThe QueenThe CroneThe Earth Citizen
In addition to everything else I am doing, I am participating in a yearlong membership called Hagitude. It is based on Sharon Blackie’s book with the subtitle: “Reimagining the Second Half of Life”.
Menopause is a time between stories, when the old story fades and a new story is waiting to emerge: the ultimate revelation of who we truly are and always were meant to be. It’s a liminal time, when we hover on the brink of the profound transformation which ultimately leads to elderhood, and contemplate the work of gaining new perspectives on our life, of challenging and evolving our belief systems, of exploring our calling, of uncovering meaning, and ultimately finding healing for a lifetime’s accumulation of wounds.
Join me and the Hagitude team on the great adventure of reimagining your journey through the second half of life.
I am writing My Personal Journey into Elderhood. I have memories and experiences that I have cataloged and filed away over my lifetime. I will look back to call them up into my own personal myth storyline. There are support strategies I have learned over the decades, and I have added some new devices into my toolbox over the past four years.
To spark my own awareness, I needed to spiral back a few years to reflect on how I got to this point, and document what happened as I pondered the power of archetypes, as characters in my life story, to better share what I observed. I am offering an autoethnographic rear view mirror showing the progress that got me to my current circumstances. Then I will present a forward-looking projection so that I can offer transformational learning experiences for others.
Many narrative structures have been presented to me in my self-exploration of various online writing workshops. For this version of my story, I will loosely use “The Heroine’s Journey” as outlined by Maureen Murdock, in her book The Heroines’ Journey, that I only recently discovered, as opposed to the Blackie models of the Eco-Heroine Journey and the Tarot Major Arcana Fool’s Journey used in the Hagitude program.
Murdock published her work in the late 1980’s and many have expanded upon her assertion that the journey begins with separation from the Feminine and finishes with integration of the Masculine and Feminine. I will use headings to outline her cycle as seen in the figure below which displays a graphic I created adding numbered stages to her illustration.
SEPARATION FROM THE FEMININE
I was my most authentic, confident, and free self when I was seventeen. The singer, Stevie Nicks had already taught me about “Dreams” and to “Go Your Own Way” when she introduced “Edge of Seventeen ” in 1981. I was, literally, 17 years old and graduating from high school. I felt like the music spoke to me to leap off the ledge into the transitory time between childhood and adulthood. I packed up my belongings for college, including the myths and fairy tales that my worth is wrapped up in being a wife and mother.
But I would abandon my natural authenticity to put on my mask – my persona – for the world and fit into the myths of society and the demands of what I should do to be successful in a neoliberal society. Wife. Mother.
I started to lose myself in peer pressure and sexual exploration. My personal feminine flame began to flicker brightly and then dull like a dimmer switch when I became a Neoliberal in training. My indoctrination began at the University of Southern California as Reagan and Thatcher were dismantling social support programs
The term, MRS Degree, was murmured by males in my classes and by women, about other women, in my sorority. USC, nicknamed at the time, The University of Spoiled Children, is deemed a place to send a daughter to find a suitable and qualified mate to live the American Dream. Was college really just a place to find a man to provide economic security to fulfill the fairy tale of marriage that was still taught to women my age? For many girls I encounter, that goal is apparent, but for me, I’m still confident in my new unnamed feminism. I am discovering my independence and exploring my bold femininity. Or maybe I am too naïve to realize that end game. I am moving in and out of different circles, while making the predictable mistakes of a youth to adulthood. Some experiences build confidence while more tear it down.
IDENTIFICATION WITH THE MASCULINE AND GATHERING ALLIES
I graduated from college and as I look back, “Society Said”: I was allowed to work until I found my husband and needed to stay home with my children. I got a job at a stock brokerage firm, then truck brokerage, and finally commercial real estate industries. I was playing in a man’s world.
The dog-eat-dog, independent contractor, commission sales world of business did not fit me. I was not comfortable in my female attire at male business suit and tie meetings. I explored the possibility of an education career. Besides the natural calling to teach, the covertly trained neoliberal feminist found a way to pre plan to have it all. Teachers have the same schedule as their school-aged children. I had efficiently prepared to balance work and career for my future happy household.
After attending many weddings of most of my friends, I felt the isolation and competition to join the quest to find a husband. At the right time, I became engaged to the son of a history professor, who wrote about the Civil Rights Movement, and a mother who grew up on a Montana farm during the Depression. He is an athlete and a business major, so he is familiar to my world, but his foundation is different, and I don’t know it then, but it will establish the common ground our marriage will build upon. We married in 1990, and I began a career in elementary school teaching. I moved away from the world of free market capitalism into the world of public service. My story is changing but I still need to start our self-sustained independent family unit.
ROAD OF TRIALS: MEETING OGRES AND DRAGONS
I encounter the fiend of infertility and the monster of multiple miscarriages. The inability to carry a pregnancy to term made me feel lesser in a society that pushed women to be wives and mothers. I battled the three-headed demon of silence, stigma, and shame. Through eight miscarriage, two adoptions, and a natural birth experience, I began raising three children.
I came to accept that everyone had their pregnancy (and adoption) challenges regardless of their circumstances. There were so many lessons I would gather up along the infertility journey. Like pebbles and shells on a walk down the beach, they were treasures to be pocketed and brought out later, for better examination, throughout the years to come. I became a gem cutter.
The struggle in a reproductive body continued when I got thrown into the dungeon with the Beast of Perimenopause and Evil Endocrine Troublemakers. Using my higher education research skills, I would be my own advocate for Reproductive Health.
FINDING THE ILLUSORY BOON OF SUCCESS
I celebrated my 50th Birthday. I am Post-Menopausal. I lived the archetypal cycle of The Maiden, The Mother, The Crone.. I am liberated from my reproductive body, but I am still in the Mother role and besides my lack of cycles, I do not identify with The Crone.
(Soon after this writing this post and my discomfort with The Crone, I discover a 4th archetype The Queen read “The Halfway Point”)
I sold my magazine and stepped away from my role as an owner and publisher when my partner moved across the country. I studied to become a Health Coach and enjoyed volunteer work while my kids are still in their secondary school years. With the support of bioidentical hormones, quality food, and exercise, I felt vibrant and energetic for the first time in a couple of decades.
AWAKENING THE FEELINGS OF SPIRITUAL ARIDITY: DEATH
I awakened politically after the election of 2016. With the Republicans dominating all three houses I predict that Abortion and Reproductive Freedom are on the chopping block and I found myself in arguments with those who tell me I am an alarmist. I felt doom and for the first time, I get inspired to participate in Women’s Marches. I am waking up. I can feel the death of democracy and destruction in my world, and I realized that I had been tucked away as a Stay At Home Mom. I wanted to get more involved. I wanted to rediscover what I would take a stand for in my society.
I entered a transitional phase of life at age 55. It began with the passing of PT, my father in late 2018 after a very rapid decline and health. In less than 6 weeks, he went from a relatively healthy man with a frustration to a diminishing golf game to hospitalization. He was diagnosed with cancer at Halloween and died a week later – exactly the way he would have wanted with a celebration happening outside his hospice bed at home the afternoon before his story’s ending.
I was born again on November 8, 2018. A piece of me died that day when I stood at my dad’s bedside and spoke words out loud in a quiet voice to let him know we would be okay and he could leave his body on earth. I didn’t feel the urge to shed tears. He was peacefully departing. I was no longer his little girl. It would take many months for me to realize my new life – free from paternal expectations and restrictions. Free from patriarchal influences of what I could and should do. I felt closer to him in the days before and after his death. A new confidence rose in me for being recognized as a main part of the supportive team that helped him find the walk home that he wanted to travel. I was born again to myself. I am free to turn the page in a new chapter and walk toward my own ending.
My empowerment came when PT died. It is interesting that I don’t call him Dad anymore. When I ask myself when that stopped, it might just be the day that he died. I don’t even think I use it with my sister, Nancy, or my brothers either. Everyone knows him as PT. I said in an earlier interview that: “I was the glue holding it all together, and I was glowing in it because I was in my element for the first time in our family unit”. Yes, it was validating. (March 2022).
INITIATION AND DESCENT TO THE GODDESS
In the summer of 2019, as plans for a year-long celebration of the 19th amendment – Women’s Right to Vote ramped up, I saw the article, “Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality in the U.S.” A graphic burned in my brain. I had struggled to live in my own reproductive body for decades and found menopause a relief.
But how is it that the United States was losing more mothers and babies when other countries were seeing a decrease? I was appalled that in the twenty years since my seesaw between infertility and recurrent miscarriages things were getting worse and the shame and stigma was still continuing. Why wasn’t anyone talking about this? The article noted, “In the U.S., unlike some other developed countries, maternal deaths are treated as a private tragedy rather than as a public health catastrophe”. No one wanted me to talk about my losses, so I found my way in newly launched internet chat rooms in the1990s to pull myself through it. I assumed that social media would tell this story. There was still …silence.
Spark. Flame. Catalyst. I needed to return to school. I left a PhD program in 1998 and by 2002, I had three children. UNLV did not have a graduate program in Women’s and Gender Studies so I signed up for online courses at CSN the community college.
It was a powerful introduction with a new foundation in Goddess and Early Civilization History, Race, Class, and Gender, and a dabbling in Marriage and Family. I found myself wanting more, but not anymore undergraduate coursework. 2020 was quickly approaching and I instinctively felt that clarity, 20/20 vision, was coming for not just myself but society. I experienced a calling to write, and I signed up for an online Memoir Writing Course. I celebrated the Winter Solstice with a friend who reintroduced me to Tarot and Guided Meditation. I was remembering my earlier teens and my mother had always noticed that I had very strong intuitive skills. Some would say it was coincidence or I was good at reading the room and predicting, I felt it was more. I needed to reconnect with my intuition and inner wisdom. I purchased a tarot deck and a guidebook.
URGENT YEARNING TO RECONNECT WITH THE FEMININE
I was my most authentic, confident, and free self when I was seventeen. Writing my story of transition into motherhood in “Three Angelfish” and self-publishing it for my children cracked open my own story. After revealing it to others, I began to feel the shame and stigma melt away and I felt the healing medicine of telling and sharing my story. I learned that when I shared my story, it provided the opportunity for others to tell their struggles. I saw relationships deepen and watched others step out of their shadows and find solace. The world was months into living through the pandemic and I applied to Northern Arizona University Graduate College where I would spiral back toward the person, I was born to be in 1963. This is how I got started. I am calling back all the pieces of me that I left all over the place in the past four decades.
HEALING THE MOTHER/DAUGHTER SPLIT
As I finished a Masters Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies, I took an Anthropology of Gender course. I had written a poem and produced a multimedia slide show. To end the course my professor challenged me to write a book proposal on my project title: An Autoethnography of a Reproductive Body. I hired a Book Development Coach and in early 2022, I outlined multiple books and titles and table of contents.
For most of my life, I did not feel WHOLE. I felt less than whole. Through years of sexual exploration and infertility, I was like the thermos from childhood days that got dropped on the way home from school. The outside looked whole, but the inside was a jumble of pieces rattling around that I hoped could be fixed.
I am writing this book to share my journey to Wholeness in a Reproductive Body.
I want to guide others to push back against the societal messaging that we are not whole beings.
I was told I was not a complete person unless I was a mother and had my own individual nuclear family. I was told to do it all on my own in the spirit of rugged individualism. I was taught that my worth (positive and negative) was wrapped up in my reproduction.
At 59 years old, I reflect, and I can only come up with a few times in my life that I might have been WHOLE: Birth. Abortion. Pregnancy. Menopause. I finally feel whole today but for 50+ years, I felt like I was a bunch of pieces-fragments-bits of a reproductive body.
WHOLE – baby child. I am a representation of reproduction.
PIECES – Sexual Exploration. I learn my parts and pieces. No thoughts of reproduction.
WHOLE – Abortion. Avoiding reproduction.
PIECES – Infertility. I am trying to reproduce.
WHOLE – Pregnant. I am reproducing.
PIECES – Perimenopause. Deconstructed reproduction. Becoming a different reproductive body.
WHOLE – Menopause. Wisdom. I am whole. I am a Creatrix. Discovering a reproductive soul.
I am writing this book to share an example of how I came to discover my bodily parts and how I learned to love my WHOLE body. With this wisdom comes awareness and strength and the inability for outside forces to pull me apart. I control my mind, body, and spirit. I am a reproductive body and I decide my destiny.
I write this book to claim my Reproductive Soul.
HEALING THE WOUNDED MASCULINE
I am still a work in progress. There is more to come but I feel like the Feminine is in the lead and I will find ways to integrate the Masculine in a self-nurturing, loving, and caring partnership. I was recently reintroduced to Stevie Nick’s “Edge of Seventeen” song lyrics the other day when I bought tickets to attend the 74-year old’s concert in Las Vegas in March 2023. I absorb a different meaning from the words today and I marvel at how lyrics touch us, in different ways at different times of our lives. At seventeen, I heard it as a rally cry to move forward and fly away from my natal family. Today, the song nudges me toward the second half of my life with grace and excitement.
And the days go by, like a strand in the wind In the web that is my own, I begin again (…) Just like the white winged dove Sings a song, sounds like she’s singing (…) The clouds never expect it when it rains But the sea changes colours But the sea does not change So with the slow, graceful flow of age
Last January, my first group interaction started with a monthly online book discussion group led by Danielle Petersen through Eventbrite. I began the book again with another group who shares a passion for SoulCollage® created by Seena Frost. Many of us in this group met through our Art_X_Magic workshops with Jessica Snow and Somsara Rielly. This December we met for the first time to discuss the introduction, Singing Over the Bones, and Chapter One, The Howl: Resurrection of the Wild Woman.
So what comprises the Wild Woman? CPE tells us:
“Wild Woman has no name for she is vast”
She is “a knowing of the soul”…
“Wild Woman is the health of all women” and “She is both vehicle and destination”.
“She belongs to all women”.
A major message from CPE is that “Stories are Medicine”. They have power and there is no required action except that we listen to them. She teaches us that stories have bones and over the past centuries, many stories have been sanitized and purified to eliminate the lessons of the ancient mysteries and life lessons. But they are not lost. Those like Dr. Estés have done “fairy-tale forensics and paleomythology” that has taught her “a vast body of knowledge about the bones of stories, and know when and where the bones are missing in a story”.
“Stories engender the excitement, sadness, questions, longings, and understandings that spontaneously bring the archetype, in this case the Wild Woman, back to the surface. Stories are embedded with instructions which guide us about the complexities of life.”
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés in WWRWW Intro, Page 14
After meeting with the SoulCollage®ing Women Who Run With the Wolves group last week, I wanted to find ways to bring the CPE’s words into my everyday life. This post is the first of many that will attempt to use big ideas, such as Stories are Medicine, as practical tools for living an authentic life.
The class is described as: “From five to seven times each night, we dream and glimpse into a reality not normally available to us. Jungian psychoanalyst and author Clarissa Pinkola Estés explores the symbols, themes, and insights of these letters from our unconscious, with the beginning student in mind”.
After taking the class, I wondered if I could use some of the techniques to gain greater meaning from some of my favorite quotes from WWRWW. It could also be used for Bibliomancy which is a method of “foretelling the future by interpreting a randomly chosen passage from a book”. We can randomly open a page and point with our finger to see what messages we need from the text of the book.
The Psychoanalytic Method of Dream Interpretation (Audio Section 4) adapted for text
Record the dream or quote
Write it down
Look at the “nouns” in the dream or quote that are Persons, Places or Things
Make a list of those “nouns”
What images, ideas, feelings, or thoughts come to me when I think of that noun
Write down the association of the “images, ideas, feelings, or thoughts”
Associate with the next noun
We can now begin to find the essence in our life. Where can we find these associations in our current life? Where is it happening in my life? Or where should it be happening in my life?
An example from Chapter One: The Howl: Resurrection of the Wild Woman
La Loba sings over the bones she has gathered. To sing means to use the soul-voice. It means to say on the breath the truth of one’s power and one’s need, to breath over the thing that is ailing or is need of restoration.
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés in WWWRWW Ch 1, Page 24
La Loba she is the wild part of me that can bring my authentic purposeful life into full technicolor awareness
Bones the foundation of my own personal story that was once influenced by the myths society told me my worth was wrapped in marriage and motherhood. I need to collect all the other bones of my own self-story so I can lay it out to create the Skelton that can run free as who I am destined to be.
Soul-Voice that part of me that was once contained and bottled up that is ready to break open and speak freely. It is my authentic voice that was suppressed because when I was growing up girls were told to stay quiet and look pretty.
Truth that is found in my heart, my core, my belief structures
One’s Power and Needs the real stuff that was hidden if it didn’t please others or would have made waves or challenged authority.
Breath take charge of one’s own life and destiny. Give life to the authentic, creative, vibrant and gifted individual we were all born to be.
Thing Ailing or in need of Restoration the hidden one
LAST STEP: How do these associations show up in my current life or where should they show up? I come away from this analysis with confidence that I need to continue to break down and unlearn many of the myths and stories that were told to me in society’s over culture. I need to continue to sing over my collections. I will encourage and nurture myself to shine and in telling my story or my truth I can share and model this method for others.
In looking for other tools, I came across an extremely similar method introduced in the 4th episode of Full Heart Free Voice podcast hosted by Emma Veritas and Caitlin Bosshart. In Season 1 of their podcast they have recorded 40 episodes that discuss their personal insights of WWRWW. I’ll be tuning in as I work though the book again while incorporating SoulCollage®.
STORY AS MEDICINE published in Michigan Reading Journal by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Volume 28, Issue 2, Article 3. January 1995.
Your blood makes up about eight percent of your body weight.
When you want to be pregnant, you do not want to see blood.
When you do not want to be pregnant, you wish for menstrual blood.
I have been pregnant ten times.
The first time, I was 20 years old. I longed for my period to begin. I had an abortion.
I got pregnant soon after we threw away the contraception. It was a blighted ovum. I had a D&C and I shed blood from the surgery.
A few months later I was pregnant again. I was using the restroom at the university where I was working on an advanced degree. The spotting started a multiple week waiting game until cardiac activity ceased.
I trickled blood from another D&C.
The total amount of blood lost during one period is usually about 60 milliliters.
That’s about 2.7 ounces, 2 shot glasses, 16 teaspoons every month.
I couldn’t get pregnant. I spill blood through many moon cycles.
Multiple pints of chocolate milk. A few bottles of vodka.
In Pregnancy #3, I dread every wipe, but I will shed post-op blood. I eventually get pregnant again. There is bleeding, and then there isn’t. My body knows, but it will take a few more weeks to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy.
They apply band aids over the spots where they cut through my abdomen to remove the mass from my fallopian tube.
A newborn baby will have around 1 cup of blood in its body.
My body has experienced multiple procedures and surgeries. It has been cut and stitched and explored. One out of ten people who enter a hospital will need blood, I am not that person.
Victims of severe car accidents may need up to fifty pints of blood before their condition normalizes.
I feel like a casualty that is bruised and bloodied and thrown to the side of the road. The knife of life circumstances cuts deep into my heart.
I am leaking inside.
There is no clotting agent for the sadness and loneliness that travels through my veins.
I yearn to hold a child pumping 2,000 gallons of blood daily.
I am walking amongst pine trees listening to Meggan Watterson. The podcast is an interview about her book, Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel, and the Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet, and these words bring everything full circle for me. My connection to the women before and after Christ, the hints of missing gospels and a union between Jesus and his apostle, and my confirmation name are encircled by a red thread. I never needed a centuries old, patriarchal organization, riddled with secrets of sexual abuse, corruption, and greed. Mary Magdalene teaches me the most crucial lesson:
It is all inside of me. It was always there. I must believe… in me.
I spent my high school years, in the early 80s I timed my mass choice to coincide with my boyfriend’s while sitting in a pew that grants me a direct line of sight to see the statue of Mary. College started, and I never bothered to attend while away at school. I dropped in during the religious holidays or Summer Sundays when home visiting, after one tumultuous short-term relationship, involving sex and drugs, I took a trip across city lines to enter the same set of doors where I gave my first confession. I was in search of that fresh off the clothesline feeling. It was time for me to grow up and get serious about the direction of my life. The ten years of racking up poor choices that gave me guilt-ridden shame and diminished self-esteem were unburdened to a clergyman behind a screen. The indoctrination at age seven, had left me believing that I was not worthy unless I was … was what? That would take a few more decades to figure out.
As a public-school student, I started Catechism class at St. Finbar Church in Burbank, California when I was in the first grade. On Saturday mornings, for one hour, I began my training for the ceremony of First Communion in second grade. After learning all the rules and variations of how to get to heaven, otherwise known as the Ten Commandments, we were ready for our First Reconciliation. The friendly lady, with the beautiful cross around her neck, gathered us into a circle. In a hushed tone of voice, she offered us all a little square packet of beads connected together a string. Our first rosary. Like a fairy godmother, she whispered that if we said our prayers on the rosary — every day, the Our Fathers and Hail Marys, we would go directly to Purgatory.
At this point, it had been made clear to our little seven-year-old minds, that there was no way anyone, let alone any of us, would be going straight to Heaven. That was for saints, and that had to approved by the Pope. He was the guy God talked to on Earth. The Pope had a direct line. This idea of a fast pass to the front of the line, to some special pre-heaven place, seemed very exciting and worth the time and effort to say some prayers while touching some smooth round plastic.
I wanted to know more.
She continued in her soothing voice, that Purgatory is the place you go to prepare for heaven and that Jesus’s mother, Mary, is there to guide you, if you say the rosary. I decided then and there that I had better make friends with Mary. Any worries of my ticket to heaven were erased because I would have a special escalator to the halfway house. With our new rosaries in hand, we were lined up to walk across the street to officially confess our second-grade sins in preparation for first communion the following week. They made a point of telling us that even if we made a few mistakes this week, we were still going to be clean enough to receive the host next Saturday, especially if we used our rosary. I thought to myself, “Wow, these beads are magical”.
They lined us up in the wooden pews by the three doors of the confessional booths. The middle door was wide, and we were told the priest was sitting in there with his loving ears to hear us. A door on each side had lights above them that were green and red. If someone was kneeling, it went red, and we knew it was busy and to wait in line outside the door. If it was green, go in. We all played red light, green light, we knew when to go and when to stop. I was eager to take my turn, pop in , tell about being mean to my brother, and disobeying my parents, and lying about eating the last cookie. Confession was like going through the wash cycle and then drying in the sunshine on the clothesline. I was excited to be bright and fresh.
I got in there and had to wait. It is dark. I can hear him mumbling in a soft voice to the other kid who went into door #2. Then, WHOOOSH the little panel door slides open and it looks like a beautiful pattern with areas that are like my grandma’s screen door on the back porch to keep the flies out. But it is darker and thicker so I can only see the outline of him. I’m taking in everything I see and then he prompts me with something like “tell me your sins Child”. I don’t really remember but he clearly wants me to give him my laundry list of imperfect actions. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned, this is my first confession”…
This would not be my last confession, but it was the easiest.
As we finished, we took the first row, as the newly reconciled, while all the other kids from all the other grades of classrooms, came in for the May Crowning Ceremony. We all waited in eager anticipation to find out who would be named the crown bearer. I had watched the year before so I knew that it was a tradition to name a second grader who would make their First Communion the following week. The next thing I knew, I was wearing the flower crown. I had been chosen. I was special. I was definitely going to be on the speed train to Purgatory. Mary is my new best friend.
I’ve been indoctrinated.
I am skipping and bouncing, feeling bright and bubbly. I spill out the story to my Dad as he drives us to his parents house for Saturday Swimming. As I am telling my Nana, Pauline, all about the beads and the special place and how Mary is going clean me up first and send me straight to heaven, I catch the tiniest eye movement in her facial expression. It would be a click, a split, the first intuitive uncertainty that I tuck away in my internal filing cabinet. The first glimmer that maybe this story is not what it is cracked up to be.
Does it mean that I am not as special?
In my 25th year, I would meet my husband. He grew up Catholic. We would decide on a formal mass wedding and commit to raising our family in Catholic traditions. I’m not feeling holy. I am doing what is assumed that I would do. I am checking off boxes that please others. On our wedding day, we left two roses at the feet of Mary while hearing the song “Ave Maria”. Mary and I were buddies again and I had joined the Wives Club. I was on my way to being what society had told me was my ultimate purpose in life – a Mother.
Although we moved in 1972, and started going to Incarnation Catholic Church, we still went back to the church where my parents were married and all four of us kids were baptized. It was more progressive from Vatican II, they railing to the alter was down and they had guitar mass with fun music using tambourines and bells. One week, a visitor got up after the gospel and told us that there were missing chapters of the Bible and gave a story where Jesus had a female apostle and they were probably married and maybe had children. I immediately filed this juicy story in my filing cabinet. Our favorite priest left St. Finbar, our lives got busier, and we eventually stopped making the longer drive to Burbank.
The church in Glendale was cold and dark. Not the temperature or lighting, the mood. The head priest, Father O’Brien, was gruff. I thought he was sinister and my young mind couldn’t understand why they let such a mean guy run the place. Decades later my mother will blame him for turning her children away from the church. He certainly didn’t promote a desire to participate. Without telling my family, I made a concerted effort to place myself in the pew to be able to see the statue of Mary to the side of the alter. I continued my relationship with the women I learned about in my first religion classes.
When I was about eleven years old, Catholic communities around the world reintroduced face-to-face confession. The dark booths were replaced by small rooms that gave the choice of pulling back the curtain for a chat or choosing the chair on the side of it. My mother packed us all up before the new school year began and at my first adventure in the new confession style. I walked in to find Father O’Brien sitting on the other side of the billowing sheet. “Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been about five months since my last confession. I talked back to my mom, I was mean to my brother, I missed Mass during summer vacation…” I received a lecture about missing mass, and when I tried to explain that my Mom and Dad had looked for a church and we messed up the times, he chastised me more and then gave me ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers. That was the ultimate child-aged penance. I finished the routine and then marched off huffing all the way. I got into the pew and nudged my sister and asked her prayer tally. “One Hail Mary and one Our Father”. I was ticked. I muttered under my breath, “What a jerk” and Mom’s ears perked up and exclaimed, “Who is a jerk? You just came from confession – turn around and go back in there”. With glee, I went straight back to Father O’Brien. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been about five minutes since my last confession. I called you a jerk”. He sucked in his breath, paused, and gave me one Hail Mary and one Our Father with no lecture.
CCD, or religion class as it was now called, was at night for the seventh and eighth graders. This was the two years for preparation for Confirmation. I viewed it as graduation from weekly boredom. By that final year, I used to watch my ride drop me off, then another girl and I would walk up the street to the grocery store and get a bag of sunflower seeds and crack and suck the salt until we got picked up again at the church parking lot. I guess I must have attended regularly enough that my parents were never notified and I was deemed ready for Confirmation. It will be decades later for me to understand this a ceremony to become an adult of the church. My only involvement was picking a name and asking a friend of my parents if she would be my sponsor. After not much thought I decided Mary Margaret would sound even better with Magdalene added onto it. In my white robe, I walked up the aisle, and as the Bishop anointed my forehead with oil he announced me as Mary Magdalene. All I could think was: “Have I just been confirmed the whore of the Bible?”
By the time I was married, I had adapted my own rules about sinning. Premarital sex, birth control, and excessive alcohol consumption were not sins. Confession was no longer weekly or monthly requirement and St. Thomas More in Henderson, Nevada, was a new church that didn’t have confessional booths. They got it done in community style with everyone gathered together at a reconciliation ceremony, and then we could go one on one in the front if desired. Tom and I attended on occasion, but Sunday mornings became our only day of down time and we soon skipped out to spend the day together.
After we got into our first house, we decided to start a family. I got pregnant right away, but it was not to be, and I miscarried. After three months, we were pregnant again. Another miscarriage. Then I couldn’t get pregnant. After my third miscarriage, I was angry and miserable. Was I being punished? Were we not supposed to be together? We went to a Sunday Mass and saw a notice in the bulletin so we signed up for Marriage Encounter, a weekend for couples. It served its purpose, we had some new communication tools, but the group didn’t feel right for us. It had the flavor of indoctrination that I was resistant to after my early years. There was a young priest we liked so we went to him for council. He shared that adoption through Catholic Charities had a very long waiting list and when I said we were on a list for a fertility specialist his eyebrows shot up and he calmly retorted that the church did not support In vitro fertilization (IVF) or other methods that interfered with God’s plan. I shrugged that off as old school. Why would God gift scientists with all this knowledge if they weren’t supposed to use it? I had my own Catholic Code of Conduct and we moved forward with a reproductive endocrinologist and drifted away from the church again.
Years passed, and after two more miscarriages, we tried 3 IUIs and moved to IVF. When my donor quality eggs met with Tom’s donor quality sperm nothing happened. In that moment, I confirmed that I was being punished for the abortion I had in college. When the cycle officially failed, I wept until there were no more tears. I was an empty vessel. I got pregnant again naturally, with twins, and miscarriage for the sixth time. Another miscarriage would follow right after our adoptive parent training.
In that moment, I made a deal with God. If he made me a mother, I would come back to the Catholic Church and raise my children in preparation for the sacraments.
We adopted a beautiful baby girl and named her Abigail Jo. She was baptized and when I had my eighth miscarriage it didn’t hurt as much, but my heart still stung with inadequacy. I kept my bargain with Him and started attending a weekly toddler and mom group called Little Kingdom. I met many wonderful friends and we joined a group called Ministry of Mothers Sharing (MoMS) They celebrated with me when we adopted our son, Luke Canyon. His adoption had twists and turns and when I gave it all up and put it in God’s hands, the tables turned, Mand we ended up getting the call to be his parents. We named him Luke, bringer of light. I felt rewarded for finally “Letting Go and Letting God”. We were a family of four. We belonged. We had created the nuclear family society preached.
Six months later, my St. Monica MoMS group celebrated and supported me through my pregnancy and birth of Nathaniel Thomas. I had three babies in less than three and a half years. I joked: “Be careful of what you wish for”. But I felt I had worth. I was a Mother. God came through for me because I had “Always Kept Hope in my Heart”. I would keep my end of our agreement.
Like all organizations, churches are no different. As I became involved with planning women’s retreats and working behind the scenes, I come to find out that there is a competitive political structure making it difficult for some to be involved and included. I was not a holy roller, but my life experiences of infertility and adoptive motherhood had opened me up to a very broad view of life outside the walls of a parish. Like the other little chinks along the way, I begin to question the Catholic machine. Why does the Vatican have enough gold, art, and wealth to feed the world and it hoards it for itself? Why aren’t women allowed to be priests or leaders? Why isn’t the religious education department expanding its curriculum?
My children resisted religious education. My daughter struggled with the clique groups in her teen years. My boys are bored, and I heard complaints from the teachers that they do not participate. I have distanced myself from formal church gatherings. We got to church, but no one is eager to attend. We continued the traditions of Advent wreaths, Lenten sacrifice, and Easter baskets.
When Abbie starts High School, she comes to me and says that this is not her religion, and she is not going to prepare for confirmation. I do not hesitate to agree that choosing to join the church is a personal decision. I had fulfilled my bargain. I had raised her through the sacraments and when it was her choice, I did not beg or demand. I listened with my heart. I was released from my barter. My boys would make the same choice for themselves in later years.
That Easter season of 2014, we were on a trip for spring break and when we came back, we just never went back to church. There was no discussion. No family meeting. No last straw. We just stopped going.
We did a few Christmas Masses with visiting family. The kids participated in the middle school years in a sex education program called “In God’s Image”. Our parish was accepting of every human regardless of sexual orientation even if they could not perform the sacrament of marriage for same sex couples. I wanted my children to learn more about sex in a community setting rather than the dark and secretive spaces of my upbringing.
Through the years, I developed a deep relationship with women before and after Jesus’s life. Mary had always held a special bond for me, but I learned of Martha, Monica, Lucy, and Veronica. Catholics don’t really do Bible Study but MoMS revealed the strength and leadership of women. It will take many more years for me to realize that if I had to name my church today – it is led by Mary Magdalene.
I grew up Catholic. I no longer recognize the Catholic Church in my life. There is a lot to untangle, unwind, and rebraid from the forty some years of experiences living in and out and back in and back out of Catholicism.
The original draft of this memoir was set in chronological order and can be represented by a timeline visual.
I took a writing class offered by WOW! Women on Writing by Madeline Dyer called Narrative Structures. CLICK HERE for her September offering. I was introduced to story structures and wrote this piece as an example of a REBIRTH story as outlined by Christopher Booker in The Seven Basic Plots. Later in the class, Madeline challenged me to explore an unconventional non-linear structure. I took this story, broke it into chunks, and reorganized them into a different timeline.
Comparing the two visuals, the most obvious adaptation was swapping the first and last paragraph. I will use this technique again in the future.
You must be logged in to post a comment.