That Summer

That summer we went camping like we had for years. Usually we went to the mountains, but this year Dad packed up the van and we drove out to the Carolina coast. We woke up to the crisp mornings and drank coffee and ate grits that Dad boiled on the travel stove. My little brother and I took turns playing in the wind and annoying each other. We raced to the top of Cape Hatteras lighthouse and were rendered speechless from the view. We threw pieces of bread crust into the air and watched the birds swarm around us, including "Boris" the one-legged seagull.

I remember haphazardly taking this photo with a cheap disposable camera. To this day it remains one of the best photos I accidentally took.

When we reminisce about the fun vacations we had, this one always comes up as one of our favorites. Thanks, Dad.

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This is part of the 52 Hand-Lettered Challenge hosted by Pen + Peplum.

Vegan cookies are the best medicine, and other thoughts on grief and gratitude

To this day I have only received one shipment of homemade vegan cookies.

Then that box of yummy, banana-y, chocolate-y love arrived on my doorstep. I had just experienced my third miscarriage. I was delirious. I laughed constantly, which was weird to most people. A coping mechanism, I was told. My sarcasm was at an all-time high. And I was at an all-time high, too, taking more pain pills than I needed. I had lost all motivation to exist, except for to watch the box set of Harry Potter that Brittany had lent me while eating batch after batch of the most delicious cookies Carey had sent-- with love from California.

After my first miscarriage, my small group leader, Jacki (who coincidentally was also vegan), brought over this sausage and lentil stew with freshly baked bread. "My friend recommended it, and I wanted to make sure I brought you something that would make you feel a little warmer." It was February. I wasn't a seasoned miscarriage veteran at this point. I broke down sobbing in the kitchen, my bare feet on the cold tiles.

Today is the Remembrance Day / Wave of Light-- a day to remember the babies we've lost to miscarriage or stillbirth. I have three that I will remember today, along with many other babies that my friends have lost over the years.

But I will also remember those friendships that came from these losses. I will remember after my second loss my college professor and mentor, Anabel, brought me spaghetti and a heart-shaped dish and sat on the floor next to my bed for hours. It was the first time I had smiled-- really smiled-- since losing Micah. We talked about travel and family and languages, and it reminded me that outside of this overwhelming, life-altering event, I was a whole person with interests and joys and dreams, and for a moment I didn't feel minimized by my loss.

I will remember when Stephanie brought me Chick-fil-a and her favorite book of comics that she thought would make me smile. And she didn't judge me, even though I was clearly drinking too much and sleeping too little.

I remember Meghan, who baked peanut butter blossoms and sat in bed with me and just listened-- really listened-- to my sorrows and my fears and didn't turn her face away from my messy, ugly grief. 

I'll remember Julie, who saved all her baby stuff for me instead of selling it in a yard sale, because she really believed that I would need it eventually. In lieu of the divorce, I gave her my blessing to sell it to someone else who needed it, but the fact that she held onto hope for me for so long meant everything, especially on the days when I had no hope at all.

I remember my yoga-teacher-turned-friend, Sarah, who let me cry and cry and cry on my mat in her yoga class as she taught me to reconnect with the body that betrayed my children.

I remember my parents taking turns coming over, helping with chores, cooking meals, and making me shower, even if it was just to get back in bed. The depression was so heavy at times.

I could go on and on and on and on. It wasn't about what these people so graciously gave to me or did for me, but I really learned who would be there in the hard places. I really learned who my friends are and I saw God in those moments when I felt really alone.

My babies gave me that.

So today, I remember.

I light my candle.

And I give thanks.

The Girl under the Pew

I was raised under a steeple with the light from my church's stained glass windows spreading their colors across my skin. As the congregation's god-daughter, I spent much of my time at potlucks and revivals. I memorized verses and doctrine. I was told I should be a Republican (because that's what Jesus would want.) I attended-- and even participated in-- an anti-abortion protest before I knew where babies came from. My first memories of creating any kind of art happened underneath those pews. I'd draw in the blank spaces on church bulletins with broken crayons, my favorite doll next to me.

I was commanded to remain pure until marriage, as not to become "damaged goods" for the man I would one day call my husband. I was told that shot glasses were called "medicine glasses" because they held just enough water to wash down two aspirin! Every advent, every camp meeting, every dinner party, every Easter gathering. I was there.

I was raised to be madly in love with-- and also terribly afraid of-- God. I was told I was a dirty, no good sinner over and over and over. I was told to "come as I was" but also that I would never be enough. How lucky I was that God would love me even though I'm a piece of crap!! But in order for him to love me, I had to acknowledge my nothingness.

So many mixed signals. So many scary nights. So much worrying about my eternal damnation and how hot the fires of hell would feel on my skin should I deviate from the righteous path.

Years later, I'm still a recovering Pentecostal-- a recovering Christian.

The pattern of I love you and I'm scared of you and I don't deserve you has replicated itself in my relationships with men. The patriarchal command of "submitting to my husband"-- while many people take this out of context-- was the reason I stayed in my abusive, unhealthy marriage as long as I did. When the fights got so severe, I was pretty sure it was my fault and began reading books about how marriage is meant to make you holy, not happy, because Jesus loves us and wants us to be like him and if that means being married to someone who harms you emotionally, so be it.

Enter God as the playground bully who hazes you and then congratulates you on your unwavering devotion having endured such a test, stage right.

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My Pentecostal roots run so deeply that in times of trouble I still have the knee-jerk reaction of whispering prayers into the void in the same way that an alcoholic unscrews the cap off a whiskey bottle. I am proud of having come from that broken, misled denomination, because it's my story, and it has shaped me. And while the girl under the pew is still a part of me, I have outgrown her.

One year at church camp, there was this skit that the youth put on about abstinence. There was a teenage girl holding a heart cut out of construction paper, and every time a new boy walked past her, she would tear him off a piece and hand it to him, until eventually she had nothing left to give her husband. "Girls, let this remind you," the pastor said, "that God wants you to remain whole for the man he has chosen for you." The boys were not addressed.

In retrospect, I can't even begin to tell you how damaging this message is for a girl to hear. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized how ingrained this "womanly shelf life" was hammered through my skull.

It taught me I was an object.

It taught me that I was finite and easily damaged.

It taught me that I could not have sex with more than one person without being considered broken and unworthy of love.

It taught me that others determined my value, and that I had no say in that at all except to keep my legs closed and pray for God to forgive me for being human and experiencing typical human emotions, like lust and loneliness and heartache.

And why did I experience those emotions? Because I was a meager young woman who needed Jesus. Jesus could fix me, if only I'd submit to Jesus in the same way I'd eventually submit to my husband! The message was crystal clear.

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To this day I struggle with my self-worth and identity outside of my faith. I feel judged and mishandled by the community that was supposed to have my best interests at heart. I feel misled by the people who were placed above me to lead and guide me through this world. I feel like I can finally openly experience this life fully, loving who I love without the fear of eternal damnation.

I feel challenged to raise my daughters and sons-- should I ever have living ones-- to treat themselves and others gently and with the utmost respect. I am still trying to learn this skill, because it's hard. It's hard to affirm others when we are still so rough with ourselves. I would want them to know that who they are is enough for this world, and that their worth is not defined by others, nor by a book, nor by their sexuality. I do not want to create another generation that grows up feeling inadequate, broken, worthless, and controlled.

They are enough.
I am enough.
You are enough.

If I were to die tomorrow, I hope that my legacy would be just that.

But tonight.

I want to remember this exact moment forever. The porch is lit by a citronella candle, the dogs sprawled out like rugs across the patio. It smells of smoke and magnolias, and a choir of crickets are singing in surround sound. I'm sipping on a beer as Tater chases a frog in the yard. This will be the last night of its kind. I'm sitting on the porch step, breathing this precious air in deeply, missing Savannah already.

The dock.

I found myself awe-struck as I watched the news a few years ago. An entire dock from Japan washed up on the coast of Oregon, a small memento of the huge tsunami that destroyed thousands of lives in 2011. How many miles it had traveled! My mouth hung slightly open, jealous of its journey as I stood there, still as still could be.

It didn't look spectacular by any means-- the trip across the ocean had weathered it greatly and it was covered in barnacles, seaweed and shells. Still, people came from far and wide to see it, not because it was beautiful, but because its story was so spectacularly horrific and the journey was so long, yet it had survived.

Poison and Wine and What I Remember

I still remember. There were days when we didn't get out of bed, because we didn't have to. We'd order a pizza and eat it in the bedroom while we watched specials on the History channel. We would walk to the sushi place across the street after work and talk about the news and about how tired we were while "Patrick" made us a Mt. Fuji roll. 

There were days when we didn't get out of bed, because there was literally no point. It was just too much to leave the apartment, so we didn't. We didn't talk about it. We didn't encourage each other. We just hid.

I remember planning our wedding. I changed our colors at the last minute because his mom couldn't seem to wrap her brain around the color yellow (gold? neon? NO, YELLOW.) I remember how he shaved his beard the way I liked it as a surprise. I remember seeing him the second I walked into the chapel and the way his mouth hung open and how I totally forgot that there were two hundred other people in the room with us.

I remember feeling hideous in everything I wore, and being told that I was being "too provocative" when I put on a black sweater-dress. I remember losing weight and how he hated it, because I finally was starting to feel like I was worthy of being seen.

I remember making plans. We were young, but we thought we knew what we were doing. We held hands and dreamed of rocking chairs on porches and kids in the yard and a little piece of land that we could call ours. We split up future chores. I'll garden if you'll mow the grass. We had a plan.

But we never had rocking chairs, not a single one. We never had a front porch or a little piece of land. We had kids-- dead ones-- over and over, and we were in too much debt to ever own anything. Our dreams didn't come true, and we turned on each other because there was nothing left to do. There was nothing left at all. I counted my losses and I ran.

I remember the day we finally saw those two pink lines for the first time and I prayed that this baby would make us feel more complete, or at least distract us enough so that we didn't realize how broken we really were. We had our names picked out, one for a girl and one for a boy. We were decorating the nursery in our heads.

I remember how we felt like we'd never get pregnant. Between the doctors' visits and lab results, we felt like obedient robots, not lovers, and the magic between us quickly evaporated. I remember the intense fear that came when I started to bleed eight weeks later, and the excruciating pain that came with each contraction, and the relief of the morphine when I didn't have to feel anything for a few hours. I remember I forced him to pray for me before surgery and how he protested despite my tears, and how he walked next to me all the way to the double doors as they wheeled me into the operating room where they'd cut our dead firstborn out of me. This was the first of the three dead children I'd come to know. We named him Evan. I have a memory chest in my room that holds the shoes he never grew into and the blanket my mother knitted that we never got to wrap him in. 

It's so easy to remember the good, and even easier to convince you that the hardest moments were trivial, like bickering over who got to watch their favorite show first. It wasn't that. It was quiet. It was oppressive. It was at times terrifying to love him. It was easier to compromise who I was and fold into him. It was excruciating to fake a smile at social gatherings, until I finally started telling the truth when friends asked about married life.

"It's terrible," I'd say. "I wouldn't wish this on anyone."

Brave New World

I've been surprising myself left and right with my willingness to try new things. Where did this boldness come from? At first I thought it was reckless abandon, and if that's what it is-- I like it. 

I wrote recently about my perfectionism, about how I wouldn't try something new if I didn't think I'd excel at it immediately.

This realization came to me when I was covered in salt and sand, soaked to the bone and sore in muscles that I didn't know I had. I had just fallen face-first into the ocean after finally standing up on a paddle board. But I was high on adrenaline, because I did it. I did it scared.

I had crab legs for the first time the other day (I know, I know.) I sucked the juices out of a crawdad's bright red torso. Despite my fear of losing him, I let Tater run freely off his leash and play with his best buddy in the river (he loved it and came back when it was time to go home and take a well-earned nap.) I tried an Irish Car Bomb (awful name, decent drink.) I did The Wobble in the middle of a bar and probably looked totally ridiculous. I danced on stage with my bride-to-be best friend at a dueling piano bar. I stayed out until last call for the first time since my college days.

Have you done anything lately that scared you?

Breaking up with 2012

art by Ekaterina Koroleva

With the onset of the new year, it's in my nature to just want to change everything about myself. My get-out-of-jail-free card came on New Year's Day, and guess what? I'm going to make the most of it. This year will be amazing.

You know how you put things in a box after a breakup, and hide it somewhere so you don't have to look at those memories? Well, I did that with all of the things that remind me of my husband, and now I'm doing that with everything that reminds me of 2012. Something (and someone) better is coming, and I'll be ready.

Good riddance, 2012, and all the misery you brought. But I'd also like to thank you, 2012, because somewhere within you I found the courage to decide that I deserved to be happy on my own terms.

I'm burying those memories, but I will never forget you.