Hard things Archives - Page 11 of 15 -

Sleep and the Definition of Enough

February 12, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Three years, eight months. That’s how old my son is. To the day, actually. That’s also how long we’ve been dealing with a kid who just will not sleep.

I haven’t posted too much about sleep issues here, but if you go back through my Facebook timeline to 2008/09 you’ll find that the vast majority of my status updates are about our sleep battles.

I’m sure there are kids who are worse. And I know there are parents who deal with much harder things. But oh my god the sleep. It’s tiring. (Pun intended.)

We have had very short – VERY short – stretches where he’ll sleep through the night a few nights in a row. I can’t remember what the record was, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take two hands to count out the streak. We had some rough nights when we first moved into this house, which we expected, but we’ve now been here, and pretty settled, for 2 1/2 months. Guess how many times he’s slept through the night since we’ve been here. Go on, guess.

ONE.

That’s not counting the nights he slept with us or the ones where one of us, or my mom, slept with him. My husband and I still basically alternate nights so only one of us has to get up on any given night. Which works all right, except for those nights when he gets up 4,326 times.

Okay, to be fair, he’s not that bad.

I’d say he’s up an average of twice a night. Many nights only once, but quite often three or four times. The good thing is that it’s much, much easier to get him back to sleep now. Lately he will just quietly walk into our room and stand next to the bed. That’s generally enough for one of us to wake up, and when we do he says he wants a cuddle. So one of us will go back with him and give him a cuddle because (a) cuddles are nice, even (usually) at 3 a.m. and (b) we’re just too tired to be tough and make him go back to bed on his own.

We’re doing this to ourselves, aren’t we? We know we are, and I think we’ve essentially decided we don’t care. I remember when Connor was really young a fellow new mom observed that all those things we do in the moment to deal with a baby when we’re really tired totally screw us over, but we don’t care. It’s like we’re choosing the way present “me” wants to do things and saying, “Screw you, future me. I’m tired.”

And then you become future me and you wish formerly present me wasn’t such a bitch.

But, alas, here I am nearly four years later still making choices that screw over future me. And not only does future me have to deal with the waking up and the interrupted sleep and the way-too-early mornings, but she has to do it while she’s tired. And there’s no version of me who does well when she’s tired.

I’ve long stopped thinking he’ll finally just sleep already. I’m sure he won’t, ever. I’m sure somewhere out there is a very small girl who may one day become his wife and who will be mad at me for screwing her over too. And all I will be able to say is, “I used to be a much nicer person and a much better mother but your dear husband never slept enough and as a result I’m kind of a bitch.”

So to her, and to all the future versions of me, I say: “Yeah, sorry about that.”

Oh look, he did sleep once. We even got it on camera.

Filed Under: Be enough me, Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: Be enough me, sleep

Farewell Susan

February 6, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

I have tears tonight for someone I never met. She just appeared, as new blog friends do, and I came to know her name and her face. I read her blog – not always, but occasionally, as is often the case when I come across someone I’m just getting to know whose words reach out from the computer screen and touch something in me.

If the blogosphere is made up of circles she and I danced in ours, occasionally crossing paths and sharing a word or a smile on the way by.

One day I was on Twitter and realized I wasn’t following her. I fixed that straight away, naturally, and not long after I got the notification that she had followed me too. We both laughed. “How could I not have been following you?” “I know! I thought that too!” Maybe we had just assumed. Maybe it was a Twitter goblin unfollowing people without my permission. Either way, we both fixed that link in our circles.

And so we danced.

I saw her around, we shared a few comments, I read her blog.

She seemed better, and then got sick, and the community rallied. I sent her a Lego figure, because No Princess Fights Alone.

She wasn’t well, and I watched her updates with fear and hope and little understanding of what it must be like to fight cancer for five years. To fight it and beat it and fight it again, on and on while your two small boys stand by.

There are no words except goodbye, because today our community lost one of our lights and tonight my world is darker because of it.

Susan – @whymommy – you were loved. And will be missed.

Filed Under: Hard things · Tagged With: community, spreading the love

A Serving of Working Mom Guilt, Please

January 23, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

I’m struggling tonight.

I’ve started a new job, which I love, but I’m playing the Working Mom Guilt Game, which I hate. And tonight I lost.

Last night, after a fun and busy weekend, I stood at the kitchen counter to make my lunch for today. Connor came over and asked me what I was doing. “Making my lunch,” I said. “Why?” he asked. “Because I have to go to work tomorrow.”

And then came the face.

“I thought you didn’t have to go to work every day.”

I hate that face.

We’ve had this conversation several times in the last couple of weeks. He wants me to play with him in the morning or sit with him while he eats his breakfast. I want to do that too. I love mornings with him. It’s quiet, I’m not thinking about all the things I have to get done, and it’s just me and him. But weekday mornings are too short, and more often than not lately he isn’t even up when I leave for work, which steals at least half an hour I’d otherwise get to spend with him. When he is up I inevitably get, “Do you have to go to work today? [sad face]” So as we approach weekends I get to do the “Guess what?!” thing and tell him I don’t have to work. We talk about the things we’re going to do and he gets that excited, I-get-my-mama face.

I love that face.

What I don’t love is the other end of the day when I come home after a day—preceded too often by too little sleep—from a new job that makes my brain tired. When I have spent all day in an office full of people, talking and laughing and working and learning, and my inner introvert just wants to sit in my quiet bedroom by myself for a while.

3-year-olds don’t let you sit in your bedroom by yourself for any length of time. At least mine doesn’t.

So I come home after working to a little guy who wants his mom to play with him, which, as the last thing I feel like doing, induces massive guilt.

Working Mom Guilt.

I’m not here when I want to be and when I am here I spend too much time wanting something else. It sucks.

This is what I missed while I was at work today.

This is especially tough right now because I’m working a slightly longer day than I used to and I work farther away, both of which slice into my momming time. And he’s going to bed later, which slices into my me time.

Nobody’s winning here, people. (And don’t even get me started on all the blog reading and commenting I’m not doing.)

Maybe I’ll get used to it. Maybe we all will. Maybe we won’t. In any case, tonight my working mom guilt came with a side order of the Monday tireds and some irrational, the-toddler-is-chewing-too-loud annoyance and I had to leave the room to take a deep breath.

My mama mug spilleth over, and I don’t know what to do about it.

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor, Hard things, Motherhood · Tagged With: admissions, expectations, family, rants, telling the truth

Gratitude, Comment Love and Something Entirely Unrelated

January 3, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Confession: The revision history on my last post is RIDICULOUS. I edited it over and over and just could not get it right.

It actually started off as my blogging anniversary post, and it was directed at those of you who come here and read and offer support. I wanted to tell you how much that has meant to me over the last year. How much it means to me now.

Writing about something as personal as depression—especially in the moment, as so many of my posts were—feels incredibly vulnerable. I wrote about those things because I needed to have them live somewhere other than inside my own head, but there was also a part of me that wanted to hear I wasn’t alone. And wow, am I ever NOT ALONE.

Image credit: Joffley on Flickr

Over the last year I have come to realize just how many people struggle with depression and anxiety, and I hate that there are just SO many. But I love that there is so much support out there too, and that it’s becoming more and more okay to admit to these things.

So in the end, after realizing that it simply wasn’t working, I wrote something more simple for that anniversary post and said what I really wanted to say, which is: Thank you for loving me. But I didn’t give up on the rabbit.

I played around with that post some more and eventually decided it was actually about something different. And then it got to a point where I thought it was good enough, so I published it.

And then you all took over.

I’ve had so many incredible comments and messages and re-tweets on that post. It seems I struck a nerve. I keep trying to respond to those comments, and I will, but right now I don’t really know what to say. It’s all making me feel a bit weepy.

So again: Thank you.

On a related note, if you want another glimpse into why it’s so important for us to write about depression and have it be acceptable, go and read the latest post by The Bloggess. Jenny, if you don’t know her already, is absolutely, stunningly hilarious. But she also deals with mental illness. She writes about that pretty openly, but this post really blows the doors off. Go, read, and give her some love.

And now sometimes entirely unrelated…

I wasn’t actually planning to post today because I signed up for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) for January, where the goal is to write a post a day for the whole month. And after I signed up I decided that was crazy, so I intended to cheat (sort of) and just direct you to my Just.Be.Enough. post today. But then you were all so nice and I kind of got sidetracked writing this.

Anyway… I did write a post for Just.Be.Enough. today and it’s about Spanx. See? Entirely unrelated.

I’m going to close comments on this one, so please either visit me at Just.Be.Enough. or go and give Jenny some comment love. (She’s already got over 1,000 comments, but what’s a movement if not something that really takes off?)

R xo

Filed Under: Better world, Happy things, Hard things, Randomness · Tagged With: anxiety, community, depression, going public, gratitude, love, spreading the love, we're not alone

Farewell to 2011 in Photos: Link-up

December 26, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Christmas is over and a new year is nearing. As much as I love Christmas, I also really love this time of year when the holiday madness is over and the week-between lull starts. The end-of-year lists and retrospectives appear, offering a chance to remember what was and think about what will be before normal life resumes and the daily what-is takes over.

So let’s do some retrospecting, shall we?

Pick a picture (or a couple, if you wish) for each month of the year, post, and link up with me to say farewell to 2011 in photos. (You can focus on the photography or the memories – up to you.)

One winner will be randomly chosen from those who link up to receive a complimentary registration in the Brave Girls Club’s Soul Restoration I class.

January

This is the only photo I’m including that’s not mine (credit underactive on Flickr) but it’s what best represents January to me. January 2011 is when I started this blog and shortly after that I started using this image in my header. I’ve had 2 other designs since, but this one is still “my” image. It remains my wallpaper on my laptop and I’m still getting gifts inspired by this image. I love it, and it will always represent this blog and what it has come to mean to me.

February

I took this photo as we were preparing to take off for Toronto from my hometown, which doesn’t get a lot of snow so de-icing is a rare requirement. This picture is not about the snow, though. It’s about the trip, and not because it was memorable but because it wasn’t. In thinking about February I knew I had travelled for work but I couldn’t remember where I’d gone. And even now, I barely remember that trip, except that I forgot to pack underwear. It was the start of my realizing something within me had fundamentally changed over the last couple of years, and not in a good way.

March

The happenings in March—including this visit to the antenatal assessment unit—were the precursor to what happened next and what my year has become. On the current path of my life this yellow hallway was the start line. It was where I went to see the psychiatrist who put me on the medication that almost killed me (and that, incidentally, also probably saved my life). I will never, ever forget this hallway.

April

In April I plummeted. Crashed and burned. And this room is where I ended up. No, not a psych ward, but the guest room of a friend’s place. She was out of town and kindly offered me a sanctuary when I badly needed to run and hide. At the beginning of a 4 1/2 month leave from work I spent a few days here, awake late into the nights before finally taking a shrink-prescribed pill that knocked me out completely for at least 12 hours. When I think of the me who spent time in this room I barely recognize her. This grainy picture from my BlackBerry isn’t one I’ve published before, but I took it because I wanted to remember this room. When I look at this picture now all I feel is unending gratitude for that time and space and my friend’s generosity.

May

By May I had scraped myself up off the floor and was riding a yo-yo. Yearning to be better but mostly bouncing between desperate depression and feeling nothing. I walked. A lot. On the day I took this picture I decided it was time to start looking at what was around me again.

June

June was the start of the road that let me where I am now, though I didn’t know it at the time. “We could move to Alberta,” my husband said, and shortly after that we went to Calgary for my sister’s graduation. This picture was taken at the Calgary Zoo and I remember enjoying the visit while one question reverberated around my brain: “Am I ever going to feel better?” And yet, at the same time, I started to really see myself again.

July

In July I had had enough. Enough of being on leave from work, enough of being drugged all the time and enough of feeling like a mental patient. I started to explore going back to work, but my psychiatrist wasn’t so keen. I was annoyed at the time but when I look at this picture I remember that she was right. My husband took Connor out one day so I could have some quiet time alone in the house. It was badly needed, but when he sent me this picture all I could think was that I should be there with them. But at that point early in the month I just couldn’t. When I look at this picture I think about how I missed out on so much time with my son. Not just months, but years.

August

By August I had taken a stand. I fired my psychiatrist, weaned myself off the sedating anti-anxiety medication (note: don’t try that at home – much better to have a doctor’s advice and know what you’re getting in to), and scheduled my return to work. But first I went to BlogHer ’11. It was totally amazing – incredible and life-changing.

I got myself back.

(Clockwise: Lizz, Galit, Natalie, me, Jessica, Mad Woman at BlogHer in San Diego)

September

In September I turned the focus back on others and streaked my hair blue in support of suicide prevention (and my friend Cristi, who is tireless in her efforts to raise awareness). In the end, there were many #bluebloggers who did this, including my mother.

But that’s not all! September was so monumental it deserves two photos. This is my baby on his first day of preschool. I just love this kid.

October

In October we did it – after a month of prep work we put our house up for sale so we could move to Calgary. It sold in less than two weeks and we haven’t looked back.

November

In November we made a quick trek here, bought a house in one day and moved into it less than a month later. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing, right?. (Smart cookie, that Helen Keller was.)

December

And here we are at the end of the year, living in snow and sunshine. Our whole world has shifted and we couldn’t be happier about it.

As I sit here now, late on the evening of Christmas Day, I will admit to looking back at this year with some emotion. I’m aware every day, around every turn and with every breath of crisp winter air, that life is different. That I am different. That I’m not where I thought I would be. But it’s been a while since I really looked back at where I was.

2011 was hard. Gut-wrenching, tear-stained, and really, really hard. But ultimately oh so good. As we finish out this year I’m so, so grateful and unbelievably excited about what 2012 will bring.

What about you?