gratitude Archives - Page 12 of 24 -

A Commuter’s View

January 4, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Every morning I drive toward sunrise. Three turns from home it starts with a glow, then over a hill and the light explodes like starburst. The city is lit from behind, creating a proud silhouette.

Up and over, over and down, the hilly road takes me closer.

A long, straight road, signs warning drivers about low-flying jets. If I’m lucky, I get there right as a big one flies right overhead. Otherwise I’m treated to lights in the distance, high in the sky, as people approach home.

A couple more turns. Find a parking spot. Hop out.

Stand before this.

You know, going in to work is not so bad.

Filed Under: Happy things, Photos · Tagged With: gratitude, living life, photos

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

Becoming Real

January 2, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen.

A few years ago I was really splendid. I was fat and bunchy too, and my hair shone. But then something changed.

For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him…Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.

When your shine disappears and your sateen starts to wear, it’s easy to feel insignificant. All the things I had been on the outside seemed to be gone, and all that was left was the threadbare version of me.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

All mothers experience this to some degree, I think. The initial boast-and-swagger clouds what is real and we stumble. We look in the mirror one day and realize the splendid version of ourselves is gone. For some, the nursery magic reveals that the mother version of ourselves in its place is actually the Real version but, for others, we think think we’ve lost ourselves and are simply gone.

I thought I wasn’t Real because I wasn’t made that way. I thought I wasn’t made to be a mother and in becoming one had lost who I truly am.

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

But I didn’t have the wisdom of the Skin Horse. I wasn’t old and wise and experienced and I couldn’t see that I could, in fact, become Real.

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

Becoming Real did hurt. Sometimes a little bit and sometimes a lot. Most of the time I did mind, but I wasn’t Real yet.

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Over the last 3 1/2 years I have become Real, bit by bit.

I didn’t actually know it though. I thought I was unlike other mothers, the same way the Velveteen Rabbit was afraid of what the rabbits in the forest would think of him, not realizing he was in fact Real, and had hind legs just like they did.

There are still people who don’t understand, I think. Those who don’t understand why I felt as though I weren’t good enough, and those who don’t understand why I share all this here.

But the nursery magic Fairy in The Velveteen Rabbit tells the Rabbit what it is to be Real, and the reason he is Real is the same reason I am.

“You were Real to the Boy,” the Fairy said, “because he loved you.”

I know it now. Just like the Velveteen Rabbit, I have my own Boy. And I am Real because he loves me.

Text excerpts from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. Illustrations by William Nicholson. All courtesy Penn Libraries.

Filed Under: Hello, Inspiration, Letters to Connor, Motherhood, Postpartum depression · Tagged With: gratitude, perspective

One Year Later

January 1, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

It feels as though the post on my one-year anniversary of blogging ought to be profound. I started off trying to write something like that, but it’s not working and will be relegated to another post, another day.

New Year’s Day usually feels quiet to me. A calm before the bustle of January, when the it’s-the-holidays excuses for being lazy or skipping out early no longer work. That’s what January 1, 2011 felt like to me.

I have a vivid mental picture of that day, which I don’t have for most New Year’s Days (tending, as they do, to all blur together). I had spent New Year’s Eve 2010 in the usual fashion—with Chinese food followed by blissful nothingness—with one critical difference. That last night of 2010 I sat on the floor of our living room, in front of the fire, and set up a blog in WordPress.

It was totally unplanned. I had been thinking about writing about my experience with motherhood, but I hadn’t really thought about it being so specifically about PPD and I really hadn’t thought about getting into blogging. And yet there I was with wordpress.com on the screen in front of me and before I knew it this blog was born.

It was a short time later that I became Farewell Stranger, but at that time I was simply MamaRobinJ. I had a basic blog and a Twitter account (because I didn’t want to use my professional Twitter persona for this very personal project) and I decided I was going to do it. And then I went to bed.

The next day, during the quietness that was January 1, 2011, I got a direct message on my other Twitter account from my boss. “MamaRobinJ is a great idea,” he said. And my heart exploded in holy-shit-fuelled adrenaline.

That was the start of what became a slow progression towards having it be okay to talk about this. I would say a year later I’m 95% there – it’s still not something I bring up early on when I meet new people, and the people at my new job don’t know this about me yet (unless they’ve Googled me, in which case hi!). But it’s no longer an oh-God-please-don’t-find-my-blog sort of thing.

For I guess that’s the beauty of blogging, isn’t it? It can be whatever we want. If we want to be anonymous, we can. If we want to use it to say, “This is who I really am. This is my experience. Do you still love me?” we can.

One year later, this is who I really am. And not because I hid who I was, but because this blog, and those of you who have been with me during the last year, have allowed the protective shell I placed around myself to crack and let the light in.

One year later, this is who I really am. Because you still love me.

Image credit: ms.Tea on Flickr

So today, on this New Year’s Day that feels not quiet but alive with possibility, I wish to say thank you. Thank you for this last year. Thank you for loving me.

Have a cupcake.

Filed Under: Happy things, Love letters, Motherhood, Postpartum depression, Writing · Tagged With: blogging, community, firsts, gratitude, perspective, spreading the love, we're not alone

10 steps to a chaotic Christmas

December 28, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Step 1: Move into a new house in a new city less than a month before Christmas. Unpack as much as you can and then stuff everything else into the basement and the spare bedroom upstairs. Pray no one needs to get in there.

Step 2: Agree to host Christmas for most of your family because you’re the house that makes the most sense this year.

Step 3: Start a new job the week before Christmas, making it tough to get all those last-minute errands done.

Step 4: Forego your usual practice of making many, many lists and figure it will all work out.

Step 5: Make one exception to Step 4 and hastily make a grocery list the morning of the 23rd before you go to work. That way your husband can do the shopping and you’ll still have time to pick up all the things you forgot.

Step 6: Hide stocking stuffers and gifts in various places around your new house. Having to look for them at 9:00 on Christmas Eve so you can finish wrapping will provide a different sort of orientation to the house you’ve only lived in for 3 weeks.

Step 7: Start cooking on Christmas Eve morning by just doing things as the thought occurs to you. Send someone down the street to the grocery store for the items you forgot in your half-awake list-making state.

Step 7 1/2: Thank your lucky stars Santa’s helpers are there to pitch in.

Step 8: Realize you forgot some of the presents you meant to get, are short on some critical elements of Christmas Dinner (pickles) and neglected to appropriately plan for the vegetables you wanted to serve.

Step 9: Decide that this is the “wing it” Christmas and none of the above issues matter. This philosophy will be reinforced when your three-year-old opens his stocking on Christmas morning with a face lit up with joy and says, “He came! Santa knows me!”

Step 10: Have a very merry chaotic Christmas with great family and the best damn turkey ever cooked in a brand-new-to-us oven. (And we didn’t set fire to the turkey like we did the first year in our old house!)