My brother just got married 
and there was a moment 
when the thought 

like a breeze
crossed 
through the trusses 
of my

forehead and said,

Grandpa 
would have loved
this song, or that 

one,
for he always had music in his 
heart, stuck in his thoughts, 
in his 

voice. He loved to
sing, loved 
the old band music he could play from the
boxy white cd player 

from the corner of the dining room
where he’d sit in the polished wooden
chair next to it, his
mind

somewhere 
else, 
arms crossed, lips mouthing the 
words he’s had memorized for 

forty
fifty 
sixty 
seventy

give-or-take
years
when times were simpler
when, from what he told me, 

if anyone was singing,
people would stop what they were doing and  
listen or join in,
and I think, Grandpa, 

that is what you would have done
at the wedding when the old songs came on.
Either that, or dance.
Honestly, 

maybe 
both. 
Wish you were
here.

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I wanted to say I am sorry to you, Subscriber, because I lied. I told you recently “that I wake and I write and Poof. Magic. Words” and that is only an ounce of what is true.

The truth is before I write, I have a ritual. It is done in the dark because I prefer to write in the early morning soon after waking, almost like my dreams can more easily become my words. Unless I head back to bed, which happens sometimes. I like my bed, I am sorry to say.

My ritual is I light a candle and watch how the flame’s light fills the room. And then I light a bundle of sage which is meant to cleanse the air of anything negative, anything that is not good and full of light or truth. My therapist is an Indigenous woman and she taught me about sage in our sessions together. I have come to love how it smells, although my husband still claims it smells a lot like pot. (Haha). (Not to me!)

And then I pray Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give me this day my daily bread and forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who have trespassed against me, and lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.

And to whoever may say that seems like a strange writing ritual I say, peace to you. But this is the only way I write what I write. Thy will be done to me means God to take my pen and write with me. Give me the words for what you want me to say. I also pray this before I write any song at the piano. It may sound mystical and magical but it actually involves a faith that I have come to rest on so hard on it’s like sitting on a couch. (Which I am actually laying on at the moment, legs up, fingers at the keyboard). But I truly believe the only way I can write is that if God is writing with me. It is the Holy Spirit which fills any person who is willing to submit themselves to be used for God.

I am sorry, Subscriber, for only giving you a quarter of the whole truth when you always deserve the whole.

I had been toying with how to write this post since I wrote last week’s Word and shared some journals from when my sons were little. And the week before last when I shared a Word about postpartum depression and birth trauma. But I wanted to share more and I think what I want to say is partly because I think God wants me to but also because I want to.

What I want to say is I think I fell into my deepest pits of shame about myself when I became a mother. This is not to say that any of it was either of my children’s faults. I am not blaming them for this. I just think sometimes that life’s challenges or sufferings provide us with the raw material necessary for some great change or transformation to come about. And I guess motherhood just happened to be mine. Like a doorway into a series of connected caverns deep in the earth. Or like falling into a well may very well mean a chance for escape or a chance to be trapped; it depends on how you see the situation you find yourself in. And if you ever get access to a rope.

Which, thankfully, I did.

Because at the bottom of the birth trauma and everything that happened afterwards was a lot of shame about myself that I hadn’t really ever stared in the face before. Shame that whispered things like, "You deserved for this to happen”; “You brought this on yourself”; “You weren’t worth your midwife coming for you and that is why she did not come”; “You did this to your children, what kind of mother has a home birth in 2017?”; and probably the worst, which was “Because this happened, God can never love you.”

And so, for years, unconsciously and consciously, I was caught in this really heavy haze of not wanting to get out of bed and take care of my kids but having to go through the motions because my children’s care required this of me. They needed me, depressed/anxious or not. They needed a mother to survive. All children do. I was also on Zoloft at the time (I was on it for 9 years) which gave my emotions a rest but also dulled them to a blank shade of white. It really did help me function, I admit. It “took the edge off of life” for a while.

It helped me not cry so much, which is what I had been doing before I got on the medication. But it dulled my feelings and I guess, during this time, I didn’t know what to say to God because I was starting to believe what the shame told me; that He could never love me, especially not now. I think I kind of disassociated. Like parts of my brain were in the present tense moments and other parts were lagging behind and stuck in the past shame. Like I wanted to disappear but couldn’t. I slept with a 30 pound weighted blanket for years. I just wanted to be buried, I guess, or just have that feeling of heaviness. I wanted to fall asleep so fast so I didn’t have to remember the painful things that were kind of haunting me.

And I finally got to a point where I really needed to cry out to God to help me at the root of my pain, to help me at the very root.

If you know anything about gardening or plants, you might know if you try to pull a plant out of the soil but leave the root, in a few days or weeks, you will find that the plant grows back. Because you’ve left the very thing it needs to grow still intact. If a plant still has roots, it can come back. Even a stump can sometimes grow little tiny trees from it. Because the roots are still keeping the thing still alive.

I had never gotten to the root of my problems; I had never taken care of the root of my problems. Believe me, I had tried. I tried what Richard Rohr calls living into my “false self”. My false self included achieving, overachieving, getting good grades, doing lots of activities, doing so many activities I have to cancel the activities I committed to, rushing around and hurrying, trying to control other people’s opinions about me by censoring myself, being nice, being too nice, trying to make everyone else happy, faking it, lying to people’s faces about how I’m doing, and, ultimately, lying to God.

Richard Rohr tells us that the false self shouldn’t be shamed, though. We come into the world through our childhoods and adolescence and develop a false self that is the best we can do. It is natural. It is as natural as a larvae growing into being a caterpillar.

But sometime in our thirties, Richard says, (in his wonderful book Falling Upward) we need to reach a point of death. Death to our false self so that we can be our true self. The metamorphosis. The very real, dramatic change of a caterpillar creating the chrysalis and transforming into the butterfly. For me, that meant coming to terms with who I had been trying to be. I realized I had been telling God “I’m fine” when, you know what, I finally realized I can’t fool God. I was not fine. He knew what I really felt deep down.

Jesus talks about this death in Matthew 16:25 Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.

I was scared to tell God my shame. I was scared to tell Him because I didn’t know if He’d be upset with me if I shared that motherhood is really hard, sometimes it’s just downright awful, and most of the time I don’t actually feel that I have what this takes. I feel like other people have it and I don’t. These are the types of “shameful” things I was never able to say to God but I say them all the time now. I tell Him all my shame now but for the longest time I didn’t.

And, turns out, my shame was exactly what he wanted me to say to him. I still remember the day I said, “Jesus, …” and then proceeded to tell him all my shame. All the things I had kept inside and told no one, not my husband nor any best friend I’ve ever had my whole life. Shame about everything—I won’t give the list here, but it was very long.

And this is what freed me, really freed me to be myself: giving it to Jesus. Which is exactly what He came to do. He came to “free the captives”. Isaiah 61:1 says The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Jesus came to heal us. To free us!

I had been confessing my sins my whole life but never once had told Jesus my shame.

But my shame has been like a ball and chain I’ve been dragging around! Or like a cage I’ve been trapped in! Or like a well I fell down into, without a rope! And sharing my shame, not just once, but every day, every day since, has been the thing that set me free. My old self had to die and now I’m…a new me. Jesus birthed a new me.

He set me free to be myself, to be a writer. To start writing a book of poetry called A Year With Me which many of you are subscribers to. He has freed me to play the piano again. I hadn’t played a note in 17 years.

He has freed me to be my true self that has been waiting behind my “false self” all these years. I knew I wanted to share with you the real reason I got out of the pit of the last 10 or so years, and it really is Jesus. He’s a real person and I tell him everything now. I tell him things I haven’t ever told any therapist. I tell him things I’ve told no human soul. And it’s not a one-and-done thing as I was taught in many churches from my past; this is a relationship. A relationship is not a transaction like a vending machine where you slide in your quarters and you receive eternal life and Jesus in your heart. This is a real relationship.

You know, it’s give and take. It’s a back and forth. I tell Jesus everything I’m thinking and feeling and struggling and wondering about, and then I step back and wait for him to speak. And I don’t do anything until he speaks. That’s what has finally changed. I am learning, finally, how to trust and trust always involves surrender. It never involves control. Which makes it really hard but honestly the best thing I’ve ever done or am doing. (This is a present-tense activity, a daily operation). This is now a journey which is different because you don’t know where you’re going but you know who’s beside you.

I wish, sometimes, that I could go back to the very moment of Isaac’s birth; the moment right exactly when I met him for the first time, and speak to him differently. Speak to myself differently. If I had been able to receive the love I know was there for me all along, I know I would have held my baby and stared at him, and just breathed the words I love you my son, immediately. Though he was purple and not crying. Though my midwife was yelling at me. Though I had felt alone while in labor even though my husband and God were beside me. I would have told myself, Anna, I love you, God loves you, look how he saved you, look how he has saved your son! This is his love, and perhaps I wouldn’t have gone down the very dark road that has been these last 10 years.

But you know what? I’ve learned so much.

Maybe I wouldn’t trade it after all. I also can’t “trade” in the past even if I want to. the past is the past. It is gone.

Learning through shame has helped me. Needing to lean on God has helped my marriage with Josh. Without the dark, we wouldn’t appreciate the light. Without being lost, we wouldn’t see what a gift it is to have been found. And I have been found; He found me. If not for God, and His love and grace, we wouldn’t be here. Not me, certainly not Josh or our kids. It’s just his grace that keeps us.

And, as my therapist asks me when I start to get woeful about the past and the regrets and my mistakes, “But what is the lesson? What is the lesson you’ve learned from this?”

I guess there are many lessons. A book’s worth of lessons. Maybe the biggest is to bring the pain to the one who can take care of it. To the one who bled for it: Jesus.

And maybe another is to know that the suffering and pain is making something beautiful inside that maybe you cannot see right now but will later. Just wait.

And so, I don’t know what any of you are facing out there in the corner of the world where you live, but I know to exist on this earth is to go through something. Which means you’re probably learning something right now. So learn it and let the suffering be your greatest teacher. And when you learn the lesson you’re supposed to learn, there will be another lesson. Such is life.

The news of the world looks so very bleak that last week I swore off reading it. I won’t though; I am going to check it so that I know what is actually going on. But how very hard it is to have hope in this world!

But yet hope keeps hoping whether anyone believes in hope or not. Hope believes in herself. Hope keeps going. Hope is breathless, and bloody, and more than tired, but she continues on because that’s who she is.

Faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is Love (1 Corinthians 13:13). I am so grateful for the Love of God who sent Jesus to take our shame and free us from the things that hold us back. His mercies are new every morning, which means we can give him any and all shame that has accumulated in the night or the previous day and just completely start over again.

It’s like visiting a waterfall at dawn.

Have you ever seen a waterfall? I saw a few when my husband and I visited Oregon several years back. We just stood there and and stood there and took pictures and gazed and nothing changed. And then we visited the waterfall at dawn the next day. And you know what? It was the same.

And so is his love. Same endless infinity rushing clear beautiful water and you get to come back and receive and receive after you’ve given what’s been so heavy on your heart. You give it and you get back so much more than you could ever dream.

Jesus called himself the Living Water. That’s who he is.

I was stuck in a well, he threw me a rope, and now has invited me to drink. I am so grateful.

Grateful to be a mom now, though I wasn’t grateful then.

Grateful for my children and the gifts of who they are, though the difficulties clouded my gratefulness at the beginning.

Grateful for the things I couldn’t face then, that I am now facing now, with help.

Grateful to be here at this point in my life, not because I deserve any of it. But because I have received a very big gift and can’t help but talk about it.

And, will you forgive me for not telling the truth before, about what I do before I write? I promise I won’t say something like that in the future; I will be honest with you. I am still wrestling with the false parts of me that want to “act” in front of you.

I hope your week is … a little more free. (I know I feel a bit better, having gotten the truth off my chest another time.)

Thanks for reading,

Anna

P.S. Have you read On the Pulse of Morning by Maya Angelou? It’s wonderful.

P.P.S. Have you heard half alive by Tenroc? I think he’s talking about this “false self” “true self” concept, which involves a death. Though, as always, I could be wrong.

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5/2/2017 and 9/25/2018

For my sons

When I think of you, I am so glad
When I think of you, I’m more than glad
I’m grateful that you’re alive
Those early years sure were hard but look at you now

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enter the little door in the forehead

leading from the heart to the brain,

they beat their little wings two at a

time, tilted, breathless, teetering on

some edge, nervous or just curiously

slipping on air, sound like white cloud

carefully, one by one.

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MY PAIN IS A LAKE
and I sit at its shores this morning
just sitting. Just 	waves, 	waving
				shores,    shoring
						 sand, sand, pain, pain.

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Sometimes I am too tired for romance
at the end of the day, too tired for sex
or anything except brushing against your 
arm in bed like I would the back of a tender
cat. Too tired to kiss. Do you ever feel this

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On the floor of the barn there is a layer 

of straw that no one can see

which is caked to the floor with poop

long since dried. It makes a perfect

glue and has mixed with other things

no one wishes to imagine:

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When a goose dreams,

it does so in green,

eaten, ample feasts 

of flying Kings 

and Queens. Meals eggshells 

and children are made of. 

Meals migrations 

are made of. 

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Tuesdays are
	piano lessons.  All I want is right 
		here, I tell the dancing
shadows
	on the streaked oak 
		floor,
tell the fly doing his back and forth dance
	across the windowpane, 

               tell a wilted spider plant or
the wind squeaking under the door, 
	and my son at the piano, 
		the other on the floor 
making domino creations 
	near a coffee table marked by shoes
		and conversations
and lazy reading feet,
	and the leaning orchid 
		and a dim but hopeful lamp,
and a stained and saggy couch slouching 
	with its comfort, 
		and tell my anxious mind  
with its flurry of words and crisscrossing thoughts
	rattling the boggy corners of my brain,
		 isn’t o isn’t o isn’t this right, this right here?
Never a wrong note 
         if it’s 
	         today. 
And 
          so
		 it is.

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He showed us the only way the rocks and sand would all fit back inside was by putting the large rocks in first. Then he filled the jar with the smaller rocks and lastly, the sand.

When I write about motherhood, sometimes it’s like emptying out a jar of rocks and I cannot put anything back inside in a way that fits together neatly. Especially when any of it involves the past. The past is… the past.

And I cannot change what I did or didn’t do, now. I did or didn’t do any number of things that was also based on a number of things I did or didn’t know at the time, which were also based on a number of things that other people did, (or didn’t) do, too.

History isn’t neat. That is true for world history just as it is true for my own. It’s always a mix.

I want to tell the story neatly. But I don’t think this is how this works. Sometimes you just have to let the dust … and rocks… and sand… and memories… settle. Just let them be. Don’t try to take them out again. Maybe just look at them. Observe. Like you’re at a zoo peering through a handprint-smeared window.

Last week, when I wrote about the hard parts of motherhood, the difficulties are the large rocks in my jar. Sometimes the hard is what my mind remembers most but it is not nearly all of it. It is certainly not all of my sons or all of me.

I had to empty it out first, though.

My eldest son’s traumatic birth was the way he entered the world but the birth is not what I think of now that he is 9. Or his brother’s birth, now that his brother is 7, soon to be 8. I look back on my struggles with postpartum anxiety and depression as I do memories. It’s real; it happened. At some point, the story changed, and grew, and morphed, and the internal pain I felt shifted too, like sand filling around all those rough edges of birth trauma and the wide gulf that existed between what I wanted to feel and what I actually felt at the time.

The fear started turning very slowly, almost imperceptibly, to love.

Fear and love; I never knew they are opposites but they are.

I feared my son’s birth so I connected fear with motherhood. I felt the same fear when I found out I was pregnant with my second son when my first was only six months old.

But as I got support from God, my husband, my therapist(s), family members, church family members, friends, the fear started taking a rest. And love crept in, like those little grains of sand.

You know, sand is just rocks that have been worn down over time. Rocks that have been both roughly and gently, loved into little particles.

I think that’s really cool. Maybe that’s what the past teaches us. It is pain. It is love. We can remember both.

I remember when Isaac was a baby, if I took him outside and brought him and some of his favorite toys and a few books and a blanket, we could lay under the magnolia tree in the front yard and he would stop crying. He’d start cooing at the tree. We laid together outside a lot during the “witching hour” between dinner and bedtime, when Josh wasn’t home from hospital shifts and Isaac and I both needed something to do. It became our “thing”. It worked like clockwork, for both of us. To get us settled again.

Another thing Isaac liked was going on walks. Babies are nice for that sort of thing. You don’t ask them to go on a walk with you; you just take them with you. He would ride on my chest in one of those baby carrriers, or ride in the stroller with Scarlet and Copper, our two beagles, alongside. (That was a little chaotic, always untwisting the leashes, but I tried). We were lucky enough to live right by a bike path when Isaac was a baby and I have fond memories of morning, afternoon, and evening walks to keep us all sane, happy, and breathing fresh miraculous air.

When Isaac was little, my pastor’s wife at our former church led a mom’s Sunday school class. I felt like the class was meant for me. I know it wasn’t; it was meant for anyone who was a mom and who had any age of children, but at that particular time in my faith journey, I really needed support from other women walking through this same sort of thing. We cried together, laughed together, listened, prayed with each other, found ways to encourage each other. I’ll never forget that stretch of a few years where I had people in my corner at church to speak honestly about the good and the bad with. My spiritual sisters who I really needed and relied on.

Learning how to breastfeed was like climbing a small mountain. There was a steep learning curve as there usually is for new things in life. But once we got the hang of it, with the help of a few La Leche league meetings, it became a special time Isaac and I had every few hours on the couch or in the rocking chair. My heart would always crack in two if he found my hair with his fingers (until he learned how to pull it!). Or how his hands would beat against my chest or kind of grab my skin over and over. It felt very much like I was an animal and he was my needy, hungry, fuzzy-headed young. I felt like a monkey or a cow at all times, in a very good way.

I remember one of the places I started taking Isaac to walk around and look at things was Petco. I guess I felt like it was a little like the aquarium but it was completely free and we could leave after 15 minutes if it wasn’t going well or if he filled his diaper with poop and ruined his outfit. He liked the fish tanks especially at that age. You know those neon tetras? Those flashes of light across the water. When Isaac got older, he stared at the turtles for a long time. And the cats and birds were a favorite, too. Even now, on rainy or cold days, my sons enjoy a stroll through a pet store. Free fun. I guess animal therapy is one of the best kinds, for all of us.

My son Matthew’s birth was really different than Isaac’s, in more than a few ways.

The first difference was my parents were visiting right around the time of his birth. We went apple picking together because Josh was working a shift at the hospital. The next day, I ate a whole pineapple. (I was always willing to try all the old folktale methods of trying to get the baby out. I think the pineapple may have worked because he was born the next morning). It was my due date and I had felt a bit of movement already.

We took a long walk; me, Josh, my mom, and Isaac that evening. I think we got some ice cream. I went to prenatal yoga and my yoga instructor mentioned that it looked like I was going to have my baby very soon. We got some kind of restaurant for dinner, maybe Chipotle?, and then I relaxed with my mom while Josh was up working on homework for his graduate school program. I think I tried to go to bed but couldn’t.

My mom was kind of like the midwife and the doula I didn’t have with me, but really wanted.

My mom laid on the couch while I was going through early labor in the dark and she was just present. I don’t need much to be said; I think I just needed presence more than anything and she was there. And as things picked up quite a bit, she said to both Josh and I, “I think you should go to the hospital.” So we did.

I think it was a little after midnight when Josh and I got there and right after examining me, the nurse said cheerfully, “You are a stretchy six! You’re going to have a baby tonight!”

About two hours later, Matthew was born. What was so different than Isaac’s birth was how he cried right away. How he nursed right away. And a few hours after he was all settled in next to me on a bassinet after having been fed, I remember asking God if he could send me an angel so I could fall asleep this time. I pled with God. God heard my prayer and I fell asleep for a few glorious, precious hours; hours of sleep that meant I wasn’t going to be trapped in the cycle of insomnia like last time. Josh slept on the couch next to me.

My mom brought Isaac sometime the next morning to meet the baby; she was the first extended family member to meet Matthew. Isaac kept saying, “Feet, feet” and “eyes” as he looked at his brother’s eyes. It is very emotional having a new baby meet his sibling for the first time. There is so much love in the room. I guess their brother bond began that day. And a new bond between all of us began that day too; a family of four now. Well, four humans, two dogs.

And the dogs liked Matthew, too.

The following are some journal entries I’ve kept from the time I had my sons.

June 2, 2017

Isaac started smiling and giggled at me. I started Zoloft for my insomnia.

July 8, 2017

Isaac loves bath time and is soothed by water sounds. Loves the tiger puppet my mom gave me. Likes watching Scarlet and Copper walk by.

August 4, 2017

We went camping. Isaac also likes going to the splash pad.

September 4, 2017

Isaac discovered his feet.

October 10, 2017

Likes seeing fish, turtles, birds at Petco.

November 20, 2017

Tried solid food but gags a lot. Does like soup, squash, bananas and apples.

November 24, 2017

Isaac got his first tooth. Very crabby because of it. Likes being tickled right by his collar bone, though.

December 14, 2017

Isaac crawled and Josh was there to witness it and we both cheered for him. He crawled across the room today, the day we got our Christmas tree.

December 15, 2017

Crawling didn’t solve all of our problems; apparently it just creates new ones. Like Isaac crawling to Scarlet’s cage while she is in the middle of scarfing down her breakfast or dinner in loud crunches, and picking up her dog food with his fingers and stuffing it into his mouth. Or crawling with lightning speed towards the full bowl of water for the dogs, and then all in one quick movement, dumping it over and creating a puddle of water to roll in.

Or three times now, when suddenly it’s really quiet and I think, “Where’s Isaac and what is he doing?”, usually when I am doing one little thing, like wiping the kitchen table, or picking up things in his bedroom, I have found Isaac kneeling in front of the tall yucca plant and slurping up dirt like it is a most delicious stew.

His mouth and chin completely black.

January 6, 2018

Squishing sweet potato skins in your hands to make a mushy lump the size of your fist, you smile as I make a game out of lifting one sweet potato fry above my head slowly, then bringing it down to my mouth and crunching loudly. I do it all to please you, my son. I sang songs to Scarlet and rubbed her belly and danced with her just to get you to look at me and give me a smile.

January 7, 2018

And so, motherhood and sacrifice? They seem so intertwined, I hardly can decipher which is which. And what is the sacrifice worth? That is something I’m still pondering, still trying to articulate. For we don’t have children because they are ‘fun’ or because they will ‘make us happy’. Just like life isn’t about having fun or being happy, although children can give us those things and life can give us those things, too. So there’s something deeper in all of this--some other deeper, bigger, wider reason why we have children and keep having children and loving these children, the very same ones who have taken so much from us. They give so much back to us, but that’s not why we have them, because that would mean they are there for ourselves, to make us feel good. So why have children if it requires such sacrifice? But what would the world be without children, who become adults?

I am not sad to be a mother. I am not regretful of the decision to become a mother. I have felt sadness and regret at times, to be honest. But more so I feel thankful, joyful, grateful. At first, resentful, scared, angry. But motherhood is growing on me, like it or not.

March, 4, 2018

Isaac likes to “empty” the dishwasher and throw everything on the floor. Loves “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”. Bath time is fun.

March 20, 2018

Isaac drinks formula and donated breast milk now that I’m pregnant and not able to breastfeed.

September 29, 2018

Matthew gets poked by his brother a little bit. But he loves his bath and if it’s the right temperature, he never cries!

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Matthew, you, are lying next to me on the couch, on your back, squirming under the cotton blanket I wrapped you in, making the little reptilian grunting sounds I have come to expect from you. I love you. Today I smelled one of your arms and it smelled sweet, like breastmilk, but also like sugar and skin.

Your brother Isaac has started getting jealous, which leaves me feeling torn and like I want to rip myself in two. One half could push Isaac on the swings at the park when he first requested it today. I’d plop him in there promptly after he pointed to the swing above his head, and push him, tickling him as he glides, bobbing. And then the other half of me could sit on the park bench and breastfeed you right when you wanted it, right when you started pecking at my shoulder with your lips open like a duck’s beak.

What really happened was Isaac wandered over to the swings and looked over at me, almost begging me to help him while I felt you sucking away at one of my nipples, unable to move. This seems to be the hardest part of these early, blurry, tired days: feeling torn in two at the sight of my two sons who need me and need more of me than I am able to give. It’s hard, and sad, and feels a lot like a rubber band being yanked in two different directions.

November 10, 2018

Matthew loves to kick in his bath. Burps a lot. Likes watching Isaac or stuffed animals.

December 25, 2018

Matthew notices his brother but gets scared when Isaac shouts at him. Matthew hates his carseat!

I feel like a zombie.

January 27, 2019

Loves watching his brother Isaac! Matthew might not have liked the spicy food I ate last night? He rolls from his tummy to his back.

February 20, 2019

Now naps at 9 and 2! Crazy how that changed. Three naps was annoying; two is a lot better.

April 2, 2019

Matthew’s six month appointment. Got three shots, poor guy.

I saw a new therapist today about the birth trauma I experienced. It was really eye opening. I am going back tomorrow to talk with her more.

April 3, 2019

I feel bad but I stopped writing about Matthew in March because I kind of got sick of him.

But Matthew loves his jumper and is loving reading books a bit more, especially ones with pictures of babies. He leans over and kisses them.

Isaac and I painted pictures on oatmeal containers today. He cried and yelled, “Paint a digger!” over and over, which is what I was trying to do. But then we played train and it was fine.

April 4, 2019

Isaac hugged Matthew today and said “eyes, nose, ear, other ear” while pointing at his face and then he said he loved me. Very special moment on our bed.

Then I took the boys to Chick-Fil-A and Isaac shook both of the cow’s hands and called him his friend.

April 5, 2019

One of those days where I feel behind before I even wake up. So hard to get up when the nights are not restful.

Isaac played with cookie cutters and play dough. Matthew crawled around and fussed.

Isaac said “I love you mama” over and over while I laid on the ground by his crib and held his hand before he napped. These are the little moments I want to hold onto.

April 6, 2019

Isaac said, “I singing wif you” while I rocked him, my face in his hair. I almost cried. I told Josh about it and he said, “See, you’re going to like being a mom!” (after two years).

Matthew is in 90-95th percentile for length. Still loves watching his brother. He is definitely crawling. He got so excited about it, he was up at 5 am this morning, raring to go.

Oh God, thank you for these boys, these gifts I do not deserve.

April 7, 2019

Isaac pooped four times today. Matthew pooped twice. I’m a little pooped out.

Isaac brought his choo choo book to the bed where I was nursing Matthew and sat by me to “read it”. He put his arm around Matthew and said, “I holding Mafu”.

April 8, 2019

Rabbits hopped around our yard this afternoon while Isaac and I drew squiggles, grass, suns, clouds, and shapes with sidewalk chalk and Matthew laid on his stomach in the grass, staring at everything. Isaac said, “I chase it” while he ran after a rabbit. Matthew ate a little plain yogurt tonight before he threw the bowl off his high chair.

I feel groggy and a little down from the weekend alone with the boys but deep inside, I know it was a good day.

April 10, 2019

Isaac made a “cake” out of couch cushions today and I think he got the idea from Mr. Rogers.

I went to EMDR therapy today and I felt sort of like my brain was getting stitched back together. Felt surreal and good.

April 11, 2019

Matthew eats a little solids: eggs, chicken, strawberry, apple, applesauce, plain yogurt, cheese, bean soup, cucumber.

Okay, more than a little.

Maybe these journal entries can start to fill some of the spaces left by the large rocks in the jar; how sand fills the holes.

Life is always a mix; it is never one straight thing.

I am grateful, for all of it.

I think,

in trying to write it down,

that meant I was grateful then, too.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

I hope you have a good start to your week.

Anna

P.S. I love this song: halle-lujah by Tenroc!

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On the first day, I cut the swiss chard with a pair 
of shiny clippers, and brought it inside to the cast iron pan
with some olive oil and a dash of salt,

and it was good.

On the second day, I pulled back the mats 
of dead leaves from last year, and I let the chickens 
eat the thick 
white grubs I unearthed,

and it was good.

On the third day, I pitchforked 
heavy chunks of dried chicken poop 
into the black cart 
and emptied it around the yard 
and garden, 

and it was good.

On the fourth day, I picked bowlfuls 
of heavenly berries 
and the pink juices dripped down my wrists
and my mouth was full,

and it was good.

On the fifth day, I stood by a steaming pot
ladling jam
into hot clear jars, 
then put them into the pot of boiling water
and after ten minutes, 
 
it was good.

On the sixth day, I discovered 
a mother rabbit nursing her young
in the driveway on a sunny morning, 
and I stood and looked,

and it was good.

On the seventh day, I did nothing in the garden 
but watch, 
and it was 
very good. Very 
very 
very
very
very
very 

good.

So good, 
the next week, 
it started 
over

and the garden
did it
again, 
but different 

and it was
somehow
even 
better

(and still good).

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8/22/2026 

My brother and sister-in-law's wedding day! Congratulations.

Was it catching 
her eye?

Or seeing his face 
across a crowded room?

What bound her to him? 
What bound him to her?

I think it has a name: Love. 
Yes, Love. I’m sure.

Love begins small, like friends do.
Then it starts to trust as friends must.

And you learn that you are falling in love, 
So you fall. 

Slowly, at first,
Then faster as you go.

You can’t separate yourself from this person.
Something has you two glued.

It is just perfect,
Can’t you see?

For Ryan, it’s “only” her.
For Blakney, it’s “only” him.

And that, my friends,
Is a beautiful thing.

And, there’s a ring.
Two rings, yes.

But there’s a musical ring. 
Can you hear it? Kind of like a bell?

The song says, “Love her well."
The song says, “Love him well."

The song continues on
And says, “Through thick and thin, 

Through heaven 
And hell."

For life is never easy.
Sure, there are fun, delightful parts

But it’s Love that gets you through
When you have a broken heart. 

For when the hard times come, 
For surely they will,

That’s when the Love you have 
Gets to grow bigger still.

The Love you have is a lot like glue.
Glue sticks between you two.

It’s binding, it’s cementing;
It’s exactly what Trust feels like, too. 

Trust never comes off. 
Trust sticks. Trust stays. Trust promises,

“I’m gonna be with you for all my days.”
“Trust I’m going to love you today.” 

“Trust I’m going to love you tomorrow."
“Trust I’m not going to turn back from you in your time of great sorrow."

“Trust I’ll lean into you rather than lean away.”
“Gotta cry? Come here.”

“Let me hold you.” 
“Let me cry with you, my dear.”

Need to just sit and say nothing?
Trust does that, too.

Trust and Love like to sit in silence 
Sometimes, too.

“Want to go on a walk by the lake? Want to play a round of golf?
“Want to sit and watch an old movie that we loved long ago?”

“Whatever it is, whatever you need,
Trust says, I’m gonna be here. 

Trust says, I’m gonna be with you, 
Trust says, I’m gonna stay near.”

That’s what Love is. 
That’s what Love does. Love stays close, never far.

It stays when you need it the most. 
It never leaves. Not on a plane, not in a car.

And that is my prayer for the two of you. 
That Trust and Love would hold you together like glue. 

Two people I love so dearly, 
you amazing you.

You’re amazing, Blakney.
You’re amazing, Ryan.

All I feel for you is Love.
All I hope and pray for you is Love.

All your days,
May they be filled up in more than one way

With a Love that keeps on loving;
Loving him, loving her, 

Going on and on
Without a beginning,

Without an ending, either. 
The kind of love that happened when you first met each other.

I wish you both the very best:
Joy, peace, happiness, 

But most of all, 
Love. 

May what you have which I already know
Continue on and 

Grow.

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A few days ago, I wrote the 100th page of the book of poetry I’ve been writing since May. I guess it felt like a milestone. Although as I was paging back through Substack, I found out there was one duplicate page back in the teens. So actually the page count is one higher than it really is. Oh well. This live-audience-thing is also revealing itself to be a masterclass in proofreading. I know I can always use more lessons there. I’d like to apologize but Julia Child’s words ring in my mind here: “No apologies! No exceptions!” Just keep learning, I guess.

Some days, I know exactly what the next page will be. Some seem to finalize during the middle of the night in the tender spaces between wakefulness and sleeping and dreaming. And then I wake up to sit at the computer and the feeling or thought or memory appears like Poof. Magic. Words.

But what I am especially grateful for is having an audience for my writing. This summer, I was in an online writing program called PocketMFA. I was placed in a cohort of six other poets and we workshopped each other’s work every week for 12 weeks. We received line-by-line feedback and advice on our poems. It was valuable time spent with real people’s words. We talked about how having a community can, to the writer, feel just as important as being published. Sometimes even more so, because you get actual eyes on your work and the feedback that goes with it. I got to talk through my poems: who their intended audience was, why I wrote them, what my process was like. It was helpful. And then I got to hear other writers do the same and that was helpful, too. The whole process was a gift.

So, so are you. It is a gift to know my work is getting looked at. It just helps aim me a little closer to my goals. You’re like the fire under my pot; you’re making my water boil. You’re putting a bit more urgency into my desire to keep going, to keep putting words out into the world, to keep showing up. If I don’t show up, nothing will happen. If I don’t write, nothing gets written. If I don’t try and instead do nothing, then nothing is what happens.

(Nothing is not nothing. Nothing is something. But Nothing is the Something I Don’t Want to Do Any Longer if you know what I mean.)

There are so many poems which you will never see. There are poems I’ve reworked so many times that will never be in this book. And that is quite alright. (In the case of many, quite quite alright.) These are the scraps and scrunched up-ness, the necessary discards, of making art. The drafts are the proof that the creator should keep creating, not give up. The rejections feel to me the same way; I will keep trying. I have to. I have too many words inside not to try.

I got another rejection just this morning, actually. The emails are always only a few lines. Thanks for submitting ________. We hope you find another place for your work.

I used to cry after the first few. Now I just nod my head, and move the email to the folder I have called “Writing Submissions” and move on with my life.

I told my husband last night that I feel like I’m getting closer to saying what it is I really want to say.

I’m still not sure what my book A Year With Me is about. A friend asked me a few weeks ago and I just said, “Uh…I’m not sure exactly,” and then went back to cooking dinner. (Haha.) Thankfully, the writing professor from my summer program had talked with us that it’s okay if we don’t know how to talk about what our writing is about because that’s the nature of creating art. Sometimes the meaning is elusive but the feelings aren’t.

I am a complete amateur and I know it. And when I catch my own typos, Boy, do I know it.

But what do I feel when I write? Free. I feel completely free. Safe. Loved. Happy. But something a lot more like joy than happiness.

So I just want to honestly take a moment and bow my head to you and say thank you for being here with me. Thanks for just… being and for letting me “be”, too.

I wish you a wonderful weekend.

Anna

P.S.

It is August which means the cooler nights are bringing more mushrooms in the garden. They arrive usually below the trees and bushes when we wake up. I want to leave you with a poem I really like called Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath. (Eat. It’s delicious.)

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Dear Scarlet,

Do you remember when
we met?

2015. March. 
I had just quit my job
teaching English to middle 
schoolers. 
I would say I had mixed feelings, 
but that’s not true at all.
I was relieved. So relieved
I wanted a fresh start

and had seen an ad on Craigslist 
for beagle puppies
on a small farm 
twenty minutes 
outside of town. 

I guess this means
I was looking
for a dog.

I guess this means 
I was looking
for you.

When I arrived 
that evening, a woman
with smile lines
and brown hair 
met me in the driveway
and opened her 
garage door
and under the dim 
light,
showed me you 
and your siblings playing together, 
a pile of black and white fur
and tails
inside a baby-gated nursery. 
A nursery of cute.
Your brothers’ and sisters’
 
floppy ears, 
everyone whining 
while I tried not to 
pick favorites, while I tried 
to pet them all. 

You wanted to be my favorite; 
you wouldn’t stop licking my 
wrists

with your little sandpaper tongue. 
I pulled you in my lap, then onto my chest
and breathed you in
and you smelled like straw and a tiny bit like poop
and I was wearing a knitted
blue sweater I had just bought,
and your nails 
undid the yarn.

I never wore it again.

But you’ve never left since.

I came home and you undid Josh 
with your sweet face,

and you met our other beagle, Copper.
I think you hit it off
because you slept on his back

like one of those birds 
which rides on an elephant
or one of those fish
which attaches to the side of a shark 
or one of those people
which surfs on a board.

Odd, but comfortable.

And for some reason, Copper 
never minded you that close

unless you stole his food, 
then mind turned to mean 
and growl fest 
and food wars
and someone got their kibble eaten, 
probably you. 
You were just small;
it wasn’t your fault.

We fell in love with your antics:

the dead snakes you found in the gutter

the trash you found in the gutter
and carried proudly home
to show Copper
who was busy sleeping his life away.

To scold him, you’d gnaw
on the ring of fur below his neck.
He still never cared much, 
and went back to napping. 

You took great notice of him, though,
and sticks, and the one leaf you barked at for 
most of the afternoon. 

And dishes. Licking the dishes
after we are done eating seems 
to be the career you were most 
prepared for in this life. 

I am sorry,
but we will never be able to pay you 
in anything

other than walks 
and long petting sessions on the couch
with your belly up and eyes closed,
your lips hanging off your teeth 
like me at an ice cream shop.
Oh, and getting your fur brushed
or blow-dried
like you’re at the salon for the 
Four-Footed 
Who Will Never Be Able to Wipe Their Own Butts
Or Walk Themselves.

But the name of all of this is:
I Don’t Mind Either,
Scarlet, 
I Don’t Mind You. 

Copper is gone now, 
so I’ll say it for him. I don't mind you at all.
Can you grow old with us?

Dear Scarlet, 
go back to your nap
but just remember:

I think you chose me
just as much as I chose you

which makes this 

love.
Love,

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I had a lot of internalized shame about my struggles with postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety and the profound lack of happiness I felt when both my sons, born 15 months apart, were helpless babies who needed me. I struggled for years, not just the childbirthing years, but for years afterwards. I guess maybe it felt like grief. Maybe I was grieving the person I was before they came, the person that I couldn’t get back. Grieving that I needed to even grieve that. Feeling shame for even needing to grieve who I was before my kids came. Maybe I was grieving the birth trauma with my eldest son. Maybe I was grieving the things outside of my control that happened during his birth story.

It’s hard for me to not judge my feelings and just feel them. Just feel them and see them for what they are.

I still don’t quite know how to talk about any of it.

If I should talk about it. Or what to say about it.

If I am entirely honest, and one day my sons read this, what would they think or feel?

If I am entirely honest, does it mean that I do not love them or are not grateful they are here?

If I am entirely honest, what’s there to lose if I share the whole truth?

My pride? My pride in being a “good mother” or being a “person who has it all together”?

I am not either. What does a “good mother” even mean anyway? Seems everyone has their own definition. And what does a “person who has it all together” mean either? Do I know anyone who has it all together? The answer is no.

I’m just human.

Being human means facing the reality of whatever situation I’m in and being real about it. Not seeing it as better than it is, not seeing it as worse than it is. Seeing it as it is. Seeing myself as I am. And I’m just… human. That’s all I’ll ever be. I cannot be anything else than what I am.

So I guess I’m going to be human and be willing to tell it all, honestly.

If you’re willing to listen, I think I’d start by sharing that I felt the bliss and the excitement of motherhood the most when I was pregnant. When my son was first curled up inside me, safe, I felt profoundly happy. I felt complete utter surprise for the first time since my 16^th birthday when my parents surprised me with a youth group birthday party at (I think, if my memory is correct) Pizza Hut. I was, I guess, so shocked to see everyone there at my party, for me. Like I got hit with a dodgeball in the stomach—it just took the wind out of me. I think I felt undeserving of all the love!

Being pregnant with my eldest was like the surprise birthday party was inside me. It felt so mysterious, this baby who was a part of me like an alien in there, moving around in the water, waking me up at night, making me excited for the future. I remember I cut my hair pretty soon after I found out I was pregnant. I donated my hair. Hair donation was something that had been on my bucket list for a long time. In light of the newness and the shock and the emotions that came with it, I went to the salon and asked for ten inches off and mailed it in.

I was just plain excited. Happy to be pregnant, even if I felt a bit terrified, too. Every emotion brought another new and even opposite emotion. This is probably what makes motherhood difficult but important to write about. Because the opposing emotions don’t negate each other; they actually make it a more profoundly human experience. Immense joy and immense pain. Immense fear coupled with a very great love. So many things at once! Such is life. Such is the tragic joy of life.

I wanted a midwife so I could give birth at home. I was scared of hospital births for some reason; scared I would be at the mercy of the hospital’s protocols for pain relief and birthing methods and scared I wouldn’t be able to birth freely or naturally. I know there are alternative routes we could have gone but all I know is we didn’t. My husband and I decided on a home birth together and found a midwife. For our area in eastern Iowa, midwives are hard to find. But we found one and my first impression was: I really liked her. She had this light brown hair. She was tall, if I remember. She said she liked to swim laps. She lived on a farm somewhere maybe an hour and twenty minutes from here, on one of those winding roads in the Iowa countryside. A road that reminded me why I like Iowa: for its trees and rivers through the woods, and yes, cornfields, which are sometimes so pretty and tragic at sunset that I weep at the sight of them.

So I guess I have this really good pregnancy, now looking back. No complications. I exercised during pregnancy: prenatal yoga, running, lots of walking, lap swimming at the YMCA. I liked the changes my body was making, I liked the baby inside of me even though we never found out if he was a boy or girl until he made his appearance. The prenatal visits with my midwife were fun. I’d visit her house. It was very maternal-feeling—she’d cook me sourdough pancakes, and we’d chat for a while before I’d lay on her worn pastel-blue couch in her living room where she’d check the baby and listen to the heartbeat. I cried every time I heard the heartbeat, a fast swishing sound that reminded me of the ocean. Waves. Little fish. Awe. Awe there was a human inside. I was looking forward to every aspect ahead: birthing my baby, taking care of him/her, even learning how to breastfeed. All things I never knew how to do. This was to be a new adventure, you know?

And then my son chose to arrive on his due date which is so perfectly him. (My son, now 9, is very prompt and organized; he even keeps me in line with what we are going to do every day or what the plan is for the next few days. He reminds himself that he needs to do his chores. I am so not like this! But I think he gets it from my husband who is as loyal and dependable as a river. My husband seems to never change course all these 17 years that I’ve known him. I am so grateful for these qualities in my husband and in my son.) But my midwife didn’t believe that I could go into labor with my first child on my due date. I guess I was the anomaly in all the other births she had seen. So I kept calling her every few hours on the day I went into labor because I was having sensations that, at first, reminded me of period cramps but were steadily increasing in their duration and sensation. I think I must have called her five times during the day, at least, and her answer was always: go for a walk, do something different, see if the sensations change, you can’t be in labor, this is your due date.

I followed her directions: I went on lots of walks. I watched a movie. I took a nap. I took a bath. I made dinner. I wrote a few letters. I made Christmas cards (this was May 1^st, haha). I did all the things I thought to do, and things only just kept going the way they had already been going. I know now this means I was most assuredly in labor, but at the time: I knew nothing. I guess I was trusting her more than I trusted myself, and that’s being honest. I have had a constant life-struggle with trusting myself. Listening to myself, to my intuition.

I guess this was my chance and I blew it?

I will say now, to myself, mostly: I didn’t know then what I know now. I didn’t know how to trust myself yet. I did the best I could at the time.

So Josh got home from work later that evening. We both went to bed. I tried to sleep but I had moved to the living room and my laboring picked up quite a bit in the middle of the night. I woke Josh up with all the strange noises I was making and was already pretty drenched in sweat at that point. I had called my midwife recently but called her again, and was met with the same words about “this is not labor”.

This would be the point, in retrospect, where my husband and I just would say, “Okay, let’s just go to the hospital then! And have the baby there!”

Again, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t believe my body at that point. My husband, bless his heart, was just trying to help me. You know, rub my back, remind me breathe oxygen between and during the waves of pain. I guess it was survival. I finally called her again around 4:30 AM when it was really getting hard, harder than ever at that point, and finally she agreed to come. But remember, my midwife lived an hour and twenty minutes from our house, so by the time she hung up, she still had to drive all the way here. I hung up with her and my water broke on the floor, the spot in the living room where the carpet met the wood floor.

I remember those 80 minutes felt so long. Like eternity stretched out by hand. Like eternity written by typewriter.

I kneeled at the front window just praying the same prayer over and over, “God. God. GodGod. GodGod. Please God”, the sweat dripping between my forehead and in my eyes, the pain in my a** so strong.

AGAIN, I know now what that pain means. That pain means: PUSH! The pain in this particular area means you’re ready to push your baby out. But I only know this after having another son and after being through the hells of childbirth for a second time. Half of my brain was struggling to believe I was in labor because this person I trusted like a mother didn’t believe me.

I don’t even know what to say at this point.

Actually I do. God stepped in, and he stepped in HARD. If he hadn’t saved Isaac, Isaac would be dead. I would have given birth to a dead baby. So there is no way around it: God spared Isaac’s life and allowed him to be born.

Because when my midwife opened the door and checked how far along I was, she yelled, “You need to push, you’re at a ten” and after pushing for 45 minutes which involved me screaming so loud the picture frames on the living room wall rattled, and he wasn’t budging, and then she checked him again, and yelling at me again, “His heart rate is dropping! You need to get him out of there! Push!” and when finally he came out just after 7 AM on May 2^nd, 2017, he was purple. Dark purple. He did not cry. There was no noise from him.

My midwife said, “Hold your baby, touch your baby!” And her voice was just so rough, so strong. Like she was yelling at me. Like this was my fault.

I know this is not true and I know that there is forgiveness for myself but I can’t tell you the amount of blame heaped on my head at that point. Blame. Shame. Terror. Blame. Shame. Terror.

I looked at my baby and held my baby. And he did not look like a baby. He looked like a creature. Like an amphibian. He was floppy and purple and puffy. I felt scared. So scared.

Like what the f*** just happened. What have I done.

I will rewrite this here and just say the truth that was always true, even though in the moment of his birth I couldn’t feel it. Here is the truth:

God. Thank you God for saving him. Thank you God for my baby. Thank you God he’s purple but I guess he’s still breathing. Thank you God underneath his purple skin a heart is still beating. Thank you God. ThankyouGod. God. Only God’s grace.

The memories from here are hazy but still present. I bled out in the tub. The tub water was pink. I got the placenta out which was very painful. More blood. I passed out in the tub. Josh was holding Isaac. He did not cry. If he cried, I have no memory of the sound. Isaac was weighed in a small fabric scale that the midwife brought. His eyes were closed. I joined him in the bed later, and tried to nurse him. He suckled for a few seconds and fell asleep. This was to be the repetition for the “nursing” I did over the course of the next two days. Suckle for a few minutes, fall asleep. I had no idea what breastfeeding should feel like. I thought he was breastfeeding. I know now he wasn’t. He was just so weak. Josh and I called some family members to tell them the news. I thought I would feel tired and be able to doze off after not having slept since the night before (I had been up for 24 hours straight at that point), but I couldn’t and didn’t.

My parents visited. I remember crying on the couch when they left. I remember thinking what is wrong with me. Why can’t I do this. Just crying, crying. Now, I hadn’t slept since the day before the day before he was born. I hadn’t slept in three days at that point.

The midwife suggested we not go see a pediatrician for the first week; that “none of her clients did”. I remember calling her on the phone the next day and telling her that I still hadn’t slept since the birth. I remember asking her if that was normal. The midwife said, “There’s something wrong with you. Usually the mother is tired and can usually sleep at least five or six hours”.

I remember lying in bed watching the ceiling fan, thinking what is wrong with me. I remember I could not turn off my brain. I remember my body felt like a train had run me over and come back for another round. I remember my lower body stinging, just stinging, that raw wound stinging. Isaac was getting weaker; his diapers weren’t wet at all. We brought him in on Friday for his first checkup with the pediatrician at the encouragement of my older sister who is a nurse, and the pediatrician told me that I wasn’t nursing. He wasn’t nursing. He was too weak, she said. We would need to feed him with a little dropper of pumped breastmilk so that he could get his strength up and survive. My mom returned at that point, and then Josh’s parents came soon after that. I remember they helped with the baby so I could get a few hours here and there of sleep, or something like it. I remember pumping milk for my son. I remember the little dropper filled with breastmilk.

And I still remember the first time, sometime in the middle of night, on Saturday, May 6, maybe between 2 and 3 AM, my son opened his eyes. He opened his eyes and looked at me. Maybe it was because he was getting fed.

I’ll never forget when he opened his eyes and took me in. His skin was a skin color; a skin color that wasn’t purple. He looked alive.

And he was looking at me and I was his mom. He was my son and he was alive.

Isaac got through it. But the real answer is God got us through it. It was a miracle. I say that here to remind myself that even through the subsequent months of sleeplessness, and struggles breastfeeding (Isaac couldn’t latch without a nipple shield), and the immense loneliness and anxiety I felt, God was there. Just there.

Sometimes I couldn’t pray. I couldn’t even pray one single word. I guess my spirit inside groaned, though. Just groaned. Like I was in a pit of anguish. Groaning.

Isaac was 6 months old when I found out I was pregnant with our second baby. Josh was holding Isaac in the hallway by the bathroom, crying because he was so happy.
I was sitting on the toilet holding the pregnancy test with its thin blue declarative line, crying. Crying because I was so sad. So scared and so sad.

I couldn’t even be a mom to one baby; how was I going to be a mom to another?

Actually, our second son’s birth gave me faith in hospital births and in doctors and nurses. Our second son Matthew (his name means “gift”) was born in a hospital. His doctor was a female doctor, the on-call doctor. I was so happy she was a woman. So relieved. I remember thanking her that she was a woman after she verbally coached me into pushing Matthew out safely. I guess it felt like it made up for the female midwife from Isaac’s birth who didn’t come when I needed her.

I had one similar experience to Isaac’s birth, though: we hired a birth doula and she didn’t believe that I was in labor either and didn’t come to the hospital in time for the birth.

Again, I didn’t know what to do or feel about that. At some point, am I just supposed to laugh about it all? And maybe just trust myself and trust my body, finally, and stop waiting around for other people to support me in the way I want them to?

Now, I do both. I laugh. I laugh that, for the second time, the person we paid for to come when I was laboring did not come in time to help me with the birth. And I depend on God. I shift my dependency on others to total surrender and dependency on God. It’s called trust. And to be honest, I am still learning how to trust.

Trust when you can’t see. Faith when it doesn’t “feel good”. When things “feel” like they are falling apart. When you still believe even though things feel scary, like having two babies in 15 months and feeling very inadequate for the work and the exhaustion of it. But believing anyway.

Maybe that’s real faith: that little invisible spot inside you that keeps hoping and keeps believing anyway. That believes, “One day I will be grateful for this. One day I will be grateful God brought me through this. Right now, I am suffering but later, it might not feel this way. Later, I will tell this story with triumph in my voice, remembering how He led me through this darkness. One day. One day.”

And my body was also teaching me that it didn’t want to have more children which is something I felt really really guilty about for several years.

Do you know how common that question is: “Are you going to have more kids” once you’ve had one child? VERY COMMON.

And it’s very annoying, honestly.

Note to self: never ask a mother of an infant if they are going to have more children. Just say, “I like your shirt!” Or, “Read any good books lately?” (If they’re a young mom, that might also be a terrible question). On second thought, just hand her $100 and walk away. :) She can go get a massage or go shopping, two luxuries that feel so nice when motherhood is taking your breath away.

But yes, this is a very common question with random people at the grocery store, common with relatives or well-meaning friends. I once met a woman at a children’s museum who bragged she had eight children and that I shouldn’t stop with just two, that I should “keep going and have tons more”.

I finally got comfortable with using a simple word which is, “NO.”

And, later, “NO” evolved to phrases like: “No, I will not be having any more children.” “No, I will be grateful for the ones I have.” “No, I will love the ones I have.” “NO.”

NO feels good to say. It’s called keeping a boundary and everyone is entitled to keep the boundaries they feel led to keep. God showed me that I needed to say no to more children. My spirit moaning within me revealed it, too.

Boundaries keep our selves intact. We are allowed to be true to ourselves. In fact, more than allowed, we need to be true to ourselves. I am not willing to abandon myself anymore. I’ve done it for a long time and cannot continue to live that way. These are lessons I am learning now with the help of my therapist and God in the form of the person of Jesus.

The suffering broke me down further than I ever had before. Broke down my pride, my pride in myself or my accomplishments or whatever/whoever I had been trusting in throughout my life up until this point. The suffering, the insomnia, the difficulties every day brought obliterated my ego and smashed it into a million pieces or a million bits of light, like a firework does.

And little by little, I started feeling more like myself. Like an inchworm gets somewhere: never very fast. You know, it took years for me to regain my footing and feel like myself again. The hormones took a while to rebalance, too. I kept a gratitude journal early on at the coaching of a therapist and learned to journal three things at the end of the day that I was grateful for.

The lists were so simple.

“Thank you for diapers and wipes.” “Thank you for my son who held my finger today.” “Thank you for children’s Ibuprofen from Hy-vee”. “Thanks for a washing machine so that my clothes don’t smell like breastmilk right now.”

Gratitude maybe is the best medicine. It helps you see what you DO have. When you feel like you’re in a black hole, gratitude trains your soul to keep crawling towards the light. Not when you “feel like being grateful”. Forcing yourself to BE grateful does make you grateful, eventually. It works. It worked for me.

These are all the things that are too long for any social media post. It’s just too much to say. It’s too much to put your finger on. There’s more that only God knows, too. Only God knows the prayers I uttered in the helpless nights, with, God bless him, my husband snoring peacefully away, and me changing diapers, or nursing, or falling asleep while nursing, or laying there after nursing and not being able to sleep again for the rest of the night.

And the Psalms. They are so rich in honesty, anguish, joy, suffering, and praise.

Psalm 77:6 “I remember my song in the night; I meditate in my heart; my spirit makes a diligent search.”

Psalm 42:8 “By day the Lord directs his love, by night his song is with me.”

Psalm 30:5 “Weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”

Psalm 92:1-2 “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night.”

Reading the words aloud in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep anyway, when it feels like the rest of the world has left you behind, it just invites the presence of God into your very real human experience.

I’m sure there’s more I could say. I seem to be a bottomless pit of words sometimes. Maybe some of my writings about motherhood will be joyful eventually. Or funny. Motherhood is very funny sometimes. Sometimes you’re too tired to laugh! Haha.

But I guess I’ve realized my joy now comes out of the suffering. They go hand in hand. If we don’t experience the well of suffering, I think our joy is either not present or it’s in a very muted form. The people I know who have been the most joyful have had the most trying times; times of great need, great anguish, great suffering. They’ve suffered loneliness, or abuse, or mistreatment in the workplace, or they’ve been discriminated against, or had some massive health problem that has lingered, or some other disappointment has rocked them. But they have very great joy. It’s like the suffering made a well inside for the joy to overflow. And without the well the suffering carves, I think a person’s capacity for joy is kind of stunted.

David’s Psalms of praise stand out even more when you consider the fact that he was hunted like an animal and chased down by someone who wanted to murder him and tried to, for years. His words from Psalm 100, “Bless the Lord, O My Soul; and all that is within me bless his Holy Name” stand out more when we look at his life honestly.

The truth is the one who has never left me is God. He’s never left me alone. He saved my son. He gave me another son, a baby I didn’t even ask for.

My kids are now older; they sleep on their own. They are more independent. Life seems slightly easier than the days of potty training and breastfeeding and carseat buckling and all the immunizations and all the crying.

As children grow, they learn. As my children grow, I learn. And I’m still growing and learning, too. Maybe I will look back on these words and feel differently about them later. Who knows what I’ll feel in the future. Right now, I guess it feels good to be honest about the journey, a little bit of my journey with motherhood.

Have a good day, humans!

Anna

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The paper pile has 
d i s a 

p p e a r 
e d, 

the mounds 
which previously glared from

the cluttered 
vortex

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choose to chew

under birds who flew

above soil who grew

first parsley, second rue’s

roots

holding dirt like glue

food for a worm who knew

he must never stop

choosing to chew through

what no one else will ever

(do)—

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Wind held Willow while she 
	wept. 
	Water stilled Willow so she
	slept.	Soil
		kept Willow from 

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The light changes things here 
in a good, silent way. How a friend 
would switch on a lamp to see 
your face better. See sand’s face 
better, how an impression forms, 

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