Something's Growing

It's been a while since I've put pen to paper, or rather, blinking cursor to vast white expanse.  This post will actually end up sitting in my drafts for a while, as I haven't yet announced that I'm growing a human, but so much of my thoughts and so much of the decisions we're making right now revolve around that.  

I don't feel like I'm the type of person to be pregnant.  At least in our culture.  I'm so tired of our culture and the confined boxes it constantly tries to put people in.  Being pregnant is like being shoved into the tiniest box, which is a bit uncomfortable as you're supposed to be growing.  Everything tells you to be one way, or to feel one way, or to do things one way.  I remember being only 5 weeks pregnant, in Maui, and reading in my pregnancy app that I probably wouldn't feel like squeezing into a teeny bikini, to which I replied aloud, "screw you, I'm in Maui, yes I do want to don a teeny bikini."  And so the pregnancy-fat shaming seemed to begin.  

But it's a double edged sword because then I get that person coming up to me at the buffet line at a wedding covertly telling me that I was lucky that I could eat whatever I wanted for the next 9 months.  Which also confused me because, hi, I'd like to remain eating and feeling healthy, which means not shoving my face with ice cream and fast food for the next 9 months.  Yes I will be gaining weight, but being pregnant is not an excuse to eat unhealthily with no consequences.  And I can eat whatever I want any time of my life.  I choose to eat or not eat certain things to maintain my health.  A fetus isn't a get-out-of-unhealthy-habits-free card.  And since I haven't had any morning (or other time of day) sickness, I get people saying stuff like, "well, you might later."  Thank you?  I'm so glad you're wishing nausea and vomiting upon me later on in my pregnancy because I haven't experienced it during the typical time.  

And then there are feelings.  Or the lack of them.  I see pregnancy announcements everywhere with phrases like, "over the moon" and "tickled pink" and honestly I don't feel those things.  It isn't because we aren't looking forward to the future with this new person in our lives.  Sure, we weren't "trying," but we also weren't being super strict about our birth control method, so I knew it was a possibility.  I don't have feelings of love and awe towards the thing that's inside me.  I don't feel like a mom, and I don't know what that even means.  Conceptualizing pushing a human out of me and then having it be in our lives forever just isn't happening for me.  I don't know when it will hit me.  For all I know it won't be until it's out of me.

I get the sense that the way I feel and how I talk about all this could be off-putting to some people who can feel those "over the moon" feelings, and who can't wait to hold their infant in their arms, and who feel in love with the tiny baby growing inside them.  I'm pushing back against that seed of shame that I'm already screwing up being a parent by not feeling the "right" way during pregnancy.  

I remember reading Mellisa's blog "Dear Baby" which she wrote while she was pregnant with her first child.  I remember wanting to do the same thing for my future baby, write letters to them while they were in utero, but here we are and I'm like, "I don't know what to tell you except I imagine you will LOVE orange juice based on how much OJ I'm ingesting these days."  Nothing profound to tell them.  No huge orations of love and amazement.  I'm not a feeler.  I'm a thinker.  I often wish I felt more often and stronger.  As a woman, I feel expected to feel strongly.  But my feelings are deep currents, usually lingering below the surface, not producing waves.  Articulating words to encapsulate those feelings is especially difficult.  Thinking comes much more naturally.  But I get the sense that I come off as unfeeling and curt because in my communication with most people I'm all information, very little feeling.  In fact, when I write emails, I almost always write out the email how I normally would (all info), then have to go back and insert pleasantries and "feelings," just to ensure I don't come off as rude or uncaring.  I imagine men don't deal with this same pressure.  I wonder what it would be like to not feel the pressure to be touchy feely.

I hope I disappoint you.

Having blogged for 8 years, I've had a few run ins with saying things that rub some people the wrong way.  Sometimes people say stuff like, "I'm disappointed in you," and after having had this happen recently I realized that, actually, I'd like to disappoint you.  Because the pressure to say the right thing always, to never offend anyone, to always be agreeable, and to never discuss topics that are controversial... it's strong.  The internet can turn into a pitchfork wielding mob of townspeople at the drop of a hat, trolls can say hateful, cruel things under the guise of anonymity, and misunderstandings due to having no external communication cues abound.  Being an internet person can be weird, let me tell you.  

But what I realized is that I don't want to be someone who never disappoints you.  Because real humans disappoint.  Real humans don't have the same viewpoints as you sometimes.  Real humans have PMS and have bad days and get salty.  Real humans want other real humans to recognize their realness and approach it with the same grace you'd like to be given.  I'm tired of the internet polarizing and turning people into saints and demons.  It's a false dichotomy.  Nobody is a saint.  Nobody is a demon.  We're all just people trying our best, sometimes being awesome, sometimes falling on our faces.

I've heard people say that because I have a "large following" and a "voice online," that I have to be extra careful with my words, and while I agree to a certain extent that "great power comes with great responsibility," but I also believe that one of the greatest responsibilities I have as a writer is to be a real person and share my vulnerability and that means not hiding all the not so awesome stuff that comes with that.  I don't want to be perfect.  I don't want to not be able to make mistakes.  I don't want to live in fear of a pitchfork mob because I lifted the veil of perfect inoffensiveness and, oh shoot, there's a real person under there.  So I hope that I have or will disappoint you.  I hope that you'll disagree with something here.  I hope that you see my mistakes and recognize that, on my side of the computer screen, there's a real live human being.

I hate answering the phone, and that's okay

I hear a lot of people diss young folks for not answering their phones and preferring texting.  The message is that you aren't a real adult if you don't answer your phones, and that being a phone answerer makes you superior.  I'd like to take a moment to call bullshit on that, for a multitude of reasons.

First, and most personally, as an introvert, phone calls are abrupt and unexpected invasions of my personal space.  Unless the phone call has been arranged in advance, I'm never prepared to talk to the person calling, unless its one of three people: my mom, my husband, or my best friend.  And even if the phone call has been arranged in advance, I usually spend 5-10 minutes mentally preparing for talking on the phone.  When a call comes in on the fly, I have no time to prepare.  I don't know what the call will be about, and I have to come up with a response off the cuff.  Texting and email are wonderful for me because they come in and I'm not required to respond immediately or vocally.  Being able to formulate a response and compose it through writing makes my life infinitely happier.

Second, historically phones are actually not the norm.  Phones have only been around for the past 140 years of human history and prior to that, people communicated either in-person or through written means.  Human beings have spent much more time in our history communicating via written word than via a disembodied voice on either ends of a telephone line.  Don't get me wrong, phones are amazing.  It's so awesome to be able to talk to people all around the world in real time, but as a whole, humans aren't used to communicating in that way.

Thirdly, phones, in their current cellular iteration are even moreinvasive than phones have been.  For 90% of the time phones have existed, you haven't had one on your person at all times.  Phones were attached to a wall and in specific places.  When you were out and about running errands, you weren't worried about getting a call, because your phone was at home stuck to the wall.  Now I'm expected to be available anywhere and everywhere, regardless of what I might be doing at that time.  I'm expected to drop what I'm doing right then and answer the phone and give that person my full attention for however long they need.  That expectation is, frankly, ridiculous.  

So no, I probably won't answer your call (and not just because my phone has mysteriously, maybe miraculously, stopped ringing unless it's unlocked).  It's not because I'm dissing you, it's not because I am maliciously ignoring you (I am ignoring you but not because I don't like you), it's not because I don't think you and what you have to say are important.  It's because I get to choose when people get to talk to me on the phone, I'm not available 24/7, for my own mental and emotional health.  You should feel allowed to ignore calls too and not feel bad about it.  This is not to say ignore calls and never call/text people back, if you never call anyone back you actually might be a dick.

Reconnecting Body + Soul

One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot, both during my Brave trip and now after getting back home, is getting back into my body.  I'm a thinker.  My personality type is INTJ so, that's no surprise.  I spend so much of my day up in my mind, thinking about doing things, figuring out how to do stuff, imagining, dreaming, planning, setting goals, evaluating, discerning.   I don't believe that thinking is a bad thing, but I do it so much that I've realized I abandon my body in the meantime.  And maybe it's because being in my body means feeling, and when I feel, well, I want to think about what I'm feeling (doh!) rather than just sinking into the feeling and letting it flow through me and letting it just be.  So even when I am feeling... I'm thinking.  Now, this isn't to say that being a thinker is inherently bad, and neither is being a feeler.  But being a feeler who doesn't think can be bad, and being a thinker who doesn't feel can also be bad.

And, of course, I've been thinking about this.  Thinking about why I am this way, how I became this way, and how to course correct and find balance between thinking and feeling.  Besides the fact that I believe I'm naturally a thinker, I've realized that growing up in the church probably instilled in me some detrimental thoughts and beliefs about feeling and being in my body.  So much of what is taught in the church centers around the body being a source of sin, a gateway to vice.  The spirit and soul are the pure parts of us and the body is just a meat sack we're stuck in until we die and go to heaven and are freed from physical existence.  Of course, it's not all body-bad, spirit-good.  There is also talk of the body being a temple and such, but usually that was also used to encourage chaste behavior, whether with drinking, drugs, sex, etc.  There was no discussion of the body as something to celebrate, to enjoy, to partner with as a way to access spirituality.

I never thought much about my body.  It almost felt like a car that I was driving around in until I died and then I got out of and no longer had.  Feelings, both physical and emotional, were almost annoying in that they reminded me that I was inextricably linked to this body.

I like having a body.  I like being a body.  I like touching things, I like moving, I like feeling the heat of the sun on my skin, I like petting my dog, I like eating and drinking delicious things.  And those things feel, in a way, spiritual.  They feel real.  But I still struggle with being up in my head all the time, which keeps me from being able to full experience life as a being with a body.

I don't really have any solutions at this point, I suppose all this is just the thoughts behind where I am right now and what I'm working on.  I want to feel less stuck in my mind, more able to release and be in my body without analyzing every thing or feeling like focusing on being in my body is a waste of time.  It's been a couple years since I did yoga regularly and I'd like to get back into that.  Making art for me is a great way to get out of my head.  I really want to start making pottery, which seems really grounding and earthy and relaxing.

Being at the Wildbride Retreats was an amazing time for reconnecting with lost parts of myself and I think that after returning, it's a matter of not getting back into the daily grind and re-losing those parts, but finding a way to revamp life, even if it's just in little ways, in order to care for those parts of the self, be present, and create a life that doesn't need escaping from.

Womanhood: Let's Do This.

I think one of the weirdest things to realize is that this blog has been following my life since I was 22... wait, 21... somewhere around then, I don't care to do the math right now.  And this year, 2016, I turn 30.  And while at 21/22 you like to think you're a grown up and you feel grown up, looking back at the girl who first sat down in her parent's kitchen and signed up for a blogger account, well, she was a girl.  She was a girl who would grow so much in the next 8 years.  So much would happen to her and eventually she would find herself, years later, still logging into blogger and sitting down to type at midnight, but this time she would realize that she's a grown. ass. woman.  Who, most definitely, hasn't experienced all there is to experience as a woman, but who is undoubtedly a full woman.

I suppose it's an odd transition that I never really acknowledged as having happened.  Perhaps because part of that transition was definitely sexual in nature and maybe I was a late bloomer in that regard compared to some people.  And sex isn't something that I've really talked about on the blog.  But in a way it's funny to think that who I am as a whole woman can't be discussed without that as part of the package.  Kristina and I were laying here in the Brave talking about having kids and damn.  If that isn't a conversation that will punch you in the face with, "Hey, so you're like a fucking WOMAN. Who is discussing the possibility of making a human with your body."  Whoa.

Being on this trip we've cultivated an extremely, and very intentionally, feminine space.  We felt like we really needed to be surrounded by very feminine energy and wanted to foster that at Wildbride retreats, and for most of the trip, even when we weren't leading retreats, we were around almost exclusively women.  There was a brief time when we were camping in Joshua Tree where we found ourselves reintroduced to hanging out with men and it was a stark moment of being thrust back into a male energy space, which was very interesting.  While I was sad to be away from Dan for so long and don't really want to be away from him like that again, we both recognized that making this trip very woman-focused in its entirety was the right choice.  But all of that is a rambling, roundabout way of saying, womanhood has been very much on the brain for the past 6 weeks.  And I realized that I never really have fully stepped into the fullness of my womanhood.  I'm discovering how deep and broad womanhood is.  How wild and wonderful it is.  It is nurturing, and raucous, and sensual, and light, and fierce, and erotic, and silly, and intense, and visceral, and hilarious.  I'm finding myself wanting to stretch into every part of it, especially the parts I hadn't realized I wasn't allowing myself to stretch into.  Like when you start working out and discover muscles you didn't even know you had.

A lot of our Wildbrides have talked to us after the retreats about how it's difficult to transition back into real life after the weekend and while we were able to offer some suggestions for carrying Wildbride life forward and integrating the intentions and lessons born at the retreat into daily life, we also haven't yet made that transition ourselves.  It's almost like we've been on the longest and most crazy Wildbride retreat ourselves, on this 6 week road trip along the west coast.  I'm just now beginning to be able to process what was created in the past couple months, and how it changed me and grew me.  And getting home and back to "real" life is going to be a hell of a thing.  In a way I refuse to believe that what is waiting for me at home is "real" life.  I don't want to believe that real life has to be the shitty daily grind of boringness.  Not that I believe that my life that's waiting for me at home is just a shitty daily grind of boringness, not at all.  But there's also a seed within me, and Dan too, that wants something different.  It's a seed that has been there for a while and in the past few months has started to germinate and begin growing and becoming real.  I'm not sure what it will end up looking like, but I know that life going forward from here will be different.  It will not be a shitty daily grind of boringness because goddamnit I have one fucking chance to live life as a human on this planet and so far it's been awesome, but I refuse to spend my days and hours and breaths scrolling through social media and wishing for a life I don't have.  Life is there for the taking and I'm reaching out and grabbing it because why not.

This is it.  This is life.  No more waiting.  I'm stretching into every corner of my life, my womanhood.  Let's do this.