tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39100378893895973872024-02-27T16:37:12.884-05:00thisclimbChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-45575715979332192292024-02-27T16:36:00.003-05:002024-02-27T16:36:40.633-05:00<p>I want to tell a story about a society where the checks and balances that control destructive powers are powerful enough to stop lies in their tracks. then reverse pain that mistakes cause.<br />The level of hard work that has to go into holding together the pieces of a system that is being actively attacked from within, that level of hard work is met by resources, large amounts of resources provided by huge chunks of the society. because everyone is educated in how the system that holds together the accountability of their society is a million individual pieces working together to fight a significantly smaller number of destructive actors.</p><p>Basically the reverse of what we are living in. I am in a very privileged version of whatever while hoping that society is not about to unravel. In the last month, lawyers have lied about people I know. Not my children, but children I know, have been stripped from safety and worse. And there was nothing that I could do to stop it. And, eventually, it was clear that this is just part of society. Everyone who understands that it exists just lets it happen because no one WANTS to be targeted by the humans who are so depraved as to see children as products. Everyone for themselves and you are privileged if family circles around you. So circle the wagons.</p><p>In a world where lawyers actually can't lie because the truth is known. No one invests in deception unless they are totally for destruction. I think that's true even now in some ways. Ideals and idols are basically the same. And really everyone is so drowning in doing their best that its easier to pretend the destruction won't get you. And then there are cracks for the ones that it gets.</p><p>My biggest miscalculation in life is based on not understanding the ability of men to mask. Making assumptions instead of asking questions- this sabotages but is also an essential piece of surviving human relationships. My best can't comprehend all parts of life's puzzle and I must have grace for myself in that. I must because I have eliminated investment in any other opinion except for that of my own. and in my own opinion of my life is that it has the best and most privileged pieces intact. </p><p>I'm getting my body back. I believe in my health and the ability for my body to survive the enemies which have worked to destroy it since I was born. I have put the pieces of my chronic illness together over the last half of 40 years. I have worked through too many adverse experiences. Ive been praying gratitude for the signs that I am on the healed side. </p><p><br /></p>ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-82925461966055950572023-10-12T10:59:00.001-04:002023-10-12T10:59:57.683-04:00Doctor Gabor Mate: The Shocking Link Between Kindness & Illness!<iframe width="480" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/L7zWT3l3DV0?si=zQyaGYOHrqFc0QMN" frameborder="0"></iframe>ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-75570354809814469242018-11-16T12:03:00.001-05:002018-11-16T12:28:42.583-05:00close to openI had to give up socializing through media for a while, it worked out to be years actually. I had to give up socializing through media because I had to give up socializing at all. I redefined my values. I couldn't be totally silent because I am me and part of me is saying what I think when I think it. I stuck to making videos that no robot would or could absorb the content of. I don't trust "big tech" because their motives are profit. Human lives do not mean more than the profit margins they report every three months, not to the companies that allow me to write this out and share it with others. But there is no alternative method of telling the people who have shared my life with me for the last 34 years what I think and who I am.<br />
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In the last two and a half years I have learned so much more about boundaries than I knew before. Boundaries are actually quite exhausting. More exhausting than expectations. I used expectations for a long time. I would be open, totally open, to anyone. Even when my instincts told me that my openness made me vulnerable to someone's intention to exploit me, I would still be open. Until I was exploited. Until I was hurt. Until their actions, over and over, fell into the category of not valuing my life or recognizing the importance of my existence in their life. And then I hurt and I grieved and I put up a wall towards them. Walls that I still, to this day, am working through the pain of their foundations. I have turned many of those walls into boundaries, or set boundaries in the vicinity of the walls, such that my relationship has not changed much from their perspective. I have set boundaries where I wasn't allowing myself to build walls, and those relationships changed significantly. But in no way, shape or form have I been able to tear down walls and return to openness. Except with social media.<br />
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We moved from one side of Denmark to the other about 3 and a half years ago. And when we did that the social network that we built up for nearly 5 years; the structure of support that made me love living in this country more than any other place I had ever lived; that network disintegrated. And no new network formed in its place. The people who I called friends never asked me how we were doing. If I was around to visit, because I was around to visit, they would listen to the struggles and become weary that nothing in our life was easy. And that was true before we moved, but I saw the reaction so much clearer afterwards. Any advice they shared was intended to be helpful, but that was rare. For the most part, we experienced treatment that fell along the lines of "out of sight, out of mind." The only thing that anyone seemed to ask questions about was the house we left behind. We left the house behind to serve God but the house still required work. God has granted the resources for that work. God has been faithful and provided for our needs so we have not experienced financial ruin. But the people who we shared our lives with, who used their words to serve God in front of us, but then demonstrated that they had no idea how to follow those words through with actions; those people were not faithful to us. I know they did their best. I know they are ignorant and broken and would never even understand the pain that it takes to still look them in the eye and smile and say nice things to them. But I believe they deserve my kindness over my rebuke. It's not my job to judge their actions, only to say that they weren't good enough to keep my family from suffering. Only to say that, in some cases, their actions became a direct cause of suffering for me, and my husband and mostly for my children. I offer kindness because, I am sure, they would have never taken on the responsibility of preventing our suffering if it was laid out in front of them as an established expectation before anyone become intertwined in our social&support network. It was just a responsibility God assumed they could rise to, their words made us assume it as well, and ultimately the worldly values of their culture ruled over the message of Jesus. But it is the main reason my family will never actively seek to integrate ourselves into a group of Danes who call themselves Christians again. This is how boundaries establish themselves. And now it is just our story. It is just what happened. It is just where we are.<br />
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Pain is part of life. I wish my life did not include so much of it. I see people who have many more friends from when they were growing, when they were in full time education so friends were necessary. I had friends then to, most relationships just did not last through my international moves, so I don't know what it is like. I see women with family who just come over and sit with their children so that they can have a break to go work on something that builds them up. I don't know what that is like. I live surrounded by people who have such a deep network of friends and family that they can not comprehend the challenges I face. And they are rude to me about the help I do not have. But it doesn't change facts. I have no one to call in an emergency. I have no help beyond my husband and a group of people who live an ocean away.<br />
I have learned that I have to take on the role of "apologetic burden who can't do anything right" in order to ask anyone physically close to me for help. I know I am not a burden. I know how right my life is, under the circumstances that it was created for me, so it feels manipulative to pretend otherwise and I don't do it anymore. And so, I have had to sacrifice connections with women I trusted to care for my children when my husband had to take me to the hospital in the past. Women I shared my life with on a regular basis, I don't have them any longer. The women I count on are an ocean away now. And for physical support, I am now dependent on my husband and his work-life. His work-life already provides the roof over my head, the food I eat and the clothes I put on my children. Now it has to provide emergency support too. I am dependent on his relationships with people that I have never met. Because if I need to be in the hospital again, and I need him with me, those are the only people we can to call on to stay with our children. And the strangeness of strangers taking care of them will traumatize our children. But, we have to risk that trauma to them because the pain of all the other trauma we have experienced is too great to overcome as just us two. And any attempts to repair that trauma with the people who helped shape it have, thus far, created more pain.<br />
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After the end of January next year, I probably won't feel as worried about this emergency scenario with no emergency contacts situation. But it is relevant right now as I am a woman who will end up in a hospital soon. I am in my last trimester of my fourth pregnancy, which will hopefully become my third healthy baby with boy genitals. I am five years older than the last time my body went through the experience of birthing a human. I am significantly more neuro-compromised thanks to the chronic infection of HHV4 that destroys my central nervous system everyday. I am holding more pain than I have ever held in my life emotionally and physically. But, I am also experiencing more spiritual stability and connection to my Jesus than I have ever had. So I have faith that my body will perform exactly the same as it has in the past two pregnancies. The ones which gave us our first two sons; each ten days late and in controlled, drama-free, short but not too short natural labours with challenge-free deliveries. I have no reason to believe this pregnancy will end any differently. And that this pregnancy does not end any differently is the most frequent prayer uttered from my lips and running constantly through my mind these days. Followed by the one that begs for my children to not have to be some version of survivours of World War 3. Even if that version is akin to the children in Denmark who lived through World War 1 and 2.<br />
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It is very unsettling to bring a child into this version of the world. I am so heart broken that the Patriarchy would risk the existence of our entire species just to keep their control. I am so disappointed that white women, who I have to count myself among even though I am the mother of brown children; that white women are so ignorant to their slot in the Patriarchal power structure that they would support its existence over a new power structure that can support and benefit all versions of human existence. <br />
Every day in our house hold we have to combat the idea that melanin has more meaning than an evolutionary defense for sun protection. <br />
Every day we have to discuss how the physical appearance, hair and clothing choices, that make a human comfortable walking out in the world have nothing to do with the bits of meat which dangle or do not dangle from their bodies. <br />
And as our children grow, more and more, we will discuss how the prayers a person is taught to pray have no bearing on their overall character, not as much as the daily love they can be shown from others and how it grows their capacity to show that love to others. <br />
It feels like we are the minority in offering these messages to our children. And we are the minority here in Denmark, most certainly, with no doubt. But maybe if all the parents of our generation were collected across the planet, we would learn that we are less alone than our feelings tell us we are. Maybe. Hopefully.<br />
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It seems more than likely that the planet will have to experience some concentrated pain before that is certainly true. People have disconnected themselves from the obvious lessons of humanity past. People do not trust other people. As a human carrying so much pain around, such that it is very difficult to not let it out, overflowed, in not constructive ways on to others; as a human who has trusted people who should have never been trusted with her heart and mind and secrets of soul; as a human who hurts more every time she hears a story of pain fueled violence causing deaths of innocents; I can understand why people choose disconnection. I have chosen it myself in these past years. But now that I have the boundaries in place that allow me to feel safe to open back up again, I am. This doesn't resolve the pain, but neither does being closed off. Closing off means you have to numb the pain, and numbing causes the most problems when it comes to disconnection. <br />
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Creating is the only solution I have to resolve my personal pain. Creating new bonds with boundaries that make those bonds feel safe. Creating spaces for plants that provide food and clean air to my family. Creating internet content that says human life, every single version of it, is more important than the balances of any bank account on this planet. Creating a new human in the face of the potential for the most destructive forces of humanity to clash and devastate my species. Creating human minds that see past the fears and deceptions of Patriarchy. Creation is the only channel I have to resolve my pain and I will do it until God grants me my last breath.<br />
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<br />ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-1006038777396395772016-08-01T06:30:00.002-04:002016-10-25T06:38:08.584-04:00most awful boss everI have this feeling that when something goes unfinished in my life. when it goes unresolved because I have not engaged. because I have felt insecure on the surface, if not deep down inside. I have this feeling that, maybe sometimes, I am not going to be able to move forward. Step forward and on to the next integration of whatever I call "my life." And, possibly, this is a reason why I am having so much stress and struggle when it comes to finding exactly that career which I would do for free if I did not have to do it for money. If I could, I would do it for free. That's the kind of job I want. Preferably with these office hours:<br />
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I have all these conditions in my head for why I feel like trying to find that job supplied by another, spending even a moment more on the cause or trying to work for someone else, is not worth my time or energy. My narcolepsy tops the list. followed by the ineptitude and disgusting morals demonstrated by other people in past work experiences. I was just adjacent to it. I definitely had no ability to speak up about what I felt. I would have lost my job. I would have lost my status in the country I lived in. I would have been stripped of my dignity because I am a nervous crier. It would have been awful. I'm not afraid of awful experiences any more though. Not since moving to Denmark :-D<br />
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And the one time where I was ready to quit that job, my mom talked me out of it. And it benefitted me financially, but not in any other aspect of my life. Such that, now, I am becoming an outlier. And I am embracing outlier status, which is scary. I don't want to be different than everyone else around me. I want to be included in the group, but I don't want to play the game. I have never seen the point of jumping through hoops. Especially not to hide things that I really can't change. I am not going to feel differently about racism or sexism. I am not going to become less body positive or sexuality positive. I'm not going to want to be suppressed or held back. I'm not going to value myself for less. I am not going to decide that I actually would like to only tell other people how to live their lives over just demonstrating with my own life as an example.<br />
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And that is truly the problem for me. I am always the subject of study. I do things differently. I believe in my convictions. I am easily goaded into a conversation where someone feels invited to critique me. And I force myself to endure the insulting aspects of their critique. I call it the "numb, dumb and smacking gum" -it's just part of my life. I don't know if I will ever escape having to hear people tell me about things I already know. things I already understand way better than they do. things that they say in an attempt to demonstrate their wisdom but, to me, just demonstrate that they are far from woke. I like the people who are woke, but the only place I see them is through a screen!<br />
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Anyway, I feel like today is the day. or at least this week is the week to tie up the loosest strings I have in terms of my work background. My first boss. A woman engineer who was a horrible manager and, ultimately, a horrible person. I learned only what not to be from watching her. And, as it was my first job out of university, where the females studying engineering were significantly outnumbered by the males. As it was my first job, with a woman engineer for a boss, the failure of that work relationship has always been a personal devastation. The relationship totally failed because I 100% lost respect for my boss. Then I never covered it up well and worked in a company that had 4 people. So when the consequences of the 2008 recession dried up our work schedule, I was the obvious one to get laid off.<br />
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And, I never told that woman what an awful person I thought she was. How creepy it was that she would pry into my private life whenever she had nothing else better to do. Because we weren't allowed to be writing emails of a personal nature during business hours. But, if she felt so inclined, asking me twenty questions in front of the other two employees about my new romance and subsequent engagement and marriage was the acceptable form of office entertainment. It exploited me. And I think she did it because I was the other girl. No matter why, it was incredibly inappropriate. I still feel violated .<br />
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I never told her how much she let me down. Because when she hired me, she made it sound like I would be the only one she would be taking on. But she took on the kid who still lived at home too. So she pit me against him, essentially. I was living alone and couldn't start working before Labour day because my dad had just died and I needed to go help my family clean out his house. And the other guy lived at home with his parents. He also did not fall in love and proceed to commit to that love in a profound and life changing way. He just worked and went home to mommy where he played video games with his siblings.<br />
It was fine for the first year. Except for the part where there was never enough work for the two of us to do. And the part where even when she assigned you a project, you might come back from a site visit for a different project and find that she had asked the other one to do something related to the project you thought was yours. And then the next time the project comes up, no one knows whats going on. That always backfired at me somehow. When I would acknowledge that I had nothing on the daily to-do list. Somehow, I get assigned the "office organization" tasks. But she always pulled out a new project for him. It was infuriating after two years. Because I could have done the work of both of us and I was fucking tired of being bored at work. Its not what I went to school for. The blatant (but probably unintentional) sexism was just not what I expected from another woman engineer.<br />
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She did make the guy research to find her a voice recorder once. It did not work for what she intended. I told her it wouldn't when she started thinking out loud about it, because I knew a lot about voice to text software. but I told her at the end when I did not give a crap what she thought of me anymore. I just never crossed that line that let her fire me for being disrespectful. And I should have done it when she laid me off, but I just left. And I never returned.<br />
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And when I wrote to remind her to send me a tax form for the week that she had me work before laying me off in 2009. She asked how I was doing in the return email and I kept my words to myself. Because I was afraid of lashing out in anger. And at the time, the fact that she even allowed me to work in 2009 made me cry with anger. Especially the part where the next year I had to remind her to do her fucking job before her incompetence screwed me. I was mad that she was too spineless to tell me over winter holidays when she actually decided that I should be laid off. And during that first week I worked for her in 2009, when I told her I wanted to take a trip to Europe in February and asked for the days off, she said it wouldn't be a problem in such a simple, syrupy way. without the normal amount of disgust and resentment. Because how dare your employees actually USE their vacation days.... or call in sick! heaven forbid.<br />
It was weird. I told people she acted weird. But I figured out why within 72 hours. She acted weird because she knew she was going to fire me on Friday! Unfortunately, my flights were booked and not changeable by then. A decent person would have been like "Straight up, add another week to that winter european vaca because you are not going to be working here by then."<br />
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And if at this point you are like "oh well she probably just blah blah blah blah.." save it. I don't care why this woman behaved as she did. Most likely it was because people made excuses for her constantly. That's why all people who exploit others through ignorance are convinced they are not bad people. Because not enough people are correcting them. I am one of those people who offered no corrections. Decided that any attempt to express myself to the awful woman I worked for was a lost cause. I enabled her. Again, I gained financially. But, no where else.<br />
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I was crippled emotionally, and as I stretch those injured emotional tendons. The ones I have nursed into atrophy. The ones I have to use if I want to soar on the love that lives inside of me. I have to work those muscles again. Even if I develop new ones, they can't compensate for what I have lost in the time since working for that awful woman. It was my birth into career and it wounded me with rejection in a way I have yet to see mirrored in another human. I'm sure there are humans out there that can relate. Where I am at, no one gets how much it all still hurts.<br />
but it really only hurts because I never told her what I thought. I never got in her face like she got in mine. So I am writing her an email.<br />
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I think it will say:<br />
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To the absolutely worst boss, manager and colleague I have ever had the opportunity to work in the same company with:<br />
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They say forgiveness is not real until it has been given. <br />
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I forgive you for starting my career off in such a horrendous and incompetent way.<br />
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I have long since been able to live life without thinking about the back stabbing, bullying and gross corruption I experienced while being employed by you. As of sending this email, I have come to a place where I can forgive you for those things. So, I decided to let you know.<br />
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regards<br />
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Then its over. right? The only thing missing is the insults I always wanted to hurl. But that's the right way to do it. right? because she is a broken person and I don't think it's up to me to try and fix her.ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-37953360235896153022016-06-29T12:54:00.000-04:002016-10-25T06:43:05.495-04:00a story about yesterdayso yesterday. I want to tell you about yesterday. I don't know why it means anything but... I'm following these instincts. or these impulses. Whatever they are. the parts of my life that become more emphasized after this intentional and out loud praying that I am doing because that is what you said to do! And so I want to tell you about yesterday.<br />
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I have struggles in applying self love. That is what my recent time spent in isolation taught me most. A lot of it has to do with relocating. moving to Denmark and trying to learn a new cultural expectation; navigate all of that. Defining myself inside and out of it.<br />
But it also comes down to the fact that, in any situation, I make space for others before I claim it for myself. and before anyone even asks for me to make space at all. It happens emotionally to me all the time. I notice because I am so sensitive to other people's feelings. I don't know if I have the words to explain the emotional side of it though.<br />
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In the physical world, a good analogy would be, when I'm on a train or a bus and people are getting on. before anyone decides to sit near me or walk by me, I am pulling myself into an uncomfortable position. I am making sure I am not in the way that may become some one's path or place to sit. Other people demonstrate the exact opposite response to sharing the spaces near them. But that is not my inclination. my inclination is to be aware of other people before they are aware of me. They may not even ever become aware of me, but I am still holding myself in that uncomfortable position until everyone around me is comfortable. Ok, then I am allowed to become comfortable.<br />
<br />
And emotionally, that final comfort after everyone else is settled. I don't achieve it every day. I need hours alone to get to the place where I have established my space. And then I can live alongside others without compromising myself. The pieces of those hours are incredibly important. They are like steps built one on the other. I can be pulled off the steps at any point by a want or need from another human in my life, so it can take as long as it takes. And I have learned that intentionally stopping to help my child or my husband is a good way to ensure that I can come back to where I paused. if time allows. Then, I don't have to start over from the first step. If I fight to keep the routine, then the fighting itself will throw me off. But sometimes I am in a place where building those steps to make myself space at all is impossible. Any attempt to try will be a fight. in the present. in the moment. So I just decide not to do it. For those around me. Because I am a dirty fighter.<br />
<br />
So yesterday I did not get a chance to do any of the things that fall into that category of self love. I was still functional. I was productive. but I did not get to spend time by myself to pray or create. or shower. or eat well. I gave all my energy and time to my family. And at the end of the day I was broken in a way that is scary for me. Sometimes the pain of existing becomes too much. I am overwhelmed. I beg for mercy. as I make more and more space for anyone but me. It does become not intuitive at some point. I have usually committed myself to more than I intended at that same point. So I feel like I have no way of going back if I want to maintain any sort of integrity or growth. I just have to go through it. get it over with and then I can make space for my self love again.<br />
<br />
So yesterday. I was broken at the end of the day. Trying to explain to my husband how I felt and not feeling like I can get the point across. But somehow, something made it through. And we decided together that I should go to the sea. Swimming in the sea is some purified me-time for sure. because no one can come with me. We live close to a beach on the Baltic Sea. We found me twenty five minutes at the end of the day yesterday. It was after 8pm. I went to the beach. I prayed first and, eventually, while praying, I was just filled only with desire to go into the water. So that's what I did.<br />
<br />
This beach is knee/thigh deep water for a really far distance. I have never ventured far enough out to experience the drop off. I don't even know where it is. And I only I know its there from the satellite images I can see online 😂<br />
As I was praying, a rain storm started on the other side of the water. There is land (its Sweden) close enough that one can see it from the beach, so there was a rain storm over this land and the sun was setting behind me and my beach. A rainbow started to form while I was praying. As I walked out into the water, I walked towards the rainbow and it just continued to become more and more intense in brightness and colour. It was fantastically beautiful.<br />
<br />
And then comes one of those full circle moments:<br />
I'm out in the middle of the water with no one near me. The water is cold. its uncomfortable, but I get used to it. Enough that I can get down on my knees if I want to sit in the sand or I can float around without touching the bottom, but still be totally submerged. Sometimes I am facing the gold setting sun. sometimes I am facing this intense rainbow. And I know the rainbow is a promise that God will never destroy humanity, but I take it personal. because I have just been praying about my life and how hard it is to find the strength to endure the pain that comes for me in just existing. Praying about how difficult it is for me to believe that God has anything but plans for more struggle and pain in my future. Then, praying to acknowledge that, outside of my pain, I know He is not trying to destroy me. And, in case there was any doubt, I have this promise right in my face making me understand that even more. The rainbow has my full attention and appreciation when I am facing towards it. I feel as if it is there just for me to go deeper into this feeling of security with God. Going deeper into knowing, for sure, that I will not be destroyed by anything outside of my own self. And, then the rainbow has my back when I face the sun, the center of my universe. And that means something too, though I only have feelings for it, not words. It was such a perfect set of moments. Totally submerged in the sea and, for the first time in a few days, feeling only protected and cared for.<br />
<br />
I only have the moment at all because my husband and I agreed together that we should carve it out of our lives for me. We used brute force to make it happen. If I had done it alone, I would have had to fight for it. I would have had to be selfish or demanding. I would never have done it at all under those conditions. But it was created by me with a partner. So it became a fantastic balm for my brokenness that I am still feeling the effects of. But I could not have had it without the cooperation of the people around me. And I do not always get such cooperation.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrFe7WjinAWG8dMQU79oa4y4BfNyEV7Yrf3KjC9-v5I11TPotJDCdfMhljUTrPMzq1T9-ABRwJxdliO36ZDut0fMcSy_KKZAPcUcsOqBpvvBqDqxmKHIkKj5ERNjaLeb7-k7WnUbNnS45h/s1600/in+the+water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrFe7WjinAWG8dMQU79oa4y4BfNyEV7Yrf3KjC9-v5I11TPotJDCdfMhljUTrPMzq1T9-ABRwJxdliO36ZDut0fMcSy_KKZAPcUcsOqBpvvBqDqxmKHIkKj5ERNjaLeb7-k7WnUbNnS45h/s400/in+the+water.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">not from yesterday. but in the same spot on the planet.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-52717782824186044142016-04-24T14:52:00.001-04:002016-04-24T14:52:47.491-04:00it could always be worsethis is just a short time<br />
its a month, maybe less maybe more.<br />
hopefully not more<br />
people leave their families for longer<br />
women leave their babies for longer<br />
wives leave their husbands for longer<br />
in the name of financial progress<br />
<br />
the constant quest for prosperity<br />
it sucks you in and then<br />
you have to work really hard<br />
to escape it's grasp<br />
its a human experience<br />
you are not doomed<br />
to repeat it over and over<br />
<br />
but to get out means to learn<br />
to get out means to sacrifice<br />
to get out means to change<br />
<br />
I always choose life<br />
from the point that I stopped<br />
I stopped choosing death<br />
I always choose life<br />
and I can't make excuses<br />
to let death in<br />
I am a valiant to the core<br />
and I always have been<br />
there is no going back<br />
I will taste death <br />
but one time, not thousands<br />
and not at all before I return<br />
<br />
to go forward<br />
with a clean tounge<br />
that means a month alone<br />
doing hard labour<br />
until the work is done<br />
or the resources run out<br />
but either way<br />
my family is far away<br />
my support system is not aware<br />
I am going into isolation<br />
a voluntary solitary<br />
<br />
the media that surrounds me<br />
the people that talk to me<br />
the community that I claim<br />
I just don't want to engage them<br />
because I need all my energy <br />
to dig my way free<br />
and I need all my time<br />
to pray for more strength<br />
to overcome the pain<br />
to overcome the stress<br />
to overcome the voice that says<br />
<br />
you are not good enough<br />
you are not strong enough<br />
you are not smart enough<br />
you will fail to fix this<br />
your children will never understand<br />
your husband will abandon you too<br />
<br />
because that voice is deception<br />
weaved into my being<br />
and I will never accept it as my truth<br />
but I still have to fight its effects<br />
only for a month<br />
maybe less, maybe more<br />
hope, fully, not more<br />
pray, fully, not more<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihfV042oM27bHcmHROlPM3Kod-uZQwwAaoldCycrz8h7muNKFl_AlKTfEUBBKqGfmfVRPKi9WFtTBaddK6q5iBjInOS-ERKouPe02zl34few21mKAl3nVIAIOjbhyRlyrCKbHIRrhhHxIz/s1600/003.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihfV042oM27bHcmHROlPM3Kod-uZQwwAaoldCycrz8h7muNKFl_AlKTfEUBBKqGfmfVRPKi9WFtTBaddK6q5iBjInOS-ERKouPe02zl34few21mKAl3nVIAIOjbhyRlyrCKbHIRrhhHxIz/s320/003.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">in a previous moment working <br />
on the project I am leaving my family to finish</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-54289138664074448562015-11-05T05:42:00.001-05:002015-11-05T05:46:33.388-05:00thisas evidence presented for: why Denmark is the place I am supposed to live happily ever after.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://news.vice.com/article/should-high-school-students-be-shown-porn-to-learn-about-sex?utm_source=vicenewsfb" target="_blank">Should high school students be shown porn to learn about sex?</a><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f4f4f4; font-family: , "helvetica" , "arial"; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 26.6px;">Ninth grade student Anders Kaagaard </span><a href="http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/video/2015/03/02/130958.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #fe3d00; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 26.6px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">told DR</a><span style="background-color: #f4f4f4; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 26.6px;"><span style="font-family: , "helvetica" , "arial";">, "I think you could get something out of it — for example the difference between real love between two people who have sex and hard porn and orgies from the US."</span></span><br />
<br />
and Im just going to leave this link here too... from a few years ago.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://thisclimb.blogspot.com/2012/11/james-deen.html" target="_blank">James Deen</a><br />
<br />
Sometimes learning so much about the way different people think makes me question things that are simply true to myself. That's why writing things down is so good for me.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_DfyehrWCJ32UcKzo5P1WitrrQeKgeSmwlnWvWBj_OMPYHDdparzT2CuFVN1vmhmUbaxXbNsJ8ijJg-3u_gNDC114IIsuNce4zkugLf3meDZcsCAQ9dZgnwSOfghDKGSVt8C1bwBAueCS/s1600/judahfriedmantrevornoah.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_DfyehrWCJ32UcKzo5P1WitrrQeKgeSmwlnWvWBj_OMPYHDdparzT2CuFVN1vmhmUbaxXbNsJ8ijJg-3u_gNDC114IIsuNce4zkugLf3meDZcsCAQ9dZgnwSOfghDKGSVt8C1bwBAueCS/s400/judahfriedmantrevornoah.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-35388015035678504962015-08-21T09:30:00.000-04:002015-08-21T09:30:24.569-04:00re: my broken heart<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlRdioJMJQWtHzH0Tsm5Tq2XFwzo-6F4QaRHNHct-9Ca_scHVH_c25nYaj90Ha3kYXS3-7dJCCwRWZjA6OxXbXH_5mAfIoXOdYHixh1RJRyJV_IFLmSAVMjtBTK1E3T5fszVHX0DywnYjR/s1600/007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlRdioJMJQWtHzH0Tsm5Tq2XFwzo-6F4QaRHNHct-9Ca_scHVH_c25nYaj90Ha3kYXS3-7dJCCwRWZjA6OxXbXH_5mAfIoXOdYHixh1RJRyJV_IFLmSAVMjtBTK1E3T5fszVHX0DywnYjR/s400/007.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
He called them kid gloves. He said none of his friends get treated with kid gloves. And it was harsh and mean-spirited maybe. but it was logical and he was necessary. All I had was Jon (and Jessica and a small hope to join Brendan or Laura) but I felt like all I had was Jon. Lots of travelling kept me distracted. Jon worked the night shift a lot so we roamed the city a bit doing ridiculous things. It was just fun to be with each other and there was never anything ever to spark. though I do remember complaining to Laura or Jessica about how sometimes Jon did things that I thought might be a bit too flirtatious. Oh the drama... anyway real life problems were that in the previous month my boyfriend of 5 years dumped me out of nowhere, my dad died and I graduated university without any job prospects. When my dad died I told him I was going to be fine because I had a plan to go to Calgary. I never went to Calgary.<br />
Sometimes, when L is screaming and E is whining and Marc is playing video games, I think about how I did not go to Calgary. a whole nother life honey.<br />
<br />
And here I am, in this life, thinking about how the only reason I did not punch Jon in the face when he told me how much I should just get over my problems is because he was real with me from the get go.<br />
<br />
I will never change the way I treat you based on the circumstances of the life you are living.<br />
<br />
[spoiler: he would however be very willing to change the way he treated me based on the circumstances of the life <i>he</i> was living. <span style="color: #444444;">#whipped #scaredoflifealone #possibleunrequitedlovestory</span>]<br />
<br />
in any case...<br />
I am thinking about how much his behaviour shaped me. Because I loved and adored him like a brother. And I know what it is like to confuse brother love with boyfriend love. I had full on brother love for Jon. Even though he did not treat me well as a friend and he filled my life with drama through the poor choices he made for himself. and as far as I know, that has yet to change.<br />
I just loved him anyway, like I do. It is brother love, there is a lot of room for forgiveness.<br />
<br />
anyway...<br />
I hated it when Jon would be insensitive, but I also understood it was actually necessary to take a break from agonizing about circumstances completely out of my control. In the before time, I had a community, financial security and a partner to do life with. I knew where I was going. I had plans.<br />
Now I had nothing but a lot to complain and uncontrollably cry about. Jon basically forced me to stop crying, so then I could talk to him about things I couldn't get out to other people. And he listened. And he helped. And I used him as a tool like this for many years. Eventually, I could stop uncontrollable tears by just dialing his number. He was a good friend in the moment. He did like me. He just would never stick his neck out for me, where I would have for him. It was something I knew but he didn't know. because he didn't really understand people or himself. and he didn't want to. he just wanted easy. but the whole thing made me feel insecure at the time. because he could just drop me, but I really needed him. Marc changed that dynamic a lot, but it took years. years where, if I was uncontrollably crying, I would need to call Jon. even if Marc was sitting right next to me.<br />
<br />
Everything. all the progress, it took years.<br />
Nothing was apparent in the moment. I could not in any way, shape, or form have the understanding of the situation that I do without having lived through it first and then reflecting on it. just like having kids- no matter how prepared you are, you are not prepared.<br />There is a point where situations get extreme enough that the emotional experience is the same for everyone. It doesn't matter what is making you feel it. it doesn't matter what country you come from. it doesn't matter what period in time you live! 'Grief because you lost everything' is a state of the human mind that is universal. And you know what it feels like, if you know.<br />
<br />
And I know. And I am actually thankful for it. now.<br />
<br />
because in the before time, I was also very lost. Like a bleating sheep all alone in darkness. Sheep are not aware they are lost and I was not either. I was never trying not to be a sheep, though. And God heard prayers in between the lines of my prayers. He knew that I wanted to be the best version of myself and he knew how to get me there.<br />
And it was a horrible experience, having the entire world drop out from under you such that your life becomes a surreal dream that you are watching swirl around you. because nothing is processing. and as you slowly start to wake up from this proverbial fall, the pain is so excruciating it freaks out your brain. The brain always responds by acting like you are going to die. Survival mode!<br /><br />
When I am in survival mode, I never feel hungry. I am a person that is very aware of eating when I am not hungry. I got so aware of eating, that it stressed me out too much and I had to stop altogether.<br />
I stopped eating. for months.<br />But with Jon, I would eat. because he would make me act like everything I was going through was a "normal" part of life. His way was very harsh, but it was necessary. And I was able to eat when I was with other people because I could do it first with Jon.<br />
<br />
I am not harsh. but I am honest. and I will not lie to people, even just by being passive. no matter the circumstances of life. My honesty comes from a the most loving place and reflects love, never judgement. And even in situations with my children, where I must judge their actions to teach them the ways for the world they need to learn to survive in- even in those situations, I do not judge the heart of my children.<br />
<br />
The thing that has happened because of your actions is bad, maybe your actions were poorly chosen ones. But you, child, are not bad. You are better. You always have the opportunity to do better.<br />
<br />
I make that distinction to them, so that there is no perceived judgement coming from me. All perceived judgment is logically abolished. Because they love their mother so much, that they would be shaped by any judgement they perceive from me- whether I intend it or not.<br />
And I know that because I lived that too.<br />
<br />
I know what being forced to hear things I did not want to hear did for me when I was drowning in the rubble of what was once "my life." I do it for people in a way that is filled with love and understanding because I also know how horrible it feels when someone treats you harshly.<br />ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-45601417034076081232015-08-07T07:38:00.001-04:002015-08-07T07:38:05.207-04:00how I do a bandaid<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
E slipped and fell on the way out of børnehaven. It was a hard fast fall, one that took my breath. But he was ok. Just scared and scraped. His knee did start to bleed, but only a little. E said he wanted to go home before getting a bandaid. But, in the car on the way home he starts freeeking out.</div>
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<br /></div>
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"I think it is time to wipe the blood away! I think every time I look at the blood, I get scared!"</div>
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<br /></div>
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So I tell him that is ok. That is normal. I tell him how for a really long time humans have had to feel that way -!"scared"!- about blood because we have to care about when our bodies are bleeding. It matters for our survival. And then I tell him that it is also ok to not be scared, because mommy and daddy have seen a lot of scraped knees in our time. And we know when it is ok not to be scared by blood. This is one of those times. We would tell him if we were scared too. But we aren't scared, and we have a plan. We are going to go home and get a bandaid to cover the blood!</div>
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And then we are off counting how many bandaids are needed- 3! he decided.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Oh and look now we are home! because we live that close.<br />And he waits in the car while I get a bandaid. I bring it out to him and wipe around the wound with a baby wipe. I explain how I won't touch the blood. And I won't. because I know the body is going to clean the broken skin better than a baby wipe. But I get as much skin clean as I can, without touching the blood, without breaking my words. Everything is clear to both of us as it happens.</div>
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The bandaid goes on. We are lucky to have a big enough bandaid that he only needed one- :-)<br />Minion bandaids- all the rage these days.</div>
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<br />I heard a conversation between two celebrities (Most likely Jon Stewart and someone else- he had his last episode of the daily show last night!! haven't had time to watch it because E turns five in like two days!!!) It was a conversation about how Minions are like, scientifically engineered, to make people feel tiny, squishy, and happy inside. Like the Aliens from Toy Story did in the 90's. Maybe the Aliens are a case study that leads to the Minions. Maybe they are two different studios competing. I don't know because I can't remember if Disney owns the Minions.<br /><br /><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/20/entertainment/la-et-mn-minions-release-date-20130920" target="_blank">Disney DOES NOT own the Minions</a>. So Aliens vs. Minions will never happen on screen- only in real life. And apparently Disney is "losing" that fight right now.. or whatever. </div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>in a world where</i></div>
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(dolla dolla bills = highest value) > (human lives = highest value)</div>
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and the humans build their lives centered around the `highest value´</div>
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<br /></div>
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So that is why Disney is "losing" even though Disney and Universal both contribute to the future of humanity in very positive ways, including employing Creatives. I feel like something will shift in my lifetime though. So many people are speaking more and more about how things really are. <a href="https://www.charleskochinstitute.org/charles-koch-end-corporate-welfare/" target="_blank">The two teired society</a>. <a href="https://youtu.be/lLgIIjnpZyU" target="_blank">The three teired society</a>.</div>
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<br /></div>
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So, until things shift in favour of loving one another,</div>
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EXISTENCE OF HUMANITY OVER DOLLA DOLLA BILLS!</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7V-vqnWUqXTRGyblKYsyJVHedFMy5j_cskauvic-APamFP3YGru93cLrrE8nSk-AxAancyHFBolyltxQoK1WSbG5Ljw44tud1YExPP6cBW_JXZ9HNwEm764gpOGFC0s0Jc03vzeUrPz8Q/s1600/IMG_3000.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7V-vqnWUqXTRGyblKYsyJVHedFMy5j_cskauvic-APamFP3YGru93cLrrE8nSk-AxAancyHFBolyltxQoK1WSbG5Ljw44tud1YExPP6cBW_JXZ9HNwEm764gpOGFC0s0Jc03vzeUrPz8Q/s400/IMG_3000.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-26376538462547821632015-07-30T05:36:00.001-04:002015-07-30T05:55:30.865-04:00saved your lifewe have this thing in our house. I think I started it. Like when a child does something life threateningly stupid and I stop them, I tell the child "I just saved your life." I never say it without truly believing it happened. In the least I saved our family a hospital trip. I noticed the phrase now because E uses it all the time in his over-dramatic, almost-five-years-old way. it's cute. sometimes he is accurate.<br />
when he catches his brother and keeps him from falling off the bed during the craziness that is jumping on the bed.<br />
<div>
"I just saved your life L!"</div>
<div>
yes. yes you actually did.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
other times he is like "I almost fell of my bike, but I stopped myself. I saved my life"</div>
<div>
maybe you did. you definitely have good instincts, no matter what.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I guess I am remarking on this because I feel like that is the point of being a mom: keep the children alive long enough to teach them how to keep themselves alive.</div>
<div>
basic human instinct. and if we didn't feel this way then, you know what, we humans would not have survived long enough to have this conversation. for real.<br />
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The survival instinct can really drive a lifestyle. Fear of not surviving gives a push that mimics the push a person gets from doing something they love and are incredibly passionate about. fear can flog you raw. passion and love do not do that.<br />
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ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-42472648080624787602015-07-10T08:48:00.000-04:002015-07-10T08:48:33.530-04:00100 year rainfall<div>
In school I learned about designing storm water drainage systems. We practiced designing them for 100 yr rainfalls. Humans only have data for so long when it comes to volumes of rain falling on places that people live. In developed areas where paving keeps rain from soaking into the ground, you have to have storm water management- essentially places for water from the sky to go so that it does not sweep people or buildings away. The maximum capacity volume of water that a system should be able to handle is the highest volume of rainfall in the last 100 years for that area. So what happens when rainfall breaks a 100 year record? flooding. With climate change, higher volume rainfalls break these records. The storm water system can only hold so much, it will overflow and floods will happen. This is just inherent in the design. There is nothing that can be done. You just have to clean up any damage, then change the highest rainfall in the last 100 years, and add the required capacity to the storm water system to meet it. You gotta clean up and then build, it takes energy and time. Just the way it is. The new normal requires a higher capacity.</div>
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When things come that are worse than you could ever imagine, you have to get to a place where you are thankful for them. A place where you can build on top of them. The things that change your life have to be accepted as part of your reality. The only way I know how to get there is through therapy. Emotionally focused therapy. Opening up to other people. Not trying to teach all the time, but trying to learn as well. Even when you think you know more. Open your ears and hear a new perspective just because it is there to be heard. You might find it is as valuable as your own, or you might reject it. Are you more open to information about humans from people that don't know anything about your life, or can you take information from people that do know something? Do you have it in you?</div>
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Vulnerability. The end and the beginning.<br />
Apparently, energy and abilities are endless if you trust in the Lord. And I do believe that even though evidence from my own life could suggest otherwise, at least on a physical level. For me, I know, I can increase my capacity because I have done it before. I can turn and face an entirely different direction, I have done it before. I know how rough it is, how much work. But there is no reason to delay change. Even if I am stretched so thin that another change might break me. It won't break me all the way through, and if it does then I will be healed. Let it come. Let it all come at the same time. If a part of my foundation is washed away, then I can rebuild it better and more beautiful than it ever was before. Opportunity to be even better. to live more fully. to not care about what faceless people think of me. Freedom to be exactly what God made me. My whole foundation has already been washed out from under me once. maybe more. This is life. It doesn't stop. I don't want it to stop, that is why I am working so hard.</div>
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ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-73673179588878509542015-05-13T05:12:00.001-04:002015-05-13T05:12:18.997-04:00comingIve been doing a lot of reading and watching and absorbing for the last five years. in two languages. alongside people of many different cultures. Culture is a gigantic and basically invisible barrier to achieving enough understanding between humans that we get to have real world peace. Gigantic and very translucent- I don't have the words yet to explain it, but they will come. and there will be a lot of them.<br />
<br />
Anyway. I have been a sponge for five years and I am about to ring myself out. And it needs to be OUT not just expressed. Rung out onto the floor and left for people to accidentally step in, then maybe their socks get so wet that they have to remove them and walk around the house bare foot for the rest of their lives.<br />
<br />
I want to make use of this "ring-out" in the best possible way. I don't want to waste a drop, so I have to slow it down. The actual expression has to come out at a reasonable pace. I am only one of me. The family is still number 1. The ideas have built over five years; grown from roots that need to be explained and explored. The expression is important, and needs to be efficient, but it also needs to have all its corners.<br />
<br />
So it comes. It comes soon. I don't want to link my personal identity to any of it. I don't trust "the internet" with my personal identity. I want the ideas to stand on their own. A huge challenge is anonymizing the context enough so that it is still genuine but also hard to place.<br />
I live in a bubble. You can be famous in one part of the world and live as not in every other- that kind of bubble. I don't know anything about either place I am attached to without putting the effort in to find out. I am an outlier. I have spent my whole life telling myself that my experiences are not unique or special, don't get it twisted. But now, that is an undeniable fact in some aspects of my existence.<br />
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The combination of my experiences has shown me something that is not the same as other people. From that demonstration, I have made choices that are different and through that I learn things other people don't know. And of course, one can find another person in the world that has made the exact same choice- or knows the exact same thing. even in the exact same moment. But the choices before and the ones that come, the lessons learned from choices- eventually it leads in different directions. Chains of choices. One of the many ways Jesus saves is through being a love activated highlighter of the "choice chains" that are harmonious with mine.<br />
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And that is all for the first day in years that I have had pre-scheduled, truly legitimate alone time.<br />
EAT IT.<br />
no, but seriously, thanks for reading.<br />
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<br />ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-271716093978244012015-01-29T17:31:00.001-05:002015-01-29T19:23:17.368-05:00january five this yearon January 5 2015:<br />
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I woke up in a weird way. I just opened my eyes and I was awake.<br />
Normally I spend a long time between asleep and awake. I fight the transition because I always want more sleep. It is the curse of being a narcoleptic, co-sleeping parent of young children. Never get enough of that sweet sweet premium quality sleep.<br />
Normally my children are talking (babbling in L's case) and climbing on top of me as I go from sleeping to waking. They crawl all over me as they play with each other. In their games, their knees and elbows inevitably gouge my full bladder. Eventually sleep is not possible even though I want it and the best place for my body to be is out of the bed.<br />
<br />
So it was weird to just open my eyes and be awake. And it was weird that my children were both sound asleep right next to me. Even more weird was the message that was in my brain and in my heart... just all over inside me. A message that said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Everything you have been planning is going to change now."</blockquote>
And I know in my heart that message came from God. I know it was a prophecy of sorts- using that word in the most humble and innocent way possible, mind you. But it doesn't really matter where the message came from- the fact is, it was there. And it felt really weird in a peaceful way.<br />
Just like how I woke up. Weird and peaceful.<br />
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I lay there feeling weird and peaceful, contemplating this message that made no sense. I looked over at L and his eyes partially opened. He woke up immediately once he saw that I was awake. He crawled all over me and then E. So E woke up. And just as things started to feel normal- the weird feelings of my wake up fading away alongside the peaceful feelings- my phone rang.<br />
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It was a short enough conversation that basically went like this: Hej, this is the lady from the kommune calling. You know how you were supposed to put L in dagplejer with the dagplejer mor that you have been waiting for since before he was born? She decided not to be a dagplejer mor any longer. She quit, so your son has no dagplejer place now.<br />
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Ok. I cried after the phone call. Mostly because it was overwhelming to go from feeling like everything was going to change, to something big actually changing. I had planned for L to start dagplejer in January of 2015 with <a href="http://thisclimb.blogspot.com/2012/08/today-i-start-new-way-of-life.html" target="_blank">E's dagplejer mor</a>. I planned on this for the entire time that L was inside and outside of me! The plan was dashed in a two minute conversation, so I was shocked. But I don't think I would have cried if I had woke up in a normal way.<br />
<br />
I was putting L in dagplejer so I could go back and finish my Danish education. BUT, a few days after I find out I don't have a dagplejer place for L, I also find out that I am actually not allowed to return to Danish school. The details are, at best, sketchy. I am actually still in communication with the kommune about whether or not the decision is accurate. It seems like it does not fit with the law.<br />
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But still, the plan was to put L in dagplejer so that I could go back to Danish school. And all of that changed. And even more has changed since then. I thought I knew what was going to happen for the first six months of 2015. I had a plan. I shared that plan with every one in my life. They all knew what January 2015 meant for me. Now, not even a single element of that plan is the same. Everything has changed.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-8114887596992203752014-10-23T07:08:00.002-04:002014-10-23T07:08:52.898-04:00city bikeWhen we lived in Canada I started playing waterpolo. It was fun. It was good exercise twice a week. I felt like waterpolo was a really good sport for me- it was "my sport." When we moved to Denmark, I could not find a waterpolo team to play with. There just are not enough people here- not every sport has a group of people who want to play it. And they already have handball, which is like waterpolo without the water. Danes love their handball. So I decided last year, around this time, that I needed another sport to call "my sport." I thought that doing triathlons might be it. So I started swimming, running and riding my bike every week. After the new year, I signed up to do a team triathlon with some friends. I would be the swimmer. I thought it would be a good way to get a read on the triathlon culture in Denmark. My training was going well, so, kind of on a whim, I decided to sign up for the mini triathlon that the running club in my town was holding a few weeks before the team triathlon.<br />
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My "thing" about triathlons is that it is an expensive sport to get started in because you need a lot of equipment, the most expensive being a racing bike. I was not sure I wanted to do triathlons regularly, so I was not about to go out and buy a bike just for racing. We don't have the disposable income to even entertain the idea. I had read many times about how important having a racing bike to do any triathlon was- even your first one. But no one really explained WHY and I just assumed it was because most people don't actually own a bike that they ride regularly. Most people have cars. We don't have a car, so this advice about getting a racing bike did not apply to me. I had a bike. I bought a racing seat for my bike (because it happened to need a new seat) and figured I would be fine for this mini triathlon.<br />
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So I show up for the race. There was some coordination with the kids because Marc had to go into work for a bit beforehand. I set all my stuff up in the transition area. Marc helped me understand the race instructions because they were given in Danish and two sets of non-fluent ears are better than one. And then I got myself ready and started the race. The swim went well. I was faster than most of the women. Then came the cycling. As I think back, I was unprepared in so many ways for the cycling part. I had no map, physically or mentally. I had no spare tire anything (though I do have this stuff in my tubes to self-seal punctures). And, I was on a three gear bike called a city-bike, because it is made for casually transporting oneself around town... like in the city. But everyone else was on road-racing bikes. And the advice to be in a triathlon riding a race bike made so much sense as I was passed by everyone. Because I could see that for every push of a pedal, a racing bike travels farther and faster than a city bike. So the other riders had to put in a significantly less amount of energy to complete the cycling portion of the race than I did. I was wasted before I even started running just because of the bike I chose to ride. My endurance and physicality did not really matter because my equipment made the cycle section of the triathlon so much harder for me. I was so tired, I had to do the run slowly. So the few people who had not passed me in the cycling portion, were able to do so in the running portion.</div>
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I finished last, obviously. I was happy I finished at all.</div>
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Our life in Denmark is surrounded by people who have a lot more access to family and to money than we have. That is just the facts of our life right now, facts that have come out of choices but also out of uncontrolled circumstances. I do not resent these people for the lives they have made, just like I didn't resent the other triathlon participants for the bikes they were riding. But I can see that for the same amount of energy expended, they are able to do a lot more than we are. And the result, especially since adding a second child, is that we really can not keep up. We have to live our life differently and we are the only people that have to do that. So we end up struggling with feelings of isolation and loneliness. We started this year just weighed down by these feelings. We entered the spring with the realization that life is not sustainable this way. But we weren't exactly sure what, if anything, could change. The only thing that we felt that we could do was pray about it. And those prayers led us to another family. A family who is riding on the same type of bike as we are. And we have decided to ride together... maybe eventually we will link our bikes to each other. It just feels like, if we are riding together, life won't feel so much like a race where we are being left behind anymore.<br />
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ChaterineKShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981919665248361178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-6760911591962367392014-10-20T13:31:00.000-04:002014-10-20T16:18:05.497-04:00weaning a 4 year oldSo E has weaned?<br />
I think.<br />
Time has yet to tell, but as of this morning he acknowledged that he was done nursing.<br />
<br />
We have been talking about it for awhile with him, almost daily since before his fourth birthday. I am about to start taking medicine for my narcolepsy again, so my milk is going to become not-drinkable. My husband has been vocal about E weaning for probably a half a year. I would cringe when he would flat out say to E that he didn't need to nurse and he should just stop already. But E could always turn around and nurse, so I think it was just something he heard and rejected. It was not his reality.<br />
<br />
It was a surprise that E has nursed so long. We wanted him to make the choice to stop <a href="http://thisclimb.blogspot.com/2013/10/two-on-me.html" target="_blank">for a lot of reasons</a>. Our expectations for how long it would last were mainly based on my husband's childhood. The story we have heard from Marc's mother was that when Marc was 3.5 years old, he and his mom had a rational and logic filled discussion about how he did not need to nurse anymore. And at 3.5 years he agreed to stop. My husband is the only person I know that has a story like that. So we thought we could remake history. We thought that E loved to nurse so much that he should be allowed the opportunity to follow in his dad's footsteps.<br />
<br />
But at 3.5 years E was not ready to wean. He understood what it meant and wanted nothing to do with it. We did the don't offer, don't refuse thing since before he turned 2. We did a don't offer, feel free to refuse thing since I was pregnant with L.<br />
<br />
And then this morning, like many mornings, E wanted to nurse and I wanted to sleep. And I told him he had to wait. Sometimes he waits, sometimes he leaves to eat breakfast. This morning he waited and asked again. And I said the same thing I have been saying lately:<br />
"What will you do when you can't nurse anymore? because soon you won't be able to drink my milk."<br />
And as usual he said nothing except that he wanted to nurse. So, I said:<br />
"What if this is the last time you ever nurse?"<br />
And he said OK. So I repeated mt statement, but saying it more explicitly because I was surprised by his response. And he agreed again.<br />
So I let him nurse. And while he nursed I made up a song about how he was having his last nurse because he was "fear oars" (that is how he says "four years"-his age... because he says it the danish way with the english s). And he is big and strong (adjectives he uses to describe himself regularly) and ready to become a cuddler instead of a nurser...<br />
And when I stopped singing, E asked me to sing it again. Which I, of course, did. And during the second rendition he broke his latch and said he was done. And we left the bed together and went down to L and Marc and I made a big deal about how E was done nursing. And E also said he was done.<br />
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So time will tell. But now that I have confirmation from E that he has had his last nurse AND a song to sing as a reminder if he asks to nurse again. I think I am now going to not offer and refuse (nicely).<br />
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L has to be weaned too, but he should be a lot easier. Mostly because he is much less interested in nursing and also because he is not old enough to flat out refuse to be weaned.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-18720625466834265662014-08-25T19:01:00.000-04:002014-08-25T19:01:20.370-04:00old ladyIt has been an eventful summer. And summer is over in Denmark. It ended either the day before E's fourth birthday or the day after. We had a birthday party that needed a true summer day, but we did not get one- we made it work anyway. That is just how it happens here. The weather can't get in your way because you get nothing done if you wait for the sun. You can be waiting weeks sometimes.<br />
<br />
I feel old in not good ways lately. Part of it is having my MIL here. It is easier for her to challenge me about the parts of our life she doesn't understand or agree with. She doesn't challenge her son about them. So I have spent weeks explaining and defending our life. And, through it, I really can see how counter-cultural our life is. We have made decisions that are not typical for people our age. I don't regret them. I don't want to regret them. But I do have maybe more information now. It is hard to look back and remember what you didn't actually know until after the decision was made. That is why I feel old. I keep having to relive the whys and hows of where we are today. And I can't regret the choices that brought me to where I am. I love my life. I do not, however, love having to defend our life.<br />
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With my MIL, it hasn't just been asking questions or wondering about ways things could improve. It has been defending choices I couldn't take back even if I wanted to. I can't change when I had my babies or why I had them. I can't change that we decided to move to Denmark for the job Marc has. And I definitely can't change how up and down Marc feels in his day to day life. But these things are not that bad. I could look at them and point out all the ways they have limited me, but I really don't see those things. We maybe I see the limitations that Marc's mood can have on me. But my MIL does see everything as limiting. It's exhausting to me because it stresses me out.<br />
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I have a renewed drive for finding work because of all of this reflecting. I guess that is a good thing. I don't know if I am ready to work, but I know that just going through the process of applying helps me get ready. It is so easy to get wrapped up in my head about how my having a job would look in our life. The fact is, I don't know how it would work and I have to give it up to God. He knows how my life needs to be for me to be the best version of myself. I just wish my extended family had as much faith as I do. In Marc and I, and in God.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">this is the part when I break free, because I can't resist it no more</td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-79811275288768938412014-07-12T11:12:00.001-04:002014-08-25T19:05:25.970-04:00value using moneyProgress means that I shouldn't have to get a job just because I need to buy stuff.<br />
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Stuff is not needs. Needs are food, clean water, sleep, permanent shelter, protections from the elements, transportation, internet access, relationships.<br />
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These needs should allow me to be the best woman, the best mother, the best wife, the best friend, the best member of society that I can physically and emotionally be. Spiritual health is some sort of result of emotional and physical health depending on who you are; depending on how God made you.<br />
I like to imagine it like a chemical equation because it only works one way. Adding two things to create a third, but if you take that third thing it won't necessarily break down into the original two parts.<br />
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In any case, for me, the world is broken because needs are not seen separately from stuff. Or stuff is assumed to be necessary. Needs are assumed to not be necessary. For me, needs should be handled differently from stuff. The acquisition of stuff shouldn't be more important than needs... or be required to meet needs.<br />
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I love to go out to my garden and pick the foods that eventually end up on my plate for dinner. Going to a store is not as fulfilling. But, in the society I live in, I can't live off of my own land. Even though technologically I could probably grow enough food to feed my family. I could find a compromise between the diet we have based mostly on supermarket shopping and the diet we could have based on eating only what we could grow. I imagine a supermarket could be just a place where the community barters with one another. Trading needs for needs. That's the world I want to live in.<br />
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That world only exists on the fringes and in pieces right now. And I know there are so many people that think it would be crazy because they define progress so much differently from me. But I say to people who put value to things that are not about needs: get over yourself. The choices we make every day effect other people. The choice to live in a developed country inherently means exploiting something somewhere in a developing country. Just because we don't want it to be that way, or choose to ignore facts. Just because we find it easier the way we do it, or maybe it's impossible to change the way, it doesn't make the effects any less. Facts are facts.<br />
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It is clear for anyone who wants to see it. Anyone who chooses to let go of the things that makes them unhealthy mentally any physically... even only for a moment... It is clear that capitalism is flawed. Emphasizing value using money does not allow all needs to be met without barriers.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-90627645549356924252013-10-13T15:03:00.001-04:002013-10-13T15:03:43.858-04:00two on me<div dir="ltr">
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The last six weeks have flown and crawled by at the same time. It feels like I gave birth to L a million years ago, but I can not believe he is already six weeks old. He is a sweet baby, but I have a lot more trouble reading him than I did with E. Six weeks in with E, he and I were in a total love fest- even though he never slept and over-ate. L sleeps! and he takes himself off the boob when he is full! He is also connecting much better with Marc right now- and that is fine.</div>
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I am curious about what is going to be the same and what is going to be different between L and E. I do compare my experiences; asking myself if whats happening today is totally brand new or not. Having kids is an experiment and I find it fun to approach scientifically. I also regularly find L giving me flashbacks to the time when E was a newborn. But, I don't try to compare the two boys to each other because they are each individuals and I always want to see them that way. My goal is now and always will be to just enjoy each of them separately even when they are together.</div>
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Mainly focusing on enjoying them separately- at least right now. It is hard to enjoy them when they are both crying together. It is also hard to enjoy them when they are both nursing together. And that sums up about 90% of the regularly joined activities for my young boys and me. Tandem nursing is the new biggest challenge of my life. Maybe it is a surprise to some but, I actually don't enjoy nursing very much. Most of the time I feel pretty indifferent to the activity, other times it just totally overstimulates me and makes me very physically uncomfortable. For the last year and a bit, I have been able to take a break when nursing is too overwhelming. E was always able to find something else to do or try to fall asleep on his own. If he wanted more, he would come back a bit later and we could try again. I can't really ask the new baby to wait when it wants its "LAH" (this is what the baby cry for nursing always sounds like to me). And even if I do want to wait, listening to that cry for more than 30 seconds is by far more overwhelming than any solo nursing session has ever been.</div>
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Nursing two kids at the same time, however, is making me redefine my definition of overwhelming. Tandem nursing presents itself in two ways. The most obvious is having a boob in each child's mouth at the same time. There is also nursing each child on their own too, one after the other, possibly giving each child more than one turn, maybe eventually turning it into a two at a time session. The only guaranteed time that I only have to nurse once child is when I am only with one of them.</div>
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I didn't think it would be like this. E has only been asking to nurse once a day, maybe twice for months. He never asked if we weren't in bed or on our way. This was a rule we established before he turned two years old, and E never bucked against it. In the very rare occasions that E would ask to nurse during the day, he would agree, or even initiate, that we needed to go to the bed first. I thought it was under control, I thought he understood how nursing worked for us. I planned to use Marc and toys and food to distract E when he wanted to nurse at the same time as the new baby. I talked to E about all of it before L was born. But none of the preparation really mattered.</div>
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I always knew E would be jealous of the attention I would have to give to L. I don't want to make that jealousy worse than it needs to be. The fact is that E is angry he has to share now. He understands the situation and he shows a lot of love to his brother. But, sometimes he gets mad about the new circumstances. He expresses his anger purely and does not focus it on any one thing. If I make a choice that reminds him how angry he is, then he will focus on me a little bit. Ultimately, his anger turns into a raging fit that has no focus and no real conclusion because the only solution is submission to a new life of being a sibling. Having a little brother is the most significant thing to ever happen to him in his short life so far. He needs time to adjust and reassurance. His reassurance comes through nursing. So E is nursing as much as L right now- maybe even more.</div>
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Two babes for my boobs to feed (and comfort) is hard. I feel like I am starving constantly. I have entire days or nights without having any of my own space. If I am nursing one and the other sees, they want it too and start to almost panic about it. Both boys act like if they don't nurse immediately they will never have another chance. I have spent years finding my way to being a relaxed person because I am a better human when I am chilled out. Having drama and stress around me makes me lose that chilled out feeling. I never feel like I can relax because my children don't relax until after their needs have been met. But with two, I am constantly meeting needs and only occasionally enjoying the peace it brings.</div>
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So maintaining as much peace as possible is the main reason why I can't wean E. We want weaning to be E's choice (which is why we even have a 3 year old nurser). But if nursing two children had me changing my mind about child-led weaning, weaning E at this point would be even worse than letting him nurse. It would be worse for my quality of life in the short term. But, even more damaging is that it would teach E on a root level that when things get tough for me, he can't trust me to not cause him suffering. It could give him a reason to focus his anger. Maybe he wouldn't feel safe focusing the anger on me, and L would end up on the receiving end. If I weaned E it would be for selfish reasons only; it would be for my benefit over his. We have to make enough decisions for E that compromise his benefit in some way. Making a choice that only benefits him and our bond with him is a positive that outshines all the negatives on tandem nursing for me.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-5805498415757788012013-08-25T05:58:00.001-04:002013-08-25T06:02:08.752-04:00the natural labour express<div class="tr_bq">
I have been wanting to post the email I sent out after E's birth for awhile and just have not done it. It is the story of how he was born. I never posted it as a blog post because I was in a different place back then, more focused on keeping personal parts about our life as private as possible. We had also just moved to Denmark a couple months earlier so we had a lot more people we were only communicating with through email.<br />
But it is a good snapshot of where we were at right after the biggest change of our lives, right before we knew how big a change it was going to be. I am posting it because I am sure at least one post of compare and contrast is on the way. Also, I am having some struggles with writing while pregnant (another future topic), so this is an easy post to make as I am too pregnant to do any of the things that are really left on my to-do list.</div>
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We are ready for our second baby to join us and just waiting until it is ready as well. The feeling is like when you are in the front car of a roller coaster and it is climbing and climbing to the top of the first hill. At the top you hang over the drop a little bit just waiting for the rest of the train to finish the climb... that moment of anticipation and deep breathing before the ride really begins. You know whats coming but it still feels overwhelming and really exciting. All you can do is just wait for it though.</div>
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When E was born it was more like being at the back of the roller coaster train- wait, wait, wait and then suddenly get pulled into things with very little warning. This time around we have been hanging over this edge for almost a month. As in, I have frequently had days where the only thing telling me I am not in active labour is my brain. Even my brain was on board once this past week, but the ride didn't start. So this pregnancy feels prolonged and a lot more annoying right now than the one with E- a general theme these past 40 weeks that I still have not accepted! In reality, I have four more days before I am more over due with this baby than I was with E.<br />
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But this is what I wrote to all our friends and family two days after we rode in a back car of the Natural Labour Express and welcomed E into our world.<br />
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For context, what preceded this email was:<br />
1. An email I had sent a few days before saying we were sent home from the hospital and we would let everyone know when we were headed back.<br />
2. A facebook status update by my sister that she posted after we left a message on her phone telling her we had the baby. The message was broken up and she didn't hear the name correctly but she posted her incorrect guess anyway. This was how most of our close friends and family found out we were officially new parents.<br />
3. A quick email sent by Marc from the hospital the morning after the birth (because we learned the news was out via facebook). While Marc and I had named E, we had not ever written out the name or discussed the spelling before he wrote the email...</div>
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Hello Everyone! </blockquote>
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-insert big sigh-</blockquote>
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I just want to thank everyone for their support and love for us, we feel so blessed right now. Nothing like an inbox full of love to give a boost of energy; you guys are all so awesome. </blockquote>
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First, let me say that we're sorry we didn't have chance to let everyone know we were going back to the hospital- things happened very quickly and I will give a (much) more detailed account shortly. Second, we also want to apologize for the brevity of the email we sent out saying that we had the baby- we know it was lacking details and it wasn't how we wanted to inform you all. It was more of a "damage control" email. And on that note, we also want to apologize to those of you who had to find out through my little sister's facebook status instead of from us. We're really disappointed we didn't get a chance to let everyone know in our own way, but we know it was just an expression of extreme love and excitement on her part- We love you Alison, please don't feel bad. </blockquote>
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In the same vein, I've attached a few pictures that I hope aren't too big for the email. Please don't post them on facebook! or any other social networking sites. We're really not keen to have pics of our baby up online right now; when we're ready, we'll post them. Feel free to share them with people in more "old fashioned" ways though, and if you do send electronic copies via email please make sure the people who get them know not to put them up online. </blockquote>
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Ok one other thing before I get all "narrator" on you guys. We've decided to change the spelling of E's name- see it's different now :-D. Actually, we realized that if we spell it "[original announcement way]" he will be called "[a different name]" in Danish and we wanted to limit the inevitable confusion, as "[the different name]" is an entirely different name. As it is, the pronunciation is a little different between the two languages, but spelling it E makes his name much clearer to the Danes and (hopefully) limits some inevitable confusion between the phonetics of the two alphabets. So, his name is E. He gets both last names because mine is that way and the system here doesn't give any choice: the mothers last name is the baby's last name- we're happy with that though. We haven't submitted E's paperwork to the state church yet so we can do whatever we want to his name... we actually debated changing it entirely for a few minutes today, but decided we're just happy with changing the spelling. </blockquote>
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Ok so let me just start from the beginning... </blockquote>
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I started getting regular contractions on Sunday morning about 1am our time. At 8am the contractions were long enough and close enough together that we called the labour ward at the hospital and they told me to come in and get checked. We took our time getting to the hospital, we arrived about 10am. They monitored the baby and I for a half hour. Everything looked good and I was only dilated 1 centimeter. I was told I could stay if I wanted, but they thought I should go home and rest. The midwife that checked me told us to come back when my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart, so we went home (We kept you guys updated for that part :-) Sunday night I kicked butt at Spades against Marc and my mom while having pretty irregular contractions. Monday morning Marc got up and went to work because my contractions we're still very irregular and didn't seem to be getting anywhere close to a 2-3 minute frequency. Marc came home for lunch, we went for a walk, he returned to work about 1:30pm and at around 2pm everything changed for me. Suddenly, I couldn't tell when the contractions were starting or stopping; things were still varied intensity-wise but everything felt really different. I didn't want to be sent home from the hospital again (and I needed to verify with myself that I wasn't just being a drama queen) so I just kind of paced the apartment, had a snack, let my mom braid my hair and tried to wait until Marc came home from work for the day. But after an hour of that I changed my mind, called Marc to come home and we all headed to the hospital- we were checked in by 4pm and they assured me I wasn't going to be sent home again. I was at 2cm when they checked me in and reached 3cm within a half hour of being at the hospital. </blockquote>
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The first four hours of labour at the hospital I had to stay connected to a monitor and that was hard. E's heartbeat was way too high for about 2.5 of those hours; that's why I needed to be monitored. I was having a lot of pain in my back and my hips initially. The back pain was solved by our amazing midwife, Lise Lotte (sounds like Lisa-lotta), with a few injections of sterile water. She gave me heat packs, but really the only way I could control the hip pain was by swaying back and forth or sitting in "butterfly" position. We tried monitoring in both positions, standing up gave E more room and he didn't move around as much which eventually got his heart rate back into a normal range. Once the heartbeat did drop to normal, the midwife put in an internal monitor, but she wanted to make sure the heartbeat stayed low so I was still attached to the machine for awhile. Through the monitoring I did a straight hour and a half vertical, swaying back and forth and breathing through the contractions. Marc swayed with me the entire time and he was about to lay the smack down like a good labour coach and help me find a new way to solve my hip problems (because what I was doing was totally not sustainable) when the midwife said that I didn't have to be monitored continuously anymore and could get into the big bath basin if I wanted. We had been waiting to get permission to go in the basin because at home being in the bath had also relieved my hip pain. Before I got into the bath (this was just after 8pm), the midwife checked me- I was 4cm and I can honestly say I felt totally demoralized. The first four hours had been so intense, and really I hadn't progressed very much. Our midwife said that if I wasn't more dilated after being in the bath for a half hour she would want to give me oxytocin (which is what they call pitocin here) to help my contractions become more effective- that was hard for Marc and I to hear. </blockquote>
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So the first ten minutes in the basin were the worst part of labour for me. I really didn't think I was going to be able to get through the labour without having pain medication and I felt devastated. I truly didn't even want to try anymore because I didn't think I was going to be able to succeed. I remember thinking "this is why people just sign up for c-sections!" Marc gave me an amazing pep-talk, reminding me that everyone reaches the point where they think they can't do it and this was the hardest part to get through; he said a whole bunch of other wonderfully supportive things as well about how he knew I could get through it. The midwife told me that if I spent a half hour in the bath and still was not more dilated we could talk about pain relief options then. I can honestly say I didn't think Marc was right. I assumed I would end up having to get oxytocin and then need an epidural. But I resolved to suck it up for the rest of the time in the basin, and I changed the prayer in my head from "God please get this over with quickly" to "God please give me the strength to do this." Within minutes my contractions got so intense, I couldn't help but bear down. I didn't think I was supposed to let that happen, but the midwife said it was a good thing so I stopped trying to fight the contractions and let them do their (totally brutal) work. By the time my half and hour in the basin was up I was 7cm. After, I think, ten minutes more in the water, and then a double check from another midwife to confirm that the baby's head was on it's way out first and not the butt, I was 9cm. I moved from the bath to the bed. The midwife asked to give me an injection of something to help with my elasticity. I don't know what it was, but she said it wasn't a pain killer and it wouldn't affect the baby so we said ok. </blockquote>
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I don't really know how long I laboured on the delivery bed for. but it wasn't long. I was on my side the whole time. Marc held my leg up forever and every time he would switch with my mom or our midwife to get a break, I begged for him back because he did it right. It felt like forever, but I finally was allowed to push. It took me a bit and I can say that pushing out a baby is seriously the WEIRDEST experience I have ever had. In my head it was a "thing" and every time someone would say anything to me about it being a little human I needed them to stop talking to me cause I just couldn't go there mentally. I delivered Euan just before 10 pm. Everyone was so happy and overwhelmed, it took a few minutes before the midwife lifted the baby legs to see what it was. </blockquote>
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All the "aftermath" took a little bit of time. Euan hung out on my chest with one thing on his mind: boob. I was in too awkward a position to actually help him breastfeed, but I tried. Once the "clean up" was done, Marc, Euan and I were left alone for a bit. My mom left around midnight and headed back to our apartment in Brande for the night. Marc and I were in the delivery room with Euan for a few hours, with our midwife in and out. Euan did get to breastfeed and eventually they weighed and measured him. He was 3.4 kg, 51 cm long. I have yet to do the conversion from metric, but he's a little guy with a full head of hair. The midwife had Marc dress him, which was incredibly sweet to watch and also funny because the midwife had trouble giving him instructions in English. </blockquote>
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We picked the name, which happened pretty randomly just going back a forth with each other. Marc was more opinionated about what he liked and didn't like, so the story will probably eventually go that Marc really named him and I helped. I tried to get Marc to agree to giving him the middle name of "Alison" and he wasn't down. He said if I wanted something like that we could use his brother's middle name "Francis" because it was "actually a real man's middle name." I also tried to give E my middle name "Jean" It's a family name, but also my mom has been calling the baby "Eugene" after her dad for the entire pregnancy because of how close the due date was to her father's birthday. In all, the name conversation really just had us laughing pretty hard at what we could do, but eventually we settled on E because we liked the way it sounds in both English and Danish. </blockquote>
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We stayed the night at the hospital and came home yesterday afternoon. Marc is taking the rest of the week off work and maybe some days next week too. My mom is leaving Friday night and I will be sad to see her go. E is doing so well, he mostly sleeps and eats at this point (not much pooping yet :-D). We have had some time where he has been very alert and he seems to focus a lot on the photographs we have up on the wall. He really isn't too fussy and settles very quickly, especially for Marc. My mom is LOVING him because he doesn't fuss when she holds him; she keeps finding reasons to be the one that gets to hold him and I think it is so funny and sweet. I think E's sold her on being a Grandma. </blockquote>
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So that is about it. I feel indebted to the Danish system because I really don't think I would have had the same outcome in Canada. I couldn't have got through everything without Marc, my mom and Lise Lotte for sure. I feel amazed and incredibly blessed that I can say I had a natural childbirth- I really can't take credit for any of it. Truly, God made it all happen for me. </blockquote>
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SO I hope that was enough detail :-) I avoided talking about my placenta (even though I think it's really cool) so you're all welcome :-D </blockquote>
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Love you all so so much, we miss you all and can't wait for everyone to meet E. </blockquote>
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[paragraph about people setting up Skype if they wanted to chat with us]</blockquote>
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Ok, for real I'm done now. Love,<br />
Catherine (and Marc and E)</blockquote>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-51732555932683787502013-05-24T12:00:00.000-04:002013-05-27T09:24:15.070-04:00define priorityI fight against the idea that what I do defines me.<br />
It is easy to do that when I have not had a full time, life consuming, pay check earning job for nearly five years. But it is not easy to explain.<br />
I am educated as an engineer. I spend most of my time fulfilling the responsibilities of a wife/mother. I invest effort in to improving my Danish. I enjoy working on projects for my garden and house. When I have spare time, I love to write. But to say that I AM these things that I do or have done... I struggle with that.<br />
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For the last 25 weeks defining myself as only pregnant has been easy. Most of my friends (because, like, everyone I know is having babies!) are pregnant while they are something else- their full time job. For me, being pregnant is a full time job. My body just does not have the energy to do very much else on top of growing a baby. And it is not because I am physically unhealthy, I'm not. It's that in order for me to be a healthy pregnant person, I happen to require a lot more sleep than most. While I am tempted to just blame the narcolepsy, the truth is that I actually need to sleep more when I am pregnant than when I am not. The narcolepsy does make my sleeping schedule a bit more complex though.<br />
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It has been frustrating coming to terms with this idea that I am not awesome enough to just add a growing fetus to my life, unfazed. For the first four months, I couldn't keep up with the house work. I couldn't cook food. My body still tries to throw up on a regular basis, mainly when I am stressed or upset about something. Generally, this pregnancy has given me a very sensitive gag reflex alongside constant nausea. So, the thought of being pregnant while working a full time, pay cheque earning job, really just seems not fathomable. This makes me feel like a failure. If you told me when I graduated from university that I wouldn't be a career woman; that the majority of my accomplishments before I was 30 would have nothing to do with my engineering education.. I would have vehemently disagreed... I just never saw myself as I am now.<br />
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My pregnancy has highlighted the parts of my life that I am not happy with and it has done the same for my husband. It's not surprising, it is par for the course. Everything was very much up in the air when we were pregnant with E. We didn't know where we were going to live or how we were going to earn money. The questions we had to answer were easy and basic- even if the answer required an international move. This time around the questions are a lot more complicated, more emotional and harder.On top of the normal emotional complexity, I am having some bad side effects from the pregnancy hormones- mainly that they are making me a little crazy.<br />
For example, I couldn't watch E take a bath for a week because I had too much anxiety about being stranded on a life boat with him in the ocean alongside other strangers. And one of those strangers offering to hold E, but then throwing him into the ocean. I would be in a position to decide whether to jump in after him and probably fail trying to save us both, or secure my life by staying on the boat and letting E drown, alone. Seriously, it was that outrageous; that specific. Seeing him wet in the bathtub just put me over the proverbial edge; I could not breathe. And I KNEW it was crazy the entire time! but that did not help me make it not a problem. From the outside looking in, it is pretty hilarious- if you aren't me.<br />
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So this pregnancy has really been a pretty crazy ride- one that still has awhile left to it. But I am better strapped in these days, I think. I'm trying really hard not to put any extra pressure on myself. Prioritize prioritize prioritize. Asking myself regularly: what matters most to me right now? and what is the simplest way to approach it? Unfortunately, writing has not been at the top of my priority list for basically my entire pregnancy!<br />
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I wanted to put some extra time into learning Danish, so I actually went to classes at a school in Herning for the time between Christmas and Easter this year. I had to travel there three days a week which was exhausting, I am now on my "baby break,: so I should be able to use the rest of my free education after we are ready to put this new baby into <a href="http://thisclimb.blogspot.com/2012/08/today-i-start-new-way-of-life.html" target="_blank">dagplejer</a>.<br />
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Since I stopped going to school I have been putting a lot of work into the garden. Last year was our first year growing anything, and we're adding more to the line up this year.<br />
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Marc and I have also been focusing a lot of effort on our house. We have in-progress work in every room. Some is just simple reorganization, but there is also some other real construction going on. Our living room, bedroom and laundry room are all in the process of undergoing very significant changes. Projects that have come about since I have been pregnant.<br />
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And E. He started in the Danish kindergarten, børnehaven, at the start of May. We have had some ups and downs with his language. The pregnancy has obviously been affecting my relationship with him. He needs a lot of energy and attention, but he is also very confident and independent. He wants to try to do everything himself now days- how do you say no to that?<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-89001932074416298922013-05-21T06:52:00.000-04:002013-05-21T06:53:37.160-04:00you know if you know<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgftDpd8GhKCviyxPF5MqyVYyWzWkJJe_dmTfU7zh0lzZEV0tc0QpziB4Vn0lXDzv-BCqf6qqkgu4xyBX1dqJtCwMcUwEY8cu-EdsY_izMTQccD6RWruFRwIcaTi9m0FN6FkcdUXQ627K8/s1600/dad+skiing+pic+for+poem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="I wasn't sure where to start today and then my breath was lost, pulled away from inside my chest by empathy and insight by a life laid down to rest a moment passes where words have no meaning and the only sound that matters is the fact that you are breathing the frail balance between life and not life that you have until you don't the shock is too much there is not even pain just a huge gap of "this should have been" it's not about fair or just or secure it's a moment where you know this is not what we were made for we live like we're not walking a fine line all the time turning our backs on this huge chasm that replaced the true source of life because it is not about when or how you fall but that you will there are chances in life where you can glance over the edge because someone you held to is gone and it breaks you, remakes you into one who knows a pain that screams the meaning of life a message we are too deaf to hear too numb to understand our evolution for survival to live with hope and purpose is to ignore the truth of death yet heed the lessons the disonance of our life, separated you know the sound if you know" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgftDpd8GhKCviyxPF5MqyVYyWzWkJJe_dmTfU7zh0lzZEV0tc0QpziB4Vn0lXDzv-BCqf6qqkgu4xyBX1dqJtCwMcUwEY8cu-EdsY_izMTQccD6RWruFRwIcaTi9m0FN6FkcdUXQ627K8/s1600/dad+skiing+pic+for+poem.jpg" height="443" title="" width="640" /></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-16863408212726587722013-02-21T04:22:00.001-05:002013-02-21T04:24:00.207-05:00danglishI have always wanted to raise children that spoke more than one language. It is one of those things from the moment I was aware it was possible that I just felt would improve my life. Language is so basic and yet so powerful. It only made sense to me, even as a young child, that knowing more than one language would be a good idea. Growing up in the US is a disadvantage for a child who desires to be a polyglot. I can remember looking at my life, my parents divorce, my after school time filled with so many other things and automatically turning the hope of mastering more than one language from myself into hope my future children would have this amazing opportunity that I didn't have. It was just an idea, not a goal, and I never recognized it to be anything more than that.<br />
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Sometimes ideas become a reality without doing anything to actively make them happen.<br />
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E is 2.5 now. He is has a very athletic body. He loves to jump. He has a physical ability beyond his age. He has always been a physical kid and never a communicative one. Now days, he communicates, but not like any other 2 year old child I have ever met. His English vocabulary is at least 100 words. His Danish vocabulary is probably matching, but I don't know for sure because he doesn't speak Danish directly to me. He will start or end his sentences with recognizable words from one of the languages, but the middle is this hilarious language that he has made up himself. E's language is essentially the equivalent of someone saying "blah blah blah blah" but with proper inflections because to him, it has meaning.<br />
Marc came home from work the other day and E had a story to tell him. He used his hands as he spoke. "Daddy! sadada dada luh buh luh luh, sadada more! Oh suuh lu de da duh da sa more." It was as if he was saying "I was enjoying the fruit I was eating, so I wanted more! And then I went into the kitchen and ate I more." But I don't know what he actually said, except that he used the word "more" twice.<br />
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I am not sure if this is what E thinks language is. He is exposed regularly to at least four different languages, so it could be that he thinks everyone just makes up sounds as they feel. It's also possible that while his head is full of a Danish and English words to say, his mouth is just not capable of forming those words yet. Or, he knows something should go in there, but doesn't know what exactly so he just fills in the blanks with noise- similar to how, when I speak Danish, I will just stick in the English word in a sentence if I don't know the Danish one. I don't really know whats going on, but I am thoroughly entertained.<br />
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I honestly have done zero research on raising a child that speaks more than one language. This is actually not normal for me as a parent. But, for whatever reason, I am passive about it. I care about other things more, probably because my dream for my child is being fulfilled. I am content to sit and watch as he grows up with two languages in his head. I am content to laugh, smile and nod as if I understand all these sounds that are nonsensical to me. It clearly makes complete sense to him and I don't want to discourage any verbal communication. I hope one day he can explain it to me, even a little, what it is like to grow up learning two languages at once. I would love to know what is going on in his head right now.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-13032148957230607202013-01-15T07:18:00.002-05:002013-05-21T07:02:05.465-04:00miscarriage is alright."Didn't you feel like this was inevitable though?"<br />
"No. What do you mean?"<br />
"I just had the feeling, since we went to Chicago, that this was going to happen."<br />
"Why didn't you say anything to me about it?!"<br />
"I didn't want to be that negative voice bringing you down."<br />
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I don't remember what my response was, but I certainly remember feeling like my best friend (at the time), Jon, had truly done me a disservice by not being open with me. We were discussing my miscarriage that just happened days before. I was 11.5 weeks- days away from finishing my first trimester. In my tenth-ish week, Jon, Marc and I had taken a quick trip from Toronto back to my hometown outside of Chicago. While we were there, we gathered with a pretty large group of close friends and family who inevitably found out about my pregnancy. It is one of those conundrums that plagues you when you don't live near all of the people you love: You have the opportunity to let them know big news in person and you roll with it, even though there are risks involved. During that weekend, every time I made mention of the fact that I was not through the first trimester and could, of course, miscarry, I was shut down. Every time I asked my friends and family not to get too excited, I was told that I was being negative. I was told not to look at things so pragmatically. I should be excited. I don't hold this sentiment against these people- they were ecstatic and wanted to be excited for Marc and I. It is good advice for life in general- look on the bright side. But, the irony of the situation was that, essentially in the week leading up to the miscarriage, I truly emotionally invested myself in the pregnancy. Then I started bleeding.<br />
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I grieved harder because I let my guard down. But, Marc and I were not alone in mourning our loss. It was a loss of an idea more than anything. And through that trip, we had inadvertently created a large network of support for ourselves to lean on while we experienced our sorrow. The support helped us get through the grief.<br />
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The other part that helped was how I felt during the miscarriage:<br />
I opted to have a "natural" miscarriage, which involved about twelve hours of significant pain and physical submission to my uterus as it rid itself of the growth it had hosted. I could have stayed in the hospital and had them take it out for me, but it wasn't what I wanted at the time. As I laid on an old mattress on the floor of our bedroom, uncontrollably crying out from the pain for hours, the only thought that kept running through my mind, over and over, was "this is preparation." My mind was so separate from my body, the words were so soothing... the source of it was clearly outside of me because I was turmoil. During the miscarriage itself, I had perspective on the experience like nothing before in my life. I understood the true purpose of what was going on at an incredibly deep level. It is one of the events in my life that I look to now as confirmation of the God I believe in. Of course I couldn't hold on long to that perspective afterwards. Marc and I grieved the loss of our plans for the future pretty hard. I think the worst part was the months after it though. They were filled with waiting to find out if we would have to go through another one.<br />
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Now my perspective on miscarriage is very interesting. Having gone through one, I researched them to an unhealthy degree. The doctors tell you that you didn't do anything wrong and you couldn't have changed the outcome, but they don't explain why and you don't really believe them anyway. I believe them now. I touched on the science in my <a href="http://thisclimb.blogspot.com/2012/11/this-is-picture-of-embryo-my-husband.html">What makes human life?</a> post. When you read about miscarriage, you find out that it happens a lot. A lot of women you know have had a miscarriage, but you probably can't name most of them. Miscarriage happens so frequently, that the general advice from society about how to reveal your pregnancy is "Don't tell anyone you are pregnant until you've past those first 12 weeks." But it's this encouraged secrecy that makes people, like Marc and I, feel like they have failed and are alone.<br />
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People who have miscarriages don't normally talk about it with other people. Marc and I say that is CRAP because we felt alone and we don't want that to happen for other people. We are so open with the people in our lives, that even if they didn't ever know we were pregnant that first time, they know now and they know how it ended. We're not shy about it- even though it is an awkward thing to talk about for other people. They don't know how to respond. But when we talk about it, we give it the reverence that a transformative life experience like it deserves and make it clear we never felt like our world was coming to an end. It is a discussion that has helped other people and never hurt anyone. Miscarriage is a big deal to the people going through it at the time, but it shouldn't be something remarkable to any one else because it is incredibly common. It should be considered part and parcel in the course of a thing called pregnancy. Like how sometimes, in baseball, a batter strikes out. Sucks for the batter, but it isn't headline news the next morning.<br />
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So I'm in my ninth week of the third pregnancy of my life. I am sick and exhausted a lot of the time. My morning-sickness, or baby-sick as I like to call it, hits me in the middle of the night. Right when I can't sleep. The hormones in my brain are making my impulsive thoughts pretty hilarious. And basically every acquaintance I have here in Denmark now knows I am pregnant. We let people congratulate us. We tell everyone it is early, and we tell everyone if things don't work out, Marc and I will be alright. We know this because we have been through the experience. But, I dream of a society where people know they will be alright if they ever experience a miscarriage because of the other people that have lived through it and freely shared their experiences. A society where miscarriage isn't whispered about, but discussed honestly. People's eyes shouldn't bug out when someone admits to having a miscarriage- seriously, that is the most common reaction I see. While miscarriage is a devastating experience, it is also a beautiful part of life. An awe inspiring symptom of the complex design called human.<br />
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Telling people to keep their joy about their pregnancy to themselves because it might turn into tragedy is backwards. It hurts the people who end up experiencing tragedy, it isolates them. For what purpose? It doesn't make experiencing a miscarriage any easier, it just allows everyone else to stay ignorant of a reality and not be inconvenienced with something "sad to hear".<br />
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If I miscarry in this pregnancy, I will grieve, I will write, and I will let everyone know when we are alright.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-7658564790965686682012-12-23T12:00:00.000-05:002012-12-23T12:00:03.451-05:00the sex knot - part 3Here is <a href="http://thisclimb.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-sex-knot-part-1.html">Part 1</a> and <a href="http://thisclimb.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-sex-knot-part-2.html">Part 2</a>.<div>
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So now that I have elaborated about my view of the responsibilities that come alongside having a healthy relationship with sex, I feel more comfortable eventually delving into the two major current debates that I have been having with various Christians over the past year: gay marriage and abortion. I don't write this to convert anyone to my side of thinking. As a debater, my biggest issue is that I understand where the people that disagree with me are coming from (because I have been them), and so I don't take a stand and say "this is my opinion." Normally I say "well this is the other side that disagrees with what you're saying." I actually believe that if God's will can be identified in any of this, it is the will that both sides be represented enough to have the struggle. Will it reach an inevitable conclusion? If we look at the past to arguments that have been similar, like slavery, racism, misogyny- we're still working them out all over the world, so I would say, not until Jesus returns.</div>
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But anyway, in my view, both the debates on gay rights and pro-life/pro-choice actually come to debates about sex. This may seem surprising because no one ever actually mentions sex itself, the closest people come is talking about babies. Just like in regular life, actually talking about sex open and honestly is avoided. I believe this is because people have had no practice and are not comfortable discussing sex with other people. It always gets awkward. Thus, my emphasis on understanding the sex knot in our brains and passing that information on as open and honestly as possible, first to those closest to us that require the benefit. If we want these debates to progress beyond where they are at, we have to raise the level of dialogue. We have to get to the root of the issue. We have to be more open and honest about what we all think about sex. Eventually, we have to own our opinions about sex and share them with people who don't know us very well.</div>
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Why don't we share what we think about sex now? Why don't we struggle through the awkwardness? It's because on the other side of the awkwardness is the threat of judgement. Even now, as I write these words, a part of my mind is wondering who is going to look down on me for them. For my culture, where I come from, I squarely place blame for this on the church- it's all tied up in their history. I have a general understanding of how following Jesus became a legalistic and judgment based religion, which I think would be helpful to share. Note that I am presenting this in an incredibly simplified manner, and also, there is definitely a strong bias towards the Anabaptist perspective.</div>
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The first Christians were Jewish. They were Jews that believed Jesus was The Messiah. At the time, there were people who followed other men that were not Jesus, but were also claiming to be The Messiah. When those "messiahs" died, so did their movements. This did not happen with Jesus, in fact the inverse happened, (arguably) because of His resurrection. Soon after Jesus walked the earth, He revealed to the disciples that followed him: not only was he the Messiah for the Jews but for the rest of the world as well! This is when the Jewish Christians started falling out of favour with the other Jews, because they were mixing with people who were "unclean." Then the Christians started falling out of favour with the Romans (who are ruling) because Ceaser was supposed to be their god, and no matter what way you slice it they couldn't recognize him as such. So for about 300 years being identified as a Christian meant people would probably try to kill you. But then, Constantine is the Roman Emperor and he becomes a Christian! The problem is being a ruler of an empire (which is always in a battle to conquer land or defend it) alongside following the way of Jesus makes you a huge hypocrite and threatens the existence of your Empire. But, if the Christians could reconcile this problem then they could stop being murdered!</div>
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How could Constantine be a Christian AND an Emperor? Enter Augustine. Augustine was probably not the first person to twist around Jesus' words such that it was suddenly OK to kill people in His name, but Augustine is certainly the most famous first person to do it. People still quote Augustine's writings today, his logic (especially when it comes to war) is still held as sound. Now the church had a place of power, and with it they exerted control. The church formed opinions on lots of different things which they implemented like laws. So from Jesus, the Man who said no human (aside from himself) is in a righteous enough position to judge another human; the Man whose main adversaries are the Pharisees (Jews that care more about following the letter of the law than understanding its intention); the Man who gave us the new commandment: to love God above all else and then to love others as we love ourselves... In Jesus' name the church turns into a judgemental, legalistic, institution of persecution. And the biggest legalism they fixate on is sexual purity.</div>
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I'm talking pre-protestant reformation still. The biggest authorities on sex were people who had vowed never to have sex! This can <u>only</u> produce ignorance. Then the protestant reformation happens. The reformation was essentially a whole bunch of Christians saying "Dear Church, you are so judgemental you can't even follow your own rules. We're leaving- you're now the Catholics. Peace out." And then those new Protestants were like "OK people, this is the RIGHT way to judge other people." So while the new Protestants reformed a lot of the legalism that had been introduced into following Jesus, they kept a lot of it too. Including the sexual purity stuff. So, now days, while it might be fine in certain denominations for a leader of a church to have a wife and engage in sex (WHAT?!), we still hold to these ideas that were made up by the early church in order to control sex and a lot of Christians still use these ideas to pass judgement on other people- including hypothetical ones. </div>
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I understand where the ideas of sexual purity come from in the bible- and I'm not trying to say they are wrong. The bible is a tool, used so that one can connect with God. It's not a weapon to be used to cut other people down. The problem I have is that people hold on to sexual purity so tightly that they let go of other ideas Jesus spent way more of his teachings on. Imagine if Christians cared as much about controlling urges to judge people as they do about controlling urges to have sex with people. Or as much about taking care of the poor. We would live in a different world.</div>
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<b>*A note on my lack of sources: </b></div>
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If you are curious about something I have said, feel free to message me or leave a comment. My opinions and ideas have been formed over years of study, so right now I just have a list of the general major influences that have created these thoughts. The things I present as fact are things that were presented as fact to me, and then sat in my head for a long time- this is only my perspective, only how I see the world. If you want to know more about where my perspective comes from check out:</div>
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<a href="http://www.themeetinghouse.com/">www.themeetinghouse.com</a></div>
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<a href="http://ntwrightpage.com/">ntwrightpage.com</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/">www.religioustolerance.org</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5-7&version=KJV">and Matthew 5,6 and 7 of your favourite biblical translation (also known as Jesus' Sermon on the Mount)</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910037889389597387.post-71822195833846351182012-12-12T06:23:00.001-05:002012-12-20T14:05:03.566-05:00the sex knot - part 2If you have't read<a href="http://thisclimb.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-sex-knot-part-1.html"> Part 1</a>, start there.<br />
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Why do we have sex knots in our brains? the answer to that question is almost as complex as our knots themselves. We could be quick to point a finger at religions and claim they are the problem, but that is an oversimplification. The problem is legalism, or the making of rules, in situations where rules alone shouldn't be made. I was just listening to <a href="http://www.themeetinghouse.com/teaching/archives/2012/the-gift-of-love/"> this sermon, From Moses to Jesus,</a> and the ever-wise Bruxy Cavey said something to the effect of: rules exist where there is either a lack of love or a lack of maturity. When you have both love and maturity, you don't need rules because you desire within yourself, within your heart, to follow the ideas that the rules would give you.<br />
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Maturity and love are both things that are achieved through understanding. If all we can understand is the physical effect sex has on us and we never look at the emotional affects. If we never try to unravel our sex knot, then we can't have love or maturity in our relationship with sex. And we most definitely can not pass the ability of having love and maturity in our relationship with sex on to anyone else. So we are left with rules. Rules we have given to ourselves and rules that we project on to other people. Rules that we can use as a check list when we're trying to decide something that involves sex.<br />
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Healthy sex is easily achieved within a healthy monogamous relationship because there is maturity, trust and love in place. In a healthy relationship, the emotional attachment to the person is healthy- it is mature, it is full of love. You want to show the person you are with that you love and care for them, so you demonstrate it by making healthy decisions when it comes to sex. You have a healthy relationship with a person and by benefit you obtain a healthy relationship with sex itself. This is the reason why the idea of only having sex after you have entered marriage is encouraged. This is the reason religions have come up with the rule. They assume a marriage is a healthy relationship between two people, and so they can assume that those two people together can achieve a healthy idea of what sex is and how it should be used.<br />
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There are two problems that are ignored when spouting the idea. The first, obviously, being that just because two people are married, it doesn't mean they have a healthy relationship, and it's quite possible within their relationship that sex is being used as a weapon, as leverage... any number of bad things.<br />
The bigger problem, I think, is that the context of the healthy relationship with the idea of sex is incredibly limited. If a person achieves their healthy relationship with sex as a consequence of being in a healthy monogamous relationship, they can't automatically explain to someone not in a healthy monogamous relationship how to have a healthy relationship with the idea of sex. With lots of things in life I like to do what I call "the teenager test." I think about how I would explain something to a teenager, a person smart enough to understand but without enough life experience to really know anything. You have to make them believe what you are saying and why you are saying it, otherwise they will just have to learn by building up their own experiences. In this case, if I only understand a healthy relationship with sex as combined with a marriage relationship (or equivalent), the only thing I can say to a teenager for guidance of how to have a healthy relationship with sex is to say "wait until you have what I have." To a teenager, who is filled with hormones, curiosity and no real concept of time relative to life, this is a failure.</div>
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We know it is a failure because studies show that teenager who get abstinence only sex education do not refrain from sex any more than teenagers with other types of sex education. It fails because people don't understand why they should wait. And no one is helping them maneuver the questions that follow the command. The irony you come to realize growing up is that all the adults that are telling you to wait: they didn't wait. Yes there are exceptions, but those people are normally much more expressive about their personal experiences. When you tell someone to wait, you have to elaborate. You have to share your experiences that brought you to the conclusion. You have to unravel your sex knot and lay it out for their benefit. Even if you didn't wait. Even if you are just saying it because you're looking at your kid going "when did you turn 12?! I am so uncomfortable talking to you about sex!" They have to understand why, otherwise they will dive in head first with the physical part of sex and realize the emotional consequences after the fact.</div>
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As a teenager, what I needed most was an honest, in depth and personal explanation of why a healthy relationship with the idea of sex should have been one of my top priorities as a developing person. Even if that came from a text book, it would have made an impact. I was missing an entire aspect of my understanding about sex. I needed someone to give me a map and mark out some landmarks for me. I needed someone to say "you know the fact that you grew up without regular affection from your father has made you more emotionally vulnerable to any male that is willing to give you affection." But of course when it comes to talking to a teenager about sex, the prevailing argument is that it is irresponsible to give any kind of information that doesn't make sex look like a horrible thing. I reject this argument based solely on its simplicity and lack of context. Plus, the fact that the media has done an amazing job of explaining to children since before they can talk why sex is not a horrible thing.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvU6yu0fBkYAm6Z2EjTpw-b5YHvt76_iodXdvPWbON62kC3hJbDIrhWmKIFi80DpmF9euNjOH_o4p0FxW6tB0TMYD3Nb3Ru-CGHyFfwGYICSGTWe-7BG71cy-_WEQsPfHDVcsBbcpf1Ug/s1600/sex+knot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvU6yu0fBkYAm6Z2EjTpw-b5YHvt76_iodXdvPWbON62kC3hJbDIrhWmKIFi80DpmF9euNjOH_o4p0FxW6tB0TMYD3Nb3Ru-CGHyFfwGYICSGTWe-7BG71cy-_WEQsPfHDVcsBbcpf1Ug/s1600/sex+knot.jpg" height="180" width="200" /></a><a href="http://hercules.gcsu.edu/~jswinton/ECON%204990/The%20Effects%20of%20Sex%20Education%20on%20Teen%20Sexual%20Activity%20and%20Teen%20Pregnancy.pdf">This study</a> (<i>The Journal of Political Economy</i>'s The Effects of Sex Education on Teen Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy) looks at the relationship between access to sexual education and sexual activity in teenagers from the 1970's. In the theory section, it says that "rational individuals become sexually active at the first age at which the perceived benefits from sex exceed the perceived costs." The map of my sex knot, the one I lay out to the next generation, is going to highlight the emotional costs of an unhealthy relationship with sex. I am assuming the kids will not have trouble figuring out the physical aspects on their own, so physically, the focus will be on using protection ALWAYS. The emotional side of things is what the sex knot is all about. It's easy to have sex, it's much more difficult to understand the effect sex has on you. Some people can handle the emotional effects, but many people don't understand what they are doing to themselves. Most people can't identify whether the sex they want to have is healthy or not. And society (read: the parent) doesn't help by just giving a single, limited context rule. We have to do better than that. And we do better not because it will help people follow our rules, but because it allows for love and maturity instead of rules.</div>
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