Freelancing....Freefalling...

I think I am close to a solution.

Now of course, my mind thinks of the wonderful Eddie Izzard skit where he's talking about Heimlich discovering his maneuver ("I hev discovered a manouuuveer...!") and I smile. I don't know if anyone reading this has ever listened to Eddie (some of you MUST have - his genius infiltrates like April rain...) but if you haven't, I would highly suggest going out and buying all of the things he's ever done, immediately. His comedy will brighten up your life.

Anyway, I digress.

My little brain is working overtime...scheming...coming up with a plan. I always have to have a plan. I write at least sixty words per minute - more if I'm on a roll or thinking of something, and thank goodness, because my mind is just whirring right now.

I figure this is how it's going to go: I have a couple of art commissions already set up. That's good. Additionally, I am already a freelancer on oDesk. Additionally, I think I will be setting up with elance.com as well. My office is almost completely sorted out - we even built the filing cabinet the other day - how exciting ey! My wonderful Dad is paying for a lovely website I can't use for lack of time. I have all of these resources at my disposal - I just need to make a break for it.

You know it's so exciting though! Okay, so the car insurance getting paid is a slight worry, as are all the other bills, but at the same time, I feel like I'm a POW trapped underground, looking out of the bars of my captivity at the edge of the compound and the thick jungle beyond that I might have a chance of fading into... I've been sawing through the bars ever so slowly with a nail file and it's taken me so long, but now, if I chose, I could pop out each of the bars and shimmy through on my belly while the guards are sleeping... I wouldn't have any food, that is true, but necessity breeds invention as they say, so perhaps...just perhaps...

There are so many things I want to do. There are so many ways I am inspired. I could explode if these chains weren't binding my body up. I could explode into a giant supernova of creativity. Pow! POW!! Creative writing allows me to use two exclamation marks, so I will.

Maybe soon, I can be the one running across the dusty ground of the camp, with my eyes on the dense undergrowth, adrenaline pounding in my arteries...hoping not to get shot down...

Moral Obligations...

Well. I had to put this down because I had a bit of an "epiphany" this morning while drinking coffee. That isn't usually the time of day I have epiphanies - too early usually - but perhaps it was the decent night's sleep, coupled with the half-dream I still found myself in, standing in the kitchen, that led me to this realization.

You see, I was trying to figure out why H didn't jump up and say "YES! I know what you mean!" in enthusiasm when I told him I could no longer work where I work and wanted to find a different job. I thought "surely, he is on this journey with me, he will understand", and while he did seem to see where I was coming from, the reasons behind my decision did not seem to strike him as so important. I couldn't work out why that was.



I realized this morning though, that his perception of this experience has been profoundly different than mine. While he watched me almost die, and felt that pain acutely, and had that be an awful experience for him (I can hardly imagine being that scared for him - it must have been absolutely frightening and horrible) I was the one who almost died. But I don't say that for sympathy, or "my situation was so much worse" because as someone said on TV last night ("House" - a show I love but almost never get to watch because I am constantly working), it's a lot easier to die than it is to watch someone die.



But how true. It's true - it's not hard to die. I know that. You just lay there, and they put a lot of morphine in you, and you're so high that you are living for the moment - you just exist in that piece of time, right then, without worrying about your appearance. I bled all over the floor in the evening and it just seemed inconvenient and I felt bad for the nurses who had to clean up. There was a crash cart outside my room - I had no idea - it didn't seem important. All of the drips and wires and the heart monitor, and the blood dripping into me weren't hard to cope with. I could have died easily. Just faded out and that would have been that. Not hard at all really.

But being lucid and having to cope with all of that and almost losing your girl as well as your daughter, all at once...that would be something. That would affect you differently, wouldn't it? Make you more insecure about things? Sadder for a while at least, right?

But I...having almost died, have been left with a different emotional legacy. All of a sudden, all of the injustice in the world has been amplified. Once you've nearly died, people who don't "get" what they are doing to others in this life, or who treat their own with callous disregard suddenly become shaded in a different color - ignorant of the facts. It's easy to die...frighteningly easy. Nobody is immune from that...believe me.



So now, here in the present, I live. I can't waste time any more. I no longer have time for bullshit. Honestly, that is the way it's changed me. No time for trivial crap that means nothing. You want a report in by 8am - sure, I'll do it, but if my kid needs comforting in the night instead, you'd better believe I'm going to be by his or her side instead of doing the report, because the report is trivial then. Fire me for it? Sure - go ahead - but you are one sad, sad person for doing so. Now, if I want the weekend off and I have everything in place for it, you'd better believe I'll take it. I am very, VERY tired of working so very hard so that others up the chain of command can sit in luxury houses, "fat and happy" as they say, in designer suits. Money like that doesn't mean thing to me but - hello - I am human (and so are others in my position) and I deserve to be treated as a human being. If you won't do it, I will. My children and my family need me.

I do not understand micromanagement any more either. How, in my job, we are managed as though we have no brains in our heads. Quite honestly I don't know how anyone puts up with it. Someone "up there" clearly has too much time on their hands. I wish I did....but we are only given one day off a week where I'm at. Priorities...priorities.



So, like a new butterfly of whatever color, I am crawling out of the chrysalis of corporate America. I'm high in a tree, getting ready to let go. My colors are changing from black to mauve...orange...pink...purple... Immorality has had me trapped like a giant spider, hugging me to her... I've stuck the spider in the chest now, and off she falls, together with her fat profits and her disregard for the people in her care. As a company, you are supposed to be a Noah. The people in your company ought to be the people in his ark. I'm not Christian but I have read the bible and I know what it says, and what it means.

The voices of people telling me to labor on regardless because "a job is just a job" are fading...I can feel the wind in my ears and the spring air smells so sweet. I can see something I believe in and I think I can fly toward it. I wonder, who are all these other chrysalises beside me? Could it be that there are others who feel the same as I do? Come with me, people - do the right thing for your lives...free yourselves.



You're smarter than they want you to believe. Make a plan and follow through. You only have one life - that saying is so, so clear now.

Joyous Dream...

Oh...I had the most joyous dream last night. Joyous is about the only word I can use to describe it because that is how I felt in the dream.

I cannot remember the last time I felt really joyous - I do know it was over six months ago though. That wonderful feeling where your heart leaps in your chest and your head feels all giddy - it's the most amazing sensation, isn't it? Joy?

So, in my dream there was a baby... She had such dark hard, black really, and I knew she was my daughter. But not Josie. Josie's picture was in my hand - one of my favorite ones, the one where she's laying in H's arms and looks just asleep. Black and white. Not this other little girl, in color and alive with a twinkle in her eye in front of me.

I held my other girl and I felt so much joy in my heart. She looked a little different than Josie - almost more like me, but with differences still. She was growing in my dream. Her hair got longer and remained dark, until toward the end of my dream, which was completely taken up with holding her, it reached over her eyes, shading them a little, and I said "oh, my baby girl!" and laughed at her, and she smiled at me. Oh, she was gorgeous in my dream.

That dream I had to write down, because I tell you, it is the first one I remember since losing Josie that has been truly happy. The very first one! Easter Sunday. Past Ostara, yes, and just two days past the six month mark or losing Josie. Maybe, just maybe, it signals a turning in the tides.

It's about time I began to believe in the significance of dreams, or of anything else, for that matter. I've been down in the underworld for a while. My head is popping out of the soil, now, I think. Perhaps I can raise my earthy arms and pull myself out the rest of the way...

Shaking off the Dust...

It's funny. Strange: funny, not hilarious: funny - when something bad happens, I think the best of us temporarily gain slightly bad habits to make ourselves feel as though we are in control. I tentatively suggest that even the most foll-of-zen Buddhist Monk might err on the side of something less than perfect for a while if his monastery were burned to the ground by violent guerrillas.

It is one thing to feel these negative emotions inside oneself, though, and another to spread vile hatred and bitterness across the world as a reaction. Now, the aforementioned Monk probably would not start beating other Monks up as a result (very unlikely) but would instead spend some time in very deep meditation to deal with the emotions raised by the monastery burning. He would get back in touch with himself - bring himself back together in the quiet.

That's something, though, that we lack as a mainstream culture though, isn't it? There is something profoundly different about taking sober, thoughtful time to reconnect with one's soul, and going out for a "relaxing" drink at the end of the work week.

The former is healing; the latter is a medication. The former demands that we take the time to face our fears like other beings, sitting in front of us, feeling the fear we feel, but sitting there face to face anyway, because it is the only way we can truly purge them from ourselves.

The latter does not demand that we face our fears, though we do sometimes think we face them, at the height of a drunken argument with our friend or spouse or partner. But becoming inebriated on any substance does not require us to create reasonable thought, or a reasonable chain of thought. Therefore, trying to sort out fears that grip us while sober, when drunk, is not an option. It might feel good to be completely without a care and in the tender proverbial arms of a bottle of wine, but at the end of it all, you sober up and find your fears have become larger, and started growing mold during your night out...

Smoking pot can be a terribly enlightening experience when you don't have any worries - sure, it can open up doors in your mind that lead to beautiful conversations and greater understanding. But when straight, it can be almost impossible to remember with clarity the conversations had. When straight, the fears return. Pot is not a good way of coping. Pot hides the hurt - hides it in a very pretty disguise, yes, but when it's time to put the joint down, the pain comes crashing in like the rising tide. Rest assured that if you've smoked before, the door opening effects of the plant never do go away - but if you're smoking to cope, you're not doing yourself any favors.

I've seen both of the above so many times in people I have been very close to. Some of them I am still close to - but others fell into the grip of something even worse than the problems they had to begin with, and they just didn't come back. Ever.

How scary - facing your fears in soberness. It IS scary. Yes, it is. Keeping my heartbeat under control when I pick up another piece of maternity clothing I forgot to put away is near impossible, because picking up the fabric comes with the sober thought "my baby - she was my baby and I loved her, and I love her". Finding the pair of baby socks I put in my underwear drawer deliberately always comes hand in hand with the memory of the texture of Josie's little feet, identical to mine in every way except size. Sometimes, remembering some of the memories I made while pregnant with Josie - the ones I forgot to remember before - feels like pushing my hands through lava. The next time I remember them though, they just make my eyes well up. In ways such as these, things get better.

Some of the best times - the best things I have done for my own soul recently, have been in silence, by myself, with perhaps a candle lit and some music on. Immersing myself in the soul of Josie, I suppose you could say. It's so large and so tangible, her soul. She lives in the space between Harry and I still, but has become this beautiful decorated, embroidered Indian shawl that is wrapped around the waist of both of us. An adornment of beauty now.

I miss her, and sometimes I break down. But I don't take percocet or alcohol or anything like that, ever. I wrap myself up in a blanket and fight the depression with a sword and armor, like my namesake, Jeanne d'Arc. I'm not her. But I can put on her armor and weild her sword in my mind and tell the sadness that I simply will not surrender to it.

I take herbs and vitamins, and try to eat healthily; I am strong because I choose to be. Anyone can be strong. You very rarely get killed by your own fears, so why not choose to dive into them and cast them off you like a mantle of ice? Life is like this: it's messy, it's very real; it's about what is going on now, not later - if you spend all your present time not facing anything, putting all the stuff away and being intoxicated in any way, there's no guarantee you will even have a "later" to bring it back out again. Stop hating yourself so much. Start spending time with yourself; taking care of yourself.

So, breathe, and get out your walking boots, and just start walking up the hill.

Changing Times...

I am scheming.

Yes, I am. I have to admit it.

I'm going to include some pictures in this post, to show what there is in the world to appreciate that so many of us don't get to even see. Ever. Even if we live around the corner from them. You can touch these rocks, rivers, stones, creatures...they're REAL! But are the lives we weave? How real are they? What are we basing them on?



After last week's PMS related breakdown in which I decided to go (and did) to Wal Mart after work simply to buy a new outfit to wear in the car on the way home (related to the conversation with H I had in which I told him I felt like "a member of the Borg"), I decided this weekend to go on a little job hunt.

It's bad enough when you dread almost every minute of your day, because you know in your heart that it's almost impossible to achieve what the company wants without devoting yourself, heart and soul to it (in manner of evil minion) - but quit another thing when it gets to the point at which you are burning inside your dress code so much that you have to run and spend $40 just to feel like a free woman in your own car. On a sunny day, I might add.



There will come a time soon, yes...very soon, where I no longer have to get up in the morning and fear my occupation. You see, the post earlier in the year about the company...it hasn't changed in my mind. It's become clearer. The lack of tangible compassion in some corporations is very acute. The orders are sent down from the highest levels and followed. The highest levels don't follow up on whether their orders produce human tragedy or ill health of any kind - simply on the issue of profit and whether their orders generated any more. Unless there's a lawsuit, they can ignore the rest and sleep at night.

There's a lot of compassion in the lower ranks, yes, and an awful lot of people I admire, respect and care for. Nobody means to be uncaring...but caring is not just something you feel, it's something you do. There's a good passage in Steven King's "The Green Mile" where Paul Edgecombe is talking about executing John Coffey, and asks what he can say to his God upon reaching the entrance to Heaven - that is was his "job" to kill the miracle that the God had created? Where does the "job" end, and the "human" begin, anyway? There ought to be a line there, in the sand, or the grass, or the concrete - wherever you are in your life, but for some reason, people forget that... Gosh people, why?

In the end, nobody in the position I held is humanly capable of doing everything "properly" anyway. It wasn't just me. I just wanted to be good when really, the goals are out of reach for even the best of us.



Now I am not saying I am resentful - no - but I have to be realistic. The above is the truth - and in turn, I cannot keep working for the company. I have given them more than they could ever repay with all of the profits they could make in a hundred years. I'm not the only one. Therefore I need to cut loose.

This weekend, I did some things to help myself! And while I keep them a mystery for now, let me just say that on this rainy Monday morning, I see the sun streaming through the drops even if no-one else can. It's going to be raining all day, apparently - but my mind is clear for the first time in so long!


So here I am...I am taking off my uniform...I am letting go...if nothing else, this will all end up in an explosion of excellent painting! Like a child with a great big chocolate bar in front of it, I am very excited about the prospect of devouring this new existence I have before me...



(One thing related to a child eating chocolate is that yesterday, D ate an entire Nestle bar, ran over to his Grandmas to give her a birthday hug and a card he'd made, and ended up throwing the chocolate all back up upon entering her front door. Poor baby...one day we'll laugh about it: "Happy Birthday Grandma.....bleuuurgh..!" - and the other time with the bowl of candy at Halloween (which I wrote about last year) but for now, we'll just give him some more clothes and a cuddle!)

Holding Babies...

This is a bit of an ode to my friend, Jill. She thinks I am brave. I think she is braver than me.

See, I didn't choose what I went through. It was thrust upon me and I had to go through it, like it or not. I had the make the choices when it came to how I recovered, that is true - but not to lose Josie or any of that. I am not brave to have lost my child - no, I am not. I don't think I took it any differently than my nature, which is honest, but not necessarily always brave, I don't think.

But Jill - now Jill is a different story.

Jill and her husband wanted to have a baby for eight years before they finally became pregnant with their gorgeous little girl, C. She had to endure eight years of playfully dressing up her dog before she finally got to dress up her daughter (which, I may add, she does very well!). She had to bravely endure eight years of trying and trying, without the funds for any kind of medical help, and just kept going. And you know what? She remained a nice person throughout. That's eight years: I have seen people become bitter, jaded, within three years. Jill didn't. She humbly took her lot and just kept plodding along.

When I met her, Jill really didn't believe she could get pregnant for whatever reason. I told her "Jill, there's something in the water around here" - since I was already pregnant with Josie and there had been several other pregnancies at our workplace. She took that with a pinch of salt.

A few weeks later, she took a pregnancy test (without salt) and got two lines. She came into the store, waving the stick at me in astonishment and I'll tell you what, I was elated for her. Everybody was!

Now fast forward to October, and me, sitting at the front of a funeral home, in my black turtleneck and my black pants, doped to the gills on as little percocet as I could get away with, using H as a crutch to brace he pain of my cesarean incision which was three days fresh. My daughter lay in her little white box under her soft blankets at the front of the room and my tears lay and fell down my cheeks into the pile of tissues I had in my lap and onto H's hand as he held mine.

People came down to hug me and look into my eyes for signs of wanting to keep living, I think. There was much to see - I did want to keep living. People didn't really believe that though - perhaps some of them would rather not have. Now envision in your mind, a gorgeous, and terribly sad pregnant lady coming down the center aisle to see me. It was Jill.

I have to say in the midst of it all, her presence just touched me. She was in tears, so affected by it all, so very pregnant and so utterly brave to have had the courage to show up to an event every pregnant woman has the ultimate fear of. I wanted to stand up and tell her not to be afraid - that it was so rare to have this happen - but I couldn't stand, I could just make crying noises. At the time I had not been able to tell her how I felt, but I did get that opportunity later on.

A month or two later, Jill added me to her Facebook account. I accepted, smiling. She didn't shun me, or keep her baby pictures away from me as other pregnant women had. She knew my condition wasn't infectious to the soul, and kept contact. I apreciated that so much...

Two or three days ago, Jill came to see me in person and to introduce me to her beautiful daughter C, who is honestly the most gorgeous little thing. She's just beginning to smile and Jill dresses her (as I mentioned earlier) in the nicest little matching outfits. I remember seeing a picture of them both together after birth in the hospital. The look in Jill's eyes said "don't come near my baby", with the full understanding of what it could be to not hold a living child. She'd waited eight years for her daughter and had seen someone else lose their first born child. She wasn't letting that baby go. I don't blame her.

She let me hold C - oh - and what joy! I hadn't held a baby since Josie! It was absolutely wonderful to meet her and to hold her and look into her little face. She looks just like Jill and is a quietly expressive little lady. We checked each other out for a bit, C and me, and I think she approved of me - gave me the okay. See, people in general have kept babies away from me, even though I did say they shouldn't. I think many people believe that the sight of a baby will make my heart explode all over the place with sadness when the opposite is actually true.

So yes, this is an ode to Jill, who let me meet her beautiful daughter and who made my entire week better by coming to see me. She tearfully apologized if her presence at Josie's funeral had upset me, if the sight of a heavily pregnant woman had been a bad thing, and I finally got to say what I'd been saving up for months "No, Jill, you were a welcome sight, and I am in awe of you being so very brave". Jill, I have nothing but humble respect for you, mama. Thank you!

An Ode to my body...

Having spent so much time reminiscing about how my body used to look, and how much my scar bothers me, and how defeated as a woman I used to feel just at the prospect of my own cesarean, I felt compelled today to write more about how well I've healed, despite everything.

Now I know, I've complained an awful lot about my c section. I still do not like that I was cut open. I mean hello - that's the most important part of my body, and nope, I didn't like the experience one bit and frankly, I find the idea that first time mums are choosing this procedure over natural childbirth...well, completely straight-jacket-style insanity. But hey, after all of that, my bouncy little body actually did manage to rectify itself pretty nicely. Let me show you a
picture of what my scar looks like right now:


Now honestly, isn't that really quite neat? There's been not tomfoolery or doctoring of the above snap - you can tell because you can see where I had my clothes on my belly (the wrinkled lines). It's not causing me any kind of trouble. I have absolutely no overhang, as I know some ladies with c section scars have been left with. That's my tummy, up there - that's how it looks. Just a little red slit really, isn't it. That's just the exterior, too - I can't feel the stitches in my muscles at all any more and my uterus feels totally separate from the external scarring I have - actually, my womb feels completely healed - yes, totally whole again. The cut on my womb in the first place, when full term, was smaller than the external cut and went the same way.

All together, I think I've done rather well - or rather, I think my body has done rather well indeed. I've just sat here wrestling with emotional issues - my body has known how to heal with the help of my vitamin concoction, which has become an object of confused fascination for H, who now wants to put up a shelf to house all the bottles. I agree - I think I do need a shelf. Perhaps I need an entire cupboard in which to house the herbs and vitamins that have helped me heal...

Anyway, so there we have it. That's my belly. In the end, the incision scar is a permanent new resident of my body and I have no choice other than to try to welcome it into my being and provide it's tissue the same nourishment and healing potency as I give to the rest of my body. Psychologically it's still hard to totally do that, but I try more every day and as I try, I find that the very small amount of feeling I lost in that area is slowly coming back.

So there, that is how Josie came out. Now that I am healed, perhaps soon there will be another little life deep inside there to shine it's life force out through my belly and my incision. Perhaps I will get a tattoo on my incision some day, try to celebrate it some how. I don't know.