Let it go
I've been sleeping hippie style on a short platform bed - just 2x4s and plywood, no headboard. It's comforting somehow - closer to how I slept as a kid on the futons on the floor, against the wall, my hand tucked above my head, up in the corner. The house is pretty quiet this Saturday, the kids sprawled across different areas of the house catching up on their books, texting friends about their first week of school. They started at an area public elementary school just a week ago, and they've made it through 5 consecutive days of 6 a.m. wakings, grumpy breakfasts, walking home…so much change in so little time! We are all ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 16, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: bittersweet growing up homeschool mothering parenting school choices Source Type: blogs
Wedding day
The bobby pins hit the ceramic of the sink in a torrent, a whole box of them spilled from the top shelf of the bathroom cabinet. I sigh. It's been such a long morning...now this. Bend down, pick up the box, pick up the first copper brown pin. I bought these to match my hair on my wedding day. They matched my hair back then. I hold one up to my post-cancer crown, now almost black no matter how hard I look for my familiar red and gold highlights. In a moment, holding that bobby pin up to my hair, everything crystallizes and a flood of memories washes over me.I remember not washing my hair for two weeks before my wedding. I w...
Source: Turquoise Gates - February 1, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: bittersweet decisions marriage marriage trouble memory separation Source Type: blogs
Confessions of a Former Christian Blogger: From Doubt to Acceptance
The snow lies in waves like a summer river, polished and bright from the high winds sweeping the country. The temperature is below zero again, and indoor activities have long since lost their luster for the kids trapped by the cold. I watch the wind whip snow devils up from the hills, carrying the drifts up and over and up and over again. When it finally dies down, I think most of our snow will be in Lake Michigan or Illinois.Winter is a time for hibernating in the colder areas of the world. We pack up our summer clothes, unpack the wool and the down, the coats and the long underwear, the duvets. We hustle around sealing h...
Source: Turquoise Gates - January 27, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: agnosticism church confession doubt losing faith loss of faith religion Source Type: blogs
Memories versus moments
The photos of me sniffing my babies are covered in dust, thick as carpet. I remember when life was like soup broth, thin and warm and full of good things, beauty, joie de vivre. Then came the great reduction, the splitting off of people and things and places and beliefs and safety. Life is kind of gravy right now, not in an easy way, I mean the food. It takes time and energy to produce but you don't need much gravy to live on. I've learned to live with less. I'm still learning to love with less.Through the fog of depression, love leaks out of me in long wails like a wolf at twilight. The children's happiness is as unr...
Source: Turquoise Gates - January 18, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: affirmation child abuse fear feeling mindfulness mothering with PTSD Pain Source Type: blogs
The long goodbye
Life hurts so much. Takes such a heavy tax from all of us before our bill comes due at the end. I've watched so many die - sinners and saints, spiritual and scientific, pragmatic and idealistic. My heart has been torn in two, and there have been other times when I was dispassionately empathetic, and those times my reflection scared me. I don't recognize the jaded me sometimes.But regardless of the countless patients, strangers and those who grew into me like family, this is different. I look into my newly godless heart, and I am somewhat surprised to see that it hasn't changed a whit. It still beats solely for the love of ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - January 15, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: best friend cancer cancer survivor death grief loss loss of faith loss of friendships metastasis Source Type: blogs
Acceptance: OneWord365
"Radical acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is.”― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a BuddhaI sing the words under my breath as the kids jam in the backseat: I'm friends with the monster that's under my bed, Get along with the voices inside of my head… I ask them about monsters, and they say they've never seen any. I wish I couldn't picture mine so clearly. It was next to my bed, not under it. Inside of my head now. I've internalized the voice of the abuser and trauma-driven self-talk rattles around on loop-repeat as my modus operandi.New Year...
Source: Turquoise Gates - January 2, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: #oneword acceptance change depression goals healing oneword365 PTSD radical acceptance sexual abuse trauma vision word for the year Source Type: blogs
2013 in review
For your New Year's Eve enjoyment, here is a summary of Turquoise Gates for 2013. It has been an interesting year, as I questioned and lost faith, yet still blog at the same site that hosted my "Christian blogger" identity before.Photo by KatrinaSite visitorsCome from 68 different countriesAveraged 7,000 visitors per week (43% new)Averaged 22,111 page views per weekRead in 22 different languages thanks to Google TranslateView 3.61 pages per visitAverage 2:51 on each pageMost popular posts of 2013Lighting my own flame (October)Everyday miracles: A day in the life of a special needs mom (August)Forgiving the past one moment ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - December 31, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: 2013 review top posts visitors year in review Source Type: blogs
Saving Seven: The Next Generation
She just couldn't quit crying when I told her I was going away for the evening. She is seven and all she wants is mama to hold her hand while she falls asleep every night. I was on my way to a tour of the Basilica of St. Mary with some friends. Maybe dinner. A few hours away from the craziness of the holidays and finals week and grading. A few hours with people who "get" me - so I can just laugh and enjoy.I brought her with. My friends - childless - were entranced by the bewitching intricacies of this very special seven year old. We stopped at the organ shining silver in the candlelight of the silent basilica. I think abou...
Source: Turquoise Gates - December 24, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: child abuse childhood loss of faith mindfulness protecting our children protecting ourselves Questioning questions without answers radical acceptance reinventing myself salvation Source Type: blogs
Saving Seven
My therapist makes me think about the little girl in me all the time. It took me 30 some years to admit that she even existed. I didn't want to be "stunted" by my abuse history. I wanted to be normal.The little girl in me is the part that comes out when I am afraid. She is a fierce protector. She has a notch in her belt for each of the brothers she saved from the filth of that woman. She has a notch in her belt for every time she laid herself down next to evil to prevent someone else from having to know that pain.Now it is time for her to get back up. It is time for her to walk away from the dark corners she's been hiding ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - December 13, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: child abuse girls growing up healing PTSD therapy Source Type: blogs
When a Christian Blogger Doubts: Permission to Walk Away
All photos today courtesy of KatrinaShe reminds me of a time when I had so much hope that even the dying flowers on the sill lit me up with faith. She holds the camera steady, checks her settings; sighs at the image that flashes up on the screen. I've started her off on a joy hunt from the time she was an infant, and it strikes me that she has perfected it in ways I haven't yet.She tells me, with elation sparkling through her words like bubbles through champagne, that you can get rid of all the mess with your camera. Hold the angle just right, and dusty piano keys glitter and gleam. At ten, my daughter has learned that hap...
Source: Turquoise Gates - December 6, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: agnosticism compassion freedom hope humanity loss of faith Source Type: blogs
Once in a lifetime
Happy Thanksgivukkah!(I figure it's the only time I'll ever get to say it, so what the heck!)I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I am thankful for the childhood I was given, being raised without want in a peaceful community. I have never suffered poverty, hunger, or fear for my life.This year has been one of great change for me personally and for everyone in my family as well. I am thankful for the kindness and love with which my family has faced my difficult transitions. Although we see this transition very differently, everyone who loves me has made sacrifices to try to understand and support me as I go through a ...
Source: Turquoise Gates - November 28, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: blessings celebration everyday miracles holidays ordinary joys thankfulness thanks Source Type: blogs
If you hate the play, change the script
If I hadn't been born with a heavy dose of piss and vinegar, I'd have given up long ago. Several people have tried to break me, destroy me, discredit me. The specter of that possibility - someone exploding back into my life and pulling the thin veil off my secrets - tortured me for far too long. The only antidote is to grit your teeth, accept reality, and be honest about who you really are. The only cure for internalized shame is to air out your dirty laundry once and for all so you can get back to life the way it was supposed to be lived. After you've radically accepted your experiences, your strengths, your flaws, then -...
Source: Turquoise Gates - November 22, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: check the facts DBT healing invalidation opposite action self-compassion self-loathing shame soul audit Source Type: blogs
Down come the ivory towers
It's all a tangled up mess of the best and the worst of times. I suppose any discovery is this way, as the familiarity of tradition and old persuasions weighs down the flight of the dream birthing into reality. Every time I think I'm tapping the glass ceiling on this new freedom I shatter right through beyond whatever wild imagination I conjured of this self-discovery thing. For a while I thought I lost my muse, so muted did the whirring of my thoughts become. There was nothing to write because I was just happy being myself.Creativity does seem indicative of chaos. It is in the tornado and the hail and the typhoon that new...
Source: Turquoise Gates - November 18, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: beauty honesty loving yourself reinventing myself Source Type: blogs
When a Christian Blogger Doubts: Pressing Pause
The earth wears frosted tips on her assymetrical haircut, corn fields left standing and all the hay shorn. It's as if the winter has caught up to us before we're ready: frozen us in an awkward adolescence of soul growth, desires muted and minds still like the windless landscape. This is what coming to peace with not knowing feels like. Radically accepting life for what it is rather than what it should be? It sounded presposterous to me at first - for didn't I know that God had created us for something bigger, better? Time passes, and life hasn't changed much, no matter what divine inspiration I've claimed.I've worn shame l...
Source: Turquoise Gates - November 7, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: christianity doubt hope lies lies we tell ourselves loss of faith paradox religion self-loathing shame validation Source Type: blogs
Dancing outside the lines
I used to stop to take photos of beautiful things when I passed by. I used to turn around. Lately I'm always running. From work, to work, away from something, toward something. My brain is like a hamster on a wheel and my car is where it spins. It's my rolling sanctuary, my therapist on wheels, my concert hall and my freak-out chamber.Miles move thoughts in increments, and my car draws concentric circles around home: like centripetal force, home pulls me back and pushes me away and I am the water trapped in the bucket while the child spins in fascination. The first revolution or so, on familiar roads, some of the water spi...
Source: Turquoise Gates - November 4, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: acceptance discovery home loving yourself running away self-loathing souls worth the pain Source Type: blogs
