life on the roof.

The sunflowers in the owl vase on my dining room table have been dead for about a week. I completely forgot to lay them to rest before vacation and now they are a little bit of sadness looking out at the gloriously thriving little roof garden we are nurturing. 

In the midst of all of the pre-vacation purging & life organizing, I have created a little dream nook for doing work at home. My dining room table (where the dead sunflowers currently hang out) overlooks our tiny little roof with our tiny little garden. 

I imaged this garden before we moved here when we set the intention to do what urban homesteading we could in whatever space was to become our new home. And now it's real. There are no chickens this year and the backyard is full of the downstairs dog's poop instead of food and wildflowers, but what we have is a start. 

This was day one:

And here we are now: 

It is small, messy and very makeshift. Who knows what we will yield from it, but I am proud to have things growing outside the window. Each day brings something new to observe as I sip my morning cup of tea. 

twenty nine days.

I started charting my cycle this past month. It may seem surprising/disgraceful that a long-time sex educator, previous penis-in-vagina intercourse participant and now birth doula had no idea how long her cycle was, but that's me. Honestly, I never bothered to pay attention.

Now I know: 29 days. This makes sense since I bleed for between 6-7 days. Anecdotally, my cycle is like clockwork. A celebration!

These days, as a wannabe queer mama, I think about my cycle all the time. There are sixteen cycles between me and the day I start trying to conceive with my wife, (hopefully) by at-home IUI with anonymous donor sperm. Instead of wishing those cycles away, yearning for the day when our dream baby is here with us, I am choosing to revel in this time, to appreciate my body and the gifts it has brought me thus far, grateful in advance for the sweet baby it will bring me in the years to come.

This month and for the next month, I will just count the days. When you don't even know the length of your cycle, this is a good place to start. On my third month, I will start checking & charting my basal body temperature and mucous. That will be a new adventure in learning my body and preparing it to make a new person.

My grin is so big right now :-)

birth + consent.

Yesterday, the LA Times released an article, "Pregnant women show an amazing lack of knowledge about childbirth options, study shows". 


My initial response: No shit.


The stats speak for themselves. Over 1 in 3 babies are born surgically in the United States. In her most recent book Birth Matters, Ina May Gaskin points out “It is simply unacceptable that a U.S. woman giving birth today has a greater chance of dying than her mother did."


This is no joke. 


There are a lot of things that make thing the way they are for people giving birth. One of those things is the failure of care providers to obtain informed consent and sometimes consent in general. 


There is the dream we all have that women and all people giving birth will unlearn the notion that our bodies belong to someone other than ourselves and that, in its place, we will learn to demand that anything that happens to our bodies is because we say it can happen BEFORE we birth our babies. 


Given this recent article & lots of things birth workers already know, this is not the case. It is at best unfortunate and at worst traumatizing for the birthing people we work with in the moment that they lose the ability/option to give consent. Or even worse if their whole experience with birth is such that they believe consent was never an option. 


This is an opportunity for birth workers to change the way things are with regard to consent. Again, we live in a culture that takes ownership over our bodies. As a doula, my greatest accomplishment is not necessarily having clients who ALL have natural vaginal births. My "record" is not just about quantitative outcomes. The accomplishment is hearing my clients say that the support I gave them empowered them to make their OWN best decision for their birth and their baby. This accomplishment begins with teaching the power and the requirement of giving consent. 

letting go.

Letting go is the theme of the last two years of my life. It has been a process that requires me to continually dig deep in order to let out all the crappy stuff I have harbored for as long as I can remember. 

I come from a family that likes to hang onto things. My mother loves to hang onto endless grudges and all of her giant guilt from leaving me 24 years ago. She hoards her shame. The result for her is that she looks to all kinds of things to subdue and/or avoid those feelings. My father clings to his sadness and unresolved hurt from two divorces, both which caught him completely by surprise. He eats his feelings and is sick because of it. He learned this from my grandparents and his siblings are just like him, if not worse, with their sickness from obesity. 

For the last 10 years, I have been using the same inner pain coping tactics that my parents use and it made me sick, literally. I gained 100 pounds. I threw myself into my work and defiantly refused to take care of myself, all under the pretense of helping to make the world a better place. I held onto unhealthy relationships that only made my emotional health worse. I avoided talking about my financial debt from college which I did not finish. I avoided that and my big shame about that too. 

About 18 months ago, I started letting go. During the first year, I let go of 55 pounds and a 13 year old eating disorder. I am not done with this part, but I am learning to be gentle with myself and allow this last part to take time. Three months and 25 pounds into losing weight, I let go of salvaging an unhealthy and disrespectful relationship with my mother and, as a result, my entire family on her side. 

Eleven months ago, I let go of my self-image as a highly successful non-profit program director and professional feminist when I moved to Chicago and did not get another non-profit job. This part was harder than all the other stuff. Who am I if I'm not the "Director of blah blah blah"? Who am I if I'm not unhealthily immersed in my work for 80 hours every week? Who am I without my work-related anxiety dreams? Initially, I felt useless. Now, I am grateful. 

Today, I let go of a lot of STUFF. I have purged and purged and purged throughout my life. Usually I get rid of clothing. That's easy. Most of my wardrobe has been thrifted for as long as I can remember. If I get rid of my clothes, I can pretty much always afford to drop $30 on a whole new wardrobe. Today, I got rid of all of the paper I have been hanging onto to remind me of all of these identities I have been clinging to in order to avoid the big, scary, crappy feelings I have had about myself. I got rid of old training binders, folders from conferences, stuff to make crafts I will never make, clothes I will never wear but wish I could, articles and magazines that only take up space, and much, much more. 

IT FEELS SO GOOD. But I don't think I could have even thought about doing it if I hadn't spent the last two years getting to know myself again and re-learning a little self-love along the way. 

On another note, my porch garden is an ultimate source of happiness:

home.

our life has been chaotic for the last year. one of us works 60 hours/week and is a full time graduate student. the other is a full time birth doula, entrepreneur and student who also has a little part time job to keep things interesting when life slows down for a minute. our schedules are usually opposite & as a result, we crave time together.

we moved to chicago 10 months ago and our home is just coming together as "our home." because life was pretty much instant insanity as soon as we landed here, we are still getting used to our apartment and how to best use the space we have with the stuff we have. i have hated and resisted this process. i have whined that we just need to get new stuff for our new life. that's just silly.

today i woke up, my "slow" summer in full swing five days before vacation and i turned our home upside down. i moved our truly giant red couch into a completely different room with a very narrow doorway by myself. our too-full bookcase came crashing down pretty much on top of my head and all over the floor. this disaster which was so easily created is the result of a year of getting by.

this summer, we will build our home with what we have and give away all that we do not need (maybe some of those crazy books). this summer, we will finally admit that we are "home" here.

weddings.

i love weddings. despite my feminist politics which make me skeptical of marriage as an institution, weddings make my sappy little heart sing. the wedding my love & i had nearly a year ago was beautiful. it was just the two of us on the beach where we both (separately) grew up searching for sand dollars and eating salt water taffy. our parents do not even know it happened, that's how little we involved others. for the time, it was perfect for us. now, we dream of having a "real" wedding with all people we love. 

last night, we went to a beautiful wedding to celebrate a beautiful couple who will soon welcome their first child into this world. it was a genuine reflection of their connection as life partners, full of love & drum beats. we went home with darling little seedlings, a sun gold tomato plant, mason drinking jars and a red velvet cupcake as favors.

i went home feeling full of joy, happy to have danced with friends to my favorite song played by a sweet band in the big barn.

but my wife felt differently. as soon as we pulled away from dropping off a friend, tears filled her eyes. as she watched the bride & groom's fathers deliver heartfelt toasts welcome each into their families with such overflowing joy, she was reminded that even when we have a wedding surrounded by the people who, for us, have become our family, our actual parents will be missing. our fathers will not excitedly welcome us to the other's family. our extended family will not run onto the dance floor to take photos of our "first" dance together. in reality, it is quite likely that none of them will be there to begin with.

that said, we are so loved and so supported by so many people in this world. it is my hope that all of the other folks in this vast family we have built will show up for us, dance with us and overflow with love for our commitment to walk through this life together as partners, an acknowledgment of who we have been as a couple for quite some time now.

we have heard from many a chosen family member that, regardless of their sexuality, they see our love as something that they could only hope to have someday, that it is truly rare that they have seen two people so beautifully matched and so wholly connected. we have heard that our partnership is inspiring and that all the ways we are there for each other and all of the ways we help one another to grow seem effortless and second nature.

my wish is that our families would allow themselves to know these things about us too, out beyond their ideas of whether our love makes sense to them.