When will it be enough?

Why aren't they enough anymore? Why don't I find joy in all that used to bring me deep fulfillment?
Now that I have extinguished the relationship with any readers I may have once had, by always posting such gloomy stuff, I can simply vent all over this blog and it is my own space..for which I am thankful b/c it seems that lately all I have to say contains a thread of sadness. No one wants to read about sadness all the time...

I can't get past, cannot accept within myself, this deep sorrow...and there isn't a damn thing I can do to rescue my heart, to make it right again within my soul.
I periodically read a few blogs written by those who have lost babies, either before birth or shortly thereafter, those struggling to conceive, plowing through numerous attempts at IVF only to have their dreams fall apart time and time again - situations totally out of their control. Their grief is justified, I feel like an invader when I read those blogs, although the feeling of loss I can now relate to.
It is a living nightmare, one that never goes away and taints my , well, everything...
I go to the store, I see babies with their moms..I go out and see women with pregnant bellies everywhere. The stab of pain never really becomes less...so many times a day, so many I lose count...24 weeks it would be, 26 weeks it would be, and so on...I would know the gender of the baby (though i knew his gender the moment I realized I was pregnant - so strong was the connection already), I would be able to feel his movement, my belly would be round and fruitful...I would soon be able to proudly show off five kids, instead of four.
I look at my children, their sweet innocent faces. The nightmare, it seems it will never end, I will never be the same as I was, whatever that was, whoever she was...is gone. Replaced by a robot who can mimic the motions of daily existence, can take care of the kids, do what has to be done - but totally void of real feeling anymore, real joy has left my world...

Just when you think you have it rough...

Please visit a blog I came across while chatting with friends on facebook. It is an amazing journey this family is on...and a precious life of a small baby boy with remarkable fighting spirit hangs in the balance. The strength of the mother is second to none. If I were her, I would be a ball of mess....

I have tried three times to insert it as a hyperlink - blogger isn't allowing it atm.
So, here it is:
www.mycharmingkids.net

edited to add: I did manage to add Stellan's button to my page - just scroll down on the right and click on it - it will take you straight to the blog..pass it on, please.

Master Rumi's timeless words

Poems from another time...

Welcome difficulty.
Learn the alchemy true human beings know.
The moment you accept what troubles you've been given,
the door opens.
Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade.
Joke with torment brought by the friend.
Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets
that serve to cover and then are taken off.
That undressing, and the beautiful naked body underneath,
is the sweetness that comes after grief.




This being human is a guest house.
Every morning, a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness
comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and attend them all,
even if they're a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture!
Still treat each guest honorably.
It may be clearing you out for some new delights.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Team Spirit

Pictures of the end of season game, All-Stars games begin this Monday. The boys had such fun this year! And how 'bout that Serenity with the cotton candy, eh? A girl's gotta have a little fun too! Yum!

The Soul's voice

Sometimes the soul DIRECTLY challenges the structure of our personal life.

Below is a poem included in Rodger Housden's book Ten Poems to Set You Free.

THE LAYERS

I have walked through many lives
some of them my own,
And I am not who I was
though some principle of being abides,
from which I struggle not to stray

When I look behind
as I am compelled to look
Before I can gather
strength to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned campsites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections
and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the the way
bitterly stings my face
yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go
and every stone on the road
precious to me

In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers
not in the Litter"

Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

In the pain there is healing

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~Mary Oliver

Altered perceptions

The picture: My brother and I with my mother. Circa 1981.

Over the holidays, we gathered together at the table one evening and poured over old family photos. It was so much fun and very humbling at the same time. It is so funny to compare the memories we hold in our minds to an actual, tangible record - the indisputable, old-fashioned Kodak color print. My how they differ! There were moments I was in total hysterics and could hardly breathe from laughter, and other moments where the reality of how it really all was struck me deep to my core.

Being a parent, I do more than just match recollections with photos, I look back at the pictures through a filter, comparing my childhood with that of my own kids. Do they look like I did? Do they like the same things I liked back then? Am I parenting like my parents did (and that can go either way, people)? What will they rememeber? What are their high points and low points?

Concerning the picture above, I vaguely remember that vacation. I was six. It was Disney World, a desitination that my family was fortunately able to enjoy more than one time and I have a lot of happy memories from those vacations. As an adult, and hearing the perspective of my mother - these vacations that my father was so keen on taking was in exchange for college educations as it turned out. At least the kind of college educations that parents pay for. He focused on the big childhood moments while my mother stretched the dollar to buy food and clothing for us kids. So, pictures can be misleading, you see. By appearances, we had extravagances, lavish motorhomes and boats, big Christmases, but behind the scenes, our clothes came from garage sales, my mother grocery-shopped with a pendaflex of coupons, we lacked home decor in every sense of the word, etc.

You just never know with pictures.