written on my body

Submitted by Katie:

I got the tattoo when I was going through a series of events I ended up losing a large number of those who were close to me. I got to a point where I was absolutely miserable and couldn’t find a good reason to wake up in the morning. I work in dorms and during my hard times some of my residents who I’d helped quite a bit throughout the year saw through my “I’m fine”’s and would come to me and would talk to me about all the different ways I’d helped them. In the midst of everything piling up it just reminded me that despite whatever BS I’ve gone through if I’m still able to wake up in the morning and help make someone else’s life better then my own will always have meaning. (The little flurries you see around the text are from a dandelion that’s on my back.)


IF I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
- Emily Dickinson, Not In Vain

I found this kick ass website, Contrariwise It's a collection of literary tattoos I adore the Harriet the Spy image- one of my favorite childhood books and inspirations

Women Writers In Photo- Guest Post at English Muse

The lovely English Muse is taking a summer hiatus; I am guest posting occasionally. Take a look at #1 : Women Writers in Photo

The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Ridiculous Endeavors

I am into small pschological adjusters.

Coping Mechanisms Recently Utilized in the Curry Family

-Milk Duds
-Harry Potter Books, Repeatedly Read By Various Family Members Until Pages Fall Out
-Champagne with cran-cherry juice splash
-Swimming Pools
-Ridiculous Jokes, Obnoxious, Snorting Laughter ( "Mom you are the most without a doubt the most and without DOUBT the most embarrassing ridiculous mom ever in the history of time" )
-Parodies of shows, songs, and people ( " haha! ' New Poon' is the porn of ' New Moon' haha ) *
-Nightly wrestling in the living room/kitchen area to the point of knocking pictures off the wall **
-Admissions of guilt, ie 'confession' : " I ate the ice cream " " I farted " " I'm sorry I put Vagisil cream on your owie instead of Neosporin " " Damnit I broke another cup " " I chewed the entire pack of gum last night "
-Sex***

* No children involved in this joke
** Mr. Curry and the boys must own this one
***No children involved



I have given up smoking ( began: age 15 quit: age 30- also for both pregnancies ) heavy drinking, self indulgent pity over small infractions, self flagellation in various forms and other vices, all intended to control the chaos inside. What I need to be ' OK ' ( In AA, 'fine' stands for Fucked Up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional ) has, over the years, morphed from what keeps me barely stable to what keeps me ' happy '. By happy, I mean grateful, looking forward to things, loved, loving, etc- to feel ' happy ' is not a constant state of mind for normal humans who are not Zen masters or stoned out of their mind. I haven't been stoned since 1990.

Having had an abusive, lonely childhood, I was transphormed by pregnancy as an unwed teenage mother, given a reason to live beyond myself. I had to have something else to live for, and Dakota, my boy, he was that, as easily and profoundly and clearly as a clarion call. I began to shed more vice, move toward a better life, but it was the steady, clear light of my love for him that was the headlight in the fog. I still felt depressed all the time. I was depressed, clinically so, for most of my life. I've only felt as good as I do now for the last three years. I had three years before then, after Lola, holding steady at another level of 'good', and then all the years after Dakota was born. The Before Dakota Was Born is a long, mournful howling of the soul. It still rings inside of me like a depressive's tinnitus. It is part of me.

The letting go of vice and moving toward a higher level of existence, of happiness, was based on the belief I had that I would see no immediate results, but instead a slow, long, excrutiating rehabilitation. Which is what it was. I put in so much work. Long years of therapy, teetering on the edge of my own abyss, long years of fear, shaking panic attacks in the middle of the night, staring at the clean unmoved sky smoking my cigarette with shaking hand, praying to God although I had no faith- only hope- and this was enough for me.

Some Things I Believed That Kept Me From Complete Despair

-Focusing on myself brought blurry vision and misery. Helping others, giving of myself through family and friends but also strangers and volunteer work, gave clarity, meaning, and relief from isolation. I knew early on that the answers did not lie in fervent self improval alone, but came as much, if not more, from what I could learn and receive from helping/connecting to those who suffered.
- Zoloft
- Excercise. I had always been exhausted, later to be diagnosed with various problems. But depression + physical problems means an urgent need for exercise, to help the body balance and detox. So I forced myself, after Dakota was born, for the first time ever. Bought a video, worked out five days a week, felt better. Less sad.
- Nutrional healing is key when mental problems exist. I'm sure that suffering, if it was a tangible thing, would eat sugar and white bread. In fact I'm sure it does.
- Hard, meaninful work clears the mind. The pilgrim thinking, the farmer mentality, so true. Hard work is the answer to many an ill, and important for a meaningful life, in whatever form it takes .
- Learning makes me happy.
- Mentors are important to growth. I found mine, for most of my years, in books.
- Yoga, when I finally gave in and tried it? AMAZING. It kills anxiety.
- Accepting, not submitting but accepting, that I was depressed and scared all my life, and stopping fighting against it, but moving forward accepting I felt it, knowing that the human condition was overflowing with people who felt like me and worse, was key to moving away from those feelings. I had to stop feeling deeply, deeply sorry for myself in order to begin healing.

These days I have no belief that I am safe from emotional furies. I have felt them ebb and flow, and my life with Mr. Curry has been very difficult. We are extremely poor, both of us have to manage emotional problems, we are a blended family, and I have had serious health problems and surgeries which in addition to the obvious stresses have ruined me financially. But the perspective that I have on my life is priceless to me. Priceless. I know that when the skies clear at night and the wind stills and the earth is letting out the bats and owls and tigers, my cries are not the loudest, and my pain is not singular. We are not alone. We have each other in this life. For me, that is the majority of what blogging is about.

-
love, maggie

The Evening Swim

San Diego is curling in on itself like a Southern cat around her kittens. She purrs on the porch, a dog barks in the distance, bugs hizz and floss through flowers and children. The heat knits and purls, knits and purls, I am a salt lick for husband. The air throbs, an atmospheric heartbeat.

After work, Mr. Curry shuts the bedroom door softly and watches the kids while I stretch out

from head to toe, Lola's stuffed dog on my belly. I close my eyes and drown in sleep, heat, the happiness and joy of my family's voices within my reach, murmuring and cracking throughout the house. I fall asleep to the sound of Lola's voice ' Dadddyyyy! '

A half hour later I wake, bleary eyed and stumbling. I pull on my polka dotted bikini and Mr. Curry ties it in a knot in the back, because the plastic clasp has broken and I don't have time or inclination to run down the street to Target and buy a new one. For one night, this will do. It is almost 7pm. Lola and Dakota smell like sunblock, this is how hot the sun is. We leave the front door wide open to air the house out, because Bellatrix and Weasley peed in the corner. Again. Mr. Curry slides his hand up my dress and thigh and we drive in silence to the community pool, barely a ten minute drive.

The pool is enormous, one area for children at 4 feet, a large free area, laps roped off for exercise, and another, deeper area on the far side with the diving boards. We pay the 2$ per person and slide gratefully into the lukewarm water. Birds dart overhead. There are a small handful of people for all this wide water. My family all swims to the middle of the large free area. This is possible because our Lola Moon, the baby of the family at 7, just learned how to swim LAST WEEK. We are so proud of her, so excited to see her wiggling and turning in the water like a big girl. The four of us bob and float in a square, grinning stupidly at each other. The young life gaurd watches us with a look on his face like he is thinking maybe one day, he will have such a thing as a family of his own. Watching us to see what it's like. The sky is enormous and unhurt by buildings, open and clear and blue. The air breaks as Michael Jackson's ' Billie Jean ' pulses from the loudspeakers. Mr. Curry begins to dance in the water. I slide my legs around him. Lola and Dakota pile on. We don't have Ian this day. We all swim through the music and the evening begins to set on the water and the light is beautiful and I slip into the embrace of the blue blue water and swim like a mermaid underneath the kicking feet of the most beautiful people in this world.

My family.

The Prayers of Nonbelievers

There is no Church for nonbelievers. There is no prayer circut for the poets who don't believe in God, the intellectuals who do not accept religious doctrine, the scientists who do not engage in a community of worship outside their microscopes. There is no laying on of hands or group mission statements for nonbelievers in a certain God or divine spirit. No wafer or blood to drink, no sins to confess to priests, no ' special religion ' as Anne Sexton said, to keep our spirits moving toward enlightement and our daily lives moving toward the divine in ourselves. Mr. Curry and I drive by the churches, their white painted walls and enormous wooden crosses and startling proclamations on rectangular billboards ' GOD WILL NOT FORGIVE IF YOU DO NOT ASK '.
We drive by a Catholic church often that has an entryway into the parking lot with twin winged lions on each side, rising up in their righteousness, and I feel a keen longing for a homecoming of a kind I do not think likely I will ever have. A mass of people desiring to serve without irony, to love without mocking or dividing or excluding, to use the oldest human traditions to ' keep the mind safe ', as Kate Mcrae's mother says in an absolutely heart wrenching and beautiful CaringBridge journal - the traditions of prayer, of song, of beauty to lift up the potential of man, of repetition to divine the energy, of art to see the angles of the elephant, of gatherings with common goals to nourish the infant cry seed of human desire to bond, to find safety in the net of community, friendship, family. We are in this together. We are all going to face demons.

My Nana gave me a prayer book she dated next to her signature as 1976, when I would have been 2 years old. It's called Just A Minute, Lord and has prayers like this one:

Make Me Well Soon

Lord,
I hate being sick
even it's just the flu
or a bad cold.
I get panicky thinking
about what it must be like
being in bed
for weeks or months.
Give me the strength you had
when you suffered pain.
Remind me of the people you healed
while on earth.
If it is your will,
make me well soon.
Soon, Lord,
If you don't mind?

This may be a book written by Christians for very small children, but the simple and earnest prayers that fill it's pages touch my heart deeply, because they are the cries of not only the very young but the teen, the middle aged, the elderly- of human beings. Crying out to the Universe in prayer, oftentimes in our most vulnerable place, our beds, for relief from the pain of rejection, for the strength not to judge others ( Help Me Unlabel, Lord ), the courage to help those in need, the love to love even when it's the last thing we feel we can do.

I remember vividly: laying open the yellow prayer book with it's 70's style illustrations, reading the prayers in my mind, silently, or whispered out loud, cautiously, and hoping beyond hope that somewhere, someone was listening and loving me. If not me, at least the idea of me. That would do. Someone, something, somewhere, who cared. I did not have high expectations.

One of the prayers in this book brings tears to my eyes. The nostalgia is overwhelming, the memories horrible and tender, and the message still so true for me today. It's called ' Lord, I'm Worried About People. ' I am worried about people, this week, all the time. I think I could use a prayer for a nonbeliever. Are you worried about people= Would you like to pray with me to the enternal Universe and to the central Spirit and dignity and love and suffering inherent to human existence? OK.

Yo. This Is The Prayer of the Nonbelievers Who Believe In Love

Babies in their bassinets, in cancer wards, NICU, NeuroUnit, homes, without the spiritual ferocity of love translated into the constant presence of touch.

- love, i give myself to you, to your pain, your suffering, your humble servitude. Love, I ask
you to give me the strength and will to reach out and make a difference, even when I am
afraid of looking ridiculous, unforgiveably sincere, unflatteringly pedantic.

(Love, hear our prayer )

Elderly people stuck in nursing home and long care facilities and hospitals and hospice who
feel scared, humiliated, abandoned, ridiculed, abused or generally given the raw deal at the end
ofsee in the face of an elderly person the face of my future, to see the face of a human being,
not just a set of ideals I'm already sure I don't agree with.


- Love, i ask you to help me reach out to the elderly in my community. Love, please help me
the elderly go before me in line, even when I do not want to because my children are fighting
and I'm late to work. Love, help me to smile, to touch a hand, to pick up a fallen object, to
help bring friendship to older people, not leaving them out of the community because of prejudice,
not excluding them from aside comments, jokes, knowing looks, or other forms of human bonding,
but instead becoming more increasinly inclusive.


(Love, hear our prayer )

Mothers and Fathers dying before their children are grown. Michelle L, with metatastic
breast cancer and son Connor and daughter Chloe and husband, to every woman and man
having to say the hardest goodbye.

-Love, I ask you to help me to have the courage to reach out even when I am afraid of saying
the wrong thing, of insulting, or of embarrasing. Help me to remember that connection is
not embarrasing, that love is not reduntant or unecessary for anyone, and that I, just as
much as anyone, can offer it. Help me to be unselfish and face my own fears of death or
leaving my children as I see this pain and hear this agony.

( Love, hear our prayer )

Soldiers wounded, exploded, shot or disabled, soldiers mentally unstable or spiritually ravaged,
soldiers young and middle aged and old, soldiers man and women, and Love help us, children
and adults. Soldiers who never make it home.

- Love, I ask you to help me find ways to show soldiers my gratitude and compassion. Small
though they may be, help me to remember that nano is sometimes the largest compound.

( Love, hear our prayer )



May Love Be With You

( And Also With You )

love is clockworks

oh my love, blindness

Pray For Kate ( Even If You Don't Pray )

This is Kate. Kate is 5 years old. She has just been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor the size of an egg.






















These are Kate's parents.




















This is Kate's family. Please pray for Kate.

Boy Seventeen

All my life I wanted to be in love and what in love meant was safe/obsessed/purified/worshiped/destined and the turning of those as well. Seventeen I fell in love and I was safe/obsessed/purified/worshiped/destined to be in love with this seventeen year old blonde haired long haired blue eyed tight jean wearing metal music loving guitar playing miserable abused reduced shadow boy, because he understood The Thing I Could Not Name and because he grew up with and lived inside The Thing I Could Not Name _ and then because I spent my entire life trying to name it _ we fell apart. Because he would not have it named and he would not hear it named and because I insisted on doing so. Because we were in love at the beginning but too damaged to care for it. Because love turned into sickly need so quickly it left me breathless and gutless. Because I still believed life was possible and he did not. We parted, we reunited, we parted again. We tore each other up and stitched each other back together. This boy was Mr. Curry's best friend. Mr. Curry was my best friend. We slept on each other's backs, curled and sweaty and horny and myself lit with a passionate fire for an intellectual and ethical life that was completely and totally out of my reach but not. out. of my dreams. When I think to myself, or let's say someone asked me - Why Mr. Curry and not Boy Seventeen? I know it is for many reasons and for one reason. The one reason sounds like this: Mr. Curry turning the pages of a book. It looks like this: Mr. Curry's eyes meeting and holding my own ( he is not afraid of this and men are often afraid of this or worse they act like they are not afraid by meeting eyes with a false bravado and false masculinity they translate into aggression ). It tastes like this: secret things. It feels like this: Mr. Curry picking me up off the bathroom floor, blood pooling between my legs, and carrying me to the car so I don't deliver our baby on the floor.

What love is and is not fascinates me. I loved Boy Seventeen and he loved me. Yes. Because we were too sick and too sad and ultimately too different to meet in the broken places where the light comes through, we were not meant to be, and because we had any sense, we let go. Because Mr. Curry and I are sick, sad, and smart and brave and ultimately hopeful, we meet in the places where the light gets through, and this is where we hold on, peering through the fog. Boy Seventeen is now a man in his thirties with a beer belly and just out of a long term relationship with a woman ten years or so older than him whom he never married but lived with. Boy Seventeen lost his mother to suicide or overdose when we were- Seventeen- He lost his dad a few years ago in his late 20's to lymphoma. He was an abused child and he has not made shore. Boy Seventeen once helped Mr. Curry clean my car after we had been married a short time, and Mr. Curry says Boy Seventeen sat in my car, rubbing a towel on the wheel, and stopped for a moment, still, before saying sadly ' This car smells like Maggie's perfume '. And I thought to myself when I heard that, we Loved. It was something easily dismissed because we were teenagers and fucked up and broken and all broken things can be easily dismissed by the rest of the world. I don't dismiss or erase it. He was the only other man I've loved. Mr. Curry loved him too. We hope he makes shore.

Mr. Curry has been my best friend turned into my lover turned into my husband turned into my Love. What I thought love was is so much less than what it is.

things i've invented this week

tee shirt : I'm The Only Slut In This Town*
* inspired by Mr. Curry and my viewing, and ensuing flash of possessive jealousy,
of a hot young lady riding the back of a fast motorcycle with tight jeans, a tramp stamp
and a black g-string made completely visable by the pull of her rear against the denim
as she hunched forward to hold her boyfriend as they weaved between cars

porn film : Highway Sluts On lonely highways, hot women in fast cars crash into each other,
finding in rage a new lesbian lust, tearing off each other's clothing and taking
each other on and in machines
* cars of use should be classic and tough, old Novas and Mustangs etc.
* also inspired by Mr. Curry and ensuing conversation after viewing
a hot young lady riding the back of a fast motorcycle with tight jeans,
a tramp stamp and a black g-string made completely visable by the pull
of her rear against the denim as she hunched forward to hold her boyfriend
as they weaved between cars

creative art for daughter : make cat/kitten toys with various papers, glues, scissors and color
for our 6 ( Mr. Curry, your love knows no bounds ) Harry, Hagrid,
Hermione, Mr. Weasley, Bellatrix and Kagome

tip for not puking while cleaning daughter's prodigious puke from comforter 2am: close eyes*
* probably not invented by author

ways to keep husband happy after 7 years of marriage: love notes in red lipstick on mirror* creative use of new toothbrush and honey, kisses on eyes and cheeks*, jasmine
perfume*, cheerfully watching bad action movie on couch*, silence when husband
does not clean up cat poop in corner even after being the one to see it happen*
* probably not actually invented by author

breast milk storage: create a funnel on both sides of plastic bag for freezing, storing and pouring
breast milk so that those pouring breast milk into bottle for infant* do not spill
other woman's breast milk* on arms clothing or floor
* infant most likely screaming
* while author herself breastfed all her babies for 2 years each and completely
supports breastfeeding, author does not deny the gross factor in spilling another
human being's bodily fluids on her person, being that in our society we are taught
from young age that all human bodily fluids or excrements are disgusting, ie: ear
wax, shit, urine, yeast from infection, snot, saliva, mucus, blood, toe jam, etc.

Two Amazing Blogs

January First

This amazing blog is the story of the life of the parents of January, a 7 year old girl with severe, birth onset schizophrenia. What struck me most about the writing here is how searingly honest the father is about his and his wife's emotions and reactions. Read this, the ending to his introduction, and try not to be both incredibly moved and struck by both the heartbreak and the honesty:

Even then, it did not occur to us that our daughter was mentally ill. Now I wonder who was really delusional. Susan and I held fast to our belief that Jani was just a misunderstood genius. Then Bodhi was born. The violence became so bad that at times Susan and I both lost it and hit Jani as hard as we could. We hit in impotent rage. We got a referral to a psychiatrist. Two months later, Janni was hospitalized for the first of what has since been four times, but in truth will be many more times. Today, Jani is no longer a brat. Today, Jani is schizophrenic.

My grandfather was a paranoid schizophrenic, a man who hallucinated and feared and refused to take his medications in the manner which could have provided him a life more accessible to the heart by those who loved him. My mother's cousin was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager, my grandfather as a man in his twenties, and my father's brother, also in his twenties. This is, for my family, more than a disease: it feels like a curse. Living with someone suffering from this disease is like the most severe LSD trip you can imagine, only much worse, because it's real, it's happening to someone you love, and like Alzheimers, it robs that person of who they are meant to be. I try to imagine the pain these parents feel when they look at their beautiful January- and cannot. Of course I cannot. But I can read his blog. I can connect. And I do. Maybe you want to, as well.



Speak Softly....

This amazing blog is written by the talented and very kind writer and mother, Vicki Forman, who has just had her first book published: This Lovely Life ( which you can find in major bookstores and Amazon.com ) Here, a summary of her memoir:

Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie, weighing just a pound at birth, at twenty-three weeks’ gestation. During the delivery she begged the doctors to “let her babies go” — she knew all too well that at twenty-three weeks they could very well die and, if they survived, they would face a high risk of permanent disabilities. However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter died just four days later; her son survived and was indeed multiply disabled: blind, nonverbal, and dependent on a feeding tube. This Lovely Life tells, with brilliant intensity, of what became of the Forman family after the birth of the twins — the harrowing medical interventions and ethical considerations involving the sanctity of life and death. In the end, the long delayed first steps of a five-year-old child will seem like the fist-pumping stuff of a triumph narrative. Forman’s intelligent voice gives a sensitive, nuanced rendering of her guilt, her anger, and her eventual acceptance in this portrait of a mother’s fierce love for her children.

Heartbreakingly, Vicki lost her little boy last year. Evan died of a complication revolving round his physical problems. What is left is the love the family had for him, and his legacy in this memoir. I highly recommend Vicki's graceful memoir, as well as her incredibly soft spoken but simultaneously intelligent and firm style of writing. She reaches me.

Little Chances - Endometriosis and Fertility

I wasn't supposed to get pregnant. My last checkup was with Dr. X, the balding Italian with the Magnum P.I. mustache and thick gold necklace lain like a bird's treasure in the thatch of his chest hair on full exposure between the good 7 or 8 un-buttons. My sweet Mr. Curry looked at me out of the corner of his eye as I hoisted my legs into the foot rests, like pocketing them in animal traps set in forest snap snap. Later he told me he was thinking there was no doubt why this guy got into gynacology, and it wasn't for the miracle of childbirth.

When I told the doctor I had 'the endometriosis' which is like ' the cancer ' or ' the AIDS ' but much harder to say, less well known/understood, and not deadly, he raised his crazy eyebrows in surprise. ' So you got pregnant after surgeries? ' Yes, three, the last two with a specialist we flew to see. ' So then you can get pregnant again! ' Well, sure. That's what I want to believe.

Originally, my first surgeon, Dr. Y, told me I had little if any chance of getting pregnant. ' Stage Four Endometriosis, multiple sites of lesions, multiple sites of adhesions, large endometrioma on left ovary ( this is a large cyst, filled with disease ) ' and basically an enormous traffic accident of a pelvis, filled with pain, scars, blood and disease. I imagined my husband's sperm trying to swim through all this, little sperm tail wiggling terrifically, trying to make it up my damaged fallopian tube. I cried. I thought we would adopt. I put the idea of a baby to the side, in a crib, in a locked room, where I couldn't hear him crying. But he was there.

My second surgeon would give no firm opinion, just enough of a sympathetic look to underscore my first doctor's opinion. Little Chance. I had researched for a year straight to find this doctor, an M.D. who specialized in women's pelvic disorders, most intensely in endometriosis and polycycstic ovarian syndrome, both of which commonly result in infertility. Different doctors will try to give you different reasons for infertility springing from these diseases, but the truth is there is no definitive answers, but as with most issues of the body, a cluster of cause/effect that goes on in a body which have various reasons and outcomes, depending on the person. This doctor, whom I'm happy to recommend, believes in the autoimmune cluster, and in addition to being a top-notch surgeon who has created a new way of lessening adhesions (internal scars that cling to organs, binding them, creating pain), he also recognizes the other central forces in this disease, nutritional deficency and lifestyle choices. Without getting too clinical, these choices dramatically alter the hormonal state of your body, creating a snowball effect that can trigger or worsen disease, especially a hormonally based one.

My research led me to find that the newest information coming out is leading towards believing Endometriosis is an auto-immune disease, which often is accompanied by other problems, of which I had many. Chronic and at times debilitating pain, IBS, hypothyroidism, migranes, muscle spasms, fatigue and swelling ebbed and flowed, came and went, dramatically complicated and diminishing my life for my entire 20's- a time when I was also trying as a single mother to raise Dakota. Meanwhile I was sleeping at the wheel during red lights and weeping in pain, locked in the shower. After I had Lola, the pain ratcheted up unbearable degrees, and I was sick and fucking tired of being told it was depression, or ' just life '. Is this YOUR life? I wanted to scream at the doctors. Of course, it wasn't, and it was ultimately up to me to change things.

I believe I was able to get pregnant largely because I did not listen to Doctor One, or Doctor Two, or even absorb the sympathy of Doctor Three. Instead, I went about researching and dedicating myself to healing. I read so many books and internet sites and phamplets I could- and can- spout information about nutritional healing with the best of them. My mother, a long time health fanatic, whole foods eater and the bringer of health during my childhood, gave me many important leads and tips. Over a period of two years, including many crying jags and setbacks and hopeless feelings relayed to Mr. Curry, I changed my diet. Changing what I ate every day was a major emotional upheaval. I felt I deserved to eat what I wanted because damnit, life is hard, and my life, I felt, in particular, had been terrifically hard as a child, and so yes, Mocha Frap. for breakfast, and yes! Fries and Coke for lunch! and yes! the tomato and white lettuce counts as a veggie. I was addicted to carbs and sugar. I had chronic, systemic yeast and vaginal yeast infections. I had IBS. I had painful agonizing periods. I had horrific back pain, unexplained. I had migranes. My feet and hands and face swelled. I had chronic UTI. My vision was worsening. My tongue puckered and hurt. My throat swelled.

Once, I drove through Starbucks Drivethrough, crying. I wanted a Frappacino. I wanted health. I wanted a life. I got the Frappacino, and drank it. But I never gave up. Eventually, with the help of some blood sugar balancing supplements and yeast cleanses, I got my sugar problem under control, and tackled the bread. I did gluten free off and on for long periods. I exercised daily. I did yoga. I meditated. I took a laundry list of supplements.

Laundry List of Supplements For Feminine Healing

Fish Oil
Garlic
Vitex (chasteberry)
Grapeseed Fruit Extract
B Complex
C
D
Bone Health Mix
Green Tea
Rhodiola
Amino Acids
Probiotics

I spent money we didn't have on these things. As it all began to work, a great fog lifted. My depression and anxiety began to ease. My eyesight cleared some. My head stopped hurting. My periods normalized completely. I lost weight. My hands and feet and face stopped being puffy all the time. My energy began to seep back into this body. My jaw stopped hurting. My IBS went away, just poof. The chest pain? Gone. The rapid heartbeats? Gone. The irritability? Mostly gone. As one by one these physical restraints dropped, I took steps back and forth, back and forth, like riding some giant wave. I started seeing an acupunctarist, who we couldn't afford either, who saw me for very, very cheap at her home. My diet was largely fresh fish and chicken, veggies of all and any kinds, fruits the same, nuts (almonds walnuts), peanut butter, goat milk and organic cow milk, water, green tea, hummus, black beans, ( oh avacado!), dark chocolate, coffee, Gluten Free waffles and pancakes and eggs. I cheated a lot, but I ate this enough that it changed my life. I took the supplements daily, daily, daily.

Then I got pregnant.

Years after they said I wouldn't.

And I will Again. You hear me, Universe? I WILL.

ps
anyone interested in endo., i'd be happy to email a list of the books and websites i use in recovery.

Phil Collins, You God Of Wonder

' Do you like Phil Collins? '
' I've got two ears and a heart don't I? '
- Thirty Rock

Today A Day Like Any Other

It's been a long day, the timing of things is wrong, clicking when I'm snapping, moving when I'm daydreaming, forcing when I am gliding. I smooth my hand against the hot metal of the side car door on the way home from work, the roar of cars to left and right, my hair is long and wavy and moving in ribbons behind me. The children are spread around town, doing things without me, without their father. They are older than they used to be. I slide off my sandal and push my foot hard on the gas pedal, feel the warm rubber. The sun is moving downward. A truckload of men in their 20's pulls up and the brown face, wide laugh of a man turns to me and he cups his hands around his mouth. I cannot hear what he tells me. I just know he has told me something. He turns back to his friends and their truck is going 60 and I am going 45. I am 34 years old, and they are brown skinned young men in their 20's. The sky is clean like blue bone. The trees are many and soft California green. The tree heads bump against the sky. Sunlight moves over my arms and my face and my hand is burnt against the car door metal. I feel the blonde down on my skin pulse with joy. I am going home to my husband and there is his face and his hands and his eyes and our history and our future. There is a center to the madness. There is this heat and this sunlight and the young men and their wide brown smiles and there is my husband to give it to. Today at work I was pushing children in the large stroller. I was by myself as you are when you are with very small children. I was looking at little I and his fat curvy arm sticking out the side, small fist curled into a caterpillar. Just hanging there. And suddenly I saw the ultrasound of my and Mr. Curry's baby, our unnamed but very real baby, and his little fists, all curled up under his chin. And I was out in the open, and the sun was soft, and the wind, and there was no traffic, and it was like a great breath was being held so sweetly by the world, waiting for me to understand. ' Your baby actually existed. He was here. He was alive. He was a real human being created with the man you love. ' And there was this new level of understanding what I had lost. I drove with one hand in the sun and burnt against the car door. I drove and thought of my children in their 3 different places with their 3 different beautiful bodies, moving and groaning and laughing and complaining and living. I pulled the car to home and pulled my body as closely as possible to Mr. Curry's. And there was this new level of understanding what I have.

Bookish, Yet Horny