Blonde Selfie

I dyed my hair and I love it. I did a terrible, awful job; it was supposed to be highlights but I didn't like the hair cap so I tossed it, and as I started glopping on the cream, I overshot ( this sounds like a bad porno ) and as you can see, ended up with big skunky blonde, but somehow, especially when down, it works, and I love it anyway. I was blonde my whole life- a towheaded child, and then dark blonde until my pregnancy with my son, when my hair truly became light brown. I dyed it Marilyn blonde for years, until I became concerned with the effects of that on my health, and for the last few years I"ve been browny-blonde. Now I'm blondey-brown. I feel more myself as a blonde, probably just because it's what I am most familiar with. The light color also makes me feel cheerful. It's a strange thing, but true regardless of if I am looking at a sparkling bright lake or my daughter's blonde halo, that light in any object makes me feel lighter myself. Here I am, reading Saul Bellow, who I love the hell out of. His writing is so damn grown up. So confident, strong, descriptive, intelligent, insightful, interesting. I read myself to sleep pretty much every night. I'm reading Saul Bellow, Charlie Wilson's War and as soon as that is done, starting the last Songs Of Fire and Ice that has been written so far. 

I have taken life by the balls this summer and I feel good, even though I feel bad. This is my idea of what it means to be a grown-up, and I'm finally coming closer to achieving it. Being productive, responsible to love, a good mother, making my own dreams come true, being disciplined with self-care and health, while facing the deep sadness that is in my life, every day. I hold the joy of my children, their accomplishments both personal and in the world, the summer leaves, water, shouting voices of my home, the dogs and their exuberant, stupid love, the Western sky, the tapping of keyboard and successes of my work this summer up next to the heartbreak, and I acknowledge and value and hold both of them. Twin. I am both. I am all my life. 

This summer I finally got into a rhythm, a routine with working out, and am on a schedule of working out five days a week, while also maintaining a very outdoor oriented lifestyle with the kids. We swim, walk or hike ( or all ) every day. I do laps in the pool, a DVD workout, and have taken up running. This shocks me, as I have always hated running, and running hated me. Everything hurt when I ran- my ears, skin, throat, eyes, and I always had cramps and shin splints. But suddenly, I run, and I feel free. So once a week, just a slow beginning, I run with the dogs for 40 minutes. I also do yoga a few times a week, and walking meditations. I want my children to see what to do when life turns their guts inside out. This is motivating beyond anything I might be able to do for myself.

My work is taking off, too. I have a few freelance writing jobs now, and although none of them pay well, they all pay. I am also doing an editorial internship with Velocity House Publishing that just started last week, and with a big hiccup and learning curve of Office Word, I have rounded the bend and feel confident. When I applied, they said I was the only person who ever got 100% on the editorial quiz. That was awesome :) I have a handful of things in submission limbo, and a few pieces that will be coming out. Motion!

Successfully Breastfeeding Newborn Babies

*This is not a particularly good shot- it's not flattering, it's from a month or more ago, the elements weren't arranged to be aesthetically pleasing- but it is beautiful and important because it illustrates a perfectly working breastfeeding relationship between mother and baby. Myself and Ever.

I am not an activist. I breastfed my son when I had him at nineteen because it never occured to me NOT to, something that I attribute to the action not words attitudes of the women in my family. My mother breastfed my sister and I, and I grew up watching my Aunt E extended nurse both of her boys. No one told me how to do it. This could have backfired- if the baby hadn't latched on properly and I wasn't sure how to teach him to- but he did latch on properly, and because no one had told me any different I nursed him whenever my guts told me to nurse him, which it turned out was about every 45 minutes. Or when he got scared, because he told me that's what he wanted. And no one told me I was wrong. No one told me that my instincts were wrong.

This, above all else, is why I'm writing you tonight. As a young woman, I thought women didn't breastfeed just because they didn't want to. And sometimes, that is true. It's also true that many times a mother wants to breastfeed her baby- or at least try it- and she ends up bottle feeding. Why is that? I read this amazing essay at The Feminist Breeder and as I took in her words about women being told how much and often to nurse I had the strange, visceral experience of the voices of mothers I've known echoing in my mind in one, long stream I tried to nurse him but I didn't make enough milk I wanted to nurse her but she was too fussy every time I tried I nursed him but not for long because he still cried too much


and in the sound of those voices I realized that I was hearing the political become personal.

At Ever's one month checkup her pediatrician marveled at Ever's weight, her beautiful fatty fat self. You must make a lot of milk, she said. Sure, I shrugged. Only afterward did I stop to think why my pediatrician thought it notable to comment on how much milk I made. Ever is a perfectly normal weight and I make just the right amount of milk for her. In order to 'successfully breastfeed' there exists a symbiosis between mother and baby that is not created in rule books, guidelines and recommendations, but in the baby's cues to the mother, and the mother's trust in her instinct and in her baby's ability to communicate what he or she needs. Not what a book says the baby should need, or what you should insist on so that the baby doesn't end up clingy/underfed/overfed/demanding/lacking in Vit D/unable to cope etc, etc, etc.

This cue based relationship between the mother and baby begins the moment the baby is born. A baby who is placed, immediately, naked onto his or her mother's chest has a greater chance of successfully breastfeeding. The stimulation of the mother's skin, scent and heartbeat against the baby's is important for both the mother and baby. All kinds of studies have been done to prove what common sense will tell you: babies and mothers do better in a myriad of ways when pressed against each other, as soon and often as possible after birth.

After Dakota, Lola and Ever were born, all of them were immediately placed with me- Ever wasn't placed naked on me because she was the sole CSection baby, but I insisted on having her in my arms as soon as they wrapped her, and immediately let her latch on, as they were stitching me up. This begins the connection of skin on skin that probably sends signals to our brains that we don't even understand yet- a most primal of acts in a society removed from our primal selves, an act that biology made workable for the continuation of our species.

After Dakota was born I saw that he was fussy, and I held him. He still fussed. So I rocked him. He still fussed, so even though he had just nursed 20 minutes ago, I placed him again to nurse, and his face relaxed, his little body relaxed against me, and as I smiled down at him I knew that I had made him feel happy and safe. Dakota was a colic baby, for reasons I didn't understand at the time, and he still cried often and I still often felt crazy and impotent and frustrated. But I watched him- his mouth, if his head was rooting, if he moved his arms and legs a certain way, and the look on his face that all of my babies seem to get when they want nothing more than to breastfeed- a certain far away longing that ends with closed eyes and mouth open and then a look around that is saying where is my booby? Not every baby acts this way. The point is that is what this particular baby needed, and no one was telling me it was wrong, so I did it. If I had done a scheduled feeding with Dakota I would have thought breastfeeding was 'not working' and I 'wasn't good at it' and given up.

Because I nursed him whenever he asked me to, I made milk- a lot of milk. This is one of the most crucial steps in successful breastfeeding. I've watched many an episode of A Baby Story since I went on maternity leave, and seen too many women stick carefully and diligently to a 2 or 3 hour lapse feeding schedule and then wonder why it's not working. The last one I saw was a week or so ago, and the mommy really wanted to breastfeed, had been excited and waiting for it, and cried when deciding to give up. It broke my heart! It was obvious to me that the reason the baby was fussy when nursing was because she was waiting way too long for the infant to nurse, and by the time the little guy got there, he was too miserable and hungry to properly latch, and her breasts weren't making enough milk because the nipple/milk ducts weren't being stimulated enough.

I had a C-Section with Ever, and again this could have been a situation where I gave up on my body and bottle fed. No one explained to me that after a C-Section it is common to have a delay of milk production. Ever was fussy and irritable and my milk wasn't coming in. It was because I have a deep sense of trust in my bodies ability to do it's job that I let her continue nursing, often every half hour, until my milk did come in. And because she kept nursing so frequently, it finally built up to a solid supply; so I went from milk-'deficient' to Ever's pediatrician saying I made ' a ton of milk '. I didn't add a bottle of formula just in case, and if I had, statistics show that our chance of successfully breastfeeding would have been greatly reduced.

Of course sometimes women don't make milk. I have a friend who just didn't make more than a slow, paltry trickle even after trying and trying. BUT. And it's a big but. This is not a commonly naturally occuring problem, although so many women are under the impression that it is. Every other woman I personally know ( who I talked to regularly and saw nursing ) who believed they weren't making enough milk were doing one of these things:

1 Scheduled feedings
2 Supplementing with formula
3 Not holding the baby skin to skin

These reasons are much more likely to be the culprit behind a failed breastfeeding relationship between a newborn and his or her mother. And this is why, when I heard the voices of these women I've known in my head, that the 'political' became 'personal'. Having faith in our bodies and our instincts and our babies communicating what they need is a key component for women feeling confident that they can and will successfully breastfeed their babies.

*this is a repost from Flux's archives in honor of World Breastfeeding Week

Book Review: Too Bright To Hear Too Loud To See

When I opened the brown package and slid this brightly colored novel from its packaging, I felt a pang of nervousness. Knowing already that the entire book was written from the perspective of a man with severe Bipolar 1, I wasn't sure how this thing would make me feel. 

The experiences that Greyson Todd- author Juliann Garey's protagonist- works his way through are largely outside of my own up close and personal with Bipolar. Bipolar 1 is the facet of this disease that most people think of when they hear the word bipolar- mania, horrible highs and even more horrible lows, cheating, stealing, paranoid thinking, long sweaty hours of creative productivity and depressions of catatonia. 

Juliann Garey writes Greyson's voice with a ferocity; a landslide of words erupt from the page in description of the wildly unhinged interior life of Greyson as he is swept away completely by his disease. The novels opens with Greyson in the suffocating emotional expectations of his small family- his wife and little daughter. What happens afterward is unbelievable and realistic, both.

Of course, certain passages rang so clear and familiar that small welts of anxiety rose in my stomach:

'You always think maybe you're just tired. Or coming down with something. Or under a lot of stress. Or overthinking things. Or second guessing yourself, doubting the choices you've made. You always think you just need a break from work and friends and the phone and your family. That you just need a rest.

You think you should have an answer to the question: " What's wrong? " You wish you knew. No one can understand how much you wish you knew. You know you  must be horrible to live with, to be around. Because you cannot stand to be you-to be in your own skin. You think you should be able to promise it will stop a month from last Friday. You can't imagine it will ever stop. You would do anything to make it stop. Instead you just say maybe you need another day to lie in bed. And then you take another and another and another and twenty more. And think you'd rather not get up at all. Ever. Over. You want it over. '

There is much at the baseline of Bipolar that remains the same, whatever category of the disease it erupts as. And Juliann Garey captures the mania particularly well, sweeping us away so that we can understand eventually what would happen to a person who makes the choices that Greyson Todd makes. 

The writing can be particularly interesting and developed in descriptions of people- Garey has a good eye for the absorbing detail, and isn't afraid to move confidently into the world of madness and sexuality. The novel isn't paced well, and that feeling of being swept away into a confident, skilled writer and then let drop into a clumsy scene that doesn't resonate is irritating, and ironically mimics the swings of bipolar. 

' She has round hips and a substantial ass and big, heavy breasts. But what I like best about Miren is the enormous black thatch of ungroomed pubic hair between her legs and the little tufts under her arms to match. My passion for female armpit hair is a relatively recent development. ... if only these women knew what a huge turn-on it is to wander the sidewalks and markets here and to feel as if every woman who hails a cab or opens an umbrella is flashing me, allowing me to steal a glimpse of her little pocket- size vagina.'

At the end of Garey's wild ride, there is a slow coming together of himself and daughter that begins slightly off key but works its way into some wonderfully alive writing with a recognizable portrait, to this lost daughter, of a father in the grips of mental illness and a daughter in the throes of waking to the fact that reality is not a story her mother told her, or the interpretation of her father, but instead, her own experience.

People In Your Neighborhood

I have a new piece up in the wonderful magazine, Role/Reboot. I wrote it after seeing Michelle Knight's moving testimony at Ariel Castro's sentencing. Michelle Knight and the Power Of Friendship

Pin up photography with male models

How to react to an overdose

I honestly still don't know how I feel about this article, which makes it fascinating. I Found Out My Grandfather Was A Rapist

An art student and artist, he writes I'm Sick Of Pretending: I Don't 'Get' Art

Fitting for a writer who just linked my own work here, The Horrors of Self Promotion

Jane Catherine Lotter has died, and she wrote her own obituary. Read it.

In The Atlantic, Authors Favorite First Lines of Novels

Bindi Irwin is a girl who I am introducing to my daughters. 

Summer 2013: The Comfort Of Water

the comfort of water
in the summertime
thick turquoise solitude 
underwater, there is a giant Buddha
i sit in his lap, legs crossed
everything is magical, and nothing hurts
the slinky play of pool against skin and stone
slapping like lover's thighs toward the steps and edges
a slender and spectacular divide runs like a river
between the bright edge of sunshine
and the cool blue of water
watch the baby's head find this space
and break brilliant, rainbow flint afire in the air
yellow! blue! green! white! pink!
her mouth the beginning of pink, her eyes the beginning of blue
the pool drinks her 
i slide into the liquid
lay in the lap of the Universe
press my legs and kick
straight through to the big Western sky

poppies

god! you cut the loose thread
i asked you not to cute
your face for red lipstick is not my
idea of an apology

i want years of devotion
only that, no less
than years of devotion
in my prairie housewife dress

i do not bend knee
to wipe this dirty floor
my arms are white and smooth
for your body

encircle me
i am lonely to the bone
the grasses wave around my brow
as if i were asleep forever

i am not asleep
i am not asleep

Oh Suburbia [ The Neighbors On the Left ]

the cat cut a tooth today
along the wilding wall
that creeps along the condominiums
that sit each twenty feet tall

The neighbors to the left are quiet. They look at each other and not outward to the neighborhood, the neighbors. The father is six foot, strong and obviously used to working with his hands. His face is genial and he is quick to smile when spotted, waves hello, flashing white teeth in a bronzed, Latino face. He has a solid look in the set of his features and in his eyes,  a practical intelligence that says I can take care of whatever is in front of me. Maybe he is 46, 47. His wife is younger. She is short, pretty and slightly plump, with a distracted, slightly fearful air about her. Her hair is 80's poof, always done, her makeup always done, her outfits match even when casual: the dark blue Padres hat, the dark blue shirt. She is terrified of our dogs and when they bound out to pee on the perfect lawns, she runs with a small, girlish shriek that is clearly involuntary and embarrassing to her. On the weekends she is drunk with a clockwork regularity, and her drunken state is high familiarity, social ease; she drinks for the oldest reason in the books, to feel comfortable in her skin. When we walk by their back porch on a Friday or Saturday, fussing at the toddler for dawdling, dropping groceries, juggling bags and stray toys, they are barbecuing, and she leans comfortably over the railing, smiling in a big dimply tipsy, chatting up my husband. 

Their children are older teenagers who they had with other people before they met. The oldest daughter has a daughter, a toddler the same age as ours. Their kids play with the same internalized focus that their mother and father do, eyes to each other, ears tuning out any shouts, shrieks, questions from neighbors that would catch someone else's attention. They stay in a precisely ten foot radius of grass outside of their condo. The wife comes out front and adjusts her hanging plants, back to the rest of us. The dogs bark and she goes back inside. The kids are happy- not friendly but they seem very happy- they scream at each other in play, have big easy smiles, large twinkly eyes, there is rarely a scuffle; I've never heard any of them crying.

In the evening there is no shouting, screaming, cursing or arguing. The lights are out when I come back from my run at 8:30. Some weekends the group of them head out to their cars, and something about the dress and posture says ' We are going to the movies. ' 

A few weeks ago, someone's grandfather was over for the drunken barbecue. He stood outside on the porch, alone, with his hand held at an odd angle over his heart, like a broken bird wing. He looked at the ground, and was bending over slightly, holding himself up with his other hand on the balcony railing. The folds of skin on his cheeks quivered. Sir, I asked as I passed by, are you OK? He looked up at me and smiled uncomfortably. For a beat, he didn't answer. Yes, he said, yes I am. I went into my house and, very concerned, checked on him again through the blinds. There he stood, face quivering, hand over his heart, clearly almost crying, his entire family behind the glass sliding door, eating and laughing and waiting for him to come back in.

i've got a bike you can ride it if you like

an old poem: Lola Bloom

Lola you are too pure for your mother,

your radiance illuminates the dirt around my mouth.

i talk and the spittle is old.

the clean in your breath is astounding.

how can anyone smell so delicious,

not baked or risen in the oven, not perfumed

with essential oils?

my breath is sour and coffee.

in the morning you say,

'momma your breath is stinky'

when i kiss you.

this is how mothers can grow to envy their daughters,

i see it now, how it happens.

their breasts spring forth in acres of skin,

their minds flexible and unafraid.

their mistakes loom in the future, unsaid,

undone, unknown.

they stand near us, in our arms,

pressed against our aging breasts

and act as if they will never grow old.

Lola i will never fight for what you have,

never cling to your childhood to clean my skin.

Lola i will never covet your boyfriends,

your car rides, your first kiss, your bikini.

you can have the flowers, the fields,

every good and brilliant man who deserves you,

the long looks of admiration, every good

time and every good feeling, in abundance,

in bushels, in gifts of foxglove petals,

the ones we both adore.

in return for knowing you, for being privy

to your luminous beauty and ringing song,

your purity of spirit, your trust,

your raging temper and saucy disobedience,

your penchant for wiping buggers on the wall.

the way your mouth opens like a pink bloom

when you are waking.

Lola i am not a martyr 

but for you there is nothing i am afraid to hand over.

( ' Momma? If you had to choose between 

chopping off your hand and losing me, what would- '

' -Lola, I'd choose you.)

in a small trick magicked up by love,

your every happiness thrills me, 

as the ocean is still and deep and content

beneath the laughing tops of wave, catching the sun.

maggie may ethridge

People In Your Neighborhood

take a seat and read!

Writing Advice from George Saunders and Cheryl Strayed 

The Problem With How We Treat Bipolar Disorder- this was a fascinating account of one woman's descent into severe bipolar, and her commentary on what is missing from modern treatment.

Powerful and unsettling, this essay left me with uncertainties and questions. You Are No Longer A Father To Me

We Are Not Trayvon Martin

This powerful study shows that poverty is more powerful than being born drug addicted in predicting the future of a child. This matters to me because I think it is vital we continue to support and expand programs to intercede on behalf of children living in poverty, for food, health (both physical and emotional) and education.

I have been reading quite a bit about the terrifying disease of Alzheimers. This article not only illuminates how it takes over a person- a family- but also points to the supports that are most helpful.

This article points to the ways that we fail and need to better intervene for children in difficult circumstance in school settings. The School To Prison Pipeline

Last and best! My friend Carrie Brown is an amazing single mother who has worked with autistic children for the last however many years. If you remember, I wrote a while back that she had shockingly been diagnosed with Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer.  She was only 42. She has been through hell and back, a few times over. I have heard and seen images of just the tip of what she's been through, and it is a testament to her spirit that she is still here, still mothering her son. She still also has occasional hospitalizations for painful and scary complications, and she still has bills bills bills. If you can help, at all, she is struggling mightily. Here is where to donate. Thank you.