evolution

This morning I sat down and read this article about when bloggers disappear. I have thought often about my little blog orphan here, and this article gave me the kick in the pants I needed to come back and check in.

The truth is, over a year ago when the boys turned two, I fell. The load I'd been carrying tumbled out of my grasp, and things simply became bad. I was depressed, angry, and unable to reach out for the things I would normally do to support myself, because I was in financially dire straights. I was embarrassed, and frankly, I felt no ability to account for my days, my choices, or even my thoughts. Ah, depression, my ugly old friend. I tried a few times to give myself prompts and other kinds of inspiration, but this particular story of hope and accomplishment and dreams realized just felt over.

It's funny that my last post was in April... as it turns out, it was the dark before the dawn. I met someone, and we quickly joined our forces together, and the tide of living life, raising kids, and forming a whole new parenting unit - consisting of me, my sister, and now Ted - swept us away. To add to that monumental change, we also had to move house, Max and Shoghi started school, Shoghi's evaluations for sensory processing disorder/ ADHD/ autism continued, Ted moved in with us, and if that all wasn't enough, last month my brother suffered a catastrophic injury to his heart, and after almost three weeks of being by his side in the cardiothoracic ICU, he died. Thirty-four years old. My brother. Dead. It's still unbelievable.

So, there's the catch-up. This whole arc of change simply paralyzed me and swept my voice away.

Now 1+2 as a title doesn't seem right anymore. We've gone from 3 to 5, we have such a huge community of friends, we now live in a co-housing community, and a myriad of other things are different. Finding Ted, and really finding so much of myself before him, propelled me into a new level of clarity about my path - and I am learning that living in integrity with my true wants, talents, and spirit is actually possible. In that spirit, I have started writing a new blog: a certainty of place. Now that I've touched down here again and made peace with the changes that came, maybe I'll come here to write more specifically about parenting, twins, household.... but I think we'll have to just see what comes.

For now, we can meet here and on certainty, and I hope you'll fill me in on your own changes and stories. I'd love to reconnect.

links:

my brother's facebook page, supporting simon

my sister's blog: lifecrafted

a certainty of place

showing up

more silence from celeste. two crazy busy weeks, with literally every moment occupied with more than one task as the demands of crafting for the farmer's market, stumbling over piles of things-in-progress, running after my sons, playing, shopping, cooking, discussing parenting challenges with my sister, fighting the recently constant tide of depression, worrying about money, wondering what to do next.

i never want to write these things here. many blogs i love are all about beauty, about finding the beauty in the moment, usually hiding the recent chaos, the piles of laundry, the dirty dishes. the writing is excellent, the photos polished, gorgeously framed, glowing with light and passion and love. i'd love to come here with daily writing about my amazing boys, about successes in mothering, growth as an artisan, discovery in homemaking and leave out how daunted i am, how overwhelmed and lost in this land of single and unemployed twin parenting.

so it turns out that the heavy task of shaping my current surroundings into something exclusively happy and shiny, or just having the brain power to sit quietly and suss out the beauty of my days, this prevents me from writing at all. i don't keep a paper journal. and because i'm afraid to be judged for my faults, afraid to frame myself in negativity (which is also not true or complete by any means), i stop writing. i stop communicating with myself save some brief quiet moments when i first lie down on my bed at night, those moments before my dark whispering ego selves start their insistent conversations and keep me up in the late hours of the night.

so what do i do? i guess i'm going to just try to write it down. i hope if you decide to keep reading that you'll read my words with a wider lens, knowing that if i'm talking about lack of this or that, or a particular parenting test, or what have you, that it's only here because i'm trying to figure it out. have to write it down. want to remember these dominant lessons, the ones that are thorny and sting, along side the ones that unfold easily in luscious colors and textures.

because that's really how life is, isn't it?

i've been feeling for quite some time that i'm in a very "live and let live" phase of my life. so i'm going to exercise the same expansive allowance for myself to just show up and celebrate the mess along with the beautiful.

just one thing

as adults, there are many things we need to accomplish on any given day. as parents, that list increases exponentially, and as working-from-home parents, the number of things-to-do seems endlessly growing. because everything is at home, you never get a break like you do when leaving things at an office. when you are trying to stay afloat in this scenario and are living with Depression, it's a whole lot harder.

my own energy for concentrated attention in the few free moments i get during the day is very limited. it's like you're standing in the middle of a hurricane of noise, activity, and emotional need (produced by two toddlers), and all of a sudden everything stops and you expect yourself to get right to work. the house is in a shamble, and there are a hundred uncompleted tasks piled up everywhere, and your mind and body are still humming with movement. since i started working at home in the winter, the amount of visual, mental, and physical clutter has mounted and now has finally overwhelmed me. the boys seem to be echoing the lack of calm back to me, as in the past several days there has been a huge upswing in toy-throwing. i have taken to eliminating the toys one-by-one from our play space as they are tossed around.

this has all resulted in a decision. for the next month, i am going to drastically simplify things around here. even though it feels like a huge responsibility i am failing to uphold, i am going to put the cloth diapers away for one month. washing has become something for me to avoid, and has led to a lot of stress for me.

rather than telling myself that today i will (for example) be present for the boys, reply to emails, bake, sew, do wash, hang clothes on the line, screen print, and package and mail orders from my shops, i will force myself to do just one of the non-parenting things on my list. it's actually incredibly hard for me to work in this way - i'm much more of an impulsive do-er. i am going to have to do a major cleaning and somehow box and organize all of my in-progress projects. i have to be ready with everything i need for my artisan booth at opening day of our farmer's market on 6/13, and i actually feel fearful that by putting things away, i won't get anything done at all.

the reality is, though, that i am already in way over my head and feeling ineffective at accomplishing my tasks.

we'll see how it goes. please send your prayers and helpful energies my way - i really need some calm and support!

back on track

ssshhhhh.... for the first time since my twinnies were little babes, i'm sitting in bed next to a sleeping child, using my computer. every keystroke sounds terribly loud.... if he wakes, i'll have to abandon the post!

well, almost all of you know me on facebook, but i wanted to remember what it's been like for me to emerge from the darkness of chemical depression, and record what's been happening for me lately.

most of the time i do write about the boys, don't i... because i figure that's what everyone's interested in. but as their mama, i have been, and of course will continue to be on quite a journey.

as soon as i became pregnant, every spark of creative energy seemed to leave my mind and settle in my womb. it surprised me (ok, and really kind of made me sad) that i had no desire to create for my future children. no knitting teeny garments, no quilting, no calligraphy... nothing. well, you know, there was the 3,000 mile move, the living with friends for 6 months, the early birth of the boys, the nursing, the help with nursing, the sleeplessness.... but you know.... besides all of THAT, i really didn't do much of anything.

so to find that now, at a time when my babies are fully into being toddlers, and still have no creative juice flowing... well, it was just sad. and on top of that the depression... when i finally found a better dose of my prescription, it all came pouring back. seriously, in the 3 weeks since i've been feeling better, i have been so inspired - things have just poured through me - my hands have found their way to making new things i've never even tried before.

i opened a second etsy shop: 70s Home. did you all even know i had one originally? well, since nothing has been new in there for quite a while, i just felt it was stagnant, but soon there will be new designs in bamboo village press, too. and so it goes - change your thoughts, change your life. this time i needed some help to get my thoughts pointing in a better direction, but all of a sudden, out of seemingly nowhere, i have energy, inspiration, work, and a little bit of income.

we found a guy who agreed to come put in a raised bed for us in our rental home's backyard - he did the work in trade for some food i cooked for him. then, seriously out of the blue, a woman contacted me through bamboo village press and asked me to make her wedding invitations for her. after doing a quote, this lead didn't fizzle... in fact, i just finished them today, and honestly, i want to cry when i see them... something i drew by hand ended up on this couple's invitations! the colors, the gold embossing i did by hand... all of it... these are really some of the prettiest things i have ever made with my hands. i am so moved. the pictures i have taken so far really don't capture just how pretty they are. i sat there, doing a job a lot of people might find tedious, thinking "i love doing this" - i think this might be the first time i have truly felt this so deeply as my calling.

so now that the invitations are done, i am going full force into preparing for this weekend. my wonderful sister had her own moment of inspiration when we realized how much the new garden was costing (which i seriously cannot afford right now), and suggested we have a craft sale/open house. it's going to be 2 days - this sunday and the following thursday, and i've expanded it to not only cover both of our handmade items, but also a bake sale. i've gotten a ton of long-distance orders for my awesome maple almond and maple cashew granola, and i'll also be baking some fresh bread, and making some sweets as well (like maple butterscotch sauce and world peace cookies). i'm excited - not only will we get to visit with our lovely friends, i'm also going to hang a poster at our local cafe and put an ad on craigslist - it's definitely weird to think about opening our home to the public like this!


in the end, it is wonderful to feel yet again so supported by our friends and family, and it's so great to know that we will have some lovely organic food on our summer and fall table this year - food of a quality that i wouldn't otherwise be able to buy this year. even more, though, it inspires deep, deep gratitude within me that a part of myself has resurfaced. welcome back, happy, hard-working, inspired me - i missed you.

missing

It's been a rather long time since I've posted, hasn't it? March has arrived, spring is here, my children continue to change and grow, and somewhere along the line, I feel like a part of me has been lost. A heavy old feeling has returned, and this time I have a happy little life surrounding me. There is no bad relationship to blame. The days of infertility and pregnancy loss are behind me. Sure, there's a lot to be stressed out about - still not having a job, getting older and wondering if I'll have a chance to be a mama to a third (biological) child, running out of money... these are all things that I encounter in my mind and heart every day. But the darkness I feel taking up residence again I have now come to accept as something else - why is it so hard for me to even type this word - depression.

To admit that I'm not just lazy, not a terrible procrastinator, not irresponsible, not at fault... to set aside labels that I have used on myself for years and years... why is that so hard? It's easier to blame myself than to think that perhaps these symptoms that have plagued me for so long are not just a failing of my will to change. Ironically, though I have spent a lot of time in therapy, I have not used medication for depression aside from when my marriage was falling apart and I was in the worst grief of infertility. And now that I really believe that this is truly clinical depression that I'm dealing with, I have no health insurance or savings left to deal with it.

I have envisioned this blog as a place to record the story of this little family - to share it with family and friends, to connect with new people... and ultimately, to have it as a gift for my sons. I hesitate to write about the darker moments of parenting.

One thing I am proud of, though, is that in these past months that have been tarnished by panic attacks, muscle and joint pain, and the dark paralysis of this strange and unwanted internal despair, I can truly say that all the energy I have summoned has gone to my children. I haven't written my resume or kept on top of all of my bills, but I have spent countless hours playing with Max and Shoghi, celebrating their little lives, cooking for them, researching their development and trying to come up with ways to engage their curiosity, looking into their precious eyes, hugging their beautiful bodies, washing their diapers, telling them stories, and re-discovering the world through their experience of living. I know that even in my worst hours, I am a loving mother to my boys, and that is a gift to all of us.

So, this is the reason I haven't been posting much. It is hard for me to admit that things have really gotten this dark - and it's been very sad for me to come to the realization that if this is not situational depression as I had guessed in the past, that I may well have to deal with the truly terrible affliction of depression for a good while. Have you dealt with depression or a disease of chronic pain or fatigue as a parent? If so, please share your experience!

somewhere beyond here

The picture doesn't show it, but I feel so adrift, so stressed out, so lost these days. My patience has washed away under a flood of anxiety, and I find it challenging to make it through the days without terrible feelings of failure - failure to discern my path, to find enough creative and engaging things for the boys, to manage this household calmly and with the finesse I tell myself most adults possess. I ask myself every day how I ever thought I could do this myself, and then I remember that I am doing it, that I couldn't have imagined how it would be to parent twins in this situation (or that my pursuit of parenthood would give me the blessing of having two babies at the same time), and that I would not change any of it, no matter how hard it is for me right now.

The fact is, I am trying. I am digging deeper than I have ever had to in my life. I do come up with new things for us to do every day, we get out and spend time with friends, and I am working hard to prepare good meals and bake bread. These things are important to me, and despite my inner turmoil, I am doing them. I have no choice but to reach for something better, to find myself in the midst of this personal crisis.

To make sure I have various kinds of support and a structure to focus my thoughts of creating a more healthy life, I've decided to take Mondo Beyondo again - the online class I took in October that guides participants through a process of becoming clear about their dreams, and then pursuing them.

This is all in line with my stated goal of 2010 of finding my voice. I'm relieved that the class starts today and I can place my frenzied mind into a calm, positive space.