Hanging on to a rainbow…
Tag: past
Diamonds in the Rough
I arrived in Muskogee last night (August 22) at the Diamonds in the Rough sober living house to visit my daughter.
I was overwhelmed by the spirit of happiness and love that abounded in spite of the fact that each girl is still overcoming her demons.
We went to a church meeting and as the music was playing, I turned to my daughter and as we hugged, I felt God flow through both of us and I realized like never before that every miracle I have ever prayed for that girl has been granted.
She is alive and she is on the road to recovery.
The road to recovery is a long twisting road with many detours and problems.
It’s not a picnic. I know, because I’ve been sober for over 30 years.
I was overcome as I held her and she held me. All that we have been through with each other in our lives with men and with our addictions almost made sense and I truly felt the spirit of God as His precious grace flowed through us.
Playmates in Pink
Dream Weaver 2
Sisters…
my sister and I…
fall into me…
Changes
I don’t often write about this, but I have severe degenerative disk disease and several creative forms of arthritis including the master bone bender, rheumatoid arthritis. The reasons I don’t write about it are simple.
I believe what you think will be, so I refuse to dwell on my health issues and I refuse to be handicapped by fear of the future. I focus on what I can still do and it’s so amazing to see how much there is left that I can still do.
However, I have been on a rough journey since last summer, beginning with moving from Florida last July to New England. We have moved so many times that I didn’t realize that we were getting older and much less spry. My husband carried boxes out to the U-Haul trailer for me and I packed every single available space in the RV. We were both exhausted by the time the trip began. We had numerous delays in the closing on the house we sold in Florida and with the house we bought in New Hampshire. The dates did not match up close together and we ended up having to camp in our RV for a month.
Although I had days and days of adventure and fun on the road trip and I loved camping in our RV on a stunning mountain for a month, the stress of learning my way around an unfamiliar area, again, was tiring. I loved the month we spent camping on the mountain but…my husband hated it.
He hated the small space and he was cramped with our two dogs on top of us, although as far as I know, our two Chihuahua’s are always on top of us no matter how much room we have available.
I think the biggest stress factor for me was finding a doctor. When we finally moved into the house, I found a doctor’s group and they refused to see me without my medical records. They would not see me without my records and they would not accept the ones I had in my hand, my complete medical records printed from my doctor’s portal. They looked through them and then handed them back to me.
“You might have forged them,” they said.
Months went by with this medical group claiming that they never got my medical records from Florida.
I began to run out of several important medications. When I called my Florida doctor’s office, they said that they had mailed my records…twice.
I went back to the medical center to request an appointment again. They went through my hand-held records and my prescription list (for the second time) at the front desk and they told me that I probably didn’t even meet their requirements to be accepted as a patient. (It was the only medical center in our little town.)
So, after a humiliating verbal dance in front of several patients and staff members, the head nurse admitted that they wouldn’t accept me as a patient because I took pain medication.
Talking about my personal history in front of anyone was a direct violation of the Hipaa Law, but I just walked away. Humiliated and so mad I couldn’t breathe. That’s how bullies win and although I wish I had turned her in, at least to her boss, I didn’t.
On the plus side, although I still had severe pain from rheumatoid arthritis and degenerative disk disease, I had by now weaned myself off a fifteen-year legal pain pill habit because I realized that I was going to end up withdrawing cold turkey if I didn’t.
It wasn’t easy, but I had a deep belief that God was in control and I gave this problem to Him. Every day. Strange things happened. My pain level went down, not up as I changed over to Tylenol.
That was last October and I immediately began to feel better, my head felt clearer and I had less pain.
I still have pain, but it’s much more manageable and I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason. I am better off without the pain pills and I would have never thought that would be the case.
Meanwhile, I found a doctor almost an hour away and waited a month for an appointment. When I saw the doctor, she told me that I needed to see three different specialists because she didn’t prescribe medicines, she was a homeopathic doctor. Would have been nice if they had explained that when I asked for a primary care physician appointment.
In the weeks that followed, I left my husband and my house and moved almost three hours away.
He helped me buy a small mobile home near my sister in Maine.
We had problems before the move so combining the stress of moving and the extreme changes in my body chemistry, well I think that I just had myself a good old-fashioned nervous breakdown. Or so my mom would say.
I have been alone since October.
I have learned many things since I have been alone. Here are just a few.
I have definitely learned how much my husband loves me, even after thirty-five years together.
I have learned that our good memories are powerful.
I have learned that no matter how old your kids are…they never want to see their parents split-up.
I have learned that I enjoy taking care of myself and that I like being alone.
It’s sad, but we have talked more since we split-up than we ever did when we sat together every night and a make-up is hopefully in our future.
My husband says that thirty-three years of marriage are worth fighting for and he has a point.
Still, I say; right now…I’m just tired of fighting.
The most important things that I have learned are that I will be okay, single or married and as always, I am in His hands and He knows where I need to be, even when I don’t have a clue.
Jeanne Marie, 2016
October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Does It End October 31?
My first question was, why not everyday? Several women (angrily) asked me that same question when I posted or re-blogged articles related to domestic violence, emotional, verbal or sexual abuse. Well, I told them that I wondered that too, and that I didn’t name the dedication, I was just trying to honor the victims and the survivors because I come from that country and I am fluent in that language.
The question I have asked myself repeatedly this month is this: What does national awareness do for the victims? Does it change the abuser’s mind? Does he (or she) say, “Damn it! I’m not going to swear and scream at you until National Domestic Violence Awareness Month is over, you lucky bitch!”
Does he pay the bills, buy some food, keep his hands off his daughter because it’s National Domestic Violence Awareness Month?
Will the family have a month of peace? Will her neighbor buy ice for her black eye?
The abusers and the victims are all too aware of what domestic violence is and the people who don’t acknowledge it all year long because it’s easier to look away, well they don’t give a flying fig that this month is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month either.
The women who go to shelters expecting to find a way out, expecting someone to teach them how to stand on their own two feet, hoping for training so that they can get a job that will support them and their kids in the future, what do they think about National Domestic Violence Awareness Month?
How about asking the ones who returned home because the shelter was lacking in anything but a whole new set of rules, a bed and some used clothes.
The shelters where women in my family have gone provided a time out, nothing more. If you run a shelter that provides therapy, job training, education, legal representation and daycare, I apologize and I’d also like your hot line phone number.
I will post articles about abuse in October anyway, hoping that even one woman might find the courage to grab her babies and run for safety.
I have read the survivor’s stories and I have read the “he killed her” stories.
I have a “he killed her” story. I had a cousin who was murdered in front of her young son, while living in a shelter.
I cry and I hold every victim’s and every survivor’s story that I have ever read or witnessed in my heart. Including my own.
Victims and abusers, survivors and inflictors, well, to them every month is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. They just don’t talk about it.
So as this official National Domestic Violence Awareness Month begins, I feel helpless. I have no answers, no help for the millions who will go to bed hungry, crying and/or bruised tonight. For those who will sleep in their cars because it is safer than their home or because they have no home and friends and family are sick of helping them only to see them go back to the abuser.
I have tears, but Lord knows, they already have enough tears of their own.
Maybe we could make everyday Domestic Violence Awareness Day.
Cry until you laugh…Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie
A No Help At All Handbook
Another brush stroke added to The Big Picture…
Many of you read my article about my daughter, Jodie Lynne, getting out of prison, The Big Picture, last week.
I said, “I am asking all of you who believe to pray for us. She is walking out the prison gates with nothing but the clothes on her back, a faith that God loves her, a belief that He will help her survive and a very strong desire to not return to prison.”
You responded with encouragement, support and promises of prayers…thank you so much.
I am thrilled to report that we got our miracle. One of many in Jodie’s Journey.
Her ex-husband, currently sober, has used his recovery connections to help her get into a recovery house for women. A very structured program designed to teach women to take responsibility for their own lives, while giving them a safe place to live. This is a big deal, definitely in the miracle category, because I have called recovery programs in the area and Jodie has already burned so many bridges that most of them wouldn’t even call me back.
When she is released, she will be taking a daylong bus ride back to Tulsa and as soon as she arrives, she will be going to the house for her interview. They have two openings and all she has to do is show up sober and say she is willing to follow the program’s rules. She will be accepted into the house that very night. She will not spend even one day or one night wandering the streets, looking for shelter.
She started crying when I told her. She had planned to leave prison with a list of shelters for the homeless and now she has a bed waiting for her.
If she wants to stay straight and stay out of jail, God has given her the opportunity. It won’t be easy, but it will be possible.
She has been calling me the last few weeks full of anxiety and nearly hysterical. I kept telling her that God had a place for her, we just didn’t know where it was yet and I believed that with all my heart, but nothing I could say calmed her down. I understood her fear, but this precious girl has helped me learn to trust God, so when I could tell her that I knew where her place was, my heart was overflowing with gratitude. I told her that I believed for her when she couldn’t and I reminded her that she has done the same for me.
Again, thank you for your encouragement, support and prayers,
Jeanne Marie
The Big Picture…
Hi! I haven’t been around my blog very much lately because I am in the middle of packing up my house in Florida and moving to New Hampshire.
Crazy as it sounds, I would rather be cold than hot and I am from New England.
I do have other reasons for moving. Still, I’m either insane or very brave considering the snow they had there last year.
So, the day that I close on my house in Florida is the same day that my daughter, Jodie Lynne, walks out of prison in Oklahoma.
I am asking all of you who believe to pray for us. She is walking out the prison gates with nothing but the clothes on her back, a faith that God loves her, a belief that He will help her survive and a very strong desire to not go back to prison.
I can’t go to Oklahoma on that day and I think God wants me to let her sort this one out because the timing means that I have to be here in Florida and not there with her.
Her dad and I have set aside some money so she can get an apartment, but not many landlords decide to rent to a felon, a felon without a job.
In spite of that, I am praying that God already has a safe place picked out for her. He can do that…I can’t.
Jodie and I are writing a book about how hard it is to make it and stay clean when you walk out of prison.
It’s almost impossible to start over when you have been stripped of everything but your life. Your children, dignity, self-worth, confidence and possessions, gone, and now you owe thousands and thousands of dollars in fines.
It used to be that you’d go to prison and work off your fines but now they not only add them on to your bill, they charge you for the services you require to stay free.
She has to pay to see her parole officer and she has to pay for frequent urine tests.
She owes $50,000 in child support and as soon as she gets a job they garnish her wages.
I will never defend the choices that landed my daughter in jail, but I will say this, people do horrendous things and walk away every day. All you need to walk away is money for a good lawyer.
She has no crimes against people, no violent offenses, just a bunch of petty crimes that added up to doing time as a habitual criminal.
Plus, Oklahoma has more women in prison than any other state and it’s not because they have the highest crime rate.
I make no excuses for my daughter, but as we have traveled the prison system together over the last eight years, I have realized that the women and girls who come out of prison are setup to fail.
I don’t know how anyone could come out owing about $70,000 and make it, excepting for a big miracle or a few medium size miracles.
My daughter is a beautiful woman, inside and out and when she is straight, she is my best friend in the world. When she is not straight, she is my biggest heartache.
I would like you to pray with me that she finds the strength and the courage to walk out of prison and stay sober, that she will find a job allowing her to pay her child support and fines, at least enough to stay out of jail. She doesn’t have a driver’s license because she owes child support, so her job options are very limited, confined to the area where she finds an apartment.
I never did understand how losing your license because you didn’t pay child support would help get child support from you. How do you get to work without a license?
And as for me, please pray that I stay strong as I pack about a hundred boxes, while trying to get rid of everything that I don’t care about because it costs too much to move it all and even some things I do care about.
I have to remember that in the big picture, possessions really don’t mean anything, people do.
I am moving for many complicated reasons, reasons that are far more important than fine china or knickknacks.
I care deeply about my writing, my books and my computers and even most of the books I own could go.
I’ve already gotten rid of hundreds of books and I pray for the strength and the stamina to make this move.
I am praying for the courage to allow my daughter to walk out of prison and stand on her own two feet.
My daughter and I are also writing about how going to prison damages the families of the prisoners, the parents and the grandparents, siblings and family members, anyone who loves them, moms who like me, never give up hoping and believing because they love their child.
Please pray that God and the angels cover our backs as we each struggle to do what needs to be done to change our lives for the better and please pray that we continue to move forward in faith despite the enormous odds that we have against us.
Amen and XO, Jeanne Marie
Thinking Pink…
Visit https://thinkingpinkx2.wordpress.com/ for more PINK Thinking!
Baltimore Stew From Grace Christine (My Mom)
BALTIMORE STEW
From my mom, Grace Christine 1926-2009
I was born during the “Great Depression” in 1926. It was a sad and poor time for most of the people in our country. However; as a child, my world revolved around my parents and I was untouched by our country’s struggles.
My dad was a barber and my mother was a happy homemaker, in every sense of the word. My parents welcomed friends and relatives into our home, and fed the occasional strangers who knocked at our door, looking for a meal and a place to spend the night.
We had a small garden in the backyard which supplied the family with fresh vegetables all through the summer and enough preserves, jams and pickles to last the winter. The chairs around our table were never empty because my parents loved to invite people to share our meals, and I believe our company came for the generous measure of love and conversation that was dished out with the food.
Mum made cooking an easy chore and she always had a smile or a funny joke as she stirred her pots and pans. Her cakes and pies were rumored to have come straight from a heavenly source to our table. Saturday was the high spot of our week because it meant a trip to Boston for our weekly supply of meat and staples. My sister and I loved the little treasures Mum bought us, such as a pomegranate or an orange, and Dad’s favorite treat, chestnuts.
When I close my eyes, I can still see my mother at our kitchen window, and I can hear her saying, “Here comes Aunt Georgiana and the children. I’ll have to put more water in the stew and another potato in the pot. I should have made more pies!” (She might have had two apple pies cooling in the pantry, but she always wanted to have more than enough for everyone at the table.) Here’s Mum’s (Harriet/Great Nana) recipe for Baltimore Stew, our all time favorite!
Baltimore Stew
Put the following ingredients into a large, heavy pan.
Two pounds of stew meat, cut into small cubes.
Two pounds of fresh carrots, peeled and sliced one inch thick.
One small can of whole tomatoes. One large diced onion.
Two slices of fresh white bread, broken into pieces.
Three whole cloves. One teaspoon of salt. One-half teaspoon of pepper.
Cover with cold water and simmer for about three and a half hours.
Add one can of drained peas and simmer about thirty more minutes. Remove cloves.
Add two heaping tablespoons of regular tapioca.
Cook uncovered for fifteen more minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.
Serve with mashed potatoes.
As Mum would say, “Eat hearty and enjoy! There’s plenty for all!”
Love Blooms Here
Love…
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle…My college essay on motherhood, 1994
Are you crazy? Not yet? Well, you can always try motherhood! It worked for me. Okay, so most women love babies. Women are attracted to babies due to a very basic, maternal instinct. Reason and logic are only slightly involved in this picture. The longing to have a baby is so strong in most women that those who can’t conceive are devastated. Babies are so precious, all soft and cuddly, and they’re even more adorable when they start to smile and coo.
Additionally, there’s no sweeter fragrance than the aroma a baby sends forth, fresh from his bath, swaddled in a Downy soft blanket. Combine that with the essence of Johnson’s baby powder and rare would be the woman whose hormones could resist the “maternal urge.” You visit your friend and her new baby one afternoon. When your husband comes through the door that evening you say, “Oh honey, I want to have a baby!”
Well, I’m here to set the story straight and reveal some well-kept secrets about motherhood. I’ll tell you secrets that will expose the reality behind the charming, family portraits from Wal-Mart, those costly, cheap pictures we love to hang on our living room walls. The things that women who are already caught never tell to the women who are still free. Misery loves company and we can’t bear to see the smug expression on your faces as you say, “My kids are going to be different.”
Let’s start with the pregnancy. One night, you and the man of your dreams make wild, passionate love and as a result you become pregnant. (Sometimes, this occurs even when you’re using three different types of birth control. What a miracle!)
Pregnancy. An awkward word, don’t you think? Rightly so, because in about eight months you will be as awkward as your worst nightmare. By the ninth month, you can’t sleep more than twenty minutes without waking up to go to the bathroom. You’ll forget what your feet looked like. Shaving your legs will be a fond memory. You’ll be praying for labor pains and once they start, you’ll be praying for the strength to get out of those stirrups and kill the man who did this to you. As you begin to scream swears in the labor room (swears your husband has never even heard before) little does he realize, you are saving the superlative curses. They will come out of your mouth, unbidden, in the delivery room.
You’ll think, thank God, as the nurse lays the baby on your stomach. The doctor lets your husband (if he hasn’t fainted or run away) cut the baby’s umbilical cord and you both count the ten, tiny fingers and toes. One nurse takes the baby off to be bathed and another nurse kneads and beats on your stomach. (I kid you not!) They wheel you back to your room and you fall asleep thinking, it’s over. (No, I’m afraid it’s just beginning.)
You’ll be so sick of maternity clothes (designed by men who have never carried forty extra pounds around their waist) that you’ll give them to the first pregnant woman you see. Even if it’s your husband’s old girlfriend. Your husband might gently ask, “Why don’t you keep them for the next time, sweetheart?” and that’s when he will learn about post-partum blues. I don’t think I’ll give all the secrets away; let’s save the “baby blues” for a surprise.
The baby is home. Your friends and your family have left. Your husband has gone back to work. At that moment, reality rears it’s ugly head. You are out of diapers (the baby has soiled twenty-four since yesterday), so you decide to get dressed and go to the store. “Whose jeans are these?” you ask. “Why can’t I get my jeans up over my hips?” You double check the closet to make sure these are your clothes. In tears, you pull on an old pair of stretch pants and one of your husband’s sweatshirts. Get used to them. It’s the uniform of motherhood, and will soon be as comfortable as an old friend.
The baby pooped his last diaper while you were rummaging in the closet, and as you pick him up, he regurgitates down the front of your sweatshirt. (That’s part of the uniform.) The fragrance that your friend’s baby radiated the day you held it, is lacking in your infant. She forgot to tell you that babies don’t stay clean. You sit down, crying, and you call your mother. She brings diapers and advice. “Save your tears for when he is a teenager,” she tells you. “This is easy, compared to that.” You don’t believe her. You think maybe she’s just being sarcastic. (However; years from now her words will haunt you, as your child goes to school, learns to drive and chooses his own friends.)
I think you’ve got the general picture concerning babies. Let’s move on to my personal favorite. The terrible two’s. This usually strikes when the child is between one and two years old and lasts until he moves out. At the onset of this natural childhood disaster, he learns to talk and how to say “NO!” He may forget how to poop on the potty, how to pick up his toys or how to eat with a spoon, but he will never forget how to say, “NO!”
He will get into your record collection, he will get into your books and he will get into your child-proof cabinets. He will climb into the refrigerator at 6:00 a.m., but he will never climb willingly into a warm bath! He will climb into your bed when he is sick and vomit on you as you sleep. “Momma, I’m sick,” will be his excuse. ( Just because the child is six years old and knows where the bathroom is, don’t expect him to use it.)
Young couples fall in love and get married, usually thinking that having children will be the ultimate expression of their love. Survival of the human race is ensured by our urge to reproduce and by our raging hormones. However; if given a choice, how many women would actually go back and do it all again? Ann Landers took a survey on that subject and was shocked at the response. The majority of people who answered the survey voted no, they would decide not to have children, if they had it to do over.
Somewhere, there is a perfect mother who has raised healthy, well-adjusted children. She has balanced the demands of motherhood and a part-time job. She has never had any major problems with her teenagers. She has no guilt or regrets, and she is happy that she gave up her life for her children. When you find her, let me know, because I’d like to meet her.
Each child you bring into this world will brand you. My body bears the scars of my children’s births. I had three cesarean sections and my scars cover the area my bathing suit used to bare. (I’m not even going to discuss stretch marks.) I’ve been doomed to a one-piece suit for all eternity.
My heart and soul bear their own scars. Years of toddler temper tantrums, hyperactive children, teenage mutiny, rebellion, hard rock and rap music, they have all taken their toll. Clothes borrowed and never returned. Disappearing makeup. Teenage pregnancies that made me a premature grandmother. School meetings with various principals and teachers, meetings where I was made to feel like an incompetent mother. (As the years passed, I began to have my husband go to these meetings. They never yelled at him.) Motherhood strips you of your dignity, your rights and eventually your vocabulary.
Some women manage to save their brain and can take it out of storage after the last teenager moves out. With a little dusting, it can be restored to an adult brain. Warning: attempting this restoration with even one teenager still living at home can cause further damage! For example, when I asked my teenage son to turn down his stereo so I could do my college assignments, he told me, “You don’t need to go to school; you’re too old.”
What was he really saying? “I want my mother’s attention. I want her to cook me a big meal. I want her to clean my room and entertain me. Unless one of my friends comes by and then I’m out of here!”
He was also thinking, “You’re not a student; you’re my mother!” I was thinking, “You’re not too old to slap!”
Motherhood drains you, uses you up and leaves a huge hole in your heart when your children leave home. If your child gets pregnant or decides to abuse drugs, it will be considered your fault. Even if it isn’t your fault, you will eventually accept society’s diagnosis, because mothers are supposed to be perfect, in complete control. This theory does not allow for the fact that children have their own personality, outside influences and other people in their life.
When will your child become mature enough to thank you for all you’ve given him, given up for him? Usually, that doesn’t happen until he has children of his own. However; with daughters, you can be almost sure it will happen right after the birth of her first child. Maybe even during the delivery.
Sometimes, your husband leaves, long before the kids are grown. He has a choice. You do not. Your time, your energy and all of your resources will go into raising your children. Did I mention the mounds of laundry, the piles of dirty dishes and the mountains of meals you will cook? Well, that’s another story in itself.
There is a positive side to motherhood, but when your children are teenagers it’s hard to remember that fact. I enjoyed having babies and I loved staying home with them when they were small. As I watched my first grandson come into this world, I was overwhelmed with an incredible rush of love and excitement! It was breathtaking to see the miracle of his birth. My grandchildren are precious and by far the best gift motherhood has given me.
As I read Parents magazine the other day, I noticed that most of the articles concerned problems that arise when raising children and how to solve them. The title of this article really caught my eye: “Survival Guide for New Moms.”
So, even Parent’s magazine concedes, it’s a question of survival!
When you’re thinking about that beautiful baby you’d like to have, remember this advice–babies are easy to have, labor included, compared to the strenuous task of raising them. Your career will be motherhood, trust me. Everything else in your life will come second. I’m sure many women would disagree with my views on motherhood. But don’t even let them approach me, unless they have already raised at least one child.
Do I love my children? Yes, enormously. Would I choose to become a mother if I had a chance to start over? I’m not sure. I can’t picture my life without them in it, but my children needed so much more and I had so much less than what they needed.
Motherhood has taught me numerous valuable lessons. We learn how to raise our children by rock, hard experience and by the time we’ve developed the necessary skills, our children are grown-up and they have children of their own.
On the plus side, the experience does prepare us for grand-parenting.
Update, 04-21-2015
I have fourteen grandkids and three great-grandbabies. Their ages span from twenty-five-years old to four-months.
Happy Birthday, Jodie Lynne
Happy Birthday, Jodie Lynne
April 18
Today is my younger daughter’s fortieth birthday. Since we couldn’t be together, we created a substitute plan. We would celebrate over the phone.
When she called me, we only talked about things that made us happy. We talked about her silky-haired Chihuahua that I am raising, Maggie Mae, we talked about other dogs that we have loved through the years and we spoke of our happy dreams, instead of our nightmares.
We talked about peanut butter and marshmallow fluff being her favorite birthday cake (today) and how grateful she was to have snacks in her locker so that she didn’t have to go to the cafeteria to eat on her birthday.
For me, as on this date every year; I am thinking about the morning that she came into my life. She made a grand entrance, all 5-pounds 6-ounces of her. Her daddy had ordered me to have a boy and he meant it, so when they told me I had a beautiful little girl, I started to cry.
It had been a rough birth, a planned C-section, but the spinal that didn’t work before they made the incision was not part of the plan, so I was a bit overwhelmed and the moment she was out, I was over-drugged to compensate for their mistake. Then, they brought her to me and the moment I saw her little face shaped like a pink heart, I fell in love with her. She was so tiny and so cute that she looked like a dolly, not like a real baby.
Everyone’s life is complicated, hindsight is an incredible tool to beat yourself with and you can do some real damage. I often find ways to blame myself for every unwise choice this beautiful woman has made, but I’m not going to do that today.
Today, I am going to celebrate her life, her birthday and the fact that when she is sober, she is full of Grace and Light. I will celebrate the day twenty years ago when she taught me to open myself to the spirit of our Universe, the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the Stars, the Wind and the Rain. The day she taught me to stand barefoot outside and to raise my arms up to the sky so I that I could ground myself in the beauty and the strength of God’s love through the elements He created. I still try to remember to do this every morning and what my daughter taught me that day changed my life.
Today, I will celebrate the precious gift that her aliveness gives me, no matter where she has to rest her head on her birthday.
As my daughter falls asleep tonight, in the gritty gloom of Eddie Warrior’s Correctional Center in Oklahoma, I will fall asleep in sun-drenched Florida. But we will be together in spirit. I will hold her tight in my heart, I will keep her ever constant in my prayers and if I am blessed, tonight she will stop in for a visit as I dream.
Happy Birthday, Jodie Lynne
Special thanks to Michelle Marie for the awesome family picture above.
One Rose…
one rose strong against the wind
you think you stand alone
but you are surrounded
by other generations
in every stage of bloom.
they stand with you till
their luscious petals drop
to the ground along the way
together in the garden
alone on your stem
your thorns attempt
to keep the pickers away
life prunes and trims
until you feel
as if you are gone
cut away
but that isn’t so
every leaf grown
from your limbs
reaches for the sky
they keep your blooms alive
so bloom for them my rose
and thus your sweetness
continues to live on and on
and you will never die.
All I need is my flowers to make me smile…
Letting go…
Letting go of painful situations is never easy and fear tries to trick you as you travel the shattered road. Give it to God and don’t take it back.
Once upon a time…
I Am Cinderella
I dream that I am Cinderella and I am running and running and I have lost my glass slippers and I have lost my dresses. I have lost everything because the man I loved has taken it all away.
The next morning, I start walking back to the castle to reclaim my dresses, my glass slippers and my books.
I will tell him, “I want everything but the castle, the crown and you, my Prince.”
One day later…and there is a new Princess in my place. She is beautiful and she is young and she has my slippers, she has my books, she has my dresses, she has my castle, she has my crown and she has my Prince.
I tell her that she can keep it all except my slippers, my dresses and my books.
Wait! I am Cinderella and I will clean his dirty ashes no more.
Yes, I am Cinderella and I am beautiful and I will flee from this dark castle.
I don’t need the damn slippers. No, I don’t need anything that I left behind when I ran away.
Now I understand, I have everything that I need in my heart and he can keep the castle, the crown, the slippers, the dresses and my books.
I turn and I walk away. I am no longer naked. I have found my old dresses and my old shoes in a shack behind the castle.
I see my grown son walking toward me and I say, “I’m sorry. I can’t stay. I feel as if I won a million dollars last night.”
He says, “Then you have to go and do what you do and be wonderful, use your wonderful, Mom.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I tell him as he hugs me.
“That’s okay, it doesn’t matter if you did. It’s fine, as long as you’re happy.”
I don’t want to leave him and as I walk away, I’m glad I told him I was as happy as if I had found a million dollars, because he understands money, but my freedom is worth so much more than a million dollars.
At last. Freedom. I have found my wings. I can fly.
I have my old dresses and I have my old shoes and I am still Cinderella.
The Prince can keep the castle and all the belongings.
I have my freedom and I can feel my glitter returning.
I cried in the castle because I was sad, but now I am happy and I am free.
My heart is torn to shreds, lying in pieces on the ground, but my soul, oh thank you God, my soul is healing.
The castle is behind me, the Prince and all of my belongings are in the hands of another woman, my shoes are old, but who needs new?
I sigh as I slip the last reminder off my finger, the gold wedding band that once upon a time, made me feel proud when it shone in the sun.
For just a moment…I hold it in my hand.
Then, I fling it over the water fall, watching it disappear.
Let the Prince buy her a new ring.
I run and I run and I am me, I am Cinderella.
Jeanne Marie
…and I would throw snowballs at your bedroom window at midnight…
I wish I lived in a little New England farmhouse with the wood stove burning and a fire in the fireplace. Beans would be cooking on the wood stove, snow would be falling outside my window and you, living right down the street.
I would sneak over and I would throw snowballs at your bedroom window at midnight so you would come out to see who it was and then I would dance in the snow under the moonlight and it wouldn’t hurt because the cold snow would make my foot pain better, and you would shiver in your doorway and say, “Get in here, you idiot!”
I would grab two icicles from your front window and dance into your warm kitchen and we would have hot chocolate with pink marshmallows and we would laugh.
We would talk for hours like when we were little girls and we would forget that we are not little girls anymore because when we are together we are just sisters. We are not old, we are not crippled, we are not grandmothers, we are not great-grandmothers (me) and we are not old ladies.
Because when we are together, we are young girls again with our future in front of us and we laugh…and I would throw snowballs at your bedroom window at midnight…
Broken Shoulder, Crippled Girl…No More
Broken shoulder, crippled girl. Always in pain, always aware of every muscle and every bone, every bump in the road, every slight movement which jars her shoulder.
I know her. She is safe, familiar and predictable. She is not who I was, but she is who I have become over the past ten years. It started so innocently, shoulder pain I couldn’t manage. Then, two botched shoulder surgeries, rotator cuff torn twice, arthritis, the shoulder of an old woman. A fall off a porch which completely tears the rotator cuff off the bone. The doctor’s assistant says, “Your arm is f—–and she does nothing. Orders no tests, has no solution. She says, “Why bother, we know it’s destroyed.”
Broken shoulder, crippled girl spends thousands as she visits three more doctors in three different states and they politely tell her that they can’t help her. Two more doctors in Florida. (Four states total.)
One doctor she turns down, she doesn’t trust him and he is arrested a short time later for Medicaid fraud. Doing unnecessary operations. Good instincts.
The other doctor says he can help her, but she will never lift her right arm above her waist again. He shows her a device bigger than both her shoulder joints! She actually considers it and schedules the surgery because at this point, she would allow a doctor to cut her arm off.
Then her husband, God bless him, he says there has to be a better solution. He does research on the internet and he finds a doctor he thinks she should consider. He shows her the doctor’s web site and they watch the surgery together, the same surgery she would have on her right shoulder. She calls the doctor’s office and expects the usual run-around (fax us all your medical records and we will let you know if the doctor will see you) but she is given an appointment for the next week. When she meets the doctor, he says he not only can, but he will fix her shoulder and she will have complete use of her right arm again.
Hope, barely visible for so many years, hope rises like a mist in her soul. Surgery with the doctor who promises she’ll never lift her arm high enough to curl her hair again is cancelled.
Hope rises like the bright orange and peach rays of a sunrise over the Oklahoma prairie.
But wait. What will happen when her shoulder is fixed, no longer a crutch to lean on, an excuse to leave herself out of life, too hurt to move, too aching with the pain to even want to breathe, who will she be when that is gone?
She never asked to become the crippled girl, it just happened, but she did her part, learned to adjust, learned to live in constant, agonizing pain. Even a living Hell, if it is home, even Hell can become the place where you learn to live. When you are stuck there, you fix the place up, do the best you can and you own it. Where did she live before the pain, who was she before she became the broken shoulder, crippled girl? When did she become this handicapped woman?
It was a slow process from there to here. One bad surgery changed her life and then another to fix it made it even worse, the pain became unbearable, but she had not chosen the pain.
She didn’t want the pain, she searched for doctors to help her and she visited doctors in three states and not one doctor would touch the mess.
So, she lived with the unbearable, she adjusted, she compensated, but she changed.
She has never quite given up the hope, even when the hope was a ghost she could not touch, years of chasing a dream that if one doctor could cause the pain, maybe, just maybe, another doctor could find a way to take away the pain.
Now, here she is, miracle of miracles, on the edge of being fixed after so many have said no. Now, one young doctor has said yes, I can help you. Young enough to be her son. As the day draws near, she is excited but she is also afraid.
He tells her he will do a reverse shoulder replacement. He will return full use of her arm and now she is hoping, hoping with all her heart, with every breath, hope shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow and all the glimmers in her soul, hoping that it’s true, praying that he can do what he has promised.
Yet, pain has become a way of life and she knows from experience, he could actually make it worse. Plus, if you take away the pain, what will replace her obsession? Who will the broken-shoulder, crippled girl be when she is a girl without a mission? Her mission for the last ten years has been simple. Find a doctor who will fix her arm.
Her daily chores now are simple, manage to get showered and to get herself dressed, do a little laundry, clean a tiny corner of the house, survive, just survive, collapse after supper in tears from pushing her broken shoulder to its limit all day.
Sometimes she just barely manages to get out of bed and get herself showered, crawling back into sweats and a tee-shirt by 4:00 P.M.
Sometimes, that is the only chore she can complete in twenty-four hours.
She will need a new mission, a new attitude.
Is she so attached to the pain now after all these years or is she attached to the pain pills that she has needed to swallow in order to move her shoulder, to dress, to eat, to live? Pain pills that barely touch the bone scraping on bone agony, just enough relief to stop her from screaming aloud, to stop her from jumping off a bridge in total desperation.
If the operation is a success and she believes it will be, because Doctor Levy has looked directly at her and promised with words that touch her heart, then she knows the pain pills have to go away too.
Ten longs years of four pain pills a day. What has that done to her brain, to her motivation? Are you afraid broken shoulder, crippled girl? Are you afraid to be whole, free from excruciating pain?
Is pain addictive or are the pain pills you have counted on addictive? Are you still strong underneath the pain or has your spirit been damaged too? Are you strong enough to fight when the pain is stripped away?
You have been fighting so hard, for so very long, but you always knew the enemy. PAIN. Pain has ruled your life for a decade, so what will rule your life after your pain is gone? What ruled your life before the pain?
Writing. Will you write again, will the ideas pour out of your mind and once again stream into articles, will the keyboard return as your best friend and will it be an extension of your right arm again, an extension of who you are once more?
Yes, I think so. I remember that woman who would write day and night, night and day, write and write. Will she come back to me? Wait. I think I see her at my keyboard. Yes, that’s her, writing, inspired by a glimmer of hope, flirting with the very idea, the hope of becoming more than the broken shoulder, crippled girl. She will trust this doctor, take a chance.
Post Note: My shoulder operation was performed one week after I wrote this article in October, 2011. It was a total success. My surgeon was Dr. Jonathan Levy from the Holy Cross Hospital, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He used a prototype that allows full movement (his own invention) to replace my shoulder joint, in reverse. Besides a twinge now and then when I forget to exercise the arm or to take a break from the computer, my arm is healed. I’ve had 99% range of motion since just two months after the surgery. I have several types of arthritis, and I still have a severely damaged spine and a broken joint in my right foot, but the pain from each is bearable with one-third the amount of medication and this pain, while keeping me from wearing pretty shoes or walking any distance, this pain does not run my life.
Once more, I run my life. I finished a book that I started twenty-odd-years ago, the year after my surgery and now, once more, I write something every day. I started this blog after my surgery and then I met Michelle Marie and we started thinkingpinkx2.
The creative thoughts flow so fast that I cannot even keep up and yes, I am truly living once more, not just surviving.
Thank you, Doctor Levy. (First picture)
The two cuties in the second and third picture are my husband Jerry and my son Rick. Thank you guys, you are my heroes. Rick was in a serious car accident just two months before my surgery and when he flew from Oklahoma to Florida to help me out after my surgery, it was a miracle to see him walk in my door under his own steam. After what I saw him recover from, just having him with me gave me courage. But that’s another story…
Eyelashes
Eyelashes by Jeanne Marie
We choose a corner table in the cozy country restaurant, two grown women, yet…I feel that we are playing dress-up. Pangs of guilt and anxiety needle me. I had to sneak away from Mom to steal this time with my sister. She looks as guilty as I do.
My sister and I are two pieces of a puzzle, day and night, the sun and the moon. We complete each other. Years of clinging together through the dark nights, years of my father’s rage, my mother’s silence, dysfunctional machinery that welded ropes of love, hope and faith that even we have not been able to destroy.
It doesn’t matter how long we’re apart; we begin our conversation where we ended on my last visit, as if no time had passed. Once, after a serious argument, we didn’t speak for three years and still; when we made up, it was the same way.
We talk about how we are workaholics, always working for (or loving) men who try to control, use, abuse, manipulate, annihilate and dominate. She tells me that at least I always fight back and stand up for myself. It’s true.
However, we agree that I accept the abuse too. I just make a lot of noise and end up quitting or running away. I’ve never resolved the situations. My life is paved with unresolved relationships.
I talk about starting my hypnotherapy to quit smoking and how when I am under, I always end up in deep, murky moats, smoky castles with walls built from bricks of terror and abandonment. I tell her that they dumped a baby out of a shopping cart into the smoke and her eyes open wide. I didn’t know if it was Sue Sue or me in that carriage. It felt like we were the same baby. I start to cry and light another cigarette. Two years of therapy and I’m still smoking.
“I’m almost fifty and I don’t want to deal with my childhood anymore, I just want to be okay. I just want to quit smoking.” I tell her. Tears fill her eyes.
We order breakfast and settle in with our coffee, letting it soothe us as I light another cigarette.
We need to talk about Mom, the reason I’m home this time. Our oldest sister has already agreed to take responsibility for Mom when the time comes. I’d always planned to be the one, but find now that the time is near, I’m not able to take care of my own needs, let alone imagine caring for anyone else.
“Is she still able to take care of herself?” I ask Susanne. “Keep track of her medicines and her doctor’s appointments? She has cried wolf so many times that I don’t know if she is honestly too confused to function on her own, and even though I just spent a week with her, I still can’t tell. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Alice in Wonderland,” says my sister. “Alice in Wonderland. I have been Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party my entire life. Nothing is ever what it seems.”
She talks about the falseness of our “loving, nurturing mother.” A mother who nearly destroyed her by trying to be the man in her life, her father, her husband, her daughter’s father.
I cringe as she talks, remembering my sister trapped, pregnant, the husband to-be my mother drove away, how I helped my sister work and escape when she turned eighteen. How she ran away into a world crazier than the one she left behind and preferred it still.
“Do you remember when dad was ranting and raving and he used to tell us that someday we’d find out that Mom was the reason he was crazy? Well, he was so right. My life has been nothing but a Mad Hatter’s tea party.”
She has mentioned Alice a lot these past few days. It has been years since I heard about Alice, so I know there is something she needs to say.
“Don’t you know?” she demands. “Don’t you know that Mom is your father figure? The dominating male figure in your life? How could you go through years of therapy and never figure out that your inability to deal with men is her fault?”
I know by the frustration in her voice, that she has wanted to tell me this for a very long time. I start to cry. Her words cause my stomach to flop over, my heart pounds with panic.
My gut knows that she is right. I just can’t believe that I have never seen it for myself. If my sister is Alice, I must be Sleeping Beauty.
“With all the therapy you’ve been in, haven’t you ever focused on Mom?” she shouts.
“No. I didn’t. I knew what she had done to you, how she controlled you and kept you a prisoner with Danielle ‘till you were eighteen, but she never wanted me. I was always the one that could handle her. Now I can’t handle her anymore and I realize that when I thought I could, it was only an illusion, I never had control. It was all just part of the game. She controls me too.”
My voice is soft and teary. Her voice is shrill and full of angry emotion. Her pain is the lighter fluid that sparks our conversation.
She cries out, “I can’t handle being around Mom. When I’m around her, I start to pull all of my eyelashes out again.”
I am startled, shocked by the degree of my sister’s torment. Yet, as she speaks the words, she is touching her eyelids in a familiar way. I have seen her do it a million times. How could I have ever thought that she had mascara in her eyes so often?
She continues, her voice taut with pain. “Mom is not normal. She hates everything about babies and childbirth. She hates kids. She is so sick. You know how I eat so fast? Well, one day when we were eating she said, ‘Watch me eat. Watch how I chew each bite slowly. Eat like this. Watch me. This is how you eat your food. Look at me.’ It was awful.”
“When you were little?” I ask.
“No! I was forty-one years old!”
We sit surrounded by elderly couples who pretend not to listen as we talk about our mother, our childhood.
Do they wonder if their own children sit in crowded restaurants exposing family secrets?
I feel as if I should shush my sister because the details that are pouring from her mouth are dirty and tattered, personal, best left to a therapist’s couch.
Her passionate grief, the shrill horror in her voice, the way she touches her eyelashes as she speaks, all these things freeze my words.
I decide that she is the only person in this room that I need to be concerned about.
“Why can’t you see the way that she has damaged you too, why do you think you never feel good enough? You had the same mother as me! You suffered the same things that I did. Do you think you escaped her mind games, her torture? Nothing was ever good enough for her; we were never enough for her. That is why you can’t deal with the men in your life, the same as me.”
My blind eyes are wide open now.
“We are so strong to have even survived, don’t you know that? We are both miracles. We are both so special, so gifted and she has not been able to destroy that in us. We are survivors.”
As we stand, we hold onto to each other for a long moment before we walk away with our heads held high. You can almost hear the people in the room let out a collective sigh of relief.
“Do you think we should have charged admission?” I ask her.
She laughs as she says, “Ya, cause then we could have used a microphone and sat in front of the fireplace.”
Ironic. When Dad was screaming, we used to hide in the old, unused fireplace in our bedroom.
I am grieving the loss of my sister even as we drive away from the restaurant together because I’ve learned that each time I leave her and fly home to Oklahoma, she will wipe me from her heart, erase me from her mind and that I won’t exist until I walk back in her door. I have to accept that it is the only way she can deal with her pain and her anger when I leave her.
Sadly, I know that one day I will knock on her door and she will not open it. She will erase me along with her past, leaving me behind as she runs away to another Mad Hatter’s tea party, an insane event that makes much more sense than her reality.
My baby sister Alice and me, Sleeping Beauty.
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie 
You must be logged in to post a comment.