Why I Ask For Help

My mom and me when I was a baby

I was raised not to ask for help.  Raised by a warrior woman single mother who would not have dreamed of going to therapy, asking for a meal or doing anything that might give any indication to the outside world that things weren't perfect.

And for over 30 years, I believed that this was the way to live my life.

When my mother died suddenly after a car accident my junior year of high school, I didn't ask for help.  I went back to school the following Monday, graduated Valedictorian and got a full scholarship to UC Berkeley.

After my husband and I (who had only been married four months at the time) took in and eventually adopted two twin teenage girls from my middle school, I didn't ask for help.  We just said yes and figured we would figure it out.

After we found out we were pregnant with our son, during the adoption process, while I was working full time and pursuing my doctoral studies part time, I didn't ask for help.  I just kept working hard and plowing through each new task, adjusting both the married life and parenting teenagers at the same time.

During the pregnancy and once Nate, our son, was born, when both our daughters were having adjustment issues to the new baby, I was going through a hard recovery from delivering him and was struggling with missing my own mother, I didn't ask for help. In fact, I sent my husband back to work the next day and hobbled around the house trying to take care of myself and my son while still physically and emotionally exhausted.  (Thank God a few friends stepped in with meals and support during that time, but I certainly wouldn't have dreamed of asking!)

When one of my daughters began showing signs of a serious mental health issue, I didn't ask for help.  I did a ton of research on her diagnosis and took on counseling her in every spare minute I had when I wasn't working or going to school.  When she developed major impulsivity issues, I didn't ask for help. I decided I would just take on more work to support her or more loans.  I gave and gave and gave, but I never asked for help.

And then, I almost died.

Five years ago, when everything in my world came to a head, I was 84 lbs. I couldn't sleep well, was constantly on the phone trying to do everything I could to help my daughter, made a monthly trip to the ER for horrible stomach pains with no explainable cause (we thought taking out my gall bladder would help, but that made the trips every other month instead of every month), was working 5 jobs in total and was slowly disappearing.  I couldn't think clearly except for the thought that I was going to just go to sleep one night and never wake up.  Sometimes, I even hoped for that.  I couldn't enjoy anything in my life.  I would cry on the sidewalk outside my house, alone and exhausted.  I kept telling my husband, "There's something wrong.  I'm going to die.  I don't know what it is but I just can't keep living this way.  There's something really wrong."

Finally, I called for help, and was admitted to an Eating Disorder inpatient treatment program.  I didn't exactly fit the textbook criteria for having anorexia, but my weight was so low, I needed weight stabilization combined with emotional support, to get myself back to a place where I could function again.  I spent 10 days in the hospital, followed by 6 weeks of intensive treatment, before scaling back to regular therapy and nutritional counseling for the next 3.5 years.  During that time, I lost one of my part-time jobs, cut out several others, had a parent of one of my middle school students file a complaint against me for "taking time off" when clearly I couldn't be that sick because I was on social media, and struggled to learn about the concept of physical and emotional self-care.  I had spent my life taking care of others and ignoring my own needs, so much so that I was literally wasting away.

That was a turning point for me.  While it has not been easy, I have fought back over the last 5 years, to regain stability and joy in my life.  I finished my doctorate, found an amazing academic position doing the work that I love, established a new community, joined my son's school PTA executive board, set boundaries on my relationship with my daughter, worked hard to establish an incredibly strong relationship with my other daughter, and just last week, gave birth to a beautiful, baby girl.  All of this, while maintaining my weight and relative sanity, supporting others and following my passion.

We named our daughter Johana, which means "God is gracious." And, God has been incredibly gracious to me through this journey.  But, I have also learned that self-care does not come naturally to me and sometimes I need to let others pick up the slack where I just can't.

Yesterday, I set up a meal train.  It's a service that allows for people to contribute meals after major life events.  This was an incredible breakthrough for me.  Not only did I ask for help, but I did so to promote my well-being and that of my family through food, something that I so recently struggled with.  Although most of the response was neutral or positive, I've received some criticism saying that it "looks bad to ask for food" from others, like I'm begging, or that it's just not right.  That criticism has hurt me a lot.

But, what I've had to remember is the promise I made to baby Johana as I was rocking her to sleep 2 nights ago, while still recovering from her delivery.  I whispered to her that I would try my best to be there for her if/when she became a mommy because I knew how hard it was to be without my own mommy during this time.  And if fulfilling on that promise means asking for help then I'll take looking bad and being my own type of woman warrior for myself and my family.

Radical Self-Care 101

Last night, I woke up around 2:30am and though I was feeling the early contractions of labor.  I'm at 36.5 weeks so this would not have been a crisis necessarily, except that, for all my talk of contingency plans, I really wasn't ready to figure out what to do with the back to back classes that I'm supposed to teach tomorrow and with the numerous meetings I still have scheduled in the next couple of weeks before the semester ends.  Sure, I know that everyone is well aware of the situation and will be flexible, but it was overwhelming just thinking about it.  Ah, my old familiar friend, overwhelm.  I'm sure the fact that I had only gotten 3-4 hours of restless sleep and was thinking about this in between contractions wasn't helping matters.

I did not actually go into labor and was able to get to sleep successfully by 3:30 am.  I woke up at 5:45 (my son is an early bird) though and was exhausted.  So, what better reason to have a major self-care day.  I figured, with the real early labor possibility and the impending end of the semester, this would be one of the last few opportunities for me to truly take a day to get myself together.

So, after dropping my son off at school, I came home and took a 2-hour nap.  Then I did get a little work done before heading out for lunch and a pedicure.  It was so nice to have a little bit of time to rest, relax and take care of myself.  And, as I stare at my toes, I remember how it's the little things that make such a huge difference in life.

I know, of course, the despite the best laid (and incredibly packed) plans of the next few weeks, if the baby decides she's ready to meet the world early, I'd better be prepared, but it was nice to take a day for myself.  It was pretty radical, in fact.  

 

Oh Where, Oh Where, Has My Motivation Gone?

Actually, the title of this blog is misleading.  This is my couch (with a friendly stuff carrot pillow).  This is where my motivation has gone.  I thought about taking a picture of the drain, but honestly, it's really about the couch.  If I could stay home all day and rest on the couch, with my feet up, a cold glass of spa water and food delivery, I'd be set.

In reality, despite a severe lack of motivation, I have a lot of stuff to get done before I meet this baby girl: tons of grading to do (but none of it actually in my inbox yet--it's all pending and coming in the next 3 weeks), presentations to coordinate, a curriculum proposal consultation, accreditation meetings to attend, finishing up the flipped curriculum course I'm taking, teaching, volunteering for my son's class, taking him to school everyday, etc. etc. etc.

And, the lack of motivation with the life set up for a highly motivated person means that actually, I just spend a lot of time being tired.  I fight with myself about the things I have to do v. the things I should do v. the level at which I have to do the things that I have to do and all of this takes energy (as does carrying around a baby full time).  While I've thankfully been able to get decent sleep 2 nights in a row, it's always a toss-up.  Without sleep, I feel like I'm going through the motions of my life...very, very slowly.

I know it's all preparation for when Baby Girl comes and I'm actually so excited for her arrival (and still somewhat hopeful that it will come after all of this work is done) but seriously, some extended couch time would be awesome.

PSA: Car seats expire

There's a certain amount of hubris that comes from having a second child when your first child is a reasonably high functioning human being.  You think, despite all your trepidation about having a new infant in the house that, hey, at least you've been there once, and you've got some experience with the whole new baby process.

So, imagine my surprise when, at a PTA gathering this morning, the subject of car seat expiration dates comes up.

"Car seats expire?!" I exclaimed, incredulous.

"You didn't know that?!" Responded my friends, just as incredulously.

Um, no.

So, my friends told me to look on the bottom of my car seat, which I did as soon as I got home, but that didn't give me the expiration date, so I turned to my bff, google, who informed me that my carseat expired 5 years after the manufacture date, which was 8 years ago (BTW, the internet also was incredulous that I didn't know about the child seat expiration date).  Um, whoops.

And this has been your friendly public service announcement about car seat expiration dates lest you be ridiculed by moms who are in the know or stopped on the way home from the hospital.
  

Welcome to the rest of my life...

Hi there! This is me at 33 weeks pregnant at my baby shower.  I'm just going to be honest--this blog is not going to be my best work.  I have two other blogs that will probably include substantively better writing quality.  One of them is about food (which I haven't posted on since I found out I was pregnant, not because I don't still eat out regularly, but because my tastebuds are all messed up from being pregnant and I can't eat a lot of things and I get heartburn which probably has little to do with the food and more to do with the baby) and the other is about my journey as an academic.  And, as an academic, I actually write peer-reviewed journal articles related to literacy, secondary education, and teacher education which has gone through a lot of thinking, revision, critique, editing, etc.  But, this blog is basically a brain dump related to my life as a "new mom" (new for the 4th time). 

Ah, so, if you don't know me, you may wonder how I can be a "new mom" for the 4th time.  Well, I have two twin girls that are adopted who came to our family at the age of 15.  This was 10 years ago (so they're now 25).  While my husband and I were going through the lengthy adoption process, we found out (to our surprise) that I was also pregnant with our first biological child, a little boy, who is now 9 (and hilarious).  If you're interested in that story, you can check it out here.

But, after going from engaged to married with 3 kids in the space of 18 months, I needed a bit of a break on the new children front.  So I took a 9 year break.  That break is soon to be broken (within the next 6 weeks, in fact) by a baby girl.  Our family's pretty excited, but along with that excitement is the realization that I completely have forgotten what it's like to raise an infant (and I'm not convinced that I did such a great job the first time--my theory is that my son's awesomeness is totally a fluke of God & nature).  

And so, I've decided (with encouragement from a friend of mine) to blog a little about my mothering journey since I blog about the other important things in my life (work and food).  

So, here we go.  Welcome and I hope you enjoy the bumpy ride into my mommy brain.  It's bound to be a wild and sometimes aimless ride, but hopefully it will be fun and interesting too.