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Kindred Mom Podcast — Kids & Family
Kindred Mom Podcast

Stories of Hope for Moms in the Weeds

Latest Episodes:

The Voice of a Narrator Nov 10, 2020
Show notes

“Mommy, can you read to me?” My son gazes hopefully up at me, books clutched against his chest. “And then you can read this one and this one!” He hastily places library books on the couch next to me and excitedly wiggles his way into my lap.

“Has our new book come in?” I lean past my son and turn to my daughter, hoping she’ll say yes to the arrival of a new audiobook. I recently downloaded apps for our library onto my iPad, and we have been requesting digital and audiobooks.

“Nope,” she tells me.

Sighing, I pick up my son’s book about a fire ninja and begin to read, attempting to focus on the characters he so enjoys and wincing as his bony body squirms on me.

I wish I was the type of parent who enjoyed reading out loud to my children. I like books. I like reading. I like my children. But I do not enjoy sitting and reading aloud to them. When I sit down to read, I feel my energy wane and my mind wanders to other things I could be doing. My own voice drones on as I ignore the dishes needing to be washed, dinner needing to be made, laundry needing to be folded, and then put away. I’m a multi-tasking, Type A, efficient worker, and the weight of household responsibilities pulls at me as my schedule is interrupted. I sit here and attempt to fight the distractions, bound by my desire to be a good mom and connect with my child over stories.

I have seen many studies about the benefits of reading out loud, about the connections formed when I sit down and read with my children. They learn rhythm and new vocabulary by listening to the sound of my voice, increase their attention spans, and build comprehension, among other benefits. I do try to focus and listen to their comments about the characters and the pictures, to ask questions about the plot or setting to engage them. I do enjoy hearing their thoughts and appreciate how their minds work. I just don’t actually like to sit down and read out loud to them.

My son accidentally elbows me in the ribs and I move him to the cushion next to me. “Do you want me to finish this?” I ask him. “Then you have to stop moving.” I don’t like the frustration that comes out, and it takes effort to control it. I continue to read the story, attempting to add emphasis to the characters, growing resentful at the fact that I am stuck in this spot, hoping my son doesn’t catch my impatience. This isn’t how I envisioned I would be.

Some of my earliest memories involve my mom reading to me. We went through the infamous Little House book series the summer before I started kindergarten. She read the Narnia series and countless picture books. I can recall the cadence of my mother’s voice as it washed over me, painting pictures of prairies and woods, lions and witches. I was secure and warm by her side as she read about life on the prairie, snuggled up in my bed while she read about snowstorms and a White Witch. Though I was swept away by the plot, I stayed tethered to my mother, knowing that no matter what happened in the story, she was going to be there for me.

I hoped that when I became a mom, I would imprint upon my children the same love for stories—that they would sit quietly and listen as I read intently, stopping to comment and await their input. I wanted them to feel safe and secure, warm, and protected as I curled up with them and read to them.

I never expected I would be the problem.

I try. Really, I do. I research the best read-alouds for their ages and request the books from the library. I plan reading during their snack or quiet playtime, or just when they’re sitting nicely. I know they truly enjoy listening. The stories can be interesting, the characters comical or relatable, or the embodiment of someone we know in real life. But still, I am glad when I don’t hear the sound of my own voice anymore.

I finish the stack of stories my son brought over and send him off to play, fretting about the time I wasted and the mountain of things I need to accomplish. I work on the dishes, listening to the chatter of the children in the background, relaxing as I get a moment to myself.

“Now can we check if our book came in?” my middle daughter asks me.

“Great idea!” I reply and dry my hands to grab the iPad, hoping to hear that the audiobook we requested is available.

“Look! It came in!” my oldest says as she scrolls through the app. “I’m going to borrow it.”

“Who do you think the masked man is going to be?” I ask. We’ve been waiting on tenterhooks to find out what happened in our current series, The Land of Stories. The last book ended on a cliffhanger, with the protagonists coming across a masked man.

“I think it’s a bad guy!” my son pipes up.

“I bet it’s their dad,” my daughter says.

“What makes you think that?” I ask, and we talk about the clues from the last book, remembering details together and laughing at some of the crazy antics our favorite characters got up to.

I set up the iPad at the kitchen table, and the kids grab their art supplies. They settle in to color, and I start the audiobook. Then I continue with the dishes, parallel to my children, smiling as we all listen intently. I am content, not distracted by the pull of a mile-long to-do list from the never-ending drudgery of household responsibilities. My hands are working, so my mind is free to be engaged, and I laugh alongside my children as the narrator describes a silly scene.

I don’t like reading to my children, but that doesn’t mean we don’t read together. They might not hear the sound of my voice as often as they’d like, but they know I am near them, listening with them to the voice of a narrator whose words wash over us, painting pictures of magical lands and fairy-tale characters. There are plenty of characters and places we can talk about, laugh about, and connect with. The memories we’re making might not be precisely what I pictured when I imagined how I would be as a mom, but we’re still connecting with one another over books, sharing ideas, and learning from each other. And I have to say, I do like it.

Beth Robinson resides in Northern California with her husband and three children. A former teacher in a public school, she now teaches her own children at the dining room table. Her mother introduced her to the library at a young age, and she did the same for her children. She’s thrilled to see them share her excitement each time they check out new books. She’s even more thrilled that two-thirds of the children can read to themselves now. If Beth is not reading, you can find her gardening, attempting new recipes, or taking her children out to explore.

4G Friendships Nov 05, 2020
Show notes

January. Perhaps feeling the weight of winter on our collective shoulders, our small church congregation begins a new practice of gathering in the basement after service for muffins and conversation. I grab muffins for my kids, talk for a minute or two to the few people I know, and then commence the awkward standing-around-trying-to-look-busy. I am grateful to have a whiny, clingy toddler because I can at least occupy myself being a mother instead of a loner.

We moved here last summer, and while I know it can take a long time to forge friendships, I leave church feeling discouraged. I long to be past small talk and to know people well enough that I know what questions to ask about how their weeks have gone. When my kids have finished their muffins, I help them put their heavy coats back on and head to the parking lot.

A midwest winter is a lonely thing when even our urban neighborhood goes quiet. The rest of the year, when grass is visible and the sun shines, we can linger on sidewalks and hang out on porches. There is an energy that flows from the streets to my veins, and it helps me feel connected. But in winter, the cold sends us all indoors to shelter, to warmth. We huddle up and hibernate. My children are snuggly, but they are not my friends.

February. I board a plane to Los Angeles for a weekend getaway with my dear friends, none of whom I’ve ever met in person before. I can’t help smiling as I walk down the plane aisle toward my seat, because I can’t imagine anything better in this moment than a weekend of adult conversation under the California sun. We stay up late every night, lounging around the hot tub or eating chocolate at the kitchen island, sharing family stories that make us laugh until we cry. When it comes time to head home to Indiana, I’m in awe of the fact that these friendships which started online have blossomed into something so deep and profound. Waiting to check my bags at LAX, I notice a few people wearing face masks and I make a note to wash my hands a bit more vigorously.

***

March. The weather has finally started to warm up, and it seems we are coming out of hibernation. On March 12, I keep my oldest home from school because he is running a slight fever. By the end of the day, we learn school is closed for the foreseeable future, and he will not get to say good-bye to his teacher or classmates. Over the course of two weeks, I watch my entire calendar get wiped clean by invisible but omnipresent forces.

I drive home from Aldi one day, not yet knowing I will soon make a semi-permanent switch to grocery delivery. Just before the final turn toward my home, I pass a median full of sunshine-yellow daffodils. Back in the kitchen, I say to my husband, “Have you seen all those daffodils?! They are beautiful. I don’t remember them from last year.”

“Lindsey,” he replies, laughing, “We didn’t live here last year.” My jaw drops open, and I am silent as I think it through. How can time simultaneously be moving so quickly and so slowly?

***

April. My friend Mary Kate, one of the women I met face-to-face in L.A., creates a group for our friends on a messaging app called Marco Polo. I had used it once before, several years ago, but few people I wanted to talk to seemed to have accounts, so I didn’t stick around. Now I dive back in. I see my friends’ faces, get tours of their gardens, and hear their children giggle (and shriek) in the background.

I open the app one day and notice that several of the women from my Monday morning prayer group are on there. I consider making a group chat for us—but it feels presumptive. Some of these women have been friends for decades, and I still feel like the new girl. Who am I to insert myself into their lives this way, to assume they’d like to talk with me more than they already do? But I take the risk.

I try to make that first message as lighthearted as possible: “Hey—this is a totally no-pressure thing!! Don’t feel like you need to respond. I know everyone is totally tired of screens lately, with all this at-home and e-learning and whatever. But…I just thought it could be fun. So, here we are. Again, no pressure.”

But I feel the pressure. I feel the pressure of needing to continue growing these relationships, somehow, even in quarantine. Otherwise, I fear I’ll be stuck totally alone and isolated by the time this is all over.

Within a few hours, all four other women respond with what feels like enthusiasm.

What I am learning during quarantine is isolation and loneliness do not necessarily exist in concert; it’s more than possible to have one without the other. I am more isolated than ever in this strange time, but my loneliness is slowly abating, thanks to a free app on my phone and the offering of an invitation.

For years, I have understood the power and necessity of vulnerability, but it’s always scary. It’s scary because until the very moment I hear someone say, “Me too” part of me keeps believing the lie that I am the only one. But one of the surprising gifts of the pandemic is that now, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am not the only one. The specifics of our experiences vary, of course, but we are all here, doing the thing: staying home, distance learning, canceling plans, wondering what life will look like in the year ahead. It is easier to step into vulnerability because we are confident others will understand what we’re going through, the factors complicating our decisions, or the way we’ve suddenly begun to resent the word “unprecedented.”

May. I look out across the yard and see my four friends, gathered around a fire pit in chairs spaced six feet apart. (A tape measure was involved.) In ten weeks, I have seen no one in person except for my four immediate family members, the bartender who handles carry-out at our neighborhood brewery, and the nice teenagers in the Chick-fil-A drive-through. But tonight, my prayer group and I move our conversation from 4G to fresh air, and I feel so light I could float into the sky like a balloon.

June. I’ve had all notifications on my phone turned off for months, but now I’ve decided to allow Marco Polo notifications. Every ping is a lifeline, my tether to the outside world, the cord that connects me to other moms in a season when I might otherwise feel totally isolated in my home.

July. I stand in my kitchen slicing up an orange with my phone propped up against the backsplash. I am listening to a message from my friend, and she is out on a walk. She is crying as she comes to terms with how much she will miss her daughter when she leaves for college. I feel two things at the same time: compassion and sadness for my friend in the middle of a hard transition, and also intense gratitude that she chose to share these raw feelings with me.

I begin to cry, too, and I’m not sure which feeling is the source.

August. This summer, the five of us dedicated what must be hours and hours of video messages to our questions and worries and hopes about the pandemic, schools, and anti-racism. We went along on rides to quarantine-appropriate camping trips and hikes, and we’ve cheered one another on through the dreaded COVID nose swab. We have said, “You’re probably asleep and won’t see this ’til the morning,” only to learn someone else was up folding laundry and someone else was watching Dirty Dancing. We’ve learned how awkward it is to pray aloud into our phone cameras.

Our church still meets on Zoom. My children are attending school virtually for at least the first quarter. We’ve moved into a new home, and we introduced ourselves to the neighbors standing at least six feet back. I don’t know when we’ll be able to open our doors and host a dinner or small group. I don’t know if we’ll get to spend the holidays in Florida with our families. Marco Polo still holds the majority of my adult conversations.

But this I know: I am not alone.

Lindsey Cornett is a writer and editor who lives in Indianapolis with her scientist husband and three young kids. If her kids aren’t demanding to be held, she’s probably carrying a pen, a book, or a coffee. In both writing and life, she hopes to provide hope and solidarity to any other women who find themselves afraid to make mistakes. She is a co-founder of The Drafting Desk, an email newsletter of soulful encouragement for recovering perfectionists. Her writing has been featured at Coffee + Crumbs, Motherly, and (in)courage. You can always find her on Instagram or learn more about her writing and editing services at www.lindseycornett.com.

Memories of My Grandmother Nov 03, 2020
Show notes

I keep a photograph of my grandparents on my living room wall. My mother’s parents sit shoulder-to-shoulder and my Grandpa casts a sideways glance at his wife, who looks straight into the lens through her cat-eye glasses with a wide, toothy smile. They look happy, content as if they know a secret. When I look into their satisfied faces, I remember being a child in their home, and I miss them.

Every Sunday afternoon, my parents, brother, and I sat ourselves around my grandparents’ big, round kitchen table for a lunch worthy of church clothes, tablecloths, and polished manners. With heads bowed, as Grandpa asked God to bless the bounty of crop and kitchen before us, I squinted against the plate of cornbread in front of me—my favorite. With the “Amen,” I seized a golden muffin, stuffed it with butter, and filled my plate with Grandma’s cooking: purple hull peas my brother and I spent summer afternoons shelling, the corn we husked that Grandma scraped and creamed, potatoes dug from sandy soil then boiled, salted, and mashed. The crowning glory was the cornbread, soft, warm, golden like the afternoon sun in August, sweet but salty with edges crisp from the cast iron pan. Grandma’s cornbread was perfect. To my child’s mind, Grandma was perfect.

Grandma’s house was a sanctuary, a place where you could find not only a home-cooked meal but a warm slice of cake to finish it off before you curled up in an armchair to read or nap. Her home was warmth, comfort, contentment, and rest.

Grandma never worked outside the home, but that is not to say she did not work. She served with her hands, sent her daughter to prom in homemade dresses worthy of the department store, filled the Methodist church with gospel hymns on piano, placed a warm meal on her table three times a day.

She knew how to want not because she wasted not, knew how to economize—canning what she could, freezing what she couldn’t, mending clothes she sewed for husband and children—because her husband’s modest single income required her to be so. She worked the invisible labor of caretaker of home and family, until one day she couldn’t do any of it.

I was ten years old when Grandma had the first stroke. What followed was a blur of medical equipment and change. I saw my mother wade through a mess of at-home care while her own mother faded before her eyes. In spite of doctor visits and extended stays in a rehabilitation hospital, the strokes did not relent, as if insistent on the defeat of a woman who sat down only to read her Bible.

Our Sunday lunches were replaced by afternoons in a nursing home, where I did my homework on a cold vinyl chair while my mother asked her mother how the nurses were treating her, whether she liked the food, whether she needed clothes from home. Grandpa was left alone in the house he shared with his wife for 60 years, until my mom found him one day unconscious on the floor by the kitchen table. The official cause of death was a heart attack, which is another way of saying heartbreak.

By then the conversations with Grandma were more about explaining who we were and whether she knew us until the conversations stopped altogether and her smile became something familiar but foreign, the way a toddler smiles at strangers. Then she was gone, too.

I first felt Grandma’s absence the day I graduated high school. After the ceremony, my parents and I took photos outside the big baptist church along with the rest of the graduates. Sandwiched between my mother and father, I smiled under my cardboard graduation cap as a friend snapped a few pictures of the three of us, then a couple more with my brother. As I walked to my car, I noticed lingering groups scattered around the parking lot. A handful of classmates, still draped in their wine-colored polyester robes, stood encircled by beaming family members. I saw my peers embrace grandmothers in soft-hued dresses and share congratulatory handshakes with nodding grandfathers, and I felt a loss as if I’d forgotten something essential.

With each milestone—college graduation, marriage, motherhood—I felt the same absence again and again. There were no photographs to take which might reflect the relationship I craved. As friends described holiday dinners at Nana’s house or obligatory lunch dates with Gram, I named my hunger: Grandparent Envy.

I wanted more than memories cut short by death. I wanted more time to sit in the dim evening light of my Grandma’s living room and ask her questions about who she was and who I might become. I wanted to exhort my grade-school self to ask more questions and take good notes before it was too late. I wanted her to hold my babies and read them stories, or sing along as her great-granddaughter played “Amazing Grace” on the piano. I wanted her to visit my kitchen and show me how to cook peas and make cornbread come out right.

What I ended up with was a handful of physical leftovers from a life—a few handwritten recipes, a box of photographs—and a child’s collection of memories. The rich aroma of cake batter as I sat on a squeaky step-stool and watched sugar, flour, butter, and eggs blend into something delicious in a domestic miracle. The red skirt she sewed just for me that spun like a pinwheel and made me feel like Annie Oakley. The soft, floral scent of her dusting powder and the cool touch of her hands while she read me picture books in the big armchair. The joy when she said “yes” to ice cream sundaes and soda, never making me choose. Her kitchen table, covered with warm home-cooked meals, and her perfect cornbread in the center of it all.

April is a wife, mama, and native Texan who loves hands in the dirt, hikes in the woods, and the company of good books. When she isn’t homeschooling her three wild children or muddling through their messes, you can find her barefoot in the garden, baking in the kitchen, or adventuring with her kiddos. During all the minutes in between, she writes. You can find her blog posts, personal essays, and fiction writing on her blog. She shares moments from her life at home and elsewhere on Instagram.

Those Kinds of Friends Oct 27, 2020
Show notes

“When can we meet for dinner?”

There were four of us on the text thread. Coordinating our calendars required a herculean effort of texting back and forth, negotiating childcare duties with our husbands, and keeping our fingers crossed that no one would suddenly throw up while we were walking out the door. Finally, we found a date that worked for everyone and arranged to meet at a local taco restaurant.

Before our drinks even arrived, my friend, Elizabeth, got right to the point.

“Look,” she said. “my mom has a group of friends that meet for dinner once a month. They’ve been doing it for years, watched each others’ kids grow up, and gone on vacations together. I was wondering if y’all would want to be those kinds of friends. If you do, I think we should commit to monthly dinners together.”

We looked at each other awkwardly. Though we all attended the same church, our friendship was surface-level at best. But excitement sizzled up, too. We felt chosen, entrusted with the vision Elizabeth had cast. If we were honest, it sounded exactly like what we all craved, too: let’s raise our kids together, grow old together. She knew, even if we didn’t yet, that real friendship wouldn’t spontaneously blossom just because it sounded like a nice idea. We would have to take the first steps and commit to the logistical hurdle of setting aside two hours each month, in seasons that we could not yet foresee.

We all agreed. And a few days later, Elizabeth texted again: “I think I’ve waited the appropriate three days to text y’all after a great ‘first date’ to see when we can do it again! Get your planners out…”

Despite our erratic schedules, we tried, nobly, to organize a dinner together each month. We settled into an every-other-month kind of pace, but the first day of the new month reminded us all to try again. We took turns picking the restaurant, trying local joints, and discovering new favorites.

Our group text thread became a lifeline. We helped welcome new babies into the world by painting nurseries together and calming each other’s fears about childbirth. We started a Sunday School class together. And once we realized that we wanted our husbands to become friends too, we started planning couples’ cookouts and game nights, pitching in for a babysitter to watch our growing brood of kids.

Christmas was approaching. In contrast to our monthly dinners “out,” we began planning an elaborate girls’ night “in.” It felt long overdue: the last time I had watched a movie with someone other than my husband was with my college roommate … almost a decade ago. In our texts back and forth, we exchanged ideas for our evening together, growing more and more excited as we counted down the days.

When the much-anticipated night finally arrived, we snuck out of our houses as soon as we put our kids to bed. We showed up with movies and snacks in hand, scarfed down some Christmas cookies, and spiked our hot cocoa with liberal amounts of Bailey’s. Then, we settled onto the sofa, pulling blankets over us to watch Love Actually.

The camera panned across the London-Heathrow airport, zooming in on various couples who hugged and kissed as they reunited at last. Hugh Grant’s familiar voice set the scene by reminding us that “Love actually is all around …”

And that was all we remembered. An hour later, we slowly stirred, opening our eyes and stretching. We had slept through the entire movie and completely missed our night together! Unable to muster up enough energy to try again, we stumbled sleepily into our cars to head home.

Could there be a more appropriate symbol of friendship during this season of life? In the trenches of early childhood, as we struggle to navigate who we are and how to reclaim our identity, passions, and social lives, what we often need, more than anything else, is a long nap.

In the future, we will be able to make it through movie night without falling asleep. We will be able to leave our houses without worrying we will wake up our children. We might even be able to carve out a standing dinner date instead of scrambling to clear our schedules every few months.

For now, though, we live within the tension. We commit to our friendship without quite knowing how we will find the time for it. We trust that each small investment of time and energy will matter in the long run. Every text message, coffee date, and failed movie night — crammed into the margins of our busy lives — nurtures our souls and sustains us until the next time.

Because we’re those kinds of friends.

Callie Dean is a writer, researcher, and musician who believes that art can change the world. You can usually find her running, baking bread, or sipping chai. She lives in Shreveport, LA, with her husband and two sons.

Thanks, No Thanks, Pinkie Pie Oct 22, 2020
Show notes

Lilly, barely 4 and still the baby, is laying on her belly in my bed beside me, chin in her hands, feet kicked up like she’s seen her big sisters do all her life. It’s about my bedtime and well past hers. An altercation between her sisters woke her up, and she needs a place to be while they settle down, so she’s chilling in my room while I read. It’s nice—there’s nothing really pressing; she’s just hanging out.

But then she spots a shiny, black battery bank on my headboard and grabs it, immediately bringing it to her ear. It’s almost exactly the size of a phone, even happens to have its “on” button where an iPhone’s “home” is. She proceeds to prop herself up on her elbows and spend the next—I wish I were exaggerating—20 minutes staring at this black phone-like brick. She scrolls up and down with her right index finger, types away with her itty-bitty thumbs, makes and answers phone calls and video chats. “Hello, fwiends…Yes…No, I don’t think so, but I will in the afternoon. But first, we will have dinner.” Her one-sided “conversations” sound eerily familiar. What has happened that my 4-year-old would rather talk to a piece of plastic than to me? I’m right here, reading, and that never kept her from chattering at me before.

I’m not offended that she doesn’t want to talk to me—it’s 10:00 pm and I’d rather not be talking to children right now—but why is the “screen” so intriguing to her, even when it’s not doing anything?

Then it comes to me—I remember being in my bedroom several weeks before, putting away laundry while Jenna (my oldest, age 9) chattered on, narrating a picture book she’d written called “The Boy Who Didn’t Baleev In Himself.”

“…and then the boy tried to fly, but he just fell on the ground. ‘Oof. I guess I’m just no good at anything.’ Mom! Are you even listening?”

“Wha? Oh. No, baby. I’m really sorry. I got a message and I need to just send someone a link real quick for work. Hang on a sec and I’ll listen better.”

[Unknown amount of time passes.]

“MOM. You said a second. It’s been like five minutes!”

“I’m so sorry. Here.” [I set my phone to silent and lay it face-down.]

This scene, or variations of it, unfolds constantly throughout the day. I’m trying to mom my kids, but a notification dings and I’m sucked into my phone. I manage good-enough parenting, but not a bit more. I’m not bringing my best self to them.

I guess that’s where Lilly gets it, this compulsive screen-staring. We’ve all heard how detrimental screen time is to kids and how kids tend to model their screen usage after their parents. We’ve all seen campaigns about not robbing the kids of attention by staring at the phone constantly. Honestly, I hate those guilt-trips with the fire of a thousand suns. I don’t need one more ounce of mom shame—not for staying home or working or vaccinating or using my phone. I am using my phone mostly for work stuff, and the work is meaningful to me. I do want them to see me doing work that helps others and makes me feel alive. It just so happens that my work is largely done on a screen.

And besides, this is not a one-way phenomenon. My various screens pull me away from them, but my kids also interrupt my creative work on the regular. It’s not like work is getting my best self, either.

This week, I was on a Zoom call with my team. I joined late (because kids) and resorted to letting them watch My Little Pony to keep them out of mischief. I grit my teeth—Pinkie Pie’s voice is distractingly obnoxious, even when she provides free babysitting. And then she was not doing her job at all—the consequences of utilizing an animated horse as a nanny. My middle two kids were in a yelling match and someone’s hair was pulled and someone was thirsty and she spilled her water so she needed more and also there was a puddle. I was progressively pulled away from my meeting as the chaos increased. ”Excuse me. Sorry,” I muttered as I muted myself. Finally, I just removed my earbuds and walked away to deal with whatever fresh hell just materialized in the living room, fearing the fallout of not managing this now.

***

So my children aren’t getting my best self. My work isn’t getting my best self. This dilemma reminds me of my kids’ hourly fights where everyone gets hurt and nobody wins. I feel bedraggled and guilty for giving everyone short shrift. I’m doing the best I can at all my roles, but what happens when “the best I can” kinda sucks?

I want to find a way to separate my realms, even if just a little, so they don’t intrude on each other constantly. I hate feeling forcibly disconnected from everyone all the time. I don’t expect to reach the oft-discussed “balance”—some unicorn homeostasis where my work is work and my home is home and everyone gets the best of me in their scheduled and well-defined slots. I just want…better.

I dream of sitting on the floor with all four babies, reading to them, playing blocks, offering art projects full of glitter, and then guiding them to clean those projects back up with grace and equanimity. My phone will be off and out of the room. My children will know they are my priority. And then when it’s work time, I will be entirely focused, monotasking at peak efficiency. My children will be within eyesight, but playing quietly together. Perhaps the big two take turns reading to the younger siblings. Oh! Maybe they can work on teaching the littles to read! If they get bored with that, they will begin quietly cleaning the house. They will cheerfully cooperate to manage their own behavior.

Uh…right. So that’s clearly not happening. Truth be told, their happy self-management is not the only part of this scenario that’s pure fantasy. I hate glitter—even more than I hate essays telling me I’m a terrible mom for using my phone in my kids’ presence. And while I’m being transparent, I’m just gonna say it: sometimes conversing with my children is boring. I love my kids. I love spending time with them. But when my attention is completely focused on them for long chunks of time, I get antsy and the clock slows down to the point where I wonder (constantly) if it’s broken. In addition, my kids get weird. They swiftly start feeling entitled to my full focus all the time, but I don’t have enough attention to give 100 percent to each of four children. The math doesn’t work.

It’s not like I haven’t tried to separate my worlds—years ago I got rid of most notifications on my phone, so I know now that when my phone dings, it’s probably something I want to see fairly quickly. (This works for me about as well as telling the children to watch My Little Pony while I have a meeting—I can try to minimize distractions, but they keep finding me.) The urgent always invades from whatever realm I’m not currently living in, and I always try to address it immediately.

That immediacy is something I am reexamining—when every need and request receives the same priority (the very top), life becomes unnecessarily chaotic. Maybe rather than giving all my attention to whichever need I’m trying to meet right now, I need to give more to assessing my own motivations. Is this need really emergent or does it just feel urgent? Do I want to respond right now because that’s necessary or because I neurotically and aggressively meet needs? Can this wait?

Perhaps the urgent does not need to be such a tyrant.

Eventually, I want my kids to become adults who know how to adapt to the world around them. I want them to know when to focus and when to switch tracks to attend to something urgent. But they won’t ever have “balance” entirely dialed in, so they will have to fight for it, just like I do.

As I sit at my table writing today, my kids are eating lunch. They pull me away every few minutes with a fight or request for more milk or food, but my work is getting done. (Both kinds of work.) I don’t always get it right, but I am showing them how to be people who do their best, even when “good enough” is as far as their best can go. It’s not comfortable, but I can teach them to live in the uncomfortable mess and pull of life as it is, rather than being mad about what it “should be.”

Do I really want to fully separate these worlds of mine? My work brings me sanity, saving my brain from an endless stream of unfollowable words from four different mouths simultaneously. And, while my children do pull me away from my creative work constantly, they also provide the bulk of the material for it. I hesitate to call it symbiosis—it’s a lot more frustrating than the word implies—but the bleed between my worlds isn’t all bad.

Robin Chapman is a part-time writer, editor, and birth photographer and a full-time imperfect mama, wife, Jesus follower, and normalizer of failure. She’s trying to learn how to do this motherhood thing in a way that doesn’t land the whole family in intensive therapy. She has a heart for helping other mamas buried in the little years with hope, humor, and solidarity. You can find her hiding out in the bathroom with an iced dirty chai, writing and editing and making spreadsheets for Kindred Mom where she is a cheerleader for mamas, or online looking for grace in her mundane and weird life. She lives in Fairbanks, Alaska with her four delightful (crazy) kids and her ridiculously good looking husband, Andrew. Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, and her blog.

Not the First Time Oct 20, 2020
Show notes

“I’m just a little bit scared,” he says as we drive to the school where his evaluation will take place.

“You don’t have to be scared. I’ll be with you the whole time,” I promise as I watch him in the rearview mirror.

“No, Mom. I’m just a little bit scared,” he repeats, holding up his hand, thumb and pointer finger barely touching to drive his point home.

He may not be that scared, but I can barely see straight. Scheduling this evaluation for the morning after Daylight Savings was not my brightest decision. Neither were the multiple cups of coffee on an empty stomach. Part of me is unsure if it is the caffeine making me shake uncontrollably or the fact that my 4-year-old will be walking into a room full of school therapists ready to pick apart his every word and move.

This isn’t our first evaluation. This isn’t the first time I’ll be walking hand in hand with my child into a room full of professionals, the first time I’ll have a complete stranger tell me there is something wrong with my child’s development. Yet I am terrified, shaking, and on the verge of tears. I know what they will say, the diagnosis, but in order for him to get into the free preschool program with therapy, I have to let him go through this again.

The room may be different and the therapists new, but I am no stranger to the feelings overtaking my body, mind, and heart. It is still frightening; I am still scared. I’ve done my research and know what to expect. I know my son well enough to know why we are here and what they will find. But my mind begins to wander: what if? What if there is something else wrong that wasn’t caught the first time? What if the fears I have kept hidden deep in my heart are realized? What if this routine evaluation doesn’t go as planned?

These thoughts add to the anxiety I can’t control. I am relying on the bravery of my 4-year-old to get me through.

I hold tightly to his hand, more for my sake than his, and reassure him that everything is going to be fine. We have done this before, I tell him. I know he is going to do great. I’ll be there with him the whole time; he won’t be doing this alone. I hope these words soak into his subconscious as I let them soothe my anxious heart.

He is slow to start as seven pairs of eyes watch every move he makes. He sits on my lap as I rub his head, kiss his cheek, and tell him he is doing a great job. He is quiet and reserved, though cooperating the best he can. I tried to prepare him, but it is hard to remember the purpose of this strange encounter when you are four and thrown into a room of strangers asking you questions and dissecting every sound you make. Still, he was better composed on the outside than I was on the inside.

It’s not easy having people watch you so closely, listening so intensely, interrogating you to see what knowledge you hold that can be outwardly expressed. It’s hard on my mama-heart to watch. Part of me feels like I’m being evaluated too. You know the official diagnosis, so what have you been doing to ensure the success of your child? I have to swallow the guilt that threatens to consume me. I have to silence the voice inside my head that tells me I’m not doing enough, that he’s sitting in this room because of me and all the ways I have failed him since the moment he was conceived. As he sits on my lap, I continue to reassure him. The words I whisper to him are just as much for him as they are for me.

It is hard for me to hold my tongue and not translate for him when the words he has are too hard to understand. I know what he is capable of; I know what he can say and do. I know his struggles and his accomplishments better than anyone. There are moments I don’t hold back, sharing with pride all that he can do physically, just to ensure they know that he is extremely talented in other areas. I want them to know this disorder does not define who he is or determine what he can do. But they don’t care what I know, they care what he can and cannot communicate.

I hate to watch him struggle and not have me to lean on. I can’t minimize his weaknesses with my strength—my ability to understand him almost perfectly. I can’t be his voice, the one who knows every word he says, who laughs at the jokes no one else can understand. He has gotten used to me being his translator, his crutch when words are hard. I can’t do anything to make this better for him; helping him now would hurt him in the long run. I stay quiet, whispering comforting words and prayers to my broken heart, hoping everything works out for his best interest, even though it kills me.

Being in this room is heart-wrenching and daunting. For the hour we sit on these tiny chairs, surrounded by therapists rapidly taking notes, I try to keep one eye on my son and one eye on their papers. One by one they move down the row, each taking their turn on the floor where my son now sits playing. He gets braver the longer we are in the room. “I got what I need; your turn.” Every time they move along, I feel like I am being punched in the gut and I can’t help but speculate about what they are writing. I know the end result, regardless of what they find: special education, multiple therapists to assist him throughout the school week. It won’t be much different than the therapy he’s been receiving since he was three with the therapist who has all of my trust. I wonder how I will fit these other therapists into our life, how I will extend faith and grace to them as they work to help this boy of mine.

The diagnosis is given—they agree with the initial diagnosis from a year ago. The IEP is worked out. After an hour with my boy, they know what he needs and we work together to form the best plan. I thought once I knew for sure that his diagnosis wouldn’t change, that none of my fears would come to fruition, I would stop shaking, but I haven’t stopped since we left the house. All of this is still hard for me. After a year to process and work through his diagnosis, I thought it would get easier. I thought that with one evaluation and a year of therapy in our arsenal we would be better equipped for these battles. I don’t feel stronger, and it doesn’t feel easier. I am still watching my son struggle and there is only so much I can do for him. I have come to the realization I can’t fix this for him—I have to search for and rely on others to help us get through it, even though that means subjecting him to more evaluations.

I don’t think they’ll get easier. Fear will always loom in the depths of the unknown.

I gather the paperwork and carefully place it inside my bag. I hold my son’s hand as tightly as I can, relying on the bravery he showed me in that room to ease my anxiety. I swallow the lump forming in my throat as I tell him how proud I am. I know this coming school year is going to be hard for him, that it is going to push him to his limits more often than not. These hardships he has to go through, that I have to go through alongside him as his mother, are trying, nerve-racking. He’s only a little bit scared, though, and he makes me brave.

Jacey is a wife to her husband of eight years and together, they have three children. She finds solace in words and between the pages of a good book. Her writing has been featured on Coffee + Crumbs among others. You can find her on Instagram or jaceywrites.com.

The Fruit-Bearing Tree Oct 15, 2020
Show notes

I stand at the granite surface of the kitchen island, chopping kielbasa into coins and feeding dry spaghetti noodles through each smoky disc for a dish in progress for dinner. A lone fly buzzes around, hoping for a taste of the meat, but I wave him away. I’m hacking the recipe from one of my 11-year-old’s favorite cookbooks in a manner that saves no time, but proportions smoked sausage and pasta noodles perfectly. Aiming my words at the smartphone balanced on my 32oz. green plastic tumbler, where I am recording an audio text to someone, I say something I have never said before: “My insecurity hurts you, but it’s not about you. It’s a deep-rooted weed. It’s a plant growing in the wrong place. God is helping me uproot it in this season, but it’s a messy process.”

The image of a diseased tree grows in my mind as we sit down to dinner and load really good pasta onto our plates.

After dinner—the only meal regularly staged at the kitchen table—I’m overwhelmed. That table is a lot after dinner.

The baby’s high chair is pushed to face the southeast corner of the table, between Mama and Daddy. Rather than watercolor smears on the dark wood together with notebooks, books, our butcher paper dispenser, Post-its, pencils, scissors, and succulent plants in glass containers, there are now crumbs, relish, corn kernels, and broccoli stems littering the table. The sun is going down and taking the rest of my energy with it. The pasta is mixed in with plates, silverware, and half-empty cans of soda and sparkling water, and it’s all sucking the life out of me. My husband is anxious and fretting for freedom too. He’s itching for respite after being on call all day with the double doors closed and monitors staring at him expectantly.

We stand at the table, trying to decide who will finish it all up in the next hour—Who will wash dishes and put things into Tupperware and scrape plates into the garbage and load the dishwasher and take out and replace trash bags? Who will be responsible for the baby? Who will run baths? Who will face the complaints and downcast expressions that inevitably follow the bedtime announcement?

I’m momentarily paralyzed. This happens every day. It’s no one’s fault, I tell myself. He’s working from home, not having a party. We’ve both been working our butts off.

Abruptly, my mind turns back to my pre-dinner revelation. (SQUIRREL!)

“It’s the tree. We have to fix the tree!”

“What?” Hubby asks. To me, he looks totally confused.

“Remember when that guy from the garden center said, ‘Make the tree healthy?’” I head back to the table to grab plates while he starts rinsing the dishes one-handed with the baby on his hip.

“Uh-huh…”

“Remember? He said the way to deal with pests on a tree was making the tree better.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“I’m the tree!” As I say the words, I think of those who birthed insecurity in me—interactions with people and experiences that scattered their white dandelion seeds in my soil. They set my root ball in the ground crookedly; they didn’t feed me nutrients I needed. My roots didn’t take hold properly, and I blew with changing winds—different opinions and circumstances. I hear the guy from the garden center echoing in my head as I visualize myself, a sick tree, and I finally understand his counsel. Trees hold their food and water in their needles or leaves, so if they’re not protected from high winds, they lose the very things they need to be strong and beautiful. Like a tree weakened by disease, which attracts pests, I have been twisted and eaten up by insecurity. From sapling to mature tree, all my connections with this world have affected who I am today—my growth and my areas of struggle.

“I get all worked up and scared over the kids and over my friends, but I feel like God is saying I don’t have control, and I never have. I can only be responsible for my responses. I have to make sure I’m well watered and fed and getting my nutrients from God instead of just worrying. Otherwise, faithlessness sprouts in me and casts a shadow on all my relationships. It affects them too.”

“Right,” Hubby said like it had been obvious to him before God enlightened me.

***

Insecurity is an old acquaintance. We first met when my best friend abruptly moved to Oregon, leaving me behind. Then, what felt like days later, we moved too. Life turned upside down for me. Fearing more loss and abandonment, I made relationships claustrophobic. I watched them closely and told them how they had to act.

Through the years, insecurity has done a number on my friendships. I have desired friends, valued loyalty, and feared abandonment in ways that border on illness, yet I grapple with doubt that any friendship can be a trustworthy environment for my heart. When insecurity led to pride, I let friends down too.

I’ve seen it too many times. Connections falling apart, turning cold, mutating into distant civility. Gradually, confidantes have transformed until you’d think we never knew each other. Did I ever actually know her? Or did we just become other people, gradually growing to dislike what we once loved?

I haven’t got it all figured out yet, but I’m beginning to realize: I tend to see every disagreement as an attack. Intellectually, emotionally, and rhetorically, I go to war. But insecurity cannot be my compass. Friendship won’t work if I always think I am right instead of trusting God’s wisdom.

Likewise, being a good mama isn’t about trying to control every decision and belief and direction of my children (or, worse, believing that I can, as if I am the Almighty). I love them, but I may not engineer (or even modify) them.

Motherhood and friendship—relationships and connections—become sick trees, if they’re overtaken by insecurity and fear. So, I’ve had to change my mind about how to do life in front of my children and how to bring God’s wisdom into my walk with friends. That’s repentance, and it’s the first step in the lengthy and dirty process of digging out unhealthy roots.

Insecurity doesn’t have to be an unrelenting wind that dries me out and makes me brittle. If I try to stand up to that wind alone, it will snap branches and create wounds leading to strange offshoots of emotion, behavior, and thought that diverge from the narrow path along which my Shepherd, Jesus is leading. Instead, I trust Jesus to be my Tree Guy, ridding the soil around me of creepers and other clinging plants. The Lord alone can pack the earth where I’m planted back into place and provide a guiding stake to straighten me out.

The truth is, God makes all things new.

I’m a fruit-bearing tree planted by God. As Lecrae said recently on Instagram, “Healthy trees don’t grow overnight. Neither do healthy people.” The spreading fungi of insecurity deeply influenced my mind—my perception—as I went through hard experiences and listened to mean words. The messages I received are just as real to me now as ever—the past isn’t the past; it’s now. However, I don’t have to drink in that insecurity. I can let God uproot lies and plant truth instead. I do that by changing my mind about who I believe—whether I will dig out the invading roots of insecurity by believing God instead. If I let God keep pulling up the thistles and dandelions and wild clover in the soil of my soul, maybe the evidence of Christ’s transformation will blossom more freely.

Jay Jones is a writer, a mama, and an audio editor for Kindred Mom. God has changed each goal Jay has ever had, chiefly those concerning her relationships and writing. If it is part of her life, she wants it to please Him. Self-taught in many ways, she is always looking to make connections and find ways to improve her brain, her blog, and her brood (ages 2 to 13 years). Married since 2004 to her husband, Taylor, she’s been tied to her college sweetheart for nearly a quarter-century. Together, they raise their 4 children in the Chicago suburbs, where they enjoy pursuing creativity in the midst of the daily grind. Whether it’s writing screenplays, gardening, or gaming, Jay’s family is usually cultivating something. As a mama to both teens and toddlers, Jay is passionate about instilling deep, identity-forming truths in her children. Her other interests include: encouraging others, reading when she can, and learning what she can about where the mind-brain-body-reality intersects with Biblical perspective. You can find some of her musings on her blog at and on Instagram.

Cry, But Not Alone Oct 13, 2020
Show notes

Sitting on the floor on the darkest side of the dresser, I sat rocking my baby, stifling my own sobs, and praying I wouldn’t wake my husband. We were living in my parents’ house until the drywall dust settled in our very first house. The days of being displaced stretched out before me–we had been at my parents’ for two weeks and it looked like another month before we could get back into the little house we loved. I desperately wanted my own space, but for the time being my little family squeezed into one bedroom—my son slept in a drawer on the floor.

Every time the baby whimpered during the night, I would quickly pick him up out of the drawer to sit hunched in the corner to start the feeding process. From the beginning, it had been challenging to get my son to nurse properly. Every feeding I would spend five minutes trying to nurse, then tiptoe downstairs to make him a bottle, and finish off each session pumping and storing milk for the next time. I quickly got adept at doing this by the light of the fridge, even in the middle of the night, but the pressure to keep the baby quiet through the whole painful process felt like a weight on my back.

It was exhausting, I sobbed through it all.

And the whole time, no one in my parents’ house except me knew what I was going through. Looking back, I know to call it postpartum depression, but then I thought I was just weak and failing at everything. We didn’t have our house together, I couldn’t get my son to nurse properly, and I couldn’t stop crying. In my deepest moments of pain, I wondered if I made a mistake.

Maybe I should never have had a baby.

I endured six weeks of extremely long nursing routines, having nursing consultants try everything from guards to teaspoons to help us, and at the end, I was left feeling like a failure. I was defeated and embarrassed by the amount of people who had seen me undressed and at my lowest with no progress to show for it until a new nurse came for a home visit. She let me cry and then told me I had put up a valiant fight and it was time to let it go. She could see in my eyes that I was not doing well and she gave me permission to just let it be. After six weeks of struggle, her affirmation that I was not a bad mom was the magic I needed. When I relaxed into that confidence, my baby suddenly started eating properly, sleeping through the night, and we moved back into our house.

It’s been eighteen years since those nights I spent curled up in the corner. I had two daughters after that son, and he’s now in his first year of college. I don’t rock babies anymore, but the depression never really left, and two years ago I was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder. I didn’t know then how many nights I would spend crying in the dark, with or without a baby, but I think about that twenty-one-year-old girl often.

If I could go back and tell her one thing it would be this: go downstairs and wake up your mom.

For so many years I thought crying had to be done alone. I thought I was the only one who could rock my baby, cry my tears, and bear the burden to figure it all out. I felt so alone and I wished someone would help me, but no one knew. Years later, I told my husband and my mom and they both said the same thing. “I wish you would have woken me up.”

People were never meant to go through life alone. We are meant to live in a far more interconnected way than our North American culture allows. When we’re isolated, it’s easy to think everyone we see thriving is doing it perfectly all on their own. But that’s a lie. They’re either not alone, or they’re not doing as well as we might think.

If you just had a baby and are struggling with postpartum depression, let me offer some hard-won advice: call someone. Wake someone up. Cry, but not alone. It’s hard to tell someone you’re wondering if you’re not up to the task of parenting and asking where God is in the night. It is life-giving to say these things aloud, and doing so does not make you unspiritual or a bad mother or the wrong person for the job.

It makes you normal. And that other mom you’re talking to? It makes her feel normal too.

So wake your husband, call your mom, open up in a mom’s group or at church, talk to your doctor or midwife, or even book an appointment with a counselor. Reach out. Be brave, honest, and vulnerable. The community built during the hard times will be there to support you for the next eighteen years. Rest easy, you were never meant to handle this alone.

Jennifer Holmes is a wife, mom, Christian School music teacher, and writer who also happens to have Bipolar II. She’s exploring how mental health and faith intersect and invites you to share that journey. She loves to podcast, blog, and share on social media, often early in the morning all wrapped up in blankets. Follow along at her website and on Facebook and Instagram (her favourite). Her podcast can be found by searching Jen’s New Song on iTunes, Spotify, or through her website.

Putting In The Time Oct 08, 2020
Show notes

It started with a cough. A deep, hacking cough that shook my entire body, right to my core.

Literally.

I coughed for months—straight through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. My bronchitis sounded worse than it felt, with one horribly embarrassing exception: every time a cough took me by surprise, a drop of pee did the same. By the second week, I wasn’t very surprised, and I had learned to cock my hip and subtly shift my weight whenever I felt a cough about to explode through my chest.

This is not fine, I thought.

My pelvic floor had been weak ever since I gave birth to my first son seven years earlier. He was tangled up in his own umbilical cord, and it took me six hours and the help of a fetal vacuum to push him out. At the time, I remember feeling very grateful I had been able to finish the job without a C-section, but in the months that followed, as I started trying to get back in shape, I realized I could no longer run without peeing. Not any distance. Not even if I limited liquids and took care of business before I set out. I guessed that the strain of pushing for so long had permanently stretched things down there. So much for the expensive jogging stroller. The loss of control wounded my pride so badly, I simply gave up running.

But, to tell the truth, I wasn’t that worried. Giving up running wasn’t a huge loss for me. We could walk to the library just as easily as run there, and I wouldn’t even have to get sweaty.

I thought I could just ignore my problem and it would fade into the background. I thought it was isolated and it wouldn’t affect how I lived or enjoyed my family.

Almost seven years later, I finally realized I couldn’t pretend my pelvic floor weakness into oblivion. It had followed me through two more births, and quite suddenly and unexpectedly became an issue that consumed almost every waking thought. I started wearing pantyliners to go on hikes and I would ask my husband to chase after our toddler when she tried to escape. I no longer trusted my body to perform the most basic function, and no amount of Kegels seemed to get me anywhere.

I cautiously brought up the subject with friends, who all agreed that sneezing is the worst. One well-meaning older lady told me that sex was the answer, and another told me I could just have surgery and forget about it.

Even as I nodded along, I didn’t feel reassured. I suspected my problem was worse than they imagined. I was beginning to grasp its magnitude, and I was afraid.

When I googled my symptoms, I learned that I had “stress incontinence.” Yikes. That sounds like a problem for a nursing home, not a 30-something mama chasing after toddlers. But if it had a name, then surely I wasn’t alone. Surely there was some way to find healing, some way I could cooperate with my own body again.

After months of anxiety, someone handed me the name of a physical therapist. “She’s great!—she can tell just by how you stand and walk what exercises will help,” my friend assured me. “She worked wonders for me.”

I showed up to my first physical therapy appointment wearing heeled booties, skinny jeans, and makeup. I care about my image, and I was about to tell a stranger that I also wet my pants sometimes. As I peered into the therapy room and spotted all the sneakers and leggings, I realized with chagrin that it had been so long since I’d trusted my body, I didn’t even own the right clothes to freely move around.

My therapist, a friendly and energetic woman, laughed at my boots and told me to stop apologizing so much. She didn’t bat an eye when I poured out my most embarrassing secret (and her subsequent questions made me realize I still had a lot to be grateful for). When I asked her with tears in my eyes whether I was ever going to feel comfortable in my body again, she told me something I won’t soon forget.

“Melissa, we can work on this. Your brain has forgotten how to connect to your pelvic floor. Those muscles are stretched out, but we are going to make them strong. We are here to remind your body what to do.” She told me that eventually, if I kept working on it, my body would remember how to hold itself together again.

“Are my knees supposed to hurt?” I asked her a few minutes later as I lay on my back with my feet on a chair and a kickball between my knees, crunching all the air out of my lungs. She assured me I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do, that my knees are connected to my adductors and my adductors are connected to my hips; everything is actually connected to everything else (just like the song says!)—even my stress levels.

I had been compensating for my lost strength by using every other part of my body in strange ways, so every part would have to learn to work differently—even my knees.

I was doubtful as I shoved my feet back into my leather booties and left. I had a new trick, but I wasn’t sure it would matter. Consistency has never been my strong suit; I’ve tried a few “miracle” programs before and never managed to stick to them. What if I can never reconnect with this part of my body I’ve neglected for so long? What if all my bad habits are too ingrained for me to overcome them?

I missed two days of exercises that week. It was hard for me to work a new routine into the hectic rhythm of my days at home. As I lay on my bedroom floor at midnight and attempted to repeat the simple exercise, curving my lower back down to the carpet and breathing out until my lungs ached for fresh air, I reminded myself to keep trying, that doing something is better than nothing.

I wish I could say I was all better after a week.

I wish I could say I don’t have to worry about my pelvic floor anymore. But I’m still working on it.

Connection (and especially reconnection) can be hard work. Sometimes it is uncomfortable, and sometimes a false start makes me want to give up in despair. But I can’t assume a real connection will happen without a deep investment, or without affecting every other part of my life. Just like any relationship I’ve ever had, forging a bond is slow and requires my persistence. No matter how much I want it when I start out, it won’t become second nature instantaneously.

I have to put in the time.

Melissa Hogarty is a habitually overwhelmed mama who is learning to slow down and sometimes say no. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and three kids, who regularly teach her that she has more to learn in the areas of grace, patience, and letting loose. She can often be found cuddled up with a good novel or pulling cookies out of the oven. Melissa is an editor and regular contributor at Kindred Mom and a member of the Exhale creative community. She enjoys singing with her church worship team and fellowshipping with other moms. She also writes a personal blog, Savored Grace, where you can find recipes as well as ideas about motherhood and faith, and occasionally updates her Instagram.

Putting In The Time Oct 08, 2020
Show notes

It started with a cough. A deep, hacking cough that shook my entire body, right to my core.

Literally.

I coughed for months—straight through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. My bronchitis sounded worse than it felt, with one horribly embarrassing exception: every time a cough took me by surprise, a drop of pee did the same. By the second week, I wasn’t very surprised, and I had learned to cock my hip and subtly shift my weight whenever I felt a cough about to explode through my chest.

This is not fine, I thought.

My pelvic floor had been weak ever since I gave birth to my first son seven years earlier. He was tangled up in his own umbilical cord, and it took me six hours and the help of a fetal vacuum to push him out. At the time, I remember feeling very grateful I had been able to finish the job without a C-section, but in the months that followed, as I started trying to get back in shape, I realized I could no longer run without peeing. Not any distance. Not even if I limited liquids and took care of business before I set out. I guessed that the strain of pushing for so long had permanently stretched things down there. So much for the expensive jogging stroller. The loss of control wounded my pride so badly, I simply gave up running.

But, to tell the truth, I wasn’t that worried. Giving up running wasn’t a huge loss for me. We could walk to the library just as easily as run there, and I wouldn’t even have to get sweaty.

I thought I could just ignore my problem and it would fade into the background. I thought it was isolated and it wouldn’t affect how I lived or enjoyed my family.

Almost seven years later, I finally realized I couldn’t pretend my pelvic floor weakness into oblivion. It had followed me through two more births, and quite suddenly and unexpectedly became an issue that consumed almost every waking thought. I started wearing pantyliners to go on hikes and I would ask my husband to chase after our toddler when she tried to escape. I no longer trusted my body to perform the most basic function, and no amount of Kegels seemed to get me anywhere.

I cautiously brought up the subject with friends, who all agreed that sneezing is the worst. One well-meaning older lady told me that sex was the answer, and another told me I could just have surgery and forget about it.

Even as I nodded along, I didn’t feel reassured. I suspected my problem was worse than they imagined. I was beginning to grasp its magnitude, and I was afraid.

When I googled my symptoms, I learned that I had “stress incontinence.” Yikes. That sounds like a problem for a nursing home, not a 30-something mama chasing after toddlers. But if it had a name, then surely I wasn’t alone. Surely there was some way to find healing, some way I could cooperate with my own body again.

After months of anxiety, someone handed me the name of a physical therapist. “She’s great!—she can tell just by how you stand and walk what exercises will help,” my friend assured me. “She worked wonders for me.”

I showed up to my first physical therapy appointment wearing heeled booties, skinny jeans, and makeup. I care about my image, and I was about to tell a stranger that I also wet my pants sometimes. As I peered into the therapy room and spotted all the sneakers and leggings, I realized with chagrin that it had been so long since I’d trusted my body, I didn’t even own the right clothes to freely move around.

My therapist, a friendly and energetic woman, laughed at my boots and told me to stop apologizing so much. She didn’t bat an eye when I poured out my most embarrassing secret (and her subsequent questions made me realize I still had a lot to be grateful for). When I asked her with tears in my eyes whether I was ever going to feel comfortable in my body again, she told me something I won’t soon forget.

“Melissa, we can work on this. Your brain has forgotten how to connect to your pelvic floor. Those muscles are stretched out, but we are going to make them strong. We are here to remind your body what to do.” She told me that eventually, if I kept working on it, my body would remember how to hold itself together again.

“Are my knees supposed to hurt?” I asked her a few minutes later as I lay on my back with my feet on a chair and a kickball between my knees, crunching all the air out of my lungs. She assured me I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do, that my knees are connected to my adductors and my adductors are connected to my hips; everything is actually connected to everything else (just like the song says!)—even my stress levels.

I had been compensating for my lost strength by using every other part of my body in strange ways, so every part would have to learn to work differently—even my knees.

I was doubtful as I shoved my feet back into my leather booties and left. I had a new trick, but I wasn’t sure it would matter. Consistency has never been my strong suit; I’ve tried a few “miracle” programs before and never managed to stick to them. What if I can never reconnect with this part of my body I’ve neglected for so long? What if all my bad habits are too ingrained for me to overcome them?

I missed two days of exercises that week. It was hard for me to work a new routine into the hectic rhythm of my days at home. As I lay on my bedroom floor at midnight and attempted to repeat the simple exercise, curving my lower back down to the carpet and breathing out until my lungs ached for fresh air, I reminded myself to keep trying, that doing something is better than nothing.

I wish I could say I was all better after a week.

I wish I could say I don’t have to worry about my pelvic floor anymore. But I’m still working on it.

Connection (and especially reconnection) can be hard work. Sometimes it is uncomfortable, and sometimes a false start makes me want to give up in despair. But I can’t assume a real connection will happen without a deep investment, or without affecting every other part of my life. Just like any relationship I’ve ever had, forging a bond is slow and requires my persistence. No matter how much I want it when I start out, it won’t become second nature instantaneously.

I have to put in the time.

Melissa Hogarty is a habitually overwhelmed mama who is learning to slow down and sometimes say no. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and three kids, who regularly teach her that she has more to learn in the areas of grace, patience, and letting loose. She can often be found cuddled up with a good novel or pulling cookies out of the oven. Melissa is an editor and regular contributor at Kindred Mom and a member of the Exhale creative community. She enjoys singing with her church worship team and fellowshipping with other moms. She also writes a personal blog, Savored Grace, where you can find recipes as well as ideas about motherhood and faith, and occasionally updates her Instagram.

Friends Who Do Not Fear My Pain Oct 06, 2020
Show notes

I am a MOO, which has nothing to do with cows, although that would spark a smile. In my life, MOO stands for Mothers of Offenders. The word offender just made this all so serious.

I am the mother of an offender. This is my smashed-heart story.

That I am a mother at all still fills me with wonder. I knew from a young age my body would never be able to bear children. Instead of crying over that, I chose to live a large life of faith in the God who created me. In my early thirties as a single youth pastor, I began meeting with a group of at-risk tween boys. Actually I couldn’t shake them. They were beautifully messy and risky, and they eventually chose to follow Jesus. The night they made that decision, God whispered to me that these boys needed more than a youth pastor: they needed parents. With open hearts, my new husband and I parented more and more. Now, decades later, we have five delightful grandchildren who are being raised in safe homes, with love and the knowledge of Jesus—the very things their fathers didn’t have until they were older.

I wish this was true for all four of my sons, but as I said, I am a MOO. One of my sons committed a serious crime as a young man, and the prison system has been a part of our lives for 21 years now.

I still remember the phone call when this became our reality. I remember the awkwardness of the jail visits which later became prison visits. Jail and prison are very different, and I hate that I know that. I can still hear the door slamming and locking behind me for the first time, can still picture sitting in that booth, picking up that phone, and seeing my son’s face through that glass. My dear son, whose whole future had just changed, who wasn’t sure if he was still loved.

I also had to go to church the next Sunday and answer questions about the front-page article in the newspaper.

When my son was arrested, people tried to figure out what to say to me. Most often they truly meant well, but it didn’t touch the anger I felt toward my son. It didn’t touch the grief I felt over his lost future. It didn’t soothe the very public shame my family now bears. Shame is already a story stealer, and because my shame rested in the crime my son committed, I didn’t know how to put words on that any more than my friends did.

So I walked into a room filled with beautiful women just like me. We are MOOs. We support each other. But none of us want to be there.

This is a place we can be honest about the shame our own children have brought us. We walk each other through the court system and then the other systems in place for those who are incarcerated. But we wish we didn’t have to.

Being a MOO means I must enter into another person’s pain. To help her is to also relive my own pain. I have to hear stories that are tragic, stories that have no easy ending point.

Being a MOO also means we really see each other. We already know what the woman next to us means when she opens her mouth. No glassy-eyed I don’t understand. No judgment. No, I can’t bear to know this exists in my safe world.

This connection is a rare find. But to get it, I have to be honest about my own pain too.

I wish the universal nature of struggle made it easier for all of us to ask for help, especially in situations like mine, when the mistakes that led to heartbreak cannot be undone. But in a culture of scarcity and perfectionism, there can still be so much shame around reaching out.

It is easier to numb that pain—by eating or drinking the pain into oblivion, or becoming so “crazy busy” that I don’t have time to feel it. I could overshare my pain, trying to get a shot of dopamine from attention (or use oversharing as an excuse, believing no one understands me). Sometimes I want to do everything right, hiding behind a face that says I am okay even though I am smashed inside.

No wonder I can stand in a crowded church, worshipping God with all my heart next to people I love, and still feel alone. Sometimes I feel like no one really knows me. Sometimes I think I have to pretend I am someone else to find any connection.

Do you know what the best part of being a MOO is? In a small group meeting among other mothers who are not afraid of my pain, I get to share my real stories. Speaking these truths aloud in this safe space helps me live my other days in the real world.

We never compare whose pain is worse. Instead, we listen. We give each other words of encouragement. Sometimes we share out of our experience—we’ve been there before. Some words seem to come directly from the Holy Spirit, who comforts us in our sorrow. We laugh at things other people could never understand.

I don’t need to talk about my experiences with prison every day. Nor is it safe for me to talk about my story (and my son’s story) with everyone. Some people don’t care. Some people may be more interested in salacious gossip than my heart. Some people have enough in their lives to handle without the weight of my experiences on top.

Only certain people get to know this brave, vulnerable part of me. This connection with other moms who also know the awkwardness of prison visitations builds me up to live the rest of my life more fully.

I no longer live under a cloud of secret shame. For a few hours each week, I know I am heard and understood—and that is enough.

Brenda Seefeldt Amodea is a pastor, speaker, wife, and mom to four men with their own brave stories. Her life is a story of getting her heart smashed and the many times she has chosen to get up. She shares the beauty of her pain at www.Bravester.com. Sometimes these stories shared are better in person—complete with prayer together. Maybe you would like her to come to your group and share?

Friends Who Do Not Fear My Pain Oct 06, 2020
Show notes

I am a MOO, which has nothing to do with cows, although that would spark a smile. In my life, MOO stands for Mothers of Offenders. The word offender just made this all so serious.

I am the mother of an offender. This is my smashed-heart story.

That I am a mother at all still fills me with wonder. I knew from a young age my body would never be able to bear children. Instead of crying over that, I chose to live a large life of faith in the God who created me. In my early thirties as a single youth pastor, I began meeting with a group of at-risk tween boys. Actually I couldn’t shake them. They were beautifully messy and risky, and they eventually chose to follow Jesus. The night they made that decision, God whispered to me that these boys needed more than a youth pastor: they needed parents. With open hearts, my new husband and I parented more and more. Now, decades later, we have five delightful grandchildren who are being raised in safe homes, with love and the knowledge of Jesus—the very things their fathers didn’t have until they were older.

I wish this was true for all four of my sons, but as I said, I am a MOO. One of my sons committed a serious crime as a young man, and the prison system has been a part of our lives for 21 years now.

I still remember the phone call when this became our reality. I remember the awkwardness of the jail visits which later became prison visits. Jail and prison are very different, and I hate that I know that. I can still hear the door slamming and locking behind me for the first time, can still picture sitting in that booth, picking up that phone, and seeing my son’s face through that glass. My dear son, whose whole future had just changed, who wasn’t sure if he was still loved.

I also had to go to church the next Sunday and answer questions about the front-page article in the newspaper.

When my son was arrested, people tried to figure out what to say to me. Most often they truly meant well, but it didn’t touch the anger I felt toward my son. It didn’t touch the grief I felt over his lost future. It didn’t soothe the very public shame my family now bears. Shame is already a story stealer, and because my shame rested in the crime my son committed, I didn’t know how to put words on that any more than my friends did.

So I walked into a room filled with beautiful women just like me. We are MOOs. We support each other. But none of us want to be there.

This is a place we can be honest about the shame our own children have brought us. We walk each other through the court system and then the other systems in place for those who are incarcerated. But we wish we didn’t have to.

Being a MOO means I must enter into another person’s pain. To help her is to also relive my own pain. I have to hear stories that are tragic, stories that have no easy ending point.

Being a MOO also means we really see each other. We already know what the woman next to us means when she opens her mouth. No glassy-eyed I don’t understand. No judgment. No, I can’t bear to know this exists in my safe world.

This connection is a rare find. But to get it, I have to be honest about my own pain too.

I wish the universal nature of struggle made it easier for all of us to ask for help, especially in situations like mine, when the mistakes that led to heartbreak cannot be undone. But in a culture of scarcity and perfectionism, there can still be so much shame around reaching out.

It is easier to numb that pain—by eating or drinking the pain into oblivion, or becoming so “crazy busy” that I don’t have time to feel it. I could overshare my pain, trying to get a shot of dopamine from attention (or use oversharing as an excuse, believing no one understands me). Sometimes I want to do everything right, hiding behind a face that says I am okay even though I am smashed inside.

No wonder I can stand in a crowded church, worshipping God with all my heart next to people I love, and still feel alone. Sometimes I feel like no one really knows me. Sometimes I think I have to pretend I am someone else to find any connection.

Do you know what the best part of being a MOO is? In a small group meeting among other mothers who are not afraid of my pain, I get to share my real stories. Speaking these truths aloud in this safe space helps me live my other days in the real world.

We never compare whose pain is worse. Instead, we listen. We give each other words of encouragement. Sometimes we share out of our experience—we’ve been there before. Some words seem to come directly from the Holy Spirit, who comforts us in our sorrow. We laugh at things other people could never understand.

I don’t need to talk about my experiences with prison every day. Nor is it safe for me to talk about my story (and my son’s story) with everyone. Some people don’t care. Some people may be more interested in salacious gossip than my heart. Some people have enough in their lives to handle without the weight of my experiences on top.

Only certain people get to know this brave, vulnerable part of me. This connection with other moms who also know the awkwardness of prison visitations builds me up to live the rest of my life more fully.

I no longer live under a cloud of secret shame. For a few hours each week, I know I am heard and understood—and that is enough.

Brenda Seefeldt Amodea is a pastor, speaker, wife, and mom to four men with their own brave stories. Her life is a story of getting her heart smashed and the many times she has chosen to get up. She shares the beauty of her pain at www.Bravester.com. Sometimes these stories shared are better in person—complete with prayer together. Maybe you would like her to come to your group and share?

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