Am I a Mother

If you know or not.  I am not an "official" member of the mom club.  After having tried for so long I have finally (Sorta) gotten used to this fact.  But I do consider myself a mother.  I consider myself a very good one as a matter of fact.  I did not learn the art of fine mothering from my own mother.  Nope.  She was far from a fine mother.  She would hardly be considered an "ok" mother. 

My mother was abusive.  Both physically and mentally.  I am still in therapy trying to piece myself back together from that wonderful mothering example she set for me.  I swore to all that was holy that I would never have kids.  I wanted to break that cycle.  Because, yes, she too was an abused child.  So years and years later.  Meet the man I love most dearly and it finally hits me like a ton of bricks.  I want kids!  Ha ha.  Oh Cosmos you.  You really got me good didn't you. 

I mention this only to make a point.  Just because you carry a child for 9 months and endure labor does not make you a mom.  If just means your have the ability to bring forth life.  Lucky you.  And I mean that.  I would love to have that experience.  I truly would.  But for me a mom is love.  Pure and simple. 

I am a proud mom.  I am a rescue mom.  I currently have five of the most beautiful children a woman can ask for.  I love them deeply.  It hurts me profoundly to see them in pain.  I nurse them when they are ill.  I take them to the Dr.'s more then I go myself.  I go without in order to make sure they do not.  I make sure they always have the best.  I mourn when they pass.  Because I lose my children every few years. 

If I am lucky I am blessed with their presence for 4-5 years.  If.  IF, I am really lucky it will be 6-7 years.  But sadly that is not the case for a rescue mom of ferrets.  They have a short life spans.  And have many hereditary cancers.  So my children often die due to cancer.  Just for the visit alone it is $50 just to be seen.  Then not counting shots, meds and everything else.  We have spent thousands in a year on just one.  Right now I have two who most likely will not last the year.  I make sure they live life to the fullest.  Have full tummys and lots of hugs and kisses.

Now today the big controversy.  Apparently I cannot call myself a mom.  So says this blogger http://www.yourtango.com/2015275999/your-dog-is-not-one-of-your-kids-insult-to-moms.  I feel insulted myself that she says I cannot consider myself such.  Granted we are all entitled to our own opinions and mine may not reflect the opinion of others.  But my thought is.  If women can give birth and kill their child they are not a mom.  If they can give birth and neglect the child in anyway or let any harm come to said child.  They are not a mother. 

One commenter on the local radio station that posted this even went so far as to say that women who adopt children are not mothers.  I feel like I have been slapped in the face.  How is it my fault if I cannot have kids.  I did not make myself defective.  Nor, I am sure did the millions of other "alternative" mothers who opted to have either adopted a human child or a fur baby because they were not able to have children.    But what about all those ladies who can have children but just did not find the right person to have them with.  Well crap we just left out a huge portion of the world. 

We already have it flung into our faces every year that we are not moms when mothers day comes around.  We are not give flowers, or fancy meals as a thank you.  Hell I don't see a "Hey so sorry your sterile and cant give birth" day.  I could really used a hug sometimes.  A thank you for taking in what other people deemed trash (because yes one of my rescued babies that had passed was thrown away in a huge dumpster locked in a kennel so he couldn't fend for himself. He lost cage mates because of that.  Just think how traumatized he was.)

I do have another thought.  Animals can be our babies.  They do not know how to fend for themselves unless we teach them to.  But we would have to teach them like a mother would.  They have no artifice so the love they show us is true and undeniable.  This goes for any fur momma rescue or not.  And for those who did not give life to their human child.  Mom is love.  Mom is security. 
Mom is safe.

 

 

Of the three of these only one is left.  She has cancer and may not last the year.

 

This is us hand feeding my little man about a week before he crossed the bridge.  Died of Cancer.

 

 

My baby of the family.  He takes that teddy bear everywhere.  Feeds it.  Brings it to the potty.  Sleeps with it.  LOVE!

 

Dear Child I Will Never Have,

Dear Child I Will Never Have,

 

I have loved you for years.  And yet I don’t know if you would have been a boy or a girl.  I wouldn’t have cared.  I just wanted you.  

I didn’t want you, until I met the man of my dreams.  The man that helped me heal.  He is a good man.  Works very hard, treats me like I have always wanted to be treated.  Then I started to need you.  I cried every month you didn’t come.  I mourned your loss even though you were never alive.  I was saddened that this wonderful man would never know fatherhood.

I still wish to meet you, but I know its best we never got to be together.  There is darkness inside me.  It’s always there, on the fringes, waiting to strike.  I don’t want to pass this onto someone who was born with so much light.  I want what every mother wants.  For her peanut to always be pure and full of joy.

There were so many things I wanted to teach you.  Books I wanted to read to you and adventures to have with you.  I wanted to show you the world and all the magic that it holds. 

I wanted to pick a magical name for you.  Something that would make people look up and take notice and say to themselves.  That young person is special.  They will be good and great.

I wanted your dreams to become mine.  I wanted you to change the world.  I wanted to be your world. 

I never wanted you to know pain, poverty, sadness or hunger.  I wanted you to be forever healthy and wise.

I write to you because I am proud of you would have been.  And I know you would have been proud of me too.  I forgive my body for not being able to have you.  I forgive fate for being cruel, but see the wisdom of not being able to hold you. 

I started writing you this letter with tears in my heart.  But I finish with a smile on my face.  I know.  Deep down.  I will see you.  And that makes me happy.  It may not be in this life.  Or even the next.  But it will happen.

Love the mother you never had.

 

Rolling in her grave

Today I went to see my dad to get some things of my stepmothers that he thought I would like.  So today as I was leaving he told me he was in a relationship and that he was going to get married.  Mind you it has been four months.  AND this is the home wrecker that he was cheating on my stepmother with about five years ago.  At the time he got caught he said it was over.  Both my stepmother and I knew it really wasn't. 

I don't care about the relationship.  I do care that its the home wrecker.  And even more that its the home wrecker four months after my stepmother suddenly passed.  I told my dad that I didn't want to meet her.  I cant.  I took my stepmothers side when he was cheating.  I find it morally deplorable that he did it to begin with when all that he needed to do was simply divorce my stepmother and then he could have gotten freaky with every woman in the tri state area for all I cared.

However my father didn't do it that way.  My stepmother has been ill off and on since I have known her as a child.  And between cancers and all the other crap she suffered though he really never held her hand through it.  Then she spends all her money to get him out of debt not once but twice, buys a house, and re-does the house.  And now this person my dad wants to be with is wreaking all the benefits.  All the things she told me I could have if she passed.....Oh my god it makes my stomach turn just thinking about this woman owning them and touching them. 

Maybe I am over reacting.  I don't know.  But it hurts my heart knowing that my stepmother called it not long before she passed.  She told me she thought my dad was stepping out on her again and I told her to leave him.  He certainly didn't deserve her.  But she said she wouldn't because she didn't want this person to win.  Sigh.  I hope to god my stepmother is happier where she is now because this would break her heart yet again.

Now I need to talk to my dad and see if he would for my piece of mind write all of my stepmothers stuff into a will in case something happens to him.  I just don't know how to do it without sounding more like an ass hole to him.

*tap *tap "Is this thing on?"

Well, I am here writing.  I stopped for so long due to depression and my therapist thought I should start the exercise and write for about 15 minutes a day.  I enjoy the process of rehashing old shit and not dwelling on it in my brain by putting it out there. 

Uggg.  Where do I start?  So much has happened in my life that has affected me, and all great for story telling.  Most not good and some very great.  I don't want to write to get sympathy from others but to share and be brave and put it out there. 

I previously had another blog that was starting to really take off before I gave up.  I gave up because that is what I do when I go through my depression.  It was a weight loss blog and at the time I finally stopped posting I had lost 75 pounds.  But over the course of a year some really heavy amounts of work related stress and losses in the family and finally a mental breakdown I gained 30 back.  I am trying to lose it again.  But I am doing it differently.  I want to make it hurt so I remember and not gain again.  I wasted my easy so now its going down the hard way.

Back to the breakdown.  Boy that was not fun.  Not by a long shot.  I scared myself so bad and by rights I should have been admitted into a hospital.  Bless my husband and best friend for being so patient and trying to get through to me.  But it all started one day at work.  The super bad stress related work.  Between that stress, loss of one of my beloved ferrets, the inability to talk about my mounting issues and to top it off it was the anniversary of my Mom's death.  I didn't realize it was the anniversary until my husband mentioned my brother had called.  But all morning on November the 6th 2013 I was just getting angrier and angrier.  I didn't want to continue and it hurt so bad.  I have never felt pain like this.  I started to think.  "I am going to go home and just end it."  And those thoughts wouldn't go away.  The voice kept getting louder and louder until it felt like my head was going to pop unless I actually did it.  And if I did it then every thing would be OK again.  I walked into my supervisors office and told him if I went to lunch I don't think I would be coming back.  Bless him.  He understood but only as far as the work related stress.  He knew what I was up against in the office and didn't blame me for wanting to leave.  But by 1030 I finally left the office after sending a one sentence letter of resignation. 

Once I was in my car and away from the office I started crying and couldn't stop.  At that point I just couldn't believe what I did.  I never quit a job like that.  I never dared.  So then panic set in.  Here I am on a highway crying like a crazy person thinking about suicide and how my husband would be pissed that I left my crappy job that we both detested.  After about 10 minutes of that I got eerily to calm and drove myself to the pharmacy thinking I can find something that I can take to end it all.  So I got stupid OTC sleeping pills and a bottle of 500 aspirin.  I had plans of taking all of both with a nice bottle of scotch that I had at home.  I had about 5 hours before my husband would be coming home so I had a great head start. 

So by the time I got home I am very numb and started to take the pills but after a handful of aspirin and few "sleep aids".  I stopped.  I started to think of the one person I loved the most.  My husband.  Could I really do that to him?  He had already gone though a situation with a close family member doing something similar and being successful at it.  Could I put him through that again?  Then I just cried.  I curled up in a ball and cried.  For hours.  Then came the three emotionless days that scared my husband and best friend.  They only knew that I quit my job and nothing else.  So when they both tried to talk to me all they got was a blank wall.  I wouldn't talk.  I wouldn't move.  I wouldn't eat or drink.  I was just there.   I think at that point I was just trying to will myself dead.  Not sure if it is possible but here I was trying to do it.

So by now you must know that I didn't die.  After all I am sitting here writing this five months later.  But I finally pulled out of the slump and started talking.   My husband guessed what some of the problem was by talking to my friend.  I don't think he really understood how hard it was for me to accept that I wasn't going to have kids.  The crap that my work was putting me through (and boy was it a lot) an with my history with my mother it finally hit him.  Yup I am broken.  He made promises that I knew he couldn't keep.  But that's what you do when your scared shitless I guess.  He told me that if I hadn't pulled myself out of my dark place then he was going to have me admitted. 

I know it sounds silly.  But I have mixed emotions about my husband wanting to throw me into the loony bin.  I was happy but at the same time pissed that he never really tried to pull me out.   But then again if I were in his shoes I would have done everything he did.  But my friend I felt so blessed to have...lol.  Zero logic I know.  I called my therapist the next day and told her I needed to see her as soon as she had an opening.  I didn't elaborate because I knew what she would have said.  She would have had me admitted anyway.  And again.  Zero logic here.  I wanted to go but at the same time was so happy I didn't get shipped off. 

I am trying, I am struggling.  But I am trying.  I don't want to act happy like I have been.  I want to be happy.  Its slow work.