January 31st

I love blogging. If I have the courage to write about what's really bothering me, despite how much of a fool I may feel or how weird I feel I may come across, then shortly after writing it, I feel an ever so useful sense of perspective on what I wrote. It's risky, but it's rewarding.

Like, my last post. After I wrote it, I figured out what was bothering me so much. It's the fact that the pursuit of a biological child could be never ending. That's the thing. If I knew I would get pregnant using IUI, would it be worth it? Sure. If I knew that I wouldn't, but that IVF would, would I do IVF? Maybe. It depends on what would happen to my other embryos.

But I don't know. Nobody knows. At what point do you stop? Or start, for that matter. Let's say Keith and I try IUI and it doesn't work. Why wouldn't we try it again? What would be the cut off point? Maybe three cycles? Maybe six?

And there's more than one way of doing IUI. Would we do just the straight transfer of sperm, for about $200 to $300 dollars a pop? Or would we go straight to the transfer with hormone therapy and monitoring, which is thousands of dollars?

In the meantime, time is just passing away. If it doesn't work, by the time we'd figured that out, we could have had a child placed with us through adoption. We would have already been parents.

When the PA had such a strange reaction to me, it threw me all off. I forgot all the reasons why we had decided on adoption. I had to think it all through again. It's not easy to think all this through; it's like opening a wound.

I tell you what, there is not a month goes by but that I don't wish I could write the "I'm pregnant" post. I have a lot of that particular post sketched out in my head already. But month after month goes by and that post never gets written.

There's no right or wrong answer. That's what gets me too. I like black and white. I was raised to believe that there was a black or white answer to everything and despite the fact that reality drills into me over and over again the fallacy of that belief, I still yearn for the simplicity it holds out.

Maybe we will try IUI before beginning the adoption process. But if we do, not for very long. One month, two at the most and then I'm done. I don't want to wait anymore.

January 30th

There were children here yesterday.

I dragged up my old box of Barbie stuff, a mildewy box that is torn at the sides and in the process of falling apart. I confess to being oddly excited; finally, an excuse to go through my old toys! What was in that old box anyway?

The children, a girl of about six and a boy of about four, were equally excited. Fistfuls of Barbie clothes were blithely tossed into the air as we dug down. We discovered Barbies so old their legs and faces had blackened. There were hundreds of tiny things, little pots with lids, a miniature Hamburger Helper box, misplaced Lego pieces.

And there was clothing. Old, old, homemade Barbie doll clothing. I had forgotten how much of my stuff was home made. It's impressive, really. How had my parents done that? That was a little purple paisley sheath dress with a lace ruffle at the bottom; clearly the work of my father. And a tiny little blue and white striped cotton suit, the skirt even had pleats, the jacket had a side pocket; the work of my mother.

They stayed for rather a long time, as Keith was helping their father do his taxes. By the time they left, we had played with almost all the toys I've saved for my own children, including four beautiful picture books I've kept for years.

I went to the woman's clinic last week, since they wanted to see me before renewing my prescription for Clomid. I saw a different doctor, a PA in fact. She looked over the chart and declared that we should skip more Clomid and just go straight to IUI.

Um, what? I told her the previous doctor thought all was well. She consulted briefly with the previous doctor and returned with inconclusive statements. She looked at me like a crazy person when I told her I wasn't sure I wanted to do IUI. She then told me about her sister getting pregnant that way and that I could have "my own" baby very easily by just getting up on the ol' gurney.

Um, excuse me? It bothers me when people assume that I can't possibly consider an adopted child "my own." Like, an adopted child can't possibly be my legitimate child. They assume if I want a child "legit" I'd better go all the way down the infertility rabbit hole. Which I just don't want to do.

Also, there is simply no guarantee that doing an IUI would get me pregnant. That's such a ridiculously simple way of looking at it. If that were true, the IVF people would be out of business and last I checked, that was far from true. I don't care whose sister, friend, sister's friend, friend of a friend got pregnant the first time with Clomid, IUI, or after ten years of IVF. It doesn't mean it will happen for me.

In fact, it hasn't. All those stories about who got pregnant the first time with Clomid? That's not my story. The fact of the matter is, the success rate for IUI is between 15% and 20%.

The whole thing got my head in a bad space. I just felt like she was judging me for not wanting to do everything possible to ensure I had a biological child. It threw me all off. It seems to me that if I pursue adoption, I am definitely going to have a baby, sooner or later. If I pursue infertility treatments, it's all a pricey gamble. I'm not saying it's not worth it to those who really yearn for a biological child, I have no judgment for any couple's decisions, it's what works for their family.

I just think, for me, I don't want to gamble. I do think an adopted child is my "own" child. But now I'm wondering: is it worth it to try IUI just once? But how on earth does one define "worth it"? What does that mean anyway? How does a person make these kinds of decisions? Just thinking about it hurts. Stupid PA.

January 29th

How January does drag on at the last.

The sun came out late yesterday and I took some pictures of the light.

We grilled out that evening, though the air was chill and damp. Keith came in smelling of Jack Daniel's honey barbecue sauce. That smell lit up all those neuron pathways in my brain, a little path of light leaping back into past memories of Keith and grilling, summer... warm sun... falling in love, getting married, making out on the back deck or on the back of the Chevy. Yum.

I love how marriage gets better with time. I love how we do the same things, year after year. I know that no matter what happens in Georgia, we'll grill out chicken and baked potatoes. Today we are driving into Louisville to see the Boat and RV show, just like last year.

We'll hold hands and wander around, lost in our own personal day dream. We'll take our shoes off and pad up onto the decks of boats we'll never, in a hundred years, afford. Unless we decide to be crazy and sell the house and live on the water ways...

Then we'll see the toy haulers and we'll day dream about taking the kids up into the Rockies, ATVs stowed away, and camp for weeks at time, drunk on the air, getting dusty and tanned.

In the meantime, spring is coming, I can feel it. It's just under the ground all squishy with melted snow. I can hear bird song again in the early morning, when I take the girls out.

January 28th

And here we are: six straight days of no sun. How is that even meteorologically possible? (Isn't that an awesome word? I'm not sure if it's real though.)

Also, last night I missed a call from guess who?

Gallup.

As in, the Gallup polls.

The masters of American opinion called and I did not answer. Oh, the agony! Finally, it would have been my chance to affect the polls, to have an impact, a voice, to be .0001% (or whatever) of the sum total of everyone polled.

And I missed it.

The good news is, they will call back. When they do, I. will. be. ready.

January 25th

I can't wait until we have this stupid debt paid off and we're settled in our new home and have secured the adoption loan and have the whole new budget planned out because then...

Then maybe we can live like how I imagine normal people live. I can start filling the house with little things that I find here or there. I want to buy stuff. Colorful stuff, vintage stuff, new stuff. I want bright yellow dishes and old lace curtains and a sheep skin rug for my side of the bed and mismatched bedside tables with sea glass in old white ceramic bowls on them. I want vases with fresh flowers and gadgets that hang in the windows and catch the light and gadgets in the garden that catch the wind and speaking of wind, a wind chime that sings softly all day long on the back porch.

I've caught spring fever, is what it is. I saw an old picture of my garden in Colorado and the delicate beauty of a petunia petal just took my breath away. So fragile and so bright with the strong sun shining straight through it. Here in good ol' Kaintuck we are on day three of a new stretch of dark, cloudy weather. Yes, that's right. We had six days of dark, two days of sun and now day three and counting of more dark. And that's just how Kentucky rolls this time of the year.

I had this sudden, blindingly obvious insight the other day, as I was working through my massive feelings about blogging my dream and memory. I realized that I keep on assuming that people who come to read my blog don't want to read about that stuff. Why would I assume that? That is a strange assumption.

That would be a persistent reader, let me tell you, if that reader still follows me in the hope that one day I won't write highly personal, impassioned, introspective, and philosophical blogs. I have to admire that hypothetical person's faith in the face of continued disappointment. The fact is, if I ever had such a reader, I'm sure I have lost him or her by now.

Instead, wouldn't it be much more logical to assume that the people who continue to read my blog might actually be reading because of what I write, not instead of it? It's amazing the degree to which a poor self image will bend even logic in it's pursuit of believing the worst. That's the thought I came away with. If you happen to struggle with a persistant belief in unworthiness, try questioning the evidence.

I miss this:

January 24th

I'm following a fashion blog. I don't know what's come over me.

Yesterday I tried cleaning out my blog feed. Half of them are dead blogs. They've either stopped blogging or went private. I could have joined most of the private blogs, but I was too shy to send them an e-mail and admit to following, so that's my fault. (Yes, I am that shy.)

Anyway, I couldn't delete most of them. I felt sentimental about those blogs. And what if, all of a sudden, they start blogging again? Wouldn't I want to know? I would.

To fill out my meager feed, I went on a blog hunt. It's harder than you might think, trying to find good blogs to follow. I found a few that I'm excited about, including the fashion blogger. She looks so much like Rachel Zoe that I had a double take. Maybe it's just that those who follow the rules of high fashion are naturally going to end up dressing nearly identically. Whereas I look like a walking advertisement for JC Penney, circa 1997.

In other news, I dropped that pound! I am now at my previous absolutely unacceptable weight of one forty. Frankly, I'm amazed because dinner last night was three pumpkin cookies, one double chocolate chip cookie and a half cup of home made beef stew.

How did that happen, you may ask? Well, yesterday we visited one of Keith's soldiers at the hospital where he was recovering from a seven hour surgery. I felt so bad for the kid. He reminded me of my younger brothers. I tell you what, I am going to be a big sister for the rest of my life; the feeling is just ingrained in me. It's this potent combination of deep fondness, pride and slight wariness.

So of course when we got home I went on a three hour baking spree. I made two of my favorites, orange cranberry muffins (Keith can't get enough of those and he's a hard man to please when it comes to baked goods) and my pumpkin cookies. They're a crowd pleaser every time. I keep experimenting with the spices. This time I added an eighth of a teaspoon ginger and boy was that the right decision.

Lastly, I decided to make double chocolate cookies instead of the regular kind. (Chocolate chips cookies were the only specific request he'd had when asked.) I'd been wanting to try that for a while. Oh, the deliciousness of double chocolate! I had forgotten the homey, mouth watering flavor of cocoa powder. It brought back memories of home made hot cocoa, chocolate no bakes, home made chocolate cake and brownies baking in the oven. I made the cookies with the large chocolate chunks, so there were huge pieces of melted chocolate throughout the rich batter. Yum.

Come to think of it, I'm incredibly proud of myself that I ate only one. Besides, it turns out that baking itself burns calories, so when I subtracted that, I only came out fifty four calories in the red. I suspect my math has the same legitimacy as the federal government's, but whatever. It looks good on paper.

January 23rd

Dammit, I only lost one pound this week after all. Stupid weight loss projection gadget. If I hadn't seen that, I would be like, "Hey, I'm right on track!"

The numbers are just a mind game anyway; what's more important is that I feel better and have noticeably more muscle tone. (That's what I keep on telling myself. Deep down inside though, I want that number to drop down, dammit.)

Yesterday I exceeded my calorie budget for the first time. That was all Keith's fault! (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) If only he hadn't ordered pizza! If only he hadn't bought Birthday Bash ice cream. Did you know you can buy cake flavored ice cream with frozen blue ribbons of frosting all through it? No diet can prepare a person for that!

Today's a new day and if this week I don't lose another pound I'll pull my hair out.

Our move is coming up. Keith got his orders to report to Ft. Benning by very early May. That means we'll be leaving here mid April, so we have about two more months. This is the part where it's easy to get anxious, largely because there's absolutely nothing to do yet except wonder. For example:

What kind of houses will be available for rent? Where will we look? When will they be available? Where will the grocery stores be? How far will Keith have to commute? How long will we have to stay with friends until we've found a house?

The answer is: Who knows! And we won't know until April. There's just no way of knowing until then. We've looked at houses on line but we know from experience that there's just no substitute for seeing in person. Also, when we do find a great house, it's just frustrating because we know that house probably won't be on the market by the time we get there, so why even look?

I am starting to get excited too, though. I do know a few people in Georgia and I'll be five hours away from another friend. I wonder what spring will look like in that state. I'm expecting beauty beyond compare, to be honest.

And we're getting a fair amount back on taxes. We will most definitely be debt free by next month. The rest goes straight into savings, not just for the adoption, but because our renter in Colorado got her orders too, so she'll be moving out in June.

I'm trying not to be anxious about that as well, but that's a tough one. How long to find a new renter? How much of our savings will a mortgageplusrent eat up? What if we can't afford the adoption? What if we get in over our heads?

It can all get overwhelming very quickly. I remember the last move, going through the same process. All that worrying did us no good, and everything worked out just as it was supposed to. So I'm just trying to stay relaxed, enjoy the time we have here, the serenity of an unpacked house, weeks yet of calm and just trust that everything will fall into place when the time comes.

And I will lose a pound this week.

January 21st

And on the 7th day, there was sunlight! Yay! Sunlight is slipping in various east and south facing windows. Kentuckians statewide are, I imagine, creeping out of doors and turning their pasty, astonished faces toward the sky, squinting in disbelief at the light. I know I did.

"Durn' sun," doubtless some of them mumble today, on the way to work in Ford trucks. "Whur's m' durn' sunglasses?"

On the calorie front I've been down graded to a projected loss of only two pounds per week. I knew four pounds was too much to hope for.

I almost went over my calorie limit yesterday; damn that bacon! In a desperate attempt to eat more bacon, I abandoned the bread and the mayonnaise and instead wrapped bacon and tomato in lettuce leaves, creating my very own BLT lettuce wrap.

Then I said, screw the lettuce and just ate bacon, standing over the counter with greasy fingers in a pork induced pleasure haze.

That put me forty calories over my limit, until I realized that I'd vacuumed that day and vacuuming for fifteen minutes burns fifty six calories, so now I'm actually sixteen calories in the green!

How's that for calorie counting on steroids? Oh yes. I know the calorie count of nearly every food item in this house by now. Eight pieces of baby carrots? 28. Sara Lee Soft and Smooth bread slice? 80. Coffee, eight and a half ounces? 2.

I've also been working out five days of the last seven. Mainly because working out burns almost four hundred calories, which means I can eat that much more and still be under my calorie limit. Consequently, my thighs are vastly improving. That alone is encouraging.

Thank goodness I don't have to do this sort of thing indefinitely. I can sustain this for a good couple of months, but no longer. Fortunately, once I've lost the weight, I can eat five hundred more calories and still maintain that size. Theoretically.

My husband thinks it's adorable that I'm trying to lose weight. When I told him I had lost a pound, he called me "a little calorie counting cutie." Also he knows, like any good husband, when to lie.

"Have you been losing weight?" he asked me last night, putting his hand on my waist.

"You can't tell yet!" I protested in disbelief. "That's impossible."

"There's definitely a difference," he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

January 20th

Day 6 of dark and cloudy weather. Yesterday's version: with rain and fog! Today's version: with snow. Tomorrow's version? Me, running into the street, yelling, "Why God, why?"

On a more cheerful note, I have lost one pound! Apparently, I lost so much in just one day that my average rate of loss was projected at four pounds per week, a figure that will no doubt lead to great disappointment when I've reached the point of actually having been on the diet for a week. Still, I'm convinced that my jeans are just a tad bit more loose.

So I went to see my therapist yesterday, wondering what on earth we were going to talk about this time. I don't like that feeling, it's a little like stage fright. Fortunately, I remembered a dream I'd had a few days ago.

In the dream, I'm walking into a party. This part of the dream was the end of a rather longer dream I no longer remember. But the party was filled with people I already knew from the earlier events. I felt warm and confortable at this party, well known and accepted for who I was.

I look down and suddenly notice that I have this gapping, awful wound on my elbow. It's appalling. The outer flesh has been ripped open, exposing the deeper flesh, which has also been ripped open. I can see deep into my flesh, which looks like tightly coiled worms of flesh packed in against the wall of my bone. Disgust and shame and horror come welling over me.

I can't believe that I've come walking into this party with a wound of this nature. I don't know what to do. It's not bleeding, but it's full of some viscious, clear liquid. I try to ignore it and go on talking to a friend of mine, but I keep getting distracted.

I look down again and see, with greater waves of horror, that there are foreign bodies in the wound, something has gotten in there. It's wilted leaves of lettuce, of all things. I'm sick to my stomach. How can I heal with foreign bodies in my wound? How can I get it out? But I'm not reaching all the way in there, no way! I feel no pain now, but if I touched the raw, ragged edges of the wound, I knew the pain would be electrifying.

With a great effort, I put it out of my mind. When I look down again, I see that almost all the leaves are gone, they must have slipped out again. There is just one remaining, plastered wetly against the wall of coiled flesh, in the deepest level. I can't stand leaving it in there any longer.

I take a long, slender pair of tweezers and ever so gingerly reach into the wound, grasp the leaf and begin to pull it out. But the edges of the wound slide and I see that the leaf has somehow gotten tangled up in my very flesh. I know if I try and pull it out, the pain will be excruciating. It's stuck. Waves of nausea and disgust come over me, I can't do any more, I leave it where it is.

Then I woke up. Of course, it's blindingly obvious what the dream is about. The wound is a symbol of the sexual abuse, the foreign matter inside the deep wound are the beliefs and thoughts about myself that I have as a result of the abuse. I have to pull those things out before the wound can close up and heal.

As an aside, I think the fact that in the dream my wound appears on my elbow is speaking to the fact that I make my healing process public with this blog. Both my pain and my healing are right there in the open. Exposing myself as I do in my blog leads eventually to great relief, perspective and insight. Eventually.

In the short term, it engengers shame, second guessing and horror, all of which I'm used to working through in the days after I blog about something intensely personal. I will be going through that process with this very blog I'm typing.

What truly bothered me was that my subconscious appeared to be telling me that there was something still stuck in there, something else I hadn't gotten to, something so deeply entanged with my integral self that to pull it out would require a great deal of pain.

Who wants to get that message from the subconscious self? But what else can one expect from the subconscious? It's not like the subconcious is going to be like, "Hey, I feel like a Crispy Creme today, let's go eat one," or "I like that color on you, it really brings out your skin tone."

"What else is left?" I asked my therapist, anxiously.

She explained that life itself is a healing process. As long as we are living, we are healing, it's never truly finished.

I get that, but I felt like there was something specific the dream was bringing up. We went back to the few memories I have consciously and evoked them again, in detail. Nothing. What happened to me in the darkness of my own mind? Why is it that even now, I still didn't let myself remember the end of one of them? How bad could it be?

I just felt like, if I didn't know everything that had happened, how could I truly put it to rest? It became clear to me that the last leaf in my dream was symbolizing the memories that still hadn't been made clear.

I had an interesting therapy session, but there was no aha! moment. On the drive home, I was lost in thought. I kept tugging and pulling on that edges of that memory. I did so boldly, not having any fear that if it was still left in dark, then maybe there was a good reason. I just kept yanking away.

As I did, a sudden swirl of emotions and images slipped loose. A whole bunch of things suddenly made sense, in a horrifying way. I felt horror, pity, disbelief, shame, disgust, relief. (As my therapist would say, "Feelings are like grapes; they come in bunches.")

The amazing thing is that if this memory had come to me at any other time in my healing process, it would have come close to undoing me. There would have been no way to put it into context, I wouldn't have had as firm a foundation to support the weight of the shame.

However, because it came to light when it did, I was able to take my child self into my open arms with no hesitation (metaphorically, of course) and begin immediately to severe myself from the shame I had felt. I felt powerful, wise and full of resource. I knew exactly what to say to my child self and I believed it implicitly.

I told myself the beautiful truth over and over again. There is so much power in the truth. I know that the truth sets one free because I have lived it.

The fact of the matter is, I am more powerful than the abuse. I know this, because I define the abuse, not the other way around. The abuse is subject to my own interpretation, therefore I have not merely survived the abuse, I have transcended it.

It becomes something that has brought out not just the worst in me, but the very best, the thing which has given me depth and strength, the thing which has tempered me to steel. It becomes the lense by which I see the unbearable beauty in the world. Because I have allowed myself to feel the horror, the shame, the grief, the helplessness, I am now open to feeling the light and the air, the deep joy of merely being alive, of being loved. I feel everything. I am congruent.

Which makes me realize that there is no hurt, no abuse, no terror or pain so great that the human spirit and the grace of God cannot heal it. What a thing to say! How life tests, right down to the bone, that belief. But I know it to be true in my own life, so I'm going to hold that belief for anyone else that needs it.

January 18th

Day four of dark, cloudy weather. Today's version: with rain! Goody. A bonus.

So I got up yesterday morning, weighed myself, and the scale said one forty two.

Holy. Crap.

How did that even happen? I had been holding strong at 140 for weeks now, all through the holidays, in fact. I thought I was safe, I thought I had managed to maintain. But no. I've never, ever weighed this much before.

Where did it come from? Does fat get stored away secretly in the blood stream until it senses that your guard is down and then instantly inflates? My belly is a shape I've never seen before. My face is full and I'm definitely on the way to a second chin. I still manage to fit into my jeans, but not very comfortably, I can tell you.

I'd been thinking for some time that I needed to change something about my diet. Yesterday I got down to brass tacks and began researching. Atkins? Paleo? Weight Watchers or Nutrisystem? I was bewildered. I didn't want to spend a fortune, or well, anything, to be honest.

I didn't want to change my entire diet either, because that would mean changing my entire grocery shopping routine and I have everything down to a science right now. I know what to buy, about how much it will cost me and how many meals I can make out of it. It took a while to get there, I didn't want to start all over again.

Well, long story short, I decided to start figuring out how many calories I need daily. That was eye opening; It turns out less than I thought, once I figured in my age and height and activity level. Though, good news! My BMI is healthy. Yay for me. I still want to fit into my shorts come summer.

Then I found this website where I could calculate the actual calories in each food that I ate. Let's just say that until now I have been completely calorie clueless. I had no idea how fast calories add up. My breakfast, coffee and creamer included, is over four hundred calories.

That's oatmeal, people. Oatmeal with no sugar, made with two percent milk and a teaspoon of sugar free maple flavored syrup. Yikes.

Furthermore, to lose at the incredibly slow rate of one pound per week, I would have to eat only 1,406 calories per day. Actually, the website said to lose slowly, I would only have to eat 1,838 calories. Losing one pound per week was their idea of losing quickly.

I just have been ignorant of the whole process of weight. But I've been learning fast, because it's clear my metabolism has dropped off the cliff of middle age and left me stranded.

The good news is that I've already been eating pretty healthy, just ignorant of calorie content. So all I had to do was use the tools on the handy website, add in all the foods I planned to eat that day, and adjust to get the desired total.

This is not the vogue diet, I know. It's so the seventies to be actually counting calories, instead of points or ordering prepackaged diet foods, or eating like cave men. (Which I think would be kind of cool, except I can't give up dairy.)

But I like the simplicity of just counting. And it's free! Also, if I should ever want to eat, say, an entire bag of Lay's sour cream and onion potato chips, I could. I just would only be able to eat nothing else the entire day... except maybe lettuce. Not that I would do something like that...

January 15th

Today started out sunny, at eight thirty the sun was a pool of molten gold spilling out low between a thicket of black trees. Little spills of sun light lay splashed on the trampled snow in the woods, illuminating the tracks of deer and squirrels. There was a pale blue sky and rose and gold clouds lying along the western horizon.

Unfortunately, in the time it took me to drink my morning cup of coffee, those clouds had grown until they had shut everything in. They do that around here a lot, it's very disappointing. I guess I'm used to Colorado, where the sky is so huge that you can see clouds so far away you know they're paying taxes in another state.

But here! Turn your back for one minute and the decorative little pink clouds will have mutated into a dense, depressing cloud cover not thirty feet above your roof top.

Anyway, on to other things. So the last time I was at my therapist's office we merely chit chatted. I mean, it was enjoyable; I like talking about myself. Especially to someone who's paid to be interested, you know? There is just no audience so attuned to one as one's therapist. One's mother, if one is lucky. (Which I am- hi mom! Love you.)

Actually, I'm not quite sure why I still need to go. She asked me on a scale of one to ten, how much did the abuse bother me now and I figure it's about a three. How did that happen?

I think it was in part because one night, when things were pretty intense in the therapy, I gave myself permission to let go of any other repressed memories I might be holding on to. I thanked myself for repressing them, for protecting myself by holding them back, but I gave myself permission to let go now.

It was really terrifying to do that. Before, I just handled what memories were coming up for me in the EMDS therapy, or what had been triggered in the course of daily life. Under no circumstances, before now, would I have actually been ok with just allowing memories to surface on their own, as it were.

Memories did come up when I gave myself permission to release them. But just because I remember them doesn't mean I have to live it all over again, it's finished. Now I don't have anything inside of myself to be scared of. Giving myself permission to let go was incredibly healing, I was telling myself that I am ok, that I can handle what happened to me. I'm no longer the victim, I'm the victor. Bring it on.

That was one part. Another part was releasing myself from guilt associated with being abused. Being abused impacts every part of a person. It impacts thought patterns. A lot of abused people suffer from what it called automatic responses.

These can be physical responses, they can be emotional responses and they can also be unwanted or intrusive thoughts, usually of sexual behavior or actions that the abused person would never want to see or experience but which get played out in their head. They can't control these thoughts, they are subjected to them.

Now, you have to understand that I was raised in a church where it was commanded to control one's thoughts. It wasn't enough to control one's actions, one could sin merely by thinking. That church was my whole world.

Can you imagine how it must be, to be a young, innocent girl who has been raped and abused by her elder uncle, subjected now to thoughts outside of her control, thoughts she can't place because the abuse has been repressed, and being told by her society that she must control those thoughts, or else she's not being pure, the holy grail of spiritual perfection?

I was already subjected to guilt. I had already assumed the guilt for being abused in the first place. I already thought of myself as a dirty, nasty person without really know why, I just knew it, deep down inside me.

Sometimes I wonder how on earth I managed to survive with my self intact.

"Have you ever stopped to think about how much ego strength you have?" my therapist asked me this week. She talks like that; she talks about things like "my ego state." I like it, it makes me feel erudite.

Anyway, yes I have stopped sometimes to wonder about that and where on earth it comes from. I don't know where it comes from; I have to assume that God created me this way for His own glory. Also, we're each born with strengths and weaknesses, if we invest over the years in our strengths, that strength is then going to grow and grow. I just kept on making the choice to live, to live as fully as I could at each stage of my life.

So, I was reading "The Sexual Healing Journey," and that's where I read about intrusive thoughts. It. was. astounding. In reading that section, I understood, in concrete terms, for the first time that:

a. I wasn't alone in struggling with them, and

b. they did not belong to me.

I can't describe the amount of freedom that swept over my soul in understanding that. I brought the book into therapy that week and read that section.

"I have those thoughts!" I cried out loud, jabbing the page with my finger. "I've struggled with that all my life! And it's because I was abused! It's not about me; they don't belong to me, they have nothing to do with who I am as a person."

My therapist was thrilled. She further described that thoughts are like birds in the sky, you can't control them. The point is to make sure that they don't make a nest on your head, by obsessing about them. The thing to do, is what my father always said, to have neutrality and altitude. To notice and pass by without judgement.

That was a very exciting therapy session, I gotta tell you. I was on the edge of the couch the entire time, bursting with new ideas, arms waving, eyes flashing. I had thoughts, thoughts, thoughts.

"I don't have to feel guilty!" I declared, joyously. "I'm not guilty! I'm free of guilt!...well," I paused, looking up at my therapist with amusement. "I don't know...I've never been completely free of guilt..."

"Who knows what might happen if you don't carry around all that guilt, huh?" asked my therapist, teasingly. "It's scary!"

"I know! The freedom! All that freedom cannot be good for a person!"

The great thing is that we both got the joke. To a person like myself who has hedged themselves in by guilt all their life, who used the guilt to control and to motivate-giving it up completely is both exhilerating and frightening. But I do think that that is what Paul meant when he wrote, "There is now no more condemnation for those in Christ."

Anyway, since that session everything has been better than before. My therapist assures me that because I have reparented myself so well, I'm going to be an even better parent to my actual children; I'll be more self aware, deliberate, compassionate and patient.

I love to think about that; that all this work I've done benefits not just myself and my marriage, but my future children as well. My children won't carry my genes on down through the generations, but instead their heritage will be freedom and integrity of person, a work that was begun and carried down to me by my own parents. What a great legacy that is.

January 10th

There is this intrepid little squirrel who regularly visits our back deck. When we first moved here, I very foolishly placed the remainder of my birdseed out there. (It was gone the next day.) That alone was enough to teach that guy to return frequently, hoping against hope for another such food bonanza. He returns each morning, a pilgrim to his mecca, and scours the grill, bushy tail alert.

It took the girls a little longer to catch on to this visitor. Once they did, they were on, baby. At first, their frenzied barking and menacing expressions of intent were enough to scare him away; he's no fool. However, after a while this squirrel figured out that no matter how loud, or desperate, or menacing the girls were, they could not propel themselves through the glass of the French doors.

This spawned a whole new phase in their relationship. Now the squirrel comes not just for food, for hope, for gratitude, but also for the simple glee of tormenting the dogs. He will pause, plump furry little body mere feet away from the salivating girls, and preen, flick a pretend bit of leaf mulch away, tilt his head, "What, oh? Are there dogs here?" he seems to be saying. "I didn't notice."

And behind the glass doors there is something akin to a shark feeding frenzy. Occasionally the girls will turn on each other.

"Get out of my freaking way, will you?" snarls one. "I want that freaking squirrel!"

"Look, poop breath, get off my stinking toe!" snarls the other. "That squirrel is mine!"

Cleaning the glass is just an exercise in futility. As I write, evidence of the valiant attempts of two girls trying to rid the world of one invasive squirrel are smeared across it at nose level for all to see. They did their best.

January 7th

Kentucky woke up and remembered it's still winter. As a state she does spring so magnificently that who can blame her if she drifts back to it whenever her mind wanders?

On their morning poop run the girls had me fixed in the middle of the road, one at the far end of her leash, attending to her business, the other at the far end of her leash, staring down a deer that had appeared like a ghost out of the falling white. That left me like one of those sign posts with the signs pointing every which way, struggling to keep my footing.

Suddenly, out of nowhere we heard a car horn. I turned and there was a black sedan, coasting slowly down the incline toward us. I hadn't heard a thing, not a thing. It had been so silent I could hear the black birds somewhere in the woods. But I hadn't heard that car's engine.

The driver rolled the window down as he slid past, us safely on the grass, some of us barking excitedly. (Not me, I can assure you.)

"I just don't know where this car's going to end up," he cried, across the driver's seat, and then he was past, and negotiating the turn at the bottom.

We are not going to be able to start the adoption in April, we have to push it back one or two months. This was a hard lump for me to get past, until I realized what exactly I was complaining about. I was complaining that I didn't have enough extra money to accomplish my dreams as soon as I wanted to.

Gosh, that sounds like something to be thankful for. We have extra money? We can accomplish our dream? Wow. What a gift. Who cares if it comes one or two months later.

We are extraordinarily lucky. I am thankful every day that we started aggressively paying off the credit cards two years ago, during Keith's deployment. If we hadn't started then, I don't think we would have ever been able to with as much focus.

January 4th

I have found the Baroque Masterpieces channel on Accuradio and I am one happy, happy girl. As the talking Candelabra in Beauty and the Beast has said, "If it's not Baroque, don't fix it." How's that for an insightful slice of modern culture?

I am doing an on line search for new running shoes for Keith. He goes through them like other men go through socks. And since Lynn eats his socks, I needn't use any literary tool to illustrate how quickly they go.

Here she is, looking way too cute and sleepy for any such thing to be true:

This is the quiet, sunny house that I am so enjoying:

Really, how could such a cutie be so naughty?

Very easily, I'm afraid. She's now starting to eat his underwear as well. We're going to have to put the entire laundry area on lock down.

January 1st

Kentucky is seasonally confused at the moment. In fact, I think Kentucky spends much of the year being seasonally confused and/or weather challenged.

Right now, for example, it's started up with spring. This state is so convinced of spring time's advent that the greens on the golf course are actually green. I expect at any moment for daffodils to pop up, all expectant and happy go lucky, only to be dumped on by three inches of snow. (Three inches in Kentucky is equal to a foot in New England. It's cause for everyone to run to the store for cola and caramel pecan buns.)

My project for today, the first day of 2011, is to take down the Christmas decorations. I always enjoy that, it's a good feeling to pull down all that clouds and clutters, to make way for the openness of a new year.

January 2nd

The Christmas decorations are down and carefully packed away. I love how we slowly gather a little bit more each year, but still have the same few we started with. I wonder if years from now we'll still be using the cheap set of silver ornaments I bought that first Christmas from Walmart? Probably.

The house is full of natural light now. It's full of empty spaces, stretches of oatmeal colored rug and polished wood. I'm going to continue to de clutter and re organize. I took all the decorations off the old Christmas wreath to reveal the lovely bones of the thing, twisted twigs that spiral out at the edges. That's hanging at the front door.

Keith heads back to work day after tomorrow. He's not looking forward to it, as he's mission commander of another months long training cycle. It'll be twelve hours on, twelve off.

But oh, I confess, I am longing for normal life to resume again. I love to have the whole long, empty day, I love to watch the seasons slowly change on my afternoon walks and I love to have dinner ready for my weary soldier when he comes through the door.

This is the best part of the year, when the days slowly get longer and the light lingers in the sky. This year, we're moving to GA. This year we're going to start pursuing adoption. In fact, this month we are officially putting money away, money that we'll use for the home study and application fees.

It's a delightful feeling. I know we're months and months away from having our baby, but we are starting the first few steps toward that moment. I've been doing a lot of researching into trans racial adoption, as we are going to be adopting a child of African American heritage.

This wasn't an immediate decision, we just assumed, at first, that we would be adopting a Caucasian child, because one just normally assumes one's child to look like oneself. But then, when we thought about fost/adopt, we realized that it would be years if we really, truly wanted a Caucasian child, but on the other hand, there were many AA children who needed homes.

So we switched our assumptions. After all, if a child is not connected biologically to one, then physical appearance alone has no meaning. At least, it seems that way to me. I started to imagine a little dumpling of a girl, about fifteen or eighteen months, with large, guarded eyes, chocolate skin and frizzy hair being presented to me one night, suddenly, by a social worker. I fell in love with this girl.

I thought about how I could celebrate her heritage while at the same time giving her the freedom and confidence to be her own person. I thought about little things like black and white barbie dolls and large things like an African American church we'd be attending on Sundays. I thought about weekly mother/daughter trips to the hair dresser and then going out for lunch. I'm going to learn how to corn row hair.

Now I'm thinking about how will I teach my child to respond to negative comments or situations and how I will handle them. What tools can I give my children to manage those situations?

Along with these questions are others. There's no question that my children will know they were adopted. Even if we could have hidden this fact, I think Keith and I would have still let our children know from an early age. I don't want our children to be ashamed or frightened of being adopted, I want them to understand that they were doubly loved.

They were loved so deeply by their birth mother that she was able to make the greatest sacrifice, she was able to give them a chance at a better life then she could have given them at that time. This is an incredible act of love, one that requires more strength than most of us will ever have to know.

Then, of course, they are incredibly loved by us, who were waiting for exactly them, to love and nurture and parent. I want my children to know without a doubt that they were always meant to be a part of our family, meant by God, who knew them before they were born, and made plans for them to fall safely into our home and hearts.

So, we will celebrate Adoption day as well as Birthdays. I'm going to have their baby books begin with the beginning of their adoption process, from the time we were matched with their birth mother. They will always know that when the time comes, if they wish to seek out their birth mother, they have our love and support to do so.

There's a lot of thinking and planning to do, a lot to sort through. But it's a pleasure, all said and done, almost as satisfying as setting up the nursery. I am planning and preparing for my children, I am putting everything in place for them.