For Everything There is a Season

"In order to write about life, first you must live it." ~ Ernest Hemingway

Category: women without children

Loving Molly

November 11, 2014 / / 1 Comment

I was at a dinner party with a group of friends last evening and one particular couple and I were discussing the topic of our dogs. After years and years of love and devotion, they recently had to put down their fourteen year old beloved pet this past year and in exchanging stories about pets, I found myself sharing my story about Molly. They had read anecdotes and seen pictures of her on Facebook, but didn’t know some of the details of my trials and tribulations with Molly, my thirteen year old basset hound and black lab mix.

I was scrolling through my blog today and I realized that I don’t write about Molly much here. I did write about her back in 2010 when we went through a horrible medical experience together. One which resulted in me having to make a decision about whether to put her down, or spend $5,000 on a surgery that looked promising in some aspects, but held no promises for either of us in terms of her quality of life. A story I am happy to say, had a happy ending of a full recovery for Molly.

I was thinking this morning about that difficult time I went through with Molly and realized that I understood why, despite the fact that I talk about her all the time with my family and friends, I never write about her…

Because I don’t need to.

Because a lot of the time, writing is therapeutic for me and my connection to this dog is so pure, and so untouched by the unsavory elements that normally affect personal relationships, that there is no need to process my feelings about her. There is no fighting, no misunderstandings, no hurt feelings, no family drama, no unfulfilled expectations.

Just love.

And a mean, pure love.

I never had children of my own. That’s a long story in itself for another day. I saw a posting recently on Facebook, not from anyone in my family, or close friend circle luckily, in which several comments were made in response to a woman (without any children) who said that her dogs are like her children. The responses went on and on about how a dog, or any pet, is nothing like having a child and that people need to stop comparing being a pet owner with being a parent. I have read stuff like this before in articles and such, but this particular thread really got to me.

To begin with, Molly is like a child to me. Yes, I am completely sane and as a pediatric nurse, a stepmother to adult children, and a person who has a million friends with children, I do understand it is different. I understand that while my dog fulfills many of the same desires and needs that a child fulfills for a parent, it is not quite the same thing and having Molly as a pet, no matter how much I love and care for her, will never fulfill the loss I feel from not having a child.

I also understand that this dog and I have traveled through life together for ten years together and I would guess that most people in my life could never fully comprehend what we have been through together: losing half of our former family, our home, the nights we have spent alone together on the couch…

The time where I didn’t think I could care for her anymore and had the phone number in my hand for a basset hound rescue…

The Christmas Eve I stayed up all night with her when she was in agony…

The nights she stayed up with me when I was in agony…

The blizzard I drove two hours in to get her to an emergency room when she became paralyzed…

The night I stayed up trying to make a decision about whether she would be better off being put down or having a surgery that I could not afford…

The moment I saw her walk towards me several days after that surgery…

These are just a few examples of the journey we have been on in the past ten years. She has taught me the meaning of unconditional love. Isn’t unconditional love what being a parent is about? Some of the comments in response to that post I mentioned above stated that until you become a parent, you cannot know what that kind of love is like. I disagree. I think as a person who has never had a child of her own, yes, I do not know what it is like to raise a child. But that does not mean that I do not know how to love unconditionally and without reservation. It concerns me greatly that as a society, we judge each other on how we love. Or that we condemn each other on the love that we do have for all living creatures.

I rescued Molly from a shelter in 2004. She has been rescuing me ever since. At the age of 13, I know our time together is limited and will come to an end much sooner than I would like. She takes medication to manage her thyroid, her stomach, and the resulting arthritis pain from her 2010 surgery. She moves slower at times and is not the spry young thing she once was. However she still has a good quality of life and so we continue on. And the thought of her being gone forever scares me. But for now, I will love her. I will care for her. I will take advantage of every single day that we have left together. I will let her love me. And when the time comes, no matter how difficult it will be, I will be by her side when she is ushered to the other side.

Because that is love.

Road To Marriage

January 14, 2013 / / 2 Comments
 
“Become the kind of person the kind of person you would like to marry would like to marry.” ~ Douglas Wilson

Four months from this Friday I will be getting married.
A whole wedding and everything.

This is a big deal.

I know marriage should be a big deal in general, but let’s be honest. In our society today, people get married and divorced more often than many people change jobs. My fiance and I have both been married before so now we are going to be included in the second marriage statistic. You know, the one that says half of all second marriages will end in divorce.

We will not be on the wrong side of those statistics. I’m sure everyone in love says that right before they get married again. Truth be told, I was fine with never getting married again. That was before I met a partner who made me experience real love for the first time.

That is a strange thing to say considering I was married once before and engaged to someone else even before that. My first fiance was this great guy I met at work when I was about twenty-three years old. We started out as co-workers and then became friends. We dated for a while, I moved into his house, we talked about marriage, I got cancer, he proposed, and then four months before the wedding, the bomb dropped.

He told me that he had come to realize that he never truly loved me and had only proposed because I had just finished my cancer treatments and he felt like he was obligated to propose. That is was what he was “supposed” to do. He should have said something sooner he told me.

Nice.
Problem was, I still loved him.

So I moved out of the house, sought refuge at my parent’s home because I was such an emotional wreck and spent the following weeks cancelling all the wedding plans that were already in place. To this day, I do not think he was a bad person. Confused and gutless yes. But not bad. After a while, I decided I was too young to pine away for a man who would never love me. I found my own apartment and continued to throw myself into my career, my family, and my friends.

Enter the next love. My ex-husband. I met my ex-husband approximately eight months after the break up with the ex-fiance and I did not date anybody in between. I am here to tell you that is a big mistake. I would have sworn to you up and down that I was not on the rebound and maybe I wasn’t. I was twenty-eight years old and all of my friends were getting married and having babies. Now I absolutely thought that I loved him and that he loved me but now looking back, I wonder if subconsciously, I was more in love with him or the idea of being in love with him and having the life society tells us we are supposed to have. You know, the one with 2.2 kids and a white picket fence. Because there were signs there that maybe he was not the right person for me but I did not pay attention to those red flags. I wanted to spend my life with someone and raise a family. I thought this was the way to be happy. Tough thing to admit.

Approximately a year after we got married (we had dated for two years prior to getting married), my ex-husband changed in a way that resembled Jekyll and Hyde. He decided that he did not want children after all. His mood started to change dramatically at times, he developed flashbacks, and he was subsequently diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which was a result of severe childhood abuse. Then the heavy drinking started and the only thing more difficult than living with an alcoholic, is living with one that has PTSD.

I tried and I tried as hard as I could to keep my marriage together. Eight long years of trying. I certainly made my share of mistakes during my marriage but none that warranted the way I was treated. I thought that if I loved him enough, he would be able to work through his issues, we would have a family and be happy. Instead, I became an emotionally abused wife. The day that he became violent and I thought he would hit me, I began the journey to becoming his ex-wife.

It was not easy, but I have never looked back.
I was finally free.

Despite the fact that the year prior to separating with my ex-husband I began to get very sick from autoimmune related issues, my life really started to evolve. I took control of my life. After we sold our house, I took one of our dogs, moved into my own apartment and discovered I truly enjoyed living by myself again. No chaos. I spent the following two years figuring out who I was as a person and reshaping my definition of what it meant to be happy and that it did not have to include being married, or even having a partner for that matter. Being happy did not depend on whether I was a mother or not. In that quest to find myself, I truly became happy.

I reconnected with my old friends and I made new ones. I began to write and pursue other interests when I wasn’t dealing with my significant medical issues.. I became involved with my church. I dated quite a bit. I even fell for a guy or two. However after a while, I found dating to be exhausting. As a thirty-nine year old with a severe chronic illness, dealing with the drama associated with dating just became too much. Too many liars, cheaters, and men with severe issues. It wasn’t worth my precious energy. I decided that I was going to be content with living on my own, in a great apartment, with my very cool dog and my wonderful family, friends, and church community surrounding me. I had my head on straight now and I was not going to compromise my happiness, health, or peace of mind for anyone else.

Best laid plans, right?

Then enter Chuck. What is it that they say? That love often happens when you are least expecting or looking for it? If you are interested, you can read our story here: Summer of Friendship…Summer of Love.

I knew within weeks of dating Chuck, that I would spend the rest of my life with him. I didn’t care if that involved marriage. I just wanted to be with him. He had become my best friend and it quickly became apparent to me that I could not imagine spending one day without him in my life. It was a big risk for me and maybe he would say the same thing for himself. The risk of loving again after you have been hurt so deeply in the past is probably one of the biggest acts of courage a person can perform. The difference for me this time though was that I knew I was with the right person. I knew what true love felt like.

The type of true love that makes you want to be an even better person than you already are. The type that supports you and encourages your dreams. The type that makes you want to work through all the very difficult questions and differences between you.The type of love that is ultimately unconditional.

I think I just wrote part of my wedding vows.

I am the woman who said she would never get married again but yet, here I am. Older, wiser, and with eyes wide open. I am the woman who is very glad to be a stronger, confident, and more self aware version of her younger self. One who, when she stands in front of her family and friends committing her life to another on May 18th, will know, with all certainty, that it is possible for marriage to last forever.

When Mother’s Day Means Something Different

May 13, 2012 / / 4 Comments

This is a picture of a flower that was handed to me today in church by one of the children. We celebrated Mother’s Day as well as Children’s Sunday today. Children’s Sunday represents the close of the Sunday school year and it is a celebration and recognition of what the children in our church have accomplished throughout the school year. The handing out of the flowers has been occurring for a few years now. I remember the first year the flowers were presented on Mother’s Day. Before the children came out to present them both that year and this year, my minister prefaced this beautiful gesture by telling the congregation the flowers would be given to those of us in church that “look like a mother.” I remember sitting in the pew that very first year and thinking how difficult it was going to be for me when the children bypassed me and I was left without a flower. Left with an outward sign of who I am not. A mother.

But miracle of all miracles, I received a flower that year and I have received one every Mother’s Day since. All the women in our congregation do; because even if we have never given birth, adopted, or raised a child of our own, we all have in some way mothered a child or another human being. The flower is a symbol for the mother that lies within us.

Mother’s Day has notoriously been a very difficult day for me over the years. Correction: I have made it a difficult day for myself. The reason is simple. I love children, have always wanted some, or at least one, and have never had a child of my own. The reasons are numerous and complicated. I know it is something that I will eventually write many essays about but for today, writing about Mother’s Day is enough.

As the years have gone by, I have struggled with Mother’s Day because I have always focused on what I did not have and that is: a child of my own. One that I can raise, nurture, and love. As the day would approach and come to slap me in the face with my reality, I would dread it. Because I knew that most likely, I would never have the opportunity to be celebrated on that one special day each year. I would never possess that which is known to most of our society as the ultimate bond between two people: the bond between a mother and her child. It can be quite a difficult thing to live with in our culture and society where being a parent is given the utmost priority and acceptance. It can be quite a difficult thing to live with period. Sometimes you feel like you don’t fit with the rest of the world. Sometimes you just feel plain old sad. But those are topics for another day as well.

Luckily though, my thinking about this issue has evolved over the past year or so. And it has not come easily. Changing my thinking about going through Mother’s Day with no children has taken a lot of soul searching and yes, even some acceptance. It is not because I like children any less. But rather because I am more focused on what I do have rather than what I do not have. To start with, I have my own incredible mother. One that has nurtured me and supported me my entire life and whom I would probably be lost in life without. I do not want to waste precious time feeling sorry for myself on Mother’s Day when I could spend that time honoring and thinking about my own mother. And there is my fiance’s mother. How grateful am I for her? The person that brought the love of my life into existence. The man who has completely changed my life.

Most women in my life, whether they are friends or family, are mothers. I have been blessed by the grace of God to know them and to witness the everyday struggles, challenges, joys, and blessings that come with raising a child. To be honest, I do not think that every mother is a great one or even a good one. But in my circle, they are. So on this day, I honor them in my heart. I feel lucky to be a part of their lives.

What I have also come to realize, similar to how my church treats the women in our congregation on Mother’s Day, is that being a mother is not just about having a child of your own. It is about how we, as women, nurture and support the children in our lives whether it is in our own family or in our community. I now can stop and think of the times I have nurtured other people’s children. I have cared for, nurtured, and loved nephews, future adult stepchildren, goddaughters, and children of friends closest to me. I have supported the children in my congregation in their endeavors and activities. I have been a mother to every single pediatric patient I have ever taken care of by holding their hand, disciplining them, and singing to them in the middle of the night when they were scared or in pain.

I have been present.

Is it the same thing as raising a child of your own twenty-four hours a day? No, it is not the same. But I do not think that fact makes it any less important, or any more important for that matter. It just makes it different.

I am not living in denial of the difficulties associated with losing a part of my life’s dream. Now though, I try to not let it define me by who I am as a woman. From this Mother’s Day on, I refuse to let it overshadow what this day is supposed to be about and that is love. So Happy Mother’s Day to all of the women in my life who are mothers. Those who have:

Given birth to a child,
Adopted a child,
Raised a child,
Encouraged a child,
Been a role model for a child,
Helped a child,
Loved a child….
You are all truly my inspiration.
Photo Courtesy of Chuck Myers

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