I am a wee bit overwhelmed these days.  Yes, just a tad.  You know, trying not to exaggerate or anything.  Because then maybe I will be able to keep myself from freaking out and running screaming into the woods.

I think, as a mother, it’s easy to allow myself to believe that I do nothing.  This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, of course.  I’m well aware that there is a powerful message in the dominant culture that says the work of mothering and the work of domestic life isn’t valuable.  It’s just that I’m always astonished at how deeply I’ve internalized so many harmful, untrue messages, and how it takes daily acts of radical re-evaluation to counterbalance a lifetime of being marinated in those messages.

I’m realizing today, now that it’s the weekend and Tom is home and I have a few moments to breathe, that I have taken on a bit too much with the Bean Farm petition effort.  (And if you’re a Northampton resident and haven’t signed yet, please consider doing so at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Bean_Farm/.)  I’ve put a lot of work into it, and I will continue to work on it, but I need to find more people to help out, or I will quickly burn out.  I think when I took it on, I thought, no problem, I’m not working (for pay), so I have time, right?  Oh wait, yeah, there’s the small issue of taking care of Lily, who is NOT pleased that I have been spending so much time on the laptop and phone.  I can’t blame her.  She’s two years old.  She needs her mama.  And frankly, I need my little girl.  I think we both need for most of our days to be calm and content, and things have been anything but calm and content around here (there have been some good moments, but the overall tone has been one of frenetic activity and frustration).

It’s hard.  Part of me feels like if I let go of some of this, then it means I’m turning away from creating a more sustainable future for my community.  Or to put it in less abstract terms, then it means I’m allowing my community to starve because I’m not doing enough to protect local farmland.  I need to remind myself that if I don’t take care of myself, if I keep going until I burn out or become a veritable frothing lunatic, then I will be of little use to anybody.  It’s such a hard balance to strike when it feels like so much is at stake.  I also need to remind myself that some great strides have been made in terms of agriculture getting a seat at the table regarding the Bean Farm, and we already have close to 300 signatures, which is nothing to sneeze at– certainly it’s enough to make City Council, the Mayor, the City Planner, and the relevant commissions sit up and take notice.  Still, I have this sense of intense urgency around it, wanting to achieve our goal of 1,000 signatures by December 7.  This is an ambitious goal and it would send a huge message of support for agriculture in Northampton.

I need to get over myself already and ask for help.  I need to tell myself that the core group working on this is not going to think less of me if I can’t charge forward at maximum speed.  And if they do think less of me, I have to deflect the pain of that somehow.

Lily has been increasingly out of sorts all week.  She has been having some tantrums, and wow, you can’t believe how piercing a child’s screaming can be until you live with a cranky child 24/7.  I can’t help but think that part of the reason she’s so cranky is because of how frantic I’ve been.  I need some household peace.  I need Lily to feel okay about getting dressed or undressed, or about leaving the house, or about getting in or out of the car seat– I need for daily life to not involve so much screaming, because my nerves are frayed to the breaking point.  I need to be able to sleep at night and not stay up until 1 or 2am because that’s when I can focus on email.  I don’t want to live like this.

On top of everything, I really, really want to enjoy Thanksgiving.  My parents are coming and I can’t wait to see them.  I want to focus on feasting and gratitude.  I want to relish every moment of cooking and eating.  I want to relax with my family and take long walks outside and immerse myself in the present moment.

Now that I’ve said all that, I think it’s time to write to the core group.  I hope they will not be too disappointed, but will rally to do bits and pieces of the work collectively.  And I will try to continue doing what I’m able to do.

Well, a little grassroots activism is sure good for the soul!  Ha, I just made a typo in that last word a moment ago– I wrote “soil” instead of “soul.”  Extraordinarily appropriate in this context.

I’m spearheading a petition effort to urge my city, Northampton, Massachusetts, to maintain farming as the primary use of the Bean Farm.  The City is proposing to turn the land into sports fields and a sports complex.  Meanwhile, the Agricultural Commission has voted unanimously to recommend that the Bean property continue to be farmed.

It’s hard to overstate how strongly I feel about this.  Local food is important for so many reasons, many of which are included in the text of the petition:

WHEREAS, the Bean Family Farm on Spring St. in Florence, MA represents important farming history for our community, having been farmed continuously since pre-colonial times,

WHEREAS, the soil type on the majority of this property meets the USDA requirements to be considered prime farmland defined as “land that is best suited to producing food, feed, forage, fiber, and oilseed crops. It has the soil quality, growing season, and moisture supply needed to economically produce a sustained high yield of crops when it is treated and managed using acceptable farming methods. Prime farmland produces the highest yields with minimal inputs of energy and economic resources, and farming it results in the least damage to the environment,”

WHEREAS, the converging crises of climate change, global resource depletion, and economic instability indicate need to protect our community’s food security by strengthening our local food production,

WHEREAS, there is increasing demand for food grown in our region, and locally produced food keeps money in our local economy and improves our health,

WHEREAS, the Sustainable Northampton Plan establishes as a target “maintaining farmland area” in the City,

WHEREAS, the Northampton Agriculture Commission voted unanimously to recommend that the Bean property continue to be farmed,

THEREFORE, as citizens of Northampton, we urge the City to maintain farming as the primary use of the Bean property, and to put this farmland in permanent agricultural preservation.

If you are a Northampton resident, I invite you to sign the petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Bean_Farm/.  We are aiming to get 1,000 signatures by December 7, 2009.

I am also tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to make this go viral.  Any advice out there?  So far I’ve thought of relevant local listservs, Facebook, Twitter, email, and circulating paper petitions.  I’ve provided some “get the word out” suggestions to our group working on this effort, Grow Food in Northampton, in the hopes that everyone will do their part to spread the word.  Plus I would really, really, really love some signature-gathering volunteers.

I guess it’s a good sign that we already have 5 signatures within the first hour or so of the petition going live, late on a Sunday night!  I can tell that my new obsession will be checking my control panel on iPetitions.com to see how many signatures we’re up to.

I’ve decided that I want to write, despite the fact that I don’t have a well-thought-out post already scripted in my head.  I want to keep up my momentum with blogging and trust that at least a few words will be useful or insightful to somebody.

I decided to get rid of all the tableware (cups, plates, utensils, etc) in our house that are made of plastic.  Most tableware designed for children, especially, seems to be made of plastic, probably because it doesn’t break and comes in nifty colors and patterns.  However, I don’t want to keep this stuff anymore, even though the items were given to us with the best of intentions, even though Lily really digs her Barbapapa plates, even though they aren’t broken and are still useable.  The frugal scrimper in me really doesn’t like to get rid of useful objects, but I’ve decided that anything that slowly leaches toxic materials into my baby’s food and drink is not useful.  To some degree, I am going on the precautionary principle here–  although some compounds in plastic have been found to be toxic and others supposedly not, I feel better just assuming that it’s better to simply avoid as much plastic as possible.  This is not easy.  I also got rid of a bunch of plastic toys while I was at it.  Meanwhile, I have made a few small purchases to make this easier; I bought two little metal cups at Goodwill (one copper, one pewter), since metal doesn’t break when dropped either, and I bought a little reusable, cloth snack bag to carry Lily’s snacks in (for sale at Wheatberry and made by a local company called Snack Taxi).  The snack bag has cool owls on it (those who know Lily are aware that she is very fond of owls).

Yesterday I also took the plunge and ordered a Big Berkey, which is a gravity-fed tabletop water filter which can process something like 12 gallons of water a day.  I’m glad I made this purchase because it makes me breathe easier about access to clean water.  We do have camping water filters as well, where you pump the water through manually, but the gravity-fed model doesn’t require that kind of work.

Speaking of shopping… I was sorely tested today in the “don’t buy stuff you don’t need” goal.  My dear, sweet friend Kristi invited me to go to the Twist Fair at the Northampton Center for the Arts today, and my eyes just about bugged out of my head.  It was pretty overwhelming.  But I greatly relished the opportunity to spend time with Kristi and get all kinds of inspiration to do my own crafty projects.  I did break down and buy ONE item, which I definitely didn’t need, but I am trying madly to justify the purchase by telling myself, at least it’s made of felt, and it’s beautiful, and I’m supporting an artist– it’s a headband of felt leaves that I fell in love with.  Here’s a picture from the artist’s Etsy site; mine is more blue and purple than this one, though.  Kristi asked me, “When was the last time you bought something just for yourself?” and I was finding it difficult to remember, especially in the category of accessories.  Still, I am trying to resist the siren song of the consumerist impulse, the seductive internalized voice that says, “Do it for you.  You deserve it! Don’t you want to feel special?”  I tell myself, at least I bought direct from the artist, at least the money isn’t going to some crazy greedy international corporation, at least it is handmade, at least when its useful life is over, it will decompose and leave no polluting remainders for thousands of years.

Yesterday I had real leaves in my hair, to Lily’s great delight (although she was also fascinated by the leaf headband today and promptly put it on her own head).  Yesterday we had a quiet day at home and I foraged even more hickory nuts.  I haven’t weighed all of the nuts I’ve foraged this season, but it must be at least 50 to 75 pounds.  That could be an underestimate.  Possible explanations for this include:  a) I was a squirrel in another life, b) it kind of feels like an Easter egg hunt, c) I love free food that falls out of trees, d) I love that I can identify wild edibles, e) hickory nuts are full of great protein and omega-3 fatty acids, f) it lessens my anxiety about the state of the world to store food.  Anyway, during the foraging, Lily kept wanting me to sit down and give her milky, which I did while husking the nuts I had just gathered.  Then we started flopping onto the ground and I told Lily that we could feel Mother Earth holding us up better that way.  Lily cried out joyfully, “Mother Earth! Mother Earth!” and tackled me repeatedly.  We rolled around and leaves became lodged in my hair, which Lily thought was grand.  I did too.  How did I get so lucky to have this little girl in my life?  Some days are much harder than others, but the past few days have been laden with Lily’s sweetness and light.  My Lily Angela, my Angel of the Lilies.  (That link will bring you to a photograph of a stained glass window at the UU Society of Amherst, where I have been attending Sunday services for the past few months; the window seemed like a good omen for my reengagement with a UU congregation.)

Speaking of delight in little girls, this has been an important week for two friends of mine.  My friend Katherine gave birth to her first child, a daughter, Anny Elizabeth, on Monday, and my friend Carol gave birth to her fourth child, a daughter, Fiona Clementine, yesterday.  I am grateful for their safe passage into the world and ecstatic for their families.

And just to continue this disjointed post: thank you to everyone (human or otherwise) who showed me loving little gestures recently, in words or deeds, allowing my downward spiral to start spiraling up again into a place with more light, leaves, and hickory nuts.

The other day, the incomparable Adrie wrote a post on the Fields and Fire blog here, suggesting the top 10 steps to save the world.  (Of course, we can question whether the world can be saved at all, or whether it is up to us to save it, or whether we should call these activities something else entirely… me, I recognize the name-brand value of the phrase “save the world,” but instantly translate the term to mean “act with maximum integrity to avert as much catastrophe as possible and spread as much goodness and joy as possible or at least know that I tried my best.”   Possibly Adrie meant that as well.  Anyway, enough with my quibbling…)

I thought it might be useful to examine these 10 steps in the context of my own life, to see how far I’ve come and how far I have yet to go, to identify hurdles and perhaps set some goals.  I will confess that I’m especially needing to make explicit to myself the fact that I am improving over time.  I had a pretty bad day today.

So without further ado, the 10 steps!

1. Stop buying a bunch of junk you don’t need.

Progress:  Compared to my habits and mindset 10-15 years ago, I am light-years ahead of where I used to be.  It helped that I was comparatively frugal (by American standards) to begin with, but I still used to buy too much junk.  That tide has been seriously stemmed.  I put way more thought into what my genuine needs vs. wants are, and I want my purchases to really count; I want my dollars to support people and causes that are worthy, and I want the things that I buy to have real value.  I also want to avoid surrounding myself with too much stuff because it doesn’t just clutter up my environs, it clutters up my consciousness. 

Next steps/hurdles:  I still need to be more diligent about each and every item I consider purchasing and to pursue alternatives whenever possible.  There is still plenty of room for my improvement here.  Some of the hurdles I’m facing are the lure of convenience as well as the ingrained cultural habit of wanting shiny new things and thinking they will make me happy even if I know better.  I need to get better about looking at Freecycle and Craig’s List and asking around.  I want to always ask, how can I make this item myself, or find someone local who makes it?  One thing I would really like to learn is how to make clothes for Lily.  We have gained tremendous benefit from hand-me-downs (the vast majority of Lily’s clothes are hand-me-downs), and I am grateful to make good use of clothes that are in excellent shape as well as save a lot of money, but I find myself wishing that I (and, increasingly, Lily) could choose exactly the kind of style and colors and fabrics that would suit her, rather than always make do with what we’ve got.  I find myself resenting the original owners of the clothing, because they had the luxury of making those choices.  This kind of thinking and resentment makes me want to run out and buy clothes for Lily, but really, it would make more sense to just learn how to make clothes for her, and make them really fabulous and personal.  Same with clothes for me.  Many of my clothes are cast-offs from others and I can’t stand to waste them, even if they are not exactly my style.  Maybe I should learn more about embroidery.

2. Grow food.

Progress: 10 years ago, I knew not the slightest thing about growing food.  Today, I have a garden and I spend time reading and learning about food growing all the time, and engage in food activism.

Next steps/hurdles: My biggest hurdle is not knowing where we are going to live yet, since we can’t do anything until we sell our current house.  I’m very reluctant to invest much time and effort in my garden here since we are planning to move away as soon as possible.  The problem is, we have no idea when that will happen.  If I had known we’d still be here in November, I might have done a lot more in the past 6 months in terms of growing food.  At least I have still been nurturing and harvesting the perennials that I planted before we decided to move, as well as foraging wild edibles.  This winter, I want to start thinking about container gardening as a temporary strategy.  There is much for me to learn.

3. Eat local foods.

Progress:  I know I have made great strides here, even in the last two or three years, let alone the last 10 or 15.  I pay a lot of attention to this, by supporting CSA’s, farmer’s markets, local foods at the co-op, and growing and foraging food.

Next steps/hurdles: Probably my biggest hurdle is our love of restaurants.  Tom is no help in this matter.  We just love to not have to do dishes, to not have to plan meals way ahead of time, to feel catered to and nurtured through food.  I have been paying more attention to which restaurants focus on getting their food from local sources (not many restaurants, but a few).  We should cut back on the restaurants.  This makes me sad.  Part of the enjoyment of going out to eat is not just about the food, but about being out, being around people.  So addressing this hurdle is going to take a lot of work in terms of addressing isolation as well.  Another hurdle involves my dietary needs and the cost of food.  Since I have prediabetes, I focus on eating a lower-carb diet than most people, without sugar or refined grains.  I find I need good, regular sources of animal protein.  Local dairy and eggs are not hard to find at a good price, but meat is a lot harder.  I just tried to sign up for a local grass-fed meat CSA but I never heard back from them, so I’m worried about this.  I need to call them and find out what’s up.  I also need to be diligent about always, always buying local, grass-fed meat, even if it means spending a lot more– probably cutting out most of the restaurant visits would cover the cost of meat.  Another strategy I should look into more is arranging regular meals with friends where we focus on local food and having fun.

4. Eat less meat. Especially red meat.  Eat it grass fed.

Progress: I addressed some of this above, but I don’t think it’s a realistic goal for me to eat no meat or very little meat.  I can’t fall back on eating lots of bread or rice or pasta or potatoes as the backbone of a meal for me, because I don’t want to raise my blood sugar.  But I agree that limiting red meat and eating only grass fed meat is extremely important.  I have made some progress in this area, but not as much as I would like.

Next steps/hurdles:  I really, really need to find out why I haven’t heard back from the meat CSA.  I need to figure out what meat is available to me.  I need to say no to meat dishes in restaurants, but this would probably mean no more restaurant eating for me with only extremely rare exceptions, because it is still pretty difficult for me to order in restaurants as it is, let alone removing one of my mainstays– I can’t skip the meat, as well as the usual starch (usually potatoes and white bread), and expect to feel full and not dizzy.  I rely on omelettes a lot.

5. What you do buy, buy in bulk, bring your own packaging.

Progress: I love buying in bulk.  I started buying in bulk a few years back and haven’t looked back.

Next steps/hurdles: Although I have reduced the amount of packaging I use, I haven’t eliminated it.  I’m not sure if it’s possible to completely eliminate it but I would love to come close, and I need to examine my habits to see where and how I am using packaging and how I could avoid it.  One thing I realized lately is that cheese always seems to be sold in plastic wrap or containers; I should probably learn how to make cheese, but it feels daunting.

6. Big Box Boycott.

Progress: I’m doing quite well with this one.  It’s rare for me to set foot in a big box store at this point, including Whole Foods.

Next steps/hurdles: It’s harder, for me, to avoid purchasing things online sometimes.  This often carries some of the same problems as shopping at big box stores, although not across the board.  It is just too easy to do an online price comparison and assume that the vendor with the lowest price wins.  I do try to minimize shopping overall, including online, and if I buy online, I pay attention to where the item is shipping from and try to choose vendors that are closer, but I need to scrutinize those purchases as well and figure out if they are necessary, what the vendors are all about, and if the need can be fulfilled locally.

7. Reduce the amount of seafood you eat (especially shrimp and tuna).

Progress: I don’t eat very much seafood, but I could eat less than I do currently.  I already avoid tuna.  I don’t buy seafood to prepare at home, but I do sometimes order mostly salmon, calamari, clams, and mussels in restaurants.

Next steps/hurdles: I should not order seafood in restaurants.  Again, this runs into all the aforementioned issues with restaurant eating.  I’m surprised at how much of this exercise is making me conclude that I should eat way less at restaurants, and how sad it makes me, and worried that I will feel even more confined and isolated in my house.  Also I feel sad to think of giving up more foods that I enjoy and that are good for my prediabetic diet.

8. Clean it green. (Use homemade cleaners, and get rid of unnecessary clutter at home.)

Progress: I’m doing pretty well with this.  I have a book called “Clean Home, Clean Planet” that has some great recipes for homemade cleaning products, also relying primarily on baking soda and vinegar.  And I have purged a lot of junk from our home in the past five years.

Next steps/hurdles: There are still conventional cleaning products lingering in our house that we have had for years now, and for some reason I still haven’t gotten rid of them.  I think I was waiting for a hazardous waste collection, but I don’t think they take everyday cleaning products if I’m remembering right.  And there is always more stuff to get rid of in our house.  I especially want to target as much plastic and vinyl as possible.

9. Use less power, pay for green power, drive less.

Progress: I think we’re doing far better than the average American, but we could always do more.  We have all CFLs, all Energy Star appliances, a very tight Energy Star rated house, we unplug or use power strips, we turn off lights, we don’t own a dryer, we don’t use a television, we don’t crank up the heat when using the forced hot-air furnace, all the conventional advice.  We also opted for the extra green option on our electrical bill so we give money to renewable energy that way each month.  We own one car and try to minimize driving.

Next steps/hurdles:  Mostly I want to move as soon as possible to minimize our driving even more.

10. Be more joyful.

Okay, you know what, this is probably the hardest item on the list for me right now.  I still feel gratitude, I still make sure to tell my family I love them every day, I still try to count my blessings.  But I’m going to give myself a pass on this one right now and try to have faith that more joy will appear eventually.  I’m not giving up on joy, I’m just trying to validate my current state and not make myself feel even worse and self-blaming about it.

How curious.  I am writing again.  I am inexorably drawn to the laptop.  Why do I feel the need to apologize every time I start writing?!  And not just apologize, but issue a warning: beware, reader, lest ye get mired in melancholic convolutions.  As if my words alone could carry a degree of toxicity.

It’s almost like a test, really.  Can I break through my own inhibitions?  Can I dare to be mediocre?  For that matter, can I dare to be downright boring, or perhaps some brilliance will come peeping through?  It’s damn hard to lift the lid and find out.

Using words feels risky.  I have been depressed for a while.  This shouldn’t be a surprise, then, this timidity; the longing for connection is so wide and so deep, and the corresponding fear of rejection is twice as wide, twice as deep.  It doesn’t feel safe to be honest and real with people, not when I feel raw and sensitive like a skinned knee.  When I am this sensitive, all of my words and those of others come shouting at me in a cascade of distortion.  Nothing sounds right.  I don’t convey what I mean even halfway adequately.  I make myself shut up and withdraw.  Meanwhile the words of others, when they come through, are too much to take, excruciating, laden with perceived judgments, or terrifying indifference, or even too much beauty and kindness.  I scramble to shut my eyes and ears and mouth, only to come peering out briefly, periodically.  I can’t stand the isolation in my own head and heart.

I know full well that some people might read this and not have a clue what I’m talking about.  So be it.

Sometimes I take those little self-scored tests that are supposed to tell you if you are depressed or not, and if so, how much.  It’s kind of dumb.  I should know by now that if I’m bothering to take the test, I am already depressed.  I know what they ask.  I know how they are scored.  Why do I bother?  Is it to read the standard exhortations at the end, about visiting one’s doctor, about how common it is, about how treatable it is, and all the blah-blah-blah about different kinds of therapy and anti-depressants?  Reading that stuff makes me angry.

It makes me angry because depression, which is still so little understood, is classified as a malady of the individual.  I was reading the entry on depression on the Mayo Clinic website and the part about what causes depression made me just about lose it.  The medical establishment would have us believe that depression is caused by some interplay of genetic factors, hormonal factors, and environmental factors such as personal misfortune.  Great, so by this logic, if you’re depressed, you’re just unlucky, or maybe you are responsible for your own illness.  But what if this is not about an individual malady?  What if the whole planet is fucking insane?  What if it is entirely rational and understandable to become profoundly depressed in the face of the collective predicament we’re in?  So, billions may die or are currently dying because of climate change alone, forget about war and poverty and food shortages and worldwide loss of soil and fresh water and species extinction?  So, the entire edifice of capitalism and globalization is built on massive fraud and exploitation and is about to come crumbling down and taking all kinds of innocents down with them?  So, the world is choking on plastic and petrochemicals and toxics that kill people and albatrosses and sea turtles and entire ecosystems?  So, I’m supposed to take a fucking pill and forget about it?  I’m supposed to harness the power of positive thinking?  I’m supposed to talk to some well-meaning psychotherapist and pay tons of money for the privilege only to have none of these issues go away?

Well.  It’s good to remember why I’m depressed.  At least I get to be sane.

On the advice of a friend, I started reading the book “You Are Your Child’s First Teacher” by Rahima Baldwin Dancy.   So far, about 50 pages in, it’s quite a good read.   I want to write about a sudden insight I received while reading it today.

On page 40, the author quotes Rudolf Steiner (the originator of the Waldorf philosophy of education):

…In 1924 Steiner said, “In the first part of his life… the child is, so to say, altogether a sense organ.  This we have to take very literally.  What is the characteristic function of a sense organ?  It is receptive to impressions from the environment.  If something striking occurs near him–for example, a burst of anger–then the reflection thereof goes right through the child.  It will affect even his blood circulation and digestive system.”

What occurred to me as I read this was this: if my child is sensitive and absorbing things like mad (like any child developing relatively normally), then there is no way for her to avoid absorbing and internalizing the less desirable emotions or behaviors I show, no way to avoid confronting, to some degree, the accumulated weight of my various traumas.  I could be as vigilant as I could muster, and still I know that it would be impossible to completely insulate her from my own pain and struggle.  This is a source of great distress to me.  I know it’s important to do whatever I can to avoid laying my own problems, my own history, on my child, as well as the layers of struggle I inherited from my own mother, and that my mother probably inherited from her mother.  And yet the only way to completely insulate my child from that would be to exile myself from her life, which surely would be a far more damaging act. 

All this made me think of a parallel to breastfeeding.  There is a preponderance of evidence that breastfeeding is the healthiest choice for feeding a baby.  I have no doubt that breastfeeding is the preferable option.  And yet there is not a single breastfeeding mother on the planet who is not transferring some of her body burden to her baby/babies.  One’s “body burden” is a lifetime of accumulated industrial chemicals that remain in the body to varying degrees.  (Sandra Steingraber writes about toxics in breast milk in her book “Having Faith“; I have read excerpts from this book, but feel too afraid and dismayed to read the whole book.)  So, knowing both the benefits and hazards of breastfeeding, it still makes sense to me to breastfeed, but oh, the anguish of knowing that literal toxins stored in my body are being transferred to my child, through the very act that most conveys my love and devotion to her.  Of course, I feel anguish about all of the various routes that toxins find their way into the bodies of babies, but this seems like a particularly cruel one.

What if a mother’s emotional baggage is part of the “mind/spirit burden” placed upon her baby?  What if the transfer of some of this baggage is unavoidable?  We all have baggage of some kind.  Anyone living in this culture, call it American, or western, or modern civilization, is traumatized to some degree, in my opinion.  And some of us may be more traumatized than others, whether through direct experience of certain events, particular sensitivity, or both. 

I know my own history, my own mind/spirit burden.  Sometimes I stand in front of it, horrified and despairing, and other times I marvel at my own capacity for healing and strength.  But I know this: that burden will never go away, the same way my body burden of toxic chemicals will never go away.  And if I am to be a good mother to my child, to show up for her, to feed her, to be gentle with her but also be my real self, there is simply no way I can avoid transferring some of the burden.  I can only hope to minimize it as much as possible.

I want to be a good mother.  In fact, I want to be better than good; I want to be perfect.  I want this because it is what Lily deserves.  And truly, all children deserve this.  But none of us will ever achieve this perfection; none of us will receive it, however richly deserved.  Probably nobody ever even comes close.  You might think that grasping this fact in a solid, rational way would comfort me.  It still doesn’t.  Maybe I wrote this post to try to convince myself, once again, through the power of rational thought, that my imperfection is unavoidable, that I should therefore abandon the project of runaway guilt and shame.  Further, I should recognize that expecting all of this perfection from myself, and the resulting guilt and shame, is just a maladaptive coping mechanism in the face of loss of control; that is, the destructive fantasy of perfectionism is that if only I were more focused, more diligent, then I would be able to exert the kind of control that is literally impossible– I will never be able to completely protect my child.

It hurts.

Lily, if I could, I would make myself perfect for you.  And not only that, I would heal the world, so you could have a reasonable shot at a healthy, happy life.  I would take away all the toxins, all the cancers and illnesses.  I would take away the centuries of war and unimaginable suffering.  I would take away the greenhouse gases and the petrochemicals.  I would take away the abuse, the rape, the thoughtless words, the greed, the oppression.  I would take away the senseless accidents, the unnecessary deaths.  I would take away the pain of loneliness and disconnection.  If only I had that power.  Lily, I hope that in some tiny way, it makes a difference that I wish for all of this, and that I am trying my best to act with integrity and love.

Okay.  That’s it.  I swear.  Today, right this second, I am breaking the log-jam.  I don’t care if it’s late.  I don’t care if I should be trying to wind down and address this recent bout of horrendous insomnia.  I don’t care if I write things in a less than elegant way.  I don’t care, I tell you!  There are too many thoughts rattling around in my brain, too many things I can’t figure out unless I write about them, too much desire to put myself Out There in the wild and public landscape of the internets, because someone might read my words and really hear me.

I think the last time I posted was sometime in June.  It is now October 31st.  That’s just great.  No, wait, I do NOT want to turn this into an opportunity to bash myself for not posting regularly.  I really do want to write more regularly, but there have been too many hurdles.  Part of it is my inability to schedule time to write.  Part of it is the impossibly high standards I set for myself, i.e., all posts must be inspirational, wise, thoughtful, scintillating.  But this blog is not called “Scintillating Through and Through,” now is it?  No.  It’s called “Scintillating Speck.”  This is my little reminder to myself that I don’t have to be amazing and brilliant.  Instead, I can trust that the speck of brilliance that resides within will manifest itself despite my quotidian, human bumbling.  There are so many other blogs out there.  I don’t have to worry that too many people are reading this anyway, right?

So, all two of you who stumble across this, you have been forewarned: I am just going to write and whatever comes lurching out is allowed to stay.

Today I went running.  I haven’t gone running in over a month.  You may remember, if you have talked to me or read my silly Facebook updates, that I have been on a quest to improve my health through diet and exercise.  I had gotten some wonderful momentum from the UMass study on prediabetes and exercise, and I sorely miss my trainer, Rob.  He was a truly kind and supportive guy.  I was very worried about losing that momentum, and decided to sign up for a membership at the Y, since they include child care in the family membership.  I figured that that would help me focus on exercise.  In mid-August, a few weeks after I signed up, there was a fire at the Y and it was closed for over a month.  In a bit of a panic, I decided to run regularly.  This happened only when Tom was around to watch Lily (mostly early mornings and late at night in the dark).  When the Y re-opened, I tried to start exercising there again, but Lily was having a really hard time with being in Child Watch.  Each time I would leave her there she would cry and beg me not to leave her, then eventually sit down at the little table with her snack.  And at the conclusion of each workout, I would return to get her, and the child care person would tell me that Lily hadn’t budged from that seat for an hour and a half.  She was frozen in place.  I can hardly blame her; maybe it was the time of day that I was leaving her there, or the particular mix of kids, or some other set of variables, but it seemed like a pretty intense place to be.  There were at least two times that the child care person told me that another child had shoved Lily or knocked her over.  There was a lot of yelling and a chaotic feeling, and parents dashing off to work out while their babies or toddlers wailed and screamed.  So recently, something in me snapped to attention, and I realized that there is no way I can bring Lily there and have a clear conscience.  I’m not trying to fault other parents about this, or the Y; I understand that people are trying to be healthy and exercise, and this is the way they are able to make it work.  But it’s not working for me, because it’s definitely not working for Lily.  I am going to have to find a way to do this differently.

So today, with almost no forethought, I decided to go running again.  Lily had just fallen asleep for her nap and Tom was home because it’s the weekend.  I ran for about 25 minutes down the bike path, up Ice Pond Drive, through the parking lot of the Methodist church, and back up to Rocky Hill via the path through the woods, twice.  I realized a few things while I was running: it was much more pleasant to get exercise outside than at the Y.  I liked being alone and observing the trees and leaves and my thoughts.  At the Y, I mostly worked out on machines, and was subjected to a bank of televisions which made me feel assaulted by visual and advertising overload.  Also, I felt so much more peaceful knowing that Lily was happily asleep in her own bed and Tom was there to take care of her, instead of knowing that she was in a place that made her miserable, and knowing that I was consciously putting her there.  I know, it’s not as if I was out to make her miserable; I was trying to take care of my health, because Lily needs a healthy mama.  But I don’t want this to be set up as some kind of false dichotomy, where the only way I can take care of my own health is by making my child scared and unhappy.

The running itself was hard, especially towards the end.  I have never been an especially athletic person.  Combine this with my traumatic experience of being forced to play team sports in a very cut-throat, competitive atmosphere in prep school (of the many traumas that prep school offers), and it’s a wonder that I’m able to exercise at all.  In my mind I was imagining my trainer, Rob, saying encouraging words to me: “You can do it, Jen!  You are so strong and motivated!  You know you can do this!” and suddenly I was brought back to another time when I received encouragement.

When I was in the eighth grade (otherwise known as Fifth Class at my school, Noble and Greenough, in Dedham, Mass., which I attended 7-12 grade) I was on the cross-country ski team as my winter sport.  Unlike public school, it was required that I participate in sports every season, every single afternoon and often on Saturdays for games or races.  In general, the cross-country ski team was a bit of a haven for me, in comparison to my experience with field hockey every fall, which was invariably grueling and awful.  The x-c ski team was much more laid-back and playful in many ways.  Races were still serious and competitive, however.  One of my first races ever was pretty much a total disaster.  For some reason I was racing with a bunch of wiry, quick, junior varsity boys from a slew of other area prep schools; I can’t remember if I was the only girl among them, or one of only a few, and in any case I was most definitely not wiry nor quick.  The race was bewildering and long.  I was in last place from the very beginning.  I think I got lost in the woods a few times.  I was skiing my hardest and totally out of breath, feeling painfully flushed with exertion and embarrassment.  It took me so long to get into the final stretch that most of the other participants had already left and gone home.  I wanted to die of shame.

But there, at the finish line, what did I see?  My coach and teacher, Tim Coggeshall, was calling out, “Go Jen go!  You can do it!  Go Jen!”  He was cheering me on with all of his might.  He didn’t care that I was so very last.  He beamed with pride as I struggled to make it to the end.  And when I arrived, he threw his arms around me and I burst into tears.  I still burned with shame and I was a little upset that he was calling attention to me– if not to the other people who had left, then to my schoolmates, who couldn’t leave because they were all waiting for me.  But that moment of unabashed support, of pride in my accomplishment even when I couldn’t see it as such, stays with me still.

Yes, I know.  It’s about time I posted to this blog.  I apologize.  Will it make any difference if I tell you what’s been happening?

For starters, my family’s participation in the formal economy has shifted significantly.  Tom accepted a full-time position with the Microwave Remote Sensing Lab at UMass Amherst and started work about two weeks ago.  In accordance with this change, I have resigned my part-time position at Living Routes and become a full-time mama.  We are relieved that Tom now has this job, which improves our financial standing a great deal.  At the same time, it has been kind of weird.  I miss Tom a lot.  I miss my co-workers.  I’m glad to take care of Lily and play with her, but I have felt far too isolated for the past two weeks.  I haven’t developed any sense of rhythm or routine yet with this new life.

The lack of rhythm and routine is compounded by the fact that we are still in housing limbo.  However, we have made great, necessary strides forward in terms of gaining momentum towards selling this house and identifying a new place to live.  We have gone through the process outlined by Rocky Hill Cohousing to offer our house for sale to waiting list members and current homeowners (no takers), and we are now offering the house on the open market.  We are working with a realtor, Julie Held of Delap Real Estate, and we have a fab listing with all the details and photos here.  We’ll be having an open house on Sunday, June 28th, 1-3pm.

Getting ready to list our house entailed much cleaning and tidying and gnashing of teeth.  Everything still looks fairly tidy although entropy sets in right quick.

Identifying the next place to live is still unfinished, although we have narrowed our sights considerably.  Now that Tom is working full-time at UMass, and we are both extremely keen on driving as little as possible, we are focusing on neighborhoods in and around downtown Amherst.  For now, we have set aside the desire to live in a communal household, although we have definitely not ruled it out for the future.  After much searching for fellow communitarians and assessment of possibilities, and keeping in mind our desire to move as quickly as possible, we decided we simply didn’t have enough time to develop the degree of trust we felt was necessary to consider a communal living arrangement (meaning, sharing living space/a roof).

The backdrop to all of this is the sinking feeling that the larger, formal economy is about to tank.  I can’t predict anything with certainty, of course.  But I feel strongly that this is probably our last chance to sell our current house, move to a new one, and scramble to retrofit if need be with insulation, wood stove, root cellar, etc. as well as do a new permaculture design and implement it, not to mention trying to meet all the neighbors and hopefully bond with them.  I realize that we are already enormously lucky to have a house to begin with, and I am grateful.  And not only do we have a house, but Tom has a full-time job.  Still, as the economy continues to stumble and falter, I don’t know how much faith to place in that job, or any job in the formal economy.

Which brings me to my thoughts about the informal economy.  I feel strongly that I need to bolster my knowledge and skills in the informal economy, or call it the new paradigm, the new regenerative culture, as well as do whatever activism I’m able to do while simultaneously caring for a toddler.  The list of things I want to do and learn is ridiculously long.  Here’s a tiny sample:

• Learn how to build a rocket stove
• Learn much more about permaculture design and apply the principles like crazy
• Become some sort of roving, counter-culture, sustainability librarian (I’ve made some contact with Radical Reference of Western Mass.)
• Grow, preserve, and cook wonderful food
• Learn about coppicing for firewood or other uses
• Figure out some methods for low-tech water catchment and treatment
• Learn some new ways to teach, learn, and play with Lily
• Develop closer friendships, by deepening existing friendships as well as making new friends
• Develop more inner emotional resilience
• Refresh my Wilderness First Responder knowledge and maybe go for the Wilderness EMT
• Learn about herbalism
• Practice foraging and preparing foraged foods

I’ll stop there but you get the idea.

Meanwhile most of my days are spent not doing any of those things.  Can someone please explain to me how I can parent a toddler and also read books, take classes, meet people, attend events, etc?  Just trying to cook dinner is a difficult endeavor, with Lily trying to push me away from the stove with all of her might, demanding milky.  Tom can watch Lily on evenings and weekends, but I really want to spend some time with him too.  At night after Lily goes to bed, I should really try to discipline myself more to read and learn, but at that point I usually feel fried and barely able to manage getting through my email.  If anyone reading this has any insights or sources to recommend for help with this, please speak up.  Or maybe I should just give up and resign myself to the idea that I should be a good little mommy and only focus on stuff like grocery shopping and potty training.

There are a few things, however, I have managed to do regardless.  One is my participation in the prediabetes and exercise study at UMass.  Time for a moment of celebration:  I am in week eight of the exercise portion of the study!  Yes, I have been going three times a week for the past eight weeks.  I am much stronger and fitter than when I started.  I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around how much more weight I can lift and how many levels I’ve advanced on the exercise bike.  It feels extraordinarily good to be more healthy.  It hasn’t been without considerable challenges, though… the exercise itself often feels pretty grueling; I’m pretty sure I’m not in the placebo group but rather in the metformin group since I have experienced some quite miserable gastrointestinal side effects; the scheduling has been wrenching; and since I am still focusing on a no-sugar, no-refined-grain, fairly low-carb diet, this in combination with all the exercise and possible metformin has made me feel very dizzy at times while training, which we confirmed with a glucometer was due to some pretty significant downward swings in blood sugar.  I’ve tried to compensate by adding a bit more whole-grain carbs to my regular diet, as well as an apple in between cardio and strength training.  It’s the strength training that really makes me dizzy.  I’ve lost some more weight which people continually comment on.  I know people mean well but it makes me crazy.  Usually I try to just say “thanks” and let it go, but occasionally, depending on how irritating the wording, I might say something like, “Yes, I’ve lost weight, but it’s because I desperately want to avoid developing diabetes and all of its horrible complications and possible death, because I am at high risk for diabetes, and I may still develop diabetes despite all of my efforts.”  I think most people can’t quite grasp that it doesn’t feel good to me to be praised for weight loss, unless it is in the context of recognizing my efforts to be healthy.  It doesn’t feel good to be told how great I look because all I can think is, hmm, is that so, I guess you thought I was pretty bad-looking not long ago, and who knows, if I gain weight I may be demoted to ugly again.  That’s what goes through my head.  I know people are trying to be nice in this particular cultural context, but it doesn’t work for me.  I don’t want my weight to be judged as good or bad.  I also completely loathe being “checked out.”  This has happened a few times and it makes my skin crawl and makes me want to run away screaming.  But let’s not go there.

The other thing I have managed to make time for is this wonderful group of people in Northampton who are interested in Transition Towns, Chris Martenson’s Crash Course, and other associated tools and resources for energy descent planning.  We meet once a week on Sunday nights and I adore these people.  We are currently in the midst of a group food storage purchase.  I have been searching for a group like this ever since I first learned about peak oil, climate change and the Great Turning.  There is true support among us.  It may not be too much of a stretch to say that this group has helped restore a little bit of my faith in the goodness of humanity, despite the continuing massacre of the planet.  I often suspected that if I was going to find any solace, it would be in face-to-face interactions, not just communication with like-minded folks over the internet (although I am grateful for that lifeline as well).

I hope I have redeemed myself for my long lapse in posting.  This has been a fairly rambling post but I hope to begin focusing on topical posts sometime soon.  Let me add that to the bulleted list, eh?

Today, May 13th, is Charlotte’s day.  This is the day that Charlotte was born and died.  (Charlotte’s mama writes about her here.)

Dear lovely Charlotte, you will never know the huge ripples you have sent out across the globe.  There are literally hundreds of people mourning you worldwide.  We all wish you were here.

For me personally, Charlotte, you have wrought miracles of consciousness– a deeper knowledge of grief, and love, and appreciation, and compassion.

I will honor your memory until my last day arrives, as it arrives for us all.

I am a bit flabbergasted that my little girl is two years old.  She kept growing, and time kept passing, and here she is, and she’s not a baby anymore.

I suppose this should feel like the usual course of events.  Right?  I mean, I found Tom, we fell in love, we decided to have a baby, I was pregnant, I gave birth, and I have been caring for this child ever since.  Why does it feel so remarkable?

On April 2, 2007, I gave birth to a living child, and I still can’t quite believe it.  I feel as if my consciousness split in half, starting at about 5:30pm on 4/2/07, and ever since then, I have been living this life with Lily, and my doppelganger has been living without her.

The doppelganger, somehow, follows multiple paths and alternate scenarios, all leading to Lily’s demise and my heart being ripped to shreds, and meanwhile I am on this one path, this lucky path threading through a minefield, with Lily alive and happy, innocent and unaware, while I am all-too-keenly aware of every narrowly-missed tragedy, or potential tragedies further down the path.

Here are some of the paths my doppelganger has walked down:  In February 2007, she decides to refuse the glucose tolerance test for gestational diabetes, believing that GD is overhyped by the medical establishment.  She is unaware that she has GD.  Everything seems fine, until April 2, when she hasn’t felt the baby move for a while.  When she visits the midwife, a heartbeat cannot be found.  The baby has died.

In March 2007, she is extremely anxious and exhausted, and very hungry.  She has GD and is on a restricted diet and is pricking her fingers four times a day to test her blood glucose and gives herself shots of insulin, and it is all quite difficult to cope with.  She reviews the debates on GD and decides it’s not worth putting herself through all this rigamarole.  She stops going to the twice-weekly monitoring at the hospital.  In early April, at an appointment with the midwife, her baby has no heartbeat.

On April 2, 2007, she is totally compliant with the GD regimen but is having her twice-weekly monitoring at the midwives’ office at Holyoke Health Center rather than at the hospital, having been given the choice between the two locations when diagnosed with GD.  While being monitored, the baby’s heart rate apparently vanishes.  Mayhem ensues.  An ambulance is called and rushes her to the hospital.  She has an emergency cesarean.  It is too late.

On April 2, 2007, she is at the hospital, being monitored.  All seems well.  The nurse who is keeping track of the test strips says, “Okay, everything looks great, see you again in a few days,” and unhooks everything at 5:20.  She gets up and leaves.  In the parking lot, she feels a tremendous sensation of movement from the baby, then it stops.  She continues home, thinking all is well, but it’s not.

These are the scenarios that still echo in my head.  I suppose it would be easy to accuse me of negative thinking and that I should just move on and be grateful.  I AM grateful.  I am, possibly, even more grateful because of my heightened awareness.  But the part about moving on, putting it all behind me… I can’t.  There is no such option.  Part of me is still in a hospital bed in Holyoke, stunned, terrified, and unable to comprehend that my baby is slipping away or perhaps already gone.

April 2 is a complicated day.  I am truly thrilled to be able to celebrate Lily’s birthday.  I know I’m biased, but indulge me: she is a marvelous, beautiful, sweet, friendly, loving child.  In my eyes, she is a magnificent flower.  When I look at her or think of her, my heart practically bursts for joy.  I know that there are many mothers who had similar moments of stunned disbelief and terror, except that there was no miracle in the end: their babies died.  They would give anything to be celebrating their child’s birthday.  Those babies, if they were alive today, would be magnificent  flowers too.  I don’t know how to express how important it is to me to stand in solidarity with those mothers and babies, to recognize and honor them.