MY INTRODUCTION
ME
Words are carriers or vessels that transmit IDEAS.
This is one of my favorite photos and a moment frozen in time of one Saturday morning when I could accurately describe myself being a so, so happy young Mommy. I have worn so many hats in this Earthwalk of mine and my hat of a Young Mommy now lives in the almost ancient history section of my memory library. My own childhood memories of my dolly and pretending to be a Mommy can be found further down in my prehistoric section yet these prehistoric memories can seem to be instantly brought to mind with the smell of lilac and the memories of my grandparents' backyard may then seem to magically appear before the light of my awareness.
At this time I was employed by an oil and gas software firm analyzing leases for subsequent input into their mainframe computers for client companies. It would be less than two years later that I would be one of the masses of unemployed oil and gas professionals trying to find a job after the oil and gas bust that hit the industry.
The above photograph was unplanned and taken on a Saturday morning outing. It was intention to purchase new tennis shoes for each of the children and then stop into a beauty shop for needed hair trims. We had gone out for breakfast before going to the mall and all four children were so excited about their shopping trip. When we walked in the large mall there had been a photographer's booth. I knew if I waited until after shopping and haircuts a picture would not get taken because I would then be dealing with cranky children after what I had called our Saturday Morning Shopping Extravaganza.
Extravaganza was a word I had heard frequently from early childhood and a word spoken by my maternal grandmother born in 1898 in reference to when she would take me shopping and I got to pick out a new article of clothing. I had heard so many stories of her own childhood in a time period of horses and buggies. Having listened to her stories of how shoes would be made by a man that moved from home to home making shoes for family members, shoes held different meaning to her than it did to me that Saturday morning in 1982 in a Denver mall.
Today going shopping for a new article of clothing or shoes is a common place occurrence for children with large big box department stores with grocery stores annexed in every town and the sounds of tired and cranky children whining and crying are not unusual sounds.
This photo also makes me chuckle when I look at my two youngest, Josie and Cassie. The day before the trip to the mall, the two of them had played beauty shop on each other with their paper scissors and Josie's bangs ended up so short and Cassie's so slanted.
In the past there was a time I wondered why I chose to have a family picture taken when we all needed hair trims so desperately. Self-understanding is such a long journey. My children have frequently heard the family story of Josie and Cassie's childhood bedroom beauty shop, however, there is also the story of how all of us wearing blue jeans in this photograph taken in 1982 provides a visual that carries so much meaning to this mother.
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In 1982 I honestly do not recall ever hearing the word schizophrenia. The term schizo can be found to have first appeared as an adjective in the 1920's and a noun in 1945 in writings, however, it was not a word that I had been exposed to at this time of my life in 1982. Recently I overheard a preteen boy call another boy a schizo without effort. Each decade that progresses brings such vocabulary changes to mold our American culture.
It needs to be pointed out that it was not until 1983 that the common term CODEPENDENCY entered the English language system.
There is the worn out expression regarding doing things different if you knew then what you know now, but then our Earthwalks would loose their flavor! I was 32 years old in 1982 and today I am able to look at myself with compassion and that mental stance in itself has been a great part of my life journey. A cavern of variance exists between the ideas carried by the terms self-compassion and self-pity.
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As a mom with 3 of my 4 children carrying the diagnoses of schizophrenia (1994), paranoid schizophrenia (1998) and psycho-affective disorder (2000) - then throw in their father now ex-husband when I was pregnant with our 4th baby became himself symtomatic of schizophrenia in 1978 (at his then age of about 28) ... the years have transformed me into a type of schizophrenia layperson 'expert'. Not the job description I would have dreamed about when I graduated from high school in 1968.
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This Earthwalk has been a journey of self-understanding and a trip I will be taking until I exit this form. I blame it on my innate curiosity and I could not count the times I have asked myself "why in the heck did I do that??". I would compare attempting to figure myself out to perhaps the challenge of putting together a large jig-saw puzzle that challenges me until I put in that last puzzle piece.
I recall when I was wearing my hat of Young Mommy with only two babies in 1975, having read some Christian book that motivated me to try my hand at creative writing to gain self-understanding. My four children would attest that even reading fiction has never been an activity descriptive of their mother, so creative fictional writing was definitely not one of my character attribute at the age of 25 years old. I recall sitting at the dining room table after I put my two down for their naps, praying as instructed and without effort I wrote a story involving me entering this large dimly room stacked full of boxes of all shapes and sizes and I had been given the job to open each box and find out what was inside and this was a job that I did not want to do. In this short writing, Jesus appeared and told me not to be afraid that He would be standing next to me when I opened each of those intimidating boxes.
I have found my own internal filing system for memories quite interesting. I discovered and unearthed this very buried memory of my creative writing when I was exploring issues involving my maternal grandmother whom we all called Nana. Nana was a significant adult from my earliest childhood memories. That afternoon in 1975, she had stopped at my home on her walk downtown. I was then living in my small rural hometown and it was not unusual to have Nana stopped because my home was about half-way between hers and the downtown area.
Nana born in 1898 had held a college degree having once taught speech and writing and her own prose had been published, and facts that didn't cross my mind when I invited her in and she sat down and could see that I had been writing. My notebook was sitting in front of me when I
invited her in and we sat down at my table where I had just been writing. In the conversation she asked if I was writing a letter and I had told her I had just written a story and a response I ended up regretting. She asked if she could read my writings. My grandmother was a very intimidating woman and telling her no was not something I held the personal power to say at that stage of my life. Suffice it to say, I would have had to do a re-write if she had been my instructor and my short story had been an assignment she had given me. After she left, I tore my writing out of my notebook, wadded it up and threw it in the trash.
