Lean In…it’s not what you think…

I was pretty appalled when Boof presented me with a book he bought off Amazon: Lean In. I even believe the words out of my mouth were, “What, you think I’m not handling the career/motherhood balance enough? You think I need to work more? Work harder?” He was flabbergasted, as he had done this as a sweet gesture based on the fact that a) I love reading, and b) had been discussing some gender discrimination that I was witnessing at work. In fact, my pre-conceived opinion of the book had been based on some bloggy articles reviewing the premise, and now that I’m 3/4 of the way through the book I assume that those individuals who made critical write-ups of Sheryl Sandburg’s philosophy had, themselves, not actually read the book, either.

What I thought was going to be the idea “lean-in to your career, get ahead at the sacrifice of your family,” is actually a well-thought-and-lived out manifesto for how strong women are and how they can be even more strategic both at home AND at work to get the maximum out of their life. It was like a breath of fresh air, particularly because I am surrounded by women who have chosen to stay-at-home full time and I often feel that I am a crazy person for LOVING my job (or, on most days, liking it about as much as I like my husband Boof whom I’m committed to forever…which says a lot more than shmoopy ‘ohmygawdmyjobisthebestest!sqeee!). I though it was going to tell me that I need to strive for high paying executive jobs (of which I have no desire…at this point), but instead it was about making myself open to the possibilities that lie before me without being afraid.

One of the biggest takeaways for me was this idea of the ways that women prevent themselves from the success they want by making sacrifices for family…before they even HAVE a family. Whoa, that hit me in the gut like a punch. Because here I am, at a job I love, but thinking silently and secretly to myself in my heart of hearts “well, if I don’t do that good of job at my administrative stuff, it won’t hurt so bad when I have a 2nd kid and either I need to take extended time off or they don’t renew my contract and find someone else.”

Um, what? The potential for getting pregnant sometime in the next 2 years has been influencing whether I do a top-notch job in the here-and-now of my job. Whoa. That’s powerful. While not going into statistics (yawn), she does say that many women begin making these type sacrifices (not going for promotions, or switching companies/jobs to something more lucrative or desirable or challenging) years before they even begin having a family (one funny anecdote was a woman doing this before she even had a boyfriend! imagine that!). But that there is an inevitable time when mothers will take some time off (be it maternity leave or extended family leave) and if they haven’t set themselves up to be where they want to be, they tend to be dissatisfied when they come back after 3 months, 3 or 10 years later. Yeah. These women feel undervalued and underpaid BECAUSE THEY ARE. They look around and see, “dang, those that weren’t parents, they took risks and now they’re getting XYZ salary, why am I still at this piddly level?”

Now maybe that’s extreme and doesn’t apply to everyone, but I sure as hell know that if I hadn’t gotten that new job (coincidentally the day that I learned I was pregnant), I wouldn’t have left that previous company because of fear of being able to do anything else while pregnant or with a child. Despite the toxic non-profit environment I was in, I would have sucked it up and likely would have had a slow soul-death in an un-fulfilling dead-end job that served me well for the first 7 months post-graduate school, but wouldn’t have sustained me 3 years later.

This book validated my desires and reminded me not to feel bad for the 3 jobs in 2.5 years that I took because I was career advancing and now I am in my “dream job,” though I know that there is so much more that I want to contribute at the collegiate level in different capacities. It might mean more schooling or moving colleges, but it certainly doesn’t mean willfully sitting on pinterest for 8 hours a day to set myself up for handling the rejection if I can’t come back after a hypothetical 2nd kid comes along, ya know?

Now I haven’t agreed with everything she says, but it has given me a lot to chew on and has validated my experience as a working-mom, or, as she says a ‘career loving parent,” because that’s the truth: I absolutely adore and love Potamus, and I also know that I am built to be leaning-in to a career that fulfills me, too!

The Mindful Carnivore: A Book Review

When I’m interested in knowing if I am the only one in the world wrestling with some moral/spiritual/ethical dilemma, I turn to reading. I read in various forms, blogs, quotes on Pinterest, but mostly books. I love the feeling of a book in my hands, the crinkle of the pages turning and the satisfaction I get scribbling notes in the pages.

But ever since I married Boof, and got flak for my CONSTANT need to buy books off Amazon. The bookshelves were filling up and every time we moved I realized that my book boxes outweighed all my others. Seriously, it was becoming a problem. But thankfully smartphones have Kindle included, and I’ve been reading books on my phone ever since. While it’s not as satisfying as holding a real book, it’s much more practical, especially reading in bed, after nursing my kid to sleep.

So last week I ordered The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian’s Hunt for Sustenance on Kindle and happily devoured (no pun intended!) the first few chapters. I had been drawn to this particular book because of my still-meat-eating-status and my interest in mindfulness. What I was surprised was, that the author was a vegan…or former vegan…a former-vegan-turned-deer-hunter.

The story from childhood fishing trips to renouncing meat after beginning meditation, he weaves a story from beginning to end that brought me along for an amazing ride. At each step of the way, he explained where his head and heart was at in relation to eating meat. Between stories of his own life, he shows extensive research on the history of hunting and vegetarianism and veganism in America. I was thoroughly fascinated in both regards.

He starts off here, with:

Though unfamiliar with this history (American vegetarianism) at age twenty-five, I had woven my convictions from many of the same threads. Abstaining from meat was part of a natural, healthy lifestyle. It would make me whole, both physically and morally, cultivating compassion in my heart and alleviating the suffering of animals…Vegetarianism-and, soon thereafter, veganism- became more of a diet. Though secular, it became a way of life, a statement of values and identity, a coat of arms for the struggle to right all that is wrong with the world.”

What began his shift in thinking, was coming across information such as:

Whenever any of us sit down for breafkast, lunch, dinner, or a snack, it’s likely that deer were killed to protect some of the food we eat, and the beverages we drink.

He begins to weave the information into this picture, that even when abstaining from certain things, like meat, we may be alleviating suffering, but in so many ways we are contributing to the overall suffering of the world. I know that right now my thing is diary cows being separated from their calves, but moms and babies are being separated all over the world, not to mention the rest of it all, in factory farms and whatnot. “No matter what I ate, habitat had already been sacrificed. No matter what I ate, animals would be killed.”

His exploration of suffering and eating and compassion led him to try hunting his own game. His mindful eating adventure had led him to the conclusion that,

“If my existence was going to take a toll on other beings, I would rather exact that toll consciously, respectfully, swiftly-and for the specific purpose of eating. I could make a deeper peace with intentional harm.”

This book was eye-opening and helped me put words to many of my thoughts. While I’m not about to go hunt my own meal, I think his point about knowing where animals come from, and really taking a mindful look at the industrial practices overall (even the vegan and vegetarian ways that it contributes to destruction), is a wise one. I’m still feeling good about my decision to be dairy free, for now, I also know that I feel equally as good about my decision to eat the local butchered hamburger.

I guess this goes back to my idea of labels. That vegan is some sort of fundamentalism that I do not yet stick to, and that I can be meat and/or dairy-free and still not be vegan, while also being true to myself and mindfully eating.

I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the history of veganism/vegetarianism and hunting in America, while also having a personal and accessible glimpse into the author’s wrestlings with compassionate eating.

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Book Review

If you’re a fan of pee-your-pants-funny writing, lots of parentheses, post scripts crazy stories from childhood, AND snark, then you really need to buy this book. Like, now. I mean it. Hilarious. Also, if you’re not a big fan of those those things, well, I don’t really know what to tell you…except you might want to skip the rest of this review.

I mostly love this book because she’s nutty and her writing reminds me of the rambling in my head. And while I didn’t have nearly as exciting of a childhood, I can definitely think of a few random stories that might compare.

A taste of one of her stories, is about the raccoons her dad helped rescue:

His name was Rambo, and he’d learned how to turno nt he bathroom sink and would wash random things in it all the time, like it was his own private river. If I’d have beent hinking, I would have left some Woolaite and my delicates by the sink for him to rinse out, but you never think to turn your pet raccon into a tiny butler until it’s too late.

Hilarious, right? RIGHT?

She then regales us with the tale of her father’s jumbo quail (read turkeys) and how annoying they were, chasing her and her sister. Her sister “had heard that turkeys were so stupid that if it rained, theyw ould look up to see what was falling on them and drown from rain falling into their noses, so we began to pray for rain, which was promptly answered by a full-on drought.” But she goes on to say, “we often talked about spraying the hose on them in order to weed out the stupider ones, but we could never bring ourselves to do it (both because it seemed too cruel, even in self-defense) and also because our father would probably find it suspicious if all his turkeys died in a freak rainstorm that had apparently broken out only next to the garden hose.”

But in between the hilarity, there are these gems of wisdom, such as the question:

Have you ever been homesick for someplace that doesn’t actually exist anymore? Someplace that exists only in your mind?

But, if you’re maybe just a littel bit curious, and don’t want to BUY the book, then head on over to her blog The Blogess

A Year of Biblical Womanhood: a book review

After reading and loving AJ Jacob’s hilarious book, The Year of Living Biblically, where a guy decides to try and take a literal approach to the Bible and follow it for an entire year, I came across the female companion book in A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans. I downloaded it on Kindle, preparing to have a few evening laughs in bed while Potamus was sleeping. What I found, was myself crying (or tearing up) more often than I laughed!

Where AJ Jacobs set out to show the absurdity of taking everything in the Bible completely literally (even carrying pebbles in his pocket to stone people), Rachel’s attempt was to discover or re-discover different aspects of her evangelical faith, while also solidifying beliefs that she already had, that perhaps, differ from traditional ideas of what “biblical womanhood,” means. I love books like this because I, by nature, love a good social experiment. I’ve gone a whole year without buying clothes, wearing shoes, shaving, and stints at vegetarianism or not buying books. I’ve learned things in every social experiment that I’ve done, so I loved this premise and eagerly set out to read her experience.

Rather than laughing my way through the book, I found myself actually learning, which is refreshing. It feels like books and things like this that sneak up on me, are stealthy ways that God is teaching me, since I’m not actively searching anything out, and feel almost opposed to really trying to dive into any Christian-spiritual reading program. Rachel does many experiements throughout the year: learning to sew, growing her hair out, covering her head in church, staying outside in a tent when on her period and calling her husband Master. It was

One of the things that I learned, was about the Proverbs 31 woman, which was of great interest to me having studied it in college. All of us giggling juniors read through the proverb each week, and then focused ourselves on one aspect of the woman, because, after all, it was a guidepost, check-list for us to follow! And then, I read this book and learned that Proverbs 31 was a poem, that was sung TO women, by the men in their life. The Proverbs 31 women, in Hebrew eshet chayil, is translated as “woman of valor,” and is the ancient version of “you go girl!” She corresponded with a rabbi’s wife in Israel who said, “my husband sings the Proverbs 31 poem to me. It’s special because I know that no matter what I do or don’t do, he praises me for blessing the family with energy and creativity. All women can do that in their won way. I bet you do as well.”

Wow.
That kind of information would have been EXCELLENT  to know in college, instead of trying to bend over backward to try and do everything listed in that proverb. Instead, being myself and allowing my husband to say “you go girl!” Thankfully, Boof is all about supporting my life choices and thinks its excellent that I work and raise Potamus and have time for friends. But I could have saved myself a few years of feeling guilty and terrible for “sucking” at living up to the spiritual ideal…just like I could never live up to the Cosmo cover-model.

All in all, I would recommend this book to any of my girlfriends.

Anna Karenina: A Movie Review

There is nothing like celebrating one’s 30th birthday, than with a Russian tragedy, er, love story. At least that’s what I convinced myself, and Boof, when he pressured to know how I wanted to spend today. I am usually terrible about thinking of celebratory things (especially things that don’t involve spending $100 on filet mignon at Daniel’s Broiler in Lake Union). But Anna Karenina is one of my favorite stories, a thick Russian love story/tragedy that occupied one good summer while I was lifeguarding and dreaming of someday being in love and married and possibly a mom.

I remember being confused at first, with a huge list of characters to memorize, and the Russian way of using nicknames and surnames that change, it was quite a challenge, and yet, I was drawn to the story, the woman: Anna. Tolstoy had this beautifully magic way of making her come alive on the page, and it was almost as if he was telling a story that was buried inside my soul, which shows his ability to not only relate to the greater human condition, but somehow understand a little about what goes on inside the hearts and minds of women. And the fact that I believed and knew and related so much to this beautifully awful complex woman made the ending that much more tragic.

But not so, in the movie.

The movie failed to capture the complexities of Anna, instead, the beautiful cinemetography and lack of substantial dialogue or even an omnipresent narrator given the task of explaining her innermost thoughts (they could have done with more actual quotes from the novel, I think), left the character of Anna more on par with that of Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attractions. She seemed mad with love, and yet it didn’t seem pure or good or anything explainable other than lusty desire and…madness, in the film. The character of Vronsky was also flat, and gave me, the viewer, little insight into what made him tick (besides his penis picking Anna) and failed to leave me with any reason why Anna would have picked him, even if it was with her ‘heart.’ If looks were the reason that brought them together, then character casting could have done a better job, at that. Because I knew the ending already, I was almost looking forward to her suicide, thinking, “when will Anna finally jump in front of the train,” which was a thought that caught me off guard since I so understood her in the book.

Because of my preconceived notions from the story, I was actually surprised that I felt a compassion and empathy with Anna’s husband, who appeared in the film as a man who had done nothing at all to deserve the roller coaster ride that she put him on. I wonder, is it age or wisdom or simply the movie-maker’s take on the story that has changed my experience of Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin.The setting, filmed as if this were a play, added confusion to the storyline and I felt like it was trying to hard, though the actual filming of the scenes were beautiful.

In the end, though, I am happy I saw the movie, even if it was only a pure escape for two hours. I so rarely get to sit in a theater and enjoy myself, so that was a real treat. And I am happy that I laid my fantasies about the story aside and got to see a different view of the same old tale of love and loss.

But I’ll leave you with a quote from the book:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Agree? Disagree? Thoughts on the book or the movie or both?

Help. Thanks. Wow: A Book Review

This book, is about prayer. And when I think of prayer, this is what I think of:
Anne is one of my dashboard saints. Though she would probably rather be my dashboard dancing hula girl, since the grass-skirt would cover The Aunties.  She is my go-to in spiritual famine. A breath of fresh air. I read nearly everything she writes including anxiety inducing facebook posts about the Election 2012.

And while this book doesn’t read as much like the hilarious coffee-house storytime gossip chat punched with spiritual wisdom, it does read like a really real fireside chat with a spiritual mentor, about things that are true and good. So it’s more spirit talk peppered with personal stories and wickedly true metaphors, than a personal jabber cupcake with Jesus sprinkles. Which, I was sorta hoping for the latter, but feel like the God I’ve been avoiding, really wanted me to read the former. Confused? Keep reading.

The book is about prayer. The 3 categories she puts prayer into (Help. Thanks. Wow.), is refreshingly honest and cuts across the denominational divides…though my fundamentalist upbringing sometimes shouts from the devil-shoulder that I shouldn’t listen to such nonsense, and that it does too matter if it’s God or Earth Mother or Hewlett Packard (Higher Power) that I’m praying to. But mostly I ignore that voice, because Truth speaks much louder.

Here are a few of my own prayer thoughts, based on some of her most powerful quotes.

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She says:

…and when I spent the night at your houses, I heard all of you saying these terrifying words, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my sould to keep. If I should die before I wake…” Wait, what? What did you say? I could die in my sleep? I’m only seven years old…
“I pray the Lord my sould to take.”
That so, so did not work for me, especially in the dark in a strange home. Don’t be taking my soul. You leave my soul right here, in my fifty-pound body. Help.

As an adopted kid, my parents had to modify the traditional bedtime prayer, because it gave me nightmares. Reading trashy kids books like The Face on the Milk Carton made me nervous that my own parents had kidnapped me. I then also worried about my unknown birth mother coming to snatch me away in my sleep. And then I had to worry about legit strangers coming to steal me and take me into an orphanage or make me a slave. I did NOT need to think about God, in all his scary white beardedness, coming into my bedroom and snatching my soul.

So my parents, awakened by my anxiety driven night terrors, made up a less terrifying version asking Him to  give us good dreams and God blessing mommy and daddy and monk-monk and monk-monk’s brother and sister, forever.  But still, the lingering fear of “soul to take” and “dying before I wake,” was still there. I mean, sleep is like a little death, and what 7, 8, or 29 year old really wants to think about the possibility of not-waking-up.

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“In prayer, I see the suffering bathed in light…I see God’s light permeate them, soak into them, guide their feet. I want to tell God what to do: “Look Pal, this is a catastrophe. You have got to shape up.” But it wouldn’t work. So I pray for people who are hurting, that they be filled with air and light. Air and light heal; they somehow get into those dark, musty places, like spiritual antibiotics.”

I think that’s beautiful, and definitely something to aspire to, though this is often more like how I am:

“…they might say, jovially, “Let go and let God.” Believe me, if I could, I would, and in the meantime I feel like stabbing you in the forehead.”

There is nothing worse than that kind of  “let go and let god” drivel, in my opinion. And yet, I never know what to say to people when they give me such Hallmark lines. A friend, who later became an adoptive mom, used to practice lines with me to answer people who asked about when she was going to have kids. Not wanting to talk about her infertility with everyone, let alone in public, the lines we practiced sounded like, “this is not an appropriate topic for the frozen food aisle at Safeway.” It shut people up, and was less drastic as stabbing them in the forehead, though she had to practice in order for it to not sound rude or worse yet, burst into tears. It had to become muscle memory. Much like prayer becomes muscle memory after a time. Especially the help prayer.

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I write down the name of the person whom I am so distressed or angry or describe the situation that is killing me, with which I am so toxically crazily obsessed, and I fold the note up, stic it in the box and close it. You might have a brief mment of prayer, and it might come out sounding like this: “Here. You think you’re so big? Fine. You deal with it. Although I have a few more excellent ideas on how best to proceed.” Then I agree to keep my crazy mitts off the spaceship until I hear back.

This just kinda-sorta-don’t-really-want-to-admit happened to me this last week. If reconciliation and Help prayers can be facilitated by my over-functioning-anxious adoptive mother. Because, if you’ve kept up, I am crazily mad at my adoptive sister. So much so, that I did the only adult thing I could do: defriended her on Facebook. And, even better yet, have been almost-smugly telling people about how  annoyed I am with her.

And then I got her name in the rigged name-drawing for Christmas.

Awesome.

But instead of glowering, I changed out of my yoga pants and went out Christmas shopping. And, instead of  buying her athletic socks and gum, I found her something she would actually like. I’m almost sorta proud of myself for getting through my crazy anger, but then I don’t want to be seen as a braggart, so I’m just here blogging about it. Maybe my help-me-n0t-hate-her-forever prayer was sorta answered. Though don’t expect me to text her anytime soon.

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Help, help, help. Thank you. Wow. Amen…And then two hours or two days later. Help….

I think my prayers are sometimes even less sophisticated. I often pray Please, which is the younger brother to Help. It’s the “beggy prayers,” of please please please, which feels both more pathetic and more manipulative than the distinguished Help, which has an air of surrender to it. I mostly approach God like a 5 year old who wants ice-cream and feels that they might utterly die if the wish isn’t granted. Lately I’ve found myself saying please please please about all sorts of things, like Boof getting a job, or getting a few more hours of sleep (in a row, this time, thanks), or that my boss wouldn’t find out that I’m an utter sham and fire me on the spot. These pleading, groveling prayers also have this air of manipulation in them, as if I were to say the prayer in such a tone that surely God would get tired, but instead of my mother would say, “stop using that one of voice monk-monk,” She would, in her eternal patience, realize that yes, I really do need that ice cream cone.

Beggy.

Perfect word for it.

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Wow means we are not dulled to wonder…Wow is about having one’s mind blown by the mesmerizing or the miraculous: the veins in a leaf, birdsong, volcanoes…Alpine blue spider lupine, monkeyflowers, paintbrush. Wow., because you are almost speechless, but not quite. You can manage, barely, this one syllable.

When I take pictures, I capture wows, and they somehow turn into well-worn wows when I re-visit the moments. When I’m seeing the world through my viewfinder, I am less critical, more open to wonder, more childlike and excited. I sometime shout

“LOOK A DAISY!”

Or stare in awe that such a beast can sleep with her mouth open

 

Or, a little gasp of wonder about the beauty of an upcoming wedding ceremony:

And even that sometimes-truth can be found on rusty burn barrels

Wow. I get to see things. I get to capture images. I get to re-live moments in full-color and share memories with others.

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Now as then, most of the time for me gratitude is a rush of relief that I dodge a bullet-the highway patrol guy didn’t notice me speed by, or the dog didn’t get hit by someone else speeding by. Or  “Oh my God, thankyouthankyouthankyou” that iwas all a dream, my child didn’t drown, I didn’t pick up a drink or appear on Oprah in my underpants with my dreadlocks dropping off my head.”

This is a pretty thankful time of year, with people’s incessant gratitude posts on Facebook feeds, which mostly make me nauseated and remind me that I am possible the least grateful person on the planet. Though I am thankful, I just get sick of it being plastered all over the internet. The internet is for worry and anxiety and pictures of food that will make us guilty later. Why do I hold the things I’m grateful for in such a grinch-like vice grip? Probably because I’m worried about losing them, and hope that my cavalier, almost disdainful, attitude will keep the big bad God from taking away those things that He/She/It most likely influenced in the first place. Because, “The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Taketh Away,” as the saying goes. Where this Milk-Money Bully of a God idea came from I have no idea. Okay, a small idea. But I hate always blaming my fundamentalist upbringing.

So I say thanks. But quietly. And sometimes in that same beggy way, like “please please please don’t take this away from me because now I know I can’t live without it, I mean, don’t want to live without it.” And I feel almost worse than the groveling 5 year old ice cream kid. Like someone who thanks you for buying them a sweater from Goodwill. That sort of, martyr-ey way about people, as if God went soooo out of Their way to throw us a bone.

Gratitude is clearly not my strong suit.

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I think you should read this book, even if you don’t think you pray. Because, maybe you’ll find that you really do.

Still: A Disappointed Review

Lauren Winner is one of my dashboard saints. She is in the list of writers and spiritual seekers who influence my own journey. When I was in college I voraciously read her two books “Girl Meets God,” and “Mudhouse Sabbath.” I loved them. Simply loved them. I tried out her “Real Sex” book, and found it less-than-applicable, so I put it down halfway. It’s been years since I’ve thought of her, but finding myself in this confusing spiritual place I decided to pull out a few of my saints and see what they were up to. Anne Lamott’s book isn’t out until November, and I’ve been making do with simply her facebook updates, so seeing that Lauren had published a new book, entitled “Still: Notes on a Mid Faith Crisis,” I knew that I HAD to read it.

I so identified with Lauren’s “character” in her first memoir, as I, too, was wrestling with my own shocking conversion story and jump into a spiritual practice and life that had energy and passion and wasn’t quite as conservative as the faith I grew up with (though there were PLENTY of fundamentalist tendencies I would later see). A mid Faith Crisis? Perhaps a good description of where I am, as it relates to my actions and feelings about church/God/religion/Christianity, etc.

Sadly, with a bursts of shiny quotes I can hang on to, my love of this book stopped at the preface. And in that, the most powerful part of the preface is a quote she uses by some other author:

When the Lord came into me,”  Buddy tells her, “it was such a good feeling. I thought, well I can do anything because of this feeling, but then there was all this stuff to do and to think about, and I don’t remember the feeling all that well.”

Yeah, that sums me up pretty well.

The rest of the book read like random thoughts, mixed with metaphor and some prose/poetry combination. While I resonated with the overall feeling of questions and stuckness of “staring against a blank wall.”

But the magic I felt during her first memoir was gone. The breathless reading and relating was gone. Perhaps its more of a testament to where we both feel we are, but I did leave, feeling rather disappointed.

Tiny Beautiful Things: A Review in Dreams

Holy shit my dreams have been intense and seemingly completely fucked-up lately. I blame the book Tiny Beautiful Things, which I purchased from Kindle after finishing Cheryl Strayed’s last book. This one is a compilation of advice columns that she wrote under the pseudonym Sugar. Some of these Dear Sugar columns can still be read over on The Rumpus. The advice she gives is raw, based on her own life experiences, and her no nonsense tell-it-like-she-sees-it mentality, it was a quick read (though I found myself taking breaks in order to process all the advice and stories I encountered.

The stories I encountered in her book did not leave my psyche upon entering dreamland. In one night I had 4 terrifying dreams, including:

1. A dream where I was sleeping in a dream and my father-in-law came in, spooned me for awhile, and then left when he heard my husband get home. His creeping into my room woke me up, and my dream self pretended to be asleep in order for him to go away sooner. Upon waking I felt very much like a little girl who had been molested (though I have no history of sexual abuse in my past).
2. A dream where my husband was sexually assaulted by a mentally retarded girl wearing a green shirt. He was tied to a chair when she raped him, and there were many people around, like what you would see at a college frat party.
3. A dream where my grandma and I visited a museum where the first room was full of mummies and decorated with bones and skulls in designs (I partially blame this on a travel channel show featuring such a place), and I was afraid to look around and we walked into another room which was similarly decorated with taxidermied animals, duck wings and antlers, until finally we made it to the part of the museum we came for…which was a room full of balloons and bouncy balls. WTF?
4. Perhaps the scariest of all…a dream where I pulled up to a park, was listening to the radio and finishing a snack before I got Potamus out of his carseat to go play. When I did turn the car off and go to get him out of the carseat, I realized that his head had gotten stuck in the straps and he had strangled. If I hadn’t been sitting there calmly eating a snack he might have lived. I called 911 and saw myself dissociate while  I did CPR, but he did not live.

Jesus, 4 intense dreams involving sex and death all in one night was a little too much for me. In the daylight I very much enjoy reading her frank advice to people struggling with all sorts of topics, but it entering into my dream-world is a little too much. Perhaps my next book choice will be something with a little…lighter…material?

What should I read next? Any good suggestions?