Maxed Out…this American mom is on the brink…

“We were all living the lives we’d chosen. We had what we thought we wanted- wonderful children and a level of financial independence that our mothers never knew. And yet, most days, it felt as if our lives were being held together by Band-Aids and Elmer’s glue. None of us could make sense of the wretched state we found ourselves in. What were we doing wrong?”

After forwarding a powerful  article  on burned out mothers to a friend, we decided to buy the book mentioned in the article (Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink), and have been sending rapid fire texts and quotes to each other ever since. Because this book has spoken to us. It speaks to my greatest fear, and how I’ve actually been feeling for a few weeks now. That everything is held together by Band-Aids and Elmer’s glue.

Katrina goes on to explain, “The last few months had been a carnival ride of constant motion that left me dizzy and sick to my stomach. I wanted off. I wanted someone to pull the brake. I wanted to make it stop, but I didn’t know how to make it stop. I  ddn’t even know what stopping meant.”

Um, who can relate? Whoa.

Her book is so honest and real in chronicling the trials and tribulations of working motherhood. It left me feeling validated, but most of the time I read it and vacillated between being completely freaked out about the future with a potential 2nd child and feeling like ‘I got this,’ because part of what she talked about what the magical aspect of working part-time. She called them “Magic Fridays” when she had a 4 day work week, which is a phrase I think I’m going to borrow. But…there was one piece that I’m still chewing on.

Because, when I take a step back, which is like a layman’s term for almost depersonalizing, I realize that there is actually nothing in my life right now that should be making me feel this crazy-carnival way. My husband and I have been in a really good place. Potamus is teething, but sleeping much more, and we’re down to one time nursing. My class is going pretty well and my advising schedule isn’t too crammed. Flexible job. Yoga class. Therapy. From the outside of my own mind, looking at my life, I’m actually in a really calm content place. And yet…..and yet…I’m not.

I know that everyone has different thresholds, but I’m actually not okay. I feel like I might start crying at any moment over any little thing. So I’m back on my meds. I got the prescription filled yesterday, and hopefully they’ll kick in next week. I felt like I was heading toward this cliff and I didn’t want to go there again. Because even my coworkers and students have noticed a change in my mood this last week especially. My irritation with things being out of place in the classroom is an all time high.

And part of me worries that if I am like this with one kid, what will happen if I have another? I know that’s a long way off from needing to think about, that I get to just enjoy the next several months and don’t even have to talk about it, and trying to project how I’m going to feel into the future isn’t really that great anyway, because it’s rarely true. Though, if I’m totally honest, thinking about it too much might send me into a panic attack.

Where is the line between intuition and anxiety? Because, in my mind’s eye, I can see us having another child. Feeling that completion feeling that I really do want. And I can also see myself having a nervous breakdown in the same picture. That just the stress of two kids, even a part-time job, and doing all the parenting things that are never ending, will kill me. That’s how it feels. I know the reality is one step at a time, but I do get terrified. Because:

“The line between ‘Everything’s okay’ and ‘I’m on the verge of total collapse’ is so thin.”

So true. And yet, when I finished the book, I felt really hopeful. Because, while I might feel on the edge a lot, I’m not alone. And I have supportive friends, partner, and am taking all the really good steps to beat back the anxiety and depression. And I’m learning more about myself, like going back on meds when I see the train-wreck coming, or choose to NOT go to yoga because I had been gone every night of the week and just wanted to relax (which feels different than just not going because I’m anxious/depressed), and taking sweet advantage of my Magic Friday today to rest while Potamus was resting.

Moms, I recommend this book. Working moms, I definitely recommend this book. Mom with anxiety, read this book. It’s so good.

What have you read lately that’s spoken to you? Inspired you? Made you feel less alone?

 

The Runaway Bunny

The Runaway Bunny is staple children’s book, one that was read to me as a kid, and one that I read recently to Potamus. Though he was mostly uninterested in it, which I believe due to the less-than-exciting pictures on each page (because how can books really compete with TV these days, anyway?)

But reading the book made me remember my childhood, and all of these conflicted emotions came flooding back. Of course it relates to being adopted, because what doesn’t these days? I recently mentioned this book in an online thread, that was about the story I Love You Forever (one I mentioned in my last blog post), where I see it as “creepy” that the mom climbs into her grown son’s room to watch him sleep. The online poster said that I was reading the story as an adult and projecting adult feelings onto it, rather than understanding the toddler’s need for a story to show something outlandish but driving home the point “I will always be your mom, no matter how big you get.”

I understood, in theory, and think that it works for many families and toddlers. But not for me. Because this story, of The Runaway Bunny, was actually frightening and made me sad as a kid. But I wasn’t able to articulate my feelings at the time. In case you don’t remember, here’s an excerpt from the story:

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away.
So he said to his mother, “I am running away.”
“If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you.
For you are my little bunny.”

“If you run after me,” said the little bunny,
“I will become a fish in a trout stream 
and I will swim away from you.”

“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother,
“I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

As an adult I could read all sorts of things into this story, making it about control, and not letting a child have autonomy. Though I know the message is supposed to be ‘I love you, I will not let you get too far away from me,” I see it is “you can’t hid from me, ever, I will find you. Which feels creepy. It doesn’t say “if you are a trout in a stream, I will be sad and miss you.”

And the message felt so mixed up as an adopted kid. Because, on one hand, I desperately wanted to believe that no matter what I did my parents would be there for me. But, I, of course, knew that wasn’t the case. Because if parents, or mothers in particular, would go to the ends of the earth to find their ‘little bunny’ then where was my mom? Not my adoptive mom, I knew she was right there, but where was my other mom? And what was wrong with this little bunny that she wasn’t coming to find me? And, if she didn’t do it, then what would my adoptive mom do if I ran away? So there was sadness.

The other thought was “oh my gosh, she’s going to come find me,” in a too-terrified-to-articulate way. This idea that the mother character would change shape (become a fisherman, a mountain climber, a gardener) in order to find the bunny made me question everything around me. Was that grocery store checker my mom? Was the school bus driver my mom in secret? Who was she? When would she pop out of hiding and tell me she had found her little bunny?

Of course life isn’t like the Runaway Bunny. I hadn’t run away. I had been given away. The Giveaway Bunny hasn’t been written yet, but perhaps it needs to have its own story someday. And it wasn’t until I was an adult, reading the story to my son, did I realize “this book is full of shit, and traumatized me, and I need to find something different.”

And I have.

In the book, No Matter What, by Debi Glilori.

 

The book is gender-neutral, with a Large and Small fox characters, and the sentiment is ‘no matter what’ I will love you. But instead of the freaky-find-you-at-all-cost-if-you-run-away, the message at the end is”We may be close, we may be far,/ but our love still surrounds us…/ wherever we are.” I’ve read this one 100 times to Potamus, so many that I almost have it memorized. And it feels good to find a book that fits his needs while doesn’t trigger my own history. I highly recommend it to little ones in your life.

It’s funny, though, to be triggered by random memories from childhood. And to have words, now, to explain how I was feeling then. It makes me wish and hope for many more children’s advocates to help kids give voice to their experiences. Or even to ask the questions about how a book, or TV program, or conversation makes a kiddo feel. While I don’t know if I would have felt safe enough to say how I felt about that story, I think it would have been interesting to at least have been asked.

Have there been any books that you’ve read to your kids now that have brought back memories (good or bad) from your own childhood? Is there a story that you definitely want to pass down to your child? One you want to avoid? Tell me!

When You Were Inside Mommy

I bought this book awhile ago, in hopes to start the readings early with Potamus. I also bought a book about having another baby, but loaned that to a friend, since there’s no need for me to read a story about something that’s not happening lately. And it’s a book that Potamus has asked me to read a few times, sitting through the whole story, and patting my belly when I talk about how he used to live inside me. This is a very easy and sweet book for little ones to understand, but I have noticed so many feelings as I read it.

Because I never had books read to me like this. In fact, it wasn’t until I was an adult, and working with a gal who was pregnant, did I really come into close contact with pregnancy. Nobody I knew was pregnant, nobody talked about pregnancy other than “don’t get pregnant before you’re married.” So reading this story, and seeing how connected Potamus is to it, it made me think about my childhood. How I was the kid who answered “offices” when asked “where do babies come from?” How I felt growing up that I had just sorta ‘dropped from the sky’ and had no physical connection to my mom. It feels so different with Potamus. I am sitting there, reading a generic story about pregnancy, and I’m nodding along like “yes, you were as small as a dot. yes, you were inside mommy’s womb, right there,” as I point where my belly button is. I just wonder if I had been read stories like this as a child if I would have felt less…hatched. And then I wonder if I would have just been even more confused, as to why I grew in someone else’s belly.

I know, now, that there are more books for young adoptees, though I’m often put off by the ‘special chosen child that God put in someone else’s belly for us’ storyline that they seem to follow. But who’s going to write a children’s book about a teen who gets knocked up and they decide to give the kid to adoption because they don’t want their families fighting over custody? Yeah, that one might be hard to pitch…

I guess I was surpised. I though that since I had been pregnant, and enjoyed it, and am bonded and love having had Potamus naturally, that I would have been peaceful and love reading that story. But it makes me wistfully sad for the connection in stories that I didn’t have growing up.

Any children’s books do you read that make you feel emotions you were unprepared for?

Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves (Part 2): Control, Autonomy, Respect

brushing teeth, because HE wanted to

I’d like to think that I have a lot of respect for Potamus, even though he is a tiny little human. I give him a lot of space to roam and come back to me. I genuinely look at him as a very small person with needs, feelings, and wishes of his own. But, in Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves, I was challenged by this notion of control, and how it might manifest in the way of cooperation. Naomi Aldort’s premise is that children need unconditional love, and because they crave it, they might give in to areas that their parent are trying to control so that they feel like they’re loved…even though she asserts that “giving up their will is the cause of most of the difficulties with children.”

So, it made me wonder…do you sometimes think:

How can I get her to do chores, be quiet, stop the tantrum, eat her food, etc., reflect a wish to control the child. IT is about ‘making’ the child do what the parent wants; the child has to give up what she wants, which is giving up on herself.

Whoa, right? Guilty as charged. Though when I read that I thought to myself, “big whoop, we all have to do things we don’t want to do.” But do you remember that feeling? When you’re doing XYZ and then you havetostoprightthisminute because someone arbitrarily (in your mind) tells you to? Or, if you had a family member who only expressed love to you when you behaved in a certain way, or got good grades, did you wonder, deep down, whether they really loved the real you? I certainly have!

I think this is the one that I’m going to have to mull over the longest. The book suggests offering chances for children, even young toddlers, to engage with, even asking for help…but with the freedom for the child to choose yes to help or no to not, just like we’d do with adults. The part of me that listens to Mother Culture says “no no no, adults are in charge, they are big and can ask for requests and to expect it to be done.” The still, quiet part of me, knows that even when I was small I had opinions and wanted to do things myself and not be asked or badgered into doing them. Or, if Boof came home, and because he is physically bigger than me, asked me to do something where I felt I would be harmed or unloved if I said no. That’s not really cooperation, that is control. If I notice that Boof is folding laundry and I want to join him, then I am freely entering into that experience. If he asks, and I say no, and it is just as loving, then I am truly free. So, why should a different set of rules apply to children?

In what ways do I try to control others, namely Potamus? When I say things like “lets go outside” and then pick him up without his choice to freely follow me, I guess, would be one way. Or putting food on his plate and expecting him to eat it (though this is something I try not to do). In fact, in a way, lately, we’ve been trying to help Potamus communicate his needs/desires about food, by picking him up and walking him around the kitchen to point to what he wants. While this won’t be something we can do forever, and I certainly am not excited about the prospect of making different meals each night or catering to my kid’s every whim. Of course, that takes it to an extreme, but I notice, the story in my head, about being controlled BY my child…and that in order to combat that I need to control HIM. Whoa, that’s a little tidbit of insight from my brain!

Thoughts on control/autonomy/respect?

Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves (Part 1): Validation & Word Choice

Last week Offbeat Families recommended a book called, Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves: Transforming parent-child relationships from reaction and struggle to freedom, power, and joy, by Naomi Aldort. I didn’t read up on Naomi or the book before ordering it on Kindle, so that I could have an open mind. I wasn’t really looking for advice, I am feeling really good about my mothering in the past few weeks, even relaxing around the edges of weaning. I actually feel that we’re closer to weaning, though I’m actually nursing more often.

At any rate, the whole premise of this book is to encourage attachment and intuitive type parenting to increase children’s belief/understanding that they are unconditionally loved and respected. Though, I will say, I am glad to report that nowhere does she say “let your kid do just whatever they want, whenever they want.” While autonomy, respect, not controlling, and unconditional love are explored, it felt right, for me, and something I’m already doing a pretty good job of, but want to explore now (and in further posts) some of the nuggets that I will be taking away with me.

First, I really resonated with the quote:

Talking about feeling sad, upset, or disappointed may or may not be grasped by a younger child. Instead, young children feel most validated when facts are acknowledged.

Whoa! Revolutionary! Whenever Potamus cries, or gets upset, I tend to “forecast” what he’s feeling. “Oh buddy, I’m sorry you’re sad,” rather than focusing on the facts “I asked you to stop playing with that toy,” or “I wanted you to go to bed, but you probably didn’t want to.” I’ve even noticed, that when I’ve just stated the facts, without TELLING him what he feels (or guessing), that he’s been a lot calmer. Revolutionary, because I thought that acknowledging what I thought he was feeling, giving voice to it, that I was helping. While I haven’t actually read any of her research, I am going to just try an experiment and give voice to the facts of why he might be upset, and see how it goes.

Like, today, instead of the usual storyline I tell Potamus in the car, “we’re going to school, and you might be sad, but mama will be back this afternoon.” While this might be true, he might get sad, am I putting on him a storyline that he should be sad when I leave? I don’t tell him that story at any other place and he adjusts really easily. So, today, I said “I am going to leave, and it might be before you want me to.” I noticed that I was more relaxed in daycare drop off, stayed with him a bit, and then he did cry…we’ll see how he does the rest of the day.

Anybody want to join me in this experiment? Validating our kids by stating facts, and not just putting our storyline onto their emotions? If you do it, lemme know the results! Any changes? Differences? Differences in YOU?

 

Blue Like Jazz

In college I was assigned the book Blue Like Jazz: Non-religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality for an internship that I was doing at my local church. This book was life-changing on so many levels. The way that Don wrote about his ever shifting views of faith and religion and relating to religous people was exactly what I needed during that time of my life. It felt so real, expressing so many things that I had felt, but hadn’t been able to put into words. Characters said things like:

“And I found Jesus very disturbing, very straightforward. He wasn’t diplomatic, and yet I felt like if I met Him, He would really like me. Don, I can’t explain how freeing that was, to realize that if I met Jesus, He would like me. I never felt like that about some of the Christians on the radio. I always thought if I met those people they would yell at me. But it wasn’t like that with Jesus.”

And that was radical and true and made me feel like I wasn’t crazy in this whole trying to relate to God and The Church and Christians and the fucked-upness of so much of my fundamentalist brainwashing that took place as a child/teenager.

And it wasn’t just about the topic of spirituality, it was the way in which Don wrote about his life, weaving childhood stories in with random musings, current happenings, and future speculations. I heard, a few years after the book was popular, that some people who had loved the book were suddenly very angry with Don because they learned that his “memoir” wasn’t 100% fact, that he had, in fact, taken some creative license with his storytelling. But that made it all the more beautiful to me. That there can be truth in a story even if it’s not 100% historically accurate (which, coincidentally, is how I now view The Bible). Don’s way of writing truth, without it being historically dry facts was life-giving and has, to this day, still influenced my own writing style (at least, in my mind it has). Like, it made this whole concept of blogging for the world okay.

 

So, when I saw, on Netflix, that Blue Like Jazz had been made into an indie movie I jumped at the chance to watch it. I was really curious about how they would translate random life stories and musings into a cohesive plotline. I was excited to see the characters (Don, and Penny, and Tony the Beat Poet) all on screen. While some people go into movies with a critical eye, trying to always compare the book version to the movie, I mostly went in as a curious individual, wanting to feel connected to something larger. I haven’t read the book since 2004, so I have mostly forgotten the actual words, and am left with how the book made me feel. I guess I wanted to feel something, and so I picked this movie.

And, sadly, I was disappointed. You knew that was coming, right? I know it was a hard storyline to make into a movie, though I think there were things that could have been added, and things that could have been left out, that would have made it better. I almost think titling it Blue Like Jazz made this pressure for it to live up to a bestselling book, and this pressure for it to follow a storyline from the book, rather than trying to get to the essence of the feeling or big takeaways that people felt from reading the book. I think it got close, a couple of times, but didn’t do it justice.

For example, the character of Penny becomes a Christian in the book, and is really transformational to a lot of people simply because they see her being a loving, kind, compassionate person. She loves God and people see it. In the movie Penny’s character is good and compassionate, but there’s something about her delivery that seems like she’s just trying to be a good person, and while it’s nice, it’s not inspirational. It almost comes off as a little goody-two-shoes, which was not how the character was in the book. I think they tried in the movie, but I think it didn’t quite measure up. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t inspiring.

There were other aspects, like trying to make Don’s family life more chaotic than it appeared in the book, or focusing on other, in my opinion, more trivial details, which made me think…if Donald Miller had simply set out to create a film on non-religous thoughts on Christians spirituality (the subtitle to his book), what would it have looked like? Even if nothing but the theme had been the same, would the film have done something more for my heart?

After watching the film I started reading the book again. It read like an old friend, and I found myself laughing and nodding in parts. But I also noticed that time had done something strange to my memory. Maybe it’s because I’m in a different place, now, but I didn’t find myself as moved by it as before. I’m hoping it means that the words have just sunk into my soul and aren’t life-changing radical as before, but I’m mostly worried that I’m jaded and cynical and curmudgeony. I stopped halfway and wonder, maybe it’s better if I just leave the memory in the past? It also made me wonder…what am I searching for, longing for, that isn’t being filled by re-visiting old spiritual favorites or new indie films on the same topics? What am I looking for?

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!

What dreams may come?

My dreams have been intense lately, like last night’s adventures that were interupted by my own snoring. There had been flying, by me and others close to me, and there had been labor. Lots of babies being born and one friend in particular who somehow was giving birth naturally, though I know she had just had a C-section a few days ago. I was helping deliver her baby, in the dream, but I can’t quite sort out my role in the whole adventure, now that I’m awake. Because I had a camera and was taking pictures, but also had the feelings that I imagine a doula or midwife might feel. The dream was filled with other women given birth, so many babies, and also, flying. Did I mention the flying already? Flying dreams usually mean that my life is going well, or that I feel in control, which, in the light of day doesn’t seem to be that way at all.

I think the intensity of my dreams is influenced by all the reading I’ve been doing. While I’ve managed to read a few books for pleasure since Potamus has been born, it’s felt like  A LONG time since I’ve really gotten into a book series, rather than sporadically picking up a book and reading it on a whim. But the other day I was at Costco and saw an intriguing book that seemed to fit my interest in things related to motherhood AND fit my interest in mystery/thrillers. The author, Sophie Hannah, has written several books and after I was 1/2 way through the book I bought from Costco, I had ordered a few more on Amazon, and have since bought a few via Kindle. Yeah, I’m on my 4th book…in A WEEK! Holy Moly! At this rate I’ll have read all her books in a month.

But, the characters she has created, and the plots that she has woven so masterfully together, leave me inspired and chilled and totally mesmerized. I love whodunit type novels, as it makes my brain work while I’m reading, trying all the while to figure out who the ‘bad guy’ is and why they’re acting the way they are. These books are written so well that the psychological aspect of the ‘why?’ keeps me guessing and it feels, at the end, like my mind has been sharpened. But in the midst, my heart and mind is racing, and I’ve found that I’m okay putting the book down halfway through, but once I pass the 75% mark, I definitely need to have time to finish the rest or my mind whirls and I can’t focus on things like…sleeping…

Before I went to bed last night, Boof and I laid next to each other and tried to re-connect. I’d been feeling shitty about how much I complain about his workload, but I know that he’s struggling with it, too. I know that quality time is one of my cheesy languages of love, and so not having him around causes me to get irritated. But I do see how hard he’s working and I want to stop nagging and being a crazy psycho about it all. I think some of my craziness has been due to my fear about trying to expand our family to another child. We talked frankly about our desire for another (hopefully daughter, but welcomed son, too) and how two is the max, how we don’t want a 3rd. But I talked about having enough patience for it all.

So I think the intensity of having several friends giving birth, paired with these well crafted psychological thriller books about mothers and crime, paired with my own wrestling around having another child, is causing my dreams to go to a whole other level.

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.