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Hello everyone. It’s been a while. We have all been doing astoundingly well, while dealing with a lot of stuff. I have wanted to write, but have felt a bit stymied. Partly due to extenuating circumstances surrounding our recent oil spill, our move away from Queenstown, the subsequent and ongoing cleanup, etc. But it is also the following message, written as a comment on my “about” page, that has given me extended pause:
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“I’m sorry but how could you as a mother abandon your 2 other children? It’s extremly rare for mothers to give up custody of children and for judges to award custody to fathers, unless of course the mother has serious issues. Very unfortunate for your sons. You seem like the type that runs away from their issues instead of facing them head on.”
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Here is my response:
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Thank you, anonymous reader from Surrey, BC, for your message. You have articulated very succinctly, what I’m sure so many people think, and have been thinking, about me for many years.
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I encountered your message in my inbox after waking one morning from another dream about Cedar and Kristjan. After a good cry, I toyed with the idea of marking your message as spam, and blocking your ip address from my site, but in my continued efforts to be honest, and true, and to face my “issues” head on, I will publish, and respond as sincerely as I can. It is, admittedly, grotesque to me on so many levels, that I am about to voice this with the world, but I have also taken on a somewhat public personae, and so I feel obliged to share.
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I love my children. All five of them. I love them all, equally. And differently. There is not one single day that passes, that I do not think about Cedar and Kristjan, with yearning, grief, heartache, sadness, adoration, love, and hope.
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I carried them for 10 months, I gave birth to them with joy and ecstasy, in the healthiest, most wholesome way that I could. I nursed them and held them and nourished them through their infancy. I love them.
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And yes, I abandoned them. I abandoned them to their father, because at the time, I felt that this was the best that I could do for them. There was no judge, there was no litigation. I chose to relinquish custody, and I chose this for myriad reasons. These reasons involved my need and desire to protect my boys from further conflict and from the courts, and these reasons also involve the broken, messed up tragedy of my relationship with their father, and yes, my “issues”, my own failings as a person, and many other factors which are complicated, and private. This is not “the story” of what happened. That is a tome that won’t ever be published: disappointments, lies, crimes, memories,
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I refuse to denigrate my boys’ father. I have made forays into this territory. But I have decided that I don’t want to be the kind of person that speaks ill of others, or who makes excuses. I am so much better than that. If I indulge my story and my sadness, I can come up with a list of his transgressions and wrongs. But honesty compels me to recognize the simplicity of fact: He is a good father. He loves his children. He has done his best. And most significantly, He is there.
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I have learned throughout the years, that we simply have no access to what goes on for other people, in their private lives. And that there is a world of difference between judging an individual, and analyzing and assessing systems and structures, societies and cultures.
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Ten years ago, I would have judged–and I did–any mother who “abandoned” her children. It is unthinkable, unbelievable, unacceptable.
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In a way, it is a great privilege to be among the most reviled members of our society: a failed mother. A bad mother. I am an expert on bad parenting. Correspondingly, I think I have become something of an expert on judgement, and by extension, compassion. I understand loss, and I understand how incredibly fortunate I am to have Horus, Treva and Felix, and how fleeting these moments of infancy and early childhood really are. Despite the chaos and everyday madness of parenting 3 littles, I can access joy very readily. And I am in a situation and a marriage now, that is imperfect, but whole. My three youngest children have me, entirely.
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Without the slightest doubt, I believe strongly that every single mother loves her children, passionately, fully, and inevitably to a fault. Mothers’ choices and decisions are often–perhaps always–based on impossibilities: the impossibility of being good, of being right, the impossibilities of politics, and reputation; the sometimes-impossibility of partnership; the impossibility of (perish the term) “having it all”. We all want to “have it all”. And each of us will fail. In the past couple of days, the image of the little Chinese boy who bit his mother while nursing, has gone around the social networking circuit. My heart broke for that sweet innocent baby. And my heart went out to the mother, who must be in more pain than any of us can imagine.
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I spent the years between my separation from my children, and my pregnancy with Horus (my third child, and the first of three babies I have with my husband, my Love, Lee) attempting semi- consciously, to kill myself through alcohol and drug abuse. I often consider that it might have been more socially acceptable had I succeeded with my suicide project. Mothers who die are mourned and lauded. Sylvia Plath is not so much remembered as a bad parent, than as a tragic one. She has been immortalized in her own words, and in the words of others. She died an artist and a mother, having it all.
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Sometimes, in my more dramatic and desperate moments, I wonder if it might be easier for Cedar and Kristjan if I had simply died. I wonder to what degree they feel they have been replaced, or forgotten.
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The truth is, we are all alone. Conversely, the separations we see and feel are tenuous, imaginary. In my darkest times, I have cried for my own mother (I still do, sometimes, of course). But she is there, and I am here, and this is the pain of existence, that we all feel, from the first breath of life. And this is why mother-child is the most potent of relationships, the beginning of forever never getting what we really want or need.
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I gave Cedar and Kristjan what I could. I gave them love, and hardship, as all parents do. I gave them the best foundation I could muster. My body and my soul.
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My separation from them is an open wound that will never heal. Short of coming to terms with this, I have come to a philosophic understanding, an acceptance of things as they are, and an acknowledgement that what has been done is in the past.
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I hear stories, here and there: Kristjan is fierce, independent, a talented ballet dancer. Cedar is introspective and thoughtful; considerate, quiet. They are both exceptionally smart and beautiful.
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I have made innumerable blunders and mistakes, I have done innumerable wrongs. It does, I admit, take a terrible and determined mindfulness some days, to continue. I cannot take back the choices I have made, I can’t soften anyone’s interpretation of the facts, or rumours.
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Despite the expectations our culture has of mothers who fail, I refuse to publicly flagellate myself forevermore, or to continuously prostrate myself to you, my known and anonymous public: my family, my friends, acquaintances, former friends, and those who seek to judge or condemn.
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My private, secret apology is eternal: each time I respond to Horus, Treva and Felix with love and gentleness, I am also loving Cedar and Kristjan: liturgy, transformation, moment by moment. This blog, in effect, is both an indictment and a mea culpa. Never enough. What a sour and shitty prize for my sons, hey?
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Are Cedar and Kristjan unfortunate? Possibly. And yet, they live a life they would never have lived with me. They attend one of the most highly respected private schools in the country. They live in comfort with a father and stepmother and little sister who love them and care for them. They have many diverse advantages that might not exist had my path and theirs, and that of their father’s, been different.
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I have made terrible mistakes. And I am done with regret. I have learned so much, including the extent of my own strength. I have learned that regret is a black hole, a room full of empty bottles, a dead end. I have experienced emotional pain to a radical degree. I am very lucky. And I have learned that actually, You just can’t possibly mess with me.
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Forgiveness has allowed me to continue living, and to be the kind of parent I am to Horus, Treva and Felix. This is no consolation, for Cedar and Kristjan, but it is an honest forward movement, a tribute to possibility, and to life. Forgiveness has allowed me to love myself, despite everything, and to love my husband Lee, and to do my work for mothers and babies with an open heart.
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I am given solace by the fact that it is in our nature as human beings to want to know where we come from. I maintain hope that Cedar and Kristjan will one day want to know me.
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I own my wrongdoing. I own my betrayals. I own my abandonment of my children. After years of seething, raging hate, I can honestly say that I love their father. He has suffered much, on account of me.
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I am grateful for Cedar and Kristjan’s stepmother: for loving them, and for making a home for them where they are nurtured and cared for.
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Am I the “kind of person who runs away from [her] issues?” Oh yes. I certainly am. I have run and run. Upon finding that there is emphatically nowhere to hide, here I am. In New Brunswick, at the church, in Queenstown, online, on the streets, at the park, in the woods, in the world.
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I am building a place for myself and for my husband and my kids. And whenever they are ready, whenever they would like to see me, I have a home for my two oldest sons: I have a home for them in my heart, and in my house, (and at my church). I am ready for them to come to me whenever they choose; to connect with me, to be angry with me, to talk with me, to hate me, and maybe even to forgive me for everything I have done.
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I won’t be discussing this much more, if at all, in this blog. I want this space to be a place of celebration: love, babies, family, food…and one of analysis: birth, politics, philosophies.
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I understand that the above can’t possibly answer all the questions you might have about my life. I grow increasingly attuned to striking a balance between openness and a sort of privacy that jibes with my personal moral code. We are all together, walking solo.
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That’s all for now.
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Thank you, as always, for reading.