How to fight loneliness, smile all the time

11 Jun
The title of this post is a line from a Wilco song.

Last summer, I had what I guess could be termed a nervous breakdown. The good news is that I wrote an essay about it that will appear in the forthcoming anthology, The Good Mother Myth. The bad news is that though I was proud of myself for pulling out of my downward anxiety spiral mostly on my own (look at how self-reliant and capable I am!), I ended up stuck for months in a toxic holding pattern of isolation instead.

We moved to this town two years ago this summer. The few friendships I tentatively made when we arrived were not yet strong enough (by my own estimation) to bear the weight of my descent into panic. So I didn’t lean on them. My partner resented me for having to pick up my parenting slack. My mother tried to reason with me but there is no reason in Panicville. I called a few friends, here and there, but mainly I shook and sweated and slumped through day after day of my summer of panic on my own.

Escaping the anxiety spiral felt like breaking out of solitary confinement. I wanted to reconnect with those few friends I’d begun to make here but I felt like I didn’t know how. My already unreliable social skills had atrophied in solitary and my opinion of myself had dipped too low. It was easier to just continue going about most of my days alone (with my kids and partner) than to try to reach out to others again.

I still don’t know why I became so suddenly possessed  by manic fear or how I exorcised it from my body, but I do know one thing and I think it’s probably related: I was lonely. I am lonely. Achingly, desperately lonely. I miss my old friends. I miss being able to sit on porches all night or in cafes for hours just talking. I miss that magical feeling of riding around in cars with my people, windows down, music turned up, singing together at the tops of our lungs. I just plain miss sharing many of the days of my life with more than one person (my age). Part of the problem I’ve been told has to do with getting older, part I assume is being a modern American parent, and part is obviously living in a new smaller, less-queer-friendly city without established relationship bonds.

For a long time I resisted saying anything publicly about this. I worried that admitting feeling desperate or lonely would repel others further. But eventually the pain of isolation outweighed my fear of humiliation and I decided to write something short about it on Facebook. To my surprise, a number of my far flung friends commented that they too struggle with feeling isolated and lonely–even those without kids living in big cities where I would expect they’d have ample opportunity to find their people.

So am I not alone in my persistent loneliness? Is everyone, or are a lot of people anyway, experiencing this same hell, too? Is it our increasing reliance on social media and other technology to meet our social needs? Is it that we all just move around more these days or work too much or both?  Maybe loneliness isn’t just a modern problem. This documentary about a couple married 54 years, happily it seemed until their son looked closer, got me to thinking that maybe a lot more people than not are hiding private pain behind their smiles, online and off.

I started reading a book about loneliness. In it, the authors explain that the feeling of loneliness is a warning sign to prompt humans to secure their social bonds, much like hunger prompts us to eat. But the more prolonged the loneliness, the harder it is for lonely people to reach out to form new bonds or strengthen old ones. Personally, the longer I steep in my loneliness, the more self-critical I become and the more I suspect that the few friends I do have don’t like me much anyway.  Plus I worry that I’m setting a bad social example for my kids, and feel sad that they’re not growing up with the village of chosen, cool aunts and uncles and other role models that I imagined for them. What a morass.

The book’s authors discuss various studies that provide scientific proof of brain changes, as well as other ill health effects (artery-hardening, stressed immune systems and higher blood pressure among them), in chronically lonely people. But these authors and others who’ve written more recently about the subject don’t cover just how many people might be suffering from chronic loneliness. I’m positive that a lot of people would take one look at me on a playground or glance at my social media activity and assume that I am not in danger of loneliness. And yet here I am. How many more are there like me?

Book clubs and volunteering have been suggested to me as ways to improve my social health. I like those ideas but feel too paralyzed with insecurity and already harried with my daily (solitary) work and mom life to pursue them right now. I’m still trying to nurture connections in my own little ways here and there. But mostly, I keep fantasizing about some kind of online dating site for meeting new friends, which would probably be an appallingly bad solution in practice, but better maybe than awkward playground overtures, writing a craigslist ad, or spending another year trapped in my head.

Meaningful friendships wanted. Inquire within.

Queer mother of two/aspiring writer in search of meaningful, real-life friendships. Likes gardening, Dolly Parton, gay bubbles, long walks in the woods, and sequins.

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Things people say

11 Jun

I’m working on a new, full post but just found this in my Google Drive and felt like sharing:

While standing in line for Santa with my two boys, I told a stranger that my kids were sperm donor-conceived. I didn’t mean to. I certainly hadn’t planned on it. We were passing the time as children wiggled around below us. I commented on her grandchild’s adorable curls. She observed that my boys were big for their ages, and asked, “Is their father tall?”

Well, actually, they don’t have a father. They were conceived with a sperm donor. Which is more information than you need but I never know how to answer these kinds of questions so I tend to just put it all out there. But anyway, no, as far as I know, their donor was not all that tall, maybe 5’9” if I remember correctly. But my family is tall, so that must be where they get it from.

That’s what I said–to a grandmother, at a Baptist church preschool Christmas festival, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She smiled and said something like, “That’s wonderful! Isn’t that something? Well, they’re just beautiful.”

Phew.

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Room for one more: how did you decide your family size?

22 Mar
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Family of four: Christmas at Granna’s house

Whether or not to have kids is surely a dealbreaker question between couples, but what about how many kids to have?

My partner and I have two (wily, wonderful) children, which is the number my partner wanted all along. Me? I wanted three. I can’t really explain it except to say that when I envisioned my future as a parent before I became one, I always saw myself as a mother of three. Sometimes, I pictured us in a cheesy Olan Mills-type portrait: There I sat in my mom haircut, surrounded by three beaming, freckled faces. (I’m sure there was a partner in there somewhere, too…) Sometimes, my vision was of us was much further in the future, sitting in a cozy living room over the holidays, sharing a bottle of wine and remembering our lives together.

Of course, the way I imagined parenthood before I had kids turned out to be a lot different than reality. Two kids, at the ages of 2 and 4, are hard work. My partner and I rarely get to spend time together alone (we can’t afford babysitters and don’t have family in town to help on a regular basis) and we’re limited in nearly everything we do by our children. There aren’t a lot of everyone-smiling-at-once moments. But it’s worth it.

The love that I feel for my kids and from them is ecstasy. It’s the only spiritual experience I’ve ever known. It’s also the only thing that could have gotten me through a year (literally) of no sleep with my first, and hours upon hours of tantrums, constant sibling conflict, crowdwailing (my term for when they both fill the house and my eardrums with sobs), poop disaster management, child-perpetrated property destruction and constant whole-family sickness (directly caused by our little germ traffickers).

You would think that if I’m so overwhelmed by two, I wouldn’t possibly want one more, right? Wrong. I still do. My partner still doesn’t. This isn’t a dealbreaker issue for us. We’re not divorcing over it, but it’s caused plenty of heartache. When it comes up, my partner feels defensive and afraid that I’m going to start lobbying hard for another child now that our littlest is almost not a baby anymore. I feel sad and alone and shut down by my partner’s reaction. But I know that, for a variety of reasons (mostly money- and health-related), I can’t get pregnant again anyway. So I discontinued storage payment for our remaining stock at the sperm bank last summer. I’ve heard this referred to as the “lesbian vasectomy.” It hurt.

Of course, there are more reasons to not have another child than to have one. Saving money, reducing our environmental footprint, being able to give our existing kids more attention and not letting the children outnumber/overpower us are all valid points. Plus, if we do have more love and resources to give, we should give them to a child who is already here and in need of a family. Private adoption will likely never be affordable for us, but my partner is vaguely open to adopting from foster care one day, years down the road, as long as we’re in a better place financially and our current kids are old enough to be a little less exhausting.

But there’s no guarantee. For now, it’s all a big, very hazy “maybe,” so I feel like I have to mourn that three-kid family vision I lived with for so many years. Some people will say that I should just be grateful for the two healthy children I have (and I am, infinitely so) — especially because we struggled to get me pregnant at all — but it’s not that simple. Being grateful for what you have doesn’t eliminate longing, and that’s OK.

Talk to me, folks. If you have kids, how did you decide how many to have?

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A stay home parent has her day–every week

20 Dec

I get one day a week where my partner, Elroi, manages the kids so I can write. I should rephrase that. I don’t get a day; I take a day. I have a part-time editing job that I do remotely Monday-Friday mornings, and I mind the children during the week while my partner brings home most of the Fakin’ Bacon with a full-time college professorship.

When our second child was born, Elroi completed a doctorate degree and was hired to teach at a college in  another state while I closed my business and planned our move all in the span of a month. Oh, and I became a stay home parent. After we settled into our new city, I struggled in my new role. I knew full-time parenthood to a baby and a toddler wouldn’t be easy but I didn’t expect it to be grueling, which it was, a lot.  All I wanted was a little time off to write or read, or you know, breathe without someone needing something from me. Eventually I realized that alone time wasn’t just going to happen to me. I had to make it happen. So I did. Last spring, I compared calendars with Elroi and we figured out one day each week when El can handle the kids while I do whatever I want.

I use my “mommy days” as we call them (which is weird. We should really call them non-mommy days, or something else entirely.) to write for this blog and to work on other writerly projects.  This fall, our boys, three and 19 months, also started going to preschool three half-days a week. These shorter chunks of me-time  usually go toward smaller tasks like paying bills, showering, returning emails, or obsessive editing of things I’ve already written. Of course, sometimes I lose all self-control and spend those few hours mincing around the Interwebs, or puttering through the house, blasting NPR.

Whatever I do, it’s incredible how revived I feel afterwards, how much more patient I am with my kids, and how much more fulfilled I feel about what I’m doing in life in general. Before I had this time to myself, not only was I not getting anywhere career-wise, but I really struggled with the stress, isolation and monotony of full-time, stay-at-home mothering.

Let me be clear: I adore my children. The love I feel for them is beyond anything I could have imagined, pre-babies. They’re funny and smart and full of personality. I get happy chills every single time one of them grabs my hand without me prompting or tackles me with a hug.

But they’re also mercurial beings who squabble and bite and throw tantrums and need me to manage their bodily functions. My oldest figured out how to let himself out of the house recently, and my youngest is a serial faceplanter. When my kids are awake and I’m in sole charge of their care, I’m in an unblinking, disaster-avoidance mode.

There are relatively calm moments when no one is near a water source or wielding a hitherto benign object–perhaps a rubber snake, a book, or a bouncy ball–that tiny hands can turn into a weapon. I relax a little when one forgets to take off his bike helmet after a neighborhood ride and plays in its head-injury-averting goodness for a while instead.

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Sometimes I’ll stumble on a scene so sublime–like my older son reading to the cat–that the weight of the previous wearisome hours lifts away, as if carried off by cartoon bluebirds. But mostly, about 75 percent of the time (down from 80 percent a year ago), when I’m alone with my children, I’m on Red (exhausting) Alert.

I know every full-time, stay-home parent does not experience this vocation the same way I do, that some have to use all of their spare time to work another job, and that many don’t have the luxury of a partner who could or would give them a whole day off. We’re very lucky that our jobs are both flexible and our income (barely) supports this set up. Elroi wasn’t exactly thrilled about my idea at first, though E recognized why I needed the time away and why it was the right thing to do in our quest for an egalitarian relationship.

I also felt tentative about taking time for myself for the same reason that many women hesitate to ask for what they need. But when I realized what I was doing, I became more determined to make my me-time dreams come true. And when they did, well, it turned out that my scheduled days off benefit all of us. Elroi gets more dedicated, quality time with the kids and better understands how much I do, and I’m an all around healthier person because of my non-parental pursuits and my mental alertness break. Plus, I use a lot of my time alone to work on building an income stream from my writing–which our family needs, and I very much want to provide.

All of that said, some of my favorite moments of the week come as my me-time shifts end. When I pick up my boys from preschool, I walk down a long carpeted hall, through pools of fluorescent light, to get to them. The chatter and squeals of children echo down the cement block walls to me. It always feels surreal, even nearly four years into parenthood, that I’m a mom there to pick up my two sweet-cheeked boys.

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I see my oldest son sitting against the wall, giggling with the classmate beside him. It’s so strange but wonderful to witness him having a social life separate from me. He sees me, jumps up, and runs to me, usually dropping a small trail of clothing items and art projects behind him. He hugs my leg and I stoop a bit to squeeze him with one arm as I turn to look into my younger son’s classroom. The scene replays, only clumsier. My youngest spots me, grins, comes stumbling, arms outstretched. I scoop him up over the half-door between us for a blissful baby hug before turning again to follow my oldest who is already on his way down the long hall and out the door to one of his favorite parts of preschool–the old, low-limbed magnolia tree.

There, with my youngest on my hip, I watch as my oldest climbs up, up , up, taking my heart and my anxiety level with him.

Continue reading →

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Giving thanks and telling stories

21 Nov

I went to see a dentist yesterday to start the process of getting fitted for a night time bite orthotic. My neck, jaw, teeth, tongue and ear hurt, in varying intensities, every day. For a while, I thought this meant I had some kind of terrible disease. I suppose it still could but for now I’m going with the opinion of the second ENT I saw who attributed all of my head and neck symptoms to TMJ.

As I sat in the waiting room, I struck up a conversation with a woman close to my own mother’s age. We were only there together for fifteen minutes at the most but in that span of time, we covered a lot of subjects and my eyes flooded with tears at least twice. This was no average small talk session, people. It was intense. Because I was simultaneously trying to fill out my intake paperwork, I wasn’t focused enough in the beginning to remember how we got from niceties to real talk but she told me a story I can’t forget.

Her son fell in with a troubled crowd in high school after being bullied for years for being a Jewish kid in a very southern, very protestant town. He was eventually busted for underage drinking and possession of a small amount of drugs. His family sent him to a rehab program, and engaged in other tough love measures, and he’s been clean for two years, so far passing every random drug test and attending AA regularly.

He started going to a local technical college and then transferred to a local university. He was doing awesome and she was so proud of how he’d turned his life around. Then, last weekend, he was being the sober driver for a group of friends when he was pulled over. The officer was the same one who had busted him years prior. He sneered, “Remember me?” He then pulled everybody out of the car and searched it. Some marijuana seeds were found in a bag in the back of the car. None of his friends would claim the bag so her son was arrested for possession and violation of probation even though the bag wasn’t his.

He’s a wreck. She described him several times as a “bowl of jello.” She’s not faring much better. She teared up when she talked about how this new arrest could destroy everything he’s worked so hard for. His court date is in January and she is scrambling to prepare a defense. Meanwhile, she was also let go from her job this year because she has lupus and receives chemo five times a month and her employer couldn’t “accommodate her chemo schedule.” A free legal advice service said she could sue but she can’t afford a legal battle against her very well-endowed former employer. Her heartache made my heart ache.

She went on to talk about how our elected officials’ posh lifetime healthcare plans keep them from ever being able to sympathize with folks who can’t get insurance or who need assistance in other ways. “All they care about are things like gay marriage and . . .” Uh oh, I thought. Here it comes–that which shall divide us. I had empathized with this woman, and felt some kind of kindred connection as mothers of kids easily marginalized but I winced at what might come next.

But what came was this: “You know, when I was a nurse, I worked in California during the start of the AIDS crisis, and that more than anything taught me that all that matters is that people love each other. That’s why I was out campaigning against that stupid amendment any chance I got!”  I teared up. I tried to get a word in to thank her but she kept talking, and I kept feeling more and more kindred. I did eventually tell her that it meant a lot to me, as someone who has a female partner, to hear her say those things. She seemed totally unfazed by my revelation. It was the first time in my life that I came out to a stranger who didn’t then respond with at least some kind of surprise or disbelief.

It felt amazing. Who knew normalization could be such a rush!

I was called back before I imagined any way that I could help her besides just listening to her tell her story. But afterwards I realized that I could offer my writing services to either start an online legal fund campaign or at least attract local media attention to her son’s plight. I know the dentist staff can’t give me her contact info but I’m going to ask them to give her mine. Does anyone know if this will work? Can they do that with my permission and still satisfy HIPAA?

When I set out for the dentist’s office yesterday, I did not expect an older straight woman to preach to me in favor of marriage equality in the waiting room. I’m so thankful for her and the thousands of others like her who are doing the hard work of advocating for others in waiting rooms, around dinner tables, in their churches, on Facebook and in other public spaces.

Thanksgiving is many things—a painful reminder of genocide for some, an ugly consumerism-fest to others, and a difficult family ritual for many. It’s true that we should all be thankful every day for all that we have but it’s easy to forget about that when times are hard and problems only seem to be mounting.

This year, I’m just grateful to be alive, aches and all, to love and be loved by my family, and to be making unexpected, life-enriching connections in the real world and on the Interwebs. (That includes you, dear reader.)

I wish you all as lovely a day as possible tomorrow, full of real stories, meaningful connections, and good listening by all. 

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Keep Calm and Do Not Google On

19 Nov

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Last June, I found some lumps where I never had before. A little Googling revealed that they were probably lymph nodes–enlarged lymph nodes. More Googling informed me that infections often cause lymph node enlargement. But I had no known infections. My doctor put me on antibiotics just in case. They had no effect on the lumps. Why else do lymph nodes swell? Cancer, cancer, and more cancer. So, she sent me to a surgeon to see if he thought I should have one biopsied. He said no, they were really nothing to worry about.

I went home and read tales on internet forums about people with enlarged lymph nodes who were young and/or otherwise healthy who were told there was nothing to worry about, only to learn months later that they had lymphoma and their prognoses weren’t good because their cancers hadn’t been caught early enough.

I was determined that this would not happen to me. My boys would not lose me before they could even remember me, not if I could help it. And thus began three months of careening between doctors’ offices, submitting to countless tests, and enduring  a marathon of caregiver condescension and dismissiveness as I hemmorhaged money “advocating for myself.”

There were at least a dozen blood draws, a colonoscopy, abdominal ultrasounds and a CAT scan, and a head and neck MRI, and I eventually demanded to have one of the enlarged lymph nodes biopsied. The pathology came back benign reactive, but containing tattoo pigment. I have plenty of tattoos but my only tattoo near this lymph node was ten years old at least, so I was confounded by this result. More Googling revealed that melanoma cells can look like tattoo pigment in lymph node tissue.

A few weeks before the biopsy, I discovered a weird mole, had it removed, found out it was melanoma in situ, had a wide excision and was supposedly cured. In a follow-up visit with my dermatologist, I mentioned the lymph node and its tattoo ink to her because I thought she might find it interesting. I didn’t think my melanoma and the lymph nodes were connected because she told me in situ melanoma, by definition, has not yet migrated anywhere. (Google confirmed this.) She seemed distressed though, and paged through my chart for a long time before finally telling me I needed to see a melanoma surgeon at a local university hospital to make sure he didn’t want to do a sentinel node biopsy. I was stunned.

Weeks later, I burst into tears upon entering his office in the COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTER wing of the hospital. It was all I could do to keep the forms I had to fill out dry. The melanoma surgeon decreed that my skin cancer was not the cause of my lymph node swelling, but that he could see why I had worried (this was the one thing I hadn’t been worried about, mind you). “You had your bell rung,” he said. I had my bell rung? What, like, my death bell?

Meanwhile, even more Googling uncovered a study which found that women who’ve used fertility drugs (I had to use them for both of my pregnancies) are more likely to develop two kinds of cancers as a result: melanoma (check!) and non-hodgkins lymphoma (#%@#!).

So what did I do? I panicked anew.

There was more to it but the whole summer is a blur for me now, both because I saw so much of it through tears but also because it’s hard to lay down memories when your heart is slamming around all the time and your brain keeps tripping the imminent death alarm, falsely it turns out, and your family is as exhausted by you as the doctors, and Google becomes a harder habit to quit than any you’ve quit before (and there have been many other far uglier ones).

I still don’t have definitive explanations for what all went wrong in my body and my mind this year. I still have the enlarged lymph nodes in their original inguinal location (which I now attribute to my body’s delayed macrophagic attack on an offending “tramp stamp”) and now in my neck too. Yes, I have an anxiety problem, and probably IBS and TMJ as a result (the latter of which may explain the neck lymph nodes that plumped up in August). No, I will not be getting any more tattoos.

All of this is to say I apologize for my long blog absence and for this paltry excuse of a 5-month recap. I’ll probably write more here about my anxious summer later. It’s just that I’ve got other topics pressing now, finally, and I don’t want to get mired again in the mess I just crawled out of. In other words, cue Dolly:

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In Which We Are Lifted Up by the We Do Campaign

13 May

On May 10, my partner and I and our two sons, along with eight other couples and families, and a large crowd of supporters, walked solemnly through the streets of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to the Forsyth County government building which houses the Register of Deeds to apply for marriage licenses. We did it knowing that our applications would be denied–to protest unjust laws, to show plainly who is hurt when discriminatory laws are passed, and to call for full federal equality for LGBT people.

All photos are taken from the Campaign for Southern Equality’s FB page.

Campaign for Southern Equality organized this action as part of their We Do Campaign. Their ethical basis calls for “resisting persecuting systems by expressing the authentic self; and approaching those who oppose your rights with empathy.” In line with their empathetic philosophy, the campaign took great care to communicate their plans to local law enforcement and the folks at the Deeds office in the weeks leading up to the action. Four police officers on bicycles met us where we assembled and accompanied us on our walk, a development that delighted our three-year-old. “Look, Mom, there’s a POLICE OFFICER! There’s another ONE! And another ONE!” Between the police presence, the mystery fruit falling on a section of sidewalk behind Krankies Coffee, his first experience walking across train tracks, and the lollipop I plied him with once we got to the Deeds office, he was loving his first protest.

My partner and I had both worried about encountering counter-protesters, and how that might affect our children. CSE’s Director Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara and Campaign Manager Lindsey Simerly instructed all of us not to engage with them if they appeared but instead to focus our energy on supporting each other. I was confident that we could do this because straight women in wedding dresses, parents, siblings, and friends of applicants and clergy members in rainbow arm bands made up the majority of our  procession. We couples were the minority whom they were there to support. However, as we rounded a bend halfway through our walk, we saw a sizable crowd of people moving toward us on the same sidewalk. I held my breath as I squinted, searching for signs of their intentions. When I spotted “Legalize Gay” t-shirts among them, my partner and I both exhaled and grinned at each other as these additional supporters approached, some of whom turned out to be my partner’s students from Salem College.

All photos are taken from the Campaign for Southern Equality’s FB page.

The decision to involve our kids in this action was deliberate. They’re not in daycare and we don’t have regular babysitters yet so we would have declined to participate if we felt that they wouldn’t be safe throughout the action. But the We Do Campaign is predicated on peaceful, compassionate, loving resistance. Building our family as a same-sex couple in the South is itself a daily walk of peaceful, compassionate, loving resistance, and the main reason that we desire marriage equality is so that we can access the legal rights, responsibilities, and safeguards for our children that come with civil marriage. So heading off to the Deeds office that day was a natural detour for us on our way to the playground and beyond.

All photos are taken from the Campaign for Southern Equality’s FB page.

When we arrived outside the government building, we saw people staring down at us from the glass-walled floors above. Worried that some of them were not happy to see us and might signal that at any moment, I looked back to the warm faces around us as we circled for an interfaith prayer led by a minister in a rainbow arm band. “May love be our ethic. May love be our way,” he said, as our one-year-old began to fuss in his stroller and I fished in the basket underneath for his toy, sweating, and heart thumping in my chest. After the prayer, we and the other applicants headed into the building.

Inside, all was quiet. Our supporters remained outside watching through the glass while we rode up an escalator. On the second floor, our smaller group congregated outside of the Deeds office, separated by more glass from the counter where we would take our stand. Sober-looking government employees sat behind that counter. They were expecting us and knew that our demonstration was to be peaceful and kind. Still, I’m sure they were as nervous as us. Behind them, multiple photographers hovered, cameras obscuring their faces. We knew media might be present but we didn’t expect cameras to be aiming out at us from behind the counter, as well as stationed on all sides.

All photos are taken from the Campaign for Southern Equality’s FB page.

When I was younger, I liked to say that I didn’t need a piece of paper from the state to validate my relationship. Indeed, my relationship still doesn’t need anything beyond my partner’s and my commitment to be valid. But now that we’re older and especially because we have children, we do need all of the rights and protections that civil marriage offers to families. Opponents argue that we need only visit a lawyer to obtain these rights and protections. Well, we’ve visited a lawyer several times, and spent thousands of dollars doing it, something that many same-sex couples cannot afford, and while we achieved some protection by doing so, it’s not enough. We don’t have any of the over 1,100 federal rights and protections afforded to others through civil marriage, and we’ll only truly know the strength of our legal agreements when one of us dies, when it’s too late to fix any errors or weak points in our documents.

I knew what was going to happen when we approached that counter. I knew that my hands would shake as we presented our application and identifying documents, that one or both children would squirm and want to wander off as the clerk examined them, and I knew that it would be painful when she told us she could not grant us a marriage license. All of that happened. But I was not prepared for how acutely the moment of denial would sting. Grief poured through my body as I stood there, hugging our one-year-old baby, next to my partner who held our three-year-old while he enjoyed his lollipop.

Images from our life together flashed through my mind: that first night my partner and I talked until morning outside of an Atlanta gay bar, our wedding two years later, the births of both of our children, our celebration over moving to North Carolina for my partner’s new job, and many more moments of joy and hardship since that move, including the devastating loss on Amendment One just days before.

I had asked my partner to do the talking once we approached the counter because I knew that if I opened my mouth I would cry. But that surge of grief and cascade of memories of our life together compelled me to say something. The first thing that came to mind was, “We’ve been together for seven years, and married in our hearts for five. I hope that one day we can come back here and get issued the marriage license that we deserve.” Our one-year-old staged his own little protest by crying with me, and flailing too.  I don’t remember if the clerk responded, just that she seemed kind, and sorry.

We turned and walked out into the fold of the other couples who offered hugs and affirmation. As they prepared to enter the office one at a time after us, that rainbow-banded minister walked my partner and me and our boys down the escalator and back to the larger crowd of supporters outside who clapped and cheered as we emerged. The grief that had poured through me just moments before was  replaced with a flood of hope and gratitude. We joined the group and celebrated the others who came out after us. Each time the doors opened up and a couple walked out, a powerful, resounding cry of love and compassion went up through the air in downtown Winston-Salem.

Since last week’s vote on Amendment One, I’ve been fighting hard to stay positive and strong, to not let despair over our future here debilitate me, and to resist that human tendency to be consumed with anger toward the people who voted against our family. Friends and relatives and total strangers have made the fight a lot easier with a steady flow of encouraging messages, online and off. But it was that moment when we exited the government building as a family, having sought and been denied rights and protections afforded to our fellow North Carolinians, and a joyful crowd surrounded us with love, that’s when the struggle in my heart shifted. That’s when the healing began.

The We Do Campaign rolled through Wilson, Durham, Winston-Salem, Bakersville, Marshall, and Asheville last week. Asheboro and Charlotte are next.  In each city, some protesters have opted to participate in and be arrested for  peaceful sit-ins to further draw attention to the cause. If you cannot participate in these actions, please consider donating money or other resources to help the Campaign for Southern Equality cover legal fees and organize future actions.

If nothing else, like them on Facebook, share their mission, and spread the love.   

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More media links:

In which I cry, Izzy cries, and the crowd cheers.

In which we are interviewed by the local Fox news affiliate. I admit that I was highly suspicious of this reporter, solely because she was from Fox, but she was actually very nice, and her camera man looked deep into my eyes afterwards and wished us well.

In which the local newspaper misquotes me and says I have a daughter.

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Amendment One and My Family, After the Vote

9 May

On the evening of May 8th, I was home on my last long day of the semester with our two kids while my partner taught two final classes. I checked the election results a couple of times online before it was clear that Amendment One had indeed passed. I had been half-consciously preparing all day for this outcome but my heart sank anyway.

A lot of thoughts flew through my head. The excitement I’d been feeling over the house we’re under contract on in Winston-Salem vaporized. I wished we could move out of North Carolina to a state where my family is more welcome. At the same time, I want my children to grow up close to my mom (and other supportive family members) and moving out of NC would mean moving further from her. Which is better for kids, I wondered: growing up around a large and loving extended family in a state that demonizes their parents or growing up with minimal extended family presence in a state that’s more accepting of us?

I damned the job market for landing us here even though my partner loves working at this small liberal arts women’s college which also provides me with partner benefits. I imagined all of the self-righteous, anti-gay people who supported the amendment rejoicing together and feeling smug at the same time as I and so many good, decent, compassionate people felt crushed and dejected. I knew that running away is not the answer, that we need to stay and be the change, but at what cost? Our kids’ childhoods?

Our one-year-old toddled around the room (he’s walking now as I predicted) and our three-year-old chased him, both oblivious to what I was going through. I decided to take them outside for some fresh, cool air and a change of scene. I grabbed my camera for added distraction and I asked my older son to sing me a song, expecting to hear Itsy Bitsy Spider or his original song, Smash (which goes something like this: Smash, smash, smaaaash, smash, smaAAAash!).

Instead, he fetched his ukelele and made up a new song on the spot:

In case you can’t watch, or understand him, here are the lyrics:

I just want you to stay with me
and I don’t want you to go out
in the woods by yourself.
I will come with you in the woods
because I don’t want a bear to get you!

That’s right, my son wrote his first love song, and his timing couldn’t have been better.

Good, kind people of North Carolina, I want to thank you for voting with and for my family. Unfortunately, there are a lot more bears in these woods than we knew. But I want you to know we’re staying with you, we’re walking with you through these dark times, and together we will keep each other safe and loved.

And we will fight back.

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Here’s a roundup of my favorite reads from today:

The morning after Amendment 1: Your world. And mine.

Despite Amendment One’s Passing, NC Is A Better State Today

An Open Letter on Amendment One

Amendment One and An Angry Lament of a Native Son

Obama Backs Gay Marriage

Pro-amendment campaigners harassed my family at the polls.

5 May

On May 4th, my partner and I took our two boys with us to vote early against North Carolina’s Amendment One. We expected to peacefully fulfill our civic duty before my partner headed off to work and I figured out what to do all day with a sickly-but-energetic three-year-old and his ever-more-independent baby brother.

We were not prepared at all for the drama that we encountered as we approached the early voting location. A crowd of people stood along the path we needed to walk down to enter the building. It was clear these people were campaigning from their signs and the way that they all quietly stared at us as we made our way across the parking lot. I got the sense that the crowd was lying in wait, that as soon as we were close enough to pounce upon, we would be pounced.

My partner held our three-year-old’s hand as we walked and I hugged our one-year-old who was snug against me in a front carrier. Surely, these people wouldn’t be ugly to us in front of our children. My heart raced as I scanned for friendly faces or messages. I could see signs both for and against the amendment, as well as individual candidate paraphernalia. As we moved to within speaking distance, a woman feebly called out the name of her candidate, and asked if we would vote for him. We barely had time to respond before the rest of the group erupted with their messages.

I was so overcome with the cacophony and the pounding of my own blood in my ears that I didn’t catch a lot of what was being said. I did hear “Vote for marriage!” and my partner say something back like, “This is our family. We’re here to vote to protect our family.”

Two young men were there campaigning against the amendment, one of whom wore an anti-amendment homemade sandwich board. I smiled at him and managed to say, “Thank you for being here to support us.” The other anti-amendment campaigner called out to us over the mayhem in a sing-song tone to “Vote agaaainst this prejudicial amendmennnnnt!” His silly but kind expression of support helped to briefly becalm my racing heart. I pumped my fist in the air and replied, “That’s what we’re here for!”

Inside the polling location, the atmosphere was calm and quiet. Everyone we encountered was respectful and kind. One poll worker cooed over our youngest, and tickled his feet. We didn’t have to wait at all to vote and the whole process from start to finish took fewer than five minutes.

As we walked toward the exit, we could see the crowd again through the glass doors. The anti-amendment supporters argued with the pro-amendment campaigners. I felt an intense flush of gratitude that these young guys were willing to stand out in the hot sun, unwaveringly weathering the anger of our opponents, to fight for our family’s rights and the rights of many others like us.

I hoped we’d be left alone as we walked to our cars because no amount of shouting was going to change what we’d already done. But no, we re-entered the chaos as we exited the building. Again I thanked the young men for their presence. As we passed the crowd, a woman who looked to be the same age as my mother shouted after us, “Children are already suffering! VOTE FOR!” Her voice was shrill and angry, and she clearly meant to harm us with her words.

Unfortunately, in the moment, she succeeded. Tears pricked my eyes but I held it together until we got to our cars. Still within view of the crowd and the malevolent woman, my partner and I carefully put our children in their carseats, and then hugged before before driving off separately. As I drove away, my tears spilled out. My three-year-old asked where we were going and I replied that I didn’t know yet. He asked me why I was sad. I told him that the woman who shouted at us hurt my feelings. He told me she wasn’t very nice.

I told him he was right. I knew that the woman was wrong not only in how she spoke to us but she was wrong about what she said too. Our children are not suffering. One need only spend a day with us to realize that our children are thriving, happy, and well-loved. They’re fortunate to not only have two adoring parents but also an assortment of doting grandparents, aunts, and uncles. If that woman only knew us or any family with same-sex parents personally, I believe her heart would soften, and her mind would change.

In Georgia, where my partner and I voted regularly for the last ten years, people campaigning at voting locations must stand 150 feet from the entrance of the building. So even though we’d voted in controversial elections before, we’d always parked inside the buffer zone and never had to walk through a gauntlet of electioneers. In North Carolina, the buffer zone is much smaller, set by law to be a minimum of 25 feet to a maximum of 50 feet, varying by location.

This law has got to change. Voters should never have to walk through a gauntlet to get to the polls, especially when they’re voting on deeply personal issues. I plan to always bring my children with me when I vote so that they understand from an early age that voting is an important and meaningful part of adult life. They should not have to be exposed to the uncivil, oppressive harassment we experienced on May 4th.

As I drove home, I was disappointed in myself for not responding to that woman, for letting her get away with hurting us without consequence. What kind of example was I for my children? Have I really come this far in life to lose my voice now? So I turned the car around, heart hammering away again, and decided to confront her.

As we drove back toward the polling place, my mind scrambled to think of what to say. I thought about telling her she and her ilk were the only source of suffering in my children’s lives, or that no amendment or law would stop me or people like me from continuing to build families and that our children will rise up to overturn this backwards BS if it passes anyway. I was angry. I was shaking. I admit that I wanted to wound this woman verbally as she did me.

But I realized as I circled the parking lot that nothing I could say would affect her, and shouting out the window of my car while my children sat inside would only serve to drive up my blood pressure, bewilder my children, or worse, frighten them. Besides, yelling angrily at people different from me isn’t my thing. It doesn’t feel right to me.

I realized that I hadn’t lost my voice. I used it that morning to vote and I would use it again to share this experience on my blog and over Facebook too. So, with my heart ready to quit on me from the stress of the morning, I drove off again and in the spirit of nonviolent resistance, I bought my son an organic chocolate milk and me a green smoothie at the Starbucks drive-thru and started writing this post out in my head.

Our one-year-old, not suffering. (Notice our three-year old in the background, also not suffering. Duda, on the other hand, might be suffering a little.)

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Amendment One and My Family

8 Apr

On May 8th, my neighbors, my mom and sister and brother and aunts and grandma, my postal worker, my landlord, my local firefighters, the checkout people and the manager and the baker from the grocery store, the old drunk but friendly guy who walks up and down our street all day long, other parents at the playground, drivers beside and around me at any given stoplight, and many thousands of people I will never see or meet will have the opportunity to vote on the validity of my marriage.


On that day, the people of North Carolina will go to the polls to vote for or against amending the state constitution with this sentence:  “Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.” Many will stay home because they don’t feel passionately one way or another, or they’ll be too busy with their valid marriages and recognized families to weigh in.

I’m not going to write about all of the consequences, unintended or not, of the amendment passing, including those for straight people and unmarried couples and their children, because to me it should be enough that it’s wrong for voters to literally deem thousands of same-sex couples’ relationships invalid. But if you’d like to read more about all of the amendment’s other harms, visit www.protectallncfamilies.org.

Instead, I’m going to tell you about us.

This is us.

My partner and I have been together for seven years. We have two kids, and moved to North Carolina from Georgia last year after my partner finished a doctorate degree and was offered a professor position at a local college. Even though we left good friends and a comfortable-for-our-family social climate behind in Atlanta, we were so thrilled to leave the big city for beautiful North Carolina where the majority of my extended family lives. We’re now an hour and a half away by car from my mom and aunt whom our boys adore. We love being able to take a Sunday drive to see them, and do it often. Having nearer-by, reliably loving babysitters is another added perk. You can imagine our dismay then, when only a month after we moved here, the North Carolina legislature voted to put Amendment One on the spring 2012 primary ballot.

Grant Leslie shares her gadgets.

On a typical day in our lives, the baby wakes up at seven. I blearily roll out of bed to change his diaper. On my way, I turn off the hall light that was on all night in case our older son made his way from his bedroom to ours. After diaper duty, I let the dogs outside, start the coffee, and fire up my computer while the baby chases the cat faster on his hands and knees than I can move on two legs before coffee. A few minutes later, our older son bounds out of our room and wants to “WATCH VIDEOS!” or “GO TO THE MUSEUM!” or “EAT 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 WAFFLES!” I cajole him into using the potty and putting on big kid underpants. My partner washes dishes from the night before while I make breakfast. After we eat, I check Facebook and email and focus for a little while on my part-time, work-from-home gig.

Mmm, yogurt.

After I finish up, my partner and I trade off the kids so we can each get ready for the day. One of us feeds the dogs. My partner leaves for work. The kids and I meet our playgroup at a local park. After a couple of hours of my older son charging around like an angry ram, incurring and inflicting countless boo-boos, while the baby (who insists on crawling on the ground) stuffs mulch and other inedibles in his mouth and I hang him upside down and do finger sweeps trying not to panic, we go home for lunch and naps. After naps, there might be painting or coloring or playing out back. My partner arrives home from work around 5:30, except for the very long days when I’m on my own until 9:30. On the short days, I cook while the boys jump on our bed with my partner. On the very, very long ones, I cook alone while my older son watches Sesame Street, the baby raids the cabinets and stalks the cat, and I drink a well-deserved glass of wine.

Playing out back.

Bedtime is complicated. Our older son has never been an easy sleeper. We’ve come a long way from his infant days of constant night time waking but he still needs help falling asleep. Currently, after coerced teeth-brushing and pajama wrangling, my partner or I read aloud to him in his big kid bed, and then hold his hand while reading quietly in the dark with a tiny book light until he falls asleep, at which point we creep out of his room, holding our breath, praying he’ll stay asleep. The baby has been an easier sleeper from the start, thank goodness, but lately with new teeth coming in, he takes a lot longer to settle. At some point, they’re both asleep and my partner and I collapse on the couch to report our day’s events to one another.  Some nights we’re too tired to do anything but lose ourselves together in DVR-ed Survivor or American Idol. (Or the Bachelor which is, oddly, my partner’s favorite show.)

On the weekends, our mornings are the same except that I sometimes attempt pancakes. Later, we go “exploring for bears”, grocery-shop, my partner mows the lawn, we do laundry, we tend to our growing garden as our older son digs for worms or turns over rocks looking for bugs while the baby rips at grass and sneaks some into his mouth, and my partner and I attempt meaningful conversation over the constant din of a shouting toddler and a screeching baby. Some days and weeks are hard and long, full of tantrums and sickness and bad news. Others are soft and light and seem to dreamily zoom past.

Exploring for bears.

We’re thinking about buying a house. It’s a buyer’s market, we hear, but as we drive around pondering our options, we worry about the usual stuff: What if we get into a loan we can’t afford? What if one of us loses our job? Will the house appreciate? We also worry about not only the education quality of the local schools  but whether our boys will feel safe and comfortable in them. Will they be bullied for having same-sex parents? We wonder if prospective neighbors will be dismayed to have a same-sex couple with children move in next door. What if we buy only to find that we’re not wanted in our own cul-de-sac? As we drive around, my heart skips and swells every time a I see a “Vote  Against Amendment One” yard sign, but deflates every time I spot a “Vote For.” The good news is that the former far outnumber the latter, at least inside the city limits of Winston-Salem.


Here’s what we hope and dream for our future: we want our boys to become kind, smart, and capable people. We want my partner’s professional career to continue to develop. I want a room of my own to pursue a Writer’s life, or at least to find a way to contribute to our family income with my writing. My partner supports this dream. I’d also like a third child. My partner is a little dubious on this desire, mainly because we don’t have the money to go there right now, and might never. I want chickens too and my partner is fine with that as long as we wait until our current herd of pets have passed on. Mostly, we just want to stay healthy, stick together, grow together, and support each other until the end of our days.

No matter how hard I squint, I cannot figure out what’s so threatening about this little life of ours. I believe in compassion and accepting people different from me so I have spent a lot of mental energy puzzling over the motivations of people who would vote to invalidate our family.  I understand those who object to us mainly do so on the basis of their religious beliefs. I affirm that these people are entitled to their religious beliefs but I do not understand why my fellow citizens’ religious beliefs dictate how our government classifies my marriage and family. Why does my neighbor get a say over who is eligible to be my valid life partner? Why do other people get to vote at all on my access to the same legal rights and privileges they’re free to enjoy without a referendum?

If you’re a North Carolina voter, I want you to know that when you vote on this issue, real people and sweet families will be on the receiving end of the button you push. My family will be glued to the TV screen on May 8th, anxiously watching the voting numbers roll in. At the end of the day, or when the tipping point is reached, we will either be crushed or buoyed by your choice. Choosing to not vote is as good as voting for the amendment.

And if you vote for the amendment, you’re not stopping North Carolina from legalizing gay marriage as the pro-amendment side would have you believe. Gay marriage is already illegal here.  No, a vote for this amendment is merely a public shaming of people like us. It’s a vote for heterosexual superiority. It’s a pep rally for the privileged against the already oppressed. It also has specific legal and healthcare-related consequences. The amendment bans all civil unions or domestic partnership recognition. We’re lucky that I receive healthcare benefits through my partner’s employer. We have to pay income tax on those benefits because we’re not–get this–legally married. But it’s unlikely that we’d lose them given my partner’s private employer’s equality-friendly track record. Many other fellow North Carolinians will not be so lucky, especially those receiving domestic partner benefits from municipalities like Carrboro. (For more information on the specific consequences of Amendment One for same-sex couples and others, please visit: www.protectallncfamilies.org.)

Playing at my partner's campus.

We’re also lucky that my partner was able to legally adopt both of our kids before we moved here. Those adoptions are binding across state lines but second parent adoption cannot be obtained by residents of North Carolina. For same-sex couples in North Carolina who have children where only one parent is the legal parent, this amendment could result in children being removed from a parent they’ve loved from birth if the only legal parent dies. It could mean employers refusing to extend benefits to children of non-legal parents. It could also absolve a non-legal parent from any support responsibility if a couple with children separates. This is not an exhaustive list. I implore you to visit www.protectallncfamilies.org for that.

If Amendment One passes, and I fear it will, for us there will be that initial gut punch, then tears, and then a burning rage at all of those people in our community who voted for it. This rage will slowly simmer down to a low boil on the back burner of our busy lives. I know this because we moved from Georgia where a similar amendment passed in 2004. Three years later, we stood before family and friends and had a beautiful wedding anyway. Georgia’s amendment and the federal Defense of Marriage Act restricted us from many rights and privileges enjoyed by straight married couples but no amendment or law could or will stop us from staying committed to each other and our little family.

Wedding toasts. Photo by Our Labor of Love.

Whether or not the people of my state judge our marriage to be invalid or unworthy of being recognized on May 8th,  on May 9th, we will wake up around seven. I’ll probably be tired and grumpy from nursing a teething baby through the night but I’ll make the coffee and get breakfast going anyway. Four days later, my partner and I will celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. We might get to go on a date if my mom and aunt can drive over to babysit. That same month, our boys will turn three and one. The baby will likely be walking by then, and suddenly having two independently ambulatory kids will bring a host of new, more pressing problems to worry about.

Look out, world.

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