Muchness and Light

Suddenly I see this is what I wanna be.

Tomorrow's the day I go into surgery to have the first round of excess skin and fat removed.  It's a massive abdominoplasty and body lift, plus lipo on my thighs and chin.  I'm planning to go back in six months for a medial thigh lift and brachioplasty. 

As of today, I've lost 110 pounds.  My original goal was 113, and it's doubtful that I'll make that before tomorrow morning.  I'll hit it after, certainly, and that's okay.  I've dropped more than 18% body fat and am now in the middle of a normal range for my age and gender.  I've lost more than 36 inches in my hips, waist, chest, and boobs.  I was a size 24, and now I'm a size 12. 

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I'm no longer hypertensive.  My type 2 diabetes resolved.  My health is substantially better than it was when I began this journey 15 months ago. 

 

My trainer, Evan, and I waited until today to do my final measurements and pull together the before and after pictures for the Wall of Fame at the gym.  I took the digital files to Walgreen's this morning to have them printed, and the guy working there didn't believe it was me in both photos. 

"I thought that was, like, you and some friend.  That's amazing!"

One of the other trainers at the gym said I should blog about it online and inspire other people.

"She is!" Evan chimed in.  (Though I have no delusions about being inspirational to anyone else.)

I had a really hard time searching for a before picture.  Like so many fat people, I didn't like to have my picture taken.  It was usually me with the camera in hand.  The few pictures of me prior to about 80 pounds ago are horrible, and I won't share them with just anyone. 

I could see myself in that girl, but I had to really look for her around the eyes.  She looked unhappy and uncomfortable in her own skin, and I remember feeling that way for years. 

Now, I'm pretty comfortable at this size.  I'm still working out and careful about what I eat.  I'll have to be vigilant for the rest of my life.  But it's when I see myself naked that I'm most distressed.  The excess skin and lingering fat isn't there when I picture myself.  I don't see the sags and bags when I envision the real Me. 

So I'm starting the process to bring that image out of my mind's eye and into my mirror.  I won't have a swimsuit model body.  I will still have stretch marks and cellulite and imperfections.  I will have huge scars from the incisions.  But the bags are so much baggage, of trauma and heartache and self-loathing, and I'm making an exchange for scars that are permanent signs of healing.  I'm making a choice to be done with that part of my past and myself and to move on.

The surgery is lengthy, and the recovery will be painful and long.  When my pre-op nurse assured me they'll be weighing and measuring everything for my medical record, I joked, "Eighteen inches, four pounds, three ounces!"

In some ways, it is like birthing another baby.  It took time and effort to get her here, and I'm cutting her from (almost literally) my loins.  I may have been a pretty baby and pretty little girl, but she started to grow into something hideous and ugly, born from trauma and miscare.  I've decided to name her Medusa.  And like Perseus, I'm taking my mirrored shield and killing that fucking monster. 

I'll be out of commission for a couple of weeks.  I'll check in when I can, especially on my Facebook page.  Wish me well and say a little prayer—if you're the praying kind.  If you're not, have a drink for me, 'cause it'll be a while. 

When this is all over, I'm getting BIG GIRL new panties—black, with the words scripted in purple rhinestones.  'Cause I totally deserve them. 

I do all I am, and it's all I can do, but I'm true.

This is my 100^th blog post on Muchness and Light.  I felt like it should be something retrospective.  The blog, and the writing that came over the last year, were all triggered by a line from Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010), when he tells Alice, "You used to be much more... muchier.  You've lost your muchness."  That quote sent me on a search for my own lost muchness.  While it's been an amazing year, I've already written about regaining some of my muchness, and I didn't want to be too repetitive.

The search for my self has led me down an incomparably twisted and tumultuous path.  Time and again, I've gone back to the idea of my life being about the journey and not the destination.  DH pointedly asked me a few months ago, "How can you get anywhere when you have no destination in mind?"

I've often set out with a goal in mind, it's hard (and sometimes counterproductive) not to.  But I like to be flexible enough to allow for a change of course when necessary, whether for literal or figurative reasons.  I'm still moving forward, but to what end?

Finally, a few weeks ago, it hit me: the ultimate destination is ME.

The end result of all of this trekking is the truest, most absolute version of Stephanie Quinn Jackson.  One of these days, my heart will stop and play its final beat.  When that day comes, I'll know I've had my heart broken and my pride stolen, but the only person I'll truly have to answer to is me.  I'm the only one who can make the final judgment call as to whether or not I did everything I could to be true—to myself, to my loves, to my life. 

There are days and times when my choices fly in the face of everything and everyone around me.  It's not always easy, and it doesn't always make me or anyone else happy, but sometimes being true, and being Truly Me, is hard.  The easy path from Point A to Point Me isn't always the true path, and I've absolutely been known to take the easiest way possible.  I've had to backtrack from that a bazillion times and go on the way I should've gone to begin with.  What I found, each and every time, is that I would've been much happier, more fulfilled, and gotten just as far, if I'd just gone the right damn way to begin with. 

So I'm not a finished product yet, and I'm glad about that.  If I were done, if I were all Stephanie could be, there would be no point to journeying onward; I could finally sit my not-as-large ass down and just see what passes by me.  Instead, I'm continuing forward and see what I pass by. 

I'll be sure to send a postcard (or a blog post) or two along the way.

 

 

And in that stillness, there was a freedom I'd never felt before.

I've been quiet for a couple of weeks, which is a little uncharacteristic of me.  I was really sick with a nasty upper respiratory thing, and I started a new job.  It's a part-time thing while the kids are in school, boring as hell, but it helps cover the cost of Muchness and Light.

There's also been a lot of emotional turmoil for several weeks.  There's a lot going on with me and in me and around me.  The first anniversary of Muchness and Light came and went on November 25th.  I intended to mark it with a special blog post, but I was caught up in the Thanksgiving holidays and all of the internal drama. 

I put away my fiction rewrites, again, until a better time and started on a much more personal project a few weeks ago.  I'd been writing a lot, consistently, through everything going on.  As is so often the case, writing is cathartic for me; I am sometimes surprised as what I find emblazoned across the screen while I'm trying to work through something.  Honestly, I've been afraid to write, fearful of the truths I might learn about myself and my situation, apprehensive of what choices it might lead me to make.

There have been so many ups and down over the last year, the last six months in particular, and I'm a little weary.  The scales have been swinging wildly from one heavy weight to another, and I needed some time to let them just stop, to find a balance and let that be.  I needed some time for everything to just be still, both in me and around me. 

It's incredibly difficult for me to be still.  I'm a kinetic person, and I like to be constantly moving forward.  Even if I'm in retrograde, I find comfort in knowing it's part of a longer-term forward motion.  And this stillness, this constant central balance, is the kind of happy medium that feels so impossible to me.  It usually takes me a long time to find what others call a happy place, where things are happening on both sides of the equation.  I know that's how life is supposed to be, in the end, but staying in check is boring and unnatural for me. 

So I had to make a conscious decision to be still.  I had to make the concerted effort not to tip the scales in one direction or the other.  I don't know how to do that.  I don't know how not to be in motion.  And writing felt like it might cause ripples and tremors that could ultimately undermine this effort, sending minute shockwaves down the beam and across the pans, shifting me one way or the other. 

Right now, I'm weighing my own trepidation against my deep, visceral need to write.  DH asked me recently what makes me happy, and I immediately answered, "Writing."  It's something I need to do, as much as I need to eat and sleep and breathe.  Even if no one else ever sees what I'm doing, it's something that just has to happen, regularly, for me to clear my own head and find my own insights. 

There's a book I've referenced before, Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland.  I go back to this book a lot when I'm questioning myself as a writer, uncertain as to whether or not what I'm doing is worthwhile--to me, to you, to anyone:

                In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot -- and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy.  It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty.  And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.

In the end, I know my scales won't be in balance for very long.  I have decisions to make and paths to forge.  I will almost certainly choose the path of uncertainty, finding some excitement in understanding the experience of the unknown.  Through all of that, I will write.  I will find my understandings by letting what's in my head come out through my fingertips.  I hope that I will be surprised by the things I find there, on the virtual page. 

I don't know if what I find will make me happy or unhappy, comfortable or discomfited.  I can't see that far ahead right now, I'm trying hard not to push past the fog and make inferences about the future.  But the process itself will bring its own comfort, its own sort of balance against my emotional upheavals. 

So I'm back, and I'm working.  A year later, I'm definitely a much more muchier version of myself.  I'm trying to let that muchness rest and regain its strength, to guide me forward toward the next phase of Stephanie.  I'm moving slowly, very carefully, so as not to tip my scales as dramatically as I have in recent months.  But even if I can't see the sights edging slowly past me, I can feel the kinesis of it all, reverberating gently inside me, pulsing deeply in time to my own heart. 

Of all people, you know who I am… who the world needs me to be. I’m Wonder Woman.

I was talking to my mom yesterday about some stuff that's been going on.

"I will survive this," I said, "and I will thrive."

"Yep, because you're Wonder Woman."

"The problem is that I forgot I'm Wonder Woman.  For a very long time."

"Yep."

Physically, yes, I'm an Amazon.  It's never been more obvious than it is now, after abandoning all of this weight.  I'm strong and smart and resourceful and resilient.

I also like boots and bracelets. 

When William Moulton Marston (a psychologist who was instrumental in the development of the polygraph machine) created Wonder Woman in 1941, he intended to create a new comic book hero who forged victory through love, rather than fisticuffs. 

Marston's wife Elizabeth said, "Fine, but make her a woman."

Based on findings during his years of psychological research, Marston believed women to be more honest and reliable than men, as well being able to work more efficiently.  While Wonder Woman is iconically feminist, some have suggested that Marston's model of ideal femininity—a 6-foot-tall beauty with the ability to lasso men into obedience—is actually the representation of his belief that women weren't really equal to men: they were better.

"Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world," Marston said.

Interestingly, Wonder Woman was modeled after two women—Marston's unconventional, liberated wife, Elizabeth, and Olive Byrne, the Marstons' live-in polyamorous partner.

I'm a tad shorter than Wonder Woman, a little weaker, totally not brunette.  I do not look good in spandex—though honestly, who the hell does?!?  I wasn't formed from clay and blessed by a goddess (at least not that I know of, though I am pretty damn lucky, in general).  I can't fly, and I'm neither especially fast nor freakishly strong.  I wouldn't know what do with a lasso, and I'd probably just lose the Crown of Antiope if anyone let me borrow it for the day.

Like Diana of Themyscira, I will continue to fight for what I believe to be right, no matter what.  There are those who will attest to my telepathic powers, and I'm pretty damn flexible.  I've been known to give up all my power for the sake of a man I loved.  And I will open the proverbial can of Diet Whoopass on anyone who threatens those I hold close to my heart. 

So thanks, Mom, for noticing what I've only recently remembered to notice in myself.  I would tell you to poke me if it slips my mind again, but I'd probably just try to kick you.  But I would have damn good hair while I did it.

97, 98, 99... 100!

It's been coming, I've known for days it was on its way, but it happened, finally.

I've lost 100 pounds.

It's a magical, if arbitrary, number.  It's only one pound more than 99, and certainly less than my ultimate goal of 115, which is well within my sights now. 

It's been a year since I started this part of my journey.  After blowing two discs in my back and being generally miserable in my own skin, I knew it had to change.  I found a great site and app, MyFitnessPal, where I could track everything I ate and did.  I started walking, and then eventually started seeing a trainer.

I still see that trainer twice a week for strength work.  It's expensive, yes, but it makes me accountable.  Some days it's hard, and I'm sore and tired, but I can see and feel the results—and so can other people.  That's a major driving force to keep me motivated when I don't really feel like working out.

In about twelve months, I've abandoned 100 pounds of ass, but I've also lost about 15% body fat.  I'm now in an "acceptable" range of body fat percentage.  My type 2 diabetes has been in remission for over six months.  I'm no longer hypertensive and sometimes have issues with my blood pressure dropping too much.  My resting heart rate is about 70, and I have to really try to get my rate above 120 when I'm working out.  I'm off all meds, with the exception of the thyroid hormone I will likely always have to take, and Zantac because I drink too much coffee.

I started at an 1,800 calorie limit.  Now it's about 1,250.  I usually eat the calories I burn from working out, so most days I actually take in about 1,500 calories.  If I'm hungry, I eat, even if it's over my prescribed limit for the day.  Hunger is a sign your body needs something—it's dangerous to constantly deny those needs.  I avoid refined sugar, because I know it will trigger a binge for me, though I still drink it in my coffee (plus real half-and-half, and I don't even count those calories).  I eat good carbs, a lot of fruit and whole grains.  I have days when I protein pack to help build muscle.  And I almost always get at least 25 grams of fiber. 

I am unquestionably smaller now than almost anyone who knows me has ever seen me.  I'm three inches taller and a size slimmer than when I met DH and Tiff and Mo.  Mo commented a couple of weeks ago, "I forget how freakishly tall you are until you look so skinny!"

The morning I hit the 50 pound mark, I caught my friend, Adam, online.  He and I had talked at length about my weight and body image issues.  He congratulated me and said, "Pretty soon, you'll be at 100.  You'll be so damn skinny!  You can do it!"  I remember thinking that seemed so unattainable, such a distant goal that I couldn't imagine when it would actually happen.  That was six months ago.  And he hasn't seen me in 30 pounds now. 

So I have a little more to go before I feel I will be completely comfortable.  I will never be anything but a curvy Amazon.  Not only am I okay with that, I like it.  I don't want to be rail thin—I know my body could never support itself at 120 pounds. 

I could be at my goal by the beginning of 2012.  It'll be my luck that I finally get the body I want, and the Mayans turn out to be right.  So I intend to enjoy the hell out of myself, with all the people I love.  Even if the world does come to an end, I'll have had a year with the ass I always thought I deserved. 

12:51 is the time my voice found the words I sought.

DH and I have had a couple of conversations recently about the purpose of my blog.  It's definitely a personal blog (as opposed to a corporate or organizational blog), meaning that I'm reflecting on what I think and see and feel.  Originally Muchness and Light started with a definitive Alice in Wonderland slant that shifts my writing from time to time, but I quickly realized I had more to say than what Lewis Carroll or Tim Burton could directly influence. 

I don't run ads, with the exception of my links to Zazzle and my Amazon aStore.  If you purchase products through those links, I get a small percentage, which helps cover my blog and domain services.  I've debated setting up an agreement with an ad service, but I don't really see the necessity or the long-term benefit.  There's already enough going on on my page.  I don't want to clutter it further with unrelated content or pretty pictures.  I can handle being scattered without any help from the outside. 

I don't write a lot about the day-to-day facts of my life, though I'm likely to mention them on my Facebook fan page.  Most days for me are a mundane mix of errands and chores and momness.  Sometimes, something exciting or extraordinary happens.  If I'm inspired, I'll write about it.  If not, I'll keep it to myself.  But I always try to find something more to say than just what I'm thinking and feeling. 

There's always the issue of what the reader adds to my words.  You aren't me, you aren't in my head, and you may or may not know the impetus for a piece I've written.  You certainly don't know the thought process I went through, jumping from one point to the next.  But you bring your own experiences and moods and expectations to your reading and that will undoubtedly influence your own perception of my writing.  That's what's expected of the audience, and I think that's what makes feedback interesting. 

Sometimes I'll discover that someone has read something and totally missed my intent.  It can be frustrating, making me question whether my words were effectual.  I have to remind myself that I'm also not in your head.  I'm a reader in my own right, and I know there have been many times when I've reread something, perhaps for the dozenth time, and realized I was interpreting it in a completely new and unexpected way. 

Every so often, I'll go back and read something of my own—an old post or random writing—and be surprised to see context and meaning I hadn't noticed before.  I've written specific things that were intended to be about one thing and ended up being about another, only recognized in hindsight.  I've been in one mood when I wrote, then in a juxtaposed frame of mind when I reread it, and seen my writing in a completely different way. 

I guess that's part of the fluidity of the written word.  It can say so much or nothing at all.  I'm sure I have days (and posts) where I do both. 

But, like me, Muchness and Light is a process.  My voice is on a journey of its own, and I'm excited to see where it takes me.  For the first time perhaps in my entire life, I feel like there are other people who want to hear me and who value not only what I'm saying, but the fact that I'm saying it at all.  It's simultaneously humbling and gratifying, knowing that you've made the choice to read this—that you have sought me out and want to see what I have to say, even if it seems like I'm only talking to myself.

 

(Yes, I know it's a Strokes song.  So does Adam.  But he's the one I love the most, not them.)

Is this lump out of my head? I think so.

I went to see my endocrinologist today.  I have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, which led to the removal of the right lobe of my thyroid in 2006.  I've taken a daily replacement hormone for the last couple of years, and I'll be on it for the rest of my life.  I have to check in with my doctor regularly to monitor those levels.  I also get regular ultrasounds of my thyroid to check nodule growth and the like.

Today my amazing doctor (who might be the smartest person I know—he worked on the Human Genome Project) was running the transducer over my neck, checking every square millimeter of my remaining thyroid. 

"I'm almost done," he said.  Then, "What the hell is that?!?" 

 Not really what you want to hear from the guy doing your ultrasound. 

"Let me go check something in my office," he said quickly.  He rushed from the room and came back a few moments later, clearly baffled. 

Turns out, my thyroid lobe grew back.  But it didn't come back where the right one was removed.  It grew at the end of the left one.  It's kind of like if I'd lost my right leg and a new left leg grew out of my left shin. 

The doctor said it looks like thyroid tissue, with blood flow.  It's not a nodule, and it's not a cyst.  It's not common, but it does happen, though he's never seen it like this.  (He said he has one patient whose entire thyroid regrew in about thirty days!)

He doesn't think it's anything to worry about, though he's not sure yet what he wants to do.  I have to have more blood drawn and go in a few days for a needle biopsy.  (I've had a thyroid biopsy before; it's no darn fun.)  It may be that it comes out, or it could just stay for a while.  I'll be interested to see if it's producing hormone.  I'll keep you updated.

But this may finally answer the question of what my superhero power really is.  Apparently I can regenerate glands.  My elder son's tonsils may be growing back, so maybe there's some weird genetic component to it all.  Maybe somewhere in my ancestry, one of the Amazons mated with a Merman whose dad was really a starfish. 

DH says he fully expects some black ops unit to come in the dead of night and take some samples, to see if I hold the key to having soldiers regenerate limbs and organs on the battlefield.  I say they don't need to sneak in—I'm more than happy to offer my services in exchange for an all-expense paid, month-long "vacation" at a research facility, where there's no dishes or laundry or homework. 

Either way, I think it's freakishly awesome.  I was going to say it has nothing to do with my muchness, but maybe all of my reclaimed muchness is being stored in this new thyroid lobe.  Oh jeez... now I gotta really think about what to do with it.  If it has to come out, should I get it in a little jar for posterity?  Is that beyond creepy?  (Am I suddenly channeling The Bloggess??)

So please chime in with your stories of weird organ regeneration and extra limbs and stuff.  Chances are one of you has a second set of tonsils or an extra toe or a third nipple or something.  Really.  I can't be alone in this, can I?

I'm high as a cloud, I'm soft and gray and lazy.

Today's my birthday.  I'm 39.  No, I don't feel any older than I did yesterday, or the day before that, or the day before that.  But I suppose it's time for some obligatory self-reflection.

It's been a big, boisterous, tumultuous year.  Lots of ups and down, though that means lots of opportunities to learn and grow and expand.  And expand, I have. 

This was the year to find my voice again.  Even though it's been sometimes shaky and screechy and almost always loud, it's mine, and I'm trying my best to raise it in song or poem or protest or praise, as necessary and as needed.  Some of you hear me, and some of you don't.  But I will continue to use this supremely fluid contralto to express myself, no matter what anyone else thinks.  Maybe because of what someone else thinks. 

So I'm going forward, looking forward, headed ever closer toward 40, and I'm okay with that.  There's a hell of a lot less of me (physically) than there was a year ago, and there will be less of me in another year.  With each passing day, I grow stronger and bolder and a little more me, like it or not. 

I have a lot to offer and a lot to give, and I hope you'll stay with me as I continue down ths path, along this journey from Point A to Point Me.  I'm sure the upcoming year will lead me through twists and turns, with an occasional bump in my road.  But this life is all about that journey, not that destination, so I'm excited to see what's in store for me.  I'll do my best to share it with you, wherever you are, and I hope you'll share a little of yourself, too, because even I get tired of my own voice.  But as I've learned this last year, it's mine--no matter what--and sometimes it's worth a listen. 

 

 

I make the path!

I talk a good bit (both in writing and in person) about my belief that the journey is more important than the destination.  It's not that I think having goals and striving toward purpose is without merit; it's that I believe the process by which we travel from one point to another teaches us about life, ourselves, and everything in between.  There are lessons of every size, shape, and color to be learned along the way, prepping us for our eventual landing point, whether or not that's at our original goal.

For me, that path is rarely straightforward.  There are twists and turns and loops, and sometimes it zigs or zags so far that I can't tell that it even is the path.

For a long time, I saw it as a path I was stepping onto, my life laid out before me like the Yellow Brick Road.  What I've finally! come to realize is that I'm creating this path as I go.  I'm the bricklayer, setting each cobblestone into place as I move through my time and space, and I completely determine where and how this ends up. 

Life is what happens while I'm collecting those stones.  Sometimes people give me pretty, smooth rocks to lay before me.  Sometimes I get a little windfall and buy some nice flagstones and fit them neatly together.  And sometimes I have to go backward, retrace my seemingly smooth, even steps and dig along the edges to find what I need to make my way.  Those are the rocks that are often jagged and rough, the ones that will scrape my knees when I crawl along them blindly, determined to take the pain and scars as long as I know I'm moving ever-so-slowly forward. 

And then there are the obstacles, the things that block my path.  They could be huge, giant boulders that seem insurmountable.  They could be crawling creatures of all kinds that waylay me with fear or loathing, and make me compliant in my own psychic paralysis.  Or they could be an overgrowth of beautiful lushness that entangles me in its sweet-smelling vines. 

Ultimately it's only I who can clear my way.  Slowly I've learned that I can step on bugs and wrangle snakes, I can machete through the dense, dark jungle, and I can chisel away at the looming megalith and use its rubble to pave my passage toward my ultimate terminus.

It's never easy with me.  I'm complicated and difficult, and I often thrive on—and utterly luxuriate in—my own complexities.  Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I'm more likely to blow my own world to Hell than to let anyone else do it for me.  So I may be battered and bruised when I finally get to where I'm going, wherever that may be, but I will arrive giddily exhausted and secure in the knowledge that each fragment of my path—from the first polished pink pebble to the final charred capstone—was chosen by me, each a profoundly simple lesson learned along the way.

They're only young once.

Someone asked me recently about my having put so much out there in my writing, about having dropped so many personal things into such a public space, and how I felt about my children seeing that, if and when the time comes.  It's kind of an off-shoot of having my parents or my in-laws read these things, and I've always said that they shouldn't look if they don't want to see what's there. 

With my kids, though, it's a little different, certainly.  They're young, and I often cover topics that simply aren't appropriate for them right now or any time soon.  Eventually the day will come when they'll be old enough to understand the concepts of sexual assault or youthful recreational drug use, of teen angst and depression, of isolation and self-loathing of self-image.  It's not like I think they'll wake up one morning, suddenly mature, and I'll decide to share all of my gory details with them.  But if my past choices and predicaments become part of their public knowledge, we'll address them as what they were: steps on the path to now. 

When I started writing again, and especially when I started blogging in this vein, I had to make the conscious decision to be (sometimes) painfully honest, both to others and to myself.  It was the only way I felt I could effectively explore the thoughts at hand.  It also meant I had to open myself up to criticism and comment from people I did and didn't know.  It's been rare that I've received negative feedback.  I'm fully aware that the more I do this, the more likely that is to happen.  And as much as I say I don't really care about what other people think, it would be disheartening to never get the goodness back from my readers, whoever you may be. 

But part of the decision to be so overtly candid did take my children into consideration.  Their perceptions of Mommy are totally skewed to the wacky intimacy of the parent-child relationship, as is to be expected.  They're only just now seeing that Stephanie and Mom aren't always exactly the same person.  While I will always be in the role of Mom with them, I was Stephanie before I was their mother, and that's not changing. 

And Stephanie did a lot of crazy shit, both badass and dumbass. 

Every single one of my battle stories is part of the Epic of StephQJ, and each deserves its rightful place as part of who I am.  I don't expect, or even want!, my children to emulate everything I did in my past or even do now.  What I do expect is for them to grow up with the knowledge that their mother is her own person with her own thoughts and feelings, as well as a life that isn't always little-boy-centric.  I want them to grow into their respect of me as a woman who did her best to enjoy her life, and who tried to model that behavior for them, even when she had to deal with the repercussions of bad choices and disappointments. 

If there's anything I am truly ashamed or regretful about in my life, it's not something I'm planning to talk about openly anyway.  There are very, very few things that fall into those categories, thankfully, and I've had to find my own ways to deal with them, to put them away for good, and to move forward.  I'm trying not to create any more regrets between now and the time this turn on the Big Wheel comes to its end. 

So what I want most for my boys to take away from their knowledge of me and my muchness, is the example of how to be their own person, how to make their own choices that are right for their own lives, and to deal with the consequences, good or bad.  I want them to recognize that the other people around them have the innate abilities and rights to do the same, even if the others' choices are in direct opposition to their own--and that being diametrically opposed doesn't always mean being bad.  And I want them to understand that everyone journeys through their own struggles in their own, personal ways, and that to get to the destination is a huge accomplishment, but that it is ultimately the quality of the journey that matters most.