Spoiler alert: everything is not OK

"You are such a good mom."

"She is so lucky to have you."

"She just needs your love and understanding and everything will turn out alright."

It's easy to smile at these compassionate lies, comments my well meaning friends tell me when I'm worried about my kid. It's easy to encase these words inside my mind, as if they are true. To use these words as a protective shield around my breaking heart. Deceptively simple.

Don't worry. She'll be fine. She has YOU for a mother.

As if it matters.

I used to believe it. I believed that I was put upon this earth to help my child thrive. Yes, thoughts trickled inside my mind. It's a mean world. So much violence. So much hate. Do you really want to bring a child into a world like this? But the answer was always yes. Yes, I do want to bring a child into the world. I will love her, and that love will protect her. With the strength of our love, we will conquer all the hate we encounter.

I honestly believed that as long as we didn't beat her she'd be fine. I believed with open eyes and a full heart that if only my husband and I don't fuck up, we'll finally figure a way out of the labyrinthine cycle of family dysfunction that began generations back beyond our memories. Our child will have a good life, with a good mom and a good dad. We will love her and everything will be OK.

Spoiler alert: everything is not OK.

I come from a long line of creative, clever women, who have all, at some point in their lives, cracked up.  A cuckoo bird flies freely on our family crest.

My mother recalls, in the 1940s, tagging along on many trips to the doctor with her mother. Mom would sit quietly in the waiting room, drawing pictures and coloring, behaving, obedient, such a good girl. Not getting on my grandmother's already frazzled nerves, awaiting a prescription for my grandmother's "nerve medicine."

I recall, in the 1970s, sitting at the piano just outside my brother's basement bedroom, gently placing my little thumb on middle c, behaving, obedient, such a good girl. Trying hard to keep the secret of what my teenage brother and his best friend had just done to me in his bedroom, scared to tell our mom. My brother's words ringing in my head as I plunked on the keys. "Don't tell Mom or she'll freak out and end up back in the hospital." My siblings and I forever hyper-vigilant of Mom's moods after her stay in the psych ward where she was forcibly committed and received electroshock therapy after experiencing a couple of "nervous breakdowns."

In the 1980s, Mom showed me a letter my brother had written her in which he used the exact same phrase when referencing his memories of our grandmother abusing him. "Don't tell your mother or she'll end back up in the hospital."

It was also in the 1980s that a doctor told my mom to take me to talk to a psychologist, someone who could help me overcome the anorexia I'd developed in fifth grade, two years after my parents began sending me to weekly Weight Watchers meetings. I'd gone overboard on my dieting. It was a form of perfectionism. "You guys want me to lose weight? I'll show you."

I waited a long time to become a mother myself. I spent decades working on myself. Seeing doctors and psychologists. Reading self-help books and memoirs and novels--the good ones that actually helped me grow and develop a sense of self. The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. The Color Purple by Alice Walker. I dated and broke up with a handful of people. I was mean and angry and insecure. I was a terrible girlfriend. I took a decade off of dating. I lived with my cat Zach in a one-bedroom apartment. No boyfriends. No girlfriends. No roommates. No family. Just me and my cat.

It was great.

But after a decade or so, I started to feel lonely. I wanted a family. A family of my own making. A spouse who loved and understood me. Children who laughed with me and listened to my stories. People with whom I could share all the goodness I'd found in the world.

I met Will. Everything was too easy. I didn't have to pretend to be anyone I'm not. I liked the me I was around him. He loved me, and he showed it. There was no guessing with him. He admitted why he liked me. He said, "You're the smartest person I know and you call me out on my bullshit." He also said, "I like the way your ass looks in that dress."

I stopped taking birth control pills two months before we got married because we were in a hurry. I was getting old, I had fertility issues, and we both wanted kids right way. Will wanted six kids. That sounded great to me. Although I doubted my body would cooperate. With the help of a fertility specialist, I was able to finally conceive. We named her Katherine after my sister Kathryn, and McKenna after Will's middle name Kenneth. Katherine McKenna Carleton. A good strong name for one good strong girl.

She's lived up to it for the most part. We nicknamed her Kate, then Katie. Pumpkin, then Punkin, then Punk. At the age of four, when she was learning how to write her name, she asked if we'd please stop calling her Kate and instead call her Katie. The summer before seventh grade, when she'd switch to middle school and meet lots of new classmates, she took the opportunity to re-nickname herself to Kat. Kat Carleton. Sounds like a badass to me.

And she is a badass, mostly. Badass because she's compassionate and kind. Authentic. Clever. Creative. Philosophical.

But, she's a twelve year old girl. She can also be fearful, and absent-minded. Moody. Sensitive. Shy. Anxious.

It was the 2010s when her doctor convinced us to start giving her antidepressant medication. She was ten and she'd been exhibiting signs of anxiety and depression since she was six, in first grade. It's the same anti-depressant medication that I take. The same my dad took. There should be a bottle of Sertraline on the crest of my dad's side of the family.

My friends, family, and coworkers often ask how she's doing. She has her ups and downs. Her behavior seems normal to me, but I was a moody, anxious, depressed teenager at one time myself. If I could bubble wrap her and keep her by my side at all times, I'd feel less stressed, but neither of those options will teach my little birdie how to fly.

I just worry so much about her. I try my best, and that's all I can do. Sadly, no matter how "good" we are as mothers we can’t protect our children from the awful aspects of this world.

I had an amazing conversation with one of my heroes last April. She was in town to give the keynote speech at a reception for the teen literary arts magazine I support. We had dedicated the 15th issue to author A. S. King, or Amy, as she told us to call her. I got to ride around in the car with her on our way to the various teen writing workshops and author talks we had booked for her. We're the same age, with daughters of similar ages. We shared our struggles of raising daughters with depression. It's a difficult topic to talk about, so it felt good to bond over it. It made me admire Amy even more. She's a fantastic author, and a good mother, too. I had proof.

If you haven't read any A. S. King novels, you're missing out. Most of her protagonists are teenagers. All of them are smart, funny, thoughtful, sensitive, and wise. Their stories relateable and feel true. There's a lot of weird shit that happens in an A. S. King novel. Surreal. Curious. WTF moments. But that just makes it all the more like real life. Amy’s novels focus on the lives of teens and kids in today’s chaotic world full of tests, and grades, and active shooter drills at school, and family violence, and divorce, and suicide at home. Amy writes with such an astute insight into young people’s minds. She understands young people. She remembers what it’s like. How hard the struggle is. How the only way out is through, and the only way through is with love.

I just wish her fictional stories weren't so true.

This weekend, Amy's oldest daughter died. Just sixteen years old. My heart breaks for Amy and her family. Yet it's still true: the only way out is through, and the only way through is with Love.

Love. That's all I got. It's all I have to give, even during the darkest times. Love is what I'm sending Amy and her family this week.

https://www.snyderfuneralhome.com/obituary/gracie-edith-king/


Love is what I'm sending them because















I have no words.

Letter to Representative Kevin Yoder: Detaining families in military encampments is immoral

I emailed my representative:

Please do all that is in your power to stop the Trump Administration from detaining people who enter our country illegally. It is cheaper and more humane to allow these immigrants to live freely in the United States until their immigration hearing. Detaining families in military encampments is immoral. Kansans are better than this. Fight, Representative Yoder. Do all you can.

My body is none of your business

It’s been a bit since I’ve posted anything about my mental health and my Health at Every Size advocacy. So maybe it’s time to send out a reminder.

I have Post-traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of trauma I experienced as a child. One of the major traumas I experienced was being a fat kid in a fat phobic family and culture. I was sent to Weight Watchers in 3rd grade. I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa in 5th grade. I struggled with disordered eating and body dysmorphia for decades. I hated my body so much that I defied convention by not inviting our extended family and friends to our wedding because I knew I’d have a panic attack standing in front of all those people with their eyes on me.

The year I turned 40, my brother died of alcoholic liver failure. The same brother who had sexually abused me when I was a young child. The same brother who, when he came back into town after having been gone a few years, asked my mom why I had gotten so fat. As if my body were any of his business. 

The same year my brother died, I checked out a book from the public library: Health at Every Size by Dr. Linda Bacon. The book saved my life. I still struggle with body shame as a fat, sexual abuse survivor living in a fat-phobic, misogynistic society, but the Health at Every Size philosophy has changed my mind. I can see clearly that I deserve to be happy and healthy and loved and understood. It is not my fault that I live in a culture that hates fat women, and it makes me feel proud when I speak up and defend myself. 

This morning I defended myself again. A so-called friend, knowing that I live with PTSD that is triggered by diet talk and fat shaming, took it upon herself to share unsolicited advice by recommending to me a weight-loss book. 

No. 

No diet advice. No weight-loss talk. No discussion with the assumption that there is something wrong with my body. 

My body is none of your business. 

#Unfriend.

Bullets Bursting

The internet's shame-ganging Fergie's interpretation of our national anthem.

I understand the purists who think The Star Spangled Banner should always be performed in a traditional way. It feels disrespectful to make the national anthem your own.

I get it, but I don't agree. Isn't that what makes our country great? Not great again, but great now and always. We make this country our own. We vote. We protest. We argue ideas. We sign petitions. We swamp our elected officials with calls and emails and faxes from our smartphones. Our Constitution makes it clear that this is not an armchair democracy. This land is our land and we have a say in how we live our lives. We have a say, as long as we let our voices be heard. What makes me proudest is our right as Americans to speak freely. If Fergie wants to interpret our national anthem in an overtly sexy way, why not? Isn't our country fraught with sexual tension? Isn't the #metoo movement a modern day battle of the sexes? Maybe Fergie was trying to make a point.

That's what's so beautiful about art. When it points something out you might have missed on your own. You look at it, you read it, you hear it and you shake your head and you say yes.

Here's a big yes of a song. It's my favorite version of our national anthem. It's as if you can actually hear the bombs bursting in air. You're witnessing history. You're there, hanging out with Francis Scott Key. On a hill. At the battle. Witnessing men killing each other over ideas. You're in the audience at Woodstock. Protesting our country's "conflict" with Vietnam.

The amazing thing about Hendrix's version is how relevant it is today. It's as if you can actually hear the AR15 bullets bursting through the atmosphere of our kids' schools.