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For someone who didn’t talk much as a child, my son J certainly grew to love his puns. Classified for years as “non-verbal”, we struggled against all odds and used any means necessary to get my boy to talk. Maybe, just maybe, we tried too hard.

It takes absolutely nothing to set him off. Don’t mention trees around him – you’ll get the “maybe I should leaf this one alone?” Or “She’s barking up the wrong tree.” We passed a broken sign this morning and he points out that “it’s a sign of the times.” The pause and inflection – yes, you know it well – is the mark of a truly awful pun and his delivery is always spot on.

My daughter’s drawing of a pink and purple unicorn brought out the “well, there’s a horse of a different color.” Adjusting a loose light bulb until it turned back on spurred the “Well, I hate to make light of the situation…” He also can’t manage to stop at only one groaner per situation. Often, it’s three or four before we tell him to stop before he hurts himself, and even then we might have to endure another one or two, complete with the sideways grin and the face that says “Eh? Eh? EH? Ya get it, right???”

His “Well, I guess…” in that tone of voice has become the ultimate signal for “yes, we’re about to get nailed with as many puns as he can come up with” and I’ll be the first to admit – I don’t mind a bit. Speaking only six words by age three followed by years of speech therapy and a constant upward battle of non-verbal communication, I’ll take his jokes and puns any day.

Every torrent of puns that floods forth is a victory for him, even though he doesn’t see it that way. He’s being verbally playful and I’m smiling. We won, one silly pun at a time and I wouldn’t trade it for the world…

There are times when something throws me back in time and it’s jarring to think where I was versus where I am. These moments frequently catch me off guard and can be triggered by something so simple as a certain smell or sound. It may seem simple, but the trigger is loaded chock full of memories waiting to be released into my mind in a torrent. Music tends to toss my brain around like a tennis ball for a jack Russell terrier. A few notes and I’ve got a decades-old ear worm that plunges me into what feels like a whole other life.

Smells do the same thing. I am particularly sensitive to smells, so triggers into memory lane can be pretty intense. From before I can remember, my family made the trek from Georgia to Ohio to visit my extended family. Each house we stayed in had a distinct smell. It wasn’t something short term like walking into a house where someone has just baked chocolate chip cookies, but longer lasting to the point that the smell of each was strongly associated with that place. I could lose my sight and still be able to tell where I was by the smell. One whiff and…

My grandmother’s house smelled like a blend of real butter and old wood. Years and years of the same sink into the fabric of the house until it is inseparable. The same brand of soap beside the sink… the same recipes cooked in the kitchen… the same people in the same place… That “sameness” pushes the connection of the senses further and further into the place. A whiff of one of those scents transports me back to the eleven year-old with a ponytail, sitting on the black padded barstool next to the roll-away dishwasher. Porcupines are baking in the oven and a Holly Hobbie glass is carefully placed next to me. It’s the one with the little kitty looking at Holly Hobbie, who is swinging on a homemade swing. I know it’s that one because that one is my favorite. There are pictures that my grandmother painted on every wall, mostly of flowers, though I really like the one of the frozen pond that all the children are skating on, bundled up against the northern cold with coats and scarves and mittens in the brightest of colors. If I watch it long enough, they almost seem to move.

If I was patient and not too pushy, I might be able to help put seed in the bird feeder. A rotating fan on the table pushed the white lace curtains back against the breeze coming in from the open windows, fluttering them back and forth in a windy pattern. Flowers line the corner of the dining room with a rosary plant winding its way through and around the windows and all the other plants. My aunts, uncles, and cousins are mostly within the block and come to the call of a family dinner, all laden with favorite dishes of their own to share. There is a box of pizzelles on the table that my aunt made this morning. She even used the vanilla! I shift my towel up around my shoulders like a cape and smell the familiar scent of the laundry soap and…

I open my eyes and look down at the towel I’m holding in my hand. My mind is reacclimating to its current surroundings and I remember where I am and what I’m doing. The towel… it smelled like that day after playing in the pool and waiting for everything to be ready for our family to have our picnic. Thirty years ago in a single smell and a moment lost in time. It might seem like another life in another world, but it’s in there, deep in my mind and just waiting for something to come out of nowhere and throw me back in time – just for a moment…

“They were so terrified, they said nothing to anyone…” There it is; right in the Gospel of Mark in reference to the women at the tomb of Jesus. That pretty much sums up my entire history of public interaction when the topic is religion. Jesus told us what would happen. Persecution comes with the territory, especially in this day and age. Even when I know something is true, or right, or good, I don’t lend my voice. On the flip side, when something is wrong, or dark, or evil, I am also hesitant to speak up out of fear.

I went tonight to a live theatrical presentation of the Gospel of Mark. It was a solo performance by a young priest (I say young, though he said he’s been doing this for twenty years, so he’s roughly my age or maybe a little older). He was taking questions during the intermission and I started to raise my hand to ask what prompted him to start performing this Gospel. He did not see my hand raised, but I realized that I don’t need to ask. I already knew.

He started for the same reason that the Gospels were written in the first place. He was inspired to spread the Word of God. It’s that simple and that complicated. Whatever the catalyst was, whatever planted that seed in rich soil, it was the same. To perform the Gospel the way he does, he has to love the Word. It was less of a performance than a proclamation. His job is to spread that seed where it may fall and let God do the rest.

I was moved within me. The experience was beyond words; indeed, none do it justice. “Let those who have ears hear.” Jesus knew human emotions. He wept, he was angry, he was filled with love. I can’t imagine that he would have been without anguish at his journey as it drew closer to the cross. He also knew to his Soul that God, Abba, Father would not leave him. Trust through His journey, and I’m worried about what people think? Maybe I should worry less and trust more.

Of course, we could all use a bit of perspective here. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we were brought into His Kingdom. Adopted. Yes, having been a part of adoptions in multiple ways, I can attest that it is a beautiful comparison of them to our relationship to God. He loves us unconditionally and we are tasked with the same. With that powerful love, why should any of us fear to speak? In fact, how are we not crying out with joy? When moved by the Gospel, why are we not glorying in the revelation that we are adopted sons and daughters of the Most High? In what universe is fear stronger than God?

I have been witness multiple times to knowledge of the presence of God. Slowly, I have begun to tell bits and pieces of my story, and only to some people. Possibly I had to wait for the words to come and those with ears to hear. It was written that when the time is right, do not fear to let the words come. Preaching on the street corner is not my thing, but neither should I argue with those not willing to listen. Paths, rocks, thorns, and shallow ground are not the place to plant. I am gifted with words, but also with the understanding that those words should mean something. So I wait for the time and I wait for the ears to hear. Above all, when I am so terrified that I am tempted to stay my tongue, I must trust Abba and remember that all things are possible with God. Maybe, just maybe, the soil is ready for a seed and God is ready to do the rest.

Sometimes having a background in psychology is a mixed blessing. When I start analyzing my own writing, it occurs to me that I might be taking it a step (or two) too far. Have you ever heard the expression that goes something like “if you don’t like where you are, then move”? I’ve realized that certain characters in my books are what I wish I were.

Those characters are me without fear. Me without illness. Me without the feeling that I miss so many opportunities just because of where I am and what I am doing. Even without magic or supernatural powers, they are me without being the real me. They are the ones in the right place at the right time for opportunity and adventure. They are my escape. They are me “moving” from where I am for just a little while. For brief timespans, I can lift out of me and go somewhere that I do not have to fight with who I am.

Some of them even look like me, or at least the me from a few years ago when I was in shape. They are not overweight but typically sport an athletic frame. They are mostly my height or thereabouts. They typically have my eye and hair color, although none are covering up gray. One in particular does not get sick. I can’t even describe how I should be jealous of my own characters. They look like I would if I could choose how I looked or be whatever I wanted to be.

I’ve done all the dialogue out loud for all of my stories. I’ll go through any given “scene” probably a dozen times before it goes down on paper (if not more). Some are based on real life conversations and what I should’ve/would’ve/could’ve said… you know, if I were brave. It’s those great lines that I wish I had thought of at the time but inspiration came too little too late. They also haven’t sold their souls. Even at their lowest, my characters don’t give up who they are for the sake of a losing battle. They are strong and brave and are always ready for whatever comes next. They are the ones who always know what to say because I’ve had ages to find the right words for them.

Let me make this clear: I love my life. I know I’m not perfect and won’t ever be, but the drive to become better is always there. I know that I am not going to wake up one day and have some kind of special powers or whatever. It’s surprise enough some mornings that I wake up at all. No, what I want isn’t to be someone else; to be somewhere else; or to exist in some other way. I wish I could be me without the hindrance of the negative aspects of being me.

I envy my characters because though they have jobs, they are not consumed by them. They might get sick, but it doesn’t disable them for a season at a time. The ones with kids get to raise them instead of working 12 hour days. Yes, they have conflict; yes, they have problems; it wouldn’t be a good story if these things weren’t there. The difference is that they get to have some resolution to those things. Real life never pauses or ties up at the end of the story. If they want something, they go get it. I can write the means for them to get whatever it is or not if that is the story line. If I want something, no one writes it in for me. I don’t wish upon a star and have it happen.

So, I walk into a bookstore and the storekeeper tells me that he can put me into a story. He has the ability to place my consciousness into a book and let me live it as if I were the main character. The catch is that none of the stories are ones that I know. They are all written by authors I’ve never heard of and I do not know the plots of any of them. Say I suspend my disbelief long enough to try it. He warns me that if something bad happens, I will experience it right next to the good stuff that happens. I have to be willing to take it all together.

Sure. Okay. Bring it. He does his thing and places me into a story. I come to realize that the most amazing thing about reading a book for the first time is that I share something with the characters. It is something that no matter how many times I read that book again, I will never experience the same thing. Good or bad, neither they nor I know what is going to happen next. It’s not always a happy ending, and if it’s a cliffhanger, there’s no real ending anyway; just a breath between books. Who lives and who dies? Who wins and who loses? Who comes out on top but does so at a terrible price? I am experiencing the story without knowing what happens next. I share that once… and once only.

Such is life. Yes, life would be simpler without illness. It would be more balanced if I were working more normal hours. I don’t know what will happen next and that’s a good thing. There are things that are beyond my control and other things that I can influence. It’s not wishing upon a star, it’s putting one foot in front of the other every day and hoping that by the time my final page is penned, by the time my story is ending and the sun is dropping below the painted horizon on my last day here, mine will be a story that means something. Complete with the conflict, with the illness, but also with the love… truly a story worth the telling.

This madness is everywhere. The moment we seem to reach any kind of balance, something happens and the world is once again turned on its head. We are not a peaceful people. We are not patient. We are not kind. Bullies are everywhere and in every form imaginable. Crazy people… Broken people… There is no hiding from it. Why?

From Columbine in 1999 to Florida just yesterday, the news is horrific beyond words. Still, we tsk tsk and shake our heads at the horrors safely encapsulated on the television and internet. A few days later we are back to business as usual. Yes, yes, so sad… okay, break time’s over, back to work.

Should someone have known? Maybe. The signs were there: loner tendencies, trouble in school, fascination with guns… I’ve got news for you, we all create this. Setting aside how easy it is to get hands on guns; leaving out my opinions on the NRA and gun control; Yes, that’s a piece of the puzzle, and anyone who says it isn’t is not looking at the broad enough picture. No, the piece I’m concerned with is the deadly downward spiral of how we treat those who are beginning to marginalize themselves.

Our children are living in a battlefield. Psychological issues from ADHD, depression, and the expansive range of disorders and imbalances that plague our children and lock them securely in the cages of their minds are more prevalent than ever. The moment a child is determined to be imperfect in any way, they are labeled and stigmatized to the point that they feel substandard and broken from a very young age. Yes, psychological problems in children are very real, as evidenced by the news lately, but so is their ostracizesation. They are banned by common consent from whatever society deems too important or precise to include anyone considered broken or imperfect. Basically, they are collectively banned from any kind of normal life.

I’ve watched as people’s attitudes and demeanors changed when they found out my son had ADHD. As it turned out, there was more going on with him than ADHD, but that’s where it began. There were the ones who automatically assumed that he had little to no worth and the reason behind it all was my lack of decent parenting or that he needed a solid beating or strong drugs. One of his early teachers told me – her words – that the teachers trade off the inclusion class each year so no one gets the stupid class every year. Really? She labeled the entire class as stupid and treated them thus. He remembers that. They told him he’d never read or amount to anything. Just pass through and get a job pushing the button all day because that’s the best you can ever hope for. Well, dang, that’s bleak… Way to give the kid something to look forward to, huh?

They might as well have handed him a gun and said “Here, do the world a favor and shoot yourself. It might also be a good idea to take some of these other idiots out before you go, especially because they are going to bully and ridicule you all the way through your school career. Maybe a couple teachers, too, because let’s face it, none of us like you.” I know that this is not what she actually said, but the “stupid class” comment and the way she and his other teachers treated him, they planted a seed deep in his heart and mind. If that seed is fed and nourished and brought to fruition, it blooms out in blood and pain that is spread to anyone within a bullet’s reach.

We have a decision to make and it’s not an easy one. Do we become the beast that spawns those headlines? That’s the easy way. That’s maintaining the staus quo and allowing ourselves to be complacent. It’s ignoring when the situation when our kids tell us there’s a bully in the school or that they or someone else is outcast. It’s brushing off comments as adults that plant these horrible seeds in our youth. It’s not defending those who are defenseless, and I don’t mean with guns. I mean by addressing the problems before they leave the caged minds and show up on the evening news. We have the means. We know the signs, long before they become massacres. We think as a society that more guns are the answer. More jails are the answer. Corporal punishment is the answer.

The answer to what? Maybe if the question is “how could we possibly make things worse than they are already?” The hard choice is helping. I don’t mean psych evaluations to determine if the shooter was sane at the time or could be tried as an adult. I mean help for the children when they first exhibit the signs of trouble. These people don’t just wake up one morning and think “oh, good, today is Wednesday; I think I’ll be a mass murderer today.” This is years in the making; Years of hurt and shame and abuse at the hands of a world that, in their minds, doesn’t like them anyway. Who is willing to tell them any different? We ignore them, which validates the feeling of being out of place, which makes people not want to be around them, and on and on and on. We have to reevaluate how we interact with people.

I would like to say that people are generally good, though the cynical side of me fights the words before they ever make it to my mouth. I’ve witnessed some pretty terrible things. I have also seen people do acts of such stunning bravery and kindness that my heart swells with pride at just being in the same species. When we decide as a people to be kind and loving to those who need it the most, that is the outcast, the downtrodden, the hurt, the abused, and show them the compassion that withers the seed of evil that ridicule planted, we will begin to see fewer and fewer headlines like the ones from yesterday. We must have the strength of will not to just let it go and doom these troubled kids to this kind of fate.

In all the madness, can we even imagine this path? Can we will it into being? In this world of chaos, can we take those steps down that path of peace? Yes, we can. We have to. Our will has to win the day because the alternative is worse than unthinkable. Once and for all, we have to show that where there is a will, there is always a way.

People are people. We’ve been around for a long time. Amongst many other things, we’ve used our precious time on this giant spinning rock to come up with sayings that cover pretty much everything that could conceivably occur. Some of them we use without truly having any frame of reference for how they came about, and they are often particular to their originating cultures. I mean, how many of us have a horse to lead to water let alone worrying about if it actually drinks? Does that have meaning in any language besides American English? And though we might feel like it at times, we don’t actually burn bridges that we would not prefer to cross again. Most people are not that nuts (Yes, I qualified that) but it sounds a little harsh if taken literally. This scenario was a real conversation.

The place where I work has its parent company in Europe. When people from different areas of the world come together in one place for a common purpose, it’s not only inspiring and heartening, it’s downright entertaining. Sometimes it’s something simple, such as getting days mixed up and insisting that the meeting is on the 3rd when the date today is the 9th. What she meant was the 30th, but she couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t get our calendars straight. Ordinal numbers… The struggle is real. Another incident involved me asking someone to “chuck” something. That one earned me a cocked head and odd look. I had to explain that “chucking” something meant to throw it away. Local terminology is often lost in translation.

When my son was almost four years old and I was a much younger me, we went to Costa Rica for a language immersion program through my school. For six weeks, he and I bee-bopped about the country and learned that language and culture were far more complicated than we’d ever imagined. Dialects often change depending on which side of the street you are standing. I’m really not exaggerating. As examples, Guatemala has over 40 distinct dialects with varying degrees of Indian and Spanish mixed with colloquialisms and personalizations for each town or village. Eskimos have more than 50 different words for “snow.” There’s the wet sticky stuff and the light and fluffy flakes, the spitting glitter kind and the kind that falls so hard you can’t even see the insides of your own eyelids. There are places like Belgium, which is situated between several other countries. The local language is influenced heavily by the languages of the countries that surround it. People at my work frequently switch mid-sentence between Dutch, French, and German, and the transition is so smooth that the casual listener never realizes that they switched.

A friend of mine told me about a trip she took across several South American countries where she knew that the vast majority of people spoke Spanish, but she had not planned for the drastic differences between dialects and local cultures. She asked one gentleman to go get the “gua gua” which in her understanding meant “bus.” What it meant to him, however, was the equivalent of the F-word. She accidentally told him what to go do with himself. Whoops. That one took some creative communication to resolve.

When I looked up the name of my blog to make sure it wasn’t taken, I came across references to another literary work that states that learning another language is like having a second soul. While I agree to a point and appreciate the poetic imagery, I will go a step further to say that wielding language gracefully can touch another person’s soul. Because of this truth, the wielding should be done judiciously. So many words in so many places right now are flung as daggers, piercing far deeper than people realize. What we need more than anything is for each of us to remember that people are people. The only race is the human one, regardless of which languages lift from our tongues. We must consider that one person’s bus is another person’s…. well, you get the idea. It is time to build bridges rather than burning them, and language can help us do this. In all things, the most graceful use of language is the one where we do not lose each other in the translation.

Warning: Disturbing themes. Proceed with caution.

As a writer, I am periodically asked to write on various topics for various reasons. I’ve written “on demand” poetry, essays, theme examples, papers for psychological studies, and even papers in Spanish. They were for everything from schoolwork to teaching writing classes to pieces for different events like baby showers and going away parties. I’ve written reference letters and official proposals. Some time ago, I was asked to write a piece about childhood sexual abuse.

One might wonder why I was chosen to pen such a piece. As it turns out, I was chosen because I have experience on the topic and, more importantly, I was willing to talk about it. I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I consider the experience one of my defining moments. Not the experience of being molested, mind you, rather the experience of writing about it. The most difficult part of writing the piece was not the mechanics of writing or even the emotionally charged topic. It was saying out loud the sentence “My name is KC, and I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.”

The piece was set to music with my voice telling the events and their effects on my life. The pictures in the background were of me at various ages from birth to adult. There were pictures of me holding my cat Sunny B (don’t ask) and snuggled up to the family dog, Huggiebear. There were shots of me posing in ballet costumes and others when I was on vacation with a tan that would make an Indian envious. There was one photo in particular where I was looking away from the camera and the shadows of a nearby tree cast leafy silhouettes in chaotic pattern across my face. That was taken at about the age that the abuse began.

I was eleven and was so innocent that I was only just learning about the birds and the bees. My abuser was not a stranger as so many people believe is standard. No, the reality is that abuse is far more common amongst those who are familiar. My abuser was not someone who gave me the creeps when I’d come into contact with them. That feeling does not come into play when the abuser is someone that a child has been taught to implicitly trust. My abuser was not a transient, not a visitor to the household or a cousin or uncle that lived far enough away to keep all things secret. The abuse was not the “play” between exploring children. How much easier might it have been to deal with had it been any of these? My abuser was none other than my own father.

For my first eleven years, he seemed to be a great dad. It was as if a switch was flipped when an opportunity arose and he took advantage of it. From my perspective, it was initially subtle and always dreadful and every time something happened I was told it was for my own good. My health. My cleanliness. My benefit. It was really a classic line to get a trusting child to go along with something that they, even as a child, felt was wrong somehow. It was not something I could articulate though I was a prolific writer even then. Words failed me more than once. The internal battle was far beyond finding the right ones to use, though.

For more than six months, I tried everything I could think of to deter the incidents. I started with “accidentally” locking the bathroom door when I took a bath. When that got me in trouble, I stopped bathing unless my mother was home because I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t approach me then. That got me in trouble for being unclean, so I switched to showers. The incidents didn’t stop as I had hoped, they only changed in nature. I learned to take the fastest showers in the history of bathing. I even went so far as to “bathe” in the river with my bathing suit on. No, I am not joking. I literally took shampoo, conditioner, and soap into the river so that I would not be in my own house alone with my father when it was time for a bath. Really, how sad is that? Unfortunately, that did not stop the incidents. Again, it only changed their nature. I would say that every time I began to master a new kind of avoidance, he was right there with a new brand of adaptation. It did not stop until my mother was home more permanently from her excruciatingly long training program and I became so elusive and defensive that I was nearly put into some kind of intensive therapy program.

So, why didn’t I tell? That’s what everyone who hasn’t been through abuse asks in one form or another. If it was so bad, why didn’t I open my mouth and spill the beans? For the benefit of those who have not been in those shoes, here goes: I tried. My eleven year old mind did not know what the words were that would convey the myriad of emotions that surged through me every time I was in the same room as my father. Since words wouldn’t work, I used actions. I clung to my mother when she was home until she had to pry me off of her. My behavior swung dramatically. I was moody and any little thing would set me off. It was all attributed to the stress of my mother being away for so long, an idea perpetuated by my therapist father who wanted to make sure it all stayed secret. When my mother suggested therapy, he pushed for me to go to a colleague in his group. I refused. Not because I didn’t want someone to talk to, but because I understood that there would be no such thing as client therapist privilege and that this guy (who did give me the creeps, by the way) would tell my father every last word of our sessions.

I felt filthy. Nothing could wash away the stain or the secret. It felt so wrong and I was powerless to make any lasting change. Any step I took got me into worse trouble than the last. After all, what he was doing was to “help” me. He was watching out for me, he said. He was the only one who really cared about me because no one else was protecting me the way he was. I should thank him. He was my father. My very existence was thanks to his benevolence, after all. I owed him everything. All that I was and would ever do was because he cared enough to do the things that must be done. Filthy. Dirty. Ruined. Worthless. He was saving me. There was nowhere to run. No safety. No reprieve. Over and over and over…

I was torn from the inside out with my own logic. If I told my mother, one of two things would happen. She would either believe me or she wouldn’t. If she did, she would have confronted my father and they would have fought and probably ended up divorced because of me. No good. Too much guilt there. If she didn’t believe me, I would not be able to trust either of my parents and there would be no safety against his desires, which would probably get worse over time as I grew up and her presence would offer no protection anymore. No good. The situation would just be worse. If I didn’t tell, things would keep happening and maybe get worse over time. This was the epitome of a no win situation.

Ironically, my salvation came with his cheating on my mother. That sounds really terrible, but the following divorce was not my fault. I was free of the dirty secret he carried and it was not about something I had done or said. I was still conflicted, but a part of me was relieved to see him go. That is, right up until the divorce papers said I would have to go stay with him every other weekend and alternating holidays. In the lawyer’s office, I was adamant that I would not go. Nope, nope, nope, not this girl, not gonna happen. After major confusion mixed with assurances that even if I was angry with him for cheating on my mother, I would come to enjoy spending time with my good ol’ dad, I blurted out that he had molested me and I would run away before going to stay with him for a single night. Mic drop…

The lawyer assured me that I wouldn’t have to go if I didn’t want to but to leave the papers as they were written. Epic fail. Here’s a note: if a child EVER tells that they’ve been molested, further sweeping it under a rug does not undo the tremendous damage that is eating that child away like storm water on a soft stone. Bit by bit, that child’s soul is being carried away in a torrent of pain. I’m not being dramatic. I’m being realistic. The lawyer failed us. He failed me. He failed me as surely as my father had. He did absolutely nothing in a situation that has mandated reporting. He was required by the legal codes he swore to that he would report to the police and child protective services if this very situation ever came up. Epic fail. He thought it would be fine since I didn’t have to see my father any more.

He was wrong.

In a way, my life was already forfeit. What I understood in that exchange was that I wasn’t worth rewriting the legal documents. My moment of truth was met with what felt like a dismissive wave of the hand and a “you’re fine” and the feeling that it wasn’t really over. My mother was horrified and though she believed me, she was concerned with what to do to keep me safe and mostly what to do next as a newly-single mom with two teenagers. I give her a tremendous amount of credit for how quickly she switched gears after being completely blindsided more than once in rapid succession. What should have happened was that the divorce negotiations were ramped up to ensure my safety, immediate entry into therapy sessions for both my mother and me, and charges brought against my father, all brought about by the proper actions of our lawyer. What did happen was… well… nothing.

Since nothing really came of it, my father married the woman he cheated with, who had been one of his clients. Her daughter from another marriage was about seven. They had a baby girl together. The feeling that it wasn’t really over? Yeah. You probably guessed it. He molested both of them. He also molested their friends and a cousin and the next door neighbor girl. I wasn’t the first, either. There were others. Too many others. It was enough that just those few of us who came forward, very reluctantly I may add, earned him years in prison from multiple counts of child molestation and aggravated child molestation.

I could argue the what-ifs and should-haves until the world ends. What if I had told sooner? What if the lawyer had done things differently? What if I had succumbed so long ago? Should I have been more assertive? Should someone have picked up on the hints and clues I thought were obvious? Should I have accepted counseling? Who knows? Any tiny turn can change the course of the largest ship. I went through long periods of sadness and pain, but I can now say that I survived. I wrote the piece because people need to know about sexual abuse. People must learn the signs and understand what a child is saying without words when words fail. People have to know that rarely will an abuser stop at one victim.

Silence is allowing the abuse to continue and grow. For every one who speaks, so many more are still shrouded in secrecy. The silence must be broken before our children are. Childhood sexual abuse leads to so many problems if left unchecked or untreated, such as teen pregnancies, eating disorders, psychological disorders, victims turned perpetrators, domestic violence, the list goes on and on. The cycle will continue unless we stop it. We have to teach our children not just good touch bad touch, but the gray areas around them and in between and that if something feels wrong, they should trust that feeling. The abuse is not black and white. The effects are not black and white. The lines that divide right from wrong in a child’s mind are still forming and can be manipulated by those who are hunting for their next prey. Our children deserve so much more than this, and it is up to each of us to protect them. We cannot help them if we quiet their pleas for compassion and understanding with scorn or disbelief or impatience or indecision. The silence must be broken.

My name is KC and I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I am breaking the silence.

As a child, I always believed in an amazing life for myself. Laying on the floor of our open-roofed treehouse and staring up at the clouds, I imagined the exotic places to which I’d travel and the interesting people I would meet. The expectations were grand and the imagination blossomed further with every book I read or movie I saw. I just knew that by the time I grew up, there would be manned space flights to anywhere in the solar system I wanted to go, and possibly beyond, but only after I had witnessed the fury of Jupiter’s Red Storm. I could see myself as an adult diving into the Mariana Trench and discovering new species that could only exist in the deepest dark and intense pressure of the ocean. I would naturally spend a good bit of time in the jungle, but would also traverse the poles to crack the secret of why polar bears and penguins would never naturally meet. Yes, it was to be a truly amazing life.

I suppose the problem is that I grew up. In some ways, I grew up too fast, learning things I should not have known until much later in life. Even so, I never imagined that I would be where I am. Of course, where I am was never a guarantee. That I’m here at all is a miracle several times over. Just how many times are for other posts. One miracle in particular came about because of a dream and a man.

When I grew up, I thought of myself as unworthy and broken. Almost all of my boyfriends had been abusive in one way or another and I believed that was the way men treated women as a matter of course. After all, the man I trusted most in my life had betrayed me in the most complete manner a father could. Right after that, he betrayed my mother. I didn’t trust men any further than I could throw them. Really, how many times can a person get burned before they learn that the stove is hot? I was burned and burnt myself, each on a regular basis, to the point that I hated myself. I didn’t express this to anyone because it seemed that no one really knew what to make of me. Until him.

I was at a miserable low. My boyfriend of several years was the most abusive yet and I had a baby son at home who had some sort of special needs. I lived with my mother and my life situation was tense at best; only because it felt endlessly wrong. I had a part time job teaching at an adult education center in a nearby town and was otherwise utterly lost. Depressed and lonely, hating life, believing that I was worth more dead than alive, suicide was rolling around in the back of my head. As it happened, I found solace in talking with my boss at the learning center. I could tell him anything and just be honest. AL was not judging, just listening.

I had seen a therapist for some time a few years earlier and she left my question unanswered when I asked her outright if I was crazy. For me, that answered the question. She didn’t understand me. In retrospect, I understand that I wanted her to say that not only was I not crazy, but that I could still have a good life full of adventures. There were only a small handful of people who I felt had not let me down or betrayed me, and the list was shrinking steadily. AL understood me. He came from a background of working with people who were stuck in trauma. That could mean brain injury or PTSD or any number of related issues that lock a person into a moment of their life that defines them, either consciously or not. I was locked. Unfortunately, I was locked in more ways than one.

AL and I talked about anything and everything. Reincarnation… Aliens… The Pyramids… Auras and energy… Wild theories that made me begin to think that maybe I wasn’t the only crazy one. When I really started to trust AL, I would tell him about some of my dreams, which were always strange and frequently scary. He would point out aspects of them and I could start to see how they were connected to my life and the emotions that were so tied up in knots inside of me.

One night I had a dream. I remember only a piece of it. I was standing in a place, but I couldn’t tell where it was. Darkness was all around me and there were voices in the smoky dim. Suddenly, I was aware of incredible pain in the palms of my hands. When I raised them to look, I had the Stigmata. Yes, I had been marked somehow with the nail wounds of Christ. They were not bleeding, though, they were burned. They were complete holes that were burned through my palms straight through between the bones of my hands. As I watched, wisps of smoke curled away from the wounds and began turning greenish with faces like ghosts. They were crying at me in silent sobs as if I was the one who ended their lives. Terrified and heartbroken, I shook awake with hot tears still on my face.

It was morning and I was still shaken and on the verge of tears. I went to work because there were no sick days. I worked or I didn’t get paid. I’ve always been the kind of person who radiates emotion. Controlling that radiation has never been a strong suit. AL could tell immediately that something had happened. In the quiet of the morning, he called me to his office and asked what was going on. When I told him, he thought about it for several moments and then asked me the question that I had not dared ask of myself.

“Are you going to kill yourself?”

The shock of his question broke whatever control I had left. The garbage that had been bubbling around in my psyche for years crashed into my skull and I broke down completely. I wanted the fairy tale. I wanted desperately to love and to be loved. I knew that where I was could not be all there was. There had to be more; there just had to be. I didn’t want think that the spirits that were escaping from the burning wounds in my hands were the dying dreams of my childhood, but that’s what they felt like. My composure was gone. Hope was gone. Even though I had not voiced it, AL seemed to understand that I wanted everything to be gone. I simply had nothing left.

When I broke, something broke free. I couldn’t deny what he asked me, though I had not been able to articulate it either. He would not let me leave before he heard the words “I am not going to harm myself.” In fact, he went further than that. He told me that I have an incredible potential for greatness. At 24 and with my history, I was hard pressed to understand that. I had been so low for so long that I didn’t really believe him. What I did believe, however, was that he had wisdom well beyond my years. Deep down, I still wanted to believe that I could be more. That spark was deeper than the depression had been able to seep. I just needed some help to find it.

AL took my hands in his, one at a time. He laid each hand, palm up in his and traced his fingers over the center of my palm, saying “heal…” At that moment, things inside me changed. AL went from being my boss to being my mentor and dear friend. There was someone in the world who wanted me to understand that I could still be everything I always dreamed about and more. I had to see that it wouldn’t be easy but it would be worth it. I had to learn to put one foot in front of the other even when I wasn’t sure that there was a foothold there. I had to know that a leap of faith is not foolishness. With a single word, AL had helped me take the first step on a path that was winding and scary and strange and beautiful. At the risk of sounding cliché, my life was never the same.

I returned to college that summer. The following year, my son and I went to Costa Rica for six weeks; a trip that freed my mind and soul far greater than any other experience I’d had in my life. The summer after that, I moved into my own apartment with my son, which was my first time living on my own. I finished my Bachelors degree. I put my foot down and insisted that I would not be abused any more, breaking off my relationship with my boyfriend of nine years. I slowly learned that a close friend was actually my future husband. I moved again, this time away from the town that had been my home since I was seven. Yes, those few years were incredibly eventful. They were sprinkled with the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of moving forward. They were, however, essential to the process that AL began when he tenderly told me to ‘heal’ from a wound that could not be seen but was felt through the core of my being.

The pain is still there, but so is the spark. The fear is still there, but the spark is brighter. I don’t even know if AL knows what that day meant to me. I’ve not mentioned it to him since. He does know, though, as does anyone who has known me for any length of time, that my life is far different than I expected it to be. I haven’t travelled like I’d hoped… Yet. There has not been an opportunity to take a flight in space, though I am able to see the results of unmanned telescopes and satellites that take my breath away and further still my imagination. I’ve not plunged the depths of the ocean and explored the deepest places of the Earth, but I’ve climbed a volcano and rafted down dangerous rivers. I’ve been to the jungle and fell in love with another land. I’ve not made it to the poles, but I’ve traversed a glacier and seen the magnificent forms of breaching whales and flying eagles.

My life has not been as I dreamed exactly, but that’s not a bad thing. I can think about the events that took me to where I was then and where I am now and see the path my life has taken to put me exactly where I was supposed to be. I have an amazing life. It’s not perfect and it’s not without pain or fear, but those things only amplify the beauty and love. In many ways, I have healed. I have forgiven. I have evolved. There are still places I dream of going and adventures I want to experience, but the opportunity to do those things is not gone. I am still moving forward. Was this the path AL saw for me? Who knows? Maybe I’ll ask him. After more than seventeen years, we are still friends. Whether he knows or even remembers that day doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he helped me find the spark instead of losing myself in the stigmata.

WARNING: Contains extremely graphic and disturbing imagery and language, made all the more unsettling in the fact that it is completely true. Seriously, folks, adults only.

It is taboo to speak about a miscarriage. People in general turn their heads away and pretend not to have heard the word, as if the act alone of speaking that word brings a terrible curse upon all those who hear it. In reality, they simply don’t know what to say and rather than giving comfort, a woman who has suffered a miscarriage is typically treated to any number of inappropriate and utterly untrue clichés that will wreck her already broken heart into a million tiny pieces of despair. For lack of any better place to turn, the un-mother runs into the arms of silence and secret. She stuffs the experience down into a magic bottle, seals it with her own deep inner magic, and vows never to release its potent and dangerous little genie, burying it in the depths of her heart, which by now has been reduced to sand, where no one will ever find it.

Only, the bottle refuses to stay buried. It surfaces at horrible times and once again plagues her memory, because some things can never be buried deeply enough to keep them forgotten. Without warning, the un-mother relives every scathing moment of the experience and whatever portion of her heart and mind she has been able to rebuild during the respite of forgetfulness is once again decimated into despair. This is what we un-mothers live with. It is what we will die with. No matter what else happens in our lives, it is there, waiting to spring on us at any moment.

Our only defense is to take hold of it and drag it back from silence and secret. We have to mold it like the artists of creation that we women are and make it part of us in a way that will not drive us into that despair. It is ours and we can do what we will with it. We have to go through the steps of turning it into something not just lost, but into something beautiful and loved. We have to embrace the experience and understand how it permeates us. Only then can we breathe again. Only then can we live again. Only then can we allow ourselves to love again. It begins just like any other process of healing. It begins with the admission that something did in fact happen and we are not going to ignore the pain any longer. It begins with having the strength to say just a few words and letting the rest fall into place. It begins here: My name is KC and I had a miscarriage.

My husband, R and I were married in summer of 2005. It was a turbulent few months, including being in a car accident, losing my job and starting a new one. My son, J (from a previous relationship) turned eight and we were all happily adjusting to being a family. We lived in an apartment and had a cat named Yoda who was certifiably psychotic. We were originally going to wait for a year before trying to have another child, but we had a happy accident right before Thanksgiving. Never let it be said that the pill is fool-proof. A doctor told me later that it is really only about 85% effective. I had sort of figured that out already, thanks.

We spent Thanksgiving with my brother’s family. We had decided not to tell anyone because we had a special way we were going to announce the good news at Christmas. By then, I would be eight weeks along and would have sonogram pictures to show. We intended to pin a small stocking to the front of mine with the sonogram picture inside it. It would, however, be a trick to keep it quiet until then. My cravings were severe and weird and my changes in behavior were significant. As an example, I sat at the hors d’oeuvres table at Thanksgiving and happily began wrapping turkey pepperoni slices around dried apricots and popping them in my mouth. This is not something I would normally do. In fact, I didn’t even realize what I was doing. R leaned over and told me in a whisper that I’d better stop or everyone will know that I’m pregnant without us saying a word.

My eight week sonogram was scheduled for a few days before Christmas. J was staying with my mother for the week before Christmas, so R came with me to my midwife’s office. Because the baby is so small at the eight week mark, it has to be an internal sonogram. We all trouped into the room and got ready to do the sonogram. The midwife, M, began the procedure and began taking her measurements. After a few minutes, she told us to sit tight and went to get the doctor. R and I happily chatted away, oblivious to the rest of the world.

The doctor was a gruff man with a strong accent. He was none too gentle with the sonogram wand, either. As he worked, R and I were talking quietly. M touched my knee and asked “Did you hear what he just said?” I hadn’t been listening to the doctor at all, so I shook my head. “There’s no heartbeat.” He stated bluntly. I think my heart stopped for a few beats. R and I looked at each other, unable to speak.
“What?” I finally managed to spit out.
“There’s no heartbeat.” He repeated, “This baby’s dead.”

He set the sonogram wand on the table and stood up. White shock filled my entire being. It couldn’t be. There had to be a mistake. Maybe we just miscounted the number of weeks. Maybe they had just missed it, like the baby was turned wrong or something. It simply could not be true that there was no heartbeat. I instantly hated the doctor. He was leaving the room without any explanation to soften his last words that hung mercilessly in the air behind him, “This baby’s dead.”

M explained through my tears that they would take blood that day and the next and compare the levels of what she called hCG, the pregnancy hormone. If the count went up, then I was still pregnant and we’d meet back there to figure out what happened. If the count went down, then we would have lost the baby and would have a decision to make about how to proceed. She left R and me alone for a little while in the room to cry.

I went in the next day and the phlebotomist stuck me with another needle. I told her why I was back. She said that sometimes, just sometimes, the sonograms were wrong. At times like that, everyone knows someone who knows someone who has had just that very thing happen to them. I was confused with hope and horror. I don’t know if I believed her.

I called my mother that afternoon. It was the day before Christmas Eve and I remember the conversation pretty clearly. “Mom, I’m pregnant, but—“ Her squeal of delight cut through me like a hot knife. “BUT,” I cut back in, “They said there’s no heartbeat. I need you to pray. Just… pray.” Her part of the conversation continued with all the same arguments that I had been making since the previous morning. Anything is possible with God. Yes, mom, I know it is.

My Aunt M called me later that day. The doctors had told her the same thing with her daughter, who was born fine. They would all pray for us. She knew it just had to be the same with me. Anything is possible with God. Yes, Aunt M, I know it is.

M called me herself the morning of Christmas Eve. “Your hCG levels dropped by about half from what they were at your appointment. I’m so sorry, KC, but your baby has died.” At that moment, so did I.

She explained that my body didn’t understand yet what had happened and that I had to make a choice. I could either have a DNC, which was the same procedure as with an abortion where they put me under and cut the baby out, or I could let it happen naturally. She said that at this stage, letting it happen naturally would be like a really bad period. Given the choice, I could not fathom the thought of a DNC. Being seriously anti-abortion in combination with a vain hope that they were still wrong, I chose to let it happen naturally. She called in a prescription for me for something for the pain, which she said would be severe, and tried again to convince me to go under for a DNC. I insisted on going natural. If I had to be honest with myself, I was terrified of going under anesthesia. If I had a choice, there was no way on God’s green Earth that I was going to allow myself to be put under. So, natural it was.

Other than that, I don’t remember much of the next week. I remember a snapshot image of R and I holding each other and crying. I remember Yoda destroying our carefully decorated Christmas tree with all of our ornaments and garlands that R, J and I had made by hand for our first Christmas tree together. I remember going back to work and sitting at the front desk, hating what I was going to have to do next. I had already told my bosses, the five lawyer partners, that I was expecting. Now I would have to tell them I was no longer pregnant. There was nothing in the world I wanted to do less than that.

L, my supervising partner, finally got off the phone. I stepped tentatively into his office and closed the door. I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t expect him, however, to suggest that I take the following Friday off to be with my family. He said that I should be with my family as much as possible for the next while. I took him up on the offer.

Later, I went into the kitchen to prepare my lunch. DJ, one of the other partners, was sitting at the table reading the newspaper. As I stood with my back to him and punching buttons on the microwave, he asked me an innocent question. His question came from an understanding point of view stemming from the fact that his wife had endured several miscarriages until they finally adopted their son, and he knew that oftentimes there were things that a woman had to do while she was pregnant.

“So, are they having you do anything like standing on your head or riding a bicycle backwards for this pregnancy?”
“No,” I felt my heart catch in my throat, “because I lost the baby.” No sooner were the words out of my mouth than he was out of his seat and wrapping his arms around me. Of course, the tears that were always so close to the surface sprang out of my eyes. Absolutely nothing could have held them back. He only said “I’m sorry,” and left it at that. Here was a man who knew from experience that extra words were just that: extra words. I am grateful to him. He showed me exactly how to react when someone shares the experience with me. Sheer simplicity and silent understanding. That is all that is required or desired.

I took the Friday off as L had suggested, though I felt no different than I had before. I only took it because L gave it. It was like some kind of consolation prize for the grieving. Waiting for the inevitable to begin and hoping against hope that it would not is its own kind of torture. I was still harboring hope that they were wrong and I would find in another month or so that the baby was still alive. Right after the New Year, I realized that regardless of actions or hope or prayers, it was indeed the beginning of the end.

The following Wednesday morning, I began to bleed.
For the record, I like M. I went back to her for the later births of both of my daughters, but beginning late that morning, the only thing I could utter through the penetrating pain was “why didn’t she tell me it would be like this?” What started like a heavy period became waves of contractions in rapid succession with the most intense bleeding I’d ever endured. I turned the phones over to someone else and excused myself to the conference room.

The early afternoon sun shone in through the windows and warmed the place where I crumpled on the floor in a fetal position and sobbed. I had called R and he was coming to bring me my medication and a change of clothes. I couldn’t move. I had put layers of cardboard under me so as not to spoil the carpet, but my clothes were ruined. I didn’t care. I had grudgingly filled the prescription for pain but had left it at home. After all, I had been fine that morning when I left for work. By the time he got there, I was nearly passed out on the floor from lack of blood and throbbing agony. Despite the fact that I had hoped to take some medication, change my clothes, take a few minutes to gather myself and then go back to work, life had other plans. L and DJ sent me home, and it’s a good thing they did. What M had called in for me was Hydrocodone, which rendered me unconscious about fifteen minutes after I took it. R practically carried me in the house, or at least, that’s what he told me. I don’t remember that afternoon or the next couple of days through the medicinally induced coma in which I existed.

On Friday morning, I woke up. The bleeding torrent had quieted to the flow of a heavy period and though I was extraordinarily sad, I was also somewhat relieved that it was finally over. I showered and laid on our bed, my wet hair fanned out around my head on the light blue sheets, leaving darker blue streaks where the water absorbed. Because it is never really over when you take a breath, another wave hit me and it instantly began again, ruining everything around me. R was right with me again, ready this time for the onslaught of emotion. I raged. I lost whatever composure my slight recovery had brought me and I raged. Had I not endured enough? I begged to go back into the oblivion that medicinal sleep had given me. In absence of the intense and persistent pain, however, R didn’t want me to. He was right, but I raged anyway. Instead, we called M and told her that it was over. She told me what to watch for and when to check back in with her. In the meantime, try to return to life as usual. There was a distinct finality to the click of the phone hanging up.

I went back to work the following Monday. No one spoke of the ordeal, though they had witnessed the beginning of it. I think they did not want to upset me. That was okay with me because I was tired of being upset. Since no one said anything to me about it, however, there was no warning to be gleaned from their words that it was not, in fact, over.

January 13th landed on a Friday that year. Everyone jokes about it or knocks on wood or crosses their eyes or does whatever it is they do to ward off the bad vibes that come from Friday the 13th. I’ve never held with the idea of inherent evil in a date on the calendar that probably isn’t completely precise with the workings of the universe anyway. I’m beginning to think that we only happen to remember things that happen on Friday the 13th not because the day made them happen, but because they happen to fall on that day.

I was sitting at my desk and felt something. It felt like the blood clots that I had been passing for more than a week now as my body attempted to clear itself out of what it now considered foreign and unwelcome material. I again passed the phones to someone else and excused myself to the bathroom, just to make sure it wasn’t going to be a problem. When I closed the stall and checked, there was nothing there. It still felt like something was wrong, so I got some toilet paper and wiped. That’s when I knew beyond a doubt that something was wrong. Part of me came away from me, held lightly in the wad of toilet paper. It was the size of my thumb and curved in a smooth arc with minuscule forms of arms and legs and an unmistakable head. At the same time that the realization hit me what I was looking at, the smell hit me. It was the smell of death. It was the reek of something that I should never have seen. It was the overwhelming stink of crushed hope.

My scream was swallowed by the sob and whatever restraint I had left in me. My body shuddered and spasmed in shock. In that moment, I dropped the toilet paper and the gut-wrenching thing in it. The plop as it dropped into the water in the toilet was sickening. I panicked and cast about for what to do next. In my frantic state, I did the only thing I could do.

I flushed the toilet.

The horror and rapidly blossoming guilt of what I had just done smacked me in the head as I watched the swirling water sweep everything away. I splayed my hands on either side of the stall walls and sobbed, my tears freely dripping and following into the water behind my tiny baby. I don’t have any idea how long I was in there. I finally went back to the office, but I didn’t take the phones back. I went in the back door and slipped into the library, closing the door behind me. I took the phone from the table and curled up on the floor, still crying quietly. Slowly, painfully, I dialed the number for home.

R realized that I was crying and was immediately concerned. I could not tell him that I was okay because I wasn’t. At the same time, I couldn’t tell him what I needed because I didn’t know. At one point, DJ opened the door to the library. I looked up at him from where I was in the corner, tears streaming down my cheeks. I can only guess from the look on his face that he knew what was happening. He backed slowly out of the library and closed the door. Finally, I was able to relay to R what had happened. He was nearly as horrified as I had been and wanted me to come home. I had already missed so much work. They probably would have let me go home, but I didn’t want to ask. After some time, we hung up and I went about pulling myself back together. I had to go back to the bathroom to get cleaned up. I never again, in the whole time I worked there, went back into that stall.

The next day, I went to M’s office. I did not have an appointment and the Saturday hours were short, but I asked for her. When she heard that it was me, she met with me in her private office. As soon as the door closed, I asked her the question that had been burning a hole in me since the whole thing began. “Why didn’t you tell me that this would happen? Why didn’t you warn me? I might have made a different decision.” I told her everything that had happened, holding nothing back. In the grand tradition of understated responses when things go so horribly wrong, she replied, “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” Ya think?!?

In her words, the fetus that she and the doctor had seen was much smaller. I should not have even noticed when it passed, which should have been while I was bleeding. There was no way I should have felt it and it should not have remained after the bleeding was over. Nothing they saw prepared her in any way for what I was telling her. I described a much more developed fetus than what she saw. The only explanation was that there were two that died at different times and that they didn’t see the second. They would have been fraternal twins in another reality. She admitted that once they saw the smaller, it didn’t occur to them to look for another. Twins often get missed that way with the first sonogram. I was left numb and cold after that. It was a long time before I could forgive her.

We didn’t tell J. It was a decision born of fear and sadness. We were not able to handle our own grief, let alone adding his into the mix. It was also a mistake. He overheard me talking to a close friend and asked me what I was talking about. I refuse to lie to him about something as serious as this, so I told him in the gentlest terms I could manage. He was hurt that we didn’t tell him, hurt that he had lost a sibling, and wanted to know why it happened. He wanted something or someone to blame, to be angry at. I knew how he felt. I wanted that too, but there was nothing and no one to blame when the answer is that sometimes this just happens.

Unfortunately, the only one left to blame when there is no one to blame is God. We all hurt so profoundly and had nowhere else to direct it all, so God became our target. By now, I also didn’t want comfort. I wanted wrath. I wanted uncontrolled fury. It was poisoning me with every breath and I couldn’t get it out. My conversations with God were not prayers in those days. They were not thanks and praise. They were not humble requests. They were one-sided yelling matches that were only one-sided because I could not calm my heart enough to hear His words. Eventually, those rages gave way to tears of guilt for how it ended. Those tears ultimately turned to bitter acceptance.

It never goes away. Healing in this case is remembering without the terrific pressure to cry. People say stupid things like “just have another baby,” or “it’s alright because it wasn’t a real baby,” or “the world is overpopulated, anyway.” Yes, I know, I really heard that. The sad thing is that the person who said it was trying to comfort me. Yeah, ok, whatever. Having another baby is not an indication that the miscarried baby is forgotten. It does not magically make the pain go away. At best, it gives another perspective. If I had carried that baby to term, we would not have our S. While it still hurts, I wouldn’t give S up for anything.

To those who say it is not a real baby, I call bull. I saw my baby, and it was real. The image is burned into my being. It had a head and arms and legs and teeny tiny feet and for the time it lived, a heartbeat. I held it for the briefest of moments and it changed my life from that moment until the end of time. Anyone who tried to tell me that it wasn’t real is simply delusional. In fact, had I not panicked, I would have taken its real little body and buried it properly like the un-flowered bud of a child that it was. I would have mourned it like any parent mourns the loss of a child. Age is no boundary for the love of a mother for her child.

Though it would not have been our baby’s actual birthday, we remember January 13 as her birthday. “It” wasn’t going to cut it, either. We named her Samantha. There is no legal documentation, no grave. Most people do not know that she ever existed. But we know. We remember. We know where she is. We know that God accepted her. He is raising her and that’s all that I need to know. She’s in good company.

Modern medicine estimates that approximately one in three pregnancies end in miscarriage, with most of the women not even realizing that they are pregnant. We are out there in vast numbers. We are silent and we are hurting. We are taboo and we are undone. But we are also made resilient and strong. We are each other’s greatest source of comfort and hope. We are your daughters, sisters, mothers, and friends. We are the Un-mothers, and we are the ones who bring the angels into the world, sometimes without even realizing it. Do not turn your faces from us. We are not contagious. We are not cursed; We are blessed. We are in this world to be a blessing to each other, and in that unity, we break the secrets. We banish the silence. We make it part of who we are and it makes us more compassionate and understanding towards others in a way that only that shared experience can. Never underestimate an Un-mother. We are forged in a painful and passionate fire to be far stronger and more beautiful than even we imagined possible.

…Doesn’t automatically mean you should.

I am a relatively intelligent person. I have degrees. I do numbers. I mean, I’m in accounting, for pete’s sake. I love complex logic puzzles, and I have Sudoku with my morning tea. None of my experience or education, however, has prepared me for what is rapidly becoming the bane of my existence…

Taxes.

Yes, Uncle Sam and his money-grubbing IRS cronies are the cause of my woes. I understand that taxes are necessary, don’t get me wrong. I know that they pay for many important things that the country and its citizens need, though I don’t always agree with how these things are prioritized. Let’s face it, the government has never held out for 100% approval. Nothing would get done. Well, more nothing than already gets done, anyway.

For all my numbers prowess, the tax system is just too complicated for me to keep track of. In fact, an entire industry is built up around the guarantee that the vast majority of Americans are not going to be able to figure it out or are unwilling to try. Those who have one job and a relatively simplified life can sometimes get away with working through it themselves. Good for them. Some with more complex filing can do their own and I wish them the best of success. To the rest of us… Well, good luck.

I mean, does it really need to be so crazy complicated? Just because changing the tax code is the IRS version of fun, do they really have to do it so often? Why can’t we have a simpler tax code? I actually had to take a day off of work to gather the things that we needed to do our taxes. I’ve spent hours poring over medical bills and mileage and expenses. I’ve even started dreaming about it, Heaven help me. I lost sleep over a statement that I didn’t have, only to find out that I didn’t need it. I have a list of things that will be necessary to file, but I have to carefully consider what goes into each category and worry that I might not have gotten everything.

An extension is relatively simple. Unfortunately, it also lulls one into a false sense of “I’ve got time” and then October sneaks up like a ninja in the night. It turns the year into a roller coaster of “I’ve got this this year” to “oh crap, it’s that time and I’m not ready” to “ok, an extension gives me time” to “oh crap, it’s that time and I’m not ready” and then the dread of the inevitable sinks in and facing the music feels a bit like musical chairs and we’re the ones standing when everyone else is sittin’ pretty.

My husband and I are actually pretty lucky. We have a tax lady who is really good at what she does. She makes it look easy when she blasts through our taxes in an hour and we can finally breathe again. She fills in everything so we can see if we’d benefit more from itemizing or if the standard deductions are the way to go. She walks us through what we need to do in subsequent years to make it go more smoothly. Pavlov would be proud… She’s nearly got us trained. It is unfortunate, though, that the training is less about chocolate entering stage right and more about wanting to avoid the stinging sensation of inadequacy. It is also unfortunate that the training is never complete because of the esoteric tax law.

Seriously, IRS, just because you can change the law every 36 seconds doesn’t mean you should. Please, please, please have mercy on the little guys who are just trying to avoid a stupid mistake that will land us in striped pajamas. In my early twenties, I filed and then realized later that I had made a mistake. It came down to who could claim my son, and it was me. I filed an amended tax return. Easy right? Wrong. The IRS selected my amended return for review. I was young and still not overly confident in my tax filing skills as it was. This ‘review’ certainly didn’t help my confidence level.

For the love of all things holy, you would have thought they caught the most hardened criminal ever to set foot on this green Earth. I was cooperative and gave them whatever they asked for. My return was pretty simple at the time and the only change I made was claiming my son. According to how they treated me, I was actually a cold-hearted criminal mastermind who was intent upon collapsing the government (and ultimately the world) by defrauding the IRS of their hard-earned tax money. They might as well have hooked up some hungry leaches for the bloodletting they were about to subject me to. I was literally in tears, multiple times.

What saved me from all this was another branch of the IRS. The black sheep, apparently, because they wanted to help. Yes, I know… help… unbelievable. When I first got on the phone with them, I was nearly hysterical. The lady let me talk (cry) for a while, then started asking questions. After about three questions, my phone battery died. I had no idea how to get back in touch with her and had never given her my number (before caller ID was quite so commonplace). I called back on a land line and got someone else. Without as much of the hysterics (thanks to the other lady who had calmed me down and gotten me away from the edge of the cliff), I explained again what had happened, but only after we exchanged phone numbers and extensions. I think of the lady from the first call as the unwitting therapist. The second was the one who worked through everything with me. Miraculously, whatever she did made them stop hounding me. The amended return went through without another hitch. Months of blood, sweat, and tears over this review and they flipped a proverbial switch and it was fixed. Those Advocates were my life line and they were amazing, even though I haven’t a clue what they did to fix it.

I’ve had other run-ins with the IRS and we’ve lost thousands because we listened to the wrong people. It’s not usually a good sign when your tax person won’t return your call but the IRS is extremely interested in talking with you. Trust me, this scenario does not do good things for the blood pressure. I wish it were simple enough that the system was fair and the common person could do their own taxes without having to resort to standing on their head while juggling sixteen plates on one foot while gargling vodka and whistling the 1812 Overature.

Sure, some of us would end up paying a little more, others a little less, but wouldn’t that be worth not having to hire someone and taking the risks that it involves? Wouldn’t that be better than having to track volumes of changes and codes and rules to figure out if we’re even doing it right to begin with? Isn’t it kind of silly to require another whole division of the IRS to clean up the sopping mess that is left behind when any little thing goes wrong? They spend so much time and energy perstering John and Jane Doe for a few bucks when there are billionaires who don’t pay a cent. Isn’t there something inherently wrong with that?

I’m no tax expert. I admit that freely. I never said I had all the answers. I’m not even sure that the answers I have are anywhere close to correct when it comes to taxes. I just want a fair and simplified tax system. I know I’m not the only one, and I know it’s possible. So just because we can, should we? In this case – for the good of each and every American, absolutely.