Working Writing Wailing Mama

New Lives to Come

WWWMama here to tell you I'm shedding a skin in order to grow and change.

I will be closing this blog soon and (eventually) opening another. Thank you dear readers and fellow bloggers who have inspired me. I have loved the experience of being WWWMama, and I'm going to use what I have learned in this process to create a blog that fits the new woman and writer I'm finding myself becoming.

My vision for the new blog isn't totally clear yet, but if you're interested in me letting you know of its official birth, please drop me an email at wailingmama@hotmail.com, and I'll be sure to let you know.

WWWMama

Hello again

In the last week or so, I've been feeling the urge to write again. It's been a while since I've felt the craving, and now that it's visiting me again, I'm a bit tentative, a bit unsure if I can trust it or that it won't leave me again. It's surprising to me that it can come and go like that, the same way I wonder at how signs of spring never fail to renew my spirit every year. Often the things that wield the most power over us are those which sneak up on us, waking us up when we'd long given ourselves over to ignorant and perhaps even blissful sleep.

My students are reading sonnets in preparation for writing some. I've been toying with the idea of writing some of my own. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with poetry. I've written it sporadically throughout my life but find myself curiously distanced from it as a form. I wrote with my students during our recent poetry unit and shared it with them to encourage them to let loose and try to get to their "first thoughts," as Natalie Goldberg would say. I couldn't believe how impressed they were with what I felt was pure blather, but it made me think about sitting down to do some serious writing.

Poetry feels so private to me. It's precise in a way that other forms of writing don't have to be; even when it's exploratory, it demands careful attention to detail. I have a habit of jotting down notes in the car; the secrets of my life could best be traced through the scraps of paper that drift into leafy piles all around me. I think I like the fact that everything sacred about me is out in the open but in forms that no-one would really notice unless I draw their attention to them. My most recent notes are sonnet dreams, and they will most likely join the pile of unfinished poems that have fluttered into dark dusty corners of drawers and old journals.

But maybe I'll write one after all. Maybe it'll hold this moment--this latest and most perfect moment that holds the promise of both spring and an eventual return of winter--and maybe it'll bring me back to writing. Maybe it'll bring me back to me.

wwwmama

Holidays and an Official Blogging Hiatus

Well, I'm still alive, in case anyone was wondering. My life has changed in these recent months with the new job, shifting in major ways that I haven't been able to process and have been resisting reflecting on in some ways.

That's not entirely true. I am one of those people who constantly reflects and analyzes, but in my new position as a high school teacher, I've found it dangerous and difficult to do what I normally do: express everything verbally by asking questions and discussing every little new thing with those around me. As Pa has repeatedly warned me, I need to be careful not to broadcast everything and remember this year it is my job to observe, take in, keep a low profile. That is so hard for me. And what it comes down to is that I see myself as someone who is open and trusting and who has succeeded in the past by sharing, so I'm struggling with finding the balance of my role in this new job.

First, there's the issue of new co-workers. I am very impressed with them and love how supportive the environment is. The temptation is to want to develop friendships and share details of who I am and how I work. I don't think that's a bad thing generally, of course, but I am having to watch what I share and to whom more than I'm used to. I also find myself doing too much meta-commentary on my own situation and fighting the urge to always share when I find things overwhelming or confusing. It's probably better to project confidence and competence, but I'm pretty much an open book. It's difficult too to always be in the position of receiving help. I feel some guilt and discomfort with not being able to yet give back; I joke about stealing handouts or ideas and am very grateful the environment is such that they're being offered (a major reason I took this job), but it's still weird for me to not be able to return the favor.

Second, there's students. I'm still navigating the push and pull of classroom management and my role in general, and there've already been a couple of situations where I've had to figure out how to respond (like when a student confides in me or when a student is in trouble with grades and doesn't respond to offers of help). Dealing with the world of parents and teenage angst is entirely new and scary to me, and I'm struggling not only with how to handle it all during the day, but how it affects my own parenting as well. For example, when I come home after an especially tough day of fighting teenage energies and unruliness, I find myself more prone to react to Free's toddler antics and a stronger need to get her to behave.

Third, there's the workload, which is still enormous. I know it'll be significantly better next year, and the fact that I can comfortably think about next year is a big shift from a couple of months ago. But still, when I move on to a new unit or have to think about processing my grades or reading a new stack of papers in addition to figuring out what I'm teaching the next day, I'm overwhelmed.

The good news is that my health is back on track. Doctors think I either have Irritable Bowel Syndrome or I was victim to an especially rough viral infection that my body is taking months to rebound from. In either case, I'm finally feeling close to my normal self. I've also gone back on the antidepressant medication I was on for a year before I got pregnant, and I've found it makes an enormous difference in my daily level of anxiety.

The other good news is that I'm better able to concentrate on this day, and this week, rather than obsessing about the whole year or month, which is too much to think about. It helps that we're almost to Christmas and I can look at the months I've gotten through and the fact that no major blowups have occured yet!

I started this post because I wanted to officially say that I won't be posting again until the season changes. I have been feeling like I don't know myself in this new life yet--that it's scary to have so much opportunity to develop a new and better version of me (just by the fact that no-one knows me that well) but that desire bumps up against the need to go back to what I know and trust about myself in the face of so much newness and change. In the process of all that, I didn't and don't know if wwwmama fits me anymore, or at least how to fit blogging into my new schedule. It's the same with the dissertation, which I am still committed to finishing but I can't yet see how to fit it in.

I've been relating a lot of this struggle back to the first days of motherhood, when everything was seen with new eyes as I tried to process a huge shift. I tell myself now what a good friend told me then (the advice helped enormously): it takes 3 months to feel like you will survive, and 6 months to feel like you are managing it. 3 months have passed since the school year began, and I know I will survive. I'm not yet managing it well, but I have hope that I will get there by the end of February! So I look toward then and ask the universe and Creator to guide me until then.

I wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday season. May whatever it is that brings you comfort and love find you.

Scratch That

Yes, it's still all about me. I do hope to eventually get back to you, dear reader, and the wider world. But here's my latest excuse:

I spent 5 days last week in the hospital, mostly groaning in desperate pain and moving in and out of consciousness. I can write this now because I've come back to the land of the living--15 lbs lighter, much weaker, and still tummy-clutching as I am. Doctors still don't know what the problem is. I have had ongoing tummy trouble for a couple of months and they're working on a diagnosis. Something intestinal, clearly. The stomach bacteria they identified earlier isn't enough to explain the hospital stay.

So, now I'm back to trying to stay above water. I had a panic attack last night. It's all too much. Today is better. Everything is being tested. My mother and Pa are life-savers, alternating hand-holding and pep-talks. Work support is fantastic. I do worry that my sick days are being eaten up, but then again, having sick days at all is amazing to me, so in a way the timing is uncanny. The Lord only sends you what you can handle (or something like that) right?

Surviving

Thank you so much to those of you who commented on my last post. Your words inspired and helped me get through a tough patch. I can't say I'm settled, comfortable, or even "managing" the new job as well as I'd like to. I have been able to have some moments, however, where I think "hey, it's not so bad right now" or "that was a good moment right there."

Several things have helped to get me to this stage.

First, my last post helped me identify my feelings and put them in some kind of perspective, as well as recognize that the writer in me finds healing and respite in the act of writing itself, even if it's about things that trouble me. In moments of relative calm (usually on Friday afternoons when I'm stuck in traffic on my commute home and have nothing to do), I can appreciate a big advantage of high school teaching--summers that are really off, with no-one to define the kind of writing I want to explore or put me on a timetable for that exploration.

Secondly, on a day when I was about to give up completely, having taken a forced sick day and wondering why after six weeks the stress was still taking such a profound physical toll, I got a call from my doctor that confirmed there was a real physical reason for that toll: at some point, I contracted stomach bacteria (linked to ulcers and food poisoning) that, left untreated, will worsen and wreak havoc on one's system. Ongoing diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and weight loss? Check, check, check, and check. It was good to know I wasn't going crazy and the stress wasn't the only thing at work.

Third, I've had the opportunity to see and relate to students as individuals and in the context of developing relationships. It humanizes the whole thing and makes it bearable. It helps me to be less of a perfectionist and work to my strengths as a teacher--talking one on one, being supportive and encouraging, finding out where they are and helping them to move forward. Little things, like having a student smile broadly when she greets me in the halls or being able to see how they struggle too, help to get me through each day.

Finally, Free is doing fine, and I'm learning to let her be more independent from me while valuing our time together. She's adjusted nicely to preschool; her teachers say she's doing great. Pa and I are working together well, and it feels nice to know our marriage is strong enough to make it through rough patches and that we can still connect throughout it all.

My mom returned home the other day, and it gave me an opportunity to reflect again on how far I've come. I'm not "there" yet, but I'm learning to stop thinking so much about "there" and recognize the advantages of "here." One advantage, for example, is that my classes can be organic because I have no long term plan. At my first official evaluation, my boss' feedback was positive, supportive. It felt wonderful to know I'm on track and that he sensed my students looked up to me and were responding productively to the class. I'm trying to appreciate these moments rather than think of them as rare exceptions.

I wish everyone, especially you, reader, could take a moment to accept and love themselves fully, to appreciate how much they give to the world in ways they never realize. We're lucky when someone points it out to us; more often, we have to find ways to tell ourselves convincingly.

A new co-worker told me recently that stress is about the past and future, and the key to responding is learning to be in the present. I'm still a work in progress with that lesson, but it becomes clearer every day. Presently, I'm listening to the hum of the fan in an unseasonably warm Fall day as the rain falls softly outside. In Ireland, on days like this, we'd say "La go bog e." It means "It's a soft day." I always loved that expression, and when I walk outside to feel the gentle kiss of moisture and breezes, my view of the world (and myself) softens too. I wish you many soft days--and the ability to recognize and enjoy them.