His mother

The full moon stared at me through my bedroom window keeping me awake wondering if you were looking at it too.  I wonder if you are cold tonight.  I wonder if you are hungry.  I wonder if you miss your baby sleeping upstairs.  I wonder how the same moon can mean such different things to us.  I wonder why your family couldn't love you, you seem loveable to me.  I wonder a lot of things about you.  I wish I could love you back to life the way I have your son.  I wish I could have been there when for you more.  I wish someone would have told you that you could be a wonderful mother.  I wonder if your defeat is what kept you from getting the help you needed.  I wonder if you know I do love you.  I wonder if you know that when I look into your son's eyes I see you, or if you know that when he is difficult I try to handle him with the patience and love you'd want for him even if you couldn't do it yourself.  I wish you did.  I wish a lot of things.

The lie

When we believe in a false narrative then everything else we tell ourselves about the topic is contrived so as to convince ourselves that we haven't been lied to.

I used to think I was pretty smart.  Then I applied myself to seeking only the truth, and that's when it happened.  That's when I realized I bought into a lie.  I believed the my body my choice rhetoric.  That contraceptives empowered me to make decisions about my body, and future.  I couldn't wait to move out of my parents house, go to planned parenthood, get on the pill so I could "get some".

I was naive.  I thought I was empowering myself, exercising my feminist rights taking the reigns of my sexuality, but I hadn't stopped to think about sexuality itself.  I didn't stop to think that I might be selling myself short by buying into the belief that I must be sexual to be viable, that I must be sexualized to be loved.  I hadn't listened when my parents told me I should be loved for who I am.

Planned parenthood certainly wasn't going to tell me this.  Media, movies, pop culture definitely conveys feminine power and sexualization go hand in hand (basic instinct, Madonna, etc.).  I didn't stop to think that woman has power outside of her sexual prowess, that was counter-intuitive, and counter-cultural. I should have realized to be valued intellectually had nothing at to do with sexuality. My self perception was definitely wrapped up in other people's perception of my sexual viability. How sick is that!

Exhibit A: planned parenthood's facebook cover photo for the election last fall... Notice it simultaneously sexualized women, while implying that our main political concern is limited to Pro-life/Pro-choice issues, not the economy, not foreign policy, not education. I am more than my private parts believe it or not. This might be excusable if it was a one time "mistake", but sadly this is status quo marketing (sexualizing, and marginalizing women).

I took my birth control religiously, more religiously than I received communion during this time in my life. I had a lot to lose! After 4 years I saw signs that my body had adjusted to the dose, namely break through bleeding, so I called Planned Parenthood, scheduled an appointment. They told me it was impossible to adjust to the dosage (mind you I had grown 1.5 inches, and gained and lost 20 pounds while on it). That I could continue as usual with no issues. 5 months later I found out I was 3 months pregnant... Their solution... An abortion. They were not at all worried about my well being, or they would have listened to me 5 months earlier. They treated me with a predatory attitude. I believed the lie that P.P. was looking out for me. I believed the lie that sex on demand made me independent, intellectual, and valued. In reality, i was still fulfilling the wishes, and roles of a male dominated culture for fear of rejection. What is a freedom that simply repackages your oppression and hands it back to you? Had I really been this blind? The entire premise of birth control is that I must be sexual to be viable. This is not true. I can be valuable, intellectual, and quite variable WITHOUT being sexual. Since this is true, if I would have followed this logic when I was younger I wouldn't have had to rely on Planned Parenthood. Contraceptives wouldn't have been necessary. I could have been healthier, as most women are(check cancer rates and contraceptives) without them, i just didn't know better. There are many lies out there about women's health. Even if I had known, I am not sure if I would have had the courage live out the truth.

The moral of this story girls is this, your body, your choice. The narrative of love, and sexuality has been so twisted, and our definition of Choice contrived, that you must seek the truth. Choice isn't what is sold to you by Jersey Shore, or the Kardashians, or Planned Parenthood. Choice is choosing to love yourself, and to demand without fear, to be loved for who you are, not what services you have to offer. This is scary, I know. Guys are used to getting sex on demand, and will likely move on to someone more willing to give them what they want. Let them. You are worth More respect than that. You do have a choice. When it comes to your body, honor it, and seek UNADULTERATED truth before you make choices about it, or what you put in it, (pun intended). Demand that the men in your life respect it also. Research! Btw please visit this link, it holds the truth about human sexuality, and I wish I would have known about it long, long ago... http://www.theologyofthebody.net/. Take courage, and know the truth is out there waiting for you to discover it and rewrite your narrative.

DEFINE choice

I sat on the edge of an examining table waiting for the results of blood work for a mystery illness.  My body was rebelling.  I hadn't been sick, yet I kept getting slower.  My mile repeats 3 months ago were all between 5:05 and 5:20.  Now, my mile in competition was barely a 5:10.  Why when my training had been consistent, and manageable, was I getting worse?!  The soft knock on the door stops the beating of my heart for a split second and forces a slight cough from my throat.  The doctor enters.  His face is white.  Whatever is wrong with me it must be terminal.  I can't look at him because when I do my skin prickles as the panic tries to find a way out.  "Miss Cooper...."   "you're pregnant".  I laugh.  He stares quizzically.
"What about the father?"  I point to my left ring finger.
"He'll be excited."  The Doctor exhales.  Finally.  The doctor finds relief, but I don't.  I am on a half-ride athletic scholarship and I can't afford to continue my education without it.  Not to mention that before this pregnancy my training had me on track to put out some really spectacular performances.  This pregnancy could mess up everything; my education, my athletic and professional careers.  Everything.

As some of my readers know I did contemplate aborting him.  Instead, I told my future husband, and his enthusiasm helped to carry me through my fears about parenthood.  I was terrified to tell my coach.  He had the power to pull my scholarship for this.  I was team captain, and our fastest distance runner.  Most Division 1 coaches would pull my scholarship.  This is where my story begins.  My story is one about true choice.

I forced my husband to come along for our "reveal".  He was afraid there would be a conflict.  My coach and I had had a few of those in the past.  Instead, there was a simple acceptance that this would require a "red shirt".  In college sports that means that you sit out a season, but you'll get that season back the next year.  My coach was very supportive of my situation.  He let me keep my scholarship.  He didn't force me to chose between motherhood and an education, or between motherhood and respect, or between motherhood and an ATHLETIC career.  He allowed me to have it all.  I'm not the only female athlete for whom he did this.

Right after track practice! I'm too tired to shower!

                                                     

Our team was populated with several girls who had chosen to keep their unwanted TEENAGE pregnancies. You heard me, TEENAGE.  I had several teammates who had their babies while still in high school, yet were able to be top athletes in their states, thanks to supportive parents and communities.  He offered them scholarships while most other Division 1 Coaches scoffed at them.  One of my teammates ran a 2:12 800m as a senior in high school less than a year after giving birth to her daughter.  While IU laughed at her and told her that her daughter would never be welcomed at any team events, our coach allowed the kids to come to our practices.  Daycare is not always available to young mothers that are full-time students.  THAT IS CHOICE isn't it?  Guess what, he was Catholic also.  He was living his values.  He never once proclaimed his place on the Pro-Choice/Pro-Life issue.  He lived it.  He was obviously pro-life.  He didn't need to go out and hold up posters, because he was taking real action.  Besides posters alienate and miscommunicate, but his actions were a clear embrace of what it meant to truly chose life.  He truly support women's rights.  When my teammate (the one I mentioned earlier) chose to leave the team for her daughter, it was truly HER choice because she was more than welcome to stay.

I think women deserve a choice, and right now they don't really have one.  Your job or baby isn't a choice, it's an ultimatum. Our society makes it nearly impossible to chose to keep life when that life is unplanned, believe me I know.  Our society treats unplanned pregnancy like a terminal illness, and abortion as its cure.  In order to truly provide choice we must support women enough that they aren't forced to chose between a pregnancy and job, a child and a career, a baby and an education, or motherhood and respect.  We must truly give them a choice by ceasing to treat unplanned pregnancy as a terminal illness.  I know that some people view each pregnancy as being very unique situation.  I disagree I think that fundamentally each choice that must be made is the same, it is usually an ultimatum and not a choice.  Do I chose the life of this child or do I chose the values of this society?  I think there needs to be a serious re-evaluation of our definition of "choice".  I am for true choice, which at this moment doesn't exist except in small pockets where people like my coach make a true choice possible.  I think that pro-lifers need to put down their posters and live their value.  It is the responsibility of Pro-Lifer's to take the ultimatum out of the equation so that women CAN chose life.  Let's start supporting women, and respecting motherhood FOR REAL.

It takes more

It takes more than
a mother to
raise a child and it
takes more than
a mother to fail a child.
It takes a community,
a village,
an Army of acquaintances an
an Army of choosing
silence or action.
of Choosing apathy
or offering. An Army of "do you need"s and
"would you like"s A tribe of smiles, and open
arms help build steps and platforms
for children to climb above
the hurt, and the anger.  The debris of rejection.
So, if a child fails do not blame the mother.
The face of the abuser is the abused.
The hands that committed the crime were
first the hands of a victim
asking, "where was my Army"?
Children, like moths, flock to the light.  If only a few had
the courage shine for them.
If not, the darkness will grow inside of them until they are darkness looking
exterminate that which makes them remember
they were unworthy
of
being
RAISED
above the
debris.

Night song

He crouches at
the window on
fragile arms and legs so
easily broken,
a Grasshopper of
a boy.
The curtains whip
easily around him pregnant
with night air and spontaneous
melodies birthed by
a faceless back yard
musician.  Round
silky notes run a way
from the plucked strings
of a phantom guitar and are
soaked up by his
frail body perched on
curled white toes and
long fingers that
press delicately into
his mattress, leaving
not the slightest dent.
Unnatural.
The music fills him up to flooding
and A smile rises from deep with
in, works up his spine with a jerk
and presses outward pushing up his soft
silvery cheeks.  He comes alive under the stars
and darkness and canopy of leaves.  11 years
of living and he is has mastered
the Dance; knowing
which moments to take pause and which
to let pass by on the breeze.

His life NOT mine

Me: Coopman, you really are a gift from God.  (His middle name is Zane meaning: Gift from God)
Coop: You know Mom, I was thinking about that today!  I mean, there is nothing wrong with me.  I am perfect (he means physically).  That has to be a miracle, right?
Me: Yeah, I'd say.  With my faulty genetics, you won the lottery!  It's more than that though. you know.
Coop: What do you mean?  I just meant that I was easy on you because I'm never sick, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with me ever.
Me: That's true.  I think you've had a handful of colds as an infant, and maybe the flu, what like 3 times?
Coop: yeah, 3 times.
Me: You were more than just abnormally healthy though Cooper.  That was of course a HUGE blessing.
Coop:  Yeah, I mean you could just take me out with a coat in the winter when I was baby and be like, 'here you go!' and I wouldn't get sick or anything!
Cheeky little cuss.
Me: yeah, I'm sure we did that to you... Oops.  But I mean that we didn't have to baby proof our house for you, we didn't have to worry about anything with you.  There were no unseen hazards for your dad and I because you seemed to know what they were and to avoid them on your own.
Coop: Well, Will definitely didn't do that for you.
He's totally right here, but we'll just ignore that statement.
Me: Well, it was like you were a grown up from the moment you were born.  Almost like God knew I needed to be eased into this "parenting thing".
He loses interest now and starts talking to me about Pokemon.
This conversation is much deeper to the two of us than it seems.  Because he knows what I'm about to say.

I thought about aborting him.  There I said it out loud.  Go ahead and judge me. I didn't want to be mother yet.  Sure I was engaged to the man of my dreams, and I knew he'd want to keep the baby.  I knew he'd do everything necessary to provide for us both.  I had done everything I had been told to do to prevent this, it wasn't fair.  That's why between hearing, "No Miss Cooper, you're not anemic... You're pregnant" and going back to my future husband's apartment I stopped at a park to think it over.  There would be no choosing what I wanted once I told Casey, because it would kill him if I aborted our baby. No, if I didn't want to keep the baby he could never know.  I wanted to have a choice in the matter, even if contemplating the "unspeakable" went against everything that was Catholic.  The girl who marched in Pro-Life rallies wanted a choice.

I sat in my beater of a car at the park and bawled and bawled and bawled to the barren trees, to my steering wheel, to a God I wanted to be mad at.  I couldn't be mad at God though, I DID THIS TO ME.  I thought of all things that would be ruined.  I was captain of a Division I track team.  How would I tell the team.  I had a scholarship, what if I lost it.  I had been running REALLY well, and was on track to break records, and win things, all that would be lost.  I didn't once think about the life in my womb.  It was simply an inventory of all the things I COULDN'T do if I kept this baby.  I had just bought a fitted coat.  I'd out grow it in a few months.  My body wouldn't be mine anymore.  I cried and screamed and slammed on the steering wheel until my throat felt stiff as steal, and I was sure my hand was broken.  Then, limp with exhaustion I numbly sat and counted the dots in the steering wheel cover until I was so cold I had to restart my car.

By: National Catholic Register 

Then I thought of living a lie for the rest of my life with the one person that mattered the most to me, just so I could get my name in small print in Track Meet programs.  No one looks at those names,  no one cares.  I took a deep breath.  Looked down and said, "Fine.  You Win."  I'm not sure I was talking to the fetus, or to God at the time.  In then end I was talking to both.  When I got to the apartment and told Casey the news he wrapped his arms lifted me in the air and spun me around.  His excitement incited a slowly building rage inside of me.  A long angry pregnancy was followed by severe Postpartum depression.  In fact, my husband was sole caretaker for our son for nearly the first 6 months of his life.  While I gave him his middle name, I certainly didn't see him as a gift until he was about 9 months old.  Even at that young age, when people would yell "Go Annie" he would cry.  Perhaps worried for me?  Perhaps he longed for me?  He didn't cry when they yelled, "Go Angie" or "Go Casey" or "Go ______".  Only my name.  He loved me anyway.

It was definitely a blessing that he was eerily healthy, and eerily well behaved.  He might not have survived other wise!  We were two young twenty somethings that had athletic obligations to fill and degrees to finish.  He DID go out in winter without a coat, and didn't get sick.  This little boy had a quiet humor and uncanny ability to sense and appropriately react to the emotions of those around him.  By the time he was 2 I was totally smitten and ever since have worked with fervor to be the mother he deserves, though strangely thoughts of a broken bond were something I never worried about.  Probably because he has always been so tender and warm towards me, even though I didn't deserve it.  So broken bonds just weren't on the radar, until I sat down to write this.  Another blessing? He truly is the best thing that ever happened to me, even if I didn't see it at the time.  Without him I would have been content in my selfishness, dilutedly thinking I was happy.  He has, for me, exemplified grace, and gives me a higher purpose.  He makes me want to be better than I am.

Because of Cooper I learned that just because we think we are happy doesn't mean we are.  Conversely, just because we don't like the situations that befall us doesn't mean we can't be happy anyway.  Happiness is inside of us, not outside of us.  Happiness is everywhere, once we find it in ourselves we can find it anywhere if we look for it.  Memories of those times when we are happy can help us through those time when we aren't.  Happiness is in surrender and acceptance, two things I (a confessed control freak) will always struggle with.  My struggle is less now than it was, not just because of the unexpectedness of the event Cooper being introduced into my life, but in who he is.  Cooper's presence and person frequently remind me that my life is BEST when I don't try to control it, but instead turn it over to God.  That when I try and fail to be the best person I can be I will be loved anyway.  I marvel at him everyday.  I love that kid.  I can't imagine life without him.  The world is better because he is in it.  He truly is a "Gift from God", not just for me, but for you.