Returning Home After Many Years Abroad

"The process of repatriation, or moving back to your home country, is often just as hard (if not harder) than moving abroad." (Quote taken from link below.)

"Part of the reason reverse-culture shock happens is because people attempt to go back to a place that no longer exists as a person that no longer exists. You’ve changed since living abroad and what you consider home has probably changed as well." (Quote taken from link below.)

This is on my mind lately as we prepare to move back to Canada. I've lived almost all my adult life overseas, all of my milestone events... marriage, adoptions, work experience, all the trials and joys of adult life have taken place far away from where I come from. Aside from the amazing support of my husband, there have been many times I have coped with large changes and issues on my own without the "normal" support network many people have.

I spent many years coming to terms with Norway, learning the language and culture. I remember how it felt to come here at 24 years old and to adjust to life in a foreign country on top of having to adjust to married life which is a great change in itself. At the same time I enjoyed and wanted my new life, I grieved deeply for a life I had chosen to leave behind which is normal. I certainly experienced culture shock and took my time adjusting. There were many years I felt a deep, unrelenting loneliness at the core of my being but I feel now that this was a good thing. Eventually I learned to make peace with many things and to understand that I am not owed anything, my happiness depends not on the situational but on something deeper.

There was nothing, not my years at boarding school as a teenager, or my year as a nanny in Germany, or the many, many months spent "on the road" backpacking prepared me for the reality of living in another country permanently.

Age probably played a large role in how I reacted to life here at first. I feel as though at 24, I was full of expectations and didn't understand that others were not meant to fulfill these expectations for me. I think at 37 I have a better understanding of my own responsibility in relation to the world around me.

Despite my adjustment time, the culture shock, the loneliness, the fact is, that I like being a "stranger". I like the feeling of being "a stranger in a strange land". I feel comfortable being uncomfortable and I feel comfortable in situations and places where I know nothing. I cope well with it.

I share the feeling mentioned in the article that "home" is a difficult concept to pin down. Living abroad for so many years, home is everywhere and nowhere... it's here, it's there, it's Sri Lanka and Chile too... We have an unusual family, one where each member is from not only a different country but a different continent. Both children come from their own countries and have in their genes and memories, their own histories, languages, even religions... These things contribute to a sense of belonging to many cultures and places and also to having an international mindset.

Of course Canada is my home and I am happy (and curious about what it will be like) to return there after so many years. But Norway is also home. How could it not have grown to be home too? And Europe itself feels like home to me in my heart in a way that North America feels unfamiliar. And yet in some ways, North America is as familiar to me as the blood in my veins.

I left Canada as a young adult and feel as though I will have to learn many things all over again. I like the advice in the article to treat repatriating the same way as moving to somewhere unknown. Although I will have more in my favor, I will be able to speak the language, I have my family there and many friends. I believe that living there will be a great opportunity for our family, perhaps for the children most of all. Canada is an amazing, vast, multicultural and beautiful country. It will be good. Just as being here was good in many ways.

http://www.intentionalexpat.com/reverse-culture-shock/

The Last Time I Saw My Grandpa

The last time I saw my grandpa I was 21 years old.  Hadn't seen him since I was 12 and before that, I had just a handful of visits with him but I remembered his deep, rough voice and his laugh.  His honest kindness.  He liked to tease, he was funny.  I held him up high in my memories, I loved him without question.

He was a fascinating and unconventional man.  He owned three antique/junk shops.  I remember visiting one when I was 12. It was walking into Aladdin's cave to me.  Dust settled all over glittery things.  Beautiful ornate things.  Odd clutter.  Piles of comics and books.  Interesting jewelry.  Pieces of people's lives.

"Choose anything you want!"  he said, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, a smile on his face.  I was shy at 12.  I chose a butter dish.  An odd choice for a 12 year old but it was a thing of beauty, the dark red-purple glass shone like jewels...

But anyway, the last time I saw him, we met at a pub, The Magpie and Stump, in Banff.  He was back, briefly, from Haiti.  He was just passing through.  Couldn't stay long because the road out there, the road out there, it always called and it had a strong voice.

It was dark in the Magpie.  We sat there for hours.  Long enough for him to smoke about two packages of cigarettes.  The waitress came back every ten minutes to empty the ash tray and pour more black coffee.  He called her "sweetheart" and I could see she was charmed by him.

He'd lived in Haiti for years at this point.  Ever since the day he sold those antique shops and everything else except his car which he drove from Ontario to Florida.  Went away forever, aside from the occasional trip back home to Ontario.  Chatham to Florida to Haiti. Beautiful, dangerous Haiti.

He'd written letters about lying awake at night listening to voo doo drums in the distance.  He wrote us about finding a dead body on his doorstep.  Although he had owned the antique shops, he was a carpenter by profession, so he lived near a group of nuns and built house after house for the poor there.  Constant action, constant work, constant love.

He loved the people there.  He saw need and beauty and truth in them.  He used the money he had left and paid for collage educations for girls so that they could be nurses instead of having to work in other, far worse, professions.  He joked with the children and made friends of the adults.  Because he was authentic in the way he treated others, the people he met loved him.  He wrote story after story about the individuals he met.

My favorite was a simple one.  Nothing "huge".  Nothing like paying for a collage education or building a house but it moved me all the more for its simplicity.  He wrote about a homeless old lady who refused to live in a shelter.  She just wanted her head rubbed.  To be touched.  He wrote to me that he made time to go see her and to rub her head.  That moved me because in life, is that simple act of love not equally as great as ones we would consider greater?  He wrote about her with genuine affection:

"This little sweetheart loved to have her head rubbed.  She didn't want to live in an institution in town because all her dead friends were still in the neighborhood.  Eventually she joined them."

He corrected wrongs where he could.  He wrote of how many people died of starvation.

"This man is a resident at the homeless shelter.  Here he is enjoying a snack.  When I returned he had died --- of starvation.  I checked through the town and made arrangements for the Sisters of Charity to provide food for the remaining 8 crippled residents.  So for the past three years now, no one has died of starvation.  This cost 45 US dollars a month."

There were countless such stories that he described in his forthright yet humble way.  These letters and stories made me want to go to Haiti and work with him.  At 14, it was my strongest wish.  Instead I went to Catholic boarding school and read the history books he sent me and the letters he wrote.  I studied the photos he sent and dreamed of a "bigger" life.

However I never went to Haiti and years passed before I saw him again.

The last time I saw my grandpa, we sat across a dark wood table from one another.  The Magpie was dim and the steady stream of smoke from his cigarettes made my eyes burn and his conversation made my head spin.  He was a brilliant man and he wanted to talk.  Well, not talk, he wanted to argue.  He was intensely intelligent, often argumentative, self-educated, a prolific writer of fascinating letters and an avid reader.  He enjoyed playing the devil's advocate.  He was good man with a good heart but he wasn't really an "easy" man.

The oldest son of Icelandic immigrants.  A hard worker all his life.  A man at home in unusual places with unusual people.

He made unconventional choices.  He cared deeply and intensely for the poor, for criminals, for the marginalized.  He was a man at ease when at work, when providing for those who couldn't provide for themselves.

I could have been wrong but that last time I saw my grandpa, I thought I heard anger running through his words.  Anger at injustice, anger at the world we live in.  Anger at some of us having everything and some having nothing.  An anger that wanted to understand how this could be so.

His sense of humor was wry.  He wanted to engage.  But he was talking to the wrong person.

I wanted to know him.  To ask him more about so many things he had written to me about in his ten page letters.  I thought he might want to get to know me as well.  Looking back, he probably did want to know me.  But he wanted to know me through verbal combat.  It's safe to say, he didn't fit the traditional, cozy grandpa stereotype.

I remember him challenging me on where I got my information about various things from.  Asking me from across the table, "Do you even read books?  And come on, don't just tell me you read fiction!"  I could hear the disdain for "fiction" in his voice.  I sat there bewildered and answered that I read all the time.

I felt like every question he asked me was an attack.  Now I understand it's just the way he spoke, the way he connected with people.  He liked a challenge, he liked to question everything and he enjoyed making comfortable people uncomfortable.  He delighted in a mind that could logically argue, defend it's point of view, but I've never been like that.

After a few hours, he gave me the last hug he ever gave me and drove off into the mountains.  I cried on and off for days.  I didn't know what to make of him.  I was sorry we had had such a terrible and upsetting visit.  He later told my mom it had been a fantastic visit. :)  When I heard that I remember feeling angry with him but now, it makes me smile that while I found our visit stressful and confrontational, he enjoyed it.  I'm glad that to him, our last visit was "fantastic".

I think William, my grandfather, was a good man with an authentically good heart and soul.  He was extraordinarily gentle and caring with those he met in Haiti.  I think he was also searching all his life for something he already possessed without knowing he possessed it.

His whole life, if one were to write it, would make a fascinating story.  These few paragraphs are only my poor and incomplete description of our last meeting and some of the history that went before it.  I can't possibly claim to understand him and I know I don't have a full picture of his life.  I have only little glimpses.  Bright memories full of sunshine and dust.  An inherited love for "old" things.  I have words written in faded ink on paper and on the back of pictures.

But then again,, all we ever have of someone else is our own filtered impressions and they may differ greatly in comparison to someone elses but the things I write about him are how I perceived him.

Below is my favorite photo of him.

"My dance troupe.  When we were building the little house for a man and his family, we hauled the stone from the river about 200 yards away.  The children would climb on the truck to go to the river but coming back, there was no room for them so I would dance with them all the way to the building site.  The little girl on my right made up a song about dancing with grand pere which all the kids sang as we danced, much to the amusement of the neighbors."

His heart was in Haiti.  He left a legacy of good there...

(I have written more about him here: http://thenocturnalflower.blogspot.no/2016/01/haiku-and-fragmented-heart.html)

Advent Done Badly

I sat at home alone yesterday morning, while my husband bundled up our two sons and took them out to mass on his own.  For the third Sunday in a row.

I did try.  I got up, got dressed, had coffee and even got in the car but in the end, I came home.

I walked through the front door, threw my coat over the back of the nearest chair and fell gracelessly onto our red couch, where the day before we found the body of our beloved cat who had died peacefully in her sleep.  I looked around and saw the advent candles, all still the same size they were at the beginning of advent.  The Christmas tree that I have to say looks beautiful because William decorated it on his own, stimming with excitement after putting on each ornament, all the bottom branches boasting three or four glittery balls.

I put my head in my hands in exhaustion and thought of all the plans I'd had to make this advent THE advent.  The most peaceful, the most spiritual, the most beautiful one yet.  In my mind we would gather around the dark wooden dining room table in the evenings, light a candle, I'd read a Christmas story in my most gentle and motherly voice.  My sons would listen.  It would be magic.

And in regards to myself, I had decided confidently at the beginning of advent I would grow so much spiritually.  I would meditate on the first Christmas, I would journey with the Holy Family.  I would pray the rosary and be filled with unshakable peace and joy.  I would be generous and not yell or get angry or judge people or focus on myself.

As I read back what I have written, maybe therein lies the irony.  I would not focus on myself.  What were all my great plans and expectations, if not the ultimate focusing on myself?  How good I'd be and how I'd be that spiritual and good all on my own.  All because I decided to and I had the strength and discipline to carry it out.

How I would benefit from an advent full of quiet peace.  A cozy, candlelit, storybook preparation for the sacred birth of our Lord.

Then I could hand the Lord these things at the end of Advent and say "Look how perfectly I've preformed!  Look what I have done!"

However, the reality has been that I haven't made it to even one mass this advent.  I did maybe six reflections with the kids and then the books I laid out with such good intentions, sat unopened.  I have been so tired and worn down that I have complained every day.  This advent has passed in a flurry of changing sheets, illness, exhaustion, impatience, trying to calm meltdowns, trying to explain the death of a much loved animal to a little boy who thinks the cat died because we didn't pet her enough.
 
Yet nothing catastrophic has happened.  Only daily distractions, small daily failures and sorrows.  Somehow the spiritual got all lost in the mundane.

Some wise friends helped me to remember though, that the spiritual is also found in the mundane.  I tend to separate the two.  As in, if I am a success at spiritual living, all aspects of my life will fall into place and I will no doubt awe others with the transcendent glow that surrounds me.  If I am not successful, well then, it all falls apart.

Deep in my heart, I know it all falls apart anyway.  I can't make anything perfect.  Not myself, not my children, or my home, or my prayer life.  I don't have that sort of power or control.

Maybe I approach this Christmas with hands full of ugly, imperfect offerings.  Approach the stable tired and a little disillusioned. With only unsuccessful attempts as gifts.  Here's all my impatience Lord.  Here's my quick temper.  My sharp tongue.  Here's all the yelling and exasperation that my kids didn't deserve.  Here's my grief, yes, grief, over the loss of our cat.  Here are all the things I put before you.  Here are all my other gods.

Maybe I approach with these imperfect gifts but I don't leave empty handed.

I know the soft glow of joy that is found in uncomfortable circumstances.  The knowledge that failure isn't always as it appears.  The promise that we can be made new.  Again and again if need be.  And need be.  In this season of Advent, rather than give, I can ask for healing, for humility, for gentleness, for all the things I lack.

I can keep trying.

The Mug That Said "Embrace Change": The Aftermath of a Meltdown

I wipe down the counter.  After putting away the things that don't belong there, I stop and look.
What's left?  A grapefruit.  A folded blue cloth.  A fat mug with words "Embrace Change" written on it.

I feel a sudden irrational rush of resentment.

I feel, unfairly, that those words failed me, owed me something and let me down.

I am a happy embracer of change, I really am, I want to say out loud to someone.  My adult life has been spent adapting to all sorts of changes.  I am good at change, I think stubbornly.  I don't resist it, I roll with it.

This time though, my heart contracts and the words on the mug become blurry.  I think, rather unreasonably, Stupid mug!  What do you know about change?  I glare at it and its pretty flowers and calm color.

I step back.  One physical step only but much further away in my mind.

Until all things large and small become distant.

Time stops.

There has been another tornado.  My palms turned upwards in dismay.  It's left miles and miles of damage and debris.  Things got broken.  Time seemed to stand still.  For awhile we just existed in the eye of the storm.

A gentle question.  How was it?  Were you afraid?

Yes.

 It was...unspeakable.  Inconceivable.  It seemed to come from nowhere.  The sky had been calm for a month. Nothing!  I had looked out my window, there were no small funnel clouds hovering menacingly over fields.  There was no darkening of the sky.  The wind didn't even pick up.  There were no alarms ringing in the air, telling us to run.  Get somewhere safe. To be somewhere safe.

I live where this sort of thing happens sometimes.  But even so, I forget pretty easily.  Second guess myself.  After awhile, when all evidence of the storm is gone, I go about my day, I smile to myself.  Maybe... it wasn't so bad, that last time.  It takes on the quality of a dream...of something not quite real...

But that's the weather for you.  That's life for you.  Isn't it?  

Later, there's a lot of discussion.  A lot of explaining the details.  A lot of words on paper.  A lot of change on the horizon.

In the aftermath, everything feels suspended.  Tender.

There is a little, still so little really, black haired boy skipping down the road ahead of me, a lopsided backpack half the size of his body, hanging off his shoulders.  Turning, peering at me over his shoulder.

"Mommy?  Do you still love me?"

"There's nothing you can do that would make me stop."

And silently I think "I've got this.  I've got you.  Don't worry.  We are going to take care of this somehow."

Schoolyard Bullying

Bullying.  A word that has only gained in intensity and power despite its frequent use.  Everyone is outraged by bullying. It is the hot topic at parent meetings and "zero tolerance for bullying" has become every school's catch phrase.

And rightly so.  Consistent bullying is intolerable and can lead to horrific situations and leave lifelong wounds, especially on the heart of a small child, unequipped to make sense of a situation that would baffle most adults.  We have all read the stories, horror stories really,  of children and teenagers who take their own lives as a result of prolonged, systematic bullying.

We read these stories and try to convince ourselves that these things couldn't touch us on such a devastating level.  

We tell ourselves that a child who is bullied so badly that they take their own life must not receive the necessary love or attention at home to overcome the bullying by their peers.  A child who would take their own life must not have really been taught how great their worth was, how precious and irreplaceable they were.  However, if we are honest, we know that this is not always the case.  It's far more complex than that.  A child who is terrorized daily on the playground may have vulnerabilities in other areas already and may not have the capacity to cope with or process the trauma they are enduring.

Sometimes the most loving home in the world can't save a child who has been made to feel so utterly worthless.  

It is frightening to acknowledge that sometimes the most secure home isn't enough.

Bullying is intolerable.  

Schools should have a zero tolerance policy.  These words instill confidence, the idea that something is being done right, but is there substance behind these words?  

Sometimes a concern about bullying is met with something frighteningly similar to victim blaming.  "I am sorry but your child isn't like other children.  I'm sorry but your child doesn't read social situations very well.  I am sorry but..."

In essence, I'm sorry but somehow your child has brought this upon himself.

The bottom line is that these "I'm sorry but" comments are essentially contradictory to the idea of having a zero tolerance for bullying policy in the first place.  These comments in fact, contribute to bullying rather than lead to finding a solution.  The message given is that children could avoid being bullied if they would just conform to a standard notion of normal.  If they could manage to become just like everyone so as not to stand out in any way.

Is this what we want for our children?  It isn't what I want for mine.  The answer to bullying is not conformity or eliminating differences or the very things that make someone an individual.  As my children grow, I don't want to teach them to blend in and not stand out.  I want to teach them to stand up and be who they are and were created to be, even if who they are is a little bit quirky, a little bit different.  

We can try to teach ourselves and our children courage, empathy and hard things like how to stand up for someone who is being hurt or made fun of.  We can try to help them understand that a person is allowed to be different.  

It's important to keep teaching children that there are obvious differences we see at once.  For example, we may remember to teach our children that we don't bully a child who has a different skin color or who speaks with an accent.  We may remember to teach them not to make fun of someone who has uses a wheelchair or a child who has a visible disability.

It's also important to teach our children and perhaps ourselves, that there are less obvious differences as well.  Disabilities or syndromes we don't see or understand fully because a child seems "normal" on the surface.  The little boy who is bright and engaging but obsesses over one thing and repeats himself constantly.  The child who is sitting quietly in class and suddenly has a series of noticeable vocal or motor tics.  A child with sensory issues who has trouble processing the light, feel, noise, and speed of the world around them and experiences meltdowns or shutdowns.  All of these things may seem funny to classmates until someone sits down and explains to them what is actually happening to the child experiencing these things.  

That that child may just think a little differently and understand and experience the world a little differently.  Most importantly, that there is room in the world for everyone and it's ok to be a little different.  It's a pretty good lesson to take with us as we go through life.

Also published here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colleen-berge/schoolyard-bullying-its-ok-to-be-different_b_10160054.html

Things I Would Like To Control

Tonight I am not looking to produce a brilliant piece of writing.
I am just looking to control the things I can control.
It's been the worst.
The most overwhelming.
I feel like between this and that, I can't quite reach the surface to draw breath.
I find myself wanting to scream at innocent people saying normal things
The words I always so smugly deemed as arrogant:
You don't understand.
But of course, I bite my tongue.
I had this urge tonight to smash my fist into a wall in frustration.
Or to see it fly through glass.
I, the peace loving, non confrontational, smiling optimist.
But of course, I kept my fists to myself.

Because I have to be emotionally stable now.
I don't get the luxury of hurling raw emotions all over the place
And leaving others to wade through the debris.

I am just looking to control the things I can control.
It's how I know when I am overwhelmed.

I struggle with a sweeping desire for clarity,
And when I can't find it.
I feel the panic burning in my throat and I want it gone.
Everything.  Every excess thing.
I want it all gone from my sight, gone from my home.

I keep hoping that in one of these purging binges, I find it.
That I will raise my eyebrows, give a rueful laugh,
Oh there it is!  Clarity was just hiding in the back of my overstuffed closet!

Material things, they make it so I can't breathe.

As soon as life starts spiraling, I start trying to breathe by throwing clothing into bags to give to a friend, by piling books on the floor to give to the library, by tossing papers and pictures into the garbage.  I open up my cupboards and slam them shut again, take a deep breath, overwhelmed by the excess...

Each thing that leaves the house gives me a rush of vivid relief.
A heady injection of the illusion of control.

The truth of it is this:
Material things are things I can control.

Things I can't control:
I can't stop someone from hurting,  Not even someone who is my world, my heart.

Walking home from dropping my son off at school in the morning, my stomach in knots, my heart pounding heartbreak, there's so much I can't control.

I can't keep him safe.  I can't protect him from the laughter, and fists, and words.

I can't keep his shining exuberance intact.  I can't wrap my arms around him and keep him from being hurt.

And this is when it hits me, the helplessness I feel.  I wish there was a contract I could have signed.
Between God and I when I became a parent.

It would have asked me to confirm please,
Am I willing to take all the pain, all the needless suffering this child might experience, on myself,
Let him get through life whole, unscathed?
Sign and date below.

I would have done it.  I would have said, yes anything.  Just let him keep his smile.

If that were a thing I could control.

Blogging: Succeeding At The Things That Don't Matter

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't matter.”  - Francis Chan

I first started blogging in 2007 when my husband and I first decided to adopt.  I began a blog called "Carpe Diem, Gorgeous!" and simply wrote. That was really all I did with the blog.  I didn't worry much about stats aside from thinking it was great fun to see the various countries those who visited it came from.  I didn't spend time on blog promotion groups, I don't even think they existed then.  I may have occasionally shared a post to my personal Facebook page but rarely.  Getting things shared on social media wasn't yet a "thing".  I never heard someone mention "going viral" or having that as a goal.  I never heard of blogging goals at all.  I never thought about my blog "making it big".  In fact, the main reason I stopped blogging at Carpe Diem was because I felt I had too many readers (in reality, not a huge amount!) and I didn't want it to become more about the readers than about the actual writing.  This isn't vanity speaking, this stems from the fact that although I love writing and publish many personal things, I also have a deep, contradictory need for privacy.  

Looking back, I think that we had more fun blogging then.  Blogging was more relaxed.  Many wrote simply for the pleasure of writing.  This can be argued of course since it is only a personal opinion but it's how it felt.  We all connected then through browsing and truly enjoying other's blogs, commenting and building strong relationships.  After a couple years of blogging, I had a good readership and a strong, close group of people that I interacted with (and interact with still in may cases) and many of those people became friends.  

I took a break from blogging (not writing) for several years and came back to discover blogging is business now.  Blogging is serious and competitive.  Blogging is less than ever about personal interaction and more about numbers of followers on social media.  Much (not all) content has become quite bland or on the contrary, purposely controversial.  Less about actual writing and more about succeeding at blogging itself.  I find that I have trouble making myself care about all these things blogging is now supposed to be.  I just want an emotional and creative outlet.

I care about writing and authenticity.  I care about reading what other people are genuinely concerned about or what touches their hearts.  I care about beautiful, interesting, clever, creative writing.  I care about the people behind the words.  I care about interaction and sharing.  I care about reaching people.

I like to write serious things and I like to have fun with writing.  I like a little, unprofessional, non- trendy blog.

The articles I send out into the world for publication are one thing.  I write them because I want people to share and read them.  What I write here is different. Sometimes I want to write things here that are more private, that I don't want to be shared many times or seen by many people. Things that are just for me.  

In the end, people may like or dislike what I write but I am the one who knows whether I am satisfied with what I have written.  That knowledge has to come from inside myself.  

Writers need to have a combination of assurance and uncertainty to maintain authenticity and vulnerability.  Blogging is one thing.  Writing another.  And sometimes, people manage to combine the two.        

Happy writing!  I'm still having fun!:)

Now You've Got To Be Strong

Now you've got to draw close.
Wrap your arms around your body, use you hands to
Protect your heart.
Create some sort of barrier.
Do the hard things you aren't sure you can do.

Now you've got be strong.
Not give anything away.
Hold your hand across your mouth
And not give fear a voice.

Now you're going to become familiar with a new sort of chaos.
With things that will hurt and damage.
Familiar with watching someone you love more than yourself fall apart.
Familiar with distance and not being able to reach them sometimes.

Now your heart will break
And you will cry a million private tears,
Into towels in the bathroom
While you do your makeup.
Into pillows.
Into your hands.
At any time of day.
And maybe no one believes you.
Or maybe they think it's your fault.
You haven't done enough.
You have done too much,
In any case, you can never win.
There will always be those who see the ways you have failed with this.

But now you have to focus.
On moments.  The small singular softer moments.
On loving and loving and reassuring that you love,

Now you must become the safest harbor there is.
The very safest place you could ever imagine
For someone who is hurting in ways you don't understand.
Now you have to open your arms
And make room for all this sorrow.
You slowly kneel on the floor and collect shattered pieces of everything broken.
Lego. Glass. Hearts.
All in disarray.
Now you have to try
To put everything back together,

Now you've got to be stronger than you expected you'd need to be.
And you can be.
You can be
Both warrior and peacemaker
Both a storm and a safe place
For the ones you love.

Accepting Norway

It's funny that come July I will have lived in Norway for 12 years and yet I have devoted little time to writing about my life here.

Maybe because Norway and I have had a rather rocky relationship at times or rather, when I look at it now with eyes wide open, because I have struggled through some trying and difficult human relationships here and wrongly held Norway the country to blame for personal attitudes I found restrictive and narrow.

This wasn't always so.  When I first came to Norway, I threw myself into being there.  I was enthusiastic about the people I met and the country itself.  I was 18 years old.  My hair was streaked blond and I was wearing an old grey and red school sweater and jeans.  I stepped into the cool autumn air and smiled at my friend Alyssa, my partner in crime, my fellow adventurer.  Oslo.  It felt so grand. So far away.  Feeling edgy and grown up, I slung my back pack over my shoulders and stepped on to the busy street, cupping my hands around my mouth and shouted to anyone listening "Can anyone point us in the direction of a church?"

We planned to take shelter in a church, we thought we could sleep there for the night.  Because we had very little money we thought this was quite a clever plan.

A beautiful black haired woman stopped in front of me.  "A church?"  Her eyes curious, her mouth forming a surprised "o".  I explained we needed somewhere to sleep and she smiled and motioned with her lovely, manicured hand to follow her.  She had somewhere we could stay,  

We were jet-lagged and optimistic.  We followed her down some winding unfamiliar streets.  She spoke to man outside a building, he led us to a room upstairs.  It was expensive but by this point we were too tired to care.

We slept there one night and moved on, not thinking about it again until I told a Norwegian man where we had stayed our first night in Norway and he snorted with laughter.  "You stayed there? That place is known for prostitution and drug dealers!"

To this day I still haven't slept in a church in Norway but at least I have this great achievement to brag about.

I digress but I came to Norway at 18 prepared to love it.  I visited again several times before moving here "for good" at the age of 24.  Every time I visited I told my Norwegian friends to find me a job and I would stay.

And that is funny in itself, because I often feel it would have made more sense given my personality and way of thinking to be drawn somewhere else.  Somewhere vibrant and colorful and diverse. Instead at that time in my life, I was drawn here.  

I was drawn here by love eventually and the thing is that after 12 years somewhere, you come to know yourself to be at home in a place, whether you like it or not really.  Whether you intend to feel at home or not.  The thing is the lines get blurred.  Home, family, missing, loneliness.  You come to see it's all a journey.  You are home here. You are home there.  It is not clear cut or easy to define anymore because you give up one home to create another and yet home is inside yourself.  Home is anywhere now.  

Living in a country is nothing like traveling, even extended traveling.  Living somewhere is a whole other story. 

I see now, finally, that Norway has borne the brunt of so many of my emotions that were really directed toward other people.  People who rather than welcome me or helping my transition here, made it more difficult.  People from whom I expected far too much.  Now for me, the lovely thing is, this is all done in my head and heart.  

I simply accept what is at this moment in time and I don't worry about the rest. 

Some days I feel that this beautiful country lacks something essential for holding the soul together.  I will never be fully Norwegian but nor am I really fully Canadian.  I have trouble identifying a place I really identify with,  But perhaps this is a great blessing.  I am not afraid.  I am not attached to just one place.  I can move through the world with great ease.  

I can be here.  I can be there.  My home is not a tangible place.  

The Death of a Childhood Friend

I learned today that a dear childhood friend of mine died suddenly on the first day of this bright, hopeful new year.  She had just turned 36 years old two days before she died.  Her Facebook page was brimming first with cheerful happy birthday messages and then filled with somber messages of grief and heartbreak.

We were friends during grade school but had had no contact aside from an occasional like or comment here and there on Facebook in the intervening years.

Having had no close contact with her for so many years now, I don't want to try to claim a share in a grief that doesn't rightfully belong to me, a grief reserved for her heartbroken family and for those strong, cherished friendships she has built at this stage of her life.

Yet learning of her death shocked me.  I am deeply sorry to hear of it.

It sends my mind tumbling backward to long summer days and long evening phone calls.  To being a girl with a best friend.  To sleep overs and laughter and whispered secrets.  To notes left in lockers and giggling in class.  To posing for grainy photos on the porch in homemade Halloween costumes, grinning at the camera with pillowcases full of candy in our hands.  To comparing our puffy sleeved taffeta Christmas dresses and the magic of school Christmas concerts each year.  To skating at the community hall rink on New Year's Eve.  To childhood and young adolescence and small town innocence.

As it happens I don't remember the last time I saw her.  I don't have a clear memory of ever saying good bye.  We had several years of good friendship and then naturally drifted apart.  Such is life, but the friends of our childhoods rarely leave us entirely.  They stay in our hearts and heads.  They live on in the memories we speak of to our own children.

People die at all ages.  There is no guarantee that just because we are young, we will have many more years to do all we hope to do.  That we will have the great gift of time.  That we will be given the time to grow into the selves we wish to become.

I always imagine myself growing quite old.  Wrinkled and wise, after a full complete life.  I imagine I will have had the time to make things right, make amends, grow past my mistakes.  I see myself in the future easily.  I see being forgiven for the things I have done wrong because I will have a whole life ahead of me to make up for these things.

I see myself now and all the things I worry about.  All the things that drive my actions and thoughts. The petty competitions and jealousies.  The unkind words I can make up for tomorrow.  The impatience for the future, for the next adventure, the next big thing when what do I have before me now if not my life's "big thing"?  Two little boys looking up to me with love shining in their eyes.  A husband who loves me, a safe home, good health, numerous possibilities and freedoms.

I see the way I try to define myself.  The care I give to my clothing.  The way I get discouraged that I have gained weight.  The small things I focus on.  The books I have read, the shows I watch, things like that.

I see how it doesn't matter.

I do not think of my childhood friend this evening and think about the way she dressed or if she got to travel more than me.  I think of her face in the obituary notice.  I think of her face in the photos I have of us as young girls.  Her happy eyes.  Her cheerful smile.  Her kind heart.

I think now of what matters.

Haiku and the Fragmented Heart

I was always a girl in love with words.

I began a love affair with poetry in a second hand bookshop in the city near our small prairie town when I was around twelve.

After passing stacks of comic books, piles and piles of regency romance and popular mystery novels, I found several dusty shelves at the very back of the shop heavy with once well-loved and well read collections of poetry.  Thin volumes and thick, often in rich burgundy binding.  Visually beautiful.  I felt like a girl in a novel when I would reach up almost cautiously, hoping my fingers would land on just the right volume and lift it reverently off the shelf, gently wipe the dust from its cover.  Magic.

I had long had an affinity for old, forgotten things.  A legacy from my Icelandic grandfather who owned three antique\ junk shops in the Chatham area before he up and sold it all and moved to Haiti, where he remained for the rest of his life, building houses, writing letters, working with those who had nothing material to call their own.  He became known down on that ravaged island as their beloved "grand-père".  He wrote that the children would hold hands and dance after him wherever he walked or near wherever he worked singing about the kindness of their white grand-père.

My own memories of him begin with hot sunlight, dust billowing up behind his old rusty car as we drove down the dirt lanes of the prairies in search of dusty treasures for sale in someone's barn.  Some colorful beads, some unusual glassware, something strange and unexpected.  I was a very little girl but I remember clearly the thrill of possibility.

That thrill never quite left me.  The possibility of finding treasure in old bookshops is one that still makes my heart beat faster.

I spent a lot of my time reading poetry.  I began with what was easiest and most available to me, the flowery poems of the Romantic period.  I spent a long time reading them but the words never quite spoke to the deepest and purest part of my soul.  They never quite reached me.  I was simply reading the wrong sort of poetry for the person I am.

Many years later, I am discovering the poets that do.  I recognize them as though they were my dearest friends.  Soulmates of sorts. Their thoughts resonate deeply in my heart.  They make me set down my book, shut my eyes and repeat their words again and again until I feel my soul lift and heal.  The words aren't pretty or flowery but they are deeply, authentically beautiful.

We need this sort of thoughtful, painful beauty in our lives.  There is too much rushing, too much fragmentation of the soul, too much distraction and devoting our time to things that don't matter.  There is little time for art, for lingering, for simply being.

I also feel that along with poetry,  the art of the haiku, especially those of Japanese poet Basho, bring us back to the core of ourselves.  Their simplicity is staggering and profound.  Alluring.  The focus on nature puts our hearts where they are comfortable residing.  Through haiku we are able to focus on one thing at a time.  We are able to feel deeply.  This is peaceful and healing.

Basho's words in the following verse are hauntingly beautiful.

Deep autumn,
How does my neighbor live I wonder?

This verse was the first of Basho's I stumbled upon while reading the book "Under the Tuscan Sun" and like it touched the author of that book, it also touched me deeply.  As a girl in love with words, as a woman who feels we are often live disconnected from all life and from others although the desire for connection is at the heart of all we undertake, it spoke to me.

I began with this haiku and I sought out books of Basho's other work and it was like quenching a thirst.  I felt the world begin to whisper in my ears again.  In the same way it when I was a child.  In the same way it did before smart phones and technology conspired to keep our eyes glued to the screens in front of us and safely off the souls around us.  Keep us from the risk of feeling deeply.  Of loving even when it hurts and challenges us.  The hard work of living.

Haiku show us that the magic is still there.  In a leaping frog.  In a quiet village.  In a still pond.  In every bird that breaks our heart with its song.

                                --------------------------------------------------------------------

(I connect these words to my memories of my grandfather because he lived a life of deep commitment and connection to those he served through his work.  He saw how his neighbor (in his case, the people of Haiti) lived and set about meeting them where they were.  Loving them through the work he did, through the humor and simple acceptance he showed them, through his life of giving up in order than others could have.  It might seem odd for me to draw a connection between a wandering Buddhist monk\ poet with a deep love of nature and my workaholic, chain smoking Catholic Icelandic grandfather but it really isn't.  They share this.  Profound love, be it of nature or of others.  A disdain for material items.  A desire to do better than the minimum society tells us we should do.  They were both perhaps, unconventional.

Two men of deep thought and profound intelligence.  Men of both words and action.)

Writing Poetry on New Year's Eve

It's done and I can't think what to tell you.
I'm somehow less
Than before.
It hasn't gotten better, but worse.
But it hasn't only gotten worse, but also better.
I don't feel like raising a glass
And thanking the year that has come and gone.
I don't feel like showing the world
That I am polished, enlightened, serene.
I don't feel like subtly asking you to admire me
And how far I have come
How much I have grown and learned.

The illusion of charmingly imperfect perfection.
A show for an audience barely watching.
And quite forgetful.

It's done now and I feel a vague disquiet.
The thought that someday
It will be better,
This grounding and necessary, determined hope that I will be better.

There's a lot I refuse to accept.
I don't buy for example, this bland notion that our best is good enough.
That our failures are somehow ok because we have done the best we could.
I won't lower my eyes, my expectations and hide behind this platitude.

Because we know.
When we have done the best we could.
It heats our blood
And breaks our hearts.
It grinds our bones to dust.
We know it without needing to be told.

I want to say to myself.
To you,
To anyone.
Your best isn't always going to be good enough
This is just the truth.
A plain, hard, simple truth
Written in your frozen breath on a car window.
Held in your manicured hands.
Tucked away in your bold, beating heart.
Strewn like colorful petals across ice.
Etched in sparkling frost.

Yes, you are loved and lovely
And sometimes you are good and sometimes you are kind and sometimes not.
There is enough hope here under the waning moon to encompass everything you are.
Everything you want to be.
But the best we can do and be is not always enough.

I see my refection in the mirror.
The truth of it in my eyes.
For all my reasonable, diplomatic talk,
My fear of confrontation,
I'm comfortable
Being uncomfortable.
The darkness of my eyes tells me so.

I won't run from you
But I might leave your foundations in shards
Of light and of truth.
Let's see what the new year brings...

Welcome 2016.

The Ghost in The Quiet

The work of quiet hours
Stretches on before me.
I, who could not keep you.
Who could not hold a ghost.
All smoke and mirrors.

Bare branches that claw and pull.

Drag me back to the quiet hours
Where I will be dull and sit in the dark
And stare at my own reflection
On the frosty window pane
And hear the clatter inside my head
And know it is a kind of Hell
That there is no quiet here.
That you are a spirit by my side.

Who won't let me rest.
Who won't let me alone in my quiet hours.

You Come From Love

You come from love.

We are dancing in circles, my son and I.

I am singing a verse from a song he has always loved, even when he was a baby.

The book of love has music in it, in fact it's where music come from...

He holds my hands tighter and smiles a smile that covers his entire face.

Then being silly I change the words "The book of love has William in it, in fact it's where William comes from..."

And I look at him laughing "Do you come from the book of love?  I think you do!"

He laughs and I say to him more seriously "You do come from love.  Remember that."

You come from love.

My thoughts flash backward to several years ago. My husband and I are sitting in a quiet, dim conference room, chairs in a semi circle, many couples there with us.  So many expressions on so many faces.  Overwhelm.  Grief.  Struggle.  Strength.  The air is heavy with anxiety.  Some women are crying.  Many of them are brought here by heartbreaking situations.  Many are bowed under the weight of indescribable grief.

The attention is focused on a woman at the front of the room asking us to think about what we will do if we learn that the child we adopt is a result of violence or rape.  Will we be honest with them?  What will we say?  How will we say it?

It's too much.  It's too heavy.  The air is too still. 

And who knows?  Who knows?  Who knows what they will say in this situation?

Some children are a result of love and some of violence and some of indifference.

Today as I looked at my son and asked him jokingly if he came from love, I suddenly felt the truth of it in my heart.  Of course he comes from love.  Of course he does.  I don't know if he is the result of a loving relationship between his biological mother and father but I know he comes from love.

Every fiber of his being was created in love.  Knit together in his mother's womb with the deepest, greatest, purest, most eternal love.  Created in the brilliance of the love of the Heavenly Father.

My sons, I promise you, you come from love.

All That We Lack

                                                       

My mom told me once that each night as my four siblings and I were growing up she would pray at the end of the day that Mother Mary would make up for any lacking she may have experienced that day as a mother.  That if there were any failings in her mothering that Mary would make up for them with the perfection of her motherly love.

I find this concept so beautiful and reassuring.  Although I have always had a deep love for Mary, since becoming a mother myself, my devotion to her has grown in so many ways.

When we were in Canada this past summer, we met and spoke with a woman from Sri Lanka.  I thought nothing of it until later, when W and I were snuggling reading a story before bed that night.  I shut the book and he asked me in a quiet, tentative voice "Mommy?  Today I saw that other mommy didn't I?"  At first I was couldn't think what he meant.  "The mommy from Sri Lanka.  I saw her today.  She looks just like me."  I said "Oh sweetie, that woman was just a friend.  She does come from Sri Lanka but she isn't your Sri Lankan mommy."  He considered this for a moment and then asked "But where is she then?"  And then the words that you always know will come someday but not usually at 6 years old "Why didn't she want me?  Do you think she misses me?  Do you think she cries for me?  Does she love me?"

I was glad the room was dark because I could feel tears filling my own eyes.  I willed my voice to remain calm and steady and tried to answer as best I could "W, she did want you very much and I know that she loves you and misses you everyday.  She couldn't keep you there though so now you are here with us, in our family and we are so glad.  We love you so much."

"But why do you want me?"

Why do you want me?  How does anyone answer this question sufficiently?  If it were a teenager or an adult asking, there is so much more one can say, so many complex things that can be explained and spoken of and understood but answering a young child is different.      

I chose the simplest way and said "We want you because we love you and you are a part of our family.  We couldn't imagine life without you.  We will always want you.  Forever."

I wondered later, are these the questions that will follow him through his life as he grows?  My heart felt heavy and sad.  Not because he had asked about his biological mother but because my own explanations are so inadequate.  I've thought about these things for years but I have no perfect answers.  

After I had tucked him in and walked down the stairs, I sat out on the porch swing and remembered Mary.  This was something I could entrust to her.  She is my mother and the mother of us all so I asked her to especially be a mother to my little son whose heart is full of questions.  That she would make up for in him, everything that I can't provide, everything that this world can't provide.

We are so fallible.  The world so imperfect.  Love, so willing but also so complex, so fraught with pain at times.

When W asks these questions, I know I am not responsible for this lack in his life, I am not lacking, but something is.  A loss that is deep and primal is being mixed with something beautiful and spiritual.  This to me is the essence of adoption.  Loss and gain.

It is a deeply spiritual bond.  A forging.  I believe we are spiritually and eternally bound, not only to our two children, but to their families and their ancestors as well.  This bond is imperfection made beautiful.  Made perfect in the desire to love.

In human love, there is always failure and imperfection.  In my own love, there will always be imperfections, places my love isn't able to heal or to reach or places I am not willing or able to go.  There will be times I fail. 

So I entrust my children to God's perfect love and to the perfect love of Mary, Mother of Jesus and to the love of her husband, Saint Joseph, an adoptive father himself.

I pray that they make up for all the ways this world and the people in it and love itself, are lacking.

Looking For You

I'm in the mood for haunting.
The places I once went.
A bench. A room. A street...
Rubbing hands together in the cold night air.
Turning the coat collar up.
Dressing all in black.

I'm in the mood for contemplating
Blazing lights from pretty windows
Up and down the boulevard.
Faces at the glass
That stare blank into the night.
Reminding me how we stare
Blankly past others
Treat them as if they were ghosts
Invisible in the wake of our own light.

I'm in the mood for pretending
I am
Rootless and forgotten.
A faint trace of something that is lacking.
Insubstantial.
Left holding the fort alone.
I want to tell you
My heart might be pure but
Do not invite me in.


I'm in the mood for wandering.
Back and forth and lost.
In the mood for wishing and a million sunlit smiles.

But the night is dark and dangerous.
There is no helpless laughter.
No joyful creasing eyes...
Where are you?
Where did you go?
Are you on the bench?  Are you at the window?
Are you blazing light?  Are you insubstantial?
Am I just looking past you?  Are you all alone?

5 Things That We Didn't Expect When Adopting Internationally

Aside from the long-awaited referral call, for many families that choose to adopt internationally, the journey to another country to meet and legally adopt their new addition is one of the most exciting parts of the entire adoption journey.

It certainly was for us.  It's a thrilling, dizzying time of preparations made at breakneck speed. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of traveling to an exotic destination and the joyful anticipation of finally meeting the new baby or child.

In many cases, the adoptive family doesn't have much time between the Big Call and the Big Trip.  In our first adoption, we traveled to Sri Lanka a mere two weeks after getting the call that told us the sex and age of our child.  It's easy to get carried away with planning for the upcoming journey because throughout the whole adoption process, adoptive parents are left with little control.  All the control we imagine we have over our lives, in terms of privacy, finances, timing, is stripped away until we realize somewhat painfully, that we are powerless, dependent.  Then along comes this trip.  Once again we have control.  We can buy tickets, get vaccinations, give notice at work, pack our bags, decorate a nursery, celebrate with family and friends because for the first time in years, we have something concrete in our lives!

It is thrilling and breath-taking and wonderfully exciting, don't get me wrong.  It's an adventure.  Like any adventure however, on our journeys to meet our soon-to.be children, we didn't really know what to expect and surprise of all surprises, we didn't really have any control.

Here are five things we didn't expect (but perhaps should have) when we traveled to our children's birth countries to adopt.

1)  That it's not a vacation.

My husband and I are travelers at heart and normally would have tried to soak up all we could in these fascinating, vibrant places, but these trips were not vacations and we weren't tourists.   We were there for a reason and that reason was so all encompassing that it blocked out almost everything else for us.  This isn't to say we didn't have some amazing experiences like riding elephants, visiting beautiful temples, and eating altogether too much incredible fish curry and fresh mango.  We did have the chance to do some things that our guide suggested but the whole focus of our trip, the uncertainty of whether we would actually be allowed to adopt the baby we were visiting every day and coming to love, put our minds into "one track" mode.  That mode was basic survival mode, catching moments of wonder where we could but mainly concentrating on the task at hand, adoption.



2) That it's tough.

We were overwhelmed.  Our days were a mixture of stomach churning stress and mindless vegging out.  The two kind of balanced each other out.  We started almost every morning by smiling at each other over breakfast, squeezing each others hands and saying "We can get through this, remember, we've been through worse."  This wasn't because we had bad attitudes, rather the opposite.  We were positively acknowledging that this was tough and draining but we knew with all our hearts, it was also worth it.   We usually ended our days collapsed on the hotel bed, ordering room service with good Sri Lankan beer.  We were happy but we were exhausted.



3) That we were traveling to a country in recovery.

Many of the countries people adopt from are recovering in some way from some form of trauma.  We knew that Sri Lanka's 30 year civil war had ended only four months before our arrival but knowing it intellectually and seeing the evidence of it before our eyes was a different experience for us.  We were unprepared for the guards with machine guns outside the hotel or for check points or for having our taxi driver point out bullet holes in the wall where people had been executed as though it was just another sight to see.

4) That we would love it so intensely.

We weren't prepared for the intensity of the feelings we experienced for our children's birth countries.  We feel that these places are a part of us, that they are knitted into our souls. The pride and love we feel for these countries is as strong as what we feel for our own lands.

5) That Not Everyone Will Approve Of International Adoption

Our instinct was to excitedly tell people we met that we were spending time in their country because we were adopting a child.  We learned fairly quickly however not to announce that this in casual conversation.  While many people had positive reactions, some people did not and the idea of a child being taken out of his or her country by foreigners upset them.

Everyone will have their own unique experiences with this.  This is simply ours.  The two trips we have taken to bring our children home have been the most exciting we've experienced.  So if you are preparing for an adoption journey, God speed.  It is worth every hurdle and challenge!

The Closing of October

I walked by an old house today.
The yard was full of trees.
The trees were full of birds.
Singing.  Glorious.  Chaotic.
And I thought how strange
That they should sing
With so much soul
So much relish
At the closing of October.

Shadow Places

Sometimes I don't want to tell you big things.
I want to drown
In the comfortable, the known, the light.
I want to shut my eyes and hide in plain sight.
I've been a ghost
And I've felt at ease in the lull.  The silence.  The no-man's land of pain.
I've gone outside and no one has seen me.
I've knocked on the glass and waited to be let in.
I've smiled and spoken
And passed through time
Lingered all the places
You once saw me.
You have a memory of a girl with a scribbled in guidebook.
A tired girl sitting on a bench along the Rhine on a cool September night.
A shadowy glimpse of a girl walking away feeling as light as the air.

Sometimes I dream of time moving backward
To city fountains and light reflecting on black water and smoky night cafes.

Forward to all the things we would never have expected in a million years.
To spirits outside the doors and in the water and black heavy skies and sudden flashes of brilliance.
Destruction and radiance all over the place.

What happened?  What went right for you?  What went wrong?

Sometimes I have nothing to say.  Nothing to tell you or anyone.

Then sometimes I want to only tell you the big things.
I lose all patience with the little things.
I want loss.
Revolution.

I want to overthrow all the gods of falseness and the little white lies we worship.
I want to leave their temples in ruins
And forget them forever.

I want to tell you something.
I've had enough of being someone
I just barely recognize.

I am going to sit and stare at the stars,
Stand on sand and listen to the ocean,
Lie on the grass like I did when I was a child
Until I recall who I am.

The Cringe Worthy Poet

Oh dear.  You see, I've been writing poetry and creative prose since I was around 13.  I can't imagine who my influences were at the time aside from the flowery, romantic British poets we learned about in English class.  I often used slightly old fashioned, ornamented phrasing  in my poems and bizarre rhyme schemes that made sense only in my head.  But I took myself and my writing quite seriously.  If you had asked me at 14 what I wanted to be I would have said a writer.  Actually I would have said a penniless writer because that is just how seriously I took it.  I didn't just want to write, I wasn't going to be a writer unless I could be some tragic obscure figure, suffering and starving for my art.  It just wouldn't be worth it otherwise.

At the age of 14, I went off to a Catholic girls boarding school and wore a uniform every day and I met writer friends.  We purposely did things that proved we were writers like dye our hair fiery red or cut it very short or wear old man's pants we found for a couple of dollars at second hand shops.  Of course these pants we only wore after school hours when it wasn't necessary to wear our navy blue kilts and crisp white shirts.  Once we even had a weekend away from the school and daringly went to a poetry reading in a smoky cafe.  We liked obscure artsy things.  To be fair though, we also did write.

This is on my mind now because I hadn't really looked at my earlier writing for years and recently decided to pull them all out and give all that brilliance a dust off.  I don't keep much but I had kept binders and journals and scribblers full of words.  In my mind, they were quite good.  In reality, as I read, I found myself blushing, cringing and laughing to myself in a mildly embarrassed way, eyes darting nervously around the room to make sure no one was there.  My first instinct was to rid my life of the evidence.  Throwing it away would be dangerous...burning it perhaps would be wiser.  But then rather fondly, I began to think what if I had never written these things at all?  There is no doubt they were very poor pieces but we have to start somewhere.  If I would never have written them then maybe I would simply have never written at all.

My point is, we need to write bad things we think are worthy and decent at the time.  They are the stepping stones that lead us forward, into the practice of writing something halfway decent, something that doesn't embarrass us and then lastly after a very long time, perhaps if we grow and learn and stretch, we write something we are truly proud of.  Nobody starts off excellent and as much as writing is a talent, it is an extremely difficult discipline as well.

So here's to hundreds of crappy poems.  They were intensely felt but poorly executed.  They have their place in my life too. 

(I am not saying I am past the cringe worthy stage anytime soon, but I am giving it a go at least!) :)