Self-care applies to ALL your parts

Your vagina has done SO MUCH work for you in the birth process. Thank her properly by taking care of her and giving her the FULL spa treatment. This loving vaginal care doesn't mean only immediately after delivery in the hospital. This gently loving care needs to extend at home as well. With that in mind, let's talk about PADSICLES!

Here are all the ways padsicles help with the healing process:

• Soothes swollen tissue

• Reduces inflammation

• Provides pain relief

• Helps with infection when combined with tea tree and eucalyptus

Postpartum Padsicle Recipe 

• Super or overnight fragrance-free maxi pad with wings

• 2 cups alcohol-free witch hazel (astringent properties)

• 1 cup alcohol-free aloe (soothing properties)

• 2-4 drops of therapeutic grade lavender (antimicrobial properties)

• 2-3 drops tea tree or eucalyptus oil

Combine all ingredients in a bowl to be applied.

Unwrap the pad leaving the backing attached. 

Spoon the solution on the pad but not soaking through entirely. The pad still needs to be able to absorb. 

Fold the pad back up in its packaging. Store all prepared padsicles in a large freezer-safe bag. Store in the freezer until needed.

Essential oils additions:

• Thyme - more antimicrobial

• Goldseal - astringent and microbial

• Rosemary - antiseptic

• Comfrey or calendula- anti-inflammatory

Stuffing has me stuffed…and not in a good way

While very little is as yummy to me as stuffing, all that bread and other richness of the day leaves me feeling a mess! But oh, the flavor! It is so good. Nothing says Thanksgiving quite like it! 

I made it my mission to figure out a way to get the goodness without all the pain. 

There are so many bonuses to this recipe. It works for so many that have dietary restrictions that need attention. If you're Whole30, you're eating this. Paleo - good to go. Vegetarian or vegan - dive right in! Dairy or gluten allergy has no fear. Even new eaters can nibble on this and be a part of the meal. It is so great. And so crunchy to boot. Top it with your cranberry sauce, and every mouthful is Thanksgiving dinner in one bite! 

Thanksgiving and spinach pie

I LOVE Thanksgiving. The turkey is good. The desserts are certainly yummy. To me, the real showstoppers are the bounty of sides that we get to chow down in during this meal. 

With one bite of these delicious sidekicks, I am flooded with a lifetime of memories.  Long car rides being entertained by big brother as we tried not to touch my grandmother's stockings, crammed into the backseat of a Buick on our way to visit with my built-in best friend, otherwise known as my cousin Murph. 

Once at my aunt's, all the noise and fun was as overwhelming as it was intoxicating.  My dad and his sisters are still torturing each other like a snapshot of them as kids—their annoyed spouses looking on, rolling their eyes at one another.  The only thing that paused the scene was all the incredible food- stuffing, mashed potatoes, string beans, and for me at the center was my mom's spinach and sausage pie.  This phenomenal savory pie only rolled out on Thanksgiving. It is memories of a childhood holiday stuffed into a flaky crust.

When the baton was passed and my turn to host my favorite holiday, the first dish to make the menu was Spinach and Sausage Pie.  

Over the years, I have made some changes. I have discovered that this pie can be altered to satisfy any craving you may have.  Want a taste of Italy? Use ricotta cheese and mozzarella. Need to avoid cow's milk? Use all goat milk cheeses.  Want to keep it vegetarian? Use a meat alternative or leave it out all together! 

This pie is tastier the next day and freezes like a champ! When I take the first bite, I ask myself why I don't make it all year round.  It is just that good!

The gift of hearing

Loving humans is a passion of mine. I am a connoisseur of people watching. Human interactions are fascinating. Every move we make tells a story. Each facial expression, every arm movement, the way we hold ourselves in different situations it all tells a story whether we want to be speaking or not. People watching is my favorite past time. It is why I am inappropriately obsessed with every insanely ridiculous and incredible Real Housewife from everywhere. Thank you, Andy Cohen and BRAVO (#sorrynotsorry). But real-life people-watching is SO much better, and I am ALWAYS binge-watching.

Taking people in and my loving of the human race is my greatest gift and my biggest obstacle. It has had a profound effect on my relationships, both good and bad. My fascination and amazement of humanity is something that I have been hiding for most of my life. I know it seems crazy. Why would anyone hide something so pure and phenomenal? When you love human nature, imagine what happens when you actually fall in love with specific people? I don't necessarily mean romantic love. I mean all forms of love. It means I am genuinely shocked when people let me down by acting exactly as I know they will. Finally, leaving my marriage allowed me the emotional freedom to go down a healthy path to understand what has been missing in my relationship with others and ultimately with myself.

How do I adequately describe this? I will put it this way. I was voted Most Sociable in my graduating class of over 700 kids. I am not bragging, just trying to paint a picture. At the time, I thought it was pretty epic. As I said, I do love humans. Talking and knowing everyone just made and makes sense to me. I had my core crew and my very best friend. (Hey, Lup!) But now? Boy, it speaks to how freaking insecure I was and am. As my therapist has been telling me for the last five years, "I give myself away too much." That superlative was a prime example of what I am trying to learn not to do anymore. But what the hell does he mean? I thought I was going to therapy to try to save my marriage. What I ended up getting was so much more. I was on the road to protecting myself.

As women, we are trained to put ourselves last. Women praise themselves and each other for how we care for others. Does she put her partner, children, family, and friends first? We judge what we do in and out of the home, bodies, children, and everything. Women think they are getting "time to themselves" if they get to poop or go to the market themselves. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? Could you imagine most men celebrating having five minutes to go to the bathroom alone? Ha!

My role in my family growing up taught me to take this idea to an extreme. My brother is the smart one. I got attention by making people laugh and being the person you could count on or handling a problem. Pair that with an obsession with humans and how they react to the world; you've got a recipe for disaster—a lot of attention and praise for being the person making everyone feel good at my own expense.

I had no idea my needs weren't getting met. Honestly, I was making others happy. People wanted me around. I knew everyone, and everyone knew me. That made me feel good. I was delighted, but I was invisible. What I wanted for myself was buried. I was the image of what others wanted me to be. I thought that was right. Sound familiar?

I met my soon-to-be ex-husband. I was the perfect mess for him and vice versa. The crazy man that couldn't be tamed. People wanted to be near him, too, for different reasons. They wanted to be there for the adventure. To see what he would do next. I saw the sweet mush inside that wild guy. He opened his big and broken heart to me. He was emotionally empty, and I could fill him. I mean, it was a people loving dream come true. When you're in your mid-twenties, this equation isn't that dangerous. I knew that big, scared heart better and more than anyone else. I tamed the untamable. It became what defined me. Eighteen years, two children, homes, work, sick and lost parents, and all the things in between that life throws at you. This equation doesn't add up. It blows up.

I was not in our story. I was also not asking my husband to be an active participant in our marriage. I didn't know I had to. It turns out the better word for marriage is a partnership—mind-blowing. I know changing how you look at something, swapping one little word can make all the difference.

It crept up on me. Asking for small tasks like putting socks in the hamper made him so angry. I am a stay-at-home mom. What's the big deal? I mean, I got to have lunch with my mom-friends. He was at work. I can pick them up. It is okay that I go to all the kids' events at school and games alone. He is tired. He goes to work. We don't need to have a grown-up night out because he wants to relax. I mean, this was the deal I made. Right? He went to work. I did everything else. We even bragged about it, calling me the CFO. Chief Family Officer. Should I complain? Everyone has problems. But wasn't what I was doing ALL day and ALL night work? You can't log off from parenting and home life. Or could you?

It felt like I was nowhere in that life. That idea of partnership was not non-existent. My entire reason for being was to care for him and them—a pervasive feeling in all my relationships. If I spoke up about what I was feeling, I was told I was a lot. If I happened to say out loud what I was observing with my unscrupulous people watching ways, I was too much. These comments stopped me in my tracks. If I didn't want or like something and met with opposition, I would quickly retract the statement or request. Jump right back into pleasing mode. Make myself scarce. I was scared to ask for what I needed, no matter how big or small. What if he stops loving me? What if she is mad at me? What if they talk about me?

I don't think this tale is unusual. I hear it all the time. Not just with friends. I see it in MEMES and GIFs, women's magazines, and talk shows. How many times do we yell, "What language do you people hear me speaking when I talk?" "How many times do I need to ask _____?" "Why can't he just _____?" "Do you think she is upset with me?" "Why can't they just once say okay to a request without me losing my mind?" We have all asked some version of these questions. Haven't we?

Then it happens. You encounter that friend or partner that doesn't just listen to you. They HEAR you. It is like you come up for air. For me, it is my very best friend, Dorie. (Insert Grey's Anatomy line "You are my person" here) This friendship fills my lungs, and I can breathe —a spectacular gift.

Hearing someone does not mean having the answers. It means allowing the other person that safe place to work out their crap. It can look like saying all the things out loud that you no longer need to chew on them in your head. Letting it out to someone means you don't have to let those thoughts weigh you down. The person that hears you laughs with you until you both pee—just a little. The person who hears you gets mad and sad with and for you when you can't or won't. When you are genuinely heard, it means that you can get it wrong, and they will help you learn from it. You can get the support you need to be brave enough to be the best version of yourself. However, that looks to you without being afraid of other's opinions. You feel valued. That is what love should look like, BEING VALUED.

When I realized what I wanted love to look like, I started speaking to be heard in all my relationships. It has ended some. Sadly. It has more than strengthened the connections that count. Telling my truth has even invited a new relationship with deeper intimacy. I am becoming more powerful while deepening my love by getting to know me, as I have always wanted to be out loud. I am a better mom, friend, daughter, sister, and partner when I start getting honest with myself. I do feel scared more than I ever have. It turns out that's okay. Feeling nervous or uneasy, some of the time, means you are doing life right.

Here is the thing, being heard shouldn't be saved for your most intimate relationships. It should be a requirement for all interactions. It would mean that you may not always get your way or like what you hear. You may not even agree all the time. Hearing others does mean needing to give space for the other's views. Isn't that why people are protesting in the streets? People of color want to be HEARD! LGTBQ people want to be HEARD. Women want to be HEARD. They are right to be mad. I am mad. People are demanding for a moment that others look through their lens. To have their history and experience mean something. TO BE HEARD. In listening to voices other than your own comes, learning, change, and strength. No one is claiming to have all the answers. People want the opportunity to be seen and heard.

When as a nation, we tell people their stories are exaggerated. When we call people menacing, threatening, aggressive, cold, and angry or too much because what they are saying doesn't sit well, we are taking away their experience. That keeps people down. It makes people angry. It should! Being invisible is painful and lonely and confusing and infuriating.

There could be joy and peace and prosperity if we all took the time to hear one another. We should allow for more than one vantage point. Could you imagine if we gave credence to other's experiences without defensiveness or anger? The stories that would come. The healing there would be—the innovation we could see. The love and beauty we would all experience and share if we just took the time to let everyone be HEARD. What is the damage that could come of that? There is none. There is beauty that births communication, discovery, growth, and love.

How many kids do you have?

It seems like the most basic of questions. For the most part, it is. Except when it isn't. The obvious answer is, "I have two children." I do have two children. Although, in my heart (sometimes out loud), I call them "my breathers". Because the real answer to this straightforward question is, I am the mother of three beautiful children.

I gave birth to my first child, Sonny Andrew, on June 26, 2009. He would be eleven years old now. From the moment I held him, I knew him. I am Mom. He is my son. I will always be Sonny's Mom. I will always know him. What he looks like, how his skin feels on my skin, those first magnificent moments when my baby boy was put in my arms. I will always know him. But Sonny would never really know me the way I wanted.

My child, not knowing my touch and all that went with that, is one of the many things I mourn when those moments of missing him creep up on me. There is quite a long list of losses. The loss of innocence. Blissful cluelessness of deciding to have a child. The joyful yet disturbing sensation of being an alien condominium while your child grows inside of you. Feeling joy and not worry when you see a pregnant belly. It goes on and on. I know this one may seem insignificant, but it still gets me; when I see friends on social media, write a happy birthday message with some version of "to the one that made me a mom." That little benign moment leaves me feeling robbed. This throw-away comment is when I think of all of us - Sonny, Amelia, Sullivan, their dad, myself, and how we were all cheated. Here comes the grief wave feeling that someone is missing.

The pain of losing Sonny Drew, as I like to call him, doesn't consume me anymore the way it did at first. The miracle of having Amelia and Sullivan and all the wonderful chaos that goes with them helped me to heal. Now I cope with losing Sonny by firmly believing being Sonny's mommy saved my life. I also choose to believe that his soul has given birth to my "breathers," his sister and brother, and his spirit continue in them and me. I know that he is with me. I feel him all the time. I know when I lost my dad a little more than eight years later, their souls united. I chose to think of my best friend from childhood that passed when we were barely nineteen, always dreaming of the children she wanted, now has what she needs. I give life to him every day by the way I love, grow, protect, and teach his siblings. I build his legacy by talking about him when as women and mamas, we sit around telling tales of pregnancy and birth with joy, laughter, and exhaustion, just like I would do if he were here—not caring if others feel uncomfortable. Just because I can't hold him in my arms anymore doesn't erase my experience of being his mother.

See, that is what I find so painful when it comes to having a stillbirth. The idea that we don't openly talk about our time with our babies is tragic to me. By shrouding our experience in secrecy, we increase the shame and guilt women carry with them after the loss. Why is that? Is it because this loss makes others uneasy? Or because the idea of losing a child is so horrific, people don't want to talk about it for fear they may "catch" it? Or because women assume that getting pregnant and having a baby will happen almost without thinking about it? I mean, we do spend a large portion of our lives trying not to get pregnant until the moment we want it. It would never cross our minds that we would ever leave the hospital without our baby in our arms.

Here is the staggering truth. Approximately one in every one hundred and sixty births end in the loss of a child in the United States each year, as reported by the CDC. Did you catch that? That means that 24,000 babies are stillborn each year! I find these numbers to be flabbergasting. The United States' statistics on infant loss are some of the highest in the world amongst countries at the same level of wealth. This loss is more significant for women of color and those living in communities of lower-income status. Not only should these numbers shock and disgust you, but they should also clearly be more readily known. As a nation, we should be doing EVERYTHING in our power to change this. It is beyond my realm of understanding that having a stillborn is something shrouded in secrecy and shame. That as women, we aren't screaming at the top of our lungs to change this.

LET'S TALK ABOUT IT.

It takes about a million things to go right in pregnancy to get to a healthy finish line. Only the smallest thing going wrong can result in that pregnancy having a catastrophic end. Yet we don't give women the support and care that they need. No support is offered as we try to get pregnant. We don't properly care for women as they carry their babies. Even worse, we expect women to soldier on doing the millions of things on our usual plates that society demands. Our society puts pressure on all mothers to look good and bounce back, work, parent, cook, clean, stay engaged with our community, as if building a life inside of us is easy. G-D forbid it doesn't go as planned; we are allowed a mourning period. Yes. But that time has an expiration date undefined but loudly felt by the parents that the loss affects. No credence is paid to either parent as to how this loss changed them, or how much time they may need. Forget about the long term psychological and physical effects that one may feel. It is almost as if people feel like you didn't know that baby, so why should one carry that loss? Just make a new baby.

I don't want to speak for all women and men on this. We all experience loss differently. I can tell you what is lost as the parent of a stillborn is blind hope. I think this feeling is real for families who have to walk the infertility path as well. For those who lose children after giving birth, well, those families are of another world to me. Those Mamas and families should be revered every day for simply getting out of bed. We mourn that nothing comes with naïve hope and joy ever again after the loss of a child. You know that everything can be in your arms and heart growing and thriving, and almost without warning, the rug is ripped out from under you and that sometimes there is not a damn thing you can do about it. There is life one day, hour, or even minute. Then suddenly it is gone. Poof.

The hardest part of it for me was the idea that I failed my partner and my child. My body had failed all three of us by not providing a healthy space for Sonny to grow. How could my body not do what I was asking of it? It always had. I felt like I didn't pay close enough attention. I felt like I didn't yell loud enough when I felt that something was off. Why didn't the doctors listen? Was I not clear? Why did I not know more? I read all the books. Why didn't they know more? I can still hear myself crying over and over, "I didn't even eat the bad cheese!"

But it isn't about the cheese. It is about the care we give to all women in this country or lack thereof. All women are expected to be caretakers, whether they are moms to humans, animals or make the brave choice to come out and say no to either of those things. When we decide to become mommies, we buy a book or google pregnancy, listen to those around us regal us with their own stories. We get a lot of advice. What we don't provide women is air to breathe. We don't offer space to worry about what this woman's life will feel like as she changes her entire identity to become Mom. To be exhausted. To be scared. To say, "I have NO IDEA what I am doing here." We don't respond loud enough with," NONE of us do! Oh, and by the way, you won't know what you're doing once that baby is out, either. There is a steady amount of judgment and very little support and unity. It breaks my heart.

Sonny is the genesis of Nourished Families. His birth was the first spark of this project. A place for women to share and feel support. A no-judgment zone that feels like a warm blanket of love and support mixed in with my madness. All of this hopefully making new mamas and all women feel seen.

As I talked about my firstborn son, I realized how many women had experienced the same thing. I hate that I have three women in my tribe that have experienced this loss. I never wanted someone I love to have this kind of hurt. Their stories may be slightly different, but they all end with someone handing them the purple box. (If you know you know that is the box a family gets after a stillbirth.) A gloriously strong and magnificent woman walked me through my devastation, giving her son life. I had the heartbreakingly beautiful gift of holding the hands of two remarkable women who allowed me to stand with them as they found the armor they needed to survive their individual losses.

Here's the secret that no one tells you: this epic loss does make you stronger than you knew possible. That is not the good part. That is the bullshit. Living with loss makes your glasses a little rosier. It is not that you don't lose your mind on the kids that you do have anymore. It is that you have experienced inside you the actual circle of life. You have given life and lost it. Dreamed of an entire life and laid it to rest. All of this is glorious, painful, and invigorating.

So, if you are reading and it speaks to you, I see you. Thank you for seeing me. Say your baby's name loud and proud. The world should know that name.

If you haven't held the purple box in your arms, but you know or come across someone who has, ask them if they would open it and share it with you. Ask them to tell you about their child. What they cravings they had during that pregnancy. Were they different than others? The same? Ask what color their baby's hair was? Eyes? Let that Mom tell you her baby's stats. She knows them. What is their baby's birthday? Ask them to share their light. Let's talk about it in love, not loss.

Let's just talk.