The Times.
They’re hard.
So count ’em twice.
Those blessings.
Count ’em all.
And count ’em twice.
Count them all.
And count them twice.
Count ’em Twice
Author: Lauren
I am Worthy
In my lifetime, I have been abandoned.
Each time I racked my brain for answers. What had I done? How was I responsible?
If you know me at all, you know that I love learning. I am an open book and daily, I shine the light on myself and all of my imperfections.
As a sought-after keynote speaker, my mother frequently listened to motivational leaders on our family road trips, long before TVs or phones in a car. So, I listened to them too.
And what was drilled into me then has never left me: Only I am responsible for my actions. In each and every decision, I have a choice on how I will respond. If I am wrong, when I make a mistake, it is up to me to figure out what happened and how I can learn from it so that I can grow into the best version of myself. Growth cannot happen without mistakes and mistakes aren’t mistakes unless I didn’t learn from them. They are lessons!
I remember so clearly the pain I felt the first three times. I felt misunderstood and desperately wanted to defend myself.
After this last time, I asked my husband and other friends, “Please, tell me. What is wrong with me? If this has happened this many times in twenty years, surely this is on me. What do I need to do to fix myself? To be a better daughter, friend or version of myself?”
And then, without them saying, I knew.
I knew exactly what was wrong with me.
I realized how wrong I had been to take responsibility for something and someone I was not. responsible. for.
That these people are human, too. That they make mistakes and it is their responsibility to learn from their own, not mine to try and fix the damage of the abandonment by proving myself worthy.
My mistake is my lack of self-confidence in knowing that I am already worthy. I am loved by God, my husband, my children and the rest of my family and friends.
And for those who choose to inexplicably check out of our relationship, well, they can keep on walking.
Because I am worthy.
And it’s their. damn. loss.
Together, Always
He’s tired.
And I can see.
I sit on the edge of his side of our bed and rub his face.
Motherly.
I am here.
I will take care of you.
I love you.
And I support you.
Together, we will.
Together, my darling, always.
Release
“There is no fix.”
That is what I told him after our last argument.
This is not a fixable issue.
This is just the way it is.
Him, working home full time surrounded by me and our four young daughters.
Me, overwhelmed with the rearing and education of our daughters on top of the insurmountable housework.
Our fuses are short. Lit quickly by the tiniest flame.
And right now? During a pandemic with stay-at-home orders? There’s no out.
No, there’s no way to fix that.
But we can talk.
We can argue and let. it. out.
“Keep talking.” I told him. “And I will, too.”
No, we can’t fix it. But we can talk.
And that’s our release.
My Darlings
My darlings,
What I want you to know
is that
You Already Know.
She resides inside.
Drown out the rest.
Listen closely.
She will not lead you astray.
She resides inside. 
Character Flaw
Oh, my!
The labels.
The reasons.
The excuses why we aren’t already who we aren’t meant to be.
What does it take?
Truly.
What is it going to take?
To be true. To be real about who. we. are?
When will our “character flaw” stop becoming our excuse?
When will our excuse stop being our character flaw?
There She Is
4 A.M.
And the moment I’d been dreading for 39 weeks.
No movement.
I sat on the side of my bed, sobbing. Begging my husband to get the baby to move, knowing I had waited one day too long to induce.
See, the day before had been my daughter’s spring concert and I figured delaying a day wouldn’t make much difference.
But in this moment, I regretted it all.
In a panic, I called our doula and midwife first and next, our neighbor.
She arrived within seconds. I folded into her arms, scared of what we would find when we arrived. She steadied me, reassuring that our three daughters at home were safe and off we went to find that baby Elizabeth was indeed alive and well.
Fast forward 18 months.
Same kitchen, same neighbor.
Our friends left and she stayed to ask the simple direct question: “Are you OK?”
“No.”
No, I wasn’t and all it took was for someone to ask.
I unfolded right in front of her, releasing the floodgates and once again, she took it. She held it. She steadied, reassured and stood me upright.
She looked me in the eye and said, “You are going to be OK.” And then she followed through.
She called to check on me. She invited me to run with her.
She held my hand.
And because of her, I made it.
There she is.
My superwoman. My angel. My friend.
Reach
I was screaming.
Lying on the dance studio floor, lights out, next to a dozen other students, screaming as loud as my lungs would allow for my lost mother, father, sister and brother.
It was my sophomore year of high school and my best friend Harper had talked me into my first-ever audition for the Fall dramatic play, “I Never Saw Another Butterfly”, based on a little girl’s experience at the concentration camp in Terezin. To the surprise of many, and yet mostly myself, I landed the lead role: Raja Englanderova.
It became a defining moment in my life.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a hypersensitive heart.
Long ago, when it rained, I used to tape plastic containers over the top of the ant hills that formed along the walkway to our house. I didn’t want them to drown.
And when another experienced a loss, it felt like my own. I mourned, as if I had known them well, too.
I felt deeply but was mocked, shamed and criticized for it.
They thought I wanted attention, when all I ever really wanted was to lend my oversized heart.
To reach.
I ended up leading two more plays in high school and when it came time to graduate, I asked my drama teacher to write me a parting note.
And what he said has never left me:
“Give to the world your deeply felt heart.”
Well, World, here it is!
Do. The. Things.
OMG y’all.
Is it just me or are you also wondering what in the world has happened in the last 2 months?
Like, wait. . . what??
Life, as we knew it stopped. Dead. In its tracks.
Forced to adapt and left to wonder, what have we left undone?
I spend half of my parenting life wondering if I am doing too much to entertain my children and the other half anxious for them to age enough to take them to the big places I really want us all to go- National parks, once-in-a-lifetime shows, international landmarks, etc.
I revel in the tender moments of playing matchbox cars on the IKEA shag bath mat that has become my 4 year-old’s holy grail. Seriously, there is no other place she’d rather wrap herself up in and/or park her 50 hot wheels inside the folds. Weird and yet still, oddly endearing.
10 minutes later, I’m dreaming of our entire crew camping, mountainside. Ready to hike, ready to roast, ready to inhale that incomparable fresh air.
As I reflect on life before Covid-19, I realize, I don’t have much to regret. The family adventures I dragged my homebound husband on that our kids still talk about. The garden at home he’s helped them to cultivate. They are all part of our story up until this point.
I suppose Covid-19 is our wakeup call.
How do we really want to spend our unspecified time?
When are we going to stop waiting to do-the-things?
Stories
101.
The age of my Aunt Mary who passed away just yesterday.
She was the first-born child of my grandmother, born in 1897 in the town of Licodia Eubia, a part of Catalia, Sicily.
In 2001, I stood in the house my grandmother was born and remember how my dad and I found the very spot: word-of-mouth.
I had just graduated high school and wanted more than anything else to know where I had come from.
We arrived in Rome, traveled through Naples and over east to Calabria where we feasted on my grandfather’s olive tree farms. He was born in 1884.
There, I experienced authentic, homemade lasagna laid upon a table set for over a dozen relatives who spoke nothing but Italian. The roads elevated and bumpy so much so that when a cousin took me on a fast-paced moped ride, I learned to scream “Ayyyy-ya!!!”
My dad, who spoke broken Italian at the time, did his best to gather contact information and on we went to Sicily.
It was there that we were robbed.
We had read about the risk, ahead of time, and our blue Mercedes Benz rental (an economic option there) didn’t help our cause.
We were lost in an alley in Sicily when a man on a moped jackknifed in front of our car, stopping us dead while a man on foot opened our back doors and grabbed my book bag and my father’s brief case.
They gained nothing aside from my diary, my camera (and nine rolls of film), and the notebook of my family’s contact information, as my passport and my dad’s wallet were safely in the front seats with us.
In other words, they stole our recorded history.
But on we ventured.
We spoke to locals in Catalia, sharing names and dates until finally, we had arrived: The room my grandmother who later would give birth to my aunt entered this world.
I don’t have photographs but I have stories.
Stories that should be told.
And don’t we all?
New Leaf Parenting 