Sidedoor Approaches to Solving Problems

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Ep. 35 Three NEW Ways to Approach Your Problems

How often do you hear you have to face your problems head-on?

FACING PROBLEMS HEAD-ON

Facing problems head-on sounds like the take-charge thing to do.  I’m a proactive problem-solver and that means I’m going to take the bull by the horns, wrestle it to the ground, lasso its legs, stand up, raise my arms and declare victory. 

But you’ve been around long enough—you’ve tried to solve problems this way—Darling, this ain’t your first rodeo, SO you know that at times our human existence is like living inside a China shop. One wrong move and you knock something valuable off the shelf. And if your approach to problem solving resembles wrestling a bull in a China Shop, well, you see what those results will be.

Miley Cyrus sums ups this approach with her lyrics, “You came in like a wrecking ball.” And take my word, trust me on this, you do NOT want a reenactment of THAT music video playing in your life.

Shattered things can be mended. China Shops can clean up after the bull runs through. Humans are actually quite repairable, but it’s always easier to not break something or someone in the first place.

Here are three Sidedoor Approaches to solve problems in a more effective way. 

Sidedoor Approach #1: MINIMIZE

Keeps problem small by not giving them FRONT DOOR attention.

Maybe this problem doesn’t deserve Front Door attention. This little thing is a side-issue. Keep it small where it belongs and let more important things through the FRONT DOOR. 

The side door is for intimate guests, right? Your family and closest friends come through the side door, so  keep problems within your intimate circle. If we hang our problems on the front door like one of those seasonal wreaths, that’s the first thing people see about us. That’s how we get defined and identified, by our problems. Remember the saying: Don’t Deck the Halls with Your Follies.

Sidedoor Approach #2: DISSIPATE CONFLICT ENERGY

A SIDEDOOR APPROACH resolves problems by dissipating conflict energy.  As humans we are made of energy, everything around us is energy, everything we do and accomplish in life is energy. Most of the time we ignore it. We aren’t conscious of where our energy is directed or what we’re doing with it.

If I face a problem head-on, it’s Me vs The Problem. It’s a face-off. Opposing football teams line up this way, which is okay because they are there for a conflict. Old-time battles were fought head-on. Think of the term front line. If you were on the front line, you knew things weren’t going to go well for you. 

One day I showed up to my church’s women’s group. The chairs were set up in two lines facing each other. The set-up was intended to foster discussion, but for some reason the entire lesson, I wanted to punch somebody. Someone would make a comment, and I wanted to argue. 

Human energy Face to Face is naturally confrontational. It’s powerful and it’s repelling, like magnetic poles. Like I said, we are 90% of the time going through life unconscious of where we’re throwing our energy. It’s like giving a laser gun to a toddler. 

What is the Solution?

During the Revolutionary War, the Colonists, with less ammunition and resources, won battles by not fighting head on. They found victory through “sidedoor” battle tactics.

Power Questions:

Am I feeding conflict energy by approaching this head on?

Am I fueling negative energy by my approach?

Could a simple adjustment of my physical demeanor resolve the struggle?

What about a simple adjustment to my emotional energy.  

Sidedoor Approach #3: QUESTION THE ROADBLOCK

Maybe the problem isn’t a problem. Maybe what (or who) you think is in your way, isn’t blocking you at all. Maybe you’re hitting up against this block over and over like a football player hitting against those tackling dummies. You think you’ve got to conquer this in order to move forward, so you keep ramming against it and it beats you down every time.

What if that ROADBLOCK doesn’t need your attention?

What if you can simply move around it?

What if the thing you BELIEVE is in your way, isn’t blocking you at all?

What if the only reason it’s a PROBLEM is because you’re fixated on it and you’ve gotten in the habit of hitting up against it over and over again?

What if all you need to do is look past it and move on?

Conclusion

I hope something here helps. There are a hundred different ways to apply these principles. Sometimes the best thing we can do is to neglect our problems and nurture our positives.

Listen to Full Episode by Clicking Play Button above.

Related Episodes: Episode 4 Permission to Make Life Easier

Shine Time & School Blessings

maleah warner

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Ep. 34 Five Reasons a Shine Time Strengthens Your Family

Can you tell the people in the image are spelling SHINE? It’s subtle.

One thing we do to replace the constant hunger for screens in our house is to have a family Shine Time. These are periodic showcases of what we are learning, practicing, working on, creating. When I ask children if their practicing is done, they know that we value developing talents, improving skills, and learning new things. This helps them to leave the screens and get homework and practice done.

What Is Shine Time?

What is Shine Time?

Shine Time for the Warners basically means everyone flops onto their favorite place ont eh couch or floor and takes turns sharing something they’ve practiced, learned, discovered, memorized, created. It’s very informal. We usually don’t plan Shine Time in advance. We don’t do it consistently. It’s most often on Sunday or when Grandparents stop by, but it can happen any time

5 Ways Shine Times Benefits Families

Self Esteem

Kids love to be seen (we all love to be seen). You hear your kids say, “Mom, watch this trick. Mom, look what I can do!” Having a designated Shine Time when you give your kids your full attention sends the message that who they are and what they do matters. It says: I see you. I know you exist. You matter to me.

Group esteem

We talk a lot about self esteem, but group esteem is a real thing. We have a human need to be part of a group. We long for connection. Shine Time allows you all to be performer and audience. When you cheer for other family members, you develop a sense of pride and value for each other and for your group. Every family has a personality. As you share and are cheered on, you feel that you are an essential contributor to your group. 

Watch how good Shine Time is for the youngest who are so often overlooked. See what it does for their sense of worth when they get to be a star for a moment.

Reason for Learning

How often do you hear kids say, “Why do I have to learn this?” One benefit from Shine Time is it gives a reason for learning, practicing, discovering new things. For example, I struggle justifying taking time to practice the piano, but knowing I will perform for our family Shine Time gives me a reason to take the time away from cleaning and household chores to practice. 

Motivation

Finding motivation to get through the drudgery of daily practice can be a challenge. Knowing that someone will be listening helps give a burst of motivation to get through the hours of practice. As a child, violinist Jenny Oaks Baker, didn’t love to practice, but she like to perform. Her mother would bake chocolate chip cookies and invite neighborhood friends to come over and eat cookies while Jenny practiced.

Low Pressure Performance

Presenting a book report in front of a school class can be nerve-racking if you’ve never stood in front of a crowd. Family Shine Time provides a lower pressure opportunity to perform and practice dealing with nerves in a safe setting.

Listen to the full episode HERE. 

Listen to: Ep. 20 Screen Time: Set It & Forget It

Listen to:  Ep.19 Why Not to Limit Summer Screen Time

Ch 11 Lies of the Magpie

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This is the REAL Chapter 11. Thanks for waiting. 

Ch 11 The Hairpiece

The road rolls under me, mile after mile passing beneath my tires without seeming to get me any closer to Tucson. I think of the miles I’ve covered in the past eleven months. Have they brought me closer to being enough?

Now that I’m in this car driving, choking down contractions, I wonder why the Maleah of ten months ago was so bent-out-of-shape about being left at the table. She was so consumed with being left out, with not being noticed, with not having something more significant to contribute with her life. Ha! What I would give right now to be left alone sitting at a table with no where I had to go, no deadlines, no appointments, no last-minute crisis calls needing my attention, no all-nighters proof reading to make print deadline. If I could I would march right back through the chaos of the past ten months and tell that version of Maleah, sitting alone at the banquet table, to just stay put. “Honey, if you knew everything you’re going to do in the next ten months, you would sit right here, soak in the stillness, and not move one muscle more than you have to.” I would bask in being left alone. I would bask in sitting at a table. I would bask in sitting. Period.

If I had had a fraction of an inkling that starting January I would be selling advertising for my own magazine,  and that I would be doing it pregnant, I would have never said YES to all the other things that came first.

But I didn’t know. I didn’t have a clue.

That version of me, poised lady-like in the black cocktail dress, was only concerned that her life was too unremarkable. She wanted something bigger, something more noticeable. Something more noteworthy. She wanted a change, and Honey, change was coming.

So enthralled with my new scars, I hardly noticed that the Awards Banquet also left it’s mark on Aaron. In the months following the table incident, while I was ruminating about how I could squeeze more impressive endeavors into my life, Aaron was looking for an exit strategy to leave Goodwin all together. 

As long as I’d known him, Aaron was always on the hunt for new business opportunities. Usually I listened to his latest brainstorm, nodded at the right places, and anticipated a different new idea the next day. So I didn’t pay much attention to how Aaron was becoming increasingly restless with work. He made passing comments about how moving people’s money from CDs to  Mutual Funds, from bonds to Insurance annuities, wasn’t stimulating. “I’m not challenged. I get paid a ridiculous amount of money for the little work that I do.”

At heart Aaron is a builder. He’d built this business, started from scratch, labored to get the flywheel turning. Now that the machine was rolling, he didn’t feel motivated by the day to day repetition of making dollar upon dollar by rolling over IRAs. All day for eight hours he did little else than converse with gray-haired people about facing the end of their life, about death, grief, and trust funds. The job was old.

To listen to the full chapter, click the PLAY button above. 

To hear Chapter 10, Click HERE.

Screen Time Reset for School

reset screen time

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Ep. 33 How to Readjust Screen Time for the School Year

Is your child struggling to readjust from summer screen time to school screen time?

The issue we’re having at my house looks like this: the kids want to be constantly on the computer after school. Like, the minute they run in the door. My older two are pretty good about getting homework done. My youngest got used to having 3 hours each day during the summer to do his Minecraft stories. And he is absolutely panicked now that he’s not going to have enough time to finish his Minecraft stuff. And I mean, he is anxious. He is seriously worried that the world of Minecraft is going to explode or disappear if he’s not on there.

Click the Play Button above the text to hear the full episode. 

Click Here for Episode 20 Screen Time Set It and Forget It

Click here for Episode 19 Why NOT to Limit Summer Screen Time

 

Ch. 10 Lies of the Magpie

Maleah Warner

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Ep. 32 Left at the Table

Three is the hardest number of children.

We adored Tanner, but adding the third child threw us completely off balance. For several months after bringing Tanner home from the hospital, we struggled to find our groove. “I’ve got Danny,” Aaron would say taking Danny by the hand when we’d arrive at a baseball game, a neighborhood swim party, or a church barbecue.  I’d hoist Tanner’s car seat with two hands and balance the over-flowing diaper bag on my shoulder. Aaron would look at me, I would look at Aaron, and we’d both look at Kate who was poised ready to sprint away the second one of us unbuckled her safety belt. “I’ve got Danny and Kate,” Aaron would concede.

With two parents and three kids, there always seemed to be one child left unattended. It used to be that I would cut Kate’s meat and Aaron would help Danny. Now, during dinner, I sat on the couch nursing Tanner. “Kate, why aren’t you eating?” Aaron chastised. Kate looked up shyly, “Nobody cut my meat.”

The worst was the day we drove out of the neighborhood. I knew something felt off…“Go back! I left Tanner.” I unlocked the front door and came out carrying Tanner’s car seat. He’d been buckled in and was waiting on the living room floor to be carried to the car.

We carried on like this, completely off-kilter until a miraculous thing happened in July. Annice and Calvin went to Hawaii and left their three kids with us. We became parents to six kids under the age of nine. Annice showed up one week later with a gorgeous tan. I hadn’t brushed my own teeth in seven days. Going from six kids back to three seemed to reboot our system, and Aaron and I found a good rhythm balancing our own Danny, Kate, and Tanner.

Tanner was an easy baby an once again I began to wonder if being a mother was enough.  Should I be doing more? 

In the fall, Danny started preschool, Aaron went back to night school to become a Certified Financial Planner, and I started a part-time job selling advertising and writing articles for a local magazine. I thought it would be the perfect outlet for me—a way to keep my intellect sharpened and get out of the house a few hours a day. After two weeks, it was obvious the job situation wasn’t working. By the time I buckled the three kids into my car, dropped them off to three different locations, and drove twenty minutes to my sales area, I had forty minutes to contact business clients before it was time to pick up Danny from preschool.

“You’re always the last mom here,” Danny would say, the sweat dripping down his face from waiting outside for me.

One night in bed I leaned up on one elbow and told Aaron, “I need to quit my job.” I hoped he would say, “I agree. I don’t know how you keep up with three kids, working in the morning and teaching piano lessons in the afternoon.”

Instead, he said, “Why?”

“It’s too much,” I rambled. “I’m always late to pick up Danny, Tanner doesn’t get a good morning nap, and the money I make barely covers Kate’s babysitter. The kids are cranky. When I started working for the magazine, Tanner stopped sleeping through the night. I don’t think he’s getting enough milk. I’m tired. I’m falling asleep during piano lessons.”

“It’s only a few hours a week,” Aaron said.

“By the time I get everyone dressed, out the door, buckled into the car, dropped off and picked up again, it takes the whole morning.”

“You’re the one who wanted something productive to do,” Aaron offered.

I called my boss and told him my decision. “I wondered how you kept it going so long,” he said.

After that, I decided to slow down. Three kids took a lot of time. I needed to make a conscious effort not to over-schedule myself.

In December, Aaron asked if we could have his Client Christmas Party at our house.

“No,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because our house has only second-hand furniture and I have no idea what to cook for retired millionaires who have dined in the best restaurants around the world.”

“It wouldn’t have to be fancy,” Aaron argued. I held my ground.

The next day, while Aaron was at work, I saw Laiah sitting on my window sill. I hadn’t heard from her in a few months. “Aaron is disappointed with you. Your house should be more nicely decorated. That is your job as a homemaker. And you should know how to cater fancy work dinners. Your husband should be able to bring his clients home any time.”

A week after I declined hosting the client party, Aaron said, “Let’s drive to Utah for Christmas this year.”

“No,” I said again. “Why?”

“Because it’s been four years since we stayed home for Christmas. I want to have our own family Christmas at our own house where we can open presents and play with toys all day and never change out of our pajamas. I want to relax and enjoy Tanner’s first Christmas.”

“You can relax in Utah,” Aaron answered. I stood my ground.

Listen to the full chapter here: Chapter 10 

Listen to past chapters here: https://maleahwarner.com/podcasts/

 

Ch. 9 Lies of the Magpie

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Ep. 31 BABY #3

In the meantime, I got an epidural that nearly paralyzed me for life.

Aaron fled to the furthest corner of the room and hid his face in his hands, peeking occasionally through his fingers to see if I was dead yet. The anesthesiologist inserted, pulled out, and reinserted the epidural needle four times. “You’re so skinny, there’s no fat to stick the needle into.” I didn’t think this was a good time to comment on my boniness.

Suddenly, with a five-inch needle searching its way around my spinal nervous system, I felt my entire abdominal area expand, like someone had opened an umbrella inside my pelvic bones. At that moment, everything on the inside of me urgently wanted to get outside of me.

“Aaahhh. Never…mind…the…epidural,” I said grimacing. “This… baby…is… coming……NOW.”

Tina dropped on top of me, bracing my shoulders in the gentlest tackle ever administered. “DO NOT MOVE.” she said, “You have to hold completely still.”

“Aaahhh. Stop the epidural. I can feel the baby coming.”

“Too late to stop now.” The anesthesiologist was not going to let this bony specimen get the best of him. “I’m almost finished.”

“Aaahhh!”

“Call the doctor,” Tina shouted to the hallway. She couldn’t make the call because she was holding me in a half nelson. “Hold still. He’s almost done.”

After an eternity, the anesthesiologist removed the needle and taped the tubing against my back. Tina rolled me gently; I winced as the epidural rubbed against the sheets “Aaahh.” More opening and Ooouuuuccchhh, something hard and round trying to squeeze through a hole ten times too small. “I can feel the baby’s head!”

“Don’t push. We have to wait for the doctor,” Tina ordered.

Seriously? Not with the waiting for the doctor, again.

“Lay on your side,” Tina helped me roll back. “Be strong and keep your legs together.” She should have told me that nine months ago.

“Does no one believe me? I. Really. Have. To. Puuush.”

Everyone in the room (except the anesthesiologist who’d disappeared from the room faster than a cub scout who’d broken the cookie jar), screamed in chorus, “DON’T PUSH.” This included Aaron. Whose side was he on anyway?

Telling a woman who has the burning need to push is like exploding Hoover Dam and telling the water to stay put. “We don’t need the doctor.” I pleaded. “I trust you, Tina. You deliver this baby.” I was thrashing around on the sheets.

“No, no. They don’t like us to do that.” She patted my head gently. “You can hold on. He’s on his way.” Tina put her hand over my ear and screamed, “Did anyone get through to the doctor?”

Was anybody even out in that hall? Finally, a desk clerk or maybe a janitor poked his head in the door, “He says he’s checking out at Walmart and will be here in ten minutes.”

Walmart? No one ever checks out of Walmart in ten minutes.

“Aaron, honey,” I looked up grimacing. I needed to push more than I’ve ever needed to do anything in my entire life. “One push and this baby will be here. You can catch it. I trust you.”

Aaron backed towards the corner again waving his hands in front as he retreated. “No, no. Wait for the doctor.”

Tina rubbed my back, “This will sound strange, but if you curl into a fetal position, it will help relieve the pressure.” I tucked my legs up to my big belly pretending that the lower half of my body was not attached to the upper half. “Remember to breathe,” Tina encouraged.

I inhaled and sighed as the epidural medication kicked in.

“The doctor is on the elevator,” the janitor/clerk stood in the door holding a phone. Tina opened a cupboard and grabbed a surgical gown and gloves. The janitor/clerk helped Tina stretch out the gown like a ribbon across a finish line. “He’s on the floor. Get ready, and in five…four…three…two…”

The door swung open and Dr. Juarez walked into the gown and gloves, crouched down, looked side to side and yelled, “Go.”

That was my signal to snap the ball, but I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. Did Dr. Juarez bypass the sink? What happened to official scrub-in policy? I didn’t let my own husband touch me if he didn’t wash his hands after shopping at Walmart.

If I weren’t such a lily-livered coward, intimidated by his medical degree, I would have asked him to turn back around and scrub. With soap. Instead, I stared.

“Go ahead. Push,” Dr. Juarez ordered.

I just mastered not pushing and now he wanted me to push! Having a baby can really give a girl schizophrenia. I felt strangely floaty and heavy at the same time, like a concrete cloud. I gave a wimpy push.

“No. Wait for a contraction. Push during the contractions.” Dr. Juarez rolled his eyes like I was the biggest idiot excuse of a delivering mother he had ever seen.

“I can’t feel when I’m having contractions,” I said. My abdomen was as still and peaceful as a glass lake with no wind. The epidural was working and I had found my happy place.

“I’ll tell you when you’re having a contraction.” Dr. Juarez watched the monitor. “Now. PUSH!”

“I am pushing.”

“Push harder. Come on. Put some determination into it.”

My determination skipped town about the time I realized we hadn’t brought any DVDs. Ten minutes earlier I could have sneezed the baby out. Instead, we endured fifty-five minutes of everyone yelling at me to push harder and me shouting back, “I am pushing…I think…I can’t really tell. Will I ever be able to feel my legs, again?”

A head and shoulders appeared just before five o’clock. Dr. Juarez declared the delivery time with unspoken emphasis that he had predicted exactly the time of birth. He was also gloating in the fact that he’d broken his own record for longest episiotomy. He stood up from stitching, and I imagined that I looked like a kindergarten class’s first patchwork quilt project. At this point, when one would expect a hearty “Congratulations!” Dr. Juarez said, “The nurse will give you the information for direct deposit to my bank account. Holidays are double time.” Then he looked in the mirror, wiped blue powder off his mouth, and disappeared into the hall.

The epidural had been stronger than Schwarzenegger on steroids. My legs were cinderblocks. Aaron helped to hold the baby on my chest. “Hello there little man.” I traced the shape of his nose and cheeks while he blinked his eyes. “Welcome to this big, wide world. I’m so happy you made it here.”

Ch. 8 Lies of the Magpie

Maleah Warner Memoir

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Ep. 30 Invisible

Last night when I packed my suitcase, I opened my linen closet to find my bag of travel size items which I keep in a plastic storage bin on the bottom shelf.  A wave of shame made me tremble and I retrieved the bag, closed the lid and stuffed the container back in the closet as fast as possible. I rarely think about the closet incident, but every now and then something will trigger the memory and I’m washed with humiliation. Was that really me? Did I really lock my children in their bedrooms and hide in the bottom of a closet? 

Aaron and I have grown closer over the past four years, but he doesn’t know about the closet. I don’t want to freak him out. Nor have I ever told him about driving away from home in the middle of the night planning to change my identity and start a new life in Vegas.

When Kate was about 18 months old, I heard Marie Osmond give an interview talking about her experience with postpartum depression. “One night I got in the car and started to drive,” she said. “I didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to do. All I knew was that I was unfit to be a mother and that everyone—my kids, my husband, even the Osmond family would be better off without me.”

I took in every word. I’d always felt a tiny connection to Marie Osmond. We’re both Mormon and we both have a lot of brothers. And at about the same time, we both got in our cars and drove away from our babies. She traveling north on the Pacific Coast Highway. Me traveling northwest towards towards Las Vegas.

That was the first time I’d ever heard the term “postpartum depression.”

At the end of the interview the audience applauded. She was hailed as courageous for sharing her story, for talking about a taboo subject. She’d had postpartum depression and audiences applauded her for it.

I don’t know if I had postpartum depression.

But I do know, that no one applauded.

Nobody even knew.

I was no Marie Osmond. All the attention, the demands of notoriety were a burden for her. My burden was that nobody noticed me.

Nothing I did was admirable or worthy of attention.

I was invisible.

(continued on podcast)

Click HERE to listen to the rest of Chapter 8

Click HERE to listen to Chapter 7

Click HERE for all Chapters to date.

Ch 7 Lies of the Magpie

Maleah Warner

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Ep. 29  The White House

When I think back about the year after Kate’s birth, my memories come with the wonder of Dr. Jeckyl and the taint of  Mr. Hyde. I was genuinely happy; I wasn’t faking happy. I wasn’t “happy on the surface and sad underneath.” I was happy to the marrow of my bones happy. I experienced joy I didn’t know possible. I had never before known how having children in my life could be so magical.

Danny thrilled me. He was smart, inquisitive, playful, and interactive. He learned quickly, could recognize alphabet letters, learned new sounds daily. He loved dogs and begged to watch Disney’s 101 Dalmatians on VHS every day. We dressed him as a spotted Dalmatian for Halloween.

Kate was the most beautiful baby, strawberry-shaped lips and rose petal cheeks. She was so pink and petite that no one ever mistook her for a boy. She was tiny and strong. She could lift and turn her head a few days after birth and she learned to roll, scoot, and crawl quickly. When she discovered her laugh, it came out hearty and full from deep in the belly, which made her, and the rest of us, laugh harder. Every day she smiled and laughed and flapped her arms the moment Aaron came in the door from work, knowing he would play with and tickle her.

In November, when Kate was six weeks old, nearly all of our family came from Utah for her baby blessing. (A baby blessing is the Mormon version of a Christening, but without the baptism and Godparents.)  Even my brother Kevin made the ten-hour drive, which was miraculous because his health seemed to be getting more fragile.

Kevin was eight years older than me, two years older than Annice. He had turned 33 days before Kate’s birth. He had Down’s Syndrome and a hole in his heart (a common complication of Down’s Syndrome which doctors repair today, but not in 1966 when Kevin was born.). His mind was sharp, but his holey heart struggled to pump enough oxygen to his extremities. After the long drive, his fingers and toes were dark purple. When he arrived at my apartment door, he enveloped me with the largeness of his hug and an exuberant Hello!

“Con-grat-u-la-tions,” he pronounced each syllable deliberately.

“Do you want to meet your niece?” I asked.

He sat on the blue loveseat, situated his body, positioned his arms into the shape of a cradle and smiled up at me, ready to receive this marvelous package. I balanced Kate in his arms steadying her head on his crooked elbow.

“She is beee-au . . . bee-au . . . bee-au-ti-ful.” It took three tries to get his favorite word to come out the way he wanted. He leaned down and kissed her forehead.

(Continued on the Audio. Click Play Button Above)

Listen to the rest of Ch. 7. Click Here.

Listen to Ch 6 HERE

Chapter 5 Lies of the Magpie

Maleah Warner

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Ep 27 Bed Rest for an Overachiever

In August I had my first prenatal appointment with my new Arizona obstetrician.

The week leading up to the appointment I had started having contractions. I’d hoped the preterm labor I’d experienced with Danny was a fluke, a one-time thing. No such luck. It seemed my uterus was prone to contract more than a team of commissioned corporate lawyers.

“You’re twenty nine weeks and already dilated,” Dr. Magnuson said with a grim expression. “Was you last baby premature?”

“No. He was born at 37-weeks and was perfectly fine. No complications.” I didn’t like where this conversation was going. Dr. Magnuson sent me to Labor & Delivery for monitoring. After two hours they sent me home with a prescription for Brethine and instructions to limit my physical activity.

The next day I didn’t take Danny for our morning stroller walk. I didn’t push him in the playground swing. I didn’t vacuum or scrub bathrooms. We didn’t go to the library or the grocery store. We didn’t go swimming. At naptime I didn’t carry Danny up to bed, but knelt behind as he practiced crawling up the stairs on his own. 

This new routine of non-doing was okay for a solid three days before we were both stir crazy and ornery.

 

The next morning, as usual, Danny was wide awake at 6:00 a.m. Our ever predictable early bird. For convenience, and to not wake up Aaron, I did carry him downstairs where I changed his diaper, fixed him a bottle of formula, and parked him in front of the television feeling grateful that PBS started their children’s programming at 6:30 a.m. with Caillou (in my opinion the second-worst children’s show in the universe only beat out by Teletubbies) followed by an hour of Sesame Street at 7:00 a.m. I fell back asleep on the floral beast and woke to the strains of the Elmo’s World them song at 7:45 a.m. as Aaron quietly closed our front door behind him.

He left without kissing me goodbye.

Immediately I called Laiah. “I think Aaron’s mad or annoyed with me.” I told her. She hurried over and we had an extensive conversation. I couldn’t do much of anything else.

“You can hardly blame him,” she replied. “He’s outside all day every day burning his butt off making money while you sit here in this cushy apartment doing nothing.”

The broken springs on the couch poked into my back. There really was no comfortable position on that couch;  if the floral beast was anything, it wasn’t cushy. “I didn’t ask to sit in an apartment all day,” I argued my case to Laiah. “I didn’t ask to have preterm labor and to be put on limited activity. I would one hundred times rather wash dishes and run errands than be cooped up all day, doesn’t Aaron realize that?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Laiah said. “Aaron’s working hard. You have to suffer equally or your marriage won’t be equal. It’s not fair if Aaron is sweating in the sun while you’re at home relaxing.”

Click to listen to the full Chapter 5

Click to hear Chapter 4 

Chapter 3 Lies of the Magpie

postpartum depression

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Ep. 24 The Story of My Journey Healing Through Postpartum Depression and Chronic Illness

Laiah was the first to see the flyer advertising the Miss Aspen Canyon Community College Pageant. “You should enter.” She ripped the flyer from its tack and handed it to me. “The winner gets a cash scholarship and a new computer.”

How would I compare in a line-up of accomplished young women? Growing up in a society where girls were not my comrades, but my competition, what would it mean to me if the judges scored me as the very best one? No friendships were at stake, my circle of girlfriends remained always the distance of my measuring stick. I filled out the pageant application, submitted a photo, and borrowed a dress.

The night of the pageant I was pacing backstage waiting for my turn in the talent competition when I heard a voice call to me. “Hey stranger,” Aaron walked towards me dressed in a sleek, black tuxedo, a ginormous grin covering his face.

“Well, you clean up pretty well,” I said taking in his aura. His hair was slicked with gel. He straightened his bow tie and winked at me, looking like a GQ model. I was already nervous, wringing my hands and pulling at my numb fingers. His presence filled me with electricity and I wobbled unevenly in my high-heeled shoes, fighting to stay balanced. The air in the dark back stage was frigid, but suddenly I felt an odd mix of hot and cold, as if my entire body had been placed in a furnace, except my arms, which were in a freezer.  I rubbed my shoulders, my wrists, my palms together and blew into them as if I were standing outside in a snowstorm. “What are you doing here?” I asked Aaron, trying to sound completely calm and in control.

“Madame Pageant Director asked the senators to be your escorts this evening,” he spoke with an exaggerated, sophisticated accent. “I just wanted to tell you good luck. You’ll do great out there.” He rocked back and forth in his black dress shoes and I wondered if he was thinking about giving me a hug or a high five. Instead he performed a classic Aaron pivot, and chugged his arms getting his train ready to depart. Before leaving he flashed me his huge smile. Our eyes locked, briefly and in those seconds, all the electric waves surging through me collected as if pulled by a magnet and traveled on one current that connected Aaron’s gaze to me. “Break a leg,” he joked and walked back behind the curtain. A jolt knocked me backwards as the electric connection broke. I stood trying to catch my breath and find my composure before my name was announced for my performance in the talent competition.

After my piano solo, I bowed graciously to the judges, smiled at the crowd, walked off stage and went directly into the dressing room to change into an evening gown and pin up my hair. The temperature felt like a hundred degrees backstage.