Madison is going to visit the hospital where she was born this Thursday. She’s going for her big sister tour because this is also the hospital where her baby brother Roscoe will be born a week from Friday. (A week from Friday!!!!!!!! So excited!!)

Madison has wanted to visit the hospital for awhile — pretty much since she first started asking about her birth/adoption story only I never really got around to it. Then Pennie announced she’d be going back to that hospital for Roscoe and so we decided that she could visit on the sibling tour only the birthing classes (the sibling tour is a part of the package) weren’t at a great time for a working/schooling mother so Pennie couldn’t get it scheduled and by the time she nailed down HER schedule, the classes were over for this quarter.

Now as it happens, I am facebook friends with our fabulous social worker so I messaged her and asked her if she could give me the name of the person they work with at the hospital so I could contact her about a tour. And she hooked me up.

The woman was lovely and asked a lot of questions to make sure she could get someone who would meet Madison’s particular needs and we’re going to end up with a tour that’s going to be better than the generic ones she missed. The social worker asked what name we use with Madison (Maddie or Madison?) and with Pennie and the language we use in our adoption. They now know that Madison is particularly concerned about whether or not the babies are ever left alone and they checked to see if she left the hospital with us or with Pennie.

I think it’s important that Madison visit the hospital a time by herself before she comes back in as an officially big sister to meet her little brother so I’m extremely grateful to my social worker and our contact at Mt Carmel who understand this, too. The educator is bringing someone specially to give Madison the tour. How’s that for service?

Unfortunately Pennie’s instructor changed the time of her final and she can’t go on the tour with us but as I think about it, maybe this is for the best. I’m worried about Pennie giving birth in the same hospital anyway (I’ve told her this) and I think maybe she doesn’t really need to revisit the hospital WITH Madison right before she gives birth for a tour where they talk all about Madison’s days there. I could be wrong about that but I’m choosing to think it because I’m sorry that the scheduling didn’t work out and I would like to think it’s for the best.

Anyway Madison is really excited and I need to remember to check our camera batteries before we go.

I love Pennie — I can’t wait to meet her new baby!!!!

Ever since Madison and I talked on this day about her concerns that I would be jealous if she openly expressed her affection for Pennie, things have been better. A lot better. Madison is much more open with me about her Pennie feelings and much more spontaneous in bringing her up in discussion. That’s not to say that things were bad before because they weren’t but it turns out they could have been better and now they are.

Here, I’ve got to stop and say that there is a huge lesson for me in this. I hear so often from other adoptive parents that their kids are “fine” because they never bring up adoption, never talk about their birth parents, never seem interested in their adoption stories, seem neutral about visits, etc. Never bringing it up or bringing it up cautiously or appearing disinterested might be the norm for some kids (I’m not discounting that it might be) but it also might be because we adoptive parents do such a good job of sending our kids the message that their curiosity, concern, love, passion, fear, anger, sadness, grief or other messy feelings are unacceptable to us. I believe it is so so so important to bring it up first and bring it up often in casual, not-necessarily-serious ways. I think they will tell us when we get it wrong (as Madison humorously did here) so I think it’s worth the risk.

Anyway, Madison was excited about two things today: 1) Seeing black Santa; and 2) seeing her beloved Pennie.

On the way to the bookstore, she started talking about when Pennie eventually has another baby because Madison has decided she’s against this. She likes being the only child and she thinks that’s how things ought to stay. I asked her how she thinks she’ll feel when/if Pennie does have another baby. She thought about it and said, “I would be pretty down about it.” (She brought this up because she was talking about family size and how some of her friends have bigger families while she thinks two kids is about perfect. Fortunately, I happen to agree.)

I feel for Madison here. I am awaiting Pennie’s someday parenthood with equal parts excitement and worry. I will be so happy for her and can’t wait to meet (and snuggle) her future babies but I know that no matter what, it’ll be hard for Madison and I dread her hurting.

So we met Pennie and we didn’t meet black Santa (I’ll write about that tomorrow — we were all disappointed although Madison and I also had a good conversation around the lack of Santas of color but this is a pretty full entry already). Pennie was starving so we headed out to eat. Pennie & Madison were giggly girls running across the street and getting lemonade and eating nachos and talking about hair products. Good times. Then we drove home (with plans for Madison to come make cookies with Pennie on the 24th like they did last year).

And on the way home, Madison talked about not liking to share Pennie because Pennie brought a friend along and I told her she needed to tell Pennie that and Madison said, “Why, because it would make her feel good?” And I said, “No, because she probably doesn’t know that you’d like to spend time with just her sometimes.” Then we got home and I was checking my email and Madison came into the kitchen with her tights off and her fancy dress all crooked and said, “Why am I not living with Pennie?”

And I told her what I felt like I could tell her (because truthfully, I feel like the answer to that question is going to take her whole life to figure out and even then it’ll be just one piece of a huge, complicated story).

Now I can see the path Madison took to get to that question. She’s been asking for the book Madeleine over and over (she spontaneously recited the first few stanzas over lunch) and I think this inspired her to ask the other day if she was alone in the hospital when she was just born. I told her that she was NEVER alone in the hospital and that the hospital was when Pennie was taking care of her. I said, “That was the time when Pennie was just being your mommy and not your birth mommy. I was not your mommy until you came home with us and the hospital was a very special time for just the two of you to be together. You were NOT alone.” (And was anyone else wigged out as a kid that Madeleine’s parents couldn’t even take it upon themselves to visit? I envied the dollhouse but I couldn’t figure out why her parents only sent it instead of rushing to bring it themselves.)

I won’t say how I explained Pennie’s decision to become Madison’s birth mommy and make me Madison’s mommy mommy here just because it feels sensitive (some specifics) but part of what I say emphasizes how much Pennie has always loved her and will always love her and that it was a difficult complicated decision. And I told her that she can talk to Pennie about this even though it’s hard. And I emphasized that her birth was a joyous occasion for all of us but I think even a 4-almost 5-year old can hear that there are no easy answers.

Madison asked twice why she wasn’t living with Pennie. She didn’t ask why she couldn’t; she asked why she wasn’t. It’s an important distinction. The first time she asked, she wanted an answer. The second time, it was rhetorical and she was sad. And I was sad for her. She was extra cuddly tonight and our first night of Hanukkah was fairly low key in part because we were both feeling moon-y.

At the beginning of our open adoption, I hadn’t realized how their relationship would change. It was short-sighted of me but then I’d never done this before. There was a time when Madison seemed angry with Pennie and a time when she didn’t seem much to care. In hindsight I appreciate that these were part of Madison’s developmental path but I also appreciate how easy it would have been to let them define our whole adoption. I can see why — without support and information — an adoptive parent might let those developmental snapshots dictate the course of openness. I can kind of understand how a person might say, “She finds the phone calls upsetting so we decided to stop” or “he just shrugs when we look at his lifebook so I put it away for now” but I will say again that I think this is a mistake.

Openness — not simply visits or cards or pictures or phone calls, because I know that there are those adoptions that don’t lend themselves to this for lack of information or because of safety issues — but true openness, which is meeting our children with honesty and a willingness to share, it brings it all out into the, well, open. And I think that’s nothing but good.

I cried today after Madison fell asleep because it’s not easy to see her hurting. If she hadn’t seen Pennie today, I don’t think she would have brought up her adoption. I don’t think she would have expressed such sadness. But I do believe the sadness would have been there only maybe she wouldn’t have words for it or known why she felt sad. And to have an experience that helps her put name to her emotions and to have some relationship even if it’s not the one she might wish for, that’s so important. I believe it goes such a long way to helping her be a strong survivor, to develop her resiliency and self-esteem.

I hate head colds because I can’t think properly when I’m living with one. And I can’t make the two phone calls I need to make because I sound like a rhinoceros is sitting on my head. (I’ll make ‘em tomorrow, I guess.) Yesterday I worked on breaking everything I need to do down into teensy-tiny baby steps so that I could do a little bit at a time and then go upstairs and lie down. See, this part is like having a real job only without sick pay or even unpaid leave. Rats.

The kids woke up early to decorate the house for Halloween. Madison remembers doing all of this last year (when she was two!) because she’s like an elephant with her memory. Honestly, she remembers stuff like crazy. Noah does, too. He remembers the apartment we lived in when he was two. I’ve decided I have the smartest kids alive.

Madison and I are picking Jessica up from work today. I’m going to do my best to stay far away from Jessica who doesn’t need a cold to derail her incredibly busy school/work schedule. Madison is very excited because Jessica bought her glittery toenail polish.

Erin (who has the cutest little Who-ville of a child over there) posted something about parents with bio kids who worry about openness being unfair to said bio kid to which she says, “What the heck?” (Or as Madison says, “What the hoogah?”) So allow me to pontificate on openness and Noah.

Noah figured out early on that adoption that included the first parents made sense since he was involved in the waiting, involved in our first match and unmatch, involved in the candles we lit and prayers we sent to the family who would one day choose us. He didn’t meet Jessica until after Madison was born but then we (Brett and I) only met her once ourselves. She and I talked on the phone a lot but we only saw her that once when we first officially matched.

You may recall (if you’ve been reading that long) that I wasn’t sure about Noah meeting Madison before the surrenders were signed because I was worried it would be hard on him but then I changed my mind because if Madison did end up coming home with us, I wanted him to meet her the first time with Jessica. I wanted him to be able to tell her about that meeting (especially since we had no idea how our relationship might change and if Jessica would be a part of our lives, etc.) and we wanted him to see his sister with her first mom so he would truly understand where she came from. And if Madison didn’t come home, I wanted him to be able to say good-bye, too, and to know that little girl was ok with her mom.

(On my facebook account is a picture of them from the first time they met. Noah was very shy with her — wouldn’t touch her — but enamored all the same.)

Once Madison came home and Jessica started visiting, Noah was someone she could relate to because while Jessica hasn’t had a ton of baby experience, she has a little sister just a year younger than Noah and her best friend, Sam, has a nephew about Noah’s age. He could help break the ice during nervous first meetings and I remember on our very first mother’s day celebration that he came out with his whole collection of micropets and entertained us all with them. Also Sam is a huge batman fan and Noah has his share of batman paraphernalia (although his super hero of choice — at the time — was more spiderman).

Noah really loves Jessica and Nate and Sam. In fact, we’ve had to talk to him about giving Jessica and Madison their space because he handles their visits with the same show-off enthusiasm that he welcomes visits from grandparents. You know, he brings out all of his latest toys, shows off his cool dance moves and generally is excited about having visitors to his humble home. He also had a good time when D (Jessica’s little sister) came to visit.

Noah instinctively understands how and why Jessica matters to us and to Madison. He notices when Madison does things that remind him of Jessica (and now D — Madison makes a lot of faces that look like D these days! Particularly her, “You said what?!” face). He talks to her about Jessica, and he talks to her about when she came home and how he fed her a bottle and watched television with her on his lap and how he picked out a pink poodle for her while we were at the hospital.

He’s also training us. He asked about Madison’s bio dad a long time ago and he’s talked about his concerns (pre-adoption) about having a family that doesn’t match and then later about feeling worried about people not realizing that she’s his sister. (He takes great pride in her and it bothered him to think that people might not assume that he’s her brother because they don’t have the same skin color.) As it turns out, he’s been able to model matter-of-fact responses to people — mostly kid — questions for Madison like, “Yes, she is my sister and yes, she’s adopted.”

Jessica makes time for Noah and has brought gifts especially for him. Like when Madison was tiny and she brought over a bunch of candy she’d won from her job for Noah. While she is definitely Madison’s special person (I mean, it’s not like she pretends to be Noah’s birth mom, too, you know?) she does have a relationship with Noah. She asks him what he’s going to be for Halloween, she helped him carve a pumpkin when she had them over for pumpkins. She tells him stories about how she used to tease her little brother and she laughs when he tells stories about teasing Madison.

There was a brief time at the beginning when Noah felt like it wasn’t fair that he didn’t have his own Jessica and sometimes he feels left out when I have to pull him aside and remind him to give Madison some time with Jessica because he wants to play, too. But he does get it and he likes having her in our family. Jessica matters to him and he looks forward to her visits. He’s not confused by it — honestly, I think kids can get this stuff better than grown-ups sometimes because they don’t bring as much baggage to it.

Edited to add: If anyone has any questions about Noah and our adoption, ask away. I’ll hit him up for answers if need be; he won’t mind.

I’ve been thinking about my sexual history because I’m thinking about my infertility book (that keeps morphing into this and that and something altogether different and then back again). I always feel like infertility memoirs I’ve read so far don’t talk much about the non-procreational kind of sex unless they’re high-lighting the great irony of using birth control in the past and using birth encouragements in the infertile present. This seems so incomplete.

For me, my infertility experiences brought back a lot of my teen-age shame about being a sexually active 15-year old who was trying to be responsible and getting lectured every time she put her heels in stirrups. That is a bigger irony in my mind — chastising the teenage girl for keeping her pap smear appointment and paying for her own birth control. No wonder most of my friends didn’t bother.

Anyway, I read Jenna’s and Angela’s recent entries in this mindset of my angry teenage self and it got me thinking.

There’s this part of my history that I have never, ever, ever written on blog and I rarely talk about it because it’s probably the thing that I feel most ashamed about and it’s complicated and not something I’ve ever really figured out. But reading these entries made me feel like I knew what I wanted to say about it although I’m not sure how much I’m going to share. (I’ll know when I’ve written it.)

When I was sixteen I hooked up with a guy who was twelve years older and had sex with him although I didn’t want to. It wasn’t date rape because I said yes but it left me feeling violated.

Part of the reason I allowed this to happen is that (as many of you have experienced for yourself), if you’re a teenager and having sex then you’re already a ruined kind of person and it seems unreasonable to say no to this guy since you have already said yes to that one. This is something huge I want to get across to my kids: You can say no even if you’ve said yes before. But in the teen world of the 80s (and one assumes in most other decades), once you’re deflowered you kind of give up your right to play virgin. The best example of this I can think of is a male friend of mine who was a virgin and who said to me, “Why won’t you have sex with me? What’s the big deal when you’ve already done it?” And I thought, “Is he right? Should I just do it?” And this is really what happened with this guy who was 12 years older only his arguments were more complex and more flattering.

Afterwards, I felt like crap and I felt used and I was angry that I’d betrayed myself with this guy (and betrayed my friend who was dating that guy, which was a huge part of it all for me and profoundly changed my self-perception). But I also felt responsible and so I tried to pretend like it was ok and tried to pretend that maybe I even liked him and this was a further betrayal of myself. And it really wasn’t until I met Brett and confessed all to him that I felt absolved because Brett helped me see that I was 16 and I was up against someone smarter and not very principled whether or not he realized how manipulative and underhanded his behavior was. I’m sure if I told this guy (if I could remember his last name because I’ve truly blocked it out) that I felt he took advantage of me that he would be totally surprised and that his version of events were that he met this randy little 16-year old and we enjoyed a fun evening together way back in the fall of ‘86.

Part of me really wanted to go with what was surely this guy’s version and for a long, long time I tried to see it that way because the other option (to call myself a victim) seemed like a lie and also who wants to be a victim? But what I didn’t see until my confession to Brett was that it was possible to find a middle-ground, which would acknowledge the complications of sexuality and personality and that this middle-ground also understood the limits of culpability.

There are many versions of truth. It’s true that this man was much older than I was and that this gave him the upper-hand. It’s also true that I pulled my tights off myself. It’s true that I was responsible for my choices. It’s also true that I was in over my head. (I’m trying to write this while Madison slurps mushy raisin bran and slams a metal car on the table next to me so I keep losing my train of thought.) These things are all true. I had to figure out how to reconcile truths that ran into each other and made a lot of confusion. How could I be responsible yet still feel so victimized? How could he be the bad guy when I walked willingly into that apartment with him? It seemed lose/lose. I couldn’t figure out how to recognize his coercion unless I lied to myself. (He didn’t hold me down or steal my clothes or force me to do anything.) But thinking about it made me want to throw up so surely something bad did happen?

That’s how I managed to slip into shame and blame. It was my fault. I was a bad person. A bad slutty person, actually, so I may as well start wearing my skirts shorter and laugh it off, right? Only I wasn’t laughing.

Jenny Garp fictionally wrote, “I wanted a job and I wanted to live alone. That made me a sexual suspect.” She may as well had written, “I had a vagina. That made me a sexual suspect.” The older I get the more I realize how complicated sexual roles are and how easily we fall into things and then twist ourselves up to make it all fit. I couldn’t maintain the personal contortions it took to make sense of what had happened. When I told Brett (who somehow managed to see me inside the situation, unlike other boyfriends who couldn’t see past the stereotypes anymore than I could) he helped me see that lots of things could be true; that I didn’t have to succumb to any paradoxes.

I think of this when I think about first moms who don’t know they have the right to grieve regardless of how complicit they were in their adoption decisions. Sometimes it seems like if we tell ourselves it’s all right to cry, we have to give some of our power up first. But if we give that up in order to have the grieving privileges of being a “victim,” we deny the truth of our experiences and then we can’t find comfort.

I remember a friend of mine who had been raped when she was 13. The first time she told me about it, her story was that she’d been gang-raped and beat up. But as we became closer it turned out that what happened is that she was raped by her crush and that at first she was a willing participant. Why did she change her story? Because when she told people that she went with him, that she wanted him to kiss her, that she liked what was happening at first, who would care about what happened afterwards? The lie was her protection but it also betrayed her. It made her a liar and it made her a sneak and it made her feel guilty all of the time and it made her, ironically, feel more responsible and more complicit in the rape but what choice did she have? The world is not nice to women; she was already a sexual suspect just by showing up.

It’s easy to get in so deep that we don’t feel like we can turn around and go back. We have to learn how to forgive ourselves for making choices that lead us someplace we didn’t want to go. Sometimes we say “yes” because we don’t know how to say “maybe.” And sometimes when we say “maybe” the world hears “yes” anyway. Sometimes we have no idea what we’re getting ourselves into.

We don’t have to accept the narrative that’s thrust upon us because people assume a predictable trajectory. Saying yes to a man, saying yes to an agency, saying yes at the hospital or in a dark apartment doesn’t mean we don’t have a right to our regrets. We don’t have to apologize to anyone (except perhaps — lovingly — to ourselves) for being too naive or too young or too ill-informed or too willing because we were doing the best we could.

Maybe that guy didn’t victimize me but that doesn’t mean that I knew what I was doing. He doesn’t have to be a bad guy but I also don’t have to be a slut. The truth is more complicated and ultimately it doesn’t matter how the world sees it as long as I make sense of how I have to see it. I was in over my head. That’s all there is to it. I wish it never happened but it did. No good things came out of it — no great wisdom or great compassion or the kinds of things that make a trial worth it. Still, it happened. It’s part of my story and I forgive myself for it. I acknowledge my responsibility but it doesn’t take away from my acknowledgment that I was also an injured party. It’s the big challenge, isn’t it? To live with those paradoxes.

My last (pre-bald doll) post about being in the hospital garnered some interesting comments. Two folks (one here, one at my LJ-crosspost) said that they feel adoptive parents should absolutely NOT be at the hospital. (One person is an a-mom and one is a first mom.) I’ll expand on what I said in response in the LJ comments.

I have really mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I get totally squicked out when I read about potential a-parents being at the birth and even sometimes being at the hospital because I understand that our presence can be coercive. And I know from reading some accounts that being there often brings with it a strong sense of entitlement to that baby and even, unfortunately, to the birth experience. On the other hand, any woman — making an adoption plan or not — obviously has the right to decide who is with her when she gives birth and who is there at the hospital to visit. So I cannot say that a woman considering an adoption plan should have fewer rights than a woman who isn’t (even knowing that it’s totally not the same thing).

Originally Jessica did not want us at the hospital but she changed her mind when Madison was born. Brett and I were both ok with not being there but when she asked us to come, there was no way we were going to say no either. Not just because we wanted to meet Madison but also because Jessica said she wanted us there and if she wanted us there, we were going to be there. But I was really floundering at the hospital. It was hard to know what to do or say and it was difficult to know how to support Jessica without being intrusive.

It’s impossible to look back and predict how our being there impacted the outcome of our adoption (would Jessica have placed if we hadn’t been there? I have no idea) but I can look back and see how our being there impacted my feelings about our adoption. I want to explain more about that but I’m running out of words. I can only say that it was spiritually humbling to be there and the experience changed me profoundly. (That’s the whole Salon essay if you think about it — I don’t know if my transition would have been as deep and as hard and as fulfilling if I hadn’t been there.) But of course it’s not about me and what being there gave to me as much as what my being there might have taken from Jessica. (And she doesn’t blog, sadly, so she can’t tell you.)

So my thoughts about this are that the expectant family — particularly the expectant mother — have a right to dictate how it goes during the birth and in the hospital but I think a lot of women are making these important decisions without really knowing what it all means.

Think about it — it’s hard to figure out how to write a plain old vanilla birth plan before you’ve given birth. Now think about writing a birth plan, a pre-adoption plan, a birth plan in case of adoption, a post-birth/pre-adoption plan, etc. etc. etc. I think an agency needs to be very forthright when they help a woman figure this out. I think they need to say (and maybe some do — maybe ours did, I don’t know), “IF you want the potential a-parents there, ok, but here is what you need to know about this. Here are your rights. Here is how I will kick them out the minute you give me the secret signal we’re going to come up with right now. It’s about you, it’s about you, it’s about you.”

I don’t know how much that would help but I also don’t think there’s really any way to fully prepare any woman for the impact of her birthing decisions and hospital stay before it happens whether she’s considering adoption or not. I think the best adoption professionals can do is be absolutely clear about what they’ve seen before. They need to put it all out there and not try to “protect” women by holding back information (likewise I think it’s wrong to “protect” women by limiting their right to create their own birth/adoption plans).

I don’t know. It’s incredibly hard. I think of things that agencies could do like have a brochure talking about hospital stays written by women who chose adoption and women who ultimately didn’t. You know something to talk about the minefields of having potential adoptive parents there and some ways to handle scenarios. But realistically, a lot of women wouldn’t read it because what I hear many first moms saying is, “I didn’t want to prepare because I didn’t want to face it.” I feel like when I say “agencies should do this or do that” that I’m asking way too much of the expectant mothers in crisis. So then I think the agencies need to be more proactive at the hospitals and really tune in to what the mother is saying and really keep a leash on the adoptive parents. We adoptive parents are just some special kind of crazy, seems like. Ugh. And maybe being proactive means discouraging women from inviting adoptive families there but ultimately it’s her choice. I don’t know. It’s like pre-birth matching — potentially coercive but I think it’s wrong to tell a woman she can’t start planning her adoption before the baby is born.

There’s so much obvious coercion and need for reform like for-profit agencies and unlicensed facilitators and professionals who ship pregnant women to Utah to avoid their own state laws. I can totally get behind those reforms. But when we start talking about limiting women’s rights in order to protect them, I get uncomfortable. Jessica was angry the agency wouldn’t show her profiles when she was seven months pregnant and she didn’t give a damn if the agency did this in part to protect her (because they felt no woman should be meeting with agencies before she’s felt her baby kick and is clearly showing and because they felt that longer matches resulted in more unreasonable hopeful adoptive parent entitlement) and in part to protect potential adoptive parents (because they felt longer matches were too emotionally difficult). And she would have been angry if the agency told her she wasn’t allowed to have us at the hospital when she called four hours after Madison was born and asked if they thought I would mind visiting.

You know, I think it’s impossible to make definitive statements about these muddled areas — pre-birth matching, hopeful adoptive parents in the hospital — and how they ought be for every family unless you have a very black/white view of adoption. If every adoption is by definition a failure of the system because a mother loses her child and a child loses its mother, then these things are surely always bad. But of course not every adoption is a failure (at least not in the views of this blog author) anymore than every adoption is rainbows and sunshine and guiding stars and sun (warning, that link is annoying and could be triggering).

Hmmm, as I write that I think this is a big part of the problem. Of course an awful lot of adoption talk is on the side of rainbows and sunshine and adoptive fathers cutting the cord of the baby and adoptive mothers tearfully hugging her child while the birth mother smiles and says beatifically, “He’s in the right place now, Mom!” (I mean there are a ton of those stories out there.) It really sets everyone up. So you’ve got adoptive parents who have these high expectations of bonding from the beginning and you’ve got expectant mothers who have these high expectations for themselves. (And all this adoption lore perpetuating these stereotypes.)

I guess the big issue is that we all of us — adoptive parents, expectant mothers, agencies — always think adoption is about getting a baby from here over to there. That’s the past tense of adoption, really. Adoption is first about a woman facing a crisis and it’s all about her and that crisis. If only there was a way to make money out of supporting women in crisis, then we wouldn’t need reform. Because I think this would all be different if the pre-birth matching and the hospital visits happened in the context of empowering a woman in crisis (in the context of serving that woman) and not in the context of that past tense of adoption. Well, that’s all theoretical though isn’t it? Because it’s a market economy and we adoptive parents are the consumers in all of this. (sigh)

I have to go make dinner now so I have to quit writing about this even though I feel like I had this little mental breakthrough for myself.