mindingmybiz

My Story: The Foreword…

I don’t know where this will lead, but I can hear the voice of Lady Gaga saying – just dance. just write.

I. Must. Write.

Write about what I know, which is my unfolding story as I go.  Of which I don’t know the ending or sometimes where I am in the midst of that story.  I don’t have the time or luxury to wait and edit it a thousand times before I click the “Publish” button, and as the hyper-self-critic and digressing kind of blogger that I can be, it irks me.  Yet there’s also this wildly defiant and ambitiously wise voice inside of me saying, “Go for it, Kristen — who gives a shit”.  That voice has been getting louder and louder.  Oh the paradox.

That is my life in one word: Paradox

So, I don’t know where this will land.  It feels very much like I’m writing my story to fearlessly make sense out of it for myself.  A key ingredient in that process is sharing it with who knows who.  I see myself writing as I go, while attaching my writing to a balloon, and releasing it into the sky, or a glass bottle and placing it in the river and — letting go.

A-ha.  That’s it.  Right there.  THAT must be why I need to just write without much forethought or agenda other than to just get it out – to let it go.  Huh.  Imagine that.  In order to let it go, I need to — let it go.  Huh.  Profound.

But that means I am letting go of control.  And in looking around at my life I see that control is how I’ve seemed to try and remedy my fears of what I cannot control.  I’ve had the propensity to try harder to control what I cannot control.  It’s hard being so human sometimes.  Especially when I am admittedly, a bit of a free-spirited tight-ass, so this is really reeeeeeally hard to NOT do.

I’m trying to tease out for you and me, why I do such seemingly crazy things, like write about my life in an open book format.  So vulnerable, yet so powerful for the giver and receiver of such vulnerability.  Well, this is somehow healing and empowering to me, though it is also scary hence the vulnerability factor.  What I write could be taken out of context and misused.  Something I fear yet cannot control.  I need to write anyway.  I’m not crazy, I’m just a little impaired with clarity right now.

Here I go…brace yourself.  I am.

Currently, I’m primarily a stay-at-home mother.  At this moment of writing I’m home with my 3rd baby-girl after sending my 6 yr old and 11 yr old off to school.

Deep breaths.

Life unfolds.  I never thought I’d be in this place of being a mother to 3 children.  Holy shit, I just said 3 children.  Yes, I have 3 children – all daughters.  I’ve found myself saying this in my head many times – “holy shit, I have 3 children!”  It’s not like that accidentally happened without my permission.  I know this.  It’s just that my conscious awareness is awakening and gradually catching up to the safety of grace by me granting it permission to do so after being in a long time-out of covert shame.

I’m grateful for each of my babies, they are gifts wrapped in many layers of emotions I need to unwrap within my heart.  I’m grateful for what life has been teaching me, but that gratitude is something that’s sometimes very hard-fought for.

Breathing still…

I am a woman who is divorced, and living with my current partner I’m engaged to.  We have one baby together.  My 2 oldest daughters were born in my first marriage of 10 years.  I am having a hard time identifying with some of the labels that are thrust on me, and that I thrust on myself.  I assign the struggle between shame and grace to rigid religiosity that declares my soul was born deformed by sin, and God is waiting for me to let him fix me so I won’t need to fear life and him so much.  That was a loaded sentence.  I’ve lived that sentence for years and it wore me down – thank god, it wore me down.

Labels are exceedingly confining and disguising.  Sometimes the disguise is welcomed and sometimes, it’s just an unwanted side effect of simplification.

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll throw out some labels I find myself associating with, some very loosely and some more intimately with.  There’s a varying degree of ambivalence I have with these labels, which are associated with different parts of what make up me, but nonetheless here they are – for simplicity’s sake.

• female
• korean-adoptee
• divorcee
• mother
• daughter
• feminist
• sinner
• saint
• ex-wife
• fiance
• twin
• aunt
• employee
• minority
• generation y
• Human

I edited the first letter of all those labels and de-capitalized them, with the exception of Human.  They are mere labels that I can identify with, but they are not my ultimate identity — other than being Human.

The story of my humanity looks different from everyone else’s.  But at the end of the day, I am human, and my story is incredibly evident of that – being human.  It is through this thread of a shared humanity and making sense out of it, that I am coming from.  All else is mostly just background noise.

Chapter One coming next…