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HerStories Voices: Girl With Headache

This week’s essay, written by Stephanie Harper, riveted me from the start. After reading about her harrowing experience of living with a headache disorder, which is often debilitating, I’ll never again complain about having to take Advil for my tension headaches. As her essay reveals, our writer never loses her sense of humor. Her story is courageous and inspiring. I hope you enjoy. – Allie.

Girl with Headache

By Stephanie Harper

It’s 7:30 in the morning and I’m warming up with the rest of my choir, as I do on so many Sundays. It’s not a particularly notable morning. I am wearing a purple dress, Simply Vera by Vera Wang, which I bought because it sounds very impressive to say—even though I got it for $20 at Kohl’s. I like it because the fabric is naturally crinkled in a way that looks like I just rolled around in the grass, so I don’t feel the need to iron it. It’s also long enough that it reaches my knees, a major accomplishment for any garment because I am 5’11. That means I can wear it without the awkward bike shorts or leggings underneath. I’d say I feel great in my new purple crinkle dress, except that I don’t.

I woke up feeling off. Decidedly off. This in of itself isn’t totally unusual. I’ve gotten up every morning for the past 20 months with a headache, one that never goes away. One that sits behind my right eye, the way that pesky squirrel sits on the fence and stares at me, twitches in a creepy way. I hate that squirrel. I used to have recurring nightmares about that squirrel stalking me across my college campus and attacking me while I slept. That’s what this headache is like—a possibly rabid, rodent stalker. That being said, this morning’s feeling is different, something hard to put into words. It’s as though my brain is under water. Not in a gasping for air sort of way, but more like when you open your eyes to try and peer through the blue of a swimming pool. Fuzzy and distorted. Not quite right.

We start rehearsing our first song and I am looking at my music and I am seeing and reading it but I’m struggling to get the words out. It’s like my brain has been given a delayed start, a mental snow day. It’s infuriating because I like to sing and do it well but I’m flubbing all over the place. The words are so slow. My brain and my body feel so slow. My arms and legs feel as though the muscle has been replaced by jelly and I am sloshing around like one of those inflatable people that dances wildly at the entrance of a used car sale.

This is not working.

I tap my mom’s shoulder—she also sings—and then I sit down on a chair, leaving my stand and microphone erect before me. The choir sings on. My mother turns around. She lowers my stand and looks at me.

“What’s wrong?” she says, though this question is perfunctory, like “how are you?” She knows.

“We have to go,” I manage to sputter, though I can hear the words rolling off my tongue slowly, the way the smoke of a good cigar might curl.

She cocks her head. She hears it too, that slight delay. “Home?” she asks.

I think for a moment. “Hospital.”

What follows is a blur of concerned citizens rallying to get me from the worship center to the car. My mother escorts me out of the choir loft and plops me down in a leather chair in the church narthex. A friend of ours, a fellow choir lady, kneels beside me. I can tell she’s scared. Her blue eyes are alight with worry, the way a mother looks when her child has climbed just a little too high on the playset and disaster seems imminent. She talks to me, asks me a few questions, but I don’t really hear what she says. Or what I say.

I try to crack a joke with my delayed words. “Guess I haven’t had my coffee this morning.”

She smiles. “At least you never lose your sense of humor.”

My mother comes through the door. She’s pulled the car around to the front of the church for easy access. I’m ushered down the ramp by two tenors, one on either side, as though I am the Queen Mum or someone equally old and important.

As we approach my Yaris, I say, “my clown car. The guy on my right laughs. He says, “There’s already 12 people in there.” In a few minutes, my mother and I are off to the ER.

This is not the first time I’ve been to the ER since my headache started. I try not to go often, but it happens—when a flare up is particularly bad or when new symptoms emerge and something seems out of the ordinary. Like today. Sometimes I go because I have convinced myself that I’m having a stroke or an aneurysm. That there’s no way whatever is happening to me is a “normal” part of my headache discourse. Sometimes I go because I want it documented. Sometimes I go because I just don’t know what else to do.

This morning, I’m going because I’ve never had this speech problem before and it’s genuinely freaking me out. I can tell by the way my mom watches me that it’s genuinely freaked her out as well.

I have been to several ERs and met a whole slew of ER doctors and nurses. And, it’s almost always the same. I walk in the door. Sometimes I’m wearing sunglasses because my eyes are so light sensitive I can’t take them off. Sometimes, I’m leaning on my mother’s arm for support. The front desk person looks concerned. Sometimes they ask if I need a wheelchair. I always wave them off because I am stubborn and maybe a little foolish.

When I make it back to the exam room, a nurse asks me about my symptoms, my medications, all the standard questions. Then, the doctor enters. He says some version of “What brought you in today?” I explain what’s going on and try to hold off on the whole headache thing for as long as I can. But it always comes up. I’ve had a headache for three months, six months, eighteen months. I have these flares. They get bad. But this time it’s different. I’m scared. Trying to be vigilant. Just in case.

Then, the same thing happens every time. The doctor writes a few things down and pumps me full of painkillers like morphine or Dilaudid. He might put me on oxygen for a few hours. Or give me a headache cocktail of Benadryl, Haldol, and something for nausea. Every hospital has its own unique protocol. Someone always sends me home. I’m there for maybe four hours at the most. This is because I am just a girl with a headache. I don’t want to be, but I am. There is nothing anyone can do for me, no magic test or antidote. The best they can do is drug me up and hope that I sleep it off, that my headache resets to its usual nagging but bearable level by the time the drugs wear off. That’s what you do for a girl with a headache.

This trip to the ER is only slightly different. I have a CT scan, or so they tell me. I don’t remember because the Dilaudid has kicked in and I’m not present. I’m somewhere else. But everything is as normal as it always is. I’m not having a stroke or a brain aneurysm. Nobody seems to know why, on this particular day, during this particular flare up, my speech has been delayed and my motor function stunted, but they don’t seem too worried. Not out of the realm of what can be expected with headache like mine. So I go home and sleep for another four hours. Then, I go to dinner. Business as usual.

At dinner it hits me again, that weird feeling from the morning. I get up to go to the bathroom and my mom can see it too. She follows me, which is a good thing, because I open the door to the ladies’ room and then I collapse a little, fall in on myself, everything jelly again. But she’s right behind me. She helps me collect myself and I use the restroom, splash some water on my face, and then we go out to the car so I can lay down while they pay the bill. I sit down in the backseat and look at her. I ask her a question, something like “What’s going on?”

She just stares at me.

I ask her again.

“I can’t understand you” she says.

“What do you mean?” I ask her, even though her face says it all. Jibberish.

“Stephanie,” she says, putting her hand on my arm. “I swear to God, if you are doing this on purpose or because you’re just too tired to try, I’m going to kill you.”

The rest of the night continues in a similar fashion. We get home and my grandpa helps me inside, a death grip on my arm that is almost worse than the pain in my head. He lays me down on the couch in the living room. As he gets up to head home, I hear him whisper, “This is the damndest thing I’ve ever seen.”

My mom tells me I need to go to bed. We make it half way down the stairs before I black out and collapse. My dad comes and helps wrestle me to my feet. They get me to my bedroom, pulling me along like a drunk who’s lost control of her body. I wish I’d had a few drinks. It’d be a hell of a lot more fun.

My mom gets me ready for bed and tucks me in, like I’m five. “I think you just need to sleep it off,” she says. Then, she turns out the light.

About fifteen minutes later I realize I have to pee. I get up and go to the bathroom. I black out again, this time while I’m washing my hands. Mom comes to help me. She gets me on my feet and through my doorframe and I black out for a third time. Now, I’m sitting on the floor of my bedroom, staring up at her.

“Why are you doing that?” I ask her. My speech has come back a little, slurred but understandable.

“Doing what?”

“Why is your face like that?” I move my hands up and down, trying to make a dripping sort of action. Her face drips like a scoop of ice cream betrayed by heat and gravity. Neon flashes of light fly around her head. It’s freaking me out.

“What are you talking about?” She sounds concerned but also a little annoyed.

“Your face is melting.”

“We need to get you back in bed.”

This starts an argument. I want to go back to the hospital. My mental state is, in a word, goofy. Like a small child. I’m frightened and I want someone to fix it. This can’t possibly be normal. I’m going to die in my sleep. I know it. This time, it really is the end. But my mother thinks I need to sleep it off and see how I feel in the morning. She doesn’t think there’s anything to be done in the ER. We’ve already been there once today. At this point, there’s nothing left to do.

“If I die in my sleep, it will be all your fault,” I tell her, as she helps me into bed one more time.

“Then, I’ll feel bad,” she says, and moves for the door. “You have to sleep now, okay?”

“Okay,” I say and roll over onto my side. She turns the light out.

“Hey, mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you check on me sometime, just make sure I’m still breathing?”

“Yeah.”

I relax a little knowing she’ll check in. I settle into the covers. “I hate this.”

“I know,” she says. “Me too.”

In the morning, I feel like a new person. Or maybe not new. More like I’ve been reset. I am tired but back to my usual state of ache, my baseline just behind my right eye, where it always is. This is as close to a rebirth as I can get. And, on a morning like this, after a day like the one I’ve just had, this is good enough.

I am constantly exploring new territory with this headache disorder. Even as I write now, it’s been two-and-a-half years since the pain started. Two-and-a-half years of waking up every morning feeling a little tired and (hopefully) a little renewed. It’s not ideal, but I have found a way to make every day a new day. Each day, I have a chance to have a good day, one where I don’t get sick, I don’t need to nap, one where I can enjoy my friends, my family, my life, without too many painful consequences. And, on the days where none of this is true, where I can’t get out of bed, or my speech goes awry and I think people’s faces are melting, I can count on the newness that tomorrow will bring. And, that’s that. In this new life of mine, I’ll continue about this day and the next day to the best of my ability, with the hope that love and joy will continue to come my way in the midst of pain. That is really all I can do.

I am just a girl with a headache.

Stephanie Harper received her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Fairfield University with an emphasis in fiction in July 2012. Her work can be found in The Huffington Post, HelloGiggles, The Montreal Review, Poetry Quarterly, Midwest Literary Magazine, Haiku Journal, and Spry Literary Journal. She served as Fiction Co-Editor for Mason’s Road Literary Journal and is currently an editorial reader for Spry Literary Journal. She lives in Denver, CO.

Stephanie’s Twitter is @StephanieAHar

Stephanie’s Instagram is @StephanieAH27

Stephanie’s website is http://www.stephanie-harper.com

**Submissions for May are now open! Our theme for the month will be May, and then submissions will be closed until August as our Voices column will be on a summer hiatus. We will announce our September theme this summer, so stay tuned! For submission guidelines, read more here, and email your submission to our assistant editor, Allie, at herstoriesvoices @ gmail.com.

**Two of our most popular online writing courses, The Balanced Writer (our newest class, offered this past winter!) and Publish Your Personal Essay, are being offered as significantly discounted self-paced courses for a limited time! Just $40 each or $60 for both! Don’t miss this great deal; sign up now to treat yourself to some inspiration, polish your skills, and connect with a writing community! Details here.

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HerStories Voices: Finding Yourself Again After Kids

The early years of parenthood are grueling for many of us and the more children you have, the harder it can be. Today’s author, Megan Woolsey, is the mother of four, and triplets are part of the equation. It’s no surprise that she lost herself. As a fellow mother of multiples, I could relate to Megan’s struggle and cheered her on as she rediscovered the light within. This essay will resonate with moms who miss the woman they were before they had children. Enjoy! – Allie

Finding Yourself Again After Kids

By Megan Woolsey

When I was in sixth grade I wrote a mystery series at recess while my friends were playing dodge ball on the playground. The heroine of my stories was named Penny Powers and she was a smart, confident, feminist girl just like my mother was raising me to be. Each story was only a few handwritten pages, but captured all of the imagination my eleven-year-old mind could muster. At the end of each story, Penny Powers proved herself to be a successful heroine by facing her challenges head on and solving problems.

Little did I know back then that I would face big life challenges and have to solve my own problems one day, just like Penny Powers.

From a very young age all I wanted to do was write. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said I wanted to be an author of books. I still have an image in my head of being seven years old, an age where you would draw a picture of what you were writing. So I said in big bold uppercase writing “I AM GOING TO BE A AUTHOR” and underneath I colored a picture of a woman writing a book in what appears to be a library filled with books of all different shapes and colors.

I kept the passion for writing alive, for a while. My writing was strong through college and by twenty-five years old I was working as a freelance writer making very little money, but I had an impressive looking byline in some local print magazines.

Then my life changed dramatically after I had my first child. My daughter was smart, funny, and spirited, and I enjoyed her every day. But I did what a lot of moms do in our current culture; I gave everything to my child and left nothing for myself. I lost my career, my writing, myself.

Three years later, I gave birth to triplets. Those first months of raising triplets were an incredible feat. My husband and I were waking up at 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. to feed our infant triplets each night. It would take us an hour and a half to feed, diaper and put them back to sleep each shift. Our middle of the night escapades were met with such exhaustion that I would feed my babies with the wrong end of the bottle, or fall asleep in the middle of my duties. My husband and I would fight and yell profanities at each other in the wee hours of the morning, only because we were too tired to be civil.

I didn’t exercise or have any hobbies for myself. I spent all of my time around the clock caring for four small children. I began writing a blog about having triplets, but my writing back then was more like unedited journal entries composed after sleepless nights.

I loved my children with every ounce of my being, yet I was completely disconnected from myself as an individual. I woke up one day and felt that my only value on this beautiful planet was juggling the schedules of my four children, household chores, and managing bills. My life had become a series of mundane tasks; such is life as a stay-at-home mother. Depression set in. There was no value in being me other than routine childcare duties. I didn’t feel attractive, smart, or creative. I could not feel any joy in my life.

On a beautiful spring day, I received an interesting invitation to attend a yoga retreat in Monterey, California. My cousin was running a three-night yoga retreat and an inner calling messaged me to go. I was tired of saying no to everything. No, I can’t have people over to dinner at my house. No, I can’t go with my friends to a weekend away wine tasting. No, I can’t go exercise. No I can’t, because I have kids. So this time, I said yes. Yes, I will do something for myself. Yes, I will go to this yoga retreat. I will pitch a tent in the woods in a secluded space and have time to reflect by myself. To get ready for this yoga retreat, I began taking yoga classes every spare moment during my week. I realized I was becoming good at something that was just for me. Pitching that tent and attending the yoga retreat by myself gave me a new energy and desire to better myself in other ways.

I made an effort to style my hair some days, and wear clothes that were a step up from sweats. I set out to make new friends, and found a soul mate. I changed the name, design, and focus of my blog to be more professional. I ate healthy food and took more walks. All of this made me feel good about myself. This made me feel like, while my kids were my world, I mattered also.

This past year I turned forty-one years old. My children aren’t infants anymore so I’ve found a little more time for myself. I spent my thirties struggling with infertility and raising children. Many days I wondered why I chose this life and if I would ever have enough energy and inspiration to create my own passions again.

Then I realized that if I look around with an open mind, inspiration is all around me. I began to find that the delights and challenges I found in being a woman, a mother, and a wife created a connection I could write about.

There is so much pressure on parents today to do everything and be everything for their children. We give everything to our kids because we love them and want them to be successful. We also do it because there is a competition embroiled in our social fabric that is unhealthy and leaves mothers lost and lonely, thinking they aren’t doing enough.

Most of us are more than good enough. We are too good at being a mom and not as good at being respectful to our own dreams and passions.

Maybe after all of these years and four kids later, there is still that little girl inside me, the one who was always writing books at recess.

I have a large family that includes higher order multiples, and it does suck the life out of me. Other days my family fills me with crazy passion and inspiration. Having kids doesn’t have to mean the death of myself as my own creative woman.

After feeling depressed for years under the pressure of motherhood, I experienced a rebirth to become a new version of the old me who loved to write and followed those dreams of being an author.

After eleven years being a mom, it is finally clear that I can still have my own life and my own dreams . . . not despite being a mom, but because I am a mom.

I am Penny Powers.

Megan Woolsey is a writer, editor and publisher living in Northern California with a very supportive husband and a wild bunch of red-headed children – a set of triplets and their big sister. Megan has been published in Huffington Post, Scary Mommy, BLUNTmoms, Bonbon Break, Mamalode, In The Powder Room and is an essayist in two anthologies. She began writing professionally for her blog, The Hip Mothership, which she began while in the hospital eating copious amounts of Jell-O on bed rest pregnant with triplets. When Megan isn’t busy writing or blogging, she loves hot yoga, long walks, and dinner with friends that includes good bottles of wine.

Co-Editor, Multiples Illuminated. Find her on Facebook and Twitter.

**Our April theme is Life Lessons. Email our assistant editor Allie your submissions at herstoriesvoices @ gmail.com. Find out more about submission guidelines here.

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HerStories Voices: Confessions of Uncharitable Thoughts Toward Others

I adore this week’s essay and I think it’ll resonate with many writers who struggle with the self-promotional aspect of writing. How do we get our words read? How can we achieve success, without sharing our work with as many people as we can? How can we do this without seeming arrogant? It’s been said, by some, that being a successful writer requires a big ego. To many of us, that may be distasteful. Is it a female phenomenon? Male writers don’t seem to struggle with ego. This author decided to own her ego and I can hear her superwoman roar. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. – Allie

Confessions of Uncharitable Thoughts Toward Others

When a few of my grad-school writer-teachers gathered to give advice to us aspiring writers, I dutifully wrote down what they said, one statement in particular standing out: “Writers who succeed have: 1) tremendous egos, and 2) are as stubborn as hell.”

I knew number two posed no problem for me. A dog with a bone, my mother always said. Determined, a good streak of OCD, focused, stubborn—yes, my quirks actually good for something besides annoying my husband and three sons. But what about number one? Ego? This I perceived as the problematic area.

Born in 1974, I am the expected womanly outcome of the heavily patriarchal, fundamentalist-Christian, blue-collar backwoods where I was raised. I was trained from a young age to be self-effacing, obedient, servile. Nice. Women like this—like me—we don’t do ego.

We cook.

At a very young age, I learned how to best serve my father. After work, I took off his boots and sweaty socks and served him platters of food. At eleven I was responsible for him when my mother was gone—making dinner and cleaning up, making sure he was satisfied. Then, married at eighteen, I cooked three meals a day, feeding my husband and later, three sons.

We clean—a lot.

We don’t flinch at nasty things—we scour. We dig in and scrub and wipe and vacuum and sweep and wash. With a houseful of four six-foot-plus-tall men/boys, I do loads and loads and loads of laundry. Mountains of laundry. Towels, sheets, jeans, sweatshirts, t-shirts. Sock mounds big enough to put a quaver in the heart of the bravest laundress.

We manage the household.

We stretch monies, grocery shop, pay the bills, cook, clean, and take care of the kids. I was married raising three young children while going to school and managing significant household concerns and finances before most of my current college students have learned how to heat up Ramen or effectively use an alarm clock.

But most importantly, we are nice.

We are kind and considerate. We put our needs second. We don’t complain—we defer and hold our tongue, carving out what space we need for ourselves without inconveniencing anyone, without interrupting dinner or laundry or homework help. We accomplish our work without removing ourselves. We are always available and supportive for the ones we love.

These things fit the societal expectations of my upbringing, even fit my personality well enough, but they don’t fit the extremely competitive world of academia and writing well at all. They don’t fit ego.

It’s puzzled me for years, this seeming conundrum. How can I succeed if I don’t have the ego others have? How am I supposed to compete with men who have ego oozing out of their pores, who convince themselves and everyone else of their own immense intellects and writerly skills?

There are good reasons for my concern. Besides my societal anti-ego training, I forget names of authors and titles and don’t really pay attention to who’s-who. I can never remember things in time to bring forth pointed conversational references that make me sound smart. I misspell. I mispronounce. I bumble and blush. My memory fails me over and over again. I’m often shy and self-doubting. When it comes down to it, I’m not very “academic,” although I always loved school, did very well in classes, and now love teaching. I can clearly see the career advantages others—especially ambitious men—have over me.

I work hard at what I do, especially writing, but unlike Emily Dickinson who kept herself tucked away, I want to be published, want to be “successful”—publicly. This I understand is an act of ego—the desire to be recognized, to be heard. But is it really tremendous ego? It doesn’t seem so to me. I don’t crave the spotlight, don’t want to be the center of attention. I’m quiet in social situations and don’t self-promote well. In fact, I’m exactly what feminists say is a woman formed by a male-dominant society; I do everything they say a woman like me does.

But one night as I whip up a tripled-recipe pineapple up-side-down cake, I tick off the things I’ve accomplished that day in my head, a sort of mental tally-sheet I often do: Today I cleaned house, changed sheets, did seven loads of laundry, took a six-mile hike, graded twelve essays and twenty-four short assignments, went food shopping, revised chapter one of novel two, tweaked on one of the four essays I’m working on, made a nice dinner, made this pineapple up-side-down cake, had good times with my children and husband, chatted with friends and my sister. Not a bad day, I think with pride. And there it is, staring me right in the face, hiding in plain sight all these many years—there is my tremendous ego!

When I finally recognize it, I realize it’s been there forever. Perhaps because it wasn’t a writerly ego, or an academic or career ego, I didn’t see it for what it actually is: a superwoman ego. An I-can-do-everything-and-do-it-well ego. And it’s not just proud. It’s angry. It’s arrogant and profane. It looks out at the world and says, That’s right motherfuckers, I’m fucking superwoman and don’t you fucking forget it! The nice-girl me turns hard and blasphemous: You want to know how far I surpass you? she asks. You want to know how far superior I am? She scorns your soft-sidedness, your inferiority. You want to complain? she demands, but you dare not because if you did she would wither you with stories of long-suffering hard-working far-surpassing accomplishments that you can never compete with, not unless you too are a woman like her—someone who at forty years old has been-there-done-that more than anyone but most people’s grandparents: married twenty-two years, bought three houses and countless vehicles, moved five times, earned two degrees while raising three sons, taught college full time and made over a thousand students care and like her classes, cooked and cleaned and done laundry for three decades (do you know how much that equates?), taken care of complicated finances, kept a nice house, painted and decorated inside and out, landscaped and gardened, stayed in shape, cut everyone’s hair, not nagged or bitched, carried the emotional well-being of the family in her hand, written and published essays and poems and stories and novels, been in a book club and a writer’s group, taken care of business like no one else and been a really fucking good daughter and sister and friend and mother and wife and teacher and made the best fucking pies of anyone, because—fuck this, fuck it all—she is motherfucking superwoman.

How’s that for ego?

The nice-girl me cringes in red-faced embarrassment and apology over the other’s egotistical tirade, her cursing fist-lifting power. But secretly even she—even the nice-girl me—cheers the other one on.

In junior-high, the girls used to say about me: She just thinks she’s better than everyone else. I could never understand why. As a child, I was paralyzed by insecurity, afraid of doing everything wrong. In disgust at my hand-wringing ineptitude over something as simple as making toast, my older sister once declared that I would need someone to do everything for me when I grew up. But I see now that the junior-high girls were the ones who got it right after all. In balancing all that I do, I do think I’m better than everyone else. My ego is enormous. She looks around the world in glaring challenge and says: Go ahead. Try to top that, quite certain you can’t. My superwoman me. My stubborn, tremendous-ego me. I have finally found her.

Annie Lampman is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Washington State University Honors College and fiction editor of Blood Orange Review. She has a MFA in fiction from the University of Idaho and lives with her husband, three sons, and a bevy of pets in Moscow, Idaho. Her essays, poetry, and fiction have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Orion Magazine, High Desert Journal, and Poetry & Place along with many other journals. She has been awarded a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, first place in the Everybody-Writes contest, an Idaho Commission on the Arts writing grant, and a national wilderness artist’s residency through the Bureau of Land Management. Her first novel is under consideration in New York.

**Our assistant editor, Allie, is now accepting submissions for our March column: the theme is rebirth. For more details and submission guidelines, read this.

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HerStories Voices: The Condom

This week we’re featuring a very funny essay written by Paulina Combow, who’s a comedian. Paulina experienced an awkward moment with her mother—extremely awkward. I found myself squirming as I read this—despite the fact that I was laughing. We all want our parents to think the best of us, but little girls grow up and have grown-up lives. Still, some things between mothers and daughters should remain private. Right? At least Paulina has a good story to tell. Enjoy! —Allie

The Condom
Paulina Combow

“Someone’s going to pay for this,” I declared as I shook the six-foot privacy fence in my mom’s backyard, checking for an entry point where the vile vandals might have entered.

My mom, Nancy, is a proud Southern woman in her fifties. She feels most presentable after a fresh at-home bleaching courtesy of Miss Clairol, and a crisp blousy Chico’s ensemble crowned with a statement necklace. She’s really into eyebrows right now and is concerned when mine are not on fleek. She loves things to be picture perfect, like a magazine spread in Garden and Gun. Yes, this is an actual magazine to which she subscribes, and eagerly awaits each month. If you think this publication has a limited audience, you should know she and her garden club got concealed-carry permits together, you know, in case they need to shoot away the weeds.

She’s not only an active member of Garden club, but the Vice President and current title holder of top recruiter in the commonwealth of Kentucky. Evangelizing for Garden club is her tactful, nonracist way of beautifying her community. “Oh dear, the new neighbors have planted Nandinas in even numbers, bless their hearts.”

Each time I visit, no matter what time of the day, it’s imperative to walk the yard and play her favorite game: “Point Out Everything That’s New or Different.” There’s no clear way to win this game.

One day we were doing a walkthrough with my pug, Mook, at my heels while she showed me her newest greenhouse or batch of chicks, when she pointed to something across the yard.

“Paulina!” she gasped. “What is that?”

We hesitantly moved across the lawn, encountering a slimy used condom in the middle of her perfectly pruned grass. My mind raced to 100 sinister conclusions. This is the kind of thing I would expect to see discarded on the side of the road outside an Arby’s. But not Nancy’s garden! The place she spends six months of the year digging, planting, weeding, and replanting in preparation for the Annual Garden Club Tour, which she herself spearheads. People in our antiquated town pay money to stroll through her flowerbeds and drink sweet tea on her front porch. A porch that comfortably seats the entire Duggar family and is attached to a Victorian Home built before the Washington Monument was completed.

The skies turned black and the birds shut their beaks, as her backyard was re-labeled the scene of a sex crime. Nancy stood speechless, a helpless victim, as I took action to locate clues and find the repulsive culprit. “Could someone have snuck back here to have sex in your yard?” I asked.

Nancy’s eyes got wide, “No, no. That wouldn’t happen here.”

Like any good detective, my first suspects were known enemies of the victim. I cut my eyes to the small building in the corner of the lot we called “The Bungalow,” because my sister moved in there after flunking out of college and refusing to get a job or move out. She had the essentials, but no running water. Nancy had a small deck built onto the front to make it feel homier. She planted bushes, added patio furniture and a couple wagon wheels for good measure, but inside was a derelict twenty-something’s hideout covered in fast food cups and a lingering aroma of BO and Maryjane.

“Do you think Portia put it here?” I asked. “To get revenge for telling her the yardman can tell when she pees in the yard?”

“No,” my mom responded. “I just told her that because she was doing it in the middle of the day. I didn’t want anyone to see her and have to add registered sex offender to her criminal record. She’s already banned from the Wal-Mart for stealing that sub sandwich.”

Another dead end, but my mind was still racing. “Then where did it come from? What kind of monster would do this?” Ruling out my sister as a suspect, I looked over the fence to the indoor pool of the neighbor—who also happens to be my mother’s ex-boyfriend.

“What about your ex, Randy?” I asked. “He’s still pretty sore about you asking to store a few plants in his pool for the winter, then turning it into a Rainforest Café.”

A little too quick for my comfort, Nancy responded, “No, Randy doesn’t use condoms.”

Dismissing the tension, my mom looked up at me and pointed to Mook, my overheated pug, who was panting next to my feet. “He did it.”

This was too much for me to handle! My poor baby! He brought this over here? “Where do you think he got it? Do I need to get him tested for STDs? Is there Canine AIDS?”

I still wasn’t getting it. Nancy had to spell it out for me: “He pooped it out.”

If he pooped it out, then it probably came from the trash. My trash. My faced turned a shade of red that put my mom’s prize-winning hibiscus to shame.

Even though I was in my late twenties and in a long-term committed relationship, my mom and I had never really had the talk. I’m sure there was a point where she accepted that I punched my V-card, but we never commemorated it. I was raised very conservatively. In 8th grade I attended Christian School and participated in a purity banquet. My mom purchased a gold ring inscribed “True Love Waits.” I remember thinking, “something’s not right about this” when she was presented with a skeleton key during the ceremony to symbolize my pre-teen abstinence. She kept it on her keychain and probably grinned like Sarah Palin on a snowmobile every time she started her car. The plan back then was to not have sex until I got married, just as the Lord arranged, but of course, in 8th grade, getting laid was not on my radar. All I wanted in life was to kiss Leonardo Dicaprio, wear jeans to school, and not have a King James Version of the Bible as my only textbook.

Interestingly, I kept that vow all through high school. (How did that happen?) I kept the ring . . . in a jewelry box. But like the ring, I pawned my virginity in college to buy groceries. Just kidding. I lost it to a normal dude and it was fine, but yeah, I pawned the ring and hope it was promptly melted down.

I don’t know when mom took that skeleton key off her keychain. The only significant event was when I won the “living in sin” argument and told my family if they didn’t want me to live with my boyfriend then they could pay my rent. Suddenly the Old Testament wasn’t so literal.

Nancy and I had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy allowing me to be a fixture in her picture perfect world. I could have gone to my deathbed letting my mom believe my chastity was unbroken, but now that was impossible. She had to know in her heart I’ve knocked boots before, but now she had physical evidence, oozing into her lawn, baking in the sun. The jig was up!

With the case closed, it was time to clean up the crime scene. We couldn’t leave it there and let one of her designer chickens get it tangled on their wooly talons. These hens are swanky, lay organic eggs, and have a better pedigree than the Kennedys and even better hairstyles. Eager to get the place back to normal, Nancy made the first move: “I’ll pick it up.”

“Oh God, NO! Don’t touch it.” I ran inside to get a paper towel with the guilty pug at my heels. How could something so pure and innocent ingest something so foul? When I looked in those big black bug eyes all I would see was dirty dirty sin. We buy you name brand food, and Puperoni’s, and this is how you repay us? And you just HAD to launch it out here?

By the time I came back outside, Nancy had gotten rid of all proof. It was as if it never happened. We didn’t speak of it again until I told her I was writing this story and telling it to an audience. She said she didn’t remember. What had been a moment in time stretched out to defy the laws of physics for me was just a repressed memory for her. Or maybe she was being polite, like when you pretend you didn’t see your friend eat the entire basket of rolls at O’Charleys. At least I know this situation can never repeat itself. We’ve graduated past condoms for birth control in my decade long courtship. As long as my pug can’t squeeze out an IUD, everything in Nancy’s life will remain worthy of a magazine spread.

Paulina Combow is a writer and performer in Nashville, TN. Her comedy points out the insecurities we all share and puts them on display so we can celebrate then (or at least tolerate them). She’s performed in comedy clubs, casinos, bars and moose lodges all over the country, but mostly the southeast. Her mother refuses to see her stand-up, even when she is in the lobby of the venue. Find her on Facebook, on Twitter @paulinagc and on her website.

**We are now accepting submissions for our Voices column, and we have a special theme for our March essays: rebirth. Send your submissions to our assistant editor, Allie, at herstoriesvoices @ gmail.com

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HerStories Voices: A Baby Story

I’ve never seen the show A Baby Story, but I know many people who love it. The births of my own children were unique and intimate experiences. I’m pretty sure I’d feel uncomfortable being “in the room” with someone I didn’t know who was giving birth. I may be wrong though, because when I read this week’s essay, which is a birth story, I was riveted. Emily’s essay is emotional and beautifully representative of the circle of life. By the time I was done reading, I had chills. —Allie

A Baby Story

By Emily Page Hatch

My mom loved watching “A Baby Story,” the TLC reality show that follows couples in the late stages of pregnancy and films their births in detail. She always wept at the end when the baby appeared.

“Why does it make you cry?” I asked her.

“They’re happy tears,” she replied.

“It’s so graphic though,” I scoffed. “How are you not grossed out?”

“Because it’s a beautiful thing,” she said. “I think of you and your brother.”

Many years later, as I reclined in a hospital bed in Boston in the midst of a January snowfall, I thought about that show. I was in the thick of my own baby story, about to give birth to a son. It was not being televised. I was being induced on my twenty-fifth birthday and feeling nervous about exposing myself in the loud, messy scene that is labor.

My husband, Tyler, and I were about to meet the boy we’d been touching and feeling and talking to for months through the itchy skin of my overstretched belly. My due date had come and gone uneventfully nine days prior. It turned out no amount of mall walking could kick this baby into gear. And as impatient as I was to meet my mystery boy, I was also secretly satisfied to have provided such a comfortable home that he never wanted to leave.

His name would be Cody and I already adored him. He woke me up every morning with karate kicks and he danced the Macarena on my ribs. My heart raced when he rested too long and I couldn’t feel him boogying; I’d tickle my belly until he awoke, and smile with relief.

The older I get, the more often it seems relief stands in for happiness. The two almost feel synonymous.

I so looked forward to holding my baby, but wished I could just snap my fingers. I hated that labor could take so long and be fraught with difficulties. I also hated the prospect of shitting in the process, which everyone warned me would happen.

My gaze drifted from the swirls of white dancing in the gray sky to the framed photo of my mother resting on the shelf across the room. It was the same photo that had been used in her obituary and funeral pamphlet, a stunning photo of her, highlighting her straw blond hair and slate blue eyes that smiled as brightly as her mouth did.

But the picture wasn’t palpable for me, not anymore at least. I saw a distant idea of my dead mother. I didn’t sense her presence or feel more connected, like I sometimes did when I sipped iced coffee or heard that Crosby, Stills & Nash song, or saw my brother smile. But I wanted to feel her—I felt more human when I did, more like the self I used to know—so I kept this photo on my bureau at home and brought it to the hospital. I figured halfheartedly it could bring me luck.

“Who’s that?” barked one of the nurses in a thick Boston accent, pointing to the picture.

“That’s my mom,” I stammered. “She passed away a few years ago.”

But it was closer to a decade ago, and I hated saying, “passed away.” It’s too nice a description for what really happened, but it makes people feel more comfortable, myself included maybe.

My shoulders tensed, a familiar frozen stance, bracing for her reaction. People always feel sorry once they find out, but sorry can feel a lot like pity.

The nurse’s eyes softened as she offered her condolences. Then she pushed a rattling cart of supplies up to my bedside and announced she was going to break my water.

The next several hours felt like a few minutes. The Pitocin kicked in and my contractions raged. Without much hesitation, I accepted an Epidural that knocked me out cold. I woke up to find that I couldn’t feel my legs.

The nurses and doctors seemed to rotate so quickly I could never remember their names. I could only recall one doctor named Emily, because she shared my name. She had been on shift when I was first admitted and in she walked twelve hours later.

“Who’s that in the picture?” she asked.

The epidural wore off as I dilated. It felt like one of those claw cranes that picks up stuffed animal prizes was scraping the insides of my abdomen. I don’t know how people do this naturally.

I was given a button to press if I wanted more drugs, and believe me, I did. But I couldn’t bring myself to touch the button, convinced that I’d overdose. So I begged my husband to press it for me and begged him to stop when he did.

At some point, an unfamiliar doctor entered. He explained that although I was not one of his patients, he wanted to meet me, because he’d heard that my mom died of pancreatic cancer—the same kind that had killed his dad.

I was touched that he shared his experience with me. It’s remarkable how loss can connect us, as total strangers, through a deep and sensitive understanding.

He spoke about what an awful disease it is, and I agreed, but felt my face go hot. I had witnessed my mother go through her illness, but most of the time from a distance. I saw her suffer immensely, and yet, I had been disconnected, steeped in denial.

Did I deserve his empathy?

When she died, I was there; and I wasn’t. Perched next to her on the bed on a dark Tuesday morning in spring, rain coming down in sheets, I watched her take a last labored breath before I covered her face in kisses. I stared in the mirror at the two of us, and we both looked like strangers, starring in an awful movie.

I was in another movie then in a maternity ward in Boston, on a bitterly cold evening, the buildings blanketed in white, looking down at myself with my legs splayed open, feeling strangely serene.

My sheets were soaked in sweat and fluid. I began throwing up cherry-flavored Italian ice that I, of course, believed to be blood.

Grunting and moaning and making the grotesque facial expressions I swore I wouldn’t make, I forced my baby out of me, gradually at first, revealing a spiral of blonde hair that looked black because it was wet—or so his father told me. Next, I freed his full head of downy hair, big round head and wrinkled neck—he was an actual human, and I was floating on the ceiling, watching this woman I didn’t recognize panting from fear and exertion, exhilaration and pride.

With sweat and tears streaming down my clammy face and unfamiliar guttural sounds emerging from my mouth, I released my boy’s sweet neck and shoulders coated in fuzzy peach hair, and time did not exist.

At some point, I pushed one final time, shrieking as I ripped apart in every way possible, my baby sliding rapidly out into his father’s shaky arms, never to live inside of me in this literal sense again.

Within seconds, my son—my son!—was in my lap and there was a nurse snapping our photo, and my heart had swelled to such massive proportions it was spilling out of my body, exploding into a billion tiny bits that I would never get back, because they belonged now to this boy that was laying in my lap, more real and perfect than I could believe.

There was the photo of my mother across from us, forever young in a frame, that still made me feel nothing, because a photo is just a thing, because maybe it’s true that our souls leave our bodies as soon as we die, because as I sobbed endlessly at the sight of Cody, whom I’d only just met but had somehow always known, and I leaned down to cover his face in kisses, I felt my mother’s arms wrap around me and she was weeping, too.

But my son, he didn’t cry. And I didn’t notice that, until he was being taken from me.

Lifted from my arms in a sudden swoop, he was placed on the warming table, stuck with needles and tubes. Machines beeped aggressively as Doctor “Emily” took out her pager and uttered words no one wants to hear: “We need everyone in here.”

Medical staff swarmed the room, but no one told us what was going on.

One doctor had her hand, wrist, and then whole arm inside of me, trying to extract my placenta, which was as stubborn as Cody had been and refused to come out.

Later I would learn how much blood was pouring out, but by that point all I knew and all I’d ever know for sure was that my son could not die.

The room was spinning and I was positive now that I had overdosed. The most intimate moments that make and break our lives—the surreal seconds of last breaths and first breaths and gasping for breath—I never thought it could happen like this.

My eyes darted back and forth from the doctors with my son to the doctor with her arm inside of me. Convinced that I could make a difference in whether my baby lived or died if I put up enough of a fight, I advocated for him, for the first but not the last time, though I was not in my right mind. I wanted to blame someone for what was transpiring. I swore that if he died, I would die right then, too.

He was taken to the NICU and I pleaded with the doctor to let me go with him. But the placenta hadn’t budged and she insisted it wasn’t safe.

What did it matter? What good was my body without my heart and my soul, which were leaving with my son?

His dad accompanied him and I passed out from a fever that had drained the color from my face. I fell into a deep and delirious sleep that lasted until dawn, when I awoke with a start. Had it all been a dream?

I found out later my baby had aspirated and there was fluid in his lungs. He needed help breathing, which he received from an oxygen hood placed over his head that we would later refer to endearingly as his “astronaut helmet.”

We were told it was common. And that he would be okay. I can’t imagine my life if he hadn’t been, no more than I can imagine my life if my mom had lived.

But if she had, I would tell her I get it. I understand now why she loved that show. I know why she used to cry. Baby stories are overwhelmingly beautiful, no matter how they end.

I gave birth to my son on a snowy night in the city two years ago, but his story isn’t over. Neither is my mom’s. One of the only things we have left of the loved ones that we’ve lost are the stories that we tell—small, but staggering consolations.

When my baby arrived at last at the tail end of my birthday—forevermore our birthday—something else was born, too, that had died with my mom on that rainy day in May.

Emily Page Hatch is a freelance writer, therapist, and mother. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Babble, The Huffington Post, Modern Loss, and other publications. You can connect with Emily on Twitter @EmilyPageH and at http://www.emilypagehatch.com.

**We are currently accepting new submissions for our Voices column! Email our assistant editor, Allie, at herstoriesvoices @ gmail.com. Read our submission guidelines here.

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HerStories Voices: It’s Really Going to be Okay

Anyone who reads Christine Carter’s blog, the Mom Café, knows that she’s a woman of faith. She’s extremely optimistic, and her writing is empowering and full of positivity. I know when I read one off her essays I’m going to feel good about the world. So when I read her submission, I was a little surprised by how harrowing it was. I had no idea that her daughter had had such a rough start in life. I was heartbroken as I read, but then the story ended with her little angel’s message of hope and faith. The apple doesn’t fall from the tree! I hope you enjoy this essay.

—Allie

“It’s Really Going To Be Okay . . .”

I vividly remember being surrounded by doctors who were covering me with an oxygen mask and flipping me over from side to side, as your heart rate plummeted once again. Just hours before, the doctor had sent me straight to the hospital, his haunting last words lingering: “I can’t promise you that your baby is okay. What I can say is you may have saved her life by coming in today.” They forced your delivery to save your life; they had no idea how long you’d been in distress. You came into this world through uncertain hopes, and as they placed you in my trembling arms, I never wanted to let go.

During your first year of life, I watched you endure countless therapies. You screamed and cried so hard they didn’t know what to do. I witnessed your relentless fight and held back my own screams and cries. Your inconsolable tears tore at my heart and all I wanted to do was protect you from your pain.

I dropped you off at your special needs program of treatments and therapies during your second year of life and held my breath as I paced in the parking lot each day. I felt tattered and twisted every minute you were without me, all alone in this strange new world. All I wanted to do was go back inside, pick you up into my arms, carry you away, and never let go.

When they wheeled you in for surgery at nearly three years old, we faced our ultimate decision to risk your life for the use of anesthesia. Going against doctor’s orders, we decided the danger was worth it if we could prevent more torture to your fragile body. We were prepared for the worst and prayed for mercy on your behalf. You had been through enough. The bald patches on your head from pulling out your frayed baby blond hair were evidence of the pain you couldn’t withstand. We couldn’t fathom any additional trauma to your already difficult existence. I prayed for your lungs to stay open, while gasping for my own air. I wanted to lift you into God’s healing arms and tell Him to not let go until you were well.

Five weeks after your brother was born, we spent hours in the emergency room attempting to open your airways. When I begged and pleaded with the doctors at the hospital to take you home, I surrendered to their haunting ultimatum as they transferred you to the respiratory isolation unit. I was faced with the nightmare of leaving you at the hospital and abandoning my place by your side for the sake of nursing my infant son.

There you were, hooked up to several tubes and lying in the crib, gasping for air. I will never forget that moment. Forced to leave you overnight for the first time, I was trembling and terrified as I turned toward the door and walked away. We drove home at 2:00 a.m. and I sobbed all the way in chorus with my son’s exhausted wail. I’d never been so distraught in all my life. I longed to hold your precious body. That night away from you, something broke inside me.

Little did I know there would be many more treatments, hospital runs, admissions, procedures, and surgeries to come . . .

Little did I know that you would endure debilitating medical issues that would leave me terrified and torn, begging to hold on . . .

But forced to let go.

You were so weak. So weary. So worn. So wounded.

And so was I.

But somehow you overcame each tumultuous turn.

And so did I.

I look back on those horrific years filled with days, hours, and minutes of faltering fear, dreaded decisions, debilitating diagnoses, and I realize something remarkably true:

You are not wounded and weak, nor are you weary and worn.

You are a warrior.

And each year since, I continue to face the undeniable feat of letting you go.

Begging to hold on.

But with every struggle to surrender . . .

You survive.

Your strength has risen in the suffering.

You have taught me that through every trial and test, I must learn to trust.

I never will forget your prophetic words in the car on the way to the hospital one fearful night. You were only three-and-a-half years old, limp with a 105.9 temperature and barely able to breathe. You heard me crying, and with a seemingly seasoned angelic voice you softly sang these words to me:

“It’s okay, Mommy. It’s going to be okay. ”

I hear your fateful words now . . .

Reminding me that what you knew then is what I know now.

It’s okay.

It’s really going to be okay.

Chris Carter is a SAHM of two pretty amazing kids. She has been writing at TheMomCafe.com for over five years, where she hopes to encourage mothers everywhere through her humor, inspiration and faith.

Are you interested submitting work to our bi-monthly HerStories Voices column? Email our assistant editor Allie at herstoriesvoices @ gmail.com. Check out submission guidelines here.

**Our next online class, The Balanced Writer: Creating a Passionate, Productive Writing Life, begins next Monday! We have a fantastic lineup of inspiring guest instructors. If you are a writer with goals for the new year, this class is a great place to start! Find out more information and register here.

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Voices

Girl with Headache

The Condom Paulina Combow

A Baby Story

“It’s Really Going To Be Okay . . .”

The Condom
Paulina Combow