It's as if all the horrific worst-case scenarios flashing through your brain were actually happening. "Picture a place where you felt safe and secure." I sat on the small couch across from my therapist, hands clenched in my lap, feet rocking. It wasn't meant to be a challenge.
By the time my husband and I first met, one love lesson I had been taught painfully well was that the words "I love you" hold very little meaning on their own. People say those words easily, say them out of habit, say them while their actions prove otherwise.
I never called it a "trauma." The term felt reserved for much bigger catastrophes than what I endured and I'd never want to come off as being overly dramatic. But, here we are, more than a decade later, and I am still dealing with the emotional and mental repercussions from my son's birth - from what I now recognize as one of the more prominent traumatic experiences of my life.
I am happily, monogamously married and I am still bisexual. As a monogamously married bisexual, almost every reaction I receive upon making this known falls into one of two camps. People either think my bisexuality is impossible or they believe it is irrelevant.
I am constantly surprised by how quickly time passes, how in the blink of an eye a kid can transform from toddler to tween. But I have never once missed it. I have never once longed for just one more of those days.
What if I told you, you don't have to do it all this holiday season? Depending on the type of person you are, you might nod in agreement or roll your eyes. Either way, the majority of you will say, "Yeah, BUT ..." But it is the holidays.But I need to make it magical.But it is tradition.
"Oh. Do twins run in your family?" Every mom of twins has fielded multiple iterations of this inquiry and I am willing to bet that each has also sensed, on more than one occasion, that the question being asked was not the question the person really wanted answered.
I like to think that maybe it is just innocent small talk, but far too often, it feels quite judgmental - like the asker is gauging how lazy I am by my response, like they must think there is an acceptable answer and other answers will be looked down upon.