It's August at the seashore and it's all Baywatch around here. Life guards have returned to their abandoned towers, sunbathers are hunkering down on the sand or dashing into the waves, probably thinking that this is the coldest beach vacation of their lives. The water is full of boogie boarders (in rented wet suits?) and I'm pretty sure I'll be adding to my collection of found sand toys as August progresses.
I walked for about an hour today at almost high noon, zipped into a fleecy sweatshirt, listening to two teenage bathing beauties approaching the water. "Did you put on sunscreen under your tanning oil?" one asked the other.
"Of course, I did," the other one said. "I don't want to look like a lobster." Really? That's what people do? Put on sunscreen and then tanning oil? Sometimes I think I know absolutely nothing.
One thing I don't know is what I need most right now. I keep pondering what I should do for myself. I keep telling myself I need to get out more. Telling myself I need a support group. But I can't decide if I want a caregiver support group, a grief support group, or maybe I even need to touch base with my favorite birth mother support group, CUB, since all of the birth mother stuff is swirling around in my head post-publication of my book.
I've figured one thing out though. At night after dinner when I take my walk through the neighborhood, since I can't talk to Dan anymore, I listen to This American Life or the Moth podcasts. People have stories. Big stories. I love it when they tell those stories. I firmly believe that the telling of our stories unites us.
3 comments:
The telling of our stories does unite us and we here in the blogworld have a great need for that, obviously.
Don't feel rushed to go out and find a group. You are in a very special time right now and you may decide on one group or several. Whatever feels right and enriches you.
I think your desire for a group is desire for community--people who get what you've been through and are going though still. Seems any and all of the groups you mention could be helpful. Why not all of them, at least for a bit.
I read your book a week ago tomorrow. It stirred in me things I had forgotten about. I had more options than you did when I got pregnant in 1996 at 18. But raising a baby when you are a kid still yourself does weird things - like I believe my emotional growth was stunted.
But a good friend of mine got pregnant a few months later. Her daughter was adopted and it was an open adoption. No mystery about where the baby was or how she was. Our friendship fizzled after a year or so. In no small part because I didn't know how to be around my friend while I had my baby and the struggles that come with that and she saw hers from a distance and well... anyway, thank you for sharing your story.
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