*I’m not really the President of BlogHer … but I’m guessing you guys get the joke

While Glenn Beck talks ‘Civil Rights’ -on the exact date and location of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech I feel the need to review.

Glenn Beck is the man who said:

“This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture…I’m not saying that he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. He has a — this guy is, I believe, a racist.”

Media Matters has a full round-up of Beck’s racially tinged remarks, because sadly that isn’t the only one.

While I am beyond offended this man and his followers will stand in THAT spot, on THAT day and invoke Dr. King…I am finding it more productive to take a deep breath and not give in to the overwhelming feeling of anger. While I want to yell and scream about being labeled a race baiter for even bringing up Beck’s racially moronic remarks and rhetoric that will have thousands of white people chanting his name…I’m going to again, take a breath…and look at this photo. Because a big smile makes it all better.

And by the way, yes my daughter is wearing a girl astronaut t-shirt … something Mr. Beck doesn’t appreciate or care about.

So while throngs of Beck’s followers talk civil rights in DC, I am choosing to look to the future. To my daughter. To my son. And to the sanity even they bring to this otherwise ridiculous display of hate and greed.

Mom, that guy seems kinda crazy.

Yes he does baby. Yes, he does.

I plan on hoodwinking many idiots.

I miss having colds. You know, the kind where you get all miserable for a few days, people say how sorry they are you feel poorly, and you eat lots of soup. Colds are a manageable illness. Almost fun.

Now I have to explain, over and over again, we’re not entirely sure what’s wrong with my body (it’s an auto-immune disorder). And I can’t just take a box of tissue and some tea and go lay in bed.

It’s been two weeks since my total hysterectomy, and eight weeks since they took 13 inches of my colon and my entire gall bladder. It’s been 16 weeks since they first cut me open, poking around and cleaning inflammation and adhesions, trying to figure out why I had been so very ill.

I look like skin and bones, and not the good kind. As my husband says, I don’t look like someone who has lost a lot of weight…I look like someone who has been very ill. And it’s true, I’ve been very ill. Very, very ill.

I’ve penned my funeral wishes. Put on paper what I want for my kids and family after my death. Thought very hard about what should happen if my vital organs were attacked like their non-vital sisters.

It’s not easy to think about these things, but I was calm and they were necessary. In the moment you just … do. I felt I had to at least prepare for the worst so I would have no regrets if it all went South.

Family has flown in and out-of-town. Friends have visited. It’s been 16 weeks of questions and theories, all while I lay on the couch in my pj’s trying so hard to hold in all the emotion flooding my usually bustling body.

We’ve all sort of soldiered on around here, waiting. Waiting to see if there will be four or five surgeries instead of these three. Waiting to see if they find Cancer. Waiting to see if I feel better when I awake from anaesthesia.

We know now there is no Cancer. And we are cautiously optimistic as this last surgery has me feeling better than I have felt in a year. But there always seems to be the other shoe that drops.

Fuck that shoe.

I’m done.

And I will keep that damn shoe in the air by sheer force of will if I have to. I feel stronger. I feel better. I’m eating, I’m walking more than just around the block. And I have every intention of revising those death wishes for many, many years to come.

There is something that happens when you spend your 10th wedding anniversary dancing in your kitchen, instead of a romantic Inn as planned. There is something that happens when your oldest child needs therapy for his mounting anxiety and your youngest re-enacts nothing but sickness and death with her stuffed animals. There is something that happens when you spend too many weeks in pj’s on the couch, petting your new puppy (a gift to help you heal) and wondering how to conquer the world while feeling more like taking a nap.

This body is officially on notice. There will be no other shoe to drop, there will be no more surgeries. There will be no more of this disorder. I’m done. And you’re getting off this couch.

Yes, my dear body, you can #suckit.

In fact, the next time you end up on this couch, it will be because of some measly cold. You will get tissues and maybe some soup, if you’re lucky.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh on this frail frame of now 123lbs. But I don’t care. Tough love baby. Tough love. I have children to raise, a husband to dote on, and Democrats to elect.

…And I refuse to let anything get in the way… even my stubborn self.

Don’t mess with us. Seriously. And while we’re at it…go and check out the original Mamma Grizzlies.

Rock on Emily’s List

I remember the first time I felt my son move. Despite the morning sickness, despite the stick confirming his presence, the flutters of life inside my womb sent a wave of peace over me that only a mother knows.

These children consumed my body, in every way, and my life. They used me as their vessel, abused me as their womb, and emerged into the world making me whole and leaving their mark inside this weary frame.

I remain in awe at what the female body can do, and what it endures. I still have no idea how I survived two very difficult pregnancies. It was hell, it was pain.

There are no ways to logically explain my femaleness. After two hellish pregnancies my body still aches for more. I long to feel that flutter. My breasts still swell when a baby cries. My maternal amnesia has pushed aside the bad, and wants desperately for that moment when a hand is placed on my swelling belly and I feel as if I have a higher purpose.

I have never felt more important than when pregnant. More useful. More fulfilled.

I’m not a content person. I always want more and I seek out change like it’s the air I breathe. But while pregnant I was calm. My purpose and path were clear and my mind at rest.

I miss that feeling. I ache for it.

And when each child arrived, the sense of accomplishment and love was so all-consuming and fulfilling I knew my place in the world.

In a few weeks, I will surrender any hope of that feeling again. I will relinquish what I feel is the very essence of me. The one thing that has grounded me. The one thing that has made me feel sane in my otherwise insane mind.

I have no choice but to give up what I feel is my womanhood. And become some sort of soulless body who calls herself female but knows the description is only half right.

I won’t speak in recent history, years from now, when my daughter gets her first menstrual cycle. I won’t ever wonder if the tenderness in my bosom could be new life in my womb.

I fear I will wander, I will want, I will search, I will ache. I will lose hope of contentment.

My comfort and key to mental survival lies in the good this body has already done. I have to focus on what my core has accomplished. And it really is my core.

My husband has been a rock since my first hospital stay. Ready to slay dragons at my whim and keeping me mentally strong. My children need me now, more than ever. And living for them is above and beyond living for what could have been. I have the most amazing family and love and light around me that expressing my fear and emotion over this seem like a slight to their being. It’s not.

For every pang of want there is the reality of the love that surrounds me. For every twinge of more there is the gratitude for the health of these two children and my steadfast partner in life, their father. There is also the hope that they understand their mother, and he understands that his wife, has always demanded more from life, too much from life, and this has brought chaos and joy into their worlds.

I am coming to terms with this infection that has ravaged my insides so that nothing remains. I am readying myself for another surgery where more of me is taken. It’s just…this time the surgeon won’t be taking simple organs and tissue. This time my soul, my heart, my core are being pulled from me. What I believe makes me…me. The woman. The mother.

I know my view on this will change over time. I know my emotions are raw and piercing, which is why I’m writing them down. I will be whole when this is over, and I will find a way to shift my heart and mind to wrap itself around what I thought was true. What I thought made up ‘me’ and what is important in this whole mess of medical drama we’ve been living through.

But in the meantime I will mourn.