Even Though I’m Missing So Many Organs, I Somehow Had the Miracle of Making Two Humans

I’ve lost a lot of pieces of myself across the years.

“THANK YOU to those helping this independent memoirist continue to work by upgrading to paid (which also helps my goal of gifting this every-weekday-writing-world to anyone who asks for a reading scholarship, no questions asked!)

I think of supportive readers (those who subscribe) as friends helping support chapters in an ongoing book, and those who cannot [but read and share for free] as equally important Word Nerds alongside…

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Here’s to another week together?”

I’ve lost a lot of pieces of myself across the years.

I’ve lost my colon, my large intestine, my gallbladder and appendix (no one cares about the latter so not sure why I’m even listing it), my uterus despite the heartbreak there.

My stomach has been changed with fundoplications and plyroplasty and pacemakers and treatment for ulcers and internal tears and multi-organ prolapse and on.

Like my grandfather and Dad, I have a heart condition now under chemical and computerized control.

Hearing loss has been akin to my father and cousin and other family members, but also like many within the CF community, as well as all sorts of cystic-clichés (frequent lung infections needing intravenous antibiotics via portacath, sinus surgeries, colonizations and mold) and some personal risks beyond (a stem cell transplant in 2015).

But even though that’s a list of things I’m lacking… organs parts I’m now without… The fullness of trying to stay alive is too large for what any word count would allow.

Even in this ongoing chapter of “a story”, asked but arrogant-feeling to still deliver-

Side Bar: What makes us feel any one should read words in a river of endless words from endlessly fascinating and worthy people? Isn’t it sort of weird when you read someone’s words long term, and they never seem to think it’s odd we are our own ‘celebrity’? That anyone would write consistently with utter aplomb that they are the most unique… They are the third person… They are, they are, they are… And yet, we follow as if the word ‘follower’ isn’t, in of itself, egotistical and problematic at root? (It bothers me when those who share everything online, don’t even pretend to worry about humility.)

- I can’t help but circle back to how, even though I’m missing so many organs, I somehow had the miracle of making two humans.

That ‘miracle’ will not and should not ever be lost on me.

I’ve always been a working mother (whether becoming a certified personal trainer, or contracts with brands back in the day when ‘follower’ wasn’t an accepted word, or my own baby inspired Buggy Busters workouts)… But if a mother “works” in this culture and decades past, we often label her as someone who doesn’t love the job of parenting just as much.

And in seasons prior, it may have looked that way. I wrote about my dance and choreography career with ease and pride, but swept my daughters into a Dear Daughter vaguery that may not have made sense. You may not have known that we had a period of time when their safety mattered, and I went from ‘vlogging’ about our life openly to private-accounts and hidden hinderances.

You wouldn’t known the intentionality with which I downplayed motherhood digitally because (if you haven’t heard this enough, though it’s rather ironically trendy now to talk about how negative digital trends are): What you see here is not who I am. Who any of us are.

But, work? Second to my daughters- the actual Firsts in my life that I hate to label as “work”- I can’t even imagine what I’d be doing if my body wasn’t doing what it’s been doing (worse than ever) these last few years. I’ve written full novels since I was a teenager. I loved being a columnist. I love dancing and performing in ways less (seemingly) neat and tidy than the dollhouse I’ve been part of making until now. But the things stolen by progressively worsening health is something I don’t detail, here, like a (former) journalist would or should. I pretend it’s all better than it is.

It’s not.

(Also, I can’t tell if the amount of ‘I” in the afore sentences is proving a “why do we believe our own celebrity” point or not.)

If I could really get a medal for things I wish the world knew, it would probably be the sleepless nights “all alone” in a farm house as a new mom. It’d be infants who slept through the night peacefully by 6 weeks old. One baby who partially spoke French as a toddler while the other ASL. It was phonics games and early reading skills and fast potty training traditions and all those things we don’t judge other moms for and shouldn’t flex about but damn if it wasn’t hard being a young enough mother that nearly all credit at dedicated craft and caring went unseen.

A lot of mothers can relate to this…

How the most difficult components of our “résumé” are something the world will never know.

So maybe I’m the most proud of that? That I don’t need anyone else to know? That I can be fossilized as someone I’ve never really been, due to age and time period and trauma. Because as long as my girls know: that’s all I really need to know to feel it’s been a life well lived.

To live an unwell life that’s…. well…

A privilege in a paragraph.

Share, Like, Restack in Notes, Forward to a Friend, Post on your Socials: All love is… well, more love going into the world!

(And if I can ever help YOU, let’s keep our karma paying forward and forward. So reach out?)