Filipino-American

I Remember

Hi! How was your Thanks­giv­ing week­end, read­ers? And for my neigh­bors to the north, hope you were able to cash in on some of the US’s “Black Fri­day” deals … or do you even have any sales like that for the day after the US’s Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day? Yes, I’m just being curious.

My Thanks­giv­ing week­end was good: Got to spend time with Hubby’s fam­ily on Turkey Day. And on the week­end, man­aged to eek out a few great sav­ings from Black Fri­day; both locally and at the “big box” shops. But the point is, I man­aged to check off a few peo­ple off my Christ­mas list.

More impor­tantly, my favorite col­lege foot­ball team man­aged to win the all-​​important “Biggest Rivalry in Col­lege Foot­ball” game. AND we got to watch the game at a bar & grill, hang­ing out with my two cousins.

These two girls — the youngest of my Dad’s nieces (and close to 20 years younger than me!) — have seri­ously been the sup­port I’ve needed this past year while deal­ing with my Dad’s pass­ing. Maybe it’s because, like me, Dad had played an impor­tant part in their lives; many times being the father-​​figure that they’ve needed. And as we talked through­out that day, I some­how man­aged to remem­ber how much my Dad’s pass­ing has affected them as well.

I for­got how my Dad would stick up for them if their moth­ers (my Dad’s sis­ters) gave them prob­lems. I for­got how Dad would man­age to sneak them some cash when he thought no one was look­ing. I for­got how much he loved to play with them, and as they got older, joke around with them. I forgot.

So to my two cousins, who miss my Dad as much as I miss him … know that I remem­ber and that I’m for­ever grate­ful that you two always man­age to check up on me when I need it most.

******

And Rain? Don’t worry, my dar­ling kitty. I didn’t for­get about today either. I can never for­get the day that I lost my first and most favorite kitty in the world. Hope you’re up there keep­ing Dad company .…

 

Planning To Fall

My Niece, Emilia Grace on her Chris­ten­ing Day

It’s Labor Day. Where did the sum­mer go?

No … Seri­ously, peo­ple. Where did it go?

Tomor­row all the kid­dos in Detroit and its sur­round­ing sub­urbs will offi­cially all be back in school.  Which always prompts me to ques­tion … why didn’t I go into a career that allowed me to always have sum­mers off?

I’m not ready for autumn … which, if today’s weather in Metro-​​Detroit is any indi­ca­tion (high of 64 degrees), means that I’m def­i­nitely not ready for the cooler cli­mate. And, see­ing that autumn has always been my favorite sea­son is absolutely piti­ful.

Maybe I need to re-​​think this whole “favorite sea­son” deal.

Even the Lil Texan thought the MI weather was too hot last week!

After all, Hubby & I did sur­vive the swel­ter­ing high-​​90 degree weather with 100% humid­ity of Orlando. Like we did the pre­vi­ous two days here in Detroit, which were just as hot and humid. All I need is a beach nearby with some nice sooth­ing waves … and I’d be golden.

Okay, maybe not so much “golden” but more “bronze.” After all, I tan nice and brown … like most of us Fil­ipinos do. But you get the point.

Yet see­ing that Hubby & I live in the Mid­west with (unfor­tu­nately) no plans to move to a warmer cli­mate in the imme­di­ate future, I sup­pose I need to embrace what I’ve got in front of me.

So with that said, here’s my list of things I look for­ward to doing with Hubby this fall:

  1. Leaves chang­ing bril­liant hues of red and orange
  2. Freshly-​​made Apple Cider and warm doughnuts
  3. Haunted Houses and Hayrides
  4. A resur­gence in my need to knit and crochet
  5. Col­lege Foot­ball  – GO BLUE!

How about you, oh Inter­nets? What’s your plans for Fall?

A Song That’s a Guilty Pleasure

Day Thir­teen – A Song That’s a Guilty Pleasure:

I should blame it on Ace of Base. After all, if it hadn’t been for lis­ten­ing to them over and over (and over) again dur­ing the sum­mer of 1993 … I prob­a­bly wouldn’t have turned back to their Swedish coun­ter­parts and get into lis­ten­ing to ABBA again.

Not that I really knew many ABBA songs prior to my post-​​college years. At least I didn’t think so.

Or I should blame it on see­ing “Mamma Mia.” The Broad­way musi­cal. And not the Meryl Streep /​ Amand Seyfried movie spec­tac­u­lar. It’s because of that musi­cal that I real­ized I knew more ABBA songs than I ever thought.

Read more »

Forty Days of Night

Forty days ago, my Dad past away. Today, amongst our Filipino-​​Catholic fam­ily and friends, we will be cel­e­brat­ing the 40th day of remembrance.

For those of you that aren’t famil­iar (or haven’t read this pre­vi­ous post), the 40th day is believed to be the day that a loved one has “fin­ished” vis­it­ing his/​her loved ones on earth and is ready to ascend into the heavens.

I won’t lie … it has been an incred­i­bly emo­tional and phys­i­cally exhaust­ing cou­ple of months. Throw the hol­i­days into the mix and … well, yeah. Let’s just say the ham­ster on the wheel inside my head has been work­ing overtime.

As I had expected, there are those days where I’m so busy that I don’t have time to think about the loss of my Dad. And then there are those times … usu­ally dur­ing the most ran­dom moment … where it hits me square in the chest.

My cousin and I, dur­ing the ini­tial 9-​​day Novena period, started to refer to those moments as “Melt­downs.” Some­thing, typ­i­cally some off-​​the-​​wall mem­ory of my Dad, would trans­form me into a blub­ber­ing mess. And although these “melt­downs” don’t hap­pen as read­ily as they did in the first few weeks, I still won­der when I’ll start to feel a bit better.

I have many sto­ries to share … some of them involv­ing sto­ries of “vis­its” from my Dad over the past 40 days … yet I feel I’ve got lit­tle strength to write by the end of the day. This is obvi­ous, as I haven’t had the incli­na­tion to blog over the past few months.

So yeah … this is my sad attempt to start writ­ing again. And maybe when those every-​​day mem­o­ries of my Dad don’t hurt so much, I’ll be able to tell you some of those stories.

But for now, just know that I’m around. And I’m read­ing. And I’m hop­ing to get back into some sort of “nor­mal” again soon.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Posts:

Emily Prays for Nine Days

Emily Hits a Pre­vi­ous 40-​​Day Mark

The Whole Nine Yards

Nine days ago, at approx­i­mately 7:30 pm that night, a pretty sig­nif­i­cant hole had formed in my heart. What had been there for the past 38 years of my life was the phys­i­cal pres­ence of my Dad on this world. And even though (by this time) we had been expect­ing his “last breath” for a cou­ple of days, it still didn’t help the sud­den onset of empti­ness I felt in my chest.

I didn’t know what to expect … or how it would feel to lose some­one so sig­nif­i­cant in my life. I didn’t know  that my emo­tions could swing from one spec­trum to another in the blink of an eye. After all, how can I have gone from laugh­ing hys­ter­i­cally about a par­tic­u­larly funny inci­dent involv­ing my Dad … to cry­ing incon­solably about that hole in my heart.

Except now, after nine whole days of gath­er­ing with fam­ily and friends … of pray­ing the tra­di­tional Filipino-​​Catholic Novena fol­low­ing the depar­ture of a loved one … I can finally say that the hole in my heart has begun to fill. And it’s because of all those fam­ily mem­bers and friends that have come out in droves to cel­e­brate my Dad’s life.

Although not quite to back to capac­ity, the empti­ness that once occu­pied that hole is now filled with the mem­o­ries I have of my Dad … of all those spe­cial Daddy-​​Daughter moments. I know that I can look back at those moments and feel my Dad’s pres­ence envelop­ing me.

But more impor­tantly, that hole is now filled with all the sto­ries about my Dad that were shared with me these past two weeks. It’s been filled with the incred­i­ble sup­port I’ve felt from old friends and even older friends … whether it was dri­ving clear across the State just to spend 5 min­utes cry­ing with me min­utes before the Funeral Mass. Or mak­ing an extra trip to Mickey Dee’s to pick up a sweet iced tea and iced latte for me and Hubby. Or even just being there to hug me; know­ing that was exactly what I needed at that moment.

So thank you, all my fam­ily and friends … I hope you know how much every sin­gle kind word** you’ve said and every sin­gle kind ges­ture you’ve done has meant the world to me.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

** Spe­cial thanks to my cousins … from both sides of my fam­ily. You’ve been my my sav­ing grace dur­ing those dark, dark moments.

*** An extra-​​special thanks to my incred­i­bly awe­some hus­band. We joke about me hav­ing a thing for “The Rock” … but rest assured, you are my one and only Rock. You are my con­stant in the midst of chaos.

Unfor­get­table … That’s what you are to me.



Things I’ve Learned on My Alaskan Adventure

  • Alaska (at least South­east Alaska) is not a giant piece of land com­pletely made of ice, like we were taught in grade school. (You know, Seward’s Icebox?)

  • Not all Native Alaskans are called Eski­mos. In fact, the South­east­ern Alaskan Natives are the Tlingints.

  • Fish & Chips and Clam chow­der at a small lunch kiosk on the dock in Ketchi­can, Alaska is d*mn good!
  • There’s some­thing inher­ently beau­ti­ful about glac­i­ers and the waters sur­round­ing them. Oh, and it is pos­si­ble to sail a huge ship through some nar­row pas­sages and still be maneu­ver around glaciers.

  • And by the way, Tracy Arm Fjord is not, in fact, an arm. A fjord is long, nar­row inlet with steep sides, cre­ated in a val­ley carved by glacial activity.

  • Glac­i­ers have a blue tint to them because that’s the only color that glac­i­ers can’t absorb. And because of that, I think Cray­ola should come up with a “Glac­ier Blue” crayon …

  • I now know the five dif­fer­ent Salmon species just by look­ing at my hand.
    • Thumb = Chum Salmon
    • Index Fin­ger = Sock­eye … as in “Poke your eye out with your finger”
    • Mid­dle Fin­ger (or tallest fin­ger) = King Salmon, the biggest of the salmons
    • Ring Fin­ger = Sil­ver Salmon
    • Pinky = Pink Salmon.
  • And now you know them, too!

  • I can offi­cially say that I’ve seen a Black Bear with her three cubs and that bears can’t read.

  • We’ve also seen Amer­i­can Eagles and I think I finally under­stand the metaphor about the strength and beauty of a “Soar­ing Eagle.”

  • The Filipino-​​American pop­u­la­tion in Juneau, Alaska is so big that they have a whole “square” called “Manila Square” ded­i­cated to them.

  • This is prob­a­bly why the num­ber of Fil­ipinos work­ing on the cruise ships in Alaska greatly out­num­bers that of all other nation­al­i­ties (60% of the staff on our ship alone were Filipino).
  • This includes a Fil­ipino Exec­u­tive Mas­ter Chef and Exec­u­tive Sous Chef … who were kind enough to cre­ate off-​​menu Fil­ipino dishes. Like pancit. And Top­silog. And Adobo. Yummmm!

  • Skag­way is actu­ally spelled Skaguay … but only because the postal office didn’t like the way it was spelled.

  • Skag­way was known as the gate­way to the Klondike because this was the first stop for most peo­ple seek­ing gold in the Klondike. And from some of the sto­ries I heard (“Soapy” Smith, the thou­sands of horses killed in stam­pedes) there were quite a few things peo­ple would do for a Klondike Bar … of gold, that is.

  • Accord­ing to our tour guide, Skag­way is a one-​​horse town. And it appar­ently likes to hang out in front of the Bonanza Bar & Grill.

  • It’s pos­si­ble for the U.S. Coast Guard to air­lift a crit­i­cally ill pas­sen­ger onto their heli­copter (on our “Day at Sea”) with­out offi­cially land­ing on a cruise ship. It may take more than 30-​​minutes of prac­tice (and cir­cling the ship) before actu­ally air­lift­ing the per­son, but it’s doable. (The pas­sen­ger, thank G*D is now sta­ble in a hos­pi­tal in Alaska … at least as of Sat­ur­day afternoon.)

  • Using the Med­ical Clinic on the cruise ship (for a pretty big bug bite that caused major swelling and ery­thema to the sur­round­ing tis­sue) is much cheaper than see­ing your doc­tor at home; espe­cially for those of us that lack health insurance.
  • There’s not much you can do in Vic­to­ria, British Colum­bia when you only have four hour to spend there between 7:30 and 11:30 pm on a Sat­ur­day night.

  • It’s a good thing we didn’t dis­cover the 24-​​hr Buf­fet until the last night. Oth­er­wise I would have gained even more weight than I already did …

  • Some­times all-​​inclusive vaca­tions (like cruises or other spe­cialty resorts) bring out the worst in peo­ple. I think I’ve seen and encoun­tered more rude pas­sen­gers with an odd sense of “enti­tle­ment” on this trip than I’ve had in other vaca­tions past.

    Just because pretty much every­thing is included on the ship doesn’t mean that you need to take all of the cook­ies or sweets. Or that you have to be incred­i­bly rude to the crew mem­bers who are there to serve you. Don’t think that just because you worked hard for this vaca­tion, you should be waited hand and foot … these staff mem­bers are work­ing just as hard for a vaca­tion of their own as well!

  • But over­all, we’ve meet some really nice folk … both crew mem­bers and pas­sen­gers alike. If I could, I’d def­i­nitely do another cruise to Alaska again. Maybe this time we’d head fur­ther north towards Anchor­age … and spend a few more days inland, dis­cov­er­ing more of this beau­ti­ful State instead!

Feelin’ Lucky

The Happy Newlyweds

Hubby & I have spent the past week in Canada. While the main rea­son was to cel­e­brate his cousin’s wed­ding in Toronto last Fri­day, we spent the past week tour­ing East­ern Ontario and Québec. And actu­ally, as I type this … we’re on a three-​​hour tour bus drive from Kingston back to Toronto, where we first started this bus tour.

The main pur­pose of doing these tours is because Hubby’s Uncle and Aunt have flown in from the Philip­pines to attend the wed­ding. Since they’ve flown halfway around the world, Hubby’s par­ents as well as the other fam­ily mem­bers liv­ing in North Amer­ica have decided to have a “mini”-reunion to show Hubby’s Uncle a small chunk of Canada.

And when I say “mini” … I mean that it’s a smaller por­tion of Hubby’s entire fam­ily. Dur­ing the actual wed­ding week­end, the total num­ber of fam­ily mem­bers (includ­ing aunts/​uncles, cousins, chil­dren of cousins, and all sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers) equaled 37. When we went to Nia­gara Falls on Mon­day, about 25 of those fam­ily mem­bers were still around for an overnight stay. And when we started the three-​​day bus tour on Wednes­day, we whit­tled down to 17. Regard­less, it has been an incred­i­ble week with the fam­ily … some­thing that we haven’t done since Jan­u­ary 2008. And unfor­tu­nately, that hap­pened to be in Vir­ginia Beach when Hubby’s grand­mother passed away.

Only a hand­ful of the “young” cousins with Hubby

In that two-​​year time period, four new chil­dren were added to the fam­ily. One was our niece, Kairi and the sub­se­quent three babies were girls born between 2009 and early 2010. In addi­tion, Hubby has much-​​younger cousins between the ages of thir­teen and eight. The other young kids are chil­dren from his sis­ter (Tyler) and his first cousins. This puts the total of “young kids” four­teen years old and younger at twelve.

That’s twelve kids being watched over by par­ents; twelve kids being beck­oned by the var­i­ous par­ents and their “Tita” or “Tito”** or “Até” or “Kuya.”*** Twelve kids all call­ing out “Mom” or “Dad” and approx­i­mately seven sets of par­ents respond­ing to that title.

That’s about eleven of Hubby’s Aunts /​ Uncles /​ First Cousins out of the 37 fam­ily mem­bers that have young kids under the age of eigh­teen.  If my math is right, this also means that about twelve of those 37 fam­ily mem­bers are either par­ents of older kids (eigh­teen or older).

Par­tial Group shot in Old Quebec

Then there’s Hubby & me; the child­less cou­ple. We’re not counted amongst those who have chil­dren at any age. We’re only counted as chil­dren of Hubby’s par­ents. And we only get the title of “Tita/​Tito” or “Até/​Kuya.”

But we’re def­i­nitely not called “Mom” or “Pa” (which is what Hubby’s fam­ily calls their Dads).

Now, I know what you’re think­ing … here goes Emily, once again, com­plain­ing about not being a Mother; of not being able to expe­ri­ence what its’ like to be called “Mom” or “Mommy.” And yes, I do admit that it has been bit­ter­sweet this past week when see­ing all the babies dressed up for the wed­ding; when see­ing all the other Aunts and Uncles and Cousins pass­ing the new addi­tions to the fam­ily around the group, oohing and ahhing and fuss­ing over them. (Although, I do fully admit I took part in such activity … )

But you know what? I actu­ally found the sil­ver lin­ing in all the hul­la­baloo of the “World of Babies/​Children.” And that sil­ver lin­ing is this:

Hubby being silly with our nephew & cousin

I was actu­ally ecsta­tic that I didn’t have to respond to being called “Mom” … espe­cially when it was in regards to the con­stant ques­tions from the kids older than four years old about what was going on next.  Or why we had to leave now to go to our next des­ti­na­tion. And I cer­tainly didn’t mind that I wasn’t respon­si­ble with hav­ing to deal with atti­tudes or behav­iors that the kids doled out once they got grumpy.

While I dealt with each instance that came my way or hap­pened dur­ing our “watch” over them****, I have to say that I finally appre­ci­ate the fact that I’m “just the Aun­tie” or “just Até Emily” to all the kids.

In fact, I can hon­estly say with­out a doubt that Hubby and I are lucky. And I don’t mean “lucky” in the sense that, as a Child-​​Free cou­ple, we don’t have to deal with the day to day issues of being a par­ent … because, I still wouldn’t trade the oppor­tu­nity to raise a child for any­thing else in the world.

Great “can­did” photo of the older kids

No, I mean “lucky” in the sense that we get to be the “Cool Aun­tie and Uncle” to the chil­dren. We get to take the kids around to do fun things (while hope­fully giv­ing the par­ents a bit of a reprieve) when we want to and/​or are able to. And we get to “play” with them and joke around with them as much as we want.

But most impor­tantly, we also get to be the ones who they can talk openly to;  feel com­fort­able around to ask some dif­fi­cult or sen­si­tive ques­tions. And we’re the ones whose words, at this point in their lives, can make some sort of impact on them; put a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive in mind for them … even if they’ve been told the same things twenty times over by their par­ents. And it feels great.

I can hon­estly say that the time we spent with Hubby’s youngest fam­ily mem­bers has been won­der­ful and truly sat­is­fy­ing. And I hope that dur­ing the week we’ve spent with them, we’ve been able to con­tribute to last­ing mem­o­ries and life lessons that they can take back with them to their own homes.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Posts

Fam­ily Fun in Nia­gara Falls

The Mr. Apron Strings Fam­ily Bubble

Wel­com­ing Kairi to the world

Preg­nancy New(s) Edi­tion (PWP)

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

** Means Aunt or Uncle in Taga­log (the native lan­guage of the Philippines)

*** In Taga­log, Até (ah-​​teh; fem­i­nine) or Kuya (koo-​​yah; mas­cu­line) is a title given to show respect to your elder sib­lings or cousins.

**** And believe me, this week there were lots of times where we vol­un­tar­ily offered to take respon­si­bil­ity for the kids.

Prob­a­bly my most fave pic from this trip. We’d go back to Que­bec City if we could!

2">Infertility Bets On Hold, Part 2

(If you missed Part 1, click here … )

While I’ve pretty much begun to resolve those par­tic­u­lar grief issues, there’s still that lack of strength that I feel I need in order to go through the entire adop­tion process.  Because it takes some­one who really has enough strength to climb over the prover­bial brick wall get­ting in the way of hav­ing a child. And specif­i­cally, I’m talk­ing about all the rules and reg­u­la­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions into your pri­vate lives just to raise a child that is not bio­log­i­cally your own. Quite frankly, I know that I don’t have what it takes to go through that.

Why do I say that? (And Kelly … hope­fully, this will help answer the ques­tion you posed to me at one time … ) Well first of all, I just know what I’m capa­ble of han­dling emo­tion­ally, and I know that I wouldn’t be able to sur­vive any fur­ther dis­ap­point­ment or heartache. Or as my new favorite quote from Pam says:

It got to the point where the poten­tial for more heart­break was more over­whelm­ing than the glim­mer of very small hope.

The sec­ond rea­son I feel as if I have lit­tle strength is because I have lit­tle con­fi­dence that things will come rel­a­tively straight­for­ward and sim­ple to us.

Not that I expect adop­tion to be an easy path. If we did decide to adopt, I have this very strong sus­pi­cion that we’d have so many more walls to climb. Give me a chance to explain … and I’d absolutely love to hear what oth­ers have to say to con­tribute to this discussion.

Let’s start off with Domes­tic Adoption:

  • Hubby & I both Asian Amer­i­can; Fil­ipino Amer­i­can, to be specific.
  • How often do you sup­pose any Poten­tial Birth Moms (PBM) would look at our dossier and — just by looks alone — think that we’d make great par­ents when their child will (most likely) not look at all sim­i­lar to the adop­tive cou­ple that they’d hope to raise their child?
  • Or that the PBM might worry that their child would face more bar­ri­ers hav­ing Asian Amer­i­can parents?
  • How often are Asian Amer­i­can babies given up for adop­tion; espe­cially if the PBM is also Asian or Asian Amer­i­can? Cul­ture dic­tates that fam­ily is impor­tant. If the child is not wanted in the imme­di­ate fam­ily; chances are that there is another fam­ily mem­ber (aunt, cousin, third uncle twice removed) that is will­ing to raise the child. Unfor­tu­nately, that’s a sit­u­a­tion that’s likely never going to hap­pen to us.

Mov­ing onto Inter­na­tional Adoption:

  • There are stricter laws and reg­u­la­tions from var­i­ous coun­tries in effect.
  • Some spe­cific coun­tries, like Rus­sia and Guatemala, have either sus­pended or have placed holds on any adop­tions to the US.
  • Wait time. Even for Fil­ipino adop­tions there are cer­tain stip­u­la­tions on how and when a child can be adopted; when the child can come back to the US with the adopted par­ents. And quite frankly, I don’t think I can afford the three-​​year wait in order to adopt a child from my native country.

And finally other, all-​​encompassing barriers:

  • Age: Let’s face it. Hubby & I are cur­rently push­ing 40. And yes, I know that there are cou­ples out there that are rais­ing babies that are much older than us. But there was a rea­son why Hubby & I started try­ing to con­ceive within a year of mar­riage: I had always seen me as a younger mother; one that wanted to fin­ish hav­ing babies before the age of 30. There was a spe­cific rea­son behind that: my mother and I are exactly 3o years apart in age (sorry Mom!). Grow­ing up (par­tic­u­larly in high school), not only did I deal with a cul­tural bar­rier, but I also dealt with a huge gen­er­a­tional gap. Both my par­ents were pre–baby boomer, while I was most def­i­nitely a Gen-​​Xer. Even though after I turned 30, I knew that this was some­thing beyond my con­trol, adopt­ing now — espe­cially as the rules and regs of adop­tion have got­ten more strict — well, it no longer seems pru­dent for both Hubby & my sake.
  • Energy: Along with age, this is the sec­ond biggest con­cern that I have. And, if I was hon­est with myself, the flim­si­est bar­rier of all. Because, really this has to do with energy and sta­mina. It’s one thing to raise a child with the thought in mind that you’ll be young enough to (some­what) keep up with their needs. It’s quite another thing know­ing that I can no longer wake myself up in the morn­ing with­out hit­ting the snooze but­ton a dozen times. Would I be able to care for another life if I can barely care for my own? Like I said, flimsy … but I’m just being honest.

I don’t bring up these points to be neg­a­tive in any way, shape or form. I’m sim­ply stat­ing facts that appear to be the most obvi­ous bar­ri­ers for our indi­vid­ual case when it comes to adopt­ing a child. And that’s assum­ing that we would ever go down that route. And, as I said above, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I per­ceive as barriers.

*****

As it is, I feel that we’ve already played our game of Infer­til­ity Roulette. We’ve already placed all the bets we wanted to at this time in our lives. And we lost that bet. With adop­tion (or h*ll, even if we ever decided to go through IVF again), I want some­thing I can be sure of … some­thing I can count on.

I hes­i­tate using the word “guar­an­tee” … since noth­ing in life is ever guar­an­teed, but after more than ten years of fight­ing the odds and now fac­ing even greater odds against us (age, finances, etc), Hubby & I opted to get out of the bet­ting pool.

And this is why, at least in my eyes, it’s never as sim­ple to “just adopt.” It’s never easy to go through another round of IVF.

This is why Hubby & I have decided to “cut our loss” … or in this case, “cut the strings” … and live child-​​free after infertility.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Links:

Cut­ting The Strings

Infer­til­ity Bets On Hold, Part 1

Thoughts on Adoption

Infor­ma­tion on Fil­ipino Adoptions

Wiki Info on the Pre-​​Baby Boom Generation

Wiki Info on Gen­er­a­tion X

Identity Labels

Any­body remem­ber the old-​​school Dymo label-​​makers? I’m not talk­ing about the fancy elec­tric ones where you can type in what­ever you want before print­ing it up. I’m talk­ing about the ones where you turn the dial to choose the let­ter and squeeze the han­dle (as hard as pos­si­ble) to imprint it on the red or black vinyl tape. And G*d for­bid if you mis­spelled a word and have to start from the beginning.

For some rea­son I was think­ing about that label-​​maker this past week­end. And really, it started last week when I received a won­der­ful email from an old High School Friend (HSF) that I hadn’t heard from in years. She had responded via Face­book in regards to the post in which I admit­tedly found myself ques­tion­ing my pur­pose in life.

HSF talked about how, as women, we are always ques­tion­ing our­selves about what we truly want in life. That we’re always find­ing a way to label our­selves while simul­ta­ne­ously try­ing to achieve more than what we can phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally han­dle. And that, in the process, we tend to lose per­spec­tive of who we really are in the grand scheme of things.

For HSF, it’s a mat­ter of jug­gling mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties. She’s a wife, a daugh­ter, a mother of three (beau­ti­ful) chil­dren. She’s also a free-​​lancer, a found­ing pres­i­dent of one of her alma mater’s alumni groups. Yet as beau­ti­ful as her life appears (espe­cially from perus­ing through Face­book), she admits that she’s still com­ing to terms with the “Suc­cess­ful Career Woman” label; espe­cially as she’s cur­rently stay­ing at home to with her three young kids.

The point of HSF’s email was not to point out how much dif­fer­ent her life was to mine; rather it was sim­ply to point out that regard­less of how we view our lives, we only limit our­selves by plac­ing labels on who we are or what we do. And fur­ther­more, why can’t we just enjoy the path that we’re cur­rently on and embrace who we are while trav­el­ing down this path?

I must admit, I’m still strug­gling to deal with the valid points that HSF has brought up. I’m sure it has to do a lot with the many years of believ­ing that “Moth­er­hood” was the end-​​all be-​​all for a woman’s liveli­hood. (I con­tribute this, as always, to the strong Fil­ipino cul­tural influ­ence that I iden­tify with.) And, even though I’ve accepted the fact that I can’t have bio­log­i­cal chil­dren of my own, I still long for some­thing to fill that void that Infer­til­ity has robbed me.

Fur­ther­more, with my recent unem­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion, I feel as though I’ve been stripped yet another label that I’ve iden­ti­fied myself with. That “suc­cess­ful career woman” iden­tity flew out the win­dow the day I found myself sur­rep­ti­tiously with­out a job.

And really … that’s what this post was try­ing to explain.

While I’d love to “give up” those labels that I’ve placed on myself, I also must admit that it’s these labels that I’ve come to rely on to “ground” myself, so to speak, when I’ve oth­er­wise felt lost. It’s these labels that help remind me of who *I* am in the face of uncertainty:

  • I’m a Wife.
  • I’m an only Daughter.
  • I’m a Sis­ter to my Brother.
  • I’m a friend.
  • I’m Filipino-​​American (1st generation).
  • I’m Catholic.
  • I’m a nurse.
  • I’m a writer.
  • I’m infer­tile.
  • I’m child-​​free after infertility.

When look­ing at who I am; what I believe is the cen­ter of my core … it’s pretty obvi­ous that there are those iden­ti­ties that I have no con­trol over. These are the iden­ti­ties that have been imprinted on my soul; the ones that I can­not change. The ones that I’ve grown to accept as part of who I am in this life.

Then there are the labels I’ve cho­sen for myself (Catholic, nurse, writer, friend). Those are the iden­ti­ties that, despite the years of time and invest­ment I put into them, I can read­ily let go. But do I really want to do that?

The prob­lem, as I see it, is when one of these iden­ti­ties has been lost; espe­cially at a time where I wasn’t ready to a) let go of that iden­tity, or b) accept that iden­tity for what it is.

Take for instance, the part of myself that iden­ti­fies with being infer­tile. This was one label I never expected to own. But the fact of the mat­ter is that after one year of try­ing to con­ceive (waaaay back when, it seems), we were unable to get preg­nant. By def­i­n­i­tion, infer­til­ity is the inabil­ity to con­ceive or carry a preg­nancy to term after 12 months of try­ing to conceive. That’s a fact. There’s no way I can change that pat of me; there’s no way I have con­trol over that situation.

But take the part of me that iden­ti­fies with being child-​​free after infer­til­ity. We tried every­thing that we could pos­si­bly do (within our own capa­bil­i­ties both finan­cially and emo­tion­ally) to give our­selves a bio­log­i­cal child, but that just never hap­pened. And because we thought long and hard about our other options, Hubby & I chose to accept that liv­ing child-​​free was what was best for me. And believe me … it was not an easy choice to make.

And because, she nails it right on the head … here’s how Pam from Silent Soror­ity recently described the rea­son why she and her hus­band chose the child-​​free path:

“It got to the point where the poten­tial heart­break was actu­ally more over­whelm­ing than the glim­mer of very small hope.”

In any case, my point is that with our deci­sion to live child-​​free, I dealt with hav­ing to let go of one cho­sen iden­tity and accept a new cho­sen iden­tity. I had to let go of that iden­tity of moth­er­hood that I held on for so long. and I had to accept that liv­ing with­out chil­dren, despite the incred­i­ble long­ing to have a bio­log­i­cal child of our own, was my new identity.

As I said before, the deci­sion to live child-​​free wasn’t a choice that we wanted to make. It’s not that we didn’t dis­cuss open­ing our hearts to adop­tion. Or open­ing our wal­lets to more infer­til­ity treat­ments. Sim­ply put, iden­ti­fy­ing our­selves as liv­ing child-​​free was a choice that we had to make. Hubby & I needed to weigh our options to decide if that the small glim­mer of hope was worth the insur­mount­able heart­break we’d already been through. Hubby & I needed to make this deci­sion so we (or rather *I*) could main­tain my sanity.

Because if I didn’t put that label on me, I’d still be strug­gling to deter­mine who I was … if I couldn’t be the mother I had always dreamed about.

And of course now … my new iden­tity cri­sis is to deter­mine what to do with my career. But I will take a page out of HSF’s book and learn to enjoy the jour­ney while I dis­cover what’s next.

How about you, Blog World? What parts of your­self keep you grounded? What labels do you place on your­self? How do you iden­tify yourself?

Cherry-​​Coloured Funk *

It’s after mid­night and I’m find­ing myself in some sort of funk.

Which is sad, because my last posts were all about try­ing to enjoy the sim­ple things in life; like the uncon­di­tional love that a pet can give you.

I am truly and utterly in a funk.

And I hate it.

I’ve (obvi­ously) been try­ing my best to be opti­mistic about every­thing, but lately it seems as if I can’t catch a break. And it’s ridicu­lous, because it hasn’t even been more than a month since my life turned topsy-​​turvy.

Maybe it’s because the loss of my job reminds me too much of another loss that I’ve finally came to clo­sure on. Well, as “closed” as it could get anyway.

I’ve always alluded to the fact that my inabil­ity to have chil­dren of my own, to be a mother has made me feel less of a per­son. It’s made me that Fil­ip­ina, who was brought up to think of bring­ing up her husband’s chil­dren is the only pur­pose in life, feel like I’ve lost any rea­son to exist in this lifetime.

And once I  “resolved” myself to a life with­outh chil­dren, I nat­u­rally grav­i­tated to my career as the next “log­i­cal” rea­son to get out of bed every day.

Which, when you look at the time line of my blog, you’d notice it. Start­ing back in Autumn of 2008, up to the point where Hubby & I decided to “cut the strings.” Plain as night and day; writ­ten in black and white. (Fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing, that is). And when you see how much I put into this job since mov­ing to Chicago; all the effort I made to mak­ing my career … it’s obvi­ous that I found some­thing to fill the void of Motherlessness.

Then sud­denly and unex­pect­edly, I find myself with­out a job. I find myself with­out yet another pur­pose in life.

I find myself strug­gling with the loss of yet another rea­son for my existence.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Ear­lier today, I asked my hus­band what my pur­pose in life was.

This was all before I came to the con­clu­sion I did up above; before con­nect­ing the dots as to why I’m feel­ing the same kind of loss for my job as I did for the loss of Motherhood.

Before I real­ized that I wasn’t quite that crazy for hav­ing these neg­a­tive thoughts; how­ever irra­tional it may have seemed at the time.

And Hubby’s answer was, “It’s what­ever we want it to be.”

In my mind I know that Hubby’s right. And my heart tells me that he’s right for me to think of this as a time of opportunity.

But the empty feel­ing I have in my gut keeps dig­ging away at my core; strug­gling to find some­thing out of noth­ing. And I wish I could make it stop.

Damn … but I was doing so well.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

* In case you’re won­der­ing where the title of this post came from, it’s the name of a Cocteau Twins song that com­pletely reflects the mood I’m in. Take a lis­ten to it here … isn’t it haunt­ingly beautiful?

Next Page →

Admin Shtuff

Other Related Strings

Archives