Go ladies with "little ones"!

Reread my last blog post and thought, "maybe I came off sounding a little harsh on the ladies with little ones". Perhaps it was all my own projection. 

When I had "little ones", and I did, about a million years ago, I was desperately running around trying to make it all work. Perhaps young women today have more zen about juggling and are relaxing into their mother roles. But I didn't sleep or stop running. I was fraught with getting it right. Women of the sixties and seventies had fought hard for the right to work at a profession AND have children. We wanted more to live for…. like an income and a retirement pension, a sense of autonomy and meaning. But at times it was unraveling.

I didn't live happily ever after. I got divorced. My children were only two and a half and four when we separated. I'd given up a budding business for the "security" of a paying job. I drove an hour to work, dropping my kids before sunrise at Kindercare where they ate a lot of Mac and cheese provided in the meal plan. It's what I could afford.

In the end, I got laid off. Thank God. No, seriously! Thank God!  Because that's when the "Spirit" made it on screen. I had volunteered to accompany a girlfriend to church (a place I never went) because her soon-to-be ex would be there and she didn't want to go alone. I don't remember her being religious.  I think it was just spite. 

Anyway, I went. After two weeks she converted to Sunday Bloody Mary brunches but I kept going.

My ex had the boys on Sunday's so church-going was a mercifully quiet experience.  No running. No juggling! Just the opportunity to be with my not-so-peaceful mind. The possibility of “ grace”. 

I adored the Maine-bred recovering alcoholic minister, Bill.  On Wednesdays I'd come in from what-ever my next job was for some "spiritual reflection" with him. Oh good!  Free therapy! As he smoked his pipe, I told him about my anxiety fraught life. We prayed.   

Then one day I knew it was time to give up the padded suits and get with God. I applied and was accepted to a seminary.  And I went with my kids in the wagon. Not to Vermont but to Boston. And that's another story. Go ladies with "little ones"!

Fiona Horning