Lawyer Mama

Depression and Living a Meaningful Life

"Mommy, we whisper through the dark trees and into the dark house. We rescue the bad kitty and turn him into a good kitty."
-- Excerpt from "A Bedtime Story" by Hollis, age 4

The last two years have been hard; the hardest of my life.  Two years ago, I was happy.  I was me.  But something happened.  It could have been the stress of two kids within 15 months, a full time job, a move to a new place, a new job, new friends.  It could be the changes in my life, but I suspect my depression had more to do with the fact that my life no longer changes enough.

I've been a nomad for most of my life.  I was an Air Force brat.  The simplest of questions - "Where are you from?" - can start an existential crisis for me.  One my own, I hopped from one college to another, to marriage, to D.C. for law school, to a new job and career, then to a new house and, eventually, to a new baby.

We moved down to Southeast Virginia for a slower rhythm and pulse.  We wanted something less stressful than my beloved D.C.  We wanted a home for our children.  A home where they will know their classmates from Kindergarten through graduation.  A home with roots and community and friends that know our stories and our cats.  We made the right choice.

But still.  I missed my friends, my job and co-workers, my favorite restaurants, and our adorable tiny house in the City of Falls Church.  I still do.  I miss my home.  But I think what I miss the most is the me that I was when I lived there; the me that I was before I had kids, before I realized that I was not just my job.  I miss who I was before life forced me to pick my head up from watching my feet as they walked along the sidewalk.  Having children did that to me. 

In a way having H&H made me unhappy.  Although unhappy isn't necessarily the right word.  Having kids made me malcontent.  Putting those little boys before me and my wants and needs made me realize just how insignificant my job and my career were in comparison to H&H.  I looked around with new eyes and saw what the world has waiting for my boys.  And now I want to make the world a better place.

Somewhere along the way I got sidetracked from that.  I started thinking about what I gave up instead of what I've gained.  And that great gripping gorilla, Depression, settled in for a nice long stay.

Since then, a lot of bad things have happened.  Many of them I've written about on my blog.  But I've also taken down a lot of those posts.  Not because I regret what I wrote, but because it's too hard for me to see what I wrote, to think about how I felt when I wrote at my lowest points.

I quit my job.  I've lost friends.  I nearly destroyed my marriage.

It took almost losing my marriage of 14 years and my best friend of 15 years, my husband, to gain some clarity.

Through it all, T never let go of my hand.  Even when I tried to shake him off.  He held my hand and led me through the dark forest, whispering, "I love you. We love you," all along the way.

So, T, I owe you many apologies and a lifetime of making amends.  I know that you've already forgiven me.  I know that you're already looking forward.  I just hope that someday I can forgive myself.

Sarah Palin: When Reality is Irrelevant

By now you've all heard about, and possibly read, this month's Vanity Fair piece about Sarah Palin by Todd S. Purdum, It Came from Wasilla.  (If you haven't, go read it!)  It's an expose about the train wreck that was the McCain-Palin campaign in the final few months.  But this time, we hear a bit more than leaks about Sarah Palin being a "whack job," a "diva," or "going rogue."  My favorite revelation?  Apparently Palin's handlers started calling her the "Little Shop of Horrors" within a week.

There's a nice follow up article in Politico today about the Republican infighting generated by the Vanity Fair piece.  Bill Kristol, an adviser to the McCain campaign and someone rumored to have been responsible for McCain's selection of Palin as a running mate, started off the bitch fest with a post on The Weekly Standard's blog criticizing the Vanity Fair article.  Since then, he and Steve Schmidt, McCain's campaign manager, have basically traded school yard insults, dragging in Randy Scheunemann, a McCain foreign policy adviser.  Keep it up, boys.  We really don't care who leaked all the stuff about Palin during the campaign or whether one of you suggested she might have post-partum depression.  It's all good for the Democrats!

Here's a sampling of the pissing match:

“Bill Kristol, going back to the time of the campaign, has taken a lot of cheap shots at the campaign without ever offering a plausible path to victory,” Schmidt said. “He’s in the business of ad hominem insults and criticism.”

Responding to Schmidt’s counterattack, Kristol directly fingered Schmidt: “It’s simply a fact that when the going got tough, Steve Schmidt trashed Sarah Palin, both within the campaign and (on background) to journalists. This was after Steve took credit for the Palin pick when, at first, he thought it made him look good. John McCain deserved better.”

At this, Schmidt unloaded in a lengthy telephone interview, suggesting that Kristol was carrying out a personal vendetta based out of anger over the attempt to fire Scheunemann in the final days of the campaign.

Man, it doesn't get much better than this.

Finish reading Sarah Palin: When Reality is Irrelevant on MOMocrats....

We're Total Geeks

Transcript of our new voice mail message at home:

Hi, you've reached Steph and T.

We can't answer the phone right now. 

Or, we're too lazy to pick up the phone OR to check the caller ID.

But DON'T leave us a message.  We never check them.

Well, that's not entirely true. Our voicemail emails us.  And it sends us both a text.  So we'll know you've called, but again, we'll probably be too lazy to ever actually *listen* to your message.

But you can call our cells.

Or email us at work.

Or email us at home.

Or email our cells.

Or text us.

Or Twitter us.

Or leave a message on Facebook.

But, please *don't* leave a message after the tone.

Welcome to 2009.

Central Park Classic - A Photographic Sneak Peek

I have another sneak peek up on LightHearted Photography from the photo sessions I did in Central Park.

The day that I shot Cinderella and her family in the park, I had another photo session with an adorable family.  Jenn, Andrea (Cinderella's mom) and I have known each other since we were all pregnant with our October babies in 2004.  Mine decided he wanted to show up in September, but all of us have children within 2 1/2 weeks of each other.  I was thrilled when Andrea asked me to come up to New York and getting to meet Jenn as well made it even better.

Jenn, it was so much fun to take photos of your family, especially your darling girls in their adorable dresses.  There's just something irresistible about sisters.  And Central Park was, as always, amazing.

Enjoy your sneak peak!

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Be sure to see the rest of the sneak peek over at LightHearted Photography, the Blog! You can't see the full impact of this photo without seeing it's full size.