Homesickness

Practicing Family

Dear Readers,

Holy wild summer. Seems like change is the only constant these days. On a personal note, I am still recovering from a bout of COVID that left me feeling energetically askew for the past two weeks. It’s been a day-by-day process of tending to my nervous system. Being sick causes me to feel really grateful for my sobriety, and the resources I have in terms of community, housing, work, and food. This essay is about a health scare I had a month ago and what it is like to be a single mom, with no dad around. because that’s what’s been on my mind and heart. If you don’t want to read an essay that involves a few mentions of blood, than skip this one.

I was with my meditation sangha yesterday and our teacher was talking about practicing with change and suffering. She said something to the affect of, you know you have been softened toward change when you stop wishing for the change to be happening. This story is about a tiny redemption. A little revolution of the heart that came from being with reality as it is.

Onward.

Your energy matters. You are loved.

Audio version for paid subscribers is at the bottom behind the paywall.

Audra

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A few weeks ago, as I was preparing to lead not one, but two retreats, back to back, I started to gush bright red blood. Not period blood. Blood, blood. Filling menstrual cup after menstrual cup, I thought “Huh? This is odd.” Like a good Yogi, I went right into bypassing. This is embarrassing, but old habits of mind die hard. I told myself I could trust my body to know how to take care of whatever was going on. My therapist often points out to me that I once rescued a woman from a fire barefoot, without putting my own shoes on first. It is as you imagine; I ran in as the glass was breaking and carried her, in my arms, to safety. My therapist was aghast at the lack of care I had for myself, the way I ran toward danger. I hadn’t even thought about it. I want to learn how to to put my shoes on first—to protect my heart and my feet. (Click here for funny picture of us winning a City of Portland award and me shooting dagger eyes at the Fire Chief for some unknown reason.)

I kept moving, preparing for the upcoming work trips—laundry, groceries, cleaning the house and car. Last month in the midst of a 28 day work streak I received an email that said, “I hope you are resting,” and I thought, “But if I rest, who would pay the bills?” Don’t hope, I thought. Please don’t hope. This no-rest dynamic also seems to be the case with many women who are partnered—so I acknowledge it is not just single moms who feel this way. I heard on a podcast recently from a researcher on gender dynamics that in hetero partnerships, men still do only 35% of the household chores, and that women are providing more hours of childcare for children than they did in the 70’s despite having full time jobs. It’s been like that since the 80’s. We have stagnated. Glennon Doyle is famous for saying, “I guess women have to almost die before we give ourselves permission to live how we want.” And, I think it goes deeper than that. I am giving myself the life I want—freedom, making my art, sobriety, lots of sex, travel, friends, work I love, and it’s a lot to manage as a parent when there are few other communal paradigms outside of traditional marriage. It takes even more work to seek out and find those places where I can I be held and cared for by other humans. In a conversation over on Sara Fredman’s substack Write Like a Mother, Sara Manguso, author of the really beautiful new book Liars, says “I believe that traditional marriage is a domestic abuse paradigm, and that all marriages, especially between cishet people, skew traditional, unless you’re doing a superhuman amount of work to bend things the other way.” This has been my direct experience.

I was trying to glue the rear view mirror to the windshield of my van, and it wasn’t working. On the road we eventually reverted to gorilla tape. Holding it firmly, and with as much lightheartedness as I could muster, I mentioned to my son that I was starting to feel like maybe there was something going wrong with my body. We were working together to clean up so he would have a place to sleep on retreat number one. He was going to help the chef with the dishes. Also, I simply didn’t have childcare (is that what it’s called when he is almost 16?) set up for those four days. He asked what was wrong, and I said, “I am bleeding too much.” We left it at that.

This intimate reveal, is a very particular moment between a single mom and a child I have not seen reflected accurately in essays or fiction—though the television show “Better Things,” comes pretty damn close. If I had partner, or even a roommate, would I be telling my 15 year old son that I’m bleeding too much, and feel worried about my health? No. Absolutely not. There would be another adult acting as a buffer between he and his mother’s current vaginal reality.

I brought this to another single mom (with an absent baby daddy), and she knew exactly what I was talking about. She said that she noticed she was a “better” parent whenever she had a roommate or partner simply because there was another adult witnessing the child/parent dynamic. “I had to step up my game, and so did my kid.” Like me, she wondered about all the inappropriate things she had shared with her now adult child that would have been left unsaid, or buffered, by having more community around to help share the responsibility for all the inevitable little, and big things, that come up in a life. Kids who are raised in truly single parent households don’t have the luxury of being sheltered from life’s storm. There is one umbrella and one set of hands holding it.

Recently, my son’s girlfriend’s mother, Linda—who my son loves endlessly, and I feel a little embarrassed around—mentioned to me that she is impressed by Ursa’s independence and capacity. Other parents often comment on both of my children’s ability to move in the world with ease—like little adults.

Her kids get a ride. My kids take the bus, walk, or pay for a Lime scooter. Someone always seems to be at home in their house, while I often don’t finish work until after 8pm. I have four jobs, and they seem to have two jobs between two people. Linda wears classy flowing pants on hot days. I wear cutoffs that fully expose my ass cheeks. Ursa and I will coordinate date nights so that when I am done with my date I can pick him up on the way home and we can debrief, or just shrug like, “that was a waste of an evening.” Veda and I used to call it being bachelor’s together. Ursa would probably prefer I don’t celebrate this little detail. Linda and her partner just went to Napa to celebrate 25 years, and Ursa told me this feels like the peak of existence to him—really living the dream. I told him I thought it sounded boring.

My kids are capable because they have had to be. So when the Linda’s of the world, of which there have been many, comment on my kids being capable and independent, I feel simultaneously proud, and completely inadequate. Couples privilege has many contexts, but there are few places where it is most stunningly obvious as in a truly single parent household. I’m new at this, so it is feeling particularly stark these days. One mom, no dad. One mom who is both mother and father. Good-cop and bad-cop. Discipliner and nurturer. Head of household. A one income family. The thousand faces of mothering in one person. Wholeness embodied. Paradox embodied. A mom who is doing it alone, like a virgin, I feel, and am, judged, often, though less so as I get older. Now people say, “You look too young to have a 23 year old!!!???” But even this seemingly outward compliment has a shred of shadow in it. There’s a question mark at the end: are you really their mom? What happened? How old were you when you had them? Is the dad involved? Do your kids even have the same dad?

When I’m on a date I often front load this last question by making a joke. “I have a super classy situation,” I say, smiling and flipping my bangs to the side, “Two kids, two different dads.” That I even still do this mystifies me.

Ursa’s girlfriend is rarely allowed at our house because I am gone too much. It’s a small thing, AND, it’s painful. For some horrible reason it gives me great solace when I find videos on Ursa’s phone of he and their daughter vaping in Linda’s sprawling, perfect house (with both parents home!). My house is too small for them to ever get away with that. I would literally be sitting right there.

When Veda was in preschool I would often volunteer in their classroom. I was 24 years old, worked at a bar so I could be at home during the day with my kid, dated a sometimes boyfriend from Long Island who stayed with V at night while I worked, and had the good sense to apply for a scholarship for Veda’s education at one of the wealthiest Montessori schools in town. If rich people went there, I surmised, then they must have a large endowment. I guessed correctly. For 3 years, and 5 days a week of child care, I only paid $280 per month, which was a steal for a single parent household. Veda, that first year, had a friend named Sarah who’s family lived in Laurelhurst, one of the wealthier inner city neighborhoods here in Portland. Sarah’s parents were really supportive, invited Veda over, and were generally kind to both of us. They were 20 years older than me, meaning that they were my age now, in their mid 40’s. That’s wild to think about. One day I was meant to take Sarah and Veda to Chucky Cheese, but something had happened at work, and I needed to cancel so I could go in and take a shift. I always needed money. This change of plans didn’t go over well with them, “Sarah is so disappointed!” I can’t remember if I flubbed the communication, or what, I’m willing to own that, I was 24 years old. But that cancellation ended the welcoming invites into their beautiful home, and so began Sarah’s obsession and bizarre fascination with me. Whenever I volunteered in the classroom Sarah always wanted to sit next to me, be in my group, have me read the book to her. I happily encouraged it because I had a feeling about why she might want to be close to me—I was off limits. One day she looks up at me with her little old woman’s face and elf voice and says, “My mom thinks YOU are irresponsible.” At that time, having worked through none of my shame I believed her.

A few hours after telling Ursa something might be wrong, I stood up from the toilet to wash my hands after losing a stunning amount of blood and felt myself get dizzy. “Fuck,” I thought, holding onto the counter, “I’m going to pass out, hit my head, and then Ursa is going to have to call 911. Plus, he’ll find me passed out and that seems like a lot for one person. And, we can’t afford 911.” This is literally what I thought. Ursa, and money. No thought of myself. So instead I called out my son’s name and dropped to my knees on the bathroom floor. He ran in and I said, “I’m not okay.” He took one look at me and the blood, and got together a few wildly random things it turned out (a phone charger, my gayest underwear, and some lotion I never use) in case I had to stay the night. I pretty much crawled to the car, trying not to pass out. This is how my 15 year old kid ended up driving me to the emergency room for the second time in 6 months. First time was for a broken toe. Later, he would relay that it was one of the scariest moments of his life, “You were white mom, like you might actually die.”

On the way, I said, “Should I call Dad, so he can come get you?” This would have been our normal order of crisis-operations pre drunkin’ dad incident of March 2024.

“No,” he said, shaking, “Dad is the last fucking thing I need right now. Mom, you are the only thing that matters. The only thing. Nothing else matters.” I knew he had been upset about a fight he and his gf had been in earlier that day, and this was putting things into perspective.

Do you see it, reader? Do you see how fucked this is? Of course I matter, but there is no way that in a community where there is a social safety net, universal health care, free higher education, financial resources for single moms that are not dependent on the income of an absent dad, and easily accessible mental health resources for struggling kids, that a child should feel that I am the only thing between him and utter chaos. Because don’t fool yourself. Don’t hope. That is exactly what he was saying. If something happens to me, than what in the actual fuck happens to him? Does he go back to live with his alcoholic dad where there was never surplus money to feel like there would be enough food in the fridge by the end of the month? Does he go to NYC to live with his sibling? Does he go live on the farm with my best friend and her kids, away from everything he knows in the city?

Driving home late that night, everything closed, searching for coconut water to replace my electrolytes, we are both tired, and beyond scared. We stopped in the Plaid Pantry parking lot, the only thing open at that hour.

I whisper, “We are way, way too alone.”

He sighs, “Yeah.”

“I need to do a better job of making sure we have people we can call.”

“Yeah, there’s no one left to call.”

There was no one to call. At least it felt like that. I have no partner. My two closest friends, the ones who feel like sisters, like family, live too far away and have really intense situations with their respective jobs and kids. My parent’s and I don’t have that kind of relationship. I thought about calling one of the people I have been dating, but as I went to dial, I felt the “too muchness” of it. And, would I even want them there, in an emergency room with me and my kid? No. And my kid wouldn’t want them there either. He doesn’t even want them at his birthday party, “I’d just be trying to read them the whole time mom. See if they are good enough for you.” A third person, who is not Veda, who is not beautiful and safe Sister, breaks the dynamic. There is something addictive in the set up of “it’s just us against the world,” and “you are the only one who matters.”

Here, reader, is the moment of transformation. “God comes to us disguised as our life,” writes Sam Radford. It’s knowing this that helps me alchemize. Where the souls longing for something to be different turns into something sacred, something life giving. Saint Teresa of Avila wrote, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world.”

Lying in bed that night, I believed for a moment what that little elf child whispered to me 20 years ago, “YOU are irresponsible Audra.” I felt the shame, loneliness, and grief of not knowing who to call. A refuge without a refuge. I felt the shame of my divorce, and the grief inherent in not being able to call my child’s dad to help us, help him. I felt the shame of relying on Jacob as my “family,” for too long post-divorce, especially over the past four years of the pandemic where I experienced a complete and utter mental, financial, and egoic break down. Family could have looked like anything, during those years, I was homesick in all the ways a person can be. And, until this latest collapse, I had not actively created new pathways of support because pretending that the old supports might hold felt less painful. This is what we get wrong about death. I cling because I don’t trust. I cling because I am afraid to let what needs to die, die.

My life, lying there alone with far less blood than I had started the day with, suddenly felt like a tree that had been holding the weight of dead branches and was now suddenly bare— naked, and exposed, yet also free. This storm, this sudden brush with my own mortality, had shaken what had already died free from my body. We seek what has already been lost because we are afraid that nothing might grow in its place.

Sometimes, we don’t even know we are homesick until we get a taste of where we came from—full immersion in the womb. The next day, as I was running around town getting shit together with a wicked headache from blood loss, I stopped to see someone I have been dating. He made me a smoothie with lots of berries in it—blood building. When he put his arms around me, and kissed the top of my head, I realized that this was the first adult human—someone I could physically lean into—to touch me since I had been in the ER, which promptly brought tears to my eyes and made me get all weird about wanting more from him than he was willing to give. Homesick. Longing stirred by collapse.

Since then, I have gathered together at least four new people who expressed not only willingness, but a desire to drop everything and come to the emergency room if I need them. Two of them are single mom’s like me—an emergency room coven. A no questions asked, or anything needed in return, text thread. Another is a friend who has slowly been becoming family. “We need to practice being family now, Audra,” she said. I love this idea of practicing family. It feels close to putting my shoes on.

The Odyssey, Richard Rohr writes, begins in Ithaca and ends in Ithaca.:“The goal of sacred story is always to come back home.” The homesickness of that night itself pointed me back to the beginning, to the longing for community, and practicing family that has transcended and yet still includes my initial experience of home (Rohr, 2016). Home may not—and I would say should not—look the same as when we left it, because hopefully we have moved beyond the limiting scope of who we were before the leaving.

May we all have the gift of years and perspective to give us new eyes with which to see more clearly. I have new eyes shaped by struggle, disappointment, loss, and disintegration. These eyes are less clouded by shame and old habits of mind so that I can see the beauty of what is right in front of me.

“The archetypal idea of ‘‘home’’ points in two directions at once. Somehow, the end is in the beginning, and the beginning points toward the end. The One Great Mystery is revealed at the beginning and forever beckons us forward toward its full realization.” - Richard Rohr.

When I think about the state of the world right now, and what I want to model for this young man I am raising, I understand, through my new eyes, that I don’t want him to create an idol of his aloneness, or even our aloneness. I don’t want his sense of worth to be informed by being able to do it all by himself. There is too much fetishization of male power happening right now. Power based in a false resilience. Power that appears alone because that is what is more palatable to our American ideals of what it means to be successful. I want him to know how to ask for help. And, I want us to start letting homesickness be not an unwelcome feeling, nestled in shame, but something akin to the pull of a compass guiding us back toward home, toward family.

Audio version behind the paywall!

Love,

A