by Rachel Toalson | Uncategorized
I keep reading these crazy articles about parents getting warnings from Child Protective Services or other government entities for letting their kids walk home from the park by themselves, even though the oldest is 10.
And parents taking hits because they let their kids play outside without constant supervision.
And cops stepping in because, God forbid, a mom let her kid ride his bike down a road another “concerned” parent thought was too busy.
Every time I read another article about it and then (I know I shouldn’t) scan the comments that look more like word vomit than intelligent conversation, I want to hold up my MYODB sign.
Mind your own damn business.
I also find, lately, that I have this overwhelming urge to thank my mom.
She was a mom who let her kids roam.
Not too long ago, my boys and my husband and I visited some of my childhood places, because I thought it would be fun for them (they complained the whole time—at least until I started telling slightly embellished stories, since my life obviously wasn’t interesting enough as is).
We lived in this one house on a pretty major road, across the street from some train tracks where we used to play for fun when I was a third-grader.
A little more than half a mile down this road was an old gas station that sold bubble gum for 10 cents.
My mom used to let my brother (10), my sister (6) and me (9) walk to that store, because we would pester her so effectively she would just yell, “Go!” at our backsides already racing out the door.
Do you know what we had to cross to get to the store? A HIGHWAY.
By ourselves.
All alone.
At 10, 9 and 6, in case you didn’t catch that.
There was no crosswalk, no blinking lights, no stop sign. There was no adult standing in the middle of the street waving a fluorescent orange flag and blowing a whistle to stop traffic. There was only an open road, a 50 mph speed limit and three kids racing across when they judged it was safe.
Now. I know what we all say—that the world is a much different place than it used to be, and I hate that old, “I did it and I’m just fine” argument just as much as the next person, but really. Has the danger of crossing a highway changed all that much?
It was, after all, the same highway where I remember watching my dog Chance spin in fifteen circles when a car slammed into him as we were all crossing to check the mail.
My mom taught us the dangers, and then she trusted us to navigate them.
We’re not so great at trusting our kids anymore.
I know. When I think of my oldest boy, who will be a third grader next year, walking his brothers (a first grader and a kindergartener) the three blocks home from school, I shake a little inside. What if he forgets to pick them up? What if he gets mad at them and leaves them behind? What if they forget to look both ways when they’re crossing streets? They have to cross three of them, for God’s sake, and what if the drivers are going too fast or staring at their phones instead of the street?
I can talk myself out of that freedom so easily. Because I love my children so much.
But I also love them enough to let them try.
If we never let our children try, how will they ever know the excitement of having this self-management responsibility? How will they ever experience those rites of passage that come with turning another year older? How will they learn to navigate the dangers in the world on their own?
Maybe I’m naïve about it, but I don’t think the world at large has changed so much as the world of parenting has. My mother used to let us walk on a busy road without a shoulder or a sidewalk and cross a semi-busy highway because she knew all the other mothers who lived on the street. She knew they would watch out for her kids in the same way she would watch out for theirs when they rode their bikes down the same road on their way to the elementary school playground. To play—by themselves—on merry-go-rounds and unpadded seesaws and metal slides that scorched the backs of your legs when the sun was out and stuck to your skin when you were wearing shorts.
If we are so concerned for the safety of other people’s children, maybe instead of calling the cops on a child’s parents, because we don’t agree with the way the child gets to roam in this dangerous world (There are predators! There are bullies! There are drivers! Predators, bullies and drivers, oh my!), we could just step in as extra eyes.
What this might look like is standing outside our home when the school bell rings, watching that wave of children walk past so we’d see anything suspicious, getting to know those children, asking them if they feel okay about walking alone. If they’re feeling scared today. Whether they would like some company for part of the way.
The other day, I was driving my two schoolboys home because it was raining, and I saw a boy on the ground and another one punching him in the belly.
“Hang on,” I told my boys, and I slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the car into the pouring down rain to investigate what looked like a pretty serious fight.
Turns out they were just two boys horsing around, and they carried on their walking way, probably laughing about another mom freaking out about nothing.
Do you know what didn’t even cross my mind to do?
Call the cops on the parents who let them walk home by themselves.
That would have been ridiculous. Parents know their own kids, right? Maybe we should just LET THEM PARENT.
I don’t want to be afraid to let my kids explore the world around them because some “concerned” person might make a call and Child Protective Services suddenly shows up at my door. I want to give them freedom to play and wonder and discover and, through it all, learn that they are capable of making their way in this scary, but mostly safe, world.
We need to reject this culture of fear that is so pervasively damaging (and unnecessary). We need to find our courage. We need to trust each other again.
Most of all, we need to mind our own damn business.
Now that I got that off my chest, it’s time to send my boys out the back door and lock it.
A mama needs her break, after all.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
The other day I walked outside to call my boys in for dinner, and this is what I found.
Some men might find this something close to offensive. I am married to a man who does not worry about four of his six sons playing with Barbies and My Little Pony.
We just smiled at the picture of the four of them collaboratively imagining without fighting (miracle of all miracles) and left them to play with the neighbor girls.
This gender issue can get a little messy.
Everywhere you go—stores, schools, libraries, museum gift shops—you don’t have to look far to find gender separation. Girls are pink and purple and frilly and sparkly. Boys are blue and black and matte and dignified. Girls have superstars and bows. Boys have superheroes and cowboy hats.
The implied messages here are “Boys wear this. Girls wear that. Boys play with this. Girls play with that.”
I get a little tired of all this.
We had a birthday yesterday, and my 6-year-old got some superhero LEGOs. The first thing he said, after all his friends left, was “Will you put this together with me, Mama?”
“Mama doesn’t like superhero LEGOs,” my 4-year-old said.
“Yes, she does,” my 6-year-old said.
“No. She likes princess ones,” my 4-year-old said.
So I sat down with both of them and put together Spider-Man’s fight scene with Dr. Octopus like a BOSS.
My boys will know that playing across the gender lines society says we must have is completely acceptable and highly encouraged.
Who says the world has to be so black and white?
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Photo by Helen Montoya Henrichs.
Today he turns 6, this second boy who stole my heart.
It’s hard to believe he is that old. Every time I look at him now I see a boy, not even little anymore. Just a boy with skinny little legs and big feet and a smile that can light the whole house on fire.
Time has flown so fast I want to grab it all back. I want to savor it right now, this moment. I want to hold him while he will still let me, but the problem is, I don’t ever want to let him go.
This weekend we cut a cookie cake and played Spider-Man games and watched him open presents like LEGOs instead of baby blocks, and I kept thinking about how these last six years have gone and how the next six will go, and I feel sad and glad and scared and excited all at the same time.
He is one of the most remarkable children I have ever known.
Just the other day, when I was in the middle of beating myself up about a to-do list largely left undone, with the potential to derail a whole week’s plans, in walked my boy, just home from school, with a yellow flower he’d made and another he’d picked. He was grinning.
“I know you’re working,” he said. “But this is for you.”
He kissed me and wrapped his arms around me in a tight hug, and then he was gone.
For six years I have watched this boy grow into his name. Asa. Healer.
For six years he has been healing holes in our home.
///
We didn’t even know if it was the right time to try for another baby.
Four months before, I had lost my grandmother, and I was still reeling from her death, weeping every time someone mentioned the name grandma, even though she was called Memaw.
And, at the heart of it, I was afraid I could not love another child as deeply as I loved the first.
Most mothers of one child worry about this, because, until it happens, we cannot imagine how a heart can expand its body borders so it’s wide enough to hold multiple children.
But then I took that pregnancy test, and it said no, and I cried, afraid we wouldn’t be able to have another baby because so many friends couldn’t.
That when I knew just how desperately I wanted another.
Two weeks later I took another pregnancy test, convinced the first one was wrong because I could hardly climb out of bed in the morning and I fell asleep while my 18-month-old was eating his lunch even though the choking fear was right up there with the drowning fear and the getting-hit-by-a-car fear.
This time the test said yes and I smiled a little, knowing already who he would be.
He would be called Asa. Healer. Zane. Everything that is good and beautiful.
Already, just a few weeks in, this baby was healing my heart, glowing new life in the space my Memaw had taken with her.
I knew she would want me to be happy, even in grief. And so I let myself be, waiting to meet another little piece of perfection that might carry her generosity or her love-looks or that infectious laugh.
///
He doesn’t even know all the way she has healed.
In our home, this second boy is the one who comes home from school and tells each one of his stays-at-home brothers how much he missed them while he was away. He is the one who will catch me unaware when I am lost in thought, washing the dishes that never seem to ever be done, and tell me, “You’re doing such a great job doing those dishes, Mama,” and make me actually want to do them.
He is the one who will open doors for his brothers and turn on light switches for the ones too short to reach them and comfort his baby brother when he’s crying.
He has more friends than I can keep up with, and he’s the example his teacher uses for a helpful spirit and a kind heart, and he’s more often than not an objective mediator between his fist-fighting brothers.
When I asked him today what he’s been put on this earth to do, his answer was simple and lovely, an honest picture of who he is at heart.
“To help people,” he said.
Yes. Of course. He has been living into that purpose since he was born.
///
He slid into the world after six hours of labor and three good pushes. He was the easiest labor of all.
When they put him in my arms, though, I thought they’d made a mistake. This isn’t my baby, I thought. He doesn’t look anything like the other one.
That mama bond with the first was instantaneous and deep, and I realized later it was because looking at him was like looking into a time-machine mirror of me as a baby.
But this second one, he had blue eyes that would stay blue and the full lips of his daddy and no hair and red splotches all over his body from a labor quick and jarring.
I worried that I would not be able to love him after all.
But I shouldn’t have worried. My love bloomed and uncurled over those days and weeks and months that followed his birthing day.
It was easy to love him. He smiled before any other the others, and he let me hold him as much as I wanted, and there was something in those eyes that could give such courage to an overwhelmed-mama heart.
When his older brother threw a fit because he was tired of sharing Mama’s attention, my baby waited calmly to be fed, like it was really no big deal.
When my belly started growing with baby number 3 five months after he was born, he just watched in awe and excitement that there would be another baby.
When his mama could not play blocks with him because she had to feed the new baby, even though he was still a baby, he did not fuss or throw blocks in anger like his older brother would have done in his place. He just came to sit by me, kissing his brother’s forehead and waiting for the time when Mama would be free to play.
He is the easiest boy I’ve ever had.
///
There is a danger in this easy.
Sometimes we forget that he has needs, too, because he is kind and calm and flexible and unworried and sweet, a personality that often gets lost in all our crazy.
Sometimes we forget that he has his own plans, because he is so good at following everyone else’s.
Sometimes we forget that he should not always be expected to act like who he is.
We’ve tried to remind him of this every now and then, because the danger in going with the flow and doing what you’re told all the time and always behaving in the way that’s expected is that you never get to try out rebellion.
Rebellion can be good for us, when used well. It can teach us that we are loved not just for our abilities and our behaviors but for just being us. It can teach us that we are accepted for who we are and not who others expect us to be. It can teach us that we have room to make mistakes, too.
Encouraging rebellion in this precious boy has taken intention and hard work, because he’s the kid who’s happy to stand in front of his whole school and accept that Star award for exemplary behavior and obedience.
But this year I have watched him grow from a boy who had to make sure he was doing everything perfectly right before he tried anything new to a boy who just leaps into the unknown. I have watched him decide for himself that his art is good. I have watched him test limits and slide into a new understanding of what it means to grow up and make his own decisions.
How beautiful it’s been.
And through it all he has remained a healer. Everything that is good and beautiful.
Happy birthday, sweet Asa.
I am so glad you are mine.
by Rachel Toalson | On My Shelf
On my shelf this week:
Get a Literary Agent: Secure Representation for Your Work, by Chuck Sambuchino
Wolves of the Beyond#2, Shadow Wolf, by Kathryn Lasky
Scary Close, by Donald Miller
This week I’m reading a book about securing an agent (highly recommended—I thought I knew all there was to know about literary agents and pitches and such, but I have learned SO MUCH. It’s chapter on query letters is worth the investment alone.), a fantasy book with my 8-year-old (it has beautiful language) and a book on vulnerability and how to have intimate relationships (also highly recommended. Donald Miller has always been one of my favorites, and I was so glad to know he’d finally written another book!).
Best quotes so far:
“If you think your book has a problem, it does—and any book with a problem is not ready.”
Chuck Sambuchino
“An agent’s job is to sell your work and guide your career—neither of which includes editing. It’s your job to make your work as close to spotless as you can before submitting.”
Chuck Sambuchino
“To have an intimate relationship, you have to show people who you really are.”
Donald Miller
“The problem is this: those of us who are never satisfied with our accomplishments secretly believe nobody will love us unless we’re perfect.”
Donald Miller
“Having integrity is about being the same person on the inside that we are on the outside, and if we don’t have integrity, life becomes exhausting.”
Donald Miller
“When two people are entirely and completely separate they are finally compatible to be one. Nobody’s self-worth lives inside of another person. Intimacy means we are independently together.”
Donald Miller
Read any of these? Tell us what you thought.
by Rachel Toalson | Stuff Crash Test Kids say
Impossible wishes
Hosea (4): “I love Ellie so much. I wish I was a dog so I could marry her.”
Another sex talk gone wrong.
Jadon (8): “Mama, are we going to ever have another baby?”
Mama: “No, Mama and Daddy are done.”
Boys: “Awwwwwww!”
Jadon: “How do you stop having babies?”
Mama: “Well, there’s this window of time where a woman releases and egg, and we can prevent that egg from getting fertilized using some different methods.”
Jadon: “So you just have to stay away from men?”
Mama: “Well, I have to stay away from Daddy. Sort of.”
Jadon: “Oh.” (Looks like he might? understand.) “So when a man fertilizes an egg that means the egg turns into a boy?”
In our case, yes, that’s exactly what happens.
Way to be specific
Zadok: “Mama, he hurt my hair.”
Mama: “He hurt your head?”
Zadok: “No, he hurt my hair.”
I didn’t realize hair could feel.
Funny words from a 4-year-old
Mama: “Is that what you want to do?”
Hosea: “Yes. It is. Indeed.”
by Rachel Toalson | Fiction in Forty
He knew where all the women sat. He knew which stop led them home. He knew what they ate for dinner, who they called, when they fell asleep. They were predictable.
He would take the one with high-heeled boots first.
Ongoing challenge: Find (or take) a picture. Write exactly 40 words about it. Post.
(Great practice for brevity.)
by | Uncategorized
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
This week my husband and I spent three days at a creative conference.
Mostly it was designers and illustrators, no writers at all, but still it was amazing to be in a place with so many other creative people and admire their work from the sidelines.
And then.
On the last day, a friend of mine spoke about building a platform from a business perspective. It was helpful even for me, even though I come from a completely different creative pursuit, and I knew it would be especially helpful to all the other hand-lettering artists who are trying to do what he has already successfully done: get their art recognized and appreciated.
Right after his talk, someone tweeted something disrespectful and rude and, frankly, immature.
Someone who was there.
Someone who was one of us.
And, see, I just felt so angry. I felt angry for my friend and for hand-lettering artists and for all of us.
And then I felt sad.
I felt sad that we can feel so threatened by someone else’s success that we think it says something about us. That we feel the need to discount another artist. That we let hate slide in to our hearts.
I felt sad that we don’t know how to share our space well.
I felt sad that we seem to have so much trouble finding a way to cheer one another on in our similar pursuits.
I am no exception. I have never ridiculed publicly, but I have felt threatened and ruffled and discounted and territorial and afraid.
This needs to change.
Our inability to share the art world and support other artists and help these talented people do what they do really just boils down to fear.
We are afraid that if a writer is successful with their writing, there will not be room for us. We are afraid that if this artist “makes it” with that hand-lettering style that looks so much like ours, there will not be any work for us. We are afraid of that husband/wife musical duo gaining 1 million followers on their YouTube channel because we think it means we will never see an audience gather around us.
Saturation of the market is a lie.
Saturation of the market says we live under the laws of scarcity.
It says:
1. There is not enough to go around, so we must be the best.
2. If someone else is more “successful” in their art than we are, we must not be the best.
3. We must protect ourselves by proving those others artists are not the best.
Best and better and all those other comparison words have no place in the creative world, unless we’re talking of our own progression of art. When we are comparing our work to another’s, we are an island of alone, and artists cannot survive and keep creating art on an island of alone.
Because, at the heart of it all, we are people. People need relationships. People need community.
Comparing kills relationships. Championing restores them.
So there are some things I want us to remember.
1. There is enough room for all of us.
2. The way our art expresses itself through us is not the same way art expresses itself through that other person (unless we’re intentionally trying to copy them).
3. We belong to each other.
The last one is the most important.
We are an artist community. Creating beauty for a world that may or may not appreciate it is an incredibly lonely pursuit, and we need to be cheering each other along the way.
We need to admire each other and we need to be admired, but we will do neither if we’re only interested in discounting those by whom we feel threatened.
We need to be giving to each other, not taking away.
Giving instruction. Giving away our secrets. Giving away the strategies that have worked for us. Giving support. Giving encouragement. Giving lessons we’ve learned so others don’t waste their time making the same mistake that cost us a year.
It feels scary to give when this is our livelihood, but relationships are ALWAYS better than existing alone.
So let’s take care with each other’s hearts. Let’s respect one another for who we are.
Let’s turn our lonely art into community art.
Challenge: Introduce your followers to another artist whose works you admire or to someone by whom you feel threatened. Oftentimes feeling threatened by another’s work only means we are operating under the lies of scarcity. Root out those lies and share another’s art. Encourage them. Champion them.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
This week my husband and I attended a creative conference in Georgia. The baby was too young to stay with family or friends, so we took him with us.
Every time I had to feed him, I hid out in the bathroom. I made his bottle while hunched in a bathroom stall so I didn’t have to share my shame.
You see, I don’t breastfeed my baby.
I didn’t breastfeed any of them.
It’s not because I don’t want to. God knows I tried every time. I did everything those lactation consultants told me to try with the first one, who ended up in the emergency room two days after we brought him home because he was dehydrated.
Sometimes I wonder if his first few days, the nursing that wasn’t really nursing because there wasn’t any milk, is why he struggles with anxiety today. Did it change something in his brain, that dehydration? Did it make him feel insecure when he couldn’t get enough food? Did it harm him in ways we couldn’t even see at the time?
This kind of thinking can drive a mama crazy.
The truth is, I am one of a minority of women who just can’t produce enough milk for their babies.
I knew it would happen. I waited for all the familiar signs, and they came around the same time they had for all the others, about three weeks in. I thought I’d taken the pressure off this time, but no. I didn’t. It felt like failure all over again.
That guilt comes creeping in slowly, when another mother asks me how breastfeeding is going and I have to explain why I can’t and wonder if she believes me. When I read a new study that finds yet another benefit of breast over bottle. When I am in the presence of other people who may or may not care how I feed my baby.
The publicity around breastfeeding has been great and wonderful and so very helpful for most mothers.
It has also been hard for women like me. Mom guilt likes to hide in statistics. It likes to use facts. It likes to twist something beautiful into something dark and ugly.
We moms aren’t always the kindest to ourselves, and that mom guilt can come out swinging, and it’s vicious and unrelenting and so very cruel.
Shame can lock us in a bathroom stall so we can try to hide our I-don’t-breastfeed secret. It can close us in a house so we can try to hide our I-don’t-think-I-like-my-children secret. It can steal the courage to venture out to a park or a grocery store or a restaurant so we can try to hide our I-yell-at-my-children secret.
This mom guilt lobs its lies at all the weak places.
You should have handled that more calmly.
You should have spent more time with them.
You should have let them sleep with you.
You should have bought them that toy.
You should have hugged them good night.
You should have built that LEGO house with him.
You should have colored that picture with him when he asked.
You should have cooked a healthy meal instead of ordering in pizza.
You should have planned a better birthday party.
You should have done more.
You should have tried harder.
You should have been better.
Where does it end?
It ends at a mom saying enough is enough.
It ends at moms sharing their secrets. It ends at admitting our fears—that we are afraid our baby won’t be as smart because we can’t breastfeed or we’re afraid we don’t really love that difficult one or we’re afraid no one else has ever dealt with this or felt this way before.
We will never crawl out from beneath the weight of mom guilt if we don’t bare ourselves.
Shame cannot get a foothold in the light. Only in the dark.
I don’t want to hide in a bathroom stall to make my baby’s bottle anymore just because I’m ashamed of my inability to produce milk. I don’t want to pretend that I always love my children and exact perfect patience in the discipline areas and keep a level head at all times. I don’t want to wonder if I could have done more or tried harder or been a better mom to my children.
Enough is enough.
We will never know enough or do enough or be enough, at least not according to those ridiculous expectations we put on ourselves.
We must choose to believe that we are already enough. We must choose to get real. We must choose to find other mothers who are ready to get real, not the ones who pretend they’re perfect.
There is no perfect. There is only good enough.
The thing about mom guilt is that it’s only true when we are alone. It’s only true if we are hiding. It’s only true if we refuse to acknowledge that we will never, ever be perfect.
Sometimes I yell at my children, because I’m just SO ANGRY at them for doing what they’re not supposed to do.
Sometimes I spend too much time on Twitter because their stories have so many words and I checked out five minutes ago.
Sometimes I wonder if I was out of my mind to have so many.
Now you know some of my secrets. What are some of yours?
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Yesterday I ran into the mom of an old friend from high school, and the whole time we were talking I was thinking, Oh, God, I don’t have any makeup on.
Last week I almost didn’t come down to say hi to my husband’s aunt and uncle, visiting from California, because I didn’t have makeup on.
I have used the excuse of no makeup to not go on a date with my husband, to stay home from church, to hide in the back of an elementary school cafeteria while my boy is singing Christmas songs.
I have never taken family pictures without makeup.
We women learn, at a very young age, that we are born with a deep-down flaw that disqualifies us from claiming the title “Beautiful.” A flaw we must hide. A flaw we must fix.
Fortunately, we can buy the fix—makeup or clothes or push-up bras or stomach-flattening undershirts or jewelry or this one pair of shoes or that brand of shampoo or a specific seven-blade razor or (fill in the blank).
The thing is, though, that flaw is an illusion. It’s simply not true. We were born with no flaw or lack or missing beauty piece.
We were ALL born beautiful.
I’m tired of believing the lie that I cannot be beautiful without mascara and eyeliner or that moisturizing foundation or the light dusting of powder and blush. I’m tired of letting a ridiculous definition of beauty define who I am or should be as a woman.
So here is my bare face. It hasn’t been washed since last night, because I didn’t have time to shower today. I also didn’t comb my hair before I pulled it back into the ponytail. And I need to go brush my teeth.
The point of this bare-faced picture?
Screw society’s definition of beauty. I’m going to make my own.
