"piece by piece..."

"Piece by piece
I fell far from the tree
I will never leave her
like you left me

And she will never have
to wonder her worth
Because unlike you
I'm going to put her first..."

I've been sitting here in a quiet daze having heard Stephanie Rice performing Kelly Clarkson's "Piece by Piece," during her blind audition for The Voice. A friend sent me this link -- I don't have to hear her story, to know it. It pours, like tears, from her voice. I know the taste of those tears.

The link shared, includes the entire audition. Stephanie's performance is at the very beginning, and ends at about 2 minutes in. I was so moved by it. And please don't miss Kelly Clarkson's own emotional performance of "Piece by Piece." I hope you will give both versions a listen.

That said, I'd like to go back to the song itself. It is one of the most honest songs I have ever heard. It hit a nerve so deep, that I discovered I was weeping before a tear had even fallen.

It is a song that lifts the veil on what many girls, who became moms to their own little girls, have lived. Me included.

We compensate. And sometimes, we over-compensate. We look at the lives of our daughters, through the lens of our own longing for love, support, encouragement, and affection. We marry men who will be the fathers "who will not leave."  The kind of father who will put a child's dreams, and needs, above his own.

When we find this kind of love and support for our children, we feel the deep wounds inside of ourselves begin to open, drain, and heal. The self-protective shell we have encased our own dreams in, begins to shatter, allowing new light to warm the dark and hidden places. We start to heal from the inside out. And because we know we have given our daughters what we needed most, we feel safe. We begin to breathe in a new way. And with this softer breath, there is peace. We have the space to heal.

I see this deep desire -- to give our children this kind of love and support -- in the lives of so many of the women in my life. I see it in myself.

I was thrice-abandoned as a child. Once, when he didn't come looking, once through neglect, and once by desertion. The details and circumstances are not important. What is important, is to know is that it never hardened my heart. I never stopped wanting to be the mother of daughters. I never stopped wanting to give those daughters the kind of love and support -- for their innocence, dreams, and successes -- that I never knew as a child.

Like so many of my friends, I never lost hope that someday my daughters would know the love and devotion of a good father. A man who would model kindness, unselfishness, respect, and integrity. A father who would not let them slip away. A father who would be present and attentive. A father who would delight in their accomplishments -- even when it required the sacrifice of his own dreams.

My daughters and I have been blessed.  And I have been blessed to be surrounded by women who have raised daughters -- alone, or with partners -- who know they are loved, supported, believed in, and adored.  These are women of courage and dignity.

God has turned our mourning into dancing. Not all of us have married. Some of us have raised our daughters in a home with two moms. But we have made sure that our daughters know that nothing will ever deprive them of their right to be respected. They know that are worthy of being loved, supported, celebrated, and heard.

I am not really sure what the "message" of this post is. I only know that it couldn't sit in my heart by itself tonight. Thank you Stephanie Rice for your powerful, and deeply moving, performance. Thank you Kelly Clarkson for writing this most honest of songs. Thank you to each of my sisters and friends who have understood my need to support my daughters unconditionally, and have encouraged me when others have told me that I try too hard, or do too much.

For all of my friends who - as girls and young women - knew the love, attention, and support of a good father, I am so grateful for the example your relationship with your dad - that you held out to me. I see the look on my daughters' faces when they know that they -- and their dreams -- come first, and I know that every sacrifice has been worth it.

I am so grateful to be a mom. I am grateful for the example of true manhood I have witnessed in so many good men. I am deeply grateful for the models of true fatherhood that our daughters have experienced. In every way, I am just so grateful. Piece by piece, I have been restored.

Here is the chorus from Kelly Clarkson's beautiful "Piece by Piece:

"Piece by piece, he restored my faith
That a man can be kind and a father could, stay

Piece by piece I fell far from the tree
I will never leave her like you left me.

And she will never have to wonder her worth
Because unlike you
I’m going to put her first
and you know, He’ll never walk away,
He’ll never break her heart
He’ll take care of things, he’ll love her
Piece by piece, he restored my faith
That a man can be kind
and that a father would stay.

Piece by piece
Piece by piece..."  

Piece by piece we are building a new world view of what it means to be faithful -- not just to a person, but to a family. Piece by piece we are restoring trust, defining integrity. Piece by piece, family by family. I am grateful.


offered with Love,

Kate

"Are you out there somewhere..."

"Sometimes I think about you.
And I wonder if you're out there, 
somewhere,
thinking about me.

And would you even recognize
the woman that your little girl
has grown up to be..."

I fell in love with Kellie Pickler during her tenure on ABC's Dancing with the Stars. I'd never listened to her music.  But after watching her breath-taking performance -- with partner Derrick Hogue -- I couldn't help wanting to understand the woman behind the feelings she shared so nakedly.

When I finally came across her heart-breaking "I Wonder," it was almost too much to bear.

It reached deep inside of me, and touched a place I thought I'd long-since silenced, and buried alive. So much so that I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be the "me," that I thought she was singing about. Almost...

I am writing this post, not to resurrect sadness and pain, but to encourage others who may be feeling helpless and alone.

Here's my story:

I was four the year that my birthfather disappeared from my life. The details of how that happened -- and why -- are not pertinent to this post. When I turned eighteen I saw him for the first time in over 14 years.  We had a brief visit at a park. And afterwards, he evaporated. Then at 36, just after the birth of my first child, I found him again. And again, he chose to disappear after an emotionally draining reunion.

I grew up with a stepfather who provided for all eight of the children he shared with my mother. Six of us were his own biological children.  My sister and I were from our mother's first marriage. Nevertheless, resources were shared equally and I never knew hunger, homelessness, or grave illness. For this, I will always be grateful.

But I also grew up knowing that I was not his "real" daughter.  I knew that somewhere - out there - I had a father. I had fleeting memories of being held in his arms, pushed on a swing -- loved. I dreamed that if only he knew where I was, he would come find me and love me.

In the end - after our first awkward reunion - I would have to be the one to find him. And each time, he would tearfully tell me that he loved me.  He would say how much he wished he would have been there for my childhood -- to see me grow into the woman I'd become. He'd stir up girlhood hopes and sorrows and then disappear on a cloud of promises -- never to be heard from again -- until the next time.

A year ago my sister sent me an email. She'd discovered that our father had passed away 16 months earlier. I was devastated.  Feelings of devastation that I could have never anticipated.  All hopes of him caring about me, showing interest in my children, pride in my accomplishments -- were gone.

I grew up in an instant. I was no longer a little girl secretly dreaming that her own father would someday - finally - wake up, and discover that he missed her. I was a woman who'd worked very hard to be a good person in hopes that one day he would notice -- he never did.

For fifty years I'd secretly never given up hope.  Suddenly, I felt bereft. And it wasn't just about me and what I had missed out on. I was sad for him. I knew I wasn't "all that," but I had been a good girl, a hard-working student, a loyal daughter, and a good mom. He'd missed it all.

I didn't know what to do with those feelings. On the outside -- and in those first few layers of patted down emotions just below the surface -- I was fine. But deep inside I was a waif. I was a woman-child who'd never been cherished by her father, and now it was too late.  It was too much to bear.

Sorrow, anger, and confusion bounced off the walls of my heart and echoed through the empty chambers of all I'd lost. I could no longer push it down without experiencing unbearable pain. I knew I had to find a way to process it spiritually, or it would take me down.

Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures was my constant companion in the darkness. One night I revisited a long-loved statement:

"A mother’s affection
cannot be weaned from her child,
because the mother-love includes
purity and constancy,
both of which are immortal.
Therefore maternal affection
lives on
under whatever difficulties." 

I've often thought about how this statement empowers both mother and child. If a mother's affection cannot be weaned from her child, then a child's affection cannot be weaned from her mother. Eddy promises that this truth lives on under whatever difficulties -- immortally, eternally, forever. Lives on beyond the false limitations of death. Beyond whatever difficulties.

My right to love my father -- to want him to know his beautiful daughters, to feel part of a family, to know himself as a good father -- was something he couldn't take from me.  It was mine.  My affection for the office of father wasn't going to be defined by his behavior. My love for my own sweet, innocent daughterhood couldn't be undermined by neglect -- or apathy.

The blighted buddings of hope in me started to blossom again. My right to be a good daughter was as changeless as God's appointment of me to that office. I could pray for my father's heart. I could include him in a spiritual expectation of good, as Eddy counsels us to pray in the second line of her "Daily Prayer," which reads:

"And may Thy Word
enrich the affections of all mankind,
and govern them." 

My father's affections were under the immortal influence of God's Word. They were constantly evolving -- higher and higher -- from a boundless basis. Death could not interrupt his spiritual self-discovery.  Nothing could deprive him of all  the blessings that fatherhood promised -- not even death. And likewise, death could not undermine my childlike hope, innocence, trust.

This clear message of love from my divine Parent - for His perfect daughter - began to heal my heart and empower me.  Nothing could stop me from exercising the right to honor my own affections -- for my father, my stepfather, all fathers.  Not because of their deserving, but because of my own right to be true to myself.

I now know that there is never a lost opportunity to love.

shared with a daughter's affection,

Kate

"You're still you..."

"Time changes everything
One truth always stays the same
You're still you
After all
You're still you…"
- Josh Groban

My dad was a mystery to me.  A farm boy from a large immigrant Irish family of very humble means, his formal education was curtailed by the demands of agricultural seasons and crop schedules. By the time he was 30, he and mom had 6 children under the age of 10.  At 31 he was introduced to Christian Science and his desire to understand words he was reading about God, and the world around him, launched him on a personal quest for knowledge and wisdom. 

As the oldest child in my family, my dad and I were often (in those days as he took up his self-education where he had once left off) studying the same things.  Our reading levels advanced concurrently and I would often find him picking up my science or history textbooks when they were laying on the table during long homework sessions…and reading them.   His tools for self-instruction were as diverse as his interests.  I was neither surprised to see him with his nose in a volume of our World Book Encyclopedia (reading it through - page after page - like a novel) or a Nancy Drew mystery I had finished.

What always surprised me was his humility in letting us see him struggle with words that were new or foreign to him, and ask for help…or the dictionary…in order to self-solve the mysteries of language-usage or meaning.

When I was in high school I went through a very rough patch of self-doubt and loneliness.  I had always been a small child, girl, pre-teen, but with the onset of womanhood my body seemed to betray me.  All my new body parts seemed to appear over the course of one summer.  Unfortunately, it happened while I was away from all the kids I had only just met when we moved into the district just before the end of the previous school year.  In their eyes I went from being a skinny little kid to a young woman overnight…or at least over the summer. 

When I arrived back in school that September I was soft and round and I don't think there was an angular feature left on my once rather gangly body. Before I knew it rumors were swirling.  No one knew me well enough to deny the rumors as lies…in my defense, or to come to me and ask whether they were true…for themselves.

As a new kid I was a blank canvas for painting a titillating picture on…and my new rounder, softer body provided the paint for doing just that.  Of course, it all added up to a fantabulous story in which my parents must have moved our family away from wherever we had lived to this small farming community, because I was in the early stages of pregnancy.   Over the summer I must have had the baby, and I was still padded with post-baby fullness.  It didn't help that my mother had just given birth to twins (yes, numbers 7 and 8) and they didn't look anything alike.  One of them must have been mine…right?  Wrong!

When I finally became aware of what was being said, I was devastated.   I remember coming home after school that day and wanting to quit school and never go back.  I went to my bed and picked up the "autograph dog" I had sewn together from two panels of pale blue gingham printed with the front and back images of a floppy eared puppy and stuffed with poly-fill.  These were popular at my former school and everyone would bring them in to have their friends autograph.  I had made one for myself over the summer, but the only autographs I had on it were from my parents and my two sisters who were old enough o write in cursive.

I hugged it to my chest and tried to pray.  But nothing really helped.  At one point, I looked at my dog and there, written in my dad's pretty horrible handwriting, were the words "She walks in beauty and grace like the night - Dad."  Something about his writing of those words made me feel braver about everything.  I felt like I could walk with my head held high knowing that what was being said about me wasn't true.  I felt an inner elegance and dignity that looking in the mirror, and seeing the all too obvious reason for the rumors, didn't give me.

I went back to school the next day...and the next.  The rumor blew over with some help from my parents, and I ended up loving my school year and the friends I eventually made.  

The blue gingham dog moved through my young adulthood with me from room to apartment to house.  The ink from my parents' and sisters' autographs faded.  I never let another person sign that dog and if I close my eyes, still today, I can see that exact shade of turquoise-y blue gingham with those four autographs in faded black ball-point pen as if I were holding it in my hands. 

It was years before I discovered that my dad had quoted Lord Byron (adding the word grace) in his autograph.  When I did, it made me cry.  I never knew he had read, and loved, Byron well enough to quote him.  It was such a new and different view of my dad.  His addition of the word "grace" is still a gift.  He was not an emotionally expressive kind of guy...and we had our issues and differences, but to think that he chose such a word in thinking of me, and that he'd had the audacity to insert it into a quote by a famous poet makes me smile. He must have trusted a Voice that told him that his own inspiration and ideas were as valid and immutable as Byron's.  His use of the word "grace" still gives me courage when navigating through rough waters and facing down my own demons. 

I would like to think that no matter what mistakes we make, or misunderstandings we face…whatever rumors may swirl or fears may poke at soft places in our hearts where we feel vulnerable or fragile, we all have a Father who is constantly writing His message of Love on our hearts telling us that, in His eyes, no matter what, "You're still you…after all, you're still you."

with Love,
Kate