Reflections...

Purple Child turns one tomorrow. Today, however, is a Thursday, and she was decidedly born on a Thursday, one week before Thanksgiving, so I can't help but feel like today is an anniversary of sorts, even though it's not her birthday.

I'll post her birth story tomorrow (publicly! omg!). Some impressions and reflections though...

And if I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying free resonated with me before the birth. It would become a mantra after the birth.

Thursday nights. Girl Scout nights. I was having contractions, avoiding seeing too many people anyway. My mom took EG to the meeting. I was the leader. I had planned meetings for the rest of the year with my co-leaders. My 02s.

(Plans they threw out.)

My mom went to get EG early. Somehow, she had known. Feverishly working on her project, "in case she had to leave early."

(That was the first time they were rude to EG. They hadn't dared before that night, because I was usually there.)

The space shuttle was supposed to be visible. I posted online about Al Gore coming to my city. I was riding the post-election euphoria still. I had thought she was waiting just for the election, but she waited a little longer than that.

(It was the beginning of the end for me, but they had already castigated me and turned me out. I just didn't know it yet. I tried, I tried so hard, for the girls.)

And if I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying free

Someone told me that Purple Child would bring me clarity and continue to teach me things. She did. She let me hang on to that mantra. As I had shut out the world on a chilly November night and brought her into the world, I could shut out the people that would hamper me from flying.

I tried to insert myself, to protect people, and they tried so hard to bring me down. I had to walk away, in the end, five months later. I had to be free. But I knew they couldn't bring me down. It's all so tied up in PC's birth, the process she initiated, the things I learned.

It hurt. A lot.

It feels good to be free.