About

When I was a kid, boys would tell the girls that we were pigs and we would respond by saying, “yes, pretty, intelligent girls.” I am all grown up now and I am no longer a pig. I have evolved. I am a bitch-bold, intelligent, tough (or tender), confident (creative, compassionate), and harried. I have 3 kids but I am the mother of 6: 2 teenagers, a toddler, a husband and 2 dogs. I have a mystery pain condition that I have been battling for 2 years and that is a total bitch. I wasn’t always a bitch and until right now, I have never written a blog, or, for that matter, even read one. We all have a story, an ever evolving set of experiences, circumstances and relationships that shape and define us. Somedays, we all feel like bitches or at least witches (although that is a post for another time.) We all also have or have had pain, physical or emotional or both. Here is my story and pain is a big part of it. Maybe you have kids, or a husband, or pain, or dogs or a job or maybe you have none of these things. Maybe you will relate to some of what I have to say, maybe some of it will strike you as funny or sad or interesting or not. Maybe it will touch you in some way.

There are some truths about me that can not be ignored. I am a liberal-unabashed, unapologetic-a bleeding-heart liberal born to bleeding-heart liberals and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I marched with my parents against the war in Vietnam and I wore my POW bracelet proudly. I worked hard to get our president elected because I could not sit idly by and let my children’s future be subjected to more damage than already caused during the last eight years. So to review, I am a liberal. I am open minded and tolerant of people with opposing view points as long as they are not bible thumping, fear mongering war hawks who tell us government should be smaller, but also want to tell us what to do with our bodies, who shred the Constitution, who would send my children to fight an ill conceived, immoral and disastrous war and who oppose gay marriage because they somehow think it will threaten their own. Now that I have made myself clear on my political views, I will also come clean regarding the other truth about me. I am a die hard, dyed-in-the-wool lifetime citizen of Red Sox Nation. I love the Sox, cried many times for them (they represented my first experience with true pain) and I was forever changed during a magical run of nights in October 2004. I kept the faith, believed in magic and I learned on one very special night that season, that the only way to get through life is by keeping the faith and believing in something.

Oh, and one more thing. I often look around and realize that I have everything I want, but I am not always or often happy or even content. A wise man recently told me something that I have been pondering a lot, meditating on, if you will. He told me, “it’s not about having what you want, it’s about wanting what you have.” Hmmm…

So, to recap, keep the faith (check), believe in something (check), and want what you have (o.k., it’s on my to-do list).

I’m a list maker. I love making lists. I just made a list of things I can blog about. This might be fun, and maybe cathartic. Here’s something ironic. I’m writing this as I lay in bed on a heating pad waiting for my first daily dose of pain medicine to kick in. My laptop broke, and my pain won’t let me sit at my desk just yet, so I am writing my very first blog on a pad of paper with a pen.

I will write about my life, my pain, my experiences and my observations. I will write about my kids, but only as it pertains to my experience and I will not publish anything they don’t want me to. I will respect their privacy so anything you read about them will be with their permission (except the 3 year old.) I will use my best discretion with her because, quite frankly, she will give me a lot of material and she is damn funny.

Soon, I will write about my pain, how I came to have it, what I do about it and how I live with it, what I intend to do to boot it from my life, how it kicks my ass, screws with my head and makes it really hard to be the mother I want to be. I will also write about the challenges navigating the world of medicine, eastern and western, doctors, quacks, hacks, and insurance compainies (spelling accidental, but it seems to work). I will write about things that happened recently or many moons ago.

I will write about my observations of the world. I already have so many things I want to write about and patience has never been one of my strengths, but it is a virtue, so I will be patient and write a little each time. And I hope that you will be interested and left each day wanting to come back for more.

I will also write about how it is to raise 2 teenagers and a toddler. Life is busy in our house. As previously mentioned, we have 2 dogs, but have been known to, on occasion, have a baby squirrel, baby possums and a rat named Elvis who comes and goes. But for now, just an introduction. I am Lesly. Welcome to my hood. Mr. Rogers had one. This is mine. 

nufced