"We should write a book," Mark said. "We can't be the only people who have struggled through all this and I think we have a lot we could offer to other people in sharing our journey."  This was a few years ago, back before I started this little blogging venture, and we were driving home from meeting with an educational advocate who was helping us navigate the tricky world of services for special needs children.

That idea of Mark's — "we should share all this" — stuck with me and was one of the reasons I started this blog: to share those experiences with a larger audience.  Now I share those experiences, but to feel safe, I have to take on a secret identity, like a super hero.  The secret identity lets me share, but it also prevents me from sharing.

I run into situations regularly (I ran into one just today, in fact) in which it would help someone for real life me to share a little bit of blog me with the rest of the world.  Because I've created a place where I feel safe sharing, I've also created this reservoir of writing and online resources and contacts to draw on, but I can't share that with the rest of my life or direct people in my life here for help for fear of outing me.

I was feeling bad today that MPJ was holding me back from sharing all that I should be grateful MPJ has allowed me to have.  I saw MPJ as the rock and the hard place between which I've been trapped, when I'm seeing now that what really traps me is a combination of my own lack of trust or fear of judgment and my drive to personally be the one who helps people, rather than trusting that that help will come.

Whew!  I tell you what, this writing stuff helps.  Go figure.

An introvert to start with, I'd gradually become more isolated since my son was born, and at the time (several years ago) I wasn't sure I knew how to talk to real live people anymore. At least not the kind of real live people I imagined most people to be: the kind who didn't frequent either IEP or 12 Step meetings, let alone both, and who certainly didn't blog about it or anything else for that matter. Nearly all of the things I spent my days working on and thinking about were not fodder for casual conversation: recovery work, spirituality, my pseudonymous blog or even the way my son's special needs fit into our family. But I worried: who was I without those parts of myself? In leaving them out entirely, was I presenting a falsely perfect picture to the world, just as I had been prone to do in the past? Was I keeping secrets and hiding parts of myself because I was too ashamed to share, too afraid to destroy an image I'd created of myself?

It's several years later, but I still struggle at times both with oversharing and with engaging in a vast personal coverup. Learning to strike the right balance has been a part of my recovery. I look at my pseudonymous blog, where I share a picture of what it's like to live in my family, and at the family blog I keep under my real name, where I share a slightly different picture of what it's like to live in my family. Both are true. But each only tells part of the story. And I've learned that that's okay. It wouldn't be wise or healthy to share the identifying details of my day-to-day life with everyone here in my life as MPJ, nor would it be wise or healthy for everyone in my real life to know about my husband's sex addiction or my recovery work. The people closest to me are the ones who have access to both halves, like a teenage girl's Best Friend necklace, the kind where each person keeps half the charm and the two only form a whole together when brought together. And those people, the people who have access to all of me, are the ones I truly trust: both to listen to my story and to help me understand it.

In the end, my worries about that high school reunion were (like most worries) overblown and ill founded. Most of the conversations I had that night didn't last long enough for me to say more than where I lived, that I was married and how many kids I had. There were simply too many people and too little time to worry about slipping into any kind of conversation, let alone one about the big issues. The closest things came to a fuller picture was when I told one former classmate, in response to his question about what I was doing now, that I was a stay—at—home mom.  "That's it?" he said, "You were the smart kid and now no big career, you're just home with your kids?" And I got to smile to myself as I thought, "If you only knew!"

I went to a great 12 Step meeting this week. A lovely group of women, some of whom I'd never met, sat together and shared the kind of things we usually share as partners of sex addicts. We share about things like incest, physically and verbally abusive relationships, using sexual relationships to escape from or buffer ourselves against painful realities, using food and alcohol to help dull emotional pain, and contracting sexually transmitted diseases from our partners.

We share about how it feels to have your life fall apart and to realize you never had that life in the first place. We share about our sex lives. We share about how we've wanted to feel beautiful and to feel loved and how we've looked to other people to make us feel that way because we didn't feel quite beautiful or lovable as we were. We share the secrets that we'd hidden from others for years, the secrets we'd hidden from ourselves. We share the kinds of incredibly intimate details most people never share with anyone, and we share them with total strangers or with people whose last names we didn't even know.

When my meeting ended, we stood around chatting. We talked about some of the same thing, but we also shared little details like how far from the meeting we lived and how we'd found it. We talked about the kinds of work we did during the day and whether or not we had kids and how old they are.

It struck me that we did things in a way that was nearly the complete opposite of the way I'm used to getting to know people, the way I get to know other moms at the park or new neighbors or new coworkers on the job. Sure, we start off with "hi, my name is..." in meetings as well as out, but inside that church meeting room, we followed that right up, not with "I'm a teacher" or "I live up the street" or "I just started in accounting" or "I have three kids," but with our deepest vulnerabilities and fears and shame, the kinds of things we're supposed to keep locked safely away from the world. We cut past the details that define us, but don't say who we really are, and we filled those parts of the picture in later.

And I realized that that's one of the things I find most refreshing about situations like 12 Step meetings; I can take down the defenses I carry around to protect most of my vulnerabilities, because they are out there and understood already. When I walk into a meeting. I'm not Austen and Janie's mother or a writer or a stay-at-home mom. I'm me. Imperfect, improving me. And that feels good.

Summers are hard. Enjoyable, yes, but also draining. My kids like routine and predictability, and frankly, so do I. In the summer, there can be routines, but they're different from the rest of the year, and they change more frequently. The whole world seems a little topsy-turvy.

I feel like it's been a while since I've made my plain old voice heard here. Just me. I don't think that's all summer, although some of it is. I think some of it is not bringing my beginner's mind (as they say in Zen) to my blogging. I've learned what to expect from blogging, what's safe to share and what's not.  I've learned that A Room of Mama's Own is not entirely my own, and I've narrowed the window in accordingly, to protect myself and especially to protect others.  I have a blog voice now that's feeling distinct from my everyday voice.  I won't say that's a bad thing (or a good one); it just is.

Anyway, I just stopped by to say to myself (as if you all aren't listening in) that I miss talking to me and that I am here.

I understand, very well, the fear and misunderstanding that surrounds addiction, and sex addiction in particular (why do you think I blog under a pseudonym?), but this kind of sensationalist coverage of recovery meetings is the worst way I can think of to address those fears and concerns. It would be like busting into a closed AA meeting to try to talk about drunk driving. After all, there really are (insert ominous drum roll) cars outside those meetings and (insert slow motion negative image) some folks convicted of drunk driving inside them, some of whom (insert scary music) slip in their recovery and show up drunk. Yep, folks. It's true.

As my husband and I always say, it's fine to worry about the sex addicts in the meetings. They're addicts. They've screwed up and done hurtful things to themselves and others. Sometimes (but not always) they've done illegal things, and in some small minority of those cases the things they did posed a danger to others. Their behavior is compulsive, and there's no cure, so they may well act out again. Of course, it's wise and healthy to maintain one's safety by exercising good boundaries. It's wise to ask questions and learn (although certainly not by busting into a 12 Step meeting and outing everyone). But if viewers really wanted something scary to worry about, they'd worry about the folks who aren't in those meetings and who aren't in recovery. Because active addiction, with no glimmer of recovery, is what's really scary.

My daughter, Janie, found the body. Our pet* had been missing for a while, so at first she shouted to me excitedly. She found him! But when I ran to her, it was clear that he was already gone. She looked from his still body up at me and asked, tentatively, "Is he very hurt, Mama?" There was a pause, where I knew that this was the moment I was supposed to do that magical mama thing. I was supposed to kiss the boo boo, mend the tear, put the pieces back together, paste the petals back in place. I was supposed to fix it. I was supposed to make it better. But I had to admit, with tears in my eyes, that he was more than hurt, he was dead. And I couldn't fix that.

Janie's grief was overwhelming and instantaneous. She sobbed until she couldn't breathe and cried until her red eyes were swollen nearly shut. I had to carry her in to the living room and place her on the sofa where she clung to me and wept. Her brother Austen hovered nearby. "I'm sad," he said, in a simple statement of facts, "but I'm not crying." After a while, Janie wanted to sit with the body, so I wrapped it in a towel and we sat together, crying, as we watched its stillness.

I told the children we would need to bury it; the life was gone and the body had to return to the earth now. While Austen accepted and even seconded this idea, Janie was, at first, vehemently against putting the body in the ground. But as she watched it, not moving, she asked what would happen to the body. I told her it would slowly decay and transform, like the dead bird we saw wasting away earlier this spring, shrinking and dissolving to just feathers and bones. If we put it into the earth, it would transform into rich soil and nourish plants. She liked the idea of new life in a plant, so she and I prepared a plant and something to contain the body. She drew pictures of herself, crying, to lay in the grave and a note with hearts and our pet's name to say goodbye. Austen said he would like to do something too. So, he took a Sharpie marker and on the towel I had wrapped the body in he wrote, in block letters, the label: "DEAD ANIMAL." Mark dug the grave and we each threw a handful of dirt on the body before placing the new plant on top.

Over the intervening weeks, each child has continued to process the loss. Janie focused first on death: pointing out dead grass, dead leaves, dead bugs wherever she went and telling me they were dead like her pet. However, I've noticed a gradual shift to thoughts of rebirth. At first, she expressed hopes and wishes for the body and spirit of her lost animal, but more recently she has spent a lot of time tending the plant that sits over the grave, drawing pictures of it, talking about it. Two weeks after the burial, she talks very little about the pet itself, although the loss is still clearly on her mind.

Austen, on the other hand, talks about the lost pet each day. He continues to express, always very matter-of-factly, that he feels sadness and misses the lost animal, even though he continues to appear (to the world at large) not to show it. He talks about how things might be if his pet were still alive: what it might be doing and feeling and thinking at any given moment. And he seems very concerned (in a way that many would find totally un-autistic of him) about how the animal parents and siblings of our pet might react to its loss. He wonders if its mother would be angry or sad to know that it was dead, and he hopes she doesn't find out, so that she won't know the pain. He wonders if its siblings would miss it and feel sad that it's gone.

As for me, I cried writing this post, so I know I'm still grieving the loss — and feeling my children's grief as well as my own.

Well, I'm back from my first ever week off! I'd like to thank my guest posters: Tanya, SavedAspie, The Discovering Alcoholic, Jack's Mom, Kat and Anonymous Reader. They all did a fabulous job, and reading all the wonderful comments pointed out to me what a great community has grown up around this blog. (And I was excited to see that it looks like some new friendships were formed too.)

While I was away from the blog, my family (and I'm going to be a tease here) had some wonderful new experiences. However, one of the drawbacks of having a blog in which I'm guarding my anonymity (or at least making an effort to) is that I have to pick which forum -- this blog or real life -- I'm going to use to share my stories. In this case, my real life family and friends heard the immediate details, so I will hold off here for now, only to sneak it in years (will I be blogging years from now?) later when everyone in my real life has forgotten.

What I can say is, as with every vacation: it's good to be back, it's sad to be back and now I need a vacation from my vacation!

And thank you once again to my guest posters and to all of you who left them such wonderful and supportive comments. You all are the best!

My husband is weird.
He loves my blog but hasn't
actually read it.

I do summarize.
Sometimes I read posts to him.
I can not not share.

"Does HE blog/journal?"
No, he finds blogs triggering.
He has a journal.

Last, "Do you look like
the woman in the header?
Nope, I don't think so.

Wait. What's that holding us up? Could it be our very own All That Is Dazlious magnet from Marla Baltes? It is indeed! If you don't know Marla, she blogs at All That Is Dazlious, where she shares her photography and writes about autism and her beautiful and vibrant daughter Maizie.

I left some Happy Thanksgiving wishes way back on, um, Thanksgiving and Maizie herself picked my name from among the commenters out as one of the magnet winners. I felt a little queasy when I told her how to contact me to send the magnet, as I always do when I let someone a little closer to my real life self, but it was such fun to get the magnet and see Marla's real life handwriting.

I love my new magnet!  Thanks, Marla and Maizie!

I was looking outside today and thinking of writing about my surroundings, but then realized (with a bit of a pang) that it's not something I write about here. I describe my internal life in great detail, but I take some pains not to describe my external landscape. Sometimes I am vague. Sometimes I am purposefully misleading. Always I am cautious about my anonymity.

My friend Ellie tells me she can tell by the way someone writes whether or not that person is conventionally attractive. She says people who grow up knowing that society likes the way they look have a different voice than people who don't. They don't need to describe themselves. I thought of that as I wondered if my setting describes itself, if the landscape around me infuses itself into my writing even though I try not to describe it directly.

Am I perched in a skyscraper listening to cars whiz past my window? Am I nestled in a cabin with the world hushed outside under a blanket of December snow? Am I peering out at the dark shadow of a cactus against the night sky or straining to see anything at all in an inky, rustling sea of withered prairie grass? Am I in a humid river valley or high in the mountains where that river is born? City, country or suburb? Wet, dry, cold, warm, temperate or extreme? North, south, east or west? And does it matter?

Does the story change if I walk Janie to school or a bus stop past graffiti tagged buildings or down a dirt road past a cow? Does it matter if Austen's school has 20 students or 200 or 2000?  Is my husband different if he's a small town businessman or a big city executive?  Would I be thinking differently if I were writing this snuggled under a fleece blanket in front of a fire or listening to a sea breeze fan palm trees?

Do our outsides affect our insides so that there's no escaping them? Do we become where we are? (And is anyone else thinking of Marta's musings on writing now?)