In-Between

I named this blog "Somewhere In-Between" over 10 years ago.  I've written in the past how appropriate this title is for my life.  It is amazing how I always seem to be in-between here and there and never really where I need or am meant to be.

Right now, I am fully in-between.  I am in-between a dream and an accomplished goal.  I am in-between young and old.  I am in-between fat and thin.  I am in-between novice and expert.  I am in-between great mother and good-enough mom.  I am in-between fully present and fully in my brain.  I am in-between a selfless giving person and a caring-for-self-only person.  I am in-between Singapore and the States.  And I am in-between a loving wife and a single woman.

I hate being in-between.  I have been here for most of my life, and I thought with patience I would eventually get to the other side.  Yet, I have come to realize that perhaps there is no other side.  We are always in-between one thing and another.  And it's the in-between times that cause us the most anxiety, but also grows us the most.

Right now, as a student midwife I am growing exponentially in my knowledge and wisdom of the woman's and newborn's body, mind and soul.  It is exhilarating and exhausting all at once.  As a mother I am growing in my understanding of setting examples and setting boundaries and setting priorities for myself and for my kids.  It is hard, juggling all of this hard and chaotic life, but successful kids are ones who see their parents work through struggles and learn to balance.  This is exhausting!

As a wife, I am growing leaps and bounds in my understanding of self and my understanding of my husband.  In the past I have worked at learning how to be a good wife.  I have tried and tried and always seem to fail.  I am flawed.  Most of the time I just plain suck.  It is so hard for me to balance everyone's needs and prioritize.  I feel like I can either be a good mother or a good wife, but definitely not both.  I guess for the majority of my marriage I chose to be a good mother.  And now that the kids are old enough for me to take a few steps back and let them try out life without my constant supervision, I want to now turn my attention to working on being a good wife and yet I am left alone with nothing.

I have tried in the past.  I have put a ton of effort into growing myself and trying to understand my husband.  But my kids' needs have always crept in and taken priority.  Especially my oldest and his needs which always seemed to be so all-consuming for so long.  It was often through reading about and learning about my oldest that I would come to understand a bit better the man I was married to.  I learned about our differences in introversion and extroversion.  I learned about communication and how we "hear" differently.  I learned about childhood development and how some of his childhood events could have altered his development.  But I never dug as deeply into learning about my husband as I did about my son.

I've started learning.  With the help of a counselor, friends who are therapists, lots of books and websites on neurobiology, childhood trauma, brain development and supporters of adults of childhood trauma, I am slowly getting better acquainted with the inside of the man I married.  I wish - oh how I wish! - I could have done this sooner.  But I didn't know.  I didn't understand.  I needed first to go through the process with my child, to grow the patience and empathy before I was able to be open to understanding the process with my husband.  A few years back when things were particularly bad, I looked everywhere for support for me in order to know what to do for my husband, and I could find nothing.  Even when he went to a counselor for himself, I asked if I could also talk to his counselor in order to understand and know what to do, and it wasn't an option.  This isn't right.  Those who love and support and care for those who have been hurt in their childhood need to also be supported.  They need to be able to understand who they're loving and how to love them and support them.  Without that understanding, we don't know what is helpful and what is hurtful.

I finally found a few websites that are helping me.  They are out of the U.K and Australia.  And I so wish I had known this sooner.  "Supporting an adult who experiences the effects of childhood trauma is challenging as well as rewarding. A `trauma informed’ approach to interpersonal relating to them can make many positive differences. Its key principles are safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration and empowerment."  How was I, at age 20, and throughout my 20s and now 30s while being overwhelmed with constant needs of four children and a husband only half present supposed to know this?  Supposed to be able to provide this?  Even now, at the ripe old age of 36, with years of experience with interpersonal relationships, reflective practice, working with a child with special needs, etc. - even now, I don't even really know how to provide the key principles laid out here for him.  I want to be that for him.  I want to be his safe place.  I want to be trustworthy.  I want him to feel he has choices.  I want to collaborate.  And I definitely want him to feel empowered.  All of these are qualities I provide as a doula and as a midwife.  These are essential to a trust-based relationship.  Why haven't I been able to provide them for the one who I love the most and who I have shared myself with the most?

I am flawed.  I have screwed up more times than I even know.  And I feel regret, remorse and sorrow for the years during which I floundered, breaking trust, breaking feelings of safety, not being able to collaborate, and not helping him to feel empowered.  Instead, I was lost in my own feelings. I felt abandoned.  Alone.  Overwhelmed.  Drowning so often without a partner to offer a hand to pull me up.  While safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration and empowerment are things that should be a part of every relationship, most relationships can absorb mistakes.  Most relationships can acknowledge wrongs and move forward.  I didn't know.  I didn't know that it would be irreparable in our relationship.

I know that it is too little, too late.  But I am here now.  I am here.  I'm trying.  I'm learning.  Because now I know better.  And when I know better, I try to do better.

Whether in a home together or many states apart, I promise to do my best for him.  Not out of guilt or a feeling of duty.  But because I love him, and I promised to be with him for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health and until death parts us.