This is Forres Elise interviewing Ellen Wagner for the Creative Pus
Project on September 14, 4th. OK. I have a weird thing with dates. 4th at
10:15. All right. So, I'm going to let you take the floor. Oh, by the way
, I know you have 2 berths. You can start with the first one and then go
into the 2nd, or we can do the second as like a 2nd recording block. So
let's start with the first. OK. That sounds great. If we could try to keep
them separate, let's keep them separate. Let's start with the first
because I think that's more the details that relate to the art the art
that That I made based on the birth, but we definitely want to but then
I'll get to the second one. so if you could just Take us back to that time
, you know, go back as far as the conception, if you can. I was in art
school. I was 22.
Uh, living in Washington DC all alone, uh, no family around, lots of
creative, interesting friends. I wasn't particularly focused on, um,
School or anything even though I was in college. I've been in college by
that time for 5 years and I've been this is my 3rd university. I was
looking to move as far away from my home in Iowa and anything I knew as
possible, so Washington DC was about as far away as I could get. So my son
was born in 1988,
but he was conceived on a trip I took on the back of a Harley riding
through the month of December from Washington DC to San Diego and then
down the Baja coast. I'd bought the Harley for my boyfriend at the time.
Um, and I thought this was just like the most amazing madcap adventure
possible. And I distinctly remember coming through Phoenix at the time on
December 23rd.
1986.
I remember the weather and everything about it, and I intended to go back
to college, of course, in January.
Christopher was conceived on a raucous night in Mexico on the Baja coast
amongst a lot of tequila shots, and I knew it the moment that it happened
. I absolutely knew it. I just knew it. And then I remember I had to go
back to school. 10 days later, and I had said goodbye to the father, the
presumed eventual father of of this child in front of the whiskey a go go
on Sunset Boulevard on January 14th, 1988. Said goodbye. I knew pretty
much I would never ever see him again, and I did not see him again until
Christopher was 2 for 6 hours once and then I didn't see him again until
Christopher graduated from high school. So that was a long time, no
conversation with the father at all. So I had no support and no family and
no people around and everybody told me I should give up this child while I
was in college and that I should not follow through this pregnancy. And I.
Explored the options, but not too far, not too far. Just went ahead and
decided, no, I was going to figure this out somehow and I was going to
keep this child, you know. So it was just Christopher and I. My pregnancy
, I remember being um. Exciting. Even though I was the only one
participating in it, and there was there was nothing like baby showers
with crepe paper. It was a lot like the conception was. It was based with
strange friends around me who had a lot of drug and alcohol problems, and
I was trying to keep it together and try to figure out where, how I'm
going to Create a life for this child in the future, and what was I going
to do in Washington DC with this child as an as an art school graduate.
So how are you handling being 23 and I'm sure partaking in tequila and
your youth? I quit immediately about. When I really realized how pregnant
I was 2 months in, I quit smoking marijuana immediately. I quit doing any
kind of drug that I was used to doing, including ecstasy,
cocaine, acid, anything, anything. I mean, I was a girl who liked a drug
salad. I loved it and so I, I quit doing that. Um, and I became an artist
model to support myself. And that was an interesting transition for me as
a woman to go from being um. A very young sexual, really sexual young
woman who felt really uncomfortable with her sexuality, but yet expressed
myself probably more sexually than most women did. And yet I was really
uncomfortable about it, and I found that when I was pregnant, both the The
transition that happened, I found interesting that I liked myself
physically more because when I was an artist model and I was taking my
clothes off now, it didn't seem sexual. Now, The thing I think that it
probably you have to understand is that before I was before I was an
artist model. And before I had Christopher, I'd also worked in a strip
club, not as a dancer though, because I so don't look like a dancer.
However, I had this desperate need when I was in college. To be
objectified as a woman, which sounds like a totally weird thing in the age
of feminism, but I needed to know.
Where I was or a placement as a woman or what men thought about me,
because growing up, I'd had really bad experiences with boyfriends, with
brothers, with my father. And so I wanted to be seen, believe it or not,
when I was about 21, 22 years old before I was pregnant, I really wanted
to be seen. Like a really sexy girl. I just wanted to know what that was
like for a little while. So having had that experience as a cocktail
waitress, it was a lot of fun. Made a lot of money, bought a Harley. So
were your family and boyfriends, did they say negative things about your
My family had no idea what was going on with me. I live so far away from
everyone. When you when you said you had a hard time with them growing up.
Oh. Did they give you body image? Oh yes, terribly. My nickname as a
child was Ellen Capell in the Watermelon. That was the nice nickname. The
nickname I grew up with that caused me all the trouble in my life until
about years of therapy and working through it, just this past summer was
Uh, Double ugly. Double ugly. I loathed the nickname. I loathed it and I
was known as Double Ugly and Ellen Capell and the watermelon and smelling
Ellen so much that by the time I'd run away from home, and I mean run away
from home and never speak to your family again. I needed to somehow
psychologically unravel this these nicknames and these impressions I had
of myself and so I put myself in these really bizarre situations like
working in a really high end strip club on M Street in Washington DC. And
watching the other girls, one was a college friend who was a feminist
artist who did work while she was a stripper. It was amazing basing her
work on audience reaction. I felt that I needed I needed to learn
something about myself. So for about 5 months, I cocktailed 5 nights a
week, dressed as a playboy bunny, just to work through this body image
thing I had. And it worked. I worked through something for sure. But I
think even more so, was gaining all this weight while I was pregnant and
really getting comfortable with myself. I wouldn't get up on a stage and
take my clothes off for money, but I would get up on a stage and take off
my clothes to have people make art. So I think there's there's a
difference there that it's a hard line to see the difference between these
two things, but for me, moving into motherhood and accepting myself as
sort of um You know, diva sitting on a lotus flower for people to paint
and seeing me as an object of beauty and fertility was a whole lot
different than the experience I had when I watched colleagues or peers,
other women making hundreds of dollars, taking their clothes off in front
of me at night. These were two different things for me. But they were both
, I think in some ways to help me get over a lot of body image, which You
know, became the narrative, the narrative arc that ran through all of my
life as a young woman was that narrative. And it's taken me till I'm 50
now. It's taken me literally till probably just this summer to be able to
totally unravel it and not let it, to let those names, those thoughts of
my sexuality and who I was, you know, and being a girl. Being a girl that
was raised in a um a strict Catholic background in a small country town in
Iowa. And I was pregnant when I was in college, unmarried, I didn't tell
my family I even had a baby. I didn't tell my family that Christopher was
born until The day Christopher was born. The day Christopher was born, my
mother, I know this because she told me the story later, had to tell my
family who was having dinner together that night. So Ellen had a baby
today. and my family just were like, Well, how can that be? How can she
have had a baby? And I did. That's how things, I think, worked with me. I
found myself to be an incredible outsider in my family, so everything I
did seemed to Happen really in my own world. Yeah, so, wow. OK, so, OK, so
take us back to the, the um pregnancy. Let me tell you a little bit about
the pregnancy.
People told me I couldn't have this child and. I, I explored abortion
options. I went far. I really. I went to the point of. Scheduling having
an abortion in Washington DC. Because the father wasn't involved and I was
just so beyond what I could do and I felt that this was the only thing I
could do. So I scheduled this and I go to the appointment. And nothing,
the doctor doesn't show up and I'm like, oh my God, this is rough. So the
next thing that happens I remember was maybe I'm at that 0.14 weeks
pregnant and you're probably past, you know, making that choice. And so I
remember the Women's Health Clinic made another appointment for me in New
York City and I was supposed to drive to New York City. I couldn't imagine
doing this, but at that time I could. It's like I was going to drive to
New York City by myself, get on or get on a train and check in. To a hotel
room ostensibly entirely by myself and have an abortion. I thought I could
do this and I planned to do it. I made the appointment. It's gonna do it
all alone. And once again, something happens where they call me and say
it's not going to happen, doctor doesn't come out. I mean this freak
experience. I could never figure out how this came to be that now I'm past.
I'm so far past the time of even considering this that I recognize I'm
having a baby. This conception is a surprise. This This this even idea
that I'm going to have a baby is a surprise. I'm sleeping on a couch at a
friend's house with my dog. I have no job anymore. I have no money and I
can't call my family and tell them. What has happened to me because
there's no love and there's no support there. So I slept on a couch. I
literally slept on a couch till I was too fat to sleep on the couch on the
corner of 16th Street and Columbia Road, just blocks from the White House
, just straight up the street from the White House. It was an amazingly
complicated time, but you know friends were kind of around and then a
friend volunteered to go through birthing classes with me. We did
something called the Bradley method, which was very not so much on
breathing techniques. It was based on intuitive connectedness, which I
really liked and what exactly was going to happen that day when you went
to the hospital. And so I felt psychologically, probably more prepared
than other people seemed to have told me they were when they went in to
have a baby. I felt pretty I felt pretty ready about what was going to
happen that day because I'd written a birth plan. I had planned to take my
best friend from college, a woman with me to hold my hand. A friend had
come along who said I could live in his apartment with him for a couple,
you know, a former boyfriend who said, you can come and live with me after
the baby was born. You know, um, and we'll see what happens. So I felt
fine going into the actual delivery. I think one of the other reasons I
felt pretty good was I was having this artist modeling experience and I
was really comfortable with myself physically, and I was working with
midwives, which was a little different than going to a hospital. So every
time I would go to a midwives appointment at Georgetown University, there
were often different people in the room. So there would be students there
and there would be maybe a different midwife than I'd had the last time.
So it was sort of like, Ellen's having a baby and it's a community event.
And so when the actual day came in the hospital, I do remember lots of
people came in to watch. It was more like a learning experience and an art
happening kind of thing, or at least I thought when I was going in, it's
going to be a lot of people because people were excited about coming to
see, and I had invited a lot of people along the way that were in the
midwifery department to come and watch the birth because I wasn't afraid
yet, and I had no plan to have a There were no video cameras. Um, we did
take some photos, but it was a living be there event, so people were kind
of invited to come and people showed up, which was nice. There were a
number of women in the room. The best thing I remember happening And the
thing that I always like telling people about. Was that if this woman came
in the room that I had never met before and that she was not a midwife I
had been introduced to previously. But she came, she came into the room, I
remember. And I didn't have a long labor. It had started. The night before
, and I didn't I didn't tell the people in my house that it started on
Sunday night, but I knew it was through the night. I knew I was laboring
alone. Which for me always seemed like the most natural thing to do is
just you're in your own headspace.
This woman came in. And she was like this angel, and I remember her
sitting down behind me and said to me. You're not in pain. You're just
connected to this bigger part of the universe. And This the sensations
you're feeling are all a part of this birth process. And there's nothing
here that's going to hurt you, and you're going to be fine and we're going
to breathe through this. And she just held me with this huge sense of love
, and I remember even though my son's father was not there and he didn't
know the baby was being born that day, I could feel him in the room. I
felt my grandma in the room who had passed away about 6 months earlier. I
felt this huge sense of love in the room, not from my immediate family or
people that other people would think you would possibly invite in. That's
not who was there for me. It was other people. It was people who just came
to be there for the experience. And so for me, the whole. The whole
birthing part went very quickly. There was no pain. I remember having a
primal scream that was extremely exciting. It just felt like the Big Bang
theory was in me, and I loved it. I loved the birthing part. That part, I
remember thinking, was great. It was so different than What other people
told me afterwards and people wanted to share with me before, it was
exciting. It was a roller coaster. I remember things like being offered an
epidural, and I said, Oh no, this will be the one thing I will do totally
drug free. I will remember every sensation and every moment. I remember
not being able to handle smells in the room because I was too. Sensitive
to everything. Everything was a sensation. Smells made me want to vomit,
and that was cleansing. I thought I wanted to have a lot of music in the
room. I didn't. I just wanted the sound of people in the room. I remember
, and this is the first time I remember, and this again, there was a
target on the wall. They wanted me to focus on, and I said, remove the
target. I can't have these sort of visuals in the room. I needed it to be.
Just a clear, clear headspace because I felt this need to go so deep in
my head and into my psyche. I didn't want it to be as much of a physical
experience. I wanted this deeply spiritual connectedness, because I
thought, this is it. It's you know life is a one time thing and this is
probably the only time I'm going to have a child. This really is the only
kind of child I'm going to have with this man. And I wanted it to be
perfection. I wanted to be something I would never forget that was perfect
and glorious and
Filled with details that I would want to share again that hopefully would
enable someone else. If I kept telling this story over and over, someone
else would hear this and say, I'm going to have a birth like that. I'm
going to have this sort of experience where angels are in the room singing
and you feel like. This is what I was meant to do. And I've told people so
many times, you know, I'm, I'm a fuck up in so many parts of my life, but
the one thing I'm very good at is birthing children. I could be a midwife
. I could probably pull over and deliver a child. So by the time I was
pregnant, Well, Let's stop and say, I did not talk to the father of
Christopher. My son's name is Christopher Robin. I didn't talk to
Christopher's father. I saw him briefly once in California for one night
for a few hours, and that was it. No, no conversation, hardly even
remember what was said. And then I saw him again. 18 years later when
Christopher graduated from high school and he finally wanted to reconnect
with his father, and by then I was married. I'd been married for many
years and I was way over the pain of being left, you know, I was over it
and and I felt like I was um. Psychologically,
and uh. And purposefully and life, everything was going just great in my
life. So I was ready for this new thing to happen and to reintroduce
Christopher to his father for the first time. So after An exhaustive
search, lots of phone callings, lots of calling to the universe. I gave
his father a deadline like in my mind. It was very specific. It was 12
o'clock, March 15th during the last commercial set of The Young and the
Restless, which I used to draw to every day without fail for 20 some years.
Those were studio hours for me. I told a friend the night before. If he
doesn't call by tomorrow, I quit thinking about him. It's been 18 years,
you know, a girl's got to move on, even in her heart. I've been holding
this man in my heart even though I was married. He still had part of my
heart, and there was a lot of unfinished. You know, but forgiveness, but I
had reached out two months before looking for him, just out of curiosity,
and since I hadn't had a call back, I decided that that morning at noon,
that was when we would never think about this anymore, and I would have to
call it quits. And I'll tell you at 11:57, I swear it's the truth, 11:57,
the phone rings. I turn it over and I see the caller ID. I take a huge
breath, like, like your first gasp of air, you know, out of water and I
pick up the phone and I said, is it really you? And he said, yes, it's
really me. I said, I can't believe you made it in 3 minutes. And he's like
, I'm on time, aren't I? I said, no way, you know, and it felt like I had
the conversation I remember flowed. Like we had just spoken maybe 2 hours
ago because I said I, I, I, I'd waited 18 years. I've waited 18 years. I
gave you till noon, you made it. You made it at 11:56, 11:58, you made it
? He said, Well, I'm, I'm under the wire. So I, so I reconnect with my
son's father then on. June 28th.
19 2000.
07.
And 3 months later, I was pregnant. Not even I saw him 2 or 3 times in
between. I saw him once in July. I saw him once in August, and by
September I was pregnant.
with his baby? Yes, not, and I'm married at the time in a rather high
profile marriage here in, you know, and. Arizona, people knew me very well
, very well, and I was not pregnant with the. With my husband's child, I'm
pregnant with my son's father, and I'm going to have children. This is the
amazing part I say to people, I have children by the same father, by the
same father who does that these days? Sure there was an 18 year hiatus
with no conversation, but you know, a couple of tequilas, and before you
know it. You're pregnant again. OK.
So 18 years later, did he look kind of the same? I mean, a lot changes in
18 years. He was so good looking when I knew him. That was the problem
with this man. He was so outrageously forced, he was so good looking. He
was so outrageously good looking when I knew him. Women just Took their
clothes off in front of him and he didn't say no. He did not say no. And
He had a lifestyle in Hollywood. That, you know, basically shamed Charlie
Sheen. He made Charlie Sheen look like a choir boy during his life in
Hollywood. So when I found him again, he was, um, he looked the same. He
was still stunningly handsome. He physically is 28. It's outrageous.
I met him again, but he had changed a bit. He was more settled, and he was
a person now who could work consistently and maintained a fairly seemingly
normal lifestyle. He wasn't he was no longer a roadie for Ozzy Osbourne.
So he, he seemed to be living a more um. Just a more normal lifestyle, and
he'd looked the same, and the thing was, the electricity was immediate. It
was just I felt like I was in a way back time machine that I had literally
way back time machine myself back to when I was before I was pregnant when
I was 23. Here I was presenting this myself to this man again. Almost like
a bride would, and I really mean that. I had prepared to see him. I looked
better than I ever had. I had really thought about it. I had, I had
cleaned my house. I had done my taxes. Everything was done. I just wanted
to feel like I had hit some sort of a milestone when I met him. And it was
the first time in my life since I was 22 that I had some freedom. Here I
was a 40. A 42 year old woman with some cash in the bank and some time on
my hands. I sounded like an eagle song, and I just played it out over
three weekends, you know, having a torrid affair. I really, really did
because I needed to know. This also is important. I needed to know I was a
woman because I've lived through, I'd lived through a marriage with
celibacy, 100% celibacy including my wedding night. I swear it's the truth.
I told it to everyone and so here I was a woman. With the child left the
nest now because he was 18, he was going off to college. My husband had
moved away to move on with his career and expected me to follow him again
in my celibate marriage now of 15 years. And I was a young woman suddenly
with freedom like I hadn't known. I felt like I was 22 again or who I
wanted to be when I was 22. And who I wanted to be when I was growing up
and done with school and ready to hit the world. Well, here I was ready to
do it again. And it was almost like I recapitulated right back again to
where I was and more people. It was not a happy pregnancy the second time.
You would have thought the first pregnancy would have been really sad and
under tragic circumstances.
But it wasn't And this one, the 2nd 1 with my son. Ansel Jackson was
fraught with sadness. Here I was with a man I always wanted to be with and
I thought about for 18 years, and yet I was in the middle of a messy
divorce and ending a life I had no intention really maybe of ending. I
hadn't really thought when I was having an affair and figuring out what's
sex. You know, it was Paradise Bad, the dashboard life. It was a meatloaf
song and I couldn't get over it, and I just didn't think, Oh, what's it
going to be like when I unravel all of my life, my grown up life? What's
that going to be like? And so my pregnancy.
When I was 42 was a hidden secret pregnancy. It was totally secret. I hid
in my house. I didn't let next door neighbors or close friends see me. No
one knew what was happening, but my closest friends who maybe lived out of
town. And the father by then had decided to come and move to Arizona to be
with me. He now was the one interested in having a child, and I was not. I
was the one who couldn't who said, I can't trust you. You've left other
children. I can't trust you well enough to have a child. And I'm a big
grown up adult who knows what it's like to raise a child alone, and I
didn't think I could do it. So there was a lot of disharmony. So at this
point, did your youngest son know that was his father, and Yes,
Christopher, Christopher had to then reconnect while I was pregnant in
front of him with a father he had never known, while he was disconnecting
from me, it was Turmoil in a house that should have been able to come
together, but it was not. It was Christopher running away to college and
me mad at him. He didn't understand what I was doing. He felt like I had
cheated him out of the opportunity for him to move off to Hollywood and
get to know his father alone. Instead, the father came here. And he felt
like it was about his father and I, not about them, and he wanted it. He
was going into this relationship thinking it was about them and it was
about the father and I. So he was mad at me for the first time in his life
and deserted me. My son Christopher, for the first time, we were
inseparable. It's always just the two of us. Even when I was married, it
felt like it was just Christopher and I, and we were married. We were
pawns in a marriage. Pretty much we were there for in church purposes and
to look good. And so this was rough. This was really, really rough, so. I
decided when I was pregnant.
I wasn't gonna be able to keep this child. I don't know what I was
thinking, but I totally said I can't keep this child. There's just no way.
There have to be people better than us to raise a child. We are not.
We're not in a relationship. This is not a marriage. I'm still, you know,
I'm still technically married to somebody else at this point. This is not
a good situation for a child to be raised in. And me raising a child as a
single mother a second time, probably is not the right psychological
situation for a child. So. I went through the desperate search of finding
the perfect people to adopt my child while I'm living here with the father
who's willing to do this for me because I've already raised one of our
kids, so he doesn't have a whole lot of cards to play in the whole game
here. He he better just be supportive and he was, but he really, I could
tell, wanted to keep the baby, but I I did not know if that would be a
good idea, because he did not raise his first two children either, or the
child he had with me. So I began a search. I found a couple. I thought
they were wonderful. They came and visit us. We met with them. We had
lunch. I met their child. I conversed back and forth with them. We moved
ahead with details. And then my gut told me something wasn't right.
Something wasn't right about the situation. We're only maybe 3 weeks from
delivery date and something besides the baby inside of me is saying
something's not entirely right, and I'm not getting the answers I need
from the adoption agency about the adoptive couple, and I am questioning
things and I'm feeling things. And I'm I'm a prayer. I'm praying to God,
show me the way. I'm screaming in my backyard, Help me, help me, help me,
show me what it is. And I find out maybe 2 weeks before now or 2 weeks
before the babies. You know, it was scheduled to be born. Not that this is
a problem, but maybe for me it is that this family has had some problems.
The father's been in federal prison for embezzling maybe $2 million from
one of his clients. It was the secretary's fault. There was a big story.
In any case, this, I did not want my child raised in a family where money
was an ongoing issue because I've already heard these arguments in my past.
I've heard this as my childhood. This is part of my. Verbal memory, and I
think they're lying to me. They got a lot of skeletons in their closet.
I'm sure they're nice people. I'm sure time served, everybody's nice
people, but I didn't feel good. So I immediately discontinued my
relationship with them. And I can I consulted another adoption
representative immediately who put me in touch with the most amazing
family ever, professors at a university, a couple, both professors. One's
the head of a law department, the other's the head of another department.
They're magical. They're perfect, they're perfect, except they're on
their way to Brazil to do a little research. So I tell them, OK. I can do
this. I can do this by myself. I can birth this baby by myself. I can wait
until you come back to Brazil, and then I'll give you the baby. I think I
can do this because I think I'm really generous. I think I'm so generous
and so wanting to do the right thing for my child.
For his future that I, I can live through whatever this pain is. I can, I
can live through this. This is OK. So The family is off in Brazil, and I'm
preparing for the baby to be born, and my oldest son is living here in the
house with me and his father. And I'm not a happy woman at all. I've
gained a lot of weight. I've been in hiding now for months. I haven't told
anyone I'm having a baby. I've also begged my best friend from high school
to take the child. She's had no children of her own and is very loving,
maternal, financially comfortable woman. I begged her. She said she could
not do this, but would be there for me in any way. I begged my other best
friends. They came from Chicago. They had no children. They'd always
wanted to have a child. I begged them to take the child. She went to
Europe and got pregnant. They could not take the child. Before I knew it,
I was in. I was in the neighborhood hospital. I did not bother having
birthing classes. There was no nursery prepared in the house. There was no
diaper. There was no plan for a child to come home and be with me. I had
no. I was literally psychologically thinking, I'm doing the right thing
and I'll get through this. It's going to take some counseling. I'm going
to get through this, but I'm going to have done the right thing, the right
thing for someone.
So we go to the hospital. Mind you, I feel that I can have a baby by
myself, so I don't go until 20 minutes before the baby's going to be born.
And I don't want to, I'm very frugal because I'm paying for all of this
on my own. I have no health insurance, so I wouldn't even go into a
delivery room. I stayed at home and sat in my bedroom, and I remember I
was watching this movie called The Other Bolin Girl. It's about Henry
Henry the 8th's mistresses and their various children and and a child is
birthed in the movie and I remember watching this thinking.
This is the moment. This is the universe's moment, at least with me having
a baby here. At least there's a feeling that I'm a bigger part of
something and there's something here for me, even if it's not a friend
holding my hand and certainly isn't going to be a family member or
anything like that. I'm OK. I'm OK. And we went to the hospital. We
skipped all that walking, all that, you know, anything, ice chips,
anything anybody else ever talked about in their birthing story wasn't a
part of it. We just went into the room. I said, it's time to have the baby
, because I was ready to be done now. And my son, I didn't know the sex of
either of my children. I like to have. I felt the surprise was just. You
know, part of the part of birth is the surprise. And since there was no
plan for me to swaddle a child in blue clothes, I certainly wasn't
planning what the sex was. It didn't matter to me one way or the other. I
just want a real nice, beautiful, happy, healthy baby. It was an easy,
easy, easy, easy delivery. I remember even thinking ahead, I'm going to be
getting up on my feet. And squatting, I could be I cuz I used to say to
people. I literally could deliver in the field, pick up the child and move
on and work, because I was just such a worker, such a Midwestern girl. I'd
ridden a bike while Christopher was when I was still pregnant with
Christopher during my first pregnancy, I literally rode a bicycle to my
last appointment at Georgetown because I had no transportation and no
money. And the only way to get there was to ride a bike. So for me, the
thought of having my second child and just having the baby and going home
the next day and going back to work was exactly what I did, and I
literally went back home with the baby the next day and thought, I'm
waiting for somebody to come back from Brazil to get their child. And I
came home and I started nursing the baby, and you know how. Even if you
don't think you're bonding with a child, you are bonding with a child,
even if you don't think you are.
You are still in these.
Moments that. Might not.
You might not be looking at your child and thinking, oh, they have their
father's eyes, or they have a nose like their grandfathers. Those weren't
the thoughts. I think it's the unverbal moments. It's the back and forth
symbiotic energy between you and your child and And here I am with the for
the first time now with the father of my child in the home.
And this is where it changes. I see the father now with this child in his
arms, and he's more into the child than I am. I'm, I'm into my son, who at
this point we haven't quite named. We've only haven't selected a name.
I didn't feel like I should be doing that. But I see this baby with his
father and the way he holds him. And I think, oh, this is what this older
father now, this father now is 51 years old, who's never raised any of his
kids. He has 4 other children he's never raised. Here he is in front of me
, and I am seeing him for the first time. In this loving parental role
where he cannot get enough of taking care of the baby. It's all about him
and I think. This is his child. I'm letting him bond with this child.
Maybe I'm letting him bond with this child because I don't want him to
leave. You know, I want him so connected, and I remember having these
thoughts. I want him connected to this child so he won't leave the child.
He needs to be with this child. And so for about the next week. Although I
was nursing the baby, I knew I was psychologically stepping back, and I
was letting him take the lead role, whereas often it might be a mother
who's all involved or a doula or some combination maybe of a mother,
father, and somebody's mother coming. This was really more about him
having this time, and I saw him for the first time in this really, really
Gentle, loving, compassionate way, and I start to realize. This baby is
not leaving us. The baby is not going anywhere. And now I'm in another
whole realm of turmoil. I'm in another realm of Dante's hell where I'm, oh
my God, I've just had this baby. I'm still married. I had this man living
in my house that I'm not really in love with. I was in lust with for sure
, but not necessarily in love. That's a whole other longer love in a big
way, but love on a daily day in and out. I'm not sure about that. Um, you
know, because I'm just having an affair with somebody that I've had an
affair with when I was in college. So
I started to feel that things were changing, things were changing, and the
family came back. I had written them some beautiful emails.
And we had to take the baby. I remember the adoption. Person came to us
here. And we wrote down a name. I didn't choose the name. The baby's
father chose his name, Ansel Jackson. She was sort of interesting because
. I remember he'd seen a number of Ansel Adams PBS documentaries. I think
the name was in his mind, but it also connected to my work as an artist
and doing. Large landscapes that were very um inspired maybe. Not me
personally looking at Ansel Adam's work, but people looking at my work and
seeing realism and black and white vintage photography in in my paintings
, my drawings, there was a visual connection. So he chose the name and he
went along with the idea that we were going to still adopt this baby, but
somewhere in my mind I thought, I don't know if we're really, really doing
this, but we did get in the car. And we did go, we did go to the family's
home. And we left that baby for a night. We drove back home without the
baby.
The baby was about 2 hours away from me for a night. And I got up the next
morning and I walked in my backyard and I screamed, What have I done? What
have I done? What have I done?
And so,
I called the the. The woman I called the new mother.
And I begged for my child back, and I cried and I begged, and I begged and
I cried and I didn't have a leg to stand on, and I begged and I cried like
I could will this child back into my life or control the situation somehow.
And they politely argued with me, very politely, very kind, very, very
kind, and said, we don't have to do this. And I said, Of course I know you
don't have to. I know you don't have to do this for me. And they agreed to
let me come and get and get my son. So we drive.
My karma, I'm spending a lot of time now in my life. Now in the last 7
years trying to. Make everything OK with people, so I drive and I pick up
this child and I pull this child from this woman's arms. She's weeping.
I'm weeping. Everyone's crying. No one's happy. No one's happy. I'm happy
, but I'm not happy. There's nothing happy about it, and we take the baby
home, and I'm not happy. The baby's with us, but I'm not happy. And I know
I have broken. Hearts. I have broken a family. I look at a grandmother
there visiting, and she tells me, you've broken hearts, and I know I've
broken hearts. I know everyone hates me. I'm in turmoil and pain, and I
remember driving to the Walmart and thinking. What am I doing? What am I
doing? What am I doing? Now I have a baby living with me. In my adult life
, my very, very manicured perfect adult life. There's nowhere in my house
have I thought about a child coming or what's going to happen. But I'm I'm
in a situation light years different than I was 20 years before when I had
my first child, and yet I wasn't prepared at all, but I was told I, I knew
you don't really need. You don't need color schemes in a bedroom and a
mural painted. None of that is necessary. You need some diapers. And so I
went to Walmart and got diapers and thought, I can't believe this is
happening and we're moving forward with this, but this is what we're doing.
And it really became a one day at a time, really, really, really slowly
because I'd never felt like a woman who had embraced being pregnant. I'd
never worn maternity clothes. There was no baby shower, there was no
Excitement of a family. There were no phone calls. There were no flowers.
There was nothing that said. This is cherished experience. Instead. It
was this beautiful child. That came to a broken home. Uh parents that
weren't together and siblings that didn't know each other. But the thing
that became magical about this child. Is that Jack Ansel Jackson, has
always been known as Jack, began the beginning of a family. There were
remnants of of his family everywhere when he was born. There was a 30 year
old brother in Los Angeles, and now his other brother, who at that time
was 20, when he was born, was 20, then moved off to Los Angeles, and all
of these siblings started to meet each other. The two brothers in Los
Angeles met for the first time and became very close, adore each other.
And a family started to come together that had never been a family.
Suddenly Jack had two parents he was growing up with, and Christopher had
2 parents living in a house for the first time that knew each other, and
he had the older brother that he had always prayed for but never knew that
he had, that he's very, very close with as an adult, and he had the
younger brother that he always wanted and this family that had no
connection throughout its seeming life suddenly now is Coalescing around
this baby like he's the fire. He's the fire that holds us all together and
we all couldn't get close enough to him.
And so I would, I would say that my pregnancy now in, in retrospect, now
seems kind of happy and joyful. It had moments of excitement.
I remember that no one knew I had a baby and I hadn't told anybody I'd had
a baby, and I whittled myself back down to my pre-baby weight, like in a
blink of an eye, like Hollywood stars try to do to be on People magazine
because I wanted to be that girl that I still wanted to get back to who I
thought I was. I was always trying to get back to who I thought I was and
missed out on. So I just, I was really back to who I was. You could never
tell I'd had a baby. So about, remember, it was 6 months after Jack was
born, I had a show at a gallery. No one knew I'd had this child. I'd
already committed to have this show in a gallery, and I worked every
single day. Take that. Marissa Yahoo takes off for 2 weeks. I didn't take
off 2 hours. I came home the next day and started working again. Literally
started working, painting, painting, painting. The gallery owner convinces
me to show up with the baby at the gallery opening and do it all in one
night because the gossip, she said, why, why piddle it out for 4 months?
Do it one night and let everybody talk about you for 2 weeks and it'll be
over and they'll be on to the next person, so. I summoned up my courage,
took my baby to my gallery opening, and held him the whole night while
people said, When did you have a baby? How could you have a baby? And of
course, people, I could see them doing like sort of weird math in their
head. I could see it. I could tell. And I just sort of thought, let them
figure it out. I've just lived through the weirdest, most bizarre public
celibate marriage. I have been through. A bizarre trajectory with more
strange men in my life and disassociation with people. If I can't live in
the shame of what I've done and the blessing of my two children, well, you
know, everybody's everybody's got things. So here it is. This is what I've
done. And people talked about it for about 2 weeks. It was very juicy and
exciting, and they really knew all the details. It would have been at
least a 2 month story, but
So was your man at the opening? Yes. So you introduced your 6 month baby
and the new man in your life to these people who had known you as this
power couple. Yes, absolutely. They were stunned. They were stunned,
stunned, stunned. Of course I was at that moment, I was pretty much you
know persona non grata from the A crowd of museum events, but that's OK.
Life is a little more important than Chardonnay the Chardonnay tour. So I
just, it became a whole different life then. It just, it really, it became
like being in some ways a parent for the first time. You have all the
Knowledge, but in some ways you're still the first time parent because
you're doing it 20 years separate and everything is different. Everything
is different. The return back to your body isn't the same. I'd return back
to who I was, but that was a force of will. That was because I had so many
issues in my head about who I was as a woman physically, and I was really
wanting to Look like a girl that didn't have a baby. I want to look like a
woman who had not had a baby. I wanted to be a size 6 again as fast as I
could.
I know. It's body image has been one of those topics that we've really
been excited for women to talk about because they don't. I mean, we had
women that said, I didn't want to get fat when I was pregnant. I let
myself get fat both times. I was totally like, this is it. I have been I
have lots of weight issues. I'm a yo yo. I go up and I go down. I control
myself with my weight. I can lose a lot of weight and be way for, wafer
thin. I lost so much weight before I got pregnant to get my husband's
attention. I carved off every ounce I physically could. So I would hope he
would see that something was wrong with me. I wanted him to look at me. I
remember screaming at him, Look at me, I'm disappearing physically in
front of you to get your attention. Aren't you getting it? You don't see
how thin I am. You don't see that I that I'm down to like 107 pounds.
That's pretty thin on me. That is really. thin on me. You know, I'm
avoiding I willpower. I can kick myself into, don't eat, don't eat, don't
eat, don't eat to get your attention, which is a pretty weird thing to be
doing already still in your 40s, but trying to get my husband's attention
, who wanted nothing physically to do with me as a woman. I thought it was
probably because I was too fat, I wasn't attractive enough, I wasn't sexy
enough. So I was trying to get this puritanical stuffy guy's attention. So
I took off all the weight I could. It was the last thing I could find
wrong with me. My house was clean. I had money in the bank, my career was
pretty good. My child was raised. Give it everything away that was clutter
in my house. How about the clutter on my body? I'll give that away too. So
I just kept I eliminated it so that I could figure out it wasn't me he
wasn't having sex with. It was he wasn't having sex. It wasn't. I had to
be able to get to. It wasn't me. And so once I figured out I'd lost all
this weight, he's not having sex with me. Well, I know who will have sex
with me. The father of my child, the one man and the last man I had sex
with. 18 years ago, who has had sex with everyone will not turn me down. I
mean that was kind of desperate when you think about it, and yet I loved
him and there was so much sexual chemistry. I did not. I felt at that time.
That I did not have time to have an appropriate affair with a nice man to
get divorced and meet a nice man. I didn't have time for that, and I
wasn't because I was 42 when I wanted to have a child. I had no biological
clock ticking sort of. Um, thoughts going through my mind. I was thinking
, I am finally free, finally free as an adult because I was the only
person taking care of my child. Even when I was married, it wasn't a
family where the father was taking care of his stepchild. It was still my
child. I just didn't have time to meet a nice guy. I just wanted to Be Who
I thought I should have been at another time in my life. And here was this
man that I'd had so much sexual chemistry with who seemed to be able
literally to have any woman he wanted. He could have any woman he wanted
and I just wanted to be wanted by any man. I mean how weird is that? I
wanted to be wanted by. Any man, he could have any woman, and he wanted
you. Yeah, really, that would have been great if he wanted me, and he was
more than happy to see me again. I was the best version of myself that I'd
ever been. I mean, who doesn't want that for a time in your life where you
actually Think about the best version of yourself and feel that you're
hitting that time in your life. Maybe it is your prime. Maybe I was, I've
said to people, I was probably so outrageously fertile by then. I was so
fertile and just dying to have sex. I was so dying to have sex. I remember
feeling it was like girls who think about their wedding night. It really
felt more like my wedding night the night I had an affair than the night
of my wedding night. My wedding night. I remember we did not have a hotel
room. We were just going to come back to be in the house that we own. Why
would we rent a hotel room to have sex in? We weren't going to be having
sex. So there would be no there would be no room as none of that would be
happening. And some of my close friends felt that seemed a little unusual
and decided to get a hotel room as a gift for us to set the stage. That
helped. I also remember on my wedding night.
Running alone in my wedding dress barefoot through the dewy grass so I
could find some matches so I could light that joint cause I knew I was
alone that night alone in my wedding dress. I knew I would be. There was
my groom asleep. No big surprise. Someone had brought me a, you know, a
joint, and there I was alone with my thoughts and my memories, and I sat
there alone thinking as soon as I take off this dress, the magic will be
over. And you know, it was, it was, there was no. There was just no
planning in my marriage that, you know, I remember my husband said to me.
Well, you knew when we got married, we weren't having sex. And I thought
, well, I kind of thought in the comforts, I mean, I hate to seem so
Pollyanna, but I thought in your up your uptightness way, maybe in the
bonds of marriage, you would feel. comfortable and it would be OK, and we
would work to this, having sex and being a patient, really patient,
considerate, I would be able to help you work beyond maybe even the most
basic. You know, missionary. Maybe we could just get to a missionary
position, but that never happened. So by the time I'm 42, I haven't had
sex in like 18 years. I'm just, I'm curious. I'm I'm I'm curious. I'm more
than curious. I'm just wanting to have sex. So I plan to have an affair,
which is a strange thing to do when you're a married woman, but It was
deeper. I thought I knew it wasn't physical. Even when I was planning to
have an affair, it wasn't about physically having an affair so you could
have sex. I wanted to know something about myself as a woman. Was I a
sexually desirable woman? Was I desirable to somebody else? What was wrong
with me? All of these problems I'd had as a young woman trying to figure
out my own sexuality. I was promiscuous as all get out as a Catholic high
school girl in the back of a car. I was entirely promiscuous. And so I was
really looking for
I was probably acting this out again as an adult. I was just repeating the
same patterns because the questions hadn't been answered. I hadn't gone
through these natural transitions. A person should, as they move along.
Their sexual evolution. I hadn't answered these questions. They'd always
seemed to be snuffed out. I would get close to the answer of finding out
something about myself, and then the door was closed and I'd go on with
life and I would have to just deal with things. But the questions would
still be there. So I think by the time I'd had an affair, it was, it was,
I'm not emotionally married to this man. I'm not sexually married to this
man. I'm certainly not spiritually married to this man. I'm married to
this man for for him for social reasons, which I always thought I always
knew was I always knew was the point, even when I got married because I'd
read this book in art school about the evolution of a woman's. Personal
life and the writer's name, the sociologist, I'm so embarrassed, I'm going
to forget her name. Is it not Margaret Bourke White, she was a
photographer. She wrote about these five different stages in a woman's
life and how, how You might or it was about marriage and evolution. You
might get married when you're young for certain reasons. You might get
married for love and lust because you married somebody that when you were
22 because you met in high school or college and you got married. But if
you got married probably maybe a little later in your life, you might get
married for career reasons. My marriage was for career reasons. My husband
married. Entirely because it looked good. He looked good on his career. I
looked good for his career. I paid all the bills. We lived on my income.
And so who could go wrong? I made lunch and coffee and iron and made the
bed. What was wrong with this situation, except that my heart wasn't being
filled. And I, and I thought, huh. I think that if I would have married
now later in my life, now that I'm 50 and I'm not married, but I've been
now with the father of our two children from 7 years, I would marry for
companionship because you marry later in your life, maybe it's your second
marriage, maybe it's your 3rd, maybe you're gay now and you're a lesbian
and you're marrying the person you really want to be with. You choose
people. I swear you choose somebody not who who makes your bottom line
look good. You think, Yeah, who'll hold my hair when I'm vomiting in a
toilet after chemotherapy? Who who'll go and get me Depends diapers when
I'm incontinent, but still knows how much I care about how good I look
when I go out? Who who will be the person who I could tell my deepest
really dirty secrets to and still feel OK about? And in the end, for me,
it's been this one consistent man that I met when I was 22. He's the guy.
He's the guy. He is. He's the companion man. He actually is the man who
answers all of those, all of, all of those reasons that you would choose
to maybe get married. I would have probably married him each time now in
my life. And I've never seemed to have chosen him, but he's always been
there. And in some ways, the circumstances I have always managed to bring
him. He's the one who says to me, You're right where you're supposed to be
when I'm complaining and, no, you're right where you're supposed to be.
Timing is perfect, timing is divine. It's taken us many years to get to
this. My husband is an older father and
he was 50, I think when August was born or something like that. You get it
that older but he's never been married, never had a kid, and he said, I
was never ready to be a father until today, until now. It took me 50.
Jack's father took him until he was 50 to be a father, a dedicated father.
Yeah. To the point that Jack is 7 in his 2nd grade and he still shares a
bed with his father. They still sleep together and we sleep in separate
rooms. Sleep's important. I love my sleep. It has nothing to do with sex
with sleep. No sex, sleep and sex and bedrooms are different things.
People should sleep in adjoining bedrooms and have sleep. Absolutely.
You've got all kinds of rooms to have sex. You can have sex all kinds of
much better places in the bed you sleep. I don't get it. I don't
understand that.
But it's older fathers can commit. If he had had a baby previously, he
said, I would have failed as a father. I've been in circumstances where
women wanted to get married and make babies with me in my 30s, and I knew
I wasn't going to be Jack's father had 2 children when he was in his late
20s, and I knew who those children were and he He had no intention, I
think, of so much being married and having children, but he had 2 children
born and he married the mother of his two kids. And it really didn't suit
who he was as a person in any way at all, and he just fled and he's a very
, very, very lucky man. He's a lucky man that I knew when I was raising
Christopher. I was really careful. Someone had told me, or maybe I heard
it on Oprah, Don't say mean things about a parent that's not there. Do not
do it, because it's not about the parent that's not there. It's what
you're imprinting on the child. It's what you're saying to the child about
part of them or the parent that's not there is somebody they connect to.
So don't start creating a negative narrative. That's going to infect, and
I mean infect that child for the rest of their life. So we didn't talk
about a missing father. There was never a mean word said. We didn't talk
about him not being there. There were a lot of really nice male role
models that were college friends of mine that would come around and a
friend who came and read to Christopher and he was growing up, but we
never said a word about His missing father or even refer to it. So when he
as an adult met him, he didn't come with a whole trainload of luggage. You
know his baggage wasn't years of my attitude. It just wasn't there. Well,
I hope he did. I pointed it out a few times like the reason. You have such
a free flowing amazing relationship with your son is because I never said
if I did one, I did a lot of bad things. I pulled a child away from a
mother. I've done a lot of bad things, but one of the good things in my
pro column is I really knew. I knew during the 18 years of. Raising my son
, even during the poverty and the bad days and not having food and being
really super poor, and I didn't have a car for 3 years. I did not say. Bad
things. I didn't blame someone who wasn't there, never a word. So this
adult could have a really great adult relationship. They didn't have to
work through years of what was not really even there. Um, you know, I
really feel for that family, but I can't help but think what I've gone
through Brazil. Well, you know. I chose a family that had big projects in
their future. They were very creative, interesting projects, right? And I
, I spent some time with I spent some time with a variety of therapists
after all of this in my life, you know, because a lot of friends of mine
said to me, I think you should give that baby away and just sort of try to
hold the pendulum steady here only because you are making some radical
swings. You are going back and forth. And what I realized was I did this
very hurtful thing. And I was going to have to do a lot of soul searching
and do a lot of things to try and make things better. In my family's life
and hopefully. A ripple effect would eventually quell what I had done to
this family two hours away from me, what they had been through, and I've
thought about them and I have been in the community where they have lived
and done things there and thought. I wonder if they remember my name, and
I remember, I remember them. This mother was so good. She looked at her
daughter, her 5 year old at the time and said, Well, let's just think of
it as we took care of the baby for a night and that he was our baby for a
night and that was good enough for us. And I thought Man, that's a good
mother. If I could even be. Maybe 10% of what this mother was gonna be,
I'd be a pretty good mom to my child cause this one, I could tell she was
gonna have to explain this to her daughter a couple of different times and
she would cry over this. And maybe, maybe if this were the best thing.
Maybe per. And what I was doing in her life. was I was placed in her path.
If this were a good, I, you know, if you, if you could like make it look
good for yourself, to maybe to make myself better, feel a little better,
maybe I was placed in her life's path. Because she wanted to have another
baby, she told me, and she had tried to, and it wasn't happening, and she
had a very high power career. Maybe she wasn't meant to have a baby. Maybe
, you know, and maybe I was pushed through in her life, in my painful way
to help her to understand. Maybe you weren't going to have a baby because
you had the child you were anticipated to have. Maybe she had a child
after. I have no idea. I chose not to keep in touch because I did not want
to drag. I thought about keeping in touch with them and there was an offer
, but I thought, I can't put these people through more pain. I can't go
back to them in a year if I'm still in pain over this and offer, I can't
do it. So I disconnected entirely and didn't keep in touch because I
thought dragging people through my soap opera just is not going to happen.
So I
some women you talked to, um, I felt are very connected with the universe
, but with you it's like shocking. It's all that it's big. Well then. I
found out, well, it seems like this was about a year ago, about a year ago
I met some, I met this woman, friend of a friend. It was a new friend in
my life. A new friend comes into my life that has no connection to my
marriage or my past, and that's exactly what I needed. Somebody didn't
know anything about me and didn't care. So this new friend comes into my
life, Bob, and It was so interesting, he was. He was so much of my
ex-husband, all the good things about my ex-husband that I wanted to hang
out without having to hang all the good without the bad aftertaste. So Bob
introduces me to this really interesting woman and her profession is,
she's a medium. She says, I talk to dead people. And I did not want to
meet her as a medium because. I just wanted to sit back and I didn't want
to be aggressively excited about her mission. I was, I was maybe a little
skeptical. And so he introduces me and I think I'm meeting this lovely
woman, Mariah is a friend and my friend Bob and how wonderful this is, and
she's this really interesting woman. And we go out and she's going to be a
nice new friend to me, and we go out and have dinner, very casual.
I'm not even into the first glass of wine being ordered, and she starts
telling me things about stuff she could never know about my life. She just
starts saying things across the table about me, and it's specific. I'm
bringing it up because it has to do with my pregnancy. She says to me
I'm here. There's someone here that wants to speak with you. And she
starts describing somebody, and I say to her, That's my grandma Olga. I
know it's my grandma Olga. She gives me details that no one could know
about these three gold rim plates, that one that I'd taken off of my
grandma's wall that I use as my drawing palettes, and they have the
Kennedys on them and the plate broke and how sad this was to me because it
felt so sad about my grandma and how I keep trying to rebuy the plate. And
she says to me to prove to me that this is my grandma, you're speaking to
me. Don't worry about the gold plates you keep breaking. Clearly a detail
no one would know because it's only about my grandma and I. So she goes on
to tell me in the course of a 5 hour dinner that the reason, the reason
that I was not able to have an abortion with my first child, Christopher,
the first or second appointment, which I have always wondered what. Could
have happened. The two doctors don't show up. I mean, what are the
coincidences in this? She says to me, your grandma passed just before you
were pregnant, and she, I swear this is true, exchanged a lot of life
force energy and cannot explain to you in words what she went through to
make happen this child to save your life. And I'm sitting here looking at
this woman who's telling me these crazy details. Again, nothing that could
be Googled. I've never met her. She doesn't know me, but she tells me all
of the previous details about when I was pregnant back in Washington DC in
1987 and the why of this and the why of that. And she knows this because
she feels. This presence is telling her all these things I need to know
about my life. Why I what my sadness with my mother was. The bad
relationship with my father, the running away from being with my family,
why I always feel so bad about myself. She explains all of these things
via of this energy that she feels that is standing with her as my grandma
and explaining my life to me. It was the most cathartic experience then.
This summer, now in this relationship, this this conversation I had with
Mariah over a year, which happens about every 3 months, usually with the
presence of my grandma telling me more details, including going back into
my grandmother's home on the farm in Iowa, the only place the woman ever
lived. It was amazing. Nothing had changed in the house. The wallpaper
from 1932 was still on the walls. It was insane. I felt the presence of
the woman. The people who owned the farm were the neighbors who knew my
grandmother and said, People feel the presence when you walk in the house
we just want you to know and I said, I know that's what I've come for.
I've come to feel my grandmother and have this this just happened in April
this past April. I feel like I've had this full circle event and it is
really because in some ways that I had to answer these questions of my
children, who I am, where I've come from. I feel this connection to this
farm in Iowa which previous to living in Arizona, all of my work was about.
Landscape and the family and the farm and where I've come from and who I
am, even though I'm totally disconnected.
To my immediate family. I have no connection whatsoever. I feel this
intense connection to my grandmother on my father's side, and because of
the farm and the family and the multitude of generations that have all
lived in this one farmhouse. It was a log cabin at one time. So I went
back just in April to feel the full circle feel the full circle thing of
it and at that time I realized as I was standing there. This is where my
father, who I have had the worst relationship with all of my life, I was
never a child who sat on her father's knee, was never loved by my father,
I never felt that daddy's. I never, I did not have my father walk me down
the aisle at my wedding, none of those kind of experiences. None of those
experiences happened for me. But while I'm in that house. You know, I'm
feeling the years and and the smells and just the. The years of lives that
have been in this house and and my my father. I convinced myself then I
can forgive him for everything that has happened and released from this.
So in June I write this long, well, no, it wasn't even long, it was just
it was very short. It was a long thought to get to it. It was a very short
letter that said, I forgive you. I for because I feel that my grandmother
has told me. Your father will die soon, and for you and your soul, you
need to forgive this man and for your children, and so that you can always
feel that you did the right thing. You need to get over because you've
gotten over it. You need to tell him you got over it. So I wrote him this
letter and said, I'm over the sadness, I'm over the hurt. I'm over this
weird relationship I had with you and your best friend and the bizarre
sort of name-calling that scarred me for life. I told him in the letter.
Every relationship I had with every single man was tainted by my
childhood relationship with you and the name calling. Wasn't a sexual
abuse relationship. And that's the saddest part. Everybody was sure I was
sexually abused. Everyone I knew, oh, it must be because you were sexually
abused. It wasn't. To me, it was worse. It went worse. And sexual abuse.
To me, have sex, I could be done with that and forget about that. If I had
to, I could compartmentalize that to a bad experience. It was the everyday
psychological eroding of my ego down to nothingness, to the point that I
would marry a man full willingly knowing I would never be having. A full
relationship with him because I'm not worth it anyway. I'm not worth
having that, and I've been told this all my life. So it takes me my whole
life and working it out through having Just really dramatic, over dramatic
sexualized relationships with people like my high school boyfriends,
whoever it was, it was really, really intense. And I always knew it went
right back to feeling like my father did not protect me. When I was 4 or 5
years old and this started, the name calling, he let it go on, and I knew
it was wrong as a child and my mother let it go on, and all the adults
around me let it go on, and I knew it was wrong. And if I said something
back, I was punished for it. You know, I couldn't say mean things back to
the mean man who called me double ugly. I couldn't say any of these things.
I was always being punished. I was this bad little girl trying really
hard to be a good girl. I lived multiple personalities as a child, and I
knew I was developing. Multiple Ellens there was. Ellen The high school
standout, who had to be the president of everything, the president of the
student council, and the best at everything and the best grades. I created
this persona of who I was for my parents, and so I wouldn't get in trouble
and other adults and people would like me, but deep down. I was this whole
other person inside who was Sad and lonely and always desperately trying
to overcompensate, over achieve, desperately a young woman trying to
overachieve because I was so eroded as a person. I just had no self-esteem
as a young woman. I had none. And yet I created this persona that I had a
lot of self-esteem and you could get up and speak in front of thousands of
people in 4H and I could get up and perform in musical performances and
theater and band, and it looked like one person was going on and deep down.
I'd had my first abortion when I was a senior, no, I was a junior in high
school alone, alone by myself, having sex because I couldn't tell my
parents. My high school boyfriend was raping me. I couldn't tell my
parents this thing, and this is why I remember my mother said to me, What
if when my mother found out I was having sex in high school, she said to
me, What if your father found out? And I looked at her and said, Well, he
certainly didn't tell so and so to quit calling me double ugly as a child.
Why would he stop so and so from raping me as a high school girl and
having sex with me, and I couldn't get away from him. I couldn't get away
from me. He was an older boy. I'd never had a boyfriend. I couldn't break
up with him. He threatened me all the time. He threatened me verbally,
physically, a lot of stuff, and I didn't have someone to say it to because
my mother is just going to punish me. I'm going to get grounded for more
stuff. I'm going to get locked in a I'm not locker room, I'm going to lock
myself in a room. I can't I can't get away from any of this, so I'm one
person in front of people. And I'm another person. In my secret life, my
secret high school life that's going on, and I'm, I'm living these two
dual lives. So the fact that these two dual lives becomes my My modus
operandum as I move through life isn't really very surprising when you
really think about it. I get to college and I'm, I'm living as a college
student by day and I'm working as a cocktail waitress by night, or I'm
living as a, as a college student by day and I'm an artist model at night
, you know, and I'm or I'm pregnant, or I'm again as an adult, I'm living
one dual life as, as, as a well-known, you know, power art couple. But I'm
living an entirely different life. I used to tell people when we would
come home when I was married when we would come home from big parties
looking like celebrities, you know, we were like the Brangelina. When we
would come home, we would walk in from the garage and I would just start
taking the facade off. It was like, take the clothes off. We don't have to
fake to being the fabulous power couple anymore because we're not. And my
husband would go to the bathroom and shut the door and lock it. And that
would be it. That would the night would be over, and I would never, I
never once saw him without his clothes on. Never once. Isn't that amazing
? Sometimes I'd go to the bathroom door on fun nights when he'd had too
much Chardonnay and I would rattle the door and kid him while he was
brushing his teeth. I'd rattle the door and say, I'm coming in. I'm gonna
see you. So at this point, I mean, you must have come to the conclusion
that
that all of that was on him psychologically. Well, I kind of started to
realize right at the end, this is not all me. This cannot possibly be all
me. There's just no way because I'm kind of a flirty girl. And I don't
have problems thinking I can speak with you and enjoy flirtation by
bringing out the best Maa. Maybe you're standing with an older gentleman
and you let him flirt with you when it's not sexual flirting. It's just
social and fun. That's just bringing out your personality. I enjoyed that
and I knew the gentleman responded to me because I was a fun flirty girl
standing there chatting it up with him.
But I also knew, wow, my husband just doesn't see past this, but it took
me a long time to realize, this is when I realized it's all on you. When
after my son was born, Jack, my second son was born. And I was in the
midst of the nastiest by now, messiest divorce because I'm starting to
figure things out. I'm starting to like revelations or hit me right and
left, and I'm starting to go. I think you're a big cheater. I think my
being celibate and holding on and being honest with you was allowing you
just to live out whatever you wanted to do, and I don't know what he did
when he traveled, but I do remember having a conversation with a woman who
was a girlfriend of mine when I first moved here, and I felt a vibe with
her about him, and I questioned her and I questioned her and said, So did
you have some sort of weird coitus with my husband, and she said, and this
helped me feel better, you know, Ellen, I did have sex with him, but it
was so weird. I'm not sure if it was actually sex or not, and I said to
her, I know exactly what you're saying because he's not a man comfortable
with having sex because He is a man who never figured out how to be
comfortable with himself and his size, and size doesn't matter. Hey, you
can do all kinds of stuff, but this man, size mattered, and he just was
desperate. This is the weirdest thing. He was desperate to have sex with a
certain kind of woman that he thought was really sexually appealing
because this other woman looked a lot like me. She had a similar kind of
thing going on, and I thought she was quite attractive when I first met
her and even said to him, Why aren't you dating her? I had clearly already
felt the vibe the first night I met the woman. That he had tried to have
sex with her in some weird sort of way, because I think he was always
trying to find the perfect girl to have sex with, and I was the perfect
girl just to have a marriage with because it looked pretty good to his
mother and society and his social group, and my bank account and all of
the things looked desirable to him except me, which was so sad because I
was working really hard to be I was trying to overcome still this high
school thing of being a really desirable girl. I was still doing it in my
late 30s by then. I'm still desperately searching for it. But in the end,
I mean, you do realize it had nothing to do with your looks. I had to have
an affair to figure that out. I totally had to. I had to have an affair to
figure out a man who could have sex with any woman if he would. I know
that's totally twisted. No, I believed if he'd, I just It worked for me.
For some reason, the fact that he that there was a sexual, and we had a
lot of sexual chemistry and it was just really It was the experience I was
looking for. And so I went back and kept having this affair over and over
and over. It wasn't just then clearly, I did not just have to have the act
of having sex at a great resort. And having a couple of drinks. It wasn't
that. It was I didn't even have sex the first night I was with him at this
resort. It was more about the intimacy. It was intimacy. That's the clear
word is intimacy. I didn't have intimacy with my husband at all. We only
talked about what we would do in 5 to 7 years regarding our career track,
his career track, I mean, not mine. That didn't matter. I was a support
network. His career track. We never talked about Goals or what your spirit
life was or what your where your faith life might take you. Clearly we
couldn't sit and talk to each other about sex.
You've experienced truly like two The 2 out of the 3 most important men in
your life were totally psychologically abusive to you. Totally. I didn't
even get it in different ways, but I believed, I absolutely believed in my
heart that I had attracted my husband because he was so different from my
father. He was very, he was an academic, he was brilliant. He was smart.
He was the kind of guy that society looked at and said, winner, my father
was a car dealer who was a wise cracker who played poker, right? Oh, they
still and they both dismissed me in every way possible. And yet I really
believe. I totally believed her. I drew my husband to him and me and I was
going to marry my husband because he was so different. I would not have
the marriage my mother had. No, he would be a good man and I wouldn't
bicker with him and we'd have this nice life. No, he just didn't fuck me.
Yeah, that will fuck you up more. I said to people, we slept in this
little bed, this little antique bed that I had that I picked out of my
grandmother's house. And I said to people, you know how sometimes when
you're in college, you spoon or you sleep like a double helix and you're
all wrapped around each other. It's very intimate when you sleep together.
It's like a sexual experience. My husband and I slept next to each other
like knives. Don't touch each other. Sleep straight like this. Don't touch.
And we both got excited when the other one would travel so we could
bisect the bed and you could sleep how you wanted to, but we never touched
each other. Never touched. And when he ran away with his assistant, a much
younger, plausible, she looked like me. She could have almost been me. I
mean, he was like he was trying to, your affair didn't break up the
marriage. Well, this is this is what broke up the marriage. He left. He
left and thought I would follow along behind him. The plan was he left and
I was going to pack up the house and move again and start my career
somewhere else, even though every time like when I moved here, he told me
, you can't tell anybody you're an artist, that'll affect my career. You
can't show your work in this town. That'll affect my career. Like I was a
coco or something. I couldn't talk about myself. I was only supposed to.
To just be there and say nice things. I went along with this for a long
time. I really did. I totally did. putting you in connection with that
with your previous man and having that same sexual sexual tension was
really like what did it. I think that's probably what did it, and he was
gone by then. He'd been gone for about 4 months. He was living in another
state in another city, and I was intending to move, but something in my
head said. If you move to that next city where I really didn't want to
move. It's like reaffirming
the nonverbal contract that you have with your husband. It's like saying,
I'm all good with this. I'll start again. I'll pack up everything. I'll
move along with this celibate relationship. We'll do it your way. And part
of me said. I don't think so. We are separating these stories into themes
, and one of the themes is connected connection connections, and I think
yours is perfect. It comes back to connectedness it so many times,
I really do imagine this when you mentioned the Big Bang too, but I also,
it is this image of like Some like planets separating and then coming back
together. It's like we now this family, well, I think it was, um, we've
had several Christmases and I'm like I was never one of those persons that
ever, I'd never have a Christmas tree or celebrate a holiday, just not me
, but I found that now I kind of have this family that expects these kind
of things and I've taken Danny's oldest son.
I've taken Danny's oldest son as if he's mine, and I, and he sees me there.
I swear he sees me as, oh, that's my father's. Nonwhite, but you know, or
like she's my mother. I feel like he is also my son, you know, and it's
become this really, really nice family. And the family that I had with my
ex-husband. I Because I hated my family. I did not like my family. My
nuclear little family was a facade. It was, we look like this on the
outside. I learned how to do this when I was a child. Looked like this on
the outside. Something else is going on on the inside of your house, and
it was, it was a totally, it was the most disconnected family and my
mother worked really hard to make it look like we were really something
and we weren't. And so when I disconnected.
It was not good. It did not. There was a lot of yelling and screaming, and
I think they're still waiting. It's been years. And I'm like, No, no, no.
Just because, just because we had years of hating each other doesn't mean
we need years of hating each other. We really, really, really, really
don't. We can, we can all move on and have different families and still be
happy about it. And you can love your family there and I can love my
family. And I told my father in my brief letter to him, I have a nice
family. I just, I have a nice family.
And I said to him, things are forgiven. All is forgiven. So did he respond
? Well, I wrote also in the letter, you do not need to respond. I don't
anticipate a letter back and don't want you to. I didn't think I'd get a
letter back, and I also believe he did not get the letter. I emailed the
letter to my high school art teacher who offered to go and read the letter
because I knew if I mailed the letter to my family's home address, my
mother would get the letter. Read the letter and dispose of it immediately
, and it would never happen. So I sent someone over who had a friendship
and would sit and read the letter, but my father's health had been
deteriorating, which was what I felt was happening. Man never did not
smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. So, you know, I felt it was time to
write something for myself, and I realized, I don't know if he even heard
the letter. She might have the letter ended up being mailed to their home
, and I'm guessing my mother picked up the letter and Probably pen to
paper. It was enough for me. I felt fine. I felt fine. She won't be
getting one that says, I'm sorry for all the sadness. I'm sorry for
everything that ever happened. My mother and I had the worst doesn't give
you the right. No, no, I lived through nastiness, so I've moved on from
that. So, the idea of a family is so much more of the who gave birth to
who. It is. It is now also in our family, um.
My kid's father's grandmother who lives in Miami has come to stay with us
a couple of times. I had her come for 6 months. I'd never met the woman
once and she lived with me, and I'm like, this is great. There are cousins
down the street and, well, what I meant to say about family was I had
disconnected from my nuclear family and when I got married. I was
desperate to be in a good family. Do you know what I mean? Like a really
good family. Even in high school, I was always sort of adopting myself
into my best friend's families who had had nice families where the kids
would all go to college and they all supported each other and they, they
would kind of kid each other and rib each other, but they're all there for
each other. I wanted to be in that kind of family. So when I got married,
my husband had a very small family. It was just his mother and his sister.
His father had already passed away. And so I absorbed myself into that
family. And when I was divorced, they never said a word to me ever again.
No one ever called me once. It was like I never existed. The girl who went
on every family vacation, you know, and lit every campfire for the family
, the cab and and organized the the the the saltbox regatta, you know, and
all of these different things. They acted like I never existed. No one
ever said my name again and I was Like like write her name, never say her
name again. It's done. Never. And my ex-husband and I have never said
another word again to each other. And why would we? Why would we?
I think we're good.