Noah's Rainbow

     We’re really getting into relationships this month, and similar to last week, I’m going to do my best not to hold back today. I’m a firm believer that, if I’m vulnerable about my struggles with things like anger and resentment, I will help someone else know they are not alone in that same struggle. So I’m gonna lay my cards on the table again today in solidarity of the struggles of motherhood. I do not like being told that I am in the wrong. I have a major tendency to get defensive when I’m confronted about something I said or did that was not seen in the best light. I think it is in our nature as humans to justify our actions. Most of us don’t purposely say things to hurt someone else, or do things to cause a conflict with the people in our lives. We usually have reasons for why we made the choice to do what we did and say what we said. The problem becomes when those reasons attempt to mask our own contributions to a conflict. In last week’s post, I admitted tha...

            It seems like everyone these days is talking about “setting boundaries.” It’s all over my social media feeds, setting boundaries in all types of relationships- with your significant other, with your parents, with your in-laws, with your children, with your friends, with your coworkers and even your boss… It’s gotta make you wonder: is this just another new mental health fad, pushed by the “millennial snowflakes” who just need to “toughen up?” First of all, I’m technically a millennial (though sometimes, I’m not a fan of being grouped in that generation). Second of all, I do not at all believe that the current generation needs to toughen up. I do believe there are people in our society- of all generations- who get too easily offended when someone simply disagrees with them or takes it personally when someone holds a different opinion than them. Neither of these things are cause for meltdown. They are just normal human existence where every...

  Listen to this post here      Throughout my journey with infertility and pregnancy loss, I had to consciously make the decision to feel and express gratitude. It was so easy to do the exact opposite: look around at those around me, those I followed on social media, even strangers I encountered out in the world, and feel envious. I felt envious when I saw someone pregnant, when someone I knew announced the arrival of a new baby, when I was invited to a baby shower. I would wonder why that person was so much more deserving of a baby than I was, why they were allowed to get pregnant so easily while I couldn’t, why they got to grow their family two, three, even four times before I even was blessed with one child. In my anxiety about having a baby, I found myself focusing on what I didn’t have, and that led to negative feelings towards those who had what I wanted. I’m embarrassed to say I judged people somewhat harshly, finding them undeserving or less deserving than I ...

  Listen to this post here      I love to capture memories. Our family has a shared album for pictures of our son; we drop pictures into it whenever we take them, so that those who are far away can still see what he’s up to and how much he’s growing. This past spring, we had to start a new shared album, because Apple limits those albums to 5000 pictures, and we had reached that with the first one. The majority of the pictures in those albums are from me. When I was making a baby book for pictures of his first year on Shutterfly, I had to split the year into two books because the first 6 months ended up taking up 100 pages, which is the max that Shutterfly will let you create. I definitely wasn’t going to just use less pictures. Timehop is one of my favorite apps on my phone. Everyday, it creates memories for me from my camera roll and social media accounts, and these memories now remind me how little he was last year, as well as all the milestones he hit as he gr...

December 25, 2020 To my Rainbow Baby, Today, I am 31 weeks pregnant! It is also Christmas, and we have just arrived home from spending a wonderful day celebrating with your Gammaw and Pup-Pup Heilmann. We got to see your Uncle John and Aunt Denise on the computer, too. Tomorrow, we’ll head to Pennsylvania to see your Grandma and Grandpa Miller and Aunt Ashley. Those will be our only celebration this year. We’re skipping our big gatherings with Pup-Pup’s family and Grandma Miller’s family because things are still not safe for get-togethers of that size. It has seemed somewhat strange so far, not to be travelling so much and seeing all those people. I have never spent a Christmas in Ohio in all of my life. But I’m also relishing the quiet and slow-down this year, not having to feel like we’re running ourselves ragged to see everyone in a few short days. It has allowed me to pause and cherish this Christmas being pregnant with you. There’s so much to celebrate despite this yucky year, and...

  Listen to the post here Let’s start with a vocabulary lesson today. The English teacher in me wants to make sure we all have a clear understanding of some words that are vital to today’s thoughts :) Personally, I struggle a great deal with Biblical words that seem to mean the same things and are often used interchangeably in Scripture. Two such words are “shame” and “guilt.” I have always treated these words as synonyms, and in a lot of ways they are. But this past January (feels like a century ago, doesn’t it!), I was in some professional development at school, and the speaker- who was presenting on trauma-based teaching- said something incredibly profound about the difference between these two words: Guilt is thinking, “I did something bad.” Shame is thinking, “I am a bad person.” In this light, they become incredibly unique from one another. Based on these lines of thinking, guilt is something that we can move past, if we rectify the bad thing we have done. However, ...