Every time I find myself not able to breathe or with a screaming headache, I try to understand and accept that it is taking all my husband has not to chase the easy money--for his American male, fifty-something work ethic not to risk another likely corporate disappointment, running on that hamster wheel.  We’re former Joneses in witness protection, only there’s no per diem. For my strapping 6’2” former firefighter/paramedic/police officer not to do what he’s always done--compromise his own happiness to feed us--but instead to marinate in this place where for the first time the actual possibility of failing to provide a roof over our heads does, too, is akin to taking a hot poker to his nether regions, something Corporate America has done enough.  Instead he’s limping along with his heart not quite in consulting as he builds a photography business on the side and dreams of having a food truck.  Things I want for him perhaps more than he wants them for himself.

Every fiber of my old self wants to run out and wait tables, tend bar, go back to being a miserable administrative assistant, or to throw together a hasty garage sale, even though everything I’ve done over the last two years has told me to keep writing, that I’m on the right path, that this me I’ve finally come back to is the me I was meant to be all along.  So instead, I’m composing this post from my new writers studio in a hip, lofty old factory turned (thankfully ridiculously cheap) artists’ Mecca, where I’ll focus on finishing my novel, and take the earnest leap to query and submit my writing for paid publication.

Our 500 thread-count sheets no longer possess the elastic wherewithal to remain tucked, and almost neither do I.  I try to be comforted knowing we still have friends with a big basement and even bigger hearts, and that we’re in this together.  We’ve been back home in Michigan where we belong for a year now, and where we have much easier access to our aging parents and married daughters.  This has been one of the longest summers in our history, but the ability to conduct our midlife crises nearer the support of friends and family has to be the only thing that truly counts right now.  

We will get through this, and come out the other side, hopefully having been rewarded and having taught our children to make choices that lead them to fulfilling lives much earlier than we did, even if today I wonder whether Ramen™ is available yet gluten free.

Maybe our son will always remember 5th grade as the year he had no new school clothes and carried a recycled backpack (hey, it’s a Jansport™, those things are guaranteed for life, right?), but hopefully he will also remember it as the year his parents eventually got it right.  This is the year we embraced the thrill ride of finding out who each of us is, instead of caving-in to what the Joneses would have done, even if neither of us has any fingernails left.  I’m calling it, 
Midlife with a Sidecar, where we’re all three taking the turns and holding on for dear life.  

It’s back to work, and I find myself still reeling, hung over, really, but not in an alcohol-induced haze, more in a mind-still-blown haze from my weekend spent with almost 5000 other remarkable women, and a few men, at #BlogHer13 in Chicago.

I say other, because one of the most remarkable discoveries, reminders, I got this weekend was that I, too, am a remarkable woman.  This is something I tell myself sometimes, but don’t really believe.

I go through the laundry list:  You had a child alone at the age of twenty, whom you raised alone for the first 7 years of her life, you owned and operated a restaurant as a white woman whose husband was only home on the weekends, in a 98% black, severely socioeconomically depressed city for three years, you usually successfully managed a blended family and raised two beautiful, loving, remarkable women, you healed your own infertility and successfully added a beautiful baby boy to the then teen his&hers daughters you already had, recovered him from and prevented further vaccine damage, and you survived a two-year stint an entire country away from said daughters, and used (half of) that time to grow and discover yourself and you didn’t (quite) manage to kill your husband (not my story to tell, yet).   

And then there’s the professional stuff that’s happened in the last two years:  you were featured on BlogHer 3.5 times, you submitted an essay which was accepted for inclusion in a book that’ll be out later this year, and the theme for that essay earned you a Voices of the Year Honoree nod from BlogHer.  You wrote and taught Creative Writing for Fourth Graders to your son’s class over three sessions, and spoke before the local Depression and Bipolar Alliance about the connection between gluten intolerance and depression, anxiety, bipolar, and neurodegenerative disease.  You have so much more in you, just busting to get out, and all the while, you’re working again on your novel about a woman dealing with infertility.  Almost forgot, you taught yourself and built two complete websites all on your own.

It’s everything, it’s so much, and yet it’s nothing compared to some women.  This struck me over and over again, particularly as I listened to the other Voices of the Year Honorees who read their beautiful pieces to us on a stage, emceed by none other than The Queen, Latifah, herself.

As I commented on Feminista Jones’ post about Queen Latifah emceeing the #BlogHer13 Voices of the Year Reception: 

“I have adored Queen Latifah ever since ‘Bringing Down the House,’ and probably well before.  For her heart, strength, humor, obvious intelligence, talent on SO many levels, and her spectacular beauty that is the antithesis of petite, she is a role model who tells me to be myself even when a huge part of me wants to hide because I'm not the size zero I once was.  My family placed far too much importance on looks.  It's been a battle to find the midlife value in my own heart and my own intelligence and my own voice.  In a moment of false clarity, my weight can wash away all I’ve gained.  I'm five feet tall.  It isn't difficult to simply look over me; to not see me at all, [or to not see myself]. 

This is my brain shit, not yours, and you probably have enough of your own shit and don't even think to look past.  When I write, when I blog, I perceive that people recognize my intelligence and hear my voice first and, I pray, accept me for my heart before they see my size.  Writing, posting is bliss because for the moment *I* can forget.  I thought I was growing past it.  But even among all of [the women of all kinds, races, shapes and sizes], even attending as a #BlogHer13 Voices of the Year Honoree, at times it was insurmountable to introduce myself.” 

Why do we discount ourselves?  Why is it that I can sit in a room full to the brim of other midlife bloggers, recognize myself in them, yet feel too self-conscious to reach out to them as they have reached out to me after BlogHer?  Many of the Generation Fabulous women have since generously put out their arms and welcomed me into their fold.  How is it that I didn’t know before I attended that panel discussion that there are so many midlife women bloggers out there? 

How is it that we are still so underrepresented in every facet of life: corporate boards, politics, sponsorship, etc., etc.??  How is it that we so often don’t even recognize it?  We are 51% of the population (hence the book, 51%: Women and the Future of Politics), and yet we represent less than 19% of congress?  It seems we are largely complacent with being slotted into the role of teachers and school board members, raising the children, building the foundation of our future—all vitally important stuff that many of us probably don’t want to leave to the men.  But the fact that we are not nurtured to do otherwise isn’t good enough.  The fact that many of us don’t even think to seek otherwise isn’t good enough. 

And woe to those of us who didn’t attend college.   Whether or not it’s truth, the lack of a college education, time spent staying home with our children and the consequential holes in our resumes, can paralyze many of us with fear.  It halted me.  I allowed my lack of a college education to stop me from becoming something more, from finishing my book, from seeking and touching more of me.  

Until I left my hometown in Michigan, hit San Diego and was forced to take a hard look at myself, I existed, I loved, I enjoyed life to a degree…I wanted more, but I was holding my breath. 

I’m no slouch.  Two college level creative writing courses in San Diego, a modicum of encouragement from my professors, and I haven’t looked back…but what if…?

Well, as Kelly Wickham of Mocha Momma said in her Voices of the Year reading about being a single mom that resonated with me so deeply, “that is unacceptable.”  Kelly also wrote in “Untold Stories are Sometimes Secrets,” about,” feeling invisible as a person of color at times.”  I want her to know that I often felt invisible as a very short woman before I was heavy, and only more so now as a short heavy woman.  Perhaps we all put on our own invisibility cloaks for any number of reasons…acne, too large breasts, bad teeth…the list of things we can’t magically change about ourselves goes on.

Before #BlogHer14, here’s something I can change:  I will endeavor to stand proud, to embrace all that I am, inside and out, to *believe* myself to be your peer, just as Queen Latifah tells me. 

Before #BlogHer14, I will reach out to other women.  I will return the embrace of Generation Fabulous, and follow in their well-forged steps.  I.  Will.  Finish.  Bluebirds.  I will seek more speaking opportunities, I will query publications.  I will get paid for my writing.  And as of tonight, I am going to submit my book to a publisher! 

And come #BlogHer14, I will extend my hand to you no matter what I weigh, and I will help wake up the next generation of fabulous women to all they already are, even if they don’t get to witness people like Sheryl Sandberg and Rita Arens and Kelly Wickham and the almost 5000 strong of us amazing, powerful, diverse women for themselves.

What halts you in your tracks?  Or how have you managed to overcome your own personal invisibility cloak?
If you heard about the #JudyBlumeProject at #BlogHer13, SUBMISSIONS ARE STILL OPEN!!