I’ve been looking at Facebook this weekend and “loving” and commenting on posts of people’s children, someone getting married and someone accomplishing a major goal in her career. As I looked at all these people’s lives moving forward, I couldn’t help but think,

People are getting what they want out of life and I’m mourning my grandmother. 

And I felt so stuck. Completely and utterly stuck. But then I remembered I can work towards what I want out of life and mourn my grandmother at the same time. I want a career in media and I’m really hoping this blog can help me get it. I want an erotic scripted podcast. I want a television show on HBO. I’m also working on a novel. But every time I try to work on it since my grandmother died, the only thing I want to write about is my grandmother. I’m going to try to work on it again on Monday. I want Monday to truly be a day of labor for me. Wish me luck!

I’m not sure if you all are familiar with the Bravo show Flipping Out, but in the most recent episode, Jeff and Gage welcomed a baby girl via surrogate. As I watched both of them cry as she was born and as they held her for the first time, I thought, I don’t know if I can live my entire life and not experience that.

My entire life I’ve wanted to be a mother. As time has passed and I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten less and less certain that’s going to happen. But I think I really, really want to have a daughter. I’m still not sure I’m comfortable having her on my own (because, frankly, that’s the way it’s looking at this point) but I may have to. I’m also still not sure I want to pay for sperm and to be inseminated when…there are ways that can happen for free, ya know? Ha!

In a little over three months, I’m going to be 35 years old. The latest I would want to get pregnant is age 38. If I may be a single mother in three years, I need to get serious about saving money now. Of all the things to worry about concerning having a child: something going wrong during the pregnancy, me dying during childbirth, my child not being healthy, etc., the thing I worry about most is not having the money to raise my daughter the way I want. I looked at the living wage chart for the county I live in and it informed me I should be able to support myself and two children on less than what I currently make.

I read that and thought, In what world?! Then I thought maybe I could technically support three people but I wouldn’t be able to live the way I wanted to. I couldn’t get my hair done and a massage every two weeks. I couldn’t pick up dinner as much. I couldn’t pay for the therapy I may still need. If I wanted to live in a neighborhood that’s as nice as the one I live in now, I’d have to live much farther away from the city.

I want my daughter to have the best of everything: the best clothes, the best education, the best (AKA safest) car seat, etc. And all of that costs money. So maybe I’ll have to start getting only one massage a month instead of two. 😉

Before I end, I want to share one of the jewels from my second therapy session. I told my therapist how sad it made me that my grandmother’s grave is another state and therefore, I can’t just visit it whenever I want to feel close to her. My therapist asked me if there was anywhere my grandmother really liked when she’d come here to visit me or if there was a place she would like/reminded me of her that I could visit. I confessed that idea had never occurred to me. I’m going to try to choose a place I can go to feel close to her this weekend.

Have any of you tried this? If so, what places do you go to to feel close to the ones you’ve lost?