{"id":5895,"date":"2019-10-23T17:38:54","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T17:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=5895"},"modified":"2019-10-23T18:10:38","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T18:10:38","slug":"my-blessing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=5895","title":{"rendered":"My Blessing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Junior<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though a devout atheist I am blessed. Twenty-five years ago my son was born. I always joke I nearly forgot to have children; in other words, he wasn\u2019t planned. Conceived in love certainly but I was still conflicted about parenthood. My mother did not inspire nor evoke tender feelings. We did share a strong bond but because she was bipolar, or something-undiagnosed-our relationship was fraught with tumult, pain, anguish. And abuse. My father-who turned out not to be my biological father-was no picnic either. They were miserable together; took it out on each other, then me and my two younger sisters. \u201cDysfunctional\u201d would be an understatement. Of course I knew none of these terms, just knew we were fucked and that beating your kids, wrong. I considered running away many times but there was no where to go. As we moved often there were no aunts or grandparents close by. No refuge.<\/p>\n

When I discovered I was pregnant I was dismayed but knew it was now or never. The doctor tried to convince me to have another abortion but for the first time I felt strongly, said no, I want this child. No doubt the hormones might have clouded my judgment and my dreaded biological clock was ticking but I have no regrets. Raising a child with special needs has been a huge challenge and I\u2019ve had much less time for creative pursuits but my passion for poetry dims in comparison to the love we share. He\u2019s a good son. A good man. It took me far too long to realize nothing in this life is more vital than family, friends, community. Nothing sustains us like the power of love.<\/p>\n

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Though a devout atheist I am blessed. Twenty-five years ago my son was born. I always joke I nearly forgot to have children; in other words, he wasn\u2019t planned. Conceived in love certainly but I was still conflicted about parenthood. My mother did not inspire nor evoke tender feelings. We did share a strong bond […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5895"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5901,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5895\/revisions\/5901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}