Tomorrow afternoon Jack and I are meeting my friend and fellow blogger Becky and her son, who is three weeks younger than Jack, for a walk at Hugh McRae park. This will be the fifth visit I’ve made to this park since Jack was born twelve weeks ago. How many times did I visit the park before he was born, in my two years of living in Wilmington? Maybe, I think, once.

What did I used to do with myself? The answer is, “Not a lot.” I’m boosting my protein intake these days, thanks to advice from my acupuncturist, to match the protein levels I was taking in during pregnancy. I’m also reducing my sugar intake. The fast food meals that we lived on for the first few weeks of Jack’s life (minus the two weeks that other people cooked FOR us) were getting a bit old. And fat. Oh, wait. Maybe that’s me getting old and fat.

I go religiously to yoga class every week, because I go with Jack. I get out of the house and go for walks, because Jack needs to get outside and look at trees. I go to the library or the art store or even the grocery store, because it’s good for Jack to go out in the car and see different people. I have people over for “play dates” or go to their houses, because it’s good for Jack to see babies around his age. And oh, yeah. It’s probably good for me to see people my age, too.

My point is that before I got pregnant, I was pretty lazy about taking care of myself. I go to the chiropractor and acupuncturist and therapist. I get massages and talk to a life coach and a healer. So it’s not like I sit in the corner eating Chee-tos all day. But as far as exercise and diet have been concerned, I haven’t participated as much as I’d like. And then came Jack. And I ate two hard boiled eggs a day and did leg and butt exercises twice a day to help me get through labor and the aches and pains of late pregnancy. And now I’m going to the park and walking at least once a week. I took three walks around the neighborhood yesterday, two of which were with my little man, one of which was with both Jack and Brian.

And it’s extending into other areas of my life, too. I speak up for myself more than I used to. I take the parking spot someone is standing in, waiting for them to move out of my way instead of finding another spot. Because I belong here. I have a place on this planet, and I deserve to actually inhabit it. I used to play along with jokes I didn’t think were funny, sometimes at my own expense, because I wanted to keep the peace. No longer. Why? Because now I have a son. And I want him to feel that he’s worth standing up for. Because he is. And frankly, if he is, so am I.

A year ago, I ended a relationship with a woman who was driving me crazy. She had been my mother’s best friend, and my mother had loved her. But frankly, she took advantage of my mom’s tendency to feel responsible for other people’s feelings. She exploited that, even in Mom’s last days, and she tried to do the same with me. For a long time, I let her, out of respect for my mother’s memory. And finally, I’d had enough. She’d guilt-tripped me and blamed me for her own unhappiness, her own mistakes and weakness. She even once told me that my mother would slap me for disagreeing with her political leanings.

I’d taken all of that, thinking Mom would want me to. But last May, I finally asked myself what *I* wanted me to do. Did I want to keep apologizing to this bully of a person for not sending her a Mother’s Day card – even though she’s not my mother? Did I want to end up angry and resentful after every encounter? If I had been dating her, I would have broken up with her a long time ago for being verbally abusive. So why was it OK for her to do it? Answer: It wasn’t. Just because Mom let her treat her like that doesn’t mean I had to.

It was a big step. I was in essence drawing a line, separating myself forever from my mother – not because this woman was a link to my mom, but because my mom never would have cut off a relationship, no matter how dysfunctional it was. An oft-heard phrase from my mother was, “Now, don’t burn your bridges.” But a year ago, I burned one. And I burned it big.

By then, Brian and I were trying to get pregnant. And it occurred to me that I did not want to subject my children to her kind of emotional blackmail. And then it further occurred to me that if my kids shouldn’t have to deal with her, neither should I. So I told her enough. I stopped e-mailing her. I blocked her access to me online. Enough. That was May 22. Our “ground zero” date for counting the beginning of my pregnancy was May 24.

And now, a year later, I have this little boy in my life. He doesn’t know how to eat or stand or move on his own. He has no claws or shell or scales to defend himself. He’s just soft and pink and helpless. It’s my job to keep him safe. It’s my job to keep him healthy. It’s my job to help him grow. What I would do for Jack is a whole list of things that I also need to do for myself.

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