Happy 5th Birthing Day: Reflections & Moving Forward

First day on a school bus ever! (summer camp)

“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

– Carl Sandburg

When you wake up and question where the last 5 years have gone. July 11, 2020. It is the height of the Pandemic. My labor is taking a long time to kick into gear. We are not allowed to leave our hospital room, let alone the hospital. A windowless room with no guests allowed. I remember a glowing landscape and a meditation type melody playing on the TV in the room. I was in and out of a foggy haze over those next 36-72 hours, in what ultimately culminated in a complex and complicated birth.

If I’m being honest though, that was the easy part. One’s birth is supposed to be wrenching and hard. The mother is allowed to reel with fear and pain. For me though, postpartum turned out to be the bigger challenge. Over those next 12 months or so, I was scared to admit what I felt and what I didn’t feel. How was I supposed to get support from other women and moms over a screen? There were no in person “mommy and me” gatherings or classes that I could find in those days. I relied on some virtual support groups and online lactation coaching. But I pretty much felt I was on my own to process the traumatic birth and the ensuing circus.

We had a newborn. She was perfect in every way, but it would take time to find my path forward. The wee hours of the morning were sometimes the most peaceful part of the day. If I listened carefully, I could hear a buzz from the crickets outside and I had my baby in my arms, cooing and nursing. I used one (sort of) free hand to read Pachinko and sunk deeply into the present moment.

Fast forward five years and there are days now I don’t want to jinx how lucky I feel. To have this little human that our daughter has grown into. She is a blessing and a beacon of light. She laughs the biggest and boldest laugh I’ve ever heard; her giggle is contagious. I want to bottle up her desire and endless energy to sing, act, dance and make trouble all at once. Yes, I want to bottle it all up like its a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade, in hopes that it will run through my veins and come pouring out like a sweet salve on my skin.

At the same time, the last 5 years have been a bit of a blur. There are times I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it… afraid that I wasn’t cut out for this journey, this role, this excruciatingly challenging task of mothering a child into the world, as well as mothering myself, for what has often felt like the first time. No script, no one book to follow, and certainly no self-help guru could solve this new life puzzle for me. How, for example, do I soothe her tantrums and soothe the inner child within me that is scared too, scared I can’t tolerate her big feelings without exploding into a ball of nerves.

As I now look towards the next five years, I find myself reflecting on this reoccurring theme in my writing of “time and space,” and specifically “time scarcity.”

I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t an issue before my daughter was born. I can remember waking up on a Saturday in my early thirties, with the entire day ahead of me. On one hand it felt like waves coming in and out of the ocean, the day is full of possibilities. And yet through my time scarcity lens, all I could often see were a series of competing choices, all of which I wanted to try on before time ran out. And yet I remember feeling so fretful that I would either pick the “wrong choice” or that I wouldn’t have time to do all of them.

Underneath all of this angst are two competing life fears that I still grapple with most days: a fear of making a mistake and a fear of missing out. I believe deep down I have this genuine love for and curiosity for life…but it rides alongside, perhaps an existential deep knowing that we are only on this earth for so long and we must make the most of it. I see this play out in my life now, both as a forty something human and as a working mom. With even less time (ostensibly) at my disposal, I find myself asking quiet questions most mornings about how I can exercise after work and have silly 1-1 time before bed with my daughter. Do I have space to finally take a French class this year, join a book club AND take my daughter on an after school play date? I’m playing out the same scenario I did in my early 30’s, except now I’m adding in another human’s needs to the matrix. I sometimes have to remind myself to literally stop cleaning the kitchen and vacuuming so that I can pause and look at my daughter sitting in her small, black, wooden arts and crafts chair, quietly drawing a picture of Elsa and Olaf while singing a made up song to herself.

You blink an eye and you miss it.

Alas, as I look towards these next 5 years, I know we will see new challenges and hurdles arise. With the Jewish High Holidays upon us, I often see this time of year as an opportunity to reflect on what I want for myself and my family in the coming year. How can I be more intentional about the way I’m living each day, giving and receiving, breathing and believing in myself, as a mom, as a daughter, as a friend, and as a citizen on this earth? As I referenced in a recent blog, I want to lean into my mid-life years with a little more freedom, ease, and forgiveness for myself. And yet, I also want to be realistic that the way I’ve been leaning into “mid-life” up till now is and has caught up with me. I can’t “do it all.” And I certainly can’t do it “perfectly,” or as well as the “the mom across the street” is doing it.

Let it be known that in these next five years, I want to emphasize quality over quantity. I want to choose less and live into those choices more fully. I want to judge myself and my family, not against any other family’s framework or lifestyle, but against my own gut instincts about what feels right.

The scariest part of this realization is that it means I must finally come to accept that there is no “right” choice for our endless daily (and more nuanced) decisions. But if I slow down, even just 1%, and feel into the safety of my body and breath, there is a window of freedom and opportunity to leap into the matrix of it all and simply make a choice.

So as a gift to myself on this 5 year anniversary of the beginning of my birthing and mothering rollercoaster, I am choosing to step off the pressure-filled looped path that I’ve been living. The new path may be a little quieter and perhaps a little boring at times, but if I can catch a murmur of those cricket sounds along the way, then I know I’m here and I’m living. One wild and precious, messy moment at a time. Blessings for the journey dear readers. And a happy, quiet end to summer.

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“I pray for the change in perception that will let me see bigger and sweeter realities.”

~Anne Lamott (Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers)

My Comfort Book

“Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?”

~ Bob Marley

There is a book that will forever bring me back to the memory of feeding my newborn daughter… in the darkest hours of the morning, when you could hear a pin drop, but for the suckling of her lips, nourishing herself and then falling back asleep. During this time I lost myself in the novel Pachinko (Min Jin Lee, 2017), a historical fiction novel following a Korean family over several generations and their epic and at times harrowing 20th century experience in Japan. Almost 500 pages, I would read it in the wee hours of the morning and get lost in the characters’ lives. It was as if soaking up poetry was my nourishment and it gave me solace and the perspective that I wasn’t alone. I knew I was going to be okay and would get through that lonely and isolating period, wracked with postpartum anxiety and depression.

Fast forward almost 5 years later and I have found myself gravitating back to Pachinko as a form of solace and comfort. When I found myself recently navigating a new period of depression and anxiety, not dissimilar from the feelings I had during those postpartum months, my sister recommended I find an audiobook to get lost in when I needed an outlet. I’ve never been one for re-reading books or re-watching movies. Once I’m done, I’m done. But in this instance, I instantly thought of Pachinko. Could it provide that similar sense of refuge, a secret knowing that I was going to be okay? 17 hours and 48 minutes long, it seemed daunting at first, but I’ve moved through it and have but an hour remaining.

It’s fascinating to me that a book or a piece of music that provided such comfort during a challenging time can soothe the nervous system in similar ways years later as new challenges arise.

I’m still piecing together what contributed to this episode or chapter of depression. I have some ideas and think I will save them for a future blog piece. Instead, I want to reflect briefly on the theme of healing and hope that can come from unlikely places. Like the characters in Pachinko, I have found that connecting with other people’s stories has been the true remedy.

Over the last 8 weeks as a piece of my healing, I participated in a group therapy based intensive program. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. Reporting to “group” (as we called it) most days of the week, I sit alongside those who, at first, are complete strangers. Facilitated by trained clinicians, the sessions provide each of us with the opportunity to “check in” about how we fared the night before, how we are feeling that day and what topics we would like to chew on during our “process session.” Everyone comes in with very different challenges and experiences. And yet, what we all have in common is that we are not coping as well as we would like with our mental health (presenting for most folks as anxiety and depression).

What is unique about the group I’ve joined is that everyone is coming from the professional world–doctors, lawyers, data analysts, investment bankers, sports coaches, nurses, teachers, higher ed professionals, the list goes on. Folks are all starting and “graduating” from the program at different times so the group rarely looks the same. And yet, you seem to travel with a few of the same core folks throughout your journey. Reflecting back now, what fascinates me the most from this whole experience is simply the human validation I didn’t realize I needed that I am not alone in experiencing the bumps and dips of one’s mental health landscape.

I come to realize that depression and anxiety (and other mental health conditions) that so many of us experience but often don’t feel safe enough to talk about widely, are endemic to our society and probably have been for centuries.

Whether it’s navigating a brutal divorce, managing a toxic workplace or not having processed childhood traumas, we are each stacked with challenges and don’t often talk about how they impact us– physically, emotionally, spiritually or mentally. We hold them in and rationalize them away. Our lifetime of baggage compounds and then one day, something just bursts… the blood vessel we call life. This process is not sustainable.

I would never share details of the stories I heard. I hold them close and preciously so. But I will say that whether it was a 23 year old navigating her first full time job after college or a brilliant 70 something retiree who is questioning his purpose and meaning in the world, I sit in a simple circle each day alongside some of the kindest and most caring souls. Their vulnerability is contagious and before I know it, I find myself connecting the dots and sharing deep wounds from my own life.

None of these wounds are completely new revelations, but shared in the context of a group, I’m able to relate to others in new ways and experience reciprocal healing.

By supporting others on their journeys, I find that I begin to heal pieces of my own as well.

About one week after I complete the program I find myself driving to meet some of the group members who, along the way, become dear friends. We decide to meet for coffee at a local diner. I walk in tepidly. It’s almost surreal seeing them sitting at a booth, with a plate of curly fries and cups of tea. We proceed to share how we are all doing, each of us on different and new roller coasters. We talk about the hard and the silly moments we had together, poking fun at each other and sounding a bit more sarcastic and light hearted than we did a couple weeks back. Are we transformed and in completely different places? No, not at all. We are still walking the roads of our lives with (to most outsiders) an invisible backpack of symptoms we are managing. But the difference, at least for me, is that I now have comrades with whom I can share more openly about my mental health, and without any taboo or judgement. I feel significantly less alone and that is worth the price of gold.

——-

It’s now been about four weeks since completing the program. I’ve since finished listening to Pachinko. And despite my being light-years away from the characters that lie within, I feel a renewed sense of grounding and comfort through bearing witness to their stories. I suppose this experience could be had through reading any good novel. However for me, Min Jin Lee’s vivid storytelling provides a deep knowing and visceral reminder that none of us are alone on our respective journeys. Moreover, the paths we cross with others and the relationships we build along the way are the beating heart that allows us to keep going.

Winter

Wadsworth Falls State Park, Middletown, CT

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~By Jalaluddin Rumi

A poem for a difficult season. When the light feels hard to find. And I don’t want to dance as much.

How can I slowly crawl back to my younger self who danced with the wind, who didn’t notice who was looking when she sprawled out in all her richness, creating a world of fantasy as she moved?

I’ve somehow lost that vision lately, or maybe lost it years and years ago. I have felt so burdened and even crushed by all the self-imposed “to do’s” that I’ve forgotten about the moments of life in between.

I started this blog a little over 3 years ago (fall 2021), in another season of my life when I needed to soak up the wisdom contained in slowing down. That was the whole premise of the blog, in fact, to journal and reflect on the benefits of slowing down, even if by 1%. In some ways I feel like I’m right back where I started, at another critical inflection point, unsure of which turn to take next. The growing demands and intensity of work and motherhood continue to push many of us to our limits. Too fast, too much, too packed. And not feeling in control. How do we get that control back?

Lately it’s felt like I’ve been swimming upstream and I know I need to start a slightly different dance.

In this new year, can I stop long enough to find others who will dance with me, alongside me and even mirror me? Can I slow down enough to see all the music and the movements that nature holds in its own dance? Can I slow down long enough to make space for those I love, not for us to accomplish anything, but for us to just be still together?

To sit around a table and enjoy the company, without worrying about who is cleaning up. To do a puzzle together. To play the Bluey Jenga game we gave our daughter for Hanukkah. To sit long enough to watch the PBS New Year’s Eve Countdown 2024 with DJ Walrus and Friends (instead of cleaning the kitchen). Guess what? I watched 95% of it this year alongside her, without my phone in my hand. DJ Walrus needs to get another day job though in my humble opinion. Sorry, Mr. Walrus.

In this new year, can I join my daughter in HER dance and learn more about the true art of slowing down? While she moves a mile a minute, she does focus her attention on just one thing at a time. In the quiet (or not so quiet moments) when she’s playing by herself, may I try once in a while to not fill the time with another chore, but instead to just breathe, soak up the energy of her play and even join in. I know my kid, competitive and playful nature is in there somewhere!

This year, Hanukkah coincided with Christmas and New Years, the holiday trifecta. For the first time in what felt like years, my family sat around the table on the 6th night of Hanukkah (the night before New Year’s Eve) and played dreidel by candlelight. We took turns spinning our own miniature dreidels and laughed out loud as the Hebrew letters were called out. My daughter was the most excited of all and belted with pride as she landed on a gimel (which stands for “gantz” or “everything.” The player gets everything in the pot.)

Wishing us all a quiet and peaceful turn of the new year. May we all find some light and abundance amidst the darkness.

Meditation on Change

“Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter.”
Amit Ray

Aging is a funny thing. It happens constantly. In every moment. While we are awake and while we are sleeping. Most of these moments just pass by, unnoticed. It is a natural and inevitable part of life and yet we often fight it. Or at least I fight it.

The gray hairs that start to slip through, harder to hide. Wrinkles on my face. An increase in aches and pains when I don’t work out as much. Or when I do work out. I’m growing older. Most of us don’t have too many outlets to make sense of this process. Instead we buy our way into stopping the aging process. Try this beauty service. Use this jade roller. Meditate more. Eat lighter foods. All of these recommendations on their own are perfectly reasonable and ones we could likely benefit from, but taken together, they feel overwhelming and at times counterproductive.

Our six year old Portuguese water dog, Halligan (aka Hal), was recently diagnosed with aggressive liver cancer. He was given a prognosis of about 1-2 months, if we pursue treatment. And if we don’t pursue treatment then we are looking at weeks or even days. Of course no one can say for sure and the research is spotty but either way you look at it, we have very little time left with him.

How on earth do you process something like this? One moment he’s seemingly healthy, running 2 miles in the woods with us and the next we are talking about comfort measures and how we want to talk to our toddler about mortality. (Tips on this are welcome by the way.)

As I remain hyper vigilant to Hal’s symptoms, I notice that so many of my waking hours are spent in a state of subtle scanning. I think I’m channeling my ancestors and looking for a fire to put out or a threat from neighboring tribes. I’m almost always in problem-solving mode, planning out my week ahead or doing the math on how I’m going to get to my new job on time while “lightly” guiding my daughter through her morning routine. (She’s rounding 3 years old and the concept of “threenager” feels apt.)

As I prepare to return to work full time, I’m asking myself, how did this happen again? I took the last year a half to step back and find a sense of calm and balance from the the frenzied pace I had been moving at. And, yet, if I’m being brutally honest with myself, I think I’ve recalibrated bit by bit so that I’m still following the same patterns just a little less intensely. All of these behaviors I’m sure are adaptive and in place to protect me from unseen threats. However, they are still getting in the way of me being in the here and now.

In this next phase, as I return to work, I want to reflect on what I’ve learned since “Taking a Pause” 20 months ago. In no particular order…

Our relationships are sacred. Our partners, our children, our parents, our colleagues, our neighbors, our friends…They are primary and deserve to be elevated above all else. No work stress or drama or inconsequential, petty argument is worth jeopardizing the connections we’ve built with those around us.
Parenting is hard. Full stop. Give myself grace as the journey continues to unfold.
When I feel cynical, which I do often, try to reframe or consider a new perspective. How am I learning, growing, and stretching through this hard thing? What is another way to look at this moment?
Dream. Imagine. Rest. Allow myself space for rest and creativity. Having just finished Tricia Hersey’s, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, I’m moved and saddened by how consumed many of us are by “grind culture.” The oppressive nature that white supremacy and capitalism have on us is dripping in plain sight and yet we can’t see it because we’re too busy grinding away. It’s in our blood and our social makeup, but it doesn’t have to be our fate. We can resist.
It’s okay to not have it all figured out. Multiple times throughout the past year and a half I thought about making major career and life changes. I researched schools, ministries, organizations, yoga teacher training programs, etc. I shadowed, I prayed, I asked for answers.

And…now….I find myself returning to something very familiar, to an organization for which I worked previously. I think my search and quest for change has ironically (or not so ironically) brought me back to where I started so many years ago when I first moved up to CT.

Perhaps though, while I have come full circle in some ways, I have changed in the process. I have grown and surely aged (as is evident by my greys). And hopefully I’ve garnered a little more wisdom about what matters.

In this next chapter for myself and for all of us, may we go easy on ourselves and others. May we see the world for all its beauty and all its pain. May we stop for snuggles and cuddles and belly rubs and know the sky will not fall if we don’t send that last email. Perfectionism is dangerous and a form of violence and is perhaps the biggest threat of all to this messy and sacred process of living.

Sending love and blessings for whatever small or big steps lie ahead.

Can We Go Back?

“We are powerful because we have survived.”
Audre Lorde

It’s the spring of 2003. I’m a second semester senior at the University of Pennsylvania. I have maybe 4 weeks left before graduation and I decide now is the moment I’m ready to walk into my college’s LGBTQ+ Center. I had finally started to acknowledge my queer identity to a few close friends and was ready for a fresh start post-graduation. I was still applying for jobs and internships and wasn’t yet sure where I would land, but decided to make an appointment with the LGBT Center Director to get some advice on transitioning to life outside of Penn as a queer person.

Back then, being out as a college student was still daunting (and for many, it still is). I had essentially spent my entire college experience in the closet. It was easier to skim the surface of my social life as just a part of myself, exploring crushes and relationships with boys, but not going near my feelings for girls. I think part of me truly believed that if I pushed these feelings back far enough that they would go away. I thought I could will a different future for myself, one that placed me squarely into the range of “normal.”

It’s now 20 years later, and I’ve decided to bring my family back to campus for my 20th college reunion later this month.

I’ve lost touch with so many friends. And I have no one knocking down my door to see me again. Part of me wonders if my connections faded because of the “dual identity” I lived during my time there. I was like a fish swimming in heteronormative waters. Every once and a while, I would poke my head out and see that there were other pockets of possibility, but they felt impossible to bridge. I therefore never truly let people in to get to know me. Maybe I’m not alone in this feeling. So many of us are afraid, for different reasons, to let others in during these fraught years. And yet it’s still sad to me looking back that I was not able to open up (to myself and others) about what I was feeling and thinking and questioning as it pertained to sexuality and identity more broadly. I would likely have been met with empathy and support and realized there was a whole community of people with similar questions and life experiences.

It is largely for this reason that I feel compelled to step back onto campus 20 years later and reclaim my college experience as a queer person. I will be bringing my parents, my wife and my daughter and while I’m grateful beyond words to have them by and on my side, this pilgrimage is really a solo one.

To step back onto the Penn Quad and College Green as my full self. To walk proudly down Locust Walk and know that I’m not hiding anymore. It will surely bring up a swell of emotions, painful and joyous, but I’m prepared this time to feel them all. I will point out to my daughter the old gothic buildings where I took my first anthropology classes, the theatre world I stepped into as a college sophomore, and the tiny dorm room I lived in freshman year above the mail center in the upper Quad.

And I will walk her into the Carriage House, home to the LGBT Center, and watch her roam, free.

Here or Nowhere

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language…Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke

I picked up a book recently from a hospital Chaplain’s library called Here or Nowhere. The Chaplain who has become a mentor to me, told me to pick any book I wanted from her bookshelf to borrow. The small dusty copy of Here or Nowhere by Renée Hermanson (1984) caught my eye. It was a simple quote on the back cover that stood out. Hermanson, writing from a Christian perspective and weaving in biblical figures to help her unpack “middle age” and all its meaning, writes, “I spent many years waiting–for time to go back to school, for the children to grow up, for our finances to get better–and then discovered time was not waiting, but marching on. I believe we need to be reminded that, as Thomas Carlyle said, our ideal is here or nowhere. We must find God in our lives and our lives in God wherever and whenever we are.”

The search for meaning and a sense of “arrival” seem to be timeless inquiries. From biblical times through the present, we are all searching, looking for answers to life’s big questions. Why are we here? What is intended for us? What is God or the world or the universe waiting for us to realize and manifest? I’ve been fighting with myself lately around these questions. I’ve been asking myself, do I want to go back to school and pursue another degree or credential? I’ve been pondering a leadership path that weaves through religion and the spiritual. I’ve also been hit with the reality that I need to focus on a new job search, to secure a full/ “fuller” time position that will give my family some more breathing room and sustenance. While just a short year ago, I thought the answer was to leave my job to find more breathing room and be home with our young daughter, now I need to reverse the cycle and work more hours. Such is the ebb and flow of life.

There is a pending fear and excitement all at the same time about the prospect of more change ahead. There is a part of me that I think will always yearn for change and new opportunities to break free from what feels like the mundane and ordinary. I’ve realized I’m chasing something that is always going to be a step (or miles) in front of me unless I change my perspective. I risk now sinking back into the “if only” syndrome of my 20’s and 30’s. If only I had a partner, if only I was settled down, if only I had a child, etc. etc. But when that elusive “if only” becomes a reality, your dreams just morph into something further away.

How can I find wisdom and answers right here in the now, without trying to search for them? How can I release the pressure to keep searching and at the same time remain a seeker and stay curious?

I recently watched the movie, Women Talking (2022), produced by Sarah Polley. It chronicles a two-day period in which women from an isolated Mennonite community grapple with the decision of whether or not to stay and fight their attackers or leave their community. It is a profound depiction of women at their strongest and weakest moments, scared out of their minds about the violence (sexual, physical, and emotional) their children might face. I was struck by the character of Ona (played by Mara Rooney) who is sometimes teased for being too lofty or imaginative in her ideals. She allows herself to dream and float above the horrors her community has endured and imagine a better world for herself and her children. She is at the same time grounded in what’s real and what’s looming if the women don’t act and make a decision. In the end, when they have every reason to give up on their faith in God, the women lean further into their faith. As one female character wisely states, they must look further out into the distance beyond what is right in front of them (in an analogy to how she steadies her horses when riding her buggy).

I also recently finished re-reading the book, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (2007). It depicts the biblical character, Dinah who is Leah and Jacobs’s only daughter. Dinah is merely a footnote in the bible, depicted as a victim to a violent crime and sandwiched between the stories of her iconic father, Jacob and her powerful brother, Joseph. Her voice enraptures me and carries me back into Canaan and the land of my ancestors. I am struck by the lives the women lead, anchored in many ways by the “red tent” which is where they gather each month during their menstrual cycles. In the tent, they talk and dream and lament. They share their wisdom and woes and build meaning through their stories. The women are apart from the men in their community during this 3 day period each month. The men are forbidden to enter in fact. Similar to the secluded barn haystacks upon which the women sit in Women Talking (set in 2010), Dinah and her mothers gather strength from one another to go back out and face the world.

On the cusp of another spring and in honor of International Women’s Day, I am reminded that perhaps we can gather wisdom from the strong female figures of our past to make tough decisions. Can characters like Dinah and Ona who aren’t afraid to dream big in the face of incredible obstacles, inspire me to do the same? Perhaps big (and even small) decisions are not meant to be made in isolation, alone in the quiet of our minds, but instead in community with our sisters, mothers and family members of generations past. In this spirit and in the red tents of our futures, may we lean into one another’s collective wisdom to emerge stronger and refreshed for the journey ahead, knowing that here and beyond are often where the magic happens.

1 Year Later: Mindset Matters

“Perfection is the mountain that has no peak.”
Emma Norris

If you had told me last year I would be celebrating New Years Eve 2022 embarking on the joys of potty training I would have probably said, “that sounds like a cruel joke.”

Today we introduced our daughter to “big girl underwear.” Getting to choose among patterns including owls, mermaids, tropical fruit and trucks was a really BIG deal. In full transparency, I was dreading this process. It brings up in me all my angst around ceding control, embracing messiness (literally and figuratively) and transitions. Moreover, asking a toddler to give up a security blanket (the diaper), which is often all they have known since birth is a tall order. It’s scary and uncomfortable and not intuitive in the least. And yet, our children have to learn eventually (my older, wiser friends have promised me they won’t go to college in diapers).

As I reflect back on 2022 and what lies ahead in the new year, I continue to see my daughter and parenting as my biggest teachers. It’s been a year and counting since I started this blog. From the get go, I’ve struggled with issues of productivity and perfectionism. Through my research and writing I’ve come to see just how deep-seated these traits are in our modern culture and way of being. I touched upon this theme in one of my first blog entries, noting how tied up our sense of self-worth is with our notion of accomplishing and chasing that illusive something, whether it be a job, relationship or some idea of happiness.

Gradually, I’ve spent this last year slowing down and scaling back what is possible to produce or accomplish. Through this process I’ve recognized how habitual my “need to please” is. Whether it be through seeking validation on a parenting choice or trying to fit my life into a perfect mold of what I think it “should” look like, I continue to put increasing pressure on myself to “get it right.” Contemplating the next right move professionally, personally and spiritually consumes my thoughts most days. Making a decision about what preschool to send our daughter to next year has been like asking me to choose just one sushi roll off an entire menu. Impossible! You can’t make a perfect decision. There is no such thing and even if there was, it won’t live up to the ideal I have conjured up in my head.

At the end of the day, most of this pressure is self-imposed. We want to “do right” by our loved ones and set ourselves and them up for success. And, yet, we have to balance that idea of success with the excruciating truth that life will be hard. We will fall down, a lot. We will have “accidents” (pun intended) and there is no prescribed school or methodology that will shield us from this truth.

Perhaps then our growth comes from learning to relate differently to our pain and worries. How do we respond and react when things get hard and there is no template for how to move forward? How do we hold compassion for ourselves in the process?

Can we begin by accepting that we don’t know all the answers, nor should we? We do not need to decipher every possible outcome and algorithm when making a decision. Instead, what would it feel like to connect with humility to the messy, tangled process of living itself?

In this New Year, may a “good day” or a “good choice” be measured not by what we’ve accomplished, but instead by how we’ve related to ourselves. Did we revel in picking out the best pattern of underwear (or socks) in the morning and then remember to laugh at our bumps and “boo boos” along the way.

To all my friends and readers, happy 2023 and happy stumbling.

Note to Myself: Reflection on Parenting

“What would it be like if I could accept life – accept this moment – exactly as it is?”
Tara Brach

Laurie Berkner at The Bushnell, Hartford, CT 10/15/22

Dear Momma,

This wasn’t about you or your parenting in any way. Your daughter is fine. You are learning alongside her.

You got her tickets to see Laurie Berkner perform live in Hartford, CT. Her favorite artist! You blocked off the day. You carved out precious time for your family. You agreed not to invite anyone else so this could be a true family outing. It was just her, Mommy and Ima. You made every contingency plan necessary, got everyone out the door in enough time. Checklist–snack, diapers, hands, face, teeth, shoes and socks. And managed to get another pair of pants and socks on when the first pair got wet from stepping in your dog’s water bowl.

You bought these tickets months ago and were thrilled to give this experience to her. As a gift, a memory she would never forget.

And yet, when we settle into our seats and you look around, you can tell she seems unsettled. Maybe overwhelmed? Unsure what to make of her surroundings? A baby born during the pandemic, this is possibly one of the largest crowds she’s been around.

Laurie comes dancing down the aisle with her guitar and sings a familiar tune… “When I woke up today…I shouted out Hooray!…” My eyes light up and my ears can’t believe what they are hearing. Is it really her? Live, in the flesh? Strumming her guitar 20 feet away. Unbelievable.

I glance over and see my daughter melting to the ground. Shrinking into a cocoon. Eyes glazed over, lying on the floor, attempting to do a summersault in the aisle and trying to get away. She seems somewhere else. She doesn’t know what to make of it perhaps? Looks out at Laurie a few times and tries to take it all in, but then retreats again. Too much? Tired? Hungry? Cautious? Worried? I may never know.

Maybe she is unable to express how unbelievably strange it is to see this icon live, a blink of an eye away, after only seeing her on a screen or dancing to her music on Pandora. Yes, Laurie Berkner is real. She’s a person too.

I’m so incredibly disappointed in that moment. Yet, in reflecting back, I realize that as much as much as I want my daughter to fall in love with Laurie Berkner in concert, to jump up and down to “Chipmunk at the Gas Pump,” like the other kids, that’s simply not what she is feeling today. She is being her authentic self.

Perhaps to be accepting of my own thoughts, feelings and actions is an admirable goal for myself too. To share our emotions with our children and allow them to share theirs with us. And to be validating and at peace with the “let downs” and inevitable perplexities and complexities of childhood and parenting that will come.

—–

A few weeks later, this experience helps me stay much more grounded on Halloween night when my daughter refuses(!) to put on her Halloween green dinosaur costume to go trick-or-treating. She has been talking about this costume for weeks and practically every day leading up to Halloween. And yet, when push comes to shove, she decides that she doesn’t want to wear her costume and instead prefers to walk around the neighborhood and simply ask for candy.

Yet, what starts off as another huge “wait, you have to like this” (oh, what did I do wrong?) moment ends with a renewed appreciation for my child’s intuition. We must trust them, to know what’s best for them and find ways to trust ourselves in the process too.

Ultimately, my daughter decides that instead of wearing her dinosaur costume for Halloween she is going to cart it around the whole night in her blue car. It will go trick-or-treating with her!

Thank goodness for children’s creative spirts and our ongoing practice as adults to stretch — and be true to ourselves — alongside them.

A Role Model in Brandi

“The midwife told us that we each needed a mantra for every time the world of motherhood felt like it was a template that we didn’t fit into. Mine was ‘I am the mother of Evangeline.'”
Brandi Carlile, Broken Horses

This is the cover art for *In These Silent Days* by the artist Brandi Carlile.

It’s not often I become intoxicated by someone’s voice, just listening to them speak. I recently finished listening to Brandi Carlile’s new Memoir, Broken Horses. From start to finish I was mesmerized and transfixed by her words and songs, woven together to tell the story of her life, thus far.

Brandi and I share the same age (both born in 1981). While our upbringings could not have looked more different, our inner journeys bear striking similarities. Brandi grew up in a rural town outside Seattle, Washington. She moves 14 times in her first 14 years. Brandi’s family was rich with love and poor with means. She drops out of high school in order to pursue a career in music, almost exclusively self-taught. Brandi is gifted beyond imagination and will eventually catch national attention and go on to become the most nominated woman at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards in 2019. Beyond her musical talent though, I think what enraptures me is her raw truth and gift for storytelling.

Like me, Brandi grows up in the ’90’s. There are no cell phones for us in middle school or high school. We are taunted by our own inner critics more than we are by social media. Bullying is alive and well but it is easier to retreat into our own spaces and hide from the scrolling and obsessive jeering that comes from toxic online commentary. At the same time, we don’t have many public role models when it comes to the queer community. For Brandi, Ellen DeGeneres is monumental. Ellen’s “coming out episode” airs on April 30, 1997 when Brandi and I are 16. Ellen is the first gay person Brandi ever “meets” and she gives her the confidence to come out in high school. She secretly records Ellen’s “coming out episode” on a cassette tape and years later she ironically has Ellen sign it while she is a guest on her show.

I am far from ready to “come out” in 1997 but I do subconsciously archive this moment in my memory bank, which over the next 6 or 7 years will give me the confidence to do the same. It’s funny because even today at 40, listening to Brandi speak so openly about her queer identity and life as an artist, it feels like she is speaking to me at 16 years old. She is giving my 16 year-old self permission to break free from her shell just a littler earlier.

Likewise, it is so powerful to hear Brandi share her story of meeting the woman who would become her wife and their journey starting a family. It normalizes these life-cycle moments in a queer context and again speaks to my younger self, giving her permission to keep moving forward, and with the message that she is not alone. Brandi describes in detail how she and her wife, Catherine Carlile, navigate nuanced decisions around fertility, pregnancy, gender roles, conceptions of motherhood, and parenting in a heteronormative world. Her writing and storytelling is brave, fierce and ground-breaking. One storyline that stands out to me is in Chapter 15, “Firewatcher’s Daughter.” During this segment, Brandi speaks openly about the confusion and “irreconcilable grief” that she experiences as the non child-bearing partner and mother who is relegated to an insubordinate role during childbirth classes. She starts developing a complex in what is a heteronormative structure that boxes “LGBTQ couples into a male-female role paradigm that inevitably makes us feel more alone”. Brandi feels “useless and humiliated” by these classes. She is a mother but feels like she needs someone to reassure her of that.

Brandi gives voice to the truth that same-sex parenting is still relatively new and that society needs to humanize these stories because history is happening all around us. She and Catherine ultimately find a new midwife who specializes in “diverse pregnancy situations” and who works with them through the remainder of their pregnancy. In another poignant scene, the midwife challenges them to each develop a mantra for every time they feel shut out of motherhood as they see it. Brandi chooses the mantra, “I am the mother of Evangeline,” (the name of their first daughter) and this lyric will go on to become the anchor of her song, “The Mother” which depicts the role of a mother through her eyes.

Brandi’s parenting story, while unique, bears a familiar resemblance to my own. While I do carry my daughter, there is a feeling that I still have to prove myself worthy as a parent and a mother. It’s a never-ending coming out process when I share that my daughter has two moms. There isn’t a great template for us (which in some ways is liberating) and we are figuring it out as we go. We struggle with all the same issues that I imagine most couples face when it comes to division of labor, paid work vs unpaid work and the need to feel validated and appreciated for our contributions. What’s refreshing is that Brandi gives voice to a community of burgeoning LGBTQ+ parents who are yearning to see and be seen. We are here and we will continue to “pave our own way,” one spilled milk bottle at a time.

In the meantime, as a nod to Rosh Hashanah and a New Year’s sermon of sorts, I want to thank Brandi Carlile for awakening something in me that needed to be poked. From her courage to speak so openly about her life, to her creative and beautiful storytelling, I am inspired to keep writing and sharing my voice into the new year. So in that spirit, may this be a year for us all of pushing our creative boundaries and sharing our stories with a little more tenacity and grit than before. L’Shanah Tovah.

My Ordinary “This is Us”

“Joy comes to us in ordinary moments. We risk missing out when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.”
Brene Brown

Baby Randall, Milo Ventimiglia as Jack, Baby Kevin, Baby Kate, Mandy Moore as Rebecca.
*NBC/Ron Batzdorff/NBC*

I know I’m a bit behind, but it’s still hard for me to accept that the show, This is Us wrapped its final season. For six years, beginning in 2016, I followed members of the Pearson Family (namely twins, Kate and Kevin, adopted son Randall, along with mom, Rebecca, and dad, Jack) along circuitous life journeys that played into every possible emotion and scenario a young family could experience.

What makes this show especially unique is that it slips back and forth in time, showing the characters at different ages and in different years within each episode. Over the six seasons, you get to know the characters in real time as they age and grow, experience major set backs, and then get back up on their feet and plow forward. Creator, Dan Fogelman, along with his brilliant writers and producers, weave together stories that pull on every heart string you’ve got while telling powerful truths.

I guess I have a thing for family dramas, particularly ones that highlight imperfect characters, in whom I can see myself and those who so honestly reflect the world we are living in. NPR’s Eric Deggans sums it up perfectly, “In other words, the drama on This Is Us comes from small moments between characters living everyday lives.”

As a way of framing this post, I want to clarify that I’m not attempting to write a formal review or critique of the show. I’ll leave that to the experts! Instead, I want to share a few themes and narratives that were particularly resonant with me and my current roles as mom, wife, daughter, sister… trying to navigate life the best I can. I see this post as an homage really, to a show that has made such an imprint on my heart during a time when I needed its company.

The season finale, which aired on May 24, 2022 largely centered around an ordinary Saturday when the siblings are in their pre-teen years, living in the suburbs outside of Pittsburgh. When their plans are canceled at the last minute, they find themselves with an entire day with nothing scheduled. Mom and Dad are thrilled at the prospect of a quiet day and two of the three kids are bored out of their minds. Kevin and Randall sit on the couch checked out, making fun of their sister, Kate, who genuinely wants to spend time with her family. Kate has proposed a litany of family pastimes to keep them busy– puzzles, watching old videos, and playing an old pin the tail on the donkey game found on a bookshelf.

And what starts as an awkward “forced family fun” day turns out to serve as a microcosm for what the entire show is built on…appreciating the small moments, while they are happening. Little do the kids know, but just a few years later, their father (Jack) will suffer a fatal heart attack after a brutal house fire in the middle of the night. Jack will live on as a hero within them for decades to come and inform many of their life decisions but they will never have those small, fleeting moments back.

My wife and I recently decided to forego a 3 day exotic family camping trip we had planned months earlier and instead settled on a 3 day staycation. On a rainy summer Wednesday we trek up to Mystic, CT, to visit the aquarium. Our daughter revels at the Beluga whales and the proud penguins while her eyes loom large over whiskered sea lions and voluminous sea turtles. Before heading home we stop at a diner off the highway and order two salads and a grilled cheese. Our daughter is thrilled to hear that her lunch is accompanied by a complimentary ice cream scoop, which she mostly gobbles up and refuses to let us taste (we are still working on sharing).

It is such an ‘ordinary’ day, and, yet, as I write this post and think back to sitting at this nondescript diner I realize that, this is it…short, sweet, simple moments of connection.

Rebecca, the mother and matriarch on This is Us looms larger than life and serves as the anchor throughout the series. Like everyone else, she is imperfect, human and trying to figure things out along the way. She carries her family through endless trials including Jack’s death and raises three beautiful humans who go on to do the same for their families (the show seamlessly spans 4 generations). Rebecca and the entire family get thrown another curve ball mid-way through the series with her diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s. This curveball, although devastating, ultimately heightens the everyday themes of time, space and memories in beautiful and unexpected ways throughout the remaining seasons.

As Rebecca’s disease progresses ever so slowly at first and then more quickly towards the end of the series, I find myself floating back and forth in time in my life as well. While devouring the show each week, I can’t stop asking myself, what really matters? When my life and all the people in it are one day laid out before me as they are for Rebecca in a final metaphoric scene that takes place in an old-fashioned train car, how will I feel, what will I be thinking, what will I be regretting, what will I be most proud of?

Within this melancholy scene that parallels Rebecca’s final moments in life, I am smiling through my tears. I may have to flex a muscle, but in doing so I can see that it is within my power to stop grasping for things to be different. Like the Pearsons’, my life is messy and filled with ups and downs, regrets and yearnings. I may not have the next chapter (or two or three) figured out but neither did Randall, Kate, Kevin, Rebecca or Jack. Their lives are messy, filled with pain and loss, but they have one another. And that is more than enough.

As a closing thought, may we all lean into the ‘ordinary’ days and moments–and the people who fill them–and appreciate knowing that often, this is it.