separation anxiety

Clearly, February was not a month for writing. Or meditating really, if I am honest. I think for a lot of February I was just working on surviving, and while it is a bummer that I didn’t stay within the practices that serve me the most in those efforts, I am just gonna go ahead and forgive myself from the get-go and move the fuck along.

In part, shit got busier in late January. Chris moved into a new position at work which means double the workload and a return to travel- for the first time in two years. Um, obviously? And the team that we once were when pops is on the road is bigger by one and we have not quite gotten our legs under us as a new older (and younger) team of 4. Work-wise, it is a great move for Chris and I am thrilled for him. It is just going to take a little bit of acclimation for all of us and probably a year of Chris adapting and expanding into his new role. I am ok with both.

Of course, the first time that he was away we had some massive mental health stuff explode in our new squad of four. It was a long time coming and clearly just awaiting the perfect storm and I guess that week was that. Much of the month was spent navigating that- which of course is deeply sensitive and personal and not for sharing here, at least not at this moment in time. The main thrust I suppose is that life was a lot, both in our little family and, quite clearly, in the world at large.

It was good to get away for a few weeks. Out of the snow and into the warm sunshine. All of our bodies got some color for the first time in what feels like forever, and that in itself feels like life and health in a way that seems so basic and fundamental and, for me at least, so necessary. That part was great. It was all of the adjusting to new circumstances that was confusing and hard to navigate. It seems that on a macro level, we are re-orienting to the fact that our hopes of a definitive end to the pandemic are fantasy and that now the task is in learning how to live along with Covid-19 for the foreseeable future. Mask mandates are lifting and life seems to be asking us to resolve our differences and get on with it already. It doesn’t mean I don’t still think you are an asshole for not getting vaccinated, but I am no longer interested in thinking about it, let alone talking about it. I am ready to stop masking my family unless we are unwell and I am ready to begin hanging out with my neighbors.

So, on my level, this need to adjust is running deep. While we were away, and I had access to the help and support of my family, Wilfred was unable to tolerate anyone’s care but my own. It was real, and it was a lot. Time away turned into time on and even more all mom all the time vibes. He has separation anxiety like I never experienced in Maple or Eider. And I suppose it makes sense. His life has been so rhythmic and regular and insular in a way that theirs never was. Limited when theirs was wide. And shamefully, I have to admit, that there was a part of me that thought this level of anxiety in littles had more to do with some fault in parenting, and while some of that may hold true, it seems that other than adverse circumstances, it is far more random than that.

I am tired. And my family needs connection. And some kind of larger support and integration. I am ready for that. Even if it means that it is time to up our risk and exposure in order to form bonds that buoy us more than my own will.

All of this, in my small sphere, running inside the larger framework of the world as it continues to unravel and Ukrainians brace themselves against the will of Russian Authoritarianism. As they are invaded and asked to either evacuate or pick up arms, I keep on thinking of how much separation anxiety we all carry. On one level or another. I listened to an interview of a Ukrainian doctor and father speak to why he and his family decided not to leave while they were still able. And he asked: how can you decide, in 10 minutes, to leave your life? everything that you have ever known, that your children have ever known, and go into a world where you have nothing and no one? How do you make that decision? How do you do that? It seems to me, that the most natural thing in the world is to stay in connection with what makes us feel most safe and most seen, to live inside the context of who we are and what we know home to be. So what then is the move when home becomes a war zone? How do we make the choice to leave home for something that may be more life-giving if the only life we have ever known lives inside of a culture and a people and a land and a country?

I have no answers. And maybe, as it turns out, no point in any of this other than simply musing and efforting as best I can to put one word in front of the other and in so doing come up for a breath from my own deep well of living and mothering. I am here. And it is imperfect as ever. It seems these past weeks and months and years have been an ongoing ebb and flow of living a life of practice, in which it is the time outside of any formality of effort that I am proven time and again and reminded why I care or why I try or why I hope, over and over again.

I keep thinking there will be a time when I have more time for myself again. Where I can fill my cup way up and have so much more to give by virtue of my own fullness. Runneth over as they say. But just this morning Chris said that perhaps we should be gathering support in case of potential radiation exposure and I just had to lay my head down on the table because I think that may be more true than the hope of some flimsy return of me time. I think that the hits may really just keep coming. And that I can either buckle and suffer under the weight of that, or I can brighten from within in a new way. Suffering still, of course. But full of some greater strength and expectation inside. As in Now is the time. What am I waiting for anyway?

And before I go, because really, who knows when I will sit down to write anything next, I still think that one of the best things that we can do is make donations to the groups and organizations rallying to help and make a difference where they can. I am still donating 15% of my Beautycounter commissions on Fridays to a different organization each month. March giving is going to Save the Children, who provide aid for “children in Ukraine, Afghanistan and around the world who might be caught in the middle of armed conflict, forced to flee their homes, and exposed to injury, hunger, and sub-zero temperatures”. As ever if you want to donate directly, please do, and if you want to grab some essentials for yourself, I am happy to redirect cash on your behalf.

Thanks for being here. I love you. I think I may have something more hopeful to write soon. So please come back.

pathways

I had no idea on the front end of parenting, or really quite frankly during much of the early years, how much time it is possible to spend fretting over one person’s educational/social/ emotional wellbeing. My mind untended these days unconsciously worries about either finances (always) or Eider (often). I am on a loop. And yes I stress over moo and wilfs too; are they getting what they need, do they feel supported, is there still an opportunity for them to be thriving in the current landscape, etc… But, for me, it is mostly my bear that has my mind’s concern. 

I have processed out loud and in my spaces before regarding the why and the how that I think it is, that the easiest kid to parent is weirdly the hardest one to gauge, and for me it certainly continues to be a thing. He is difficult for me to get a bead on and unfortunately also difficult for me to read in terms of how much he is sharing with me or not. 

Which is a trigger for me when my ideal is that our family’s most consistent currency is truth and trust. But I let more than a few things slacken at the start of the pandemic and my management of my kids’ screen time was one of them. And Eider enjoys video games. In a world with no contact, it has been some. I know I am certainly not the first parent of an adolescent to feel scared and concerned and skeptical when it comes to this domain. It is a thing. A thing that unfortunately grows is its hold as kids are not only playing games but so many “streamers” are making it possible to spectate while others game and a whole virtual world have taken shape around e-sports, and e-sport community and culture. While I can bend it in order to see the virtue and endeavor to support for the sake of my son, I am still far from a fan and in a steady state of disbelief that much good can ever come from sitting in a room by yourself, talking to players somewhere else, staring at a screen, and shooting people. 

This difficulty of the virtual gaming space feels central to what I am managing for now. Tightening the boundaries and limits that he both wants and doesn’t want for me to hold up for him. He is like most of us in that regard I think. He knows there are things he rather be doing that might make him feel better or engage more parts of him in bigger and more meaningful ways, but there is this path of least resistance that when we are at a loss can slide us all right into a screen. It is the world we live in and at best it serves as a beautiful and relieving opportunity for some kind of connection, and at worst it is a trap that siphons off all of our free and vital creative energies. I want him to be happy and fulfilled and engaged in his life. I also want him to be safe.

I have known, since he was extra small, that time outside and in his body and in the elements is a powerful anchor for him and a means for him to settle into deep, honest, and authentic parts of himself. It has been a big part of his life as a home-educated kid, to be in nature programs and spend days out of doors being in relationship with his environment and a small cohort of other home-ed kids and I am relieved that these opportunities seem to finally be returning. He is relieved too. 

And I think he is also beginning to see that learning and living and school and education need not look for him the way they do for moo and that that is great and full of all sorts of other opportunities. I see that too. But I am also wondering what that means and what they are and I am staying up late going down the various rabbit holes of alternative high school learning opportunities in Northern Vermont, or alternately just compulsively thinking about what we are doing and what we could be doing alllll of the time. Are we doing this right? Does he have what he needs? What will that look like at different levels, ages, and stages if we continue on this same trajectory?

So, what I really want to know is, in earnest, what are folks whose kids don’t want to go to high school doing? And especially, what are you doing for kids who really have a desire to go to university? Who love European History? And winter and snow? What are the things that I need to know to navigate that path? Hooooow? I think I had thought that homeschool for high school would be great, especially as it fed into a trade of some sort, but how does it feed into a deep desire for academia and higher education? Teach me mamas and papas and parents. Show me the way.

unicorn treat

A couple times in recent weeks Chris has said something to me along the lines of “remember earlier in the pandemic when you would spend a couple hours a day on your mat?” And well, yes and no. There was a stretch there where everything was in a freeze frame and the resolution on a couple of things was extra high. Like kids had NOTHING happening. Like Wilfred took two naps a day. Like there was really nowhere to comfortably go, not indoors, anywhere. And also, there was a sudden influx of access. 

That seems like a bygone era in many regards, even though much stays the same today. Now, of course, the kids are doing more stuff, but the thrill of it is muted since I am relegated to the car and prohibited access to my former specatatorship. And I don’t like bringing Wilfred into many places. Not really. 

So I do a lot of shuttling and and a lot of squeezing tasks, activities, lessons, study, and practices into skinny envelopes of time. Between the hours of 1:30 and 4pm tend to be extra freaking dicey as wilfs is napping (generally) and maple needs to be picked up and eider sometimes as well, either that or delivered somewhere and Chris is in his office working and well the balance of all of the things is extra precarious and variable and yet not so much flexible really. At all. 

Today was one of those days where I wanted to slide into a class with Christina at 3 but needed to pick up Maple at 2:45 and Chris was going to leave with her again for swim team just before 4 and Eider was game to help but wilfs awoke as I was walking out the door and wouldn’t settle for anything other than coming with me for pick up so of course we were late and then wanted to nurse once we were back home again and well I slid in to class about 30 minutes after its start. Which is wildly tacky and yet perfectly natural in the land of zoom yoga and it just got me feeling very grateful for all of the options that do exist, especially in combo with everyone’s actual flexibility and generosity. 

So while weekdays I land on my mat for something in the window of 20-60 minutes- and that is a unicorn treat- I can indeed remember earlier in the pandemic when I could practice for several hours a day multiple times a week. I don’t think that was really an ideal scenario for anyone. Those were pretty sad times. I mean these are still sad times but maybe not quite so sad. So less is more, in other words. Right. And like I have said 1000x, I am in the practice of taking what I can get when it comes to something for meeeeeee.

lift

Back in the late fall, I think I shared a bit about the process leading up to the revelation of sheep- which, in case you are wondering, is still very much in escrow in terms of vision moving toward form. No worries there. There will be wooly sheep grazing on the hillside. Much to our future chagrin and delight, I am sure. But anyhow, the process that got me to that particular point of clarity was this surprisingly excellent exercise that Rachel Peters walked us through in the last Practice Wellness Community cohort. She asked us to take 10-15 minutes drawing a picture of ourselves into the future; an image of ourselves 5 minutes from now up until 6 months from now. Just go for it. No real rules other than that and no pressure- however artistic you think you are or are not. Irrelevant. And while the image that Sam made of her future witchy self perhaps clings to me the most, no doubt because she continues to send me all of her Witch Fiction (Witch Lit?) once she has read it, so, ya know, that is what I read now too. Witch lit. I’m here for it. Yaaaaaa. In my drawing, there were three salient bits of future Meg that are of note to me. First, and what I have already shared: sheep. Yes please. Hold this vision.

Second, I basically looked like a corpse. Unintentionally and simply by my complete lack of artistic skill when it comes to really any visual art. However. It seemed right on time in terms of my levels of fatigue, burnout, lack of inspiration, depression, and despair that I decided to go with it. Yep. I am a corpse. This is real and happening. And while that was most likely a 5-minute future self it certainly still holds true in terms of what I am experiencing my baseline to be. I am pretty sure I have made that clear in other posts in this space. Ack.

The third tidbit worth noting were all of the weights I scattered across the page. They were everywhere. Here a barbell. There a barbell. Everywhere a barbell. You get the idea. And there is a way, that has become more and more clear in the subsequent months as I have been reflecting upon this and upon my drawing (hello, future meg), that I can see how that image is all tied up with the image of me as a corpse. Because when I really stop to think about it, which I really have, the time that I can remember feeling most alive, most vital, most physically and mentally whole in recent years, was when I was regularly lifting the big, heavy-for-me, weights in the Trollway Gym in Wisconsin.

Um. That was a while back.

And the good news is that I took action on that insight straight away. Chris and I began that very week taking some of the “CraftFit” classes out at The Craftsbury Outdoor Center. There were only two a week and often we could only get to one and they have since tightened their schedule even more as weather pushed things in doors and Covid rates minimized availability as well as access. But it was great. There is something so mom and pop about heading to the gym as a middle-aged person. So many families. So many community relationships. Something so wholly unlike the vibe or demographic at the yoga studios. I have also, in recent weeks, picked up the smaller dumbbells in our basement and have been integrating more strength workouts into my movement menu. It has been great. And yet, I still very much long for the big weights and other folks in a gym setting, which continues to be hard to access in the rural life of a mom with active t(w)eens and a toddler and within the constantly changing climate of The Pandemic That Will Never End.

I wandered into the local CrossFit gym in Mount Horeb Wisconsin in the late summer of 2016. I landed there after many months of curiosity co-mingled with trepidation and also the recommendation of my doctor after a blood sugar screen that showed numbers right on the edge of not alright. Up to that point I had been a one activity kind of a gal. Other than walking and the occasional bike ride, I really just love to practice yoga. I mean, I think that much is clear… I had also been becoming increasingly intrigued by information becoming available from the natural movement community, including primal movement circles as well as weight lifting ones. And the more that I considered it, the more I could admit that while I thought of myself as making many shapes and weren’t those, after all, movement, I was still missing a great number of functional movement pieces, including pulling and, well, most anything with any dynamism in it. Plus, I was becoming increasingly concerned, as I sat on the advent of 40, of how well my body was set up to be aging if I was missing a lot of functional movement and if I continued to push into the territory of overuse in certain sectors.

So, I stepped into the shoes of the absolute neophyte beginner and walked into the relatively new-to-town CrossFit gym and asked them to teach me. (At around the same time I began going to a number of MoveNat trainings, but that is maybe a post for another day. Suffice it to say for now, that lifting weights is a universal language.) And I loved it. Like, almost immediately. I loved how hard it was. I loved how worked it made me feel. I loved that I had infinite room for improvement. I loved that I was a beginner. I loved the hodgepodge of other folks that came to classes- folks I would have never connected with otherwise. And I really loved when Chris started coming to classes too, both with me and on his own, so that it started to feel like we were really weaving our family into the fabric of the local community centered around the hub of the gym. There were even classes for kids that were a super fun mix of play and cross-training which immediately began to inform how they were performing in their sports. Same for me really. I began to feel not only stronger in my asana practice but also safer. More stable and secure than I had ever felt. And yes, I did most certainly lose some depth in my backbends but I also wasn’t really developing them consistently at that point to begin with, so who knows how it would have been otherwise.

I had every intention of continuing on this course indefinitely. I liked the rhythm of 2-4 classes a week balanced with a regular yoga teaching schedule and my personal practice. We even visited a fun gym in Morrisville the summer we came out to visit Vermont and another in Waterbury that fall during a subsequent scouting trip. And then, of course, I got pregnant. I continued to go to classes once the pukes had passed and did what I could as I could. From about 18 weeks on, I very diligently worked through the weight lifting program in the Expecting and Empowered trimester manuals. All the way up until Wilfred was born. I even followed the postpartum guide for quite some time, maybe a much as 4 or 5 months. But then something shifted. The workouts took longer than I could manage, I missed lifting with other people, and my windows of time were so short. I want to stretch and make shapes.

And then, of course, The Pandemic began. And I lost the gumption for a lot of things but also suddenly had online yoga access with my teachers in a way that I never had before. Things shifted. And so did I. I think I got really excited and ended up taking a deep dive into asana study and practice, and was fed by the regularity and camaraderie of that, and honestly, it really carried me for a long time. Certainly through that first year and a half. But in the better part of the past decade, asana has not been a complete formula in terms of my particular movement wants and needs, and over time I have begun to feel the effect of that, in a variety of ways.

OK. So, here is where in this particular post I begin to talk about my vagina, and either you are thrilled to have made it this far or are thrilled to have not, and either way that seems like a readership win as far as I can tell. Or, you are in a different camp altogether and rather not share in this tmi that I am about to release regarding my vag, and well, now is your cue to go and I swear to god no hard feelings. Completely understandable. We may not even know each other at all and reading about my anatomy may truly be something that you have in no way signed up for. Great! I will meet you back here for a post about how fucking hard parenting is or to commiserate over the pros and cons of home education or to sing the praises of a backbend high. All good. Check you later.

For everyone else. Here is the deal as far as I am able to tell right now: while pregnancy and labor and delivery and mothering again in my early 40s was a truly magical and revelatory and healing experience on all kinds of levels, it also left my vagina in a state quite unlike my previous childbearing. Even though I did not tear with Wilfred at all really- I think I have a long labor and a warm tub to thank for that- my body was transformed in ways that have felt oddly progressive in the time following. With Maple, who required me to push her out quickly so that we could hightail it to the emergency room, I tore miserably and suffered a ridiculous mishap with the stitches and then a prolapse in the months following. That was horrible. Initially, healing was more complicated than it needed to be and then once I finally wanted to have sex again it was incredibly painful and therefore better off avoided much to the detriment of my young marriage and my own wellness. With Eider, there were no stitches, my midwife was determined that she would never have to stitch me again after the first time, and my healing, in general, was pretty straightforward. I had some gentle structural bodywork done early on to address any potential prolapse and really felt great physically. Other than the exhaustion of mothering a newborn and a three-year-old. In fact, I had to have a LEEP about 4 months postpartum with Eider and my recovery from that was far longer and much worse than his birth.

During my pregnancy with Wilfred, I stayed far more pro-active in terms of my pelvic floor health than I had when I was younger. I did develop a small inguinal hernia at about 30 weeks and saw a pt and did all of the things that she prescribed. The hernia resolved immediately after delivery. What didn’t resolve is something else. My perineum basically disappeared. Almost completely. No, it wasn’t just that it changed. I am familiar with that, especially after maple and the resulting hard little line of scar tissue, a reminder of the 3 big stitches that walked with me into motherhood. But this is different. And oddly nebulous. I have no physical pain. No discomfort. Not during sex or otherwise. But over time I have felt a growing sense of dis-ease associated with my pelvic floor, as though I am unprotected and physically vulnerable in a way that pushes back against the sort of woman I hope to be. I feel at risk. In my darker moments, I worry that there is only an open hole between my legs neither protecting what is inside nor shielding me from what is outside. Sometimes I fantasize that I can fashion some kind of hammock to close the gap and hold me together and safe. Or that, when I finally get into the local pelvic floor pt (soon! thank god, SOON!) she will be able to massage my perineum back into being and out of blackness. It is a lot. Maybe too much to share here, but probably not. I am not, in this moment at least, hopeless about the situation, especially now that professional guidance is on the horizon, but rather I am spending a portion of my energy in simply feeling what is, honoring the difficulty, and working toward staying steady with self-compassion around the whole difficult ordeal.

But why why why include this vaginal report with a post about singing the praises of weight lifting? I don’t know. They feel interwoven for me right now. How I feel versus how I want to feel. Remembering a time where I felt safe and strong and able in my physical form. And I do think that returning to some weights is in the better interest of my tissues, especially as age and gravity and circumstance continue to have their way with all of me. It is messy, you know. And embarrassing. Even a bit of a shame trigger for me in some strange way. But I am not without hope, or without a plan, and the return to the weight room is a part of that. As is more rest. And water. And meditation. And all of the other bits and parts of habits that make me feel myself. With love and wonder and worry and forgiveness and struggle and fear and renewed effort and all the rest. And truth-telling. Especially that. Oh yes, and dreams turning toward plans of sheep on the hill. Don’t forget!

S T A T I O N E D

Hello. I am showing up in this space tonight feeling like I have too much to say and nothing at all to say. This week, this month, this year so far has been a lot and I am simultaneously super riled up and also managing my own numbness. This shit is unrelenting. Oh. Whoops. I believe I have said that before. But fuck if it isn’t still true.

So what have I learned? Well. What I really want to say is not much because everything continues to be extra hard and I am well past over it as are all of everyone else I am sure. But that is not entirely true. I have learned a few things that ultimately center around my own discipleship to my own nervous system and that all roads lead me there despite adjusted plan after canceled plan after derailed plan. And so. Back to basics again and again and again. The rant won’t fix it, the blame won’t fix it, the self-medicating won’t fix it. And once again I am left with the quiet spaces inside myself where I hope to god honesty and sanity and peace prevail.

I am well over the sad trend toward looking on the bright side that I have seen more than once every time I scroll through my socials. As someone who has mostly never been a look on the bright side kind of a gal that shit irritates me to no end. To me, at this moment in time, it lands as the most toxic sort of emotional bypassing that we could possibly begin to contrive of and I am simply not here for that. I am here for the truth and that is not it. Not to say of course that there is not pleasure and beauty and wonder and joy in the midst of chaos and tragedy and suffering. If history and art teach us anything they certainly teach us that. But no broad bright brush strokes over the unending endurance event that is the 20s. No thank you to that.

Ok. Now that that is out of the way, the real thing I am here to talk about tonight is my word for 2022. Of all the cliche things to write about good lord. I am not one for words of the year. Like really, not at all. This might be my first one ever in fact. I have themes and goals and intentions, but not words. Not really. And as this year I am mostly choosing to be over goals, I do not have anything along those lines to share with you. What I do have is my word, and that word is STATIONED.

I found my word- or my word found me- last month when I traveled to Tucson for a weekend of yoga and writing with Christina Sell and Mary Angelon Young. In part, it emerged from the content of the workshop, but more than that it emerged out of the content of the trip in its entirety. I occupied some spaces inside of myself that I had not occupied for a good long while and I received some reflective recognition for aspects of myself that I couldn’t be sure even existed in me anymore. It was helpful. Up to that point, I had been thinking that some shift or some big new becoming was necessary for me moving forward when in reality, I am already very well stationed within everything that I am wanting to be and indeed already am it is just that everything is so well dormant after the last 2-3 years of life and apocalypse that my doubt has taken the upper hand.

It is hard to feel like a yoga teacher when you never teach yoga. It is hard to feel like a mentor when you are not actively mentoring. It is hard to feel like an educator when everything you have to offer educationally feels so lackluster and, well, lacking in general. I think what I had been- and to a large degree still am- feeling is an internal severing as a part of a basic survival strategy to live another one of the days set before me within the limited scope of the new and current reality of things. It has been bleak. Even with all of the bright spots. (please please please hear my recognition of the bright spots!) But, basically, don’t do the thing for long enough and begin to doubt that you ever did it to begin with. Something like that.

My trip to Tucson was a reality check with that bit of my personal narrative. It served, quite surprisingly to me if I am honest, as an excellent opportunity for me to take a step back and look at me and my life with a broader lens and maybe even more of an objective perspective. Being around others who know me to varying degrees for a stretch of days afforded me a chance to see myself as they do, and see within that the ways in which I am already seated in the position of embodying the woman I have been becoming for the past 2+ decades. I have years of training, knowledge, experience, and aptitude for not just teaching yoga but a whole heck of a lot of all of the things that interest me and engage me and whose pots I have had my hands in from the get-go. I needed the refection. We all need the reflection. The chance to get out of our own worn-out story of ourselves and see us as the folks that know us and love us do. Like that.

So anyway. That is it. And I am already stationed there. So. Stationed. No big pressing objectives other than perhaps trusting the positioning of myself within my life. The woman I once was, the woman I now am, and the woman I have always been coursing toward woven together indistinguishably into a just-right-for-me yoke. I am working with the small things this year. My discipleship to my own nervous system, my daily steps toward personal growth and fulfillment and forgiveness, and taking note of the small (and sometimes huge) moments of delight that present themselves. A Wednesday ski with my boys. A shared slice of pizza. A game of chase. A peel of laughter. A good book. A hand-knit. A hug. Or any other shared and simple moment of human connection. This year. I am stationed for all that.

I am a jungle gym

Before having kids, I gave little to no thought at all to the type of parent I would be. I didn’t have any plan regarding how I would do anything. All I knew is that I wanted to have them at home if possible, and the rest I would figure out as I went. I had no plan around co-sleeping (or bed-sharing as we call it now), or extended nursing, or delayed vaccination, or how I would approach feeding them, or what screen time even was, or really and truly any of the rest of it. I definitely could not have predicted a lifetime of choosing to be home with them. It might be safest to say, that how I (we) parent chose me (us) versus the other way around. Nary a plan, save wanting babies.

But along the way, discoveries and their subsequent choices were made, philosophies and approaches embraced and then let go and then there was some sort of evolution that grew us into our particular style. For better or worse. (Mostly better, I hope. Fingers crossed.) And at some point I got clear around the value of doing the things I love, that bring me joy and fill me up, around our kiddos instead of waiting for them to be bigger or otherwise tended for me to get back to it. And yeah, compromises have to be made by everyone: maybe it is not my perfect practice environment, and maybe my kid has to wait or settle for my partial attention; holding space and getting the care I crave for myself while at the same time supporting a space in which they witness their parent prioritizing their own needs in healthy, honest, and loving ways.

It is a moving, and imperfect target to be sure. I have considered this regularly throughout the years and shared a great deal about in this space. Beginning all the way back here. It is maybe helpful to check out, especially during one of the cycles of feeling like the tending of them when they are small is prohibitive of the other things you rather be doing. That can be a miserable feeling, I know, to long for our kids to be bigger and more independent than they are so that we can get back to the parts of us that feel difficult to access when they are so very much on us and at us much of the day.

I get it. I really do. And while I 100% think parental sanity also depends on a predictable and reliable (as anything with children can possibly be) time away and on our own, what I am referencing here is the way in which we can condition ourselves and our families to hold space for each other’s interests and passions from early on. That training will go a long way to contextualize all of the sacrifices parents make for growing kids and their own curiosities and discoveries and whole-hearted interests. It becomes, in this way, something we hold space for together instead of a burden or imposition.

So, like that. A reminder to you and to me to do the things we love, the things that are calling out to us. However imperfectly the stars may be aligned in the present moment. And be easy with yourself. I will too. Their need will shift and lessen and fade as the years go, and when that happens, maybe you too, in all of your rediscovered autonomy, will long for the days of your small and funny children crawling all over your business,

back to home

Eider had his first full-day of full-time homeschooling again this week Monday. It was sooooo good. I think we snuggled and read together on the couch for close to 3 hours that first day. And did all the things. At the end of the day I told him how great I thought the day was and how proud I am of him and he said that he has resolved to do everything mom asks him to do the first time she asks. In fact, he said, it’s his New Year’s resolution. He’s so hilarious.

And I am so relieved. Honestly, he can do whatever he likes in terms of his education. (mostly)  But his time at school was going sideways for him and I think we were having a hard time understanding why we were doing it. So, now, back to basics. Chris jokingly said that after 2 days home fulltime Eider had gotten more actual school work done than he had in a semester of a class at school. I laughed. But Eider nodded earnestly and said “mom, it’s true”. 

My learning curve in the area of parenting and home educating continues to be massive. No two kids are quite the same and everything I have learned with moo is moot for bear. And for Wilfie too no doubt. There are a lot of things that make the middle grades complicated, primarily socially, and there is not one best response for any of it. It is too easy to say that they need social opportunities with their peers. That is true in one sense but it also really depends on the content of those connections. Some kids (ahem, maple) are determined to meet the difficulty head on and not let the assholery bring them down. And other kids are perhaps too empathetic and intuitive to sustain the extra energy needed to both have effective boundaries and also stay in a spaciousness around their potential for growth and learning. 

There is no one way. I think the best hint or tip I have is to just watch how contracted my kids are becoming in any given circumstance. Are they growing? Or are they retreating and shrinking into themselves in a way that is the opposite of their dreamed becoming? How much pressure is good and beneficial, and how much is just too much and now they are shutting down? It can be hard to tell. It is hard as a parent to keep my eyes peeled and discerning of all of the ups and downs, highs and lows, revelations and treacheries that it is to be a modern adolescent and teen. 
Ok and I guess cuz I am realizing that this is longer and something more than an ig post, I gotta say, middle school today is not what it was when I was a kid. And while I certainly was messing around in a whole bunch of ways earlier than many, drugs and sex were more of a high school phenomenon than a middle school one. Middle school is extra young, right? I mean, maybe I’m not stunned about kids smoking weed, but I certainly am confused by the rest of it. And if my grown lady ass is confused, I cannot really begin to imagine how overwhelming the whole thing is for the actual middle schoolers. For real. 

Plus, there is other weird shit that seems hostile and unnecessary but horrifyingly understandable in light of the shitstorm of a world these kids are living through and looking to inherit. Everyone has the benefit of the doubt as far as I am concerned. But, maybe the 12 and 13, and hey how about the 14 and 15 year olds, could hold off on a few things for now? Ugh. Honestly though, I know nothing. Especially not about what life is like for kids living through this moment in time. I thought middle and high school were a super special kind of suck 30 years ago, and that was when basically nothing that exists now was even a glimmer on my narcissistic radar. 

So before I go too far off the rails and freak myself the heck out about the world, about the kids, about all the things; let me just circle back to say, eider is back home, the relief is palpable, and life and childrearing continue to be an incredibly mysterious, and humbling experience. 

Milk

Last month, when I went down to Tucson for a too short stretch of 4 days, was the first time in forever that I had gone anywhere on my own, and the first time ever that I had been away from Wilfred. Several of my mama friends asked me before, during, and after if this means that I have weaned him, or am weaning him, or something of the sort. To which I think I mostly replied something along the lines of “good grief I hope not”.

I have shared, here and there, off and on, over the course of the last almost 2 and a half years, plenty of details regarding breastfeeding in general and nursing Wilfie in specific. And even so, it is still such a place of mystery and wonder and discovery for me that I am getting the sense that I have only just begun to scratch the very surface of my own understanding of what all of these years of making milk for my children actually is in the bigger, and broader picture of my life as their mother, and even more significantly, in my life as my own woman.

I realized yesterday, that with the turning of the calendar page I have just entered my eleventh year of nursing. Obviously, not consecutive years, and many years just in part, but still, eleven of those whole or part years with a bare chest and a small hand resting (or tugging) on my breast. There is a particular vein, many women know it, that weaves its way across the thin flesh of a sternum toward one tit or the other, whichever one is favored, as one always is. The vein itself is both a physiological feat and a talisman of female fortitude. It is a sure sign of a nursing female, mother or not. And we know it well. How amazing, really. This way that the body can work its ways and will to make love manifest in the form of custom-designed milky nutrition.

Before Wilfred was born I thought perhaps, with some degree of certainty, that I would nurse him only til he turned two. After all, that is a lot! Some might even say plenty. I think that is what I was saying to myself. I nursed the others for far longer but I am older now and life is different and well all of the other reasons a mom tells herself that she can do one thing when she is quite possibly very well inclined toward the other. And so. I was deliberating it aloud this past summer, on the eve of his second birthday, when a wise mother, who is also a foremost Tibetan Buddhist Scholar, might I add, which is oddly strange and difficult to come by in the scope of parenting resources and advice… in other words: when she speaks, I listen deep. Anyhow, she had her daughter when she was a little bit older as well and she nursed her for quite a long time too, til perhaps three or four, and when she looked back on the whole thing it was with magic shining from her eyes at the telling. She exclaimed with so much devotion that she felt like her whole body was this amazing pharmacy for her kid and the milk was the medicine. A complete and wonder-filled miracle of a thing.

Needless to say, she is, of course, completely correct and the whole thing got me really thinking as I took in her declaration, ears wide open at what was at the time the 17th month of a worldwide pandemic. And I have returned to it again and again in the subsequent months especially as new variants emerge and vaccinations for the youngest crowd are pushed back in favor of better outcomes with further trials. Which I am all for. Obviously. (I hope that is obvious.) I do not wish to be haphazard with what is delivered into my child’s bloodstream. But I also do want some protection for him. Of course I do. Which circled me right back to that whole-hearted, full-breasted declaration that my body is a gd pharmacy and is just right for my little one in so very many ways. And we are now seeing that the antibodies in the breast milk of vaccinated mothers is providing similar protection for nurslings. So much so, that mamas whose littles no longer nurse are looking for vaxed breast milk for their small ones. Wisely so in my mind. I mean, that’s what I would be doing if I did not have the milk in my body, in my house. A parent has to do what a parent has to do. And it has always taken a village, in the end, looking out for one another and resourcing ourselves and each other to the best of our abilities.

All of this, and so much more, was in my heart and mind in those days away from my little one last month. And while getting away was so much what I needed and then some, it was physically quite uncomfortable as well. If you know, you know. My rhythm with Wilfred when we are together all of the time, which we are, is easy and natural. My breasts fill and empty, fill and empty, never getting engorged as they did in the early days but in sync with one another now. In the flow. Not so much that way when out in the world on my own. My breasts were heavy and tight and full from 8 hours into my journey and through much of the first 3 days away. I would express a bit in the evenings, as I could, a few ounces in the shower or tub, as I could manage. It felt like such a waste, to watch the milk just drift away, especially in light of what I shared above. The only thing that I can parallel the feeling of engorged breasts with is the feeling of stuffed and stagnant bowels. It is just a gross, gross, uncomfortable feeling.

Until, on Saturday evening, when it just… stopped. It was strange. And horrible. A little bit more comfortable, perhaps, but still so deeply unsettling. It had never happened to me that way before. I had left here and there for several days, even for a week several times with the older kids when they were still nurslings, and my milk would taper. But never just stop like that. By Sunday night, my breasts felt almost normal. No longer heavy with waiting milk. They felt, done. And the subsequent rush of hormones in response to this shift in my biology was sudden and full of weepiness. I knew in those days with complete and infinite clarity that I did not want to be done nursing Wilfred. Not at all. And it felt wholly out of my control. Like my body was making decisions for me and I was at her whim. Completely helpless. A forced surrender.

It is uncanny when the body disobeys the mind, disobeys the desire and longing of the heart. The mind disobeys the body all of the time and we condition ourselves to just take it, roll with it in some way that keeps us relating to the need for forgiveness like an iv drip. But not the other way around. It is much harder to negotiate understanding under those terms.

I have a very wise mama friend whose counsel and comfort I sought while down in the desert and she just held me and laughed and reminded me that “he makes the milk, meg. he makes the milk”. I did my best to trust her and in the end, she was most certainly correct, but at the time I was scared and resistant and so unsure of the capacity of my 44-year-old body to be as resilient to changing circumstance as I was when I was younger. Even once I was back home and he was in my arms chattering to me about dogs and eider and outside and all the other stuff of his world, I worried that he was simply drawing on emptiness, hollow and unreplenished.

I was wrong. But it stirred up stuff for me to be sure. And this whole revelatory and average experience over this stretch of days and years has gotten me thinking more and more and again and again of the stuff and substance of women's bodies. Blood and sweat and tears. And also milk. They are the heart of the mystery and wonder of women. The suffering and the emblem of what we have to bear as well as the gift we are given. My best friend, who is not a mother and yet mothers me, loves to read novel after novel of witches and their ways. She is an aficionado, we could say. I am slow to make it through much more than one of the many books I read aloud to kids, so she kindly sends me her favorites when she is through. For the past several years, it’s really the most of what I have read in terms of fiction. Witch Lit. If you like. And there is something to the desire of women to connect to the magic and the power that lives inside of each of us. What we are asked to bear by virtue of our bodies and how that burden elevates our capacity for clairvoyance and the casting of spells and hexes. We transform everything into some kind of potent elixir that is hard to understand let alone relate to until you have made it yourself. We bleed. We feed. We let run from us whole oceans of tears and sweat in our efforts to both sustain and let go of what is ours/what was never ours. If that is not the magic of something so much bigger than my one life in my one body, I don’t know. I really don’t.

There is a force in me. I feel it sometimes, just below the surface. Not often needed but ready to be called on when it is. Nonetheless.

And gosh, I don’t know. Just a whole lot more words to say I am nursing still. Just not at night thank god. And my milk seems to be just right and my kid seems to be healthy and very happy. And he is my last baby so I will probably keep breastfeeding for just as long as I possibly can. Which is never forever. But in the meantime, my body is a god damn pharmacy.

interminable

Do you remember way back in the beginning of the pandemic how it was difficult to find a show to watch that even came close to matching the sudden absurdity of the world that we were living in? People were standing too close. People were unmasked. People were acting like their lives and the world was humming along perfectly fine and not about to implode at any moment. It was hard to watch that. And then The Tiger King craze began and it totally made sense. It was bizarre enough to be relatable. Now it seems that there are a whole slew of shows that are reflective of the world we live in. End of days shows. Climate crisis shows. Pandemic shows. We are watching one such show right now and honestly when it first began the chaos and peril of it felt like a relief. Like the day-to-day experience of living was normalized and reflective in the tv narrative. I mean, it is much of what we want in our entertainment, is it not? To see ourselves reflected in characters in such a way that helps us understand who we are in some strange and small way. The show that I am really into right now is Station Eleven. Check it out. I like it. So much of the far-fetched shit of these contagion narratives seem so much more plausible, and dare I say regular, than it did in the pre-covid world.

Which, by the way, truly feels like an unending and ever-deteriorating reality. This winter, as far as I can tell so far, is utter shit with promises of more to come. And I am so tired. Aren’t you? I am scraping the bottom of a barrel of optimism that feels like it emptied itself months ago. I know that at this moment in particular, as we turn the calendar page and set our course for the horizon of a Whole New Year, the outlook should be brighter and the shimmer and shine of the HOPE for a brighter future should be upon us. But it is not. I just want to survive at this point. And I want my kids to survive without too heavy a burden to bear from the ragged scar tissue of the past 22 months of their young lives. A hefty percentage at this point.

I am suffering that. As I am we so many of you are. When I think about what has become of my children’s childhood most days I want to crawl back into the nest of my bedding, close my eyes, with the blinds drawn and the sound machine on and just shut it out. For as long as I am able. They are resilient, sure. But they are suffering at a level that feels so woefully unfair for children to ever suffer. And I am mostly aware of this is my children mind you. Who are held in privelege and opportunity even in dark times. When I consider children less fortunate I am quick to gag on the bile of my own macrocosmic heartache and grief. And then make a donation. It is all I can think to do, and I must do something.

There is a lot to say at this point, some of which I am still really chewing on especially in regard to the events of the very end of the semester. So I will sit with it for a while longer and in this moment simply speak to how this looks in my own home, and mostly in regard to Wilfred whose life is still interwoven enough with mine to speak about publicly. For Maple, suffice it to say that the ongoing stress of an entire highschool experience in which the pandemic is both the context and the content is exhausting and isolating and riddled with an on-going and ever-increasing anxiety. And for Eider, who you may recall opted for a hybrid version of homeschool and public school this fall has decided to stay home for the spring term. For so many reasons including some scheduling difficulty but also in big part because navigating the stress of his classmates that manifests in meanness and antagonization is too much to bear for a 12-year-old. He would rather be home with me and Wilfred and try his luck with the kids his age that are still opting for something similar. I guess I do have some hope that this shift will be positive and enriching and even provide some hard-to-come-by joy for him. But I am tentative nonetheless. My hope is well in check at this point.

For Wilfred, in many ways, the interminable pandemic life which is all he knows has been just that: all he knows. And he is happy and healthy and funny and smart and such a joy and godsend to know and love. I mean, truly I cannot begin to fathom the last 2 years of life without the daily delight that he brings to all of us. What a massive blessing to be sure. And yet, he has his own suffering embedded in the circumstance. We just wrapped up a month of having him assessed by the county to see if he qualifies for services because of his speech delay. They are lovely and supportive and we are so lucky to have the resource available to us. Because he is indeed delayed. Despite being almost 29 months his communication development is hovering somewhere around that of a 14-18-month-old, and while he is a mostly jolly person, it is clear that this difficulty occasionally frustrates him and we certainly all would love to know what funny or clever or kind or in any way informative tidbit he would like to say to us is. Maybe it is because of the masks, maybe it is because of the isolation, maybe it is due to any number of the things that have become normal practices in our day to day. Any. All.

I know that I am certainly lonely. I want to get to know the folks that live where I have been living these past two and a half years. I fear they may think I am antisocial or a hermit or simply like to keep to myself until I remember that that is simply the way of it these days. I want to have playdates and craft circles and dinner parties. I want the door of our home to be open to the wild sweep of kids and teens wandering through for a snack or tea or a chat or to hash out some grand project or plan. And sure I could do these things still, but not really. Not in good conscience. Not with omicron raging across the region and every test, kit or appointment, sold out or booked through the New Year throughout the state. I can't. And so I continue to wait it out. And grieve the day and the season and the year through which my kids’ childhoods crumpled in on themselves and became something simply good enough and not even a shadow of the magical realm of possibility and play I had been dreaming for them these past 16 years.

But a new year is coming. And I will bring hope. I am getting my shit together even in this very moment and I will bring it. I really will. We have some adventures ahead yet. And while it seems that Trip Protection is a solid plan no matter what going forward, I am cautiously optimistic that the time on the beaches and mountains and in the sunshine that awaits us in 2022 will provide some of the healing and inspiration connection we are each so starved for. I am holding out hope for that for my small family. And for you too. And for everyone. I really am.

cookies + wtf

I think it must be something I learned in college or on the NOLS course I took a quarter-century ago, but shit info is best delivered with a dose of sweet. Not exactly a feedback sandwich perse but something to lighten the blow, as it were. This entry this morning is an effort at that.

I am home with the whole crew today. Unexpectedly. Anyone else home with their kids today surprise surprise? So I am gonna use the time out of the car to get my holiday cookie plan in place and I figured I’d share it here for y’all too. We already dipped a few toes in earlier this week with some peppermint bark, to give as gifts and nibble on our own; no doubt we will be wanting to make more within the next week. It got me going in a way that feels cozy and bright and a little more spirited than I have for the last few cycles of holiday. At least, that’s how I feel right now. Or maybe I am just good at forgetting either way. Some sweet to come.

Maple and Eider are home today in response to an email we received from the school district yesterday afternoon followed by a few social media posts that came across my feed last night. I do not have TikTok, BUT ONE OF MY KIDS DOES, which is honestly fine with me. She uses it mostly for art inspiration which in my mind is one of the most positive uses for the apps. She did not see these source posts and I obviously didn’t either and I imagine some of you may have or not. Anyhow. Apparently, some tiktoks went viral encouraging kids to incite in-school violence today, Friday, December 17th. A mass call to action for all of the disgruntled, underserved, gun-loving youth among us to bring weapons to school today and use them, I don’t know, however?

WHAT. THE. FUCK?

Earlier this week marked the 10 year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings, which stands out in my heart and memory as one of the singularly most devastating losses of lives that I have ever lived through. I cannot even begin to imagine the unrelenting pain and heartache of those positioned close to that tragedy. And even so, 10 years later, there is no real measure of protection for our children out there other than the repeated shooter drills that they are asked to endure month after month, year and year, resulting in no greater “preparedness” from what I can tell. Rather they have engendered a whole lot of embedded fear and anxiety or something even worse: numbness. In addition to an all too American ideal of take care of yourself because no-one has your back. Sorry kid.

So last night, after deliberating much of the afternoon, Chris and I decided that our kids would stay home today. It is weird to make a call of this sort, because on the one hand you really don’t want to make a big deal out of it and on the other you are like what if I sent my kid today and something did happen??? What the fuck then? Their responses when we told them were different. Maple, often seated pretty close to a measure of anxiety, let it all out, felt her big feelings, and worried about her friends. Eider, in contrast, said this when we told him: Covid has basically been 90% of my life at this point so I guess everything feels normal, even though none of this is. Mouths of babes for real.

A few minutes after 10 when we made the call Maple informed us that she had a big ‘ol text thread from all her friends discussing whether or not anyone was going to school. At least 20 were planning on staying home. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief and felt a little more secure in our decision.

So, today we are all home. Letting them sleep a little longer and then giving them extra snuggles and hugs throughout the day. And also tending, in whatever ways -writing this helps- the brokenness of my own heart over the world that these children have to live in. It is a lot, even on a good day. They contend with the backlash of a poorly managed global pandemic, ongoing climate crisis, and then the unchecked and unregulated gun industry designed to line the pockets of the rich and scare and endanger the young and/or vulnerable.

And so, getting the cookie plan in place. As you do. I try to keep it both familiar and cozy with just a little dab of new each year. I am not a huge fan of frosted sugar cookies, for a whole slew of reasons, but this year I am going to try a new-to-me recipe for the sake of Wilfred getting to mess around with royal icing and see how it goes. Basically, today and this weekend, and the coming weeks are all about my kids getting to be kids. Whatever it takes. For however long. I’ll let you know.

The peppermint bark recipe I have been using for the past dozen or so years is here. But beware, you will fuck this up in the form of a dry heap of unworkable sugar if you use anything other than real white chocolate. A mistake I continue to make year after year with this year perhaps the solitary exception in all that time. Like I have said, slow learner.

It looks like most of these recipes I am sharing today were also shared by me last year in another sweet and salty post. It is good to see some threads of consistency over the course of the years. Phew. As in, nothing new to see here! Anyhow, go ahead and snag the Hamantaschen recipe I use year after year, as well as my older sister’s Korova Chocolate Cookie recipe; a great take on a tasty freezer cookie. We make a lot of both of those, one easy peasy and quick, the other just about as labor-intensive as I can get.

The sugar cookie I am going to play with this season is another Smitten Kitchen recipe. I obviously love her. And am pretty faithful. At any rate, this one caught my attention not solely for the use of the word “UNFUSSY” but also because of how the dough is rolled out before it is chilled which seems gd brilliant to me, and also she has a youtube video of her making them which should help to entice my older assistants. I am pretty excited about these honestly. We shall see…

Whelp, that’s it for now. Hopefully, this day passes by without a hitch and everyone makes it home safe and sound. And while I am positive that hope is nowhere near enough, it is what I have this morning. In addition to the growing list of foundations that I plan on donating a percentage of my commissions to for 2022. Be well friends. Squeeze your people!

*** edited at 10:46 am on 12/17/2021 to say >>>

Maple was just texted by a friend whose parents opted to send her to school today to report that the school is currently locked down. Which is modern speak for there is someone with a weapon in or around the premises. In case you did not know. And before I leap to wondering why the heck some parents sent their kids to school I want to just be clear: I know why. It gets back to the pervasive numbness I mentioned above. I get it. I really do. I feel numb too. Because you give people the same input for long enough, they tune it out. Like the floaters in my eye that my brain blocks from my vision over a long enough stretch of time. That is what is happening here now too. With gun violence in our schools. I mean, did anyone catch the shooting that happened earlier this month in Michigan? Me neither. Because it is so standard, so typical, so daily. We tune it out. Like the rising Covid cases. I mean, do we even care anymore? Just last night Chris was giving me some stats on the current caseload through the state and region and noting that it seems like the true second wave is only now beginning. We are surging past all previous numbers. Because we are over it. Or at least, hella numb to it. I know I am. I mean, I just wrote a post about making a move to start teaching in-person classes again. That’s probably not a great plan. And good lord I would LOVE to have a dinner party soon, ya know? Same goes with the fucking guns in schools. People cannot listen well to what they hear all of the time. And here is the caveat: the real overlords in this situation are banking on that very fact of human nature. In fact, that is the entirety of the hand that they are playing. The status quo has always been and will always be dependent on the slumbering complacency of the people. Of you and me.

So, right now, in this small northern region in Vermont where our local school is in lockdown and all of the local law enforcement have gathered round, it is going to take so much more than hope or prayers or my own selective amnesia. And I wonder, is the school in your town locked down right now too? How many across the country? And also, I wonder, what in god’s name is it gonna take to break the cycle and make a new story and finally WAKE UP to a new world?

Alright, one last thing. And please please please let this be the last thing today. Chris just called me to say that he got the email from the school principal confirming the lockdown and to reiterate that we made the correct call. But so did the parents who sent their kids. I mean, what are they gonna do? It is a privilege to be able to keep our kids home. Honestly, I think the administration and the district made the wrong call having school today. They could have easily gone remote. They know how. And let’s face it, parents need help making decisions when it comes to our kids. We just do! We need the input of the community, whether that is a school community or otherwise. I mean, it is a big reason we send kids to school, to begin with. For input. For guidance. For some help. So, right now, while some of my kids classmates and friends are huddled together under their desks brandishing hydroflasks, and trying to quiet their sobs as best they can, let’s remember that we can do better. And if ever you need a place to drop your kid for the day because school isn’t the right option but you still need to work, please know they can come here. I’m here.

Now let’s comfort these kiddos and make some fucking cookies.

back to beats

I have made it back to the hot room for ye ol 26&2 for 3 weeks running. Once a week. The first time was while I was in Tucson, nudged on by Christina’s enthusiasm to drop in to the only class we would be able to make all weekend. A Friday night class called “Bikram Beats”. It was simultaneously laugh out loud and perfect. For real. And I know I have been over and over and round and round in this space that I am a slow learner and that the revelations I have are generally recycled from somewhere in my history, but wow, I am good for it tell you what.

It had been a long ass time since I had found myself wearing next to nothing in a sweaty room making shapes on a wet towel. Since March 7th 2020 to be precise. I knew that I liked this practice, but I had also mostly forgotten. And the thing that I had forgotten was in part how incredibly familiar I am with it. Despite feeling like very much a visitor in the land of 26&2 it is nonetheless a practice that I have been engaging off and on with varying consistency for the past decade. I am not sure how that measure of time has elapsed, but it has. I first began showing up in a hot room in Milwaukee in the summer of 2012, right after we sold our first family home in Viroqua and then spent the subsequent season living with my mom. I kept it up from the very start in Madison as soon as we landed at our sweet little postage stamp in Mount Horeb just before Halloween.

That practice carried me through all measure of life events. Like, for real. I sweated out a lot of shit on that little space of yoga towel. I stared myself right more than once in that mirror. I came to terms with my own fidgeting and its function or lack thereof. I bargained with myself and made more than one deal with my past/present/future. I wrote endless lines of prose. I learned how to finally and repeatedly practice forgiving myself. All the way fighting the heat to stay in the room and staring my own self down like a one woman wrestling act until I could finally feel that sweet softening inside. The letting go that became a reclamation that became a revelation. And THANK GOD for those second sets. For everything. For real.

I have let that practice inform me as a wife, a mama, a friend, a student, and as a teacher. It has been huge for me this past decade (minus the past two years) and I am ready ready ready to restore some rhythm and cadence into the fabric of my weeks with it restored. I mean, not that it hasn’t been happening. I just haven’t been going. Covid and all the rest. And all of those reasons still stand. But I am going to choose this for a bit and see what shakes out. It feels like an imperative after a rocky season of living through much of 2021. And this mama needs a minute to stare her own self down and get right with herself. Ya know?

It was a lot, right? I mean, I know it still is and I know we will keep going but I have such a big desire to take a step back for a hot second and reassess, redefine, and redetermine what works and what doesn’t and move forward from there. The time in Tucson was extra good for me. A lot of it is still landing and still being digested for sure, but there was also a way in which it really affirmed what I had been leaning into already and served up a hefty helping of remembering who I am, what I know, what I value, and the relevance of all of the work and study and consideration that has been a part of the last 20 years of my life.

For one thing, it helped me think that maybe I am not so ready to throw in the towel teaching yoga. And that maybe I am ready to find my footing locally in in-person settings. There is still something very real there for me, some aspect of my identity threaded with the gift of getting to offer support and guidance to others in their practices. I am not done yet. Even if I am ready to fade to grey with everything online. For real. I mean, its great and all and I am not going anywhere any time soon, as a student or as a teacher, but I need some seriously precise parameters within the etheric context of neither here nor there. It is one of the central reasons that sheep beat grad school, and kids win over work, at least in my world as it is right now.

Anyhow, I am ready to teach some classes to people in the same space. And I really think that it may be on the very near horizon in the new year and I am thankful for that. I am interested in what is here and now. How I can best show up to serve what is instead of continuing to steer towards a more opaque abstract. I want to take it slow and easy and relax my edges as best I can. For myself. For my people. For whatever moment is unfolding. I want to make choices and practice the behaviors that are in alignment with the identity I want. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. Yearly. But mostly, right here right now. Starting small and being consistent and showing up for the moment to moment choices in the form of writing and reading and meditating and making. And all the rest of everything that lands me right here. Right now. As I choose to be.

some bits

Today is my birthday. I took Wilfred to a new play group at the pool in Johnson and snuggled him to sleep for nap and bedtime. I chatted with maple and eider and made food and hauled wood. I made some shapes and took a bath and read a book. Mostly, the day was all of the normal mama things, especially after a long weekend away and Chris gone now for work. Thankfully, it feels like the season is given to celebration and if I get to fold myself in to that mix for a stretch of days, I’ll take it. I am guessing we Newlins will have a bit of merry making ahead of us this weekend in the form of cake making and finding our tree and doing a little bit of elfing. I will knit too. And read. And write. And eat. And do some yoga. Basically, a perfect story.

Mostly, I opened this space up tonight to deposit a bit of my writing from the past weekend with Christina and Mary Angelon. It was rich for me in all sorts of ways and I imagine I will process that more in the days to come. But for now, just these few snips.

***

For the last two decades the ma in me has been in suspended relief, stuck in the goo of everything that leaks, seeps, and oozes through all the stages of longing, conception, gestation, birth, and early rearing. And right now, sitting here with these heavy breasts away from my final baby for the first time, I can feel that life bit by bit drying up, dissolving into dust, nudging closed a door long wedged open. I held on to a hope for so long that I am over-conditioned to the act and even after having gotten what I wanted my hand still think they need to grip. Even now. Empty Space.

When my milk is gone this time the door will close and not reopen. The time of the Maiden is done and now I am the Ma that makes her way god willing to the Crone. If there were a key now might be the time to remake it, forge a new one for a new lock, for a next passage.

This hurts and is harder than I want it to be maybe because I am so happy to have what I do but good grief I am so nostalgic all the time for the early days- even as I am in them. Again. The loss of this time has been something I’ve denied and fought against for so long and now that its finally time I am at once ok, excited even, and utterly shattered. I am shattered.

***

Even though it is so cold now and the ground is frozen, deeper every day, I see small green leafy shoots push up everywhere I step my feet. Something is rising, fresh and new, from far beneath the ice and snow, where the earth is dark and loamy. My eyes are still so tired but the light that’s coming in around the edges now is bright and clear and so full of something more solid than hope. It is so good to be away for a few days. To sleep long and easy in a bed made sweet for me by old friends. It is good to get some distance. From here, today, I can look back on my people and see them as they are, free from the up-close residue of our perpetual proximity. And great news! They are ok! They are more than ok, they are excellent. Of course they are. Beautiful and fine. So fine.

Chris keeps sending me all of these pictures of the kids and finally I had to say hey just send me a picture of your face. I just wanna see your face. He helps make so much possible for me. Help me remember me. This morning in the shower I thought again that I should write him a letter. I should write him a letter. I want to write him a letter. I never do. I put so many words together all the time and launch them into the ethers and I am pretty sure he reads them all. But none are ever just for him. I mean, they are all meant for him but none ever just. I think its time. He’s so many things. My fellow torch bearer. We take turns but almost always walk together. Different but never really separate. Not anymore. And As I was showering and being with me and remembering to remember- I just once again thought good grief, I got it good. My presence is the ground of being. But his is too. His is too. And in that remembering, small green shoots, pushing up from under my feet.

alcohol, instagram, anxiety

I am at the end of what is hands down the most difficult day that I have ever had with Wilfred. He is a force. Which I am sure is excellent, but in this moment, all of me feels drained and hollow. Taxed to the max. However. I have had something that I have wanted to spend a little time processing through writing for a while and I will give it a start now. Who knows how long I’ll last.

I have never been a big drinker. There have certainly been periods where I drink more than others but for me drinking regularly generally equates to 2-4 drinks in a week. And never, save once in a very blue moon, more than a drink or two in a day. That is just how I generally always am. And ok yeah if you can remember me at some wedding where I threw more back than that you are probably correct and I can assure you that I paid the price for that the next day and then some.

Cuz here is the real deal: I always pay the price for it. I feel like crap whenever I have anything to drink. And if I am doing that with some regularity, not only do I feel like shit bodily, but I also am most likely experiencing heightened anxiety and nudging my way toward depression. Alcohol does not seem to agree with me. And that is ok but also a little sad. I like a beautiful wine and dark beer. I like most types of Scotch and a number of other interesting whiskeys.

And I am not a purist. It is not moral for me. I am not generally, with anything, much of a this or that kind of a person. I don’t know if it is my high-ish blood sugar or my low blood pressure or a combination of the two or just simply my preferences when it comes to my biochemistry, but it seems like I am not a person who does well with even very occasional alcohol consumption. That is not to say that this is some declaration about whether I do or do not drink. I can guarantee you that I am going to enjoy some lovely wine with family later this week. And I can also be pretty positive that next week I am going to have to pay some extra attention to my personal care as I walk myself back from mixed and uncomfortable states of being. I am ok with that. So long as it is not a regular walk back I have to do and so long as I can keep the whole thing in perspective and not spiral needlessly about any of it.

This is not a post about sobriety. Like I said, it is not moral. This is me getting clear about my own relationship to how I feel and how I function. And while it is difficult sometimes to not cue off of others I have found in this instance that how I feel is not, and really need not be, how others feel in relationship to alcohol. Some folks are fine drinking regularly and experience very little to no downside to that other than maybe an extra couple pounds of weight, and that may or may not be an actual downside. For some folks it is best to avoid alcohol altogether, whether because it is a trigger that could provoke a landslide of substance abuse, or because it simply works best for them to choose a lane: yes or no. For me, it is something in between. Something that I am ok with being a little gray about. A little variable about. In fact for me to take a firm yes or no stance would most likely be more unnecessarily provocative than working to trust my internal wisdom about what is best.

As with many things, I am working on building up this sort of trust. Early on in the pandemic, I leaned into alcohol to meet the stress of the endless all the same days unending and forever way that I think maybe many people did. I had a beer most evenings and just gave up a certain part of myself that perhaps was the governor of my better interests. And it was actually excellent in terms of building up some very lived data around how much that really does not work for me and jettisons me into malaise coupled with hopelessness coupled with restlessness coupled with depression. I mean, I really know now. And in the year and a half since those early months, I have played a couple of games with myself to see what the levels are in terms of provoking my discomfort. Turns out none. The level is none. Not without any price to pay. So now I know that. Which is honestly, a pretty massive relief. Maybe it will be different when I once again sleep through the night. But maybe not.

I have also learned something quite similar in terms of how I interact with social media in general, and instagram is specific. For a month or so this past summer, I put down the app to see how I fared without it and to sort out its role in how shitty I was feeling. It was significant. And when I came back I knew I needed to shift the way in which I engage in that space. For me, that meant not sharing other people’s posts, especially ones that expressed any kind of political or social opinion or dictate. I needed to have nothing preachy that wasn’t just me in my particular bubble. Like my brand, my life, my lane. That is not to say that I do not value the way in which IG can function as an educational platform, and I utilize it in many of these ways. What my personal stance is on it, for myself, is that I have nothing to prove in that space. I do not need to prove my politics or my wokeness. IG is not the means by which I declare or affirm my social action. It simply need not be that for me.

It might even be right for me to say that for the most part, at this place in time, I am not so interested in “re-posting” or sharing others people’s content in general. I am here to be me and see you as you are and forge awkward and clunky friendships together, albeit virtual. As much as the space of Instagram is statistically not the healthiest or even safest space, I have met folks here that have informed my life for the better and relationships that have sustained me during the long and lonely seasons.

But, I gotta say this again. My perspective is not moral. It isn’t. It is just personal. I am paying attention to what serves my mental wellness and culling or moderating the actions and behaviors that do not. I do not have any issue with the choices that you make that work well for you and your personal wellness. I really do not. I just need to manage my energy to the best of my ability and these are my findings in relation to being in study and service to that energy. When I am living in anxiety I am not the best version of myself. Not personally, not relationally, not socially, etc…

So, like that. I am not sure what I am aiming to do here, save maybe clarify a few things for myself simply by putting them out there. I tend toward being incredibly impressionable and am able to adapt and adjust quite a bit to what is happening around me and I think maybe this is just my way of affirming that these are examples in which I am not best served by that behavior. So, like that. I am working to know myself better and what works best as applied to me. Not you. It is neither good nor bad. Right or wrong. This or that. It is simply what I think I need to be choosing and it is not very definitive. More flexible. More temporal. More me.

contentment/determination

Eider lost interest in soccer this year. In many ways, it was the natural progression of things. Two full seasons off and the kind of multi-sport conundrum of over-lapping seasons and the subsequent picking and choosing. And even though I understood, I was still a little bit bummed. He began playing when he was four back in Mount Horeb and it always felt like something that was just his. None of us really had a huge connection or understanding for the game. Not really. And his autonomy and agency with the sport only grew once he was old enough to bike himself to the town fields for practice. He grew with the sport in natural and exciting ways, culminating in a full season on the club select team our last year living there.

And he seemed genuinely excited to play again this past fall. But once the season began it was evident right away that his heart wasn’t in it. I think he was happy for the activity but when the season ended he was relieved to be done. It is interesting with Eider. He is such a naturally enthusiastic person that it can often be difficult to tell how into something he actually is and how much is just him responding in ways he thinks he ought. And that’s the thing. 

Eider was by far my easiest baby and small child. He was always sooooo content. So go with the flow. He is, after all, the baby that made me want 1000 more. His sister and brother are much more determined. They both seem to want to make shit happen and are hell bent on a struggle if that is what is required to get there. At least that is true for moo. It seems that Wilfred is following suit. And while that particular quatlity is a challenge to parent, it is pretty incredible when they grow older. Maple takes no shit and I have no concern over her ability and capacity to do exactly what she wants to do advocating for her interests along with her needs the whole while. She is a force. And it is super inspiring for me as her mama, but also a huge fucking relief honestly. 

As Eider grows, I can see the shadow side of his contented disposition. He settles so easily for something that he may or may not want. Or he walks away from the difficulty. His contentment often has an expression of inertia and it is hard to tell what the heck the kid really wants. The rock and the hard place that we find ourselves in as his parents is that we do not, by any means, want him to lose the ease and content and radical acceptance that are hallmarks of who he is. Of course. But we would love to see a rise in some of the passion that makes us know he is proud of his efforts and that he is living the life he wants. 

Sometimes, especially as Maple gets closer and closer to her departure from our family nest, it is hard to remember that Eider still has a whole bunch of his childhood left to live in our care. The years may seem short to me, and in many ways they certainly are, but for him, there is still so much time left to live the supported and protected, yet also unbound, life of a kid.

This came up for us recently when he tried out for 802 lacrosse. And even more so once he was offered a spot on the team. He hemmed and hawed. Saying first yes, and then no, and then yes again. To be fair, so much of this is because of a continued failing on the part of Chris and I to always want our kids to be their best and be clear and also exactly how we begin to descend into the realm of crazy sports parents. What we really want is to not make him do something he doesn’t want to do. But the trouble is that him wanting something is so much more relaxed and easy than how any of the rest of us want anything. We are generally each on some kind of mission or another. Like yes I LOVE THIS and OF COURSE I AM DOING THIS and YES YES YES. Whereas bear is more like, yeah it’s pretty cool and I think it will be fun. But he never seems to get very miopic and we interpret that as lack of interest or indifference. I don’t think it really is.

Eid is a big picture kid. He is the type of person that when picked on by another kid is gonna give them the benefit of the doubt, try to see things from their perspective, stand in their shoes to the best of his ability. It is amazing. In many ways it is part of what makes him just the most stunning person. He is fiery, don’t get me wrong. He is a red head after all. But he is mostly very patient, very accepting, very even-keeled. He is a joy to know and love and parent. And yet, I so want to know what he wants and do right by him in supporting him as he wants and needs, that I sometimes- ok often- lose sight.

Alright. I just drove Eider home from his weekly violin lesson. An hour, mid morning, every Thursday. And because I was mid-stream with this thought, I asked him: “Hey, you think you’re gonna still play violin when you are grown?” And from his very own mouth, I kid you not, he said: “I don’t know if I will or not. I am a very obedient breed. I do very well with someone just sitting me down and telling me what to do.” I cannot make this shit up. And kuddos to you if you picked up on his Bluey reference. He is nothing if not self-aware, this kid. It is pretty incredible really. He is leaps and bounds ahead of where I was in that department at like 24, and certainly not even comparable to twelve year old meg’s level of self-awareness, which was nil. Or something maybe even less than nil if that exists.

And so. I am trying to do better. Always. Do better at letting my kid live the childhood that is right for him, and not my projection of what might possibly be best. Do better at not being so hard on him or myself. Mostly myself honestly. I am gonna keep on trying to affirm and uplift his contented nature and also ask for greater clarity in the places where it is his to give. I can still answer some of the questions around certain decisions myself, and let him enjoy my holding of some of the reins for a while longer yet. I can still practice taking it slow with him and letting us both be spacious around who he is and what he wants and what the fabric of his remaining years at home are made up of. 

I imagine it is apparent that these posts either come all in one fast fell swoop or in fits and starts over the course of a day or sometimes even a week. This is certainly the latter. At any rate. I just spent the last hour doing a workout in the basement with Eider. At the tail end of October I devised a challenge for our family called “the 50”. It is 50 push ups, 50 squats, 50 sit ups, 50 burpees, 50 times between the start date and the end of the year. With a carrot held out in front for $100 or something of equal value. Maple has done none, Chris some, me a bit more than that, and Eider in the obvious lead. It isn’t even close. And I think it is so perfect that it is unfolding this way. He is so obedient. I guess that is one way of saying it. Or loyal. Faithful. Steady. Ugh. I just really love him and all of the ways he continues to teach me about the values that I want to live into, the person I want to be, and the life I want to be living. 

And yeah, he is going to do the 802 team next year. After all of us circled around the decision, convoluding it in various and unnecessary ways for days. Chris and I are practicing shifting our perspective around Eider’s desire to be “casual” in his approach to the opportunity and trying to really see that as the gift, even asset, that it most likely is. Maybe a little bit of calm in the midst of intensity. Maybe a little bit of contentment in a turbulent life. 

being. ok.

I continue to be a slow learner. Slow to digest, assimilate, integrate. So it is. When I was younger I mistook this for a lack of intelligence, reinforced in many ways by dominant structures in family and education. But now I see it as something much more spacious. Something in which change and growth unfold at their own right pace and where the time in between one form and another is the real space of becoming. 

I think about this quite a bit and again as of late have had it reinforced in my own experience of waiting for some clarity around what the next right form is, as well as in the musings of some of my mentors and dear hearts. A longer and more intimate exploration of the liminal space of not yet knowing. Where the revelation is there but the light of awareness hasn’t lit it fully just yet. 

The paradox of course is to already have enough time spent in process and in practice to know that the knowing will eventually arrive, that the waiting in wonder and unknowing is in many ways the juiciest place of pure possibility that we could linger in. Hard to know that without knowing that. It is hard to know that trusting something is worth it before you’ve ever lived into the outcome. And so.

Recently Christina has been instructing, when overwhelm or confusion or just too many instructions start to take over: breathe, and trust the shape. I think maybe I heard her say it a dozen times before I heard her say it. Ya know. Slow to learn. Sometimes slow to even hear. But I love that. I have been taken by the relational nature of practice in general and the postures in particular for a long time, but I love the metaphor of that in the larger uncertainty of life. 

Can I trust the shape of things, when parts of my understanding are still hanging out in the dark corners of the unknown or unresolved? Can I trust the form of my life to support the space between one being and the next becoming? That I live in this house on this land with these people and this is the particular form of it all and on like that. Trust the shape of my life, made by many things, and mostly by design. Mine, and ours. And again, this does not seem so much like the appropriate task to set out before the young and eager first-timer. But to get from there to here, it seems it must be possible, right? That at some point we just choose to trust the inherent wisdom in the process without yet having any experience of the proof? I think so. It kinda has to be so. 

And yes 100% this is where mentors and guides and community seem to me so essential in the support system of this spacious, yet often tenuous, unfolding. I know I couldn’t have learned to trust the shape (of anything) if I hadn’t watched others before me. I am curious now if I am making it sound too easy… Simple, yes. Easy, no. It is hard to learn new things, especially new things with no seeming answer other than the suggestion that perhaps the next thing will eventually arrive. In time. After a while. 

I did this practice today with no plan and just a timer and some longing to visit some shapes that make me feel good, with whom my relationships tend toward the positive. Mostly. Like a greatest hits but not at all. I listened to a podcast about sleep research the entire time and the whole thing was so average and just right. Just me. Just a basic daily tending. And then Wilfred woke up and I went on with my day. Unfinished and okay. Unresolved and okay. With more questions than answers and a whole lot left to learn. But I like leaving that way. It might be the very thing that brings me back. So, to more waiting in the space in between. But not so much waiting, and very much more being. Like that.

Ba

I hope that it is clear enough by now that I just mostly show up in this space to muse about identity and all of the surrounding considerations of who I am and what the hell I am doing with my life. Maybe I need to change the blog description to something more like that… At any rate, for months (ahem, maybe 20 or so. conservative estimate) I have been floating in and out of a particular liminal stasis. Part dark night of the soul, part trying not to force an outcome. At any rate, I have been waiting on some clarity, some kind of sign from the Universe about what exactly the next thing might possibly be. What is the next chapter of my life? What are the bits and pieces that will make up the whole of who I am in this next phase and place of being? But, no answer, really no insight whatsoever has been forthcoming and the waiting has left me more often than not nostalgic and depressed.

Signs are funny though. Many times they arrive all at once as though spontaneously delivered from some source with the force of possibility. But often that sudden arrival has been built bit by bit, one thought, one conversation, one dream, one remembering, one discovery, one letting go, one forgetting, and one forgiveness at a time over the course of a secret stretch of weeks or months or often, years. It is funny, but even after all of this time of being taught and in turn teaching by means of “a blinding flash of the obvious”, (thank you Christina), is still really just that. Sudden, and Blinding in its bright clarity. We can see something once it is here, and not a moment before.

What the hell am I talking about anyway? Jeez Meg. More specifics for more relatability. Ok. Got it.

I received my most recent lightning bolt last Monday morning when I saw a post shared by an old farmy friend of mine back in Viroqua Wisconsin regarding a flock of sheep looking for a new home down the hill from where I live outside of Morrisville, Vermont. Like, right down the hill. As in, I have been driving past these sheep as I shuttle my bigs to and fro every day for months. And I was like: Oh those could just be my sheep. And yes, I know, no just about it and I promise I will get into all of that. But in the moment it just shook me. Like this thing that has always been an earnest interest of mine, since the very beginning, at varying degrees at varying times throughout the course of my adulthood, but there nonetheless. I have even rearranged aspects of my life at different points to more easily accommodate the vision of sheep. If I am honest, it is a big part of why we chose country over town in our move to Vermont.

It triggered some serious self-reflection for me. For months I have felt at a real end of things. Like something is dying and I have no idea what is going to rise up out of the ashes. And all of that makes sense. I have felt unrooted and untethered since we made our big cross country move, for some clearly obvious more macro reasons as well as a few particular to me and my personal identity. For the last decade or so my primary identities have been structured in and around teaching yoga and being a homeschool mom. Every part of me filterd through these two aspects. Teaching as I once knew it feels gone forever and I am not necessarily eager to resurrect that even if I thought it were possible where I currently live (a story for another post perhaps). Similarly, how I experienced homeschooling changed forever when we landed here and Maple began going to public school. I couldn’t quite put my finger on that exactly until a conversation I had with a home ed mama friend of mine in which she related how difficult the transition to public school has been not for her son who is going, but for the younger brother that he left behind who has until now, never known a day without his older sibling. That is how it has been for Eider. For me too in some different ways. And certainly if COVID hadn’t taken a massive crap on everything that made homeschool fun and wildly more social than folks ever believe, maybe it would have been easier to hang onto the gold with him. But it hasn’t been and in my awareness of the end of our time learning together in this way, I have been grieving the loss of a part of myself. That loss along with no longer feeling like a public yoga teacher has been leaving me wondering what to do, what is next, who I am now, who I want to be.

For the last year or so, I have been succumbing to the New England value system and thinking that I could restore or even discover anew my own worth by going back to school and getting a higher degree and throwing some letters up after my name. They got me, those Northeastern academics. Ha. Almost. The trouble with that though, which is the same trouble with every other hair-brained idea of what could be next for me in my life is not only the $100,000, but also the fact that everything I have considered doing doesn’t do anything to land me here, in the place that I live now, on this land within this community in this context. It’s just another etheric option that jettisons me out into space or through another airport and off into the world somewhere else. Which, if I am honest, is good god so fucking hard to do even for someone who does a decent job of paying attention (and you can read my last post for more of that struggle if you like).

No. I am not doing myself or my discontent any favors if everything that I am looking forward to is about somewhere else and something else. Yes, I know I am being hard on myself here. I am doing a good job. I said when we moved here that the beginning bits would be all about focusing on my kids and helping them in building up their lives here and it has and I do and that is its own reward in a certain way. And yet, I need my own identity and my own individual sense of purpose interwoven with passion. So, sheep. At least, in part.

But not the flock down the hill. Something more planned and more thought out and more suited to my particular intentions and desires. I cannot throw us into this. Even though that is always my inclination. Cart before horse. Whoops. So, I am busy doing what I do and finding mentors and guides, and digging into the examples of what I don’t want along with what I do, and hopefully, by the late spring, there will be some sheep out grazing on our hill. I am sure I’ll share all sorts of details about that as it unfolds for those that are interested. I imagine there are more than a few wooly friends in my midst. Just an idea.

Oh yeah and by the way the other thing that I figured out this week is that I HAVE A WHOLE OTHER KID that I can decide to homeschool or not. I mean, I knew that but for some bonkers reason, I have been telling myself that if Eider is done then I am too and Wilfred will probably go to school. Well, turns out that I do want to homeschool my little- at least, that’s what I think right now- and holy shit I actually have an idea of how to go about it compared to when we began over eight years ago. Horse, then cart baby! Ha! This may seem obvious to you but please let me assure you that this entered my awareness like a shooting star. Bright and unexpected and with a trail I can follow.

So, at this moment, I still feel the grief of what is changing and what is or has already ended. But I am also feeling more grounded and hopeful and alive than I have in a long time. Like I am here now. And my eyes are open. And what needed to die in me has died and the ground feels fertile with the possibility of what comes next. As my mentor/shepherdess/pal back in WI says: Babes and sheep are the best. Yes indeed.

immediate

Here is the teaching that lives closest to my heart: Tell the Truth. Seems super basic. Which is good, because it is. It is also harder than fuck to keep eyes on. The truth, itself as it is, in the very center of all things and my most essential self, is steady. Not exactly fixed because it has the freedom to evolve and unfold and infinitely become, just like me. But it is everything that sits right up close to the truth that makes the hold itself so slippery. And honestly, it is all of those things that sit close that have me almost entirely consumed in the day to day and leave my vision a lot less crystal than at other times.

These days, my best moments, when most of the parts of me are present and I feel super steeped in gratitude, are in the evenings when Chris and I are doing Wilfred’s whole long and rhythmic bedtime routine. Bath and bubbles and tooth brushing and lotions and potions and snuggling and jammies and stories and all the added silliness that sets him up right for an easy transition to sleep. (most nights. not gonna jinx myself jeez.) It is a soft and cozy time. Just being together. In those moments I am in the love of and respect for the papa that Chris has grown into as well as the grace of Wilfred’s particular presence in our lives. Even though I am tired and feeling the pull of a moment or two to myself. Those are still the central to me moments that I am always calling myself back to. Some central truth of who I am and who we are embodied in the bedtime rituals. And not just Wilfred’s really. But the remnants of memory of the sweet, soft, close of day time we shared with the older two when they were small as well.

And still. Those moments can also feel as much a part of the hamster wheel I find myself on as many of the others. A lot of day in day out and trying to recoup what’s been lost and pay the price and recover what feels to be the compounding deficits of a couple of years of truncated connections and fragmented isolation. Wilfred is amazing. My heart. As Chris calls him: the prince that was promised. omg. To say we adore him is such an absurd understatement. And he has delays. He struggles with many sounds and even though he has so many more words than he did just a few months ago, it is still a difficulty for him to make many of the words that he would like to be using. And he is anxious around other kids. He clings and cries and tries to steer my body back in the direction I came from. He does eventually melt a bit and settle into some shared space and time but it is a rough entry to be sure. All of it is in such stark contrast to how our big 2 were. But then again, much of life, and the world, are.

With Maple and Eider, we were always with other friends and their kids one way or another. At playgroups, at storytimes, at activities, at shared family meals. All of these things that haven’t taken hold in the context of a new community in a new state in a pandemic world where inside hangs are sketchy at best, terrifying at worst. I guess I am just feeling the absence of these things in our lives these days. Or the clunkiness of our efforts toward them and my child’s lack of fluency in them as the subsequent result. I am simultaneously missing and longing for the broader nets of community to carry me and my emergence into the here and now in some meaningful way.

Day after day feels mostly the same. I have to remind myself how much bigger and more grown all of our kids are than when the pandemic began. I have to update my current operating systems lest I continue to treat the toddler like a baby, the tween like a kid, and the teen like a tween. I have to catch up, ya know. To now. Even though it is real hard to know what that even means, even is.

Most of the folks that I work with are in some experience of anxiety or depression or both. Everyone is hanging on. At least that is how it seems to me. And those that appear to be thriving, well, I have my doubts. I can’t help it. I am skeptical about how much thrive is possible in the world as it is today. And if I am honest, I am not even going for that right now. Maybe in 5 years. Fingers crossed. But right now I am all about good enough and not losing sight of any part or anyone so much that something essential falls into decay or disrepair.

I was recently looking through a journal from mid-2020 and I saw a quick note that I had jotted down. I remember at the time that I heard it and wrote it down feeling like it was a worst-case scenario, now I actually can see the hope in it. It said: Immediate Pandemic 2020- late 2022; Intermediate Pandemic 2022-2024; and post-pandemic 2024+. So, I guess, maybe in 5 years. Maple graduates high school in 2024. I mean, isn’t it entire lifetimes lived in the years between 2020 and 2024?

This is kind of a tangent in a sense, something that applied to life when we lived somewhere where we had embedded community stretching out over the course of years and we weren’t still in the getting to know you phase but made infinitely more complicated because do we come inside and hang out or no? Do we take our masks off or not? How can we connect if it feels unsafe to connect? Anyway. The tangent: I was talking with an old pal this morning whose daughter is graduating this year and we were lamenting how we move everything around when they are little so that we can be “home with the kids” and that oh heck “we can work more when they are older.” But she said that right now as she links together a string of “last times” with her girl, she is like wtf NOW is when I need to be home with my kids. In one way or another, this has always felt true to me. When they are little and they need you for mostly everything pretty much always you are a great big steady and waiting target. But when they are big and independent and seemingly need you not so much do not be fooled because when they do need you, they really need you and the target is tiny and obscure and hard to spot and on the move.

Ok so lots of data here. The years are apparently flying by but every day is a slog but nothing changes but everything is different and whoops actually turns out it all changed over the course of days that I was so tired with malaise and dread that I did not notice. Whoops whoops whoops and CRAP. There is no way I can get this right. Plus I really am sooooo tired. But too sentimental to do the things that could possibly restore me in some slivers to myself. I could wean my (27-month-old) baby. Not gonna happen. He is my B A B Y. I haven’t even turned his carseat forward facing yet. Sheesh. I could rest more. Maybe, but when would I knit? I could lay off the caffeine. But hoooooow? And yet I know that something must give. I am hanging on to whisps of inspiration gathered up from eons ago and I am unproductive and foggy and hard to pin down inside of myself. It is a thing. I don’t feel great. My bones hurt and my blood feels bitter. I try to do the things that will reinstate me to me, do the little big things ya know, but in truth, I just want to crawl under my duvet and stay there until I am truly all the way done staying there. Ah well. Onward I suppose. In some way.

I guess maybe this is the truth today. As it is. For me. Or what lives right close up to it. I am a work in progress. Trying to keep my eyes on the evolving truth that lives inside of me. Backtracking or playing catch up. Trying to filter out all of the outdated stories I have been telling myself and rewrite the script more suited for today. How you spend your day is how you live your life or so they say and I am studying the terms of what that can or cannot mean for me. Today. And as needed. Thanks for bearing with me during it. No inspo all truth telling. As we do.

in between

It is past peak where we live in Vermont, and until there is snow that lasts, this season is officially called “stick season”. All of the red leaves are down. Most of the orange are down too or are otherwise in that in-between of half up/half down, like shadow mirrors that circle the base of the trees in circles. A witchy skirt reflected. Quite a few yellow leaves are still up in places, in clusters, which is lovely and I think perhaps enough to attract the straggling peeper.

But we are in between seasons now. And you can really feel it. The in-between. The annual wobbly yet determined descent that lays low everything that was bright and light about the other half of the year. Low down and into the deep now.

I am sitting in the fading and dusky light of a Burlington athletic club parking lot waiting for Maple while she flips and turns, stroke by stroke, breath by breath, back into all of her parts. An embodied Maple. Last week we gave up the ghost- or rather, saw clearly all of the ghosts that had never made their way to her swim team experience after Wisconsin. We threw in the towel and as a family made the call (and the sacrifice) to move her to a proper swim team a solid hour away. We chose to give her a chance and a solid option in terms of what swimming can be for her. For the sake of better coaching, better communication, and feedback that offers development potential, we now drive even further.

Early last week we made the first trip down so that Maple could do an assessment swim. She worked hard and showed up and was seen for all of it and more for the first time in actual years. And an amazing thing happened. I watched her have maybe her first real moment of reclamation ever. She re-membered how it used to be. And all the grief of how it hadn’t been for so long was finally safe for her to feel. She let it out, my strong brave girl. The pain of leaving and losing something essential that feels like you. The horror of realizing that you had been pretending that everything was ok, was working, all this while, when now you can see that it clearly was not. She chose herself and her most true desire over the not-good-enough substitution she had been settling for.

And there are so many stories like this for all of us really, right? The great pretending. And subsequent forgetfulness. It is strangely easy to lose ourselves in one way or another and on repeat. A little giving here, a touch of aquiessing there, a push too long or too far. And I recognize that it seems perhaps like I am talking to you here, or maybe even moo. But really I am talking to me. Forever. And again. We have to be vigilant. But first we have to learn how to be vigilant. We must learn the difference between wanting something to be one way, and what it is to really have clear sight of our reality.

This season of the in-between, the descending energy into the dark and into the cold and into the night is a great teacher of remembering. At least, I believe it can be. A descent into the darkness always runs the risk of laying us low and right down into the grip and the grab of our shadow tendencies. And behaviors. But I think if we can culture some more stillness, more silence, into our rhythms, then we can see what is true in us.

I have been padding around in the dark. Waiting for some remembering for so long now. Like a shadow of a shadow inside myself. And it is strange, or maybe it is perfect, that now that the nights are truly long and the colors have almost entirely faded, I am beginning to perceive some luminescence still clinging to me in parts. A sparkle along my arm. A streak of twinkle and shine slipping across my spine. The light is here yet. Of course. And it is funny that as much as I think myself the lightkeeper and the guide out of the darkness for our children, I am not. Nor have I perhaps ever been save for when they were very small. They are their own. They walk themselves out of the shadows or choose to linger a little longer. Their call. I can try to blow on the ember of a fire but if it is not mine I cannot force a spark. I am the torchbearer of my own path back. As ever. Which as a mama, is one thing to say, and another entirely to embody. I am working on it. All this life long. Remembering to remember that my light is vast and deep and wide and mine.

ships

Maple texted this picture to me the other day, and I just can’t even. Ya know? The clearness of her eyes kills me. Everything about her really. Slays me. There is this way over the course of the last several months that she is just completely claiming herself. It is radical to watch. Kids that picked on her and tore her differences down and did their best to make her feel small and less and other are now like “Hey Maple when did you get so cool?” To which she responds with the only viable answer I can think of “Whenever it was that you stopped being an asshole.”

Last night, during our Practice Wellness Community call, I shared a piece of writing by David Whyte. It is called Beginning and as much as anything it makes me think of Maple and all of the beginnings that wait ahead for her. But also, it makes me think of the continuum of beginnings that are strewn throughout the path that each of us has taken, are taking, will one day take. Last week when one of my longtime students and friends from Madison was visiting, she shared that she was quite enjoying a book and thought I may like it as well; The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. We bantered back and forth a bit about the book because Maple, who reads everything, had said that she thought I might really like it too, even though she said she did not. My friend laughed when I told her that, saying that perhaps that is because she is only 15 and hasn’t quite wracked up the regret of a lifetime that time accumulates for each of us one way or another, like it or not. She is probably completely right about that. So, I am reading the book. I am just at the beginning but basically, I think that the woman is visiting all of the possible lives that she never lived, due to one choice and then another made at each different fork in the road. Relatable, no doubt. Especially to those of us in our middle years and beyond.

It brings to mind one of my most favorite quotes from Cheryl Strayed; “ I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.” Don’t you love that? I have been letting some of those ghost ships tumble around in my mind as of late as I consider my many sleepless toddler nights and excruciating pandemic fatigue. But at the same time, I am working to harbor some particular attention to the very real ships that have yet to present themselves or are even in the process of presenting. Right now. In these days.

Sometimes I think about how swell it would be to have a little apartment in an old house in the East End of Portland Maine. I could go there on my own, or with Chris, or with one of the kids, or the whole lot. Eat out. See a show. Do the stuff you can do in a small and beautifully walkable New England City. I also still think about how curious I still am about raising some of my own wool (ahem those are called sheep meg), and seeing what that might yield. Some old world far northern breed with warm fleeces for turning into creamy sweaters and rich meat for eating all winter. Chris laughs at these two ships in particular because of how at odds they seem with one another. Which is it? He says. The City or The Farm Meg?

And I guess that is the thing of it. There is a bit of that feeling of some of my dreams really being at odds with one another. Which is not super helpful in terms of any level of decisiveness for me. I wind up not choosing one so as to not block another which, as far as I can tell, looks a heck of a lot like a whole lotta nothing. I am tentative of the bold moves. And yet. Anything other than some boldness feels not quite right. Not quite me.

So. Lots of living left to do, and choices to be made to be sure. And oh my god, for my girl? So much. She is in the process currently of applying to spend a semester of her junior year at the Oxbow School of Art. Most likely, that will ride right on the heels of another summer spent as an apprentice/instructor at Islesford Boatworks. She has plenty going on, and from what I can gather, much of it is awesome.

OK. All the while I have been writing this, Wilfred, who fought his nap for a good 2 hours today and then finally relented to sleep on the drive to take Eider to soccer practice, has been snoozing in the car. I have been sitting on the steps watching his face through the tinted window, obscured and slightly distorted and imagined like those fancy new ultrasound images. He has woken up now so I guess this is where I’ll leave it.

Here is David Whyte’s piece Beginning, that I shared in the pwc cohort last night, from his compilation entitled Consolations:

BEGINNING

well or beginning poorly, what is important is simply to begin, but the ability to make a good beginning is also an art form, beginning well involves a clearing away of the crass, the irrelevant and the complicated to find the beautiful, often hidden lineaments of the essential and the necessary.

Beginning is difficult, and our procrastination is a fine, ever-present measure of our reluctance to take that first close-in, courageous step in reclaiming our happiness. Perhaps, because taking a new step always leads to a kind of radical internal simplification, where, suddenly, very large parts of us, parts of us we have kept gainfully employed for years, parts of us still rehearsing the old complicated story, are suddenly out of a job. There occurs in effect, a form of internal corporate downsizing, where the parts of us too afraid to participate or having nothing now to offer, are let go, with all of the accompanying death-like trauma, and where the very last fight occurs, a rear guard disbelief that this new, less complicated self, and this very simple step, is all that is needed for the new possibilities ahead.

It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: which is why we so often prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities clouded by fear, the horizon safely in the distance, the essay longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility...

David Whyte

slog

Sometimes I forget and think that the purpose of my sharing inside of this space is to be inspiring. It feels like a lot of pressure when I think that is what it’s about. Plus, it feels kinda false. What I am really inside of this space to do is to be a truth teller. To speak, or write, what is real for me right now in this moment, as I am, in all of my flaws and imperfections and missteps. Maybe I am just here to do my part in normalizing the slog of being alive. And maybe that is inspiring but mostly, and especially right now, it just feels like surviving. I am bogged down. Anyone else? My fatigue on every level feeds into a constant state of overwhelm and I am mostly just trying to do my best in any given moment and on any given day to at least try and soothe my nervous system. To regulate myself at all and pray pray pray that that matters in my efforts to co-regulate with my kids and spouse. It is fucking hard.

Yesterday was hell. Wilfred was a handful and a half, or maybe more cuz we generally have a lot of hands on deck. He is slow to talk, which I mostly think is no big deal, Eider was too. But unlike Eider who seemed completely content in his preverbal life, Wilfred is frustrated and seething in some moments that feel too big for me to hold. But I keep on trying. Even through the tears. Through the fatigue. When he finally goes down for a nap and I get to leave him at home for a moment with Chris while I drive to pick up Maple from school and to swim team practice, I am rewarded with her low blood sugar rage at me for something that I either didn’t do right or simply just '“don’t get” and I know for sure in those moments that something is being seriously tested inside of me. Whether it is my patience, or my calm in the face of calamity, or perhaps more likely my capacity for compassion and forgiveness, self and otherwise, it feels like a test. Like the kind that sets you up to fail.

Cuz I most certainly lost my shit this week. I yelled at moo in the car. Like, yelled yelled. Refusing to be the receptacle for whatever it was that she was dishing out. A day later I yowled fuuuuuuck!  at the full capacity of my lungs outside of the door behind which Chris was on some work call. Off-gassing I guess. And I forgive myself already for all of this and more and am also a little sad that neither outburst made me feel any amount better at all. It was a good experiment though I suppose. So there’s that.

The thing I want is some relief, right? But what does that even mean? Because even if I get a break from the slog of mom life for an afternoon or god willing a whole glorious weekend, the world that I step out into is still on fire, people are still dying or in denial, basic human regard is still woefully absent and hard to find and there still doesn’t appear to be any end in sight for any of it. In fact, science is basically telling us that even if we heed the fucking emergency and get our shit together RIGHT NOW, that it still only going to get worse for another 30 or so years before any of our efforts even begin to be felt by the planet. What the fuck? And that is assuming that anyone even cares enough to do something for the good of a world that they may or may not even be here to see. That’s a lot of goodwill. Or a lot of faith. Or something else entirely for which I may not even have a word for. 

It’s a lot. And here is what I know for sure: I believe in humanity. I believe in myself. Even if both are the wavering sort of faith that is hard to find consistent footing inside of. Even if I cannot clearly or coherently wrap my head around any version of the future, mine or ours. I do believe in continuing to culture myself. In forgiving myself and working to do better in this next moment. I think that there is actually hopeful room for improvement, for all of it. And maybe it just starts in some way with me snuggling up to the darker and more dismal areas of discomfort inside of my personal experience. I think that there is probably some kind of imperative around my efforts at integrating the more treacherous parts of myself into the whole and shining some light a little deeper into the recesses of my darker spaces. You know, those ones that are so dissociated that they are all heavy shadow and toxic mold. 

Anyhow, that’s it. No inspo just some truth-telling. May my story serve in some way. Or not. Maybe it just gave you a moment of distraction from something harder and that is fine too. I am just gonna leave it with this: thank god for eider. He is the calm in the storm for me right now for sure. That quiet little guy has become a not-so-quiet but incredibly compassionate kid that knows how to hold space and offer support. And while I know it is not by any stretch of the imagination his job to take care of me, I really appreciate the way he calmly steps up to help with his bro while I do something super luxurious like take a shit. I also appreciate the way in which he knows that Freddy loves to eat all of his brother’s food, even when he has the very same on his own plate. And how anything I suggest is gonna be infinitely more fun if done with Eid instead. I appreciate that. I am grateful for that. And in there, some relief.