Every Ending A Beginning

Today was the last day of preschool for our twins. Next year all my kids will be in school, and will all be on the bus by 7:00 am. Having been home with little kids for almost 17 years, it feels surreal to have that much time open to me.

The day started taking them to kindergarten screenings, and it ended with me helping to decorate for my daughter’s 8th grade graduation tomorrow. Like so many others at this time of year, I keep thinking about endings and beginnings.

I love being a mom and am deeply in love with my vocation, with the joy and delight I get from each one of my kids. I routinely tell them, if you were my only child, I would be blown away by the gift of you, by the gift of motherhood youhave given me. And I have that feeling times six.

I also love deep thinking, writing, and reading. I have always written in the little pockets of time I had, and when people ask me how I found the time, I always cite Barbara Kingsolver’s line that if you want to be a writer, be a mother. If you have the writing impulse, you will find the time, and you won’t waste it.

So taking stock of the next chapter of motherhood is so exciting. To have more time for these things will be so joyful, and if past seasons are any indication, it will overflow to our family. Before the twins, I sent our other children to a private preschool because the public preschool was only a 2.5 hour day. I’ll have just packed their backpack and dropped them off before I have to pick them up again! I’ll have no time to write! I opted for a preschool with a longer day that gave me writing time.

But with Ronan, my son who loves Scooby Doo and potato chips and Batman, and also has Down syndrome, we knew having an IEP and having the public school know him well was better for him. The school is 20-25 minutes away, so I ended up having the tiniest window to do all the things for our family + write. To have that constraint in my schedule for the past three years has made this final mile like the ones in marathons: hard and long, but worth it. It was hands down the best choice for us, and Ronan has grown so much.

But dear reader, the fact that I only have to do this drive for one more day is making my heart skip a beat. When I think about the twins getting on the bus in the fall at 7 am, well, let’s just say we are planning to pop some champagne that morning.

Mom’s can do hard things because we love hard. But to be able to love hard and have our days have a little more space for other things sounds amazing. While being a mom always came first, the seasons I could write were always the best. I felt like a better wife, mom, friend. I have learned I have to prioritize that mental stimulation. I have found many ways to do that while being a mom – books on Audible, podcasts, smart conversations on Youtube. It was a crazy realization that my food blog was an attempt to feed my creative brain while multi-tasking making dinner, and it worked! I loved it. I had to take a break from it this busy season because I had so little time, and I wanted to simplify everything in my life. I have learned through this time about the sweetness of self-sacrifice.

But in looking at this next season, I felt called to deeper learning, deeper writing, a kind of formation. One week while I was in the middle of outlining C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain, my husband called. His best friend Matt was in town, who was the best man at our wedding, and they caught up for dinner and a few drinks. “Guess what?”, he said. “Matty is getting his PhD online. You should do that too!”

I looked over at my computer, and the Lewis book that lay open.  “We’ll see,” I said. I had just finished my second novel, and thought I don’t know. I love philosophy but I love writing and literature too.

I had gotten my MA in Philosophy at Boston College and was two years into a fellowship towards a PhD program in Philosophy when I had my oldest son. When he was six months old, my little family had zero time to be together due to my husband’s travel, and I resigned. A few months after that we found out that we were being transferred back to our home state of New Hampshire and were expecting our second child, so I was so glad I had been nudged to quit at the beginning of the term. I wrote about it here.

I recently shared about the joy of being able to write every day during lockdown while the twins still napped. When the world opened back up, and I had no time to write plus all of the scheduling demands for my kids on me again, I knew that something was wrong but couldn’t put my finger on it. After my sister was diagnosed with ADHD during lockdown when working full time and remote learning was too much for her, she mentioned I may want to get checked out. I thought I was fine because lockdown was good for my brain. But then when things opened up again, I wasn’t. I suddenly saw how ADHD affected me. I got on medication, and it was a major relief.

When I look back at leaving my PhD program after I had my oldest, I wondered if I had been on ADHD medicine, would I have been so inclined to quit? That was a similar season where the demands on my executive functioning were really hard.

But God’s hand is all over this story.

By trusting him and trying to stay close to His plans for our family, we have this amazing life. It is hard work and so much joy. Ducking out of my PhD then to have a family, to be able to be home with my kids, was such a gift. It didn’t matter why I quit then, and I would have made the same decisions all over again.

But there is a season for everything. And my season for having little kids at home is almost done. So when my husband planted that idea in my head, I looked into it. I found a program where I could easily do courses online at night and read and write during the day. I was already pretty much doing that out of sheer interest and a need to write and think about questions I was interested in. Why not get credit for the work?

The best part? It is actually a PhD in Humanities program. Philosophy + Literature. It feels like God just nudged me there and found the perfect way to merge a love of philosophy with a love of literature. When I found the program, I thought it was a Philosophy PhD because of all of the ancient Greeks and modern philosophers listed in the course work. And I am sure my dissertation will be heavily in philosophy. But I also get to look deeply into literature and classic great works. There is a connection for me between these two – when I think deeply on abstract ideas in philosophy, it always generates examples of this inside of stories, in characters and narratives.

I applied and within a week I had everything in. Since I already had my Master’s, I didn’t need GREs, and all of my grad school professors were still there and remembered me and wrote recommendations. I randomly found a writing sample of my work in my PhD was the same length as the writing sample they requested. When I re-wrote it, something woke up in me. I remembered loving writing about these things.

It was kind of…too easy. That hallmark of grace – serendipity – was all over it. Of course, being a busy mom, I forgot all about my application until after Christmas and then I checked.

I had been accepted. I could go back, sixteen years later, and get my PhD.

So we are celebrating a lot of endings and beginnings in our house. We will have two kindergartners, one fifth grader, and three high schoolers. And a mom whose beginnings and endings of babies and learning just end up being a circle of love.

Babies don’t keep you from your dreams. They make your dreams better.

Be Not Afraid

Recently I listened to an interview with Dr. Jean Twenge, a psychologist and researcher about iGen and its use of social media. This is a topic I am very tuned into, since we are parents to the first generation of children who have iPhones. We are the guinea pigs. One detail in her research that stood out to me that I can’t stop thinking about it is how much iGen prioritizes safety.

I guess it is because I rarely thought about safety growing up. 

While I would guess that is because I had a secure family, the statistics Dr. Twenge is referencing are also from children who have not only a secure family, but by and large, have parents who opted to have two children to ensure they could invest heavily in them, who are living with their children longer and financing their lives for longer as well. This seems like it would make people feel more secure, not less. So why the increase in concern for safety, or more specifically, why is there so much fear?

According to her, this fear is stunting them. They don’t go on dates, get jobs, get their driver’s license until much later, and have far less face to face interaction with friends. All of these are the hallmarks of independence in previous generations. Her research made me picture caterpillars who don’t want to leave the cocoon, and don’t want to spread their wings. 

When I chatted with my husband about how our kids are affected, he stopped. “Do you know what the ad said that Ernest Shackleton posted to get a crew for the Endurance?” He’s always been fascinated by Shackleton and his Antarctic expedition that lasted from 1914-1917. “Google it,” he said. So I did and found this:

“The line of men answering this ad was around the block,” he added.

This comparison of previous generations reveals the changing cultural tides.

Dr. Twenge highlights in past generations, having larger families meant that parents couldn’t hover or be as protective. She cites her own mother’s upbringing as one of eight kids in a dairy farm in Missouri, and how the load her grandparents carried meant they couldn’t possibly be overprotective, and the children all gained independence very early.

This resonated with me as one of eight children, and as a mother of six. As humans, our psyches are hard-wired that there is safety in numbers. Perhaps the reason why I never felt afraid growing up because I had such a big family, and conversely why iGen feels afraid is that their tribes are much smaller, and less connected? Having a lot of siblings certainly helps to instill a sense of community. It also encourages responsibility and erodes narcissism, which are without a doubt the biggest problems in iGen according to Dr. Twenge. Hence the title of her most recent book: iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood–and What That Means for the Rest of Us.

These large family sizes are counter-cultural, largely because of the fear around having children. This is always surprising to me, given the level of joy, wonder, fulfillment and connection the experience of being in a big family has given us. Yes there are sacrifices but the benefits so completely outweigh the costs that I wonder why people are so afraid. Big families encourage not only independence but teamwork, self-sacrifice and strong interpersonal skills. Does the fact that my oldest son loves to cuddle and play with his little brothers before he heads out the door to high school bode well for him and society? I think it does. My kids might not play on travel teams or be assured of unlimited educational funding, but if all this investment in kids isn’t making them feel secure, what is the point? Conversely, kids that have to be independent early really have no other option than to work hard (and well) to get what they want. While my kids are far from perfect, at most parent teacher conferences they stand out as conscientious and empathetic, and the teachers always make comments that being from a big family makes them very good at group work. Which is what Dr. Twenge’s research shows is lacking in iGen. I often wonder why the fears are highlighted and the many positives are not counted with having more children, especially when these positives are just what our culture is missing.

It is not a surprise that her research shows that faith in God has gone down in iGen. I think it is interesting that as belief in religion goes down, fear and anxiety go up. They are inversely correlated. We often cite Marx’s injunction that religion is the opiate of the masses, and it implies that believers are numbing their independence with being a blind slave to the authority of a church or God. But where is the increase in independence for iGen that don’t believe? The research seems to show it is frozen by fear. This doesn’t sound like Nietzsche’s will to power uberman or the triumph of the will that the post-modern philosophers were convinced would be the result of embracing our own will as the ultimate authority. It seems that while people consciously refuse to acknowledge that they are subject to a higher authority, or any limits at all to personal freedom, they subconsciously know that they are human and have limits and are only as strong as their family, finances, or social supports. Often, they make whichever one of these is their main source of support their god.

Conversely, for most Catholics like myself who derive security from their faith in God’s love for them, there is no question faith helps crowd out fear. The Bible quotes the phrase ‘do not be afraid’ over 300 times. And Saint John Paul the Great is famous for his impassioned plea to young people be not afraid. As a recent article about him wrote, John Paul’s joy and courage never wavered because he was not their source — Christ was.

We live in a pluralistic society, and not everyone is going to hold these beliefs. But even the Talmudic tradition warns against the epic belief in individualism iGen has inherited. In the Ethics of Fathers, the teacher Hillel concisely contradicts the expressive individualism that has replaced religion for many with the following idea: “Do not separate yourself from the community, and do not trust in yourself until the day of your death.” In warning against cutting off one’s community he reminds us as Aristotle did that we are social beings, and often not our own best guides. 

I think my lack of fear is due to my family and my faith, but it is also largely a reflection of the level of fear in society as a whole when I was growing up. Even though the threat of nuclear war loomed and we had enemies and economic instability waiting in the wings, our belief that our fellow man would be with us, and not against us, held firm. That can’t be said of iGen. The fear and mistrust of our fellow humans, of being publicly shamed, canceled, or isolated if they do not fall in line with whatever attitude is trending might have made me afraid too if I grew up at this time. We need each other. But we can’t see that if we have a screen between authentic connection and that screen feeds us with a steady diet of fear and disdain for people who don’t think like us.

As a joyful mother of several members of iGen, I hope young people remember this: don’t let fear win. Let hope and faith in yourself and others guide you. And if you can open yourself up to hope and faith in a God who loves you, then the sky is the limit for living without fear. As JPII said,

“Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. … Do not be afraid to be holy! Have the courage and humility to present yourselves to the world determined to be holy, since full, true freedom is born from holiness. This aspiration will help you discover genuine love, untainted by selfish and alienating permissiveness.”

Then you may find that a life of adventure and purpose is where true joy is found. Just ask the men of the Endurance.  

 

 

 

I was last week years old when I finally realized I had ADHD.

The revelation has been a bombshell. 

How in the world have I lived 46 years without knowing this? Because now that I can see it, there is so much clarity. It is like putting on glasses. And realizing all the ways I was compensating for it is truly amazing.  It feels like I managed a super human feat for most of my life, and I was VERY good at finding ways to cope, finding mechanisms to help my brain get what it needed. Running. Writing. Excercising. Food blogging. Praying. They all worked so well, until they didn’t. 

Like most adults who get diagnosed with ADHD, what brought me to my knees and made me finally see that I have it was my coping mechanisms were no longer working.

After I had the twins, the pandemic hit, my big kids got older and there were more demands on me. For the past few years, I was white-knuckling life, I was gaining weight, and I was not achieving all the things I kept dreaming about. 

Because prior to this time, I could organize my life around getting what my brain needed, and in many ways this hid the fact that I had ADHD. I was lost in books my whole childhood, got to hyper-focus in college, grad school, teaching, and writing. As a wife & mom, I hyper-focused on learning everything I could about cooking, becoming a food blogger, writer, and columnist. I could fit that into the small windows of time in my day as a mom, and when I got a larger block of time I wrote. I got to hyper-focus when I ran and listened to music. Oh, the freedom I felt on a run. But then my chiropractor showed me my X-ray and said I shouldn’t run anymore since I had no cartilage between my L4 and L5 vertebrae, and that was why my back hurt all the time. I had an absolute mourning period when I couldn’t run any more. Now I know that running and listening to music were yet another way to hyper-focus. 

But the very best coping skill, the best way to hyper-focus, was when I was reading and writing novels. When I didn’t have a book going – either reading or writing – I felt adrift. I always used to say that reading and writing were self-care, and now I know that I was definitely getting my brain what it needed.

As a presenter with ADHD said on a recent Tedtalk I watched: 

We have more thoughts then we have time to pursue, so we do so at every available opportunity. Our brains have a special lust for dopamine. We are wired to take risks. ADHD minds become super-powered under pressure. 

This is truly are me in a nut shell. I now understand why SO many of my friends and acquaintances comment on my mode of operating. How do you do all those things with six kids? How do you cook food and write a book? I never really knew how to answer their incredulity. I don’t know, I just know I need to do it. Now, it makes sense why I do those things and why neurotypical people don’t get it.

I remember a night right after my third child was born when a babysitter came over to help while my husband was traveling. I was busy making Ina Garten’s aioli in the food processor to put on top of fingerling potatoes, because I had watched her make the recipe earlier that day while I was nursing. The kitchen was filled with pots and pans and the food processor was whiring, my precious 4 and 2 year olds were playing, the baby was in a bouncy seat, and the dog was barking at her entrance. The (older and wiser) woman walked in to the kitchen and kindly said, “You just had a baby. Do you think you might want to keep things simple right now?” And I remember saying, “I just had a baby. I need to do this to stay sane!”

How in the world did I miss it? How did everyone around me miss it?

There are a few reasons. First, as I mentioned I was very good at setting up coping skills and structuring my life around it. I was always able to change things up so my brain could find something new to learn, to create. I prioritized exercise and healthy eating which is important for the ADHD brain. I kept a very disciplined spiritual life, which I am sure sustained me this whole time. According to this article, How You Are Self-Medicating Your ADHD, I had a lot of good things going for me and did use a lot of healthy ways to self-medicate. 

The author lists the following: 

Exercise – I have long had a habit of excercising 4-6 days a week, because I knew I needed it. For a long time running gave me the hyper-focus and endorphins I craved, but now it is a mix of walking, elliptical, tennis, classes, HIIT workouts, and more recently the Faster Way Strength workouts. I’ve had amazing results eating tons of protein and doing strength workouts and losing weight for the first time in two years, and credit this program with helping me to prioritize my health and start to uncover the fact that I have ADHD and was compensating with bad habits.

Meditation – I could write a whole book about my faith journey and probably will, but I said to my husband that having the Rosary as a daily habit with ADHD has probably helped me more then I will ever know. There is some connection with the spiritual life and ADHD I think, maybe it is because we make so many mistakes we need to lean on God, or are more easily like little children? We have way more tolerance for imperfection, and ideas like forgiveness and mercy and second chances fit our understanding of life because we see how much we need those things. Or maybe it is because there is always so much more to learn about God and ourselves, it is endlessly interesting to our brains. I read St. Therese’s Story of a Soul at 16, St. Therese’s Interior Castle at 18, Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain at 20, and Augustine’s Confessions – my all time favorite book – at 21. (I bet he had ADHD, and I also learned St. Catherine of Siena is the patron saint of ADHD because she struggled with it.) Looking back, I can clearly see that the depth of these works were perfect stimulation for my hungry mind. In the same way, I was completely hooked on my first day of philosophy and have only grown to love it more as I get older. There is a big meditative quality to philosophy makes my brain feel like a duck in water. Maybe truth lights up our brains.

Passion – Being a mom has absolutely been good for my ADHD in giving me a purposefulness to tackle mundane chores. My love for my kids and my passion for my family has made me put systems in place and order in our home and schedule that actually are part of why I didn’t think I had ADHD. I don’t forget to pick up my kids, I rarely missed doctor appointments thanks to always setting 2 reminders in my phone, and there was only 1 school event that I completely spaced (because another of my kids was home with strep, but we still talk about the trauma around when I missed the 1st grade rainforest play.) I’m five minutes late to everything, and our house is messy, but otherwise I take care of my people because of passionately wanting a good life for them.

Connection – I would say the faith piece and the mom piece fall under this coping strategy as well, because feeling connected to God and my family has been the center of my adult life, and the times when I am thriving, it is due to connection. We are also very blessed to have an amazing community, and my husband and I both thrive with a lot of connection and friendships. We have made some major moves in our past in order to raise our kids in a place with a lot of connection, and it has paid off. 

Coaching – I have always been interested in self-help, therapy, self-improvement. I think I was trying hard to understand the parts of me that felt different from other people. Now that I know, I truly hope to help other people who may be struggling unknowingly with ADHD. In particular, it is crazy undiagnosed in women. We have only been part of ADHD studies since the 1990s! And I think not understanding how it presents in women is why it took me so long to get diagnosed. It was the ADHD mama on Instagram that made me see. This Ted talk is also about how women are under-diagnosed (and this presenter has a very similar ADHD to me as well though I don’t share all of her thoughts).

Having all of these coping skills in place helped me self-medicate my ADHD and while they are clearly beneficial, they probably masked it and prevented me from seeing it. 

Another reason why I couldn’t see it is because my husband has the very traditional type of ADHD. Very high energy, needing to move his body, seeking peril & thrill in skiing, hiking, kayaking, bike riding, super social, frequently interrupts. We joke that on our honeymoon in Aruba, in order for my husband to be able to sit by the pool with me for a few hours, he needed to sign up for the 20-mile bike ride around the Island at 7 am. In comparison, I craved finding down time to sit still. But that was because then I could read/listen/think about something mentally stimulating. That was my way of getting a fix. And I had no idea. Now I can see that during ski season, our whole family tends to thrive because skiing medicates ALL of our ADHD.

When my kids started to get diagnosed, they had a similar type as my husband, which added to the idea that I couldn’t have it since I didn’t share their ‘motor running’ symptoms so common in childhood ADHD. When our oldest child went through testing for his NF-1 at Boston Children’s hospital, we were surprised when they diagnosed him with ADHD. I immediately read all the things (i.e. hyper-focused) and bought Ned Halloway’s book Driven to Distraction. He recognized his own ADHD at Harvard Medical School when he was sitting through a class about ADHD, and how they seek out high-adrenaline activities that have peril or risk. I then immediately recognized my risk-loving husband’s ADHD. But not my own. I didn’t seek risk or peril. I was happiest going to a coffee shop to write for 4 hours quietly. Now I know that ADHD’s Ferrari engine (as Dr. Halloway calls it) runs fast in men’s bodies, but it runs fast in women’s minds. Now I see that I like to take risks on anything creative, because doing it is so gratifying to my mind.

As we kept having kids and they kept getting diagnosed, our family went through tremendous learning curves, and found lots of great tools and help from therapists and books and specialists. And I still didn’t see my own ADHD. I would help parents who asked me for advice in person or on social media and suggest that they may want to consider medication for their child because if they don’t, they will likely grow up and self-medicate. And I still did not connect my weekend wine habit and hyper-focus staying up late watching tv on the weekends with ADHD. This absolutely blows my mind. 

Then my sister was diagnosed with ADHD during the pandemic. Trying to work full time while having school-aged kids remote learning created days where her coping skills no longer worked, and she wisely talked to someone who helped her realized what it was. She spoke of going on medication as feeling like her brain went on vacation, and was filled with ah-ha moments after her diagnosis. We talked about the possibility of me also having it, since hello! It’s genetic and now my husband, kids, sister, and very definitely our mom and my oldest brother, had it too. Our conversations went like this:

Me: I don’t think I could have it. I loved school. I loved learning. I have a Master’s in Philosophy and loved it. I write novels. I don’t have a problem sitting down and doing hard things. Isn’t that the main symptom of ADHD?

Her: Remember in your 20s when you would drive your jeep, smoke a cigarette, turn on your favorite song, and converse with whoever was in the car? Maybe just get checked out. 

So I took many online quizzes.  I even took one from a Marriage and ADHD course my husband and I took – and they all came up scoring very low possibility. I didn’t even relate to the test questions like ‘are you always fidgeting?’ ‘do you bounce your leg or feel like you have a motor in you?’ ‘is it hard for you to start a task?’.  No, I thought. I am very task-oriented! I get stuff done. I can accomplish a lot in a day, and tackle my to-do list, and don’t procrastinate or blow stuff off. 

That is, as long as it is interesting. My answers were colored by the fact that my drive to get to the mentally stimulating stuff made me plow through the things that were hard and boring. See, I could slay my to-do list and sit and do hours worth of hard writing work, and heck, I didn’t even have trouble with the day-to-day stuff of being a mom because I love making dinner! Don’t ADHD moms struggle with that? But all of those things are super interesting to me. When I had to fold laundry I piled it all on the bed, watched a movie and had a chore beer (i.e. made it interesting). I love learning about food, and when you are ADHD your brain is always seeking mental stimulation, finding new recipes to try is exciting and interesting. So it makes sense that I started a food blog, and as long as I could keep creating and trying out new recipes, my brain was happy, and I have kept it going for a long time. BUT – and this is a big but – ask me to do something to make the blog successful like posting it to a zillion food sharing sites and Pinterest and try to monetize it by reaching out to collaborators and figuring out how to post adds on the site – and my eyes glaze over. I have kept the blog a labor of love and delightfully ad-free partly because I hate ads when I am reading a recipe and mainly because the business side of the blog is SO boring to me. I have been fine with a small, loyal following of 2,000 ish readers per month for so long, but every once in a while I would wonder why don’t I try to build it? I chalked it up to being too busy with motherhood.  Now I see how much ADHD played a roll in procrastinating on doing the things that were boring to me compared to the fun & stimulation of creating content and new recipes. 

I also found the most stimulation in writing though. I wrote for the food blog, and then used it to write for magazines, and the story assignments were always so much fun to write. In fact, it was part of why I didn’t think I could have ADHD, since so many evaluations ask you about work, and my work was sitting down and writing an article which was easy for me to start and complete. Now I see the truth, that every assignment was a chance to hyper-focus and give myself the stimulation my brain needed. My work was by design not boring. 

Now I can see why I was always the happiest while I was writing novels. The name of the writing genre is literally an ADHD brains favorite thing – novelty. I remember thinking while I was writing my first one, this is the best! I am such a much better wife, mom, friend when I am writing. I feel all filled up, I feel so content. I am meant to do this! 

But when I got bored waiting to hear back from publishers, I immediately had to start another book. I got lucky that my first novel won a novel contest while I was waiting, because without knowing I had ADHD I might have given up. And even more lucky that it was received so well and had so many good reviews. I do have discipline and passion when it comes to trying to find an agent and I will keep going, but that part of the business is hard for everyone to face rejections, but for an ADHD brain to do something hard and to keep having no reward is a special kind of torture. The fact that my brain didn’t get the stimulation from writing it needed this summer and on top of that did the hard work of slogging through agent queries was a BIG part of what led to my unhealthy coping and realization that I had ADHD. 

For the whole of my life, I had my coping skills of reading, writing and learning, and I was lucky to have a great education and a lot of great friends and family around. For a long time, the only cracks that really showed seemed minor, and easily blamed on having a big family. 1) I was always running late and 2) I was very disorganized. 

I remember talking to a mom (hi Pippi!) at my daughter’s softball game last spring, and she mentioned she was just diagnosed with ADHD. I I told her my sister was too. She said she learned that people with ADHD tend to be very authentic, because they are so busy holding it all together that they don’t have time for facades, or pretense. I remember something clicking in me, thinking, ‘I really love authentic people too’. I thought of my husband who creates so many great relationships because he is that way too, as is my sister. I thought of my friend Kristen Reilly from One Hail Mary At A Time who has ADHD and is very open about it and very authentic. So many other ADHD people come to mind – Mel Robbins, Jim Carey, Robin Williams, Simone Biles, Will Smith, Peter Kreeft.

And then Pippi added, they also tend to have really messy cars and rooms. 

Check, and check.

Disorganization has probably been the biggest source of shame in my adult life. Luckily, my husband never gets stressed about it because his ADHD makes him blind to it too. We have compensated by having cleaners every 2 weeks, and my friend who runs an organizing business helped me with lots of problem areas last year which was amazing. But our van is always, always messy, and I rarely open the door with out something falling out. Her comments struck a nerve to be sure.

Why I didn’t just go get diagnosed right then is beyond me. But eventually, my coping tools didn’t work, and the cracks started to get bigger and bigger this summer, until it felt like every day I was duct-taping our life together. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on, until finally I saw the truth.

It wasn’t our pace of life, it was me.

To Be Continued….

We are surviving a New England winter with lots of soup and skiing, and I have been in a big reading kick which always makes me happy.

Here are some things that I have been loving this month, hope you enjoy them too!

1. What to Read: The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah. I blogged before about how much I loved The Great Alone, also by Hannah, and I was blown away by how good the Nightingale was. I was lost in German occupied France for the better part of January and I have a renewed appreciation for warm houses and full bellies. They suffered so much, and it has reminded me of the simple, profound grace of peace time life when contrasted with the realities of war. I also just bought Memoirs of a Happy Failure by Alice Von Hildebrand after a friend recommended it. I have wanted to read her books for a while and her passing has led me to so many beautiful interviews with her that I can’t wait to start it.

2. What to Make: These Buffalo Chicken Wraps are so super simple and a hit with the teenagers. I’ve also been making this super flavorful Pork Posole and everyone loves it. I can’t wait to try this Butter Chicken recipe too. And I read about someone raving about this Lemon Mustard Vinaigrette and my mouth is watering now.

3. What to Wear: The Loft has the best sweaters this season – I love this cardigan, I’ve been living in this sweater, and puff sleeve sweaters are the easiest way to look girly and dressed up even though you are super comfy.

4. What to Do: I really enjoyed this online writing course by Joyce Maynard. She is clear, concise and so encouraging for new writers. I want everyone to write a memoir after listening to her.

5. Where to Go: We just booked a trip here (with all 6 kids!) and I can’t wait.

6. What to Emulate: My organizer friend and I are tackling my pantry this week and I came across this post from In Honor of Design. Total pantry goals, though I am not sure I will be able to transfer all our dry goods to those pretty containers, but one can dream.

7. What to Listen To: I REALLY want to link to Encanto but we might all be sick of it by February since we have been listening to it so much. Instead I will offer up this sweet song that I’ve been playing to the twins. I first heard it at 4:30 am on a snowy morning when I had to bring Ronan to do a procedure at Boston Children’s (all is well). Early mornings are magic and this song brings me right back to thinking about what I would do for him because he is such a miracle.

8. What to Watch: The show Maid on Netflix wrecked me. We just started Yellowstone. But for family shows we have loved Resident Alien on Spyfy. The comedian Alice Wetterlund is a total scene stealer and if you remember Dodgeball or 28 Days with Sandra Bullock, the star of Resident Alien Alan Tudyk played such lovable characters in those movies.

9. What to Play: My neighbor has been telling us how much fun the card game Spite and Malice is and I can’t wait to try it. It is played with 2 decks of cards and sounds like it is sort of like a competitive Solitare for 2 people.

10. What to Dream about: Staying on an Italian farm through agritourism sounds pretty great right now. Of course, finding a French farm house on VRBO sounds lovely too.

The chill in the air.

That’s what started it all, this current moment of peace, of calm, of happiness. It is like the heat of all the things that caused pain has given way to a cool breeze, light on my skin, waking up something in me like childhood.

In this moment the deliciousness of coffee, the sweetness of our kids playing, the coziness of pulling on a sweater to ward off a chill, are bringing me a delight that comes from being very present. It makes me wonder, why does this feel so new? And if I am so happy right now, what is the source of unhappiness? Because this is the good stuff.

And I think the answer is this: trying to check out of pain. It is so ironic that we think we can find happiness by hiding, numbing, escaping. Wheather it is Netflix, social media, food, wine, over working. So lately I have been trying to do the opposite. I have just come out of a challenging period praying for healing, for growth, for peace and the fruits of these prayers are bearing fruit. The cross and the crown, repeated over and over again in our lives.

It is a combination of things that led me here. I have been trying to eat well. Sleep well. Drinking less. Not watching tv. Organizing. Cleaning. Taking a lot of walks with friends. Taking long walks with myself. Joining a tennis league. Lots and lots of reading. Of course, the kids going to school gave me more time to work and to play. But there has also been a lot of prayer. And a combination of reading books about healthy eating/low sugar, understanding the way our brains seek dopamine hits, and finding natural highs to replace them. Sunshine. Laughing. Tea. An apple.

I don’t know what to call it. All I know is I’m finding the same things that made me happy when I was 12 making me happy. Listening to music. Journaling. Rest. Inside jokes. Feeling alive in each moment. I’m finding a million things each day that bring joy.

It was also reading this book – St. Therese’s Way of Trust and Love by Fr. Jaques Philippe. The deep discussion of humility leads to a radical acceptance with exactly who you are. Loving your neighbor as yourself requires you to love yourself. So through these meditations, perhaps I’ve let go of the last lingering parts of me that still believed I would be loved based on what I do rather than who I am. Aren’t we all in various stages of letting that go? Every inch of progress on that journey yields the joy of increased self-acceptance. And further, this book holds that the parts of you that are weak are useful in keeping you humble. St. Therese’s Way is one of trusting that being little means when we fall down, which we will do because of our smallness, we don’t have that far to go to get back up again.

And then a few weeks ago, I saw this interview. And it hit me: how would I live it if I only had a short time left to live? I am astounded by the way her words have impacted me. I wrote these down in my phone notes and have read them over and over again:

There is so much beauty and poetry in the world if you are willing to sign off on the pain that it takes to stay awake.

I remembered a time when I used to feel that more. The poetry more. And I wanted to surrender from whatever things that were keeping me from that. Feeling a feeling as it comes. Not trying to run away from it. Feeling deep down loved – by my God, myself, my people. Realizing that the thing I was trying to numb out most from was the stories I was telling myself. Staying awake to both the bad and the good and finding the good so outweighs the bad.

And now, in my very favorite season, I am living life wide awake. The autumn sunshine, the laughter with my teens, the hugs from my toddlers. Nurishing myself with real food most of the time, but relishing homemade apple cake with my coffee. Trying to make sure there is only a loving voice inside my head, no matter what I eat, no matter what I do or don’t do.

Each day, I wake up trying to love well. Others, myself, my God. Somehow, this has generated hope. Because to love well also means to suffer well. Life’s pain and stresses aren’t going anywhere. Heartache is right around the corner for me and the people I love. But I have more faith now in my ability to withstand it if it comes because of who I love, and because I know He loves me. It’s part of the surrender. It’s part of the trust.

This season I am finding my way back to myself, my deep down self, and it is hard to describe how good it feels. It feels like childhood. It feels like wholeness. It feels like home.