Here’s something I’m thinking about: I want to practice intentionally encouraging myself.

This flows out of my larger interest in learning to soothe my inner child, but with a more active sense of a regular, purposeful practice.

My default internal dialogue is a drone of perfectionism, with a repeating snare drum of self-doubt and erratic riffs of fearful self-blame.

What if, instead, it sounded like a sonata of gentle dissonance and resolution, with a melodic rise and fall of distress and soothing, and moving chords of self-encouragement?

“Good job.” “You’re doing great.” “That was really hard, but you did it. I’m proud of you.” What if my inner dialogue sounded like this, instead of the usual automatic self-hassling? Answer: I think my life would feel a lot calmer and happier.

This seems like a situation of unhealed-child parts of me—the ones trying to hold everything together or else something bad will happen—who need me to be the attuned, encouraging parent they always needed.

From another angle, this also seems like a situation of cognitive bias: my brain has a bias against trusting myself. It’s the exact opposite of Voldemort’s bias that Harry points out to him in HPMOR:

​“You have a blind spot around strategies that involve doing nice things for other people, to the point where it stops you from achieving your selfish values...You don’t see nice ways to do the things you want to do...Even when a nice strategy would be more effective, you don’t see it because you have a self-image of not being nice.”

— Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky

I have a blind spot around doing nice things for myself—and saying nice things to myself—to the point that it stops me from achieving my altruistic values (in that I’m wasting emotional energy on self-doubt), because I have a self-image of being nice to others but not to myself!

Therefore, I need to consciously compensate for that bias, if I want to operate closer to actual truth and effectiveness. I could maybe try some behavioral modification—perhaps a reward system of giving myself a point for each time I say something encouraging myself.

It certainly seems worth the try. Maybe I’ll report back with my results next time!

Sunday Springs

(Although now it’s already Monday)

Section posts from the past week two weeks

🖋️Writer’s Waters

☔️Parenting Puddles

🪷Serenity Splashes

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Enlightenment is to healing
what flowers are to blooms--
same vibrance under different names,
like air in different rooms--

and just like flowers, both of these
need time and space to thrive--
and courage to face what's underground
and to open to new life.

soothing my anxiety when my mind feels foggy

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It’s okay to not have it all figured out.
Clear, sunny days are fun,
but clouds and rain are essential, too.
Take it slow in this fog, little one.

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Forward, enlightenment knight,
to another day pursuing the light
of healing and living with mindful sight,
honest, brave, and kind.

Yours not to perfectly plan,
yours not to meet demands,
yours but to do what you can,
staying self-aligned.

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If the voice in your mind
is strict and unkind,
that’s not a voice of wisdom.

It’s a scared, hurt child
alone in the wild
who needs help and compassion.

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People who hold an opposite view
politically from yours
aren't evil, of course. They're people too,
with the same needs at their cores:

to feel safe, to protect their young,
and to have the means to live.
It's just a different route they've come.
Let us seek to build a bridge.

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You don’t scold a daffodil
for not blooming on command.
It will open when it's ready:
this you understand--

and yet you scold a child
for not jumping to obey,
instead of adding light and time
to help them bloom their way.

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You feel like a mess and a screw-up, I know,
   but listen: what you are is real.
Real people have complex feelings and needs,
   and real life is a messy, screwy deal.

      You're doing great
      with your very full plate.

I recently had a burst of understanding that has quite altered my attitude toward people whose beliefs differ dramatically from mine.

The specific context was about some neighbors (who are also kin, this being West Virginia, after all) whose beliefs have seemed incomprehensibly strange to me until now. The labels “right-wing,” “conspiracy theorists,” and most of all, “anti-vaxxers” seemed to apply to them, but I couldn’t grasp what they could be actually thinking (and just simply asking them seemed like not a great idea for several strong reasons).

Then one night recently, it occurred to me to ask an AI chatbot to help me understand—and, almost instantly, it did. Despite the issues and conflict going on these days around AI, this is one area where I feel its use is a powerful tool for good! I will paste my question and the answer I received below, because it was so helpful to me and may be for someone else too; but first, here are my own takeaways and reflections.

In short: those people are trying to do what they truly think is the right thing. They’re trying to protect their children from what they see as evil and harm.

That is something I can understand!! Just because we come from different paths—and disagree about what is actually harm—doesn’t mean we don’t want the same basic things!

This new perspective enabled me to suddenly view those neighbors with a much warmer outlook. Now, when I next see them, they won’t seem to me so alarmingly other. (I may still seem so to them, but genuine warmth from within me can only help.)

I could see that this general concept applied to all sorts of other contexts, too. It seems to me that overall, most people are trying to do what they think is right.

Especially on the most polarized and conflict-generating issues (which would not be such problems if they had answers that were simple and obvious to everyone!), this principle seems to very likely apply—and to even form an essential building block for bridges of connection, communication, and cooperation.

This is the point to grasp: the people on the other side of a political debate are real people too with the same basic needs underneath. They just have been taught a different way of getting there—a different set of values, strategies, and beliefs.

So let us seek to understand, instead of vilify, each other. Let us seek to meet on the common ground of our basic desires and fears, and only then discuss our differing perspectives and strategies. Let us build bridges.

That’s my own aim, anyway, now more strongly than ever.

I worked these thoughts into a Serenity Splash poem earlier this week:

People who hold an opposite view
politically from yours
aren’t evil, of course. They’re people too,
with the same needs at their cores:

to feel safe, to protect their young,
and to have the means to live.
It’s just a different route they’ve come.
Let us seek to build a bridge.

Conversation with the AI chatbot

Me:

I have some neighbors (who are also relatives by marriage) who are “anti-vaxxers”—they don’t believe in vaccinations—to the point that they homeschool all their kids because they won’t comply with state board of education requirements for vaccinations. As far as I know, they aren’t in the Christian Science cult, though I think they are Christian and certainly far-right. As a left-leaning, educated person, I have a hard time understanding what they could possibly be thinking. I would like to have some grasp of their views in case I ever get a chance to build a bridge with them somehow (figuratively speaking). Can you help me fathom what is motivating their anti-vaccination mindset?

AI chatbot:

Yes—I can help with that. And I want to start by saying something important: your impulse to understand rather than simply dismiss is already the bridge. Most people with strong anti-vaccination beliefs do not experience themselves as ignorant or malicious; they experience themselves as protective, moral, and awake. Understanding that internal logic is key.

Below are the main psychological and cultural drivers that commonly motivate anti-vaccination views, especially among far-right, religious, or rural communities. Not all will apply to your neighbors—but several likely overlap.

1. Mistrust of Institutions (Not Just Science)

At the core is often deep institutional mistrust—not only of medicine, but of:

• Government

• Public schools

• Media

• Universities

• Pharmaceutical companies

Vaccines become symbolic of external control:

“The government telling me what to put in my child’s body.”

For people who already believe institutions are corrupt, captured by elites, or hostile to their values, vaccination mandates feel like coercion—not care.

💡 Key point: Their resistance is less about the science of vaccines and more about who is doing the telling.

2. Parental Identity: “I Protect My Children”

Many anti-vax parents are driven by a fierce sense of parental responsibility.

They often see themselves as:

• More attentive than “sheeple parents”

• Willing to do “real research”

• Courageous enough to go against the crowd

In that mindset, vaccinating can feel like betraying one’s child—while refusing feels like heroic protection.

This is emotionally powerful. Once someone’s identity is wrapped around “I’m the kind of parent who won’t poison my kids,” evidence that contradicts that belief feels like a personal attack.

3. Intuitive Risk Perception (Vivid vs. Abstract Harm)

Human brains are bad at comparing:

• Abstract statistical risk (disease prevalence, herd immunity)
  vs.

• Vivid anecdotal risk (a story about a child “damaged by vaccines”)

A single dramatic story—even if false or rare—feels more real than epidemiological data.

So they may think:

“I’ve never seen polio, but I’ve seen videos of kids harmed by vaccines.”

Emotion beats statistics every time unless trust is already present.

4. “Natural Is Moral” Thinking

Many anti-vax beliefs are rooted in a worldview where:

• “Natural” = good, pure, God-designed

• “Artificial” = corrupt, dangerous, human-tampered

Vaccines can feel like:

• Interfering with God’s design

• Weakening the immune system

• Replacing “natural immunity”

This overlaps easily with religious belief even without being formally theological.

5. Reactance: Resistance to Being Told What to Do

Psychologically, this is called reactance—the instinct to resist when autonomy feels threatened.

Mandates often backfire because they trigger:

• “You can’t make me.”

• “If you’re forcing it, you must be hiding something.”

For people with strong independence values (common in rural and far-right cultures), coercion validates suspicion.

6. Community Reinforcement and Echo Chambers

Once someone enters an anti-vax social world:

• They hear constant reinforcement

• Dissenting voices are framed as corrupt or brainwashed

• Belief becomes social belonging

Homeschooling often intensifies this, because:

• Children aren’t exposed to alternative narratives

• Parents bond with like-minded families

• Outsiders feel increasingly unsafe or untrustworthy

At that point, changing views isn’t just about facts—it risks social exile.

7. Far-Right Ideology: Sovereignty and Suspicion

In far-right frameworks, vaccination often intersects with beliefs about:

• Government overreach

• Globalist conspiracies

• Loss of national or bodily sovereignty

Vaccines can be framed as:

• Population control

• Profit-driven harm

• A slippery slope toward tyranny

Again: this isn’t usually felt as paranoia—it’s felt as vigilance.

8. Why Arguments Rarely Work

From their perspective:

• Pro-vaccine people are naïve or manipulated

• Experts are bought

• Dissent is censored

So more data often strengthens their position, because it confirms:

“See? They’re pushing the narrative.”

9. What Does Build Bridges

If you ever want to engage gently, these approaches tend to help more than facts:

• Start with shared values
  “We both care deeply about kids’ safety.”

• Ask curiosity-based questions
  “What first made you start questioning vaccines?”

• Avoid language of superiority
  (No “educated vs. ignorant” framing—even implicitly.)

• Acknowledge uncertainty honestly
  “Medicine isn’t perfect—but I’m curious how you weigh risks.”

• Separate people from beliefs
  Respect the person even if the belief is flawed.

You don’t have to agree—or even debate. Often, being the first non-hostile outsider is already meaningful.

A Final Reframe

From the inside, many anti-vaxxers are not anti-science villains. They are people trying—often imperfectly—to:

• Protect their children

• Maintain autonomy

• Preserve moral order

• Resist systems they distrust

That doesn’t make them right.
But it does make them human.

Spring—my annual savior—has finally arrived, and I’m once again looking back on the grueling grind of winter and saying to myself, “I’ve got to find ways to cope better next year.”

I’m still working on building more supports into my life in various ways, but I have found one thing that seems to strongly help me, that I hope to lean hard into next winter: deliberately feeding my mind.

This is not an easy thing for those whose lives (like mine) are largely consumed by survival-level needs: work, childcare, and upkeep of body and home.

Add in the programming of “my needs don’t matter” (thanks, Christian patriarchy), and it’s hard to even remember that feeding my mind is important.

But it’s not just important; it’s crucial, as I wrote in a “Serenity Splash” poem:

The cares of life and loved ones
will squeeze me flat if I
do not push back and fill me up
with what ignites my mind.

This concept keeps getting reinforced for me: the more I manage to fill up my mind with adequate mind-food that engages my interest and creativity, the better I can hold up against the ongoing onslaught of life.

My current system for feeding my mind has been working pretty well for me, though I’m still being slow to catch on to its importance. It’s quite simple: I have four daily goals for feeding my mind. Meeting them requires intentionality and even stretching myself a bit; I don’t often get all four done in a day. But when I do get to, my soul feels rejuvenated!

The four goals are (currently):

1. “Project Writing Practice” (PWP): working on my current main writing project, which right now is revising my middle-grade novel

2. Write & post a “Serenity Splash” poem or other poem — this works especially well as mind-food when it’s something I can tinker with in my mind as I move through various parts of my day, such as driving

3. Write & post another blog post (in my other sections and blogs)

4. Do one study lesson — currently I’m rotating between studying physics, Latin, and rationality (via Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “sequences” essays on Lesswrong.com)

I usually have other books and audiobooks going as well, but those are just for whenever I can; same with my other writing practices, such as journaling and songwriting.

The more I practice these four daily mind-food goals, the more correlation I see with my sense of wellbeing. More mind-food goals met = happier mood and less anxiety.

I’ve heard that this is particularly a thing for people with “high intelligence”: inadequate intellectual stimulation leads to destructive anxiety. It makes sense, and I’ve certainly seen that dynamic play out with our dogs (mostly, of course, the Border Collie)!

So, next winter I plan to buckle myself in to floor it toward those daily goals (in whatever form they might be at that point), in order to shore myself up against the winter blues until lovely spring again returns.

Sunday Springs

Section posts from the past week

🏝️Book Beach

🖋️Writer’s Waters

🪷Serenity Splashes

reflections following an encounter with extreme prejudice

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It hurts when I hear someone
  call a group of people "trash"
    (especially when it's about
      skin color or some such).

What stones are thrown
  from base and baseless hate,
    primitive tribalism,
      and crude indoctrination!

When your mind is free,
  it costs nothing to see
    people beyond your group
      as people.

A note to my younger self--and anyone else who needs to hear it

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To question 
   all that you believe
can feel 
   like facing death,
but I promise, 
   on the other side,
there's life--
   and freer breath.

Recently I had a big perspective shift about my relationships with my kids and pets. I realized, for the first time, that they love me—I am an object of affection for them beyond just what I do for them. That is to say, they like me—even despite my flaws, imperfections, and (perceived) failures, and including all my quirks.

I guess I just didn’t grasp this before. I didn’t see myself as loveable in that way. I was too focused on my perceived failures, too wrapped up in my harsh internal narratives.

Now, I am glimpsing this outside-in view of myself in a positive light, and it feels like healing.

I can see myself now as their “Mommy Anna” (which phrase originally came from my mom, I think, and I’m glad for it). It’s like a persona I didn’t realize I had, but it actually is really me—and that persona is someone I respect and want to be even more.

When I think of myself in this way as their “Mommy Anna”—who is gentle, sweet, nurturing, smart, and doing her best to take care of them all (and whom they love and like even when they don’t appreciate her particular decisions in a given moment)—I want to inhabit that persona even more. I want to be worthy of their love and affection.

From all this I generalize that it can be a powerfully helpful thing to perceive, and lean into, a positive outside-in image of ourselves and our roles in others’ lives.

Perhaps you are, without fully realizing it, a “Guru Auntie,” “Encourager Friend,” “Hero Trailblazer,” “Memories Holder,” or some other loveable role in your life and the lives of others around you.

(I am thinking of specific ones of you for each of those examples, btw! You know who you are…I hope!)

In short: our harsh inner narratives can hold us back from seeing the beauty that others see in us.

May you be graced with eyes to see your beauty and loveableness. 💜

Sunday Springs

Section posts from the past week

🎵Song Stream

☔️Parenting Puddles

🪷Serenity Splashes

A litany for women and other high-achievers

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Push your boundaries, 
      not your body.

Raise your standards, 
      not your scope.

Stretch your liberty, 
      not your limits.

Learn to claim, 
      not to cope.

Uncertainty can make you scared.
Certainty can make you scary.

Uncertainty is bravery
facing hard questions.
Certainty is fear
dressed up as answers.

Uncertainty lets truth steer,
even if it goes off road.
Certainty just lets fear drive,
even if it runs over creatures in its path.

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The grief that you carry
   is yours to bear--
and the ache 
   of aloneness you feel--
but so is the light 
   that is only yours
and the power 
   you solely can wield.

I’ve long been interested in the power of quietness. I’ve written poems and songs about it, read books about it, and explored quietness in my daily life—consistently finding that the fewer words I managed to speak, the better everything felt. I viewed quietness like a Zen art of wisdom and mindfulness: something to practice and aspire to.

Now, that viewpoint has changed like a dandelion into puff that blows away.

Quietness is not just something I value and aspire to, like some lofty virtue. No: quietness is something I need.

And it’s something that was taken from me, that I am trying to take back.

The chatty mask

My culture (fundamentalist Christian) and environment (eldest daughter, baby boomer parents, etc.) shaped me to be a friendly people-pleaser. Being chatty and cheerful was the way to be safe. It let others know that I was happy, fine, pleased, not a problem, and ready to help with their problems. It also provided protection against unpredictable, unsafe intrusion: if I was cheerful and chatty, there was no need for anyone to inquire deeper into the actual state of my mind.

I truly had no idea that I did not want to be chatty. My world had nothing to do with considering what I might actually want or not want. Being a good Christian girl meant learning to suppress my thoughts and submit to what I was supposed to do.

I was fascinated, though, by the quiet kids at school, as if they had some kind of magic that was forbidden to me, as I went chattily on, carefully spelling out my very approval-worthy thoughts for everyone to witness, and ignoring my embarrassment and discomfort.

That was my safety strategy—my persona or “mask” that I thought I was—and, for the most part, it worked.

The real me likes quiet

Now I’m a grownup with actual safety that I can reach for directly, without having to rely on sideways strategies like people-pleasing. This has freed me to discover the real me underneath the mask, as I wrote about in a poem several years ago:

You mean I can be quiet
without an excuse?
I don’t have to fill silence
with words glib and loose

so that others won’t think
I don’t like them or that
I’m unfriendly, depressed,
distracted, or mad?

I’ve been so long so busy
with what they might see
that in crafting my image,
I forgot to be me.

And the real me likes quiet
and space in between
my own mind and others’—
like an opaque screen

behind which I can listen,
choose words with care,
stay in touch with myself,
and just be aware.

Another, shorter poem from around the same time similarly expresses these feelings as well as my dawning understanding that friendliness is not the same as kindness:

I was raised to be friendly,
to extend my hand
to be shaken,
as if from my own land–

for I want to be quiet.
That’s all I ask.
I can be kinder
without a mask

of smiles and chatter.
I want instead
to speak what I choose
from a quiet head.

I now also understand that “friendliness” doesn’t have to mean outgoing, bubbly chit-chat, as I used to think it did: I can still be warm and approachable, but in a quiet way that feels truer to me.

Ohhh: the real me is autistic!

My journey toward quietness took a sharp swerve last year when I got diagnosed with autism (level 1, formerly known as Asperger’s Syndrome). In other terms, I am “neurodivergent”—or, if you will, “neurosparkly.” :-)

As you may know, some autistic people don’t speak at all, while others have a very limited ability to speak. I’m obviously very grateful that I can speak. But what I didn’t realize all this time is that speaking costs me significant mental and emotional energy, of which I have a limited amount to get through each day.

It’s a strain to make words out loud to people (I gather this is not the case for those who are not autistic), due, I think, to various particular dynamics in my brain and nervous system, most of all my slower processing speed. It’s hard enough to hold the track of my thoughts—which are taking in a ton of information and making a ton of connections all at once—even when I’m not talking to someone. Conversation introduces unpredictable variables that can feel upheaving, confusing, overwhelming, and demanding.

If I’m just mostly listening to others speak, that’s all right; but when I have to make words in response right then and there, I feel like I’m being thrust out onto thin ice, and I have to just self-abandoningly skate around and hope for the best. It feels risky, uncomfortable, and stressful.

Thus, speaking taxes my nervous system, in the same way that noise, social interaction, eye contact, and external demands do. (Those are other autism-specific struggles that I’ve come to recognize in my own life.) And just as wearing noise-cancelling headphones helps to reduce my overall system strain, finding ways to speak less helps, too.

To spell it out more clearly for anyone reading this who doesn’t get it yet (because I have had some naysayers of the “but you don’t look autistic!” variety): Yes, I can speak. I can make eye contact. I can endure noise, social interaction, and external demands. But all of those things cost me significant coping-energy. They stress my nervous system and, over time, lead me into burnout, exhaustion, depression, overwhelm, anxiety, and so on.

(Here’s an amazing thing, though: writing, by contrast, gives me mental and emotional energy! It’s no wonder writing became one of my main “special interests”—it’s a way of expressing myself that feels good rather than hard!)

I’m trying, therefore, to find and claim ways of speaking less in my daily life.

It’s a practice of boundaries, of self-respect, and—crucially—of paying attention to what I need and what I feel like in relation to speaking.

Finding new options for speaking less

With my kids, at my job, and in my other relationships, I do have to speak some, of course. But there’s a lot of room to practice speaking only as much as I want to or as is truly necessary—and thus being more frugal with the mental energy that speaking costs me.

Work is the easiest, because I have a pretty solid set of conversational scripts built up, by this point, for most issues that arise for my customers. (I work in insurance.) I’ve also learned over time that phone calls with customers go much better if I keep my own words as minimal as possible. Still, though, every single conversation is a strain from which I need to recover.

At home with three highly spirited kids, however, I am very much still struggling and trying to find my way. One thing I’ve started doing is sometimes saying, “I can’t talk right now” (especially if I’m driving or trying to fix dinner, and my kids keep asking me questions like, “Mom, when can we get a pet snake?”)—and then just keep quiet, unless and until it becomes truly necessary for me to speak.

My husband, meanwhile, has grown quite used to my using micro-expressions instead of words to answer his many off-the-wall comments. (We could be a comedic team with him as the comic and me as the straight man staring deadpan at the camera, like Pam on The Office.) It’s a matter of boundaries here, too: when I reply only to communication from him that feels to me respectful and sane, it elevates our interactions to the standards I want.

With my close friends (who are also autistic), all I have to do is say something like, “I don’t feel like talking right now,” and they not only get it, they celebrate with me that I managed to notice my feelings!

There are some other general methods I’m experimenting with, like using wordless sounds (especially “hmm”) and hand gestures to spare me having to speak as long as possible. When words are necessary, I’ll use them; but if something can be solved by my pointing a finger or nodding my head, I’ve just saved myself some energy.

Another strategy I’m beginning to use, this time consciously borrowing from what I’ve learned about autism, is intentional “echolalia”—repeating back phrases the other person has said, as a way to signal that I heard them. This is much easier on my mental bandwidth than requiring my brain to form its own words in reply. Again, when this suffices, it saves me energy.

Sparkling More

After all these years of paying attention to what other people wanted from me instead of what I felt, it still feels mind-boggling that I can be sparing with my speaking, and things will be okay—even better than okay. The more I practice speaking less in pursuit of self-accommodation, the more honest and sustainable my relationships feel, and the more my true joy—which is not a mask, but is from my authentic, connected self-awareness—can sparkle.

May your journey, too, lead you to your own sparkling joy, in whatever form that may take.

I’ve been thinking about responsibility—and how, for some people, it gets twisted from a normal, healthy level of respecting commitments to an extreme, existential level of feeling Responsible for how things go. It turns into worry, stress, self-blame, anxiety, discouragement, depression, and most of all, pressure.

I think it’s the unhealed little kids inside—the little kids who got emotional demands without emotional support—who feel this capital-R, hyper-Responsibility. They feel the pressure of threat-management as a solitary, chronic burden: it’s up to them to make sure things go okay. But since life is not actually in their control, it’s a losing battle.

Rest, little one. You’re trying so hard
to carry all this weight,
to bear responsibility
for making things okay—

but try as you might, controlling life
is something you can’t do.
You’re not that big. Nobody is.
The blame is not on you.

— from my poem “Rest, Little One”

I’m trying to learn to first hear, and then soothe, that little one inside me.

For example, when I notice myself feeling panicky and trembly (or flinching away from those feelings), I try to listen for the little one’s underlying beliefs/stories/fears, such as “I’m a failure” and “I’m letting everyone down.”

Then I can try to soothe her from the adult perspectives of my thinking brain, such as, “It’s okay. You’re doing great. It’s not your job to do everything perfectly. You’re a creature, too. Come on, let’s try to help you get calmed down.”

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Just navigate each moment 
through its facts as they arrive—

    watch, and feel, and treat myself well.
    I'm not the controller of life:

        I’m but a creature experiencing,
        in this moment, alive.

— from my poem “I’m But a Creature Experiencing (My Feelings Matter)”

I’m trying to help myself learn that I am not Responsible for everything, in the way that my unhealed inner “littles” think I am.

In fact, this is an area that calls for some boundaries and some healthy anger about boundary violation: “F*** OFF” to messages of shame, blame, pressure, and expectations of me to be some kind of superhuman magician.

The replacement messages I need are these: I am just a human. Just a creature. I have limits, and so does reality. I can only do what I can, with the time and energy I have. I can only act in the present; I cannot control the future. My own needs and feelings matter just as much as other people’s; and in fact, respecting my own boundaries is one of the main things I am actually responsible for!

Maybe, with lots of patience and repetition, my inner littles will begin to grasp this.

Sunday Springs (section posts roundup)

I haven’t gotten to post much in the past couple of weeks…I’ve been quite worn down. The only section I’ve gotten to post in is “Serenity Splashes.” I’m glad for those posts, though…“You Make Some Hope” in particular has been helpful for me.

🪷Serenity Splashes

Reflections in the style of (my girl) Emily Dickinson

Oh, the comfort of denial—
the sweet without the salt—
the predetermined smile—
till reality’s assault.

Reflections on patterns I observe in myself and others around me

We pace in our loops like a dog on a chain.
We strain at the limits we learned before—
until we outsmart our rut-bound brain
and begin to radically look for more.

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When you’re already tired, 
  and you fall in the rain, 
when life just feels 
   like pain after pain,
and in the news, chaos 
   and cruelty reign,
you want a rope to grasp—

so, link by link, 
   you make a chain:
you add bits of beauty, 
   glimmers of grace,
pieces of purpose, 
   kindness, and space—
and you make some hope to clasp.

...because sometimes this is how it is.

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Can I moggy find
     my foggy mind?

   The clay grouds
      of gray clouds

      and mist seep
       (by missed sleep)

   and skew my
          mind’s sky.

This rhyme attests:
   it’s time to rest.

An autobiographical story-sonnet

Once upon a time, I learned to serve
the High King (and His minions) on the throne,
for I was lowly and did not deserve
to live, He said. My life was not my own.

I tried to serve the King with every breath
and never question. Loyal, low, I stayed.
I served Him until living felt like death,
for which, down on my knees, I wished and prayed.

I saw no other way out—till, bereft,
I slipped outside the castle walls and left.

Astonishment: out here was life and joy,
and all along, the High King was a ploy,

and I was the true queen of my domain.
Now, with kindness, truth, and growth, I reign.

They laughed at your meltdowns and sneered at your joys.
What attention they gave you was cruel.
When you dared express needs, they exiled you
to your room, all alone, or to school—

where your bright intelligence withered and writhed
unmet. It was all a nightmare—
except it was real. No one else saw
the pain that you bore—and still bear.

You somehow survived, alone and deprived.
You live with the scars—and yet
you find ways to grow toward the light, like an oak
whose old wounds give creatures a nest.

If there’s something I feel troubled and unresolved about, my default is to not express it to others.

It’s automatic and subconscious: it won’t even really occur to me to express the feelings, in most cases.

Sometimes I may not even fully notice the feelings myself.

I can see how this situation came about. Early in life I learned that my role was to be strong and steady, so others could depend on me for co-regulation—and that there was no one who could reliably do the same for me.

It was unsafe to express my dysregulated feelings. It messed up the fragile emotional ecosystem around me.

Now I’m grown up and things are different…but my brain hasn’t caught up yet.

I need to be able to trust my close loved ones (the adults, of course, not my children!) to be show up for me when I’m having a hard time, in the way I do for them.

I strongly value honest, authentic relating (and writing!!), and that can’t happen when I’m keeping my troubled feelings to myself.

But this is not just a matter of deciding to “be more honest,” or the like. My inner protectors, who block me from sharing and sometimes even seeing my troubled feelings, have good reasons for doing so. They don’t trust that it’s safe—that sharing troubled feelings won’t lead to more trouble.

So I think the work (borrowing from the concepts of Internal Family Systems therapy and the book No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz) is to practice conscious listening to them, finding out what they need, and looking for ways to proactively take care of those needs. (For example: boundaries, small steps, and asking for what I need from others.)

That’s where I’m at currently. Thank you for witnessing. Do let me know if you have any wisdom to share about this!

I also wrote about some aspects of this experience in an essay post last year, “Practicing Transparency,” in which I also shared this poem:

Life was something to cope with alone
and people were as well—
to manage, help, appease, or save—
their heaven built my hell.

But now life is for living linked
with others—and myself—
and letting my experience
be witnessed, shared, and helped.

Sunday Springs

Posts from my other sections last week (though now it’s Monday; I didn’t get to finish this post yesterday):

New section: 🖋️Writer’s Waters

Some excerpts from this post:

“I’ve long been wanting to add a section for writing about writing, to have a designated “container” for it. I have quite a lot of things to say about various aspects of writing—process, genres, craft, and the inner aspects of creating and writing.”

“Then followed a period of years in which writing was mostly lost to me, during the mental, physical, and spiritual strains of my teenage years and early twenties. Those were dark days indeed.”

“Here’s the catch: I know that writing brings me joy, but trauma shaped me to pursue threat-management instead of joy.”

🪷Serenity Splashes

(I’m going to start posting the text of the poems here, too, instead of just the links.)

A reminder-rhyme for myself in times of stress & worry:

You don’t have to know
how the future will go.
Just be on the ride
and stay on your side.

I didn’t always know,
and I’m still trying to learn,
that I can just say no—
it’s a right I need not earn.

My needs and feelings matter.
Let others cope with theirs.
Guard my joy like treasure—
then I’ll have more to share.

A song I’m working on:

Each moment’s a gift,
a new chance to live
and to be the person I want.
There’s no guarantee;
there’s just reality.
So I’ll take whatever gets done—
whatever I get,
whatever needs met,
and every last breath
as a gift.

“Things have always been this way.”
“That’s just how things are.”
“They wouldn’t allow it if it was bad.”
“Aren’t you taking this too far?”

These are the words of submissive sheep
with comfortable, matching coats.
I used to be one. Now I want
to question like the GOATs.

Reflections & wishes inspired by current events:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

In our world,
     the vulnerable--
     like women--
          need protecting
     from the men
          who make the plans.

I want a world where
     women
          make the plans
     and men
          do the protecting
     of the vulnerable.

It’s been a busy and grinding February for me (as perhaps for most), but as the snow and ice have been thawing, I feel like some long-frozen patterns in me have been thawing as well.

I tend to just go-go-go, keeping on working to tend to my children, housework, job, and all the various details of life. What gets pushed aside, by default, is what I need.

That is the model I was given, growing up, and the programming from my patriarchy-based culture and sacrifice-based religion. That is the pattern that got frozen in me, that I’m now trying to break and thaw.

(My mind makes a connection with the current Epstein files fallout: old, frozen patterns of abuse and secrecy are finally thawing...painfully slowly, but still.)

Back to my here and now: when I’m feeling worn down and burnt out, the question should not be “How can I cope better?” but “How can I radically take care of myself?”

My direction of correction is to do less, let my family members fend for themselves more, and speak up more firmly for my needs.

It’s almost a foreign concept to me to say calmly and clearly (as I have sometimes witnessed another mom I know do), “I need to go lie down now” or “I’m going out this evening”—to just make the necessary arrangements and then go do what I need to do to take care of myself, without explanation or apology.

Of course, this involves learning to even recognize my feelings and needs in the first place. I’m still on a rather remedial level in that area, despite all my thinking and writing about the inner life and such. By default, my mind has no sense of limit to how far I can push myself—no cap on my giving of myself—no innate sense of “no.” There’s just endless giving, serving, and coping.

But my behaviors can provide the clues, if I pay attention (practicing mindfulness/self-observing): as I depicted in my recent “Hold Your No’s” essay, when I notice that I’m sighing or muttering a silent “aaaarrrgh” in response to someone’s request, that means I’m feeling overwhelmed (etc.) and that I need to say no!

Another indicator is to keep an eye on is joy (as I wrote about last week). Joy is the result of being aligned with my feelings and needs, so non-joy means further investigation is needed into how I can take care of myself. If, for example, I’m slaving away feeling stressed, stop as soon as possible and go rest/recreate until I am back in touch with joy.

Of course, real life is messy and imperfect, but this is the general model I’m exploring.

So far, it seems very much like the way to thaw what has been locked up inside me all these years.

My dogs in the thawing winter weather this past week:

Sunday Springs

Just a few section posts last week, all Serenity Splashes:

Saying no is not my strongest skill.

Thanks to my neurology and my childhood programming, my nervous system finds it easier to just say yes to things that people ask me to do, especially when I’m already depleted and overstimulated. It’s much harder to summon up the courage and mental clarity to say no—and then face their unhappy feelings.

But that’s not the type of person I want to be (and definitely not the type of mother I want to be!).

I want to be strong and authentic, showing up in my relationships with integrity and mindfulness. I want people to be able to be their real selves with me, trusting me to operate with boundaries and self-respect, so they don’t have to fear that they’re burdening me, etc.

I’ve been working on this for many years. Probably I’ll always be working on it! I’ve written plenty about this learning here previously, such as in these posts:

• “Living Self-first” (poem)

• “I’m a Real Person” (song)

• “Learning to Uphold Myself” (essay)

After a lot of practice, I’ve found a basic process that helps me “hold my no’s,” as it were. (It can involve metaphorically holding my nose as well!)

I think it’s easiest to explain visually, so I drew up a little cartoon:

Here are the three steps in words:

1. Notice how I feel: if someone asks me to do something, and my mind goes “Aaaaarrgggghhh,” that indicates that I am feeling stressed, overwhelmed, defensive, reluctant, frustrated, and/or exhausted…and that means I need to say no.

2. Claim my no. This means making the decision to say no. It may also involve 1) recognizing that I need to say no (see previous step), 2) remembering that I have the right to say no, and 3) preparing myself to deliver the no.

3. Say no with support to the other person. The key is keeping the focus on empathizing with them. This keeps the focus—both mine and theirs—off of defending, justifying, or reconsidering my “no.”

When I inwardly hold my “no” while outwardly supporting the other person’s experience, what results is immeasurably more peace and less drama than when I’m wishy-washy or defensive.

I don’t always succeed, but having this as a goal helps me correct my course when I get off it.

For example, yesterday evening, I reacted defensively to a kid’s request, saying with a sigh, “I don’t think I can do that right now; it’s just too hard…” Then, when she pushed back (“Why is that hard?”), I felt aggravated and began listing reasons. Then I heard myself. I stopped mid-sentence and said, in a much gentler tone, “I can’t do that right now, honey, but maybe tomorrow. I know you really want it.” Then we were both able to move on calmly.

I am reminded of this quote from (once again) Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:

“The more you try to justify yourself to people…the more it acknowledges that they have the right to question you. It shows you think they get to be your inquisitor, and once you grant someone that sort of power over you, they just push more and more."

— from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, chapter 48

Indeed: when I defensively try to explain myself to someone, I am really just handing them my power.

Healthy boundaries—and actual self-defense—looks like calmly and quietly standing my ground.

In other words, holding my no’s.

I’ll close with one of my learning poems, previously posted as a Serenity Splash poem here. This is what I’m trying to learn.

I tend to blend myself with them
(down deep, I’m tremulous)
when they blend with their feelings
(all comingled, nebulous).

In their dysregulation storms,
my sense of “me” needs tended,
so I can be our lighthouse,
standing boundaried, not blended.

Thank you for witnessing my learning journey. Please share any wisdom or resonating experience you have with this!

The answer that comes back could be a simple need (such as hunger or fatigue) or a complex tangle of old story-beliefs (such as “I have to get all these problems under control before I can rest”). It might also be ever-new levels of dismay and outrage about the latest news.

Whatever needs, beliefs, or feelings are in the way of joy, noticing them allows me to start asking/addressing what I can do to help. This is self-care in action—which is joy-boosting in and of itself!

Sometimes, especially in deep winter, I seem to need reminded that joy even exists as a thing to be reached for. That’s why I’m now writing about this—to help me remember to reach for it.

This weekend brought some sun, and I got to reach for joy outside! A few photos:

Sunday Springs

A roundup of my section posts from this past week

New section: ☔️Parenting Puddles

🪷Serenity Splashes

I particularly like “Kindness Is Not.”

I’m thinking about power dynamics and abuse, both on a public/national level (especially given the recent devastations of ICE and the Epstein files) and a private/domestic level, such as within a marriage or other personal relationship. Here are some of my current reflections and working models.

Bullies cannot see the harm they cause

On the public/national level, what I observe are cries of outrage from the victims’ side seeming to go utterly unabsorbed by the abusers’ side. The wealthy, powerful men and their minions seem to feel not only untouchable but also unaware that there’s anything really wrong with their actions.

On the private/domestic level, what I observe are men who have been so culturally influenced by patriarchy and authoritarianism that they don’t really see anything wrong with, say, cussing their wives out when they’re angry or scolding children who don’t obey them.

This has all baffled me, most of all from the perspective of asking what, then, the people on the victim-end of those power dynamics are supposed to do. Clearly, just speaking up about the harm is not enough.

I am now forming a guess, however.

My guess is that those on the power side of a longstanding power dynamic cannot emotionally or intellectually grasp what it’s like to be on the victim side of that dynamic.

Fully enmeshed with a sense of entitlement to their power, they cannot understand the harm they are causing. Attempts to shame or persuade them will not work.

There is only one thing that will work: boundaries.

They can only see a solid wall (boundary)

Bullies cannot, of their own accord,
understand what harm they cause,
nor can they be persuaded,
only stopped by boundary-walls.

— “Bully Stopping,” my Serenity Splash poem for today

It seems to me that hard, full-stop boundaries are the only thing that can stop the abuse of power.

Boundaries sound like this: “I will not tolerate this treatment; therefore, I will ____.”

Examples of boundaries:

• public/national level:

  • “I will not be voting for you.”

  • “I will call Congress to demand change until it’s done.”

  • “I will exercise my freedom of speech to condemn this action.”

• private/domestic level:

  • “I will exit this conversation/relationship if you cuss at me.”

  • “I will not allow you unsupervised time with our children until you go to therapy for your anger issues.”

  • “I will begin filming you if you start shouting at me while we’re in the car.”

Boundaries & creativity

Finding effective boundaries may involve creativity on the part of the boundary-setters. (In cases of serious, dangerous abuse and/or fascist regimes, there may not be many/any options available; survival then becomes the primary consideration.)

For those of you who know HPMOR (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality), in the early arc when Harry is accusing Snape of emotional abuse, Dumbledore and the others cannot hear/receive what Harry is saying. Dumbledore says, “One does not speak of a Hogwarts professor in those terms.” They only hear extreme, status-quo-busting accusations from someone on the non-dominant side of the power hierarchy. Harry has to resort to creative blackmail measures to get them to listen. I’m not advocating for blackmail in real life, obviously, but this strikes me as a poignant fictional example of creative boundary-finding to deal with abuse of power.

Further complications

The loaded word “abuse”

That example also highlights for me how loaded the word “abuse” is for people. For anyone who is hearing the word, rather than using it themselves, I think it tends to sound extreme and alarmist. I don’t have an answer for this…I suppose my main conclusion here is to not expect abusers to respond to the word “abuse.”

They will only respond to hard boundaries that force them to stop.

The prevalence of emotional abuse

Further, when it comes to emotional abuse specifically, I think that emotional abuse is so prevalent and normalized in our culture that most people don’t really even know what it is. (To be clear, I have been one of them: I am only now grasping it.) It just seems like how people normally relate. It seems to me that television shows are full of people emotionally abusing each other, and that we as a society are very desensitized to emotional abuse.

Trying to control other people through fear and shame is emotional abuse, and it’s not okay.

In other words, it’s NOT the way to build a healthy, collaborative, wellbeing-maximizing world.

I think that’s all for now; thanks for reading my reflections. I am interested in any comments, counter-perspectives, or connections you may have to offer, since I am still very much learning about these issues!

For this first edition, I thought I’d share some recent pet-snuggles photos, for some cozy vibes in this winter cold. At least we’ve now officially made it to February!

Pet Snuggles

I am wishing you pet snuggles—or some equivalent of warmth and love—during this upcoming week of continuing winter cold. ❄️💗

Sunday Springs

Below are (most of) my section posts from this past week, in case you missed them.

Note: I’m aiming to add some new sections soon, including one for parenting-related topics and one for writing-related topics.

This past week I did make one section change: “Learning Lagoon” is now called “Book Beach”!

New section: 🏝️Book Beach

🎵 Song Stream

🪷 Serenity Splashes

This is one of my main core life philosophies: Whatever is happening in my external life and the wider world, my safe place is inside, in how I relate to myself.

I sure won’t find a sense of safety in the news (!) or in trying to make things go well in my day-to-day life. As I’ve written before (like in my essay “Where Do We Look for Safety?”), the only kind of safety that can remain no matter what else is going on—whatever the river brings—is the inside kind, from being aligned with myself.

Here are some further reflections on this theme, because I benefit from writing about it, and maybe it can benefit you too.

Inner safety practices that are helping me lately

I build safety inside my mind by (as I wrote recently in my “Essays on Self-relating” series):

• listening to my feelings (“Cultivating an Inner Observer”) — noticing and acknowledging how I’m feeling (for example, overwhelmed, stressed, overstimulated, exhausted, anxious, upset, etc.)

• speaking kindly to myself (“Comforting your Inner Child”) — such as, “I hear that you’re feeling ____. I know that’s so hard. Let’s get through it together. Would you like to tell me more about it? / What can I do to help?”

• reaching for mind-nourishment (“Creating an Inner Sanctuary”) — seeking out positive mind-food—which for me may include:

  • writing (like now!)

  • reading/consuming meaningful content, from writers whose work makes me feel more connected and clear-minded (some of my current favorites are Brittney Hartley and )

  • listening to music — any, but especially my own songs, which I wrote for my own self-help purposes!

    • As an example, my mind cleared significantly the other day when I heard this line in my song “Shut the Door” (which I’m hoping to rerecord sometime for better musical/vocal quality): “For I won’t find peace out there—only in here.” My brain had been trying to problem-solve a situation as if my life depended on it, when really, that decision didn’t ultimately matter—what did matter was how I related to myself!

Putting it all together, and on an even more personal level, self-help for me lately often takes the form of visualizing my inner child (whose name is Writer) in her inner sanctuary (her “Tower Room”) being cared for by her also-me helpers (such as a big guy called Bouncer who guards the door to the Tower Room!). :-)

In the “let’s see what we can do to help” part of checking on my inner child, something lately that has been emerging is to look into ways I can mindfully take action in response to my feelings of dismay about the brutality I am hearing about in the news—for example, writing and calling my congress representatives. I tend to feel like that will be fruitless, given that I live in a deeply red state, but I think my inner child would feel a lot better if I try anyway!

What practices help you feel more connected with yourself? (Truly, I’d love to hear!)

Inner Unsafety

By contrast, here are the old-way patterns of self-relating that I am trying to NOT do:

• pressuring and hassling myself (to get more done, keep everyone happy, be perfect…)

• ignoring, suppressing, distracting from, and/or coping around my actual feelings

• enmeshing with the contents of events, conditions, and/or people in my life—linking my sense of wellbeing to how things go with them

The new way is to listen kindly to the feelings of my inner child and ask what I can do to help—like someone who loves me.

Like someone who loves me

I highly recommend this as a general coping strategy: if you have somebody in your life who is a consistent voice in favor of treating yourself kindly, imagine what they would say to you, in any given moment of struggle.

For me, that person is my dad. I’ve been gradually realizing over the years how consistently he has encouraged me to take it easy on myself. I am deeply grateful for that (and I really ought to tell him so)!

The new rock in the river

I used to write a lot about the metaphor of the rock in the river—staying on my stable rock of detached observation in the midst of the river of life’s contents. That’s even where the name of this blog comes from!

These days, I still like and use that image, but the rock has changed—it’s not just Zen detached observation, but it’s attachment to my relationship with myself rather than the contents of my life’s river.

Thanks for reading my reflections, and I hope they may be helpful to you, too, in these times of scary river rapids—and/or whatever your river is bringing lately.

It’s been almost a year since I’ve been on Substack, and I feel like I haven’t yet been fully showing up here, in ways that go beyond my time constraints. I want my online presence to reflect me as an authentic person with whom people can genuinely connect.

Especially in light of our troubled political times, I particularly want to speak more openly of my own beliefs and my backstory, in case it could help make a difference. So far I’ve mostly been channeling that stuff into my novel (which I hope to start pitching to agents sometime soonish!), but I’d like to bring it into my online writing more as well.

It feels tricky, though, because to speak openly on important but fraught topics is to risk alienating people. I live in an area where the majority of people (including my own family members) identify with the Christian, right-wing, and/or MAGA tribe, which with I no longer identify. That’s no secret; but as long as we don’t talk much about politics or religion, we have functional peace.

I want more than functional peace. I don’t want to stay silent and afraid of ruffling feathers. I want to use what I’ve been through—and my love for writing—to try to make my world a better, healthier place.

The question is how to do that in the most effective way for me. I’m no militant protester or hotshot debater; I’m a quiet, sensitive thinker (i.e., if you come at me with scary rage, I’m likely to just dissolve into tears). I’m not interested in winning arguments—but I’m very interested in using writing to create meaningful connection.

Becoming a bridge-builder

Another way to say it is that I want my writing to not burn bridges, but build them.

This reminds me of what Eugenia Cheng says at the end of her excellent book The Art of Logic in an Illogical World:

“The best way I think that we can use this superpower [of intelligent rationality] to help the world is to bridge divides, foster a more nuanced and less divisive dialogue, and work towards a community that operates as one connected whole.”

— Eugenia Cheng, The Art of Logic in an Illogical World

In our world of violently polarized politics, we need bridges of connection to help us understand each other and find common ground upon which to make progress toward real change.

I want to be a bridge, not throwing stones from one side or the other, nor sitting passively aside while the violence goes on around me.

I want to refuse both silence and aggression, and instead reach my hands out to each side, with thoughtfulness and empathy. I won’t do it perfectly, but I can try.

How to show up in a bridge-building way

To return to the question of how: how can I show up more fully and authentically in my online writing, such that I am building bridges rather than burning them?

Here are my current guesses and the strategies I aim to try:

1. Start with gentle steps. As with any new pursuit, taking it slowly and gently seems like the way to build up my courage and skill.

   1. My “Serenity Splash” poem from yesterday (“Runaway Train”) felt like one such step, because in it, I wrote more directly than usual about my very non-theist philosophy and worldview.

2. Write about plenty of personal and neutral topics in addition to the tricky ones. It seems to me that this will help overall to foster connections.

   1. This is something I want to do anyway, because I have a LOT of interests and things I want to start blogging more about, including books, writing, and parenting.

3. Write from a place of regulation and groundedness. This seems like the most important thing of all!

   1. As scary as it may feel to write something controversial, I’m realizing there’s a very big difference between angrily attacking people’s beliefs and writing thoughtful pieces about my experiences and working opinions.

      1. I think people will be much more likely to respond well to the latter—which is much more conducive to building bridges.

      2. I hope I can help the younger, more vulnerable parts of me grasp this difference through practice, and over time feel more confidence here.

   2. I’ve got my anonymous Substacks for working through raw, vulnerable feelings about topics I’m currently healing around, so I’ll save that sort of content for those. Here on my public Substack (and in my corresponding social media), I’ll try to choose topics that I feel healed enough about to write with a sense of calm and collectedness.

   3. This is really the same as my goal with parenting: to keep myself regulated and grounded (even communicating honestly about that with my kids, like, “Mommy needs to go outside and take some deep breaths for a minute,” LOL), so that I am not burning the bridge of our connection by blasting my raw feelings at them, but instead I’m building the bridge by showing up for them as a present, stable grownup—ready to help them handle whatever big feelings they may have.

Do you have other suggestions? How do you approach the tensions involved in wanting to connect meaningfully with people about tricky topics?

I hope you’ll join me in seeking to build bridges in our divided world—and in seeing what this particular tributary of my river will bring.

As for celebrations, I’m not a party person, but I did start a family tradition of having a family game night on New Year’s Eve. Last night we played Candy Land, Connect 4, Uno, and karaoke.

Gifts that 2025 brought to my life

In the spirit of New Year’s, I’ve realized that 2025 brought me many significant gifts. (Obviously, on the political/national front, it was a pretty insane year…may 2026 somehow be better!)

1. New puppy

We adopted a stray puppy and named her Papaya (like “Pup-aya”). I adore her. ❤️

(See this “Serenity Splash” post when she made her first appearance here, still a stray at that point.)

2. New old friend

I unexpectedly reconnected with my childhood best friend from ages 9 - 13. After all these years apart, we have more in common than ever. ❤️

For one thing, she’s a poet, too! (Her poems are like powerful waterfalls of raw feelings beside my tinkling “Serenity Splashes”!)

It’s been particularly amazing to reconnect with someone who both knew me and liked me when I still had a lot of childhood innocence, and who knows about the huge part of my story that came next, because she was there experiencing it too. (Let’s just call it religious trauma.)

I’ve been trying to talk her into making a Substack. I’ll let you know if she does! But she may have even bigger and better writing plans. :-)

3. New diagnosis

The most life-changing event for me in 2025 was getting diagnosed with autism as well as ADHD. (See this post I wrote about that for more detail.) Like a key that suddenly fits with a click, this diagnosis has unlocked a whole new world of validation and accommodation of my needs.

For example: headphones. I got myself these noise-cancelling headphones, and they are magic to me! Especially at home with noisy kids (and noisy husband), they make an enormous difference. I hope to write more about this sometime, because it’s been so very life-changing for me.

Sunglasses help a lot, too, to reduce my sensory overwhelm and calm down my nervous system. My family is used to me looking like this at home most of the time:

I’ll take looking weird but feeling calm over looking normal but feeling stressed (which was pretty much my whole life till now) any day!

4. New writing achievements

1. I won my first (adult) writing contest award, and I had my first short story published! The story (which both got published and placed in the contest) is called “One Marble,” and you can read it here in the online magazine Appalachia Bare.

2. I finished my first novel! (I’ve started several others in the past, including one that was up to almost 100,000 words before I decided to take a break on it.) This one is a middle-grade novel of about 40,000 words, and I really like it. I’m currently revising it, and I hope to start submitting it to agents/publishers in 2026!

3. I also finished a few children’s picture books and a chapter book (all of which are just sitting and waiting for me to do something with them…I enjoy the writing part much more than the revising and submitting part!).

4. I started recording and posting videos of my songs (as you know). I’m still finding my way with the technicalities there, but it feels good to get those songs out.

5. I expanded my Substack writing (as you know), dividing this blog into four sections (River Reflections, Serenity Splashes, Learning Lagoon, and Song Stream), and starting four anonymous Substacks to give myself a safe space for writing about more sensitive topics (such as religious trauma, neurodivergence, and marriage).

   (If you aren’t already subscribed to the anonymous ones and would like to be, just send me a note or comment below.)

Gratitude & getting in touch

I feel extremely grateful for all of these gifts, as well as for the many other existing gifts in my life (my kids, husband, and adulthood best friend; our pets, our home, and the nature around us; and so much more)…including all of you, my readers and friends!

For those of you who are friends I’ve accidentally lost touch with, please do forgive me and reach out to me. Now I know that this is how it works with AuDHD (and maybe having kids, too). My heart can be full of love for someone and interest in connecting with them, but my brain can have immense trouble with initiating that communication.

I’m wishing you met needs and happiness in this new year. Here’s to 2026, whatever its river may bring. 🌊

When I imagine a childlike part of myself that holds my rawest feelings, and then I internally speak to that part with kindness, empathy, and validation, wow: everything feels a lot better!

This is an area of learning and growth that I’m still very much in the midst of, but so far it seems so powerful that I feel like maybe this is it—that maybe getting the hang of comforting my inner child will equate to healing and enlightenment!

Defining “inner child”

I simply mean the childlike part of your mind that holds your most vulnerable and authentic feelings, such as sadness, joy, wonder, and hurt.

It’s the part that so many of us learned to conceal, suppress, and even outright abandon, in order to function in a harsh world.

Inner children?

Sometimes it may be more helpful to imagine not just one inner child, but multiple inner children, each carrying a different burden of trauma and pain. This is the model put forth in the book No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz (and the whole realm of Internal Family Systems [IFS] therapy, which sprouted from the book), which I’m currently reading and liking very much.

In this model, these inner children are all trying in their own ways to protect the core self, as they have been doing since literal childhood. For example, one of them might hold the experience of being left out—and try to protect against that pain through people-pleasing behavior. Meanwhile, another inner child holds the experience of hopelessness and abandonment—and tries to protect against that pain by pulling away from people when feeling vulnerable. I like this model very much.

Keeping it simple

However, most of the time for me, for now, it feels simplest and most effective just imagine one childlike part of myself who holds my rawest feelings, whatever they may be in a given moment.

It’s like I’m getting in touch with the actual child I once was, who still exists in me.

How the process works for me

1. Disconnection

Say I’m going about my day while worrying about something. At first I try to distract myself. Then I try to hush the worries. “Stop thinking about that,” I tell myself. “You’re being silly.” Guess how much these tactics help me stop worrying? Not at all.

2. Listening

Finally, I manage to get alone and quiet, and I give my full attention to my inner child. I say, “Would you like to tell me more about how you’re feeling?”

Yes: she pours forth more fears and pain than I was expecting. It feels like a childlike, face-crumpled whine inside me--and I allow it, instead of tamping it down censoriously. I listen to her say vulnerable, wounded things that the grownup part of me would never say.

3. Emoting

Then suddenly I’m crying, and there is great relief in the release of the feelings I’d been forbidding. The child in me feels like she is finally being allowed to feel her f***ing feelings! I feel much more connected to her, then—or perhaps it is that she feels more connected to me. Or maybe both!

4. Comforting

Then, in the newly cleared emotional space, I can speak to that child from my more grownup/observer self, using kind words of validation and compassion. I might say:

• “I know, that feels scary.”

• “It’s okay to feel that way.”

• “What do you need from me?”

• any other expressions of compassion, kindness, and validation that help my inner child feel cared for

And then I can move forward—feeling much more whole, self-connected, and at peace inside.

Soothing during stress

I’ve been finding it powerfully helpful to directly soothe my inner child when I’m in the midst of stressful situations—like getting my (literal) kids out the door when we’re already late, seeing messes all around my house but being too tired to tackle them, or worrying that a friend might be upset with me.

When I can manage to say something comforting to my inner child, it helps me to calm down and think more clearly.

Verbal comforting

More examples of things I might say:

• “This is really hard, I know. You don’t have to do it all. We’re okay.”

• “I hear that you’re feeling overwhelmed. Let’s slow things down. We’re going to be okay.”

• “You’re doing a great job.”

• “It’s okay if we don’t get there on time.”

• “We’ll be okay even if someone else is feeling a bit mad at us.”

• “Let’s try to find a way we can take care of you right now.”

Physical comforting

Bodily interventions can help, too, such as taking a deep breath, stretching or wiggling, doing “butterfly tapping,” feeling the texture of a fabric, squeezing a stress ball, or any other physical movement/sensation that feels helpful for system regulation.

One idea I particularly like is to hug a designated stuffed animal, to represent the hurting little one inside.

The guru of inner child comforting

If you are interested in developing this skill, too, please go check out the content of Fei Wyatt @yourwisemomfriend on Instagram or TikTok. The way she models talking kindly to her own inner child is teaching me so much, even about how to talk kindly to my literal children!

Go & grow!

My time’s up for the moment, but I hope to have more to say about this learning arc as I go and grow!

Please let me know if this stuff feels helpful and interesting to you—that may encourage me to hurry up and write/learn about it more!

I forgot all about my seasonal “splashings” posts—so it’s high time to indulge in the fun of writing one! I’ll have to keep it short and sweet, though, for sake of time.

Books I’ve read lately (summer + fall)

I’ll just list the titles and give a rating of stars (asterisks) out of five.

Fiction

• Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins ***

• If It Bleeds by Stephen King ****

• A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry Thomas ***

• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins ***

• A Killing in the Hills by Julia Keller *

• Dune by Frank Herbert **

• The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith ****

• Never Flinch by Stephen King ***

  Nonfiction

• Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes ****

• No Nonsense Spirituality by Brittney Hartley *****

• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson *****

Those last two are outstanding! I highly recommend them, and I hope to write posts about them sometime.

Writing lately

• I’m still working on revising the first draft of my current novel. It’s slow going…apparently my inner Writer does not relish the work of revising. But I’ll keep trying to find ways to get her moving on it, because I really want to get this book out into the world, one way or another!

• I’ve kept up with my ~daily “Serenity Splash” poems, because they’re simple and they nourish my soul/inner child/Writer to create.

• Just a bit here and there on my other blogs and sections…I’m hoping to do more, because, again, it feeds me! You may be hearing from me again soon with some fresh writing plans/strategies.

Music I’m listening to lately

• Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl, of course :)

• I’ve taken to just keeping Apple Music’s “Piano Chill” playlist on most of the time in my headphones, and it’s super helpful to relax and calm me!

Kid laughs lately

• Twin 1 (age 8) was expressing adoration of our current set of dogs (Winston, Penny, and Papaya) by saying, “Winston is the cutest boy in the world, Penny is the cutest girl in the world…”—then, out of categories for the third dog to win, she made one up—“and Papaya is the cutest memberina in the world.” LOL!

• For the rest I’m going to let you take a peek at the twins’ letters to Santa (which their aunt orchestrated)…they have me chuckling.

  

  

“In every heart there is a room / a sanctuary safe and strong”

— Billy Joel, “And So It Goes”

In my previous essay in this series, “Cultivating an Inner Observer,” I wrote about the important practice of noticing your experience, to “level up” to greater perspective, intelligence, and calm.

Building on that skill of observing yourself, this second essay is about establishing a home base of security and connection inside yourself—an inner sanctuary.

Contents:

I. Inner sanctuary: impermeable security
     A. Attachment inside, not outside
     B. "Where the juice is"
II. Suggestions for creating an inner sanctuary
     A. It starts with self-kindness
     B. Look for mind-food
     C. Visualize your inner world 
III. Connections: inner sanctuary in literature 
IV. Conclusion: Where I'll Find True Safety

I. Inner sanctuary: impermeable security

I’m most at peace when I’m most connected to myself and my inner life. It’s like there’s a buffer between me and the world. It’s a sense that whatever is happening in my outer world, the place where I truly belong is inside me—and no person or situation I face can take that peace away.

That is what I want to keep practicing and cultivating more, and what I want to write about, in case it can help others, too.

A. Attachment inside, not outside

Another way to describe it is attaching to your inner life, instead of your outer life.

I’m prone to stress and discouragement when I’m attaching my sense of wellbeing to the external contents of my life, such as relationships and situations.

I thrive most when I remember that those outer things are not where my true meaning and security come from. Only attaching to myself—being my own ally and witness, keeping company with myself through whatever happens, and filling up my mind with what I choose—can give me a source of wellbeing and meaning that does not depend on external things. This is the impermeable security of inner sanctuary.

Certainly (as in Billy Joel’s staggeringly beautiful song “And So It Goes”), it’s healthy to be able to let some people into our emotional space and form intimate social connections. I want that, too. But I want my deepest, strongest bond to be with myself, the one person I’ll always have.

B. “Where the Juice Is”

People, situations, events, pressures, experiences—all the contents of your daily life—do not have to be all the contents of your mind.

Thinkers from ancient Stoic philosophers to Zen Buddhists have talked about and practiced this in various ways, often using images and metaphors.

Here’s my metaphor: the hard, outer rind of a melon is for protection and defense, not for eating; the inside is where the fruit is. It’s like we’re trying to eat the rind when we expect our sense of inner wellbeing to come through successful management of the outer contents of our lives (such as work, family, groceries, bills, etc.). That’s not where the “juice” is.

Of course, we do need safety—the “juice” can’t exist without the rind’s protection—but the external kind of safety is not where to look for lasting meaning and fulfillment. The juice is on the inside.

II. Suggestions for creating an inner sanctuary

A. It starts with self-kindness

Self-kindness may come easily to some people (though I don’t know them!), and it may look like simply talking to yourself like you would to a friend, with sympathy and encouragement. For example: “You’ve been working hard, Self; and even though it doesn’t always feel like it, you’re doing a good job.”

But for others, it’s not so easy. The thought of that kind of self-friendliness may even bring on mental screams. When children grow up in emotionally scary environments, they internalize the scorn, shaming, and hassling they receive from their caregivers. Then, even as adults, it literally does not feel safe to speak kindly to themselves.

So if your mind feels more like a haunted house than a cozy sanctuary, this is where the work is: gently, gradually noticing your experiences (including your defense mechanisms in action), aiming for interested observation instead of judgment. This practice will serve to turn on some lights in your mind’s haunted house, showing you what’s really there and equipping you to begin clearing out the cobwebs.

Practicing mindfulness (observing yourself) and self-kindness will help make your mind a safer place to be.

B. Look for mind-food

Upon the foundation mindfulness and self-kindness, build a practice of seeking mind-food that nourishes you.

The goal is to give your mind something to think about that you actually want to think about, that you choose on purpose to think about, instead of whatever random or anxiety-fueled thing your brain automatically generates as content for your cognition energy (as mine does, anyway).

What lights up your mind?

For me, the most nourishing kind of mind-food is writing. I love it when, in moments of idleness and/or excess anxiety, I can turn my mind deliberately to a writing project or poem. (This is a main driver behind my “Serenity Splash” poems.)

Learning is my best friend’s preferred mind-food. She’s constantly listening to audiobooks, figuring out new practical skills on her homestead, learning languages through podcasts and Duolingo, and asking ChatGPT questions about all sorts of interesting things.

Meanwhile, my husband is inwardly nourished by hunting, my sister-in-law by decorating, and my sibling by making music.

What excites you and sparks your interest? Look for ways to purposefully reach for it, as much as you can, to nourish your inner life—and to fill your mindspace with content you choose instead of automatic content you don’t.

C. Visualize your inner world

If you like, you can elevate the concept of “inner sanctuary” beyond the merely figurative: you can literally create an imaginary sanctuary for your mind. All you need is your imagination to construct and visualize it. You could even draw a picture of it (or get AI to make you one)!

Making your own inner world

You could start by imagining a room inside your heart that is a safe place for only you. Fill it with things you like, “paint” the walls with your favorite color, make it as big or small as feels comfortable—imagine it however you want, in as much detail as you can.

Then “visit” it often, for maximum benefit—perhaps as a nightly practice before you go to sleep, or when you wake up in the morning, or at some other regular, solitary time that works for you.

About my inner world

I’ve been creating my own imaginary inner world for almost two decades now, starting when I went to a treatment center for severe depression when I was twenty-two. Prompted by some therapist or exercise there (I can’t recall now), I imagined an inner room for myself that was at the top of a tall tower, safe from the rest of the world. I added a big window with a lovely view, a big desk for writing, walls lined with bookshelves, a piano, a cat, a fountain, and a comfy couch.

That was the first creation of my “tower room.” Over the years it has expanded into a castle, then a kingdom, then a whole secret dimension that no one else can access. (There are other “people” in my inner world, but they are all just different versions of me—both made-up characters and my inner versions of actual people in my real life.)

I’ve got meditation gardens, writing rooms, a huge library, a throne room, pools, caves, beaches, forests, and on and on. (I’ve got a song coming about it, actually, that I’ve just been waiting for time to sit down and record—so stay tuned for more on this!)

It’s up to YOU

The key feature of having an inner world is that it’s all up to YOU. You can make it up and change it however and whenever you want. It’s a resource for your own unique mind, made by you.

III. Connections: inner sanctuary in literature

I treasure certain pieces of classic poems and prose passages about this topic. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Marcus Aurelius (ancient Greek philosopher [Stoic]), in his book Meditations, on the power of having an inner sanctuary:

   “For it is in your power whenever you choose to retire into yourself. For there is no retreat that is quieter or freer of trouble than a man’s own soul, especially when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.”

   ---

2. Emily Dickinson (whom I love!) on self-connection as profound and infinite:

   There is a solitude of space,
   Of sea, of death, but these
   Society shall be
   Compared with that profounder site—
   That polar privacy—
   A soul admitted to itself—
   Finite infinity.

   ---

3. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay “Self-Reliance” (which I love!), on the ability to dwell in one’s inner sanctuary even while in the company of other people:

   “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

   ---

4. Maybe it’s too soon to refer to Taylor Swift’s songs as “classic literature,” but hey, I’m a Swiftie! I was thrilled to hear her sing about having a lush and locked inner world on her album The Tortured Poets Department:

   “I hate it here, so I will go to /

   Secret gardens in my mind /

   People need a key to get to /

   The only one is mine”

IV. Conclusion: Where I’ll Find True Safety

For one last connection, here’s one of my own “Serenity Splash” poems that helps me remember to practice looking for my meaning, safety, and wellbeing inside me rather than outside:

🪷“Where I’ll Find True Safety”

Not in managing their feelings,
nor always keeping peace,
nor making sure that everyone
is fully pleased with me—

not in mastering conditions,
keeping things under control—
I’ll only find true safety
in alignment with my soul.

💗

Thanks for reading, and please let me know if this resonates with you. What other tips, thoughts, or connections would you add?

I am wishing you the peace of inner sanctuary, in whatever form works best for you.

I didn’t set out to purposefully try to cure my lifelong sense of “privilege guilt”—from being born to a financially comfortable, educated, and white middle-class family in the US—but I realized last night that I may have accidentally done so.

I was walking into a grocery store that I hadn’t been to in several years (due to moving house), and I remembered how I used to feel quite self-conscious going in there. I was hyper-aware of the other patrons I tended to see there, who were often from the poorest economic class (in the US—which, I understand, is still better off than the poorest people in other parts of the world).

During those years, going to that grocery store was often an exercise in finding out my limits. I discovered that I would decline to help if a man approached me in the parking lot and asked for spare change, because I didn’t feel safe. But if a man (or anyone) asked me, in the store, to help him buy a few groceries, I would absolutely say yes. And so on.

Last night, when I went back to that grocery store for the first time in a long time, I realized that that same sense of hyper, awkward privilege-awareness was gone. Just totally gone.

Instead, I was just calmly inhabiting the fact that I am a person of privilege, and I’m ready and willing to help where I can.

There’s no fear, no flinching, no apologizing for my privilege. There’s just open-eyed acceptance of the reality that I have resources others don’t have, and I am ready to use them to help where I can.

I don’t know exactly how this change came about, but I’m guessing that it’s largely a result of all my work on “my feelings matter” practice.

Whatever the cause, I’m grateful—because the world is a mess, and there’s no time to waste on flinching and apologizing!

I love what Hermione says at the end of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (by Eliezer Yudkowsky):

“There are just people who do what they can, whatever they can. And there are also people who don’t even try to do what they can, and yes, those people are doing something wrong…

“I’ll go on trying to do most of what I can, or at least some of what I can…

“That’s my answer.” Hermione took a deep breath, her face resolute. “So, is there something I can do?”

That’s my answer too. No more “shoulds”—I’ll just do what I can to help others in need as I walk along my own path.

Can you relate to this? What insights do you have to offer for those who struggle with privilege guilt?