Burnout is not a blip, a bout, or a temporary spell of unwellness, as I used to vaguely assume.

Burnout is more like an eruption of a serious medical condition that requires you to significantly change your lifestyle going forward.

I’ve been in a deeper pit of burnout this summer/year than I’m used to—and I think it’s because I’ve been paying a lot more attention to my feelings and needs than I used to. (A lot of them have to do with understanding and “unmasking” my autism. For example, see my post “Speaking Less, Sparkling More” and “On Taking My Own Needs Seriously.”)

It’s (not) funny: last summer I posted about my grand intentions to practice “My Feelings Matter” in the midst of the extra parenting challenges of summertime. Hah! I didn’t yet know that practicing “my feelings matter,” for someone like me, is a pretty straight line to burnout.

That doesn’t mean I should just go back to masking, over-coping, overcompensating, overexerting myself, and thus living in a chronic state of low-grade burnout. I want to raise emotionally healthy kids who have an emotionally healthy and truly present mom!

No, I think the solution is to let the burnout happen, as far as I can. Let it burn down my structures of over-coping so that I can build new, more sustainable structures for my life instead.

I’m still very much in the midst of that process. I can’t just utterly stop functioning, so I’m letting small fires blaze up here and there instead.

Often they take the form of my being less interpersonally responsive, because my need for inner attending is so great. I may seem weirdly quiet or antisocial even, compared to my previous, very effortful social mask. I talk much less, and I pause much more before responding.

And when my beloved husband and kids are being so freaking loud that I’m about to lose my mind, I drop what I’m doing and go outside.

Here was one brilliant act recently, born out of desperation: I dragged a bunch of boxes out of a closet, put down a blanket and pillow in it, and declared it my official hidey-hole for solitude and writing. Ahhhhhhh. It’s amazing! (But next I need to rig up some kind of interior lock for it, because my four year old keeps busting in.)

Wish me luck as I keep finding my way through the blessed fires of burnout.

River Roundup

Section posts since last time

🪷Serenity Splashes

a poem on feeling burnt out & down-and-out

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I'm down like a candle
   burning too long.
My mind feels melty;
   my will's not strong
enough to stand up 
   for what I need.
I'm a puddly hot mess.
   Let me be.
      Let me be.

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Yes, they gave you life,
  but they treated you with scorn
while pretending it was love.
  And you--confused, forlorn--
tried hard to play along
  and dodge their blasts of blame.
Now it's your turn to win--
  by forfeiting their game.

a poem for a loved one who’s had a hard path

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Little indigo bunting, 
  with your blues deep and bright,

you've journeyed hard and far.

Your song has survived
   rough storms and dark nights.

Carry on, like the hero you are.

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May I be my own witness--

notice more, govern less--

not censoring how I feel,

but holding me through what's real.

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I’m already on a rugged climb:
Healing Mountain’s steep and rough.
But sometimes I’m too tired to try.
These days, the going’s extra tough.

Each gust of wind just knocks me down,
where prickly self-doubt shrubs are thick.
But for today, somehow I’ve found
compassion as a walking stick.

reflections on codependency & rejection sensitivity

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Your thin skin, so rejection-prone,
   is not actually my own
emergency to manage.
   I cannot heal your damage,
and I only harm me
   by trying to be your sunscreen.

Some philosophical reflections for you today…

I used to think of “ego” as basically an inner control freak.

My ego mind, bound up in identity and conditions, cares very much what other people think of me and how things go.

By contrast, when I can access the broader perspective of mindfulness, I can simply observe my experience in the moment, with curiosity and openness. Ahhhh—so much calmer.

Or, in verse form:

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Ego cares how things go.
Big mind just rides the flow.

  Ambition wants to get things done,
  then Stress and Violence join the fun,
    and Ego tells a tale of woe
    because it cares how things go.

Big mind feels, but makes no claim;
observes, but does not play, the game.

-- "E" from my "Alphabet Meditation Verses"

Now, however, my view of ego has become more nuanced.

Here’s my current working model:

Yes, ego is a control freak—but not just out of arbitrary backwardness or “natural depravity” (a brilliantly hilarious phrase in The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins).

Ego is the mind’s social defense system. It’s what develops during the socialization of childhood and adolescence, as we leave behind the simple creature-level existence of playing, moving, and feeling, and we begin self-consciously shaping our presentation to others in social self-defense.

But that’s only the emotionally healthy childhoods.

In childhoods with insecure parental attachment and other sorts of developmental trauma, children have to start developing egos—social self-defense systems—much earlier than they naturally would.

They learn to carefully shape their presentation to others (most of all, their parents/family) to maximize their chances of getting needs met and to minimize their chances of receiving scorn and other abuse. So their egos become supercharged with deeply ingrained layers of hyper-responsibility, shame, blame, and other fun add-ins.

Those of us with these special Ego Plus subscriptions may require extra help for the work of shifting from ego’s “little mind” (for us it’s “little” as in young!) to the “big mind” perspective of mindfulness.

Specifically, the work involves engaging our “big mind” to re-parent our “little mind.”

Here’s an example from one of my recent-ish “Serenity Splash” poems:

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You’re clinging, nerves wringing,
to an illusion of control.

You can let go, little ego.
Take my hand. We're here and whole.  

Practicing this sort of self-soothing and self-coaching is being very helpful for me!

How’s your relationship with your mind’s “ego” going these days? 🩵

River Roundup

Recent section posts

🏝️Book Beach

“I’m trying to inch my way back toward more organization and intentionality with reading…because books feed my soul.”

🪷Serenity Splashes

See full posts for my audio recordings, in-the-notebook photos, and featured photo captions.

For all survivors

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My dear, what happened to you was wrong
   and not your fault in any way.
The shame of it does not belong
   to you. You're free to grow away.

a message to my younger self on codependency and boundaries

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You dash around your loved ones' wounded hearts,
hoping to staunch their spills of blood in time--

but your bandages can't mend their inner harm,
and meanwhile you are burning out your light.

Stop.

No amount of self-abandonment
on your part can heal their woundedness.

The best way you can love them is to tend
yourself and what's on your side of the fence.

simplified reflections on this growth process

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"Overfunctioning"
   was my middle name
(except when I burned out--
   that's when it became
"underfunctioning").
   Now I claim the grace 
of "natural functioning":
   my body sets my pace.

haiku poetry for my fellow religious trauma survivors

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Like a tamed, trained horse,
pleasing other people was
what we were shaped for. 

      spirits broken,
      pain unspoken

At last, we broke free.
Now we're running our own ways
in weird, wild glory.

     Come and join us:
     chase what's joyous.

reflections in honor of Pride Month

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What boxes have you 
  broken yourself
     to fit into?

Perhaps a dull gray
  closet, when your
     heart was rainbow-hued?

I broke myself for altars,
  pews, and good-girl plaques.

Now I break the boxes 
  to keep myself intact.

Here’s a model/schema I made up recently, putting together similar terms from different contexts, that is helping me understand myself better.

(1) Overfunctioning

I got this term from the excellent book Who Deserves Your Love by KC Davis. She writes:

“Someone who overfunctions in relationships is constantly reaching over that boundary line to take responsibility for things that are not their responsibility…

“Boundaries are about allowing us to give in ways that don’t harm ourselves or others and allow us to show up for people authentically.

“Overfunctioning isn’t about other people but about a lack of internal boundaries.”

Oof. I felt/feel like that pretty much sums up my life so far, especially in my growing-up years. It’s like I emerged into the world as a carefully honed cornucopia of people-pleasing, codependency, lack of boundaries, masking, and overfunctioning. I’ve done a lot of healing work and growth, but I still have a long way to go.

I also think that the concept of overfunctioning probably applies to all late-diagnosed, high-masking neurodivergent people—all those who have been straining all along to seem normal and fit into the mainstream work/school schedule, while actually having different needs from the majority.

So I’m trying to stop overfunctioning—pushing past my boundaries and needs to do what others want me to or what I think I’m supposed to.

With my kids, this mostly looks like stopping myself from doing things for them that I’ve mindlessly done for years because I “could” and because it was slightly harder to require them to do it for themselves. It’s not fun—we have enough meltdowns around here without adding extra disruptions to routine—but it does seem like the best path forward.

And I do have a handy, if nonideal, motivator for this practice: burnout!

That leads me to the next item in the schema:

(2) Underfunctioning

KC Davis uses the term “underfunctioning” to describe those who, in contrast to people who are overfunctioning in relationships, fail to “take ownership of the responsibilities on [their] side of the boundary line.” In other words, they let the overfunctioners do most of the work.

But I am applying the term “underfunctioning” instead to burnout—what happens when overfunctioners push too hard for too long and then just crash out. For example, they may enter a depression in which they can’t get out of bed.

I go through mild episodes of burnout pretty regularly. This is not surprising, given my strong pattern of overfunctioning. (I did have some major, really bad burnout crises when I was much younger, when I didn’t even know that self-care was a thing.)

I’m in a burnout phase right now, actually. So I’m trying to lean into it and use it as an opportunity to help myself correct for the ways in which I’ve been overfunctioning. For example, at this moment, I’m sitting outside on the deck (having taken a day off of work), utterly ignoring the huge amount of housework needing done. It will get dealt with sooner or later. Or it won’t. But I’m not going to break myself to do it.

“I cannot break myself any longer for you.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Burnout/“I’m not doing it” mode are not the ideal place to dwell forever, of course. So what is? What is the alternative to either “overfunctioning” or “underfunctioning”?

Once I asked that question, the answer was right there:

(3) Natural Functioning

I think I originally got this phrase, which I’ve been using for years, from Thich Nhat Hanh (in some book or talk that I cannot now locate), to describe the dynamic of living with mindfulness according to the natural functioning of one's body and mind, rather than by egoic effort to control things.

It can be hard for the ego-mind—especially under the influence of trauma and cultural programming—to not try to be in control of things. (That’s what my songs and “Serenity Splash” poems are for!) I find comfort in these words of Thich Nhat Hanh:

“All we need to be responsible for is the present moment. Only the present is within our reach. To care for the present is to take care for the future.”

Natural functioning is inhabiting the present moment, noticing your feelings and consulting your intuition. It’s letting your body and feelings guide you from moment to moment; it’s following the lead of your instincts, intuition, and intelligence.

It’s exactly what my evangelical Christian upbringing—and perhaps the larger Western culture in general—said not to do. Don’t trust your feelings; don’t “feed the flesh”; don’t heed your own wisdom. Trust instead to the great patriarchal authority, whose almighty wisdom you must never question, no matter how evil and absurd it may seem. It turns out, that’s a great way to keep masses of people (especially women) under control, but it’s not a great way to live a satisfying life as a thoughtful individual.

I’m so thankful I’ve found my way to learning to exist in a new way—neither overfunctioning nor underfunctioning, but functioning at my own natural pace, which is unique and ever-fluctuating.

River Roundup

Section posts from the past week

🖋️Writer’s Waters

🪷Serenity Splashes

Slow down, body, we're okay--

no need for fight or flight right now.

To let our wise-mind lead the way,

let's take our time to hear its sound.

You're a hero blazing trails,

sometimes through thorns and heavy rains.

What feels hard is not your fault.

These are your hero's-journey pains.

   Compassion and respect to you,

   my friend--and may your sky show blue.

Worn and teary,
 torn and weary:
need to rest--
 read and nest.

Unless I ask,
  please don't presume
    to tell me what I need.
We're not the same,
  so you do you,
    and I'll look after me.

You 
   were never the problem.

Their love 
   was impossibly far

because 
   it was already broken.

You 
   were loveable—

     and still are.

I was thinking recently about rules—not the official kind, but the subtle, internal kind: the unspoken rules we strain to meet, often without even realizing.

There are rules we make up for ourselves and then think we have to follow them. (Maybe this is just a neurodivergent thing, I don’t know, but most people I know do it!) For example, I’ll tell myself that I have to get the laundry done today, then feel discouraged when I’m not able to get it done. Meanwhile, my nine-year-old (“Twin 1”) has a rule that she won’t eat a “breakfast” food like cereal unless it is literally breakfast time.

These kinds of rules can be limiting—but easily helped by self-inquiry: “what am I thinking and why?”

A much bigger problem is the kind of rules we internalize from the conditions of our growing-up years.

It’s my understanding that children who grow up with harsh requirements for their behavior live in a chronic state of stress from straining to meet those rules—and this stress continues even after they’re grown up. For some people it looks like chronic feelings of shame and anxiety, while for others it can look like depression and despair.

The work of healing, then, involves identifying those rules we had to strain to meet, noticing when they show up in our minds, and then choosing new rules to live by.

I think I especially tried so hard growing up to follow the rules of my church/religion as well as of my neurotypical world (and of my parents, who were also trying hard to follow those rules)—to this day I’m still sorting out what unspoken rules I’m still trying to follow.

An example of a new, chosen “rule” for me is “I’m allowed to not be perfect”—calling out and contradicting my old, internalized rule that I must try to be (essentially) perfect.

For a close friend of mine, “I don’t have to not be fat” would be a helpful rewrite to her internalized rule from childhood that she must not be fat.

For my husband, “I don’t have to hold everything together” would be a counter-rule to his ingrained sense that he must keep it all together.

What are some internal rules you still tend to live by—that you don’t actually have to follow anymore?

My poems below offer more reflections on this theme.

River Roundup

Section posts from the past week

🏝️Book Beach

🌀Divergence Deeps

🪷Serenity Splashes

a rap poem

Perfect
   is what
      you don't have to be
         anymore.
The one
   this life
      that you're living
         is for
is you!
   Beautiful human
      you are--
messes and all--
   your molecules came
      from a star.

a song I’m working on for self-soothing

This part is hard,
but you’re finding your way.
Compassion to you.
Things will be okay.

on mental health, unmasking, and growing up

The rules 
    we learn to follow
        follow us

and sometimes chase us down
    with shame 
        and stress.

"Keep it together." 
    "Smile."
        "Don't show pain."

The shadows 
    of our early rules
        remain,

darkening our minds 
    and moods,
        until

we learn to see 
    and rewrite them
        at will.

The weight you've been trying to hold
  from the way you were treated and told
you'd better shape up, instead
  of being supported and led--
this burden's still keeping you bound.
  It's okay to start setting it down.

looking back at my growing-up years in church

All those times I thought I was wrong

  and sinful for wanting to run and hide

from the pious, pushy, worshipping throng--

  I just had different needs inside.

perspective reminders to my “little mind” (ego)

Little mind, life is not
  a puzzle to solve,
nor a mountain 
  to finally climb.

It's a sandbox you're in,
  with the sand you are given,
each moment 
  at a time.

One morning recently, I managed to get up before everyone else (thanks to my dog Papaya waking me up—and to nobody waking me up during the night!). In the quiet, I could actually hear myself think, as I fixed myself some coffee and oatmeal.

I heard a song floating through my mind, probably sparked by some trivial connection. It was a song called “The Little Things” by Irish-folk group The Gothard sisters, in which they sing the famous Gandhi quote:

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

That led me to wondering what change I most want, that I’m trying to be.

I want a lot of changes in the world, of course, but very few of them are things I am currently equipped to actively address. I deeply admire people who are working hard to rescue children and others in need, to help animals and the planet, to effect political and social progress, to solve diseases and AI-related conundrums, and so much more. I love that they are being the change in those areas.

But as for me, I wondered, what change am I trying to be, in my life path as it is right now? (What would be your own answer, for your life right now?)

The answer that came up for me was mental health.

Of all the changes I wish to see in the world, that’s the one that feels most crucial for me personally to live.

I don’t have any kind of mental health-related job; but in my own life and personal growth, I’m working hard to develop and spread better mental health.

I’m learning to treat myself, my children, and others kindly—and to support our diverse nervous systems.

I’m grateful for that clarity about my values and my path!

In keeping with that self-chosen mission, I want to share a list I made recently in my journal, of things that help me regulate my nervous system—that is, to calm down and re-ground my mind. Making this list was an act of support to my own mental health!

Things that help me get calm and grounded:

• solitude (above all)—in which I’m not being perceived and my thoughts are not being interrupted by other people talking to me

• sitting or walking outside, especially in sunshine, extra-especially in woods

• taking a shower or especially a bath, extra-especially by candlelight

• being around animals, especially snuggling with my dogs (and sometimes cats)

• writing, especially a poem, then journaling, then projects & blog posts

• listening to audiobooks and music in my headphones

• knitting

• reading

• organizing my books and notebooks

• “puttering”—gently restoring order to my living space

• resting—especially lying facedown

• “nesting”—making myself a bed-nest (with my satchel and something to eat & drink) and staying in it for a while

• “book-making”—printing out stuff I’ve written and cutting it to size with scissors, and attaching it into my current notebook/s where relevant

• eating spicy chips—I think the spiciness and crunchiness help me come back to awareness of my body.

• drinking cold water/beverage or hot tea

• voice memo-ing or talking to my close friend/s

• (sometimes) scrolling Instagram, especially reading funny posts (such as by @iamthirtyaf)

• (sometimes) hanging out with my husband (when we’re not stressed!)

• (sometimes) exercise—such as stretching, walking, dance-cardio, and calisthenics—oh and especially swimming, when I get to

What are some things that help you regulate your nervous system? Your list may involve other sorts of things like:

• smelling incense or perfume

• going for a drive

• drawing

• meditating

• being loud and silly (that one applies to my husband and kids…unfortunately for my own quiet-loving nervous system!)

I’d love to hear what works for you!

River Roundup

Section posts from the past week

🌀Divergence Deeps

When setting up this latest new section, I accidentally sent out this post to everyone, instead of restricting it to section-only. I aim to fix that for future posts. If you do want to receive notifications of new posts for this section (and/or other sections), go to your subscriptions management page and select which sections you want to receive.

🪷Serenity Splashes

verse-reflection on relating to anxiety

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You’re clinging, nerves wringing,
to an illusion of control.

You can let go, little ego.
Take my hand. We're here and whole.

a sonnet about mindfulness and healing

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Ego is a puppet of tomorrow,
chasing phantom safety without end,
trying to own what it can only borrow,
not realizing its power is pretend.

A creature who is real lives in the moment,
navigating through experience,
allowing feelings, so the mind stays open
to take in facts and choose next acts with sense.

It's not poor ego's fault it's so deluded.
It's like a child in the wild alone:
it needs a bigger mind to help and soothe it--
one who's real and now, not puppet-sewn.

For those who grew in fear instead of care
now must learn to care for fear still there.

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You don't have to bully yourself anymore.
It's not your fault life is so hard.
Being kind to yourself, as though to a friend,
will serve you better by far.

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The hungry mouth of suffering

needs compassion

        on compassion

          on compassion.

One major aspect of my growth journey is learning to take my own needs seriously—enough to apply my best intelligence to the project of accommodating them.

Maybe most of us are still learning to relate to our needs this way. Unless you grew up in the care of emotionally mature parents who showed you how to relate to your needs with matter-of-fact consideration, you are probably somewhere on this same journey with me.

Part of this growing-up work is understanding that our needs are not merely optional. We really do need sleep, food, water, functioning bodies, shelter, income, connection with others, etc. Beyond those obvious and universal needs, we also really do need the particular things that help our particular nervous systems stay regulated. These vary from person to person (exercise/rest, organized living space/creative messiness, quiet/background noise, solitude/social time, etc.), but they’re still critical; they’re not just quirks or idiosyncrasies.

I was recently reading about Temple Grandin, and she seems to me like a role model in this area. Her nervous system reacted strongly against human touch, but she still needed the calming pressure of being held—and this led her to eventually create her squeeze machine. Of course, she did have the advantage of resources that not all of us have, but I think it’s amazing that she took her needs so seriously that she created something entirely new in pursuit of accommodating them.

By contrast, I learned from an early age to ignore my needs and feelings. My whole existence was a carefully honed performance of untroubledness for the benefit of my family and church. It wasn’t even just a performance—I became that role. “I am one who is fine and good”: that was my identity—until I just couldn’t manage to do it anymore.

So it makes sense that for a long time after I learned about autism, I thought I couldn’t be autistic because “I didn’t have sensory needs.” Ha! Of course I didn’t think I had sensory needs: that would require treating my feelings like they mattered.

Now that I’ve finally started doing that, here I am with my noise-cancelling headphones and sunglasses indoors, hiding from people who might interrupt my precious trains of thought, struggling with the itchy seams of my pants…and so on. I majorly have sensory needs. It turns out, everyone has them—that’s what it means to have a body! Some of us are just more high-maintenance than others.

Here’s what I have been learning about my own particular needs lately: I have a real, valid, sensory need for quiet and solitude—uninterrupted mindspace in which to think, create, and write.

What helps me own up to that fact is the belief that it’s not my fault that my current life circumstances do not accommodate this need well—but it is my job to keep trying to find ways to accommodate it.

I think that starts with taking my need for quiet, solitariness, and writing time much more seriously. It’s certainly difficult, being a mother of young kids, but this is my challenge and my path. It’s my practice, my koan, my question to live.

Plus, the more I keep trying to accommodate my own needs along with theirs, the more I will teach and show them how to do the same.

Some further thoughts on the how of this:

• I want to stop thinking of my need for solitude as optional—or, worse, something to apologize for…which I’m kind of endlessly doing, when it comes to my perceived failures of staying in touch with people.

• I want to proactively and ongoingly look for ways to meet this need, both externally (such as trying to make new regular times for writing and solitude) and internally (by cultivating a richer inner life and practicing mental boundaries more—that is, detaching emotionally from others and attaching closer to myself). I know that writing is my #1 tool here…so I need way more writing!

  • One thing I’m trying right now toward that end is the Story a Day in May challenge. I’ve only gotten one story partly written so far…but that’s better than zero! And I’m glad to have the push. Anyone want to join me? (I asked my faithful writer friend to join and he said he’s in! How’s it going so far, Josh?)

  • I’ve also found my way to the Finch self-care app, where you can set self-care goals and get little rewards. If any of you use it and want to be “friends” on there, let me know!

What specific-to-you needs have you been dismissing or ignoring, instead of taking seriously and seeking ways to accommodate? May we keep finding ways to accommodate our needs so we can be the best versions of ourselves. 🌻

River Roundup

Section posts from the past week

☔️ Parenting Puddles

“So the content doesn’t matter when my kids are melting down: what they need is co-regulation, until they’re feeling steady again and ready to function. Then we can calmly discuss the content of the meltdown.”

🪷Serenity Splashes

a fun poem for Earth Day (belatedly)

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Winter does its duty,
then spring shakes its booty
till summer's indolence--
then fall restores sense.

I'm grateful for the chance
to join this earthy dance.

a reminder for my anxious mind

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It’s not my job 
  to control how things go
or to keep people happy.
  I can’t, anyhow.

It is my job
  to attend to the needs
of my body and mind
  in the here and now. 

on looking past the hills to see the mountains

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Welcome, new hero.
  You have the right
    to your own choices:
      it's your life!

Pushing back 
  against the ones
    who held you back
      is just step one:

now you step 
  up to the throne
    and rule your life
      like it's your own.

on creating

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Whenever you go to create,

look inside you, not outside--

not what others say and make--

follow what lights up your mind.

“So many secure facilities [to break into], so little time.”

— The Arctic Incident, book 2 of the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer

When I reread that facetious line recently, it occurred to me that that common phrase might be useful for a deeper purpose.

“So many _____, so little time”: how would you fill in the blank?

Keep the gleeful spirit of the phrase—chuckle evilly, grin with crazy eyes, or rub your hands together in delicious anticipation.

What is the object of your eagerness?

Your answer (or answers) can direct your attention to your interests, reminding you that they exist and that your time for engaging in them is not infinite.

In this way, the question activates the motivating power of scarcity and urgency in a positive direction—the direction of what truly interests and excites you.

For example, the first two things that jumped to my mind were “books to read” and “things to write.” (More serious and profound things, such as “moments with my kids to make the most of,” came a bit later and were farther from the gleeful tone.)

My husband might answer “estate sales to scout for cool antiques and hidden deals.” My friend would answer “languages to learn” and “animals to rescue.”

What’s your answer? Whatever it is, may you get some of it today! I’m off to try to get some writing and reading!!

River Roundup

Section posts from the past week

(formerly “Sunday Springs”—I’m changing the name because I can’t always get it done on/by Sunday)

☔️Parenting Puddles

“The key that clicked for me is that I can be firm and authoritative without harming them. Just because some adults are cruel and abusive to children doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to be both authoritative and kind.”

🪷Serenity Splashes

See full posts for my audio recordings of the poems, plus notebook snapshots and photo captions.

a chant

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Slow down.
  I'm okay.
Let my feelings
  point the way.

Life is hard,
  but I can choose
how to meet
  each moment's news.

another chant for healing-help

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It's okay to stay in here.
Let boundaries counter fear.

   I don't have to leave myself
   to placate everyone else.
 
      That was life before.
      Now my life is more.

   I'm learning to protect
   my needs and self-respect--

to stay on my own side
and in my core abide.

What I’m learning lately

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It's okay to stay inside my shell--
to be quiet, still, and close to myself.
I don't have to constantly spell
out my status for everyone else.

Like a turtle, I can wait
with quiet as my shield and home
until I'm ready to relate,
calmer for the time alone.

a reminder

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Good thing I don’t have to defend 
myself in your esteem. 

My happiness does not depend 
on what you think of me.

a poem in English & French (just for fun)

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There is always change
in the world outside,
so look to arrange
my world inside. 

~~
Il y a toujours du changement
dans le monde à l’extérieur,
alors regarde l’arrangement 
de mon monde à l’intérieur.

Last week, during the kids’ school spring break, we went to Pipestem Resort State Park, one of the WV state parks I hadn’t yet visited. It’s lovely, situated atop the mountain ridge of the Bluestone River gorge. The views are spectacular, especially the sunsets. Best of all (according to us), they have horses for trail rides! We fell hard…in love, that is!

On the downside, I had a cold all week, and I didn’t get/manage to do much writing or reading, so I felt pretty drained. It feels like that’s also been my general state during this always-difficult season of winter and early spring.

So now I’m trying to take proactive steps to help rejuvenate my inner Writer, including, now, doing one of my seasonal “splashings” posts (which I tend to forget about until I truly need them!) on what I’ve been reading and writing lately.

Reading lately

• (re-reading, for fun/mind candy) the Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer (audio, narrated by Nathaniel Parker, through my library via the Libby app) — love

• the Dreamers trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater (audio, narrated by Will Patton, through my library via the Libby app) — love

• How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids by Jancee Dunn (audio, narrated by the author, via Libby) — love

• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin — (audio, narrated by Jesse Martin, via Libby) (then I went and bought a copy of the physical book to reread and underline) — LOVED

• just started today: Self-compassion by Kristin Neff (audio, narrated by Xe Sands, via Libby) — loving it so far

• recently started but will probably give up on: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga (audio) — so far, the philosophy this book is apparently proposing sounds ridiculous, and I don’t have time for that right now.

Writing lately

• revising my novel…it’s being a struggle, as I wrote about in my post “The Quagmire of Novel Revising (in which I am currently stuck)”

• journaling, poems, & blog posts as I can

That’s pretty much it…my inner Writer needs much more. I’ll keep trying.

I’ve also been doing little “Writing & reading log” notes on Substack when I can, aiming to do them nightly. I quite enjoy doing them, and I actually wish everyone would post periodic notes about what they’re reading and writing/creating—I’m always interested!!!

So please share with me, dear reader: what are you reading and writing/creating lately?

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. What are they thinking about? I wondered. Meanwhile 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:

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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!