Intuition

 *For a long while, writing was too overwhelming, so my therapist suggested I try voice recordings. This is my first attempt to transfer a voice recording to blog format.

Sept 16, 2020

Hello Intuition 

It's been a while since I listened to you. I've been driven by survival. Slowing down has not felt possible. Being present with myself, with my children, with my friends, none of that has felt possible. 

When I try, I can't slow down. I can't bring myself to be still and be present with them. I think it's because I haven't been present with myself. 

I value being present with others and I don't value being present with myself. I am trying to change that. I hope that as I begin to listen and hear the messages of my intuition, that it will become easier. That the messages that haven't been heard will find a voice and that I will be able to hear that voice. 

On what we've lost

9/27/20 

We went to the park where I used to have Tinkergarten classes. I thought it would be a good "pandemic park" because there isn't a playground close by, or really much of anything other than green space and walking trails. I forgot about the shelter nearby, which was hosting a massive birthday party. Between that and the other small groups of people gathered on the hills and walking on the trails, I've never seen so many people there. How could I have not realized? I've never tried to guess which park would be most deserted for a Saturday night picnic before, especially during a pandemic. 

The anxiety was instant. How was I going to keep my kids away from the people, the lake, and the poison ivy? They were uninterested in food, preferring instead to run (toward the people, the poison ivy, or the lake). 

I couldn't do it, but Caleb took over, graciously navigating the hazards and allowing me to sit and eat my dinner on the picnic blanket alone. 

I looked out over the park and wondered if it was really just over a year ago that I was welcoming and inviting families I didn't know to gather on a tarp and read a story before launching into that week's activity. It was then that it struck me, how much we've lost. 

We're not good at mourning or grief as a society. We're excellent at avoidance, numbing out, putting on a fresh face until we get home. And we've only been home lately. 

It's always felt like work, good work, important work, but a lot of work for me to talk to people I don't know, to connect with others in a crowd of strangers. Both my parents are outgoing and effortlessly launch into conversations with new people, seemingly without any racking their brain for a good topic or overthinking their first line. When I was little, I assumed this was just something all adults were capable of, but it turns out that it still is hard for me to think of what to say, even though I desperately want to connect. 

Now it's a pandemic, so in addition to overthinking, I am trying to keep myself and my kids 6 feet away or more plus evaluating what the risk is of striking up a conversation with someone who isn't masked outside. It's just easier to stay quiet or only talk to my kids. 

It was within this very year, from January through the first week of March that I gathered in that same spot to take a Tinkergarten class that I wasn't leading, meeting families without having practiced their names to try to memorize parent and child each week. 

How could so much have changed in such a short time? This is a rhetorical question of course. I know how. I watched it unfold, with much anxiety. Too much anxiety, or maybe just the right amount for the situation.

Pandemic day 106

July 14

WHERE TO BEGIN?

I woke up at six am with my littlest. These days, even though we keep their sound machines on blast, they tend to wake each other up even one is still tired and woke up three times in a night. So when the cry blared through the house at 6:00am, I bolted as much as one can bolt from a deep sleep at 6am to get him and hold him.

It was too early for him to wake up, but he wasn't going back to sleep, so outside we went. He tends to be very sad when he wakes up to early, but if I can sneak him into the backyard, his mood improves and he is less likely to wake up Sammy. So we had a nice time letting our chickens out, except they were out of food, so I lugged the 40 lb bag of feed out there and then proceeded to dump half of it on the ground instead of their chicken feeder at 6:11am. Oops. We watered our garden and had a generally nice time, minus the mosquitos, then went back inside and met Sammy as he woke up at 6:37.

Last week when our three year old came down with all the usual cold symptoms: runny and stuffy nose leading to congestion that makes you cough, I panicked. I called the pediatrician and was told that since he hadn't been around anyone who had tested positive for COVID, they did not think he needed to be tested... despite the fact that our state is now considered in "uncontrolled spread". We took him to get tested at the county and were told we would have results in 3 days. Today is day 5 and we still have no results. Nothing posted on the patient portal, no response to voicemails. After talking to daycare, they said the were not particularly concerned about his symptoms, so we have continued to send him for the three days per week he is there. We all have the cold now.

A week and a half ago, I ordered myself some hats that don't have sports logos on them since I do not like sports but do like wearing a hat when I walk. I also ordered a small new toy. Still has not arrived, tracking has not been updated. I run to the mailbox every 30 minutes all day to see if it will arrive. I am thinking about placing a new order for the same or different toys just to see if it will get here faster.

We had a follow-up appointment with a nurse practitioner from the allergist. The week before the lockdown, our youngest had a multi-system reaction to eggs. We had a video appointment with the allergist a few weeks ago, followed by bloodwork (generally was awful, they dug around in his arm trying to find the vein for so long that he stopped crying which was the worst feeling), followed by a phone call that said "yep, he is really allergic to eggs, call us back in a few months or a year." During that last phone call I asked so many questions that they offered us another video appointment with the nurse. Normally, I don't care at all if an appointment is running late, but when you are home alone and have one kid set up with rare screen time alone in his room and the other set up with puzzles and other quiet gadgets at the table with you, a delay of 5 minutes is very meaningful. The answers to my questions made me wonder if this was a place that handled very many food allergies.

This all in one morning, on day 106. 

Imperfect beginnings: an introduction

 I was listening to a Brené Brown podcast where she was talking about the article Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful. 

One of the things she or it mentioned was that now that we have hit six months of crisis, we have depleted all of our reserves and we must find a new source of strength. The paradox (I think that's the right word?) is that we can't do that until we have acknowledged how hard it has been so far. 

You may find my writing now less precise, but I am giving it an imperfect try and trying not to overthink it because frankly I don't have the bandwidth. Like many of you that I have talked to, my head is full of fog most of the time, especially when I try to write. I make and ignore more typos than I ever have before. 

Another thing Brené mentions is that when we are struggling with something, we are rarely struggling alone. She mentions that phenomenon when the one student bravely asks the question and there is relief written across the faces of 90% of the class who also had the same question. So here, in this space, I will attempt to share honestly how things have been, how things are, in the hope that I will make others and myself feel less alone. This will most certainly delve into topics not usually "aired", and that is intentional. 

I nearly always wait before sharing things, wait for it to not be so fresh. But in these unprecedented times (I know we are all sick of this phrase, yet here we are), I don't think we have that luxury. I think the only way for us to collectively move forward is through radical vulnerability about how hard things are. We are seeking deep connection with others, having had most day to day connections removed or severely altered. So let's begin.