On returning

Hello friends.

I'm not quite sure what to say. It's been so long since I've shared my adventures (such as they are) with you. One moment I was busy blogging and sharing my goals and projects, and the next moment I was closing my computer and stepping back. It just didn't feel right anymore, and I'll tell you why. 

Things sucked.

Now before you kindly reassure me that I'm so lucky to have had the time off from the stress and chaos of full-time school or that I am blessed to have the experience of staying home with my daughters, please know that I know all this. And in between all the times my year off from school has sucked, I've loved the time I've spent with my children, and the quiet hours at home while they're at school. But this doesn't change how I've felt this past year, and I don't want to brush these feelings aside anymore.  

I had taken a break from my midwifery program for a few different reasons, but mostly it was about taking a year or so to become my healthiest self. Midwifery is demanding, parenting is demanding, and I wasn't getting any younger. I was out of shape, in pain, struggling with my moods, and in need of a reset of sorts. I believed that I owed it to myself to spend some time getting healthier in order to both meet the demands of life and to enjoy the hell out of it.

But then life got hard and I wasn't ready for it. There I was, with all this time in front of me, and yet I couldn't seem to find a single moment with which to devote to the changes I knew I needed to make to my life. Yes I was working and spending a lot of time with my girlies, but I also had a lot of freedom that just brimmed with possibilities. I would go to bed at night with big goals and plans for the next day, but then the next day would come and nothing. All I felt was unmotivated, grumpy, and still out of shape, in pain, and struggling with my moods. Nothing seemed to change. So I'd just take a nap and see if tomorrow was better. And it wasn't.

Looking back, there were many reasons why I felt so low this year. It was a shock to my system to go from a hectic midwifery placement to life at home and I needed more for an adjustment period than I realized. I was struggling with Alyce and all of her new eight-year-old needs. I'm not the greatest at self-motivation. And also--the biggest reason--change is fucking hard.  

But here are a few things that I've learned about myself this year:

• It's dangerous to spend too much time on my own. I am one of those tricky extroverted introverts and if I'm not careful I'll stay home in a quiet house for too many days in a row. Do you know what I do while I'm home by myself (besides obsessively clean)? I dwell. I sit on the couch and dwell. And that's not good for anyone. I have the kind of job where I work by myself, but even leaving the house to go work in a coffee shop or library forces me out a good rut. And friends--I need more time with my friends. They soothe my soul.
• I need get more exercise. I've surprised myself lately with regular walks and I'm always in a better and more productive place after these excursions. Fresh air + moving my body cures so many ills. 
• I need structure. Like I REALLY need structure. Cue my husband rolling his eyes because all he ever does is tell me this.
• I'm a good parent. While Alyce might find it terribly annoying that I'm around all the time, I know deep down that she's needed me this year. Shira has been overjoyed by my omnipresence and it's nothing short of magic to be loved that hard. 
• I need to be okay with doing hard things. I started the year with so many big goals and then I crumbled under the pressure because it was difficult. It isn't easy to quit smoking or to change how you eat. But I'm starting to see that life won't fall apart just because things get hard. I have to believe that I'm stronger than I realize. 
• I really just want to be a midwife. How wonderful that I've taken this year off school and realized just how badly I want to be a midwife!  
• It's okay to take a year off and hate it.

So why am I back? Because I think I'm feeling better. I have four months left before I return to school and I'm ready--really ready--to move forward. Spring is in the air, there's sunshine on my face, and I'm ready to go. I've decided to show up here and again and share my days and efforts and challenges with you all over again. Maybe you are too, and we can do this together.

Get ready for goals you guys. 

Be well!

xo

When complicated is better than simple

There was a mum sitting next to me at Starbucks this morning and I couldn't help but listen in as she spoke with her three year old daughter. I was initially drawn to the harsh tones of her voice, scolding her daughter for running in the through the coffee shop, for running back and forth between tables, for doing everything, well, like a three year old. She told her daughter some version of "no" about a hundred times in the span of ten minutes, and I wanted so badly to run over to her and tell her yes. Yes, you can twirl around. Yes, you can climb on all the chairs. Yes, colour anywhere on the page.

I'm not sharing this with you not because I want to shame this mother or judge her or put her impatient parenting on display. She was impatient with her daughter, but so was I not ten minutes before when Alyce starting pouting before going to school. We're human, all of us. In addition to her impatience, this mum was also kind, made her daughter laugh, and the two of them were clearly in love. I think I'm going to get the following parenting advice tattooed somewhere on my body: It's complicated. Relax.

Since I'm kind of afraid of tattoos, I'll just write it here one more time: Parenting: It's complicated. Relax.

I've written a lot over the past couple of years about how much I struggle with with hard parts of parenting. I love, I mean really love, being a parent. I am blessed beyond measure with my two daughters and if we're lucky we'll have more one day. I am also blessed beyond measure to have my own mother, who more than anything has taught me to love my own children with utter abandon. (That's the two us above, circa 1980. Isn't she gorgeous?)  As parents we are gifted with pieces of advice that aim to remind us to take a breath and to be gentle on ourselves, and while I mostly embrace these reminders, there is one piece of advice that has always irked me.

I hate it when people try to tell me to keep things simple. Keep it simple, they often say, it doesn't have to be complicated. I get it, I really do. At the end of the day we just love our kids and that is enough. But here's the thing: parenting is complicated! There are so many feelings that come and go during a single day of parenting that simple is simply out of the question. Alyce alone has roughly 6,389 emotions in a single day, which competes neck and neck with my own variations. Simple? Rarely. Complicated? Always. If I don't acknowledge that parenting means feeling both impatient and elated in the presence of my children, then my only other option is guilt, over not keeping my cool enough or rising above their crazy moods. Sure I'll accept that as the adult I should have fewer tantrums, but I can't rule them out completely. Life just isn't like that.

At the end of my life I will be grateful for the simple things.  I will remember the way it felt to hug Alyce every single morning after she crawls out of bed all warm and bed-headed. I will remember how much I loved breastfeeding Shira well into her third year (we all know this is going to happen). And I will never forget the way my whole body smiles when my family is together. But if we erase the complicated in favour of the simple, even if our intentions are good, we will lose something.

As a parent on any given day I will lose a little patience, dance in my kitchen, read twenty books, wish I had more time to myself, and be smothered in kisses. There is nothing simple about it, but I welcome it nonetheless.

On the depths of their emotions

We have a firm rule in our house, one that you might need in yours, too: stickers go on paper and people. Repeat with me: paper and people. Everybody: paper and people! You get the idea. If any of you have tried to scrape off a worn-in sticker from a nice stretch of hardwood floor or a freshly painted wall, you understand where I'm coming from. I have no interest in standing against the magic of stickers, but as with most things in life, boundaries are important.

For the most part the girls follow this rule but we do have missteps from time to time. I usually roll my eyes to the high heavens when I spot a misplaced sticker, but when I came across this yesterday I could only smile. I don't know where Alyce received the alphabet stickers, and I don't know when she escaped to her bedroom to stick them on her bedside table, but at some point in the past few days Alyce used rainbow letters to spell out the name of her best friend. A friend left behind at her old school in another town, but who is obviously never far away in her thoughts. 

I find myself constantly underestimating the emotional depth of children. Yes, Alyce and Shira bounce along a spectrum of emotion every day, jumping from feeling to feeling with almost a new one every minute. It would take only a short visit at our house to stand witness to the highs and lows of childhood. There is excitement over opening the paints, devastation over one sister's discovery of the other sister's hidden treasure, thoughtfulness in a moment when one recognizes the other is hurt and needs help, over-the-moon delight when I finally agree to a cup of hot chocolate. But it's the depths of these emotions that get me every time. 

I think many of my struggles as a parent to Alyce and Shira comes from not acknowledging how real these highs and lows feel to them. I grow frustrated, as I did this morning, over Alyce dragging her feet to choose a dress for school, but maybe I would be less so if I took a moment to remember how upset she was when she awoke from a nightmare this morning, how those raw feelings might still be lingering only thirty minutes later. Or maybe if I thought about how much joy she feels wearing an outfit crafted exclusively, if not quickly, by her. When Alyce feels sad about her new school, something she is feeling less and less these days, I need to remind myself that she misses her friend. Alyce is not a baby but a sensitive, loving, excited, joyful, and stubborn little girl whose feelings for her friends--or her toys or her favourite food--are as real as yours or mine. They can't be dismissed. I love my own friends deeply; so does she.

It helps me to remember these things. Parenting books are often so preoccupied with helping us through all the (very important) basics of food and sleep and safety that we're all at risk of forgetting how one of the greatest challenges and gifts of parenting your children is learning who they are, how they feel. I sometimes get so preoccupied with the details of care and how to manage these details within the organization of our larger family, that I forget that one of my most important jobs, and probably the most fun, is to watch. Just watch. 

The controlling perfectionist grown-up in me often ends up worrying about routine and habits and structure, all fine things in their place, but I hope I can remember more often that I can still parent from the background. It's such a balance, isn't it, to let our children feel these depths without trying to manage them? They need these depths, just like we do, to learn who they are in the world. They need to love their friends and feel sad about sisters colouring on the wrong paper and get angry over their mama saying, No, Alyce and Shira, we can't stay up and read anymore, it's bedtime. Just like I need to cry sometimes when my day juggling work and life is hard, or how I need to dance sometimes because I'm just so happy to be near my family.

How do you remember these things?

I just couldn't write what I wanted to write

I should have known that baking cookies would do it.

I've been quiet around here for the past month. Some of that has to do with our big move to Toronto, not an easy feat with two young children. (We say that a lot, don't we? That things are made more difficult with the addition of young children. It's true that little ones are pure chaos sometimes, and their schedules often make planning life a challenge, and their whining can drive you to madness. But I do want to come right out and declare that life is made infinitely better when you throw young children into the mix, and I wouldn't have it any other way.) I've been busy readjusting to how this new life fits. So far I'm happy with our choice.

I've also been busy teaching again, an online course at a nearby university, and this just makes life very full. I'm learning a lot as I reintroduce myself to my course after two years off, including how to run a course in between all the events of my days at home with the girls. It looks something like this: get up and return emails. Read some posts from the discussion forums. Make breakfast for starving children in my kitchen. Return another email. Take children on new city adventure. Eat a popsicle. Do a tiny bit of grading during Shira's nap. Unpack. Chase children around park. Tuck them in after dinner, collapse, and then peel myself off the couch to start actually working for the night. Rinse and repeat.

But I'm always busy. We're all always busy, yet we still find time to do the things we love. I love writing this blog. What's stopped me from finding the time hasn't been all this other stuff, busy as I am. I could post three times a week instead of five, or one time instead of three. There are always ways to readjust (and I'm already doing a lot of readjusting this month). Nope, I'm quiet because I'm afraid. I'm suddenly feeling exposed and vulnerable here on the internet. I love the internet, love it a lot, but all of a sudden I'm feeling awfully open. A big part of this comes from my return to teaching. I know some of my students have read my blog, and this kind of exposure is a first for me. I've always been an open person and it's translated into my style of teaching. When I teach in-person courses I learn about my students quickly, and they learn about me. I don't hide my love of cooking, or my enthusiasm for Sookie Stackhouse novels, or that my American husband just doesn't get the CBC. But my academic mentor always taught me to keep a distance from my students, even when you share parts of yourself as you teach. I remember when an undergraduate student asked her religion, and she emphatically explained that it was None Of Their Business. Her interaction with the inquiring student left a mark on me, because my mentor shared so many things with her students, even her home sometimes, inviting us over to share a meal or an extra lesson. But there was a line, she taught me, and it was critical. The space of the classroom, it seemed, had boundaries.

On this blog I write very explicitly about breastfeeding, my religion, how it feels when I lose my patience with my children, and the devastation I felt when I wasn't accepted into midwifery school. The space of my classroom has changed a lot from the days with my mentor. Of course blogs don't reveal everything. I am always choosing to tell a very particular story in my posts and details are overlooked (I hope, the very boring and the parts that involve another person's privacy). But when I write I'm not trying to deceive anyone, and at the same time I'm intending to share some very honest, and traditionally private, feelings and ideas. It's this kind of exposure that makes writing and reading blogs both so exciting and so overwhelming.

Teaching and blogging, at the same time, has forced me to think about what I want to share on my blog. As soon as I realized that students were reading I felt paralyzed, caught in the act, if you will. I would jump up to write a post, or be brainstorming in the shower, and instead of wondering how I would tell a story in a way that was honest and interesting, I was worried about how a student might think of me after reading it. I immediately began censoring myself. If I wanted to write a post about how much my breasts were hurting because my two year old was enjoying yet another renewed fascination with nursing every two hours, I held myself back. No one wanted their paper graded by someone who had just moments ago complained loudly about her breasts. Or if I wanted to write a post about postpartum depression, my own included, I withdrew the idea before I could even consider how to write it. Writing about how to cope with the stress of multiple deadlines while parenting two little ones? Forget it. If I'm not perfect, I'll lose their respect. Or so I thought.

It turns out that I have no interest in writing about my life if I can't be honest. I don't want to write about my trip to the museum if I can't also write about how many times my toddler pulled my shirt up to nurse. I can't share with you how hard it is to balance all the competing demands of my wonderful life if I can't permit myself to admit that re-learning how to fit in grading papers is hard sometimes. If I was so concerned with censoring my posts, I felt pretty sure I didn't want to blog anymore.

Nah. I won't stop. I just don't want to. And I've reached a decision about how to manage my concerns about exposing myself to my students: they'll get over it. Or they won't. Either way, it's fine. I'm not doing anything scandalous here (hardly). I'm not inappropriately discussing my course or students. I'm just writing honestly about how I spend my time, how I choose to carve out this life of mine. I'm a parent. I want to be a midwife one day. I want to be a doula right now. I love to teach. And I bake a lot. Nothing too crazy.

So when I was baking today with Alyce and Shira, the first real baking adventure in our new kitchen, and Shira's first time as sous-chef, I wanted to share it with you right away. I took their picture, the two of them bickering over who would sprinkle the baking soda into the bowl, and I wanted to share with you how glorious it feels to have our own space again. I wanted to tell you that I felt comfort baking with my girls, while Matt chatted with us from the other room. I wanted to tell you that adjusting to our new life in Toronto, as happy as it makes me, is sometimes hard, and that some days I spend a lot of time worrying about how we'll make ends meet or where we'll end up a year from now, but that no matter how much I worry, that baking with my daughters makes everything ok. That makes me human. I think my students already knew that. You already knew that, too.

So, I'm back. Let's get this going.

See you back here tomorrow. Let's make it a good Monday.

You get what you get and you don't get upset. On second thought, scrap that.

It's Friday, let's do this. I haven't posted for a few days and I just spent the last twenty minutes crafting a depressing post about something or other, but I scrapped it in favour of not being a downer at the start of what could be a wonderful weekend! Who wants to read a sad post about how lonely it is to grocery shop at ten o'clock at night? Not me. I'm depressed just thinking about that post.

Instead I thought I'd share some photos from our day at the Royal Ontario Museum this week. Alyce had an appointment in Toronto Tuesday afternoon, so we all headed to the city with Matt in the morning (since we only have the one car) and me and the girls needed something fun to keep us busy. A museum! I miss the Philadelphia Please Touch Children's Museum so much (so much), and I've been grieving its absence for a year now. The ROM, while no Please Touch, was everything Alyce and Shira needed. Its hands-on, discovery exhibitions kept the three of us busy for hours. We dressed up as queens (Alyce), knights (Shira), dragons (me and Alyce), butterflies (Alyce and Shira). We dug up dinosaur bones. We watched bees make honey and fish swim. It was a good day.

The depressing post-that-almost-was has gotten me to thinking about what I want this blog to be. I've been writing and posting for a year and half now, using this blog as venue for conservations about parenting, breastfeeding, eating, baking, being married, leaving graduate school, and starting over. I've urgently pointed you in the direction of so many of my favourite recipes that I've had friends suggest that I might need a food-related intervention. (By the way, no intervention needed. What I could really use is this cookbook. And maybe this one, too.)

Everything lately feels so out place. And I mean everything. When I wrote about having lost my sparkle I think I was on to something. It's a serious claim, to have lost one's sparkle, but I've given it a lot of thought, and yes, I'm a bit dull. Subdued, maybe. Holding myself back. Spending the day in the city with my girls, however, made me feel a bit shiny. Since we'll be moving to Toronto in five weeks I'm going to go ahead and say right now that I'm completely over-the-moon-excited to start fresh in the city. This move will mean a lot of things: that we have are both employed, we will have our own space, and that we'll all be starting something new. The move feels like one enormous opportunity to sparkle again.

But. I think we're often too quick to look beyond the opportunity that is already sitting right in front of us, right here in the actual present instead of five weeks into the future. So I will not wait five weeks to brighten up. I will start now. A very wise woman suggested the other day that you won't get what you want unless you know what you want. This piece of advice makes me think of Alyce, who repeats on a daily basis something she learned at school this year: You get what you get and don't get upset. At first I loved this lesson of hers, something to help her to manage her four-year-old disappointed feelings when such tragedies occur as not getting the pink plate at breakfast, or having to eat a cookie without chocolate chips. But no, no, no. This is truly terrible advice. I will get upset, thank you very much, and I'll channel my own disappointment into something good for this year. For many, many years.

When I read Helen Jane's advice I was both relieved to realize that yes, of course, I need to figure out what I want if I want that sparkle back, and exhausted by the knowledge that this is going to take some work to figure out. Thank goodness I like lists so much already. Next week is devoted to making lists in attempt to bring some of that good focus to my life. Less complaining, more sparkle. Vibrant, even. Lucky for you (maybe) this blog is just the place to figure this all out, a good place to find some of that focus I've been craving. That, and also what I'm going to cook this week. No matter how I envision my blog and my writing, I just can't leave out food. It is simply too important a detail to ignore.

Our day at the museum did more for my motivation than anything has in ages. I can't tell you why or how, but I can tell you that it felt good. I can also tell you that it felt good enough that we're getting a family membership.

P.S. Stay tuned for another interview this coming Monday! I'll give you hint: he's devastatingly handsome, has two daughters, and he's my husband. Tune in Monday to see if you've guessed right!

Raise your hand if you wish you had more energy?

Shira rests, briefly.

I spend most of days around two wee ones with more combined energy than, well, anything I've ever known. I'm sure all of you with young children feel the same way, and wonder, as I do, what it is that we're feeding these kids. Where does all the energy come from? They just don't ever stop. They fill their days (actually) hopping from one new discovery to the next, running instead of walking, skipping instead of strolling, talking instead of breathing. The world is so big, so exciting, that they can't contain their passion for living. Exhausted as I am some days, I am grateful to be in the proximity of this energy. Lately, instead of feeling overwhelmed by their endurance, I am feeling just a little bit motivated by it.

I have been in hiding lately. But I needed some time to realize that their energy could motivate me instead of just making me very, very tired.

I have tried so many times in the past couple of weeks to share things on this blog, and every time I've fallen short of putting two words together. Yes, life is busy and gets in the way, but life is always busy. It always gets in the way. No, it isn't just about not having the time. It has more to do with not having enough of a voice. I'm not quite sure how to put into words how I'm feeling lately, how to talk about my days, or how to imagine what I want for the future. I feel a bit stalled, stuck in place. Each time I try to speak or write I draw a blank. For someone who has as much to say about the world as I do, it comes as a surprise. But amidst all of the good things, life can still feel overwhelming.

***

I've suffered from depression before, particularly when Alyce was young and I was isolated from my familiar friends and family while we lived in Delaware. That was tough, and for now I'll leave it at that. Today, this time, it feels different. Instead of depression I feel more as though I resemble a slug.

I am without energy. We are planning for the future, I am working on new projects (like the online course I finally start teaching tomorrow), and I am adapting more and more to staying home with The Children. Of course some days are harder than others, especially those days when the three of us are stuck home, inside, feeling a bit stir-crazy, but most days it's good. In spite of these blessings, I am still slug-like. I feel incapable of enjoying so much of my day because my stores of energy, both mental and physical, are low. I've tried to acquire more energy from the sheer force of will alone, but it's not working, and I'm just left with a hurting brain (willing requires extreme concentration, but I'm just too tired to concentrate that hard. See above re: slug). It turns out that I'm actually going to have to do something different. I need to make some changes.

I'm in a rut. In some ways I was pushed into this rut on account of some very practical life details, such as moving countries, unemployment, living with my mum and stepfather for the past six months (which, of course, I am eternally grateful for), and I accept that I have been challenged a bit more than I've wanted to in the past year. But I know who I am and somewhere underneath all of these challenges is a person who is optimistic, passionate, and confident. I know these things are not lost and I'm desperate to make an effort to rediscover these things. This rut has been in the making for a long time now, and I need to speak up for myself again. Of course I speak all the time (overshare much, Danielle?) but it is a particular voice I fear I've lost lately. A voice that is confident enough to declare what I want in my life instead of feeling silenced by, well ... I'm not exactly sure what has silenced me.

I have a few ideas. I spend a lot of time apologizing for past mistakes and focusing on mistakes is a surefire way to suck out a person's confidence (take it from me). The problem is that it's hard to stop apologizing. Of course I'd rather think about new opportunities, and I really am an optimist, but it's a bit of a vicious cycle: as soon as my confidence started to waiver I would worry more about mistakes I'd made in the past because I was quickly convincing myself that I was incapable of doing things differently. I was soon convincing myself that I would always make the wrong decision (such as staying in a graduate program I wasn't happy in) or planning poorly for my family (not saving money for what turned out to be a year-long emergency of unemployment). And these mistakes I'm apologizing for? These go back years, not just the past year or two. I still have guilt about decisions I made in high school. Could I be more ridiculous?  If I keep up this way my confidence doesn't stand a chance.

***

I follow Andrea over at Superhero Journal because I am consistently inspired by the way she lives her life. With confidence. With excitement. Always with purpose. I have all of these things, but sometimes I forget where I keep them. She has a tradition wherein she chooses one word for the upcoming year, a way for her to focus on her goals, to direct her steps, so to speak. She usually chooses this word at the beginning of the year (one year her word was thrive), and as much as I have wanted to follow in her footsteps and start the year off with some focus of my own, I've been stuck. Four months it has taken me to come up with my word. (Remember? Slug.)

Vibrant. Vigorous. Lively. Vital.

I am craving some vibrancy in my life again. The word vibrant, or, rather, my word vibrant (because I am choosing it for myself, to play with for the next year), can remind me what I crave so very much in my life. It isn't something I can have, but something I need to feel. Losing my confidence made me feel powerless, and feeling powerless stole my energy, allowing for sometimes-bad habits to turn into all-the-time-terrible habits.

So I have my word, my magic. Now I need to find out what is contributing to my lack of energy, practically speaking, and then banish those things from my life. (Except The Children. They are my muses. Exhausting muses.) Having declared my intention to feel vibrant again, I am now working on an inventory of things (both physical and emotional) in my life that threaten to steal my confidence or deplete my energy. I am not a slug. I can do this.

Next step? A list of energy-stealing offenders. You know I love a good list. Coming soon.

Saying no

I found this letter in a box of things I can't seem to get rid of, and I am so grateful I kept it. This is a letter given to me when I was twelve by my seventh grade English teacher, Mr. Cowan. He was a remarkable teacher who was kind enough to see how much I was struggling with trying to be perfect. I was having a hard year socially (understatement of the century) and I was throwing myself into my academics and anything else that I could do well, such as ballet. It seems that I have always been exceedingly hard on myself and worried about what other people might think. There are many reasons for this, but at this particular time I was dealing with some very harsh judgment from my circle of friends (that resulted in losing those friends, for the most part). I was always a kid who had high expectations of herself, and dealing with rejection at the social level intensified my need to be perfect in other areas of my life. I was flailing under this pressure and this very kind teacher reached out to me:

It is terribly worrying to have a whole lot of people expecting you to do well in everything you do, all the time. At some point it becomes necessary to consider every activity, every class, every assignment, every friendship, and ask if it is worth it to you to continue, or to try to meet someone else's expectations...We need to talk about time and how to spend it. Only time has value. Nothing else does. 

I have received so many encouraging replies since my post on authenticity. Thank you for these words, too, and thank you for sharing some of your own authentic "reveals." I think the kind of authenticity I want to practice in my life is found right here in Mr. Cowan's letter. Being authentic means sometimes letting go of expectations, sometimes coming from others, other times coming from yourself. Expectations themselves are not bad, in fact, I think they are quite valuable (and I think Gretchen Rubin is spot on with her take on this). But when these expectations stand in the way of living the life you want to, when you feel paralyzed by what other people will think, it's time to reassess (I'm looking straight at myself, by the way).

Thank you, Mr. Cowan, for your many kindnesses. Also, thank you for introducing me to E.A. Poe, Shakespeare, and writing for the sake of writing.