When my daughter Pippa was born five years ago, my tool kit was empty. But after years of work and reflection, I think I have a decent range of tools that are helpful with different tools and situations. My tools include:

• Journaling and morning pages to clear the crap out of my head
• SLEEP. Doing whatever it takes to get my SLEEP.
• Exercise. It used to be Zumba. But now, I’m in love with walking and the Classical Stretch program.
• Babysitters. Because I need breaks.
• Accepting help from my parents. Because I need help.
• Accepting help from Nathan. Because HOLY EFF I NEED ALL THE HELP.
• Spending as little time as possible on social media.
• Getting outside into nature.
• Neglecting the housework, but also
• Decluttering whenever possible.
• Going with the flow, but
• making sure the flow is not headed for Niagara Falls.
• Reading parenting books, but
• not all the time, because,
• I have to trust my intuition.
• Dance parties in the kitchen. Sometimes a tool kit just needs the emotional equivalent of a confetti cannon.
• Silence.
• Meditation.
• Solitude.
• Mom friends with kids the same age as my kids.
• Mom friends with kids who are older than my age so I can absorb their wisdom and perspective.
• Mom friend with kids younger than my kids so I can feel wise and sage.
• Lowering my expectations. All the way to sea level. And then lower. And lower. Just assume the flight to Nebraska will be the Apocalypse and then you’ll be happy when it is only a Shit Show.
• Understanding that everything is a phase. Toddlers will eventually get all of their teeth and stop teething. (I swear, it’s true!) Your defiant preschooler will someday poop like a pro on the potty. And no child leaves for college with a sippy cup.
• Accepting that life shifts and I have to change my routines, schedules, etc.
• SYSTEMS to put as much of motherhood on auto pilot as I possibly can. This is actually the newest tool in my mothering tool kit and I feel like I need to use it now all over my life. I recently made daily checklists for morning and afternoon, laminated them, and hung them on the fridge. Then, we have containers for everything – a shoe basket, a library books box, a place for Barbies… I love systems!

Spoiler alert: expect some future posts about Motherhood Systems because they are changing my life.

I used to run a mom-to-mom postpartum support group. I started it Spring 2014 when my daughter was one-year-old because it was something I needed and wanted. I had made mom friends; I had told people I had postpartum depression; but I needed mom friends who had had similar postpartum experiences.

The group went on hiatus when I was pregnant with Julian. I puked the entire pregnancy and just couldn’t handle scheduled meetings when I needed to be in bed, feeling like death.

I rebooted the group when Julian was about six months old because my intuition decided it was time. It felt right. Running the support group inspired me to start my podcast Adventures With Postpartum Depression so I could reach moms who could not attend group due to nap times and geography. After a few months, I found the group a permanent home at The Family Room. Instead of sporadic meetings at playgrounds, I hosted the group every Thursday afternoon in a climate-controlled room. It was great. It was the right thing for me to do.

Until one day, it wasn’t.

A few weeks ago, on Pippa’s first day of kindergarten, an idea bubbled up from my intuition: it was time for me to stop running a postpartum support group.

What?! That seemed outlandish. I had assumed I would run the group for at least five more years.

Nope, my intuition said. It’s time to stop.

Okay, I bargained. What if I run the group once a month?

No. You need more time to write. Even one afternoon enough takes away too much time from your writing.

Okay, I thought. What if I run the group once a month at night? I never write at night, but I like socializing at night.

No, my intuition said, that’s not right either. You need to stop doing the group all together.

I realized, about 48 hours after the idea first bubbled into my conscious thought, that “ending support group” was more than an issue of needing more time to write. It was (and still is) about my personal healing journey.

I told the owner of The Family Room that I needed to stop running the support group because my intuition was telling me to move on. She wants to continue the group in some capacity but was very supportive of my decision. And so, that is what I’m doing. Last week, I hosted my weekly support group for the last time. Now, a week has passed and it is Thursday again. Instead of packing up and driving over tosupport group, I’m writing at Starbucks. In an hour, I’ll be getting a massage.

I don’t know yet why my intuition wanted me to stop running support group. I have a few inklings about “needing more time to write” and “taking my foot out of 2013, when I had PPD, and placing it in 2018, when I’m working on different issues.”

Maybe ending support group will help me build and strengthen the relationships I have with the people in my life. With weekly support group, I got the chance to have deep, powerful conversations with amazing women every week. But most women only attended once and then moved on with their recovery. So I was having meaningful conversations but not building meaningful relationships. Maybe, just maybe, the support group was becoming a crutch that excused me from truly opening up to my friends and family because I was already being open with strangers at a weekly support group.

Huh.

I don’t know.

Ultimately, there are probably a lot of different reasons that I needed to end support group. I think it’s important for me to stay tuned in to myself and recognize my shifting and changing wants and needs. I can have five year and ten year plans, but ultimately, life is uncertain. I am changing every day with every experience I have. I could have resisted and kept limping along with support group for several more months or even years, lashing myself onward and forward because “it was the right thing to do.” That’s what happened when I went to law school and became a miserable lawyer. I made myself practice the law for years and years because I had spent the money on law school and it was the right thing to do.

But postpartum depression pushed me to a higher level. Now I’m at a place where I can tune into my intuition’s frequency, figure out what I want and need to do, and make big changes when they need to happen.

I wonder what magical things will happen in my life next!

Meditation makes me feel like a better version of myself. I have known this for years, but still, I have had trouble sustaining a regular practice. I have tried attending meditation classes at yoga studios, using Tibetan singing bowls, staring at candles, and various guided meditations on YouTube. Every time, I get into a good groove but after a few weeks, I get irritated or bored and quit. It seemed like meditation just wasn’t my jam.

When I started weaning off Mirtazipane (the medication that helps me sleep when I’m anxious), I realized I needed to find some new tricks to fall asleep at night. Meditation has been helping enormously on that front, but I’m doing it entirely my way:

1. When: Right before I go to bed. It’s the last thing I do before falling asleep. Previously, I meditated in the morning or around 8 p.m. Morning meditations felt wrong because I’d rather journal when I wake up; and the 8 p.m. meditation would make me sleepy, but then I’d watch t.v. and get a second wind, thereby undermining the benefits of paying attention to my breath for ten minutes.
2. Where: In my bed. Lying down. With my head on a pillow. I don’t care if I’m “supposed” to meditate sitting up. I meditate better when I’m comfortable in bed.
3. What: I’m using the Calm app. I listen to different guided meditations. Right now, I’m listening to the stress management series.
4. Why: To relax at night and unwind from the day so that I fall asleep easily.

Meditation is a tool that is helping me right now in August 2018. Will I still be meditating in September 2018? I have no idea! I don’t even know if I’ll meditate tonight.

But this is what I’m loving about my current meditation practice: I’m doing what works for me. According to the Calm app, I’m supposed to meditate sitting up. Well, I don’t want to do that. I want to lie down, damnit, so that’s what I’m doing.

I’m sure there are some meditation experts who would roll their eyes at my techniques, but that does not bother me. I’m not meditating to impress anyone. I’m just doing what feels right for me right now.

I have been weaning myself off mirtazipane for about a month now. Or maybe it’s been six weeks. Shit, it’s so hard to keep track.

The last time I saw my psychiatrist, we devised a plan for reducing my nightly mirtazipane dose. If all had gone according to plan, I would be completely done with mirtazipane.

But life does not always go according to plan, and sure enough, I’m still taking mirtazipane. And I expect it will take me at least two, if not four, more weeks to completely wean myself off the drug.

I had to first slow down my weaning journey when I had PMS. Every few months, PMS gives me a touch of insomnia. Mirtazipane combats insomnia. Why would I reduce a medication that helps me sleep when PMS is keeping me awake?

After the PMS, I got a cold. According to my schedule, it was time to reduce my dose but my intuition told me to be gentle with myself. If I feel shit lousy from a summer cold, then there’s no need to rush to the end of mirtazipane weaning. I’d just end up having an anxiety attack at night and boom, I’d be back to the full 15 mg at bedtime.

So long story short, I’ve decided to wean off mirtazipane even more slowly than my psychiatrist recommended. I’m using my pill cutter to halve the 7.5 mg pills into 3.75 mg doses. I am toggling between 7.5 one night and 3.75 the next. When I feel ready, I’ll do 3.75 mg two nights in a row and take 7.5 mg on the third night. Eventually I’ll be down to 3.75 every night. Then, and only when I feel completely and fully ready, I’ll go to bed without mirtazipane every third night.

I’m weaning myself off mirtazipane mindfully and intentionally. I realize that 3.75 mg of mirtazipane is next to nothing. Any effect it’s having on me is probably psychological, not actually physical. But that’s okay. If I have to reduce this slowly, then that’s what I have to do.

My brain feels zapped. I feel like I have reached capacity and need to delete some programming in order to free up memory space. Or maybe I just feel like an outdated broken computer?

I have been reading Tim Grahl’s new book Running Down A Dream: Your Road Map to Winning Creative Battles. I listen to Tim’s podcast The Story Grid, so I was actually just reading the book because I want to support his work. Also, I had listened to several episodes about the creation of Running Down A Dream, so it made sense to read the final product. I assumed that it would not have any relevant information for my life.

I assumed wrong.

I’m not even halfway through, but I have learned about so many tools that I cannot wait to implement in my life. First: Tim writes about removing non-essential activities to free up time for actual work. That’s something that has been on my mind all summer. I started watching less t.v. to free up more time for the activities I actually want to do before bed. I’m also making some other big changes that I’ll write about in later posts.

Tim also writes about creating systems for activities that can be put on auto pilot. This is something I have also been thinking about, but I have not put into action. But reading about Tim’s story, I feel motivated to take a look at my life and create some systems for the tasks that eat up my creative energy.

For example, the “getting ready for school shit show.” We do the same things every morning. I’ve been using checklists for several months, and the checklists help me cruise through the morning routine. But. I still make the checklists every night. And I usually forget to include something which throws me into panic mode. Why am I wasting that energy? Why not create a system? Something that I can build – which will take a little more effort in the beginning – but which will then serve me for the entire school year.

Over lunch, I just typed up some weekly checklists for the morning routine and the afternoon tango (homework! pack lunches! all that crap!) I’m going to print, laminate and hang the checklists in the kitchen. Then I can see if/how they help my overloaded brain and report back.

I want to do the creative work. I’ve started writing a fantasy series. I love it! But the work of motherhood drains my creative juices. So damnit, I need to put as much of my life as possible on autopilot, create systems and habits, and free up some brain capacity for the work that I was born to do.

Excuse me, I have to go print some checklists…

Earlier this year, I started seeing a naturopathic doctor. I had recently weaned off Zoloft and noticed that I was experiencing some wicked PMS. Rather than go back on Zoloft, I decided it was time to take charge of my physical health.

Yesterday, I had an appointment with my doctor and got to learn the result of a food sensitivities blood test. I learned a lot!

The blood test results are divided into three categories: low sensitivity; moderate; and severe/avoid.

For me, there’s only one food in the severe/avoid column: kelp. Farewell, sushi! But hey, I can still eat sashimi, so I’m not bummed about this.

I’m especially happy about the foods that fall into the “low reaction” column. There are too many to list, but the foods include tomatoes and onions – THANK GOD. The night before my appointment, I told Nathan that I did not know what I would do if it turns out I’m allergic to tomatoes or onions. When I scanned the test results and saw that tomatoes and onions are both fine, I felt like the winner of a game show.

There are a bunch of foods in my “moderate” column. I’m going to list them here as a reference for myself because I know I’m going to eventually lose my test results! My moderate food sensitivities are:

• Alfalfa (No big deal here, I loathe alfalfa)
• Bamboo shoots
• Black beans
• Black pepper
• Brewer’s yeast
• Casein – a protein in milk and cheese
• Coriander
• Cottage Cheese (I had a bad experience with rancid cottage cheese in 12th grade. I still have flashbacks. I was in the Calculus classroom. Now I have a health reason to avoid cottage cheese – sweet!)
• Cow’s milk
• Cumin
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Gliadin – a protein in wheat, barley, oats, and a few other things
• Navy bean
• Nutmeg
• Oregano
• Pineapple (random!)
• Turmeric
• Vanilla (But hey, cacao is good – priorities)
• Watercress
• Whey
• Yogurt

My doctor would like me to avoid all the foods on my moderate list for the next three weeks. Then, I can bring back one food group at a time. I eat the food for one day and then wait 48 hours to see if I have a bad reaction. This could be something like gas and bloating, acne or even mood swings. If I don’t notice a symptom, I can continue eating the food once or twice a week.

I’m so happy! I love a lot of foods on the moderate list, but hey, if black beans and garlic are making me feel congested, I can live without them. I can still eat every fruit, except pineapple, and every vegetable that I love.

I’m curious to see how I feel over the next three weeks. Since I started paying attention to my overall health, I have noticed that I seem to live with constant low-level congestion. I’m often tired in the morning and my ears feel clogged. My doctor could tell my ears are irritated and said it looks like a food issue. I will gladly trade all the foods on the moderate list for a clear head!

I feel ready for this. I have been living without refined sugar for over two weeks. It is time for some more big changes. (But not caffeine. I need to cut back, but dear God, not now. There’s only so much change I can handle at a time without going postal on my family.)

To avoid casein and gliadin, I’m going to have to make some big changes on the bread and cheese front. But today, I feel good. I don’t feel deprived. I feel, instead, like I’m choosing the pleasure of good health over the pain caused by food sensitivities. Earlier this year, before I even had my blood drawn, my doctor recommended I avoid gluten. That felt like torture. No pizza? No bread? WTF? But today, I think “pizza” and my stomach recoils. Now that I have test results that identify the foods causing pain, I have lost the craving.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

That’s not the actual dictionary or diagnostic definition of insanity, but I heard it on a podcast, and it’s been resonating with me.

(I was very deliberate just now with my verb tense. I initially wrote “it resonates with me” but I switched to “been resonating” because the more I pay attention to myself, the more I see that I am constantly growing and shifting. So right now, today, the definition resonates with me, and it has been resonating with me for the past few months, but I have no idea what tomorrow will bring.)

I like blogging because it helps me keep track of my personal journey. Maybe a few bread crumbs that I leave behind will help a stranger find their way. Or maybe, it’s enough that I am paying attention to my journey so I can intentionally and consciously take my next steps. My intuition told me to start blogging about my journey, so that’s what I’m going to do.

Right now, breaking up with sugar is a huge part of my journey. As I have written before, I decided on August 5, 2018 to break up with sugar for one hour. I kept extending the fast by one hour increments until lo, eleven days had passed and last week, I decided I could extend the fast for an entire day. For the past five or six days, I’ve been doing that.

Yesterday, I thought I might be ready to extend the fast for an entire week.

Today, I know I am ready to do that. And I’m not simply ready to give up sugar for an entire week, but I feel excited and relieved to take this next step.

Excited by all the health improvements happening to my body.

Relieved that I don’t have to think about sugar for the next week. I have made the decision – I’m not eating sugar for the rest of the week – and boom, the decision has been made and I don’t have to waste any emotional energy on the issue.

I’ve also decided that my week ends on Sunday. So I won’t be eating any refined sugar between now, which is mid-day Tuesday, and the time I go to bed on Sunday. Emotionally, I feel like my week restarts on Monday morning, so that is the logical time for the sugar fast to end and, if it feels right, start anew.

I am feeling confident that this week’s sugar fast will renew into another week-long fast on Monday morning. But I’ll see Monday morning. This is a slow journey, and I’m letting my intuition steer the ship. And right now, my intuition is telling me to patient and wait and see how I feel when I wake up Monday morning.

I can tell that something big is happening. I am changing. But this is not going to be a dramatic overnight transformation.

That feels good. That feels right.

It’s the middle of the afternoon. Pippa is home from kindergarten. Julian is one week away from starting preschool.

The toys are beeping and whirring. Oh I wish I could burn all the electronic toys.

Julian is tired but won’t nap. My children are not nappers. They just get cranky and deranged and then, get their second (third/fourth) wind and rally and keep on playing and making messes.

But they are healthy and busy, so let me take a moment of gratitude while the storm rages around me.

I am incredibly grateful for:

1. My busy healthy children
2. All their messes, because the messes show they are curious and happy
3. My new backpack because hauling around a laptop in a tote bag is just no good.
4. The library. Free books! Free books!
5. My book club. Friends who read! Friends who read!
6. My parents taking Julian to the mall today so I could get a little break and time to walk and write.
7. This website, a place to explore and wander.
8. Julian’s ability to sit and play by himself for looooong stretches of time.
9. This moment.
10. And this moment.
11. The BLTs we are making for dinner tonight.
12. The fact that my husband and I both agree that the L part of BLT is unnecessary and detracts from the B and T.
13. The little song Julian is singing to himself right now as he plays on the floor.
14. The leather cushion beneath my tush.
15. The space I feel in my head just from taking a few moments to breathe and write and feel grateful.

p.s. I wrote this post on Monday afternoon at my parents’ house but then my laptop disconnected from the Wi-fi, so I’m publishing it almost a day after I wrote it. So let’s update the list to include: 16. For not losing my shit when the internet got cranky.

I noticed something this morning.

I got out of bed a little before six, poured myself a red Solo cup of Diet Coke*, and settled into our big brown leather armchair. I uncapped a blue pen and started writing in the journal I bought last week at Target. The cover is dark blue with pictures of kittens in outer space. I was at Target with Pippa, cruising the school supply aisle before going to the Observatory. Or rather, before attempting to go to the Observatory, because as I unfortunately learned, one must never go to the Griffith Park Observatory at noon on a summer day. All the tourists in the Western hemisphere were gathered at that one spot, and parking was impossible. So we aborted the Observatory mission and went bowling instead. Except Pippa got car sick on the way to bowling, so we ended up going home to snuggle. But when we were at Target, we did not know any of that. Pippa suggested I get the notebook with kitten astronauts since we were going to be looking at space stuff.

But I digress.

I had my Diet Coke and kitten astronaut journal, and as I started writing my morning pages, I felt the energy flowing through my body. I realized with a jolt that every morning, when I write my morning pages, the act of writing makes the energy flow through my body. It’s as if my energy stagnates while I am sleeping. I like to think about my energy as a river. So if we go with the river metaphor, it’s as if the river gets clogged with sticks and leaves and all sorts of debris while I sleep, and when I wake up, there’s a dam reducing the river to a trickle. Morning pages loosen up the muck and slime so my river of energy can get back to flowing and roaring along in its mighty glittering brilliant way.

I only recently got back into the habit of daily morning pages. I knew the pages were essential to making me feel like my best self, but I did not know why. Then, last week, I caught a cold. I could not wake up before the kids. I had to sleep and sleep until they ran into my bedroom and woke me with tickles and shrieks.

The extra sleep was necessary, but damn, I just did not feel right until I had found an opportunity to write, if only for a few minutes.

I thought I was being bitchy. I thought I was failing, once again, to live up to some mythical romanticized motherhood ideal. Or, worse, I was just selfish to want the time to write morning pages.

But this morning, it clicked. I have to write morning pages, because that is the best way I know to help my energy flow. Once I get my energy flowing, the rest of my day just seems to fall into magical place. But if my energy is clogged and sluggish, the day is a struggle.

In the same way, writing helps me regulate my energy at day’s end. If I watch television until bedtime, I feel wired and antsy. But if I stop watching television by nine, and spend a little time relaxing with my health journal,** then I fall asleep so much more easily. And better, the sleep I get after journaling at night feels so much more restorative than the sleep I get after too much television.

I’m glad I have figured out why I love writing morning pages so much. There will be days when I have to skip morning pages. I accept that. But I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure those days are few and far between!

* I fully recognize that my Diet Coke consumption is an addiction and a problem. But right now, I am working on my sugar problem and making TREMENDOUS progress on that front. I will deal with the Diet Coke Situation when my intuition tells me the time is right.

**My health journal: I should and will write more about this. Suffice to say, I write about things like sleep, food, exercise, and mental health in this evening journal. I’m also trying to get into the habit of a nightly gratitude practice.