I sometimes catch myself feeling bad for my kids. They are in first grade and preschool and have missed out on many fun school experiences. Pippa also missed her birthday party, which was supposed to be in the second half of March. And now, it is almost certain that they are missing out on The Summer 2020 I so carefully planned back in January. (Camp! Trips! Raging Waters!)

When I start to feel bad for my kids, I remind myself of something I read when Pippa was a baby (book and author long since forgotten). To paraphrase, the writer said that as parents, we often think our job is to smooth the bumps and potholes that our children face; but in actuality, our job is to teach them how to navigate the ups and downs of life.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been an excellent opportunity to do just that.

Of course, that is easier said than done. I am on sensory overload from all the noise my kids make. Zoom is a shitty substitute for actually seeing my family and friends in person. And damn, it is tough to spend all day, every day, with my kids. I love them, but absence truly does make the heart grow fonder.

But current circumstances are out of my hands. If I dwell on just how surreal life in Pasadena has become, I make myself anxious and upset. (Yes, I am speaking from personal experience.) (Voluminous personal experience.) When I remember that the pandemic is God’s business, not mine, I relax and feel the tension whoosh out of my body.

Still, this sucks for my kids.

And so we loop back to why I remind myself, again and again, that this is my opportunity to teach my kids how to navigate the uncertainty of life. I am not perfect at handling all the Covid-19 bumps and potholes. Somedays, the bumps feel like mountains and the potholes feel like unexpected drops off a cliff. As often as my kid see me living with the pandemic in a way that approximates grace and good humor, they also see me feeling angry, sad, confused and frustrated.

I believe this is what they call being human.

Maybe my heart aches for my kids because I think that is the way I am supposed to feel. Maybe this crisis is a blessing in disguise. Why should their summer be programmed with camp and trips when we can take long walks and look for potato bugs? They are ages four and seven and they actually still enjoy my company. One day, they will be surly adolescents who roll their eyes and groan when I suggest family board game night, but right now, in this precious present moment, they are eager to do anything and everything with me.

I started this post with the idea that I need to let my kids experience the Covid-19 pandemic because it will help them develop grit and resilience, but as I write this, I feel a new idea emerging….

I need to let my kids experience the bumps and potholes of life, but maybe I am imagining the current bumps and potholes.

Maybe this is about my mindset.

If I think, This is a tragedy and abomination! How can my kids miss out on camp! They are being cheated out of childhood! then Summer 2020 feels ruined before it can even begin.

But if I think, This is a golden opportunity for us to have lazy mornings and days and days without agendas or appointments, to step away from the usual summer busyness, then we can savor the summer ahead.

This is not the Summer 2020 that I planned, but if I let my imagination run wild, it might be better than anything I would have planned in My Former Life.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I am currently reading Byron Katie’s Loving What Is: Four questions that can change your life. Katie has created a process for questioning our thoughts and beliefs that she calls The Work. I am not going to attempt to describe The Work or the questions that are part of “The Inquiry.” She details the entire process on her website, thework.com.

But I have to share this quote:

I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. (For me, the word God means “reality.” Reality is God, because it rules. Anything that’s out of my control, your control, and everyone else’s control–I call that God’s business.)

Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, “You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself,” I am in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business.

Byron Katie, Loving What Is, pg. 3.

I felt an inner sea change as I read this quote. Currents traveling north to the Arctic suddenly reversed south for the equator.

This is what I do! I live in your business all the time, thinking about what you should be doing in order to be a happy person, and I am in God’s business constantly.

Take the pandemic. I am constantly thinking, This should not be happening, my life should be easier, my kids should be at school, I should have some certainty about the 2020-2021 school year. All those thoughts increase my stress. And yet: the pandemic is happening; we are sheltering at home; school has been cancelled. My thoughts are trying to deny reality! Every time I resist God’s business, I might as well be banging my head against a wall.

I read the passage quoted above yesterday morning and spent the rest of the day feeling light and free. Whenever I caught myself thinking about someone else’s business or the pandemic, I thought, Oh! That’s not my business. And then I felt an immediate relief.

This morning, a fellow mom texted about some drama at our kids’ elementary school that might affect who will be teaching our kids’ next year. Their first grade teacher is going to be their second grade teacher next year, which is exciting after all the chaos of the pandemic. But another first grade teacher decided, after all the teaching assignments were made, to retire after all (probably prompted by the pandemic) so now our teacher might have to stay with the first grade after all. I saw the text relaying this information and thought, I could get upset about this… but it is not my business. It’s the principal’s business, and to some extent, it’s God’s business. But do I get to decide how the principal is going to handle the sudden staffing change? Nope. It’s not my business.

It felt so good to learn about the drama and not get sucked into the blackhole of panic! stress! and despair! I nearly giggled with relief.

Then I wondered, am I being indifferent and passive about my daughter’s education?

Nope!

Nathan and I had already decided, months ago, that Pippa would continue at her current elementary school for another year. We made that decision before we knew who her second grade teacher would be and before we knew a first grade teacher would retire. That’s not something we have any control over. Teachers move, get pregnant, retire and even die. I can do my best to make sure my daughter is getting the best education for her needs, but I can’t control who any of her specific teachers will be. Nathan and I might decide at some point in the future that she needs to go to a different elementary school, but stressing about the retirement of a first grade teacher just adds unnecessary suffering to my life. I can be calm and interested in my daughter’s education at the same time.

I feel a bit like I did in fourth grade when I got my first pair of glasses. As the optometrist checked that the glasses fit right, he said, “You are going to be astonished when you step outside and see the leaves on the trees.”

I thought, No way, people can’t actually see leaves on trees!

Then I stepped outside and nearly tripped over my feet when I realized I could see thousands and thousands of individual leaves that had for years been a blur of green.

For years and years (probably most of my adult life), I thought I had to stress about everything: my business, your business, and God’s business. It was exhausting. Now I see that I just need to live in my business. I don’t have to worry about your business or God’s business.

Glasses helped me see thousands of leaves with sudden clarity. And a few sentences in Loving What Is helped me see the difference between my business, your business, and God’s business.

Life really is magical.

When I was first treated for postpartum depression, I worked with a cognitive behavioral psychologist who helped me dismantle my anxiety. First we tackled the anxiety that was specific to being the mother of a newborn, like excessive worries about SIDS, germs, and kidnappers stealing Pippa in the middle of the night. Once I was back to feeling like my pre-PPD self, we decided to keep going.

I detailed this work in my memoir, but by the time I ended my therapy (about eleven months postpartum), I was convinced that I had conquered that beast called anxiety.

I believed this was true for several years.

Then, a couple of years ago, when I first tried to wean off Mirtazipane (an anti-anxiety medication I take at bedtime), I experienced some middle-of-the-night anxiety that interfered with my sleep. I wondered, Maybe.

Maybe I had not fully conquered my anxiety.

But I had written a memoir! About conquering my anxiety! That is the trouble with memoirs: they make you feel like you have done all the personal work you need to do when really, we are born with a lifetime of work that will require our attention until we draw our last breath.

I went back on Mirtazipane and the anxiety subsided, and so did my interest in the possibility that I still had some issues with anxiety that needed further work.

Then, I tried to wean off Mirtazipane for a second time (and a third time) (and a fourth time), and every time, I would be fine for a week or even a month. But every time, anxiety would interrupt my sleep. Then I would feel anxious about feeling anxious, and I would sleep even less. So I would jump back on Mirtazipane – and I am not judging myself for going back on Mirtazipane. Sleep is the foundation and cornerstone of my health. So long as I need Mirtazipane to sleep, I will take it.

But.

Every time I find my sleep interrupted by anxiety, I wonder if maybe my anxiety is like an iceberg. Over 90% of an iceberg’s volume is underwater. During my treatment for PPD, maybe I only conquered the 10% of my anxiety that was easy to see, above the surface of the ocean. Maybe there was still a massive icy mountain of anxiety lurking just beneath the ocean’s surface.

I wondered, again and again, if I needed to dive beneath the surface of my subconscious and confront that iceberg of anxiety. But instead, I did just enough work to manage my immediate issues with anxiety. Then, once I started sleeping through the night, I congratulated myself on solving, once and for all, my issues with anxiety, when all I had done was chip away the bits of ice that had reached above the surface of my subconscious. I never took a proper look at the entire iceberg.

I do not want to sound judgmental or critical of myself. I think I did my best to address the anxiety that I could see. How could I reckon with an invisible iceberg of anxiety that was hiding in dark and frigid ocean waters?

Enter the pandemic.

Postpartum depression was like a magnifying glass that revealed some personal issues that were making it difficult for me to enjoy my first months as a mother. My bat shit crazy hormones helped me see that I had some impossible ideas about motherhood that were making me anxious and depressed. But, I am seeing now that PPD was only a magnifying glass. It did not reveal all of the personal issues that I needed to address in order to become my best self.

Well. If postpartum depression was a magnifying glass for my issues, then the pandemic has been a Hubble telescope aimed directly at my subconscious.

Going back to the iceberg (I adore analogies): postpartum depression let me see that there was a big chunk of anxiety bobbing on top of the ocean, and my therapist at the time helped me hack that anxiety into little ice chips that melted away. (Sometimes I take analogies a little too far.) (But hey, it’s my blog!)

The pandemic has essentially evaporated the ocean that was hiding my iceberg of anxiety and wow, I cannot deny it any longer: There’s a freaking iceberg there! I still have some deep seated anxiety that needs to be addressed.

My anxiety is sneaky and vile. It waits until 3 a.m. to wake me and set my thoughts whirling. I have been having more and more sleep disturbances since we started sheltering-at-home. I have blamed these sleep disturbances on my menstrual cycle, a heat wave, and eating too much sugar. A few days ago, I finally relented and thought that maaaaaaybe I am a little stressed about the pandemic and all the uncertainty.

Two days ago, I finally talked to my psychiatrist on the phone. I usually take 7.5 mg of Mirtazipane but if I feel like it’s necessary, I take 15 mg. The 15 mg had felt necessary for several days – and still, I was up at night. So my psychiatrist said I could take 30 mg. I did that two nights ago, and I slept beautifully. I took 30 mg again last night.

And I was up at 4 a.m., my body alive with anxiety.

I cannot drag around this anxiety anymore.

I see it. And that is at least half the battle.

I have had a book — Loving What Is, by Byron Katie — on my book shelf for months. It kept popping up on my radar. Then, when I was reading Geneen Roth’s memoir This Messy Magnificent Life last week, Roth shared a story about Byron Katie that struck me to the core. Katie was visiting with a cancer patient at a hospital who complained about having a bloated leg that was bigger than her other leg, and Katie said, I see that you are suffering because you think your legs should be the same size.

I have not fully processed that story, but every time I think about it, I feel as if someone has struck a tuning fork in my soul.

I read a few pages of Loving What Is this morning and spoiler alert: I think I have found the approach that will help me conquer the anxiety that was lurking in my subconscious.

I’ll write more about that over the next few weeks. Insomnia is a bitch, but at least I can see the work I need to do.

And when I am doing the work I need to do, life feels outrageously sweet. Even if I am sheltering-at-home during a pandemic.

It has been at least two weeks since I finished Glennon Doyle’s new memoir Untamed, and I keep going back to this quote:

Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

Untamed, pg. 128

And then this quote, further down on the same page (I literally highlighted all but the first sentence of page 128):

What if a responsible mother is not one who shows her children how to slowly die but how to stay wildly alive until the day she dies?

Untamed, pg. 128 (apparently my favorite page of the memoir!)

Here we are on Day “Who The Fuck Can Keep Track Anymore” of sheltering at home, and I want to show my kids how to stay wildly alive, but I have so much guilt about taking time for myself.

Guilt that they are bored and I should entertain them.

Guilt that they are not at school, and I suck at homeschooling.

Guilt that I just want to write for two hours without being interrupted by constant demands for snacks, drinks, and boo boo kisses.

This is what I need: two hours, every day, to write. Not so long ago, I got that time when my kids went to school and camp. During vacations, I suffered because they would not leave me alone to write for even twenty minutes, let alone two hours. But I figured I could handle those vacations because eventually, they would go back to school or camp.

Now. Wow. Who the eff knows? After two months of non-stop parenting, I see that I feel like I am only allowed to write when my kids are otherwise occupied with school and camp. If they are home, then I must be available to cater to their every whim and demand. (Elaborate messy and time consuming art project? Of course!) The current situation is forcing me to reckon with the fact that I do not have healthy boundaries with my kids. I do not let myself exist as a woman with a passion for writing when they want me to do the fucking farm puzzle again. (To clarify: I have been writing but feeling guilty about wanting that time.)

When I had postpartum depression, I often felt guilty that I was somehow failing Pippa. I felt guilty when she had jaundice and we needed to supplement breastfeeding with formula. I felt guilty when I set her down to play by herself so I could make myself a sandwich for lunch. I felt guilty when she woke up and started crying while I was in the shower.

Guilt, guilt, guilt.

After I was diagnosed with postpartum depression, I read a lot of books about maternal mood disorders, and those books often listed “guilt” as a symptom of postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is a spectrum illness, which means there are many symptoms, and different moms experience different constellations of those symptoms. It’s like a Vegas buffet except instead of gelato and prime rib, you get anxiety and insomnia.

During my recovery, I told my therapist that I often felt guilty about asking Nathan to help with Pippa, even though he adored her and adored me and liked being helpful. My psychologist had me bring Nathan in for a session, and I admitted that I often thought Nathan was mad at me. I regularly asked Nathan if he was mad at me and he would laugh and say that he wasn’t. This was a compulsion on my part, a seeking of reassurance that backfired and made me feel worse. For homework, my psychologist forbid me from asking Nathan if he was mad at me. After a few weeks, the guilt I felt in regards to having Nathan help with Pippa faded and disappeared. I told myself that the rest of the guilt I felt faded and disappeared as well.

I think I was lying to myself.

I am starting to see that I may have resolved the guilt I felt toward having Nathan help with Pippa, but the rest of my guilt went underground.

Or, maybe it stayed above ground. Maybe I just tolerated guilt as a necessary part of motherhood. Maybe the degree of guilt I regularly felt did not seem worthy of notice in comparison to the hell that had been my postpartum depression.

Sheltering at home during the Covid-19 crisis has been forcing me to acknowledge some issues that I had previously been able to ignore. And I might as well write it here, so I can finally admit this to myself: I still feel guilty for wanting to stay wildly alive.

Despite all the work I did to recover from postpartum depression, holy shit, I still feel guilty if I am anything less than a martyr to my children’s wants and needs.

When I first read the quote that I cannot stop quoting — What if a responsible mother is not one who shows her children how to slowly die but how to stay wildly alive until the day she dies? — I remember thinking, “I suppose I have to stay wildly alive and bear the guilt, and maybe someday, Pippa will be able to stay wildly alive without the guilt.”

But I don’t want to be a mother who feels guilty just for wanting two hours to write. I don’t want to be a mother who feels guilty for wanting to do the work she was born to do.

Somewhere along the line, some experts decided that “guilt” was a symptom of postpartum depression, and I think that calling “guilt” a symptom did a disservice to mothers everywhere. Because it was a symptom, I just assumed it would go away with my recovery, just like you stop vomiting when you recover from the flu or stop coughing once the cold passes.

But I am starting to see that the guilt I feel as a mother is much, much more than a symptom of an illness I once had. (And deeper, but beyond the scope of this post, I am starting to see that the illness I once had was so much more than an illness, and my postpartum experience was diminished because the insurance company needed a diagnosis before covering my Zoloft.)

A couple of years ago, I was reading Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. About midway through, Robbins wrote about the meaning behind different feelings. I have to paraphrase, but Robbins wrote that we feel guilty because we did something wrong.

I remember sitting at my kitchen table and feeling like I had just been punched in the stomach.

I had felt guilty many times as a mother, and I knew that in all those instances, I had done nothing wrong. How could Robbins say that guilty = wrong?

Shortly thereafter, I chucked the book into the trash. (Hence, the paraphrasing above.)

Ok, wow, this is a long post! But here is where I am at:

• I believe Glennon Doyle is right. I should show my children how to stay wildly alive, instead of slowly martyring myself on the altar of motherhood.
• I feel guilty when I assert my right to feel wildly alive.
• But even though I feel guilty, I am not doing anything wrong.
• So the guilt must be arising from some toxic beliefs I have about motherhood.

Whew. That is my Covid-19 homework. As we continue to live with the uncertainty of sheltering at home, I have to reconsider my beliefs about motherhood.

I have to stay wildly alive.

Without the damn guilt.

As in-person camps in Pasadena close down, some virtual options are popping up. I do not know what our summer is going to be like, but I do know this: Thank you, but no virtual camps for us, thanks!

Julian has Zoom preschool three mornings each week. He usually attends 20-40 minutes of the hour. I have to be there for every minute, paying attention and helping him. It’s exhausting.

Pippa has Google school for forty-five minutes every morning. I have to be close by to help because something always happens. A screen closes. Volume goes bonkers. Or she just needs a boo boo kiss. It’s exhausting.

I received an email this morning about Girl Scout’s virtual camp. They will be delivering packages with activities. It’s very affordable. I briefly wondered, Should I? But my whole body cringed, revolted by the idea of more virtual activities that require my constant assistance. Just the thought of virtual camp is exhausting.

And these days, I don’t need exhausting.

I need rest and relaxation. I need weeks and weeks and weeks without distance learning because holy shit, it seems likely the 2020-2021 school year will involve more of this distance learning bullshit. I want to get outside with my kids, dig up worms in the garden, splash in the pool, and kick the soccer ball. I don’t want to spend another minute helping Pippa do virtual socializing. She hates it as much as I do, so why torture ourselves?

I do not know what Summer 2020 is going to look like, but it will definitely be an extended break from distance learning. And it will be an opportunity to lean into my intuition and do the things that work for my family during The Great 2020 Adventure.

I am currently reading Geneen Roth’s new book, This Messy Magnificent Life: A Field Guide to Mind, Body, and Soul.

I have already read two of Roth’s earlier books: Women, Food and God and When Food is Love. Both of those books were about the complicated issues that get wrapped up in food, eating, dieting, and weight. Roth’s ideas can be applied to other addictive and obsessive behaviors, but food is her focus.

Food is also my focus. I have been struggling with my weight for most of my life. In seventh grade, I remember comparing my legs to my friend Jenny’s and feeling bad on a soul-level because her legs were so much smaller than mine. And even earlier, in fourth grade, a classmate demanded during recess that all the girls reveal their weight; and everyone had a number below 100; so for the first time in my life, I lied about my weight.

I have used food to numb uncomfortable feelings like anxiety and loneliness.

I have used food to fill an emptiness that I thought was hunger but was actually the dissatisfaction I felt when I was not my authentic self.

I have used food to keep my hands busy during social situations.

I have used food in dozens of ways to avoid the work I am meant to do during my one precious life.

In her new book, Geneen Roth puts into words so many things that I have been trying to understand. She writes:

… the way we eat is always a primary gateway to the mind that creates the suffering about it.

This Messy Magnificent Life, pg. 4

Amen! I have been dieting, and then not dieting, and then thinking “I should be dieting,” and then dieting yet again, since I was fifteen. I had friends who were dieting much younger than that. My first proper diet was Weight Watchers. Since then, I have done Weight Watchers several times, both in person and online. I have also tried Jenny Craig, South Beach, paleo, counting calories, some variation on the Mediterranean diet, and the crazy program detailed in The 4-hour Body. I’m sure I’ll remember a few more diets later. I have met with two different nutritionists and read countless books and magazine articles about healthy eating and exercise.

I have lost weight.

I know how to lose weight.

But then I always gain the damn weight back, and with a vengeance. I gain weight because I eat too much, and I eat too much not because I don’t know how to eat, but because I have emotions and beliefs that compel me to eat.

Before I continue, full disclosure: I am currently using the Noom app. I have lost 13 pounds since late February. Noom is great. It dives into the psychology of eating. It also addresses the bad habits that get created around bad eating. I think I still have to work on my relationship with food, which means I have to work on my relationship with myself, but I also have to work on my actual eating habits. Noom is helping with the healthy eating habits. Geneen Roth is helping with the deeper dive into my mind.

Before I end this post, I’d like to share another quote:

The million-dollar answer to the question of why weight loss is so difficult to maintain, is that along with the exaltation of being thin come less positive feelings. The lightness that accompanies an unencumbered body feels vulnerable. And if we’ve used our weight in any way, even unconsciously, to keep us safe, the joy of weight loss can be overlaid by a wash of terror. In my experience, one of the unspoken reasons why many people don’t maintain their weight loss is that they don’t want to be thinner more than they want to stay protected. Or hidden.

This Messy Magnificent Life, pg. 28

I had to read that paragraph five times in a row before I could keep reading. I have not been at my “right for me” weight since my 20s. I am now 41. The summer of 2004, when I had just graduated from law school and was studying for the bar, I weighed 135 pounds. At the time, I felt fat! But looking back at old photos, I know that was a very healthy weight for me.

I remember feeling so vulnerable at that weight.

There are a lot of reasons I felt vulnerable at 135 pounds, but this jumps to mind: when I have weight to lose, I can blame all the difficulties of life on my weight; when I am at my goal weight, I have to address the actual reasons for any discomfort. And shit, that is terrifying.

But I have reached a point where addressing my deeper issues is less terrifying than not addressing them. Those deeper issues are keeping me from living my best damn life, and I don’t want to live my life running from whatever “my issues” are. Ever since I was diagnosed with postpartum depression, I have done a lot of work and slain a lot of personal monsters and here is the thing I keep learning, over and over.

The monsters? They might seem terrifying when they are lurking in my subconscious, but once I shine the light of my attention on them, they are never that scary.

I am excited to keep reading This Messy, Magnificent Life and shine some light on the monsters I have been avoiding with food.

I want the record to reflect: this is tough.

I am deploying all of my self-care tools to thrive while sheltering-at-home during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is still tough.

Yesterday morning during my walk, I thought I should listen to the new episodes of Unlocking Us With Brené Brown. I really like the show. Last week, two new episodes dropped about the art of apology. When I saw what the episodes were about, my body tensed. I thought, This does not sound like the sort of thing I have the energy for right now. But I made myself hit Play. I love the podcast, and I love working to be a better person. If I just listenend for a few minutes, I would surely get fired up.

After ten minutes, I realized I was just not in a place to absorb the lessons. I switched to NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour. For me, that show is a reliable source of brain candy, and damn, I needed some brain candy.

Then last night, Nathan asked what I wanted to watch after the kids went to bed. I picked the movie Bel Canto. I read and adored the book years ago and thought I would enjoy the movie. The book involves a hostage situation in South America with an opera singer, and oh, it was such a lyrical story. I wanted to revisit that lyrical place. But within fifteen minutes of starting the movie, I realized the movie was going to be a little more intense than my sepia toned memory of the book. After all, it involves a hostage situation in South America. Nathan asked if I wanted to watch something else. My body screamed, Yes! Let’s watch something pleasant! But then my brain thought, I should watch this movie. (One of these days, I will learn to associate the word “should” with alarm bells.) I soldiered on for another fifteen minutes.

Then I waved the white flag and asked Nathan to switch to Fleabag. Again, I needed brain candy.

I have to keep reminding myself that we are living during an unprecedented moment in history. I want to get comfortable with uncertainty but holy shit, there is so much uncertainty. I want to go with the flow, but where the fuck is the flow going? And why does it sound like there are waterfalls ahead? Has anyone checked this river for waterfalls???

I am doing everything I can to be my best self during this adventure. I can try to be positive and call this The Great 2020 Adventure, but it’s still a fucking crisis. It is still draining to be living through such uncharted territory with two small children who want to go back to school already and see their friends. Sometimes it helps to call this an adventure. But sometimes, I need to remember this is a crisis and it is okay to feel drained and grumpy.

Sometimes, my best self just wants happy, entertaining podcasts and television shows. If that is the medicine that helps me get through this crisis/adventure, then that is the medicine I am going to take.

The difficult movies and podcast episodes will be waiting for me on the other side of the pandemic.

Pass the popcorn and brain candy!