Yesterday I blogged about the uncertainty of Summer 2020. Our trips have been cancelled and summer camp is looking like a bust. I wrote about how I am trying to get comfortable during the uncertainty. Personal growth! Transformation! Yeah! And I am still trying to do that today.

But.

I had another idea.

What if I just accepted the inevitability of the worst case scenario and then made plans for that? What if I harnessed my desire to plan ahead to help me deal with the Covid-19 uncertainty?

So first, I thought about the worst case scenario for Summer 2020:

• Nathan will be back at the office
• The kids will not have any school or camp
• Fun things like the zoo and aquarium will be closed. We might not even have play dates with friends.

Of course, this is not actually the worst case scenario. I am creative. I can think of plenty of shittier situations!

As is so often the case, my challenges (parenting during a pandemic) arise from my blessings (my healthy radiant children). But even though I know I am blessed to have Pippa and Julian, we are all still going a bit crazy after spending over seven weeks sheltering-at-home. Pandemic parenting is no joke.

Since we started sheltering at home, I have been trying to live in the present moment. Today I realized that might be a helpful mindset in ordinary times, but these are not ordinary times. By focusing on the here and now, I have allowed myself to wallow in a big pit of denial. It’s a perverse type of bargaining: if I just enjoy today, and focus on the here and now, then surely this will be over in a few weeks.

But my pre-pandemic mindset is not serving me today. Instead of having my hopes constantly crushed, I need to accept the current reality. My kids will be home with me all summer and our ability to go fun places will be very limited. And also: the 2020-2021 school year will probably involve more distance learning.

That’s a lot for my brain to digest. But it’s also a relief to finally accept the present, albeit shitty, reality. Maybe later I’ll be pleasantly surprised when things are better than I expect.

So that was Step One: I considered and did my best to accept the Summer 2020 Worst Case Scenario.

Then I moved on to Step Two: plan for the Summer 2020 Worst Case Scenario.

I opened a new document on my laptop and wrote a two page list of things we can do to stay happy and busy over the summer. This was comforting. I also wrote down my self-care absolutes: daily journaling; blogging; and one hour for revising my fantasy novel. The kids will be allowed to watch television so long as they leave me alone to write.

Speaking of television: I will be ignoring all the screen time recommendations. This is a pandemic. I am not trying to win some expert’s approval about how much time my kids spend watching Netflix shows.

And: we will make zero efforts at this distance learning bullshit over the summer. We will read when we want to read. That is easy. We are a family that loves to read. If Pippa wants to write, she will write. If Julian wants to practice his ABCs or count, sure, we will do that. But I am not going to enroll the kids in online classes that create more work for me. The coming school year might be full of all sorts of shitty distance learning, so I need as much relaxation over the summer as I can possibly get.

It is the first week of May and normally, I would already have a good idea of what our summer was going to be like. Actually, I had it all planned out months ago, in January: a long weekend in Las Vegas for our annual reunion with my dad’s extended family; then a few weeks of summer camp for the kids; Fourth of July week in Nebraska; and then more camp for the kids. Somewhere in there, we would have a couple of free weeks as well for lazy mornings and fun outings.

Unfortunately, that thing we call “normal” left the station weeks ago.

Las Vegas is not happening. We have decided that after all we have been through, it would be irresponsible to visit a destination like Vegas. Plus, most of our relatives already said they are not going. It’s not much of a family reunion if your family is not there.

Nebraska is also not happening unless things change dramatically. We just do not feel comfortable flying and then exposing not only ourselves but our extended families to Covid-19 germs.

Summer camp is the big wild card. Pippa was registered to attend two different camps. Camp #1 cancelled its entire summer program a couple of weeks ago. Camp #2 is still apparently all systems go… but that could change at any moment. Julian is slated to attend summer camp at his preschool, but who knows when schools will be allowed to reopen.

I am getting a lot of practice at living with uncertainty.

It’s not easy. It’s not comfortable. But I do not have much choice in the matter, do I?

My brain wants to plan ahead. That’s not my fault. It’s biology! Our cave ancestors had to plan ahead to make sure they had enough to eat and did not get eaten by a saber tooth tiger. Shit, even squirrels plan ahead! That’s why they bury nuts — they are saving up for winter. If squirrels are planning for winter, then of course I am going to have some biological instinct to plan for summer.

For me, planning ahead is generally an act of self care. I have to write or I lose my sense of self. I learned that the hard way when I was committed to a psychiatric hospital for postpartum depression. A turning point in my recovery was when I finally set pencil to paper and started to write. I can miss a few days of writing from time to time, but I have learned to plan for my writing time to make sure I feel like my most authentic radiant self.

But right now, planning ahead more than the current week feels like a special kind of torture. It reminds me of all the things we have lost. It’s a bit like rubbing an open wound. Just don’t do it!

My biological instincts are sound. If I was a squirrel, I’d have the best damn acorn hoard possible for winter. But now I am living in a situation that is forcing me to live with great uncertainty. And this is what I have noticed so far: when I resist the uncertainty generated by Covid-19, I feel shitty; when I surrender and live in the current week, and accept that I do not have control over all the variables of my life, I feel okay — even, I dare say, great.

This is something magical about being human. The squirrel is going to keep racing around, burying acorns, no matter what its circumstances. But I am not a squirrel. I can pay attention and get curious about my thoughts and feelings. I can connect the dots: trying to plan for Summer 2020 makes me feel anxious and bitter; surrendering to the uncertainty feels better.

And then.

The magic happens.

I can decide to override my biological instinct to plan ahead and surrender to the uncertain flow of life.

I am trying to do this during the pandemic. Some days I am more successful than others. But even on successful days, I have to make a conscious decision to override my desire to plan again and again and again, because damn, my tendency to plan is basically mingled with my marrow and blood.

But I can do it. Slowly, persistently, and patiently. I can change the way I think. I’ll stop feeling the urge to plan for Summer 2020 several times a day (okay, by “several,” I mean “several hundred”). Eventually, I’ll just think about Summer 2020 every few days, and I’ll quickly release my desire to have solid plans for the months ahead.

Unlike the squirrel, I can change my thoughts to help me get better with uncertainty.

And since uncertainty is one of the few certainties of life, that might not be such a bad thing to learn during The Great 2020 Adventure.

There is an old Far Side cartoon that depicts a classroom with adult students and a teacher at the chalkboard. In the front row, there’s a student with a freakishly small head, hand raised, and the caption:

Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full.

That just about sums up my current state of affairs.

I have not blogged or worked on my fantasy novel for the last two days because my brain is just too damn full. Right now, my brain still feels too full, but I also feel like I might lose my mind if I don’t write something. So here I am.

I know this is just another fun part of the Covid-19 sheltering at home experience. We have been doing this for seven weeks! It has been seven weeks since my kids’ schools closed, and seven weeks since Nathan’s firm decided everyone should work from home. And still, we have no idea when this will end.

On one level, this is not that difficult. Bombs are not falling from the sky. We are healthy. Our days are filled with very basic tasks: laundry; dishes; cooking; keeping the kids busy; makings sure Pippa does some first grade schoolwork; tidying the messes that never stop accumulating; taking walks; texting friends. The car does not get used every day. My To Do list is rather short.

But on a deeper level, this is one of the most difficult thing I have ever done. (It’s a close foot race between my adventures with postpartum depression and the current situation. I think PPD was worse… but ask me that again in five years when I have some perspective.)

It’s not surprising that my brain is full! My whole life was turned upside down in the space of a few days.

This upheaval has kicked the shit out of a lot of routines and habits that I took for granted. For example, I had a daily routine to get the kids ready for school that included things like brushing teeth and getting dressed. We don’t have to get ready for school anymore, so now it is often mid-day before I remember they need to brush their teeth. Today, they actually asked me to help them floss! Another example: I used to make ice in the afternoon while packing school lunches. Now: no more packed lunches, no more remembering to make ice.

And don’t get me started on the grocery store! Pre-Covid-19, I parked the car, got a cart, checked my list, put everything in my cart, and paid. Now my brain has to go through high-level acrobatics just to make sure I get what we need:

• Where will I park? Which entrance will be open? It changes!
• Oh, crap, where’s my face mask? Got to put on the face mask.
• Then I get my shopping cart but the store keeps changing the protocol for that. They are doing their best to sterilize the carts, but I swear, it was an obstacle course to get one last time.
• Now it is time to social distance. I can’t just waltz down an aisle and get what I need. I have to make sure I am giving the other shoppers enough space.
• Then I cannot be certain I will be able to get what is on the list. Dairy has been hit and miss. And meat? Well, I no longer write specific items on my list. I just write “meat” and see what the grocery gods will send.
• Waiting in line to pay is another social distancing game. Is this difficult? No. Is it new? Yes! And when everything is new, it freaks my brain out a little.

I am mentally and emotionally drained. I feel like I should lounge in bed, read a book, and give my brain a break. But I have been doing that for two days and I miss the escape of working on my fantasy novel.

I also do not have a lot of patience left for my kids. My brain is like, All systems full, access to patience reserves denied.

I know that I will eventually feel like myself again. I know I need to be patient and give myself rest, grace and compassion.

But damn, this is tough.

Covid-19, my brain is full. May I be excused from this alternate reality now?

I blogged yesterday that I am going to write some posts inspired by Glennon Doyle’s new memoir Untamed so by god, that is what I am going to do.

My inner Resistance is putting up a hell of a fight. I love the idea of Resistance. Steven Pressfield first introduced me to the concept (and I think he coined the term as well). I have read a lot of Pressfield’s books, but I am 90% certain it’s in The War of Art. If you are a creative, you should read something by Pressfield. ANYWAY, Resistance is the force that keeps you from doing the creative work you are meant to do. Sometimes it manifests as the voice in your head. Sometimes it manifests as physical illness. Or sometimes it manifests as a series of ridiculous events that consume your time and keep your butt away from the desk, easel or wherever it is that you create.

Resistance is a bitch.

And she has been putting up a helluva fight ever since I decided yesterday that I should start blogging about the books that inspire me. First, she tempted me with blog post ideas that are less personal. Blog about your favorite pandemic hobbies! That would help someone. Or, ooh, I know! Blog about the health benefits of cardio. I added the ideas to my list of possible future posts, and then told my Resistance that I was still going to blog about Untamed.

Then my Resistance got personal.

You are not ready, she said. This is too vulnerable and uncomfortable. You have a lot of ideas and you need to think them through. Write about them in your journal, if you must, but don’t put them on your blog. Then you are committed to what you have blogged and if you change your mind-

Then I might as well never write another word, because as Doyle writes so beautifully:

I am a human being, meant to be in perpetual becoming. If I am living bravely, my entire life will become a million deaths and rebirths. My goal is not to remain the same but to live in such a way that each day, year, moment, relationship, conversation and crisis is the material I use to become a truer, more beautiful version of myself. The goal is to surrender, constantly, who I just was in order to become who this next moment calls me to be.

Untamed, pg. 77.

This. Wow. All my adult life, I have clung to the idea that I would make one more change and that change would be The Getting Together Of All My Shit and then I’d be done with self-transformation. I’d have everything figured out, end movie, play the credits, nothing more to see here.

I went to law school convinced I had figured out my career and life.

But being a lawyer made me miserable. I could feel my soul screaming for fresh air. So I left the law — sort of, that’s a long story — and started a novel. I was making some money working part-time as a lawyer from home while having plenty of time to write things that lit me up inside. I felt better than I had in years. Surely I had figured everything out.

But then I had a baby and fell into the darkness of postpartum depression. That experience transformed me. I emerged from the darkness less anxious, less apologetic, more me. I published a memoir about it, so surely that meant it was time to roll the credits on the story of my life. At last, I could get down to the business of Happily Ever After and not be so preoccupied with personal transformation.

Except now I am 41, and I realize that Happily Ever After is not what I want. What I want is the work of personal transformation until the day I draw my final breath. Glennon Doyle says it perfectly:

I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution.

Untamed, pg. 51

I am meant to write about my personal journey and transformation. And that means things I write today may not hold true for me tomorrow. Hell, writing this post might lead to the realization that I am meant to not write about my personal journey and transformation.

This makes me uncomfortable, but hey, I was also uncomfortable the first time I told a group of women that I had postpartum depression. Those first months of my recovery from PPD, every time I told someone that I had a mental illness, I felt as if I was confessing some great crime. But the discomfort eventually faded, and now telling someone that I had PPD feels as comfortable as wearing my favorite sweatshirt. Maybe this sort of writing will eventually become comfortable as well.

Here is something I have learned: the more Resistance fights something I want to do, the more important it is that I roll up my sleeves and get to work.

I am so grateful that Glennon Doyle had the courage to write not one, not two but three memoirs. I have only read her second and third books, but wow, the difference between the two is so great, they could have been written by two different people.

And that is incredible. Doyle wrote a wildly successful memoir and it would have been so easy for her to stay stagnant, and keep writing the same thing, rather than disappoint her followers. I confess, I have sometimes felt paralyzed by the work I have done as an advocate for maternal mental health. My spirituality has been exploding, but I thought: how can I write about spirituality if it’s not helpful for moms with PPD? So instead of writing about my spirituality, and current adventures, I ended my PPD podcast and blogged very, very rarely.

Fortunately, the crisis of sheltering-at-home during the Covid-19 pandemic pushed me to a point where I could no longing ignore my call to blog.

And now, with her memoir Untamed, Glennon Doyle has shown me how to be a writer in a flow of “perpetual becoming.” I can write what I feel called to write today, and not worry about how if it fits perfectly with Future Courtney. All this work is necessary to keep becoming my truest, most beautiful self.

I have been reading Glennon Doyle’s new memoir Untamed for about a week now. I still have about thirty pages left but my god, I can already say it is one of my favorite books.

I also read Doyle’s memoir Love Warrior when it first came out in 2016. I highlighted it and wrote notes in the margins and felt transformed by her ideas. Doyle’s husband (now ex-husband) had admitted to sleeping with other women since the beginning of their marriage, and by book’s end, they had renewed their commitment to each other and appeared to be enjoying their Happily Ever After.

Shortly after I finished Love Warrior, I learned that Doyle was divorcing her husband, and I remember thinking, WTF? Why did I just read a memoir about saving her marriage if she was going to divorce the guy so soon after publication?

So when I first heard about Untamed, I was not interested. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice… But after I heard Brown’s interview of Doyle on the Unlocking Us podcast, I knew I had to read Untamed. Actually, that’s not entirely correct. Within the five minutes of listening to the interview, I knew I had to read Untamed. I had ordered the book from Amazon long before I finished listening to the interview.

I know understand that writing the Love Warrior memoir was part of Doyle’s personal journey. If you have not read Love Warrior, you could definitely read Untamed first. But having read Love Warrior, I really appreciate just far Doyle has come. It is inspiring. She is a work a progress, just like all humans, and she is not afraid to let us see the work of her life before it is finished.

I’m not going to try to write a proper review since there are already over 1,000 reviews of Untamed on Amazon. But here are some quotes that made my jaw hang open:

If you are uncomfortable–in deep pain, angry, yearning, confused–you don’t have a problem, you have a life. Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s heard because you are doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.

Untamed, pg. 93

Oh, I could just sit here and reread that quote all day. Maybe I should. (No, wait, the kids will need to be fed. They are eating like hobbits during quarantine!) But I feel like I have spent so much of my life trying to numb the uncomfortable feelings, but those are the feelings that mean I am living my life.

Another quote:

Brave is not asking the crowd what is brave. Brave is deciding for oneself.

Untamed, pg. 106

I am pulling out these quotes because Untamed shone a brilliant radiant light that I needed. It flooded my heart with love and filled my brain with ideas I needed. But as I cite these quotes, I feel like I am circling the thing I want to do, without actually doing it.

I read a lot of nonfiction books that I think of as self-help, but that fall into lots of different genres: memoirs like Untamed; books about spirituality (also Untamed); psychology; parenting (Untamed again); and philosophy (definitely Untamed). And I often think: I should write several blog posts about this book so that I can internalize what I have learned. Now I am actually blogging nearly every day. Maybe it’s time I do what I have been thinking I should do for several years?

This idea is coming from what I think of as my intuition. Glennon Doyle calls it The Knowing. Whatever you want to call it, I think it is my connection to the divine, sending me ideas that lead me on the adventure that is my life. And my intuition just keeps popping into my mind, suggesting that I write about the book I am reading. It has been doing this for years. And I always come up with an excuse (Pippa needs help with homework! I have to fold the laundry! The dishes are dirty!) and then I’m reading another book and the moment has passed.

I don’t want to let the moment pass again.

Today, I waxed poetic about Untamed but tomorrow, I’m going to open the book and when I find a quote that inspires me, I’m going to start writing and see where that leads me.

It’s going to feel awkward AF but I Brene Brown keeps admonishing her listeners to lean into the awkward.

My intuition has nudged me in the right direction many, many times. Now I’m going to let it nudge me again. Even if that means I am about to venture into writing territory that feels awkward.

It’s Week “I Completely Lost Track” of the Great 2020 Adventure, and the house is wrecked.

It’s actually not that bad. It just feels oppressive because we are here all the damn time. And now that I am writing about it, the house would probably feel oppressive even if everything was neat and clean BECAUSE WE ARE HERE ALL The DAMN TIME. But still, everywhere I go, there is somethingin need of sweeping, tidying, scrubbing or burning. (Burn the toys! Burn them all!)

The problem is that all four of us are home basically 24/7, so more dirt is being tracked on to the floors, so no matter how often I sweep, there is always somewhere in need of sweeping. We eat all our meals at home, so there are more dishes to wash, and then there are more towels to clean from drying said dishes. And then there are the toys. Don’t get me started on the toys.

It is not fun to live in a house that feels like a toy store that was just hit by a natural disaster. But when the kids are home all day every day, a mess-free house is just not realistic. Hell, a semi-mess-free house is not realistic. Still, I look around and when I see all the messes, I get agitated.

That’s when I remember the wisdom of a wise soul at the car wash.

It was over five years ago, before I was even pregnant with Julian. I took my SUV to the car wash and even though I just had toddler Pippa at the time, the car was absolutely disgusting. The floors were covered in crushed Cheerios and spilled milk. (Oh my god, I just had a lovely flashback to how my car used to smell like a latrine whenever a bottle got lost under a seat. The horror, the horror!) There were toys everywhere. There were probably also several toddler purses because Pippa had this phase where she could not leave the house without three bags (minimum).

The car wash attendant asked what sort of wash I wanted, and I apologized about the mess in the car. He took one look at the car seat and said, “It’s a blessing! Healthy kids are messy kids! Kids stop making messes when they get sick. If there are messes, thank God. The kids are healthy.”

Looking back, it was almost as if God was talking to me through that car wash attendant, to make sure I got the one piece of parenting advice that I really needed at the time.

And it’s the one piece of advice I keep remembering, again and again, as the children keep wrecking the house as we shelter-at-home. Did they disassemble the couch and use all the pillows to build a fort in the living room? Thank God, the kids are healthy! Is the kitchen floor covered in bits of paper and glitter? Thank God, the kids are healthy! Did I just find a tractor in my closet? Thank God, the kids are healthy! As between (1) a clean house + sick kids, and (2) a messy house + healthy kids, I’m going to choose Door #2 every damn time.

p.s. As I was finishing this blog post, Julian came to me with a bag of dominos. He had been playing with the dominos and then put them all away. He brought me the bag so I could return the dominos to a shelf he cannot reach. He cleaned a mess without being asked! Hallelujah! It’s a social distancing miracle!