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 Or maybe I just feel like an outdated broken computer?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.

I am in a period of upheaval.

Pippa started kindergarten on Monday, and Julian starts preschool in a week and a half. This means I will have more Me Time, and I want to use that time for exercise and writing.

Except…

Standing in Pippa’s kindergarten classroom this past Monday, I realized I want to be involved with her elementary school life. I want to be in her classroom so I know what my daughter’s days are like. And more, I want to be there to help the teacher because holy eff, how is one teacher supposed to teach twenty-five five year olds how to read??? Pippa’s teacher is amazing, but education also depends on parental participation. And even more, I want to be there because something in my gut is telling me to do that.

I did not realize that the start of kindergarten was going to be such a big transition for me! I thought I was going to have heaps and heaps of extra time to write. I didn’t realize I’d start thinking over my values and how I want to spend my time. I didn’t realize I’d want to spend some of my Me Time in the kindergarten classroom. Which means I have to either (a) spend less time writing or (b) diminish another “obligation” to free up more writing time.

Well.

Poop.

I’m actually going to see my psychic in nineteen minutes to sort through all the crap spinning around in my head.

(I’ll have to write another post about “my psychic” and my new growing relationship with the tarot and intuition. By another post, I probably mean “an ass shit ton” of posts because I’m figuring all this out as I go along. My journal is a wonderful place to vent and express and feel the joyful flow of words moving through my body, but blogging is helping me become very intentional about my journeys and adventures.)

A big part of me feels like I need to sort out my calendar and figure out my priorities. How much time will I spend working at preschool? How much time will I devote to kindergarten? And how will I spend my time helping at elementary school? And what about my writing? Just how much time do I need to feel satisfied on that front? What about my podcast? And the support group I run? A couple of days ago, it occurred to me that it might be time for me to stop leading a mom-to-mom postpartum support group on Thursday afternoons and instead, maybe host a monthly nighttime gathering. The Thursday group takes a huge chunk out of my babysitter time, which is time that I could spend writing, and shit, I have a lot of crap to consider.

Deep breath.

I don’t have to figure out my life today. Or tomorrow. Or next week.

Right now, I just need to accept that I’m in a period of chaos, upheaval and transition. A month from now, I’ll have a better handle on how I want to spend my days.

For now, it’s enough to embrace the chaos.

As I blogged about here and then here, I have been fasting from sugar, one hour at a time, since August 5, 2018 at 7 a.m. I have now been fasting from sugar for eleven days, just by taking a One Hour Sugar Fast. As of this morning, I have lost four pounds. (Woot woot!)

Earlier today, while walking around the mall with Julian, a thought bubbled to the surface of my conscious: I’m ready to commit to a One Day Sugar Fast.

Eleven days ago, I was eating all the sugar: ice cream; pancakes with syrup; donuts; more ice cream; candy; birthday cake; and oh my god, give me more ice cream. The thought of giving up sugar for even one day was overwhelming. How could I get through an entire day without at least a little hit of chocolate? Impossible!

But could I live without sugar for one hour? Yes, of course. The idea of fasting from sugar for one lousy hour was so absurd, that of course I could and would follow through on the commitment. The commitment was so ludicrous, I could even extend the fast for another hour and then another and another until lo, I found myself living without refined sugar for an entire week.

Now that I have been living without refined sugar eleven days, the idea of fasting for One Day More feels so ridiculously small, that of course I can commit to it. It’s been eleven days since I had processed sugar. I can easily make it to Day Twelve.

And so, the Adventure of The One Hour Sugar Fast has turned into the Adventure of the One Day Sugar Fast. I’m not exactly sure where this adventure will take me, but I know that (a) this is something I must do and (b) I need to blog about my weight loss adventures because (c) this is about something bigger than numbers on a scale.

For the past year, I have let myself eat whatever I wanted to eat. Sometimes I wanted to eat healthy nutritious foods. And sometimes, I did not. I had to take the past year to eat all the chips and ice cream and candy and chocolate that my heart desired to show myself that I am worthy of love no matter what.

I get that now. I am worthy. Simply by virtue of being, I am worthy.

But now I am ready to level up. It’s no longer enough for me to love myself no matter how much I weigh. Now I want to love myself so much, that I take immaculate care of my body so I can feel like my best and most vibrant self.

I have the One Hour/One Day Sugar Fast is going to help me get there. I have a lot of work to do – eat more veggies! drink more water! ditch the Diet Soda! – but one adventure at a time. It’s tempting to hit the time travel button and jump to the end of my journey by making an overnight transformation, but I have seen that movie, and I know how it ends: with me having a breakdown, going back to all my bad habits, and gaining back all the weight. This time, I’m watching a different movie. It’s the Peter Jackson Hobbit movie version of weight loss. But I know that right now, this is the adventure I have to follow.

One day/dragon at a time.

As I explained last week in this post, I gave up refined sugar for one hour on August 5, 2018. You read that right. Just one hour.

I know, it seems absurd to give up sugar for one lousy hour. That’s the point. If I gave up sugar for a month or even a week, that commitment would seem too daunting. I’d get overwhelmed, crack, eat all the Red Vines, and decide life is not worth living without sugar.

Believe me, I know this from prior experience. I have tried breaking up with sugar many times in the past. Always with grandiose resolutions to get clean and pure. And sometimes, I could last for a month or two, but always, the idea of an eternity without sugar made me crack.

But one hour? I can give up sugar for one hour!

So that’s what I have been doing for the past nine days. Or, more accurately, for the past 204 hours. Every hour, I give up sugar. And every hour, I decide to give it up for one more. I don’t actually think about sugar that much. The sugar fast automatically renews on the hour, so if I get a hankering, I just check the time and remind myself that I can have sugar when the current hour is up. By the time the hour is over, the craving has passed.

I have felt pretty lousy the past few days: congested, headache, low energy… It might be a summer cold, but according to Dr. Google, I might be experiencing sugar withdrawal symptoms. My intuition tells me I’m hurting from sugar detox.

Sugar withdrawal symptoms do not make me reach for the chocolate. On the contrary. I just feel more determined to renew my one-hour sugar fast when the big hand on the clock reaches twelve. If sugar withdrawal is making me feel this shit lousy, then it’s better to renew the fast a few more times.

Bonus: I’ve lost just over three pounds in nine days. I have not made any other dietary changes. Also, I spent two days in bed, feeling sick as a dog, walking less than 2,500 steps in a 24 hour period. Which is to say, I’m exercising way less than usual but losing weight. Sweet!

But I mean sweet in a totally natural way, of course. Not in a waffle/Snickers/cupcake sort of way.

As I was writing in my journal this morning, I realized that my adventures with postpartum depression are similar to earthquake.

The first four months of postpartum depression were the equivalent of an actual earthquake, starting with some trembles and tremors that began to grow and grow in intensity until I felt as if my world was coming to an end. Four months postpartum, when I saw my obstetrician and told her I had thought about killing myself, there was one objective: STOP THE EARTHQUAKE.

I voluntarily admitted myself to the psych unit at my hospital and started taking Zoloft and mirtazipane. Four days later, when I left the hospital, the earthquake had stopped.

It was time for damage control.

After a big earthquake, there are a lot of immediate crises: collapsed buildings and bridges; fires, floods; and dozens if not hundreds of people in mortal peril. There are also broken windows and crumbled chimneys, but first things first: you have to save the people.

For two weeks after my discharge from the hospital, that was my focus. I spent lots of time resting, taking long walks, and writing in my journal. I started seeing a psychologist. I got a massage and a pedicure. I went to the mall with my mom and bought shirts that were not stained with breast milk. In other words, we stopped the fires and floods and rescued all the people trapped beneath crumbled buildings and bridges.

During those two weeks, my husband, baby and I lived with my parents. When I was feeling more like myself, we went home. At that point of my recovery, I was ready to deal with the rest of the earthquake damage: the broken windows and crumbled chimneys; the cars smashed by fallen trees; the fallen power lines; and so forth.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about that part of my recovery because hey, I wrote a book about it. But long story short, when I had finished all the window and chimney repairs, I considered myself fully recovered from postpartum depression.

But something interesting had happened during my personal earthquake.

Like an actual geological earthquake, postpartum depression had ripped open a chasm right across my soul. I was able to peer into that chasm and see the inner workings of my spirit.

The chasm revealed a toxic waste dump.

I could have covered the chasm with dirt and fenced it off with barbed wire and signs that said “Danger: No Trespassing.” Then I could have planted tall trees around the fence and acted as if the chasm had never happened.

I think that’s what most people expected me to do. It’s the polite way to deal with a spiritual toxic waste dump.

But I refused. Instead of burying my chasm, I have spent the past five years climbing down into its depths, hauling out the toxic waste, and sometimes, just holding my hand against the infected soil to draw the poison out with love and patience.

This website is about everything that has happened and has continued to happen since postpartum depression ripped open a chasm in my soul and revealed the toxic waste deposits that were dragging me down.

I have another website, PPDadventures.com, but I want to limit that website to all things related to the immediate recovery from a maternal (or paternal) mood disorder. That website is for the moms and dads who are in the middle of an earthquake and need to figure out how to make the ground stop shaking. It’s for people who are putting out fires and floods. And it’s for the women and men who are still trying to cobble their chimneys back together. That is all difficult and important work, and frankly, while you are doing that work, you shouldn’t have to worry about chasms that reek of toxic waste.

But once all the catastrophes are handled, and there’s this gaping chasm in the wilderness of your soul, then what? What do we do with the chasms?

I’m going to keep writing until I figure that out.