However, in my continued attempts to “actually feel things” because my therapist is a sadist with weird rules, I will tell you the truth: I have avoided this moment because it hurts.

In fact, it hurts enough for me to have ignored, for actual years, the writing on the mommy blog (fuck you) wall: I’m done writing about motherhood as a primary area of focus. And I’m done blogging, which you’ve perhaps observed through my habit of not writing blog posts. Once I knew this, though, I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. Also I had a small mental collapse but I digress. Where does one go when the mommy blog dies?

Again, stop calling it a fucking “mommy blog!”

I am not abandoning you, though: I AM MOVING TO SUBSTACK.

Pro tip: You can stop reading here if you want. I have shared the critical information.

I started Renegade Mothering in January 2011, which means I’ve written this for over 13 years. Can you believe it? We’ve been together a long time. Some of you started reading back when I had nine readers and five of them were trolls named Dan.

We’ve become online and real-life friends. We’ve hugged at book events. We’ve hung out when you came to my town for work. We’ve yelled at each other, and I’ve apologized, and you’ve apologized. We have yelled at each other and not even remotely apologized.

We’ve endured the Concerned Internet Brigade a thousand times over, hit with every holier-than-thou asshole on the internet reminding us IT WAS OUR CHOICE TO BECOME MOTHERS.

We’ve gone through some very serious shit, too. The murder of my grandmother. One or two or ten depressions, the 2016 election. Births, deaths, divorces.

And well, oh god—you all made me a writer.

I guess I’ve been a “writer” since the day the bishop’s wife in my church handed me a journal when I was 9 and told me to write every day, and I did, but you made a Writer (puke) in the sense that this is my life, my career. I published a book. I work as an editor and writing teacher, and lead retreats all over the world. I make a living from this. A dream.

I won’t forget the day I sat in my professor’s office in 2013 and told her I was going to forgo the PhD application. I said, “I just have to try being a writer. I think I can do it.”

The reason I thought I could do it was because you exist.

We’ve definitely had some fun: Jack Daniels, that time we were overtaken by second-wave feminists who hated us (?), that time I had to turn off comments because I said tidy houses were not a thing. The time I came out to you as an alcoholic. The time we crashed servers with a friendship manifesto. That time I wrote about Caillou and really offended those in support of tiny bald Canadians. And every single time one of you has commented or emailed that my words have resonated with you.

When I started this blog, my kids were 9, 5, and 6 months.

Arlo was the words “I’m never having a fourth child.”

I was so deep in it all, it seemed the all-consuming motherhood life would, in fact, never end. All those years I wrote to you from the thick of it.

But my house isn’t chaotic anymore. It isn’t loud and raucous. Getting out the door is annoying but because I am ignored by teenagers with no sense of urgency.

Only one kid can’t find their shoes and forgets we put them on every day.

Only one kid needs me to help pack his suitcase.

Only one kid even wants me to pick them up from school and only one needs me to help remember when it’s pajama day. THERE USED TO BE SO MANY OF THEM AND NONE OF THEM KNEW WHEN IT WAS PAJAMA DAY.

It isn’t that childhood is so fast; it’s that the time our families are full of needy children is not the entirety of childhood. Yes, they’re with us for 18 years. The house is a joy-hell clusterfuck for 10. Maybe 12. I guess more if we have a dozen kids.

Arbitrary numbers. Does it matter? The point is I woke up one day and it had all changed, and it really felt like that. Like one day the life I had known like air was just gone. And it isn’t coming back. This is the moment they all warned us about. And oh, how they irritated me.

One day you realize you have time. Hours alone each day. The Friday night movie and pizza tradition, once an explosion of blankets and pajamas and a nursing baby and screaming toddler – a movie never finished, pizza eaten cold—becomes just you, your husband, and the one kid who stays home with you sometimes.

“There used to be six of us all the time,” Mac says. I hit him on the arm and tell him he’s dead to me.

I do it to him the next week, finally giving away a toy all four kids played with, and the youngest has outgrown. I show it to Mac and say nothing – words are unnecessary — and he whacks me back. I think this is how we deal with our feelings. My therapist will be so proud.

What the hell will our lives look like when it’s just him and me?

People start telling you to look forward to grandchildren. Good god. Why is that so depressing? I always said my kids weren’t “all of me,” and I meant it. I had an identity outside of them then and I do now, and I felt erased by all the domestic, unpaid, unseen labor.

But oh, how simple it was to fall into the identity they offered me.

How active, how distracting, how forever calling for me. How warm to hold a little one. How soft their arms I could nibble, just a little, any time I wanted, to get a rush of meaning, calm, love. How simple to be married—no, how much easier to ignore a marriage—when you’re wrapped in and through the babies, one day tumbling into the next and no time to look around at each other, at the day, at the years.

And then they just don’t need you like that anymore, and you get to face how much of your existence was wrapped up in them, even if you partly hated it. Because it was right there. Because it was easier than the alternative (figuring out who you were outside of them). Plus, was there ever really a choice?

Fuck it. We’ve been here before.

What I’m trying to say is thank you. It’s been a beautiful ride. And it’s time to move on.

I’ve said what I wanted to say about motherhood, and now, I’ve got different shit to say–about my home culture, about what it means to be 45 years old, in a country that isn’t my own, with one kid gone, another close to gone – and me, looking forward to what comes after the mommy blog dies.

It may seem like I’m saying, “Welp, that was fun. Motherhood is over.” No. That’s not it. Parenting teenagers is the hardest phase of parenting I’ve faced. It is also distinctly more private.

What I am saying is this: My life is shifting away from what it was and toward the second half of this existence. While I sense a dwindling, an ending, I feel a budding sense of expansion — a desire to reclaim myself like some Oprah-approved lady novel, to find the parts of me I dropped along the way, to remember what it’s like to be a bit more alone.

Shit sure gets real, doesn’t it, when the kids start leaving and the parents start dying?

I feel myself in a strange, liminal space: Not out of the “old life,” unable to see the “new.” These are the cliches we ignore until we cannot anymore.

I want to write about all that. I want to write about how I’ve been changed by age, death, moving abroad. How I’m utterly done with the bullshit. How I am no longer willing to accept dumb shit from anyone, even if they’re on “our side.” I am a bit disillusioned, to be honest, with so much of what’s around me. I used to see the world in much simpler terms: good vs bad. Progressive vs inherently and completely evil (lol). Moving here complicated everything I thought to be True in those simple terms.

I want to write about that, about what I see, read, think, and wonder as an American walking around The Netherlands. I want to write about things I’ve learned while living here. The things I hate, which I’ve never addressed publicly before because it’s a lot harder. And the things I love so much I feel I can’t breathe sometimes in gratitude for being here.

I don’t want to be the “expat blogger.” I don’t want to be some “follow your bliss” live your dreams girl-wash-your-face Dutch version because I moved to a country that feels like utopia because America hates people.

You know I couldn’t be that anyway.

I want to bring the Renegade Mothering energy (eye?) to, well, everything else, only without the political ranting into the void. More on that in my Subtstack.

Anyway, what I hope brought and kept you here is identification. Not so much that we agreed on everything or lived the same kid life or that I never said anything that made you angry (as if that were possible), but rather that there was something in my words that struck something in your bones. That human level.

Why am I moving to Substack and not just shifting the focus of the blog? Because Mark Zuckerberg is an angel of death and I am tired of him deciding who sees my work.

Also, any day now I’m going to get banned permanently from Facebook. No for real if I get one more temporary ban I’m pretty sure I’m off the platform. I can’t write any sort of satire without getting “hate speech” bans, and even though when I argue them they agree it’s not hate speech, the bans are not retroactively annulled or expunged from your Big Brother FB record.

How is it that this billionaire frat tech bro and his dystopian AI zombie team determine what I see, what you see, who sees me, and what I am allowed to say about French people?

Look Mark, we all talk shit about French people because they’re better at everything and we’re jealous. GIVE US THIS.

Are you sensing some anger? I have anger.

In fewer words, I have no agency over my own writing, and I’m tired of being at the mercy of social media algorithms trained by data stolen from my friends.

With a newsletter, I can go straight to the inbox of those who want me. I HOPE YOU WANT ME.That sounded less codependent in my head.

On Substack, I’ll be writing essays on all the things we discussed here, plus quicker bits and observations, brief and low-bottom “reviews” of books I read and movies I see, and links to good shit as it comes into my life. Hopefully all of them are shorter than this blog post.

I don’t need to say goodbye–I am right here!–but I will tell you I have tears in my eyes as I write this, thinking of the first one I wrote, when I had something to say and no idea to whom I was saying it.

I had to find you. I had to trust you were there.

I feel the same way now, a little–unable to find what I want to read about being a human in times that feel just a bit too dystopian for our standard menu of bullshit. Ready to write what I’d like to read in these end times.

Thank you, Renegade Mothering. Thank you to my babies for all those years.

And with all my goddamn fucking heart, thank you.

Now let’s get the hell outta here.

Like Arlo packing up his busking career, let’s fucking go.

Note: I am working on an author site that will eventually house my workshops, retreat info, etc., but the blog posts will ALWAYS be available, right here, as they are now.

The post The last blog post – and what’s next! (other than my tears) appeared first on renegade mothering.

Setting aside the question of whether or not I am the person on earth who sets new rules for the entire population of American mothers, I hereby declare that we shall not, under any circumstances, engage in criticisms of “choice” without taking into account the fact that America hates people.

Not to be dramatic.

But it loves us fighting with one another about individual decision making.

You see, I moved to The Netherlands. Most of you know this. I have been permanently and irrevocably ruined. I will never see the USA in the same way–and I didn’t see it in a particularly flattering light in the first place– but I truly, deeply, had no idea how bad average American parents have it.

I don’t think a person can understand it until they’ve left the USA, raised children in pretty much any other developed nation.

From where I’m standing, it’s truly surreal to watch mothers in the States yell at each other about “choices” to be a stay-at-home mom or “working” mom, or to breastfeed or not, “helicopter moms” vs. “free range” moms or anything else we yell at each other about.

Why? Because every single decision we make is defined by the utter lack of social safety and healthcare in the USA.

In other words: it’s not you, it’s America. 

No, I’m not making us all helpless victims of the system. What I’m saying is this: Every single decision we make as parents is almost entirely determined by the resources at our disposal, the structure of our communities, labor laws and rights, pension availability, healthcare, childcare, and the entire concept of work-life balance. Or lack thereof.

Critiques of “parental choices” are irrelevant and misguided if they fail to take into account how little “choice” most Americans have.

Allow me to explain. (When I say the word “guaranteed,” I mean “legally mandated at a national level.”)

Guaranteed paid parental leave allows mothers and fathers to establish a more stable and early role as parents, integrating breastfeeding if desired and allowing for a less stressful newborn period.

Subsidies on childcare for a much wider breadth of people allows many more people to have an actual “choice” in whether or not they work outside the home, or breastfeed, for that matter. Collective bargaining as a norm and robust federal labor laws allow for creative work structures, and things like “daddy days” in the Netherlands, a half day each week when fathers can take a day off work, PAID, to spend time with their kids. For the first eight fucking years of life.

A 36-hour workweek and flexibility within that week allows families to create more customized schedules and for both parents to share the childcare, and to not be financially penalized for it.

Guaranteed paid sick days and care days for both parents at all jobs further helps balance domestic and childcare responsibilities, and removes the stress of one parent always needing to endure the burden of a sick kid, or go to work sick, which means they’re exhausted and worn out at home, or get sicker and sicker until they really can’t work, at all.

Guaranteed paid vacation of 4-6 weeks a year plus an extra paycheck to fund it, plus quarterly child benefits to help you raise kids increases mental health and lowers stress levels of families, not to mention supports a functioning family as a whole.

Universal healthcare and FREE healthcare for children under 18 makes parents less obsessed with safety.

Subsidies and assistance for low-income/minimum wage workers make parents less concerned with their child being the top of the class. Parents are much less concerned about having The Best. Mommy wars and shame are virtually nonexistent. Because it isn’t an existential thing here–parent how you want.

Ever think about how many American parents are helicopter nutbags because they know a skilled labor, minimum-wage job is essentially a fast track to a shit life?

Well-funded schools not based on local tax income means your kid can go to any neighborhood school which gives you more time in the mornings and evenings and gives your children more independence, and removes the frantic need to live in certain neighborhoods so your kids have a chance at getting a decent education so they have a chance of getting scholarships to attend unaffordable universities to attempt to get a job that will pay off their student debt that accrues at 7%.

But we get mad about school choices.

Universal healthcare and robust mental health and addiction treatment programs make the streets safer, which allows kids to be freer, which allows us parents to be freer–not to mention access all of those services themselves.

Universal healthcare means you are not tied to your job for the benefits, for literal survival. So you have more actual freedom of employment. You can leave. You can start over. You can take a break. You don’t have to stay in a job that’s sucking your soul out your ears so your family has healthcare.

(Tell me again how the USA is the country of freedom, though.)

Affordable university means you are not strapped forever by student loans. It means you don’t have to panic about how to fund your kid’s education. It means you don’t have to work three jobs to pay for it all.

If you have a burnout, also known as extreme stress to the point that you’re unable to work–also known as “the way most Americans live,” or if you have a chronic illness making work impossible, you can take a year or two off, paid at at least 70%, then go back to work. By law, employers must pay this amount for 2 years, and again, this is a minimum. If complications from pregnancy arise, you’re paid at 100% of your salary.

You have the capacity to take care of yourself so you can take care of your fucking family.

Universal pensions means there are many, many more grandparents around to help their kids raise their grandkids. Do you ever think about that? Think about how many old folks work basically until death in the USA. Think about how many families take in their elderly or sick parents or family members because there’s nowhere else for them to go and nobody to care for them. What if that were relieved? What if that were covered?

Can you imagine the difference it makes to KNOW your chronically ill, mentally ill, or elderly parent or loved one is CARED FOR and you don’t have to personally guarantee they don’t die alone in a Lazy Boy armchair or your living room?

This is truly just the surface, friends. Off the top of my head.

So no, we don’t even get to scream at each other for falling apart in the USA as parents, for crumbling under stress, for messy houses or yelling too much. Working and middle-class American parents are thrown scraps, chucked into a society that doesn’t give a shit about them, then told if it isn’t working, they simply need to try harder.

Unless you’re rich, in the USA you’re set up to fail then blamed for it, and every conversation is reduced on both sides to identity politics and shit-slinging us vs. them. What a way to smash class solidarity, no?

It’s stunning to watch from here, and I’m fascinated by my own past participation in it. I understood it was more complex than simply “individual choice,” but I did not understand how much easier all of it would be, how vastly different all of it would be, if America treated basic human rights as actual rights instead of privileges.

I also did not understand the role of “culture wars” in all this and the way political parties form themselves around cultural issues precisely because it distracts us from the systemic problems materially affecting our lives.

As long as we’re angry at each other, we won’t get mad enough to be like the French, or English, or Russians, or the Dutch, who ate their aristocratic leader in 1672. I am not recommending that. What I’m saying is, people get mad when they’re tired of being fucked by the oligarchy, and then, sometimes, they revolt.

OH WAIT THE AMERICANS DID THAT TOO.

And as long as we’re mad at each other, we aren’t mad at them.

I know what some of you are thinking: You live in a commie country. You pay 85% taxes. (I read that literally a few days ago).

I pay the same tax rate I paid in the USA and California (around 24%).

Nobody gets ahead in those socialist countries. Lol. The Netherlands is a fucking tax haven. It’s regulated capitalism. Their healthcare system is a blend of public and private. I buy private insurance; if I want to pay more, I can have more services covered. But the basic package, and the cost of that package, and what it covers, is dictated by the government each year as opposed to for-profit insurance companies with a vested interest in me NOT getting healthcare.

This is worth repeating: The Netherlands is a tax haven, not some socialist utopia. It has some of the greatest inequality between rich and poor in the world. The difference? They raised the bottom, folks.

That’s it.

They don’t make these choices out of some bleeding heart niceness. The Dutch are fiercely pragmatic, science-driven (a lot of atheists and agnostics here), and measured. They make these societal decisions because they have the best outcomes for the society as a whole.

No worries, you can be an obscenely rich asshole here, too.

The only difference is that here the state has said, “You know what, the rich can be filthy rich and WAY richer than the bottom but the bottom can ALSO have a decent fucking quality of life.” A basic standard of living.

In America they say the rich get it all and the rest get nothing and sorry, there’s no other way it can be.

But there is. And until we stop blaming one another for the shit show of parenting in America, they’ll keep winning.

I didn’t even get into the difference for kids.

Writers: I have a memoir workshop coming up. I promise I’ll be less mad than I am in this post. 

FROM MEMORY TO MEMOIR: 

APRIL 6 – MAY 11, 2023

Thursdays at 10am PST/1pm EST

A six-week online workshop for the person ready to write a memoir, or the one with a shitty draft abandoned in a desk drawer. We will discuss everything from narrative arc to dialogue to writing about other people in a way that won’t make them hate you. This workshop involves weekly direct feedback on your writing and offers tiered support, including a whole-manuscript review.

The post Hey, Mothers: It’s not you, it’s America. appeared first on renegade mothering.

When did I become this person? Unclear.  Am I embarrassed of it? Probably.

I think back fondly to the time when I had stunning cultural analyses to share, every day, all day, endlessly, impressing at least myself with my witty responses to whatever I needed to be witty about. I’d share articles I had read that angered or enlightened me. I’d post them with a recap. I’d have things to say. I’d believe those things were worth saying. I’d wait for the world to respond.

Now it’s kitten, puppy, dog, puppy, kitten, all the animals. Kitten in a ball. Puppy on the ground. Me, vaguely delighted. Unsure when I became that person.

Untrue. I know exactly when I became that person: I became that person when my mental health quite literally collapsed this summer.

I didn’t wake up one day to Mental Collapse, as if it were on the agenda. It had been building for a few years, maybe a couple of decades if we’re really gonna get technical, but around June I started writing things in my journal like “I feel really, really strange,” and “I can’t access my thoughts.” “There is something terribly wrong with me.”

Look, there was a time in the not too distant past when if you told me “My mental health doesn’t allow me to engage beyond cat photos,” I would have told you to grow the hell up. I would have tried to hide my eye roll and I would have failed. I would have asked myself what kind of delicate rose petal backs away from life because they truly cannot engage. As if that’s a thing!

But my life has been a series of lessons on things I’m wrong about, and I was wrong about that. My deep belief that powering through is always an option could be in part why I find myself here now; not only the universe’s way to level that which must be leveled, but because it shows how little I understood the power of the brain to remove one’s capacity to function in the world.

It is possible to collapse. It is also possible, if you ignore your body’s signs for long enough, that your brain can shut down. There will be no “powering through.” There will be only a powering down.

They really should rename that book “The Body Keeps the Score, and it will Fucking Win.”

You can only run for so long.

As an aside, this if the first time I’ve been able to write this many words in a very long time, so please celebrate with me.

Also, IN MY FUCKING DEFENSE, have you seen my animals? They are very cute. There are four now. It’s a long story.

Whatever, I want to talk about the most boring, overused word ever. Stress.

“Stress” is one of those things I heard about for so long for so many years by doctors and wellness people (puke, stop) and People Who Know Shit that I categorically denied it as a thing that mattered. If you’re having trouble following that logic, join the club. I’m simply reporting the facts here.

It’s almost like it becomes white noise, the whir of a fan, the hum of a dryer. It’s so constant you don’t notice it anymore.

No but seriously: Stress kills, stress makes you sick, stress causes cancer, stress atrophies your hippocampus, stress hurts your back,

stress

stress

stress

stress

fuck you.

All life is stress, ya assholes. “Reduce stress.” Like how? Get rid of my kids? Stop earning money? Live in a different country (this applies to both my time in the US on account of its shithole country status, and here in The Netherlands on account of it not being my shithole country).

But here’s what happened, reader: I had a mental break in the form of my brain simply checking the fuck out. It went full dissociation on me. Yes, I have a mental health diagnosis that I’m not going to go into now that makes me more susceptible to dissociation from chronic stress and anxiety, but y’all—damn.

I spent a week at an inpatient mental health facility, and then my brain left my body. I developed dissociative anxiety disorders called depersonalization and derealization. Apparently the treatment was “too much for me.” lol understatement.

It is very hard to explain but it essentially felt like I was outside of my body. When I would talk to people, it was like somebody else was talking from inside of me. I had no idea where the voice was coming from. I couldn’t trace its source. I knew intellectually that I was standing on a street talking to Mac, but what it felt like was somebody else was inside of me talking to Mac. I realize this makes no sense. Try being the one feeling it.

And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, please consider yourself “blessed.” Or something.

The world around me felt like a video game. Like there was this 100-foot wall between us. I could see through it; I knew I was in the world. But I would look at cars coming down the street and not understand how close they were to me. Would I get hit? I was unable to judge distances. Lights and sounds became sudden and disconnected. I got so afraid of how I felt, how foreign the world became, I didn’t leave my house for two full weeks. As in, I did not step outside. That made it worse.

There were no decipherable thoughts in my brain. Or, perhaps better said, thoughts would pop up but I couldn’t find the source of them, or follow them, or develop them. Friends it’s so, so weird.

I could not work or write for more than an hour on my very best days. Hence the cat photos. And if you’re my friend, the lack of communication.

My vision was blurry. Sometimes my head would fall backwards, and my eyes fall shut from the weight and dizziness of the heavy ass head and empty brain. When I say literally could not engage, I mean literally.

Before I had a name for what was happening to me, I began genuinely fearing that I was going insane and may hurt someone. I wondered if this is what it felt like before a psychotic break. I began panicking multiple times a day, thinking if I didn’t get out of this, I couldn’t stay alive. I began to understand why people sometimes end their own lives when they receive a diagnosis of early dementia or other degenerative brain diseases. I didn’t want to die, but I would not live my life like that: No thoughts, no memory, no ability to think, no joy, no connection, no nothing.

I told Mac this as if it were a mere statement of fact. But honestly, the idea that I may STAY like that, and according to the internet forums on depersonalization and derealization, “almost everybody” stays like that. I DO NOT RECOMMEND INTERNET FORUMS. (Why don’t we learn? Why do we always go back?)

But my therapist flatly told me, over and over: You will not stay like this. This is your brain thinking it’s protecting you. If you reduce stress and anxiety, you will teach your brain that it’s safe to “return,” and you will come back. I had to trust her. And what she was saying made sense.

At least it made more sense than, “And one day, your brain left, and it never returned, and then you died.”

This started in earnest in July. It is now November. I had my first mostly “normal” day four days ago. And now, I’m writing to you. By this evening, I may be gone again.

But I will come back. I will always keep coming back.

I’m not sure why exactly I’m writing to you. I guess I have a few things to say. One, I’ve missed you.

I’ve missed myself. I miss the me that had something to say to you, the person that wanted to chat and rant and engage and hang out.

I want to say that sometimes people really are struggling that much, and it doesn’t mean they’ve just moved to Europe and found peace and now just post pictures of the cat’s toe fluff.

It doesn’t mean they don’t care about social and political issues. It doesn’t mean they aren’t scraping the cell walls with everything they’ve got to claw their way back to you. I think we need to go easier on each other. I think we need to stop projecting our shit onto others as if our individual lives are universal.

Am I kinder? Am I a life coach now? Why is life always trying to make me nicer? WHOSE IDEAS WAS THIS.

I also understand now, all the way to my bones, that the internal life is all life is. There’s nothing else. All this external shit, it’s window dressing. Some sprinkles. Who I am, what I am, what makes this life a wild and vibrant thing, comes from within me. I am the one who jumps into a river in Spain and makes it mean something. I am the one who synthesizes and creates from the beauty and pain around me. It’s possible to have it all washed into neutrality, to walk through it like a Marvel robot—and it’s death.

In a way I feel a love and compassion for myself (puke) for the first time– feeling, after all, that I’d give just about anything to experience that asshole again. Why was I so hard on her?

To think and create and desire. To contemplate and grow confused and seek to understand. To follow a train of thought for hours, to write for more hours, to remember yesterday, last week, what I read this morning. To move through the world with a sense of self and personality and my feet on this fucked-up, broken ground.

I begged to return no matter how hard it was. I begged to move through the world again as the person I was quite awful to. Perhaps only those who’ve been through this will understand how I can talk about myself in third person. But if you’ve ever had your Self ripped from you, reduced to a zombie walking through the world through a thick fog of numb, empty distance, with no ability to access the part of you that lives and creates and feels, you will understand what I’m saying here.

We are, to put it bluntly, no matter how fucked up, better than nothing.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I must believe it’s all leading somewhere. Over the years a lot of you have been quite worried about me, probably able to see what I couldn’t see myself. Slow down, settle down, calm down. I couldn’t, though, you understand. Because when I did, I would find myself here.

Whatever I’m going through is the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced. It somehow makes getting sober look like a cakewalk. Perhaps what I’m living through now is getting to the bottom of why I ran straight to whiskey as my main life hack. Perhaps this is the scorecard finalized. I guess it all led me here. And I’ll find myself on a new ground, made just for me, no longer running, and that much more alive.

Until then,

The post The Body Keeps the Score, and it will Fucking Win appeared first on renegade mothering.

I was just coming out of the complete and total numb-fog of wandering around a strange place and wondering how the fuck to buy baking powder  when the pandemic began. I was just beginning to feel a little ground beneath my feet when we were all sent home to our bread making and toilet-paper hoarding, and, somehow, Tiger King. 

I had no friends. I have no family here. I was living in a house in a more suburban area (read: boring to the depths of my soul). And it was cold, as usual. And my eldest child was in America. 

I put on my pajamas and caved into myself. 

For two years I’ve existed in this country that feels like a snow globe: Beautiful to look at, wholly removed from my reality. Something I can look at, hold in my hands, appreciate for what it is, but remains eternally closed off from me. I sure as shit can’t join it.

I hear a lot of expats and immigrants talk about this in The Netherlands. How they never feel a part of the country, whether or not they Speak Dutch, whether or not their spouse is Dutch, whether or not they have a job here. 

I could speculate for 9 hours on why that may be but I don’t see the point. It is what it is. I am not alone in feeling this. But goddamn it makes it worse, I think, to have moved just before or in the middle of the pandemic. I say this not to have difficulty Olympics—I decidedly LOSE—but rather as a point of hope. As in, perhaps it will get better. Maybe I will one day walk out of my house and sit in a favorite spot that feels like mine. 

And yet I wonder if we can all to some extent relate to the feeling of having been reset in an irrevocable way. Like it all blew the fuck up and you can take away the masks and social distancing and mandatory testing but you can’t bring back the way it was. Do we even want it back?

I am not one of the people who feels afraid to “return to normal” and I am definitely not a person who wants to wear an N95 for the rest of my life. No, I do not believe it is an invasion of my deep personal liberty. No, I do not want to wear them forever. Yes, I like human life better without masks, social distancing, QR codes and 750 pages of forms to travel one country to my right.

But what’s fucking with me isn’t any of that. It’s this feeling that I can’t access whatever it was I had before. Like I’ve gone so far inward at this point, pulled so deeply into a life of moving from my bedroom to the kitchen to the office to the couch to the kitchen to the bedroom just to do it all again the next day that I—like it? 

No. 

Or maybe I do. 

I get lonely. Really fucking lonely. And bored. I want a life and friends and places to go and favorite cafes and theater and music. I want to get excited about something. It isn’t just the depression I was fighting. 

It’s some sense that I’ve lost touch entirely with the life I had built and decided was meaningful. The routines and ways of being that brought purpose to my daily life. I’ve been stripped down to me and not much else and I can’t seem to find a path back to you. 

To the world. To community. 

It’s a dark place in my mind sometimes. Every time I walk into the light of this world—the weird, vibrant life around me—a bit of that darkness is illuminated. I don’t feel particularly healthy. I feel contracted and suffocating. 

But I don’t want to take a step out of this house either. It lost its appeal somehow. 

I survived the loneliness by moving straight into the solitude. That wasn’t my idea. My best friend told me to do that. I’ve read more books than I have in years. Written more words (although not on the blog). But I’ve also played more stupid games on my phone than ever before, stared at too many walls, concentrated in ten minute intervals. Life has demanded I learn to look inward for what I need. When I do, I’m not sure I like what I find. 

Are they going to tell us how to reenter? Are they going to instruct us how to get back out there the way they told us how to survive “covid brain” at home? Will there be helpful guides for what the fuck to do as we watch our kids race into the world without a thought, and we miss them a little, feel a little left behind, as the mother on the couch again. Or the office. Or some place we’ve never been at all? 

They took it all away after telling us for generations what life was about, what it all meant. Those of us who survived got a glimpse of those lies, the fragility of that house of cards. 

Moving from a pandemic straight into war.

What is the point, truly, of reentry. Is there even anything out there I need? Why build it all back up again? 

I don’t have anything particularly helpful to say. Sometimes it’s better not to try. If anything, I’m grateful that our delusions were smashed, that maybe we see what they offered was a thin invention that offered distraction, a lot of money for billionaires, and something to do until there’s nothing to do. 

Yesterday my kids and the neighborhood kids spent all afternoon preparing a funeral for a dead bird they found in the little community playground. They dug a grave and placed stones around it. Made a cross from sticks. Gathered flowers for the grave. Invited all the parents out. They sang some songs, offered eulogies, the tweens too dramatic and silly. One boy played his guitar. At the end, one of the dads said, “cake and coffee!”, which is an after-funeral Dutch tradition, I guess. 

He was joking but I had just made a cake. I went inside to get it. We passed it around and ate around the grave of the buried bird. I thought about Ukraine, these children, their children, the little bird in the ground. 

I’m glad it got what it deserved, a tiny world around it, caring that it died. Honoring a life we wouldn’t have noticed at all if we hadn’t stopped for a second, looked around, thought about the way it flew.

Beautiful snow globe bike world I’m so grateful for! Now just to find where I belong–or accept that I don’t.

Writers & Artists: 

I am leading two incredible writing retreats in July.

I realize this is a strange thing to write after the post you just read. And yet, something I know more than anything else: We keep living as long as we can, and, in the words of Toni Morrison, “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language.”

And of course, you don’t have to come to a writing retreat in Spain to do that. But, if you can, well.

“When Artists Get to Work” is July 3-9, 2022 and blends a traditional artist residency with the workshops and discussion of a retreat. There will be five incredible artists & writers in residence there and it’s open to writers and artists of any genre (and of course, those who do both!). It will take place in a 15th-century farmhouse in Lleida, Spain. (4 of 8 spots left)

“Craft Enables Art” is July 13-19, 2022 and is designed for writers. We’re going to a 10th-century castle in the Girona region of Spain. This is my more traditional annual retreat focusing on craft, process, and the creation of a sustainable writing practice. (4 of 12 spots left)

Tomorrow, March 15, and 10:30am PST/ 1:30pm EST, I’m holding a Zoom chat/ informational meeting about the retreats. If you’re interested in learning more, concerned about passports, travel, refunds in the case of disaster, or just what we do there all day and the vibe of these events, join us. Here’s a Facebook event link.

Or email me for Zoom info.

The post Anyone else failing to find their way back into the world? appeared first on renegade mothering.

I didn’t mean to leave us there for so long, but, to be frank, my blog was the last of my concerns. It isn’t that I didn’t care, or don’t care, it’s that my life was stripped to the bare minimum. Stay alive. Don’t drink. Get through the day. Sorta.

And I had nothing to say. I said it all on the day I said I couldn’t seem to will my legs to move.

And because I was empty. I write from the inside, you know? Interests, curiosity, concern, joy, rage. What do you pull from when there’s nothing but blank space?

How do you weave a string of words into meaning when you can’t find any?

It all sounds rather dramatic unless you’ve been there. I felt I had been entirely hollowed out. It will be a long, long time before I understand what happened in this depression.

I have been writing. I’ve been writing long, wandering essays that may take shape someday, and I’ve been writing non-essays that probably have more hope. I’ve been writing in my journal, in notes on my phone. I’ve been reading. I’ve been praying. I’ve been wondering how it was that I felt like myself again though I know exactly when it was.

See? This is good news. I AM SO MUCH BETTER. Do you know how long that depression lasted? Almost two years. From September 2019 to July 2021. I know this because I keep a journal. And yes, because the end was really that clear. Really that defined.

I’m sharing this part because I seem to hear less about depression that lasts for a long time but does, eventually, go away, or shift into something new. Something tolerable. It’s almost like it becomes integrated. I am not talking about resigning oneself to meaninglessness and pain, but rather that the pain and meaninglessness seem to have done their job, and they leave.

There is an appropriate, enlightened way to talk about depression and what I just said is not it.

The idea that pain may have a purpose, that it’s doing something vital and unique to itself—as in, no other source could teach me what that pain taught me–that I may have, as a person, needed it—I can already hear the internet telling me I’m dangerous and toxic and misinformed.

Whoever decides the parameters of these conversations seems to have made clear that the only story we are supposed to tell is “Depression is a chemical illness and we need medication.” And it ends there.

The thing is, I agree with this statement. I knew it was true then and I know it now. And it didn’t bother me. What bothered me was that there didn’t seem to be anything past that.

The idea seems to be that we are supposed to accept the endless pursuit of new and better pills as the correct and awakened method for treating depression and expressed deviation from that is dangerous.

My problem was that the pills didn’t do much for me.

That’s not true. The medicine brought me from non-functional to Vaguely Functioning—and that, if you think about it, is a fucking big deal.

But those pills were my last frontier and last hope, so when my mood stayed as dark as a Dutch January I almost felt—worse? As in, final hope gone. Because where do you go after you’ve played your last hand?

Have I used enough cliches or shall I press on?

Yes, I could change pills. And we were talking about that. But the last time I had an intense clinical depression (when sober enough to differentiate that from regular old alcoholism), I got on Zoloft and was a new human. I went from just on the edge of “postpartum psychosis” to a job, regular exercise, moving houses, and a new life that felt satisfying and real.

The pills this time made me able to get dressed before noon sometimes and stop thinking that if I killed myself my children would be happier.

That’s a damn low bar.

The idea that my sole job in that condition was to find new and different and better pills, many of which I have already taken, many of which have already given me the worst withdrawals I’ve ever had—harder than cocaine, opiates, or alcohol (I’m looking at you, Effexor!)—with some of the most awful side effects including, but not limited to: hallucinations (my favorite was when snake scales slowly crawled up my boobs), gaining 70 pounds in 3 months, cold sweats, insomnia, memory loss, and the total inability to have sex—well, perhaps you can forgive me if LET’S LAUNCH DOWN A PSYCH MED ROAD was not my singular, most joyful approach.

Plus, my life’s circumstances were new and intense. I couldn’t imagine the depression wasn’t at least in part circumstantial: new country, pandemic, first time away from my home, family, friends. I knew I needed help. I knew it had passed the point of “I’ll just take more walks and eat better.” But I also never felt comfortable with “my brain just needs chemical balancing” as a solution.

While trying to figure out what to do with all of this, I started seeing an acupuncturist who is, now stay with me here, a healer. Yes, I said healer. An actual healer. Not one of these assholes who enjoys the sound of her own voice so much she’s convinced she’s a shaman–but like, one of those people who has an indescribable energy of seeing.

Welcome to the new Janelle. She says things like “healer” and “indescribable energy of seeing.” Whatever. I ate my encapsulated placenta. I’ve always been like this. You’ve probably just been in denial.

Anywho, he began telling me things I did not enjoy hearing but that resonated with me on a level that’s hard to describe. I would lie face down with needles in my butt while he said words, and tears would fall out of my eyes and drip through the little face hole.

Bit of an awkward awakening.

I’d tell you all the things he said but that’s a longer story and longer piece of writing because it’s very personal, and delicate, and because I don’t want you to think I am declaring that a person can be healed from clinical depression with well-placed needles and words. Or maybe they can? I don’t fucking know and I ain’t giving medical advice and I’m not your life coach. I am merely recounting my life here.

I will tell you that one of the things we found together was that I was standing between two worlds, unwilling to accept a new way of being, a new relationship to home, work, family, friends—and unwilling to let go of the old one. I was liminal as fuck.

Fighting. Resisting. Clinging. Very, very confused.

We talked about the soul needing to learn some shit as we move through life. I SAID SOUL AND I MEANT IT.

At the same time he’s doing his thing my therapist starts hitting me with “Janelle, if you want to get through this you have to actually feel things,” if you can imagine that shit.

You think you know a person then one day they’re telling you to stop numbing yourself with a cell phone addiction.

I like to write true things as jokes to avoid real emotion. Wait.

Let’s change the subject. GODDAMNIT.

So between needle guy talking about how some egos die harder than others, the Dutch therapist telling me to “actually feel things,” and my own restlessness, I was beginning to suspect that I, in fact, was going through some sort of bullshit growth I never asked for.

Then the therapist is giving me assignments like “The next time you’re feeling vulnerable and sad try to let Mac hug you for fifteen seconds without stiffening like a board.”

Have we rounded the fucking bend here?

The thing to do when feeling vulnerable is to signal to all loved ones in the vicinity that if they come any closer you’ll eat their face off with your bare hands.

I’m good at feelings.

Look, if I’m really fucked, I put my forehead against my dog’s forehead and cry, or tell him about it. This action was, in fact, what made me realize I have never in my life been able to accept comfort from a human being.

What kind of bullshit news is that? I regularly go to my dog for comfort, even physical comfort, and the thought of doing that with a human is incomprehensible. Apparently, though, some people accept hugs when they’re sad, or kind words, or back-patting, or some other weird demonstration of “support.”

I started wondering if this was the part of me that needed to die. (Ya fuckin think?)

Alright enough therapy hour. The point is I started searching with my whole self, as if my life depended on it, for what all this pain was about. I started asking a simple question, and I don’t even know who I was asking: What do you want me to learn from this?

I developed a rabid obsession with reading about depression and melancholy through the ages and through religions and histories: St. John of the Cross’s dark night of the soul, Jung’s alchemic processes of internal transformation, beginning with nigredo, the Greek mythology’s descent into the underworld. Shit, I even hit up Keats’s melancholy.

I wanted to learn what I needed to learn. I felt the world or universe or god was trying to teach me something and I could not find it. There’s a line in my book that says “I didn’t want the pain gone. I wanted it to mean something.”

What kind of new bottom is quoting yourself?

Whatever. Between that and soul growth there’s nothing left anyway.

I guess what I’m saying is I know that sometimes I have to suffer a whole lot before I can get someplace new. I’ve lived that once. Why did I think it wouldn’t happen in sobriety? Why did I think my Self wouldn’t need some serious changing? And why, perhaps most importantly, would I ever think that losing everything that made me feel connected, human, and safe (new country, hi), then finding myself cut off from the ability to create new connections, friends, home, delusions of safety (pandemic)—why did I not suspect this might take me down to the bones?

“I have a feeling you think this is going to pass on its own.” Damn that needle guy.

Check it out, once again: I don’t know what you need to do for your depression. What I knew, or at least suspected, what I felt deep in my blood, was that something was happening to me and I couldn’t just pill it away. I absolutely needed that medication. I am grateful for it and I think there’s a decent chance it saved my life. It definitely saved my sobriety (I was about five minutes from drinking, because it’s a slightly slower way for me to kill myself and everything I love).

But I KNEW this wasn’t going to pass without me doing something. I could feel myself stripped of everything that gave meaning to my life, and I couldn’t create new shit, and I couldn’t find anything in myself. To survive, I had to believe that what I was going through had some meaning, that if I could face it, and face it squarely, and integrate whatever truth existed deep in it, that I would find what I needed.

And the truth is, folks, the process I’m describing up there is in fact a very, very old process, but we sure as hell don’t talk about it. Someday I will talk about it. Someday when we have more time.

**

I don’t think I was off the plane in San Francisco for ten minutes before I felt that sprawling gray lift out of my body.

Maybe it was the warmth (read: Satan’s armpit) of California summer. Maybe it was my beloved state’s trees and mountains and crystal blue of the lakes. Maybe it was the smell of Tahoe pines. Maybe it was Bodega Bay fog.

Maybe it was seeing friends I love with whom nothing is forced. Who I’ve known for years. Who tell it to me straight. Who know it all, already.

Maybe it was being around my own culture and people even though I low-key hate them both. Americans don’t exactly, as a whole, make me swell with pride, as we ban books we don’t like and abortions we don’t like and sing our bullshit country songs of sequin patriotism while waving flags in the faces of hungry kids and wondering what the problem is.

But we are more, of course we are, and for better or worse, I am American.

Maybe it was the fact that people understood me and I didn’t have to work at it and I had a sense of humor again because there was no language barrier blocking sarcasm and understatement comprehension.

Maybe it was going home.

It was definitely going home.

I don’t think we’re aware of how many tiny moments of human connection are created through language and shared culture. Until they’re gone. I don’t think we understand what it feels like to sit effortlessly with a friend over coffee, until it’s mostly gone.

I am misunderstood in my daily life as often as I worry about being misunderstood. I find myself purposely refusing to have real conversations with people around me because it’s just too hard. It’s too much effort for too little return. We still aren’t going to know each other. We still aren’t going to connect. I will leave this conversation wondering how many times my humor didn’t translate.

And over my time here, compounded by lockdown after lockdown, my world got smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier until it was just me, on the couch, wondering if there was ever a person in the meat sack of my body, writing to you about depression.

But I see now that it had to get small, to get me down to the bones. To get me relying on nothing because nothing is there. To get me stripped down to the person who can’t receive a single hug when she’s afraid and heartbroken. To get me to let go of the lifetime of defense, rage, and self-delusion that had me convinced I could go it alone.

It doesn’t work, ya know. It doesn’t work.

I’m not fixed. But I’m closer to a freer, truer self than I’ve ever been.I don’t know why the depression lifted out of my body when I went to California. It felt like I suddenly remembered who I was. “Oh, right,” my whole self seemed to say, “I’m a person. I have a home and friends and a sense of humor and roots way down into the ground.”

I felt a lightness for the first time in years. An energy. A silliness. And a looming dread that the second I went back to the Netherlands it would all go away again.

But it didn’t. By the end of my month in California, I wanted to return. I missed it. I missed our little life here. My kids started saying, “I want to go home,” which was really something.

I remember riding my bike in the sun after returning and noticing that the same lightness existed. I remember a sense of gratitude so deep it gave me chills. I remember feeling like I will never understand how it feels that some things are one day removed from me, not beaten to death, not talked away with a therapist, not diluted with a pill.

I needed it all to get well. I needed the pills and I needed the needles and needle-guy truth and I needed the therapist’s terrible ideas about normal human connection and goddamn I definitely needed the miracle that is my dog.

In a way, I came back to California and felt the arms of old friends and family and the trees and ground give me that fucking hug my therapist insisted I learn to accept.

I didn’t see it coming. I’m not sure what will come next. But I see again, I get what I need, and I am just happy to be here. DAMNIT.

Happy fucking New Year, friends. Here we are. Here we are.

my mom took this picture of me the other day in Amsterdam and it struck me how genuinely happy I look

The post Oh, hi. It’s been a while. appeared first on renegade mothering.

It crept up on me, I suppose, the need to sit for ten minutes after showering. I’d sit on my bed, naked, the towel around my head, thinking about getting dressed, knowing it was the next step of my life, wondering how or when it began to feel impossible. I’d wait for the strength.

It never came, but I’d do it anyway. My whole life became a process of waiting for the next task I couldn’t avoid, watching the clock tick by and wishing it wouldn’t.

Somebody had to get my kids from school. Somebody had to shower and get me dressed so when Mac came home I wouldn’t still be sitting there, not dressed. I’d do the dishes to make it look like I had accomplished something. I would send an email or two. Some days I’d send twenty, apologize twenty times, try to set it all up again.

I’d give myself immensely pathetic pep talks, always the same words: “You can do it, Janelle. Come on.” I’d say it out loud. I’d force my body up. I’d yell at myself. COME ON. DO IT.

And I would. But nothing changed. I’d watch hours pass by, days, weeks, and me still sitting there on the goddamn bed—metaphorically, you understand–waiting for some will, believing myself less and less able to do it.

Life was right there. I could see it, but I couldn’t touch it, and it certainly couldn’t touch me.

So instead I stared at it, remembered what it used to offer, scanned every crevice for some indication that I was alive.

It all sounds so dramatic when you talk about it. Self-pitying. Syrup emotion. Even while writing this I want to tell myself to shut the fuck up.

Depression talk is boring, unless you’re in it.

And that’s why I’m writing this. In case you’re in it. I wanted so badly for somebody to see me in that state, in that ground-down, useless place. I found myself looking everywhere for somebody talking about the sitting-on-your-bed-for-ten-minutes thing, staring at a wall as if it could help you, or giving up hope that the wall had anything to offer, growing ever more silent because it’s all so strange.

But I mean that quite literally, the part about looking for something that reminded me that I was alive—as in, something to touch the part of me that felt alive. The part that experiences something. A desire, a spark of interest.

It wasn’t the sadness so much that killed me but the absence of feeling. Like my whole life was rolling out and it was all the same–today, tomorrow, the next day. I’d feel hopelessness, a permeating regret I couldn’t define, and a sadness that felt like meaninglessness. And not a single change on the horizon.

I wrote some notes in my phone once:

It isn’t that I can’t do the things I used to do. It’s that it won’t mean anything to me.

I can write to you on Facebook a funny story. Show you some beautiful architecture. But after I post it I’ll wonder why I do things like that, and I will feel confused. I’ll respond to you. I’ll excuse myself for not responding. I’ll use out-of-date laughing emojis. I’ll meet you for coffee. I’ll teach a writing workshop. I’ll talk to you on the phone. I’ll pick you up from school. I’ll write you an essay. I will definitely make you laugh.

But it won’t mean a single thing.

I wasn’t asking for joy. I was asking for things to mean something again, for it to be a little less hard.

One morning I listened to an interview with a pastor who had been committed to an institution for depression. He said he understands why people commit suicide.

He said it is because they want rest.

My head fell in final recognition. Gratitude.

Rest. Yes.

I wasn’t suicidal. But I would have given anything for some relief from whatever it was inside of me that wouldn’t budge. Just staunchly refused. It looked at me and laughed. “You’ll never beat me,” it said.

And I never did, but I walked through life anyway.

I understand why women “in the old days” used to “take to their beds.” Simply stop.

I’m not moving, they said. It beat me.

They wanted rest.

I could see running out of steam, when an eternal rest is, at least, rest.

It’s obvious now, looking back, that things weren’t right, at all, but I was playing “Is this depression or regular pandemic life?” with the rest of the world. Before that I engaged in endless rounds of “Is this depression or I just moved to a new country?” I was dying for answers.

But everything I’d ever used to figure such things out–my feelings, intellect, will, even, yes, my God—had left me at some point. It was just me, hanging out, reading what other people had to say about it on the internet.

And no matter how many times the world told me this or that, that it’s normal or not normal, seasonal or chronic, depression or regular lockdown life or pandemic burnout—I wanted to find the answers within myself, because that is where I’ve always gone, and that is where I know things, really know things.

To find out if I need help or not, if it will pass or not. How to fix it. How to get through it.

But the singularly consistent feature of this depression was feeling disembodied–fragmented, a head on an alien body.

What I’m saying is I looked inward and found nothing at all.

Past the nothing was an urge to pick up my phone to play a very stupid game. Some history forever replaying. A craving for a cigarette. A recollection of food in the house I could eat.

I’m speaking of this in the past tense, as something having come and gone, and I suppose, in a way, that’s true.

The day came when it didn’t matter anymore if it was circumstantial or clinical. I couldn’t go on like that. I would have returned to drugs and alcohol if I thought it would work for even a moment. My brain started telling me about how we could make this end. I imagined lying down and never getting up again. I felt myself really slipping away.

And it all became extremely simple. I just needed, help.

I’m seeing a psychiatrist and psychologist now, and I went on a medication that gave me back some energy. I get up earlier. I take a shower without much trouble at all. It’s such a difference I had three neighbors say “Oh, you’re up so early!” when they saw me outside before 9am.

I am silly with my kids again. I sit at the table after dinner and talk with the family. Tasks don’t feel so impossible. Sometimes I really feel like doing things. The thoughts don’t replay so fucking endlessly. They are less intrusive, less despairing, less creatively destructive (and yet also somehow unbelievably boring).

But mostly I feel flatlined. It isn’t, shall we say, the life I’d like to be living, the internal self I aim for. It is, however, what it is. You’re welcome for that stunning insight.

I don’t feel “fixed.” I don’t feel “back to myself.” I am made uncomfortable by the idea that a special cocktail of medication will return me to some glorious equilibrium of pre-fucked self.

I consider perhaps that the “self” has altered irrevocably.

I consider the sun coming back. I consider the end of the pandemic. I consider the way my dog would sit by me and stare at me and jump on my bed and put his paw on my chest. I truly do not believe he was away from me for more than ten minutes during any of this. He’s here right now at this very moment.

I consider the way Mac asked me so often if I was okay, and how he looked at me just the same as he looked at me two decades ago. We didn’t know what to do then, either.

I consider how writing left me but here I am, in words.

That’s strange, isn’t it? That here we still are.

There wasn’t a time when I was completely gone. I know that because every time I sat on that bed searching the wall or life or myself for something to hold onto, something to lighten up or enlighten this fucking world, there was a part of me insisting it existed—otherwise, why look? With zero evidence some part of me saw all the way through to a life I couldn’t touch, reached forever for some rest, right here, with you.

I’m not saying I was strong. That I achieved something. What I’m saying is it gives me some hope. What I’m saying is she may become more than a sad pep talk at 1pm. What I’m saying is I wasn’t abandoned. What I’m saying is maybe you aren’t either.

If you know the dark, you know what I mean. I hope I’ve found you there.

He’ll wait as long as it takes. 

The post This is what I wanted to read in my depression. appeared first on renegade mothering.

-Huffington Post Parents on Facebook

Wow. This is absolutely rich coming from a bunch of people who bought all the flour and yeast in a five-mile radius within two weeks of the pandemic so they could obsessively bake their own bread for no apparent reason. We’re three seconds from grinding our own wheat as if it were 1830, nobody knows why, but we’re all on board because it feels right, so fuck it. This may be the end. “Irrational fear?” Nah, totally normal adult pandemic response.

The well-adjusted, non-regressing contingent of society is hoarding fourteen packs of toilet paper for a family of four as if water doesn’t exist but our kids are “codependent” because they want more hugs while everyone talks about disease, dying, and trying not to kill grandma.

Within a month we’re pouring 2pm cocktails, Tiger King, and middle-aged TikTok into the emotional void of our lives but find it concerning that our kids want to sleep on our floor and don’t seem too interested in Zoom math.

Truly cannot imagine why a child would want to find some comfort in their parents, one of the few things that have (sort of) remained the same after being cut off from every other source of routine, stability, and comfort in their lives.

How truly fucking odd.

Let’s be concerned.

My social media feeds are full of articles about how brain fog, inability to concentrate, and anxiety are totally normal–we even refer to it as “pandemic brain”–but apparently we can’t figure out why the hell our two-year-old isn’t on board with potty training.

What is it with our need to frame our children’s natural, reasonable responses as some sort of pathology? First of all, fuck anyone adding one more thing to our pandemic-worry list of bullshit. Fuck them secondly for a disingenuous framing of a non-problem as a “problem” so we can click on their articles that will then solve it for us.

To be clear, ASKING FOR MORE HUGS IS MY ACTUAL MENTAL HEALTH GOAL.

I yearn for the day when rather than turn to carbs or my phone to remove my brain or find myself yelling at a family member for existing, I turn to that family and say, “Can we snuggle? I’m scared.”

Oh, god. A shudder went up my body just thinking about saying those words with my actual mouth, letting people know that I’m a human being with actual needs who relies on people around her. As if I am, in fact, vulnerable, and cannot always find the strength within myself to power through to a better day, which I also suspect will never come.

Alright, I’m being hyperbolic, but am I?

Incidentally, HuffPost published an article a couple of weeks after their bullshit post letting parents know that this “regression” is normal. Because of course it fucking is. But they had to, first, lay the foundation of “worry,” rile us up just enough that we start wondering what’s weird or not weird or if our kids are “codependent” as our families navigate a once-in-100-year pandemic.

Look, my kids are in a country where they’re learning a second language, and they’re now both behind in reading. They were pulled out for three months of the language immersion school they were in, and then they lost months of regular Dutch school.  Zoom calls aren’t the same. They are squarely behind in their reading of Dutch.

But it’s okay. What the hell else is going to happen? What else can I expect? Aren’t we all given a bit of a Free Pass to Loser at this point? I know like three adults who claim to be functioning at full capacity and judging from their Facebook feeds I’m pretty sure two of them are lying.

How can we excuse and accept just about every iteration of physical, mental, and emotional deterioration among adults yet somehow expect kids to “keep on their studies,” continue unabated in their quest for independence, and stand proud and alone as if nothing has happened?

This is why I’ve always been skeptical about what they (the media, “experts”) say about raising kids. They pathologize our children so they can sell us shit to fix what they invented. They create “solutions” for problems that are often created by societal systems that do not allow us to be parents in a “normal” way, which varies by culture anyway and nobody can really define. See, for example, no paid federal maternity leave and the “need” for sleep training, weaning, etc.

I am not knocking sleep training—well, I’m definitely knocking some forms of sleep training–or weaning. What I’m knocking is the idea that we need to adopt their “tried and true” methods of parenting, which we can access for $19.99 on Amazon, that just happen to align perfectly with the patriarchal, capitalist way of being. Or a lot of clicks for them.

I’m sure it’s mere coincidence.

I believe, generally speaking, that we have at least some intuitive capacity to raise the kids our bodies produce. The alternative seems like a rather serious evolutionary error. Of course, judging from that gold Trump statue, clearly there are some serious evolutionary errors.

No but seriously, imagine being an animal that birthed a matching baby animal and was then like I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FEED THIS FUCKING THING. We’d have been gone eons ago. I highly doubt cavewomen were sitting there contemplating how often they should nurse their young, or whether or not they should carry the fucker.

“Honey,” she asks, “Should I put this thing down to not spoil it? What does your mother say? IS THERE A WALL PAINTING EXPLAINING HOW MUCH HOLDING IS TOO MUCH HOLDING?”

The idea that I need books and essays and “experts” to guide me in providing every step of basic care to my offspring—including hug quantity during a pandemic–strikes me as ridiculous.

Yes, I needed my mom to help me learn to breastfeed my babies. Yes, I asked my midwives a million questions and my friends and mother even more as my kids grew. No, I do not need you to tell me that it’s normal that my kid wants to sit on my lap while the world blows up.

Can’t we trust ourselves a bit? Our kids? Our families? Have we grown so disconnected from our children and their humanity, and our ability to respond to that humanity, that we see their need for extra closeness during an apparent existential crisis as “a potential cause for worry?”

It’s sad, and it’s nonsense, and if there’s ever a time when we can just settle into giving these little humans extra time and affection, trusting that they probably know what we all need better than their Tiger-King-sourdough parents, goddamn it’s now.

And isn’t it beautiful that we can still do that for our kids. We can just be there, and it can be enough. Someday, it won’t be. Someday, they won’t even ask. Someday, they’ll be the adult staring at the wall, phone in hand, looking at a child brave and clear enough to say, “Hey, Mama? Can I sit with you? I haven’t touched your body all day.”

My 6-year-old said that to me the other day. I took a picture to remember our shared regression. And how to be a human.

The post Breaking: They aren’t “regressing.” They’re kids in a blown-up world. appeared first on renegade mothering.

And it was amazing. It’s rare to kneecap an autocrat through voting, for a nation to buy herself some time. And we did it.

We walked right up to the fucking ledge, all the way to armed insurrection, to “very fine people on both sides,” to years of lies culminating in the Big Lie, to organized right-wing militias, to the beating of police officers and chants of “Hang Mike Pence” and a confederate flag flying in the halls of the American seat of government. We went all the way to domestic terrorists, backed by Members of Congress and incited by the President, storming our Capitol, replacing the American flag with theirs, and roaming the halls with zip ties looking for hostages.

So, yes, when I saw Biden repeat the oath of office, it felt like a damn big deal, like the biggest bullet ever had just blown right past our heads, and I felt proud of what America had done. It felt like a bit of relief, a breath. Some hope for the first time in a long time.

And yet, like the empty seat where the outgoing President normally sits in a symbolic sign of the peaceful transfer of power, Trump’s presence—even in his absence—runs beneath it all.

He’s a damn specter: We can not see it if we don’t want to.

What? That? It’s gone. I don’t see it. All I see is Lady Gaga’s brooch.

On January 6 we had no choice but to look at it all dead in the eyes, but now, if we want, we can go to brunch and never think about politics again. You know, like we used to.

Let’s never do that again. That did not go well at all.

We can “move on” and feel safe again, enjoy “decency” and full sentences in the White House, competence and the lack of name-calling, dog-whistling, conspiratorial, lying tweets.

But, uh, y’all, we had all that right before we had Trump.

And always there’s that empty chair and the 74 million Americans who voted for it.

There’s still Trump and his merry band of lying corporatists (in and out of his family), the nutjobs of Q-Anon, the tiny-men parade of Proud Boys, Boogaloo, Oath Keepers and Three-Percenters.

But mostly, my god there is the “sane” GOP. At least the far-right idiot brigade is clean, clear, and crisply disturbed. They are, quite clearly, fascists.

But the fascist-lite wing, the “we’ll work with the fascists as long as we can get tax cuts” wing, the “surely we can get Trump under control and just use him for court appointments” wing, the “since we can’t win on our ideas let’s appeal to the imagined grievances of white people” wing, the “sure let’s tell them the election was rigged because losing power sucks” wing—those people, the ones who gaslight us until our heads nearly explode—what the fuck do we do with them?

“Unite?” Please.

Watching them feels like a direct assault on truth, reason, and sanity because it is an assault on truth, reason, and sanity. Accepting what they’re saying requires us to deny what’s in front of our own fucking eyes, to accept a false version of reality.

As sane people—and I mean that literally as in, “a person who can distinguish fantasy from reality”­—we can’t do that.

But there they are, almost like legitimate leaders, walking the halls, getting interviewed on CNN and Fox.

They stand for nothing, dip their toes into accountability via mealy-mouthed rhetoric and only if there’s not a single thing at stake for them personally. (My, my they all get so brave as they walk out the door to quit, retire, or sign a contract for a 7-figure “tell all!” book deal.)

They tell us “The insurrectionists do not represent the GOP” five minutes before they vote against the material manifestation that the insurrectionists do not represent the GOP (see: impeachment).

One hundred and forty-seven of them in the House voted against certifying the results of a free and fair election, mainly votes by Black Americans, after they’d lost sixty court cases on the subject, and four hours after that very lie led to an armed insurrection.

And yet, people talk of “unity” with them. Quick question. What exactly are we supposed to unify with? 

The Republicans didn’t even have a 2020 platform, choosing instead to become the official party of Donald Trump. In their words: We “enthusiastically support the president’s America-first agenda.”

And on January 6, the entire world saw where that “America First” agenda led. How the fuck do we unite with a party that is unwilling to unequivocally purge itself from the very agenda that led to a fascistic movement?

It’s not that complicated. You can’t walk both sides here. You can’t say “Trump’s our guy” but also “Coups are bad” when TRUMP INCITED A COUP. You can’t stand behind Trump and his myriad bootlickers for four years as they ramp up fascistic rhetoric and imagined grievances and then, when all of that comes to its ultimate and logical violent end, declare “That isn’t us” while voting to perpetuate it all.

The GOP, in its current form, evidenced by its own behavior, is an enemy of democracy, the rule of law, and the republic until further notice.

And now, now they want us to unify with them while they continue to show the moral cowardice that got us here in the first place?

AGAIN, I ask, unify with WHAT?

Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt guy? “6 Million Isn’t Enough” guy? How about the confederate flag dude, or maybe the ones who built a noose or planted bombs? Do we share a cold one with those bastions of freedom who beat police officers with flag poles and a fire extinguisher?

Do we sit down and really get in touch with the white nationalists and ask how we can help them achieve their domestic terrorist goals? Sure, the FBI classified far-right extremists as the greatest terror threat in America, but you know, maybe if we really hear them out, break some fuckin’ bread, we’ll realize suddenly we’re all on the same team here.

WE CANNOT BE ON THE SAME TEAM HERE.

Or maybe we go the Q-Anon route. There are actual Q grifters in the House of Representatives now! Is that the new Q Caucus? Trumpy called Q folks “patriots.” His lawyer Lin Wood and his main man Michael Flynn are all about it. Anything for power, amiright?

So in the interest of “healing” do we join whatever backwoods website they’re still allowed on and ask them to elaborate on the Soros-run cabal of deep state politicians and Hollywood stars involved in the rape, murder, and organ harvesting of children?

Do we add “The Great Awakening” to our calendars and look for Q drops and cryptic messages from Giuliani, Pompeo, and random YouTube personalities telling us soon, led by Trump, who’s sent by Jesus, all the bad ones will die?

Look, I know, GOP, you aren’t those people. Of course you aren’t.

But you are.

Because they, too, support the America First agenda. And no, we cannot simply ignore them. We cannot just focus on the everyday, guy-next-door Trump supporter (who we all know extremely well due to the 7,000 profiles in the New York Times).

Our ability to ignore them ended the day they stormed the American seat of government.

Our ability to ignore them ended the day we saw all of these radicalized factions unite under the man you “enthusiastically support.”

Our ability to ignore them ended the day 147 of you STILL voted in line with the lie of a “stolen election,” with zero evidence.

Fascistic movements do not just go away, assholes. They don’t release one collective, sad sigh and say, “Oh, well, gosh darn-it, our leader wasn’t elected so I guess we’ll just go back to rubbing our guns and trying to get back on Parler.”

They evolve. They go underground and keep planning. They look for a new leader. And if the GOP refuses to unequivocally disavow Trump and his agenda, they won’t have to look very far, will they?

Look I know the GOP is fucked. They played with fire, thought they could reign Trump in, thought they could use him for those sweet tax cuts and court appointments, thought of him as a useful idiot—they gambled, and they lost. Because yes, if any of them vote for impeachment, they will probably get primaried and they will probably lose.

MAYBE THEY SHOULDA THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE THEY BACKED A FASCIST.

Maybe they should have thought of that before hitching their wagons to a white nationalist shitbag with bad spelling and brilliant rhetorical manipulation skills who effectively convinced tens of millions of Americans that a free and fair election was a left-wing conspiracy against Trump, orchestrated by dead Latin American leaders and “hacked” voting machines that don’t even connect to the internet.

Maybe they should have considered the unsustainability of backing an aspiring autocrat unless you’re willing to ride it all the way to the end of democracy.

The GOP needs to decide who and what it is and then talk to us about unity. And the left needs to settle for absolutely nothing less no matter how soothing it is to see normalcy in the White House.

The post Dear GOP: What exactly are we supposed to unite with? appeared first on renegade mothering.

Now, understand that this post was in a group specifically created to support business owners who are also mothers. That’s key.

Most of the comments were supportive, commiserating, offering words of solidarity as we all manage the shit show of a global pandemic, kids, and businesses, many of which are flailing as much as we are.

But one woman, who calls herself a “healer,” responded that she could not relate to this struggle because she “loves her life!” She then went on to speculate on the energy vibes of the woman’s house and suggested she clarify the air or some shit by calling on angels to wash the pandemic death vibe out of her spoiled habitat. I may be taking some liberties there with my summary.

My point is, it was condescending, holier-than-thou bullshit. “Toxic positivity” as many call it.

The small part of me wonders what kind of sociopath you have to be to see someone struggling in a very NORMAL WAY under the weight of extremely abnormal circumstances—namely, widespread global death at the hand of a novel virus—and all you can think to contribute are meaningless platitudes that do nothing but boost your own ego.

And then I wonder if people like that burn puppies or something. Like they walk around robotically smiling and telling everyone how much they love life and then on Sunday around midnight they walk into the cold dark night and harm small, fuzzy mammals. They scare me is what I’m saying. It is not normal.

I suppose a bigger part of me, if I really dig deep into myself where my Mama and James Baldwin have tried to teach me to be a decent human who sees a larger whole, feels empathy and sadness for people like that—because what a fucking quandary that must be.

If we’ve convinced ourselves that “loving life” translates into impenetrable positivity and unwavering enjoyment of all the things, we’d be walking around having to lie to ourselves ten to fifteen times a day. At least I would. Every time we lose patience, get annoyed, act like an asshole in one way or another, we’d have to turn away from the truth, deny it outright, and grab the closest sage bundle.

Exhausting. And confusing. Shouldn’t I have good-vibes-only’d my way out of this by now?

Oh, god, and the constant reconfiguring of ourselves to present Endless Joy Only. Who could live like that?

If we really believe that being a good, enlightened person means eternal sunshine, what do we do with the side of ourselves that gets on Facebook to shame a woman who’s struggling?

What do we do with the part of ourselves that is more interested in catering to our own ego’s need for superiority than offering a word of empathy and support for a person causing no harm and having a hard time?

And how can you say you “love life” while denying one of the most vital parts of it?

Pain, grief, and disillusionment have invariably led me to the greatest changes in my life. They are often signs that something is amiss, usually inside myself, and my job becomes to find a bit of balance again. I have to learn to live with loss. I have to learn to function through pain. And I have to, at some point, surrender to reality. Not that I like it or don’t do anything, but rather I have to accept that it IS before I can change it.

And some of it I can’t change at all, and I have to simply accept that the darkness IS a part of life. I mean, is grief not the logical outcome of deep love? You can’t have one without the other. If I love you, and I lose you, I grieve. And I will inevitably lose you.

IT IS REALLY FUCKED UP.

And what we face now seems to me a collective grieving, a collective squaring off with our own volatility, our own deep reliance on each other. We have seen the world shut down because one person in one place ate an animal with a disease. We have read accounts of loved ones dying alone in hospitals, an iPad propped up to Facetime eternal goodbyes. Maybe we have said those goodbyes ourselves. We have seen refrigerator trucks in streets as overflow morgues.

We have watched our children lose their senior years, their first years of college. We have watched our little ones sit in front of screens rather than go outside and run and be with their friends. Like some sort of dystopian sci-fi movie, we watch them act out on video what they used to live.

We have all lost holidays with our loved ones, parties and festivals and concerts we never knew we needed until now. We have lost a year of our aging parents’ lives.

We have been alone. We have been afraid, and we have been without the power to change it. We have been insecure. We have lost jobs.  We have watched head-spinning conspiracy nonsense rise from the dark corners of brains we didn’t even know existed a few years ago. We have watched selfishness and greed rise to the top and we have seen great acts of compassion, comradery, and friendship insist on their place in all of it. We have watched a harmed earth try to hold us and we have been reminded of the way we refuse to work with her, love her—and we know we’ve only seen the beginning of what’s to come.

So yeah, MAYBE IT’S A LITTLE HARD TO GET OUT OF BED.

Maybe it’s hard to stand up and face our days as if it’s all as it was, or should be, as if the whole house of cards hasn’t fallen around us and we’re left wondering what it all means, how we fit in, where we go next, and, most importantly, what the fucking point is.

Fuck the “healers” who deny the truth of our existence, the darkness, the moments of loss and being lost, that teach us how to live in a new way, in new days, especially in a time like this, when it all depends on us changing, together, in an actual love of being alive.

I’ve never found peace in pretending. It isn’t sustainable. At some point the truth of me I’d like to forget rears its head and reminds me I’m just a standard human, ill-equipped for the weight of it all, and yet somehow, they say, made of stars.

For now I’ll stay in this paradox, the mother in bed, showering at 1pm, wondering again what to make for dinner, and if, in the end, it matters.

actual good vibes the other day after school

****

Speaking of good vibes, I’ve got a whole line-up of writing workshops happening in 2021:

Write Anyway in January (5 spots left)

A brand new workshop, “As You See It,” on personal essays & blog posts called (March)

Our 30-day writing intensive, Renegade Writers’ Group, in March

And finally, From Memory to Memoir in May

Email me to discuss installment payment plans.

The post Good Vibes Only in this Burning House, Please appeared first on renegade mothering.

ANYWAY, a commenter asked a question I so related to and felt all the way to my bones. She asked if my family was always so harmonious during outings and that we all look so happy. And we really do.

First of all, it’s a heavy happy vibe on principle, apple-picking in the fucking Netherlands. The Dutch are big on “gezellig,” which closely translates to “cozy” but also means much more than that. It’s cozy, quaint, comfortable, friendly. It’s like a way of being, and it penetrates so much of Dutch life. You’ll often hear Mac and I yelling “Good god this place is so fucking ADORABLE JESUS CHRIST!” Or just the random “Are you fucking kidding me?” while staring at some street that looks like it’s out of Disneyland, and then here comes a toddler on a balance bike wearing MaryJanes and tights and a puffer coat and everyone just looks so happy with their fucking healthcare and reasonable college tuition. Don’t even get me started on the boating situation on the canals, OR THE MOTHERFUCKING BIKES WITH BABIES ON THEM OR IN WOODEN BASKET THINGS ON THE FRONT.

It’s fine. Gezellig.

But it’s not a cutesy cute. The Dutch are not “cute.” They’re direct, strong people committed to personal liberty, freedom, and being decidedly NOT DELICATE. You don’t bike 2-3 children, groceries, and possibly a small mattress home in a sideways rainstorm year after year while being delicate.

Anywho, I also add filters. I like playing with photos. I like photography. I’m not a photographer, but I’ve always enjoyed the process of taking a drab photo and turning it into something that better captures what I think the photo is trying to say. You know, cropping, fading, highlighting, fucking with this and that. Sometimes I can’t be bothered, but on a day like yesterday, when I had some time, I doctored my shit and made the photos look as gezellig as the outing felt.

You know, in between times we were screaming at each other.

Oh right. That was my point: These photos are, by definition, bullshit. They are a filtered selection of real life. We all know that.

And yet they aren’t at all. Everything in those photos happened, they happen every time. They are real. But it’s a curation, a thoughtful presentation. Our trip to Italy recently. Damn. You’d think we were some fancy-ass world travelers who sit around and love each other all day while eating large shrimp.

Absent from the photos are the screaming matches, the teenage and kid tears, the parent tears and rage-breathing in response to it all, the bickering between kids, between parents and kids, between parents. (Look, it’s not my fault Mac doesn’t drive perfectly. SOMEBODY HAS TO SAVE US.)

Also absent: The moment I realize it’s noon and we’re in Italy and I’m on my phone playing Two Dots and I hate myself.

I don’t feel a need to excessively curate my life. I post my messy house. I post my messy self. I tell you how miserable the drive home was from Germany on the last day when every last one of us contemplated launching ourselves out the car door and into a Swiss alp just to make it stop.

I don’t add filters and “iris enhancements” to our eyeballs until we’re teetering on the border between “definitely aliens” and “perpetually tanned white people with astonishingly blue eyes,” causing half the comment section to freak out: THE EYES OMG THE EYES.

(Friends, if the eyes look fake, they probably are. Creating piercing crystal eyes is like a ten-second process in Photoshop and Lightroom.).

But also, when I post these collections of dream-like shit, it’s real, and it’s what I remember, and it’s what it means to me. I think I’m old and tired or something because the family bickering doesn’t bother me as much. It does for a moment—don’t we all have moments when we wish we had chosen a different life with different humans on a different continent? No, just me?—but it’s a moment, a flash. It doesn’t define the day, the trip, the outing.

In other words, I don’t really give a fuck.

The yelling, the bickering, the snapping at each other, the freak outs, the muddy shoes, the forgotten jacket—for sure there was a time when all those things would have turned the heat up beneath my patience until I was boiling in anxiety, pissed off, and reflecting on how our day was “ruined.”

I’m not better than that now. God knows we reject all personal growth around here. But as I’ve written before, I MISS MY BABIES AND CLING TO THIS SHIT FOR DEAR LIFE.

I feel like I’ve seen it all, felt it all. I’ve done the rotation of Family Shit so many times. Not that I know more or I’m better at handling it. I’m just immune to it. Where it used to hit me deep inside and I’d decide my family was dysfunctional probably due to a deficiency on my part, or Mac’s, depending on my mood, now I see Normal Family Shit and move on.

Ava will be 19 next month. Rocket is 15. I’m happy they’re here, that they’re around, that we’re together. I’m happy my teenagers want to hang out with us occasionally, that we laugh sometimes, that we turn on Paul Simon and sing after somebody whines about how THEY DON’T WANT TO LISTEN TO GRACELAND AGAIN and everyone in the car has to “handle it” instead of just, like, us parents. I swear to god I say “You don’t have to HELP!” 1500 times a day.

I’m happy Mac and I have been together long enough to accept that we’re both dicks. I have no idea how to expand on that.

I’m happy we talk honestly to each other and come back around and apologize when we act badly and I’m happy we pile on the couch almost every night, for a few moments, until somebody gets mad and stomps upstairs yelling about how they hate us.

I don’t know. I’m 41. I have four kids between the ages of 18 and 6. I turned around once, and one was grown. I look back on the days when they were little as the happiest fucking days of my life and I hate myself for even saying that. But let me tell you what I wouldn’t give to go back to the day when my George was born and I watched Ava and Rocket hold her, just kids themselves, and it seemed there were so many years.

I know this isn’t everyone’s story, but it is mine, and I realize the strong cliché vein running through this—but I’ve never bullshitted you and I won’t now, especially not to maintain some consistent branding as the one talking shit about motherhood. Ha. Branding.

I still talk shit about motherhood, but now I’m mad at the fact that I would, at 41, reflect on the years that felt SO ENDLESSLY HORRIBLY HARD AT THE TIME AS THE BEST YEARS OF MY GODDAMN LIFE.

Also why am I talking about my life as if it’s over? Is this a 2020 trait?

It’s not over. And now I live in a country where I feel more serenity and day-to-day happiness than I’ve ever felt, so basically I’m full of shit and nostalgia is a motherfucker.

My point is: I miss those days, I love those days, I love the days we have now.

You know what I really enjoy about this stage of parenthood? That those outings to me, even with all the yelling, bickering, forgotten shit, and moments of why are these people in my life, the day, more than anything else, is my little boy showing a Dutch oma which shape of candle he’d like, and then watching her, wide-eyed, as she twists the warm wax of the candle he made.

It’s the grin my boy Rocket gave his dad as he teased him about a joke I missed and the way I caught him smiling as he picked an apple, and he looked just like he did when he was seven. It’s my Ava getting so irate about the mud on her suede shoes, just as she’s done her whole life, but walking through the orchard with us anyway.

It’s that same girl, my first, almost 19, taking a picture of her siblings, the ones she was so fucking mad at on the way home, and posting it on her Instagram, as they sat making apple dumplings that evening.

“And they called themselves the apple dumpling gang,” she wrote.

And I remembered how many times we’ve watched that movie together. In time, it all becomes a beautiful curation.

The post On family outings and harmony and why I don’t care anymore appeared first on renegade mothering.