There are seven days until the election. And the news is coming fast and furious, isn’t it? My brain wants to rationalize and say this is like other elections that I have been worried about. That no matter the outcome, in the big grand scheme, it won’t mean that much and we will, as a country, adjust and carry on.

And yet.

This isn’t a normal election, is it? This weekend, Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden where, to warm up the audience, a comedian made horrifically racist jokes,* Stephen Miller declared that “America is for Americans and Americans only” and multiple speakers referred to Kamala in racist and crude terms. Unfortunately, these messages are carefully calculated and designed to bring out the worst in people in order to win an election.* They tap into a very human, very primal but very ugly instinct.

And they just might work.

I have family and friends who consider themselves conservative who are planning to vote for Trump and those who consider themselves progressive and are planning to vote 3rd party or not at all. Each one has very personal reasons for doing so - the reasons they tell themselves and use to distance themselves from the ugliness and reality of Trump’s rhetoric and authoritarian tendencies.

In many ways, I get it. I was in my own place of denial before Biden’s debate performance. I had concerns about his age, but chose to ignore those misgivings. I chose to not look too close (I easily dismissed criticism as selective editing or partisan politics and read what he said rather than watching or listening). That is until I couldn’t ignore it any more (at which point I emailed my senators and other elected officials urging them to get Biden to not run.)

Unfortunately, Americans (and Republicans especially) have gotten really good at ignoring their misgivings about Trump.* Denying that he is saying what he is saying and that he will do what he says he will do, makes it easier to justify voting for him. Buying into his alternate reality that the election was stolen, immigrants are “eating cats and dogs”, Russia would never have invaded Ukraine and the biggest lie of all—that he alone can fix it—makes it easier to not only support him, but to feel righteous in doing so.

The problem is that we live in the reality we live in and, when it comes to Trump, you don’t get to pick and chose what you get. If you vote because you think your taxes will be lower or the economy will somehow be better, you are also sending a message that the racist messaging and unconstitutional threats are ok and that January 6th was not the dealbreaker it should be. You are signaling your approval of someone who encourages people to distrust our democracy with the result that people now seem to think it is ok to set ballot boxes on fire and harass election workers. This is how it works - it is a package deal.

I woke up this morning feeling utterly exhausted. As someone who cares deeply about this country and our elections process. As a woman who is horrified at the idea that the government should get a say in what happens with my body. As the parent of a young adult trans kid I love dearly. As a history nerd who sees the similarities with other not-so-great points in our history and can’t believe that this kind of rhetoric might be working again.*

This election truly could go either way, which makes my heart hurt. We won’t know until election day which electorate shows up (which shows the limitations of polling). Truth is that Trump's strategy of targeting "low-propensity voters" and putting Elon in charge of voter turnout could look brilliant or it could completely crash and burn when the potential voters they are targeting don't show up. Same with Kamala's strategy of trying to make the tent as big as she can and appealing to as many people in as many ways as she can. We just won't know until the votes are tallied.

And maybe that is a good thing? It means that the only thing we can do is put our heads down and look to how we can help. For me, that has meant writing postcards and working locally to elect pro-housing members in the Alexandria City Council race. And of course voting.

I’ll also be working as an election officer on Election Day, doing my part in making sure that the election goes off as smoothly as possible. Something that I highly recommend! Going through election training and seeing how much effort and care goes into running an election truly does my heart good. Not to mention it will be a good distraction.

So this is where I am a week before the election. Surprisingly not disheartened but cautiously hopeful. The energy and excitement I am seeing as folks come out to do their part to make this happen makes me feel good about our country, no matter how the vote turns out. The odds that we pull this off are just as good as the odds that we don’t. And that is where I am placing my faith and what I am using to keep myself grounded.

At the very least, next week, we will know where we stand and will go from there. Here’s hoping that all the organizing and care that I am seeing in support of this incredibly messy country I truly love makes a difference.

Related Links

Trump comedian's MSG joke draws huge backlash from Puerto Ricans

At Madison Square Garden, Trump Deals a MAGA Dopamine Rush - found this take by Tressie McMillan Cottom about the appeal of what Trump is offering to be an interesting one

Donald Trump Says He Will: Believe Him - Pretty good summary of what is at stake and why: “His rallies offer a steady stream of such promises and threats — things like prosecuting political opponents and using the military against U.S. citizens. These statements are so outrageous and outlandish, so openly in conflict with the norms and values of American democracy that many find them hard to regard as anything but empty bluster. We have two words for American voters: Believe him.”

Jon Stewart on Trump's McDonald's Shift & His "Enemy Within" Threat - sometimes a Jon Stewart righteous rant hits the spot & I found this one extremely cathartic.

Terror in the Heartland by Timothy Egan - fascinating look at another time when racist rhetoric made real political gains in our country. I find history (and its reminder that we as a country have gone through hard times) can be very comforting.

I recently stumbled across this quote again by A. H. Almaas (I came across it while looking through my Commonplace book for a different quote):

We don’t trust that if we relax we will have the capacities, we will have the intelligence, we will have the strength and we will have the compassion that we need to deal with our lives. We don’t trust that reality as it is, is fundamentally fine and will work for us and support us without any interference on our part.

Basic trust is learning that life is manageable, is workable, that we can relax into it and just let it be. It is that trust that the universe itself supports us and that we have the inner resources to deal with whatever life presents us.

~ A. H. Almaas

What made this quote hit home is that I am currently in the process of working my way out of what ended up being a 5+ week struggle with back/hip issues that, for a time, made it difficult for me to be upright and had me wondering if I was ever going to feel “normal” again. (And no, the irony is not lost on me that I just wrote about Discovering I Have a Body in Midlife).

Beyond the physical issues I was having, what eventually became clear was that once again, I was wrestling with emotional issues, specifically how to trust. I was not trusting myself to “make the right decisions” nor was I trusting myself to know what to do to not hurt myself again. As always, it can be humbling when you see how quickly you revert to old patterns when under stress.

What caused this flare up was a perfect storm—me, trying an exercise at home that I had done in the office with my physical therapist without fully appreciating how much she had been supporting me combined with her then being on vacation which meant not being able to realign things before it became a bigger issue. I was able to hang in there for most of the week until I went to a friend’s house on Friday evening. The next morning my back went completely out (at which point I was just thankful to be able to make it back to my bed.)

In the beginning, I did a fair amount of numbing and white knuckling my way through, assuming that this would be like other episodes with my back when I just needed to take it easy for a little while in order to get back on my feet.

But as time wore on and I did not seem to be bouncing back as quickly as I felt that I should, there were times I felt frantic, like “everything” was riding on what I was doing or not doing when there was no way to know with any certainty what was the “right” thing to do.

Did I simply “need more time” or was I ignoring signs that I needed to be more active in my recovery? (Mostly, I needed more time.) Should I take muscle relaxers? (Yes, twice. Kind of helped, maybe? Definitely knocked me out and made me loopy.) Did I need the prednisone? (No.)

I kept trying to convince myself that I was “turning a corner” and would soon be back to my “normal” self. Only to discover that did not seem to be the case. It took a little while for me to recognize that there were strong parallels between the physical issues I was having with my back and hips and the emotional issues I am more familiar with.

Initially, I thought I was dealing with a purely physical issue until I had a couple of experiences where I could literally feel my back seizing up as a result of anxious thoughts I was having. Seeing this connection was both daunting (I have to control my anxiety!) and freeing (oh, I’ve been here before and have tools I can use.)

I would like to say that once I made the connection, everything started to fall into place, but unfortunately it still was not a straight path. Instead it involved a lot of being whipped around between conflicting feelings—the worry that I was not doing “enough” and the desire to let go and trust that I (and my body) would know what I needed to heal.

Of course, in the middle of working my way through this, it mostly felt incredibly muddled. Looking back, I can see that it was having to sit in this muddled-ness that has led to a deeper understanding of myself which I am still working on unpacking.

I do know that the times when I felt the most relief were the times when I was able to let go of my expectations of what healing was supposed to look and feel like (and how quickly it was supposed to happen.) I learned in real-time how much better I felt when I could stay present rather than worrying about a future that I could not predict. I also had a specific experience that helped me get past a self-compassion wall that I had been experiencing recently.

The truth is that while definitely not ideal, being laid up was not as bad as it could have been. I did not have to figure out how to stay on top of a job. I did not have to parent kids. I was lucky to have Kyle home for the first few weeks when the pain was more acute to help with taking care of the cats and doing household tasks (though I felt guilty and frustrated about being so incapacitated during his last weeks here.)

I also had already been doing a lot to support my body which came in helpful— an existing relationship and weekly appointments with my physical therapist as well as my one-on-one session with my pilates instructor where she was able to customize my workout (if you can call it that) to match what my body could do (which for several weeks was not much).

What is most fascinating to me now, is realizing that I actually had the time and flexibility to pare what I was doing back to the minimum—and the world did not come crashing down. Yes, I had to back out of some things (some personal fun things I had been looking forward to as well as some volunteer activities I had been planning on helping with.) Everyone was more than understanding and supportive. No one actually expected me to “just push through” like I often feel that I should.

Which brings me back to the idea of “trusting that reality as it is, is fundamentally fine” which I don’t think means that bad or challenging things won’t ever happen. They absolutely will. What it means is that it is ok to let go of the resistance I often feel when those challenges arise. That struggling is not a sign that I have done anything wrong; it is merely a natural part of the human condition.

I’ve found that it is so danged easy to resist the reality of a situation I find myself in. But it is this resistance to reality—this idea that I should not be struggling or that there was something that I could have done (or should be doing) to prevent myself from being where I am now—that makes whatever I am struggling with even harder. As the Buddhist saying goes: “pain + resistance = suffering”.

While letting go of the resistance doesn’t necessarily make the pain go away or immediately resolve what I am struggling with, it can, counterintuitively, give me more space and clarity around the situation because I am less overwhelmed by the extra suffering stemming from my resistance (which for me usually manifests as anxiety).

Which comes back around to approaching life from a place of trust. As Almaas puts it: “Basic trust is learning that life is manageable, is workable, that we can relax into it and just let it be.”

This feels right to me (both from my lived experience and at a soul-knowing level). Yet, I still find it so hard to do! Because it means allowing myself to feel the feelings that come up in these situations. The feelings that say I must be “doing it wrong” if I am struggling that feel hard-coded deep in my bones. The feelings that I have done my best to numb protect myself from all these years. And feeling those feelings, of course, is the last thing that I want to do!

So here I am, feeling about 95% back to where I was physically before this episode and being extremely appreciative of that. But also not wanting to move on too quickly from this experience because I can sense that what happened went way deeper than just the physical experience and I don’t want to lose that.

Yes, despite all my good intentions, it has been 3 months since I posted. Instead of just jumping into the next thing on my mind as if no time has gone by, I wanted to do a quick post letting folks know that, yes, I am still alive and yes, I still plan on posting regularly here.

The transition from having external structures and motivations for “getting things done” (both with my work with Brave Writer and with raising and homeschooling my kids) to having to develop internal structures and motivations was always going to be a tricky one for me (especially as an Enneagram Type 9).

I will admit that I thought that I would have had it worked out by now. Though in retrospect, I have no idea why I would think that, given that this is how I’ve been my whole life. So maybe thinking it would just disappear was a bit of wishful thinking.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem “filling up my days” or “finding things to do”. That part is easy. The tricky part is identifying what my priorities are (and how to get them done) when there are not a lot of pressing “have tos” in my life any more.

I also get that some of you might be rolling your eyes, wishing that you could have similar problems. But truthfully, even when I had more external constraints on my time, identifying my priorities was still something that I wrestled with. So my guess is that while my current situation may be different than yours, the underlying issues I’m wrestling with may feel familiar.

The main issue that I wrestle with is how easy it is for me to “lose the thread” of what I want to be doing. Since many of the things that I want to do (such as my writing and my photography) often take more time to come together, there are lots of opportunities for distraction as I work on projects. When combined with little outside pressure to keep going, it is easy for inertia to set in.

Of course, many of these “distractions” are simply life happening. In the past 3 months, there has been a lot going on. I’ve been volunteering with the Friends of Duncan Library, helping maintain their website and doing PR for the April library book sale. I’ve also been doing housing advocacy work with the YIMBYs of Northern Virginia and we are in the middle of mayoral and city council elections.

Toward the end of April, Kyle headed off, once again car camping his way across the country to his latest job as a wildlife tech at Rydell Wildlife Refuge in NW Minnesota (where he is living in a bunkhouse on the refuge.)

The biggest life distraction is that I threw my back/hip out in late April and only recently after 5+ weeks of not being able to be comfortably upright for long periods of time am I finally feeling like I’m getting back to some semblance of “normal.” Definitely more on that in a future post

I have so many ideas of what I want to write about—more about my house, life here in Alexandria, my cats, my photography, books I’m reading, organizing and living in a small home, growing older, thoughts on homeschooling now that I am several years out, parenting young adults. And the main throughput of my life: learning how to work with and better understand myself and others.

I’m also very curious to look back on my life in relationship to the world we live in now. I just turned 56 yesterday and I am feeling more and more as if I am “of a different generation”. The world I came of age in is so different than the world my kids are coming of age in. I see resistance and push back to not only ideas that I accepted as part of the way the world worked (which I am glad to see!) but also to ideas that I deeply valued (especially around parenting.) My goal as I get older is to stay curious and intellectually nimble (and to avoid getting to the place where all I want to do is yell about kids these days needing to stay off my lawn!)

So we will see! I appreciate those of you who are still here despite my posting inconsistency. We’ll see what this attempt at learning to work with my natural proclivities reveals. There is part of me that wants to say that if I have not been able to make writing here “work” yet, then maybe I should just let it go. But I’m just not quite ready to do that yet.

So until then, I will keep experimenting and see what comes up in the process.

Like many, I am a person who tends to live mostly in my head. I remember several years ago, telling my therapist that I knew at some point that I would need to focus more on my body (which, in my mind, meant become “more active” and “eat better”) but that I just wasn’t there yet. Of course, as someone who was comfortably straight sized (yet, who also came of age in the 80s and thus perpetually felt that I could stand to loose 5-10 pounds) it was easier to feel that I had the option to “not worry about my body.”

I felt I needed to first focus on understanding my feelings/emotions and those definitely felt very removed from my body. With time I have come to realize that this was a coping mechanism—it felt much safer to think about my feelings rather than to allow myself to feel them (how I finally realized that “thinking” does not equate to “feeling” is a subject I want to explore more in a later post.)

My first foray into addressing that I had a body that needed care was when I started acupuncture treatments in 2019, I hit a point in therapy where I felt I had a good understanding of the wheres and whys of my anxiety. And yet it seemed as if my body insisted on holding onto the anxiety and stress resulting in anxiety responses even when there did not appear to be a “reason” for feeling that way. In many ways, acupuncture is my ideal therapy. It works directly with my body—opening blocks, re-balancing energy, settling my nervous system—and I do not have to consciously “do” anything.

Then came the pandemic. While my anxiety shot sky-high, I also discovered that the work that I had done in changing my relationship with anxiety over the previous decade had given me tools that I was able to successfully fall back on. What I did not fully appreciate at the time was how big of an effect the pandemic was having on my body.

Truth is that I have never considered myself to be an overly “active” person. I did not regularly work out so during the pandemic it did not seem as if much had changed. What I failed to consider was that pre-pandemic I tended to be very much “on the go”—running errands, grocery shopping, taking kids to activities, meeting up with friends. All the incidental activity that completely went away during the initial year of the pandemic. During the pandemic, the only activities I regularly engaged with were very slow walks with my elderly dog and the occasional brisk nighttime walks when I needed to burn off my anxiety before bed. I truly became a “couch potato.”

In 2021, I started having digestive issues which I worried were signs of IBS. I started working virtually with a local intuitive eating nutritionist and we began untangling my issues around eating and food. Back in 2016, I had used alternate day fasting (ADF) to lose 30lbs gained while on anti-anxiety meds which refused to come off even when I was able to stop taking the meds. With ADF, the weight came off fairly easily over the course of a year and then I was able to use it to maintain my weight for the next 4 years. Even while it “worked” and I found it easy to adhere to, I often joked that the reason it felt so easy to do was because it worked with my eating issues (basically it meant that I did not have to really think much about what I was eating, only when.) I personally found it a relief to disconnect from my body. Until, of course, my body started letting me know that it was not happy.

Around that time, I also ended up with a frozen shoulder which led me to a wonderful physical therapist. What began with my shoulder led to a more honest reckoning with how much discomfort/pain in my body I had been ignoring (not to mention how unsure I am about where the line between discomfort and pain is). What I had been oblivious to was how constricted my body felt (partly due to a decade long TMJ issue, partly due to the previously mentioned inactivity, partly due to age and perimenopause changes) and here we are, a couple of years in, still working on unraveling my body and figuring out how to get it functioning with less discomfort/pain .

As part of getting caught up on the increasing number of preventative check-ups you get in middle age. I found that my cholesterol, which had always been on the higher side of normal, had shot up to 429. Yikes. I had known that there were heart issues in my family (my Dad survived a stroke when he was 57 and my paternal grandfather had died of heart failure in his 60s). I chalked their heart related issues up to the fact that my Dad had smoked since he was a young teenager (though he had quit many years before the stroke which most likely saved him) and my Grandfather smoked a pipe his whole life. Given that my experience with smoking consisted of a very ill-advised and luckily short-lived exploration of menthol cigarettes my freshman year in college, It had not crossed my mind that this was something I needed to be concerned with. Until it was. Luckily, I had already been working with a nutritionist and I am responding well to the statin I am now on.

Then, of course, there are the peri/menopausal body changes that I abstractly knew about but was completely unprepared for the actual experience when they finally manifested (not to mention how many there are and how unrelated they can be!) The previously mentioned frozen shoulder and increased cholesterol. My thick-but-poker-straight-for-my-entire-life hair turning curly (though inexplicably not gray yet) which necessitated having to completely relearn how to work with it. The weight gain (due to actually eating and, you know, not starving myself any more). Having to figure out what clothes feel/look good on my changing body. Hot flashes (which felt not-so-bad in the beginning but started feeling out of control during my move). The poor sleep. The mood shifts. The realization that “good support” is now a primary criteria when buying shoes. My body taking much longer to “bounce back”.

I started HRT along with a few supplements about a year ago and that has helped immensely with the hot flashes and sleep. But still, I really wish I had fully appreciated that going through menopause would feel akin to going through puberty again where everything you thought you knew about your body gets completely upended and you have to learn how to understand it again.

And then there is the mental shift that has hit hard recently. The acknowledgement that I am older and that my age is no longer a “protective” factor (first driven home during COVID where being in my 50s meant that, while not “high” risk, I was still in a “higher” risk age group.) That my body is not going to just naturally bounce back. That physical activity is not something that is “nice” to do if I can fit it in, but rather something that is vital if I want to be able to continue functioning as I get older. Same thing goes with giving my body the food it needs to be healthy.

The good news is that I am making progress. I am working on adding in more daily physical activity. In addition to my weekly physical therapy, I also have a weekly pilates private session (which allows my instructor to meet me where my body is that week) and a weekly MELT class which is giving me tools for helping my body feel better. Since moving to Del Ray, I am naturally walking more places. I also enjoy going on walks here much more than at my old place. So many different potential routes with much more enjoyable scenery along the way.

But I’m not going to lie. When I told my therapist that I knew I would have to “get around” to my body at some point, I had an unconscious expectation that once I did, it might take a year or so to get everything “back to normal”. It is obvious now that this is going to be a long-term effort and that my expectation for “normal” at 55 is very different than what I previously thought it would be. But I’m also motivated by the awareness that if I want to be in decent physical shape in my 70s, I have to actively work on taking better care of my body now.

So I am now someone who walks regularly. Does pilates. Has learned that there are some vegetables that I enjoy (just not the ones I was made to eat as a kid.) Uses curl cream. Is rethinking her relationship with food and her body. Wakes up regularly with back/hip pain. Wears an appliance for TMJ. Has two weekly meditation groups (one virtual and one in person) and a regular meditation practice. Not to mention has regular appointments with my acupuncturist, cardiologist, physical therapist, TMJ specialist, and menopause doctor. Whew.

I realize that this post has been long, but I feel like I wanted to lay the ground work for some of what I want to write about in the future. Plus, I personally appreciate folks who are writing about their experiences with menopause and aging. Taken individually, a lot of what I am experiencing does not feel like that big of a deal. But taken altogether I will admit that it can feel overwhelming and really frustrating at times. Mostly because while I think I’m doing what I need to do to help my body feel better, it is becoming more apparent that there is actually no guarantee that it will.

Of course, as the pandemic so clearly highlighted, there has never actually been a guarantee. It only felt that way.

Related Links

Oldster Magazine - wonderful writing featuring first-person essays and interviews related to mid-life aging. As someone who loves memoirs, this hits the spot.

Midlife Feast Podcast - been hooked since Season 1 which felt like a Midlife 101 class I did not know I needed. Support for intuitive eating, body acceptance, and better understanding peri/menopause.

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One of the many things that I love about Alexandria is that it definitely knows how to do festive! Despite living in Annandale for 30+ years before I made the move here, I feel much more connected with Alexandria itself. Maybe because it has more of an identity as a city as opposed to a northern Virginia suburb?

The holiday season is truly where Alexandria shines. Walking around after dark is a feast of holiday lights everywhere you go. I definitely want to write more about what it is like to live in a “walkable” city made up of a variety of neighborhoods, each with their own distinct character.

Until then, please enjoy some of the festive doors and houses I encountered on my various meanderings.

Enjoy!

If you would like to receive email notifications of future posts, subscribe here!

Enjoy!

If you would like to receive email notifications of future posts, subscribe here!

It’s hard to believe that it has been a year since I made the decision to downsize and sell the home where I raised my kids and lived for 23 years. The good news is that I am still pinching myself about living in this house and I have completely fallen in love with my new neighborhood and yes, my new life.

How I ended up here feels like it happened so quickly (which, in truth, it did) while at the same time feels like it unfolded exactly as it needed to unfold. In hindsight, I can see that there was a strong sense of knowing that this was the right decision for me and that helped me not indulge my typical second-guessing and overthinking. Definitely not my usual way of making decisions!

Looking back, I can see that this process started at the end of May (2022), I had gone up to Vermont to help Kyle move into a new apartment. I ended up having to come home early when Jezzabelle took a turn for the worse and, unfortunately, I had to make the decision to let her go (she had been going downhill for awhile, so not a complete surprise but still hard). I can see now that Jez’s passing allowed me to more consciously consider something that I had only subconsciously be aware of—that maybe it was time to look for a smaller place here in the Northern Virginia area.

I had felt for awhile that my current place was too big now that the kids were no longer living with me but I had always assumed that I wouldn’t downsize until I was ready to move out of the area. Partly because I knew that Jez would not be able to handle a move but mostly because I assumed that it would be hard to find a smaller place given how much housing prices had gone up. Through pure luck of timing we had bought the house in 1999, a year before the start of the housing bubble that eventually burst in 2008. Not to mention, I had just refinanced earlier that year to a 2.5% interest rate.

Sometime mid-June, I decided that maybe I should at least see what was out there, but I assumed that it would probably take up to a year—if I was even able to find a place. In the meantime, I headed out to Ocean City over July 4th for a couple of weeks. When I got home, I reached out to Megan’s mom, Katy, who is a realtor and asked if she would be interested in helping me see what was out there (again, with the caveat that I was still not 100% sure I wanted to move.) She was absolutely on board (side note: how lucky am I that we not only welcomed Megan to our family, but that Katy and I have become wonderful friends as well!)

That night, I came across a listing for an adorable 1920s house in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria (my physical therapist is in Del Ray and I had often walked around the area after my sessions. I loved the houses and the neighborhood so figured that it would be as good a place as any to start my search.)

The house had a cute screened-in front porch overlooking a small garden (complete with a white picket fence!) The inside was wonderfully updated and had built-in bookshelves incorporated into a fantastic staircase that divided the main living area. The only drawback was that it was 900 sqft (with 2 bedrooms and only 1 bathroom)—a big difference from my current 4 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom house. But it was really cute, so I sent the link to Katy with a note that while this was too small, it was the style I was looking for. She asked if I wanted to go take a look at it anyways. I decided that it couldn’t hurt.

Katy set up the time and we met up on Monday. The whole time, I was convinced that it was going to be way too small. It did not have a driveway or even much of a back yard (there is only 3’ 9” between the house and the neighbor’s yard behind it). And then we walked in.

I realized very quickly that it did not feel small at all! The main living area felt very open with the stairs adding a beautiful architectural element. The kitchen had a very similar vibe to what I had been thinking about doing in my current kitchen (which desperately needed an update.) It had original wood floors and original solid wood panel doors. The two bedrooms and the bath upstairs were small, but felt very cozy. The windows had just been replaced/upgraded in January and it had a new tankless water heater. And that porch!

All of a sudden, I realized that this house might actually be perfect for me. Which also felt completely crazy. It was literally the first house I looked at. And while it didn’t feel as small as I had thought, it was definitely much smaller than my current house. This would be a major change.

So I left undecided, but I could not stop thinking about it. I decided to come back on Tuesday at 5pm to walk around the neighborhood and get a feel for what it felt like in the evening when there was more traffic and more people were home. I talked to a neighbor who was outside (who only had good things to say). I checked out the library (right across the street on the opposite corner from the house). I walked by the Mount Vernon Community School (right behind the library) where there were a lot of families hanging out on the playground. I walked a couple of blocks to Mount Vernon Avenue which has lots of local shops and restaurants. All in all, this felt like a neighborhood full of life.

Katy had invited me to a family barbeque that evening so I headed over there and shared pictures of the place with Jay and Megan. At that point, I was still on the fence—I really loved it but it felt like such a huge leap.

Since it was the first house I had looked at, later that night, I decided to look up all the houses that had sold in Del Ray over the previous year to get a feel for the types of houses that typically came available in the area. There was only one house that I might have considered and even then, I definitely liked this one better.

I had recently heard Glennon Doyle talk about the idea of a “whole body yes” when trying to make decisions. The idea is to get out of your head and get a sense of what your body is trying to tell you. As someone who often has difficulty tapping into my body’s wisdom, I was surprised to get a very clear signal: an absolute whole body yes (the actual thought I had was: oh shit. I’m going to do this!). My brain however was not quite ready to hear that—it was was still stuck on making all sorts of arguments as to why this was an absolutely crazy thing to do. Could I really downsize by that much? How would that work? What would I do with all my stuff? Could I live without a garage or even a driveway? Without a backyard?

By Wednesday, I had worked through a lot of the logistical aspects and come to the conclusion that I would not miss the driveway or my very big backyard (my old lot was a bit of a unicorn—a 1.3 acres lot inside the beltway). But I was still feeling extremely anxious and scared to make a decision. I asked Katy if we could go back to look at it again and she set up an appointment for the next day.

That night, as I found myself feeling even more panicky and as I tried to sit with the anxiety that was coming up, I realized that what I was truly afraid of was making a decision of this magnitude and then regretting it. The subconscious narrative that I was telling myself was that this had to be my forever home and that made the decision feel incredibly overwhelming. Of course, that was unknowable, hence the anxiety.

As I started interrogating that narrative, though, I began to feel more at peace. Did I have to make a decision that I would have to live with forever? What if I shortened the timeframe a bit? Could I see myself happy in this house for at least 5 years? After all, even though I had lived in my house for 23 years, many other people moved after much shorter time periods for a variety of reasons. That was exactly what I needed to take the pressure off. I absolutely knew I could be happy there for 5 years (and probably longer.)

By the time I met up with Katy on Thursday to do my 2nd walkthrough, I had made up my mind. I was going to put an offer in. She went home and drew up the paperwork basically offering list price (this was happening just as the market was starting to shift out of the crazy COVID sellers market period.) We had a brief scare when we thought another offer was going to come in (it had been on the market for 11 days by that point) but it ended up not being an issue and I got the house!

So basically, a process that I had thought would take at least a year (if at all) ended up taking less than a week. I don’t think I have ever made this big of a decision this quickly. And (once I worked through those initial worries) I—amazingly—have never second guessed myself about it.

Of course, making the offer was just the beginning of the whirlwind. I still had to figure out how to sell my current house and what to do with over 23 years of accumulated “stuff”. In a nutshell, I closed on my new place on August 11, moved in on August 18 and then immediately jumped into cleaning out and selling my old house which closed on October 31st.

But I’ll save those details for future posts. For now, I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on what it took to get me here. Those 4 months were definitely a crazy period with so much to do, but oh, so worth it. So much has unfolded since then and in many ways, it has only been recently that I feel as if I have really settled in.

And I’ll take it!

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One of the tricky parts of jumping back into writing after not writing for a while is trying to figure out where to start. And that indecision has created just a wee bit of inertia around here. That and a whole lot of “life stuff” that seems to keep happening (funny how that works, isn’t it?)

Of course, the best way to overcome inertia, is to not overthink it and just start posting. Which is what I did back in January. While that did overcome the inertia of the moment, it, obviously, did not solve the longer term problem of actually continuing to write.

The next obvious strategy is to “make a plan”. To brainstorm a list of future posts/topics. To commit to a regular posting schedule. Except I know myself well enough by now to know that is not a way that works for me.

In reflecting on what has worked in the past, I’m realizing that I write better in response to something. When I started Throwing Marshmallows in the early days of blogging (way back in 2005!) it was in conversation with other homeschool bloggers. We’d read what someone else had written and use it as a jumping off point, linking back to the various discussions. Or participate in homeschool blog carnivals where we would submit a post which then would then be linked in a central location and then shared by all the participants (a way to discover great homeschool blogs pre-social media).

I also did a lot of writing on homeschool email lists like VaEclecticHS and Homeschooling Creatively where homeschool moms in the trenches were trying to figure it out together. These at some point (with varying degrees of success) migrated to become Facebook groups. And many homeschool bloggers migrated to Instagram which, interestingly, resulted in a shift away from a sense that we were in the trenches learning together and towards looking for the “influencer” who seemed to “have the answers”.

One of the reasons I loved the Brave Learner Home was that it provided a framework for deeper dives and explorations than Facebook or Instagram. Conversations did not “scroll off” the feed in a day. You could reflect, give ideas a try and come back to share what was working or not working. We got to know each other. We could have more in depth conversations than was possible in the comments of a social media post. It also gave me a steady stream of writing inspiration.

Since stepping down from Brave Writer, I have lost that organizing framework that helped focus my writing. Yet I have not lost the desire to explore and share my thoughts. Recently, I have started subscribing to various newsletters via Substack (which I also use to send out notifications of new posts - if you haven’t already, you can subscribe here!) Substack has an old-school bloggy vibe and many have developed into wonderful communities with thoughtful discussions about interesting ideas (how many places nowadays can you say that you look forward to reading the comments?) Yet, I tend to not jump in (even though I read regularly) because they feel too large and anonymous and my Enneagram Type 9 tendencies kick in, wondering what is the point (and would anyone there care?)

It has given me an idea though: what if I use those posts as a jumping off point for myself here? That won’t be all that I write about, but it might be just enough in the moment inspiration to keep my motivation feeling fresh and provide a flexible enough organizing principle to keep me writing more consistently. Because I do miss it.

I guess the only way to find out is to try! Wish me luck. 🍀

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So, it’s been a moment—18 months to be precise. And here I am, wanting to jump into writing yet again. Mainly because I enjoy using this space to record what is going on in my life and what I am thinking about it all.

And what has been going on has been quite a number of things. Where to start…

Jason (who now goes by Jay) got married to Megan, their college love, on August 13, 2021. It was a self-officiated wedding followed by an intimate dinner with the immediate families. You can see pictures here! They really enjoy Fredericksburg and have decided to make a home and to get involved with the community there.

Kyle is in his senior year at the University of Vermont (UVM) and will be graduating with a Wildlife & Fisheries Biology degree in May. The experiences he’s had (pandemic not withstanding) have been amazing (and so very different than my college experience!) His course field work and being in Vermont have allowed him to really hone his wildlife photography. He’s also fallen in love with birding after taking an intensive field ornithology class this past summer (and is a TA for his professor this semester). You can check out his recent work here.

After losing our 20 year old cat Sammie in 2021, I adopted two new cats last February: Gansey and Kelledry, who I will definitely be sharing more about. And then in June of last year, we said good-bye to our sweet pup Jezabelle, who was the last of our four “family pets.”

Then in July came the biggest change—after living 23 years in the home where I raised my kids, I decided it was time to move (only 15 minutes away, yet it feels like a completely different world!) My new place is an adorable little house (900 sqft!) with a cute front porch. It was built in 1920 and retains its “old house charm” while being beautifully updated. How I came to this decision was quite the process, not to mention the subsequent clean out and downsizing. Making this kind of major change (and all that it entails!) is something I want to write about more here in the future.

If that was not enough, just a couple of weeks ago, I stepped down from my role as homeschool coach for Brave Writer’s Brave Learner Home. Back in 2014, when Julie invited me to join her new endeavor, what was then the Homeschool Alliance, I had no idea where it was going to take us and what an impact it would have on me as a person. I so thoroughly enjoyed getting to know our members and their families and the work we did there. It was a really hard decision to make, but, especially with my move, the time felt very right.

So yeah. Given all that, maybe it makes sense that I want to jump back in over here (or I could just blame it on Lissa and her recent posts making me nostalgic for the old days of regular blogging!)

As always, no promises as far as how often or what I’ll be posting about. But if you are up for the musings of a 54 year old former homeschool mom who is navigating a new transition to who knows what after having experienced life in a major pandemic, I would love to have you join me!

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As I sit in this liminal space—transitioning from “homeschool mom” to “mom of young adults” and the empty nest it brings—I’ve been giving thought to how much more freedom I now have over how my days unfold and how I want to use it.

As I’ve been pondering this, I was reminded of an essay I read a few years back, What if All I Want is a Mediocre Life?. At the time, it spoke to me and I have thought of it often. What I notice now on my re-read is that the appeal for me is less about the specifics of what that mediocre life might look like and more about the lack of striving it feels like living a mediocre life might bring.

Looking deeper into the appeal of “less striving” has me wondering as to the motivation behind that desire. Am I using it to give myself permission to not feel as if I have to put too much “effort” into my life as a way of numbing or checking out or is it speaking to a true inner desire for more ease in my life?

I like to think it is the latter and I suppose the difference between the two has to do with intentionality—is this a conscious or an unconscious decision to “opt out”? And here is the larger question—am I choosing to reject a life based on other people’s “shoulds” because I know what I want to replace those external shoulds with?

While I have chosen the mediocre (less striving) path in many ways, I am beginning to realize that I’ve done so unconsciously, if not passive-aggressively. I was not choosing in the affirmative but rather avoiding in the negative.

What is quite fascinating to me is that, even though I was not fully aware of what my heart wanted, I unconsciously seem to have lived my way into a version of it. But now I’m wondering if maybe it is this lack of intention which creates the sense of struggle I sometimes feel regarding how my days unfold, despite having much more control over my time.

If I let myself look more honestly, I can sense an underlying fear—if I identify what I want, then what? It feels easier to avoid admitting what I care about and instead reassuring myself that “it will all work out.” While there is truth to the idea that it will all work out, I can see where this can, for me, fall into being an avoidance technique.

It’s an interesting possibility to consider that instead of making life more difficult, living a life that is more intentional could make it easier. Novel concept, no? I also find it fascinating that becoming clear about what we truly want is a growth place for an Enneagram Type 9.

And yet, there is resistance. There are old conditioned patterns coming into play—conditioned patterns, originally developed to protect me, yet no longer serving me. If it were just a matter of “knowing” the change I want to make, I’d be set. But that’s not the way that it works. I have to live my way into this new way of being with the world. And I have to do it in a way that honors my old way of being because it did its best with what it had.

Luckily, I have time. Even if it does not always feel that way.

Just spent the last month or so working on a yet another refresh to my space here. Squarespace rolled out a new platform that looks to have a lot of increased design flexibility. Unfortunately, they did not roll out a way to easily get my old content onto the new platform which meant that I had to cut & paste over 15 years of blog content. Amazingly, I have to admit that I enjoyed the process of going back into my decades old posts and impressed myself at being able to easily relocate most of my photos so I could re-upload them.

I have done a bit of reorganizing and updating the overall look and feel, hopefully making it easier to explore.

Another change is that, as of July, Google is discontinuing the email notification function of Feedburner which I used to allow people to subscribe to my posts. To replace this, I have started a free account over at Substack which will let folks continue to subscribe. I’ll be moving my current subscribers list over there shortly and I encourage you to sign up (which you can do so here).

Now that I’ve got all this squared away, my plan is to jump back into more regular writing. We just moved Kyle into his off-campus apartment this week so I am once again empty-nesting and thinking about how I want my days to unfold. More time for reading, writing and thinking is definitely on the list.

I enjoy having this blog as a place to record my thoughts and I hope you will enjoy it as well!

I got my first vaccination shot on April 14th Needless to say, I have lots of thoughts and feelings. Mostly just a huge sense of relief.

I got Pfizer which is the one I had felt partial to despite being willing to take which ever I had access to first. It is funny to realize that I actually have developed a preference despite there not being any substantial reason for that preference, given there are no discernible differences as far as protectiveness. Yet there it is, a general sense that I wanted a vaccination that used the mRNA technology and that Pfizer was my “preferred brand.” The way our brains work is fascinating.

I was able to get my appointment at an urgent care center five minutes from my house. I had seen a posting on Nextdoor that they were allowing anyone to register (here in Fairfax County most places have only been taking registrations for those in Phase 1). I checked it out and they were asking the appropriate screening questions so I was able to register without misrepresenting myself. I figured that I would probably not hear back from them until closer to when vaccinations were being opened up to those of us in Phase 2 (those of us with “non-essential” jobs who can easily stay home and have no health issues.)

About a week later on Friday, I got a voice mail saying that I could call for an appointment. I actually did not notice the message until Saturday evening after they were closed. I don’t always check my voice messages since I don’t get a lot of phone calls and I was expecting to hear from them via email (which I was checking religiously to make sure I did not miss a message.) Luckily they were open on Sunday when I called and I was scheduled for an appointment in 2 weeks.

The night before the appointment, my anxiety decided to kick in and keep me up (which also served to remind me it has actually been awhile since I’ve had middle of the night anxiety.) I had a couple of dreams where I was waiting in an overcrowded hallway for my vaccine and realized that I was not wearing a mask. Or where I was running incredibly late and getting lost on the way to my appointment.

My appointment was not until 4pm and I had it in the back of my mind that maybe I would get there and they would not have any record of it (I had actually called back after I made my appointment to ask if I would be getting any sort of email confirmation of the appointment and they had told me that the phone call was my confirmation. Yikes.)

Turns out that they did have my appointment (yay!) and they got me in and out quickly. Took a whole 5 minutes to get the vaccine. Had a delightful conversation with my nurse about how appreciative I was and how she enjoys this part of her job. The longest part was waiting the 15 mins. My follow up appointment is scheduled for May 5th.

All in all, I am happy with how easy the process was (and happy that the only side effects with this shot was a sore arm.) The hardest part was the period of knowing that you will be getting a shot but not having any idea of when you will become eligible, much less be able to get an appointment. Which could change in a blink of an eye. My neighbor across the street was not expecting to get an appointment but then got a call from INOVA saying she could come in the next day. Another friend who lives outside of Richmond had registered on the state-wide registration system (which did allow pre-registration, Fairfax County has been using their own system) and got the call from out of the blue before she was officially eligible and could come in the end of the week. So I knew it was going to happen. Just had no idea when.

It really is such an incredible undertaking when you think about it. All that had to come together from the development of the vaccine to the logistics of the roll-out to the majority of people choosing to actively do something not only to protect themselves but to protect our entire community. Truth is, getting the shot was actually pretty easy for how big of a deal it is. For that I am grateful.

Jason and Kyle have gotten their shots. Jason in Fredericksburg on April 20th the day after they opened up Phase 2 in Virginia (Moderna) and Kyle in Vermont on April 27th (Pfizer). It is looking like Kyle will need to get his 2nd shot back here in Virginia as the timing would not give him enough time to recover if he does not feel well before having to be out of the dorm. So his plan is to get it the day after he gets back home which should not be hard to do as they have now opened walk-in clinics in addition to being able to schedule appointments.

So now I am in this liminal moment…not fully vaccinated, but safer. But also feeling like I want to hunker down even more because who wants to make it this far only to get sick? Which parallels what our whole country is going through—not quite out of the woods yet, but finally feeling like we might be getting closer.

Of course, then we get to figure out how we want our new post-pandemic lives to look like. I, for one, am happy to take it slow. To be intentional about what I am adding back in and what I want to keep. It makes me happy to realize that in 2.5 weeks I will be able to be inside without a mask with a friend who is one week ahead of me. And by the end of May I will be able to go to Fredericksburg to see Jason and Megan’s apartment they’ve been in for a year which I have yet to see (they moved in April 2020.) Maybe we’ll even grab lunch (outside or take-out still for the time being.) But I can’t wait to finally be able sit in their apartment with them without a mask and to be able to give them a hug!

A little wild to realize how happy it makes me to have something so simple, yet so huge, to look forward to.

So what is The Barnraisers Project? It is a project started by organizer Garrett Bucks:

The Barnraisers Project coaches and trains white people to organize their friends, neighbors and colleagues for racial equity. We’re nobody’s saviors, but we’re committed to do our part to help build a better, more just world.

Operating from the premise that white supremacy was created by white people for the benefit of white people, we (white people) are therefore the ones who need to fix it. In our own community. For our own benefit. While in the abstract that can feel very overwhelming (dismantle white supremacy, me?) there are many ways into this work that can feel very doable.

I just completed Garrett’s winter organizing cohort and can’t say enough good things about the experience. Garrett combines solid, practical information (such as the difference between activism and organizing?) with unabashed confidence in our ability to make a difference. It is the perfect combination of empowerment and accountability that winds up being, yes, actually a very enjoyable experience. As he puts it:

It’s really easy to fall into an “all talk, no action” trap when you’re a white person who is learning how to be a more helpful, less-harm-causing community member. Phrases like “organizing for collective liberation” can sound super intimidating. It’s tempting to just retreat from it and start another book club. I get it. But.... what if learning how to do it was actually pretty awesome?

Garrett is currently taking sign-ups for his spring cohorts.

Details:

• Cohorts kickoff the week of April 18th. Sign-up by April 2nd.

• Meets every other week for 10 weeks (90 minute workshops) and involves homework in between.

Read more about the expectations and see if it is right for you: White Anti-Racist Organizing Cohorts: Additional Information and Participant Commitments

If you are interested in joining, you can sign up here: Barnraisers Project Organizing Cohorts (Enrollment Form).

If the timing isn’t right, you can subscribe to Garrett’s substack newsletter: White Pages to stay connected.

If you have any questions, I am more than happy to share about my experience. More to come!

How weird it is to look back in my  Instagram feed  and see a very distinct divide between “before coronavirus” and “after coronavirus.” I had no way of knowing that when I posted on March 1st about how I was on the “upswing after being hit hard by a cold or flu bug” my recovery was going to take longer than I expected and would happen as the United States was only just starting to fully understand the full impact the virus would have on all our lives.

It all seems at once to have happened in the blink of an eye, yet, at the same time seems to be moving in slow motion. Now that we are heading into 2021 (some 9 months into the pandemic), I’m feeling the need to reflect a bit and to record some of my thoughts and experiences of this time. 

I had just come off the whirlwind of Kyle  getting accepted to the University of Vermont in mid-December which, given the holiday. left us a very short amount of time to plan and prepare for  getting him moved onto campus  mid-January, in the middle of an unfamiliar-to-us Vermont winter. 

I was preparing to fulfill a long-time desire of taking a  writing workshop  with one of my favorite authors,  Dani Shapiro. The plan had been to fly up to Syracuse and then drive out to Kripalu in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts on Friday, February 28th, returning on Monday. Jason was coming up to house and pet sit for me while I was gone.

Wednesday before I was supposed to leave, while waiting for my orthodontist appointment, my throat started feeling scratchy. That evening at my therapy appointment, I was worried that I might be getting sick and was feeling a bit stressed about possibly having to make a last minute decision about traveling. 

Jason came up that evening, so we grabbed take-out and enjoyed catching up a bit. Thursday morning, I could tell that I definitely was fighting  something  so I contacted my acupuncturist about coming in for my appointment. She felt it was ok and that the treatment might be helpful. By Thursday evening, I was running a fever and it was obvious that I should not travel. Friday morning, I contacted Kripalu to let them know I was not coming and canceled my flight and car reservations. 

I spent most of the day Friday upstairs in bed and was grateful to have Jason around to help take care of Jez. By Friday evening, Jason had started not feeling well and we decided it made more sense for him to go back to Fredericksburg. Luckily my fever broke Saturday morning. As I posted on Instagram, by Sunday, I assumed that I was on the upswing and would be feeling better relatively soon (because that is how colds and flus usually work, right?)

While Jason bounced back after a day or so, I continued to feel completely wiped and had a lingering cough. I was able to work some, but felt completely drained. I was never more grateful that I worked from home as the idea of having to get up and go somewhere felt completely overwhelming. I skipped an “old timers” homeschool potluck get-together on Saturday and did my best to clean and straighten up the house before Kyle flew home from UVM for spring break on Sunday, March 8th.

In just this week, talk of the coronavirus, which was starting to spread in Washington state and then in New York, had started to get more serious. Before Kyle flew back from UVM for spring break, he had been told to bring his books and work he might need “just in case” but the general consensus was, in all likelihood, they would be returning. 

The week Kyle got home, he got together with some of his homeschool friends and debated about going to an open house at a friend’s house. On Thursday, March 12th, Governor Northam declared a state of emergency in Virginia due to COVID, closing schools, banning large get togethers and encouraging teleworking. On Saturday, Kyle met up with two photography friends to explore Georgetown and at that point, I was nervous but not quite ready to say “no, don’t go.” I did ask that they stay outside. By Monday, March 16th, we were not going anywhere.

The speed at which conditions were changing kept us completely off-balance. It was like we, as a society, could see what was coming but did not want to believe it, so we kept trying to convince ourselves that it was not as bad as it looked. At first the goal was to “flatten the curve” which we thought we could do in a matter of weeks. Yet what it would take (complete shut-down of non-essential businesses and people staying home) also seemed unfathomable. We had no model for how this would look and no idea of how long we would have to live this way. Not to mention conflicting messages from political leaders, often at odds with health officials.

The shut down orders were originally issued for a couple of weeks at a time which in hindsight was definitely wishful thinking. The dates became a moving target and each time they got extended, our hearts would sink a little bit more. 

We had no idea that we would be here in January 2021 only just now seeing a glimmer of the light at the end of the tunnel. We had no idea how it would unfold and what would be laid bare about us, both as a society and individually, as it did so.

So he made it. When we sent Kyle back to the University of Vermont in August, we had no idea what was in store for him. Would cases spike out of control? Would he be back home after just a few weeks because they had to shut down again like in the spring? Would classes and campus life with coronavirus restrictions be worth it?

The whole thing felt very much like a crap shoot which could easily go one way or the other since no one really knew what to expect. We decided to trust based on the strength of UVM’s testing plan. We were required to quarantine for two weeks (at home for those who could do so or on campus for those who needed it). He took a pre-arrival at home test they provided 5 days before returning. He was tested the day he got there as well as weekly throughout the entire semester (testing was required for all on and off campus students.) Dining halls were mostly grab-and-go. No visitors were allowed in dorm rooms. Masks were required (even for trips down the hall to shower.)

He drove up on his own the end of August so that he had a way, if needed, to bring everything home again. This also allowed him to transport his extensive plant collection he had assembled over the summer.

Turns out that UVM’s extensive testing plan, combined with Vermont’s overall handling of the pandemic which kept local numbers low, enabled them to have a successful semester. Cases throughout the semester had stayed in the low single digits, usually around 1 or 2 cases each week. Until a recent uptick of 7 cases two weeks ago, then 26 cases, then 36 cases this past Monday which mirrored a spike in Vermont’s overall cases as well.

Of course, all this led to increased uncertainty as to reintegrating Kyle back into my bubble. He was able to test on Sunday before returning home on Tuesday, but of course a negative test at one point in time does not mean that he is COVID free. It just decreases the likelihood that he isn’t. It was interesting to talk with friends who were in the same boat but with different colleges (who knew the homeschool to college Facebook group I started with local friends when Jason was applying to Mary Washington would still come in handy after the kids had successfully made it to college?)

I’ve honestly gone through a heck of an emotional roller coaster ride this month between this and the election and the pandemic in general, culminating in a panic attack a week ago where I could not stop shaking as I was trying to go to bed. It’s been awhile since I had one and it is really obvious to me that it was a way for my body to release the built up anxiety/pressure I was feeling. I felt remarkably more grounded the next day and was able to find a way to be comfortable with the uncertainty around what to do.

Where I ultimately landed was that after talking with him, given the level of exposure that he had and given the relatively low numbers in Burlington combined with his negative test, having him come home without taking additional precautions once he got here felt reasonable (though I did open the windows for the first day he was home) Of course there is no way to know for sure if that was the right call but I feel better as each day goes by.

It is wonderful to have him back home, even if the emotional lead-up to his return has been messier than I would have preferred. The fact that UVM made it through the entire semester is commendable. Kyle’s experience was a positive one, despite the limitations (especially socially). He finishes up the semester remotely, with his last week of classes and finals week.

The start date for Spring semester has been pushed back to February 1st which will hopefully give Vermont time to get back on top of the holiday surge. I’ve been really impressed with how Governor Scott and Vermont’s Public Health Commissioner, Mark Levine, have been handling the pandemic which makes me feel optimistic about next semester.

In the meantime, I plan on enjoying having my kid home.

What a week. What a relief.

Biden is going to be our president. And we get Kamala too. 

Been doing a lot of self-observation and thinking about how much we think we “know” about politicians and national figures. How much we assume that our opinions are completely rational. Based on fact. 

And yet.

I’ve always liked Joe Biden, especially as Vice President. He seemed like a genuinely good person. But during the primary, he annoyed me. He was an old white guy. His gaffes/stutter felt like a liability. When looking through the lens of “who could win” I could foresee all the ways people (Democrats and Republicans) would not like him. Given the stakes of this election, putting my hopes on him felt risky. 

Truthfully though, all of the Democratic candidates felt risky. I did not have a personal favorite. While I would have been fine with any of them, I could also see the limitations of all of them (hello, Type 9 tendencies!)

Kamala felt abrupt and a bit “cold” to me during the primary. Again, I liked her on the whole, in part because of this same directness and ability to call it like she saw it. I would have had no problem voting for her. But the worry about how she would be perceived absolutely played a role in my impression. 

In sitting with this, it is obvious that my own implicit misogyny and racism played a role in my sense of her. Which makes sense. Why would I think that it wouldn’t? Given how much it permeates our society, why would I think that I would be immune? Of course I’m not and I, especially as a white woman, need to acknowledge and own that. Even as it pains me to admit and even though I would like to believe that I was immune. 

The truth is that we project so much of what we want other people to be, especially politicians and national figures. We think we know who they are and are blind to how our narrative shapes the lens through which we view them. 

After Kamala was nominated, instead of seeing her through the “could she win” lens, I started viewing her through the “breaking barriers” lens and discovered a much warmer picture of who she is—which was there all the time. 

I am sure that picture also has its own blindspots because, of course, it does. Human beings are complicated and messy, made up of what Pema Chödrön calls our wisdom and our neurosis. 

And so now we wait. And let the process continue to play out. Which is maddening and frustrating and scary. Because even while I know there is no basis for voting fraud, it saddens me to know how many friends and family do believe it exists and are pinning their hopes on that. And how many national Republicans are fueling the flames of doubt that are not healthy for our country and democracy. 

I also remember the deep sense that something had to explain Hilary’s loss in 2016. I get it. But then as now, the process needed to play itself out. So I am going to do my best to hold space for these feelings for family and friends while at the same time holding the very real worries I have for my country going forward from the damage that has been done by this administration to our institutions and norms. 

We as a nation don’t do both/and very well. We don’t do messy. We don’t do nuance. We want our opinions and decisions to be clear cut. We want easy answers to complicated problems. We like right vs wrong. Good vs evil. 

Yet life is rarely clear cut, much less people. 

So I’m going to continue working on what I have control over and letting go of what I don’t. Realizing that while my way of processing is right for me, everyone else will have their own way of processing.

So that is where we are. And while it is an incredibly uncomfortable place to be, ultimately we can only be where we are. Even when it is as painful and as scary as where we are right now.

Voted today. Line was out the building, around the corner and down Columbia Pike. All told, took about an hour.

Some observations:
• No I Voted stickers (boo!)
• Though good intentioned, people have varying ideas of what 6 feet apart means.
• Everyone was wearing masks (yay!)

Evolution of my voting plans: Requested an absentee ballot back in April or May, thinking there was no way I was going to vote in person during a pandemic. With the USPS issues, decided I would drop my absentee ballot in a drop box. Then realized I wanted my vote to be accounted for on Election Day so decided in person early voting was it. Swung by on Monday, but the line was even longer so decided to try again later in the week. Very glad that Virginia gives us lots of options, almost like they want us to vote!

Voting really does my civic heart good. Today felt big and oh so important. More so than usual.

Voting, like mask wearing and social distancing, are ways that we can come together as a community and do something for the larger good.

🗳🗳 So let’s do this thing. VOTE! 🗳 🗳

Had a bit of a close call this morning. Showed up for my 8am appointment at my orthodontist. Let the office manager know I was waiting in the parking lot. They were just getting in so told me they’d let me know when they were ready.

10 minutes later, my orthodontist calls me to let me know they had just been notified that one of their patients had tested positive for COVID so out of an abundance of caution they were going to cancel their appointments for the time being.

I have to say that I’m grateful. Grateful for people doing the right thing—from the person who tested positive letting the office know about their potential exposure to their office for taking precautions seriously and having practices in place like me checking in from the parking lot rather than coming into the office. I’m grateful for masks which hopefully provided them protection from the exposure.

My thoughts are with everyone in their office as they get tested and do what they need to do to stop the spread.

My heart breaks knowing how many people out there are not willing to do something as simple as wearing a mask. But I’m grateful to those who are willing to do their part for the safety and well-being of us all.

So, here I am. Again. Writing a post about jumping back into Instagram and blogging.

My overthinking tendencies have been creating paralysis—should I just pick up where I left off? should I acknowledge that I have been gone awhile? am I once again, sounding like a broken record? does it even matter?—so I’ve just decided to get this first post written and posted and go from there.

Obviously, a lot has changed since my last post—we are in the middle of a global pandemic that has drastically changed life as we know it. We, as individuals and as a country, are going through a long-overdue reckoning with our history of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. And if that wasn’t enough, we are less than two months out from one of the most pivotal and divisive presidential elections in recent memory.

Whew.

Needless to say, I am looking for ways to make sense of it all and writing is one way that I do that. I have also been choosing to spend less time on Facebook and while that has been an overall positive choice, it also means that I have lost an outlet for sharing my thoughts.

So, here I am. Dusting off the cobwebs. Hoping I can sustain my good intentions (that Enneagram Type 9 inertia is real!)

In case some of you are like me, feeling just a bit unmoored by the constant reminders of how uncertain life in this world really is, I’ve found a couple of podcasts that are helping me maintain my sanity. Sometimes it is just nice to know that you are not alone in dealing with this crazy world we are waking up to.

• Pantsuit Politics: Grace-filled, nuanced discussions around politics? Sarah and Beth are speaking my language. They also have the uncanny knack of putting into words exactly what I am feeling. Especially their two most recent episodes:

  Breonna Taylor, Protecting Democracy, and Burnout

  RBG, Gender Roles, and the Pandemic.

• Unlocking Us: Brené Brown has a podcast? Enough said. Definitely check out the latest episode:

  On My Mind: RBG, Surge Capacity, and Play as an Energy Source.

That’s all I have for now. Hopefully more to come soon.