Hello, Old Friend!

Oh, my! It’s been so long since I’ve been in this space. Well, technically this isn’t even the same space since I migrated my blog from Blogger to WordPress. But it feels the same since it’s still just me, my keyboard, and my thoughts.

What has happened since I last shared? It looks like I left off at the end of September. That makes sense, given the fact that October got pretty busy. It started with our Fall Break trip to Stinson Beach (north of San Francisco). Then it was all Beto O’Rourke campaign work all the time. Then we traveled to Florida for a week at the beach with my family for Thanksgiving Break. And then Christmas was upon us.

Sometime in there I learned that there was going to be a Montessori middle school training in January. I’ve been trying to go for a couple of years, but it’s usually in the summer, which is one of my busiest times at work. So I worked it out with Matt and decided to attend the training in January (in Melbourne!).

I returned at the end of January and celebrated my 41st birthday at the beginning of February. We then had our annual Valentine’s celebration, and now Henry’s birthday is upon us.

But those are just the logistical details of what has been happening (I promise to write separate posts for each of the big things that has happened—especially Melbourne!). As you and I reconnect with one another, it seems more fitting to start in an emotional space.

But how do I even begin to encapsulate the emotions of the past four months (that’s a third of a year!)? I guess it suffices to say that it has been high highs and low lows.

My life continues to be filled with so many highs. I love going on vacations with my family. I love our home. I love all the funny, playful moments as a family. I love doing work that attempts to make the world a better place for all of us. And spending a month as a learner in Australia was INCREDIBLE!

The lows have been more in the transitions, I think. Spending so much time away from home during the Beto campaign and then spending another month away in January really strained the connection between one of my sons and me. The strained connection leads to more opposition and defiance, tantrums, mean comments, etc. It makes me feel like I don’t have enough or the right kind of strategies in my parenting toolkit. It makes me feel I’m failing as a parent.

The tension in parenting has also led to tension in our marriage. For example, Matt felt judged when I got home from therapy and got upset because he decided to let Henry watch Netflix on a school night, even though no screen time on a weeknight has been a hard and fast rule in our family for the past eight years.

And then Matt, Henry, Tate, and Hoss got rear ended by a car, and the Prius was totaled. We had to buy a new car within the week.

And our dear Hoss (our bloodhound-mix rescue dog) is not doing well. He’s almost 12 years-old. He’s having up and down days.

And work has been really, really stressful. I can tell from the heart palpitations I get whenever we go through a particularly stressful period (launching a massive start-up is no joke!).

Phew! That’s a lot! And yet it’s not very much compared to what others are dealing with around the world. (However, I’m trying to be more conscious of letting myself feel my sadness and work through it, since my therapist has pointed out that one of my self-defense/coping mechanisms is to compartmentalize my negative feelings, suppress them, and just focus on the positive. It’s easy to dismiss the difficulty in my life as not that big of a deal because I see real trauma in others’ lives both up close and from afar, and yet I have my own sadness and difficulty that I have to fully experience and process.

So that’s it in a nut shell, my friends! I hope to recommit to regularly publishing in this space. I hope all is well with you!