I catch my inner critic when she’s on the verge of taking over. She makes most of her power grabs when I’ve made a mistake, done something contrary to my self-perception, or been rejected. When I recognize the pattern I take a deep breath and acknowledge that I’ve lost my balance. This is helpful because forcing things or faking it until we make it will only reinforce the pattern. We operate from that space with so little of our true selves that even if we fool others, we only become convinced of our skill in pretending.

So I begin by paying close attention to the nature of the critical thoughts and trying to date them. How old is this girl? How old do I feel? Feeling very young and having very toddler-like mental tantrums calls for a different approach than a moody teenager. Once I figure out how old she is today, I can speak on her level. I say to her what I would say to my sister, or my son, or someone younger that I cherish.

At first, this feels silly and awkward. Every step of the process is deliberate, conscious, concentrated. I have to actually imagine the person telling me why they feel stupid or ugly or bad, imagine my response to help and comfort them, and figure out what I need to move forward. With practice, it becomes much easier, more fluid and intuitive. My solutions typically have a comfort aspect and a productive aspect, though sometimes I just put the cranky toddler down for a nap.

I do something to console myself, and the younger my critic is, the more indulgent I am about it. Then I do something for someone else, and this is key- it always relates to the nature of my self-criticism. Feeling unworthy means finding a way to pay it forward. Feeling weak or ugly means helping someone else see their strength and beauty. Feeling incompetent means cooking a family meal, or helping someone find a solution.

This is what builds healthy pride and real confidence while we struggle with our self-regard, and makes us better at solving the problems behind it. We become more skilled at accepting imperfections, noticing and appreciating strength and beauty in unlikely places, and realizing that we all have something to offer and something to receive. Lack of self-esteem is more a loss of interconnectedness- we’ve forgotten that we belong, forgotten how we belong.

We know how to swim, we just have to remember.

The tagline for this blog has never changed. The crazy stops here is a play off my determination to avoid some of the mistakes my parents made, to give my children a better life than I had. They transcended the skill of loving they were raised with, and my aspiration is no different. Every fifteen minutes is still an accurate description of how often I need to remind myself.

What has changed is how I find my way.

For six years, writing here has been my therapy, my release. I came here when I couldn’t let something go and gave it life on the page, an ecstatic bloodletting that always left me spent, exhilarated, centered. I needed that, and I needed you. You were here for me during some of the best and hardest moments of my life, and the encouragement and support you’ve given me has halved my pain and doubled my joy.

Equanimity has always been my greatest challenge. One of my favorite managers and most valuable mentors told me that my reactive nature was hurting me professionally. “It ruins your focus. You’re brilliant, but you get distracted by petty bullshit. You need to cultivate mind like water. People throw pebbles in your ocean, and you react as if someone threw a meteor in a fish pond. When you start to get worked up, remind yourself: mind like water.” He was talking about office politics and difficult personnel, but the stakes are higher these days.

I knew that having a child meant becoming a living example, but I couldn’t understand the depth of it before. We sat on our first plane, making faces and looking out the window when I noticed the propeller. A seed of anxiety germinated behind my navel. I don’t care for dual prop flights. The planes are old and loud, and the sensation of weightlessness, if even for a moment, can start my adrenaline flowing. When they started the engines, Jay’s face froze solid and he locked eyes with me. I took a deep breath, smiled, and put his face near the window so he could watch the propeller spin. We hit that first air pocket, and again, he froze and looked at me. I took a very deep breath in and let it out with a “whee!”. He smiled and bounced on my knee, waiting for the next one.

My emotional responses are as intense as they ever were, but the way I deal with them has changed entirely. When my son is in my care, I am called to deliberateness. It really isn’t possible to be present with an infant and freak out about anything, and for the first time in my entire life, my biochemistry is actually, finally on my side. Motherhood brings me a deep sense of fulfillment, a potent antidote to the raw ache of uncertainty I suffered all those years. This favorable climate makes it much easier for my perspective to get a running start before intensity of emotion can overtake it, and reason is winning most of the races these days.

It is said that meditation begins where therapy ends, and well, here we are. I need this space for meditation; writing about how I can cultivate more mindfulness, compassion, understanding and equanimity. I rely heavily on Buddhist concepts and principals, but that’s less a religious declaration than a spiritual one. My aspirations aren’t to become a monk, or a teacher, or a guru or anything other than a calmer person and a better writer.

There’s a minor makeover in progress for the site that includes removing comments. I’m writing the posts for myself, but I’m publishing them as an offering. I don’t want to make that offering expecting anything in return, nor do I wish to give anyone the opportunity to level criticism here. If something inspires you to discussion, I would love to do that via email or social media or over coffee or via text message. Flowers are nice, too.

Speaking of fauna, cattails are a symbol of peace and prosperity. I’ve spent the last six years searching for those very things. I intend to spend the next six years creating them. I hope you’ll stay with me.

photo credit: courtneysue75 via photopin cc

Amazingly, the train didn’t come in until Saturday afternoon. We were both tired, hungry, and in need of some downtime. My left arm was sore as hell, from carrying two bags and a seventeen pound kid around the day before, and all he wanted was to be held and fed. He fell asleep, I ordered dinner, and about halfway through my first full meal of the day, he woke up screaming. I tried to hold him and eat at the same time, but he wanted my attention and my arm was killing me, and he started crying again. I laid my fork carefully on my plate, held him to my chest and let my own tears roll down my cheeks. He wiggled down until he could see my face, and I was sure that my weeping would leave him completely unhinged, and we would drown right there in each other’s tears.

He laughed at me, patted my cheeks, blew raspberries, grinned his toothless grin. Just kidding, Mama! I’m okay! Eat your salad!

And so it was with the conference; I had feared the intersection of my lives as a professional and a mama, afraid that I would be too distracted to be of any significant value, and anxious about looking like a hot mess in general. All of which happened, to some extent, but everyone was sweet and supportive. I wasn’t particularly pleased with my performance, but this trip definitely convinced me that what I want is possible. The scattered distraction of mama-brain drives me absolutely nuts, and it will take some more practice to organize this new life.

I have never been comfortable with a lack of mastery. I crave challenge and growth, but I also have an emotional attachment to competence and familiarity. Before motherhood, I closed the gap between my opportunities and my abilities by working my fingers to the bone until I understood the details intimately. This isn’t that kind of problem. This is actually almost the exact opposite of that kind of problem.

Living well as a work-at-home mama means figuring out how to design systems that offer structure and balance without being inflexible and meticulous. It’s about finding out how to stay as centered as possible, and being present in whatever I’m doing at the moment, without letting things unravel too much somewhere else, and without sacrificing my well-being in the process. Which leads me to the next gift I received in Philadelphia.

A few women asked me what kind of blog I write, other than for my business, and as usual, I was at a loss of words to describe this place. I usually tell people that I write about my feelings, or my life, or whatever I want. I’m tired of that, and I’m tired of not getting to this space as often as I’d like, and I’m tired of over-thinking my writing here.

Stay tuned.

I’m over my head… but it sure feels nice…

Later, she admitted that she passed this bit of information on to our mutual friend, who was kind and gentle, but admitted that I just wasn’t wholesome enough. You know, it’s bothered me ever since. Not because he wasn’t interested, such is life, but because he wasn’t interested due to what he perceived as a lack of wholesomeness. It is probably one of the last vestiges of my bitterness.

Because all I ever wanted in this life was a cute house, a family, a comfortable income, and a bestseller. Seriously.

I married my high school boyfriend. He was the third man I ever slept with and the fifth that I ever even fooled around with. I thought we were going to grow up together and grow old together, and I was going to have a beautiful, impeccable golden anniversary party, with all of my grandchildren in attendance. This was before Pinterest, but trust me- I had the fucking flowers picked out for that fucker.

That’s not how things turned out, and that’s okay. We grew up together, but we grew in different directions, and we ended up not wanting the same things. Or, not wanting things the same way. It’s hard to explain, but with the gift of time and equanimity, it’s easy to see that what we had began to hurt us more than it helped us, and that golden anniversary party plan went into the dumpster with the debris of our marriage.

In my few years of sowing wild oats, I had some serious relationships. While I was involved with these men they had my complete and utter devotion, commitment and fidelity. At that time in my life I didn’t have the time or energy to date anyone for long that I couldn’t imagine marrying.

I don’t have to say much about those relationships because every bit of it is in these archives- the good, bad and the ugly.  A girl meets an emotionally unavailable guy, falls madly in love, and winds up on the bathroom floor with a fifth of vodka listening to Carole King and Carly Simon on repeat and crying to dehydration. Rinse, repeat.

You could set a timer for about ninety days into to any of these relationships. On day ninety-two, you’d find me under a blanket of Grey Goose and tears, mumbling along to “It’s Too Late”.  Or you could just watch plot-relevant episodes of “Sex in the City”, which is why I will never, ever forgive those assholes for writing Big’s grand gesture into the series finale.

The healthiest, most positive relationships I’ve had with men were the decidedly unwholesome arrangements. I still talk to most of those men- some of them are still my closest friends. They know me in a way that none of my boyfriends ever did, because they were safe, because there was no agenda. We were actual friends, with actual benefits, and when the benefits expired, the friendship endured.

Don’t misunderstand- I don’t mean to play the victim. I quickly dismissed twice as many decent men who were actually willing to explore the life I wanted and needed. In a fit of panic and delusion I still don’t quite understand, any man who suggested that he was willing and capable of sharing a home and a family was immediately deemed weak, suspicious, or overly dependent and was dismissed without hesitation.

No, I will not waste my time with some idiot that actually wants to share the life I dream of. Give me a man that isn’t sure he’s really capable of love. That’s who I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Yeah, I don’t know either. I’m just saying. It’s like I entered all of these relationships with an implied contract but understood how fucked up that was and categorically rejected anyone who enthusiastically bought what I was selling.

I am wholesome like fucking Cheerios. I always have been. I just looked too hard in all the wrong places for something that is on the verge of extinction.

Now I have a four month old son, a heart peppered with battle scars, no reason to think my piss-poor romantic judgement has improved at all, and people are telling me I need to “get back out there”. Numerous people, with notable insistence.

Dating anymore makes as much sense to me as a pinata at Helen Keller’s birthday party. I’m not looking for a husband, or even someone to share my life with. No one is going to think it’s cute or sexy that I spend most of my time running around with rice cereal and half-digested banana puree in my bra, and I wouldn’t trust them an inch if they did.

Which, really, is what it all boils down to- I can’t afford any more mistakes. My life is full, and when I look to bet what I can afford to lose, I come up empty-handed.

Why isn’t that a good thing?

I almost started a feminist movement in the ladies room line at Fenway by suggesting we storm the men’s room, where the line was moving much faster. A man yelled at a teenage boy for standing during the game and blocking his son’s view. He dropped a string of expletives and a woman yelled at him for his language. In the bowels of Boston’s subway system, the public transit workers accepted some good-natured abuse from weary passengers, but when a heckler got nasty, he found himself called out by the same crowd. Several people helped tourists (like us) figure out where the hell the bus dropped us off and how to get back to the car on time.

Maybe that’s what makes it heartbreaking that anyone would target an event like the Marathon in a city with such an innate sense of fairness and friendliness.

We wonder what we can do, we want to be a meaningful part of the solution to help us process our grief. We are humbled by the reminder of our own mortality, our sense of security is shaken, we’re bewildered by the prospect of explaining this to ourselves much less our children, and so sorrowful for the lives and sense of peace we’ve lost.

Beyond attending to the obvious needs created in the wake of a tragedy, there is only one thing any of us can do.

Love more. Love harder, love sweeter, love longer, love deeper. Love louder, so that the whole world can hear you. Next week, next month, until the next awful thing happens, don’t stop smiling at strangers or taking extra time to cuddle. Don’t stop paying for someone’s coffee, or holding the door for a lady with a baby (we love that), or a man in a wheelchair. Give (correct!) directions to tourists. Stick up for people. Be a shining light of what is right in the world.

Forgive your enemies. Not to excuse their transgressions or renounce protective measures or to avoid taking responsibility for your own missteps, but just to find peace in your own heart. Cultivate all the peace and compassion you can in your own corner of the universe.

Let anger, hatred and violence become so out of place in our public spaces that it seethes for attention and apprehension, and let us have the courage to call it out wherever we see its stain. Let us do it with as much concern for the disturbed as our own safety, understanding that only a frightening lack of love and acceptance causes anyone to be so violent and desperate.

Most of us have unlimited capacity for love. It is why we run towards trouble to help, instead of fleeing for our own safety, it is why we finish running 26.2 miles and keep running to the hospital to donate blood. It’s why we show up with warm blankets and triage kits and cash, it’s why anyone runs a marathon for charity in the first place, it’s why we stand on the sidelines and cheer people on. It is who we are, and all we have.

if anybody asks you where you’re coming from
say love, say for me love

This calling to choose betterment over bitterness is the only thing I remember from the entire sermon, but it colored my approach to nearly every ending I encountered over that four years, and lo, there were many. Sadly, all my grief and loss still pale in the shadow of my sister’s emotional Mount Everest, and she works tirelessly at better, not bitter with a fierceness that is breathtaking and awe-inspiring.

Letting go of bitterness in the face of loss is difficult. It’s a decision you make once an hour, sometimes. That’s where better comes in; bitterness tells us there’s a loss that needs honoring, you can’t loosen your grip on bitterness without something else to reach for. Better isn’t about getting over it or rising above it. Those things only happen when you’re working at being better at something rewarding and constructive.

Even then, sometimes bitterness will jump up and smack you in the face at the strangest times, leaving a stinging reminder of what was lost. That old tired pain brought fresh again. You wonder if the scar ever heals, and no, I don’t think it does. I think some hurt just never disappears, but you fill in that space well enough that you only notice when the edges get raw. Sometimes you have to let bitterness sit in the corner and sulk until she gets bored and goes home, so you can choose better again tomorrow.

Bitterness can inspire betterment, but only from the perspective that it reminds us of our impermanence and gives us a sense of urgency and a desire for redemption. Bitterness itself is too easily spent to motivate any permanent bettering. It can only remind us to reach forward instead of looking back.

It’s natural to pour over things, to ruminate over the significance of every decision and detail, looking for some cosmic reasoning, some lesson, some meaning, but there are no answers there. They may come later, if there are any, and sometimes there just aren’t.

Choosing to be better means allowing hope, something to wish for, something to relish and cherish, and yes, risk losing or failing. Bitterness refuses to be fooled again by happiness or joy. Better seeks to create those very things by its own virtue rather than living without them, while bitterness only sees another attempt at mockery. Perhaps rightfully so, but to choose it is only furthering tragedy.

So, four years later, we are better. We are stronger, more accomplished, better practiced. Choosing better, not bitter is easier, and when the ghosts come to call in the predawn hours, sometimes we manage not to answer the door. Sometimes we have them in for drinks, but we’re better, not perfect.

Women aren’t unified.

Sure, we have deep, enduring friendships. Some of us work together very well. The code of universal sisterhood will get you anything you need in a public women’s restroom: cuts in line, tylenol, tampons, extra toilet paper passed under the stall wall, a pep talk, and my personal favorite, wardrobe malfunction assistance. We support each other’s endeavors, and encourage one another through rough spots, but when it comes to the very basic societal needs of every woman, we falter.

Two of Jane Doe’s former friends testified as character witnesses for the defense, alleging that Jane was prone to lying and making poor decisions. The friends of the boys can be seen attempting to hold them accountable in the text messages entered as evidence, but none of those boys came forward willingly to sink their friends.

As disgusting as the whole mess is, those two girls committed the worst furtherance of rape culture in the whole mess. Because Jane Doe never whispered her secrets across a darkened room in the middle of the night to fucking CNN, but she made the wretched mistake of trusting her friends.

Years ago, I was shopping with a friend, and I endured a humiliating little tirade about how silly and wasteful I am to buy Chanel perfume instead of finding something cheaper. After I made my purchase, I helped her shop for a purse that cost more than any purse I’ve ever owned, and most of my suitcases.

We actually bickered about whose purchase was more trivial. We bickered about most of our differences, despite supporting one another rather staunchly when encroached on by an outside force. It was as if we weren’t allowed to be different and both be valid. Someone had to be wrong.

Which brings me to untreated postpartum depression and the identity, intimacy and isolation shifts that a woman navigates in new motherhood. People say that we don’t talk about it enough, and that’s not true. We talk about it all the time; this article (at last count) had over 80 personal stories about postpartum mental illness, and I read approximately eleventy four gazillion articles and forum posts just like this when I was pregnant.

The biggest commonality among them: most women realized they suffered a postpartum mental illness in hindsight. They never got help, they just assumed it was the cost of new motherhood and muddled through.

Because you don’t ask your friends if they secretly suspected that the world was populated with baby-eating zombies when their kids were born. Sure, you grouse about sleepless nights and weight-gain issues, you laugh about how to handle all of the attending family issues that come along with a new addition, but you don’t look them in the eye and say every night, before I can go to sleep, I have to convince myself that my kid will wake up in the morning. You can admit to it later, you can laugh about it once you’ve conquered it, but the real taboo is admitting there’s a problem while there’s a problem.

It’s the same thing with rape culture and victim shaming: women don’t care to admit to being abused because they fear being judged. No one wants to find themselves sitting in a courtroom watching a former confidant spill the beans about their sexual history, or their drinking habits, or that time they asked to be tied up, and we’re clearly taught that if you stand up for yourself, you’re opening the door to your closet and begging folks to drag out every bone.

That sinking shame is the same feeling (at a considerably lower intensity) you get when breastfeeding doesn’t work out, or you don’t have the heart for sleep training, or you decide to go back to work, or you decide that you can’t.

There’s always someone waiting to tell you that you’re wrong, that something is wrong with you, and someone is usually another woman who made a different decision, who is probably judging you to justify her own choices.

We need to figure out why we do that to each other, why someone always has to be wrong, and we need to stop fucking doing it, so that we can solve these problems.

I sat next to a woman in the lobby of a restaurant today. I had Jay in his carseat, and she had her seven week old in her carseat. I mentioned that this is one of Jay’s first trips out of the house that didn’t include the doctor’s office, that I hadn’t been out much because of flu season. (I self-conscious about looking awkward with the diaper bag and the carseat). I asked her how old her daughter was, and her response was apologetic. She’s seven weeks; I know it’s too early to have her out in public, it’s really cold today, right, and I should be at home, but I was going stir-crazy. 

I smiled, and told her that she was doing awesome for seven weeks postpartum, and that she knew better anyone what the two of them needed. Because that’s what I want to hear: you are doing awesome, and you know what the two of you need. She lit up like a sunrise.

We could have judged each other, and it would have been easy, because neither one of us owed the other any loyalty. It would have justified our respective decisions, but instead we decided that no one had to be wrong, and y’all, it felt incredible.

In March of 2007 I was happily married, heavily mortgaged, and looking towards the future. The first incarnation of this site was hosted on Blogger, inspired by the writing of Danny Evans and Catherine Conners. I really just wanted to build my page rank before I got pregnant. My career was blossoming, and the fruit of that labor was the beginning of my college education, but what I wanted most in the world was to be a mommyblogger. Not coincidentally, the first incarnation of my business was born in that same season, designed at first to be merely a bookkeeping side gig. I had no idea how to make any of it happen; how to honor all of those roles and transitions, what that woman would look like.

Sitting here tonight in a modest townhouse, listening to my father dig through the refrigerator while my son and mother sleep peacefully, writing a post before digging into business all weekend is a little surreal. Most of what I ever wanted out of life has come to fruition. There are a few more things to accomplish, absolutely, but if at any point in the last six years you would have told me that everything was going to work out, I would have laughed at you. If you would have tried to tell me how it was going to work out, I might have hit you. I sure as hell wouldn’t have believed a single word.

Those key differences between my vision and my reality still haunt me at three in the morning. The divorce, the foreclosure, the string of failed romances, and even the layoff- they all had a function in building my current life- but I struggle to accept them. It feels like a life built on all the things one aspires to avoid in pursuit of success. It isn’t how I was raised to live, it isn’t what I dreamed of as a little girl, and it isn’t anything I consciously pursued in my adult life. If anything, these digital pages are proof of how long I held that vision so tightly, and how much I was willing to suffer for it.

Mama guilt is inevitable; it’s only a matter of where it lands. It is as universal as birth and death, and as far as I can tell lasts as long, in some measure. Mine is tied up in the sheer joy of being a work-at-home mama in a multigenerational household: an opportunity that my own parents would have given an eye tooth to have. I’ve come into it by committing every offense against responsible adulthood possible, but here I am. I can raise my son to believe that this is what love and success look like, but only if I believe it too.

That’s what this site has always been about for me; unraveling the knots within, leaving things here on the page to cure and season, releasing them from my crowded mind, all in hopes of finding some wisdom, comfort or meaning- something to soften the edges of my agony and ecstasy. In the beginning, I wasn’t entirely sure anyone would ever read it, much less anyone who actually knew me, and I fear that shows in both my writing and some of the subject matter.

Instead it brought me into an incredible community, and now a large part of my life is built on the relationships, inspiration and talent that overflow from all corners- the original twenty-something blogger crowd, who are slowly following me to the other side of thirty, the parent bloggers that are supporting me as I gain the wisdom they’ve had a few years now, the local social media crowd, and everyone in between. It became such a large and important part of me that it began demanding authenticity in my personal life, and to my shock and delight some of my oldest friends, family and coworkers actually read here.

Starting a blog didn’t make me a writer; only writing can do that. Whoever said that the first step to being a writer is to try and be anything else knew what they were talking about. I’ve tried my damnedest, and it just doesn’t work. No, blogging helps me find the courage to become myself.

You help me find the courage to become myself.

Because the past is just a goodbye.

When the universe seems to be conspiring against us, when doubt is thick and fear is sharp, we want a reason why. We look for patterns and meaning, some sign of providence or cosmic reasoning. We create stories to explain the twists and turns of our lives.

Just like ancient societies created epic myths to explain the world around them, we give people, places and experiences their significance, we define ourselves by the stories we tell. Whether we take, share, or place blame, whether we cast ourselves in a comedy or a tragedy, whether we’re the darkness or the light, we are the sum of our stories.

Some of those stories encourage and inspire; they remind us of our best selves, our greatest moments. Some of those stories are not as helpful. They whisper and gnaw from the edges of shadows, they give us our excuses, our greatest fears, our deepest regrets. They fill in the gaps between our expectations and what we receive, between our goals and our progress, the distance between who we are and who we long to become. These stories focus on what was lost, what is missing, what might have been, and what will never be.

This very human habit of finding patterns, filling in gaps, looking for hidden meanings and attaching significance to our life experience is imperative to our sense of control and order, our need to understand. It serves us in that sense; a motivation, an inspiration, an explanation. We like the idea of fate and destiny- even if what we like is the ability to make our own- because those things are great reasons to crawl out of the blankets. Too often, though, we limit our potential with stories that reinforce our feelings of powerlessness, the great losses and pain, our humiliating defeats.

Difficult circumstances and great challenges arouse our fear of failure, and our instinct drives us to review our memories of frightening, hurtful events in an effort to recognize danger. Yet again, mental and emotional processes that kept us safe from woolly mammoths complicate modern life. We build associations and attribute meaning, and further the plot in our life story with that mindset.

The woman who can’t stand up for herself because she fears rejection. The man who won’t fulfill his potential in the world because someone else held him back. The little girl who got teased in school, the little boy who grew up poor. Maybe your boss or your best client, or your current crush is the kid who wet his pants during a fire drill in third grade and never lived it down. He still thinks about that when his laptop freezes up during a presentation.

Sometimes we forget that we are the authors of our lives. We can decide which stories define us, and how they define us. We can decide to retire stories from our books when they stop being important or helpful.

We can engineer a plot turn, a conflict resolution, a turning point for the main character. Wasted youth, lost potential, unrequited love, unspeakable betrayal, financial ruin, personal failure, moral transgression- they all have exactly as much significance as we give them.

Some people never learn, and learning comes from failure analysis, but other people hold on to their lessons a little too tightly. Shame, bitterness, guilt- they’re like Grandma’s quilt- heavy, familiar, but the holes are a little too big to offer any real warmth. That only comes from the growth of self-forgiveness and real change.

So we stopped at the store on the way home and bought some devil milk. I got a large, dark coffee. Roughly ten minutes after arriving home, Jay asked to nurse. I made up a bottle and handed it off. He protested for a minute, the same way he does when he’s offered breast milk in a bottle, and promptly sucked it down in what appeared to be one big swallow. The second serving went down a little slower, but with no less enthusiasm.

My milk went rather quickly. I nursed last night, but I don’t know that there’s much point tonight. He’s happier than a pig in shit. Literally. His cheeks are getting reassuringly chubby, and the sweet note is gone from his scent, replaced by a hint of sour milk and diapers brimming full with a foulness the likes of which I’d long forgotten. I’ve been seeing a lot more of that heart-stealing toothless grin, which more than makes up for the stench. I feel better physically, if you don’t count the tension headache I’ve been fighting the last few days. The level of my fatigue wasn’t apparent to me at the time, I assumed it was the cost of new motherhood. He was literally sucking the life force out of me.

Devil milk was the best thing for both of us, and I met the moment when you concede your pride and your idea of what kind of mother you’ll be, and you hide your shame beneath your relief, or maybe it’s the other way around, but you do what is best for your kid, even if it means admitting that you’re not enough. Except, oddly, not being stubborn about it is exactly what makes you more than enough.

So it is that I finally have just enough control over my basic existence that I can now contemplate getting fully dressed on a semi-regular basis, and I can tell you that I am slightly relieved but mostly terrified. Women write about losing themselves in motherhood, about realizing that you can’t go home again, if home was the bar, or the dance floor, or a lazy afternoon with a bottle of wine. Because even when you find the occasion, you’re a different person.

I haven’t really struggled with that; I feel more like I’ve finally become who I always was, in some comforting, Alice in Wonderland kind of way. Emotionally, I have both a security and a freedom I’ve never felt before. That isn’t to say that I never feel overwhelmed or guilty or crabby, but there’s a rightness to even the hardest moments; that good, sweet ache that only comes from working to exhaustion. The isolation is hard, but it’s largely self-inflicted. I’ve been nothing short of reclusive since last spring. It was what I needed at the time.

Now the silence is tiresome, but the idea of resuming public and social life is heavy with inertia, agoraphobia, and wariness. I need to move forward, I need to get out and about, I need to leave the baby at home, I need to take him with me, I need to talk about him, and I need to not talk about him. I need to figure out how to talk with all of you again, how to make a call, send a text, write an email. In my signature style, I took things too far in one direction and now I’m struggling to move back towards center.

So much about my personal life has changed in the past year. I don’t know what to do about socializing, and sometimes I fear I’ve forgotten how. Just like the car I’m sharing with my Dad- I know how to drive a manual transmission, but I’ve not done it in years and years, so there the keys sit, waiting for me to find not just the time, effort and energy to try, but the courage.

I will find that courage, just like I accepted our early and unexpected weaning. Because if there’s one lesson the past year has taught me a little too well, it’s that there really isn’t any use in crying over spilled milk.