MamaManagement

Confession: I don't know what to write. I'm here. I showed up. I'm ready to write. But...about what? I have lots of thoughts: jumbled thoughts, tangled thoughts, fast running thoughts, lazy river thoughts. But, fast or slow, I can't seem to catch any of them. They slip through my fingers like dandelion fuzz on the wind. I feel jittery and scatterbrained and, at the same time, heavy...like one of those over-loaded old pick-up trucks carting a house-full of belongings strapped on with bungee cord and riding low to the ground. It's a weird dichotomy of physical and mental sensations. Hence the jumbliness of it all. Confession: Things have been weird on the inside lately. My inner world is the manifestation of a tired, old, wooden roller coaster. Ups, downs, and some extra fear thrown in because you're never quite certain if the whole thing might not just come down right in the middle of the ride. And there's buzziness. I'm pretty sure that the buzzin...

My family has been on edge, people. February was yuck. And March wasn't any better for them. The recipe has looked something like this: 2 cups Winter Blues 1 cup Cabin Fever 1 cup General Life Stressors 1/2 cup Grey Skies 1/4 cup Freezing Temperatures 2 tbsps Stuffy Noses and Sore Throats 1/2 tsp Aches and Pains 1/3 cup Sick of Everything Mix all together for a big batch of blah, and then go back to bed. My husband's been massively stressed out at work. My daughter doesn't even want to go to school because she's so sick of the noise and chaos of stir-crazy kids. Everyone's so on edge that they're blowing up and breaking down over even the smallest annoyances. Even my always happy little man has a lower tolerance for frustration these days. This family is in massive need of a mental health break. And that's exactly what we're doing right now. It's Spring Break week at the kids' school and we have run away to North Carolina ...

Words of Wisdom... Not from me, of course. These are words I've been gathering, like wild flowers for a field bouquet. If you've been reading my blog this year, then you've probably gathered that I'm doing a lot of reconfiguring of my life and my brain. When I get into this mode, I tend to try to saturate my mind with words of wisdom from as many different sources as possible. I read books and blogs and articles; I listen to music and interviews and guided meditations and TED talks. When something catches my attention and makes me pause, I write it down...or, more often, I type it into the reminders on my phone. And then I look at it again and again, trying to absorb it in a way that makes it a part of me. And I am hard-core in this mode right now. Hard. Core. So, as I procrastinate working on my novel, I thought I'd share some of these little nuggets, these words of wisdom, with you all. Maybe they'll speak to you, too... Be still and know. This i...

This is a pill bottle. It is a pill bottle with my name on it. In this bottle are tiny white pills containing something called a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. It's prescribed for depression and anxiety. I have never in my life taken an SSRI, or any other psychotropic drug, before...until this week. I held onto the prescription for these little pills for more than month before I filled it, grappling with what it meant to take them...to need them. I felt like a failure. I've always been able to manage my emotional ups and downs with some combination of exercise, reevaluation, time, and sheer will. But this time was different. This time was some weird perfect storm that brought everything to a head all at once and resulted in my body remaining in a constant, heightened state of anxiety. You know that feeling you get just before you go on stage, or get up in front of an audience for a big presentation, or before an uncomfortable conversation or early morning flight...

GRACE. It's possible that I need to tattoo this word on my wrist, or the back on my hand. Some place I can see it all the time. I feel I need a near-constant reminder these days to give myself, and others, Grace. I've been going through a rough patch. Which is why you haven't seen my typical new year's post about resolutions and goals yet. I have several ideas and have started writing, but I'm in such a...I can't even think of the right word...blue period?...that I can't bring any of those ideas to fruition. Yet. Those posts will come. Just later. So instead of staying silent and, well, kind of suffering on the inside, I decided to write a post about Grace. Grace isn't a word I've used often in my life. For me it always meant 'something you say before you eat dinner'. But a friend used the word with me a while back, using a different meaning, and it kinda stuck with me. Of course, I looked it up to see what exactly  Grace means. Grac...