Taking Up Space

Yes, that is what I'm doing here. I'm taking up space in between posts. I'm waiting on my hubby to write a post about the media as a guest blogger :) I've got some stuff in the works about guns, C-sections, and meditation. Stay tuned and in the meantime, think about the poem below and what's taking up space inside of you.

The Guest House

by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

The Breakdown

Last summer, I hit some serious turbulence. It was on my daughter's first birthday. I put her to bed and sat down to write her an email (we registered an email account and have been writing to her as a keepsake for her later on). After the email, I laid in bed all night, restless. From here, I slipped into a bad cycle of anxiety and insomnia. I stopped sleeping and felt like I was in “fight or flight” response constantly. The lack of sleep fueled anxiety and it was unsustainable. Anxiety has always manifested in sleep disturbance for me, but this was another level. I became afraid of nighttime and my bedroom. I lost too much weight for my body frame because I had no appetite. I thought I was going to die. 

I did everything I could to get better; acupuncture, magnesium supplements, probiotics, yoga, meditation, medication, a new local therapist, FaceTime with my old therapist, extra workouts, help from family, consults with psychiatrists. It took well over a month to calm down and realize I wasn’t dying of “fatal familial insomnia” (don’t Google it). A combination of the above things enabled me to get some good sleep and start to think straight again. I realized that the breakdown happened because I had stopped taking care of myself during a time when I needed to most. I hadn’t processed the consecutive stresses of the previous year— a miscarriage, serious genetic scares during pregnancy with Quinn, leaving work, an unplanned C-section, husband starting a new job, selling and buying houses, and moving. I didn’t let myself feel any of that. I didn’t have time and I didn’t want the teeny tiny human growing inside me to feel it. So I buried it. And when you bury feelings, they always come back to haunt you. You might store them in your body and over time they manifest physically in disease or pain or addiction. Little feelings might turn into big feelings, rendering you depressed or anxious. You might try to give your unpleasant feelings to others in your interactions, straining relationships. This all happens unconsciously, so you have to be mindful of your behavior. Sleep, believe it or not, is a behavior! In my situation, medicine helped get my sleep back on track, which led to mindfulness. Then, I put a self care plan in place and it’s been smooth sailing since then. 

I’m grateful for the breakdown I had last summer. I learned some big lessons. I lived through things that as a therapist, I had been on the other side of for so long. I needed medication to glue me back together so that I had the space in my mind to approach the “stuff” I needed to work through. I relied more on help than I ever personally had before. Help is a positive thing for all parties involved. You can’t do life all on your own all the time. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re in a panic, not knowing what to do with yourself in the moment, wishing you had a weighted blanket for your brain. I felt the power of an anniversary of something that hit you so deeply you didn’t even realize it. Anniversaries are incredibly powerful. 

So, take care of yourself and give yourself space to have your feelings. Don’t let them get backed up. Do something that fills you up every day. Be open and honest with others about your hard times. Talk about miscarriages. Talk about relationship issues. Talk about medication. Talk about a friend who is battling addiction. Take a risk and lay it out there; you might be helping someone else by doing so and there’s so much more we can learn from one another. 

Wishing peace and love upon everyone. 

"I love my son, but..."

One of my friends is at her wits end with her son. He’s about 15 months old and has been getting super upset if he’s not stuck on her like stink on poop. It’s been going on for almost 2 weeks. She gets home from work, her time is precious, and lately her choice has been to either hold her son or listen to him scream and cry until bedtime. She can’t do anything—when she makes dinner he screams and claws at her feet. Even playing with him doesn’t suffice…he needs to be held to feel content. The clinginess is affecting the whole family. Big sister is feeling it—her evening routine and special time with mom has been disrupted. Family dinners, which they value and work hard to make happen, are being strained by this behavior. A few nights ago my friend just handed the little guy to her husband and went and sat down in the basement just to escape the crying for twenty minutes. For the record, he’s not sick. She thought that at first, but it’s since been ruled out. Kind of a bummer—an ear infection would have been such a fast and easy fix.

My friend and I were recently on our way into the city for a girls’ night out. One of the first things she said as she stepped foot in my car was, “I love my son, but I really don’t like him right now.” We then talked about the clinginess and tossed around ideas for how to bring things on the home front back to homeostasis (if there is such a thing, right?!). We were with a third friend and the three of us had all worked together at a therapeutic day school with intensely behavioral and emotional little kids. Behavior shaping and limit-setting was the bread and butter of our work, so we really thought hard about how to squash the clinginess and screaming. I think the concept of the Oedipus Complex even came up! We thought and talked and by the end of the ride, the conclusion we came to was that her son’s behavior may “just be a phase” of development. 

Sometimes, things really are “just a phase” and your kid has to “grow out of it,” as simple and excuse-like as it may sound. Sometimes you’ve got to ride it out because there’s no apparent rhyme or reason and you could drive yourself mad trying to figure it out when in reality, you never will. Some phases don’t make any damn sense—your kid stops eating vegetables for 2 months, all of a sudden someone’s afraid of the car, and remember those weird times you yourself went through in junior high school? No sense! While we know you love your kid, you might not like your kid very much while you’re going through one of these times. You’re not excited to be with him/her through it. It’s normal to feel like this, so save your mom guilt for another time. My friend might just to have to weather the storm with her son and do what she feels is best for the family in the moment (to hold, or not to hold). And take twenty minutes a few more times in the basement to maintain sanity. A professor I had in grad school used to call this “sitting in the suck.” When things suck and there’s nothing you can do to solve the suck, you have to sit in the suck till it’s over. But, like all things…this, too, shall pass.