Even beyond self care, I often work with people who reach a place where they can say: I’m not beating myself up as much anymore. I don’t think I’m totally awful. And yet, I still feel anxious. I’m nervous and edgy. I lash out at people when I don’t mean to.
So why does this happen?
Read MoreOne of the blessings of my baby’s sensitivity was that it started to open us up to understanding our family as sensitive as a whole. I started learning about both my and my partner’s limitations based on our sensitivities, which were often ignored during our childhood. There’s good and bad to realizing this about ourselves. On the one hand, it makes us extra sympathetic to our little guy’s struggle… and on the other, it makes us triggered a lot more often.
Read MoreUnfortunately, culturally we live in a place that idealizes “the grind”: this idea that if we work hard enough for long enough, we’ll be able to achieve happiness and safety through monetary gain. Of course, we’ve all experienced that this particular bar is one that will continuously shift - there will always be another promotion, another goal, even another healing journey… it’s easy to feel as if we will never truly be enough.
Read More“To the parents who grew up with childhood trauma… To the parents who grew up in homes with violence or shame or emotional neglect or wounding of any kind, please know that the sheer amount of effort it takes you daily to not get triggered by the screams of your children, or the punches they throw at you (or each other), or the lack of control you have over your environment, or the constant sensory or physical demands, does not go unnoticed…
Read MoreWhen my son was two months old, we waited in one of our many doctor’s appointments, and I saw a poster that read: “1 in 5 babies are hard to soothe.” It was an advertisement for a support group. As I read it, I was bouncing him, shushing him, stroking his hair, all as he screamed. For the first six months of his life, he rarely stopped.
Read MoreBut nothing could have prepared me for the terror of new parenthood. During these days, it seemed I could barely go ten minutes without an intrusive thought shouting at me: have you checked his breathing? Did his seatbelt loosen since we got in the car? What if I drop him? What if I fall down the stairs while I’m holding him? What if my partner falls down the stairs while holding him?
Read MoreJust days after I gave birth, my midwife sat with me. She saw the weariness in my eyes and said, “Birth is the best kept secret among women. I don’t tell my daughter; it would break her heart.” Of course, we all know going into it that it will be hard. That isn’t the secret… but how it feels… it’s something we couldn’t even explain if we wanted to. Later she said, “If we could tell each other what it’s like, there wouldn’t be a human race anymore.”
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