Hello there! Just wanted to do a quick post here. I am feeling so much more grounded and settled than I was the past two weeks. So the point of posting now is mainly to speak up at a time when I am feeling regulated and more myself. So hellooo here I am!

Writing has helped me immensely over the past few days. I have been doing morning pages every day so far this month (and, by default, so far this year- love how we can say that when we meet goals in January). Friday morning I got ready for the day and then sat and really wrote, for 2 hours. I felt into the uncertainty and panic from the past couple weeks, and from there tapped into times in my childhood where I felt similarly, and I wrote through those childhood memories. I got there by FEELING into my body and making connections, and then writing through them.

We did not have any plans yesterday aside from watching football (Lord I will be so happy once this football season is done! What a dangerous, awful sport on so many levels- but we have some humans in this apartment who are obsessed). Saturday night I began feeling anxiety as I looked ahead to the next day, because it was OPEN. I felt that would be the recipe for our implosion (this was really the continuation of two weeks of my body being so tense from a more flexible schedule). A part of me realized that I needed to manage this dysregulation without projecting onto the kids or my husband, who deserved to have a quiet Sunday if that is what they wanted. I set an intention then for myself for Sunday, that my priority was to tend to myself and any feelings that I was having.

This was the actual intention I wrote in my planner:

I will extend care and support to myself if/when feelings come up about today or the week or the near future, and I will make this care a priority.

In the morning, on a whim, I set out this football puzzle on our dining table, and miraculously the family tended to it throughout the day. We even had some fun! I have never considered myself a huge puzzle person and we have the added complication of C-A-T-S, including one who likes to run off with puzzle pieces in his mouth (Bean….). But over the past few years we have acquired several (puzzles, not cats, though we’ve acquired a couple of those as well) that have actually ended up being quite enjoyable. Five hundred pieces is my sweet spot- you know you can get a 500 piece puzzle done in one day :)

While the puzzle was out on our table, I stepped away and typed out some of what I had written by hand on Friday. And there was something about typing it out, in the setting of this intention to provide care to myself, that allowed for my past self and feelings to integrate with what has been my experience during this time of change and uncertainty, and suddenly…I felt calm. I softened. It probably would not have taken much for me to have shut the door and cried a bit, but I didn’t. I felt this connection with the younger parts of me that have been so activated since I quit my job, and this connection led to a soothing. It was like I came back online, into my adult self. I felt like everything would get taken care of. I felt an allowing to be as I am. I accepted myself and this experience.

Today I made it to a 7 am barre class in the extreme cold and some snow, which also felt incredibly refreshing and fulfilling. I brought out another puzzle and once again the kids helped me and it was FUN. I dropped my daughter off at a friend’s house and on my way home the song “Like a Stone” by Audioslave played on the Lithium station on SiriusXM radio and omg, there are some songs that just HIT in the moment and I cranked it up so loudly in the car.

Bibliophile Diverse Spines 500-piece puzzle

And this just happens to be the daily tear-off calendar for today (by @positivelypresent). I am seen and supported by the universe :)

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Ducks on Ice

Ten years with Grady cat