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Grief and Gratitude: an art show, a funeral, and a tree disaster

Hi friends,

I know what they say about May. I am familiar with the term “Maycember,” and how May mirrors the chaos of the holiday season with dance recitals and Little League playoffs, bake sales and end of school year activities. The month of May walloped me this year. On top of the normal seasonal busyness, I mourned a deep personal loss, attended a celebration of life out of state, participated in my first art show, and endured the terror of a huge part of my favorite tree falling in a storm and then being told the remaining tree is in “imminent danger of falling on our house” and having to coordinate the tree’s removal and a safe place for us to stay.

Whew.

You know I am all about honesty and transparency, but I am still too tender to share more about the loss of my friend and our beloved tree. Art and connection continue to be anchors for me in this tough season, so I wanted to share about my art show and let you know that I am officially selling some of my art!

The Art Show

Last weekend I participated in my first art show where I sold(!) my art at a local artist showcase. I keep saying it was MORE than a dream come true because I certainly have never viewed myself as a visual artist or even dreamed of being one. I stumbled into painting because I love the landscape of my lake and trees. My paintings delight me. To see others delight in them too has been an added bonus, a gift, like zest in a recipe.

I loved sharing my story and many people encouraged me to make a book out of my Plunge / Paint / Poems, stock my cards in local shops, or try to get a booth at the local farmers’ market. My next step is to make my cards and prints available to you, my readers and best encouragers.

Before I show you my offerings, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge how many people helped make the art show possible.

A Tribute to the Helpers

Thank you so much to:

• My friend, Cha’vette, who gave me the idea to offer card bundles with a poem, picked out the paintings, and gave me advice on what to charge and how much to order

• My neurodivergent mastermind group who listened to my anxious spiraling and encouraged me every step of the way

• My writing mastermind group who listened to my presentation and gave feedback on what to offer

• My daughter who gave me this note when she could see I was fighting OCD (who I call poison) and imposter syndrome

  

• My friend, Kristina, who sent check in texts and an encouragement card

• My friend, Kim, who validated every worry and feeling of overwhelm and told me over and over again that I am a real artist

• My mom, who helped me print my poems at UPS, and wrote out price stickers for my card bundles

• My kids who helped package all my individual prints

  

• My dad, who printed and cut the remaining cards that we ran out of time to print through UPS

• My husband, who let me order over $800 worth of prints and cards without any guarantee that we will make a profit and spent two hours reloading my Snapfish cart after all of my bundles mysteriously vanished when we hit order

• My graphic designer friend, Leslie, who gave me feedback on my Canva design and went back and forth on alignment and font and background color

• My friend, Emily, who had surgery the day of the art show, but helped me set up my booth the day before and strung up all 100 of my original Plunge / Paint / Poem paintings with twine and tiny clothes pins

  

• My friend, Dani, who tied the bundles and was the first to say she wanted to buy some

• My friend, Holly, who helped me plan out my booth design, gave me advice on framing, and came up with the idea to hang the 100 original PPP paintings up with twine and clothes pins—this was a huge hit and I got a lot of great feedback about my installation. She also consistently reminds me not to listen to the “itty bitty shitty committee” in my head trying to sabotage me.

  

• My boothmate, Sunshine, who I just met the week before the show, but who encouraged me and gave me advice on printing and display and what other shows I can enter

  

• Everyone who visited my booth and bought prints or cards: Vanessa, Eva, Kristen, Grace, Gayle, Yvette, Teri and Bill, Ali and fam, Jeff and Holly, and my husband and kids who helped with my greeting responsibilities so I could work my booth

  

  

  

  

  

  *Everyone who has already bought or order cards or prints: Naomi, Chanel, Kim, Taylor, Maddie, Dani, Krista, and my kids who insisted on using my cards for their teacher thank yous and gifting their teachers a card bundle

  

Truly, this was a group effort, and I feel so held and supported. I create in order to connect, and I am high on creativity and connection :)

Art for Sale

Without further ado, I am so excited to share my current offerings for purchase. For now, please email me at alyprades@gmail.com if you would like to purchase any of these offerings or have a commission request. Thank you!

(Breath & Breeze is my most popular bundle, so if you want it, get your order in fast!)

Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting. Feel free to share this Art Shop link with any friends who may be interested in purchasing prints or cards.

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The collections include folded greeting cards that are 4.25x5.5”. The cards are blank inside and come with an envelope. If you want a collection of prints with a poem, you can make a special order in any size. I have a limited selection of fine art prints ready to go, and I can make any of my paintings into prints with a little lead time. I have friend who is commissioning thank you cards for her wedding, so that is also an option.

First up, I have a poem on depression—that sneaky, lying jerk that I fortunately haven’t dealt with in over a decade when I had undiagnosed OCD. This poem is adapted from the brilliant ’s poem, Just a Mother that appeared on .

I am useless

So please don’t try to convince me

That a person can change

Everyone knows

Bad days last forever

You cannot persuade me that

I will feel joy again

The truth is

I have nothing to offer the world

I refuse to presume

My suffering is not my fault

I assure you

The mistakes I’ve committed

Overshadow

My humble contributions

I have learned that

It is possible to be beyond repair

You can’t tell me

There is beauty to come

I am confident that

My life is over

I no longer believe

I can make a difference

Now re-read the poem in reverse.

My second poem was inspired by ’s post Things Your Pastor [Probably] Won’t Tell You About Pain.

I was struck especially by her point that “Honesty about pain—not positivity nor praise—is the path to peace.” I have found this to be true in my own life. I used to think I needed to praise God in all things—and truly feel grateful and praiseworthy in every moment—or that was sin. I have learned disappointment and pain and resentment is not sin, but a part of being human. We only further wound ourselves when we try to bypass or dismiss these feelings. Like K.J., I have discovered that joy and gratitude always find me, unbidden, after I allow myself to the space to be honest.

On to the poem:

I am hurting, pain throbs with each breath

–But God is good!

I am scared, worst case scenarios spiral in my mind

–But it could be worse!

I am defeated, ready to give up

–But I will focus on the positive!

I am doubting, unsure of myself, my God, the future

–But I will trust!

***

Let’s try this again

***

I am hurting, pain throbs with each breath

–And God draws near to the broken hearted

I am scared, worst case scenarios spiral in my mind

–And God can handle my fear

I am defeated, ready to give up

–And defeat is not failure

I am doubting, unsure of myself, my God, the future

–And doubt leaves room for faith

I am willing to be honest about my pain and disappointments

This is trust, too

I’d love to know if either poem spoke to you. What’s surprising you lately?

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Surprise."

She wrote a blessing for when the world is on fire, a blessing for baseball season, and a blessing for parenting in the summer. Now these blessings—and many more!—are compiled in one beautiful book, Small Steps: Blessings to Lift Your Soul on the Pilgrimage of Life that releases today!

Kim’s words are practical, lyrical, encouraging, and life-giving. They make readers feel seen and held in the good, the hard, the lonely, and the mundane.

In honor of Kim’s upcoming book, I thought I’d try my hand at writing a blessing. I started a blessing for cold plunging, and after scribbling down some phrases, I realized Kim had said it best in her own blessing.

A Blessing for Going to the Water

by Kim Knowle-Zeller

If you need a reminder
of who you are
and whose you are,
go to a beach
and listen to the waves
lap over and over and over on the shore,
or go to a pond
or lake.

Simply sit yourself beside some water
close your eyes and breathe the air
tip your face to the sky
extend your hands
and reach forward.

Feel the pull of the water
rock your body to its rhythm
trust you are held
and made of this water
that first formed this world
and pulses through your body,
water that nourishes and creates
renews and remakes
and lives inside of you
calling you home
to yourself,
wholly known
wholly beloved.

The Blessing I Need Right Now (and maybe you do, too.)

I love the title of Kim’s book: Small Steps. I am a slow, consistent progress kinda girl. I love a daily challenge and establishing replicable rhythms in my own life. My Substack algorithm pushes the magic of the mundane, encourages slow living, and exalts the unseen, repetitive work of motherhood. I think back to the messages of the church in my childhood. They warned against one-night stands and encouraged us to make all decisions with eternity in mind. We celebrate best friends FOREVER, not best friends for sometimes.

I hadn’t realized how much I’d internalized this elevation of daily rhythms and lasting significance until I tried to replicate my plunge / paint / poem challenge last February to only moderate success1. Out of 28 days, I completed 12. I found myself wrestling with how to feel about it.

What is the value of something you only do sometimes?

It certainly felt less worthy of celebration than if I had completed all 28 days. I am trying my best to move away from all-or-nothing thinking, but what happens when the culture around you celebrates it? Wants you to go all-in? Poo-poos the special events or uncharacteristic progress?

I’ve been reevaluating the role of discipline in my writing life. How can I employ discipline without making it king?

Do I really believe you don’t have to do something every day (or on any consistent basis) for it to be valuable? I want to, but I’m not there yet2.

I wrote this blessing for myself, as a response to these questions. Of course, I believe the consistent are also blessed. The small steps are blessed. I’m just wondering if giant leaps and one-off activities can be blessed, too.

I wrote this blessing for you if you have a differently wired brain or chronic illness or, regardless of circumstances, life continues to get in the way of your ideal plans and rhythms. I wrote this blessing for the moments that “interrupt” our plans and for those us who can’t seem to stick to a consistent routine.

We may be inconsistent. But God isn’t. The verse says, “great is Thy faithfulness,” not ours. This blessing rests in that truth.

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Blessed are the inconsistent

For a culture obsessed with quick fixes,
we also worship at the altar of slow, sustained progress
Only consistency counts
Is it sustainable?
Scalable?
Replicable?

We want to build something lasting,
Important
Can it be important if it fades?

They warn against temporary highs
Grate against instant gratification
Belittle mountaintop experiences
Instruct us to set our hearts on eternity

Is it any wonder we distrust the good? The ease? The present moment?

Jesus wept over Lazarus knowing full well his death wouldn’t last
Fed the 5,000 knowing bellies would rumble again
His mercies are new every morning
Yes–every
But also–new

Consistency makes a certain kind of magic, true
Produces growth and gains and goodness

And also–

What do we make of the unexpected? 
The endeavors we can’t manage to fold into our plans and rhythms and routines?
What do we make of our own haphazard attempts? 

The anomalies and sometimes
The scattered and episodic
Are those moments, those efforts worth less?

Can we dare to call them blessed?

Because life happens
Hormones cycle
Dishes and laundry and sickness and school projects interrupt
Rinse and repeat
Rinse and repeat

Breathe in these words: 

Blessed is the energy you have today
Blessed is your current capacity
Blessed are your efforts and abilities and interests, though they may change, 
and change again
Blessed are your eyes, open to the here and now
Blessed is the day you had, not the day you hoped for

Blessed are the tasks and habits, dates and duties
Carried out
Once in awhile
Infrequently
Dashes of blue moon energy
Punctuated with pleasure

Because God meets us in any moment
Scalable or not
God the rock and also the wind, the fire, the breath,
In and out
In and out
Not always in
Not always out

God of movement
God of stillness
God with us in our movement
God with us in our stillness
God with us in our inconsistencies
God with us in our efforts
God the sustainer and God the unexpected joy giver

Blessed are the blips of worship
The sporadic songs
The scattered prayers
Let them be good
Let them wash over our thirsty spirits

Blessed are the projects now abandoned
Let them be good
Let them be over

Blessed are friends for now
Let them be good
Let them move over when a new season comes

Blessed are the one-off date nights
Let them be good
Let the connection carry over

Blessed are the small acts of creativity
Let them be good
Let them spark ideas to mull over

Blessed are our atypical days
Let them be good
Let us give them over when our heads hit the pillow

Blessed are you who acknowledge your limits
Who follow the energy
Who live in the messy middle
Blessed are you who believe that something is 
Better than nothing
Who show up, just as you are

Blessed are the inconsistent
The scattered and scrambling
Held by a steadfast God

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This post is a part of the blog tour for Small Steps: Blessings to Lift Your Soul on the Pilgrimage of Life. Small Steps is a book of blessings meant to meet us in our daily lives, in all of the challenges and joys, struggles and triumphs. A few of the blessings include: For a Rough Morning, Listening to a Dream, Learning to Pray Again, and For an Ordinary Tuesday. Order your copy wherever books are sold. Small Steps releases May 5th! (today!)

But there is a moment at every wedding I’ve attended since giving up alcohol that I am blindsided by the unfairness of it all.

Take our friend Dave’s wedding. My husband was a groomsman, meaning he’d been downtown all day at the venue enjoying “get ready” shots of whiskey and taste tasting the groom’s signature cocktails. I got ready--alone,--drove downtown--alone,-- parked downtown--alone--, found the venue--alone, and meandered into the cocktail hour--alone.

I could see my husband across the rows of white chairs and twinkle lights. He looked handsome in his suit, and his rosy cheeks glowed against the industrial backdrop. He caught my eye and smiled what I can only describe as his tipsy smile, his face transforming from a reserved introvert to an affable socialite--the guy at the club who would for sure hit on you. This is not his norm.

I shifted in my heels, balled my fists at my side, and seethed.

Anxiety pulsed, overwhelm stole my breath. Is it weirder to stand alone or talk to someone I don’t know? Is that woman with the sequin dress hoping I’ll say hi or hoping I’ll leave her alone? If I get a tonic and lime will people assume I’m drinking? Do I want them to assume that? Will my husband think I’m drinking? What if someone hands me a champagne flute? Is it rude to sit down already?

Everyone else was warm and glowy and socially lubricated and I was raw dogging it with a tonic water in a plastic cup.

Everyone else gets to take the edge off. Everyone else gets to feel good. Everyone else gets to celebrate. Everybody but me.

***

When I was in the throes of OCD, my constant pursuit of perfection was an addiction. And like most addictions, it wasn’t all bad. That is to say, there was a reason I kept coming back. OCD would dangle the carrot: if I could just do x, y, z, the anxiety would go away. If I could just prove I made the right choice or reach X standard or figure out X dilemma, this pulsing fear of failure would subside.

OCD particularly attacked my writing. If I could just finish this blog post or phrase this the right way or explain something perfectly, I could know--really know--I was a good writer, a good human. Good.

That was the promise. And sometimes it worked. When I finished the post or found the phrase, I was met with an exhilarating high. Whether it was the elation of figuring it out or the stark relief against crushing self-hatred, it was intoxicating.

But the feeling wouldn’t last. I knew overall it wasn’t working. Like my problematic drinking, it worked just enough to keep me hooked.

***

Back at the wedding, why, yes, I did throw myself a pity party, thank you very much. I started a fight with my happy, tipsy husband and contemplated sneaking back to the cash bar for a rum and coke. I white-knuckled it through dinner and dancing and toasts. I kept feeling sorry for myself. I am not a superhero. I let the pity flow, but I didn’t drink.

Now had I shamed myself for feeling FOMO, I probably would have caved and snuck a drink. I let myself wallow and feel bad. Wallowing is the first step in acceptance, so they say. Oh, they don’t say? Well, they should.

I somehow had the wisdom to know I didn’t need a drink; I just needed to acknowledge the unfairness of it all. Many people can enjoy an adult beverage at a wedding and be fine2. This is not available to me. Even when I’m anxious. Even when I’m awkward. Even when I really want it.

I know this.

My brain. My wiring. My history.

99.9% of the time I feel this in my bones. Feel lucky, grateful, undeserving of the freedom. I feel like I cheated the system by getting sober when I did, not waiting for absolute rock bottom. (Though there were many instances that should have been rock bottom!)

I wake up without a hangover, without worrying about what danger or mortification I encountered while drunk.

It’s a trade I’d make over and over and over again. My life, my children, my future and all I have to do is say no to alcohol.

Sometimes, I just need to acknowledge the sacrifice.

***

I’ve been in OCD recovery for a couple years3 and most of the time, I don’t miss it. I don’t miss the endless compulsions or debilitating doubts or nightmare of shame.

But there are some moments, especially when I’m writing, that I am blindsided by the unfairness of it all.

I miss that rush of figuring it out. I miss the thrill of chasing perfection. If this blog post isn’t going to solve/justify my entire life, then what’s the point?

I miss the sense of conviction I felt over every word. I used to think this was passion. I considered myself passionate about writing. What is passion now? Without the addiction?

Joy comes in small moments of epiphany, but I don’t experience the same rush of relief at such a high stakes level.

I can know that it was always a bait and hook, and yet I need to grieve that it was a trap, an illusion.

Acknowledging the loss brings me to acceptance.

Many writer friends can enjoy the quest for a perfect phrase or chase the high of finding their unequivocal calling or revel in a post that turns out just right4. This is not available to me. Even when I really want it.

I know this.

My brain. My wiring. My history.

It’s a trade I’d make over and over and over again. My life, my healing, my future and all I have to do is say no to certainty, to resist the urge to make sure I’ve made the right choice.

Sometimes, I just need to acknowledge the sacrifice.

And maybe that’s how I’m reclaiming my passion for writing. By learning to be all in on my terms, not OCD’s, I can acknowledge the loss and keep writing anyway.

***

Just to lighten things up, I’m sharing a fun abecedarian describing what my passion for writing looks like now:

All in, not all-or-nothing

Buoyed by surprise and delight and self-trust

Compassionate commitment to growth

Daring to set the project down

Eager but not exacting

Following fun

Game for a challenge

Happy to help

It all counts

Juggling multiple passions

Kindness toward myself

Letting good enough be good. Period.

Mentored by the mountains, lakes, and trees, rooted and grounded with

Nothing to prove

Open to possibility

Paced passion

Quiet resilience

Rest rest and rest some more

Serious play creates serious art

Trust the process

Untethered from the altar of discipline

Walking the walk of self-compassion

eXpectant and enraptured

Yanking free from shame

living Zestfully

All a bonus

All a gift

All a grace

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Reclaim."

It’s a challenge to get students to read the text even once, much less multiple times. Yet my most successful students are the ones who are comfortable returning to the text again and again.

They don’t believe the lie that they should know the answer already. They don’t trust half skims or Chat GPT summaries. They read for themselves, and read again. Until the answer emerges.

A key trait of successful students, therefore, is not intellect but patience and distress tolerance. Do they keep going when the homework is taking longer than they hoped? Can they admit to themselves that they don’t know the answer off the top of their head? Can they let the process take the time it takes?

Perhaps I’m not just writing about my students.

///

I sit on the couch and lean over the coffee table; a 1000-piece puzzle box balances precariously on my lap. I don’t have much space, but I do have a system. Like most people, I start with the edges. My space is limited, so I sort in drafts. I methodically pick up each of the 1,000 pieces in one half of the puzzle box and move all the edge pieces to the coffee table while non-edge pieces get transferred to the empty box top. Piece by tedious piece, I pluck and place. At first, I’m looking for smooth edges as the only distinguishing feature. The colors and patterns themselves are visual gibberish. Blobs and lines and a whole lot of textures. After one round of transfer, I begin to piece together the frame.

I return back to sorting for another round. This time, with a little more familiarity with the puzzle, I search for a new salient feature. Sometimes it’s a background color or pattern. The water or trees or lava. A type of roof or a color of a building. I now can see there are three shades of pale blue–the clouds above the mountains, the snow, and the clouds reflected in the water, each slightly different in a way my eyes can see but words can’t describe. I follow the same method, picking through the now full box one piece at a time, transferring what I can recognize–three shades of blue–to the coffee table and moving the rest to the empty box. Then I piece together the sections with the focus feature. Sky, snow, clouds below.

It’s not ideal. A puzzle board would help a lot. On a smaller puzzle, I could dump all of the pieces at once. Turn them over and organize that way. My lack of space has forced me to puzzle in drafts. I’m tempted to find and place every piece, but there’s no room. I must go section by section. Sometimes this means recognizing a piece but moving it to the slush box anyway, trusting its time will come.

Perhaps I’m not just writing about puzzles.

///

I found my students didn’t automatically know how to read in drafts, so I modeled this skill for them. Each read-through counted as its own grade in my grade book.

We could spend a 1 hour and 15-minute class session previewing, making predictions, and skimming and discussing a two-page reading.

“Based on the title, what do you think the text will be about?”

“What kind of text do you think it is? Opinion, argument, personal essay? What clues lead you to believe this?”

“What do you already know about the topic? What do you expect to learn?”

Then I’d send them home with additional close reading questions. I’d label the worksheets: pre-reading, close reading, language focus, etc.

The next session we’d dive deeper into the same two-page article. I’d model note taking and marking up the text with a process called think aloud. I’d share my real-time thoughts and associations.

“I can tell by the bolding here that this must be an important term.”

“The use of “I” tells me this is in the first person. Since this is in quotations, I know the author is bringing in evidence from someone else.”

“Since we know we’re going to be writing our own opinion piece, I’m going to underline all of the persuasive language I see, like this use of the collective “we” to form common ground with the reader.”

In the beginning of each semester, my students would groan and complain about these lengthy discussions. They would try to get me to pass out the homework early, read ahead, or tune out on their smart phones. As the semester went on, students began to anticipate my pre-reading questions. Eager hands would shoot up to identify the text’s genre or connect the title to something they were learning in another class. The answers on the homework went from one-word phrases to full paragraphs and quotations that they later utilized in their essays. Their eyes would light up with understanding the second or third time we discussed a text. Multiple exposures aided comprehension.

Sure, I liked to teach my students skills and techniques, but I wonder if the most valuable lesson I could show them was just how much time it takes to truly understand a text. In a culture that values efficiency and digital shortcuts, it is invaluable to learn they’re not doing it wrong if it takes time.

Sometimes we’re lucky enough to have people in our lives who model patience through life’s uncertainties. Many of us are figuring it out as we go, pushing back against the inner critic that says we should know all of this already.

///

There is something comforting about my puzzling process; rhythmic, calming. When all the pieces start to look alike or revert to gibberish again, I step away. It’s remarkable what a good night’s sleep will do for my puzzling abilities. A nonsensical piece finds a clear home in the light of the morning.

I don’t know how many transfers I make throughout the course of the puzzle. By the end, though, when I’m down to 50-100 pieces, I can pick up and pinpoint exactly where any piece should go. I’ve seen that individual piece 10, 20? times and all of those past times it didn’t mean anything--just colors and shapes. Until it does. One glance and I know it’s a piece of a giant’s leg or a squid’s tail or shadow of snow.

Damn, that’s satisfying.

Of course, life is not quite as linear as solving a puzzle or drafting a response paper. I love the promise of a puzzle: surrender to the sorting and sense will be made.

Perhaps life could be as satisfying as a good puzzle–or at least less frustrating– if we let ourselves sit in the sorting for longer. Without rushing to an answer or tweetable lesson or finished product. If we become more comfortable with drafting.

Could we let ourselves take the time we need? Step by tedious step. Draft by circuitous draft. Layer by layer. Loop by loop. Until the picture becomes a little clearer.

Wouldn’t that be satisfying? Maybe even the definition of success.

***
I’m curious, do you have anyone in your life who models patience in this tedious sorting period? How do you handle revisiting a challenge or lesson or theme over and over? I think this idea could apply to writing, creativity, parenting, friendships, you name it! In what area of your own life would you like to become more comfortable sitting in the sorting? And what are your favorite puzzles!

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Being held by the creative efforts of my current life

A self-compassion curriculum I created for my kids. We haven’t implemented it yet.

It all counts

I hope you know

it all counts

as art

as life

as love

as forward motion

as enough

the sketching and the color mixing,

the scribbled notes on receipts and snippets of ideas sent to yourself via text,

the processing on Voxer,

the ski days,

the snowy drives,

the reaching out to new friends,

the meal planning, cooking, and curriculum making,

the dream of a back-fence mural, designed by you and the kids,

the color-coded chart and reward system,

the re-stacking, the commenting, the pre-ordering for artist’s you love,

the far-off ideas and the quiet disciplines,

the quotes saved,

the prayers whispered,

the time spent in nature,

all the noticing

there is no right way to create

can we take advantage of this freedom?

if it is for freedom we have been set free,

why do we cage and prescribe and box ourselves back in?

it all counts

every moment you are alive to notice

awake to love

pouring out your pain and passion

folding tiny shirts

wiping counters smooth

kissing tender foreheads

it all counts

as art

as life

as love

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***
What creative efforts do you engage in, but feel like don’t “count” toward your “real” creativity? What other endeavors would you add to my list?

Leave a comment

***
In case you missed it, I shared my latest Plunge, paint, poems here: Celebrating Some?

Some photos of recent creativity that I’m tempted to feel like don’t “count” because they aren’t longform essays:

I wrote this poem as a response/reflection for our current climate of division. Lately I’ve been in rooms where my political view is the minority, so I have heard jokes, statements, and tones of ridicule that have grieved my heart. I am doing my best to voice my concerns about these statements directly with the people involved. I believe strongly in staying friends with people from different political backgrounds. I want to yell, “I am one of those people you are making fun of.” I want my friends to be tender with their words when I’m around. To acknowledge my different point of view.

And also.

I shouldn’t have to be in the room.

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I am writing this for myself, too. How many times have I made a flippant statement or sarcastic comment denigrating people who vote differently than me? I am just as guilty, though I think my current status in the minority makes me more aware of my words and tone than I used to be.

I would go so far to say that we should watch even what political satire and memes we consume and spread.

It comes down to loving your neighbor as yourself.

If I wouldn’t want the other side laughing at memes ridiculing my point of view, then I’m not going to do it to them. Awhile back I was very frustrated at some people in my life for getting their news from only one source, but realized I was doing this as well. Now I always read the headlines from left, right, and center so I can see where the people I love are coming from. I know social media feels silly/harmless and it’s easy to say “it’s just a joke,” but I refuse to fuel the us vs. them narrative with what I consume and share, even with jokes. I can’t read/listen to political hate and love and respect my friends and family well.

I’m sure I still make mistakes. I’m sure I’m not as sensitive as I think, and I’m pretty positive even if I hold my tongue, my face might speak for itself (resting judgy face, anyone?).

I wrote this poem so that we all might remember that the other “side” is filled with people we know and love (and just might be sitting in your living room.) Let’s act accordingly.

***

These beating hearts

What if the other side is not a side at all but the beating hearts of my favorite loved ones?

What if the other side has a favorite color (teal) and hums Backstreet Boys under their breath?

What if those hearts were in my living room, feet tucked under their legs on the couch, twiddling absent-mindedly with the fringe of the blanket?

What if they were on my social media feed, hearting photos of my kids, behind me in the checkout line, buying toilet paper and ground turkey and bubbly water?

Would I say that joke then? Join the ridicule?

If I knew I would see the sting of pain on their faces, jump at their flinches, or squirm down the silence?

Would I forward that meme?

Let the judgment slip from loose lips?

Would I want it said about me?

Can I really take the moral high ground if I don’t love my neighbor as myself in what I consume, repeat, laugh at, stand up for?

They shouldn’t have to be in the room.

We have been tricked into thinking some people over there think some certain way that is

terrible, idiotic, demonic.

I am angry at assumptions.

Sick of hiding.

Saddened by invisibility.

What if the other side is not a side at all but the beating hearts of my favorite loved ones?

Can we handle these brittle hearts with care?

This poem originally came from my Plunge/Paint/Poem practice. Sign up for my weekly(ish) Plunge/paint/poem updates if you don’t want to miss one!

*** I’d love to hear any tips or stories you have regarding news/media consumption and loving friends/family/neighbors who may have a different political persuasion than you. I personally get the news from the All Sides Now app and do not share or post any denigrating (even jokey/sarcastic) memes or stories, even in dms/directly to people I know agree with me. I have also stopped watching political satire, which I believe has a place in revealing truth, but for me, it just reinforced negative views of the people I love.

Leave a comment

***

What would you try if you knew you couldn’t fail?…er, let me rephrase that,

What would you try if you knew you’d be kind to yourself whatever the outcome?

This question, and the tenets of self-compassion, has transformed my writing practice, my approach to life, and my mental health. I am no longer scared to try new things or “fail” because I know I will be kind to myself no matter what. In the last year alone, I have taken up cold plunging, painting, submitting my writing to new contests and publications, and completed my first sprint triathlon. Self-compassion has taught me to treat myself with the same kindness, grace, empathy, and encouragement that I would a friend. And it has made all the difference.

I led a workshop on self-compassion for writers last fall at my local writing group. It was so cool to see war vets and journalists, mystery writers and poets practice speaking to themselves with compassion. Self-compassion is for everyone! Even you!

So I’d like to share this self-compassion resource with you, my dear readers. I crafted it specifically for writers, but you can replace writer with artist or mother or worker or human. You can utilize the following exercises wherever perfectionism or resistance pop up in your life.

Self-compassion for Writers Worksheet

Three ways to access the resource:

Click below for a printable pdf

Self Compassion For Writers Resource By Aly Prades

151KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Click here to make a copy of the Google doc to fill out yourself.

Or keep reading and follow along here on Substack 👇

Self-compassion for Writers

Tips for moving through perfectionism and resistance

What is perfectionism?

Most perfectionists recoil or scoff at that term because they can see how far off the mark they are. If that’s you, keep an open mind.

Perfectionism is “A pattern of unhelpful thoughts and beliefs that focus on unreasonably high self-standards and endless self-criticism.”

Common perfectionism behavior patterns

Self check in–label the above tendencies N-never, S-sometimes, O-often, A-always

• High and inflexible standards___

• Endless self-criticism___

• Avoidance and procrastination___

• Fear of failure___

• Stagnation/self-sabotage___

How perfectionism sneaks into our writing/art making practice/lives

• All or nothing: If I can’t write 1000 words today, I might as well not write at all.

• Every detail of this draft must be perfect.

• If I make a mistake, people will think I’m incompetent, stupid, lazy, unoriginal, etc.

• Black and white thinking–The creative process is either all good or all bad. I’m either a genius or an idiot.

• Analysis paralysis–I can’t move forward until I’m sure this idea will work.

• Endless revision–a piece never feels done or good enough to hit publish, submit, or share with others.

• Uncomfortable with praise because you can see all of the mistakes / fear being “found out” as a fraud.

All writers struggle at some point–with writer’s block, procrastination, time management, running out of ideas, etc. We can respond with self-criticism or self-compassion.

What is self-compassion?

If a friend came to you and said they were struggling with a part of their writing practice, how would you respond?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Most likely, you would be understanding, compassionate, and kind. Self-compassion is responding to yourself with the same compassion you would a friend. Why do we have different rules for ourselves than for others? Now imagine you are having a similar issue as your friend. Write a compassionate response to yourself below:

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What self-compassion isn’t

Self-pity

• Mental space allows us to view our struggles within the context that all humans struggle

Self-indulgence

• Not license to do whatever we want with disregard for what’s best for us

Self-esteem

• Not tied to external factors such as our successes or our perceived value in comparison to others

**It’s possible to be kind while also working and progressing towards our goals.**

3 Components of Self-Compassion

1. Mindfulness vs. over-identification

2. Common humanity vs. isolation

3. Self-kindness vs. self-judgment

Practice Time!

Think of something you are currently struggling /have struggled with in the writing process. Respond with mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness by filling out the blank spaces in the chart above.

Ex: I am feeling anxious right now because I haven’t heard back about my submission. (mindfulness) It’s okay that I feel this way. All writers feel nervous about how their words will be received. (common humanity) I will honor how hard this is and the bravery it took to put myself out there. (self-kindness)

Tips for moving through perfectionism (the all of all or nothing)

• First, Self-compassion

• Drop one –is there one task/requirement/standard that you can let go of, at least for today?

• Mess up on purpose –leave in a typo, don’t go back to revise a second or third time

• List your fears. Ex: What if it’s terrible? -respond with “maybe” and” so what?” Am I going to let that stop me?

• Experiment–stuck on an opening? Experiment with three potential openings. Try a new format, medium, or POV.

• Play–try a different creative outlet. Try fiction or poetry, painting or gardening.

Tips for moving through resistance (the nothing of all or nothing)

• First, Self-compassion

• Push one (as opposed to drop one). Do one thing you’ve been avoiding

• Set a timer

• Body doubling and accountability–set a time to write with a friend, either in person or online. Or text, I am going to write for __ minutes.

• Move! Walk, drive, dance, do laundry (but don’t clean the whole house or reorganize the junk drawer to procrastinate ;))

• Expect resistance and plan for how you will respond

Mission statement—what is your why for writing? Connect to your values.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You can follow your values even when perfectionism, resistance, and life gets in the way.

Resistance statement—how do you plan to respond to resistance in your writing life? Resistance is trying to protect you, but it is not serving you.

When resistance surfaces, I will _________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Resources

• Exhale Creativity–an online creative community for mothers—this is the best place to see compassion and encouragement modeled

• Self-compassion website by Dr. Kristin Neff

• If you have anxiety or OCD, I highly recommend The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD by Kimberly Quinlan, LMFT

***

I would love to know if or how you utilize this resource. Are you new to self-compassion? Did any particular exercise resonate with you? Would you like me to a lead a workshop for your writers group or a group of you and your friends? Let me know by replying to this email or commenting below.

Leave a comment

Onions, carrots, and celery simmer in the buttered pan, filling my home with an intoxicating foretaste (foresmell?) of what’s for dinner: sneaky veggie bolognese1.

Once I’ve browned the turkey and added tomatoes and a touch of cream, it’s time for the lemon zest. This is my favorite part. I zest directly into the aromatic carrot, celery, onion, butter, turkey, and tomato sauce mixture. Rind in my hands, dimpled and waxy. The scrape scrape and scritch scritch of zesting (what a great verb!). The tangy tingle in my eyes and nostrils. Fresh.

As I add the zest, I like to picture the whole pan awakening–each component becoming more itself.

The turkey becomes more savory, the tomatoes bright and acidic, the carrots sweet and earthy, onions pungent and translucent, the powerhouse of the recipe that reminds me of my grandmother’s onion-heavy spaghetti and meatballs.

I want to approach my life this way, filled with zest that awakens each component of my life from creating to mothering, resting to serving to playing.

***

In the summer of 2023, I drove with a friend from San Diego to San Francisco (an 8-9 hour drive) to attend my first International OCD Foundation Conference. The whole experience triggered my anxiety and forced me to be brave. In the OCD world, this is called an exposure, or the act of purposefully triggering your fears so that you can respond in a new way (without any of the compulsive safety behaviors). Even though I was a couple of years into OCD recovery, every aspect of the conference was an exposure for me. From driving such a long distance with a new-ish friend from my church’s small group (what would we talk about for 8 hours?), to sharing a hotel room with a woman I had never met (surely, I had learned nothing from all those true crime podcasts and was about to be murdered), to even deciding which workshops to go to (what if I missed the one workshop that would solve it all?), I was a nervous wreck, but doing it anyway.

The conference offered multiple workshops and lectures at each time slot. The whole weekend I was scared I was going to make the wrong choice. I wanted to maximize, optimize my recovery. I was convinced I needed to pick the one session that would unlock the key to my recovery. I needed to speak to everyone possible so that I could meet the one person who would unlock the key to my advocacy success.

Are you getting the picture? OCD has a way of convincing you that you are just on the cusp of discovering some life-changing information or plummeting to absolute ruin.

It’s an exhausting way to live.

With this mindset, I wandered into a workshop titled, “Living Beyond Shame” that focused on self-compassion and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT.)

I knew I had a problem with shame and self-punishment. I knew I would never treat a friend the way I treated myself internally.

“Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with your failings.” (Dr. Kristin Neff)

I was familiar with the concept of self-compassion in theory; in practice, rewiring 35 years of defaulting to shame and judgment was a slow, tedious process.

I have shared a lot about my own journey with self-compassion, and you can find many self-compassion themed posts here.

I bring up this workshop for another reason. It was in this workshop that I learned a key value driving all of my fears.

The presenter guided us to reflect on our inner critic (I was very familiar!). She asked, “What is this critic trying to remind you of that is important to you?”

My inner critic’s name was Poison and I had depicted her as mean, angry, strict, rigid, unrelenting, critical, and out of touch.

What could she possibly teach me about what I value? I pictured Poison as a protective older sister who was effing with my life. Was there anything real she was trying to protect me from? She tried to protect me from mistakes and failure and feeling stupid and looking stupid and forgetting something and being irresponsible and and and…

I decided to write directly to Poison.

“I see how concerned you are. Thank you for reminding me that life is important to me. Your way is not working for me. I’m going to try this my way, in a kinder and compassionate way.”

Life. I would have never pinpointed this as a value. I thought I valued excellence and responsibility and integrity and consistency and growth. When I looked deeper, I could see all those other values spoke to a life well lived. I wanted my life to appear right and good and free from mistakes. And yet I was missing out on actually living.

I put so much weight into every single decision because I cared about life. The cruel, sad, irony was that all the worrying about how to live stole the life from me. Stole my joy and enjoyment.

At that workshop, I committed to living a different way. Though I didn’t know how. Though I was still stuck thinking the whole conference was a test I could pass or fail.

A cheesy phrase popped into my head, “I won’t know if I chose best, but I can live my life with zest.”

Zest felt so far off. A mockery. I was making choices and living with the consequences, building my discomfort and uncertainty tolerance, but I wouldn’t call it zest. OCD recovery felt more like torture and tedium. Responding over and over and over again to OCD’s attempt to ruin the moment, draw me out of my life and into my head.

I made a keychain with the word ZEST in small beads to remind me to keep living and stop focusing on whether or not I chose correctly. I kept up my ERP therapy and self-compassion practices. The keychain said zest and I hoped to one day live it.

***

My 2026 word of the year is Zest. 🍋

Last year, my word was Flow and I learned to embrace surprise and delight in my days. I discovered a zest for new experiences and let myself off the hook for being human.

I experienced life unhooked from OCD for the first time ever. And I had a freaking blast!

As I became unhooked from OCD, I found I missed the sense of purpose OCD gave me (in its own toxic way, like an abusive boyfriend.)

These days I want to be hooked, not stuck or caught or trapped, but fully immersed and invested in my own life like you would be hooked on a good book or tv show.

This, to me, is zest. Being present like this can only happen when you’re not consumed with worry or anxiety, when you’re not torn about what you should be doing or lamenting all the paths not taken. (If you’re in a season of being caught in anxiety or OCD recovery, I see you, and I hope you can find your way to zest and experience small moments of joy in the midst of recovery.)

Choosing zest is a major milestone in my OCD recovery journey. Zest is no longer a mockery or distant dream. I made it here, past the torture and tedium.

In the bolognese recipe, the author writes, “you can omit this if zesting a lemon sounds annoying to you right now, but it adds a nice freshness!’

The zest is a bonus. I want to live like everything is a bonus. Addition, not subtraction. Enjoyment of the moment, not pass/fail decisions.

I want to be zestfully creative, engaged, alive, open to the unexpected, committed to love and care and paying attention. I want to live a vibrant, zestful life with creativity, good friends, new experiences, delighting in rest and play with equal zest.

In the past, I have used writing to process my way out of pain, anxiety, and fear. This year, I want to write my way in to delight and enjoyment, connection and revelations, beauty and challenge, novelty and discipline.

I am moving from writing as medicine, therapy, necessity, to writing as zest, a way to add flavor, meaning, and depth to my days.

The opposite of poison, the ruiner all good things, is zest. Zest adds to, fully in, fully present and accepting. Zest adds to, makes things good.

Here are some definitions of zest I am leaning into:

zest= being present

zest=interest piqued

zest=energy and exuberance

zest=adding flavor or piquancy

zest= brighten (to make lighter, not righter)

zest=to spice up (embracing my neurospiciness and remembering that variety is the spice of life)

I’m sure zest will come to have deeper and unexpected meanings throughout the year. I look forward to being surprised.

I’ve had so much fun with the word zest already, like this lemon painting that symbolizes the juicy life I want to live.

Instead of artist dates, this year I will plan “zest days.” I’m also making mini-goals for each month called “zestipes” or recipes to sprinkle in creativity and fun. My January zestipe was to write 300 words a day and touch my paints. I am also embracing re-creation, admitting my need for novelty and rebranding. I used to see this as weakness, as a lack of consistency which pointed to an absence in integrity. I am learning to work with my brain chemistry and plan for re-branding and re-packaging with short creative sprint challenges. I’m also implementing “secrets themes” each month where I focus on a new creative project that is just for me. It adds a little mystery and intrigue to my days knowing that it’s my little secret. It also conveniently silences the shoulds when there’s no outside pressure to perform.

The news cycle of 2026 has started heavy. I often come back to this quote from Ann Voskamp, “I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I’ve seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.”

While it feels a bit silly to write about zest, I believe I will only deepen the wound of the world if I don’t live into my healing and give thanks with my words and my life.

Here’s to staying zesty, being hooked on joy and mystery and presence, living a life of beautiful addition, and believing that God’s goodness hasn’t run out.

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***

Do you have a word of the year? I’d love to hear it. What would your “zestipe” be for adding flavor, interest, or meaning to your day-to-day life?

Leave a comment

Imagine believing that only one choice is right, good.

Imagine living like you’re failing this test, over and over and over1.

I don’t have to imagine, I lived this. My life with undiagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder was a Groundhog’s Day of failure. My OCD, coupled with my religious upbringing that encouraged me to seek God’s will in every situation, melded into a just-believable-enough distortion that if I could predict every outcome, anticipate every contingency, and accurately interpret every sign and signal from God, that I would live a holy life above reproach.

When I couldn’t accurately predict, when I couldn’t tell the future or read others’ minds, when things did not unfold the way I planned, I failed. And because this directive was so closely linked to my faith, failure here meant sin.

The unexpected became a minefield. I rightfully balked at surprises. I clamped down my own curiosity, seeking certainty instead.

If a test in school was more difficult than expected, I chastised myself. I should have known to study ____.

If a friend responded in an unexpected way, I shamed myself. I must not be a good friend if I didn’t know that she would think _____.

If I received a negative student review at work, I berated myself for days and worked overtime to revamp my lesson plans. I sent my supervisor (unasked) a detailed plan of how I was going to respond to / prevent these failures in the future. (Keep in mind these reviews were from 18-year-old college boys who were mad they got a C on an essay they most likely bought online.)

The refrain of my inner critic taunted hourly:

I should have known, I should have known, I should have known.

Imagine my surprise when I took an OCD test at the recommendation of an anxiety therapist and discovered that many of my attempts to be a responsible and intentional (oh, don’t even get me started on this word) person, were flagged as OCD compulsions.

***

I’m going to take a minute here to explain the OCD cycle, so pardon the interruption to the narrative, but I believe it’s key to understanding my story and I am also passionate about putting out accurate information about this very misunderstood disorder.

Like the name suggests, there are three components to OCD:

• Obsessions

• Compulsions

• Disorder

Obsessions—intrusive or unwanted thoughts, feelings, memories, urges, sensations, images, and ideas that cause distressing shame, anxiety, guilt, fear, or disgust. My obsessions show up more like an obsessional doubt about whether or not I am good enough and if I have made the right choices. Intrusive may not feel accurate if you’re engaging in obsessions and compulsions all day long—your obsessions may just feel like your normal thoughts, the voice of God or truth or intuition. In addition to intrusive thoughts, OCD can also include intrusive or unwanted feelings. For example, I had a constant pit in my stomach and “just knew” that I had done something terrible (even though I really hadn’t!).

Jon Hershfield calls OCD a “glitch in the good enough.” For people with OCD, it feels like you’re never good enough in a certain area (this is called their subtype or theme). Is it clean enough? Am I a good enough Christian? Does he love me enough? Am I sure enough that I have caused no harm? Do I feel good enough to move on?

The glitch is that, most often, for people with OCD, the answer is no. You don’t feel good enough or clean enough or sure enough to move on, so you get stuck doing compulsions.

Compulsions are checking, reassurance, or avoidance behaviors related to your theme of not good enough-ness.

For example, if it never feels clean enough, you may have compulsions to wash your hands a certain number of times or only use a certain type of soap or follow a methodical cleaning ritual in order to feel clean enough to move on. A key thing to note is that these behaviors can be external/physical or internal. In the example above, a physical compulsion would be handwashing, and internal compulsions could be replaying your handwashing ritual in your mind hours later to check that you cleaned them correctly. Avoidance compulsions could include not going to public places that may be too dirty or not engaging in activities that you used to love in case of contamination.

For someone with a social anxiety OCD theme, a physical compulsion may be over-apologizing or checking to make sure you haven’t offended someone. Mental compulsions could be replaying conversations to make sure you didn’t say anything inappropriate. Avoidance could look like not going to social events altogether for fear of looking stupid.

The problem with these compulsions, even though they bring relief in the moment, is that they feed the glitch in the long run. What felt good enough before, doesn’t bring the same relief the next time (like a drug addict needing more). The compulsions bring temporary relief (or else we wouldn’t do them!), but that obsessional doubt comes back stronger than before.

With OCD, it turns out you can never plan enough, prepare enough, wash enough, check enough, be sure enough, so you stay stuck in this cycle.

An important note, it’s not OCD if you enjoy it. If you like to scrub your hands to hospital grade cleanliness—that is not OCD unless it brings you great DISTRESS when you are unable to complete your ritual.

Another note, the person struggling with OCD may be able to see that their actions are irrational and wish to stop, but the intensity of the urges and feelings make them feel like they don’t have a choice.

Disorder

According to the DSM, in order to receive a clinical diagnosis of OCD, the following must be true:

“The obsessions and compulsions cause marked distress, are time consuming (take more than 1 hour a day), or significantly interfere with the person’s normal routine, occupational (or academic) functioning, or usual social activities or relationships.”

***

Okay, back to my story. When I saw the results of my OCD test staring back at me, it was like a bubble burst. Years and years of trying to anticipate and predict every outcome showed itself for the futile mission it was.

• My “responsible planning” was renamed “Fortune Telling.” (highly opposed to my faith upbringing!)

• My “thoughtfulness” renamed “Rumination.” (like cows chewing the cud)

• My “concern for others” renamed “Mind reading.” (the nerve!)

• My quest for “conviction” renamed “Need to know” (I guess this explains my most cringy childhood habit of correcting people who called me a smart aleck with an obnoxious, you mean the Smart Aly.)

The bubble burst and my kneejerk response was shame and the familiar, “I should have known.”

I felt like an idiot for wasting years trying to read minds and predict the future and anticipate every scenario.

I also felt hope.

In addition to the diagnosis and awareness of what was happening in my brain, my therapist also gave me tools (you can check out my list of resources here) that have re-wired how I view anticipation, planning, the future, and surprises.

Subscribe now

Nearly five years later, before I knew the theme of the blog hop, I was brainstorming my 2026 word of the year and Anticipate was a front runner.

What used to be an all-consuming commandment to anticipate every outcome, is now an invitation to delight in surprise. I have surrendered my need for certainty (Check out Shannon K. Evans poignant post on the Anxiety of Certainty), and encountered so much unexpected joy, wonder, and delight. I can now enjoy the positive nuances of the word “anticipate:” to look forward to, regardless of the outcome.

Early on in OCD recovery, I wrote the cheesy phrase, “I won’t know if I chose best, but I can live my life with zest2.”

OCD recovery has meant surrendering my need for certainty about whether or not I made the right choice and living fully anyway.

Surprise used to mean failure to accurately predict; surprise is now one of my favorite experiences. In the last year alone, I’ve surprised myself by taking up watercolor painting, cold plunging, cooking, and yoga–all things I used to hate.

I even keep an “unexpected list” much like others might keep a gratitude journal. I track all of the good things I never could have predicted or orchestrated my way into being.

It sure beats viewing the unexpected as a moral failing, I can tell you that.

Mostly, though, where I used to overthink and over-plan and replay decisions, I now do nothing. I don’t try to predict the future or read minds. I don’t need to know how something will turn out. I don’t try to figure it out; I just keep living.

A tree is not a test

A life isn’t either

Imagine believing there’s more than one right answer

Imagine living like the unveiling of each branch and bud is beautiful

I am beginning to see

I am just getting started

Do you like surprises? Does the word Anticipate have more negative or positive associations for you? Were you surprised by my explanation of OCD?

Leave a comment

You can check out my OCD Resources here. And more essays and posts sharing my OCD story at Glitch Fix.

Send me a message or reply to this email if you’re interested in a Printable Branches poem and/or painting from my Plunge, Paint, Poem challenge last year.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Anticipate.

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***

I am so excited and grateful to be welcomed into this space. Aly has become a wonderful creative friend and encouragement to me as she explores and shares her own art, OCD recovery, and reveling in beauty. It’s an honor and joy to share in this space today! I am Kristina, a licensed counselor specializing in maternal mental health and trauma, as well as a wife and mom of three, a yoga instructor, and an artist who loves yarn, watercolor, and giving antique linens a new life. I write on Substack about healing, embodiment, and practices for those longing to flourish and come home to themselves, their loved ones, and the tender presence of God on my publication Healing The Roots, Letting the Soul Bloom.

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“Sure! We can be den leaders, and I’ll be committee chair for the holiday party,” was my answer to the dearth of responses for volunteers needed in my sons’ Cub Scout Pack.

“Oh, you need someone to teach these weekly yoga classes? Let me check my schedule and make sure my husband can be on parent duty.” Later that same day, “I can make that happen! Count me in!” In my head: ‘Okay, that’s now 4 classes I teach a week…’

I’m wrapping up a therapy session with a client, and we shift towards scheduling our next appointment. As we look at our respective calendars, she lets me know that her work schedule for the next few weeks is crazy. She wants my latest availability on Friday afternoon. I usually end my workday at 2:00 on Fridays to be able to get the kids from the bus… “Okay, let’s plan for 4:00 on Friday,” I find myself responding. I then add “find childcare Friday 12/12” to my to-do list.

Also on that to-do list: doctor’s appointment before deductible resets, find gift for my dad (the hardest person to shop for maybe ever,) buy fuzzy socks for kids’ class exchange, finish addressing Christmas cards, get business license, and find outfit for anniversary date.

The calendar is over-full, and I am exhausted, burning out, and missing connection with my husband, kids, and friends. I am running myself ragged every day as I hustle from one activity to the next. Hustle has been the boss of my schedule. The fact that I could technically handle and accommodate the tasks and asks has made it so that all are on my calendar and to-do list.

Unhooking from Hustle

For most of my life, I have followed the American ideal of “You can be anything you want if you just set your mind to it.” I’m an eldest daughter, high performer and high achiever— always the one the group can count on to get the job done.

I am learning to let myself off the hook for doing everything just because I technically can.

Throughout my young adulthood, early career, and young parenting, I continued to do what I had always done: everything. I served on committees, led the groups, started businesses, and was always a top performer. I grinded myself to the bone hustling to prove my worth and value in the spaces I inhabited.

What am I unhooking from now? Hustle. Doing it all. Doing it all because I am technically able. Doing it all because I have the competence and ability.

Holding Onto: Capacity

My morning cup of coffee has a 16-ounce capacity. What happens when I feel like I need more caffeine and try to pour more into the cup? Well, it doesn’t work. It overflows. The cup only holds 16 ounces; I cannot force, expand, or put more coffee into the cup.

What if the same is true for me, a human? What if I only have so much capacity and I can’t keep adding more and more and more? What if I honored the capacity I have instead of listening to hustle and burning out?

I am learning to prioritize a different way of being; I am learning that I have a finite capacity. Now sayings like “What is mine to hold will feel sustainable” and “do the next right thing, not all the things” guide my decisions. I know I can still be counted on to complete the goals and roles that matter most, but I am letting go of the things that I don’t have capacity to carry and complete. This allows my husband, kids, friends, and clients to get a more present and connected Kristina.

Learning what my capacity is has been a journey. Unfortunately, I don’t have a sticker on the bottom of my body that says “16oz.” Knowing my capacity comes from a moment by moment awareness of myself and my energy. It has come from slowing down and asking myself, “do I have the energy to complete this next activity?” As I move through my day, I notice my body and what she is telling me. I listen to the low thrum of anxiety and “shoulds” and pay attention to what is truly mine and how I am feeling before hustling to complete anything and everything. Listening to capacity looks like allowing myself to rest, to sit and breathe and stare at my Christmas tree. I now pause and take short breaks to recharge so that I am ready to continue on in my day.

There is also the reality that our capacity changes by the moment, by the day, and by the season. For instance, there are times of my cycle (hello, follicular phase!) where my capacity is immense and I can get so many tasks accomplished. Cue the superwoman energy and the long to-do list, I got ya! And then there are other times, like winter, when it is dark at 4:00, and my capacity dramatically drops and less things are accomplished because I need blankets, cuddles, and movies.

I am learning to listen to my own energy, emotions, and finite time as informers of my decisions. I am holding onto capacity being my guide… just because I can doesn’t mean I should.

My responses to requests and self-talk sound more like:

“I’m sorry, I can’t sub in and lead our book club this month. I have too many obligations already on my calendar in the evenings to add organizing an event too.”

“Dinner tonight is prepared pizza from the grocery store that I can quickly put in the oven. I don’t have time in my day to prep and cook every meal.”

“I’m tired and it’s dark outside… I think it’s time to curl up in bed and read, even if it is only 8:30. The mess of toys on the living room floor can wait until tomorrow.”

Learning to live by capacity is a process. This time of year especially, opportunities, invitations, and extras pop up on our family calendar daily. Add the extra load of school dress up days, gift shopping/making/wrapping, decorating, and wanting to savor memories with my family and friends, it is so easy to get overcommitted and default to hustle. However, I keep returning to capacity as my guide.

Phrases to help hold onto capacity as your compass:

• Just because I can doesn’t mean I should

• What is mine to hold feels sustainable

• Do my next right thing, not all the things.

• I honor my limits.

• I am listening to my body and emotions instead of steamrolling and white-knuckling my way through my days.

• I am a human being, not a human doing.

• I can change my mind.

• “No” is a complete answer. It is okay to say “no.”

Unhooking from hustle and holding onto capacity is a process. With awareness and intention, I find myself shifting more and more into a more grounded and balanced way of being. Maybe you find yourself in my words some too, or maybe you notice that there are ways that you are not living up to your capacity– ways that you aren’t fulfilling your responsibilities, abilities, or taking agency when needed. Wherever you find yourself, may you have compassion and make the gentle shifts into your next right steps.

***

From Aly—

Oof, this was such helpful word in this season! I’m impressed by how she connected this lesson to the theme of unhooking and holding on. Please show some love and follow her Substack and her Instagram. She is a well of wisdom, compassion, and creative ideas.

Comment below what part of the post resonated with you. I am also curious if you have any phrases that help you make decisions based on capacity. A phrase I have come back to again and again is “I can and I don’t have to.”

Leave a comment

My mom criticized my parenting / my daughter’s adoption story / I started a new creative project / my father-in-law is staying the weekend / my husband is having doubts about his calling in the army / I don’t have a budget, a will, a chore system / I started anti-depressants / they couldn’t find a heartbeat / we’re thinking of moving, homeschooling, switching churches / I’m turning my free little library into a food pantry / I’m writing a book / my son started therapy, meds, the robotics program / your uncle has prostate cancer / your aunt is a grandmother / my wife is having surgery / I’m hosting a Fun Friday for my kids’ teachers / my brother, daughter, friend is struggling / we’re getting bought out of our lease / we got in a car accident / I’m burned out on social media / I’ve been painting, knitting, reading / they found water damage / I feel so loved / I didn’t get the grant / my daughter needs a ride / it’s a girl! / I’m grateful for you / I’m proud of myself

These are all updates I received from friends and family in the last week. I am not known for hosting elaborate dinner parties or opening my home, but I do like to think I am a safe person to share and process with.

With each confession, update, and ping on my phone, my friends invited me into their world. And I’m so grateful. As I fold laundry, I can picture my friend painting at her desk. As I plunge, I can pray for another friend’s struggling brother. I offer to bring a meal to friend who’s having surgery. I couldn’t do any of these things if they hadn’t first shared these details about their lives.

There is a stigma connected with over-sharing. The meme above suggests we should respond to our friends with silence. But I worry we’re so concerned about being a burden or “too much” or self-focused that the pendulum is swinging into under-sharing and isolation. How will we know we aren’t alone in our struggles unless a friend is willing to say, “me too?”

All my algorithms have firmly planted me in the neurodiverse corner of the internet, which brought me this meme below:

While this type of communication may be more common for neurodivergent people, I would argue this is a human urge and a human way of connecting!

We know and love each other through stories: sharing them and holding them.

Of course there is a time and place for responding with our own stories. I wouldn’t reply with a related story to a person of color describing discrimination or a friend sharing her journey of infertility or someone grieving the loss of a parent. I don’t have comparable stories. But if a friend admits to resenting her husband or getting annoyed with her kids or lying awake at 3am replaying every social faux pas she’s ever made, I am going to let her know that she is not alone.

Beyond the context of friendship, storytelling can also be an act of hospitality when we share about tender and taboo topics with grace and candor.

I am grateful to writers and advocates who have shared about their mental health journeys that mirror my own. I am also grateful to writers who recount stories that are outside my lived experience. When I was an ESL teacher and in charge of picking reading curriculum for my students, I followed the principle of windows and mirrors. The theory goes that students deserve to see their own story reflected back to them (mirrors) and should also be exposed to diverse perspectives outside their own (windows).

Here are a few writers that have blessed and shaped me with the hospitality of their stories that have been both windows and mirrors for me:

• on creativity and marriage and parenting and life.

• on deconstruction/evolving faith journeys and her essay on giving up alcohol, which I originally read on her blog and was re-shared by Relevant Magazine, which led me to sobriety almost a decade ago

• on anxiety and infertility

• on divorce and raising a child with autism

• , , and on neurodiversity

• and the entire premise of her book Share Your Stuff, I’ll Go First

And so many more I don’t have space to list!

I’ll end this with a request:

Please tell me your rambling stories, leave me “long story long” Voxer messages, over-explain the reasoning behind your new chore system or sourdough routine or how you feel seen in your marriage. I am here for all of it.

If we were sitting down for coffee, what would you want to tell me?

Leave a comment

I’ll go first.

I started plunging again / I want to be better about working out / keeping up with friends is tricky / I’m kind of lonely / I’m scared of getting out of routine during the holidays / I can’t believe I didn’t know how to paint a year ago / I lose my patience all the time with my kids / I’m grateful for you / I’m proud of myself

It is a gift to know you. Keep sharing; I’ll keep reading and listening (and most likely responding with my own related story.)

***

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Hospitality.”

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! The lake is cold enough for cold plunging again and I am re-starting my plunge / paint / poem ritual1 because it makes me so dang happy. Last winter, I completed 100 plunge, paint, poems between February and June (when the water got too warm to be considered a cold plunge.) You can see all 100 posts and read a little more of the background behind the challenge here.

I’ve been a little skittish to share again in the same format— shouldn’t I choose something new that shows my growth as an artist? This challenge started as play and ended up being a life-giving, grounding practice that I have been anticipating all summer/fall. I am not about to give this up even if artist culture is focused on growth, improvement, and optimizing2. I’m still here, still playing, still trusting that what lights me up is a worthwhile endeavor. I’m allowed to make the whole goal be play—I don’t have to focus on craft or technique or making sellable paintings, growing my platform, or getting published. What a gift.

This season I thought I would offer weekly Plunge/Paint/Poem updates most likely going out every Friday (and most likely with me reading my poems aloud). I created a new publication for these posts so please sign up if you want to receive Plunge/Paint/Poem updates specifically.

I will continue to share longer essays, stand-alone poems, and soon some guest posts here on Unhooked & Held—you don’t have to do anything if you want to keep receiving this regular content.

Check out my first installment of Plunge / Paint / Poem below to see if you’d like to follow along.

Week 1: Plunge/Paint/Poem

Day 1: Getting my feet wet again and examining my motives behind this extreme practice

Should I choose a rhythm, a ritual,

less hard and

abrasive?

something soft and warm and cozy?

I am working to let things be easy

The work is to let things be easy

Then why do I force myself out in the cold?

The storm has passed.

I no longer have to brave the onslaught of my own dark thoughts

No longer have to be brave just to function.

Why make things harder?

Because this is the choice I was never given

I didn’t want to choose brave, it was forced on me

Be brave or stay stuck

Be brave or surrender to fear

Now–for now–

I get to choose

My brave, my hard

I decide when to strike out from my safe harbor

I choose the stillness of a solitary beach,

mist rising off rippled water,

golden leaves glittering in the sand

I gladly, giddily, open-heartedly,

choose to exchange easy for feeling alive

Day 2: More thoughts on extremes and leaving behind absolutes

In Defense of Extremes

I can see where all or nothing does not serve,

and yet admit,

I will always feel more comfortable either all the way in

or all the way out.

Fully warm and dry, hot drink in hand, book to read by the crackling fire,

Or,

Stripping down, racing against freezing rain, stepping in

deeper deeper deeper still as limbs tingle then numb

It’s not just temperatures

Recovery meant living in the gray, never hot or cold,

always warm and half-assed,

mediocre and unsatisfactory

All or nothing is my enemy when I cannot start or cannot rest,

when it poisons the good enough and keeps me paralyzed.

Yet All is my friend when I dive headfirst into a project,

when I’m lost in the flow of words,

when passion ignites and I can’t help but twirl in glee.

Nothing is my friend when I let myself off the hook,

when abstention serves as a guardrail for the things I know harm me: no

alcohol, no self-criticism, no caffeine after noon.

Both are good, can be good

I’m releasing the hard and fast rules, the rigid absolutism,

flowing where the energy takes me, even if it takes me all in

I will let myself love the extremes again.

Be jolted alive by the shock of it,

swept away by the challenge and the solitude.

Again, I get to choose

Day 3: A haiku

A haiku

Orange flames flicker

across crested waves, obscure

what’s lurking beneath

Day 4: Forever wrestling with my frustration of ebbs and flows

Upon learning that waves are defined as a disturbance,

I feel justified for my distrust of ebbs and flows

I nurse my dissatisfaction like a sickly sweet

butterscotch candy from my

grandmother’s dish, nestled against my raw cheek

Yes, the same water that flows has to draw back to gather strength

Yes, the disturbance is temporary

Yes, waves are also propulsive

Can I admit to a stronger force?

Inertia

I want to keep stopping or keep going

The transitions tire me

A transfer of energy when I want to stay the course

Still, I keep sucking on candy that has long lost its sweetness

Day 5: Giving thanks for the kind of growth that isn’t flashy but comes with consistently choosing to show up for yourself

The gift of a normal Tuesday

No longer a challenge, but a rhythm

No longer an exposure, but a life

No longer white-knuckled sobriety, but a typical morning with a clear head and cleaner conscience

Maybe I don’t measure improvement through ever-expanding brush strokes or techniques, through awards or accolades, but by

noticing that

What once felt impossible melted into muscle memory

And maybe that’s the only growth that matters

Which painting or poem resonated with you?

Leave a comment

Don’t forget to sign up to receive Aly’s Plunge / Paint / Poem Updates! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. (Note this is a separate subscription from Unhooked & Held)

For any parent who is both baffled and delighted to find their froggy babies turning into lanky children, this is an ode to the prayers we whisper in the quiet moments.

Stay

6am: he crawls into my bed

Sun already bright

Birdsong dances off the window

He flattens his body across the length of me

Echoes of the froggy baby he once was

All angles and elbows now

Hair still soft as a feather,

Smooth and almost imperceptible,

Like the eight years that have morphed him from newborn to boy

My boy

always

How long? I wonder, can he lay on my chest without crushing or recoiling, content

I tickle his smooth, warm back under his pajama shirt

Slide the moons of my fingernails below his winglike shoulder blades

Run my hand through his hair, silky enough to float away

I pat down his brown strands and they rise back up

Weightless

Ethereal

My body pulses gratitude

For slow mornings and sweet boys

Unhardened by the world

For he has never felt injustice or crippling fear

For he is safe

For he is here

For he is mine

Our hearts beat together, a ricochet of love and hope and dreams unspoken

I attempt to smooth his feather hair again,

Tether strands to head

Tether boy to heart

Tether safety to future unknown

Whisper-pray

Stay stay stay

***

What image or phrase resonated with you? What prayers do you whisper in the quiet?

I do not like not knowing. I do not like the process of becoming. I want to know where the journey is going. I love marking where I have been; I struggle to live where I am now.

When I quit my teaching job and moved from San Diego to North Idaho about a year ago, leaving our life, friends, and family, I could see my destination so clearly, or so I hoped. With my new margin, I was going to finally become a “real writer.” I would become an OCD expert/coach/advocate and finally write and publish my memoir about growing up with undiagnosed OCD.

The journey has not led where I thought it would.

I thought healing from OCD meant I would continue to write and share my story and possibly go back to school to help more people recover from OCD. Shockingly, and thankfully, my healing journey felt fast tracked once we moved. OCD is mostly a thing of my past and, surprising to me, I’d like to keep it that way.

This is good news. I know this. What a privilege and luxury to move on from actively healing to just…living.

Yet I can’t help but miss the certainty and purpose and conviction I used to feel about my vocation.

I am working hard to acknowledge these losses and stay present in the season I am in.

At a recent Girls Night In event put on by Exhale Creativity, my friend Lindsay Swoboda offered this compassionate reframe for anyone who feels like their dreams are on hold due to their current life circumstances. It’s a way to acknowledge the loss/the ache of dreams not-yet-fulfilled and embrace the goodness of the season you’re in.

This is not my season to _____. It is my season to ____________

When we only focus on what’s missing, eagle-eye on what we lack, we miss the good right in front of us. Today, as I think about this season of waiting, I’m going to play with some reframes.

It is not my season to serve. It is my season to play.

Ouch, this one hurts. I have a deep desire to serve others with my words, my life, my story. I thought I would continue to serve fellow OCD sufferers by offering resources and putting my heart and soul into a memoir detailing exactly how I went 35 years without knowing my brain was engaging in self-inflicted warfare.

Rationally, I know sharing my paintings and my words on other topics and putting beauty out into the world isn’t wasted. In fact, it’s a different kind of service. I have to tell you it doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t feel as useful or helpful or important.

After my plunge/paint/poem experiment last winter/spring and a September challenge of walking and water coloring every day, I thought I would be in a place this fall to get back to SERIOUS ART, SERIOUS PROJECTS.

Nope, I’m not there yet. And I may never be.

The blog hop prompt asked, “How do you wait expectantly instead of anxiously?” And the resounding answer, for me, for now, is to keep playing.

So, I am diversifying my joy, finding meaning and purpose in silence, nature, meal planning for my family, slow days, painting, free choice. I am redefining success and service and what it means to be a “real writer.”

As much as I want to move on, circumstances have left me firmly in the “still playing” season and, for once, I am not rushing to arrive at easy answers or fill my time with “important” projects just to alleviate this discomfort.

I will keep playing with painting, poetry, submitting to new places that feel fun and challenging, trying my hand at fiction, writing stories for my kids, and giving myself permission to not know if my art is useful or serving others. It is enough to just play.

It is not my season to write or publish a book. It is my season to join launch teams, pre-order copies, and cheer on my friends who are writing books.

After years of not having enough time to work on my memoir, I finally have the time and my desire to write on this topic has vanished. Poof. When will it be my time? How can I serve others while I wait? Will I let it be enough?

Here are some friends’ books I would love for you to check out!

• Holding On and Letting Go: A Life in Motion by

• A History of Holding by

• Commodore Rookery by Christy Lee Barnes

And I will forever shout my praises for any cohort put on by and . They are offering a brand-new Artist’s Way Cohort that starts November 3rd! Registration closes TODAY, so now is the time to apply!

It is not my season to be an expert. It is my season to be a beginner.

I am a beginner at painting. I am a beginner at living without OCD calling the shots. I am a beginner at being an artist for fun. I am a beginner at being a stay-at-home mom. It is humbling to go from college professor and self-proclaimed OCD expert to ….just a person learning to let my small acts of creativity and service be enough.

It is not my season of conviction. It is my season of discovery.

This one hurts, too. I miss feeling convinced that I was doing “the right thing,” but that is actually a false memory. In the throes of OCD, I was never actually convinced, or at least not for long. Brief moments of clarity and conviction were eroded by constant self-doubt, a glitch in the good enough.

I don’t miss the angst or shame or doubt. The dis-ordered thinking that had me chasing an ever-moving target of “success.” I do miss the urgency and sense of importance. Every decision felt IMPORTANT. Every revelation felt PROFOUND. Every moment felt life or death. That is not a healthy way to live, I know this. Still, I hope that my small discoveries and inconsequential decisions can add up to a life of contentment, enoughness, and satisfaction.

It is not my season to document everything. It is my season to capture illuminated memories.

This is another reframe from Lindsay Swoboda. What if our highlight reels are illuminated memories? Highlight reels get a bad rap, but I find so much joy in capturing moments I want to remember, moments worth shedding light on.

Even if I don’t have a big project or 5-year writing plan, I can use my words and paintings to mark sacred moments, expand time, and gain perspective and gratitude.

It is not my season to redeem the pain of undiagnosed OCD. It is my season to live the healing.

I have a history of turning my pain into a vocation. After I witnessed abject poverty in Central America, I became a grant writer to raise funds for rural communities like the ones I had visited. After I experienced a hard and lonely year living in Guatemala as an ex-pat, I went back to school to teach English and ease the transition for immigrants and refugees in the U.S. After I was diagnosed with OCD, I shared everything I was learning and built out a resource hub for fellow OCD warriors.

It was intoxicating to feel so useful, so necessary, so needed.

The work I did was not necessarily bad, but I can now see how these actions were still part of a disordered cycle. I was still trying to solve the problem of my pain. I was compulsively “making sure” my pain and insight were not wasted (oof, fear of wasting/squandering is my top OCD theme.)

Turns out I still have disordered thinking and beliefs to unhook from.

What if my pain can’t be solved? Or even if it can, what if it’s not my job to solve it? Isn’t that God’s job?

Doesn’t my frantic performing signal a lack of trust that God has the power to make things new?

So I come back to the seemingly irresponsible directive to play. From an OCD standpoint, playing still feels like an exposure. It feels wrong and irresponsible. How will I know I am correctly living out my healing? Sheesh. Old habits die hard.

Maybe the hardest thing for me to do is take myself less seriously. Maybe the most obedient action I can take is to keep playing. Maybe the next stage in my healing is just living.

***

I’d love to know! What season are you in? Fill in the blanks:

This is not my season to _____. It is my season to ____________

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Wait.”

H/t to Meagan Francis for the subtitle and please check out her amazing essay Maybe I’ll Just Get Old on aging.

Part of my journey of unhooking and being held is learning to accept myself—the quirks I love and the tendencies I’d rather downplay. One of the prompts in my creative cohort was to write a short “source code” that highlights what makes me “quintessentially me.” In a world of AI creep, I offer you my very human source code.

Source Code

Forest exhales through dappled sunlight. Walk and Vox. Sunrises and cold plunges. Multiple projects at once. Responding to your story with my own related story (sorry not sorry). Tears of empathy. Wearing the two-piece. Rock climbing, wake boarding, upside down rides. Thinking I can still do a cartwheel. Brie and burrata cheese, speaking of cheese, cheesy encouragement and groanworthy segues. (Parenthetical asides.) Multiple lists at once in my text messages, notes app, google docs, journal, post its, receipts, in my head. Cat videos. Baby wearing. Taking notes on sermons and Voxes from friends. Doodling. Putting away the silverware. When someone takes my advice. Needing to share my art for it to feel real. Reviewing a text message until I have it memorized. Noah Kahan and Jonas Brothers. 2010s Reggaeton. Body shivers when I get a new idea I cannot shake. Twirling when I’m in the flow. Sharing what I’m learning. Sweet and salty. Watercolor magic. Being silent in a large group but won’t shut up when I’m with people I love (to my husband’s dismay.) Reading aloud. Family walks and biking in real life. No make up, no hair dye (hello cinnamon sugar gray), no botox, but yes tinted moisturizer and curling my hair with a straightener (when I do my hair once a month, ha). Starting a new google doc each time I come back to a draft. Saving every card ever given to me. Hoarding words. No small talk. One-on-one catch ups.

Another thing about me is that I have the hardest time whittling down my ideas, so today I’m sharing my take on two prompts (of many!) from the cohort. I couldn’t resist the task to write a “Things I Know About Myself” List.

10 Things I know about myself1

1. It is one zillion times easier for me to do any admin or house tasks when I am high on creativity. Schedule creative work first, and the rest will flow.

2. When I’m tempted to be all or nothing, pushing one task/expectation and dropping one works really well.

3. Sarcasm, exaggeration, and humor is my best tool for my anxiety. “Yep, you are the worst writer in the history of the world because this paragraph isn’t coming together. Your friends will hate you. Your husband will leave you. Conservatives and liberals will finally come together as they agree how terrible you are. Even your cat will poop on your keyboard because this sentence is literal shit.”

4. It’s easier for me to do something 0 days or 7 days, 3-5 days a week is really hard for me, but I’m working on it. (see #2 above).

5. Self-imposed deadlines don’t work for me. I need an external deadline/accountability.

6. It is not procrastination to work on things at the last minute–I really do my best work under pressure, and it keeps me from spending waaayyyy too long on a project. Procrastination = forced time limit.

7. Instagram skincare has never lived up to the hype. Don’t fall for it!

8. Connection, creativity, and nature can solve almost any angst I feel.

9. My best cure for anticipatory anxiety is not deciding what I will work on until the last minute. You can’t overthink what you don’t know! In the same vein, I do better when I work on multiple projects at once so I can’t overthink any of them and I feel like I am making constant progress on all of them even if I’m not touching each one every day. Case in point: Plunge, paint, poem, doing a triathlon over the summer, writing my source code/things I know about myself/way back to myself simultaneously ;)

10. Reaching the word count is never the problem; cutting is my nightmare, hence the multiple Google docs to save every version and a list of 11 instead of 10.

11. I am the best version of myself in nature and the worst version of myself in Costco.

Your turn! I’d love to hear what makes you, you! If you take a stab at either of these prompts, please share in the comments below.

***

This post is part of a blog hop with the Creative Speed Dating Cohort led by Laura Rennie and Laura Bass, with participation from the Exhale community. I am currently in the cohort, and fun prompts like these are just a taste of the creative exercises offered. Click here to view the next post in the “Things I Know About Myself” series.

Introducing… Unhooked & Held

Unhooked

The term “unhooked” has come to mean something quite specific to me in this season. I feel unhooked from the jagged grasp OCD had on me for most of my life. I am learning to let myself off the hook for “failures” or “shortcomings” that merely point to my humanity. I hope this term may also resonate with you. Perhaps you are unhooking from shame or false beliefs, thought spirals or unrealistic expectations. Most of my readers are in mid-life and I feel a collective desire to let go of rhythms, ideas, and identities that no longer foster our thriving.

Other poets have pointed me to the beauty of a life unhooked:

Don’t we deserve the water? Deserve to float, to heal, to rest, to feel the water sway and support our most tender places?

Held

Unhooked to me does not mean untethered or unaccountable or unsupported. The antidote to being “on the hook” is self-compassion. I am not seeking or espousing an anything goes approach to life, but a softer, more dignifying method of self-reflection. What can life, growth, and wholeness look like when we’re not hounded by guilt and condemnation? Can we be held by grace, self-compassion, community, curiosity, beauty, and God? This is what I seek to answer through my words and paintings and what I choose to share in this space.

A poem/prayer I wrote three years ago on being held:

When you are overwhelmed, may you be buoyed by the love of your community.

When you are overworked, may you be carried by the work you have already done.

When you are overwrought with a grief that swirls like a vortex, may you be cradled in tenderness, like a mother comforting a child, patting rhythmically, rocking and swaying.

Sshh, shh, you are safe. I am here.

You are safe.

I am here.

May you realize that you are that mother, fierce and tender, capable of holding and being held.

In this moment, may you choose to be held.

Unhooked & Held

When I was first diagnosed with OCD, the image of floating was a powerful metaphor for healing, and I still feel that way. I now know that floating is not passive or easy or static, floating requires flowing, changing, adapting, recalibrating, and resetting. The image is still so meaningful to me–that I can be held and cushioned by my own mind, that I am safe to let the water wash over me, to surrender my defenses, that I have become my own safe harbor.

Recovery has been a journey of both/and.

Here at Unhooked & Held we are:

Unhooking from shame and holding on to self-compassion.

Unhooking from false beliefs and holding on to compassionate action.

Unhooking our worth from outcomes and productivity and being held by those who love us just the way we are.

Unhooking from judgment and holding on to curiosity.

Unhooking from certainty and holding on to self-trust.

Unhooking from unrealistic expectations and holding plans loosely, opening ourselves to delight and surprise.

***

I’d love to know if any of these words or images resonate with you! How are you unhooking in your life? What are you holding onto or allowing yourself to be held by?

Leave a comment

My OCD resources aren’t going away!

OCD Resources: a compilation of my favorite OCD resources on the interwebs

Glitch Fix: a collection of my own stories and tips for OCD recovery

***

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Reset."

This was the summer of berries, bikes, and books

Berries

Up and up and up the mountain we drive, hugging the edge of the cliff. Besides the curve of the road, all you can see is a wall of green: pine, maple, and oak trees, and, the reason for our excursion, huckleberry bushes. Bonnie, a woman from church, has offered to lead us to the berries. I follow her car closely and many times say a prayer of gratitude for her hospitality. The curves, the bushes, the banks of trees all look the same. Even with a map, I would most likely give up on my own. We finally pull over off a dirt road, the rocking of the car still swaying in our bodies. We walk through the forest to the sounds of birdsong and crack of sticks and crunch of leaves. Golden slanted sunlight pours through branches. Huckleberries look almost like blueberries, but some are redder, even purple. We taste the tang of the berries, sweet then sour, sour then sweet. Afternoon turns to evening as we embrace the delicious monotony of plucking berries from branches. My daughter twirls on a log. My son makes 8-year-old small talk with Bonnie, “who’s your favorite Pokémon?” “what’s your favorite baseball team?” Upon discovering she isn’t a baseball fan, he changes to “What’s your favorite football team?” “Why do you like them?” When I was his age, I would burst into tears if an adult who was not my mom, dad, grandma, or teacher even looked in my direction. I smile at his confidence and plunk more berries into my pail.

Later, when we are home and have washed and dried the berries, my daughter cooks up (or down) a huckleberry coulis: splash of lemon juice, sprinkle of sugar and cornstarch, sizzle of berries sweetening in the pan. We spoon the warm jelly over scoops of vanilla ice cream in fancy dishes.

My son adds huckleberries to Pillsbury crescent roll dough, stretching his baking skills. When the oven dings, we bite into warm flaky dough, let the berries burst.

Bikes

We bike to hike our favorite trail, spilling and scrabbling over boulders like a train of ants. We find a private beach, remove socks and shoes, let the water cool our feet, our spirits.

We bike to church in the quiet of a summer Sunday morning. A rooster crows and tires squeak. We pump our legs like prayer.

We bike to books at the library. Spend hours lost among the stories. Bike home with a backpack of more books.

He bikes to show his bravery at the motocross track. His friends, two other boys, wait and cheer. He learns to stand, to pedal hard, to keep trying.

I bike to train for my first triathlon. I beat my distance and beat it again. I learn to stand, to pedal hard, to keep trying.

Books

We read together:

We did a jiggery for Diggory in The Magician’s Nephew. We learned about Turkish delight and the sacrificial love of Aslan/Jesus in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. We cheered for the underhorse in The Horse and His Boy. We got spooked by The Celery Stalks at Midnight. We howled with laughter at the Return to Howladay Inn.

We read apart (Some spine poetry without the spines since I read e-books to summarize my own summer reading):

     The Favorites
     How Beautiful We Were
     The Most
     Counterfeit
     Atmosphere
     This is How it Always Is
     Heft
     Broken Country
     The Unseen World
     The Tell
     The God of the Woods
     Where The Waves Turn Back

***

This was also the summer of lice, small town horrors and small town parades, the kids learning to make dinner, my first sprint triathlon and my first art show, Disneyland, trips to San Diego and Seattle, a girls weekend with my college besties, activity spinners, “quick six” clean ups, art at the library, loneliness and less play dates, our 1 year moving anniversary, my parents’ visit, lake days, kayaking and water coloring, irritation and joy and a brain that turned to huckleberry coulis mush with lack of alone time.

***

This was also the summer of slow, quiet, and small moments where I returned to myself through painting and poetry.

During our girls’ weekend, while the rest of us packed up our suitcases and chatted skincare routines, one friend took a moment for one last quiet dip in the pool. She asked me to take her photo (I am not a creeper!) to capture not just the setting, but the sense of peace and presence she held onto for a few moments more than the rest of us. I later asked if I could paint her and sent her the painting along with this note, a reminder to her, to me, and to all of us moms who make magic in the margins.

Magic in the margins

You have found the ability

To make magic in the margins

To choose breath and life and

Self-trust

You can do this anywhere

Alone or in the chaos of an ordinary day

You have always been a magic maker for those you love

May you remember to

Receive, receive, receive

Another slow, quiet small moment

I sensed the growing restlessness of not writing or painting or reflecting as much as I could during the school year. I snuck away at dusk one evening. Watched an eagle swoop into the lake for a fish. Remembered that even eagles, birds of prey, don’t always hunt. I was encouraged that summer may be a season of creative roosting for me. That doesn’t mean I’m no longer a writer, an artist, a creative. I will return, I told myself.

I have returned.

***

What about you? How was your summer? Any alliterative themes, lessons or highlights?

With Dad at the Lake

He was in constant motion, his spry body loading towels, ice chests, ropes, buoys, wakeboards, bindings, sunscreen, sunglasses, Ginger Ale for him, Squeeze-Its for us kids, Lunchables (the perks of a dad packed lunch), or, if not Lunchables, a fresh turkey sandwich from Port of Subs, the local Subway knockoff at the last gas station before the winding road up to the lake in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The lake was surrounded by pine trees. My dad was surrounded by kids, laughing, joking, whining, oblivious to his constant exertion.

We joked about our latest crushes (Kyle W. and Eric T.) and hummed Mmm Bop while my dad lined up the boat and the trailer and the dock to launch, leaving us cluelessly holding the rope, the line slack in our palms, unsure what to do if the boat did decide to drift off to sea.

My dad drove the empty, dripping trailer to the lot at the top of the hill, then he sprinted back. When he returned, we’d moved on to discussing the merits of Avril’s Sk8er Boi, and he’d leap over tow lines, effortlessly taking back the rope and control.

Wake boarding was my favorite. I lived for the adrenaline rush. Giving up the warmth of the sun on the sticky vinyl seats to the shock of cold water when you jump in. Toes tingling, dangling below, buoyed by a life jacket, fingers gripped tight around the hand hold. The giddy moment of expectation as the line pulls taught, the lurch of the boat, the whir of the motor.

“In gear.” Thumbs up.

“Hit it.”

If you can survive the sudden surge, let the boat pull you up, straighten out the board, you are invincible. Gliding across water. Give a little wave to the people in the boat. I’ve got this. Before attempting to jump the wake…

Spray up your nose, glass-like water hitting your face as you tumble down. I knew my dad would circle back to get me, Oldies blasting from the radio set to Cool 101.1 today’s hits and yesterday’s favorites. Beach Boys, James Taylor, Jackson Browne.

I learned I loved the lake and the water from my dad. I loved the water because he did. The lake provided an outlet for his constant tinkering, unending motion. The motion of the boat, the wind, the waves. His buzzing internal tempo perfectly matched by the environment. He was in his element, driving, checking, tacking, adjusting.

I wiped the water from my face, reopened my eyes, the world a mirage of green and blue as the boat circled toward me.

Dad at the helm. Glowing, confident and competent. Perfectly at peace. Giving me the freedom to find peace, too.

With Mom in the Garden

The garden was our favorite place to play. Between daydreaming about our future hair salon (Sassy and Jazzy’s Hair Salon) or pretending to give birth to multiple children (why we wanted to simulate labor and contractions is beyond me), my best friend, Caitie, and I would pop blueberries, cherry tomatoes, and even string beans. The sungold raspberries were the highest treat–yellow and squishy, pure summer sweetness. Hidden treasures, not available at Albertson’s. They never made it up to the house.

My mom has always tended a garden. Vibrant flowers, hardy shrubs, and abundant berries and veggies. We played and my mom plucked weeds, snapping off dead branches, picking the ripest cherry tomatoes to take back upstairs in her mesh basket, if they made it that far. Dirt on her knees, under her fingernails, a smudge across her cheek. Delighting in juicy earthworms, the pungent smell of cut grass, piles of pruned plants.

Or, my mom steeping sun tea, the epitome of intention and patience. The tea boasted a striking bitterness–unsweetened unlike my dad who prefers sweet tea with a cloud of sugar settled at the bottom. Sun tea meant long afternoons in the garden. Harnessing the sun, the taste of summer. I thought it tasted like dirt. But I loved that she loved it. The rhythm and ritual of dunking the tea bags and leaving the potion-like liquid to brew on the patio. She was unbothered that we didn’t partake. Her commitment to her own joy and creativity.

Though I never learned to love black tea, I learned I loved vegetables, fruits, cherry tomatoes, the healing power of time spent in the sun, from my mom. I was oblivious to the hours of work and learning, the trial and error, the constant labor of love.

Mom plucking weeds in the garden, sweaty and dirt-stained. Glowing, confident and competent. Perfectly at peace. Giving me (and my friends) the freedom to find peace, too.

With Nini in the Kitchen

The smell of garlic and onions wafted through the air as the sauce simmered. My eyes stung and watered. I hated onions on their own, but the smell felt like home. My grandmother, Nini, boiled the pasta water, assembled her mise en place, stirred and tasted her homemade spaghetti sauce while I watched reruns of I Love Lucy or played Solitaire on her living room rug. Occasionally she'd let me dip my tasting spoon or (even my finger!) into the bright red sauce.

"More onions. More Parmesan," she'd conclude without fail. She'd grab another half an onion and begin chopping away while handing me the Kraft Parmesan cheese to sprinkle to my heart's content. I know for anyone with a grandmother who was actually Italian, this must sound horrifying, but this was our secret ingredient and I will defend it until the day I die.

My other special job was to mix and shape the meatballs. After washing my hands, I'd plunge them into the bowl of ground beef and turkey (always a combo for the softest meatballs), breadcrumbs, eggs, and all the seasonings. I loved the squish of the mixture between my fingers and I'd knead and shape until my hands were almost numb with cold. We'd brown the meatballs in a pan first, rotating them one by one, before adding them to the sauce.

She let me add the one lone bay leaf and sometimes I would be lucky enough to find it in my bowl during dinner, like a cracker jack prize.

When I think of Nini now, I see us in her small kitchen. I smell garlic and onions.

Nini making meatballs. Glowing, confident and competent. Perfectly at peace. Giving me the freedom to find peace, too.

The question

So we have Dad at the lake, Mom in the garden, and Nini in the kitchen. This is not a Clue-like whodunnit or a Jeopardy answer, but a compilation of my happiest memories from childhood.

Last year when working through Emily P. Freeman’s How to Walk Into A Room workbook, she asked the question,

When did you feel most like yourself as a child?

My first thoughts were the three scenes I described above: at the lake with my dad, in the garden with my mom, and cooking with my grandma. Huh, I felt the most myself when the most important adults in my life were in their element? Felt the most themselves. Like I could let down, relax. No expectations. I knew they were happy. I didn’t need to perform. I could just witness and participate in their joy.

As a child, I got to show up and enjoy the fruits of their (often unseen) labor. Feel at ease myself. I learned I loved the water and being outside, loved the squish of raw meat in my hands, the smell of garlic and onions sizzling on the skillet. The tang of fresh picked raspberries, yellow pear tomatoes, nature’s candy.

I felt at peace because they were at peace.

From the mouths of babes

This past spring, a new friend’s 4-year-old asked his mom, “What does Aly do?”

His mom is a nurse/teacher and his dad is an orthopedic surgeon, so I’m sure he was expecting a clear vocation for an answer.

My friend replied to her son, “Aly is slowing down and doing things she loves.”

When she first recounted this story to me, I recoiled a bit. His parents are doctors and nurses and I am dilly dallying around doing things I love.

Shouldn’t I be doing something important or life-saving or at least contributing to the family income1?

I want to blame Julia Cameron, but I really must blame my parents and my grandma first. They modeled having passions and hobbies, finding a creative outlet and pursuing it unabashedly.

After my initial shock, I couldn’t help but buzz with joy. Not only are my kids seeing me in my element, my friends are noticing that I am doing things I love.

I am biking the kids to and from school, reading Roald Dahl in the treehouse, hiking and plunging and watercolor painting. I am entering writing contests, displaying my artwork in galleries, and currently training for a sprint triathlon 🙈.

I am learning what lights me up. I am finding activities where I feel confident and competent.

My kids might learn they love these activities, too. But more importantly, they might feel most like themselves. They might not feel like they need to perform or make me happy in those moments.

Finding my own peace might help them find theirs.

With mom (me, I’m mom) in the trees

My son is screaming and threatening to run away from home. For a kid who never leaves my side at a playdate, this means something is seriously wrong. I am about 4 box breaths away from teaching the kids some new cuss words.

I often say I do my best parenting outside. It’s almost impossible for me to be grumpy out in the dappled sunlight between pine branches.

My son stomps and I start to negotiate.

“I know you’re mad at me right now, but I would like for us to take a short hike. 20 minutes?” I venture.

“No, one!” he counters.

We banter back and forth. 15-5-10-8.

We both agree on 8 minutes in nature.

The drive to the trailhead is 5 minutes and when we arrive, I realize he’s already started the clock. Nature has 3 minutes to work her magic.

My son and daughter and I set out on the trail. My daughter is skipping, I am hopeful, and my son is scowling, but I notice a slight pep in his step. He is hopping from rock to rock involuntarily. At the 3-minute mark he is still scowling, but has forgotten about the timer. By five minutes, a giddy smile spreads across his face as he traverses the steep hillside, parkours off of boulders, and yanks single needles off pine trees.

The transformation complete.

We scurry down the hill to our favorite secret swimming beach. My daughter flings off her socks and shoes and dips her toes in the cool water. I contemplate jumping in wearing only my running shorts and sports bra. My son skips rocks across the wavy surface of the lake.

The three of us at the lake. Glowing, confident and competent. Perfectly at peace.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Glow."

***

I’d love to know—when did you feel the most like yourself as a child?

Leave a comment

***

On our 8th wedding anniversary date, over nut crusted Brie and views of the San Diego Bay and skyline, my husband said to me, “I want to pursue the move to Idaho.”

Tears mixed with my mascara and I felt like I was sinking sinking sinking. We’d talked about this possibility before, but he’d never voiced his desire so boldly. The questions had been nagging, the what if’s swirling for years, decades even for him, but we were finally seriously considering a major life change.

The life I imagined for us in San Diego with family and beach days and Spanish Immersion school dropped like a rock to the bottom of a clear lake. I could see our future glinting back at me, now obscured and unreachable.

***

April 2024

Finals week at the university where I worked was quickly approaching and my anxiety grew along with each day’s light. My husband and I had decided to move our family from San Diego, CA to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. We had told our parents, our kids, and most of our friends. Nothing had changed—yet.

A text from our realtor informed me that the interior painting of our house needed to be pushed up two days sooner than planned. The painter had an upcoming surgery. The request was fair enough, yet my stomach dropped and my jaw locked. I was counting on those two last days of normalcy. Two more days until our house would never be ours again. Two more days until all evidence of our life here—painted accent walls and family picture galleries, the dents and scuffs and doodles of my children’s baby and toddlerhood—would be erased.

It’s too hard, I whispered. We should just stay.

***

I decided to treat the move decision like OCD. I planned out exposure work1 specific to the move. I wrote out worst case scenarios and accepted that maybe this was the worst decision and maybe I would regret it. I spent time each day with my tried-and-true tools of OCD recovery. Allow, accept, acknowledge the fears. Keep coming back to my values.

Despite the grief and the guilt and the utter inconvenience of it all, what did I want with the move?

I wanted to trust in an expansive goodness. That there was good for us outside of San Diego. I wanted to trust in adventure. Trust in our choices. Value my husband’s desire to branch out and try something new. I wanted to trust that we could handle however it turned out. Trust that discontent could be holy.

I committed to stopping the cycle of rumination. (more details in this post here: Snooze on Solving)

I made an alarm/calendar entry to "figure it out later.”

I still had fears about the move, but I felt ready to proceed with our decision and the heartbreaking and exhausting work of moving my family.

***

We did not feel called to move, in the sense that God gave us a clear conviction to go. Annoyingly, God was very silent on the topic. Both staying and going felt like good choices, bad choices, and excruciating choices. Only after I found peace with the decision and moved forward in self-trust, did God give us “signs” that we were on the right track.

I am not one to open my Bible and point to a random verse for inspiration. I can count the number of Bible verses that have felt personal to me in the last few years on one hand, on one finger, actually.

When I first started sharing more about my OCD diagnosis, I was working as a burned out ESL writing professor. I desperately wanted a new passion and vocation.

One morning in church, in a flash of inspiration, I had the idea to combine my love of teaching, writing, and working with people one-on-one into a new outlet: OCD advocacy, education, and coaching. (This is the idea that led to this Substack.)

The verse that sparked this idea:

​“See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:19

Sunday morning the same weekend we took all of our photos and proof of life off our walls, the pastor preached on a verse. You guessed it: Isaiah 43:19.

First, I was mad and a little resentful for God or the universe to give such a clear sign after so much agony. Second, I was encouraged.

The “new thing” of OCD coaching and advocacy had been so life-giving. This verse reminded me that new is not necessarily bad. New can be very very good. It also helped me see that I could trust myself. Even in the silence, I had made a choice for good.

***

July 9, 2024

We arrived in our new home of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, sad and tired, but also expectant and hoping for good things.

***

July 9, 2025

A year ago, I could not have envisioned the scope of new things I would experience and enjoy. I thought I would be moving into a career in mental health and finishing my memoir about growing up with undiagnosed OCD. It turns out those were the old new things.

The new new things are plenty.

Below is a list of new things from the last year that I am currently loving and give myself full permission to change my mind about later. (Feel free to skim, I just wanted to record all of these new things in one place.)

Hobbies (brand new or rekindled)

Whether from OCD or just a general fear of failure, I learned that I previously avoided hobbies or activities that I am not instantly excellent at. How silly. I don’t do that anymore and I am loving a variety of new things:

• Zumba

• Rock climbing

• Snow walks

• Lake swimming

• Hiking

• Cold plunges

• Biking in real life (my friends and I had a laugh at this phrase, but I just mean regular old biking outside, not on a Peloton or at a speed that rivals cars)

• Solitude/silence

• Poetry

• Watercolor

• Walking almost everywhere instead of driving

Physical health

• Last August I had sinus surgery and spent most of the fall recovering. Recovery was a b*tch, but I haven’t had a sinus infection since, so I begrudgingly admit it was worth it

• Started seeing a functional medicine doctor and have overall improved my mood, energy, and immune system

• Started cold plunging, which has been huge for my insomnia and generalized anxiety (I would not recommend as an OCD treatment, but I do find it helps calm the general hum of physical anxiety symptoms.)

Creative year in review

• Launched Glitch Fix

• Found and attended an in-person writing group with a lake view that I can walk to from my house. I’ve walked to the meeting in the sun, past the fall colors, in the rain, and in the snow. I’ve made new writer friends and share my own work most meetings. It is so life-giving to me to read/share my words to a live audience.

• Worked on my OCD memoir (and gave myself permission to pause it for now so I can live into the healing.)

• Re-launched my Grace-Filled Growth newsletter

• Plunge / Paint / Poem Challenge with three new things—cold plunging, watercolor, and daily poetry writing and sharing

• I participated in two creative cohorts with the amazing Laura and Laura

• Took a photography class with Ashlee Gadd (I would have been way too intimidated before this year—another thing I wouldn’t try because I don’t feel good at it)

• Discovered I’m actually a visual artist and love documenting my life and places I love through painting

New ways I put myself out there

• The hardest one—harder than all the publications listed below—was figuring out how to sign my son up for Little League that required forms from doctors, the school, and two proofs of residency. It felt like more vetting than a cabinet-level position. And then the try outs. Oh, I was so nervous and proud watching my son try to catch a grounder in front of a roomful of strangers before he even knew what a grounder was.

• Publications

  • I shared an essay on motherhood for Listen To Your Mother Spokane on Mother’s Day to a theater of over 300 people

  • Essay in the Coffee and Crumbs Summer Collection: Children at Play

  • Guest post: Craving // Connecting: Exposure for Kelsey Aldringer

  • I had two poems published in Kris Ann’s A Year of Poetry Study and Reflections along with many other Substack poets. (Held, on page 15 and Monday Morning poem and painting on pages 69-70)

  • My essay, Living in Wonder, was accepted to the literary journal, Calla Press. You can order a copy here.

  • The God of Surprise for the 1st Pres blog

  • An Artist’s Prayer featured on the Coffee and Crumbs Instagram

  • I had five watercolors accepted to a local art show

  • I was shocked and honored to win 1st place in my local library writing contest. I will share the piece, Making A List, that honors the memory of my grandmother when I’m able, and my story will get to live in a book at the library.

    

• Making new friends and connections, asking for people’s numbers, and introducing myself to other parents at school pick up.

Kids

Kids live in the present and their lives are filled with so much newness even without a move. My kids (6 and 8) at least aren’t sitting around pining away for the life we left. They are fully here.

• My kids learned to ski and ride bikes

• My son tried out for Little League and performed in two dance performances

• My daughter learned to read and did dance class and performances

Spouse

• My husband started cold plunging and was in two musicals with a local theater company

Relationships

This has been the trickiest part of the move. Staying connected to people from San Diego, while trying to be present in our new life here.

• My Voxer group and a few other close friends were a lifeline to my old self

• We re-started family dinners with our good friends who moved to Coeur d’Alene in 2020, and it has been a gift to do life together again (though we grieve the friends and family we left)

• My parents and in-laws have visited multiple times and keep in touch via Facetime

• We visited SD four times (one was for surgery, so it doesn’t count)– and I was still able to attend a friends’ baby shower and a girls weekend with my college friends

Mental health

• OCD remission–is this a thing? Because OCD is such a small part of my life now. I no longer want to work in mental health or finish my OCD memoir because I have the luxury of not thinking about OCD. I never thought I would be in this place.

• It has worked wonders for my mental health to not have to grade college essays in the age of ChatGPT

Spiritual health

• Job teaching Sunday school at a church that models compassion and humility and seeks to love first. Being able to tell the kids “I don’t know” is healing something in me.

• Growth in self-trust / banished the voice of Poison/OCD/self-doubt–it’s literally soooo quiet in my mind and it’s amazing how much easier it is to believe God loves me when I don’t have a constant inner critic berating everything I do.

Downsizing

• Smaller house

• Less things (spent 6 months decluttering before the move!)

• 1 car

• No grading essays or department meetings!

When we moved, I downsized my house and in-real-life friends and work and schedule and obligations, but the people, places, and practices I love are growing exponentially. I am learning so much about myself and what I’m capable of. I am constantly delighted and surprised, instead of anxious, torn, and overwhelmed.

I am not saying that you should move or moving will fix your life if you’re currently having a hard time. In fact, moving has the opposite effect in the short term.

But I can’t deny that my move offered a fresh start/catalyst for some changes I was trying so hard to integrate into my life in San Diego.

Sometimes a change of scenery is helpful, especially with OCD/mental health. It helped me immensely to be in a place with less triggers and less history of giving in to compulsions/obsessions/fear-based behavior. In my new town, I am not bombarded by the same triggers or locked into the same habits. I was able to build on the foundation of growth and healing I had been fighting tooth and nail for in San Diego2.

I am still committed to not figuring it out/deciding if the move was a good idea or if we will be here permanently.

I do know the move unleashed something in me. A zest for new experiences and an ability to see the good in most situations (instead of constantly scanning for errors and threats). My dear friend Krista had told me moving would be so much harder because I have OCD. I wonder if the payoff has been greater because of OCD as well. Because it cost so much to step into uncertainty. But that agony allowed my freedom.

If I can move my family out of state with no assurances we were making the right choice, I can do anything. I still feel this way.

I’m delighted and relieved that the factors I thought would make a difference in my quality of life really have: more margin, slower pace, proximity to nature, less obligations. Even in my wildest hopes, I did not picture myself submerged in a frozen lake and loving it, OCD-free, taking on a new art form, or considering joining an adult softball league.

What once felt like sinking, losing, all-consuming grief has opened into possibility.

Instead of a rock dropped to the bottom of a lake, I am in the lake, floating, and delighting that the future is unknowable.