Then I got home and thought with great horror, what have I done? My paper is now late. With the markdowns I won’t even be able to get a score in the low 90’s…Unacceptable. I’d rather not turn anything in at all then. I quickly calculated if I could still get an A without the paper and if things went the way that I had planned it was still possible. Until I didn’t think the next paper was good enough either. Or the next. By that time I was losing sleep over my grade and my doomed future and my dismal GPA. When my teacher asked me to come in at lunch time I knew what he was going to say. I was getting dropped from the class, I was going to probably get detention, and he was going to have to send a note home to my mom. I was crying in the bathroom before heading in there trying to wipe away streaks of Maybeline Great Lash with the world’s scratchiest paper towels and pull myself together.

When I sat down in front of him he said “I am going to tell you what I know. You wrote and rewrote all of the papers you haven’t turned in and you finished them on time. They are at home in your desk because you don’t think they are good enough to turn in. Am I right?” I nodded and valiantly blinked. He continued, “I’m going to make you a deal, all three on my desk tomorrow before school starts and I will grade them like they came in on time but you can’t do this anymore. Not in my class and not anywhere else, you have to just turn it in. Do you hear what I’m saying?” By this time I was sobbing, because he really saw me, the aquanetted-wound-up-tight teenager, and met me with a compassion and generosity I could not offer myself.

I have returned to his words countless times in the last 35 years, that encounter shaped me as a person, pushed me to take risks and has haunted me when I retreat. As much as I have overcome, I still find that 17 year old perfectionist at the helm sometimes, assuring me that it is safer to fade into invisibility and when I listen to her the shame around my lack of action lands me square back in the anxious girl tummy ache club.

I have worried a lot this last year about all of you who are paid subscribers to my Substack. I feel like your investment in my writing was such a gift, and I apologize that there was not really any return. ( a peace offering for my faithful supporters is found in my paid content. I know you will say I don’t have to offer you anything and that you support me because you love me, but I feel it will assuage my guilt.)

Between the small absurdities of life and a subconscious fear that nothing I wrote was really good enough or worth your subscription, I stopped short of publishing until the work was “better”. I’m working on that. Especially because I really do love writing and because my dear friend JJ Elliott says “Don’t be stingy, words are medicine”. And if laughter is medicine then get ready because I have a whole series I want to write about concerning my embittered battle with the lawnmower, but I can’t begin it without first offering this apology.

Thank you for subscribing to my yapping and believing in me. I hope you can see yourself somewhere in this story and in whatever you are procrastinating on, please just turn it in. We all really need what you have to offer.

Those tasks are often what wakes me up around three am some days. If my list was personified then it would be a sick five year old announcing in the middle of the night, two inches from my face that her stomach doesn’t feel good. Same adrenaline dump. So how do I help that poor baby feel better? How do you?

The first thing I tell my clients (and myself when I take my own advise) is that procrastination is never about laziness or being a bad person. The shame is the sneaky poison here and the first thing we have to get rid of. Shame poses as the solution, but if we could berate ourselves into being and doing better we would all be perfect by now. Curiosity is the antidote and where healthy action steps begins. I want to encourage you to think of your behavior as data that informs you and that’s it. We stop the cycle of avoidance and shame by paying gentle attention to ourself and investigating what is standing just behind the procrastination. If you are looking for a place to start, here are the questions I ask both myself and my clients to get unstuck:

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My ex-husband bought Wyatt to be his dog, and even went so far as refusing to let me to go with him to choose a puppy because this was his thing. When he brought home his little grey ball of fuzz, I took one look at him and decided that contrary to previously held ideas that he was going to be an “inside the house” dog, which I think is when Wyatt decided that he in fact belonged to me.

His daddy was a Queensland Heeler and his mama was a Boarder Collie, both from a working cattle ranch in Tulare County. Maybe it was that specific genetic combination, or he is just a magical unicorn because as far as herding dogs go he has a gentle quietness about him uncharacteristic of his breed, unless you are a man wearing a hat or tires on a lawnmower. To be fair, I broke my ankle on one lawnmower and accidentally set fire to another so I feel that his concern was warranted. (And we won’t touch his well deserved disdain of men with hats here today). That being said, all cattle dogs need a job, and his was keeping my children all in one room, all in one spot in the yard and most of all to keep his eye (and nose) on me.

All dog moms might say this, but Wyatt is hands down the smartest dog ever. He opens doors, opens gates and knows so many words it’s freakish, but where he really shines is sneaking food. I’m not talking grabbing low hanging fruit like the lasagna I left to cool on the counter and came back to with the top eaten off. Or the ham on the Thanksgiving table stolen while table clearing, or the pizza dough left for a second rise, or the hot cookie sheet of taquitos. Childs play! I am talking about full blown food capers. He watches to see if anyone is looking and literally slinks to the pantry in search of carbs (I feel that). Usually boxes of crackers, packages of tortillas or bags of chips which he then carefully and quietly removes, sneaks down the hall into my office and scrunches under the desk to eat. I have only ever once caught him in the act, all the other times I have gone to sit down to work and found the evidence at my feet littered with wrappers.

He has no use for stuffed toys but before arthritis kicked in he was obsessed with his ball and frisbee. He wasn’t one of those dogs that wouldn’t bring the ball back or made you chase them to get it out of their mouths, no way, it was immediately retrieved and returned with laser focus and life or death seriousness to the task at hand. You could even ask him to bring it closer and he would pick it up and drop it on your lap. If I was done playing, he would just hike the ball to himself, so it was the first of my heartbreaks with him when I had take that away permanently. He (much like his owner) cannot do anything casually, and his intense way of herding the ball was causing him pain afterwards.

I can brag on this dog and his antics ad nauseam, but the very best thing about Wyatt is how he has loved me. Even now, as I am writing that sentence and beginning to cry, he moved from the floor by my feet to the couch, pressing his nose to my arm, shoulder and is currently sniffing at my face. In a minute he will settle and try to wedge his head on my lap, doing what he can to regulate my nervous system as usual. I process a lot of my feelings on walks and runs, (which he is still able to keep up with) and without ever missing a beat, if I find myself lost in my feelings he interrupts with a check in nose bomp, a scan of my face and his head up wiggled up under my hand.

The past six years saw some of my saddest, darkest, loneliest times, but there has been one sentinel who has never left his post. The steady presence of this herding dog has been my saving grace. In the chaotic months before my separation and eventual divorce I had regular night terrors that were met with a wet nose and whining to get me to wake up. I’d pull myself to the edge of the bed and put my feet on the floor to reorient myself and he would lean his heavy body against my legs, pressing in like he knew I needed it. I cannot imagine how I would have made it through those days of one hard decision after another if it had not been for the constant love of my dog.

He scared me a couple weeks ago with an arthritis flare up that immobilized him and I was harshly confronted with his mortality and the choices that will soon need to be made about quality of life. His quality of life, not mine. While I am researching all of the things I can do to make him more comfortable (thank you Dr. Monica Tarantino @seniordogdoc on Instagram), I am deeply aware of this in between space and that the cost of this type of love is grief. The anticipation of his eventual loss is seeping in to every interaction I have with him. I find myself being far more intentional and really pausing to notice him. I’m soaking in the morning rituals we have and his greetings when I get home. I let him lick my bowl when I’m done and offer slow pets and so many tearful thank you’s and I love you’s because I know the day is coming where I’ll not be afforded those luxuries. As I lay on the floor snuggled up with him, which I find myself doing more and more, I so wish my denial hadn’t kept me from these practices sooner.

There is now an open ended handwritten letter in my bedside table where I speak these things to him, that one just stays between us. If posted it here I fear I would bleed out all over Substack and what good would that do anyone? However, this practice of noticing as I watch with tenderness how my best boy moves through this world with his days winding down is doing good work in me.

As I tend to him more thoughtfully now then ever, I can’t help but see what an excellent job he has done tending to me, thirteen years and counting of quietly filling in gaps that others left and never, ever leaving me alone.

Oh Wyatt, what an extravagant gift you are.

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As a trad wife, I hadn’t had a real job in years. Our agreement was that I would raise our children and handle everything on the home front with the exception of yard work and paying bills. He would go out and build his career and I would hold everything else down. Now here I was, alone and unexpectedly looking down the barrel of impending poverty and wondering who would hire me with that pesky little 20 year hole in my resume. Applying for a safety net in the middle of that free fall felt like the most responsible thing I could do.

Dressing carefully, I reminded myself that I was a professional, eyeliner and mascara because I wasn’t going to cry. This is temporary. I laid my best leather purse in the grey plastic bin, sliding it forward as I stepped through the metal detector, then with shaky hands, typed my information into a computer in one of the many carpeted cubicles lining the grey concrete walls. When the screen popped up assigning me a number, I followed the suggestion to write it down on one of the small rectangles of paper in a stack to my left with the provided navy blue half pencil. No eraser. I found a seat next to someone pacing the isles, angry and loud on the phone with a landlord while a woman two seats from me held a sleeping newborn while she herself struggled to stay awake. Most chairs filled with couples in their seventies and eighties leaning on walkers and melting into wheelchairs, all of us just numbers. I folded and unfolded my paper, listening to several different news channels battle for dominance coming from several different phones, ricocheting off the cinder blocks into an indistinguishable racket. I caught myself being judgmental of that and then snorted aloud at my hypocrisy, considering the place I currently sat. It’s shameful how quickly I grasped at superiority as my own fragility blared louder than their phones.

Making my way through a maze of hallways, the robotic voice called my number several times over herding me to the desk marked G38 and my soft spoken case worker introduced himself to me. Pablo was shielded behind a sheet of plexiglass, sandwiched in by two little quarter walls. I imagine the walls were intended to offer us some semblance of privacy, but we had to raise our voices to be heard through the barrier and I felt sorry for G37 who I could hear plain as day explain to her case worker how her recent DUI was impacting her employment. I filled out the stack of papers he passed through to me with my good pen that I pulled from my purse. Sliding the completed forms and documents back, we sat quietly as he entered my answers. Picking at a cuticle I waited for his computer to determine just how much help I deserved. Turning back towards me, he let me know that my card would arrive in three to five business days and that I would be receiving $873.00 per month for groceries and $900 of cash aid. He explained that I needed to report any income and attempts at employment as he set our meeting for the following month to discuss my progress. I nodded. He smiled as I got up to leave saying he hoped I had a good day and that he looked forward to seeing me soon. I smiled back and said “Thank you Pablo, but I truly hope I never see you again”. His eyes widened and we both belly laughed. This would became our ritual over the course of the following year, us smiling and creating calendar dates that we both wanted me to miss and saying our goodbyes with “I hope I never see you again”.

Those meetings got easier, but paying with my card never did. I hid it in the secret pocket of my wallet and at the grocery store I would angle my body to shield this form of payment from my children because I didn’t want them to know we were on welfare. I stopped going anywhere that I couldn’t pay with self checkout because I was so embarrassed to have to face a grocery store clerk. On the occasion that I couldn’t avoid it, I wondered if they hated me as much as I did since they worked all day on their feet while I worked through complex ptsd and tried to put my life back together. I wanted to tell them and explain that I was trying so hard and that my expensive wallet was a Christmas gift from my mom and any jewelry I had on was what the pawn shop wouldn’t take and my clothes came from Valley Thrift Center’s 75% off tags. One time (and one time only) I braved Trader Joe’s. The people who worked there were people I chatted regularly with about the little details of our lives but this felt like too big an insight into mine. My cashier happened to be training someone new and after I paid there was a system glitch so they had to manually remove the 10 cent charge for bags and the trainer explained that I was using food stamps so they couldn’t charge me that fee. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole when the lady in line behind me rolled her eyes and said “it must be nice”. If I could go back in time I would ask that woman if she wanted to sit down with me at the tables outside and hear about what had led me to this nice life she felt so safe to audibly judge. But trauma brain me burst into tears as they loaded my cart and I didn’t go back until I could pay for things on my own, until it wasn’t obvious just how much help I needed.

The shame of that needing surprised me with the force of its intensity. My brain knew that the system is created for people in my situation, I knew the taxes our family had paid into this system were carrying me now but I felt crushed every month that I needed it. It felt like failure after failure when what I thought what might be a couple months turned into a a little over a year. As an overly responsible oldest daughter I had to grapple with this for what felt like infinity billion hours with my therapist. My self worth and identity were deeply rooted in not ever being a burden to anyone, which meant that to be valuable I could never ask for help. Having grown up in a middle class family with middle class friends, I had subconsciously filed away other’s disdain for people who are “using the system”. Once I was in that system I realized that (a) it’s really not that much money and (b) it’s very difficult to escape. The truth is, the jump from the threshold of qualifying for aid to not qualifying, can actually lead you into more qualifying. I got to the place where I made too much to receive federal money but then I was not able to pay all the bills. I simply lucked out with a family and a community that helped bridge that gap while I built my business. People who called me and said we believe in you, keep going, you’ve got this and we’ve got you. That was then followed by them putting their money where their mouth was. Gift cards, cash, odd jobs that I did and was then paid extravagantly for. And that’s where the privilege I want to acknowledge comes in. My family and social circle had resources to help me, but what if they couldn’t have? I’d likely be working two jobs at close to minimum wage and still barely making ends meet. I would have never had been able to work through the trauma, care for my traumatized kids or build a consulting business that could actually sustain us. I often wonder what would have become of us all without the system and the support? Those thoughts keep me striving to grow even more, because to me, financial success looks like a place where I get to give as extravagantly to the vulnerable as my people gave to me .

I keep an aqua blue post-it note on my laptop with something my author friend JJ said to me when I was balking about writing. She furrowed her brow and annihilated my justifications with one statement: “Don’t be stingy, words are medicine” and this time the medicine is for me as I find that my shame falls away in transparency. I also hope it can be medicine for you if there are hard parts of your life that you hate yourself for. How can you soften towards yourself and give yourself the mercy that you offer to others? Or maybe this part of my story can expand your perspective on poverty, creating an opportunity to examine any unchallenged generalizations about those receiving aid from the government (especially as politicians lobby to drastically decrease that aid). This way, when you are in line behind people like me you can offer them the softness that they need in this very hard world. May the broken, hidden pieces of all of our lives remind us that we don’t know what some one else’s story is, even if they aren’t required to pay the grocery bag fee.

A few weeks ago my youngest had her senior photos taken and she surprised me while she was getting ready by asking if I would curl her hair. If you are a mom of a teen girl then you know that of course I said yes and as I brushed it out slowly I thought about the thousands of times I have brushed and curled and sprayed and styled. “Two pony’s mama”, “One bun-bun mommy”. How many times had I hoisted her up on a counter or had her sit between my knees in the living room while she watched cartoons and I tried to get her part straight? As I brushed it out I thought that this was quite probably the last “hair ask” from her and while I don’t tend to be overly sentimental, my heart ached with this bittersweetness that I couldn’t entirely explain (especially since she hated having her hair done as a child and it was almost always a fight to the death to get it done). But maybe that’s it- it was done

(Look at that hair! Also photo by the incredible Jamie Dillmore, dillmoreportraits.com)

When my middle (who was always my snuggliest) became a tween he stopped being snuggly - which is certainly age appropriate and to be expected. However, on one special trip to Disneyland in his excitement and joy, my then 11 year old forgot that he was such a big boy and for the entire day anytime he stood or walked next to me he instinctively reached for my hand to hold it, laughing and chatting up towards me as he squeezed. I etched those moments in my memory thinking “hold on to this, both literally and physically, just soak this in” because I knew it would be the last. (It was).

My oldest recently graduated from college and I likely won’t ever receive another request to review a paper. How many corrections have I made as a homeschool mom? How many times have I been awed at my thoughtful, creative child as I looked over the raw forms of their work? I can’t remember that last underline I made or the last note in the margins as it was such an everyday occurrence that it doesn’t stand out to me exactly when I held the last warm papers fresh from the printer (usually handed over at 11:00pm, ahem). Now that role has reversed as I’m the one asking to see what they are writing and see what they think of mine.

As I try to put a finger on what this flood of feelings are, I do know that it isn’t grief. It actually more resembles deep gratitude because I got to do it. I got to be there for it all. Every holiday, field trip and hyper-fixation. The gift of that takes me by surprise sometimes.

Yet in these freeze frames of lasts I see my own mortality and theirs starkly staring me in the face, a truth mostly veiled by the grind of life being just so daily. All of the breath-taking beauty of parenting is just casually mixed in with the bickering, stomach flu’s and excruciatingly long explanations of Minecraft portals. The lasts remind me that we get to have it and then we don’t and the only reason life is beautiful at all is because it’s a slowly closing window.

This is a place where I find myself carrying the joy of the graduations and first loves alongside heartache and the angst of adulting. The job applications and college applications, the dreaming and despairing, it’s all a bit of a blur. Soon we will look for apartments and secondhand furniture and then I won’t lay half awake at night listening for cars to come in and text alerts to say that they are home safe. There will be freedom and sorrow in that because the house will be too quiet but also no one will be fighting over who deserves the first shower. Since both the pandemic and this economy have slowed the age of young adults moving from home, it may not be soon that I am spared ridiculous arguments over who had the audacity to actually start the water running when the other person was thinking about getting in while scrolling their phone. When that day arrives though, the over abundance of folded towels in the closet will have a ache of it’s own.

When I imagine myself alone in this house, the only thing I can count on is that it will finalize my transformation into my own mother. (I’m already on that slippery slope but when the kids are gone- forget it - I’ll complete the metamorphosis). I’ll start panicking and remember dangers that I have forgotten to warn them about while drinking coffee at ungodly menopausal morning hours. Calling (too early) just to make sure they know the signs of Spinal Meningitis and when to go to the hospital and also that I saw an ad that the good cheese is on sale and they should stock up now because you can freeze cheese you know. Last year my mother literally bought me a ham because it was on sale and drove an hour to bring it to me! And while I am laughing out loud at that memory, it makes me wonder about the lasts I’ll have with her and that’s almost too tender to bear. How many good years do we have left? How many more glasses of Chardonnay over a gossipy lunch? How many more “good morning sunshine”s will I get? I’m not saying that to be morbid, but to not let the fast pace of life make me forget that it’s all temporary. To remember that it’s truly precious.

My childhood friend Lisa Nardiello always told her mom, dad and sister every time she left the house that she loved them. Every. Single. Time. My 12 year old self wondered a lot about that and as I bumped the kickstand with my heel, I asked her why she always said that as we got ready to bike to FastTrip. In my family we saved that for serious moments and we were just leaving to go get a slushy. Unbothered, she pedaled, explaining as our waist length hair flew behind us, “you never know when the last time is that you get to say I love you. Why not say it all the time?”

That middle school moment transformed me. So much so that I have made it a practice in my own home. Almost forty years out from that grape slushy run, I’m sitting here typing and can overhear my middle child tell his buddies that he loves them as he walks them out the door. (Look at Lisa over here influencing gangly 20 year old men to throw around “I love you’s” like confetti!)

So, we may fight about showers, who drank too much Dr Pepper and the disappearing leftovers, but if “I love you” is our last, I will feel like I have won at the weird mix of monotony and brilliance that parenting is. It helps me to zoom out and remember that this place won’t last, but hopefully love will.

I hope you savor what is good today, are filled with grace for what is annoying and strength for that which is breaking your heart.

I am off to go get my shower in before anyone else does.

OMG Hiiiiii to my paying subscribers and welcome to the first post that is just for you!!!!!!! Usually this content will be in the coaching and consulting lane, but in honor of Mother’s day just around the corner I thought I would post this little gem. While it may not be of much help this last minute, I hope it’s something you can return to and that you find useful in years to come. Thank you for supporting me!

Okay, who is this gift guide for? Pretty much everyone. If it were me, I would keep some semblance of this list in my phone or computer or in an old school file folder somewhere so that I have the skinny scoop on all the people that I love. This is also the list that I would want a significant other (should I ever find one) to have of my preferences.

So, this is for you if have no idea what to gift the people in your life and shopping feels overwhelming, so you procrastinate then you rush around with uncertainty at the end and hate it. Or maybe they tell you one specific thing to buy but then there is no surprise of joy when they receive it which feels super lack luster.

Or maybe you’re the kind of person that knows your people love you but you often have to veil disappointment on special days because gift giving is not their specialty? You probably have a great partner, but they are not inclined or become stressed when buying you a gift, so I want to help you to help them (ala Tom Cruise). This isn’t you being demanding or spoiled or entitled- it’s just you vocalizing things that bring you joy and opening yourself up to be known for what you like. It’s unproductive to assume that just because someone loves you that they will have picked up on or know the things that you want and like. It’s a skill that often has little to do with love and care, it’s just something that needs to be taught.

I learned this when I was a little girl and I watched my Grandma write on the bathroom mirror with her red lipstick “3 more days till our anniversary”. Imagine my flabbergasted five year old self asking what in the world she was doing. What she told me was that she was tired of being hurt, angry and disappointed when my grandpa forgot special days. She said “Your Grandpa is a good man and so I am helping him to make me happy”. She. Was. Brilliant.

So, in the spirit of Phyllis and her red lipstick, I have created a tool that will help you receive extremely detailed communication or will help you communicate concisely things that you like to your family, friends and partners.

Ultimately, what we offer someone when we get them a gift is the evidence that we know them and that we see them. Gift giving is an opportunity to show thoughtfulness and affection and whether you spend one dollar or thousands, showing someone you know what they like creates connection.

Lastly, I want to share one more important thing to take note of: Sometimes it is awkward and even painful to be honest with what we want and need. Some of us have been taught that it is shameful to have needs or want things. There are messages that have been absorbed by some that says that they need to just be grateful for whatever they get. While it is excellent to cultivate gratitude, please reassure your person (or yourself) to be alert to these possible wounds and to not have a knee jerk reaction and say they don’t care and “just get me anything”. Dig a little deeper. Some of us have even shut down our ability to know what we want because we have been so disappointed and want to avoid the vulnerability of need and want. Be gentle with yourself or your partner and tread carefully here. This process may take time and open up tender places.

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If you are still here for my attempt to explain the ambiguity of the third Sunday of May, it’s that some of (most of) my struggle stems from my internal radar that alerts me to the heaviness of Mother’s day for people I love and just the world in general. When I was little, I didn’t have any words for this superpower, I just got in trouble all the time for crying too much and had chronic tummy aches. After much therapy I now know that I am really good at paying attention, and that the knowing inside me says that Mother’s Day suuuuuuuuccckkks for a lot of you. For a lot of you, mothering has not been straight forward and there are some really achey parts of it even if it all turned out mostly good. Im talking about those of you who had to navigate the turbulant waters of step-momming, those of you who adopted and those of you who are adopted. Not saying that there is anything inherently negative about any of those things, but I know for many who find themselves in non typical mothering, it holds some pain and tenderness. Then there are those who have lost their mom or have a really painful relationship with their mom. Or those of you who wanted to be moms but aren’t or aren’t yet. The worst of the worst clubs to belong to are those of you who have lost a child. My heart particularly holds space for you this weekend.

For the majority of us, whether we say so or not, Mother’s day is that day that invariably and ironically highlight the cracks in one of the most significant connections on earth. Even if there isn’t anything earth shattering happening, some of us are just struggling as a mom in general because, hello, it’s harder than we thought it would be. Then in the middle of all that intensity the Instagram posts start rolling in with all of your contacts posting their all perfect families in all perfect outfits eating all perfect brunches which is all just too much.

Bleh. I need a Mimosa just thinking about it.

To all of the above let’s add in my single mom-ness. Four years ago my kids went from having a dad that took them out to buy gifts to just floating around on their own and they didn’t really know what to do. I remember saying that it wasn’t a big deal and they didn’t need to get me anything but I woke up that first Mother’s Day morning with no cards and no partner that was making sure the things were said and the coffee was delivered and I just ached for all of it. Then I felt like a big baby for being hurt and when I said something to them about the possibility of next year being different, they felt absolutely horrible for not doing anything (even though I said don’t do anything). All of which made me feel monstrous for showing my disappointment and everyone ended up crying a lot. Remembering that stupid Mother’s Day breaks my heart for us. They were young teenagers with no money or direction, I was reeling from the recent separation and the whole thing was salt in the wound of our new family status that looked nothing like perfect Instagram posts. They ended up asking if they could please do a redo ( I am always here for the redo - repair), so the following Sunday there was candy and flowers and handmade cards all around that made me cry my eyeballs right out of my head for the right reasons.

**Hopefully this can be a bit of a PSA for any of you who know a single mom, especially a newly minted one: help her kids this week, for real, they need you. Don’t ask if they need help, just tell them you can take them shopping or meet them somewhere out. Even if it’s help buying a card and their moms favorite snacks, this will go a long way for everyone involved**

Now that we are past some of those terrible first holidays in the first year of terribleness and doom, it really is fun again. My kids conspire together and shop together and I’m scolded for buying myself anything in the month leading up to the big day and there is always gifts and handmade cards so amazing that they belong in a fireproof safe. It should be the scenario that perfect Instagram posts are made of but no, which leads me to my other fly in the ointment of Mothers day. See, in the meanest part of my brain, I start thinking about all the ways I have failed them and the regret I feel for each of my many mistakes. That hateful part of me doesn’t feel like I have earned celebration. (Now, if I heard any one of you said such nonsensical lunacy like this about yourself I would knock you straight into next week and lecture you to near death about how that’s just not true). But in my dark corners and late nights I worry. I’m the mom that read all the books because I wanted to get this right more than anything else. Annoyingly, that’s just impossible no matter how hard you try or how much you read. So my work (and maybe yours) is to give myself grace. To apologize and practice the well loved “redo - repair”. Quiet the rumination and remind myself that I don’t have to be perfect to be enough. That still feels like a lie sometimes, like it’s way too good to be true, but I know in my healing brain that it is. (Mimosa me).

All that to say, no matter where you land on this emotionally loaded day of expectations, guilt and grief, I hope you feel seen here. As I process out my own weird life I hope it creates space for you to feel safe and acknowledged in yours. Believe me, if you lived in my town and we both had a few minutes to spare, I would hug you so hard and ask you how you were really doing about Mother’s Day and listen to the weirdness as I made you a mimosa in the fancy crystal glasses (because I use those bad boys on plain, old regular days).

Since seeing you all is impossible, please be kind to yourself in the next week as it holds a lot of weight no matter how healed you are.

Happy Gentle Mother’s Day.

Hi there! I am so glad you are here in this weird space with me! I find myself in a bit of a hallway, transitioning from what I thought I knew to the ambiguous place I am heading. Here I’ll be retelling my many absurd mishaps ranging from the perils of dating apps to lawnmowers going down in flames. That coupled with my thoughts on parenting the mostly adult-ish kids in my house and whatever else flits across my radar as important. I assure you that it will be full of dark humor, as there is no other way to navigate my ridiculousness without it! There will also be run on sentences, made up words, em dashes and too many exclamation points (but that IS how I talk in real life!). (Also too many parentheses.)

I’ll offer coaching tips with all of my life lesson-y insights thrown in to my paid subscribers. (I know you are probably wondering why you would want help from someone who burns her own lawnmower down, and believe me, there are many days when I am giving advice to a client while furiously writing on my note pad in all caps “PHYSICIAN HEAL THYSELF!!” but I promise I know stuff!) I was certified as a Martha Beck life coach 20 years ago and five years ago became a certified CliftonStrengths™ consultant. It’s literally my favorite thing to share ways to improve all of our life experiences, so amidst the Tom foolery expect some real life examples of how things can and surprisingly do go right. I’ll also be sharing my favorite resources and maybe some of the products I think are worthy of your dollars (my Input Strength™ can do the research for you).

My biggest reason for posting here is an effort to be visible in a world where I have wanted to fade away. But if I am showing up here being my realest self, maybe you can be encouraged to be more of your real self, and then the whole world is better for it because we need the realest you. Fingers crossed you walk away with some legitimate tools or at least just have a good laugh (or cry) with me. If I meet any of you in real life that actually subscribe (paid or unpaid) to all of this I will give you the biggest squeeze ever (unless you have a cold or don’t like hugs - and in that case - I will keep it cool).

Welcome to my in-between.

Titles and bio’s are a weird-ish thing. Especially if you are a woman who grew up in the 80’s and were taught by your predominantly evangelical culture that you really shouldn’t take up space and above all you need to be meek and modest. That didn’t exactly leave very much room to chisel out an identity.

In this era of reexamining my selfhood and who I am and who I am becoming, I am most proud of the above award given to me by my middle child on mother’s day: “king pimp warrior mom”. Go ahead and put that one on my grave.

What titles are you most proud of and what parts of writing bio’s make you cringe with weirdness?

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