I cannot begin to explain how tired I am.

Physically, yes, but mostly because I am exhausted mentally. Emotionally.

If I could—like, literally could—I think I’d be done. That sounds dark and grim because it is. It’s also true.

Listen, I’m not going to be done because I cannot be done. I really don’t know what it is inside of me that will not allow me to give up.

Maybe my mother? I keep saying I never saw her fall apart. I know her life was hard, and sometimes I look at myself falling apart and wonder how I could possibly be like her. But maybe this is how. Maybe it isn’t that she never fell apart but maybe it’s the fact she kept going anyway… Maybe that’s the part of her I got.

I could have given up several times in my life, but only recently has that become something I actually sit with. I can feel how tired I am. I can know, completely, that I don’t want to keep doing this like this—and then wonder why, somehow, I still can’t give up.

I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m sure somebody out there would read that sentence and know exactly what I mean… Whether that person ever reads this is another question.

Because when I look backward now, I can see so much sadness in my life. I’ve figured things out. The lights have been turned on, and man, once they’re on… you see everything. You cannot unsee it.

I don’t know how to adequately explain the mindfuck of that. Because at first it’s like— when the lights come on— everything becomes so clear that it almost feels liberating. You think, Oh… Okay.
So that really did suck.
That really did hurt.
That really wasn’t all in my head.
It wasn’t just me.

There is freedom in finally understanding what happened to you, what has been happening around you, and sometimes even what you’ve been doing to survive it.

But then something strange happens… Nothing immediately changes. You just keep living there. Except now you’re living there with all the fucking lights on. And even if part of you wanted to turn them back off, you can’t.

Once you wake up and face your life, there is no going back to sleep. And this is where it gets really messed up, because I would never actually want to go back to sleep. I do remember that hell. I remember what it felt like not to understand why I hurt, why things felt wrong, why I kept questioning myself. I don’t want that back.

But sometimes I look around at this new, brightly lit version of everything and think:
Okay, but this fucking sucks too. Where is the happy middle? Where is the part where you see it, understand it, figure out how to get out of it, fix what you can fix, and then finally stop having to live inside it?

I know this part belongs to me. I know I have to figure out my own life. No one is coming to save me and I’m not sitting around waiting for someone to. I am figuring it out… One excruciating step at a time.

At this point, I’m not even asking life to suddenly become easy. I would just really appreciate it if it would stop hurting so much or knocking me down so goddamn often while I’m trying to get back on my feet.

Because I am trying, I keep getting up, I keep taking another step. I keep finding some tiny reason to believe something better exists on the other side of all this.

I stay positive, hell, I think I was born that way… Which is its own particular bitch when sometimes I really, desperately want to say: FUCK THIS ALL. I quit.

And apparently some obnoxiously hopeful little part of me is standing somewhere inside my brain going: Nope. Absolutely not. Keep moving.

And I do.

Being positive does not make life stop being hard nor does it magically solve anything. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to get you very fucking far at all. But it does attach you to this life. It keeps making you imagine another version of it. And then, just when you swear you don’t want to do this anymore, it refuses to let you give in.

I don’t really know what the point of writing all of this is. I’m not asking for sympathy. I don’t want this to sound like some vague “woe is me post”, and I don’t particularly want to list every struggle I’m carrying right now either… Partly because sometimes even I convince myself I’m being dramatic.

Then I wake up one morning feeling a little better. I think, Okay. I’ve got this.

Then I take a step forward and maybe I even feel good about it.

And then another thing comes flying out of nowhere and smacks me directly in the fucking face.

Womp. Womp.

I know. Life is hard. I know it isn’t only hard for me. There are people carrying things I know nothing about, just like there are things I’m carrying that they know nothing about.

I don’t know. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is me reaching for those people. Maybe I’m trying to sit beside somebody else who is exhausted and say: Yeah. Me too.

Sometimes that is what I need. I don’t need to hear that it could be worse. I don’t need someone reminding me that I’m strong. I don’t need someone scrambling around trying to find a brighter side for me to look at.

Believe me. I will find the brighter side. Because apparently I cannot fucking help myself.

Sometimes I just want somebody to hear me when I say: I am exhausted. And sometimes I want someone to nod, hold my hand, sit there beside me… And let it be hard. Not forever, just for a minute. Just let it suck without trying to make the sucking mean something. Let me hurt without reminding me how well I survive hurting. Sometimes “you’re strong” can start sounding almost cruel when what you are actually saying is I know I can carry it. I am telling you it is fucking heavy.

So, I already know I’ll keep going— that has never really been the problem. Sometimes I just need someone to understand how tired I am from having to.

love you, bye.

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!

There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write.
If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me!

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“I swear I left her by the river.”

Those are lyrics to the song “Hazard” by Richard Marx. It was on his album Rush Street, released in 1991. Depending on the month, I was either four or five years old.

I don’t know how much older I was when I remember my mom telling me she liked that song. It couldn’t have been much older because the song was still played all the time on the radio.

My mom was not one of those people who listened to a song and really paid attention to the lyrics or what they meant.
_{(Which— How does anyone do that????)}

I didn’t know that about her at the time, though.

I also didn’t realize how young I actually was when lyrics started hitting me the way they did. I can remember sitting in the back seat of the car as a very young child, hearing songs and hearing the meanings inside of them.

So when my mom said she liked “Hazard,” naturally, I wanted to listen to it and figure out why… I don’t think that was a conscious decision back then. Not as a five-, six-, maybe seven-year-old. But I’ve come to realize that now, if someone tells me they like a song, I want to listen to it because I’m interested in what it is they like about it.

What did they hear?
What made them feel something?
What part belonged to them?

So I’m pretty certain that’s what little me was doing too. But ufortunately for little me, that song scared the absolute shit out of me.

There was a woman. She went walking alone by the river one night. Then she ended up dead. There was a man singing about her. He was a suspect. He kept saying he left her by the river.

OH MY GOD DID HE KILL HER OR DIDN’T HE?
WHO KILLED HER?

The song is about more than that, and the lyrics actually tell a really good, dark story. None of that mattered to little me. There was a dead woman by a river, some guy may or may not have killed her, and apparently, I guess, we were just going to play this on the radio while I sat defenseless in the back seat of a car.

I did not like that song.
Ever.

And I swear it always came on when we were driving at night for whatever reason. In fact, it seems like we were always driving through some dark, wooded area when it played too, because apparently the universe has jokes and understood atmosphere.

I should also mention that, while writing this, I watched the music video for “Hazard” for the first time in my life. You know what? Thank fucking God five-year-old me did not have YouTube. Because, could you imagine?

Although, apparently, I didn’t need it. My brain had already taken the lyrics, cast the characters, scouted the creepy wooded location, and produced the entire murder mystery itself. So, the music video would have just provided production value.

And here is maybe the funniest part of all to me. I am such a lyric listener that you would think— at some point in the literal decades since— I would have actually listened to “Hazard” closely enough to hear the whole story. But nope. Apparently not.

Listening to it now, I’m realizing there are sadder parts I never really absorbed. He was already misunderstood. Mary seems to have been one of the few people who understood him. Then she dies, everyone assumes he killed her, and now he is alone again. Unless, of course, he actually killed her… WHICH I AM STILL UNCLEAR ABOUT.

But that almost feels like proof of how badly that song got me when I was little. If I had first heard it when I was older, I would have picked apart the whole thing.

But five-year-old me only heard:
She went walking alone by the river. Now she’s dead.

And so obviously that was enough information for my brain to close the case forever.

I never really told my mom why I hated it so much. I just told her I didn’t like it because it was scary. And truthfully, because she was not a lyric listener, I don’t even know if she knew all the words.

Which—side brain here—people who don’t listen to songs for the lyrics or to hear the meaning of them:

Do you still learn all the words?
Do you sing the words but not really think about what you’re singing?
Do you know them but just…not feel them?
Serious question.

Leave a comment

Fast-forward several years.
I’m older. I have a kid. The kid is around one, so I’m a relatively new momma myself. One day my mom, once again, tells me she likes a certain song.

She asks me if I’ve heard “If I Die Young” by The Band Perry… Nope.

She tells me it has good words.

At this point, I still don’t think I fully understood that my mother was not really a lyric listener. I say that because it wasn’t until later that I specifically asked her how she listened to music and she told me it was mostly like background noise… Which, okay mom, explains A LOT about the previous songs you liked that I hated.

Anyway.

One morning before class—because I was also a new mother who was still in college—I was sitting in the parking lot listening to the radio. And that song came on.

The opening is sad immediately. I mean… It is called If I Die Young, so I wasn’t exactly expecting sunshine and fucking daisies. Fine.

But then:

“Lord, make me a rainbow, I’ll shine down on my mother”
What????
Okay.
No.
Please don—

“She’ll know I’m safe with you when she stands under my colors”
Stop.
This is heartbreaking.

“Oh, and life ain’t always what you think it ought to be, no
Ain’t even gray, but she buries her baby”
NO.
I AM GOING TO THROW UP.

“The sharp knife of a short life
Well, I’ve had just enough time”
I HATE THIS SONG.

For the record, the lyrics are powerful. That is the whole entire point.
But nope.
No.
That song is not for Brittany.
Skip.
Every time.

Still.

And listen, I enjoy torturing myself with music. I will absolutely listen to songs that break my heart. Sometimes I will deliberately break my own heart with a song because apparently that is one of my hobbies and sometimes I just need a good cry?

But songs about losing a child? No. Hard pass.

I was legitimately pissed at my mom for suggesting it. Like—
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?
THIS IS DEVASTATING.

I had class, and then later, as soon as I saw her at home, I’m pretty sure I stomped up to her like:
“I HEARD THAT SONG. I HATED IT. WHY WOULD YOU MAKE ME LISTEN TO A SONG ABOUT A KID DYING?!”

She was a little caught off guard. And I don’t blame her.
Hello to you too, Brittany.

She told me she hadn’t really listened to the whole song. The part she was talking about was one specific line:
“And maybe then you’ll hear the words I’ve been singin’
Funny when you’re dead, how people start listenin’.”

Which— Yes. Okay. Powerful. Agreed.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT SOMEONE’S CHILD’S LIFE BEING CUT SHORT?

WHAT ABOUT THE RAINBOW?

SHE WANTS TO BE A RAINBOW TO SHINE DOWN ON HER MOTHER SO HER MOTHER KNOWS SHE’S SAFE AFTER SHE DIED.

OH GOD. 😭😭😭😭

She honestly had no idea the whole song was about any of that. She apologized because I was legitimately upset about having to EVER hear the song.
_{(Which is hilarious to me now.)}

I forgave her, I wasn’t actually mad at her. I just wished I had never taken her word for it and listened to the damn thing because I could have happily—much more happily, in fact—lived the rest of my life without ever knowing that song.

FUCK THAT SONG.

Except there was one time she surprised me.

She told me about a song called “In My Daughter’s Eyes” by Martina McBride. I really don’t know how much of that song she actually listened to either. I don’t know how many of the words she heard or how deeply she thought about them.

But the title said enough, she found enough in it to resonate with her. And enough to tell me that was how she felt. And thankfully… finally… here was one song my mom liked that didn’t terrorize me or destroy my heart.

My love language, personally, is music.

When I hear a song with lyrics that say something better than I ever could, I share it with the person those words belong to. If I tell you to listen to a song, or I tell you a song makes me think of you, definitely listen to the lyrics. There is a message there. I promise.

(In return, I’d die all over the place if someone did the same for me, but that is another story.)

For the record, I always want to know what songs the people I love listen to… Even if they aren’t as tuned into the lyrics as I am. _{(I don’t understand you people… But I accept you. I think.)}

Maybe just do me one favor? Before you tell me a song has great words, a beautiful message, or that you think I should listen to it, could you please perform a brief lyrical background check first?

Normally I love a good surprise… I simply prefer the surprise not be emotional devastation involving a dead woman by a river or someone burying their baby.

Thanks.

love you, bye.

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!

If you like essays about songs, mothers, tiny childhood brains, emotional devastation, and the occasional dead woman by a river, you may enjoy it here.

If you enjoy being emotionally ambushed by songs and then reading someone else overthink them for several thousand words, welcome.

There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write.
If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me!

Subscribe now

Everything I write stays free.

Paid subscriptions/supporting my spark just help support the time, energy, and questionable emotional decisions that go into making more of it.

💛Thank you for being here! If this resonates with you, then that means I see you. If you think someone might need to be seen too, please take a moment to share my heart’s work. 🫶🏻

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I haven’t really written in a while, and I don’t know why.

I haven’t even really thought about it.

I haven’t thought about writing.

It’s not that I haven’t had any thoughts. I always have thoughts. But I haven’t had any thoughts that have made me want to write. I don’t know why. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with all these thoughts.

It’s not even that I don’t want to write about them.

It’s not even that I don’t want to write. But I also don’t want to write. But it’s not that I don’t want to write.

There is a coherent thought there and a difference between those sentences, and they make sense.

At least to me.

And as I write right now, I’m not even sure what I’m writing for. Just the fact that I’ve opened a Google Doc for maybe the first time in nine, maybe ten, days.

It’s not that long of a stretch, but it feels that way because during those days I haven’t even thought about writing.

To be honest, before writing right now, I wasn’t thinking about writing either. I was just thinking about how I hadn’t written.

Then I put those words into words, and that is technically writing. But it’s not doing anything.

No thought to stretch or release or dig into or under. Just the fact that I’m not really sure why I haven’t written, and I’m not sure what I would even want to write.

But now, as I’m writing, I’m being covered in these tiny-ass biting bugs who are interfering while I try to even write.

They must be active during a certain time of day because when I first got here, they weren’t bothering me at all. Within the past few minutes, though, I’ve been smacking them away and more keep coming back.

Which is annoying because I wasn’t really ready to go. I was enjoying sitting here writing about not writing.

So maybe I guess I wanted to write. And it just took a little graveyard sitting with my mother, and some peace and quiet, to drag it out of me.

And maybe I needed the reminder, when the bugs started biting, that I wanted to all along.

I don’t know how to finish that thought.

But this writing is finished because I cannot take being the feast of choice for these tiny aggravating bugs any longer. Their bites are making my skin burn.

Oh well.

I broke the streak.

love you, bye.

Intro: Going to try to record this one while it is 8:04 at night and I still have children who are awake. So, I will probably get interrupted and have to restart. Anyway. I um, was told that I should do more voiceovers. So I will.

I don’t know how I feel about doing them on my more serious crap, but stuff seems easier. Anyway.

Taytum is my goofy kid. She’s also my very obviously neurodivergent kid.

Testing and results are pending on a reevaluation for my other daughter, Tanner, whose ADHD signs are quieter— the kind you notice when you know what you’re looking for.

Taytum, however? Well.
Taytum might as well walk around wearing a neon flashing sign that says:
HELLO. MY NAME IS TAYTUM AND I HAVE ADHD. LIKE, REALLY BAD.

The hyperactivity. The impulsivity. The complete and utter inability to executive function sometimes. I’m telling you, nobody meets that kid and thinks, Hmm. Are we sure?

I’m neurodivergent too, by the way. I had the hyperactivity and impulsivity as a kid, just nowhere near as loudly as Taytum does— which is probably one of the reasons mine was missed.

Anyway.

And sometimes, when two neurodivergent people live under the same roof—specifically a mother and daughter— we trigger the absolute fuck out of each other.

Mostly she triggers me. But to be fair, I guess, I’ve had a lifetime to learn how to deal with being overstimulated ^{(undiagnosed and untreated for the most of it, mind you)}, and I’m the adult, so technically I’m supposed to handle it better.

But holy moly.

That child can get on my ever-loving nerves. There are things she does that make me feel like my head might actually detach from my body in the moment, only for enough time to pass that I can look back and think, Okay. That was actually hilarious.

…Just not while it’s happening.

Recently, my girls and I took an extended-weekend trip to Michigan City— a little end-of-summer getaway before school started.

Tanner, freshly sixteen, got plenty of driving practice and drove the entire way because I was clearly born to be a passenger princess and I do not enjoy driving.

Somewhere along the five-and-a-half-hour journey, Taytum spoke up from the backseat.

“Mom, look.” She held out her phone.

On the screen was an incredibly detailed, close-up photograph of a mosquito sitting on her leg. And I mean detailed. iPhone cameras have gotten entirely too good because I swear I could practically make out the little fucker’s eyeballs.

“Kill it,” I told her. And I assumed she did. Which was stupid of me, because I know my child.

Taytum hates bugs, generally speaking, but she also loves living things with a level of compassion that obviously extends to insects now. Including mosquitoes.

Which, excuse me, but why do mosquitoes even exist? Spiders? Fine. Spiders have jobs. They eat mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes bite you, drink your blood, make you itch, and I think were possibly created by God, or the universe— whatever you believe— as a sick joke.

At some point later in the drive, Taytum mentioned the mosquito… again. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember asking,
“I thought you killed it?”

And she said she had. Great. Mosquito dead. Story over… Except this is Taytum, so obviously no.

We finally made it to Michigan City. I’d ordered groceries through Instacart, but something went wrong with the scheduled delivery, now it was coming tomorrow, and I had two hungry kids. So around 11 p.m., we got back into the car and headed to Raising Cane’s for dinner.

It was vacation. Time doesn’t count. Calories don’t count. Rules are fake.

On the way back from there, Tanner suddenly said, completely nonchalantly: “Taytum, I think your mosquito is biting me.”

My entire body snapped around, “WHAT?”

Then, very what-the-fuckly: “I thought you killed it?!”

Why I was surprised is beyond me.

Taytum answered like this was the most normal sentence a person could possibly say: “No. I felt sorry for Lil Jim Bob.” …Of course she named the mosquito. That part wasn’t even surprising.

What bothered me was the name. “Jim Bob is the dumb name of the dad from the Duggar family,” I told her, rolling my eyes.

“Lil,” she corrected me.

Oh. Excuse me. Lil Jim Bob. My mistake.

Then I got bitten. And now we had confirmation: Lil Jim Bob was alive, thriving, and feasting on my family. Specifically Tanner and me, because the two of us are always the ones mosquitoes destroy.

Taytum? Barely. Ever. Gets. Bitten. Which made the fact that she had spared him feel even more offensive.

“I’m getting bit now!” I announced, scratching at myself and grumbling that she should have just killed the damn thing in the first place.

But Taytum always has an answer. Because she’s Taytum. Because of course she does. Apparently mosquitoes are just “insect vampires,” and she likes them.

I informed her that she absolutely does not like mosquitoes because mosquitoes bite people. She said she likes getting bitten. Fine.

“They make you itch.”

“I like to be itchy!”

Oh, for fuck’s sake, kid.

I should probably mention that by this point my ADHD medication had worn completely off, it was late, my groceries had been rescheduled, I was hungry, I was being actively eaten by a mosquito that had absolutely no business still being alive, and my daughter was passionately defending his right to exist. My mood was deteriorating quickly. Bless Tanner, because she noticed.

While Taytum continued explaining the virtues of LIL JIM BOB, Tanner finally cut in: “Taytum. Hush about the stupid mosquito.”

Thank you. Somebody in this car loves me.

Eventually we made it back to the Airbnb and as we opened the van door, I saw the little bastard fly out.

Lil Jim Bob had traveled all the way from Evansville, Indiana, to Michigan City. Five and a half hours and against all odds— he was a survivor, an immigrant, a pioneer.

Apparently we had not taken a family vacation. Nope. We had relocated a mosquito.

“I saw him fly out!” I announced.
Taytum lit up. “Yay!”

I rolled my eyes so far into the back of my head I’m fairly certain I temporarily lost vision and I’m surprised they didn’t get stuck like that. ^{(Something my grandma would tell me was going to happen anytime I rolled my eyes or crossed them. Anyone else?)}

Then I went inside and informed my lovely, darling children that I was going to eat and go directly to bed because nobody needed me biting anyone’s head off. They know when Momma is done.

Well…One of them does. The other will continue discussing insect vampires until somebody physically removes her from the room.

The best part of the whole thing happened sometime in the middle of the night though.

I woke up, kicked my socks off, and felt it. My ankle itched. Immediately, half asleep and irritated, I thought: Ughhh. Taytum. Not even the mosquito. Taytum.

And lying there in the dark, scratching the tiny welt Lil Jim Bob left behind, I had one of those little moments of motherhood where two things were completely true at once:

My kid drives me absolutely fucking insane sometimes.
And God, I love the ever-loving crap out of her.

Lil Jim Bob made it all the way to Michigan City. And somehow, the little fucker still managed to leave me with a souvenir.

**Audio note: I know. I called him Jim Bob instead of Lil Jim Bob once. I heard it too. It’s fine. We’re practicing “good enough” around here.

love you, bye

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

Subscribe now

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful. And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

💛Thank you for being here! If this resonates with you, then that means I see you. If you think someone might need to be seen too, please take a moment to share my heart’s work. 🫶🏻

🗣️Talk to me— I love to talk and I promise I don’t bite.

Comments and my DMs are always open if you read something of mine that tickled your brain, touched your heart, made you laugh, cry, or you just wanna say hi!

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Author’s note: This is not a perfectly polished reading. I talk fast, I stumble, and sometimes my mouth is apparently just trying to keep up with whatever the hell my brain is doing.
But… hi. This is me.
My actual voice reading my actual writing, and I figured the silliest thing I’ve posted lately was probably the safest place to try it.

INTRO: Fingers crossed that this is the last attempt at my first attempt at a voiceover of my own writing, with my own voice. It is probably one of the silliest things that I’ve actually posted, but I think that’s why I’m taking the chance and doing a voiceover.

Also, just a side note here, I say the word “niche”, and I pronounce it as such because Google told me you could pronounce it as “neesh” or “nitch”. I like “neesh” better, just saying.

Anyway, that was the intro. Here we go.

Do you ever get so tired of writing about feelings and grief and healing and blah blah blah that you’re like:

HELLO. I DON’T WANT TO MAKE THIS MY CONTENT.

Goddamn.

I SAID I DON’T HAVE A NICHE. And yet here I am, niche-ing it the fuck up while apparently processing some deep shit.

I would rather not ALWAYS write about this. But how do you not write about it when that is where your brain is? Where your brain has stayed. Where it has apparently taken up permanent residence for, I don’t know, months? TOO LONG. That’s all I know.

I annoy the shit out of myself with my writing sometimes. I really do.

I have a sense of humor. I have a huge imaginative side of me, and she’s actually a lot of fun. Super weird. But fun nonetheless. And weird is absolutely fun, and if you disagree then, well, maybe YOU’RE the one who isn’t fun. What now??

Anyway.

I am tired of writing about feelings and grieving and trying to heal and all the other crap I literally just listed in the first sentence but am apparently repeating because I have now decided to answer my own question.

…YES.

I do get SO TIRED of writing like this that sometimes I want to throw my laptop across the room and smash it with a sledgehammer. Lucky for me, I don’t own a sledgehammer.

Because I am a person of positivity by nature, and I do know that one day— probably sooner rather than later— I’d want to write again. And then I’d have smashed my laptop into tiny pieces. And I’m too broke to buy another one.

So. Crisis averted. Great.

If I’m so tired of writing like this, WHY DO I KEEP WRITING LIKE THIS?

WELL, I DON’T KNOW, CAROL.

Maybe because, like I said, THIS IS WHERE MY BRAIN IS.

I don’t choose that part either, in case you were wondering. I don’t choose to have all the shit constantly circling my orbit… constantly circling my orbit.
Trust me. If I could shoot some kind of thing into space and knock all of it off its path, I fucking would.

SOMETIMES MY METAPHORS ARE SO DUMB.
Whatever.You get the point, right?

^{º º º}
Everyone always has something going on. Duh. LIFE.

If someone has absolutely nothing going on, they’re either delusional, lying to you, or dead. And by “going on,” I don’t automatically mean everyone has something awful happening that they hate.

I literally mean whatever is going on in their L-I-F-E.

Sometimes the lucky ones have THE BEST things going on. They’re surrounded by so much good luck and good things and happiness that I WANT TO PUKE.

What??
That’s better than saying I WANT TO PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE, right?…Okay then.

Except I’m kidding. Calm down.

I actually think it’s fucking fantastic when people have that much good going for them. As long as you’re not a yucky, icky, asshole-type person, I wish you peace, love, happiness, good fortune, excellent parking spots, and whatever else your little heart desires. Seriously. Truly. Honestly.

And guess what? I wish that for myself too. Because I am also not a yucky, icky, asshole-type person. So of course I do.

This is not a competition. I am not trying to compare my shit to his shit, her shit, or anybody else’s shit.

Right now, I just have A LOT OF SHIT. If you also have a lot of shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you feel me. And if you need an ear, hi. I’m here.

Somehow, one of my superpowers is being a damn good listening ear and helping people through their shit while simultaneously going through my own shit. I can somehow find all the time, energy, space, and presence in the world for someone else’s bullshit while having DAMN NEAR NONE LEFT FOR MY OWN.

And that isn’t because I feel like I have to anymore. Before? Yeah, sure. I would absolutely ignore myself and my shit because I thought everybody else deserved more of me than I did.

But now? Now I’m just tired of giving myself to me while myself is tired of DEALING WITH BULLSHIT.

So bring me everybody else’s bullshit… Wait…
I KNOW.

Someone— anyone— take my bullshit, and I’ll go find somebody else’s bullshit to take on. Seems fair.

Then I sit here and realize what I just said and immediately become annoyed with myself.

BRITTANY. SERIOUSLY. REALLY.

SHUT.

THE.

ACTUAL.

FUCK.

UP.

Because you, sister, do not actually have it THAT bad. You, dearest brat, would not want to trade places with somebody who has it WORSE than you.

NOPE. I would not.

Please know that my complaining and occasionally wallowing on the metaphorical floor like a giant child does not mean it is lost on me that somewhere out there, a whole lot of people have it much worse than I do.

And you know what? I wish they didn’t. I wish they didn’t have it worse than me. I wish they didn’t have it at all. I WISH NOBODY HAD ANY BULLSHIT, EVER, IN THEIR ENTIRE LIFE.

Like, whoever designed life— why did we decide bullshit needed to exist?? Why is that a feature????

Same question I have for the person who invented the five-day workweek instead of, um, hello, FOUR. Because to me, four makes significantly more sense. Four workdays still means you work more days than you rest, play, stare into space, or whatever else you do when you’re not working.

Four days of work out of a seven-day week still gives you fewer days off. YOU GET THREE. That is the math. I suck at math, but I know that. So why five?? Who approved this??

Anyway.

Probably because LIFE COMES WITH BULLSHIT. Apparently that was part of the design. Very rude.

But I do feel a little better after throwing a tantrum about all of it.

So yes. Technically, I am still writing inside the “niche” I keep insisting I DON’T HAVE.

Except this time I didn’t process it. I COMPLAINED ABOUT PROCESSING IT. Growth? Yes?? No?? Who cares.

WHATEVERRR.

I just let it the fuck loose because I wanted to. It probably sucks. Oh well.

Won’t be the first time. Won’t be the last. I’m an imperfect human. Which makes this perfectly on brand.

LOVE YOU, BYE.

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

Subscribe now

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful.
And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

🗣️Talk to me— I love to talk and I promise I don’t bite.

Comments and my DMs are always open if you read something of mine that tickled your brain, touched your heart, made you laugh, cry, or you just wanna say hi!

Leave a comment

I miss my mom so much sometimes it literally guts me.

I wasn’t going to write about the grief yet. I was saving that for a special edition post on the anniversary—which is a sick fucking word for it—of the day she died. September 25th, to be exact. Then maybe it would make sense why I was pouring my heart out onto a screen. Because that would be the day I had officially been without her for three years. Emotions are supposed to be raw on days like that. Except mine are raw now. Right now.

I keep thinking maybe it’s because September is getting close. Like maybe my body knows the date is coming even when I’m not consciously thinking about it. I don’t know. I keep looking for a reason the grief is so goddamn loud and alive right now.

But this isn’t really just right now. The grief has been sitting heavily on my shoulders for months and it doesn’t quite feel like the grief I had when I first lost her. Sometimes, if I’m being honest, it feels like it hurts more… Which is confusing because time is supposed to make things easier, right?

…Okay, but no.

I think most of us agree that time does not heal everything. Still, the consensus is mostly clear: the more time moves forward, the more you adapt… Maybe that’s the word. You adapt to your new fucking shitty normal. The one without your mom. The one without my mom. So the fact that almost three years later I sometimes find myself sobbing and needing her more than I think I have since she died is confusing.

I’m used to getting used to things. I have gotten used to a lot of things. In fact, since losing her, I have probably done more healing than I did during my entire life while she was still here. And that’s the part that really fucking sucks. I’ll probably get into that eventually. Just not today.

What I mean is that I have sat with a lot of shit, a lot of hurt, a lot of things people did to me… And somehow, I forgave a lot of them. Period— forgave. And I don’t really know how I did it, so unfortunately I don’t have some inspirational five-step forgiveness program to offer you. Maybe I just finally understood that forgiveness wasn’t really for them. I could go deeper into that. But again, not today.

Sorry if you were looking for the answer. I don’t typically write to give people answers anyway. I write through my life. Someone once told me I would never grow much of a following that way because people want answers. Well... Guess that just won’t be working for me. Because right now, I don’t have an answer, I just miss my mom.

I am not used to her being gone. Nope. Not one bit. I don’t mean I’m not used to the literal fact that she isn’t here— my brain understands that now. I don’t automatically grab my phone to text her when something happens anymore. I did that when the grief was new. My brain learned and we don’t make that mistake anymore.

But I am not used to her being gone because I am not used to what life feels like without her in it. And I don’t only mean the pain of losing her, I mean every other kind of pain too.

Everyday shit and everyday overwhelm and everyday heartbreak… And just everyday life being life, and sometimes being way too fucking much.

All of it hurts differently without my mom. My constant. I know now, more than I ever could have while she was alive, that she truly was my constant.

And yes, I know. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
If you are considering offering that little nugget of advice to someone currently grieving, please don’t. Actually, fuck you. Even if you mean well. You can absolutely say it about yourself and something you have personally realized— but do not say that shit to someone sitting in grief because I guaran-fucking-tee they already know.

Anyway.

I knew my mom was my constant while she was alive. That woman was there for me through anything and I always knew that. But you absolutely cannot know what the absence of something like that feels like until there is an absence. Even when you appreciated it while you had it and even when you knew.

And listen, just because my mom was always there for me does not mean she always got it right. That is not me criticizing my dead mother. News flash: no one is perfect. Including her. Including me.

I had a complicated childhood. My mom spent a lot of her life trying to keep my father content. A lot of her attention went toward him when, yes, there were times I needed it more. For a long time I couldn’t understand why she kept choosing him over me. I was angry with her for that. And honestly…I did feel neglected, I did feel unseen. Those parts are true.

But the older I’ve gotten— and especially after becoming a mother myself— I’ve been able to see something I couldn’t see then. She wasn’t choosing him over me, she was trying to keep the peace.

Her thinking was basically:

If he’s content, he isn’t blowing up.
If he isn’t blowing up, he isn’t terrorizing the house.
If he isn’t terrorizing the house, he isn’t screaming profanities and horrible things at people.

And one of those people she was trying to protect was me.

Was it the right way? Mostly, probably not. Not all the time. I wish more than anything she had known she didn’t have to live that way. I wish she had known she had other choices. I wish she had known she deserved other choices. But she didn’t, she was doing what she knew how to do. And man, is there a lot of messy, complicated heartache inside finally understanding that.

The neglect was real and the not seeing me enough was real. But the part where I thought she was simply choosing him instead of me, well, I just don’t believe that anymore. She was trying to choose me— she was just doing it the only way she knew how.

There is another whole story inside that realization and I’ll tell you sometime. Strangely enough, forgiving my mother helped me understand that she was still teaching me. And still even now.

So yes… Things went wrong, she got things wrong. And still— she was there. Even when she didn’t know what to do, she was there.

My mother may be the clearest example I have ever known of a person trying to do the best she could while holding way too goddamn much. I see that so clearly now. And it makes me miss her more than any collection of words I put on this screen could ever explain.

Without her now, I know what it feels like not to have a constant and I know how lonely that is. I know what it feels like when there is no one who is trying, failing, trying again, getting it wrong, trying again—simply because they care about you and desperately want you to be okay. Actually, there is no failure in that. Because that is caring and that is love.

When it gets hard, you don’t stop.

When you don’t know what to say, you don’t stop.

When someone you love is hurting and you don’t fully understand it, you don’t have to understand it— you just don’t stop.

My mom wasn’t big on words like I am. She didn’t sit me down and have giant heart-to-hearts the way I do with my girls. She didn’t give me long speeches about mistakes she had made or tell me stories about everything she wished she had done differently. (Which, now that I think about it, may be exactly why she taught me to do that.)

But there was never one single doubt in my mind that my mother loved me and cared about me with every fiber of her being. I know the kind of love a mother has for her children because I am one and I do not have a single doubt that my mother loved me as fiercely as I love my own two girls.

People have had a way of making me feel like I am hard to love. Like I expect too much, like I need too much, like I need someone to always know the right thing to say.

I don’t.

My mother is proof that I don’t. There were plenty of times I went to her and spilled my guts and she didn’t say much of anything back. But not once— not one fucking time— did I think she wasn’t listening. She took it in and she held it.

She held my hurt.
She held my anger.
She held the same stories I brought her over and over again.
She held all of it and I knew she did because I could feel it.

And I can’t stop thinking about how much her heart probably broke every time I came to her with the same: I’m not okay. Over. And over. And over again.

Maybe that was the difference? Her heart hurt because mine did? As a mom, I think so. I think that sounds accurate because she loved me enough that my pain registered somewhere inside her.

I think about how heavy that must have been for her… To be my mom and to want desperately to fix things she couldn’t fix. I understand a little bit of that now because I’ve had tastes of it with my own girls and their mental-health struggles. It’s that horrible mother feeling of: Please let me take this from you. And not being able to.

My girls are still young which means hopefully I have time. Time to help them, time to learn them, and time to get things wrong and come back.

My mom didn’t get that time with me because she had to leave this world while I was still in the dark. Before I figured out so many of the things I understand now and before I dragged so many old hurts into the light and finally looked at them. Finally. It took a long time, and time is what she did not have enough of. And now I’m not quite so much in the dark…. But she isn’t here.

I would give almost anything to have her beside me during this part of my life. I think the cruelest piece of all of it is knowing that I may have only gotten here because my world shattered when she died. Losing my constant forced me to find parts of myself I had never needed— or maybe never been able— to find before. That feels so fucking unfair. Unfair to me and unfair to her.

I don’t want to make it sound like I know exactly what I’m doing now. That is laughable because I definitely don’t. But I think differently now and I see things differently. I know myself in ways I didn’t before. I have also stopped believing some things about myself that nearly ruined me, and I have started trusting things I spent most of my life questioning.

I know that is progress. But progress doesn’t always feel like progress while you’re inside of it. Sometimes it feels like nothing even close to progress. Sometimes it just feels like being even more aware of everything that hurts. Because seeing something clearly does not guarantee it will feel freeing. Sometimes seeing clearly feels fucking awful because now you can’t unsee it.

Most of the time I still have no idea where I’m going. I just know I’m not where I was. Meanwhile I’m being asked to carry so goddamn much without the person who used to be my constant. So there are days when all of this growth does not feel impressive to me. It feels like confusion, exhaustion,and anger.

It’s heavy in a whole new way— being lost in a life I understand better than I used to but still don’t always know how to move through. If my mom were here, I think she would have seen the progress inside of that. She would have known that me saying, I don’t know what I’m doing, does not mean I haven’t changed.

She knew the woman I was before. She knew the things I believed. She knew how often I came to her completely certain that everything was my fault. So she would know what it means that I don’t believe that anymore. She would know what it means that I can see something clearly now even when seeing it hurts. She would know how much work exists inside the fact that I am lost in a completely different place than I used to be.

I think she would see me on one of the days when I swear I’m getting nowhere and somehow still know how far I’ve come because she would know what she was looking at. And she would be proud of me. I know she would.

That’s the part that hurts. There is something incredibly lonely about changing your entire life from the inside while the person standing closest to you doesn’t seem to see the breaking that came before it— or the amount of work it took to put yourself back together differently afterward.

I have spent so much of this part of my life feeling unseen. Not just unseen in the hurt, unseen in the becoming. My mom would have seen it. She would have known what some of these realizations cost me because she heard the pain before I had words for any of it.

She heard the same stories, the same I’m not okay over and over again. She knew the version of me who was still desperately trying to figure out why everything hurt so much. So she would have understood exactly how far I had come and she would have known this didn’t happen easily.

She would have known how many times I had to fall apart to start putting myself back together differently.

She would have seen the things I stopped carrying. She would have heard the things I finally named. She would have noticed the things I forgave and the things I finally stopped forgiving over and over again.

She would have seen me becoming someone I don’t think I ever knew I could become. Although I think maybe she did. Maybe she knew before I did and all she wanted was for me to find her— me.

I used to worry that I depended on my mom too much and maybe— no, probably— sometimes I did. But I understand that differently now too because my mom did not do everything for me.

I was still carrying a lot while she was alive. I was making decisions, raising children, surviving things, fixing problems… Doing all the things I somehow convinced myself she had made easier simply because I could call her when I couldn’t breathe through them. She wasn’t carrying my life but she was making sure I didn’t have to carry it alone. There is a difference and it is a really fucking big one.

I think losing her is the only reason I finally realized how strong I am. Which is cruel because she is not the full reason I became strong, I already was. She just stood close enough that I didn’t have to feel the full weight of my own strength all the time. And now I do.

Now I know what it feels like to carry the same kinds of things without anyone beside me who is genuinely affected by how heavy they are. Maybe that is exactly why everything feels heavier now… I didn’t suddenly become responsible for my own life when my mom died, I had always been responsible for it. I just lost the person who made sure responsibility never felt exactly like abandonment.

And I would not have had to become this strong if she were still here. Except at the same time I guess I was already this strong. I just didn’t know it. But I’m pretty sure she did, I think she always knew it, she just didn’t think I needed to carry it on my own regardless.

And of course there is another impossible part of this. If she were here, this would all be easier. I would not have had to feel this strong and this tired in the first fucking place. I wouldn’t have had to become quite so good at carrying myself because I would still have somewhere safe to put some of the weight.

Losing her is tangled up in the person I am becoming now. Her death shattered something in me badly enough that I finally started looking at parts of my life I had been surviving instead of examining… And I hate that.

I hate that something so devastating became part of what woke me up. I hate that I had to lose my constant to start realizing how much I had been abandoning myself. I hate that her absence is part of why I finally understand my own strength. And I hate even more that the person whose absence forced so much of this change is not here to see any of it.

I don’t want to go to her with the same questions anymore. I want to sit beside her and tell her what I figured out. I want to tell her I understand things I didn’t understand then. I want to tell her I understand her differently. I want to tell her I’m sorry for the years I thought she chose him over me— I want to tell her I understand why I thought that too.

I want to tell her that I know both things can be true.

That I was hurt.
That she loved me.

—and—

That she got things wrong.
That she never stopped trying.

I want to tell her some of the things she spent years watching break me don’t own me in quite the same way anymore. I want to tell her that I finally know I was strong all along.

I want to tell her that apparently she wasn’t doing everything for me after all. I want to tell her that I know she was just making sure I never had to do everything alone.

And God, I still need that, I still need her. Figuring something out doesn’t make it stop hurting and knowing why doesn’t mean you stop needing care. Her care.

Maybe that is exactly why the grief has been so loud lately. I’m not only grieving the woman who used to listen while I told her I wasn’t okay, maybe I’m grieving the fact that she never got to hear me say: Mom, I think I understand now.

She was my constant while I was lost. She saw so much of the pain. She knew the version of me who hadn’t found the words yet. And now that I have some of them— now that I think differently, now that I see differently, now that I am still lost sometimes but at least lost somewhere new— she isn’t here.

She didn’t get to see what I did with it. She didn’t get to see what I am still doing with it. She won’t get to see what I am going to do with it. She didn’t get to be my witness.

And maybe that is why I miss her most right now. Not— her— because I need someone to tell me where to go, or someone to fix it, or even someone with the right words.

I miss the person who knew where I started well enough to look at me now—even when I’m crying, even when I’m exhausted, even when I’m saying I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing—and still know how far I’ve come. She would be the person who always knew I was strong, even before I realized it myself, and even after that, she would still be the person who refused to let me carry all the weight.

I miss my mom.

So, so, so fucking much.

love you, bye.

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

Subscribe now

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful.
And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

🗣️Talk to me— I love to talk and I promise I don’t bite.

Comments and my DMs are always open if you read something of mine that tickled your brain, touched your heart, made you laugh, cry, or you just wanna say hi!

Leave a comment

I am a genuinely kind person. That is a statement, not a question. It isn’t even an opinion.

Like almost everything else about myself, I spent way too many years wondering whether it was true. Whether I really was kind or whether I had somehow convinced myself I was a better person than I actually was.

I’m telling you, nearly every terrible thing I believed about myself came from somewhere… from someone. But I held onto those things and repeated them to myself far longer than the abuse itself lasted.

I think that might be one of the deepest hells a person has to drag themselves out of— the pits of their own mind. Especially when they hate themselves down there.

Kindness is huge to me. Maybe the biggest thing and probably one of the first things I notice about another person.

And there’s another thing I know about myself now: I will never be the unkind person first. Ever. I genuinely don’t think I’m built that way.

How someone can walk into an interaction with another human being and just decide to be an asshole for no reason absolutely blows my fucking mind.

I can have a terrible day. I can be tired, overstimulated, angry, distracted, sad, or quietly wishing every person within a five-mile radius would please stop requiring things from me and just leave me the hell alone.

I might not be particularly warm that day. I might be quieter. My face might accidentally tell on me... But there is a difference between having a bad day and making someone else have one. I know how to say, It’s not you, it’s me, and actually mean it. If I’m off, I don’t need to make you responsible for whatever happened before you walked into the room.

But being intentionally mean first just because I can? Because I’m irritated? Because someone else pissed me off? Because making another person feel smaller might make me feel bigger for thirty seconds?

Yeah, no. I can’t do that.

Honestly, I think I could be friends with most anyone.

You don’t have to think like me. You don’t have to live like me. You don’t have to have my personality. We don’t even have to agree on most things. Just don’t be a genuine asshole.

My bar for people is literally on the fucking floor. Nobody even has to limbo. Just stop digging. That’s it. That’s the entrance requirement.

I think maybe that’s why everyday kindness hits me as hard as it does. There are these tiny blinks of life with people I’ll probably never know… Someone working the drive-thru who compliments my sunglasses. A stranger revering over the tattoos on my arm and asking about them. A cashier looking at whatever weird assortment of groceries I’m buying and striking up a thirty-second conversation while she scans them.

Tiny things.

They don’t have to do them. They just do. And maybe that’s why they hit me the way they do. I get this little rush of warmth through my body, almost like the feeling of a really good hug when you needed one more than you realized.

Maybe you know that feeling. Maybe you don’t. Maybe it sounds ridiculous. Whatever. That’s fine too.

But I can’t get enough of it. Honestly, I might be chasing that feeling more than almost anything else in life… For one tiny moment, another human being decided to be kind to me when there was absolutely nothing in it for them. Then the world gets lighter for a second.

I don’t need to know whether that cashier is an angel in every other area of her life. Because maybe she screams at people in traffic. Or maybe she refuses to return shopping carts. ^{(She works at a grocery store, so I hope not...)} Maybe she has some absolutely terrible opinion I would rather never hear.

I don’t care.

In that moment— with me— she was kind. And that moment gets to be exactly what it was.

People I actually have to know are different.

Coworkers. Church people. Other parents. The fucking PTA… People who enter your life because circumstances keep putting you in the same room and with those people, I’m more guarded.

I can see kindness with my eyes.

Smile.
Check.

Warm greeting.
Check.

Friendly body language.
Check.

Saying all the correct nice-person words.
Check.

Meanwhile, there are two separate conversations happening inside me.

My head: Seems nice.

My body: Mm. I don’t like this.

^{(And yes, I realize my head and my body are both technically me. I have an entire explanation for how my internal committee operates, but unless you want a dissertation on that, stay with me here. )}
Because there is also somehow a third me standing between the two of them trying to decide which bitch knows what she’s talking about.

Usually, I’m cautious with anyone I know I’ll have to interact with repeatedly. But every once in a while, somebody sets off this quiet little red light inside me. Nothing dramatic really. No sirens. Just… Something is off.

Those are also— hilariously— often the people everybody else TOTALLY LOVES. Which does not help. Everyone is telling me how wonderful they are while I’m sitting there internally going: Where exactly are we getting that?

So then I do what I spent most of my life doing… I question myself.
Maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe I’m being dramatic. Maybe I’m projecting something. Maybe everyone else sees something I don’t.

So I try. I really do. I stop leading with the feeling and let my brain talk louder.
See? She’s nice.
Everyone likes her.
That interaction was completely normal.
Stop being weird, Brittany.

Eventually the red light dims but it doesn’t disappear. Actually I just get better at ignoring it.

And then Miss— or Mister— Nicey-Nice does the thing… The thing that suddenly makes everything snap into focus. And, even worse, sometimes they do the thing directly to me.

Then my head and body finally reunite like two divorced parents who have decided to set aside their differences for the sake of saying: I told you so… Which is really rich coming from my head because she was absolutely questioning the whole operation five minutes ago, but sure. Welcome back to Team Body.

And now all of me knows— there it fucking is. Verified. I’m not standing there wondering why I couldn’t see what everyone else saw anymore. I’m standing there wondering how everyone else can’t see what I do.

Sometimes a few people can. They’ll tell me quietly and privately. They’ll make the face— you know the face. But publicly? Nothing. And I think those people sometimes annoy me even more than the ones who genuinely don’t see it, because I have a very complicated relationship with indifference when the moment calls for none.

I’m not particularly good at pretending something is fine once I know it isn’t.

That doesn’t mean I immediately burn the whole village down because I give people chances. Probably more than I should. Actually, you know what? Definitely more than I should.

For a long time, I confused that with kindness too.
Give another chance.
Understand where they’re coming from.
Maybe they’re having a hard time.
Maybe they didn’t mean it that way.
Maybe soften.
Maybe forgive.
Maybe try again. And again… And sometimes again.

That wasn’t always kindness. Sometimes that was me abandoning myself and giving it a prettier name. I had to learn the difference.

The version of me standing here now usually gives people another chance. One, maybe two. But I’m paying so much attention during the second one. And once I know? I know.

That’s also when my kindness can start looking a little less kind from the outside. I have a mouth on me. My bark is vicious. I have no idea about my bite because, thankfully, I have never literally had to sink my teeth into another human being… For the record, I’d like to keep that streak going. I am a lover, not a fighter— by nature. Please note the qualifier.

I shit-talk. Abso-fucking-lutely.

I can be petty. I can be mean when I’m angry. Then I can tell my kids to turn the other cheek and then immediately call somebody an asshole in the privacy of my own home. I’ve wondered whether that makes me hypocritical. How can kindness be one of my deepest values while I’m also standing in my kitchen saying,
This bitch again?

But I don’t think those things actually cancel each other out. Being kind does not mean I never get angry when someone is unkind to me. It doesn’t mean I have to like everyone. It doesn’t mean someone gets unlimited access to the softest parts of me because I happen to possess them. And it sure as hell does not mean I have to keep allowing someone to burn me so I can prove I’m too good to burn back.

Especially now.

There are people who knew the older version of me. The one who looked away. The one who questioned herself first. The one who thought keeping the peace was probably more important than saying:
No— you don’t get to do that to me.

Those people sometimes try again because it worked before. The first time I push back, I can almost see their surprise. That tiny step backward. A recalculation.
Oh. She does that now.

Then sometimes they try one more time. Maybe they think the first one was a fluke. Meanwhile, I’m standing there thinking: I literally just told you I’m not the one anymore. And something inside me gets hotter and not because I suddenly stopped being kind. But because I finally became kind enough to myself to notice when someone else wasn’t.

So I open my mouth and the flame comes out. And suddenly they realize what I already have: They burned me first. I just stopped volunteering to stand in the fire.

And then sometimes something strange happens. They’ll come back again, differently this time. Softer, more careful. I feel it immediately. There’s a little edge underneath it, like they’re testing where the new invisible electric fence is without wanting to cross it and find it by being shocked again.

And I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a tiny bit of satisfaction in that. Kind of like:
Hahaha. I told you not to fuck with me.

But then they thank me. Or compliment me. Or say something genuinely nice. And the part of me that usually lights up when someone is kind just…doesn’t.

And that actually sucks. Because I want people to be better. I want people to learn. I want people to become kinder. I want someone who treated me badly to go out into the world afterward and treat the next person better. Truly.

If you took a shit on me and I finally picked it up and flung it back hard enough that you thought, You know what? Maybe I should stop shitting on people, then fantastic. You’re welcome. The world is welcome. I’m thrilled for everybody involved. Go forth and stop shitting on humanity. But I still don’t have to stand underneath you again just to verify the lesson stuck.

That’s the part I didn’t understand before— I can hope you became better and still not want you near me. I can be happy that you learned how to treat people kindly without volunteering to be the person who tests your new skills.

Maybe the kindness you offer me afterward is completely genuine. Maybe you do mean every word. Maybe you really did learn. Good. I hope you did. But I’m also allowed to trust the part of me that remembers what it took for you to learn it.

I tried to like you when I still wanted to. I gave you the benefit of the doubt while doubting myself. I questioned myself. I looked away. I gave another chance. And when I finally stopped doing all of that, something in me changed too.

Your growth doesn’t require my renewed access. I don’t have to hate you, and I don’t actually hate you. I don’t have to punish you, and I don’t actually want to punish you. I don’t have to spend the rest of my life telling everyone who will listen that you’re an asshole. I don’t actually want to.

We can peacefully exist in the same universe. I can wish you well from way the fuck over here.

And maybe that is another kind of kindness I had to learn… Not the kind where I keep forgiving until I disappear or the kind where I prove my goodness by letting someone keep testing it. The kind of genuine kindness where I can truly hope you become better—and still say: No thank you.

I don’t have to try again.

love you, bye.

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

Subscribe now

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful. And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

🗣️Talk to me— I love to talk and I promise I don’t bite.

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I didn’t break it. I spent years trying to hold it together. Although, eventually, I began to wonder whether it had ever really been together in the first place.

Maybe I wasn’t holding it together. Maybe I was only holding it.

Every time a piece came loose, I caught it. Every time something slipped, I shifted the rest of the weight and made room for it in my hands.

Sometimes I dropped things too. Of course I did. My arms were full and my hands hurt. There were days when I could feel everything beginning to slide, and I would press it harder against my chest, dig my fingers into whatever I could reach, and tell myself:

Just hold it.
Just a little longer.
Just don’t let anything fall.

But sometimes I couldn’t. Sometimes my knees buckled and there were pieces scattered around me faster than I could gather them. Sometimes I sat in the middle of a breakdown, in the middle of everything I had dropped, and sometimes I told you I couldn’t keep doing this.

I can’t hold all of it.
I’m failing.
I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.
I need help.

You would look at what surrounded me and ask:
What can I hold?

Anything. But anything wasn’t specific enough. So I would look through the pile. I would decide which piece I could risk giving you.

This one.
Hold this.
Put your hand underneath it.
Careful. It slips.
Don’t forget that part.
Please don’t put it down.

You said you understood. You said: I’ve got it.

And because you said you had it, I let go. But not completely. At first, I watched your hands. I reminded you when your grip loosened. I pointed out the edge beginning to slip.

But you told me you had it. I tried to believe you. I wanted to believe you. I had hope. I turned my attention back to everything I was still carrying.

Then one day, I realized it was on the floor. I don’t know how long it had been there. Maybe you put it down carefully and meant to pick it back up. Maybe it slipped. Maybe you forgot you had ever been holding it.

All I knew was that it was lying there. And it still needed to be held.

Can you pick it back up?
You said you would.

So I waited. I stepped over it. You stepped over it. And I kept holding everything else while it remained between us.

Can you please pick it up? I will. Okay. Thank you.

But it stayed there. Until—Goddammit. I bent down and I shifted everything already balanced against my body, reached toward the floor, and picked it up again.

I found somewhere to put it. I always found somewhere. Between two fingers.Under one arm.Balanced against my shoulder and pressed into the hollow beneath my chin.

It didn’t matter that there was no room. I made room. Then I kept going.

Until the next time I began to break. Until the next time you looked at everything in my arms and asked: What can I hold?

And once again, I had to decide. I had to take inventory of the weight— I had to choose the piece. I had to explain how to carry it. I had to place it in your hands.

I had to remember that you were holding it. I had to remind you that you were holding it. I had to check whether you were still holding it. Then you weren’t holding it. And eventually, I had to pick it up again. It became one more thing I had to hold.

So I stopped handing pieces to you. I still needed help. The weight had not become lighter. I stopped because each time you said, I’ve got it, I believed I was allowed to let go. And each time I found it on the floor, I broke a little more.

But I took it back. The same piece I had told you I couldn’t carry anymore. The same piece I had placed carefully in your hands. The same piece you promised you had.

So I picked it up again. Not because I felt like I could. I didn’t. But I finally understood that whether it was in my hands or yours, I was still the one responsible for keeping it from falling and breaking.

love you, bye

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

Subscribe now

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful.
And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

🗣️Talk to me— I love to talk and I promise I don’t bite.

Comments and my DMs are always open if you read something of mine that tickled your brain, touched your heart, made you laugh, cry, or you just wanna say hi!

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I Don’t Want Revenge. I Want a Realization.

I don’t ever want to hurt someone. I don’t want to be the cause of someone else’s hurt. I don’t want my pain transferred over to them so they have to feel it the same way I do.

What I want is for it — my hurt — to teach them something. Something about me, maybe something about them too. And maybe something about the space between what they meant and what they did.

I want them to acknowledge my hurt, even if they don’t understand it from a personal place. I want the fact that I hurt to matter more than the way my reaction to that hurt made them feel.

And I think this is where people get it messed up.
A reaction to being hurt is not the same thing as retaliation.
Retaliation acts like revenge and says, “I want you to hurt because I hurt.”
A reaction says, “I am hurt, and it is finally showing.”

Those are just not the same thing.

Someone feeling hurt by my reaction doesn’t automatically mean I chose to hurt them. It doesn’t automatically mean I was cruel. It doesn’t erase what came before it. It does not make my pain the new problem just because it became visible, inconvenient, loud, sharp, tearful, angry, detached, or impossible to ignore.

Sometimes a reaction isn’t an attempt to wound someone, sometimes it is the wound speaking. Sometimes it comes after years of the quiet hurt finally coming out with teeth because the softer versions went unheard.

That is the part I keep tripping over. Because I can— and do— care that my reaction hurt someone without agreeing that my reaction is the real wound. I can understand that someone feels pain but I’m not pretending their pain started the story.

That is not me being cold and it took me a long time to realize that. Instead it’s me refusing to rearrange the entire history of my hurt just because someone finally felt uncomfortable standing close to it.

Listen, I do care if someone feels hurt by me. Even if I know for a fact that my hurt wasn’t being accurately understood, or considered, or held with any kind of care. There is still this part of me that cannot stand there with my arms crossed and say, “Good.”

Because retaliation isn’t really a thing for me and I mean that truthfully. I would much rather someone realize and acknowledge their impact on my hurt than ever have to hurt too. Yes, I said ever.

But I also think if you truly realize that something you did — whether you meant to or not — hurt someone, it’s probably going to hurt a little anyway. Not because they punished you or they wanted revenge or even that they handed their pain back to you. Regardless of what you did or didn’t do, regardless of whether you were aware or unaware, regardless of whether you meant to or didn’t mean to, that should still sting a little. It should just hurt because you never meant to hurt them, but unfortunately, you did. It should matter when you let someone down.

Sometimes what someone is feeling is not the result of retaliation. Sometimes it’s the result of realization. Sometimes it just hurts to finally see the damage you participated in. And sometimes it hurts to hear the truth after years of not listening to the quiet versions of it.

And too often the person who caused the hurt wants to focus on how badly it felt to be confronted with it, because that feels easier than sitting with the fact that someone they claim to love has been hurting for a very long time.

But my reaction is not the original injury. My reaction is the smoke from the fire that came first.

Maybe I think differently because I’ve spent damn near a lifetime trying to make sure I didn’t hurt anyone. Trying to make sure I didn’t let anyone down. Which is a weird little trauma response when you were the one pretty consistently being hurt and let down.

How we take our trauma and either learn from it or become it is wild to me. Because one keeps the hurt alive inside you while the other hands it to people who never caused it.

And if you are like me, and you learned perhaps a little too well how not to become what hurt you, then you also become responsible for continuing to hurt yourself. I know that stings because that feels like blame. And you already do that to yourself, don’t you?

But I don’t say it as blame. I say it because I know what it is to make yourself smaller, softer, easier, quieter, more understanding, more forgiving, more reasonable, more digestible, all so no one else has to feel the sharp edge of what they did to you.

I know what it is to be hurt and still worry more about how your hurt lands on the person who hurt you. I know what it is to be standing there bleeding and somehow still checking to see if the other person is okay because your blood made them uncomfortable.

That is not sainthood. That is fucking survival dressed up as kindness.

When I was a kid, I was bullied a lot. I remember one incident in particular that happened on the school bus. There was this group of kids who picked on me because, what else was new? But one of those kids was a kid who was different, maybe a little delayed.

And one day, I was so tired of being hurt by these people — and by him — that I retaliated. I said something on purpose and I said the thing I knew would hurt him. I said it because he had been actively choosing, over and over again, to hurt me.

And as soon as it happened, I don’t know if I felt sick because I actually said it, or if it was the look on his face that gutted me first. Either way, fuck me for that because I did not feel better at all… I felt worse.

Congratulations to me, I guess. Now I had my own hurt from the bullies, and then I had the hurt of knowing I had become one for a second too.

And maybe that is why I know the difference so well because I can’t seem to shake that experience. It was so long ago but I have never forgotten how that felt, and worse, I have never forgotten his face.

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Sometimes I wonder why I am the way I am… And then I realize maybe it’s just because. But maybe it’s a gift. Definitely not a gift I asked for but a gift all the same.

Because for everything that has hurt me, I could be cold. I could be heartless and I could be done. But I’m not.

I can’t even pretend to know if I would really hate that or not, because I cannot imagine what it would feel like to move through the world without this much feeling attached to everything.

I would rather feel that sting when I hurt someone and I would rather be bothered by the look on someone’s face. I would never want to be the kind of person who can easily say, “Good. Now you know how I feel.”

I think that’s the entire difference between retaliation and accountability. One wants you to suffer and the other asks for understanding.

That is something I keep trying to explain.
My reaction is not revenge.
My distance is not revenge.
My anger is not revenge.
My honesty is not revenge.
My exhaustion is not revenge.
The fact that I no longer try to keep swallowing the same hurt quietly is not revenge.

It is just what happens when the pain has nowhere else to go and after I finally stop protecting someone from the reality of how badly they hurt me.

I don’t want revenge, that has never been what I wanted. I don’t want someone to hurt just because I hurt. I just want my hurt to matter enough to teach them something when it should.

And even though I know their hurting is in response to my reaction of being hurt, I still hate that they hurt. I know that is because I feel too much. But I still think I’d rather feel too much than feel nothing at all.

Because otherwise, I think that would make me an asshole.

And I cannot stand assholes.

love you, bye.

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

Subscribe now

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful.

And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

Share Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project

🗣️Talk to me— I love to talk and I promise I don’t bite.

Comments and my DMs are always open if you read something of mine that tickled your brain, touched your heart, made you laugh, cry, or you just wanna say hi!

Leave a comment

One Step Forward, Five Million Two Hundred and Sixty-Two Thousand Fucking Steps Backward

Yes, that’s dramatic. No, I don’t care.

I’m not dramatic. Life just keeps giving me goddamn “lemons,” except they’re rotten and gross. And listen, I like lemonade, motherfucker, but I can’t make lemonade out of rotten lemons, can I? Actually, I think that might be the problem. I keep making the lemonade anyway. And then I drink it.

Stop drinking it, right? I can’t. I’m thirsty, and it’s the only thing anyone has bothered to put on the table.

That was a stupid-ass attempt at using a metaphor to explain how completely out of control my life feels, no matter what I do or how many supposedly correct steps I take.

I keep trying to do the right thing. Follow the instructions. Make the calls. Go to the appointments. Ask the questions. Advocate for myself. Wait patiently. Follow up when patience stops being reasonable.

Apparently, I’m still doing it wrong though, because everything keeps going in the opposite direction. Up when I need it down. Down when I need it up. Sitting perfectly fucking still when I desperately need it to move.

There is a lot tangled up in this right now. A lot of life shit. But today, specifically, it’s this: I am trying to reduce my risk of getting breast cancer—or fucking cancer in general—because last fall, I found out I am BRCA2 positive.

I was going to write about being BRCA2 positive eventually. I was going to explain what it means, give actual information, maybe turn it into something useful. But I don’t want to do that today. You can Google it or go here.

Right now, I only want to write about how much it fucking sucks. It sucks because the entire reason I know any of this is because my mom died from an unknown cancer twenty days after being diagnosed. Twenty days. She was fine until she wasn’t.

Losing her like that scared the absolute shit out of me. It showed me how brutally unfair life can be and how quickly everything can change. It made me think that if there were any way I could know about something inside my own body— something that might eventually kill me— and maybe stop it before it had the chance, then I should.

My sister had genetic testing first. She was negative for the mutation, and she told me that meant I was in the clear too. She meant well. She was also wrong. The terrifying part is that I almost believed her. Except I have an intuition problem. By that, I mean my intuition will not shut the fuck up when something doesn’t feel right, even when I would prefer it to leave me alone.

At a gynecology appointment, my doctor and I discussed my mom’s unknown cancer, and she recommended genetic testing. I didn’t even tell her that my sister had said I didn’t need it. I agreed to the testing while simultaneously feeling a little stupid for agreeing to it, because part of me still thought my sister was probably right. But something didn’t feel right… Intuition, remember?

Insurance wouldn’t pay for the test and that gave me another opportunity to say never mind. My sister was negative, surely that meant I was negative too. Why spend money on something unnecessary? Then I paid for it out of pocket anyway. The entire time, I felt like I had probably wasted the money.

Then I forgot about it— until I received a phone call asking me to call back so they could “discuss my results.” Listen… Anyone who has ever received medical test results knows you usually don’t get a special phone call requesting a conversation because there is absolutely nothing to discuss. Still, I thought, Yeah, right.

There was this constant battle between what I had been told and what my intuition had been telling me. But then I called back. They assumed I had already seen the results, but for whatever reason, I hadn’t received them. So they spoke to me like I already knew what they were about to say. Except I sure the hell did not.

The test was positive.

So I made an appointment with my doctor to discuss what that meant. Between the phone call and the appointment, I researched quite obsessively, so I knew some things by the time I walked in. Kind of.

I told my doctor that my sister had said I didn’t need testing because she was negative. My doctor explained that genetics do not work that way. Which, in hindsight, sounds obvious and I felt dumb for not knowing it. Except apparently, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know it, was I?

Whatever. I almost didn’t get tested. Then I did. And now I know I’m BRCA2 positive.

We discussed my options. There were several, but the ones that offered the greatest reduction in risk involved preventative surgeries. I don’t feel like going into every detail of that appointment right now either. There is a whole other story there. Today, what I’m writing about, is the part where I am asking— begging, really— for something to just work. Sooner rather than later. Easier before it gets harder.

I decided I would have the preventative surgeries. The surgeries could significantly reduce my risk of breast and ovarian cancer. I spoke with a genetic counselor who — without technically telling me what to do because they are not allowed to do that— made it fairly clear that preventative surgery was my strongest option.

So I started the process and I researched and I dug. I compared hospitals and procedures and surgeons. I also cried a lot, because duh. Eventually, I found Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, which has extensive experience with exactly what I needed: a prophylactic mastectomy and a reconstruction procedure called DIEP flap surgery.

With DIEP flap reconstruction, they use tissue from your abdomen to create new breasts. Your own tissue from your own body. Your new tits made out of your old stomach. That matters to me in a way I don’t fully know how to explain. They would still feel like part of me because they would still be made from me. No implants, no silicone. This isn’t your typical boob job afterall.

I have now driven to Nashville four times. Three times alone and once with my oldest daughter. I met with the oncology breast surgeon, and I am comfortable with her. She’s got the job.

Then I met with the first plastic surgeon. Her last name was Ora, which was deeply ironic because her aura fucking sucked. A total mindfuck because her reviews on the hospital website were glowing. Several people specifically mentioned how empathetic she was, which mattered enormously to me. I thought I had gotten lucky.

Then I met her. She shit all over me. Once again, I’m not telling that whole story today. I will eventually, because I always want to write about people who suck. It helps me heal, okay?

But the important part is that she made me feel small and not metaphorically small. Teeny-tiny and insignificant. Like I had shown up asking for too much while trying to make decisions about removing healthy parts of my body so they would not someday maybe turn into unhealthy parts and kill me.

After that appointment, I slipped into a deep depression. I had spent the last year and a half at that point practicing speaking up for myself. The appointment caught me so off guard I froze. I didn’t say what I needed to say and that triggered the wound. Even worse, this was the appointment my oldest daughter attended with me.

So, It took me a while to gather enough energy to start over, but starting over was exactly what I had to do. Eventually, I contacted a patient advocate and explained what had happened and they scheduled me with a different plastic surgeon… So I drove back to Nashville again and I met the new surgeon. I liked her. She actually was empathetic and she did not make me feel small.

Finally, I thought. Here we go.

The next step was insurance. I was told approval could take six to eight weeks. Federal law in the US requires insurance coverage for breast reconstruction following mastectomy under qualifying plans, but that does not mean the process is quick, clear, or magically handled without someone having to chase it. So I waited and the six to eight weeks came and went, I heard nothing. Zero. Zip.

About two weeks ago, I reached out to the doctor’s office after putting it off long enough. Crickets. Fuck. Somewhere inside me, I already knew— here come the fucking rotten lemons.

But the thing about me is that I have this hope that refuses to die. I don’t hate that about myself and I also fucking hate it. Because every time I allow myself to believe that maybe this particular thing will work out, I become vulnerable to being flattened it doesn’t. You would think I would have trained myself by now to begin every process with:
What’s the point? It won’t work out anyway.

But that is not where my mind naturally goes. My mind says: I know how things usually go, but this time doesn’t have to go that way. Then, inevitably, I find myself drinking the fucking rotten lemonade again.

Today, I got a call. I let it go to voicemail and then I listened to it…
“Hi, we’re calling to get you scheduled with a plastic surgeon.”

What???

Immediately, I wanted to cry, scream, and throw up. Instead, I called back. Reluctantly. Very fucking reluctantly.

The second plastic surgeon— the one I liked, the one who did not make me feel small— is leaving in October.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The person on the phone asked whether I had a preference between a male or female surgeon. No. What I do have is a preference for someone competent, compassionate, and capable of speaking to me like I am a human being whose body and life are actually involved in this process. Before I could agree to see anyone, I had to explain the entire situation with the first plastic surgeon to make sure they would not try to send me back to her— or to somebody exactly like her.

Then they asked whether I wanted to make an appointment. No shit…
Like, no, actually. Please just select a surgeon I have never met, and I will blindly entrust them with performing an extremely complicated and long surgery on my body.

Yes. I want a fucking appointment. So I made one. August 18th, back to Nashville I go. No further along now than I have been since I started the process. Cool, cool, cool. Love that for me.

After I scheduled it, I received a message telling me I needed to bring all my medical records and imaging from everything I had already completed. Excuse me but… All the records? All the images? All the things that should already exist inside the same hospital system where I have been receiving care this entire time?

I am assuming it was a generic message. I am assuming they already have everything. I am assuming my insurance authorization has actually been started. I am assuming I am transferring care and not beginning this entire process from the very first fucking square.

But remember: that’s what I do. I assume maybe this time, it will work out.

But I need to say this, I am so tired. I am tired of doing everything I am supposed to do and still ending up back at the beginning. Or worse, maybe never moving? I am tired of advocating for myself, following up, crying, explaining, crying, re-explaining, traveling, researching, crying, recovering, restarting, and crying.

I am tired of being told to make lemonade as though the condition of the lemons has nothing to do with it.

I am trying to prevent cancer. That sentence alone should be heavy enough. I should not also have to carry a broken medical process, disappearing doctors, unanswered messages, lost momentum, and the constant fear that nobody is actually handling the things they told me were being handled.

I am not asking life to become easy because I know better than to ask for that. What I am asking for is one thing to move forward without first falling apart. I am asking for one step forward that is allowed to remain a step forward. I am asking not to be sent back five million two hundred and sixty-two thousand fucking steps every time I start to believe I might finally be getting somewhere.

And for the love of God, I am asking for something other than rotten lemons to make lemonade if I want a drink.

love you, bye.

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

Subscribe now

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful.

And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

Share Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project

🗣️Talk to me— I love to talk and I promise I don’t bite.

Comments and my DMs are always open if you read something of mine that tickled your brain, touched your heart, made you laugh, cry, or you just wanna say hi!

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When I wasn’t a good mom, I could never do enough.

When I wasn’t a good mom I kept up with the appointments. I scheduled them at the right time of day after calculating which day they would fall on, which kid’s school schedule would be affected, and what class would be least disastrous to pull them out of— because Lordt knows everyone else had already taken every appointment available after school. ^{(How do they do this?)}

When I wasn’t a good mom I made sure the uniforms were clean and ready for the next soccer practice. I made sure the opposite-colored jersey was packed in the bag for game day, just in case.

When I wasn’t a good mom, I made sure the schoolwork and studying were done, and I spent plenty of nights sitting at the kitchen table helping with last-minute “I forgot this was due” projects that should have been completed days earlier but had somehow not even been started.

When I wasn’t a good mom I drove to and from sports, dance, and friends’ houses. I gave rides to other children who somehow always seemed not to have one, but whose parents never appeared particularly concerned about how they would get home because, apparently, my children had already volunteered me.

When I wasn’t a good mom I grocery shopped for the right kind of applesauce. I remembered who preferred strawberry yogurt and who preferred vanilla, but bought extra of both because we all know they would both suddenly prefer whichever one ran out first.

When I wasn’t a good mom I knew whose medication would run out over the weekend, leaving them without any for school on Monday, so prescriptions became another very important thing to track.

But then I definitely wasn’t a good mom because sometimes I forgot something.

And sometimes I wasn’t a good mom because a hormonal preteen with the wrong tone would frustrate me. Or because a hyperactive, impulsive eight-year-old would push me to my limit after I had told her to stay in bed for the fifth time that night.

Sometimes I got overwhelmed. Sometimes I yelled and sometimes I cried. Sometimes I was certain I did both too often, and I could already picture my grown children sitting in therapy, carefully breaking down all the ways their mother had ruined their childhood because, well, she wasn’t a good mom.

Sometimes I said yes to something when I really meant no, and I couldn’t fake my excitement quite well enough. Sometimes I tried to say no but immediately yanked it back and replaced it with a yes because I didn’t want to ruin someone else’s good time. Then I would feel like I was dying inside because the no I had swallowed kept screaming at me internally. I smiled, though. Then I felt guilty because I wasn’t a good mom because good moms always want to do the things with their kids.

Sometimes I wasn’t a good mom because I bought too much processed food. Chicken nuggets. Macaroni and cheese. Fast food instead of homemade meals with vegetables cleverly hidden inside them for the picky eater.

Sometimes I wasn’t a good mom because I failed to get the kids into bed on time, even though they HAD to get a certain number of hours of sleep because it was science-backed, obviously.

Sometimes I wasn’t a good mom because I allowed too much screen time. Sometimes I opted for screen time myself.

I am sitting here now thinking about all the times I wasn’t a good mom. And I am also sitting here thinking about how much that is such fucking bullshit.

That isn’t what I felt then, though. Back then, I was convinced I wasn’t good enough because I always felt like I wasn’t doing enough— or at least wasn’t doing any of it well enough. Or hell, I don’t know. Somewhere along the way, I had simply gotten it into my head that I wasn’t good enough, and then I collected evidence to prove it.

I could perform one hundred acts of care in a day and still go to bed thinking about the one thing I forgot. Or the tone I took with my kids after I had asked them for the 6th time to pick something up only to be eaten alive with guilt for raising my voice.

I only found out what autopilot actually was a few months ago. Or maybe I mean I finally understood what autopilot was.

We had just finished my daughter’s medication-management appointment when the doctor asked how she was doing on refills. And the question stopped me dead in my tracks, my mind went completely blank.

I scoffed—only at myself—and admitted that I had no idea. It made me feel a little ashamed. Because wow… How could I not know?

Because I didn’t want to HAVE to know anymore. That was why. I had been trying to “let go.” I had been trying to “take things off my plate.” I had handed this particular responsibility over to my husband and both of my children because I should have been able to hand it over. That was why.

I told the doctor I didn’t know, and I told her why. I had asked someone else to take care of it because I wasn’t going to touch it, and I meant it. Then I confessed to her more; I couldn’t do it again if I had to. I knew I probably already had to. I still felt like I couldn’t do it.

I explained to her I didn’t understand why because I used to do it all the time. I used to manage every medication, every refill, every appointment, every practice, every uniform, every forgotten project, every ride, every yogurt preference, and every goddamn thing that might happen over a weekend and become a problem by Monday morning. But now it all seemed impossibly hard.

She immediately interjected and said something that woke me the fuck up.

“Because you were on autopilot.”

Listen, I had heard the word before— we’ve all heard the word before. But apparently, I didn’t actually know it until right then. As soon as she said it, something dawned on me that I had never realized before.

All that shit I used to do back then—when I wasn’t a good enough mom, when I wasn’t asking anyone out loud to take something off my plate, when even thinking about asking for help made me criticize myself because I should have been able to handle it—that was fucking autopilot.

Autopilot wasn’t calmly moving through a familiar routine while my mind wandered somewhere pleasant. It was my body continuing to perform tasks after the rest of me had disappeared. It was not stopping long enough to notice how tired I was because noticing would not have changed what still needed to be done anyway, so what was the point? It was functioning because there was no other option. It was swallowing every no, answering every question, remembering every detail, solving every problem, and moving immediately to the next thing before I could feel the full weight of the last one.

From the outside, it might have looked a lot like competence. It could have looked like I had my shit together. Sometimes it even felt like competence to me, although I never once felt like I actually had my shit together.

When it stopped, I thought I had become incapable. I thought something was wrong with me because the woman who had once handled everything could suddenly stare at a prescription bottle and feel her brain short-circuiting.

And that, my friends, is what we call burnout.

Autopilot ceases to exist once burnout enters the picture. The system that kept you moving despite the exhaustion finally shuts down because it cannot keep overriding you forever.

Burnout sucks. I absolutely hate it. But burnout also forced me to see that I had been doing all those things without ever allowing myself to register their weight.

I didn’t consciously decide to stop believing I should be able to do everything forever. Something inside me simply collapsed beneath the expectation. Because of course it did. It was too fucking heavy.

When I wasn’t a good mom, I was never actually “not a good mom.”

I was a mother on autopilot, mistaking her own disappearance for proof that she was handling everything just fine. I was exhausted and overwhelmed, but I still got up the next morning and did it all again.

Whether or not I could do everything was never what made me a good mom. And the wildest part is that I had to stop trying to do everything before I could finally see I already was one.

love you, bye.

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

Subscribe now

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful.

And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

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Over the last number of years, I’ve had what I apparently have to call a massive weight loss. I only call it massive because one time a doctor called it that.

“I want to see bloodwork because of your massive weight loss.”

Except she was a bitch, and out of every professional I met at that day’s appointment, she somehow managed to make it sound nothing like a congratulations.

I don’t see that doctor anymore. One day I’m going to write about her and that whole experience because sometimes reviews mean absolutely jack shit.

Anyway.

I lost nearly 100 pounds. Or exactly 100 pounds. Or more than 100 pounds. It depends on what weight we’re starting from and which actual year we’re going off of, because I have tried and tried and tried many times before—and failed and failed and failed many times before, too.

Whatever. ^{(Turns out there’s something about getting your mind right that can help with that.)}

I just say I lost 100 pounds.

Not much of it came from exercising to be honest. Walking occasionally, sure. I tried kickboxing for about a month before I quit. I really wanted to like that one. I’ve had gym memberships and quit those within months, too. Sometimes I paid for months while going approximately one time, until I finally stopped pretending there was a chance I might suddenly become Gym Girl next Tuesday and canceled after donating far too much money to a building I wasn’t entering.

I’ve also tried, very hard, to stick to a routine because I’ve always heard some version of, “If you keep doing it, it becomes a habit and eventually it won’t feel like work.” And I wanted that, I genuinely wanted to become one of those people who enjoys exercising.

I believe it’s good for your mental health. I believe all the shit they tell us about the benefits. I actually want those benefits. But for me, the magical habit thing just never happened.

My brain is weird and it does weird things. You probably already knew that if you’ve read basically anything else I’ve written. But I don’t just mean weird as in quirky. I mean weird as in the way it actually works—or doesn’t work?—is sometimes fucking baffling.

Not new information: I’m neurodivergent. I also struggle with what I’ve been told are “spatial skills.”

I was told that way back when I was tested for ADHD as a teenager and told I didn’t have ADHD, which is hilarious in hindsight considering difficulties with spatial awareness and visuospatial processing can show up alongside ADHD.

LOL.

RIGHT?!

And I think this explains something about exercise that I have spent years interpreting as laziness. Exercising on my own or in group settings is hard for me because so much of it demands real-time visual and physical tracking, and I very much suck at that.

In everyday life, I struggle to picture what something would look like turned upside down or viewed from another angle. ^{(This is one example of what it means to struggle with spatial skills, by the way.)}

So, put me in a group exercise class and now we’ve created a whole entire fucking neurological obstacle course.

The instructor is facing the room. Their left is my right. Everyone else appears to understand this extremely basic concept and has already begun moving their limbs while I’m internally doing advanced fucking calculus trying to mentally flip a human being.

Wait…

That arm? MY arm?

This leg? OTHER LEG?

Okay, shit, they’ve moved on.

Ahhhh!

It sounds so easy and dumb. And listen, it feels like it should be easy and dumb… But my fucking brain, man. You can’t make this shit up.

And yeah, it can be embarrassing. But honestly, the biggest problem isn’t even that I’m worried everyone is watching me. I know almost nobody in that class gives a shit what I’m doing. They’re busy trying not to die themselves.

The problem is that it’s exhausting. I’m literally using so much of my brain just trying to figure out what my body is supposed to be doing that I’m barely able to concentrate on actually doing the movement. I don’t want to spend the entire workout translating the workout. I just want to do the damn thing.

It happens when I’m alone, too. You know those little diagrams on gym equipment showing a perfectly proportioned faceless person demonstrating what you’re supposed to do? Cool.

I stand there staring at that motherfucker way longer than any grown adult would like to admit, trying to translate a two-dimensional person into where the fuck does my actual body go?

Except in the gym— unlike the group class— I become considerably less convinced that nobody is watching me. So now we’ve added an audience to the neurological obstacle course.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Here’s what I think I actually need:

A personal trainer. Duh.

But not just any personal trainer. I need someone who understands neurodivergent people. Someone patient enough to show me a movement more than once without making me feel like I should have gotten it the first time. Someone willing to physically position me if necessary and basically hand-over-hand me through something until my brain and my body finally understand each other.

And, of course, those people exist. They also cost money. I’m willing to bet the better someone is at working with brains like mine, the more they cost. And you know what? Fine. Makes sense. They should because knowing how difficult it can be to live inside this brain, somebody who can genuinely understand it, work with it, and help me learn without making me feel stupid deserves the bigger bucks.

And here’s the funny part: I don’t want someone to baby me. Not at all. I want to be pushed. Make me sweat. Make me work. Make me think I’m going to die for forty seconds. Make me work so hard I puke.

Actually, I don’t think I hate that idea. What I want is to know I’m doing it right. I want someone to teach my body what the movement feels like instead of expecting my brain to reverse-engineer it from a picture or from watching someone else do it. And eventually, I want to know it well enough that I can do it on my own.

You know what? I bet my literal ass I’d enjoy it then because the human body actually fucking fascinates me. Everything about the way it works fascinates me.

I want to experience what happens when I make mine stronger. I want to see what it can do. I know the extra skin from losing so much weight isn’t going to magically disappear because I exercise, but I also know strength and muscle tone can change how my body looks and feels.

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And aside from looking better, I know I would feel better. Physically and mentally. I know all of that… And yet I still battle my own mindset about this constantly.

Because one side of my brain says:
You’re just lazy, that’s it.
If you really wanted to do it, you would.
Other people manage to figure this shit out.

And then there’s this newer voice—the one I’m still learning how to believe—that says:

But it isn’t supposed to be this fucking hard.

Not the exercise. Exercise is supposed to be hard. Your muscles are supposed to work. Your heart is supposed to pound. You’re supposed to sweat and get tired and sometimes wonder why the fuck you voluntarily agreed to lunges. That’s the hard part I actually want.

What I don’t want is for simply understanding how to move my body to require so much cognitive effort that I’m exhausted before my muscles ever get the chance to be.

That distinction matters because just maybe… I haven’t spent all these years quitting exercise because I’m lazy. Maybe I’ve actually spent all these years trying to learn it in environments and through methods that were never particularly compatible with the way my brain processes information.

I’m almost 40 and apparently this is another thing I get to figure out now, after spending damn near a literal lifetime trying to understand myself.

There’s grief in that. And there’s a lot of anger as well because I can’t help wondering what it would have been like if somebody had connected some of these dots way back then. If someone had noticed the things that were hard for me and gotten curious about why instead of leaving me to decide what they meant about who I was.
Lazy… Uncoordinated… Bad at this… Not trying hard enough.

What would it have been like if— instead of spending decades collecting those explanations for myself— somebody had simply helped me understand my brain?

Unfortunately, even now when I finally find an explanation that makes sense, I have another battle waiting for me: Convincing myself I’m not making it up.

I really think that is one of the strangest parts of understanding your own brain this late in life. You finally start finding answers, and then you have to fight the person you became without them.

I keep having these moments where I want someone to reach backward through time, find that girl who knew something was harder for her but couldn’t explain why, and just tell her:

This is your brain, babe. Here’s how it works and here’s what it needs.

Instead, I grew up, carried it around for almost 40 years, and eventually had to bring it somewhere myself and ask:

Why is this my brain?

love you, bye.

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

Subscribe now

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful.

And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

🗣️Talk to me— I love to talk and I promise I don’t bite.

Comments and my DMs are always open if you read something of mine that tickled your brain, touched your heart, made you laugh, cry, or you just wanna say hi!

Did you know ADHD is about as heritable as height?

Not in the sense that if you have ADHD, your kid definitely will. Genetics aren’t that neat. But ADHD is highly heritable— estimates are somewhere around 70 to 80 percent.

Which is fascinating and all… until you’re the parent with ADHD looking at your children and thinking:
Oh.
Did I give you this?

Because that actually feels kind of shitty.

Of course, I didn’t invent ADHD. Somewhere along the line, there were almost certainly brains like mine before anybody knew what to call them. Maybe they were diagnosed with something else. Maybe they weren’t diagnosed with anything. Maybe they were just called lazy. Difficult. Unmotivated. Too much. Not living up to their potential. Blah blah blah.You know…The classics.

I’m not sure if my dad had ADHD. He had a shit ton of mental illnesses, but ADHD wasn’t one of the diagnoses I knew about. I can almost guarantee my mom didn’t have it. I don’t think my mom had any mental illnesses unless there’s one whose main symptoms are chronic people-pleasing and completely neglecting yourself
— actually, don’t answer that— I guess I just never witnessed my mom break or fall apart mentally. I definitely witnessed my dad do so. And yep, I’ve definitely done so myself.

Love that for me.

It doesn’t really matter whether my dad had ADHD though. I’m just curious now is all. Knowing what I know as an adult with ADHD— an adult who wasn’t diagnosed until well into adulthood— I can see things in him that make me wonder.

How much of what I remember could have been undiagnosed ADHD underneath everything else? Nobody ever wondered that about him, as far as I know.

Then again, I’m not sure knowing would have changed much. Because aside from the mental illnesses he had, my dad sometimes just couldn’t— or wouldn’t— step outside of himself enough to put himself in somebody else’s shoes. He was just... difficult.

And then I had kids.

I have two girls. My youngest was diagnosed with ADHD in kindergarten, but I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I knew before she was even two.

I said it half-jokingly back then because sometimes humor was how I coped with how much more... challenging... she was than her older sister.

But there was truth underneath the joke. I knew.

When she started kindergarten, I wondered how this was all going to go down. I intentionally didn’t tell her teacher what I suspected because I didn’t want to plant an idea in somebody else’s head about my baby— even though I was pretty damn sure the idea was a real, actual, thing inside her head.

I wanted to see what happened. So I waited and I watched her struggle. I waited to see if the teacher would reach out, if she would say anything. She didn’t say anything. So, eventually, I had to.

At first, her teacher suggested waiting until after Christmas break to see how things went. I agreed. That was until I couldn’t anymore and I brought it up again before break.

As it turned out, her teacher also had ADHD and told me she didn’t take medication for it— which, to each their own— but looking back, the combination was actually a fucking nightmare. You had a very scattered kindergarten teacher trying to organize a very scattered five-year-old while the five-year-old was trying to learn how the hell school worked. Listen, even a neurotypical kid might’ve needed a map.

Getting my daughter evaluated was surprisingly easy compared with all the horror stories I’d heard. Her pediatrician had me fill out a questionnaire. Her teacher filled out her version. And imagine that…They matched.

Then bam! She was diagnosed, medication was started, and holy shit, the difference.

I’ll never forget the first day I gave it to her. Part of me hated it because it almost looked like somebody had sucked a lot of the personality out of my kid, and that absolutely killed me.

But then something happened.

She sat down with a pair of scissors and cut a Strawberry Shortcake character out of a coloring book. She followed the lines. She cut along the lines perfectly, but really and actually “developmentally appropriate” for a kindergartener. But she had never been able to do that before.

Right before she finished, she looked at what she’d done so far and said:
“I can’t do this at school.”

I knew exactly what she meant… She really meant, I try to do this at school and I can’t.

I don’t know whether she understood that the medication had anything to do with why she suddenly could but I watched my little girl feel proud of herself for doing something her peers could already do. And that was everything.

I developed a very complicated love-hate relationship with medicating my kid. Which, well fuck me, because wow… how particularly bold of me considering I’d once been a preschool teacher watching children who clearly needed more help while their parents refused to even consider medication, thinking:
Ugh. Just medicate your kid.

Then I became the mom holding the pill.
(Hey, Karma. Yeah. I see you. I take it back.)

Then COVID happened which ended her normal-in-school-kindergarten year abruptly. Suddenly I was a full-time employee, a full-time homeschool teacher, and the mother of a child with ADHD who needed far more individual attention than I could possibly give her while simultaneously doing my job. That part was fucking hard and I hated giving her the meds most during this time because I began to notice, as long as her brain stayed active, the less “zombie” she was. That wasn’t always easy to do.

We made it through.

But here’s the part where the whole “wow, that was surprisingly easy” thing eventually came back and bit me in the ass. Nobody really talked to me about therapy.

Nobody sat me down and explained that medication might help her brain access some of the focus and regulation she was struggling to access, but it wasn’t going to magically teach her all the skills she needed once she got there.

Nobody talked to me about executive functioning. Nobody said, “Hey, maybe we should also teach this five-year-old how her brain works.”

Maybe therapy should have come first. Maybe it should have started at the exact same time as medication. I don’t know what the perfect order would have been for her, and I’m not going to pretend I do now. But I do know I wish somebody had presented the whole picture.

And yes— ugghh— fine. Maybe there is something to be said for why medication isn’t normally handed over quite as quickly as it was to us.

I hate when life makes me admit things like this. But I also refuse to rewrite history and pretend medication wasn’t necessary just because I know more now. I saw what it gave her. I saw fucking Strawberry Shortcake! I watched my child do something she’d been trying to do and couldn’t. She needed help accessing her own brain, and medication gave her some of that access pretty much right away.

I don’t believe for a second she would have gotten as far as she has without it. She did eventually start therapy about a year later and of course she’s still in therapy now. I just wish somebody had told me from the beginning that this wasn’t supposed to be an either/or thing. Medication helped her do things but I wish we’d also been helping her understand how she does things— and what to do when her brain makes those things harder— from the very beginning.

Her ADHD journey hasn’t gotten easier just because we know what it is.

Eventually, the medication that had worked so well stopped working well. As school became harder, it seemed like the medication focused her so intensely that instead of helping her move through things, she became stuck inside her own head.

And because she struggled to keep up, eventually that became what she focused on:
How much she couldn’t do.

We’ve tried multiple medications since then. She’s picked up a few more diagnoses along the way. She’s come incredibly far… And she’s still struggling. That’s the part I don’t know how to fix. It feels like we keep trying to find the right medication while the bigger thing underneath all of it isn’t always being heard.

Truthfully, I worry about what happens when a kid spends too many years feeling like everything is harder for her than it seems to be for everybody else. Worse, I worry that one day she’ll decide she’s tired of trying in school at all.

So I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure she knows she doesn’t have to do this alone. Even though, as her mother, this can be an incredibly lonely ride.

Which brings me back to heredity. Remember that?

When I started learning about ADHD for my daughter, something annoying happened. I started seeing myself. Not just myself as an adult— my actual whole fucking life.

Except I’d been tested for ADHD when I was a kid. They said I didn’t have it. So obviously I didn’t have it. Right? Hmm… Eventually I stopped insisting that this couldn’t possibly explain me and got evaluated again as an adult. This time I passed. Or failed. I’m actually still not sure which way we’re scoring this particular test.

Dun Dun Dunnnn…
ADHD.

My official diagnosis says “mild.” It is anything but mild. Part of the reason it was classified that way was because adult ADHD evaluations look backward, too. They want evidence that these traits existed during childhood and I guess also continue to exist since childhood.

So my mom got a questionnaire and I remember handing it to her. She told me I could just fill it out myself— In hindsight, maybe I should have— but I didn’t want to. I wanted to know what she remembered, I wanted to see little me through her eyes.

What’s wild is that I didn’t even look at the form after she filled it out. And I don’t know why I didn’t, I just wish I had. Because maybe then we could have talked about everything she apparently didn’t see— or simply didn’t remember.

It’s no secret that a lot of the attention that probably should have gone toward me— because I was her child— went toward managing my dad. Ifit didn’t, everybody’s life became more hellish than it already was.

God, he was good at that shit. So maybe, no, she didn’t actually remember. How could she?

I don’t know. It’s whatever now.

I got the diagnosis. And eventually I got medication, although that became an ordeal of its own because of a “heart issue” I’ll tell you about someday. But thankfully, it didn’t keep me from eventually getting this life-changing little stimulant with the kiss of dopamine my brain apparently desperately needed.

And remember how I said nobody told me that executive functioning skills couldn’t be magically fixed with a pill? Well…Apparently I forgot to extend that same knowledge to myself for a minute.

Because getting medicated as an adult went something like this:

Holy shit. Clarity.

Followed shortly by:

Wait. Why do I still not know how to executive function?

Why is my house still a disaster?

Why can I look at a room that needs to be cleaned and somehow have absolutely no idea how to clean it?

Why am I medicated for ADHD and still doing all this ADHD shit?

And then, because brains can be assholes, sometimes the thought became:

Maybe I don’t actually have ADHD.

Because apparently I expected a stimulant to come with complimentary organizational skills and a completely-cured-from-ADHD tiny person inside my brain pointing at things and yelling:

“PICK THAT UP FIRST.”
It doesn’t do that. In case youwere wondering.

The shitty part about being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult is that by the time somebody finally figures out what’s happening in your brain, you may already be in therapy for a lifetime’s worth of other shit. And therapy is just fifty minutes.

Fifty. Fucking. Minutes.

There isn’t exactly a lot of room left for “Can somebody please teach me how to clean my house without becoming emotionally overwhelmed by a laundry basket?” when you’re also actively trying to heal things that have been bleeding for decades.

So I am still learning. And I do think medication— when it’s the right medication and it’s actually doing what it’s supposed to do —can help your brain begin to get there.

But yeah… My house is still chaotic. I still don’t magically know where everything belongs. I still have days when I look around and think, “How in the actual fuck did we get here?”

But when my meds are medding? I can usually look at the mess without having a complete meltdown because I cannot figure out where to start. And also, sometimes I can just...start.

That sounds ridiculously small until you’ve spent your entire life unable to understand why starting feels so fucking enormous.

And now we jump to my other kid. My oldest. The teenager.

We’re still talking about how this shit is heritable, remember?

Gosh. This kid reminds me of myself in approximately 5,000 ways. And sadly, there are lot of ways I wish she didn’t.

Specifically the dark ones and the hard ones. I see her anxiety and the OCD. I see the ruminating thoughts that grab hold and refuse to shut the fuck up.

And this is one of the things that makes me understand in my bones that mental illness is real and that genetics matter. Because my daughter didn’t live my childhood—her childhood hasn’t been perfect, no childhood is— but she didn’t grow up inside the things I did. I will be damned if I was going to hand all of that down too. No way.

But still, sometimes I look at her brain and recognize mine.

She’s been treated for the things we know about and she’s tried multiple medications. Some worked until they didn’t. Yes, the one she’s on now helps.

But I still look at her and think:
There’s something else here.

She was evaluated for ADHD when she was younger, too. She didn’t have it. Fine. Good. Except...I’ve heard this story before. So not fine and not good.

She doesn’t fit the mold and neither did I.

Meanwhile little sister practically arrived carrying a neon sign that said ADHD and has been waving it around enthusiastically ever since. But my oldest is different.

She was around twelve when she was first evaluated. That was before I understood my own brain and before my own diagnosis. Before I learned what ADHD can look like when it doesn’t look like the stereotype I’d carried around my whole life.

And now I see it all over her.

We’ve talked about it. I’ve told her I can’t know for certain until she’s properly evaluated again, but if somebody asked me to bet my literal ass on whether she has undiagnosed ADHD? Then I’d start saying goodbye to my ass.

She’s sixteen now and next month, she gets another evaluation. A re-evaluation really. Not decades apart like mine, just four years. And this time I know a hell of a lot more.

I know what questions to ask. I know what to mention. I know what can hide underneath intelligence and anxiety and coping mechanisms and years of figuring out how to make yourself function in a world that seems to require things your brain doesn’t naturally do. And I will go in there swinging if I have to.

I’ve already heard:
“She isn’t you.”

I know. That’s the entire goddamn point. I don’t want her to be me. I don’t want her to spend decades wondering why things that seem easy for everybody else feel impossibly hard for her. I don’t want her mistaking executive dysfunction for laziness. I don’t want her deciding she’s irresponsible or a bad person or simply not trying hard enough. I don’t want her to have to become almost forty before somebody hands her an explanation for the brain she’s been living inside her entire life.

And I’ve already told her something else. The thing I didn’t realize in the beginning when my youngest was diagnosed… If— and when— we figure out what’s actually going on, whatever we learn doesn’t stop in the doctor’s office. If ADHD is part of the answer, we’re bringing that shit into therapy.

We’re talking about executive functioning.

We’re talking about how her brain works.

We’re talking about strategies and skills and all the things I wish somebody had explained to me, and all the things I wish I’d known to ask for when her little sister was five.

Look at me. I’m learning shit. I’m realizing ways to maybe, hopefully, make some of this suck less for my kids because it fucking sucked for me.

Glad I volunteered as tribute. Truly.

That’s sarcastic. Except it also isn’t.

Because if somebody in this family had to stumble through the dark long enough to figure out the shape and space of the room, I’m glad it was me. I’d absolutely take every bruised shin if it means my girls don’t have to hit every single thing I did.

Which is also why sometimes I want to grab both of them lovingly— but with considerably aggressive enthusiasm—by the shoulders and yell:

LISTEN TO MEEEEEE.

Because I know they have to live their own lives. I know they have their own brains.

I know they are not me… Thank God they’re not me.

But, babies, I have already stepped on this particular rake several times. Please allow my extensive research to benefit you.

I think there are some parts of heredity we don’t talk about enough. I don’t know exactly who handed ADHD down to me. Maybe my dad had it. Maybe somebody generations before him did. Maybe there are people scattered throughout my family tree who spent their entire lives being called difficult, lazy, scattered, emotional, irresponsible, too much, not enough—without ever knowing there might have been another explanation. I’ll never know. If I was a betting woman though, I’d probably be rich.

I inherited this brain from somebody who never knew what theirs was doing.

Sometimes there are days when I look at my girls and feel that awful little tug:

Did I give this to you?

Maybe my girls inherited some of it from me. I can’t change that. And even though genetics suck sometimes, my kids do have a mother who knows what she’s looking at.

I believe them when they say something is hard and I know struggling to do something isn’t the same thing as not caring enough to do it.

I understand that getting the diagnosis isn’t the finish line and medication can give you access to parts of your brain but it doesn’t magically teach you how to use them.

I didn’t start the ADHD. I might just be the one who finally actually noticed it. And if I handed my girls some of my wiring, then the least I can do is hand them the map I’m making while I figure out how the hell to navigate it.

There is actually something that feels a little beautiful and special— dare I say rewarding— about understanding your kids on a nuerdodivergent level even if your own diagnosis came multiple decades late.

love you, bye

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

Subscribe now

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful.

And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

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**Trigger Warning: This essay reflects on a personal experience involving suicide. It includes emotional discussions that may be difficult for some readers.

The nitty gritty truth is, I am still here because of my kids.

Not necessarily me now, but the me before.

I want to be here now. For the most part. I have my days…. No, that’s just a feeling on the particularly hard days. Because I do want to live. I want to live and be alive, actually. That’s the difference between then and now.

I was staying alive for my kids.
Now I want to stay alive for me.

I used to not be able to fathom how anyone committed suicide. I have always battled depression. I was a self-harmer as a teenager, but I never really had suicidal ideation. Sometimes, of course, I would wonder what it would be like to no longer exist. For life to end so it would stop being so hard. But I never had intent. Just wonder.

And the wonder was always outweighed by the idea that it made no sense to me how someone could end their life because that was a permanent, shitty solution to a temporary problem.

Things always get better, right? Just keep hanging on until they do again. I thought that sounded so easy.

Enter the dark ages.

Around the end of 2019, I was thrown into some scary dark times that seemed to come out of nowhere.

They did not come out of nowhere.

They came from years and years of not acknowledging they were there. Years and years of being the positive person outwardly for everyone else while completely ignoring that it meant I was neglecting myself.

If everyone else was okay, then that meant I was too. I was supposed to be okay if they were okay. I spent a lot of time, effort, and energy making sure no one felt quite as low as I did while not noticing I was actually that low.

Then one day, I wasn’t okay and I realized it. It came like a smack in the face. Existential dread out of nowhere, but really from everywhere.

And that fucking hurt. So bad. It was like whiplash from the wreckage where my body came crashing into my reality and into how “not okay” I was right now.

Maybe ever… maybe I had never been okay. That’s what I realized.

And it was scary because suddenly, it made sense. Suicide made sense. Not as the answer but as a thought. As a doorway a person might start staring at when every other door feels locked.

I was terrified because the reason why people take their own lives made sense to me for the first time. Because even if it gets better, it gets worse again. That’s the bitch of it. The heartbreaking, soul-crushing bitch of it.

I love a rollercoaster. I just want to be able to get off.
That is exactly what it feels like. Being stuck in the cart while it goes faster and faster. The ups and downs, the climbs and the drops, the loops, the force of gravity slamming you backward through it all. Always. All the time… An endless ride that does not stop.

That is exhausting.

This is when you find yourself sitting in the good days and bracing for the next time the ground gets knocked out from under your feet. This prevents joy from fully existing. And do you know how much that fucking sucks?

How is anything good worth celebrating if you are already waiting for the bad around the corner? The good starts feeling less like something you are looking forward to and more like something you are afraid to trust.

And okay, neither is permanent. The bad is not permanent either. I know that. But I don’t know how to explain what it feels like to be unable to get off the rollercoaster if you have never actually been on it.

I still do not think ending your life is the answer.

When I realized why people did it, I did not think it was THE answer either. I just understood the thought behind it.

I know for a fact, one hundred percent, without a single doubt, I would never, ever take my own life. But sometimes I find myself sitting here thinking, oh… I know why someone might.

LISTEN TO ME — I WON’T — SO PLEASE DO NOT SEND A WELFARE CHECK TO MY HOUSE, OKAY?

I just need to be allowed to say this part out loud. I need to somehow honor the people I once thought I didn’t understand. The people I once looked at and thought were selfish before I understood how exhausted they must have been.

Because there comes a time when living for someone else might not feel like enough. I do not think it is right. I’ll say it again and again and again. I do not think suicide is the answer. But I also do not walk their path in their shoes, and I cannot pretend I have.

I don’t think it is fair to call people who die by suicide cowardly. I don’t think it is taking the easy way out. I don’t know if brave is the right word either. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe there isn’t a clean word for something that devastating.

But I know cowardly is wrong. I know “selfish” is too small. And I know “weak” is fucking cruel.

Because they had to have the thought. Then sit with the thought. Then —in whatever state of pain or panic or exhaustion they were in— cross a line most people cannot even look at directly.

Sometimes it is impulsive, yes. But their pain is usually not new.

I said the reason I am still here is because of my kids. That’s true.

But then I think about how long I have been on this actual rollercoaster. Way before I had kids. And then I think about kids who end their lives before ever really living.

That part guts me because how on earth can a kid feel that low? That bad? That down? How can a child look at life and think leaving is the answer? This is where calling it cowardly bothers me the most.

Kids are supposed to be afraid of death. No, I don’t mean they should live in fear of it, but I mean because death is big and scary and final and a lot for a kid to deal with. But there are kids choosing to end their lives because living feels worse.

It’s personal here because a cousin, through marriage, once committed suicide.
She was twelve. Not even a teenager yet. My youngest daughter turns twelve next week. That realization just smacked me in the face…

So anyway, I think about her and how terrible she must have felt. Then I wonder how long she felt that terrible. I wonder if anyone did enough. If anyone paid close enough attention.

It wasn’t a secret that she struggled with mental health. She was different, and it was obvious from the time she was old enough to show signs. But mostly, the difference was that she felt like a sad soul to me.

I met her when she was a baby. Then I said goodbye to her at twelve.

Throughout her years, her family treated whatever she was dealing with mentally like it was taboo. No one ever really talked about it. No one ever named what she “had.” They just danced around it like it was a phase. And that is exactly what it wasn’t.

I remember being her. Not exactly her, because I am me and she was her, but I remember navigating mental health struggles I didn’t understand. I remember feeling like I was on a rollercoaster I couldn’t get off of, even then.

I didn’t have the language for it either, just a diagnosis. I am not trying to compare either one of us to the other, but I think I can see now how easily what she did could have been me. That is terrifying to think about.

I cannot say for certain, because obviously I made it out. But what if I didn’t? What if I ended it before I ever got to the part where I decided the reason I stayed was for someone else? For my kids. Before I HAD kids.

I felt so alone, yet I made it through. And she didn’t. So how much more alone did she feel? Worse, how much more alone was she really?

I think if I had been a kid when she was a kid, she would have had someone who understood her. We would probably have been the depressed girl squad, sure. But she needed someone.

Another part of me feels like if I knew then what I know now — if I understood why people take their own lives when she was still alive and closer to that decision than I ever realized — maybe I could have stepped in and helped her. That is guilt talking, of course, and you can’t ask those questions now or they’ll eat you up inside.

But it’s true. That is the should have, could have, would have.

Maybe when she decided she could not do this anymore, that was the beginning of my understanding. But it took me a long time to sit with it. It took me a long time to go against the grain of “suicide is selfish” and understand that we cannot necessarily blame the dead for leaving behind the people who loved them to hurt.

Because truthfully, sometimes the people left behind who loved them did not really let them know. Her pain wasn’t silent. There were signs and there was language. It absolutely was not a phase.

This is a slippery slope, and please know that I know that.

Please know that I am still standing firmly on suicide is not the answer.

Please know that I am not blaming someone else for another person deciding to take their own life.

Please know that I understand someone could do everything right and still not convince a person to stay.

But also please know that maybe this is my attempt to honor that twelve-year-old girl who made the most permanent of decisions because I do know she was left behind.

This is me saying:
I see how much you were hurting.

I am sorry I didn’t see it then.

I am sorry they didn’t see it then.

I am sorry it was too late.

I am still here because of my kids. But there was also something inside of me that I didn’t acknowledge for a long time, and maybe I owe a little gratitude to me too.

A Note for Readers:
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. You are not alone.

Call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (US & Canada). It is free, confidential, and available 24/7.

Text HOME to 741741 to connect with the Crisis Text Line.

International resources can be found at findahelpline.com.

love you, bye

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project!
There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…sub me! It’s free!

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Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
I will never put my writing behind a paywall. The entire reason I write is to connect.
However, paid subscriptions and the option to support my spark are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing— so if you want to do that, I’ll be deeply grateful.

And if not, you’re still welcome here. 🫶🏻

Share Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project

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Recently I posted a note saying I don’t even want to write.

It said more than that. Something along the lines of how it took me twenty years to come back to writing, and then I had it again for eight months, and now I’m terrified I’m losing it.

I don’t know. I’ll post the screenshot so you can see it verbatim.

But it doesn’t really matter what it said because, as you can tell right now—because you have eyeballs and you are currently using them to read the words on this screen—I obviously am writing.

Or have written. It’s have written by the time you’re reading this.

The thing is, I still don’t really want to write. Not about the stuff I keep writing about.

About how life is tough and things are hard and financial instability and how looking at my bank account makes me want to throw up. All of that stuff is real, though. And I once posted an article about how I think maybe I’m supposed to write through this part so I can eventually write more about what I actually want to write about.

Which makes a lot of sense, really.

Think about it… If I’m not where I want to be, how do I write from where I want to be?

Listen, technically I could write about whatever I want. The problem is sometimes I’m not even sure what I would want to write about.

Being lighter, probably.

Being less overwhelmed.

Except right now I am heavy and completely overwhelmed, so I think those things are kind of one and the same. One is the way I am right now and the other is the way I want to be, but am not currently.

That’s probably why I write so much about the past and the present. I’m trying to process things that still live inside my head and things I’m actively trying to get through. So even when I don’t want to write—because I don’t want to write what I’m living, or maybe what I’ve lived—I think I still need to.

I say I didn’t write for twenty years a lot.

I am very aware of that. It’s a big deal. Of course I’m going to hold that sign up any chance I get because I can’t really explain what it feels like to not even realize what you lost until you find it again.

When I stopped writing, I didn’t really miss it. Sometimes I’d say, “I used to write,” and that was it.

Not “I used to write and then something happened and I don’t know how to get back to it.”

More like I was talking about somebody else. Someone I vaguely remembered being. And I don’t think I really missed her.

But when writing came back, suddenly I realized I had. It was like, oh shit. But even then, it didn’t feel like I suddenly remembered what it felt like when I “used to write.”

It felt more like: I want to write.

It didn’t feel like a memory. It didn’t even really feel like returning to something.

It felt new and I think that’s because I was writing as a different person.

I don’t mean literally. I’m still me. I didn’t wrap myself into a cocoon and transform into a butterfly, although, honestly, talk about the ultimate transformation. A wormy little thing turns into something with wings and then it can just… fly? Mind-blowing.

(That’s still my ADHD brain wildly in effect, in case that wasn’t obvious.)

Anyway.

What I mean is, I was writing as a person who had lived an entire twenty years without really hearing herself.

I didn’t hear the childhood trauma. I didn’t hear the anger I had been sitting with. Or the hurt. Or the guilt I carried around like all of it belonged to me. I didn’t hear that maybe not every single thing was about me and perhaps I didn’t actually suck quite as badly as I had convinced myself I did.

I had already been in therapy for years when I started writing again, and I can assure you that is absolutely where a lot of the processing began.

But writing is where I actually sat with it. Writing is where I let things come out, put them somewhere outside of myself, and then read them back.

Honestly, it was liberating.

It was like: Ohhh. So this is why I felt miserable so often without writing. I had nowhere to put my thoughts.

It’s probably also important to mention that somewhere in those twenty years, I was finally diagnosed and treated for ADHD.

My head cleared enough for me to actually hear the thoughts I needed to process instead of obsessing over how everything was always about me, everything was my fault, everyone was upset with me, and I had probably somehow ruined everything.

Of course I couldn’t write. My thoughts were crowded with bullshit.

It took a little dopamine to make that part of my brain shut the fuck up long enough to let me hear myself.

And writing let me read myself.

I’m still being treated for ADHD. I still take my depression medication.

But lately life has knocked me a little bit a lot on my ass. It knocks everybody on their ass sometimes. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t.

And yes, I am very well aware that plenty of people have it worse than me.

See? There I go.

I almost cannot say, “This is really fucking hard for me,” without immediately producing evidence for the defense.

Because what I have going on right now is a lot. And because I have major depressive disorder, sometimes I wonder if it makes everything feel heavier than it actually is.

I can’t even say that for certain because I am constantly gaslighting myself in an attempt to make sure I never, ever sound like a victim.

Even though another part of me is standing there going: Umm… excuse me? Sometimes you actually are the victim.

Yuck. Even writing that makes me feel icky “Victim” feels like such a naughty word.

There is being an actual victim of something, and then there is playing the victim, and for some reason my brain has apparently decided that acknowledging anything painful that has happened to me puts me dangerously close to the second category.

Even though I’ve gone through some things. Even though I am currently going through some things.

And this is basically what it sounds like inside my head all day:

“No, sister. What happened to you was real. What is happening right now is real. It hurts. You are allowed to say that.”

Followed almost immediately by:

“Oh my God, stop complaining and get your shit done.”

Back and forth.

Constantly.

When I write, I think I’m usually following the first voice. My personal advocate. The one trying to tell me I’m allowed to feel what I feel.

When I’m not writing, I’m often just sitting here arguing with myself—and unfortunately the side telling me to quit being a little bitch has an exceptionally loud microphone. (Someone should really take that away from her…)

Maybe that’s what I’m doing here. Letting both sides have somewhere to put their words. Processing the ongoing dilemma between me, myself, and I.

Because writing forces me to let things out—as long as I let it.

And maybe that is also exactly why I don’t always want to do it. I am tired of thinking what I’m thinking. Sometimes the very last thing I want to do is write all of it down and then read it back like I don’t already know how fucking blah I feel.

I don’t know what the answer is.

I think some part of me is just trying to write through it because I don’t actually want to shut down. I’ve done that before. No thank you.

And maybe I post these things instead of keeping them tucked away inside a private journal because someone else out there feels like I do.

Maybe my own fucked-up helps somebody realize they aren’t quite so fucked up… Or at least lets them know they’re in good fucked-up company.

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Maybe publishing it also holds me accountable somehow. Because yes, we are all out here trying to “grow our people” and gain subscribers and whatever else we’re supposed to be doing on Substack…

But for me, this has become so much more about the connections.

And some of you have touched me more than you probably know. Strangers showing up in my DMs just to offer an ear. Someone leaving a comment that makes me realize I’m not the only person on earth who has ever felt this way. People who don’t necessarily have answers but are willing to sit beside me in the question.

Maybe part of the reason I write here is because I’m trying to tell the truth and see who stays. Who doesn’t back away. Who can look at me—all of me, all of this a lotness—and still think I have something worth saying. Who can still think I’m a good writer even when I’m womp-womping all over the place.

I am grateful for this space. I am grateful for the people I have found in it. And maybe that’s why I’m writing, too.

I really don’t know.

I just know that maybe I didn’t want to write.

But I needed to.

love you, bye

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💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project! There is no neat niche here. You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.

It’s writing that is impossible to fit into one box. I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write. If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…hit subscribe!

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system. It feels slightly weird to say— because of course it does— but paid subscriptions are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing.

I applied for a graveyard shift at a cookie place.

And that is where we are right now.

I am laughing while I tell you this because laughing is one of the ways I keep myself from lying facedown on the floor and quietly smothering myself into the carpet. But I am also completely serious.

I need a job.

Not in the vague, someday-I-should-probably-return-to-the-workforce way. I need an income. I need something soon. I need to help support my family before the financial situation becomes a catastrophe and not just a situation.

The problem is not that I do not want to work.

The problem is that I need a job capable of existing inside the life I actually have—and the life I actually have is not currently built for a traditional, inflexible, full-time schedule.

I left my last job in January 2024.

A few months earlier, I had lost my mom. I had been carrying years of professional burnout, fresh grief, family responsibilities, and a nervous system that had apparently decided it would no longer cooperate. Then, in January, I had what I refer to as a bit of a Menty B.

That is the less clinical way of saying I reached a point where continuing to force myself through everything was no longer possible. Leaving my job was not an impulsive decision or a dramatic declaration that I would never work again. It was necessary. I still believe that.

But I also want to be clear about something.During my so-called employment hiatus, I did not not work. I still do not not work.

I kept an entire human infant alive. I cared for him regularly from the time he was a baby until he was two years old. I fed him, changed him, soothed him, entertained him, protected him from his own deeply questionable toddler decisions, and helped structure my days around everything a tiny human requires. Now I am helping keep his infant sister alive too.

So no, I have not spent the last two years sitting around doing nothing. I have been caregiving, parenting, managing appointments, running a household, grieving, trying to get myself mentally and physically healthier, and keeping several other humans moving in the general direction of survival.

It simply was/is not work that has a salary.

Before all of that, I spent years carrying large caseloads, managing complicated systems, helping people through confusing and emotional situations, keeping up with documentation and deadlines, and making sure important details did not disappear into administrative black holes.

I was good at it. I was also exhausted.

What I did not know when I left was how complicated the road back would become.

One of my children is now in the middle of an ongoing medical journey involving specialists, testing, unexplained symptoms, and appointments that do not politely arrange themselves around a standard workday. There are long drives. There are last-minute changes. There is the emotional labor of trying to find answers while also keeping life feeling as normal as possible for a teenager who deserves to be more than a collection of symptoms and lab results.

I am also BRCA2 positive.

That means I am navigating my own medical appointments and preparing for major preventative surgery, currently planned for later this year. It means consultations, testing, planning, recovery logistics, and the strange emotional reality of making enormous decisions about my body because of what might happen if I do not.

This is not me saying that I cannot work.

I can work. I want to work. Frankly, I am approaching the point where I would like to grab employment gently— or not so gently— by the shoulders and ask it to please stop hiding from me.

What I cannot reliably offer right now is the traditional version of work that requires me to be physically present in one place, during the same rigid hours, every weekday, no matter what is happening.

What I can offer is years of remote-work experience, strong writing and communication skills, case-management experience, research ability, detailed documentation, organization, resourcefulness, empathy, and the particular talent of remaining calm while someone else is having a very bad day.

I have a bachelor’s degree in sociology and an associate degree in early childhood education. I spent nearly seven years working with veterans and their families through the disability-appeals process, managing a caseload of more than 170 people and helping organize complicated medical and legal evidence.

After that, I worked as a care manager supporting people receiving Medicaid waiver services. I managed more than 50 cases, completed assessments and care plans, coordinated resources, maintained compliance, and handled the kind of documentation that punishes you immediately if you forget one tiny detail.

I have worked remotely successfully before. I know how to manage my time, communicate clearly, meet deadlines, learn new systems, and do my job without someone watching me breathe through a webcam for eight consecutive hours.

I am open to remote, part-time, contract, freelance, evening, weekend, project-based, or genuinely flexible work. I am especially interested in writing, editing, content, research, legal or medical intake, case support, documentation, data or records work, administrative support, resource coordination, and roles where my ability to understand people and complicated information might actually be useful.

I am not looking for commission-only sales, cold calling, or a job that secretly means convincing everyone I have ever met to purchase a financial product.

(If you think that sounded oddly similar to a résumé, you’re right. My résumé.)

I am not asking anyone to invent a position out of pity.

I am asking because people find work through people all the time, and I have decided there is no prize awarded for privately panicking while pretending I have everything handled. Because holy shit do I not have everything handled.

Maybe someone reading this owns a business. Maybe someone’s company is hiring.

Maybe someone needs a reliable writer, researcher, assistant, intake specialist, case coordinator, or detail-obsessed human who is extremely good at finding the missing piece.

Maybe someone has a project sitting unfinished because they do not have the time or brain space to deal with it.

Maybe somebody knows somebody.

So here I am, saying it plainly:

I need work.

I need it to be remote and flexible enough to coexist with my family’s medical reality. I need something that allows me to contribute without pretending the rest of my life stops existing between business hours.

I am capable. I am experienced. I learn quickly. I care deeply about doing things well.

I am also a person standing inside an unusually complicated season, trying to build something sustainable instead of forcing myself back into a structure that will collapse the moment real life happens.

If you are hiring—or know someone who is—please reach out.

And if your workplace needs someone awake in the middle of the night making cookies, apparently I am open to discussing that too.

P.S. It feels absolutely ridiculous to say but… If you enjoy this strange little thing I do here and have ever considered becoming a paid subscriber, this would be a particularly lovely time to do it.

It may also help me feel slightly less guilty for writing and posting here instead of spending every waking second doom-scrolling LinkedIn. And who knew you could doom-scroll LinkedIn?

You can. Oh, you absolutely can. It is like regular doom-scrolling, except everyone has a certificate and is thrilled to announce something.

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My daughter turned sixteen on July 16th.

I am accepting thoughts, prayers, and maybe a light sedative because how is she sixteen??

Sixteen feels different from the birthdays before it. I know every year is technically one year closer to adulthood— that is generally how numbers work— but sixteen arrives carrying evidence.

She’s driving now.
She has a real-life job and she works.
She has a boyfriend… one that I like. Thank the lordt.
She has plans that do not automatically include me.

She has an entire life happening inside and outside of our home that belongs to her now. And yet, when I look at her, I can still see every version of her at once.

I see the two-year-old who dribbled a soccer ball like someone had taught her how, even though no one had.

I see the tiny momma’s girl who needed one of my shirts to sleep when she couldn’t be beside me. If the shirts were already in the washing machine, apparently one of my bras was an acceptable emergency substitute.

I see the little hand reaching for mine beneath the covers.
Three squeezes meant I love you. Four meant I love you too.

Now she is sixteen, and she would rather perish than openly admit she once slept with her mother’s bra for comfort. But every so often, she still finds her way back to me.

She will lay across me when she needs her momma. She will crawl into my bed if the storm outside is just stormy enough to make it seem reasonable. She will give me a hug at the exact moment I need one, sometimes before I have admitted that I do.

Those moments are rarer now, which makes them feel a little sacred. I think they are sacred actually.

I have been working on a birthday gift for her: sixteen things I love about her for sixteen years of her.

It sounded simple when I thought of it… Of course I could list sixteen things I love about my daughter. I could list hundreds, but I didn’t want to give her sixteen generic compliments that could belong to anyone.

You are beautiful… You are smart… You are kind.
All true of her just none of them enough.

I wanted her to be able to read every word without seeing her name and still know that nobody else in the world could have inspired it. Just her in all of her Tanner-self.

She is not merely smart.
She’s the kind of smart that announces she hates math and then earns an A. The kind that procrastinates until the building is nearly on fire, stresses herself half to death, and then somehow emerges from the smoke with the assignment completed and the grade intact.

She is also the kind of smart who once asked me what was inside popcorn shrimp.
“Is it chicken?”

She also wanted to know what fish was called, because cows are beef, so surely fish must become something else once we eat it.

It is fish, babe. Fish remains fish. And I’m still not sure she actually gets it.

Her brain contains multitudes.

She is not merely kind, either.
Kindness can be easy to perform when people are watching. Tanner’s kindness follows her into rooms I am not in.

There have been students from the special education classes in her gym classes who naturally gravitated toward her. She did not treat them like people she was generously including… She simply treated them like her friends.

One boy wanted to play duck-duck-goose while everyone else wanted volleyball, so she helped him understand that sometimes friends take turns choosing. They played volleyball first. Then they played duck-duck-goose.

Another boy began sending her silly YouTube videos because she was his favorite. He did not talk to the other kids the way he talked to Tanner. He did not text them the way he texted her.

Then, just the other day during summer break, he called and she answered. He told her not to tell anyone because he does not talk to girls. Naturally, she protected this extremely serious secret.

That is who she is. People who may not feel understood by everybody else seem to know they are safe with her.

She is a soccer player down to her bones.
She has played since she was four, though I swear I saw it in her when she was two.

She has spent most of her soccer life playing with older girls and never looked like she did not belong. She is coachable, hardworking, welcoming, and far too humble for someone who has saved as many games as she has.

Sometimes I watch her doubt herself on the field, and I wish I could lend her my eyes. I wish she could see the player I see.

Even more than that though, I wish she could see the person I see.

Her own brain is not always gentle with her. She inherited anxiety and OCD, and I would bet my literal ass ADHD may have joined the family reunion too. She ruminates. She doubts herself. Sometimes her brain tells her she is not good enough despite the complete lack of supporting evidence.

But I have never watched her allow doubt to become the end of her story because she keeps going. She speaks openly about mental health. She is not ashamed of needing help. She is already learning that thoughts can feel true without actually being the truth. A slow learning process, yes, but she is growing and it’s showing.

She is stronger and more self-aware at sixteen than I was for a very long time. It isn’t because nothing gets to her. Because things absolutely do— and she faces them anyway.

She is also wonderfully ridiculous.

Her weirdness speaks the same language as mine. We roast each other as a form of affection. Our greetings occasionally contain words that would make someone on the outside think we definitely did not get along.

“Hey, hoe.”

“Hey, bitch.”

In our house, this can mean: I know you. I get you. You are safe with me. There is so much home in our strange little language.

She eats pickles by the jar and treats mayonnaise like a literal major food group. She puts it on hot dogs, which is an offense I have chosen to forgive but it still makes me cringe. She loves enormous gummy pizzas and Krabby Patties, and ranch dressing still turns her face red when she gets it on her skin.

She has enormous blue eyes that have been taking me out since the day she arrived. When she smiles for real, her entire face changes. Her eyes light up, and for one tiny second I can see the toddler, the little girl, the teenager, and the woman she is becoming all at once. She is such a beautiful girl.

This is the strangest part of motherhood I think. Your children keep growing and changing, but none of their previous selves entirely disappear. They remain layered inside the person standing in front of you as you remember them through it all.

Tanner has taught me more about love than I realized while it was happening.
I spent years trying to make sure she knew she mattered. I wanted her to love herself, protect herself, trust herself, and understand that she was worthy of a life that did not require her to shrink. Somewhere along the way, loving her forced me to confront why I did not believe those same things about myself.

I could look at her and know, without question, that she deserved fierce love. So eventually, I had to ask myself why I believed that truth belonged to her but not to me.

By seeing everything special in her, I began to recognize some of it in myself. She was born with her fire. Just like I was born with mine too. Hers simply helped me find mine again.

More than anything, I love the way she sees the world.

She does not reduce everything to black or white. She understands that gray can be complicated and beautiful— clearly a superior trait inherited from her gray-loving mother. _{(Hi, that’s me.)}

Injustice makes her angry. She believes people deserve dignity because they are people. She believes love is love. She understands that something does not have to harm her personally before it becomes worth standing against.

She can be a real big sass-hole.
She can be moody little mess. She can roll her eyes with a goddamn force. But she is not ever cruel for sport. There is no mean streak hiding underneath her goodness.

She has a huge heart, and my hope for her is not that it ever becomes smaller. And I hope she keeps learning that a big heart does not have to absorb everything around it. That empathy does not mean carrying pain that belongs to someone else. That she can love people without abandoning herself. I hope she protects her softness without losing it.

Today, my girl is sixteen.

I am proud of her in ways I do not know how to fully put into language, although I am apparently willing to write several thousand words while attempting it. Woopsie.

I am excited to meet every version of her still ahead while at the same time I am also quietly grieving every version I cannot go back and hold. That is both the good and bad of motherhood, I suppose. Being proud and devastated at the exact same time.

Letting them grow while some part of you still wants to scoop them up, pull the blankets over both of you, take their little hand in yours, and squeeze three times.
I love you.

And if I have done any part of this right, she will always know the answer.Four squeezes means:
I love you too.

Happy birthday to my favorite Tanner.

love you, bye

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters:
A Soulbirth Project! There is no neat niche here.
You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
It’s writing that is impossible to fit into one box.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write.
If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…
hit subscribe!

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
It feels slightly weird to say— because of course it does— but paid subscriptions are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing.

I want to be very clear:
I will not put my writing behind a paywall and the work stays open because I want it to reach whoever needs it.

Subscribe now

💛
If you want to support that, I’ll be deeply grateful.

And if not…you’re still welcome here.
I mean that, truly.
🫶🏻

Share Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project

Of course, this is normal for me. It’s how my brain works. I can feel emotionally waterlogged one day and wake up the next with enough room inside me to breathe. That doesn’t mean I was exaggerating then. And it doesn’t mean anything was solved overnight. _{(I wish.)} It only means feelings move, sometimes faster than the circumstances creating them.

And listen… Yes. Yes there is every possibility that by 8:27 tonight, I will be dragged directly back into the icky emotional swamp by one poorly timed text message or a minor administrative inconvenience. My nervous system loves whimsy. It sounds so much cuter if you call it that, doesn’t it?

But right now, I am okay.

And I still want to share what I wrote when I wasn’t. I almost took down the last sad-girl transmission because vulnerability made me want to sprint directly into the void and dissolve into dust and static… But people didn’t turn away from it—or from me— the way I feared they would. So here I am trying something deeply inconvenient: letting this one exist too.

This came from the same place as Sorrow-Fatigue— except somehow even less polished. It is raw-raw. It fell onto the screen without permission, punctuation, or any interest in sounding reasonable. _{(I have since added the punctuation.)}

While I was writing it, I thought it made absolutely no sense.
Then I read it back… And every word made sense.
Then I read it again— outside of the same place as Sorrow-Fatigue— and it still makes sense now.

I think sometimes the truest thing we write is not the thing we carefully explain. Instead it is the thing that escapes before we have time to cross-examine ourself for writing it.

So this is not a current distress signal. Today is a better day. This is simply a record of what it sounded like inside me when “I’m okay” and “I’m not okay” were both true and exhausted at exactly the same time. This is the more unfiltered piece.

Okay, But Not Okay

I wish I could have a conversation with someone who knows what it’s like to have a conversation with someone who is like me.

I hate my Notes, and I hate my Google Docs, and fuck, sometimes I hate Substack because I hate writing my thoughts but never really letting them go.

I hate being asked if I’m okay while not really being asked if I’m okay because no, I am not fucking okay.

I haven’t been okay.

Even when I say I’m okay, I’m not okay. Even when I say I’m not okay, I’m not okay. Even when I say that I know I am not okay but that I’m going to be okay. Even when I say I know I’m okay because everything is always okay, even when I’m not okay—and yes, that is actually a true belief of mine—I’m not okay.

I’m tired of the not okay being okay because I know that it’s okay, and that means I’m okay and will be okay, and that it’s a circle and a cycle and it comes back around.

I’m tired of that circle.

Just stop on the one spot of okay long enough that I forget I’m supposed to always remember I’m okay, even when I’m not okay.

Who cares if I’m not okay if I’m really okay and it’s always okay?

Me.

Because I know what I mean and what I feel, and how great it is to live so positively while, at the same time—stop that fucking shit and let me embrace the negative.

Because sometimes the negative feels better.

Colder and darker, but better.

Not comfort. Just better.

Better because there is no hiding or looking toward the bright side when the bright side won’t turn off the light. It taunts you and torments you because you can’t get there.

I want to stop looking at it sometimes because it isn’t doing anything positive to me. In fact, it is beating me down a little more.

Somehow, it will get closer, and you would think that feels better, but it doesn’t, because the closer you get is not in distance.

It’s in vision.

You cannot cross the bridge because there is no bridge.

Build a bridge.

How do I fucking build the bridge?

That’s where I’m stuck.

Where do I start? Where do I go? Where do I get what I need to build the bridge?

I would just jump in since I can’t find the shit I need for the bridge, but jumping in doesn’t only affect my own life because I’m a mom with kids, and there is not a single decision that exists without having to take them into consideration.

I can’t wait until they grow to jump in, and that’s why I want to build the bridge.

I want to cross the acidic river over the safety of a sturdy and indestructible bridge with my kids, hand in hand.

Not after finding out this or after that. Not after more time to get on track or rid my body of cancerous mutations of cells and reconstruct the body I was born with—and then suddenly have parts of me taken away. Parts of me I’ve always been insecure about and parts of me I can mold to be the way I want them to be.

I will take my imperfections and go and grow now, thank you.

But no.

I’m so tired of waiting and wondering and believing that I can keep holding out to feel alive because I don’t think I can. I’m drowning and suffocating, and it is much too much to take.

It doesn’t matter that I can see it upon the horizon or that I know there is hope anymore, because the hope belonged to me, and when I speak on it, there’s no one even listening to hear what I need underneath.

To be me.

To be free.

To exist as a version of myself no one has ever met—but I have. I do know her, and I want to be her.

I’m ready to go.

To step into whoever it is no one knows while, at the same time, I am still me.

The good parts that are me are also me.

New and old.

Except they’re dying here, and that is what I’m afraid of. That is what I’m trying to escape.

I honestly don’t know how much longer my soul survives this.

And what does that even mean?

A mental collapse?

But does that mean the end of all of me? Or does the brain just literally fry, and I’m institutionalized, like my collapse took it all away from me?

Just another thought and another question.

And it’s scary to think because you’re always thinking.

All day, you’re thinking, and there are so many things you’re thinking—and it’s not just for you.

You think for her and for him and them and everyone else.

That’s not negligent of me because I’m always screaming:

What the fuck about me?

I can’t answer that part, which is why writing it isn’t replacing my desire to converse with someone who is like me.

I’m sick of writing my thoughts in my Notes, my Google Docs, and my fucking Substack.

Love you, bye

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters:
A Soulbirth Project! There is no neat niche here.
You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
It’s writing that is impossible to fit into one box.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write.
If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…
hit subscribe!

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
It feels slightly weird to say— because of course it does— but paid subscriptions are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing.

I want to be very clear:
I will not put my writing behind a paywall and the work stays open because I want it to reach whoever needs it.

Subscribe now

💛
If you want to support that, I’ll be deeply grateful.

And if not…you’re still welcome here.
I mean that, truly.
🫶🏻

Share Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project

Lately, I have been falling apart in front of my oldest daughter more than I want to.

You know… Just in the ordinary, humiliating ways exhaustion leaks out of a person. In tears I cannot stop quickly enough. In a voice that sounds heavier than I want it to. In an apology arriving in the same breath as the emotion.

I hate it.

I hate that she can see how depleted I am. I hate that the weight of everything has become visible in places I once kept protected— actually, more honestly, places I kept hidden. I hate that I cannot always reach the version of myself I want to give her— the lighter one and the steadier one. The one who can absorb the hard things without letting them spill into the room.

And because I am afraid of what my sadness might ask of her, I explain it while I am still inside it.

So I tell her I am sorry. I tell her I am not trying to suck right now— she tells me I do not suck.

And then I have to explain that I was not asking her to say that. Because I don’t need her to convince me that I am good. I don’t want her to become the person who feels responsible for holding me— her mother— together. She doesn’t need to study my face to analyze how I’m feeling or adjust herself to keep me calm. I don’t want her learning that love means managing someone else’s pain.

My pain is not her assignment. That is the line I am trying to hold, even when I can’t hold much else.

There is a difference between a child knowing her mother is struggling and a child believing her mother’s survival depends on her. I know that because I have been the child on the other side of an adult’s pain. I grew up learning to read the room before the room had a chance to read me.

My dad had major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and other mental illnesses, but those were the big ones. I was taught that when he hurt me, my mom, or my sister, he did not really mean to.

He couldn’t help it.
He was sick.
He loved us.

And somehow, all of those explanations meant the rest of us were expected to absorb whatever happened.

Things were said to me that shattered my heart, but I was supposed to let them go because he did not mean them. I apologized for things I should never have had to apologize for—things that had actually been done to me—because maybe… maybe if I had not said this, done that, or reacted the wrong way, he would not have responded the way he did.

I became hyperaware of his mood because it could flip in an instant. I watched his face. I listened for the tone in his voice. I paid attention to the way he moved through the house.

I watched myself even more carefully and still, somehow, I would end up triggering something_{. (Probably because I was just a kid.)} Then I would sit with it afterward, trying to figure out what I had done this time.

No one told me: “You didn’t do anything.” No one told me that his pain could explain his behavior without making me responsible for it. So his pain became my assignment.

My mom had so much patience for everyone. Too much patience for my dad. I love her immensely. I forgive her. I also have to tell the truth about what it was like to be her child.

She was surviving. She felt responsible for fixing things, caretaking, and making sure my dad was okay because he damn sure could not—or would not—take care of himself.

She was always trying to keep the peace. But peace was impossible. What she was really doing was trying to keep him comfortable enough that the rest of us could breathe… And that often came at my expense.

Even as a child, something in me understood that mental illness could make healing more difficult without making accountability impossible. My dad was wounded, but he also chose, over and over, to make his wounds everyone else’s responsibility.

He made everything about himself—not by believing he was the problem, but by refusing to consider that he might be. Funny how his absolute certainty that he was never the problem taught me to believe that I always was… And that belief followed me way too far into adulthood.

I remember my mom choosing my dad’s comfort over my feelings many times. And listen, I forgive her for that. I know she was trying to survive him and manage the fallout. But in trying to keep the peace, she brought me her pain too.

When he made life hard, she needed it to stop. She knew he was not going to take responsibility, so the responsibility had to land somewhere else. Usually on the person who could still be reasoned with.

Me.

She did not literally say, “Take the blame.” It was more subtle than that.

She cried.
She used guilt.
She reminded me that he did not mean it.
She asked me to understand him.

She needed me to apologize, soften, forgive, or let it go so he would calm down and the house could return to whatever version of peace we were pretending to have. So, I became part of the system that kept him comfortable. And because I loved her, I carried her need for peace too.

If that sounds like I am hating on my mother, please understand that I am not. She made mistakes. But she also lived much of her life asleep, without any real sense that she was allowed to have a self outside of caring for everyone else.

I can understand why she did what she did. I can forgive her— I do forgive her.

But I’ll also tell the truth about what it taught me… It taught me that an adult’s pain could enter a room and immediately become the child’s responsibility. It taught me to comfort the person who hurt me. It taught me to monitor, explain, apologize, forgive, and absorb. It taught me that love meant making myself smaller so someone else’s emotions would not get bigger.

And I refuse to hand that job to either one of my children.

There is a difference between being witnessed and being made responsible. I can be sad in front of her and I can be overwhelmed. I can be human. What I cannot do is hand her the weight and call it honesty.

So I keep telling her the truth as clearly as I can:

You did not cause this.
You do not have to fix it.
You are allowed to keep having your own day.
You are allowed to be a teenager while I am an adult having a hard time.

And based on the time I worried aloud that my mood might ruin her entire day, only for her to say, “Yeah, no, I don’t really think about you.”
Well… I suspect she is doing all right on that front. Brutal. Honest. Healthy even. But perhaps she could think about me four percent more. Just enough to bring me a snack. 😂

But underneath the joke is the thing I am most afraid to admit. Sometimes I just fucking miss myself. I don’t believe I am a bad mother or that I have disappeared entirely. I just hate that sometimes it is so hard to access the version of me as the momma I wish I could always be. The one who can laugh easily instead of digging for it beneath layers of panic, grief, appointments, money, responsibilities, and the constant fear that I have forgotten something important.

She is still here— that momma. I mean me. I’m still here. I show up In laughter at an unfiltered teenage answer and in the care I take to make sure my daughter knows she is not responsible for saving me.

Even while I am falling apart, some part of me is still watching over how the pieces land. That is motherhood, I think. Not pretending nothing hurts or becoming so polished that your children never see you struggle. _{(That’s actually a whole other lesson, you know? Teaching them that it’s okay to struggle sometimes. Especially as a mother— I’ll probably write about that one day. 😉)} But being able to admit that even though you—the adult—are having a hard time, it doesn’t make the child responsible for carrying that burden. The child stays the child and does not have to absorb the adult things. It’s the honesty in saying, “I am having a hard time, but you are still safe to be yourself.” That’s allowing them to know us as human while refusing to make our humanity their burden.

So yes, I do wish I were lighter right now. I wish loving my girls made me immune to exhaustion. And I wish knowing who I want to be gave me immediate access to that side of me… But it doesn’t.

Sometimes I know exactly who I am and still cannot reach that part of me easily. It doesn’t mean that part of me is gone. It might just mean I am tired. It might mean I am carrying too much. I know it doesn’t mean I’m loving too little.

Until I can get back to that lighter side of me, I will keep doing the thing where I tell my daughter the truth:

I love you. I am struggling and my pain might be visible but you did not cause it, and it will never be your job to carry it.

Love you, bye.
-Brittany

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters:
A Soulbirth Project! There is no neat niche here.
You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
It’s writing that is impossible to fit into one box.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write.
If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…
hit subscribe!

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
It feels slightly weird to say— because of course it does— but paid subscriptions are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing.

I want to be very clear:
I will not put my writing behind a paywall and the work stays open because I want it to reach whoever needs it.

Subscribe now

💛
If you want to support that, I’ll be deeply grateful.

And if not…you’re still welcome here.
I mean that, truly.
🫶🏻

Share Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project

I keep saying I’m sad, but sad feels too small, too simple, and too clean. Sad sounds like one thing happened and it hurt. This has not— and is not— one thing.

This is grief and fear and anger and disappointment and loneliness all soaked together until I cannot tell where one ends and another begins. It is too many things hurting at once, too many things repeating.

I am not only sad. I am fucking tired of being sad. I am tired of waking up inside the same emotional storm. Tired of discovering another reason to hurt before I have recovered from the last one. Tired of being able to see every pattern clearly and still being unable to make any of it change.

I notice it. I name it. I explain it. I try. Then it happens again, and then I have to carry how that feels too. Fuckity-fuck.

Really, that may be the most exhausting part. Not only living through the thing, but having to survive the aftermath inside myself. Having to question whether it was really that bad. And brotherrrr, I do, everytime.

Then telling myself to just get over it. And having to argue with the voice that says I am too sensitive, too dramatic, too affected by things everyone else seems able to shrug off.

But the truth is, it is not one small thing. It is every small thing arriving at the same bruise. Too many small things start to feel like big, huge things.

It’s me exhausting myself, trying to explain myself, and still being misunderstood. It is being overlooked after already feeling invisible. It is hearing compassionate words that still somehow miss me. It is being told I am seen while living like I am not. It is finding out that the place I thought I had was apparently only available when there was enough room left over.

Then one more disappointment walks into the fucking room that is already full of them.

Maybe the word is not sadness. Instead, maybe it’s called something like sorrow-fatigue. It’s like what happens when a person has been hurting for so long that even the pain becomes tired.

I feel emotionally waterlogged and there is no dry part left for the next thing to land on. And I still keep trying to make it smaller because I think that’s just what I do. I keep telling myself it could be worse and that other people have bigger problems.

I should be grateful. This particular thing is not the end of the world. I actually know that it isn’t.

But it doesn’t really have to be the end of the world to hurt me, does it?

It doesn’t have to be catastrophic to matter, does it?

It doesn’t have to destroy me to leave me feeling more depleted than I was before it happened, does it?

Sometimes I think I am not looking for a solution anymore. I am looking for someone to stop me from trying to convince myself that it should not feel this heavy.

I need someone to say: “Yes, Brittany, that was painful.”

Yes… It did happen again.

Yes… You are exhausted because you have been carrying too much for too long.

No…. You are not imagining it.

No… You do not have to make it smaller so everyone else can remain comfortable.

It’s like maybe I need to hear my own pain reflected back to me because I have spent so long treating myself like an unreliable witness. I have lived it and still asked whether I was allowed to believe it. I have demanded evidence after I have felt it. I have stood inside the wreckage and asked myself whether anything actually happened. I think that’s the equivalent of gaslighting yourself?

So perhaps this is the evidence if I’m sitting here saying it now?

I hurt and I am tired of hurting. And that needs to be enough. I do not need to turn it into growth in one night, though I sure as shit think I should just be able to sometimes… But, I don’t need to find the lesson in it I guess.

I don’t need to forgive it, fix it, understand everyone involved, or make it easier to swallow. I think I am supposed to stop abandoning myself inside it.

I think I’m supposed to stand on business like I already know. Like I believe myself. Believe that it hurts, that I am tired, and right now I’m carrying a bunch of heavy shit. And I believe maybe I should stop cross-examining the woman saying so.

And yes, I will be o-fucking-kay. Of course I will. Because who am I if I am not the person who survives the thing, analyzes the thing, writes the thing, and then makes a joke about the thing before anyone gets too uncomfortable?

Apparently, being okay is less of an emotional state and more of a job I was hired for without applying. I also don’t get paid which is a real bitch.

So… Please do not unsubscribe because of this extremely sad girl transmission.
I contain multitudes… Unfortunately, several of them are exhausted, one is crying, and at least one still thinks this is funny.

Love you, bye.

💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters:
A Soulbirth Project! There is no neat niche here.
You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
It’s writing that is impossible to fit into one box.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write.
If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…
hit subscribe!

Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
It feels slightly weird to say— because of course it does— but paid subscriptions are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing.

I want to be very clear:
I will not put my writing behind a paywall and the work stays open because I want it to reach whoever needs it.

Subscribe now

💛
If you want to support that, I’ll be deeply grateful.

And if not…you’re still welcome here.
I mean that, truly.
🫶🏻

Share Sparkplug Letters: A Soulbirth Project