I’d finally nailed down a direction for my life’s work. Not just a bunch of random projects, but something that really felt like A Meaningful Thing that I could do, that pulled a lot of the randomness together. After the excitement wore off and I was done buying domain names and making a loose plan, the overwhelm settled in. The fear settled in. The who-do-I-think-I-am settled in.

I was 50 years, seven months, two weeks, and today years old when I learned that figuring out what you want is only marginally less terrifying than not knowing.

And also, PMS. And the mood downturn that happens every year at this time. And moving our youngest into her dorm. And a bunch of freelance work.

I’d be lying, though, if I said that was really what was keeping me from writing. Because into all of this, I threw in tearing apart my office to completely rearrange it, go through all the papers and all the crafts and all the books and all the collectibles to purge a lot of things, and somehow incorporating three cat beds into the furniture because the felines are now lost without the kiddo as their favorite hooman. Basically, I did what every self-aware ADHD person does when faced with the possibility of Clarity of Purpose: productive procrastination!

I’m writing this now from my nearly-done office setup. Naturally, none of the cats are with me. But the freelance projects are largely done, I’m wearing mood patches, the kid is settling into college life well, and I’m out of excuses.

Meanwhile, whatever traction I had gained here on Substack may have cooled off a bit. That’s alright. I was already in transition here anyway.

What I’ve actually missed are the interactions. Reading your Notes. Leaving my occasionally insightful but more often smartass comments. Having little conversations with people I’ve never met but have somehow come to recognize in this corner of the internet.

I’d like to get back to that.

The Clarity is still there, even if it has endured a little scope creep already and accessorized. The long list of to-dos for it is also still there, and I’m certainly overwhelmed. Most of all, the desire to share this with whoever might yet read it is still there.

So... I’m here. The fires are burning. And The Heat from a Dozen Fires is still coming.

And now I get to write in my slightly less thing-chaotic, slightly more furry-chaotic office.

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Constant tension. Very distracting. Do not recommend. But this is kind of par for the course of being my AuDHD badass self.

So imagine my surprise when, just a week ago, all that smoke coalesced into one shape. Well, most of the smoke. But I’ll take even six out of twelve fires networking into a co-op of conflagrations over running my brain ragged through each fire’s individual possibilities. (Does this mean I’m franchising my ADHD?)

I had no idea what to call this. I even posted a note about it earlier this week: “What’s the word for when so many different and important pieces of who you are and what you want and all the things you do finally converge into a picture big enough for you to frame as a reminder of the direction you’re going? There is a word for that, right?”

A friend suggested via Facebook that the word was alignment, but she was too late. I’d already coined “gestaltiphany.”

Gestaltiphany (noun): that slightly alarming moment when all the random shit you’ve been doing suddenly reveals that it has, in fact, been going somewhere.

You may be wondering what this moment was. You will have to wonder a little longer. I have to build true anticipation, see? I can’t just have a few short paragraphs, reveal it all, and have you go, “that’s nice.” I need you to walk among the fires with me. Get a little toasty. Brush off a few sparks. And then, bam! All shall be revealed. I mean, it’s entirely possible you’ll get there and think, “All that for this?” But this is my gestaltiphany’s backstory, so I shall release the smoke signals as I see fit.

If you’re curious, get cozy.

THE VIEW FROM DOWN HERE

Here are some of the fires I’ve been trying to tend:

1. The 30-hours-a-week job at a progressive mainline church (and always trying to do it better).

2. My freelance business, 4th Power Creative.

3. Creating more resources for Open Table Studio, a church graphics and worship series storefront.

4. This Substack: wanting to do better for my paid subscribers, and have a freaking focus already, dammit.

5. Designing more products for Thingularities, my POD line.

6. Promoting my self-published faith deconstruction workbook, which is approaching its first birthday.

7. Developing another workbook in a more niche-y version of the same vein.

8. Building out a website with resources for people who are deconstructing and those who care for them (mainly pastors or ministry leaders who don’t know how to support exvangelicals).

9. But also having that website be much more than faith deconstruction (more on that later).

10. Writing real, honest-to-goodness book-books. (I have, like, three on the TBW shelf in my head.)

11. Navigating the learning curve of supporting my previously-unsupported neurodivergence at 50 years old.

12. Simply existing in this dystopian triathlon of authoritarianism, AI-assisted climate change, and end-stage capitalism while realizing I may never be able to “retire,” which adds urgency to all the possible income streams mentioned above.

Yup, that’s twelve.

If you know anything about ADHD, you know we Shiny Squirrel Chasers can be absolutely brilliant at falling down rabbit holes and starting projects or hobbies with full-tilt enthusiasm. Until the dopamine runs out. Then said project or hobby becomes another doom pile, left to moulder in its potential perfection.

Over the years, my autistic pattern-recognizer learned to harness that flood of neurochemical git-’er-done juice to race the clock to a project’s finish line. Or, at least to publicly commit so far into it on behalf of other people that I had no choice but to push myself to completion. Just don’t ask me to maintain something consistently.

Guess which part was creating and publishing the workbook? And guess which part was marketing it?

Yeah. I created this thing with love, tears, laughter, and a crap-ton of hope that it would help people like the me who could have used it 20 years ago. I released it into the world almost one year ago, and it has found its way into exactly 67 households. Not all of them friends and family, though, so there’s that little victory.

It deserved better. Better planning. Better strategy. Better promotion. Better consistency of effort.

Folks, I was like a pro-lifer who just wanted the thing to be brought into the world, but who let their executive dysfunction vote no on anything that would have supported it after its debut. Like usual, I jumped in with both feet, blinded by visions of people finding peace through sacred-cow-roasting exercises, and did not nail the landing. If by landing you mean launching it well.

It still deserves better. I look through it, and I know that I could and should do better by it. And so I contemplate relaunching it, which is one fire out of twelve.

OTHER VIEWS FROM OTHER PEOPLE

I’ve known most of my life that I had ADHD. I was diagnosed in third grade.

But wait, Amanda. Didn’t you say you’re now learning how to manage your neurodivergence?

Yes. Yes, I did.

See, there’s a difference between getting diagnosed and getting supported. I took Ritalin and saw a therapist occasionally for about two years after my diagnosis. Then we moved, and the support simply stopped. Instead, as I entered middle school years, the refrain was “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you do anything right? You’re so lazy… Don’t be selfish… This shouldn’t be such a difficult thing to do… You have so much potential, but you’re not living up to it... Try harder.” The knowledge of the diagnosis was there, but it had zero bearing on expectations or frustrations. There was no treatment to be had, unless you think being considered a constant problem to be managed is treatment.

And so that thinking was internalized. In the evangelical environment in which I grew up, it was also sin. Sin = bad, and I was always doing bad things by not doing my homework or cleaning my room or not paying attention. Whenever my ADHD did come up, even in my own head, it was just an “excuse” for not dealing with my character flaws. I was avoiding accountability, no matter how hard I tried to do better.

Spending most of my existence without support or even compassionate acknowledgement of my very real disability puts me in a similar boat to people who receive a later-in-life diagnosis: finally, answers. But also a tremendous amount of rage. And regret. And grief. Because an answer in the present can rewrite your past.

Even though the road of learning about your neurodivergence and how to cope with it can lead to healing, there is still a bewildering sense of loss mixed in with the relief of having a why, because suddenly your identity that was so rooted in the certainty of being fundamentally flawed is gone. So what do you do now?

Along the way, in the last couple of years of coming into honesty about my ADHDness, I also self-diagnosed as autistic. Because holy hell does that explain even more about me, especially that unique friction between the two neurodivergences.

Two roads diverged inside my brain, and I—
I took both (obviously),
And that has made all the difference.

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Dear Reader, at this point we are well past 1,200 words, and you may be wondering now (or have been for a while), “Does this woman have a point?” Or even just, “Get on with it already.”

Getting on with it already….

Just a moment ago, I wrote of certainty, and loss, and healing. Of the fire of navigating my alternatively-wired brain. Of the fire of promoting my workbook. Of my history of mistaking the dopamine of creation for the commitment to the creation.

Usually, I make the thing, and I’ve scratched the itch. Whee! Then: Thank you, next.

This time I’m not done. I’m circling back around. There’s something bigger in the shape of the smoke, in the way this fire connects to the others.

I’ve always done better at completing and committing to projects when the goal is to help other people. Yes, accountability (see, I’m not afraid of it!), but also? It’s a part of who I am, just as fundamental to my wiring as the AuDHD parts.

I’ve struggled all my life with knowing who I want to be when I grow up. I’m not any closer to figuring that out. But I know what I want to build. And more importantly, why.

However… That’s a story for next week.

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This essay is in a style I don’t often write in anymore; the crankiness of middle age and the rage of sinful empathy and heretical faith at what the hell is happening has given my words a sharper edge. When I reread this, however much I might disagree with some of its theology, the very real grief and very real earnestness of wanting something good to come out all that pain still rings knowing bells in my soul.

God, how is it I end up here so often? It’s not like I want to be here. But we have a history, the floor and I, and here I am again, examining the fibers of the carpet through my tears. Eventually I will be done with the sobbing, the clenched fists and white knuckles, the physical writhing that mirrors the interior twisting, and I will lay quiet on the floor, a hollow husk of myself. Bare, dead and waiting for my exhaustion to carry me away.

There are many things that bring me low, pull me to this floor then tear me apart. Loss, fear, rejection—real or perceived—the trials of loved ones, shame… Not only single instances, but also the piling up of all these, in the past and present—and sometimes the dreaded future—jumbled together like so many jagged pieces of the same broken vessel. They drag me under their weight, cutting and separating me.

I am being threshed…

What is suffering but some kind of wrong to be endured by the whole being—body, soul, mind and spirit; the same whole being commanded to worship God? What is threshing but dividing the interior from the exterior, the useful from the scrap?

An ancient and necessary process, threshing makes grain usable. In undeveloped countries, the work is done much the same way Araunah was threshing the wheat harvest when King David, at God’s instruction, came to him to purchase the Jebusite’s threshing floor. The grain must be separated from its husk and its straw, so he used oxen to tread over the sheaves spread out on the floor, the beasts dragging a heavy board with broken pieces of pottery embedded into it—a threshing sledge—behind them with Araunah most likely sitting on the board, directing the movement.

I have agonized much on the threshing floor. Like Joseph, I have mourned the loss of my father. Like Gideon, I have bartered with God. Like Ruth, I have uncovered longing to fill my deepest needs. Like David, I have sought forgiveness and relief. Like Uzzah, I have been struck down after encountering the holy. Like Ahab, I have not liked the prophetic truth heard on the threshing floor.

One of the very few things I miss from years spent in more evangelical churches is the altar, the low line of dark wood benches. How many come-to-Jesus moments prompted me to rise from my seat and move forward, then to fall to the floor on my knees, often crying? Sometimes it was a response of joy and gratitude. More often it was a conviction or startling realization that pulled me to the ground. Always, after the sledge had finished passing over me, as I lay bleeding out saltwater, the peace of grace would settle like a balm.

I recall the very first time I understood grace, despite having been a Christian since a very young age: At a fall retreat for a college campus ministry when I was 18 (the only semester I was at Ohio State University). The understanding that God wanted all of me—not just the best of me, as it seemed from family—took me out of a crowd of strangers and stretched me out, face-down, on the floor. Abuse, neglect, shame from things I had done, shame from things done to me, all my failures and faults and flaws… All of it was for the harvest. What might now or later or never be shaken loose from me, what might be carried out on the breeze or be used to sustain life, none of these were under my control. The wind and gravity, forces not of my creation or will, would be agents of God. God would decide what was useless debris or not, neither myself nor anyone else could judge. I was simply laid out at the altar, sacrificing all of me.

Threshing floors are usually rock or unfertile soil beaten down to become as hard as possible. You have heard it said that rock bottom is a great place on which to build, but I ask of you, who feels like building off their own suffering while they are in the midst of it? Does the grain dream of the recipe that will turn it into bread for consumption? Or does it only know it has been flayed naked of what protected it as it grew, as it now lies in vulnerability on a barren space, a hard place? A high place.

That Araunah is riding his threshing sledge around a large, flat circle is a funny thing to be doing, really, when you read the story in 1 Chronicles and realize that while he is doing this, a giant angel is standing on the threshing floor, holding a sword over Jerusalem and scaring off his four sons. But it’s not until the King approaches that the Jebusite abandons his work to greet David and finds himself suddenly in a real estate deal of divine proportions.

David insists on paying for the threshing floor—he will not beseech the Lord through means that cost him nothing—and proceeds to make offerings, seeking peace from God’s wrath over his wrongdoing. Then, when God accepts, offers more sacrifices in thanks. After this, David decides the threshing floor is the perfect spot for the temple he wants to build. David was neither the first nor the last to see a threshing floor as a good place for worship. The First Testament is full of stories of altars built on high places, and of threshing floors doubling as sacred spaces, for both Yahweh and the gods of nearby kingdoms. A simple perspective: the closer to the heavens, the closer to the divine. Such a juxtaposition, that crushing separation on the floor is linked to lifting up the soul. Threshing is to threshold as suffering is to sacrifice.

I was 25 when I learned of the power of lament. The most significant threshing that year was the lowliness of being fired from two jobs within a six-month span1, to be unemployed and facing the truth that I was sorely lacking the professional competency to keep a good job, let alone develop a career. A truth made worse by the fact that I did not, and still do not, possess any kind of degree or formal training. Despair of ever reaching real adulthood drove me to scripture, particularly the Psalms. In them, I found a vocabulary that dragged heavily across my soul, loosening its potential to create from its own despondency. I wrote, “I seek to hide from my enemies/ But how can I hide from myself?/ Tear me down, Lord;/ I am weary of dark holes, the stench of deceit,/ And the gluttony of posturing.” I wrote, “I’m tired of playing vulture to myself—/ These lazy circles of/ Self-pity and self-loathing nauseate me.”

At the lowest point, I paced the floor in my then-church’s sanctuary, pleading with God for a change in heart and a change in circumstances. And God crushed me as They blessed me; that floor became the place where I was freed from that “stench of deceit” through confession. Painful, that tearing of the ego, and beautiful, that mercy given in the tearing’s wake.

Many threshing floors were on outcroppings or the tops of hills near fields nestled in more fertile valleys. These were great locations, not only because of proximity, but also because the wind blowing over these elevations made winnowing easier. Why work so hard to sort the grain from the chaff when a breeze could sweep the lighter husks away while you could sweep the heavier grain left behind into piles? And the chaff must be let to drift away else it rots where it lies, festering on a ground that cannot grow anything but is yet so necessary for processes that sustain life. These floors are where crops become food, as arduous as that alteration is. These floors are also where crops become offerings—of grain, of dough, of unleavened bread.

I used to bring myself to tears imagining what it would be like to lose my dad. But those agonized moments of grief anticipated were nothing compared to when he suddenly died on Father’s Day in 2011. There was no goodbye, though I felt as if I should have known something was wrong. Dad, only a mostly healthy 58, had just given me two small but very meaningful family items saying he wanted to make sure I had them if he died. And when I fretted about paying him back for a portion of a bill, he dismissed my fussing with a comment about allowing him to take care of me while he was still around. This was just a few days before he abruptly sat down on the steps in his home, complaining of dizziness and then passing out. How did he know about the brain hemorrhage that would sweep him away, his vibrant wit, his drive to continue improving life for those he loved, his pride in solving all the newspaper puzzles in pen? For even though it would be the early morning of the next day when the rest of his body would follow his consciousness and he could not be resuscitated, he was essentially gone the moment he fainted.

The threshing floor was unrelentingly hard so long after that. What is supposed to be made from that kind of separation? What could come of that threshing, especially when much of that grief is the loss of the reconciliation my maturity would eventually have brought? The death of the richer relationship we could have had still chokes me. Is this a gift offering, since I have yet to discover any transforming leaven? This bread is dense and bitter. It tastes of sackcloth and turns to ashes in my mouth.

God chose the threshing floor, but David obediently approached it, bought it, built the altar, and made the sacrifices—all to redeem an evil he had done and to save his people. Threshing floors are spaces where we might recreate from wreckage, reconcile from alienation, and restore from harm. Crops may not be asked to be cut down or threshed, but the floor is an inevitable invitation for all souls who would be transformed.

What part of me is being harvested? What has grown with me that needs abandoning? These tears that fall from my overflowing anguish, are they the grain that drops heavy to the ground? Am I shaking down my hopes, loosened from unrealistic expectations? Is my love becoming substantial enough to break away from what holds it back? Have fears have become realized, and now they blow away as they are faced? Maybe it is my God-image that drops like a newborn, and this labor that tears weeping from my throat mingles with the first cries of an infant identity.

What is the sacrifice on a threshing floor: the grain, which is gathered and ground, or the useless chaff, which becomes dust on the wind? What pleases Yahweh more: the sacrifice, or the showing up? And if the sacrifice, the broken heart, is honest about its pain and its doubts, does that still mean it is pure?

Look on me, Lord, for I am lowly and humbled by sorrow. I lament with all my soul. Do not muzzle me as I tread out this sacrifice. You have allowed me to be brought here, but I choose to enter my own threshing in the hope of sharing in whatever will come of this. I will not muzzle myself; if I am in a high place, I will use it to be heard. I will not hide grief. I keep coming here, to the floor. For all the times I’ve wanted to walk away, I am compelled to bring my whole self, chaff and grain, mind and soul, faith and doubt. To offer a praise of sorts, praise that costs everything, praise that sounds like mourning, praise that is a sacrifice. I come to be threshed, which is to say I come for the full harvest, for I would be transformed.

Questions

I’d love to know:

Have you ever gone back and read something you wrote years ago and met an earlier version of yourself there?

If you’re open to answering, what have your floors been?

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It started with the sound of plops on the carpet, and tapping on the mid-1940s marble windowsill in our bedroom.

The sounds entered my dreams first, as a discordant element with the story already spooling through my subconscious. Once my brain recognized the sounds to push me awake, there was a rush to get something under the ceiling leak, which we’d dealt with before, and a towel over the windowsill taking the beating from the leak above it, which was new. Then I had to check the pre-existing leaks in the kitchen, with its three exit points, and the dining room, and the entryway, while my husband came upstairs from his basement office to share that apparently the solution he’d had for the leaking basement window wasn’t a solution after all.

Only after the flurry of activity could my brain catch up. Shit. The mortar work James did didn’t fix this. When does this become black mold?

Even my steadily worsening eyesight had seen that the new leak was inevitable from the growing discoloration on the ceiling above the window.

And the worry and frustration of knowing no fix was going to come anytime soon—not for the leaks, not for the surgery I can’t afford on my eye—settled into every crevice of my body.

I spent most of the day vacillating between bouts of crying, trying to get work done, and spinning my wheels over what else I could try to get us out of this perpetual paycheck-to-paycheck cycle that somehow still leaves us falling behind.

So, no Substack. Sorry about that. I was busy containing one kind of water while leaking my own.

BEHOLD, MY BRAVE VULNERABILITY

The eyes are my fault. That’s almost as hard to admit as my fear of losing my eyesight.

I have Type 2 diabetes. I have spent most of my life obese. I have mismanaged my eating and activity levels for years, and never mind all the complicated reasons why, because we’re not generally allowed any reprieve from the guilt and shame of being fat. Reasons become excuses. Health problems become consequences. There is always an implied you did this to yourself hovering somewhere nearby. Sometimes the health problems feel like taxes on a debt I’ve already been paying for all my life: failing to be the kind of body I was supposed to have.

My diabetes is controlled now, but the damage is already there because I have diabetic retinopathy. One eye was treated last fall, and I’m barely managing the payments now. The other eye still needs treatment I can’t afford. I’m doing the things I’m supposed to do now. But effort isn’t retroactive, and increasingly I’m discovering it isn’t predictive either.

Oh, did I mention I am a graphic designer? That the bulk of my livelihood depends on seeing?

For nearly three decades, when people haven’t known what else to make of my strange assortment of abilities, they have at least known I can make things look good. Design has been one of the steady pieces of my professional identity. I know how to do this. People come to me because I know how to do this. So what happens to a graphic designer who loses her eyesight… or enough of it that it matters?

All the effort to change my health hasn’t erased the risk, just like all the effort to fix the house hasn’t stopped the leaks, just like all the effort to earn more hasn’t replaced our financial house of cards with something durable. None of it has paid off. Literally.

PLEASE ENJOY THIS TASTEFUL DISPLAY OF FINANCIAL DESPAIR

I don’t know exactly what I thought 50 would be like, but I’m pretty sure I expected to feel more secure by now.

Not wealthy. I’d settle for Coke Zero wishes and enough-money-in-savings-that-a-retina-specialist-doesn’t-cause-a-financial-collapse dreams. The house gets fixed when something breaks. The medical thing gets done when the doctor says it needs done. The bills get paid without the monthly game of financial Tetris. There’s enough paying work, which in turn provides enough income. There’s enough margin that one unexpected expense doesn’t immediately start eyeing another necessity and asking which one of them would like to volunteer as tribute.

I thought I’d have more to show for all the effort by now. That’s another sentence I’ve been trying not to write. Because I have tried. God, I have tried.

I work 30 hours a week at my main job. I have one regular freelance client. Last year, I self-published the resource I wish I’d had 20 years ago. I write this Substack. I’ve made print-on-demand designs and liturgical resources and assorted other things, and researched approximately eleventy billion ways to make money online. I keep trying to Frankenstein these disparate parts into something resembling a sustainable living.

Occasionally someone buys something, and I throw the switch. IT’S ALIVE!

Then the creature flops lifelessly to the table again.

I know creative work takes time. I know audiences don’t appear overnight. I know publishing one book does not entitle me to a parade, a publishing contract, or even enough royalties to keep me supplied in Costco rotisserie chickens, as measures it. Knowing and needing occupy very different parts of the brain.

I don’t only want readers, or connections, or projects. I need money.

That’s an uncomfortable sentence for a creative person to write. We’re supposed to want connection and expression and impact, and money contaminates the purity of our craftsmanship. Except GM Financial remains stubbornly uninterested in accepting artistic fulfillment.

As for that artistic fulfillment? Lately the things I’ve been putting into the world don’t seem to be landing much: The workbook isn’t selling, my Substack isn’t growing—-even my Notes seem to disappear into the algorithmic sea without a ripple.

There is something uniquely demoralizing about making things you’re proud of and watching the world respond with the digital equivalent of a polite cough.

This isn't happening while I'm lounging around waiting to be discovered. I'm working, looking for clients, building things, learning things, trying things. I'm attempting to create systems in which I can earn enough without perpetually trading away the parts of myself that make me feel alive, all while still living the life that needs the money.

And so it goes, and so it goes… And I’m not the only one who knows. Right? Right.

HAVE YOU CONSIDERED SIMPLY BEING MORE EMPLOYABLE?

The obvious answer, of course, is: Get a full-time job. That sentence scares the shit out of me.

I am 50 years old. I don’t have a degree. My professional history makes considerably more sense if you think of it as a buffet than a ladder. I’ve spent decades accumulating skills, experiences, weird competencies, and enough software knowledge to call myself well-rounded, but I don’t fit particularly neatly into the boxes on job-search websites.

I’m also AuDHD. I’ve done the corporate job. I know I can function in that world (albeit still being the office weirdo). I also know what functioning in that world has cost me.

For most of my life, I didn’t know there was a word for the constant work of monitoring myself: how much I’m talking, whether I’m talking enough, whether my face is doing the appropriate face, whether I’ve missed an implied instruction everyone else apparently received telepathically, whether I’m being too much, too quiet, too distracted, too intense, too sensitive.

Masking. (I just felt like I was pretending to be human. Or maybe I was human, and everyone else was a demigod.)

Then perimenopause showed up and started sneaking those “cognitive compensation competencies” out the back door. So now the mask doesn't fit as well anymore, and the sensory stuff is harder, the executive function is harder, the emotional regulation is harder, and the energy required to appear functional is harder to manufacture. Hello, midlife female rage. Goodbye, last shreds of social conditioning.

There is a lot of encouragement in neurodivergent spaces about unmasking. “Be authentic.” “Honor the way your brain works.” “Stop forcing yourself into systems that weren’t designed for you.”

Sounds great! Meanwhile, the HVAC loan company prefers Masked Amanda to pay on the AC unit that we had to replace several years ago (an amount that never really seems to get smaller). So… exactly how authentic can I afford to become? Does authenticity cover the bills when you’re a fat middle-aged woman without some trendy brand and sales pitch that writes itself?

I can tell you it does not. What my failures to succeed while being myself tell me is that I’m not valuable. Fuck, that hurts.

AND NOW, A BRIEF INTERLUDE OF SELF-AWARENESS

I think some part of me believed I was supposed to be safe by now. I did the things: I worked. I learned. I built skills. I paid bills. I tried to be responsible. I didn’t expect to be rich, but somewhere along the way I apparently absorbed the idea that responsible adulthood came with a floor.

Work hard, and eventually you’ll be okay.

Now, I have to acknowledge the privilege buried inside that expectation. The old equation of hard work plus responsibility equals the American Dream hasn’t been true for a very long time, if it ever was. It certainly wasn’t equally available to everyone. Plenty of people have never been promised a floor. Race, class, gender, disability, generational wealth, geography, plain old luck: the distance between effort and security has never been evenly distributed.

I know that, I have written about that, I have voted with that in mind. And still… some little part of my Wonder Bread-white psyche thought there would be a floor for me. Not because I consciously believed I deserved more than anyone else, but because I did the things. (God, I sound so whiny.)

How revealing. How revolting.

I think some of the fear I’m experiencing now is grief over a promise that was never actually made, but more implied. With fingers crossed.

Hard work does not guarantee rescue, which is terribly inconvenient, because apparently I also have a vestigial pre-2000s Disney Princess living somewhere inside me who is still waiting for someone to show up and rescue her.

Not a prince. I already have a husband, and the poor man is doing enough. Maybe a fairy godpublicist. She could sweep in with a glittery wand, wave it over my book, and suddenly thousands of people would discover it. My Substack would take off. Clients would appear. The algorithm would recognize my sparkling snark. Woodland creatures would repair the roof.

Bibbidi-bobbidi-solvency.

ODE TO HUSBEAST, WHO DID NOT SIGN UP TO BE A LIFEGUARD

The truth is, the husbeast is already doing a lot of the rescuing, and I don’t say that lightly. He works full time and pays our essential bills, does all of the yard maintenance, and a significant amount of the routine housework. He fixes things when he can, including mortar around leaking windows that have the audacity to keep leaking anyway.

His labor creates much of the margin that allows me to maniacally piece together the part-time church job, freelance work, writing, design, self-marketing (ew), side hustles, and whatever new scheme I am currently convinced might finally be The Thing.

There is enormous gratitude in that. And a shit-ton of guilt, because I don’t want him to have to carry so much. I want my work to relieve some of that weight. I want all this trying to work.

And when it doesn’t, the failure is more than just a disappointing royalty statement or an empty inbox. It’s like I’ve spent all this time trying to build something sturdy while someone I love keeps bracing the walls.

I don’t know how long I can keep trying like this. How long he can keep carrying us. Persistence itself costs us both time, energy, attention, intimacy. Hours spent researching one more possibility, building one more page, making one more product, trying one more strategy take me away from my husband—and my ability to be a good partner, which wears him down.

God, if I’m drowning, I don’t want my frantic clutching and flailing to take him down, too.

We talk about persistence as though it is inherently virtuous, but what if you’re persisting in the wrong direction? What if the thing you’re building isn’t going to work? What if becoming more yourself makes you less employable in the systems available to you? What if the skills you’ve spent thirty years developing become harder to use because your eyes don’t work the way you need them to?

What if you’ve done the work and made the changes and patched the mortar and the fucking water comes in anyway?

OH, HEY. IT’S MY INNER CREFLO DOLLAR!

This isn’t a crisis of faith, at least not the kind I used to have. I’ve dismantled enough theology to know God isn’t a vending machine where you insert faithfulness and receive favorable circumstances. I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe good people are rewarded for trying hard or that there’s a divine blueprint tucked away in some celestial planning office labeled Amanda: Q3 Deliverables.

But apparently I still have some prosperity gospel left in me. Not the Joel Osteen kind, but the subtler kind that says effort should eventually produce evidence. If I am talented enough, persistent enough, brave enough, responsible enough, useful enough, enough enough, eventually something will break open. Maybe it will. I don’t know.

That’s the reckoning: I don’t know. 25 years ago, that felt like possibility. Now? Uncertainty comes with invoices.

And yet… There are things I know about myself now that I couldn’t have named when I was younger. Beliefs I have escaped. Losses I have survived. People I have loved. Work I have done that mattered even when it didn’t make much money. I have made things I am genuinely proud of regardless of how many people bought them, read them, liked them, shared them, or subscribed because of them.

I know more, I like myself more, I trust myself more. And I am more frightened about the future than is comfortable to admit here. All of those things are true at once.

Is that the real midlife crisis? Not an affair, not buying a camper van and disappearing into the woods, not suddenly getting a sleeve of tattoos that tell my life story in some appropriated cultural symbols, but discovering how many contradictory truths a person can carry without dropping any of them.

I am grateful, and I am tired.

I am proud of what I’ve made, and deeply discouraged that so few people seem to find it.

I believe my worth has nothing to do with productivity, and I desperately want my productivity to pay some fucking bills.

I have become more myself than I have ever been, and I still don’t know how to make a living as her.

That last one hurts. Worse than anything else. It hurts because I had this little fantasy that becoming myself would solve something. That after all the questioning and unraveling and rebuilding; after learning what I believe and what I don’t, what I want and what I won’t tolerate anymore; after finally beginning to recognize the woman in the mirror as somebody whose company I might actually enjoy… I thought she would know what to do.

She doesn’t. She’s just less willing to lie about it.

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY PUBLIC DISPLAY OF INSTABILITY

Last Tuesday, I was supposed to write something for you. Instead, I stood in my bedroom listening to water hit the carpet.

I don’t know yet what’s behind the discolorations on the ceiling. Maybe it’s nothing catastrophic; maybe there’s mold. Maybe the repair will be manageable; maybe it won’t. Eventually, somebody has to get up there and look.

Perhaps that’s where I am halfway through 50: Looking up, finally willing to admit that I can see the stains on the house, on my body, on my work, on the stories I believed about what effort was supposed to earn me.

OK, so I don’t have five lessons from my breakdown. I don’t want to turn an unfinished story into a testimony just because that’s what I’ve been taught stories are supposed to do. I don’t know how this one ends. Will some things break open? Will some things need to be let go? Will the fairy godpublicist ever show up?

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

This is just where I am, floundering in the middle of effort and evidence, halfway through 50, in the strange territory between I have come so far and I have no idea how I’m going to get there. If you’re somewhere in that territory too, I wish I had directions. I don’t, but I see you.

Let’s hold on to the idea there is something sacred in refusing to pretend we’ve already found our way out. Let’s allow ourselves to sit beside each other in the midst of terrifying uncertainty and tell the truth before we know what it means.

Last week, the ceiling leaked. I leaked. And this week, I’m still leaking. Just trying to get back to doing it with words instead of salt water.

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One day during his daily devotions, while studying his bible and reflecting on recent messages he’d heard and popular spiritual books he’d read, it occurred to him that there was one important part of being faithful that was yet missing: suffering for his beliefs. His life of faith suddenly felt stale and routine.

This thought took root in him and grew. First, he did a bible study on persecution. Then he subscribed to alerts about religious oppression in the news (the Christian religion, of course). He read books about martyrs and listened to podcasts about the end times. He talked to his pastor earnestly about the moral decline of their nation and the coming abuse of Christians.

But despite all his learning, he couldn’t point to anything in his own life that would serve as evidence that he had endured for his faith. He became restless to prove he was a steadfast believer. He envied missionaries. He worried that he was disappointing God. He lectured his wife and children, admonishing them that it was just a matter of time before they all would need to stand firm against their adversaries. Whoever they were.

The man’s preoccupation continued to grow, as did his frustration at his inability to act. His pastor was out of answers, and neither could any of the podcasts or subscriptions point him toward specific people or times. He grew desperate to find out how and when he could offer up everything, even his life, for the cause.

Eventually, the man heard of a well-respected bible teacher speaking at a conference in his area. Eager to connect with this scholar, he bought his ticket and traveled to the event. Impatiently, he sat through the scholar’s lecture on crosses and symbolism, waiting for the Q&A portion.

Finally, it happened. The man’s hand shot up before the emcee even finished asking if there were any questions, and he stood up before he was even called on. With a voice full of anxiety and urgency, he asked his question as soon as the microphone was near his mouth.

“Who is my enemy?”

The teacher opened his mouth, then paused and looked hard at the man.

“Sir, are you married?”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you have children?”

“Well, yes, we do, but—”

“And I assume you work, and shop, and drive, and live in a community?”

“Of course, but I don’t—”

“Tell me, does your wife ever disagree with you? Or your children misbehave? Or your coworkers get on your nerves? Or you get cut off in traffic? Or frustrated with your neighbor?”

“Of course that all happens. What does that have to do with my question?”

The scholar paused, looked, and gave a small nod. Then he looked out at the rest of the crowd.

“Next question?”

The microphone had moved on. The man sat in stunned silence. Then he took up his coat and left.

When the gospel is a gun, 
it's a spiritual practice to drop thoughts and prayers
like shell casings on classroom linoleum 
with a semi-automatic response

that now isn’t the time to talk about change;
there’s another Mass
isolated incident to attend to
—briefly—

before we lift our palms and shrug our shoulders,
schedule another active shooter drill
for our children’s catechism, 
for raise up a child in the way he should go.

We put our faith in a good guy with a gun, 
this savior exalted to give us hope
that we need not lay down our idols
to be delivered from their consequences;

besides, we need protection from tyranny,
like from the possibility of an empire 
that puts its own citizens in its crosshairs,
that puts them down like dogs in the street.

Let's not doubt this institution
that bends knees to violence 
and turns backs to victims,

that absolves hair-trigger executions
with second amendment sanctification,

that offers communion with handheld power
over the bodies of bystanders
and the blood of little lambs.

Our cups runneth over,
and still we call it good.

This is the first of a series of Altared Gospels.

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There’s that quote about “the arc of the moral universe”
taking its sweet old time to get turned in the direction of justice.

I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a hopeful promise
or a dire warning about the never-ending work
of trying to right wrongs and end oppression.

Perhaps it's simply a reminder that bridges
take time to travel, to get from one place to another,
with a whole lot of colorful experiences suspended between.

When you think about what it takes to see a rainbow – 
the right circumstances, the right angles and distances – 

It does feel like something of a miracle, like old-timey
Genesis stories with dark clouds rolled up on one side,
and light and blue skies on the other,

And spread between them this arch in the vault of the skies,
skies we have spent so much time looking at in wonder.

We are told that it’s a sign, a covenant that says
a God who claims the right to vengeance will not 
deliver said vengeance as full destruction.

Almost as if God, who sent the apocalyptic flood of Noah’s time
in the midst of grief over the evil inclinations of humans,
was grieved even more about this retribution.

Almost as if God learned that revenge doesn’t cleanse the heart,
and annihilation doesn’t atone for grief.

The promise is for all people, all creatures, all life, forever.
A radical inclusivity against violence even in judgment.

And even though science says this covenant is an optical illusion,
there is something here, too, for us to remember:

That the spectrum of color made visible by refracted light
always exists, is omnipresent in every beam of the sun through clouds,

In the patches of warmth on the floor that bleed through our windows,
in the reading glow of lamps, and the reflection of the sun on water.

Whether or not we see God’s promises in chromological order
or simply find peace in a blue sky puffed with white,

We should remember the arc of the covenant of God
to not seek destruction, no matter the justification.

To challenge ourselves to keep bending toward restoration,
and to the same sweeping promise toward all life, however long it takes.

BACKSTORY

Well, it’s rainbow month, init?

I’m on vacation this week, and I thought this poem was a fitting nod to the intersection between Pride Month and Juneteenth. Particularly since Juneteenth is about celebrating liberation — even when it’s delayed in arriving. Particularly because justice for all kinds of diversity is under increasing threat, is being rolled back, and people are using God to justify their destructive judgment.

This was one of four poems I wrote for a worship series on Creation. Back in 2023, I think. There was a fifth poem — well, it was actually the fourth because I needed to get some criticism of Noah out of my system before I wrote this one — but that one is snarkier, less inspirational, and more reflective. I’m sure I’ll eventually post it here.

If you’re reading this during the week it’s published on Substack, I’m in Quebec City soaking up some culture and getting some relief (I hope) from the relentless nightmare circus that is our American news cycle now, thanks to He Who Shall Not Be Respected. Let’s hope the travels go smoothly.

Happy Pride Month, and Happy Juneteenth (a little late)!

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What if the most we get to taste of heaven
     is the least of the hell we dished out to others?
That what we’re left chewing on
     is how tough and tasteless was our judgment,
     that it’s hard to swallow, 
     that it burns our mouths.
And when that hell is shoved down our throats
     it settles in our guts like weights–
     like millstones, perhaps–
     but leaves us empty and needing
     a measure of mercy,
     an omer of understanding
     just to make it one more day.

If only it had burned our mouths as much when we spoke it.

What if the weight of all the crosses
     we made others carry falls on us?
That we are suddenly crushed under
     the rough and rigid pillars 
     of our warped zeal?
What will be the splinters 
     that stab our backs–
     the ones we turned to ignore 
     the torture we were causing–
     and shred our once-cold shoulders–
     the only gift we gave to 
     those we could not tolerate?
Who will offer us water to irrigate our drought of justice,
     or lift us from the searing pain of being pegged
     for rejection and repression,
     of being transfixed in shame and humiliation,
     so we don’t choke on the dogma
     we couldn’t let go.

If only we hadn’t gotten so carried away with justifying cruelty.

What if all the chains we used to control bodies
     become the locked shackles of our souls?
That the rules, and the laws, and the hierarchies
     we forge and link and fetter and enforce
     so everyone has to perform our morality–
     regardless if it is actually right–
     are the same manufactured bindings of spiritual scarcity
     Jesus came to emancipate us from?
That we have bound on earth
     what was meant to be loosed in heaven,
     including grace,
     and integrity,
     and hospitality,
     only to find we are working against our own prayers
     to see God’s will on earth
     as it is in heaven.

If only our addiction to authority weren’t so ironclad.

What if we really believed Jesus was the way,
     the truth that makes us free indeed,
     and the abundant life?
What if we really believed that our salvation
     was messily tangled with everyone else’s,
     and that it is for this life, too–
     the everydayness and tangible now–
     perhaps even more than the next?
What if we really believed it was easy to switch places,
     that the last could be first,
     and the first could be last,
     that this is all a dance,
     a constant movement to serve one another?
What if we really believed that "the least of these" was Jesus,
     that the most we could do for eternity
     was the least we could do for another human?

If only.

THOUGHTS & MORE QUESTIONS

So this is the first poem I’ve posted on Substack. I’ve had the first line “What if the most we get to taste of heaven…” in my phone’s notes app (and percolating in the back of my brain) for the better part of two years now. I finally sat down - several times - to give it my attention. I suppose I should let it rest, like one does after you take a roast out of the oven, but maybe this isn’t as meaty as I think it is. I don’t know. I just write things I want to read. At least, that’s the aspiration.

Since I’m taking the rest of June off (and maybe the first week of July) from writing my 50 Things (I got to 20 before I burned out), my weekly stacks will be a grab-bag of Thingular Thoughts. Last week, it was a light expository rumination on a series of social posts I created last year. This week, it is—you guessed it—poetry.

There is another poem bubbling, but it’s been brewing for only a short while. I’m not sure it’s ready for writing. But there are other Thingularities I can attend to. Stay tuned to see what’s up next.

Your comments are appreciated. Did anything hit? Did anything miss? Did you actually stay awake, or manage to not roll your eyes?

Regardless, thanks for reading.

I’m still committed to putting out fresh-ish content each week. I am working on a poem or two, and pondering non-Thing essays. But this week? I’m going to cheat a little.

Part of this is inspired by ‘s Illustrated Essays, which are beautifully done. I, alas, am no artist. But I am a graphic designer, and I have at least one set of designs I think make a good post. (By good, I mean one that allows me to make several terrible puns.) So let’s try this out, shall we?

Last fall, to promote my self-published workbook, I created a carousel set of images. Basically, I mutated spiritual fruit. What does that list in Galatians 5:22 look like, redeemed from all the evangelical additives that clogged up our hearts? (Maybe we can call it Fruit of the Upper Room.)

Here’s that set, (cropped to reduce length), with some extra words.

LOVE

God’s “unconditional” love was dangled in front of us like bait. The low-hanging fruit for recruiting those who needed some hole filled, for whatever reason there was a hole to begin with (including holes newly formed from evangelical teachings on how we’re all horrible sinners needing God’s love). But it was also a bait-and-switch, because once you bit, you discovered there was a line attached. Which is where the analogy breaks down, since there were actually several lines/strings attached to being a “good” Christian. So much for unconditional.

As an ex-evie, I have discovered love to be both more demanding and more liberating than anything I experienced in my 30+ years of connection to evangelical churches.

JOY

I have a folder on my phone full of memes that roast high-control religion. I may have made a few of them myself. What’s your favorite meme?

I think joy isn’t just a feeling, it’s an ability to let yourself be fully present. The fear of “doing it wrong” robbed me of that for years.

PEACE

It’s amazing to me to learn about somatic therapy and other ways of understanding myself through my body. There was a lot of hypervigilance on bodies, paired with a lot of disconnection because of super-spiritualizing everything. And don’t get me started on how “peace” was preached as a facet of “submission.”

PATIENCE

The challenge for me now is being patient with my continued healing and disentangling from that culture. Every time I think I’m done, something new becomes evident. A memory is sparked, or a fresh wave of “I can’t believe I ever believed that” rolls over me. I’m getting there. Wherever there is. (Even if I already know I’ll be deconstructing until I die.)

I also am no longer waiting (usually) for permission. No one gets to have authority in my life unless I give them that authority — and I can take that authority away.

KINDNESS

Gee, I dedicated a whole Thing to how “I have zero interest in playing nice”. I forgot that this graphic included kindness toward yourself. I really appreciate that all over again. Sometimes it feels like faith was about learning how to bully yourself for someone else’s agenda.

GOODNESS

If rewards and punishments aren’t a factor, how would you behave? What’s your motivation?

How about just doing the right thing because it’s the right thing? And, in particular, how about trusting ourselves that the right thing isn’t necessarily what we’ve been told it is? (Or that the “wrong thing” isn’t actually wrong?)

FAITHFULNESS

Hoo. This is a big one, init? For those who say we’re faithless because what we believe is important no longer matches their priorities, I say you have no idea what level of faith it took to get ourselves where we are.

GENTLENESS

I think this is one of the most overlooked fruits, especially for evangelicalism. Or perhaps misbranded. It’s sickening to see the almost gleeful embrace of violence and/or violent speech that has happened over the last few years.

SELF-CONTROL

This one was pretty much just “sin management.” And a lot of teaching about not trusting ourselves. How much of that “self”-control was actually someone else’s control?

THE FANCY BOW FOR CLOSING

Fun Fact: The job that also got me started on my graphic design career began as a lowly “gourmet department” employee at a floral chain in Toledo. Yes, friends, I made fruit baskets for a living (among other things).

There’s a basic “art” to building a fruit basket: use a sturdy container (those suckers get heavy fast), put your largest and heaviest items on the bottom and in the center, use lighter and smaller items on the top and to fill in gaps, and construct it kind of like a pyramid.

This reminds me of something I observed long ago (and a supposition of mine about the original fruits of the spirit): The list isn’t random. It’s a deliberate order of one fruit leading to the growth of the next fruit, and compounding. Self-control is the last one for a reason, yet that is where so much of evangelicalism starts: trying to put the most burdensome fruit on the top, damaging the other fruits (not to mention making a very unappealing basket).

Evangelicalism works to shape an entire worldview within a very narrow set of binaries. The definition of these words within that world undermined their true meanings and made experiencing them shallow and warped. Do you love someone outside of a heteronormative relationship? SIN. Do you have a special interest you intently focus on outside of church? That joy is SIN. Does your self-control show up as boundaries that prevent you from being exploited by the church, leadership, or family members who use religion to give themselves more authority? YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

We were handed the supermarket prepared version of the fruits, instead of being allowed to wander and pick for ourselves. Almost as if authentic, full experiences were just as forbidden as the fruit that plucked Eve’s curiosity.

Yet another thing to redeem from religion.

Go ye forth, friends, and make your own fruit basket. Or be a fruit basket. Whatever fills you up without bringing you down. Taste and see that the gourd is good.

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I bring this up for two reasons: First, it introduces my construction metaphor. Second, it demonstrates what I want to talk about. There was a time when I would have explained Arbery’s death differently, filtered through the ideological house I inherited. The fact that I now recognize our main difference was skin color, and that Arbery’s death was actually a racist murder rather than an unfortunate misunderstanding, is because I have been deconstructing that ideological house.

I’m sure I’m not the only kid (or adult) who wandered through those houses after workers and supervisors had left for home. Navigating loose nails, partially framed walls, and sections where even the subflooring hadn’t yet been installed. Figuring out which rooms were the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room, maybe a bedroom. Imagining this place with hardwood floors, or that space with tile. Wondering what the outside would look like when finished. And, eventually, what kind of people my neighbors would be.

If you’ve always lived in established neighborhoods or have never been around new construction much, it’s easy to forget that houses don’t just emerge fully finished, and that’s that. Along the way, choices were made. Blueprints were used, sometimes tweaked. Costs were considered. Minds were made up, then changed, perhaps multiple times. Trends were followed – or ignored.

If you’ve always believed the same things you grew up with, it’s easy to think your identity is fully finished, and that’s that. Your faith was poured into you like concrete foundations. Your politics are the structural support, framing your worldview. Your selfhood is listed as the occupant/owner.

But you can break up concrete. You can reframe the house. Your identity is not a done deal, even if you inherited it. Even if that inheritance has been handed down for generations.

That work is called deconstruction, and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for over 20 years now.

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POISONS & ANTIDOTES

God knows I’m not talking about money when I’m talking about inheritance. I’m talking about all the absorbed architecture from my family. The emotional wiring, the assumptions and opinions installed like builder-grade fixtures, the beliefs set up as the plumbing system – even if some of those beliefs delivered wastewater instead of removing it.

Beliefs like:

• There is only one right way to live, to believe, to vote.

• Demons are everywhere, and sin is just as omnipresent as God.

• Authority is holiness, and nothing secular can be sacred as well.

• Fear is wisdom.

• Everything’s about the afterlife.

• Salvation is only spiritual, and the gospel is only for church [read: curated neighbors].

I grew up on contaminated water. Did you?

These beliefs were so deeply ingrained at such a young age. Long before the brain could process them as opinions, not to mention long before the brain was fully developed, they became part of my nervous system. Emphasis on nervous. Because getting “saved” at five years old so you can avoid the eternal conscious torment you heard about at your grandma’s friend’s funeral is the kind of core memory that anxiety feeds on.

All this to stay the house was built and I was living in it before I was old enough to question the construction. By the time I was old enough to question, I’d been indoctrinated into the belief that “questioning is rebellion.”

But questions still show up, don’t they? At least for me, they arrived like ants at the turn of the seasons, swarming over my unease and misgivings, dragging doubts like crumbs. As I got older, the questions got harder to dismiss. The answers I’d always heard started sounding hollow, like partitions instead of load-bearing walls.

Like a good Christian girl, I went to scripture and prayer. And in the midst of the most intense and prolonged time of connection with God through those spiritual practices I had ever experienced, it happened. Over Easter weekend in 2005, I answered a challenge (where it came from, I don’t recall) to read the gospels through. No study aids. No filtering through someone’s teaching, or even what I’d been taught my whole life. Just read the words as themselves. And I did it.

So when people ask me what started my deconstruction, I tell them to blame Jesus. The red letters in the gospels were the crack in the foundation. I realized that, for the nearly 25 years I’d been “saved” and the nearly 30 years I’d been alive, I’d yet to be a part of a church or faith group that tried to take care of its neighbors like Jesus seemed really, really concerned about us doing. Up until then, all my religious instruction had me more focused on what my neighbor was doing, not how they were doing.

DEMOLITION & DISMANTLING

I come from a long line of interesting women on my dad’s side, which is to say that I come by my terrible housekeeping skills honestly. My dad grew up smack dab in the middle of a pack of six kids, in a cluttered and crowded home, with an alcoholic and abusive father, and with a bipolar eldest brother. They were poor. The house and cars were always falling apart. Basically, chaos. This is all likely why Dad liked things clean and new. Order and cleanliness were probably next to godliness for him. New was probably proof he had escaped and amounted to something despite what he’d been told growing up.

So, at around fourth grade, living in a new housing development became normal for me. I would live in two more before moving out in my early 20’s. While I saw construction happening around me, everything in our home was already finished, and also wouldn’t need repairs for quite some time. Great news for my brain, which is just fine at creating chaos on its own, no help needed, thank you very much.

Then I go and marry a man who has family stories about his dad coming home from work to see his two young sons, the youngest still in diapers, covered in plaster dust from helping their mother demo a wall. When we were ready to buy a house, he was drawn to a big, beautiful (boned) old foursquare that needed dozens of intensive repairs and renovations. And for all of us to make sure we were up-to-date on our tetanus shots.

He walked through it with vision. I walked through it horrified, thinking I cannot survive living in a permanent construction zone.

Which is funny, since I was already in one spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. I just didn’t know what I was experiencing, and had been for 11 years at that point, was called deconstruction. Or that it had two other related processes: dismantling and demolition.

WRECKING BALLS & GLACIERS

I haven’t done a lot of demolition, where you outright destroy old belief systems with immediacy and forcefulness once you realize they need to go. Except for hell.

Once I had the wrecking ball available, I joyfully tore down the concept of hell. The idea of eternal conscious torment because of being born into sin, having only one specific right way to forgiveness (that still hinged on your behavior), which was somehow “known” in your heart (which is deceitful above all things, by the way), even if you never heard the concepts during your life… That series of biblical gotchas and twisted thinking no longer felt holy. Or loving. Or just. (Not to mention learning how unbiblical it was.)

Buh-bye. Cue that Miley Cyrus song.

Other things take careful dismantling, where you’re really hoping you can salvage the piece in some way during the reconstruction phase.

That was heaven. If one half of the rafters is warped, the other half may be as well. I clung to that ‘may be’ – honestly, I haven’t completely let it go. Not because I want “treasures in heaven,” but the comfort of believing in that great reunion of souls. To see loved ones again. To hope that some part of who we are continues on in a recognizable way.

I realize, of course, that does not necessarily hold any theological water whatsoever, even with holes plugged up with used chewing gum and scraps of duct tape. But in those moments of grief when missing my dad feels as fresh as when he suddenly passed, the idea that his particular wit, imperfect patience, and exasperated love still exist somehow is like the last match to get the pilot light going and heat the house. So a small remnant of hope in a homecoming-style afterlife is tucked away for emergency use.

Well, if I’m going to fully disclose this dismantling, that hope also serves as a small flashlight with a nearly-dead battery against the dark of nihilism. What happens to grief if reunion is no longer guaranteed? What happens to meaning? What happens to me?

I am moving past the feeling of exhaustion that comes with the idea of making my own life’s meaning, and the magical thinking that an Outside Purpose makes this process less bleak. However, the era of not wanting anyone else to decide what my life means is moving in at a glacial pace.

People mock the idea of faith deconstruction as if it’s a trend to follow or a whimsical choice. Those of us who do the work know better. Can I get a witness?

ROASTING & REDEMPTION

My deconstruction has been slow, but it finally reached its most “back down to the studs” phase within the last couple of years. Questioning the non-Christian spiritual experiences of a loved one prompted a critical crack to form, a question I’d been avoiding for a long time: What makes the absurdities of common Christian doctrine more reasonable than their absurdities?

Lots of things fell apart after that. Last year, a snarky deconstruction workbook was self-published. (That was particularly cathartic.) But as I wrote it, some things began to settle. I accepted the uncertainty that decided to su casa es mi casa my inner life. I finally joined the church I’d been working at for several years, after some serious discussions with the pastor about where I was spiritually. And some former things I thought had passed away have been redeemed.

Most recently, the song “Testify to Love” which was originally released in 1997 by the Christian pop group Avalon. It was an anthem that my young adult soul adored. Only a couple of years before my deconstruction started, one of the founding members was pushed out of the group for being gay and not continuing with conversion therapy. Meanwhile, my best friend, my uncle, and my cousin had come out to me, and I was starting to wrestle with all I had been taught about the terrible sins of the gays. What agenda did they have, other than to be accepted and to have equal rights?

The re-release of “Testify to Love,” restored to the context in which it was written (the song’s writers have verified this) with the ousted member one of the vocalists on the re-release, now makes the song an inclusive anthem. And the lines “For as long as I shall live, I will testify to love/ be a witness in the silences when words are not enough” hit harder than ever. I have been ugly-crying to it in the shower, in my office, in my bedroom, in my car. I feel like a piece of my soul has been returned to me, with a little bit of interest: a reminder that the gospel is still good news for ears that will hear.

COMMITMENTS & COMMANDMENTS

That makes me sound like I’m fully back in the church house, but I assure you that I keep doing the hokey-pokey at the entrance, not so much with my commitment to a life of faith, but with having it outlined neatly into a specific image. I’m still connecting the dots, with a pencil, and with the freedom to add or remove dots that don’t make sense. And I’m coloring everywhere, not just inside the lines.

I’m not sure if that’s reconstructing or not, nor am I worried about it. When I created the workbook, I wanted it to reflect the same openness of direction I needed, which I still need. So no content assumed which direction the user would head – to agnosticism, atheism, another belief system, or a different version of Christianity. If people got to the end of the workbook confused about how one snarky comment conflicted with one tender memory and couldn’t pinpoint where I was spiritually: good. That meant no agenda had bled through to interfere with the very personal work and healing process the book was intended to aid1.

I once read a statement to the effect of “don’t deconstruct unless you have a plan to reconstruct,” and to that I call bullshit. I’m not saying that that writer’s deconstruction wasn’t real, but I’m also not not saying that. A deconstruction with a premeditated reconstruction works better for an actual house, but spiritually it sounds more like a logic puzzle for the brain than the work of a whole being – the body, mind, soul, and strength of the Shema, that original greatest commandment to love God.

And the second greatest is like it: Loving my neighbor – that is, all the people I encounter and interact with – as myself. Which meant that deconstructing my inherited house wasn’t just about faith. That was the first domino. What followed was all the parasites infesting the ideology I’d inherited: racism, internalized misogyny and patriarchy, xenophobia, classism, homophobia and transphobia, ablism, nationalism, etc. Pulling apart these rotten ideas led to a better love of self and neighbor.

Not to say I have deconstructed all of these completely. Hence, the honesty of this essay’s title: I will be deconstructing until I die.

If that sounds overwhelming to you, let me assure you that it is. Yet it’s not just about loss. Along the way, I’ve also picked up:

• The ability to experience wonder without programming.

• Spirituality without fear.

• Awe without threat.

• Love without doctrinal fine print.

• Welcome and inclusion without caveats.

• Gratitude without strings.

SELF & SANCTUARY

At 50, I have reached a place where I recognize the difference between existing and being, between reflex and intention. So I will pull down what I no longer want to live in, and deliberately build my being.

I sure as hell (wink) no longer want to live in rooms wallpapered with guilt and shame and fear. I no longer want to dine where I’m left still hungry for kindness, or to shower in judgment mistaken for holiness. I don’t want to live inside any ideology, whether it’s religious or political, that tells me what I am worth, what my identity should be, how I should think about other people, and who can be invited into my life.

I will build a being that knows the difference between discernment and cynicism, between skepticism and nihilism, between faithfulness and fanaticism. I will choose righteousness that liberates over anger that seeks power and control. I will stop sitting at tables that serve institutionalized indignation and call it vigilance.

I know how easily anger and fear can become identity. How easy it is to mistake demolition for deliverance, even if some things need to be torn down. Things that never should have been built around us and in us to begin with. Inheritances that left us impoverished.

While I’ll be deconstructing until I die, down to the gospel that is the good news, to the non-negotiable essential framework of loving my neighbor no matter who they are or what kind of house they inhabit, may I also be reconstructing into a sanctuary safe enough to grow inside. With better ventilation for doubt, and load-bearing wonder, and large windows for seeing the world with curiosity, and rooms big enough for snark and grace to cohabitate comfortably.

May my house be a house of prayer: one that is not spiritualized inaction but is instead a grassroots base for mutual aid.

Amen, and amen.

I suppose it was just an overly large drainage tunnel for rain runoff not far into the woods behind our housing development, back past the broken fence (our street was actually called Broken Fence Drive). But during late spring through early fall, when the trees were full of leaves that the sunlight slipped through, and with the tunnel mouth emerging from the side of a small hill into shade freckled with filtered highlights, who knew?

It was just large enough for a fourth grader, walking at a slight crouch, to enter the ever-deepening shadows. Unfortunately, when one of my neighborhood friends went home to get us snacks for our travels, the jig was up. His mom asked what he was doing, and no snacks for us. (If you’re Gen X like me, you know how abnormal it was to be asked what we were doing, who we were with, or where we were playing.) Soon after, no tunnel access thanks to Very Serious Signs and a padlocked gate installed at the tunnel mouth. No magic. No adventure. Just a new reality forced by adults.

50-year-old me says, “What about having an accident? What about no one knowing where you were? What about diseased animals? What about sewage and germs?”

A small, 10-year-old voice reaches through the intervening 40 years to say, “Still… What if?”

PRESENT TENSE

When I was a kid, I talked and thought and reasoned like a kid. When I became a woman, I put aside wonder to take up worry.

The girl whose career ambition was to be Wonder Woman, who half-believed unicorns were real at some point long ago, and who was kindred spirits with Anne Shirley, grew up and became Mrs. Rachel Lynde. (Maybe not quite so nosey.)

At some point along the way between adolescence and bills, ‘what if’ became a harbinger of anxiety and worst-case scenario predictions. Fear conscripted my imagination into serving angst because it appeared to be more mature and productive than whimsy and curiosity. I got so focused on solving problems – real and imagined – that I forgot how daydreaming can do the same work. I stopped playing with possibilities and started grinding under certainty. (High-control religious culture stole this from many children long before adulting did.)

Now it’s hard to take off on flights of fancy, and much more infrequent to question impossibilities, like:

• What if I could touch a book and immediately absorb its contents if I wanted?

• What if dust mites were secretly running the world? (My house is obviously their headquarters.)

• What if God has a ponytail and only speaks in iambic pentameter?

• What if I could hear trees talking?

• What if there is a multiverse version of me who only ate raw onions and lima beans? (I don’t think we could be friends.)

• What if Trump had a come-to-Jesus moment and actually… came to Jesus and repented?

(I realize that the last one is the most absurd one of the lot.)

But… what if?

I DON’T LIKE ‘YEAH-BUTS,’ AND I CANNOT LIE

Do you or a loved one suffer from chronic yeah-butosis?

Common symptoms include frequent temptation to act as devil’s advocate, a deflection reflex to criticism, and compulsive itching to use phrases like “Well, actually,” “To be fair,” and “Both sides…”

Yeah-butosis is the first sign of the debilitating condition of whaboutism, as “Yeah, but” is followed by a persistent “what about.”

Certain treatments can alleviate this disorder. The most effective approach for a patient attempting recovery is to recognize when the urge to be defensive and use this maneuver occurs. Is it when their privilege is challenged? Or when they are critiqued for a mistake, lapse in judgment, or a harmful habit?

Next steps in a healthy therapy course are pausing before replying, separating issues and context from excuses, accepting accountability, and staying focused on the concern. Patients should avoid dismissing responsibilities and fabricating fake moral equivalencies as coping mechanisms.

Side effects of treatment include humility, broadened perspective, critical thinking, the ability to handle conflict, and an increased capacity to use both/and thinking and recognize nuance.

You don’t have to let yeah-butosis and whataboutism hold you back. Talk to yourself about Introspection today. You have nothing to lose but your objections.

THE GEOMETRY OF WHATTING

Hold on, folks. I’m about to sweep some generalizations here to keep things nice and tidy, but I do realize both of these ‘isms have corners and crevices where pesky little details tend to collect. The dust mites that rule the world have told me this is okay for now.

If whatifism is about problem-solving, then whataboutism is about problem-pointing.

If whatifism has the power to imagine something different, then whataboutism often steers toward the status quo.

If whatifiism can be developed into a mental discipline, then whataboutism is a mental rut to climb out of.

If whatifism is expansive thinking that anticipates there’s more to discover and try, then whataboutism is small thinking that assumes the objection negates the need to explore.

If whatifism is dismissed as superfluous and immature, then whataboutism is posed as wisdom and reason.

Both kinds of ‘whatting’ shift focus, but toward different ends. One is reactive and lazy; the other is proactive and productive. While the whatifism territory can include catastrophic thinking and intrusive thoughts, which are important to identify and name, the vast majority of the ground it covers is courage, creativity, curiosity, and emotional resilience. While whataboutism can give us related tangents or more context to consider, most of the time it’s used as an avoidance tactic or to mask fear as caution and negative behavior as insight.

MY BATTLE WITH YEAH-BUTOSIS

Whataboutism is… easier. That is why it’s such a popular tool of the Outrage Industrial Complex. It’s like someone asked, “What if the internet rewarded rebuttal more than reflection? What would that look like?”

And we have the answer: content filled with clapbacks, mic drops, and dunking that goes viral and gets more engagement than posts based on collaboration, positivity, nuance, and compassion. That particular ‘what if’ led to expansiveness, alright. The expansion of consumables for our anger and anxiety to gnaw at, false equivalencies for us to swallow, and division for us to digest.

Whataboutism is a rhetorical tactic grab bag of logical fallacies. Red herrings to distract and divert; tu quoque attempts to discredit. Straw men to distort the issue, contrarianism to sow chaos instead of construction. The list goes on. Though it may introduce ‘correct’ information, it’s information that is irrelevant, no matter how persuasive it sounds.

Beyond interpersonal dynamics, there are the intrapersonal pitfalls of whataboutism. Here are some of the yeah-buts that hold me back:

• What about the last time I tried – and failed?

• What about how they’ll react?

• What about my AuDHD/weight/personal history/health…?

• What about the things I can’t control?

• What about me?

Right now, I’m wrestling in the no Amanda’s land between two yeah-buts: “Yeah, but what about who they support and how they behave and how I feel after I interact with them?” and “Yeah, but what if they die?”

I have no easy answers, just continued questions.

SOME HYPOTHETICALS & SOME RESULTS

‘What if’ is often followed by ‘what would,’ prompting specificity and preparation for action.

What if I went out and deliberately performed an act of kindness today? What would I do, where would I go, who or what would I help?

What if this life were all there is, and there’s no afterlife to worry about performing for? What would be more authentic in how I live my life for now?

What if I read through my stash of thank-you notes from work to remind me of things I’ve accomplished when I’m feeling worthless? What would it be like to internalize that love?

What if ‘what if’ is a spiritual practice? One that is seeking, open, hopeful, adventurous, that reframes attitude into one of possibility, and that slows things down (instead of shutting them down). It’s like a mental labyrinth, putting you on a path that hinders momentum while guiding you. A prayer to possibility, either deliberate or spontaneous. What would that look like? Maybe like sitting down with paper and pen to draw or list ideas or record what you’re thinking. Maybe like putting your hands on your head and heart and noticing how the possibilities that arise make your body feel. Maybe it sounds like a breath prayer.

Whatifism can be playful and release steam. It can also do heavy lifting by asking hard questions and helping us decide risk. It’s a sideways approach to the path of change and transformation. It’s a gentle approach to surfacing fear. What if can imagine exceptions to rules and anticipate mercy/grace, e.g., “What if I’m still learning?” “What if their action wasn’t deliberate?”

The kind of thinking that whatifism embraces may not always start with a ‘what if’ proposition, but they share two important characteristics: curiosity and courage. All the really good things in my life were prompted by curiosity and letting it lead me. Asking, then continuing to ask, “What if…?”

• What if I stopped hoping for someone to reach out to me? What if I messaged this interesting guy before shutting down my OkCupid account? (Hello, husbeast.)

• What if Toledo had some kind of program to help the unhoused and others struggling with poverty create income for themselves? What’s out there? (Hello, Toledo Streets Newspaper.)

• What if I read through the gospels over Easter weekend as open-mindedly as possible? (Hello, new lifetime friends and deconstruction and my first book.)

WHIMSY IN THE STREETS, ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE DEETS

I think I heard from God the other day when I was taking notes to write this essay. I caught a whiff of sandalwood on the same breeze that brought these words:

“Belovèd, release thy death-grip, please;
the path unfolds through curiosities.”

There was a distant rumble as I started to say, “Yeah-but…”

All butosis jokes aside, it’s a very persistent pestilence to overcome. All those ‘what-abouts’ doubts I listed earlier pop up whenever I ask the ‘what-if’ questions that are tugging on my soul right now:

• What if I stopped waiting to be ready and just wrote the book?

• What if I got tested for an official AuDHD diagnosis and took medication?

• What if I make the commitment and trust that things will work out?

The fears and insecurities don’t go away; they just turn into strategy. They’re a reminder that every adventure has risks and consequences. I can address them as curiosity flushes them out, and they fly up out of the rushes.

Whatifism can be universal, too. There are questions all of us can ask that take curiosity and courage:

• What if I tried/tried again?

• What if I asked/spoke up?

• What if I’m overthinking?

• What if I just listened?

• What if I rested/allowed myself to dream?

• What if I’m wrong? (What if they’re wrong?)

Those are the kinds of ‘what-ifs’ that might change our lives, if we dare to grab some snacks and start our adventure toward magic.

There probably aren’t unicorns on the other side of the dark unknown.

Still… What if?

Even when I do hear the stories of the times he’s stabbed people in the back, or been vicious and nasty when he’s not getting his way. Even when he sidles up to me and always wants a hug and to make small talk like we’re best buddies. He stands too close. His voice, slightly nasally, has a natural wheedling tone. He talks in rhetorical questions that assume you agree with him. Which I usually don’t, because we’re about as far apart ideologically as two people can be. But I can’t say anything because he’s… nice.

He’s nice on the outside, but you can still smell wolf when he’s around, no matter how much wool he’s wearing. The thing is, he’s pulled that wool over his own eyes. He thinks he’s a genuinely good guy because he has convictions and believes the right things and has good intentions. One of those beliefs is that the end justifies the means, with the means being disregarding - even disdaining - those who disagree with him or obstruct his agenda. But until it happens to them, no one would believe him capable of that because he’s… nice.

It makes me wonder, though… how often I’ve bitten when I thought I was baa’ing?

YOUR EMOTIONAL COMFORT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO ME

Please hold for the next available obligatory pleasantry. Do you have a minute after this interaction to rate my performance?

My ratings are going down as I get older. There are several reasons that contribute to this. Some of that is reflexive (see Thing #17), but another major reason is that I just don’t care to do what’s expected of me simply because I’m a woman. And a church lady. Or I’m uncertain of how someone will react. Or because I want to be liked.

All of those things still apply: I do want to be liked. I prefer peace. I am female. I do want to behave like Jesus. I merely don’t think that those are good reasons to play nice, especially when they reinforce harmful social structures or stereotypes. Or when they require lying or manipulation. Or it’s The Right Thing to Do™ (as defined by the person who’ll benefit from your self-sacrificing niceness). Or when it’s generated by toxic positivity trying to make up for a lack of therapy.

No, I won’t take notes during the meeting. I won’t plan the office parties. Bob spilled coffee in the break room before he went back to his cube, and all the guys walked away, too? No, I won’t clean up after them.

What did you say? I’m supposed to turn the other cheek after that comment? It’s not appropriate for me to say that your joke was inappropriate? If I can’t call you a bigot, how about a white-washed sepulcher? Oh, how sweet of you to threaten to pray for me.

Let’s not forget the transactional nature of niceness, whether that’s customer service or a hidden agenda. That covers a broad spectrum between “my pleasure” to the Nice Guy syndrome, where favors and basic decency are considered relational currency for, er, romance. “Prithee, tell me if it art not so, but I was told my chivalry wast the key to unlock thy chastity belt.”

TELL ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE…

So go ahead and call the Tone Police on me, but performing pleasant needs to take a back seat to real. But I’m not talking real as a euphemism for a no-filter blunt criticism. Folks who use “I’m just keeping it real” as a disclaimer statement for their unsolicited opinions aren’t being any more authentic than the constant people-pleasers and peace-at-any-price-keepers.

You can add these statements as well:

• “I gotta be honest…” (Sounds like compulsion, not intention.)

• “I’m going to tell you the truth in love.” (Can I get a witness from my church folks on this one?)

• “I call things the way I see them.” (Funny how you package your opinions like facts.)

• “Not to be offensive, but…” “Not to be rude, but…” (Read: “I feel I’ve done the bare minimum of being sensitive so I can say I wasn’t being rude or offensive.”)

• “Everyone’s thinking it, I’m just brave enough to say it.” (Congratulations. You found a way to position being an asshole as a virtue.)

• “I’m not gonna lie…” (Do you normally lie, and this is the exception?)

These phrases aren’t the beginnings of open dialogue. They’re keys locking doors that close it off. They’re cul-de-sacs of conversational disregard, just missing the “No outlet” warning sign. People who regularly employ these phrases usually enjoy the brutal part of their “honesty.” The mic drop moment. The release of their opinions or perspectives. The opportunity to be “right” or feel superior over being genuinely helpful. When I’m on the receiving end of brutal honesty, it feels diminishing, like someone punctured me to steal my breath for their own use.

I’m not sure what’s worse, though: brutal honesty or passive-aggressive pretense. Or even just bland agreeableness.

I get it. I really do. There’s so much riding on the back of this idea of being nice, and it’s not all image management, conflict avoidance, or manipulation. How often have we been asked to ignore our instincts and control our reactions to protect the feelings of someone we knew wasn’t safe? (That one goes out to the ladies with my heartfelt commiseration.) How much of our sense of belonging in church culture—or some other group—was dependent on ignoring red flags, submitting to “godly leadership,” and considering our valid thoughts and emotions as “sin” if they didn’t align with what you were being taught… or how you were being treated?

When I say niceness needs to take a back seat to real, I mean the end of prioritizing other people’s needs, wants, and emotions over ours. Doing the emotional labor. Excusing the lack of accountability or initiative to grow. Assuming our identity is at risk when we confront with truth instead of placate with insincerity.

And when I say real, I mean kind. The kind of kind that is both compassionate and honest, that’s familiar with boundaries, that can handle discomfort. The kind of kind that doesn’t coddle, isn’t transactional, and refuses to enable harmful behavior and ideas. The kind of kind that shows up consistently, not to say what’s expected or do the bare minimum for appearance’s sake, but to listen and to act. The kind of kind that considers timing, context, and capacity before gently sharing truth while risking misunderstanding. The kind of kind willing to be uncomfortable to stay in the conversation. The kind of kind that can handle being accountable for its impact. That kind of kind doesn’t always feel pleasant, but it’s usually somewhat warm and helpful, like a scratchy wool blanket.

BLESS YOUR HEART

That’s pretty idealistic, Amanda. How much do you actually behave like that?

Hey, I never said these aphoristic Things I’m writing are ones I’ve perfected. They’re aspirational, okay?

Actually, I often feel I’m natively running a program that accomplishes the exact opposite. Or, to paraphrase Paul in Romans, “Why do I do what I don’t want to do, and not do what I want to do?” (The Apostle Paul: the original scat cat. Do-do-be-do-do.)

I’ve been nice to the point of being obsequious, sometimes to protect myself, sometimes to ingratiate myself, sometimes to get what I want. I’ve been nice to control how people see me. I’ve been nice just because it was easier than being direct or open, whether that was about how I really felt or what I really wanted. I’ve been nice to make up for when I’ve not been nice.

I’m not counting customer service nice or now-is-not-the-time nice. Nor am I including general, everyday politeness or courtesy or manners or whatever you want to call it. Those all have their place in healthy human interactions.

I’ve also been brusque, harsh, biting, and even cruel. When I’m in problem-solving or “get it done” mode, communication is necessary as a means to an end rather than intentionally collaborative so I can be all “get to the point” blunt without comprehending how that might come across. When I’m “in my feelings,” I can get very sharp-tongued and reactive, even to the point of going on the offensive—my ego is ready to use my tongue to twist “truth” into a whip and lash out. I’m also more likely, in a moment of emotional disruption, to project my issues as truth onto others.

So, no, I’m not kind. Not consistently, or even anywhere in the same 500-mile radius of consistently.

A SHEEP IN WOLF’S CLOTHING

What I am is trying, though. And not just other people’s patience. I’m trying to choose kindness. But unlike politeness, kindness doesn’t have a standard script. Kindness can be soft and comforting, but not always. Not at the expense of boundaries, authenticity, and principles. Kind can be angry without being mean. Being kind is an intentional, consistent demeanor. It shows up without strings attached.

Niceness, while not always insincere, is usually shallow and seeks to be served. It can be switched on and off depending on the people and the circumstances. It can turn into nastiness at a moment’s notice. When your behavior hinges on social expectations, people-pleasing, image management, and manipulation, that behavior is as fickle as a Wi-Fi connection when you’re on a deadline.

How do you tell the difference between insight and injury? Between being brave and being brutal? When there’s a truth to speak, how do you remove your ego enough to speak it carefully, knowing you might be misunderstood or even retaliated against? Or to not speak it, if speaking serves to forward your position more than the relationship? How do I become kind from where I am?

This is where I am: Looking around at the socio-political realities that are advancing power and privilege and performative piety while regressing rights and safety and love for neighbor, wondering how I balance being angry with being compassionate toward all, regardless of who they are or the ideas they support?

There is so much fear and frustration and fury. It’s a fight with myself to not turn my indignation into self-righteous tirades that do nothing to help anyone, but create greater separation. To not let cynicism and despair calcify my soul. To not become cruel while watching cruelty being normalized.

I don’t want to just think I’m a good person because I have the right beliefs and I use niceness like a lever. I don’t want to be another white woman who isn’t safe for a black woman to be real with. I don’t want to be another Christian who pays lip service to Jesus while abandoning the work of the gospel. I don’t want to be another American who thinks patriotism looks like treating xenophobia as a virtue.

I want to still be soft on the inside, no matter what the outside looks like. To treasure my sensitivity to what’s fair and equitable; in fact, to work on increasing it. I want to weigh my words on scales of love and mercy, to keep my commentary humble and honest. To take risks with my safety and comfort by raising my voice if it means providing comfort and safety to those who are having both taken away, then to back that up with action. And to always be accountable for my impact.

That’s what I think being kind is. That’s what I want, even if it’s not how I act.

Do-do-be-do-do.

No more smiling on the outside while resentment builds on the inside. But only if that’s alright with you.

Because, honestly, some of it felt a little too familiar. In an abstract way, of course. It’s been a few years since I had a meltdown because I couldn’t wear dirty underwear as a hat1 or go on a hunger strike because rabbits and frogs are not the same.2

The ones about having to share, not being allowed to bite someone, or food not being ready? Those didn’t feel like much of a stretch. Though these days, I don’t throw myself on the ground to scream. It’s too hard to get back up again.

WELCOME TO THE ‘HOOD

You would think that, at age 50, I wouldn’t be so surprised by what triggers me. Or that I would have matured enough not to have my triggers be the same patterns as for toddlers.

You would think.

The expectation is that I remain calm and emotionally regulated when I feel dismissed, neglected, or unable to have a voice in the conversation. The reality is that I get louder when I feel disrespected, or I completely withdraw in shame and unworthiness.

The mature behavior would be to graciously adjust my schedule when last-minute changes happen to plans. Semper Gumby and all that. Instead, I assume everything tied to that plan will also go off-kilter because my plan was terrible to begin with, so I should just give up trying to do anything.

The image in my head of myself is that I have a particular clarity that comes from five decades of experience, and this wisdom guides me well in my everyday life. But the embodied truth is I still move through my world on impulse and intuition; it’s just that I am allowed to use profanity now. Most of the time.

I mean, for crying out loud, I get upset when the husbeast claims the bathroom just as I’m about to finally go in. (We’ll not mention the fact I vaguely registered that I had to go an hour ago, but I was focused on work.) The point is, he took something that I saw as mine.

I have disproportionate reactions to so many small things:

• The casual inconsideration of others (especially when driving),

• Interruptions when I’m focused,

• When I forget, misplace, or break something, or I’m clumsy or clueless,

• The combination of too much noise and trying to delegate tasks and feeling responsible for everyone’s emotions and the success of whatever is going on. (OK, maybe that’s not so small.)

At these times, I feel like all ability to function at a higher level has been suddenly removed, and the only option on the control panel is “Overreact.” Toddler Amanda LOVES buttons.

When having an adult tantrum, I’m likely to hit with my words, flail my irrationality around wildly, run away (at least emotionally), get louder, tear up or outright cry, throw my maturity to the ground and kick at everything and nothing, or stomp my foot and demand that other people accommodate my needs or desires. At best, I go sulk in the corner with my catastrophic thinking.

I try to justify my behavior after these outbursts, at least initially. But give me a little more time, and I’m usually apologizing profusely for my ridiculousness.

“EVERY MELTDOWN HAS A MEANING”

That subhead? It’s a phrase often used in autism advocacy. When I brainstormed a list of triggers (well beyond what I bulleted above), I realized that many of them could be solidly connected to my neurodivergency: sensory overload, miscommunication, disrupted routines, masking burnout.

Even if my wonky wiring isn’t part of the equation, there are usually reasons underneath my outsized responses. For toddlers, and for adults, tantrums often happen when we don’t understand why we can’t do or have something. Not being able to “do” something could be the inability to handle a big emotion, like fear or anger. My fears may be a bit more existential now, but the anxiety of entering a new situation is as liable to set me off as an adult as it was when I was a wee one. Uncertainty about my work or how it will be received is particularly dangerous since it’s so closely tied to my identity. The frustration of subconsciously sensing something off but being unable to articulate it or point to something specific does it, too. (Thanks a lot, hypervigilance.)

For someone who loves words, you’d think I’d be better at them. Or, at least, finding them in a timely manner. It feels like I’m forever searching for the right word, whether it’s the name for something currently escaping me or trying to express something in just the right way. This compounds my communications failures. Telling me to “use my words” when I’m upset is liable to cause you injury.

And, y’all, hangry is a thing. I’m more likely to go from 0 to 60 on the crankiness scale when I’m hungry. Or tired. Or overheating. Or in pain. Or all of the above, which is increasingly common.

MY COMING OF RAGE

Now there is the added layer of perimenopause, when the question of “is this reaction due to a character flaw or chemistry” underlies every emotional outburst or inward raving.

“Step right up, ladies of a certain age, and spin the Wheel of Feelings! If you’re looking for an excuse to cry, rant, laugh, or emote uncontrollably in any way, this is your chance to win big!”

After the Wheel of Feelings, I move down the causeway of the Carnival of Hormones to play a popular guessing game: How much of this is related to my immaturity or need to heal from something, and how much of this is cougarty?

I’m afraid the answer is yes, and I will forever be hopelessly attempting to untangle the two, just like I’m forever plucking hairs from my chinny-chin-chin.

What do you do when your trigger is just… aging? Someone stop the ride, I want to get off the Estrogen Drop and get some equilibrium. I already have enough chemical imbalances, thanks to ADHD. This combination is no joke.

IT’S THE FINAL MELTDOWN!

It’s also no joke to have so many reasons to feel powerless and pissed off as we do right now. Every day brings a new headline (or several) to remind me that too much of the world is being run by people who never question their behavior or how it affects others. Lots and lots of others, and likely for a long time to come.

I can only manage myself, though. Or not, as this essay seems to be pointing out.

What does it mean that some parts of me haven’t caught on to the fact that this existence is entering its matronly years? And how do I live with the parts of me that don’t act my age?

I don’t know much about child development, but I’m finding a great deal of value in the idea of gentle parenting my inner toddler. Though I’m not entirely sure what it looks like in practice sometimes, things like emotional validation, redirection, reassurance, specificity, somatic exercises, setting boundaries, and small choices for a feeling of control in uncertainty sound smart.

Now, if only I could get myself to stop carrying on during an episode to listen to myself, we might gain some maturity. For now, however, toddler Amanda needs a nap and a snack.

Well. At least I don’t start any wars.

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A breath. A pause. A questioning. A ramble.

A moment for a heavy heart to sit with its hands clasped in its lap, its eyes closed, its thoughts sometimes scrambled and distracted, sometimes sharpened and clarified.

Because I am in this one a bit right now, not looking at it with the bemused detachment of a 50-year-old woman, but looking out through the mire of loss. Perhaps you are, too.

I’ll not be sharing the loss; that’s a private thing that stretches beyond me. I will simply mention that it is my threshold into a subject I’ve explored many times before. Losing a parent unexpectedly and too soon. Losing friendships. Losing jobs. Losing dreams and hopes. Losing innocence and trust. Losing illusions. Losing justice and rights.

There is no way to make this process easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be grief. But I do think there are ways to make this healthy, and so much of the way we treat loss is not healthy.

DIRGES AND DOULAS

Several years ago—long enough that I don’t remember how long—I bumped into a verse in Jeremiah. Not the 29:11 one people like to take out of context and put on graduation cards, but this one:

“Hear, O women, the word of the Lord, and let your ears receive the word of his mouth; teach to your daughters a dirge and each to her neighbor a lament.”
—Jeremiah 9:20, NRSVUE

Lamenting is a skill. Actually, a skilled trade in some cultures, including ancient Judaism. A recognized and respected profession for women. (Not a lot of those to be had then.) I’m sure there’s a boatload to be said about the gender expectations around emotional expression and who carries the load—and who doesn’t get to benefit from showing grief. That’s for people smarter than I am to write about. I want to focus on what lament is and why it helps.

Why would you pay someone to help you mourn?

Why do we pay anyone to write and perform music? To create art? To act? To write or tell stories? To prepare expensive food? To make us laugh?

Because consuming art done by skilled people helps us access emotions. They help us feel, especially intensely. They put sounds, visuals, motions, and emotions into experiences. They help us release things inside us that we have trouble releasing ourselves.

(There’s a reason authoritarian governments cut funding to the arts, restrict free speech, and villainize independent creative expression: Artists remind us we are human. All of us. Together.)

Did you know that lament is not just wailing? It’s singing. It’s poetry. It’s protest. And it’s public performance.

Lament is a vocalization of the deep well of emotion caused when something important is stripped away. It is the blood from the wounds. It is the expression of a new sensitivity.

We are to teach it to others. To our children. To our neighbors. (Could this be part of loving our neighbor?) We are to help them express grief, not push them to hide their feelings because displaying them is “cringe.” Or not masculine. Or inconvenient.

Or because we feel inadequate to provide comfort.

THE OPPOSITE OF THE NOTHING

Lamenting is not fixing things. It’s not a resolution to a temporary problem. It is not an answer or a reasoning.

We really struggle with that.

When we heard news of loss recently, my husband and I talked. I told James, “We fill our lives with so many things to do, pursuing results or performing acts we think are important. And then something like this happens, something truly important, and there is nothing to do. We are forced to stop.”

Loss creates a void, which we try to fill with clichés, with spiritual bypassing, with shallow guesses on “why,” with busyness. The void swallows them all like they’re more nothing than it is.

I guess that’s true. Loss is crowded with its own substantial ghosts. The love we can no longer give. The expectations we can no longer cherish. The ideology that can no longer lead us.

Lamenting—good grief—simply helps us feel more fully. Gives us some release. Lament bears witness to loss and refuses to make sense of it or sweep it under a rug. It doesn’t pretend it can’t recognize the discomfort and sorrow. Instead, it fully embraces the heartache. It sits with the heavy heart, holding its hand.

Lament doesn’t tell us what we should feel; it helps us with the how of all the emotions. The anger, the despair, the confusion, the shock, the anguish. Even the numbness.

TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF

I think most emotionally intelligent people recognize that grief is sacred, even if they are not spiritual people. And truly sacred things require stillness. Grief doesn’t respond to productivity or platitudes; it respects presence.

A far cry from the commercialized cleansing of loss so prevalent in our culture. We will say grief isn’t on a timetable, then turn around and be surprised by continued bereavement, even our own. We’ll admit grief isn’t linear, but think we’re “done” with feeling such-and-such, only to discover it looped around and slipped in through the back door.

I wonder if we were more practiced at silence, at being, we’d be more capable of healthy grieving. If someone taught us how to wail, for instance, or at least expressed some of our grief for us so we could greet it, sit with it, know it better. If grief wasn’t somehow shameful to share, to publicly acknowledge, instead of some private affair (when being public didn’t cause more harm than good, of course), or a visitor we rush out the door because it overstayed its welcome.

Just like a lot of grief, there’s no closure to this essay. There is an offer of companionship, a blessing for a healthy path, and a nod to the importance of creativity. (If you’re like me, you may be inclined to write a lament instead of perform one.)

You may not be up to wailing, but there are those willing to take their shoes off and witness your pain without flinching. May we be those kinds of people for each other.

What are you grieving right now?

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Position Title: PEACEMAKER

Organization: Systemic Solutions Collective
Location: Remote
Job Type: Contract
Hours: 34 (paid), plus expectations to volunteer

Join our team of passionate changemakers and invest in the future of our society!

Are you searching for a position that fills you with purpose, working for the common good? Do you excel at exchanging your time, energy, and well-being for good causes? If so, then we want you to become the new lifeblood of our mission-driven organization! As a Peacemaker, you’ll play a critical role in the long arc toward justice, ensuring the moral universe is never without a champion.

What You’ll Do

• Navigate ambiguous goals in evolving and emotionally-charged situations

• Develop strategies for bridging gaps without solid organizational support

• Be accountable for effective program implementation, independent of community buy-in

• Facilitate difficult conversations while remaining emotionally regulated

• Initiate or uphold challenges to entrenched systems while avoiding the comments sections

• Work around cognitive biases, persuading through tribal identity and emotions

• Risk being misunderstood, misquoted, and occasionally unfriended

• Prioritize repair over appearance and curiosity over defensiveness

• Listen to understand, not just to resolve

Key Skills & Qualifications

• Demonstrated ability to intentionally engage in conflict and identify underlying issues

• Maintains belief in systemic change despite discouragement

• Tacit consent to compromise comfort for the cause

• Ideological bilingualism

• Interpreter for the tone-deaf

• Proven capacity for carrying the emotional labor load

• Thrives in fast-paced environments with shifting expectations and limited support

Preferred Education & Experience

• Doctorate-level comprehension of sociology, psychology, economics, law, politics, and rhetoric

• Blue-collar approachability and work ethic

• Experience in handling burnout and isolation

• Previous exposure to toxic organizational cultures presenting as socially aware

Benefits

Since this is a part-time role, only soft benefits are available: flexible hours (must be ready to work at any time), lip service toward mental health needs, making connections in the community, and meaningful work

At Systemic Solutions Collective, we believe the price of peace is only as much as you’re willing to sacrifice.

Applicants who viewed this role also considered…

Title: PEACEKEEPER

Organization: Continuity Partners
Location: Hybrid
Job Type: Permanent
Hours: Full-Time

Continuity Partners, the nation’s largest conglomerate of special interests, has been operating in some way since before the states became independent and united. We are dedicated to the principle of business as usual and value loyalty over change. We’re a leading influencer of public opinion, with opportunities for impact in every town, city, state, and region through a variety of channels. We work with agencies and organizations of all kinds, hinged on the principle of alignment with current societal positioning.

Continuity Partners is currently looking to fill multiple Peacekeeper positions to support its many programs across the country.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

You will:

• Maintain the status quo for the current power structures

• Intervene in moments of imminent harm to provide temporary safety

• Suppress personal discomfort to act as a culture carrier

• De-escalate tension as quickly as possible while ensuring root causes remain undisturbed

• Redirect or shut down problematic conversations

• Prioritize superficial harmony over legitimate concerns

• Handle charged situations when the capacity for other efforts is low

What We’re Looking For*

You are:

• Practiced at enforcing rules without question

• Quick to take performative action

• Skilled at emotional suppression

• Proficient in social scanning

• Fluent in euphemism and strategic silence

• Capable of managing optics while ceding outcomes to ingrained patterns

*Candidates who show an adeptness for gaslighting and bad-faith arguments are preferred.

Why Join Us

If your personal mottos are, “Why can’t we all just get along?” and “But both sides are equally bad,” you’re already on the fast track to being one of us. Here’s what you will enjoy:

• A culture of compliance and conformity

• Predictability and short-term relief

• Long-term resentment

• Alignment with the societal trend of valorization

• An identity as The Nice One

• Perceived entrapment

At Continuity Partners, we believe the price of peace is whatever placation is trading at today.

You do your best to cover up the body, slowly casting dirt back toward the hole, starting with concealing the face that looks back at you. A face whose features are frozen in misery. A face that mirrors your own.

The wounds are next. You can’t stand to see what punched holes in the body, the tears and trauma that caused damage too great to bear. Then all the other identifying marks of who used to exist. Shovelful by shovelful, you erase this ex-person. They must be fully disappeared, left behind to decompose slowly. And you must leave no trace of where the body was buried.

You are out of breath, dripping with perspiration, smeared and caked with dirt, and—is that blood? Never mind, it will all be gone soon. Every indication of the dark work you just did. No one will ever know.

Somewhere safe, somewhere you can clean up and relax and move on. You escape there as quickly as possible. Your familiar distractions will comfort you. Your routines will be like dirt thrown on the memory of what’s been done. It will all be behind you.

And behind you, in the dark, in the dirt, something moves. Something that refuses to passively decay, to be silent, to be hidden.

DAWN OF THE DREAD

How many attempts to suppress my pain do I have to fail at before I remember that my psyche is a sort of “pet sematary”? Not only does it keep returning, what comes back is a nightmare to deal with.

Of course, I don’t intend for it to come back. I intend for it to disappear, to be erased, to be like it never happened. That criticism that cut deep, that rejection from someone I trusted, that disappointment, that embarrassment, that grief.

I can dig as deep as I can go, I can shovel over every excuse and avoidance I can find over the wounds, I can cover up the face of the hurt with masks. I can tamp it down with distractions (see Thing #12) by using my “Fondle Slab,” starting new projects, going shopping, stuffing myself with food. But somehow, it rises. Sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly. And it has changed, but not for the better.

It isn’t just emotional pain I try to avoid. I’ve put off physical pain, postponing getting treatment out of fear of the slow—and also painful—process of recovery. I put off taking care of my diabetes, thinking I could magically change a lifetime of food issues, plus genetics, if I just tried a little harder to eat better. I put off dealing with financial issues, hoping I could figure it out with the next paycheck or win a lottery I never played.

Still, all these things get restless at the roots. So they climb and they clamor. I’m never alone in the dark.

28 GRAYS LATER

Brains. All of these things eat at my brain. Or is it my brain eats at them?

Daniel Pink recently posted a carousel of findings regarding stress, burnout, and overthinking.1 Essentially, ruminating—“defined as repetitive and unwanted past-centered negative thinking”—over stress is what burns out our cranial meatloaves, not so much the stress itself. Pink refers to ruminating as “endless loops of unprocessed thought.” I call it spiraling.

Stepping back to observe the phenomenon, it’s actually fascinating. We can analyze what happened from so many angles, picking at the corpse of it like vultures, dwelling on it like we’re claiming our 160 acres of homestead. Yet for all that energy, we’re not really processing the emotions, just running the memory through the mill of our minds.

After I’ve gaslit myself: “It’s not that big a deal.”

After I’ve procrastinated (again): “I have time.”

After I’ve dreamed up a fantasy: “Maybe someone will rescue me/validate me/heal me.”

After I’ve dismissed it: “This kind of thing doesn’t bother other people.”

After all that, I still turn it over in the grave I made for it like it’s a rotisserie chicken on speed.

RESIDENT UPHEAVAL

When the dead return, they come to collect debts. Hands outstretched, demanding dues, and mumbling about how it didn’t have to be like this.

They’re not wrong. There’s a cost to avoiding pain and problems. Refusing to address issues in a relationship has led to outsized outbursts at low moments, which often damage the relationship further. I’ve prolonged the impact of injuries and caused further stress to my body by not getting physical therapy, hoping that time would solve the issue. Wishful thinking, overwhelm, and shame had me procrastinating on taking care of my financial responsibilities to the point I almost had a car repossessed.

Even when the shambling remains of my grief, worries, and issues aren’t immediately present, their ghosts hover. Fleeting reminders might rush a wave of anxiety from my gut to spike my heart rate. Digestive issues plague me. Tight shoulders, headaches, exhaustion from playing mental and emotional dodgeball while also doing that ruminating thing.

I start projecting my fears and hang-ups on other people, and I handcuff growth by arresting my development.

Oh, no. The Thought Po-Po is corrupt. Shocker.

Possibly worst of all is the numbness. Stuffing these things into pits and covering them up also means I’m creating internal blockage. The psychological equivalent of eating too much cheese and not drinking enough water to give myself cognitive-affective constipation.

Until the “excrement hits the air conditioning,” as Vonnegut has said. Then my usual inability to compartmentalize my messes becomes exponentially messier. Clean up in every aisle.

WORLD WAR WHY

There is a difference, of course, between postponing our processing intentionally and avoiding it. Rather than ignoring or evading the issue indefinitely, you acknowledge its existence and the need to address it while also realizing you’re not in a position to do that now.

There are all kinds of reasons to temporarily set aside our feelings: When we need to remain clear-headed for immediate tasks or calm for being professional. When we know we’ll have access to better resources, more privacy or safety, or simply an increased capacity later on. When we’re doomscrolling. When we’re operating heavy machinery (sometimes the same thing as doomscrolling).

At those junctures, the need to compartmentalize is the mature response, but it can’t happen in a vacuum. It requires a deliberate pause and an internal bookmark. Which looks like saying to ourselves, “I can’t deal with this the way I need to right now, but I know in two hours, or tomorrow, or whenever, I can process this—or at least start to—properly.”

As I mentioned, however, I’m shit at compartmentalizing.

REMOVE THE HEAD, OR DESTROY THE BRAIN?

My unhealthy processing looks like vaguebooking my emotional outbursts, like I did the other day: “Y’all, I’m tired. You ever get those times when, no matter how hard you work and how much you care, you can’t seem to do anything right?” (That was about the job.) I don’t do that nearly as much as I used to, which is great, but I’m obviously still a work in progress.

The older I get, the better I get at pattern recognition (I’ve been terrible at it for myself; I’m great at seeing it everywhere else), identifying what’s happening in the moment, and managing my quirks. I’m learning to create little rituals for myself to signal when I’m starting and stopping a particular piece of my life—work, home, social, etc. Not only is this helping me focus somewhat better, it’s also signaling to my brain that I need to transition into that area of my life, including all of its associated responsibilities and attitudes.

Catching, labeling, and recording intrusive thoughts is another large contributor. I’m increasingly able to go, “Hey, that’s not helpful. But you’re a pest, so I’m penciling in a reminder to myself that you need some targeted extermination.” It’s like a double-tap to the infected electrical and chemical activity in my mind.

When I do get to healthy processing, it looks something like:

• Sitting with the emotion and noticing how I feel, including in my body.

• Questioning what other emotions I’m feeling, and probing all the sources: Why was this upsetting? How is it connected to other experiences? What else is coming up because of this?

• Returning to that as often as I need to.

Sometimes I involve someone else, like my husband, but I’m often processing things internally by myself.

One of the things in Pink’s post about ruminating was how to stop it. Basically, to get out of your head, you have to move your body. Standing up and shaking out your arms and legs. Splashing cold water on your face. Humming. Putting your hands on your chest and abdomen and breathing slowly. (I included the ones I’m most likely to do.) Five minutes to shift, and another five to really ground yourself. This interrupts the unresolved stress of that mental looping.

My problems aren’t all in my head, but that’s where most of the resistance occurs. To survive and save my brain, I have to do more than bury the bodies of my issues. I have to hold a wake, provide emotional release, start healing, and give myself closure. If I don’t, not only will I be hunted by my personal horde of the damned, I risk becoming the living dead myself.

Hi, I’m Amanda, and I can’t always trust my impulse to run when things get hard, or my inability to let go when hanging on is no longer a good choice. A common problem, yes, but also shaped and reinforced by things I didn’t choose. It’s instinct x trauma, and my nervous system is the lovechild.

This shows us in all kinds of ways, from the “girl, you need therapy” kind to the “that’s the Benny Hill you’re going to die on?” ridiculous kind. It shows up in relationships, when I’m working on projects, in my belief systems and perspectives, with old goals and with new special interests, and in my need to prove myself. I didn’t make the rules; I just follow the chemtrails in my brain to their inevitable conclusions.

The problem is I care too deeply. The problem is I’m a perfectionist (until I’m not). The problem is I get fixated on an idea and I can’t pivot. The problem is if I connect, they’ll disconnect. The problem is they don’t understand like I do. The problem is my fantastic imagination likes picturing the worst-case scenario in convincing detail and now that’s the only possibility. The problem is I have attachment issues.

I’ve got 99 problems, and they’re all in my head.

THE SKY IS RED & I’M ON THE BRIDGE SCREAMING (on the inside)

I’m overheating, my head is aching, and an internal pressure has built inside me to the point I’m about to explode. This is how I feel right before a moment when I want to “quit” and walk away.

How do I sit with an emotion so big it looms over my mind, threatening to crush me from the inside?

It’s kind of like when a cartoon character churns its legs in circles before moving forward when it wants to run. All frantic urgency but no progress. Not emotionally. Cognitively, I can hold nuance. I can say I know this or I understand that. But in my body? The sirens are sounding, the lights are flashing, and I’m stuffing every justification for escaping into a getaway bag.

But leaving often gets me nowhere. Not when it comes to maturity.

How do I not abandon myself when everything inside, and so many experiences have taught me, that I’m in danger, that I’m about to be rejected or disappeared again, that I and my work will be made irrelevant because other people are analyzing all my mistakes and imperfections?

THE RIVER RUNNING UNDERNEATH

When you’re a child, you don’t have a lot of control. This was compounded for me in dramatic (but not all that uncommon) ways through sexual assault, early rejection, emotional abuse through intentional withdrawal, etc. My past taught me that giving up and leaving puts me in some kind of control. I can remove myself emotionally before the other person/people can discard me. As soon as I feel any kind of emotional distance, I’m starting to make my exit strategy because I was trained to know this was punishment. I struggle with those who are more reserved emotionally, as this was a sign of abandonment, manipulation, and cruelty.

But the skills that I developed to survive and adapt, and that now put me on high alert, aren’t always reliable. They lead me to make radical decisions based on strong but primitive emotions. And then regrets frequently follow in the wake of those decisions, bringing with them a despair that I will ever change, be competent, be mature, be… better.

EXIT, PURSUED BY A FEAR

I remember a moment in the first couple of years of my marriage when I was talking to my husband in bed. The conversation was difficult, and I had that impulse to run away, to give up, but I deliberately chose to stay present. I recall thinking “I’m changing,” and “If I leave right now, I’m sabotaging our relationship, and this matters too much to risk that.”

Sticking it out is so hard. I want to be reasonable and make sound decisions based on a fair assessment. I want to give others the benefit of the doubt and not flatten them - or myself - into a villain. So my wonky-wired electric meatloaf tries to force clarity on a situation before I even have all the information, before I have a deeper conversation with the other person. My brain must make it make sense. Even if it’s too early.

Meanwhile, the rest of my nervous system is doing that five-alarm fire dance, trying to exit uncertainty as quickly as possible. Warp nine, Mr. Spock.

Protective disengagement is a shoot-first, ask-questions-later deal. Those questions are, “Is the problem the thing, or my experience of the thing? Is this a time to give up because this thing is no longer aligned, or a time to let go of control because that’s what is throwing me out of alignment?”

BUT ALSO, DO I HAVE TO LET IT LINGER?

I also stay long past when I should. This is also based on fear: of failure, of looking like I don’t care, of uncertainty elsewhere (that “better the devil you know” syndrome). Or I’m pretending things - or myself - haven’t changed, or I’m trying to live up to other people’s expectations (at least, my assumptions of their expectations).

That baseline dedication to being “reasonable” means the meatloaf will gaslight me into complacency. “You’re too sensitive.” “That’s not what’s really going on.” “This is your fault, but it’s also your responsibility to see it through.” “No one else has these problems or sees these signs. You’re unstable. Delusional.”

So I do stick it out. I collect all the red flags I pass like I’m some kind of clueless relational toxicologist. “Oh, another excellent specimen of manipulatus coercitus. This area appears to be especially conducive as breeding grounds.”

Funny, though. Somehow, it’s always some part of me that gets pinned up for display as an example of complicity or gullibility. “See, kids? This is what happens when you trust the best intentions of others over your own gut feelings.”

I’ve stuck it out through egocentric pastors, narcissistic bosses, abusive friendships, toxic boards and teams, projects and ministries long past their season of effectiveness, and almost the first season of Parks and Recreation. “It gets better, I promise,” will be the last words I hear from a two-star hotel employee as I descend into a lava pit that was labeled as a natural hot spring.

PUTTING BABY IN THE CORNER

That pathological allergy to ambiguity resists having to wait for answers. To sit patiently long enough to get to the source of my discomfort makes me want to crawl out of my skin. What makes it even trickier is that my instinct to “fly, you fool” may not be wrong. Just too early in the game to be a healthy judgment call, the kind that forfeits the game.

So it’s time for a different game: 20 questions with myself. (Actually, three.):

• Where is this coming from, fear or truth?

• Am I trying to escape a feeling or honor a reality?

• Am I acting out of self-respect or self-protection?

And a few complete-this-sentence exercises:

• If I stay, I’m afraid that…

• If I leave, I’m hoping that…

• What I actually need right now is…

I hate homework. But I have to sit myself down in this corner and think about the repercussions of my intended actions (or inactions).

IT’S NOT ME, IT’S ME

I’m asking myself other questions, too. Ones that don’t have clear answers.

As someone who thrives at the intersection of momentum and meaning, how do I slow down long enough to have more balanced decisions without breaking stride? How do I not assign values too early in a conversation, a project, or a relationship? As someone who tends to be all-or-nothing, how do I give of my incredible amount of energy, passion, and creativity without becoming too invested or controlling?

I guess I’m asking, “Is it possible to be me and still be able to be flexible? To be engaged without being possessive?”

Because I can’t control other people’s intentions or motivations, their actions, or how they perceive my words or actions. I can’t control the outcomes of my work, just the effort I put in and the quality of what I produce.

I can’t even control my default settings. But I can know myself well enough to adjust for my quirks. I can keep gently tugging on my meatball’s leash to guide my head back to focusing on who I want to be and how I want to behave.

WHEN THE SCARS ALIGN

I’ve kind of had two threads running through this essay. One is about the impulse to give up and the reluctance to let go, the other is about healing enough to not reopen my own wounds through acting out old patterns.

Man, it’s really hard being so publicly mentally ill. But this is what it’s really like being me, being inside my head. And while it’s alienating, I don’t think I’m alone. So I put this stuff out there in the hopes of connecting.

Back to the issue of patterns. I’m still trying to recognize them when they surface, and to name them. I suppose it’s a bit of magical thinking to believe that knowing the true names of those subconscious drivers and hardwired habits will give me some mythic mastery over them. Honestly, I’d settle for some simple potty training.

Because it’s about practicing over perfection.

My husband has a constellation of scars on his arms from an ATV accident when he was a kid. They are fascinating to trace and inspect when I notice them. A lot of the time, I don’t, and he long ago “forgot” them in the sense of acute awareness morphing into natural acceptance. He let go of them being a defining characteristic of his appearance (if he ever did in the first place).

I’m looking forward to the time when I’ve healed enough to not let my scars define me, to when my amygdala’s responses morph into quiet acknowledgment instead of knee-jerk overreaction.

In the meantime, can I interest you in wasting energy with an extreme emotion bundle from the brain’s temporal lobe?

In the dimness, an unnatural glow highlights a hooded figure hunched over the small rectangle casting the light. The figure is nearly motionless, except for one finger that repeatedly slides up the glassy surface of the rectangle. The glow shows a middle-aged face, exhausted and desperate for an elusive, quite possibly delusional, time of mental rest. The forehead between the eyebrows gradually constricts, while the corners of the mouth creep downward. Once again, trying to conjure up some kind of personal peace after a long day of overthinking, overwhelm, and overstimulation has been corrupted by a long string of posts on current events, people’s takes on current events, sarcastic memes and screenshots of provocative statements on current events, advertisements for miraculous side hustle goldmine courses, and reels of cringey AI content with no context.

This is the roulette of Revenge Bedtime Procrastination (RBP), and I usually lose to the spin.

In the last couple of years, RBP has often been augmented by late insomnia triggered by my bladder, then picked up by my brain. At that point, doomscrolling in a dark bathroom goes on long enough that I suddenly realize my legs have gone numb. This phenomenon is called toilet leg (no, really, it is). My sciatic nerve must love me.

I am a glutton for punishment, and I must consume the feeds of social media.

HERE WE GO LOOPTY LOO

It’s not just late at night or early in the morning when I am susceptible to the immediate distractions my phone provides. Nor is it just instant brain rot from the media I mindlessly reach for: my other two vices are food and shopping. I live to consume.

Pick a cause for my escapism: Dopamine chasing because my ADHD-wired brain constantly runs low. I’m avoiding something I feel I can’t handle right now. I’m bored, lonely, anxious. I’m trying to subconsciously process a solution for a project.

The cause varies, but the effects rarely do. Consumption without contemplation leads to excess, and excess leads to overconsumption, and overconsumption leads to overload. And, in the words of the existential pilgrims Bono and The Edge, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” I’ve circled back on myself.

While Meta is an evil saboteur, Facebook actually comes in second to whatever game app that’s become my latest compulsive distraction. I’m seeking the feeling of productivity and completion - easy solutions, easy wins. There have been times when the graphics of the puzzle game I’m obsessively playing pop up visually in my dreams. I believe it was the cultural commentators Henley and Frey who said, “we are all just prisoners here of our own device[s].”

If media is predominantly a mental distraction, food is an emotional one. There’s a reason I’m obese. Actually, several reasons, with a history of food as a coping mechanism, the one sure comfort I could give myself since childhood, as one of the main ones. When you combine self-medication via pantry with low executive function in preparing meals, you get a habitual indulgence in convenience foods. Alas, I follow the guidance of the lifestyle guru Yankovic all too often: “Just eat it.”

Shopping brings the ephemeral happiness of accumulating things that I like, but also the longer-lasting financial consequences and chaos of clutter. Because, let’s face it, I like a lot of things. I have many fandoms, cute animal fixations, and delusions of crafty needs. I hoard books and Lego sets, but never seem to have the time to read or build. As the renowned sybarite Grande declared, “I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it.”

I THINK I HAVE SYSTEMIC IBS

The results of these diets of gratuitous gluts go deeper than the temporary need I’m trying to satiate. Sessions of letting my brain marinate in media usually also involve bludgeoning it with bad news, reactive opinions, and ridiculous slop. It’s been tenderized into pulp.

This pulp has digested content that includes cultures of comparison (see Thing #11), so that biotics of dissatisfaction grow. I have absorbed outrage and depression, shared information I didn’t fact-check, and felt sick over feeling powerless and afraid.

Worst of all, I have let anger and frustration dehumanize those whose beliefs differ from mine, especially when those beliefs have harmed me and others. Getting stuck in an echo chamber of noise that compounds my traumas, biases, shock and distress, and fear makes fighting this tendency a herculean effort. Consuming the comments section feels like wading into one of two bodies of water - the best and the worst of how we treat one another. Too frequently, the former feels like a kiddie pool and the latter like an ocean.

The hostility doesn’t stay online, though. I tend to have imaginary conversations (arguments) with people in my head; sometimes it helps me vent, but mostly it feels like perpetuating venomous narratives. I regurgitate what I’ve fed on into my non-online life. My mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being is so easily poisoned.

And yet I go back for more.

NOURISHMENT, NOT NOISE

Because it’s not all bad. Careful consumption has expanded my horizons: exposed me to new perspectives and cultures, helped me heal from trauma, let me relax and feel understood, brought new friends and positive influences into my life, and kept me aware of my privilege and the work that still needs doing while reminding me I’m not alone.

I am an inveterate meme-hoarder. The gallery on my phone is lawless landscape of simple funny ones, sarcastic ones, and thought-provoking ones. Every now and then I curate a themed meme dump on Facebook, just to remind everyone of how unhinged I am. Recently, though, I have been trying to save ones that are positive, so that meme dump might remind those who see it that Samwise was right, and “that there’s some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”

Not all content is social media, of course. As a child, I had a long list of comfort reads - books I’d read over and over. Anne Shirley and Mary Lennox were my friends. I was the invisible tenth member of the Fellowship, and sailed on the Dawn Treader with Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace. I longed for a mysterious package to arrive in my room so I, too, could build and use the Phantom Tollbooth. These books calmed and consoled a lonely, weird kid. I learned more about interpersonal relationships and human nature visiting Prince Edward Island than I did in “real life.”

Movies, too. The nostalgia and fantasy of The Neverending Story, the humor and charm of The Princess Bride, and the irrepressible energy of Annie were safe for me. As an adult, P.S. I Love You never failed to cause the tears to flow whenever I needed a good cry, especially after my father died.

Nowadays, I’m discovering more thoughtful and well-curated content on Substack. My brain is usually grateful after catching up on one of my many subscriptions, though, here too, I need to be aware of the rants that might rile me up more than inspire me.

THE OUTRAGE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Why is there an overabundance of that kind of content, anyway? Why do we love our hot takes and mic drops so much, even at the cost of creating greater division? We devour the sound bites, slogans, and cartoons that seem to neatly package our anger and indignation into a Reader’s Digest-able and shareable version of “so, there!” Even many of my most intelligent friends are susceptible to propaganda (and the other most intelligent ones are rarely, if ever, on social media… hmmm…). Our basic needs for safety, belonging, and worth, and our senses of justice and morality, become targets for those who would pull our strings.

The surge of biochemicals caused by strong emotions can be addictive. We use emotional intensity to feel alive, to experience a sense of power and control, to avoid other emotions, even to be entertained (hello, Fox News). Organized systems like politics and religion have been leveraging dopamine, fear, and belonging for centuries. Many of us have personal experience of this and are trying to deprogram ourselves. (Cue shameless plug for my workbook on healing from toxic religion.)

I think we need to be aware that a lot of content is like a super malevolent and effective pineapple: It’s delicious, but while you consume it, it’s consuming you. Your energy, time, and perception of reality. The most important question is, who’s serving the pineapple, and why?

INFORMED VS INFLAMED

Questioning others’ motives in generating and sharing content is good. Vibe checking ourselves is just as important. I’m trying to get better at asking myself these questions:

• Am I allowing nuance, or am I letting an issue be flattened?

• Is the rush of emotion I feel from this making me more volatile?

• What should I actually do with this content? And with myself after consuming it?

• What is being revealed about me from my reaction to this? Something I still need healing from, insecurities and fears I have, biases I have yet to unlearn, and so on?

I can’t avoid the news cycle while also trying to be a good citizen, but I can “drink responsibly” from the firehose of doom. And I can remember my original reason for being on social media in the first place: keeping up with loved ones and seeing into their world. I should let Facebook be connection-centered, not my primary source of information, or even entertainment.

YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME

I admire my friends who do digital detoxes or have even removed social media from their lives. I honestly don’t know how to balance a detox with the need to be on social media for my job. And, frankly, I don’t know if I’m up for going to Facebook rehab. And I won’t be going on a hunger strike or shopping boycott to cure myself anytime soon.

But I can take small steps and manage points of control, like seeking long-form articles from sources whose values include holding nuance and researching/verifying their information. Like identifying my top two overconsumption traps for my vices. (These are likely decision fatigue and transition gaps for media, overstimulation and executive dysfunction for food, and stress and boredom for shopping.) Then I can do things such as preplan snacks, budget a fun money allowance, set limits for idle time on my phone, seek intelligent and thoughtful debate, and have a personal system of checks and balances to pop those algorithmic filter bubbles.

The trick is practicing intention and form over having an all-or-nothing mindset. I can alter the intensity of my consumption habits rather than trying to eliminate them altogether. “Curate input, choose influences, protect attention” can be my new catchy slogan. (It is catchy, isn’t it?)

Consumption isn’t neutral. But it can be shaped instead of shaping us.

Not exactly a mic drop, but I’ll take it.

This is one of those times when I wish generative (or regurgitative) AI wasn’t so inherently evil, because I lack the skill to create this image in my head:

A small, furry creature running on a wheel with a stick tied to its head. Tied to the stick so it dangles down in front of the wee beastie, just out of reach, is a carrot labeled “Enough.” Better yet, this stick is real; the creature tied the stick to its own head, but the carrot is just the animal’s idea—maybe floating in a thought bubble, maybe just a drawing of a carrot taped to the end of the stick. Not only is reaching enough impossible, but the idea of what enough is is illusory.

Does that sound bleak to you? Or does it sound liberating? I’m sometimes torn, but slowly getting to the point that the latter predominates.

GIVE ME A MILE, I’LL TAKE AN INCH

You know that scene in the old Disney Mary Poppins where she pulls out the tape to measure Jane and Michael, then herself? Michael is marked off as “Extremely stubborn and suspicious,” and Jane is “Rather inclined to giggle, doesn’t put things away.” When Mary takes her own measure, she’s “practically perfect in every way.”

I think I have yet to meet a woman with that level of confidence. Then again, Poppins was some kind of magical being anyway. As illusory as that carrot.

I have so many talented and hard-working friends who do amazing things both professionally and in their communities, and it’s hard not to see what they’re doing and feel like I don’t measure up. My friends getting degrees in their mid-40s, or fulfilling life-long dreams, or making over 3 times what I do and planning early retirement, or taking amazing vacations. I was never going to be someone who did things the way you were “supposed to”—college, career, marriage, budgeting, investing, and all that proper adulting—but while I’m more at peace with myself than ever, it’s particularly hard to be 50 without a degree, a full-time career, or a 401k and retirement plan. I don’t resent my friends the well-earned fruits of their labors, but I’d be lying if I claimed my eyes didn’t get a little more verdant when my adulting checklist of “dones” doesn’t balance out in comparison.

THE MEAT IT FEEDS ON

Ah, comparison. So many of its synonyms sound arith-matic, wafting hints of analysis and equations with a dry-but-heady sensibility. There are standards, after all. We must calibrate our existence and align our lives to expectations.

But comparison can so easily slip into something a little more monstrous. Envy, and her sister Jealousy, both have claws. Envy’s extend as they reach for what she wants; Jealousy’s has little barbs to help her hold on to what she thinks is hers. Both sisters lead you to make bad decisions.

Envy and feeling behind led me at 30 to buy a house with my aunt because everyone my age that I knew was becoming a homeowner. Like young Michael Banks, I can be very stubborn, and I got what I wanted. We needed a place anyway, since her condo had burned down just after my birthday and just before hers. When she lost her job five years later, however, it wasn’t sustainable on my income, and that house ended up being foreclosed on. I overreached to make a milestone, a high-stakes decision driven by poisoned comparison and fear, and I took someone else down with me. Coveting what I wasn’t ready for ate away at what I should have valued more: relationships, real security, health, and freedom. I tried to buy a sense of belonging. That never ends well.

I outsourced my sense of worth to extraneous data points, thinking that having a mortgage somehow made me a more legitimate adult. The carrot was the house, the stick was my insecurity, and the wheel was all the energy I put into trying to be normal, or average, or some kind of standard-issue mature person. None of which I am.

THE RIGHT KIND OF ENOUGH

I will refer you back to Thing #2 for a whole soliloquy on not having my shit together (or any hope thereof). The G.Y.S.T. of that essay was how I often feel like a failure at adulting. Financial management, self-discipline, keeping a home, etc. I touched on comparison then, too, but left it at wanting “to be done with comparison culture.” I still want to be done with the culture, but comparison… could it possibly be nuanced?

Fear of the future, combined with insecurity and not much to show for a lifetime of labor despite doing meaningful work makes it easier to overlook what I’ve actually accomplished. My pile is smaller. My list is shorter. My credentials are less impressive. This feeling of lacking isn’t just about material things, but also about judgment of how well I’ve performed to common standards.

Am I deep enough? Funny enough? Interesting enough? The majority of my life’s most embarrassing moments have come from trying to make up some perceived lack, of trying to make up some difference in how I thought I was compared to others, to where I thought I should be.

I let comparison diminish my dignity instead of drive direction.

Because comparison isn’t purely evil. It can be useful when looking at how far I’ve come, or giving me stepping stones for improving myself or my circumstances for things that are in my control. It can help clarify my preferences or expand my thinking about possibilities when looking at someone else’s life. Comparison has revealed ambition I pretended I didn’t have, and exposed insecurity I haven’t dealt with. Both of those are useful to know, but neither requires self-loathing.

Often, the problem is applying a surface-level knowledge of someone else’s story as a critical diagnostic tool for my own. Comparison isn’t useless; it just can’t define worth. Like a carnival mirror, it might show you the piece of broccoli in your teeth, but on the whole, it distorts your image.

NOT PRACTICING FOR PERFECTION

It’s tempting to frame envy and enough as opposites, as if one is the villain and the other the hero. Real life is rarely that tidy. Envy and enough are not black and white. If we think of enough as a baseline that separates essential from excess and determines sufficiency and sustainability, and we use comparison as a compass for determining where we want to go based on our values, then envy can be a warning light. Envy will let us know we’re drifting away from healthy goals into territory that harbors resentment, bitterness, and self-censure. That feeling of FOMO can be a source of information instead of shame.

The other false binary thinking is that extrinsic comparisons are less valuable than intrinsic ones, that just using a metric of personal fulfillment and growth is superior to working for recognition or reward. We need both external and internal scoreboards to balance each other. Focusing only on the former risks us becoming impressive and miserable, and solely fixating on the latter risks us becoming peaceful and disengaged.

The question is, What’s in the driver’s seat? When I think I must attain this or that, what do I think having it would make me feel? Significant? Successful? Secure? And when I get wrapped up in the idea that I’m not “enough” this or that, I need to ask if this is my ego talking, or is it real self-reflection?

Despite all the grief, anxiety, and other problems it can cause, being told what to do is easier than charting your own course. We spend the formative years of our lives being assessed by developmental markers, having decisions made for us, and being guided (and sometimes goaded) into activities deemed healthy and appropriate for our improvement. This is part of growing up. But if we never have the training wheels removed or the apron strings cut, we can spend our lives living up to others’ ideals instead of our own. (Hello, childhood rooted in evangelical indoctrination.)

My life is not a way station on the path to something better, or a practice round for an existence more real than now. This is it. This is all I get. So, rather than saying “I’d better make it good,” I’m going with, “I’d better make it mine.”

THE BUGS BUNNY EFFECT

If your only familiarity with rabbits is based on Looney Tunes propaganda, you might be unaware that carrots are not a main staple of the Leporidae diet. Rabbits need a high-fiber menu, and root vegetables are too high in sugar to be the main course. Carrots are, basically, dessert. A treat. A non-essential. They are certainly not “enough.”

At 30 years old, having just lost a home and seeing peers buying their own, working in a limiting corporate job, and being chronically single, I wanted a house, a loving relationship, and meaningful work. Not bad things to want at all. I just wasn’t ready for them.

Now at 50, I have all of those things. The temptation remains to think the carrots I see others my age enjoying are necessary for my own well-being. It’s harder to choose what’s healthy for me when “enough” is illusory and envy wants to convince me that my life is a beige tragedy because I don’t make $35,000 a year. I know better, though. Not only am I diabetic, but I’m acquainted with real tragedy. My current circumstances certainly don’t qualify.

Bugs, while looking great in drag, was a trickster who manipulated reality for his own amusement, often to the destruction of foes or rivals. Fortunately, gratitude is a lot more grounding than a hunting license and a white male ego. I might be on the scenic route compared to other people’s journeys through life. That’s fine. As long as I’m driving and not running on a wheel.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Things.

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