Past Tense, Present Progressive

I'm an introvert and a bit of a homebody .  So during the early months of the pandemic, why did I frequently find myself pacing the perimeter of my home like an agitated and caged wild animal, feeling trapped and intensely desperate... as if I had suddenly been transported back into the severe social isolation of my teenaged years as a fundamentalist homeschooler ? As a mom of two high-maintenance kids with dramatically different needs from each other, I provide emotional support on a daily basis, for problems of all sizes... so why did my nervous system frequently react to their big emotions as if there were a true crisis, leaving me continuously drained with nothing left for myself? It turns out that these types of experiences are called emotional flashbacks, and they are a common symptom of Complex-PTSD.  Through some recent therapy, I found my way to a book that has been incredibly important to my childhood trauma healing process.  In fact, from my reading, I ended up...

 As someone with a lifelong history of anxiety, also affected by the profound sleep loss that often accompanies new parenthood, it took years for me to realize that I was increasingly unwell and needed professional help.  I told myself: it's just that I have a very difficult baby who won't sleep (and who was diagnosed with autism years later).  That seamlessly transitioned to our second baby, two nighttime wakers, two in diapers, and two who needed constant supervision and exhausting emotional management.  Nothing on earth was more important to me than their well-being, and I was lucky to have a caring husband actively sharing that load with me.  But my sanity was cracking more and more, and I was stuck in a hyper-vigilant obsession, micromanaging the kids' environment, demanding the kind of impossible perfection from myself and my husband that doesn't just solve problems but somehow prevents them instead. Even then, an awareness in the back of m...

Much to my surprise, I'm finding motherhood to be incredibly therapeutic. Part of it is certainly that I have felt far more socially connected since my son's birth than at any other time in my life.  Ironic, I know, but true.  I feel incredibly supported by my friendships with other parents, accepted for who I am, and inspired to grow.  Finally experiencing the social connection that I desperately craved for my entire childhood has increased my self-esteem and has decreased my issues with depression, which in turn helps me feel like a better mother. But more specifically, as a mother, I feel like all the kindness and love that I pour into my son's life is somehow healing my own childhood wounds.  I see him learning the lessons that I wish I had learned myself as a child, and I feel at peace. He is learning, right from the start, that his feelings are important .  As a toddler, he has so many feelings, which often appear suddenly and catch both of us off gu...

"How was your Christmas?" the guy working at the fish counter at my local grocery store asked. "It was a good Christmas....how was yours?" I responded, moving my cart as my toddler tried to smack his slobbery hands on the display window. "Oh actually, I celebrate Hanukkah.  My family is Jewish," he volunteered. And from there, we somehow chatted our way into the story of his first Christmas experience--last year, with his girlfriend's extremely Christian family.  "We just sat around singing songs about Baby Jesus," he said incredulously, "and anytime I made a joke to lighten the mood, I could tell it offended them, especially her aunt." "That is soooo awkward and no fun at all!" I said, secretly wondering how similar my past self was to his girlfriend's aunt.  "What did your girlfriend think of the whole situation?" "Well, that's the problem; she's not religious anymore herself, but she...

If I had stayed within the constraints of fundamentalism and Christian Patriarchy, my husband and I would absolutely not be happily married today.  Our relationship from the very beginning consisted of many departures from the teachings I grew up with.  Each of those departures furthered the development, health, and mutual happiness of our relationship. The first departure: As a single woman, I moved out of my parents' home to get a college education .  What is a completely ordinary step for many North American women was a  desperate and terrifying  leap for me.  My family's homeschooling church, led by  Reb Bradley , promoted  a very restrictive view of gender roles  along with a strong suspicion of the " liberal bias " of higher learning institutions.  Within the church culture, daughters were obligated to stay home under their father's authority until marriage; once married, they would be housekeepers and stay-at-home mothers. ...

Do any of these sound like you? I have to always say yes to others, or else I am selfish. I have to always hide my hurt, or else I am unloving. I have to treat other people as faultless, or else I am holding a grudge. I have to keep my wants and needs to myself, or else I am a burden to others. People who experienced authoritarian parents tend to turn into adults with poor boundaries.  They were trained for it their whole lives and can't imagine another way of doing things.  However, it's an extremely unsatisfying and unsustainable way to live, don't you think?  But most importantly, it's actually not what a loving person is like!  For me, when I was in that mindset, my "loving" actions were actually motivated by obligation or guilt because I thought I didn't really have a choice; I was just an actor. Besides hindering me from showing real love based on real choice, this mindset also prevented me from ever feeling loved.  My buried wants and needs...

I have a lot of respect for my dad. He's thoughtful and generous to all of us. His constant reading makes him an interesting and well-informed conversationalist.  He makes his life decisions very carefully, yet never looks down on me for making different decisions than him.  Instead, he tells me all the time that he loves and misses me, and that he's proud of who I've become. I feel so lucky to have him as my dad. Unfortunately, we have not always gotten along so well.  Less than ten years ago, our relationship had been almost completely destroyed thanks to the authoritarian parenting techniques of the fundamentalist Christian homeschooling culture (in our case, it was Reb Bradley's Child Training Tips). Authoritarian parenting forced both of us into roles that we were not at all suited for, with tragic results. For my dad, authoritarian parenting caused him to see our relationship as a power struggle; maintaining his authority was his biggest responsibility and...