February 16, 2022

This post I found tucked away in the drafts and, having not even logged on in a year, I am just going to send it out there into the world. Dated, but not irrelevant…

As a parent in the pandemic, the overarching narrative of the past 12 months has been making sense of the Autism diagnosis our son received last August. Still processing what this means for us and how we feel about it. One hilarious friend said, “Hey! You just went from awful parent to hero.” Amazing.

I started this blog in desperation. Bored, lost, frustrated and needing to vent beyond my friends and family. Although slightly mortified as I was writing a ‘parenting blog’, I had to swallow my pride before I imploded. And now writing again after a year, I still feel conflicted. I am a very private person, there are no pictures of my kids on Instagram, and I want to stay respectful of them as individuals. But I also find myself scrolling through websites searching for someone to tell me how hard their day was. That is what I want to hear. When I first wrote this post it was filled with honest and big emotions. I asked my husband to read it, and in his wisdom, he asked me to rethink what I was putting out there into the world. This is not just my story, this is our family story. My children need control over their own narrative. No matter how much I want to scream out there to the world all my thoughts and feelings, I am not operating in a silo.

What I was searching for in writing this blog was the structure and challenge of a research paper, homework, urgency. And after a long break within the pandemic what I realize is that this process was to puzzle out this thing; our kid is different and now we understand better in what way. In these last months, with all the privileges we enjoy, I have become an unrecognizable parent. I have anger at myself that sometimes stays with me for days. I respond not as the adult, but a peer. I’m burnt out and angry at all other parents who seem to have it easier, and I feel hollowed out inside at the end of most days.

So what now? Yes, languishing. That is what we are all talking about. Why I am so depressed after two doses of the vaccine and the skys brightening? Languishing.

So this is now going to be a place for me to put organize what I learn about new resources and the process for parents in a similar situation. I guess? I don’t know. Thinking of all you families out there who have languished this year. With no supports, specialist waitlists that can break your spirit, and days that go on forever. xoxo

April 21, 2020

This is one of my favorite Elizabeth Bishop poems. One I have had committed to memory since I first discovered it. I used to repeat it over and over in my head until it lost all it’s meaning as I marched the streets of Brooklyn with my colicky newborn. The streets I loved and had felt like mine for years, were suddenly unfamiliar through the eyes of this new parent. Estranged from all my old haunts, I felt like a boring relic from another time. Apparently, I was defined by the bars and clubs I frequented and the company I kept. These elements of my life represented the careless youth I believed I embodied (at 36!). I was lost without them.

February 14, 2020

I, like everyone else in the world right now, am trying to manage some considerable climate anxiety. The other day I told my friend she needs to get serious about her composting habits. She works in criminal justice reform and lives in Brooklyn AND has no kids. The nerve of me.

December 9, 2019

Tara and I met in the early aughts when we were both working at an educational publishing company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As two freshman editorial assistants we easily fell in step with our shared love of KEXP and pizza. It was a lonely time for me, having just arrived back from an isolating year in Europe. I needed someone to pull me out of my haze upon returning to a post 9/11 country and Bush in the White House. And Tara did just that.

It is no surprise to me that Tara is working all over the world and living in Mexico. I can’t imagine her life any other way. Since Cambridge she has lived in Hawaii, California, Oregon, Colorado, New York City (where we luckily had a brief overlap), and now Mexico. Tara gives a very simple explanation when asked how she makes this work, it’s always been this way for them. Traveling is part of how they operate as a couple, and now it is how they live together as a family.

September 23, 2019

My husband recently returned from a job where he was working with a crew of men and women. At one point, while driving to location and engaging in the casual chit-chat one has in a crew van, one of the female crew members asked him, “So what does your wife do?”

“She’s at home with the two boys right now.”

“Oh...”, she replied.

This detail was an aside within a larger story and with its inclusion I saw my husband try and shift back to his greater point. But it was too late.

July 12, 2019

I didn’t plan on a summer hiatus but that’s just what happened these last two months. We moved and then the next day flew to Ireland to visit family for 14 days. Now we are settling in to our new home and are, bit by bit, falling into the rhythms of daily life. Returning to the news of two mass shootings sent me into a deep despair. Along with the rest of the country…

June 28, 2019

“The only journey is the one within.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

As it turns out, we did not get very far with the online therapy. And I will tell you why. We signed up for BetterHelp which is an online therapy website. They have a platform specifically for couples counseling called ReGain.us. So I, in a decidedly sanguine state, diligently set up a profile, selected couples counseling as my interest and provided my partner’s email so he could be alerted and included when we were matched with a therapist.

May 24, 2019

I am constantly asking parents about the logistics of the day-to-day. Did you shower today? How did you do that? Did you wash your hair or do you do that at night? Do you have a snack in that bag?… So when I was connected to Ginger by our friend Julie, I had so many questions. Ginger has three kids under three and splits her time between New York and New Mexico. She has created this great blog resource for moms called Women of Sustenance that she plans to turn into a book. WOS publishes personal stories about the postnatal experience along with a recipe for a dish that helped the author get by. We had a chat and here are some highlights…

May 8, 2019

"For millennia, midwives have championed women’s health and dignity in the face of patriarchy."

- International Confederation of Midwives

Nana Zappia, my husband’s great grandmother, was born in Newark, New York in 1902. The oldest child of Italian immigrants, she became the translator for her parents who still communicated in their native tongue. After she married, she remained in this quiet hamlet of the North Country. Not unlike many women in these sleepy villages throughout rural parts of the world, Nana Zappia became a known “lay midwife”, or in Europe a “handywoman”.

April 17, 2019

“Life changes in the instant.” Joan Didion

In the essay After Life, Joan Didion discusses the ordinariness of things once something unexpected happens. By contrast, those few moments before the unexpected event, whatever it may be, are finely tuned memories of normality. “It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it.”

Last Thursday, on a busy two-lane street, our Subaru Forester (did I really need to specify?) was hit from behind by a vehicle traveling about 35-40 mph, when the driver failed to notice both my blinker and my decrease in speed.

March 31, 2019

“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.” - Dame Iris Murdoch

With the baby feeding three times a night, I watch all the things. And when my husband’s away, I need a constant stream of media to anticipate consuming at the end of each day (preferably with a glass of wine and chocolate or gummy candy IN BED because this is how I live now). In these wee hours, I dig deep into the Netflix and Amazon archives. (Scottish series, The Book Group, anyone??? Well, I actually wouldn’t recommend that.)

March 17, 2019

I first heard of the British philosopher Alain de Botton over 10 years ago when my brother read Status Anxiety and was blown away. He left it on my coffee table and there it sat, formidably, for years, essentially untouched. De Botton’s subjects of interest were so applicable it was impossible for me to resist referencing his work at dinner parties and wowing rapt audiences with the brief synopsis from the book jacket or a first paragraph from a recent New Yorker contribution. My poor brother, hip to my uninformed nonsense, would just roll his eyes.

brooklyn, ny > PORTLAND, ME

February 19, 2019

Our son was 8 months old when we decided to leave our sweet little Brooklyn apartment… ok it was a bit more complicated than that (our apartment was sold, we couldn’t afford the neighborhood, blah blah blah… you get it).

February 11, 2019

February is a brutal month. The bleak days were intensified by the looming approach of my partners work trip to India while I was to stay home with our 3 month old and 3.5 year old. In the days leading up to his departure I felt dread.

February 4, 2019

When we first moved to Portland our son began exhibiting some behavioral issues (simply put, intense tantrums), we needed any form of support we could find.