...it can stay, I don't have to...

        I am a compulsive mover.
        Self-diagnosed, but nonetheless true.
        I tire of my surroundings quickly.  I'm never wholly pleased with the way things are.  I constantly find myself picking things up and putting them down elsewhere...
        arranging...worrying on...then rearranging...
        Dishes, knick-knacks, furniture...nothing is safe or secure in my sightline.  If I could move the walls themselves, I likely would...and often!

       I've never understood how people can tolerate the static.  How they bring into their homes a piece of furniture or a decorative item and determinedly, decisively choose the very spot where it will live out the rest of its life.    And they dust it, or polish it, or vacuum around it and never once wonder if it might be happier...might be more comfortable...might be more pleasing....might be more useful...elsewhere.

         Maybe in that corner instead of this one?  Or up on that shelf, if this moved over and that was taken down?  Or....or...or???

        I wonder, as I sit down to write this, if it's my imagination that is the root of my compulsion.  My imagination that fills up the walls with possibilities.  My imagination that says "if ever this, then...." and tries to predict the arrangement based on all the foreseeable variables.

         Perhaps instead, it's my inner discontent.  Perhaps its an attempt to right the view when it's the viewer that is distorted. Perhaps the shuffle of stuff is nothing more than the sloughing off of what isn't working out.

         Or maybe, simply, it's just that I crave change.  That I want to grow and adapt without stagnating.  That I  want my very surroundings to reflect every new piece of information...every new interaction...every new sight, as it gets added to my story.

        Stop.  Redirect.  This wasn't what I sat down to write.  The "reasons why" wasn't the topic I had in mind.  I didn't mean to expound on the causes.

        It was the wall.
        It was the wall, this morning, that I looked at and furrowed my brow at...and, quite possibly, harrumphed at.
        It was the wall.

        The wall of rock that splits in half one side of the livingroom in our current home-base.  It's...decorative, I suppose.  I don't know that for sure.  Perhaps it's structural or load bearing or any number of other things I can't possibly understand.  But I think it's simply decorative.  Dark stones, stacked atop and amidst, sticky with some old attempt at shellacking.  Dusty, if you get close enough.  No matter how many times or ways I try to clean it, the dust just gathers there and I've never found the right tool to cleanse all the nooks and crannies.

        The wall just...is.  Glaringly so.  It's there...so solid and substantial that it can't be avoided.

        The Wall.

        See?  Bold and imposing and completely, wholly immoveable.  Even on the page.

        So here I am, this self-diagnosed compulsive mover, who rearranges the furniture every time that stressors bubble up.  Here I am, pushing and pulling and shoving and grunting...exercising and exorcising the irritation out.  This, no longer here.  That, no longer there.  Wait...no...maybe...no...  Scrap it all and start again.  Sweat the situation right on out of existence and flop onto the floor, ears ringing with the racing pulse and gasping breaths.
        Here I am, the mover and shaker of all the things...and there is the wall.

        The wall won't move.  The wall won't be shifted, ever so slightly, into the corner.  The wall won't be picked up and put where I want it.   The wall just is.

        And I have met my match.  Or so it seems.

        In all the years we've lived here I've never been able to sort it.  It's there.  And I'm here.  And everything gets rearranged around it.

       And for some reason, inexplicable to even me, I've never once been able to just...cover it.

       Even on the rare occasions when I've temporarily put a piece of furniture in front of it, it's still held sway.  It's still been the focal point and the furniture a mere interruption.

         So there I stood this morning, brow furrowed...coffee mug in hand...growl vibrating in my throat.  I stared at that wall.  I willed it out of existence.  I blinked and wished it to melt right down to the carpet.  Opened my eyes and there it still was.  The Wall.   I took a breath and felt my shoulders straighten.

         I decided.  Right then.  Right there.  Just like that...a shoulder shrug and I decided.

        Ignore it.

        Pretend it's invisible.  Pretend it's insubstantial.  Pretend it's irrelevant.

        Ikea, here I come.

        I've a boy who's growing faster than I can keep track of.  His physical body expanding upward and outward as his intellect grows exponentially.  I've a boy whose interests need substance, whose dreams need space to be realized.  I've a boy whose stuff needs room.  And that wall is in my way.

        So I'm bulldozing it out of my existence.  It can sit there all...substantial.  All...solid.   All...unmoving.  That's fine. I'll just move around it.  I'll just ignore it and put what needs to be in front of what is and just like that, stop it from being.  Stop it from stopping me.

        That wall has got to go.  I need that space for him.  And I aim to have it!

        *Sometime it really is just about the wall.
        **Sometimes, the wall is the one I accidently built with other peoples' expectations.

~Leanna

   

...the nerve...

        I remember a time when a blank page was all I needed to set myself free.  Words and scribbles and scrawls would flow out.  Curlicue trees or wisps of fire filling the margins when the words got stuck in traffic.  But soon enough, no matter the clutter in my mind, that page would be full to overflowing and I would feel the relief of having written it out.  

        

        I find myself wondering, as I sit in front of a blank screen if that's part of the problem.  Screen substituted for page.  Keyboard tapping instead of ball point scrawling.  Not a free form margin to be found to keep the fingers active while the mind puzzles out the language barrier between heart and soul. 

        For a while there, my writing was confined to the tangible page...my words stuck between the covers of a journal.  It seems, when I look back through the post scroll here, that I jump track frequently and let this blog sit, empty, when there's too much to clean up or organize or pack away...emotionally.   I, as the writer, have the benefit of being able to bounce back and forth between blog and journal to see that my timeline is uninterrupted.  But here on the screen, the seasons of my discontent play out in huge gaps of empty space...empty days~weeks~months...when nothing finds its way to this space.  

        I think there are apology posts.  I don't feel like opening up another window to scroll through and check.  But I think they are there, one or two at least.  The "hey, I'm still here....checking back in" words of someone who feels guilty and neglectful at having taken the time to deal with things in her own time, in her own way.

        This morning I woke up in a mood, a distinctive mood...a dream not quite run its course before my eyes opened.  I woke  up wondering when and how and where I had lost so much of myself.  

        I used to sing.
        I used to dance.
        I used to act.
     
        I used to move through my days in music and passion and creativity.  No matter the weather, my home sparkled inside with song, the music filling up the vacant corners where the things that should have been...weren't.  Music filled the empty space and made of our impoverished means, a substantial existence.  The walls were covered in art, and photos of things that caught my eye.  My son's early paintings from school competing for space with thrifted textiles and postcards from abroad.  I liked the quirk of it all.  The chaos.  The constant flow of energy that all that colour and texture created.  And through that space I danced.  My legs stretching to an arabesque in the kitchen or pirouetting the plates to the table, much to my then-toddler's delight.  Life was...something to enhance.   A show where the presentation mattered more than the substance.  Where the music and dance and drama made more of what little we had and we felt rich, indeed.

        I woke up this morning in a mood and felt my legs stretch out, my toes flexing out to twinkle.  I sat up and stood, shoulders rolling back...neck stretching side to side and pinging in pain...and rose to demi-pointe.  Felt the burn in my arches as they curved and froze, locked in a position short of the flexibility they once had.   Felt the quiver in my calves as long-sleeping muscles tried to spring back.  Felt the crack in ankle as rusty joints gave way.

        Felt, in that moment too, the disappointment and disgust of an aging body that hasn't been "kept up" and the sudden, firm resolve to "set things right".

        So I got up, fully.  Grabbed my robe and flicked off the a.c.  Marched into the kitchen to set the pitcher to boil and prepped our mugs.  I stretched in the kitchen as well, arching my back and feeling the little pops of tension, suddenly angry and not just annoyed at how stiff and tense I am.  Frustrated to feel the solid wall of restricted movement.  Feeling like the Tin Man, in need of a good oiling.  And knowing, full well, that so much of what's lost to time is gone forever.  That inevitable depressor on all good intentions of knowing that they aren't wholly-fully-totally achievable.  Knowing that my body will never spring back the way it did at 20.  Never contort as it could at 30.

        But I shook it off.  Made the coffee, letting my body sway to the music in my head as I puttered about the kitchen and waited for my son to wake.  Turning the music on when he finally stirred and reminding him, with a smile, that we used to always have music in the mornings.  He just nodded his assent...an acknowledgement of "Yes...that's how it was...and how it should be again" and grabbed for his mug.

         And I thought, in that moment, all's well that begins well.

         I thought, as he slunk back to the livingroom with his coffee and his book and his blanket, that I had hit the reset button.  That I had activated a "fresh start" of sorts.

        I thought I was me again.  The "used to" me...that sang and danced and acted and created and for whom a new day was the blank page for a new adventure.

        I thought I'd had a breakthrough.

        Until I sat down with my second cup of coffee and I put my headphones on and clicked through the screen saver to the blank page where the cursor blinked my creativity into oblivion and I sat, counting the seconds along with that cursor...1....2....blink....4....

       All the words turn into dust.  A mess of thoughts and emotions that can't possibly be sorted through.  Just...leftovers...refuse....garbage to be tidied up and disposed of.

        Is it really the creativity that's missing now?  Or is it maybe, just maybe, the recklessness?  The bravado of youth.  The carelessness that allows for free-flowing thought.  Is it my creativity that has been suffocated, or my nerve?

        I think now, again, of the music and the night last week when I shoved all the furniture back to the walls and let it burn through me.  Of the fiery energy that took hold and of the way the whole of me sparked and sparkled as my barriers came down and the music and the movement blasted right through all the responsibility~logic rigidity that holds me together.  I think of that night and I want it back.  I want that feeling and that freedom and that fulfillment.

        I want to shrug off the mantle of everything everyone seems to think I should be and just be me.  I want my son to know me...the me that I was and still am...the me that is drowning under the waves made of not wanting to make waves.   Its as though I'm drowning in reverse.  My body safe and dry and going about the business of being all that I'm supposed to be while only my eyes are below the surface, endlessly gazing at all I used to be.
     
        And there she is.  There I am.  The me of 16 and 20 and 21 and 24.  The student and the explorer and the new-wife and the new-mother.  There she is again.  The girl and the woman who danced through her days and sang out her feelings.   The "animated conversationalist" in the spotlight of a high-school dinner, when a friend loudly declared just that....pointing right at her, as she tried to melt into the floor.

        There she is.  In her 20s.  Spinning out inside her head, desperately trying to stay above water as her marriage implodes and her life...thoughtfully planned and carefully wished...blinks right out of existence.  There she is.  Bruised and battered and broken.  Silent and still.  Not daring to make a noise or jostle the delicate balance for fear that more bad things will find her.

        There she is.  Wholly immersed in motherhood.  Going through the motions on everyone else's behalf.  The employee.  The chaperone.  The advocate.  Fueled by the needs of others.  Ignoring her own.  There she is, that woman in her 30s.

        There she is.
        But where am I?

        Right here.  I found myself.  Right here, under the surface.  These two eyes that can see through all the form and function and formality.  These eyes that focus on the way the notes dance across the staff and the way the feet bend and flex.  These eyes that see all the words that were, and all the words still stuck inside.

        And I blink.  1....2...blink...4....  I blink along with the cursor.  Trying to clear my field of vision.  I bend and twist and stretch in my chair, feeling the sharp twinges of pain as stiff joints and lax muscles try to obey me.   I hear the click of my fingers on the keyboard and wonder what's flowing out onto the screen.  I'm curious to read it now...to see what makeshift sentences my brain constructed while I was listening to the music....

~Leanna

...made the list, now checking it twice...

        Way back at the beginning of March I posted here about planning for the year ahead.  And here we are, 5 months into it at the start of August.  Seems as good a time as any to check back in and see where we're at and....maybe more importantly...remind me of everything I forgot!

15 for 15:

1. Finish setting up his new business
2. Fill up the calender:
1. Zip-Lining
2. Hiking 
3. Camping (err...maybe in a cabin???)
4. Spontaneous road trip
5. Canoeing, or rafting, or tubing, or all three!
6. Work on that ice-skating!
7. Fishing or crabbing, or both
8. Use the library passes to check out new museums
9. Take the train to a new destination
10. See a Broadway show
11. Rock climbing
12. Roller coasters!
13. Water slides!
14. Biking
15. Take a class together
3. Let him teach me how to 3D design
4. Collaborate on some advocacy pieces, written and/or filmed
5. Switch out the nightly tv episode for a game at least twice a week
6. Take a walk together every day, no matter the weather. (Coats? Umbrellas? Flashlights?  Good to go!)
7. Cook dinner together once a week
8. Let him make breakfast once a week
9. Stay overnight at a hotel just to use the pool and order room service
10. Volunteer together
11. Build a piece of furniture together
12. Try geocaching
13. Try our hand (and eye co-ordination) at golf
14. Waste a day playing arcade games
15. Put him in charge for a week in the summer: have him pick the groceries, plan the meals, choose the activities!  Don't forget to be a good sport...even if he forgets that you NEED coffee!

         Ooof...well, there's the proof.  Not quite up to "goals" level, now is it.  Granted, we've kept busy with things not on this list but to see it all in front of me is a bit overwhelming.  Mom-guilt triggered, as I think back on days when we should have~could have~would have done more...

        But then again, there's so much more to it, isn't there?  So many little things not on this list that we've done and enjoyed.  So many moments not represented here that have filled up our days.

        I look at this list and see the big-ticket items...the trips and the amusements and the things that aren't free...and they are all still sitting there...un-done.  

        And I'll be honest.  That makes me nervous. 

        Anxious.

        Guilty.  

        It makes me feel like I'm failing at something...at motherhood.

        So I have to take a breath, and reassess, and remind myself of all the things we have done....all the small adventures and explorations, all the new discoveries and learning, all the experiences.  

        I have to value the things we've done more than the things yet to be done.

        In other words, I have to stop comparing my "done list" to my "to-do list" because...

"Comparison is the thief of joy"-Roosevelt

~Leanna

...at 1:30pm on a Thursday in August...

        What do you write when the words won't come out right? How do you leave that empty space?

        I sat down today, with every intention of writing. I needed to write. Needed.  

        There's been...a lot...going on, or going about...and I realized that I needed to sit down and tune out and self-soothe.  I needed to, for at least a little while, shut down everyone else's needs and wants and just address my own.

        So I did.  Or, I tried to.

        I prepped the French press.  I made my son a snack tray and settled him in with a project.  I dropped some music in a play-list.  I turned off the phone, locked the front door and dimmed the light.

        And yet here I sit: headphones on~ coffee mug full ~peace and quiet at last.  And  I'm caught in the type-delete cycle.  My fingers fly across the keyboard, but as my eyes track the words appearing, they fall flat and I go back, deleting words and sentences and paragraphs and pages.  Deleting...everything.  

        I feel the words on the tip of my tongue, but none of them stick on the page.  I feel like I'm singing off-key, or dancing off-beat.

        It's as though the more I try to focus, the more ephemeral it becomes.

        It's like this photo...

        We were hiking recently, when I took this photo. We'd been at it for about an hour, making our slow and steady way on a trail that wound uphill through the woods with seemingly no end in sight. The trail was well-worn but rugged, rocks and roots reaching out to trip us as we walked. It was hot and humid, and the air thick under the canopy of trees. We were both winded, struggling to push forward, when we turned round a bend and the trees opened up and the sun shone through...sparking off the trail. I stopped and hunched down, trying to photograph the brilliant rainbow sparkle glinting off the rocks. It was...remarkable. This dazzle of light that made us forget, momentarily, how hot and tired and frustrated and 'done' we were. 

        And this photo?

        Shows...

        Nothing. 

      It's empty of the sparkle...the brilliance...the dazzle. It's empty of the words. 

        And so, apparently, am I.

~Leanna

...brushing by...

I have the most boring hair ever.

Stick straight and fine as can be.

I wear it down, and keep it long.

I alternate between a center part and a side part.

Rarely will you find me with it up, or back, or any kind of anything.

It doesn't hold curl...not without tons of product at any rate.

So you can probably imagine my surprise-delight-confusion combo when first my son's hair started to grow into the soft, loose curls of his toddlerhood.

When he was born I remember staring at him, as all mothers do, analyzing what parts of this new creature came from me and what from the other half of his gene pool.  His hair, it seemed, was determinedly mine: jet black and stick straight and fine as spiders' silk.  But as he grew, the black melted away into chocolate brown, and the straight lines curved and corkscrewed.  They would twist right round my finger when I brushed his hair and in the sunlight, spark glimmers of gold and red.  I wore my hair in braids then, my "mom-do"  and envied him his curls.  

Fast forward through the years and all the haircuts, and those curls gave way to waves.  The perfect hair...the compromise between straight and curly.  Such hair is wasted on a boy, I think to myself sometimes.  Rich chocolate brown full of natural highlights, thick and lustrous.

The battle line.

Oh yes, that hair is the battle line.  He likes it long.  That's okay.  The bangs though...the bangs that hang straight down across his eyes.  Those?  He hides behind them, I know.  I understand.  It's hard to be him at school.  I'd hide, too.

I brush them out of his face constantly.  I want to see those flashing blues of his.  He'll toss his head from time to time, shaking them loose from his eyelashes.   Then flop...right back where they started.

I trim them whenever I can.  Little snips here and there, more frequently then he'd like.  Always a rousing chorus of complaints before-during-after.

Brushing.  Another battle.  "Brush it back." I tell him.  "Brush it back from your face and let the waves settle naturally."  I know that when it's clean it curls up and out and when it's not, it curves in.  "Brush it back." I say, every morning after he's towel dried it.  Every morning he scrapes the brush across his scalp, pulling it all forward from crown to nose.   He emerges from the bathroom with this wide brown swath cutting off half his face.  "I don't know how" he says when our eyes meet.  That little drum behind my left eye starts pounding away as I think of the countless times I've shown him.  15 years of brushing his hair.  Brushing it back and flipping the ends.  I do it again, in front of the mirror so he'll see.  He doesn't watch.  I fix it, just so.  I grouse inside, that I have better things to do, but secretly love these moments when I'm still of use.   Before I've even put the brush away, his fingers sneak up and start fussing with it, pulling the hair back down to his face.

Sometimes, now, when I want to take his photo, I lean in close and blow the hairs away from his eyes.  A quick breath, then snap before he "fixes" it. 

Last night he had his volunteering session at the library.  Homework was done.  Dinner was rushed.  Time was up, and I bustled about with clean-up while urging him to brush his teeth and hair and get his shoes on.  Dishes in the sink...sneakers laced...purse grabbed... 

Then...wait...

I stood by the door waiting, while he finished up.  The clock ticked.  I stepped back in and walked through to the kitchen.  Saw the bathroom door open and his face in the mirror.  He didn't notice me.  I stood there, at the edge of the table and watched as he brushed his hair.  Down.  Down from top to nose.  I think I sighed.  He put the brush down and I started to move.  Stopped when his head went down, thinking "Oh no, not another bloody nose!" (They've been frequent again.)  His head went down and he shook it...up and down, side to side, all those neat little lines fluffing back up.  Head up, brush in hand again.  Repeat.  I watched, barely containing a giggle.  He brushed it down and shook it out, over and over.  Then finally something must have looked okay in the mirror, because he put the brush away.  Then I watched, those giggles erupting now, as he picked two clumps of hair at the sides of his head and pulled them up and out.  Repeating the maneuver again and again, making little sections of hair fly up.  Another shake of the head.  Then a swipe at the bangs, first to the right and then a twist up.  He jumped when he walked out and saw me standing there, startled.  I burst into a laugh and choked if off.

"I've never seen anything funnier in my life!" I gasped out.

He looked confused.

I said "What was that about..." and he replied "You told me to brush my hair." 

"Yes, brush.  I didn't know it would be so involved.  What was that?  The brush~muss~fluff?"

"I was trying to get it to look like the look I'm going for."

"What look is that?"

"The way it looks when it's clean.  But it doesn't like to do that at 7pm."

Out the door then.  Into the car.  Off to the library.

I giggled the whole way, replaying the scene in my head.

Brush.

Muss.

Fluff.

He got out when we arrived.  Walked in by himself.  I look in the rear view mirror, pulling out.  Saw my hair.  Pulled a section forward.  Pushed it back behind my ear.

I have the most boring hair ever.

His, though, is wild and wonderful...and apparently willful.

Just like him!

...cut and run...

There's a move in our future.

Not sure when. Not sure how.  Not sure where.
Hoping soon.  Hoping simple.  Hoping south.

It all depends on the budget.

Wallet worries aside, we (or rather, I) have been slowly working steadily towards it.

I've moved a good deal.   Oddly enough, I've never really found it stressful.  Maybe the excitement over-rides the fear?   Packing up is fun.  It's an opportunity to sift through memories and toss out the ones that don't mean as much anymore.  It's a chance to divest of the bits and pieces that aren't a part of you or your life/lifestyle.   It's the perfect time to really take stock of all that you have and unencumber yourself, shedding off those things you never really wanted or used, but couldn't quite see your way clear to throwing away.  

I'm no moving expert, but I like to think I have a pretty good system.  At the very least, it's one that works for me.  I like lists.  I like boxes.  I like knowing I have everything organized and ready to go, well in advance.  That's the key, right there...well in advance.  

During spring break, we set aside time to tackle our storage shed?shack?lean to? (It used to be the poolhouse at the back of the property for a now long-gone pool.  We've used it to store the bulk of our off season belongings, as our apartment is a veritable postage stamp.  Then Sandy came through and turned it into a demolition site.  A few handy boards have held up just enough of it to keep our totes mostly dry, but the most recent bout of winter-spring storms turned it into a safety hazard!) Totes upon totes upon...yeah, you get it.  We pulled them all out, and started the great dig through. 

3 piles to start: keep, donate, trash  

Some hours later those 3 piles had morphed into 5:keep, keep for now, donate, trash, ebay

Then one more: undecided

Quick tip: if you really want to be thorough, make it a solo run...don't involve anyone else in the "hmmm...keep or toss debate".  If too many cooks spoil the soup, then too many opinions absolutely spoil the slough.  Given the opportunity to weigh in, someone else will absolutely come up with a reason to keep your ready discards.

At any rate, the undecided pile grew...then shrank...then grew again...until I finally opted to put it all in one tote to be dealt with in the future.  What I had thought would take an hour or two at most had morphed into an all day circus.  Every new-found item requiring discourse and debate.  But in the end, my stubbornness prevailed and car load after car load was dropped off at dumpster or donation center.  (When we went back a few days later, we got a good giggle out of the prices Goodwill had marked our cast-offs with!)  All the keepers got relocated to a dryer, safer locale. There they'll wait until I feel another purge come on.  Be warned! Ha!

Storage tackled, closets came next.  What. A. Nightmare!

So here's the thing.  I try to be good about closet-purging.  I talk a good game.  The seasons change and the closets rearrange.  Twice a year I pull out every last scrap of fabric.  Everything gets tried on.  Bags get filled.  Donations happen.  No, really, they do.  But inevitably at least one of those bags, chock full of items I know I should get rid of, sneaks it's way back into my closet....hiding well back behind my off season items. 

This time around, I found two of those bags.  Full.  I wanted to keep them all!  I really did.  Pretty dresses, all bagged up and ready to go...but I wanted to keep them.  I wanted to go back in time...or tonnage...and wear them all again.  More than that though, I wanted to not be getting rid of anything more!  

There's a bit of trauma...or, maybe, more appropriately, drama...involved in the closet purge. At least for me.  There's these feelings of shame.  Shame for the body that has changed and grown and doesn't fit into what it once did.  Shame for the money spent and now seemingly wasted as something that was purchased is now rendered useless.  

So I try to be good.  And I talk the talk.  I even walk the walk.  Then I find myself walking things back in, right back in to the very back where they won't be seen but they won't be gone.

But this time, it's different.  There's the promise of a move on the horizon.  That alone is enough to inspire a harsher approach.  So those bags came out, as did everything else.  I shut the bedroom door.  Locked it for good measure.  No interruptions allowed.  I tried on everything.  The mis-fits hit the floor, the still-fits hit the bed.  Soon enough, the floor was covered.

Doesn't fit?  Floor

Faded?  Floor

Damaged?  Floor

Doesn't spark a smile?  Floor

I sifted through the piles on the floor, pulling out what could be resold.  Then tossed the rest into bags (ugh, so many bags!) and quickly carried them out to the car, no second glances allowed.   We drove directly to Goodwill, pulled into the donation drop-off and emptied out.

Once home again, I slowly went through the remains.  Piece by piece, hung in the closet.  Lonely...and bare looking.  Piece by piece had to pass by a second round of judgement, and again the floor was littered with cast offs.  Shoes came next.  Then handbags.  Accessories...socks...pajamas...nothing was spared.

Even now, as I write this, I wonder what more I am ready to part with?  What more has outstayed it's welcome?  Seen through the lens of a move-of a fresh start-what is there lurking in that closet that isn't really who I want to be?  

Laundry day has become part of the process.  Wash-dry-fold...and then...unfold.  Look at.  Really look at.  And toss into a bag.

I'm trying a new rule.  Nothing comes in without something going out. So far, so good.  It helps that warm weather keeps poking its head out from between the cold and rain to remind me that it's time for change.

By the time summer rolls around, I expect we'll have whittled down to easy packing.  At the rate I'm going, we won't need wardrobe boxes...just suitcases.  Perfect!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still untouched?  My son's Transformers collection...and all his creations.

They'll require an extra U-Haul!

...resilience:revisited...

Last week I attended a speaker presentation hosted by a local special-education parent advocacy group, on the topic of "Building Resilience for Kids and Teens" and it reminded me of this mini series I wrote a while back:

https://confessionsofthecaffeinated.blogspot.com/2015/03/wow-resilience-sunday.html

https://confessionsofthecaffeinated.blogspot.com/2015/03/wow-resilience-monday.html

https://confessionsofthecaffeinated.blogspot.com/2015/03/wow-resilience-tuesday.html

https://confessionsofthecaffeinated.blogspot.com/2015/03/wow-resilience-wednesday.html

https://confessionsofthecaffeinated.blogspot.com/2015/03/wow-resilience-thursday.html

https://confessionsofthecaffeinated.blogspot.com/2015/03/wow-resilience-friday.html

https://confessionsofthecaffeinated.blogspot.com/2015/03/wow-resilience-saturday.html

At the start of the meeting, during the roundtable intros, I spoke briefly about myself and my son before sharing that my primary reason for attending was because the topic was one near and dear to me and one that I had consistently worked hard at fulfilling.  

I've spoken before (probably ad nauseum at this point!) about how our family motto ought to be

Roll With The Punches

and it's safe to say I'll likely still be thinking-out-loud, so to speak, about this for many years to come.

I think it's important, in a parent-child relationship, to identify not only areas that need to be improved upon but also those strengths you have as a family...as a team.  Speaking for us both (and yes, I've asked him point-blank), our resiliency is definitely high on the list of our family superpowers.  It's not only our individual resilience that I'm thinking about here.  We've both, individually and independently in vastly different ways, become highly resilient, and that's no small thing.  But as a family...as a team...we've built a foundation that allows for resilience together through all of the ups and downs.  We've learned how to take the impact, redirect around it, and find another path to common goals.  

I love that about us.

I love that we come together to protect what we've created and are creating, and fortify the boundaries that keep our path to happiness as clear as possible.  

That night I said to the other parent attendees that happiness only exists where there has been an absence of it.  Think about it.  How would you know what happiness feels like if you didn't have its opposite to compare it to?  How would you be able to truly appreciate the good, if you hadn't made it through the bad?  That's the product of resilience.  That's what happens when you properly cope with your circumstances and move through them...when you allow yourself to bend a little and then bounce back...when you roll with the punches.

There's a lot in this mother-hood to worry about...to doubt...to wish you could re-do.  But at least in my experience, when you 'big-picture' it and step back a bit, there's something about all those missteps and mistakes to be grateful for.  After all, they are the very building blocks of resilience in both you and your child(ren).   I've talked before on here about how seriously I take my role as a parent, and how important it is to give my child all the tools to build the life he wants.  A huge part of that is not only allowing, but encouraging, him to move through failures.  Coddling and preventing and fixing may make you feel like you are protecting your child, but in the end you'll have raised up someone who is completely unprepared for real life.  You'll have raised up someone who breaks down at the first bump.  How scary is that? 

One of the handouts from the presentation included 10 tips for building resilience in children and teens:

1) Make connections

2) Help your child by having him/her help others

3) Maintain a daily routine

4) Take a break

5) Teach your child self-care

6) Move toward your goals

7) Nurture a positive self-view

8) Keep things in perspective and maintain a hopeful outlook

9) Look for opportunities for self-discovery

10) Accept that change is part of living

(Each of these includes a more in-depth blurb, and the full brochure is available from the American Psychological Association here: http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/resilience.aspx)