Noticing a Way Back
Reflections from the dining room table
I have been struggling to find my way back to writing. Not as content, but as connection, an offering of community suspended in time, agnostic as to location and grounded in love.
For months, I had been thinking about how to block out focused time to write, but recently admitted to myself that is not what I want right now. I want to connect in the midst of it all, allowing incompleteness and shifting directions as part of the process.
The structure that found me was born from trying to finish an essay on the subtle power of noticing—how it is changing me daily, over and over, as I have the space and time to take it in. But the particular events described in the essay had passed. My attention and energy had moved on and everything I tried to “finish” it felt forced.
So I am experimenting with honoring that subtle power in a different way. What follows are a couple reflections from last week, written at the dining room table in between lemonade refills, urgently mandated tours of the most recent Lego build, and mother-son Roblox adventures.
They represent moments of noticing, discrete pieces of an ever-evolving story. I hope to build on this shared noticing as a practice, offering a nuanced, closer to real-time representation of what is happening in my bodymind and home as we are in an extended wintering phase.
I am mindful that ours is a tiny corner of the world, holding both significant privilege and deep pain. I am sharing what I notice not as a template, but as a way of claiming my lived experience and creating space for others to do the same.
I deeply appreciate you being here with me.
December 2
I don’t feel well today. My head aches with a sort of dull pressure at the base of my skull. It is not hard to ignore as I go about my morning, paying bills and feeding children, but every so often it gets my attention.
When fully present to the sensation, my response is compassionate. I give myself permission to throw out the to-do list. To prioritize care for my body in the form of rest, nourishment, and patience. I quite literally don’t need to do anything other than provide basic care for my children and myself today. I understand deeply that doing the minimum is my most loving action right now and absolutely enough.
But the considered compassionate response is not yet a part of my default operation. Underneath the compassion, I also notice a current of annoyance in my body and thinking. How inconvenient to pause the important “doing” for care (especially of myself)! It is not the physical discomfort that is a problem but the disruption, distraction from “productivity.”
It is easy, now, to see the inverted value structure and how it led me away from curiosity, pushing through with minimal awareness of my needs for so long. And why today I found myself scrolling, imitating productivity, rather than giving over fully to rest.
December 3
What I am noticing today somehow feels like both an invitation and a commitment to slowing down even further. Gratitude for the insights and recalibration that has occurred so far and a delighted sense of being only part way through this journey.
When I first started down this path, accepting the limitations of my body while still trying to perform in my roles, I was somewhat troubled to find that each time I did less, my body would adjust and I would again hear the message of it still being too much. A part of me worried about where the “less” might lead and when I described this phenomenon to others that fear would often be reflected back.
I have always had, though, a small but steady voice inside asking whether it was possible that so much change was necessary because that is how far I had pushed past—or away from—what was for me. I started small and paid attention. I started to feel better, not happy, exactly, at least at first, but more stable and hopeful.
And, after two and a half years, including the most recent six months of rarely leaving the house, I’m not done yet! If anything, I am more convinced than ever at the richness and depth here in the not-doing. I feel it for myself and see it in my children. I know it will not last forever in this form and am holding it loosely as our reserves are replenished and wounds heal, but heading into winter already primed to go slow and take rest, it feels almost lush in cozy possibility.
And because that is perhaps too rosy a thought, I will acknowledge that much of what has surfaced has not been pretty or pleasant. My experience of learning to feel more alive is that these moments are often two things at once. Both deeply painful and revealing of a beautiful truth. Immensely joyful and heavy with grief. Easy in requiring little physical effort, difficult in quieting the mind and processing the experience. All of it matters. And I am appreciating where we are.
I would love to connect further:
Check out the Here Together gathering (email me for details if you’d like to try it out before upgrading to a paid subscription).
Join me in a neurodiversity affirming peer support group for parents of neurodivergent kids (winter dates not yet set)—you can express interest here.
Schedule a discovery call to work with me 1-on-1 (I am a certified Wayfinder coach using presence, curiosity, and compassion to support parents veering off beaten paths to create lives more aligned with their families and values.).
Love your words, Taylor.
Feeling better and beautiful truth. Yes! Loving you from afar.