Welcome to another post of Mindful Mom in the Mud. A newsletter focused on navigating the mess of parenthood with humor, compassion and common sense. Enjoy reading (or listening) with a hot beverage…or a reheated hot beverage.
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It’s my birthday month…and it’s a milestone birthday. Birthdays are ripe for reflection. So before this banana of a birthday gets over-ripe, time to meander through reflections on writing, storytelling, and how there are only more and more questions.
Story: a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader.
I am going to ask a lot of questions
I said this often when meeting with families as a psychologist. So many questions to ask and never enough time. I wrote a lot in this role and that’s where I will start this reflection on writing. Writing as a clinician was different than the early stories of a little girl, school essays, research papers, and of course, the soul-crushing dissertation. In my grown-up job, it was about writing evaluations and treatment notes that all originated with the question “What brings you here today?”
Writing as a clinician is a form of storytelling, albeit the stories of someone else. The task is to translate another’s narrative into a coherent guide for a family, school, medical team, or other providers. This translation is the data to communicate the why, the how, and the where to go. It’s certainly not pretty with short sentences, acronyms, and jargon primarily intended for providers, schools, and insurance companies. Not pretty, but private stories of great value and importance all the same.
School emails and goat friends
I went from full-time psychologist to being home full-time with four kids (a longer story for a different day). There was a lot less writing; mainly emails to the school, birthday cards, and all the other scribbles of family life, and a lot less storytelling. There were some exceptions, such as a made-up story about a goat friendship, so my child would nap. I may have not been writing many words but my brain was certainly still full of stories, some mine, and some others. As they were banging around in there, I started to contemplate what to do with all that noise. I decided to start writing words on the internet, an original idea these days. I discovered I had a lot to write.
There is nothing to write as a parent
This is a false statement. Sometimes there is too much to write. There seems to be an endless amount of stuff to write but never enough time. I never run out of hijinks to explore, like when the little ones redecorated their room.
But there is also the other stuff, the bigger stuff about the state of parenthood. Do you remember Dug the dog in the Disney movie Up? Dug has a collar that allows him to speak to humans. Throughout conversations, he intermittently pauses to tune into squirrel sightings. I catch glimpses of squirrels (or concepts) relevant to parenthood all over the place. A lot of these glimpses show up here in this newsletter. Glimpses trigger curiosity which tends to only trigger more and more questions. I guess I just can’t get away from asking lots of questions.
“For this reason, as we grow up and become more certain about the world, most of us leave curiosity to the children. The problem is, research shows that curiosity is critical for learning throughout the entirety of our life, not just childhood. In fact, a meta-analysis of dozens of studies and over one million participants found that we actually get more curious as we age into adulthood and middle age, and even as become elders.”
Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World
by Scott Shigeoka
My curiosity is certainly not slowing. It has been obscured somewhat by the exhaustion of parenthood. The fog is a little less heavy these days and I now recognize I am in “the portal” (the weird transitional space in the 37ish to 45ish age zone) as discussed by Anne Helen Petersen:
“What if it wasn’t ambition pushing me forward….but a swell of creativity? And what if that swell of creativity was possible because I’ve become a whole lot less concerned with b******t?”
Creativity and curiosity meet in a portal and interesting things show up. And this is where my curiosity has been lately, just check out my recent and current reading stack:
* The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being by Christy Harrison, MPH, RD
* Seeing Others: How Recognition Works—And How It Can Heal a Divided World by Michele Lamont
* The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care by Rina Raphael
* The Power of Us: Harnessing our shared identities for personal and collective success by Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel
* Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
* Mistakes were Made (but not by me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
* Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World by Scott Shigeoka
* Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure by Maggie Jackson
* The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell
* Lifestyle Gurus: Constructing Authority and Influence Online by Stephanie A. Baker and Chris Rojek
But isn’t this newsletter about parenting???
I know this doesn’t quite look like the Amazon parenting best-seller list. And this newsletter is about parenthood and that includes parenting. Parenting is the doing--the process, the methods, and the approaches. Parenting is what you are saying, how you handle screen time and do mealtimes. It’s the details. It’s being in the weeds.
Parenthood is the state of being a parent and it’s so much bigger. Just think about your childhood. When I think of my childhood my parents are main characters, but they are not all of it. There are siblings, friends, and their families, community, and school. And the world as I knew it at that moment within the larger context of culture and history.
Parenthood is not dissimilar—it is you and your family and all those other things, too. The people, the places, and this time in history. Your parenthood is not only parenting. And there is so much important stuff to see outside of the weeds. How we care for ourselves and others, how our inner and outer world is shaping modern parenthood, and how we see forward. Sometimes we get stuck in the weeds. It’s all part of the ecosystem—it all plays a role (the weeds, too) but it’s helpful to look up and see the whole system from time to time. That involves a lot of different views. Sometimes it’s two steps back or two steps to the side or maybe we just need to sit down for a minute. I no longer have the role of translator in the form I did when I started my career but I am still sorting out the why, the how, and the where to go.
Thanks for being on this path with me, where it’s taking us, I am not sure. But that’s the thing, I know as I get older uncertainty isn’t such a bad thing.
My birthday wishes are to…
* tell stories
* show up curious
* keep exploring
Even though I spilled my wishes to the internet, I think they can still come true. I’ll keep the juicy ones to myself.
As always—Just a little reminder: The content on Mindful Mom in the Mud posted by Dr. Kathryn Barbash, PsyD on the Instagram account (@mindfulmominthemud), YouTube channel (@mindfulinthemud) and newsletter (mindfulinthemud.substack.com) or any other medium or social media platform is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for medical, clinical, legal and professional advice, diagnosis or treatment. Reliance on any information provided by Mindful Mom in the Mud is solely at your own risk. Always seek the advice of your licensed mental health professional or other qualified health provider.
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