Whew...

There has been a bit of a writing hiatus here, as you may have noticed…I feel like I should apologize but then at the same time, I spent a fair amount of time writing about self care and well…not working on the blog for almost three months was one of those release valves on life for me. The book proposal process led to lots (and lots…and lots) of rejections and while, on the one hand, that’s expected for a first fiction novel, I lost the motivation to write for awhile. There are some things even chocolate can’t get me to do.

It doesn’t help that all that rejection fell squarely in the middle of what feels like the darkest winter of my lifetime. I don’t know about you, but whew…things are tough here. I know spring is coming. (I have the packets of seeds to prove it!) But it’s not here yet. And until it is…I am making it through day by day, sometimes even hour by hour.

And for me, while I can preach hope sometimes, part of this dark winter has been about sitting in the sadness. There is no meaningful vaccine yet for my family, and there won’t be until the kids one is approved. Any school return plan will be either dangerous or complicated. I miss my people and we are not out of the danger zone yet.

The other day, I saw Willow on the couch, holding a piece of paper and crying. Of course, I went over to ask her what was the matter and she showed me her paper. It was something she’d typed up and printed. On the left, there were about ten sentences, all starting with the words “I feel” and ending with some negative emotion: “I feel angry.” “I feel resentful.” “I feel disappointed.” On the right, there were just two sentences: “I can do hard things!” and “Remember, you’ve made it this far with distance learning.”

She told me she circles the emotions she’s feeling when she’s really down and then reads the other two sentences to herself. But today it wasn’t working. Because she wanted to spend her real dollars to buy something on a video game, but our family rule is you can only do that so often (because video game makers tend to scam little dopamine-seeking children), and she understands the rule because she DOES want to have money to spend at Target, but also, her sisters’ both have the cool thing she wants and ….there’s no good solution.

I’m not sure if it’s good or bad that my child has been down so often that she printed out a stack of little motivational posters for herself, but as we sat there and she cried, we both remembered that sometimes sadness can be solved, and sometimes you just have to wait for it to evaporate off. Eventually it did. The dog came out and licked away some tears, Dad came in to get his lunch and told a few jokes, and afternoon class started.

I don’t have a solution to the periodic spells of discouragement, sadness, and exhaustion I’ve been feeling. I know I’m not alone, which helps. I wish I could be a more productive person right now, keeping to the types of schedules I used to before. But sometimes all there is to do is to sit down and remind myself that I can do hard things and remember, I’ve made it this far.