When there's no choice

but to finally figure it out

Last week, my daughter refused to go to daycare. We had recently organized to have her at a lovely, local Waldorf-inspired school down the road. The idea of it seemed heavenly. She would have a couple mornings a week to play with other kids, sing songs, light candles, make bread. And I’d have an unimaginably peaceful handspan of a morning at the house by myself to work and write.

Once we enrolled her, I began quietly planning the weeks ahead, excited to finally launch into the creative work that’s been rising in me, and put the finishing touches on a brand new course.

Then—my daughter wouldn’t get in the car, wouldn’t even put clothes on, flat out refused to touch the absolutely, earnestly lovely playschool in which she was enrolled.

And so I had no choice but to figure it out.

Somehow, I fit five hours worth of work into one hour.

Somehow, I still moved ahead with the big launch at work I’ve been dreaming into for months.

Somehow I got dinner on the table and the dishes cleaned.

Somehow, I figured it out…but only because there was no other choice.

I’ve been seeing a funny video circulate recently on Instagram where a mom sobs into a dish towel, only to have her kid come in and ask where their favorite snack is. So she stops mid-sob, gets the snack, and then goes back to sobbing once they’re gone. Over the video is the caption: “when you’re mid-breakdown but also a mom.”

I can’t count how many times I’ve been mid-meltdown only to have to stop, reorient, adjust. And as frustrating as it can be, as emotionally taxing and hard, I know the breakdown is ultimately being interrupted so I can have a breakthrough.

It often feels like the demands of mothering takes me away from what needs to be done, but the truth is, parenting doesn’t disrupt our trajectory…it shows us what is ready to be, finally, figured out.

Stepping into motherhood was like pulling every rug out of my house. After years of quick vacuuming and polishing the floor beside it, I finally saw what was underneath…

Some of it was delightful—like being reunited with a beloved piece of lost jewelry.

And some of it was shocking, ugly, messy.

But all of it gave me an opportunity to see it, and in seeing it, to know myself.

Parenthood continually asks me to figure out the things I thought would remain koans for the rest of my life— work/life balance, self-doubt, ancestral patterns of anxiety, my needs and desires. But of all the things parenthood has demanded I finally figure out, the biggest has been my own sensitive nervous system.

Before having a child I was aware that I was sensitive—it was a defining factor of my existence. And yet, part of me also believed I could somehow bypass it, overcome it, change it, when need be. That I could pull all the honey out of the hive when it was necessary, and it would always be replenished. I believed this, even as chronic illness and pain took up residence in my life in rhythmic waves. Even as I was constantly, always, on the verge of burnout, break down, sickness.

At the time, I thought these symptoms arose because I was sensitive in an overwhelming world, that there was an inevitability to it.

But now I see that I was sick so often, not just because I was sensitive, but because I was sensitive and didn’t know how to take care of my own sensitivity.

Then, motherhood happened and I had no choice but to finally figure it out.

Suddenly, there was no way I could drain myself until I was laid out flat in bed…because then who would rock my baby as she cried?

There was no way I could rob all the honey from the hive… because what, then, would the children eat?

There was no way I could pretend I wasn’t overwhelmed, anxious, on the edge of burn out…because my child felt it, and reflected it back to me.

My therapist once described parenting as akin to equine therapy.  Just like horses help us heal by showing us our own inner selves, your nervous system is immediately, instantaneously, reflected back to you by your children. The moment you step out of regulation, out of capacity, out of alignment, they show you.

Children come through our bodies and teach us how to be embodied. How to be inside the bodies that we were born into. The only bodies we will have in this lifetime.

And so, as intense as parenting is. As little resources as I have at the end of some days. As weary as my face looks to me in the mirror, I’ve noticed something interesting…

Somehow I’m sick less. I’m in pain less. I’m steadier. I’m more grounded.

Somehow, I’m more in harmony with my energy resources than ever before, because I’ve been forced to learn, finally, how to be inside this body. How to embrace my sensitivity, instead of be at odds with it. How to breathe gently in and out of my nose, to chuff, to run when I want to run, to stand still and watch the light ripple over the hills, to ask to have my flanks be rubbed down with hay, when I need it.

In spiritual circles I sometimes hear the term—choiceless awareness. This state of being in which we are present without effort or judgement.

Most people talk about choiceless awareness as something you reach only when you’re on day ten of your vipassana retreat, or months into your ashram experience.

And yet, on my best days of parenting, this is what it feels like.

There’s no choice, and so I step into a deep awareness of what is.

There’s no choice, so I allow myself to trust that, everything, ultimately is already being figured out for me.

There no choice, so I let go of having to choose and just come into the moment.

There’s no choice, so I surrender to playing make-believe in the sandbox, to eating the other half of a discarded apple, to coming into a state of pure, radiant awareness on a sunny Thursday morning when my child is not in daycare and we are simply together.

There’s no choice, and so I allow myself to be in the process of befriending my body, my self, my life.

There’s no choice, so I figure out, slowly, slowly, how to be alive.

….

P.S. I’ve been thinking about all of this so much as I prepare to teach a new upcoming program: THE SENSITIVE SERIES (aka. the class I was hoping I’d have a glorious stretch of a daycare week to work on, ha). I’ve wanted to teach this course for my fellow sensitives for so long, but it wasn’t until I became a mother—and walked through the green therapy fields of that initiation—that I felt ready. Motherhood prepared me, delivered me, to teach this. And I’m stepping into it with a deep sense of gratitude for the experience of parenting as a sensitive person. Wish me luck.

I’m curious…what has motherhood finally forced you to figure out or step into it in your life?