A life update

It just poured outta me

Hello! It’s been a minute! And since it has been a minute I am going to make this usually paid post into a free-for-all post!

This week: I planned on writing a whole post about holiday time. But this is what poured out of me instead. I will save holiday thoughts/questions for next week and hope that you don’t mind such a me-focused post. This Substack feels like I am writing to my friends, from my heart. So I’m just going to leave this here and 🏃🏾‍♀️

---

It’s been a wild and woolly fall over here. As you all know, I hit pause around the start of the school year because we had to rejigger a bunch of things to work for this family of neurodiverse brains and nervous systems.

The update is: After years of school refusal and learning about ourselves, we have said a big NO THANKS to traditional school and found a school where our kid can do a modified schedule.

She is thriving. She is relieved. Her nervous system is not fried at the end of each day. She doesn’t spend most of the weekend recovering. She tells us she loves us more times a day than we can count.

Making this change has taken us years. Years of struggle, hand-wringing, worrying, tension, fighting, and worrying some more. School was relatively easy for me growing up. I was never a mind-blowing scholar, but I also never had trouble being compliant and doing what was asked of me.

So, it’s been a confusing journey for this people-pleaser who prefers structure and systems. It’s also been empowering and enlightening. Because I can see now that as much as I benefitted from fitting into the structure of school…I didn’t necessarily learn more.

I really didn’t! Yikes. That’s a whopper of a realization. Most of what I have deeply learned over the years has come from my own innate curiosity or passion or need. (I am far more neurodiverse than I ever knew, btw.)

So, these days, if an issue arises with how much work she is producing, my first reaction is not to sit down and force her to finish a 13-page packet of busywork. (Sidenote: I cannot believe how much busywork I made her finish from way back in 1st grade! It makes me want to cry thinking about it.)

Now I will instead ask the teacher, “What’s the learning objective here? And how can she show you that she understands the material?”

Jason and I traverse paths of worry, still. We wonder, are we doing too much for her? Or perhaps most pressing: Will the world afford her such nonconformist accommodations?

And then I look at him and remember that:

1. He was never a desk jockey with a corporate job.

2. He is one of the most hard-working people I know.

3. He is prolific at what he does because he can hyperfocus on it.

4. He carries lifelong anxiety because he was never accommodated or properly diagnosed with ADHD until adulthood.

5. As prolific as he is at his job, he needs a lot of downtime. A lot.

6. He could not have survived or thrived in a job where he was forced into a structure. He has created his own structure that works.

7. Although I’m not an activist by nature, you might as well call me Norma Rae when it comes to neurodiversity, because I will scream through a megaphone as I stand on a table to make the world a more affirming place for her.

All of this is to say, we’re doing so much better. I’m happy to be “back.”

And I am so grateful for the supportive comments and notes that you have sent me along the way.

More soon.

With love,

Andrea

PS: I hope you will comment and let me know how you are doing. I’d love to hear from you.

PPS: Due to the modified school schedule, I have even less time devoted to work hours than I used to. My mind loves to work, so about six weeks ago I said to Jason, “I need to teach a course with you! I need to show up for people in some way!!” And so we created our Mind-Body Reset, which is happening in January. You can get info about that here.