I couldn’t blame her. By then, she’d seen more doctors than most people see in a lifetime, and so many of those appointments had ended the same way. Exercise more. Lose weight. Get better sleep. Whatever was wrong with her, it was something she was doing, and if she just tried harder, she’d feel better. Except she’d been trying for years, and she wasn’t getting better.

She had reached the point where she dreaded going to the doctor. She wouldn’t sleep the night before an appointment, and sometimes getting her there was a battle. On this particular day, we’d made it as far as the parking lot. I sat with her, knowing she needed help and understanding why she didn’t want to walk through another office door.

I was her mother. I was supposed to be able to help her. I could make the appointments and drive her wherever we needed to go. What I couldn’t do was make someone listen.

It hadn’t always been like this. Before she became ill, my daughter was a straight-A student, a cheerleader, and a kid with a busy social life. She loved school, had lots of friends, and went to parties. She was smart as a whip, curious about everything, and never particularly shy about expressing an opinion. Trust me, that last part hasn’t changed.

When the stomach pain began interfering with school, we started looking for answers. We saw specialist after specialist. We heard anxiety, weight, prediabetes, PCOS. There were tests and medications, but nothing seemed to explain everything that was happening to her. Eventually, a gastroenterologist diagnosed her with gastric ulcers. She was thirteen.

I remember feeling relieved. Finally, something concrete. Something we could treat. We arranged hospital-homebound education so she could follow a medication schedule that didn’t work around a regular school day. I thought that once the ulcers healed, we could start putting her life back together.

And the ulcers did heal. But my daughter was still in pain. There were days she couldn’t get out of bed. School became something other children attended. Her friends continued going to parties, spending time together, and making memories without her. At first, they called. Eventually, the calls became less frequent, until even her two best friends stopped calling.

I watched all of this happen while we continued looking for answers. I could take her to another appointment, but I couldn’t give her back the ordinary experiences she was missing. I couldn’t make her friends remember to call. And I couldn’t promise her that the next doctor would know what was wrong.

My daughter, however, wasn’t about to stop looking. She often goes down the rabbit hole of research, just like me. It’s something that I passed down to her. When something interests her, or when she wants to understand something, she researches it until she’s satisfied. She reads everything she can find, follows the references, and keeps going until the pieces start making sense.

At some point, she began researching her symptoms herself. And eventually, she came to me and told me she thought she had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

I had no idea what Ehlers-Danlos syndrome was. I couldn’t tell her she was right, and I couldn’t tell her she was wrong. But I wasn’t going to discourage her from asking questions. We’d already spent years listening to explanations that hadn’t made her better. If she’d found something that seemed to fit, it was worth bringing to a doctor.

So we went looking for doctors who understood EDS. Or at least doctors we thought understood it.

And once again, we ran into the same dismissals. Exercise. Weight. Sleep. The explanations barely changed, even when the names on the office doors did.

What made those appointments especially hard was that my daughter wasn’t simply asking someone to figure out what was wrong. She was bringing them something she’d researched, something she believed might explain her symptoms, and asking them to consider it. And so often, they wouldn’t.

I watched her stop wanting to go to doctors at all. She had spent years being told that anxiety might explain her symptoms. Now she was anxious about seeing doctors, and I understood exactly why.

That was one of the hardest parts for me. I wanted her to keep going because I knew she needed help. But I also knew what another dismissive appointment might do to her. I was asking my daughter to trust a system that had given her very little reason to trust it.

I don’t know how many times I wished I could simply make someone understand what was happening to her. Not just the pain, but the loneliness, and waking up every morning not knowing how much she’d be able to do.

And through all of it, she kept insisting that there was something more going on. Eventually, we found a doctor who listened. The doctor who took her concerns seriously was also the one who diagnosed her with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

My daughter was relieved. And she was angry.

I was relieved, too. But I couldn’t stop thinking about all the appointments, all the explanations, and all those times she’d been made to feel that she simply wasn’t trying hard enough.

The diagnosis didn’t give her those years back. It didn’t restore the friendships or the school experiences she’d missed. And it didn’t erase what had happened in all those doctors’ offices.

She was right.

It just took years for anyone to say so.

Reach for Ikigai when somebody asks what your purpose is and you find you have nothing to say, or when the honest answer is a handful of things that do not add up to one grand purpose.

Ikigai doesn’t require four circles or one big answer grand enough to explain you. It asks something smaller, and the smaller question actuall…

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Divorce is hard on kids. Transitions take time. Kids test boundaries, and they go toward the parent who says yes more. I told myself all of that while I watched my daughter shift, slowly, away from me.

Her hugs got shorter. She didn’t look at me the same way. When I asked about school, her answers were clipped, almost rehearsed. Sometimes she’d say things that didn’t sound like her at all, like she was borrowing someone else’s words. “Daddy says you worry too much.” “Daddy says I don’t have to do that at his house.”

So I adjusted. I let go of rules I actually believed in. I told myself being flexible was love, that this was a phase, that consistency could wait until things calmed down. I didn’t want to be the bad parent, and I sure as hell didn’t want to give Mark more ammunition. But something still felt wrong. It wasn’t just two different houses with two different sets of rules. It was the tone underneath it, the idea that I was unreasonable, too much, maybe even unsafe.

Of course she liked it better over there. Homework was optional, bedtime was whenever, and screens were unlimited. I felt like I was losing ground I didn’t even know I was standing on.

Then the teachers started asking questions. Gentle ones. Her attendance showed a pattern: she missed Thursdays, almost always after Wednesday nights at Mark’s. When anyone raised it, Mark brushed it off as me overreacting, which to him was just more proof of how anxious I was.

I needed someone outside of it. Not someone who’d just tell me I was right, but someone who knew both of us.

So I called a family friend who also happened to be a psychologist. He knew Mark and me casually. He’d met Mark for the first time at his son’s engagement party to our niece. Everybody’s on their best behavior at an engagement party. Mark apparently wasn’t.

When I told him what was going on, he was quiet for a second. He was choosing his words. “Can I tell you something honestly?” he asked. “Please,” I said. “I found Mark deeply unhealthy,” he said. “The way he talked about his mother. The way he talked about you. It was in public, and it was demeaning. I noticed it right away.”

I closed my eyes.

“What you’re describing fits a pattern,” he said. “This isn’t a co-parenting problem. It sounds like alienation.”

I wasn’t shocked. It was more like he’d said out loud the thing I’d been circling for months. I’d been here before, with Susan, with my nephews. I knew what it felt like to see something clearly and be told I was wrong.

He gave me advice on how to stay steady and how to document everything so I’d be heard. He even offered to mediate. I knew that wouldn’t work. We’d tried counseling once, early on, and it ended with Mark calling me a “reading Nazi” in front of a professional. A Jewish man saying that to his Jewish wife, with no self-awareness and no apology.

He called Mark anyway.

When he called me back, his voice was quiet. “You were right,” he said. “He said exactly what you told me he’d say.” My stomach dropped. “He told me you’re unstable. That he’s afraid to leave her alone with you. That you’re too hard on her. That she doesn’t like being with you.”

It wasn’t just what Mark said. It was how easily he said it, how smooth it was, like a script he’d run before. “This isn’t about her well-being,” my friend said. “This is about control. And it’s already happening.”

When I hung up, I felt validated and terrified at the same time. I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t overreacting. And Mark wasn’t just losing his temper. He was building a story, one where I was the problem and he was the fix. Back then I still thought that if I understood it, I could stop it. That if I named it, it would slow down. That he could be reasoned with.

What I didn’t know yet was that none of that mattered. He didn’t need me to misunderstand anything. He just needed time with her, and he had plenty.

Reach for Calm when you cannot remember the last time your shoulders came down. When the thing that used to settle you is out of reach, because you moved, or life moved, or the place is simply gone. When every version of peace on offer needs a retreat, a beach or a free weekend you do not have.

This guide does not ask you to be calm all day. It asks you to find a few minutes that already soften you, and to look at them closely enough to know what they are made of.

Take what feels useful. Leave what does not.

The choice is always yours.

Nagomi

The Moment Something Settles

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The easing of tension. A softening. The feeling of settling into a moment.

I love the idea of living in harmony.

Unfortunately, my life has rarely gotten the memo.

But perhaps harmony doesn’t mean everything has to be peaceful all the time. Which is good, because that ship sailed a long time ago.

Nagomi

morning light arrives
the colors shine and I breathe
a different horizon

Try It Once

Think about something that helps you settle. Not something that makes everything better. Just something that lets you soften for a moment. Maybe it is a place. Maybe it is music, morning light, a familiar chair, a cup held between your hands, or something entirely your own. Notice it the next time it happens. Stay for a little while.

Sit With It

What helps me settle, even for a moment?

What did I think I had lost that I might still have a piece of?

What Is Nagomi 和み

Nagomi is a softening. The easing of tension. The feeling of settling into a moment.

The character 和 carries harmony and peace. The verb behind the word, nagomu, is used when feelings soften and settle, when a face relaxes, when the air in a room grows easy.

Nagomi is not a place. It is what happens in you, sometimes in a place, sometimes with a song or a cup or the first light, when something lets go a little.

It can be small. A few minutes counts.

A Week with Nagomi

Seven days with the moment something settles

This week comes back to one thing. A moment that settles you, even a little.

You may already know what yours is. You may not, and that is where Day One starts. Each day after looks at the same moment from a different side: what it is made of, where else it lives, what happens when it is out of reach.

You do not need to feel calm on a schedule. Some days the moment may not come, and those days belong to the week too.

Day One · Settle

There may already be a moment in your day that relaxes you.

The first sip of something warm. A song in the car. The minute after the door closes and the place is yours. The light at a certain hour.

It does not have to be beautiful. It only has to be the moment something in you eases a little. If nothing comes to mind, that is where the week starts. Not knowing is a fine place to begin.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Today, notice one moment when something in you softens, even slightly. You do not need to make it happen. Catch it if it comes. If it does not, notice that.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

When did I breathe out today?

Day Two · Parts

A calm moment is often made of smaller pieces.

The beach was never only the ocean. It was the waiting, the quiet, the dark turning into light. A cup can be warmth and weight and a minute when nobody needs anything. A song can be a voice you know and three minutes you are allowed to stop.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Go back to your moment, or any small one from today. Name what it is made of. Two or three pieces is plenty.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

Which piece of it matters most to me?

Day Three · Where

Some pieces of a calm moment travel.

The ocean was far away. The first light still came through the window. The light, the song, the waiting, the blanket. Some pieces can go with you. Others stay where they were. Today is only about noticing which of yours can move.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Take one piece of your moment and notice whether it turns up anywhere else today. A different room, a different hour. You do not need to move anything. Just look.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

Where else does this piece of calm live?

Day Four · Gone

Sometimes the thing that settled you is out of reach.

A move. A person. A body that cannot do what it used to. A stretch of life that ended. Missing it is fair. This day does not ask you to replace it. It asks only whether some piece of it is still with you. Sometimes a piece is. Sometimes none of it is, and the loss is simply the loss.

If this touches something too heavy right now, stay with yesterday’s page instead. The week will wait.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Think of a place, a routine or a person that once settled you and is out of reach now. If you like, name one piece of it you still have. If there is none, let that be true for today.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What do I miss about it, and is any of it still here?

Day Five · Nowhere

Calm does not have to be found today.

No moment to catch. Nothing to name. The week has looked closely at one thing for four days. Looking that closely can turn into one more thing to get right, and today it stops.

If the moment comes on its own, it comes. If it does not, the day was still yours.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Today there is nothing to do. This is the day the week rests from looking.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What was today like when I was not looking for anything?

Day Six · Curtains

A small piece of calm can sometimes be left ready.

The curtains open before bed, so the light can find you. The song saved where it is easy to reach. The cup set out the night before. It may not work every time. Sometimes everything is in place and the settling does not come. That is ordinary.

TODAY’S INVITATION

If you like, set out one small piece of your moment where you will meet it tomorrow. Something easy. If today is not a day for setting anything up, skip it.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What is one small thing I could leave ready for myself?

Day Seven · Arrive

Morning comes whether or not anyone is watching.

The light comes. The song is there when you press play. The moment you have been looking at all week was never something you had to earn. Today, let it come if it comes.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Meet the thing you left ready, if you left one. Or catch your moment the way you did on the first day. Or simply notice when the day begins to change.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What helps me settle, even for a moment?

Reflection

The horizon may change. The morning keeps arriving.

When You Forget

Calm can be easy to forget about until it is gone. When you notice you have not settled in days, you do not need to start the week again. Go back to the one moment. Wait for it, the way you would wait for the light.

This guide offers reflection, education, and gentle practice. It is not medical or psychological treatment, and reading it does not create a clinical relationship of any kind. The author is not acting as your therapist, your counselor, or your physician.

This guide offers reflection, education, and gentle practice. It is not medical or psychological treatment, and reading it does not create a clinical relationship of any kind. The author is not acting as your therapist, your counselor, or your physician.

It was a typical morning. I had arrived at school and was settling into the day when my phone buzzed. It was my father. My stomach dropped as I answered. He rarely called during the workday and especially not that early.

His voice was hollow, broken, as he said the words that would change everything.

I collapsed into a chair, my hands trembling as I tried to make sense of the impossible. This couldn’t be real. She was supposed to see me in two weeks. We were supposed to have more time.

Later, people told me they heard my scream from down the hall. I don’t remember making it. I only remember my father’s voice, repeating the words over and over, as if saying them enough times would make them make sense.

“Mommy’s dead.”

The phone slipped from my fingers. The room began to shrink around me, the familiar walls of my office closing in with suffocating pressure. My lungs refused to expand properly. Each heartbeat slammed painfully against my ribs, too fast, too hard, as though trying to compensate for my mother’s heart that had inexplicably stopped.

This isn’t happening. This cannot be real. We spoke yesterday.

Cold sweat broke out across my back. The edges of my vision darkened. Time lost its shape. It could have been seconds or minutes. Nothing existed except the sound of my father’s voice and the unbearable truth pressing down on my chest.

I wasn’t aware of Sandy appearing in the doorway, or of her face shifting from annoyance to concern to alarm. Her voice registered only as distant noise.

“What happened? Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

I couldn’t respond. My mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out beyond desperate gasps.

“Give her space.” Someone in the hall shouted.

Sandy was already kneeling beside me, one hand gripping mine.

“Breathe with me,” she said. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth.”

I tried. My body wouldn’t cooperate.

“My mother,” I finally managed. “My mother is...”

I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Should we call an ambulance?” someone asked.

“No,” I said. The word took everything I had. “No ambulance. I need to... Florida. I need to go.”

Even then, my instinct was not to fall apart, but to get everyone where they needed to be.

With Sandy coaching my breathing and the school nurse helping, the physical panic slowly loosened its grip. But as it receded, something heavier rushed in.

Grief.

Massive, crushing grief that felt like it might swallow me whole.

I sat there, tears streaming down my face, unable to move.

Around me, administrators moved quietly, making calls, arranging a substitute, and gathering my things. I barely registered any of it.

“I’ll drive you home,” Sandy said. “You can’t drive right now.” Kevin followed in my car.

I nodded. I couldn’t speak. I let her guide me past students staring in the hallway and out into the bright Georgia sunshine. The sun felt wrong. Too cheerful. Everything felt wrong.

Later, sitting in Sandy’s car with my hands still shaking, all I could think about was getting to Florida. Getting to my dad. What was left of my family. I needed to see it to believe it.

My mother was dead.

That truth followed me home. It sat with me in the quiet of my house. It pressed against my ribs while I stared at my phone, scrolling through call history with trembling fingers.

The night before.
9:42 p.m.

My mom had called.

We had already talked that morning. normal things like weekend plans, how my friends were doing, and of course the weather. When the phone rang again that night, I thought, I’m so tired. I’ll call her on my way home from work tomorrow.

I silenced the ringer. I watched the screen go dark, rolled over and fell asleep.

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Reach for Beauty when the days have gone flat and the route to everywhere has become a corridor, and you cannot remember the last time something outside made you pause.

Kachofuugetsu is flower, bird, wind, moon. Four ordinary things. It does not require a landscape, a journey, or a spare afternoon, and it asks nothing of what you notice except that you notice it.

What is out there when I actually stop and look?

Take what feels useful. Leave what does not.

The choice is always yours.

Kachofuugetsu

Stopping for Beauty

“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
Mary Oliver

flower, bird, wind, moon; turning toward the natural world and noticing what makes you stop

I’ve always been someone who notices the little things in nature. The light, the flowers, the way the sky changes.

And now that I live across from Central Park, I have an entire playground of beautiful things to notice.

Of course, I also have approximately 4,000 photographs of the same flowers because apparently one picture is never enough.

But I suppose there are worse addictions.

Kachofuugetsu
stopping for beauty

orange and yellow
I stopped. I could not walk past.
I have not stopped since.

What Is Kachofuugetsu 花鳥風月

Kachofuugetsu is four characters. Flower, bird, wind, moon. Four ordinary things from the natural world, and an invitation to turn toward them.

It asks for no landscape. Nature does not have to be a mountain or an ocean or a garden anybody designed. The bird on a fence qualifies. So does a weed through concrete, the moon between two buildings, and a flower you have walked past a dozen times before the day it stops you.

What the concept is careful about is where the value sits. It is not in the object. One flower stops you and the next one does not, and there is no ranking involved and nothing to be understood about why.

It is also not a lesson. Beauty is not obliged to teach you anything, improve your perspective, or become gratitude. It can simply be there, and you can simply look at it.

And it can spread. Noticing one thing may leave you more available to notice another, though nothing here depends on that happening.

A Week with Kachofuugetsu

One ordinary thing, looked at all week

One thing you already pass, or already see from where you sit, comes through the week with you. It does not have to be impressive, and you do not have to go anywhere to find it. A window counts. If you cannot get back to it on a given day, look at whatever is available instead.

Day One · Past

Something you already pass, or already see from where you sit, is worth a longer look.

Pick something ordinary and already in your life.

A tree on the route. A patch of sky from one particular window. The weed coming up through the paving. The bit of the view you see every day from the chair you always sit in. It does not have to be beautiful. The chapter’s version is flowers on a street corner outside somebody’s house, which is not a landscape and was not anybody’s destination.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Choose one thing you already pass, or already see from where you sit. Nothing that requires a journey. A window is a perfectly good arrangement. Today is only the choosing.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What did I pick?

Day Two · Two

A longer look is longer than it sounds, and two minutes is a great deal of it.

Today you look at it for longer than feels natural. Ordinarily you glance, recognise the thing, and carry on. That is the mind being efficient, and it is why you have walked past this particular object several hundred times without ever quite seeing it. Two minutes is a long time to look at a hedge. That is rather the point.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Look at it for longer than usual. Two minutes if you have them and want them, less if not. Nothing has to happen while you are looking. Boredom is allowed, and is often where it starts.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What turned up after the first few seconds?

Day Three · Weather

The same thing in different weather is not quite the same thing.

Weather changes an object more than most people expect. Wet stone is a different colour. Wind turns a tree into something with a sound. Cold can make a distance look nearer. The same thing under a flat grey sky is not the thing you saw on Monday. None of this requires you to stand out in it.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Look at it today in whatever weather there is. If you cannot get back to it, look at something else from where you are and notice what the weather is doing to that instead. No particular weather is required, including good weather.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What did the weather do to it?

Day Four · Lesson

Beauty is not required to teach you anything.

This is where the week turns, and it turns by taking a job away. Beautiful things get conscripted constantly. Into gratitude, into perspective, into a lesson about impermanence, into a photograph for somebody else. All of those are fine, and none of them is anything the thing is obliged to provide.

It can just be a nice tree. No message in it, no instruction, nothing it wants you to understand. It is doing precisely what it was doing before you stopped.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Look at it today without asking it for anything. Photograph it if that is how you look. Name it, draw it, say nothing at all. Any of those is fine. It simply does not have to mean something afterward.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What caught my attention, if anything?

Day Five · Hour

Light at a different hour makes a different object.

Light is most of what you are looking at, and it rarely gets the credit. The same tree at seven in the morning and at six in the evening is two different things. Side light shows texture. Flat midday light removes it. Late light makes very nearly anything look better than it is, which is a trick photographers have been living off for a hundred years.

The object has not changed. The light arriving at it has.

TODAY’S INVITATION

If a different hour is available to you today, look at it then. If not, look whenever you are free, at it or at whatever else is there. Notice what the light is doing rather than what the thing is.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What did the light do?

Day Six · Spread

Noticing one thing can leave you available to notice another.

Sometimes this does not stay where you put it. A week of looking at one tree and by Friday it may be the birds in it too, and the light on the wall behind it, and something about a puddle. Nobody arranges that, and nobody can arrange it. It also may not happen at all.

The chapter’s version is nineteen years that started with flowers on a corner and became birds, trees, sunsets, and light on water.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Notice whether anything else has started getting in. It may not have, and a week is not very long. Nothing to do about it either way.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What else got in, if anything did?

Day Seven · Changed

Whether it changed or not, it was going on without you watching.

Look at it one more time, if you can. It may look different from Monday. Something may have opened, or dropped, or been cut back. Or it may be entirely the same, which is the more common result across seven days and is not a failure of the week.

Either way it was carrying on the whole time, in whatever light there was, whether or not anybody was standing in front of it. That is true of a considerable number of things.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Look at it once more, or at whatever is available. You do not have to find a difference.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What do I notice now?

Reflection

Kachofuugetsu is flower, bird, wind, moon. Four ordinary things, and an invitation to stop for them.

And it is not what you notice that matters. It is that you notice, and sometimes that spreads on its own.

When You Forget

You will forget, and this one forgets by getting efficient.

The route becomes a route. You arrive places with very little memory of the journey, which is the brain doing its job properly, and the tree is still there and you have not seen it since March.

Nothing is lost. The tree is not keeping score, and nineteen years of this started with one corner and no plan whatsoever.

Stop at something on the way. A moment longer than the glance is where it starts.

That is all of it.

This guide offers reflection, education, and gentle practice. It is not medical or psychological treatment, and reading it does not create a clinical relationship of any kind. The author is not acting as your therapist, your counselor, or your physician.

So I am going to tell the story. Not all at once because there is a shit ton of “stuff”. This is the first installment in a series about what it is like to be a targeted parent. I am not speaking for anyone else, and I am not interested in rehashing the worst moments of my life. But I do want people to know what can happen when a parent tries to change the course of a relationship slowly and with malice. This is my story. Not my daughter’s. Not my ex-husbands. It is what happened to my daughter and me.

And it all started because I had the audacity to ask my daughter to finish her math homework.

It started so innocently back when my daughter was 7. My ex-husband and I had just gotten a divorce and we were co-parenting our 7 year old. At the time, she was a mama’s girl. We did everything together. We played, painted, traveled and went to Disney a ridiculous amount of times, but she had to meet all the princesses, so what else could I do?

I remember the first time I realized that something was not right. My daughter (who was in gifted classes from a young age) was doing her homework. I had noticed that after an hour she had only completed 2 math problems and that she was on her phone. So being the conscientious mother I was (am), I took it away. I left her in her room, to complete the rest of her homework, telling her she could get her device back, when she was done. I went back to the kitchen to finish cooking dinner, and unbeknownst to me, she had “stolen” her phone back and texted her dad.

I was blissfully unaware when I was startled by the opening of my front door. I went to see who it was and lo and behold it was her dad. He waltzed past me, ignoring my question of “Why the hell are you here?” and went into my daughter’s room. Then I hear his soft, disgustingly sweet voice, saying “honey, are you ok?”. And her response was “no, mommy is making me do my homework”.

I walked into the room and asked him to leave. She got upset and started screaming at me, as to why I was being so mean to her daddy, and I told him, if he didn’t leave I would get the police involved and then she lost it. She was so angry that she didn’t want to stay in my house. And I asked him to come out of her room, and told him that if he took her I was going to call the police because it was my time with her.

That was the first time I realized that he was trying to put a wedge between me and my daughter. I remember this scene almost as if it happened just yesterday (it’s been years). And I panicked.

I don’t actually know what made me panic. Maybe it was the way he walked into my house unannounced, using a key I had given him. Maybe it was hearing my daughter defend him when all I had done was ask her to finish her homework. Or maybe it was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

When he finally left I remember sitting on the floor shaking and crying. And I remember my daughter refusing to talk to me and crying on her bed. And I remember reaching out to people I trusted because there was something about that encounter that frightened me in a way I couldn’t explain. I thought these trusted people would understand, but they dismissed my concerns.

And I then began to wonder whether I was going to have to face this alone.

Not deliberately, at first. Nobody decides to become a person who keeps cards. You put one in a drawer because throwing it out feels wrong, and then there is another one, and thirty years later there is a quantity.

Birthdays. Mother’s Day. The ones with no occasion attached, which my father was prone to.

For as long as my mother was alive, she signed the cards for both of them. That was simply how it worked in our house, and I never thought much about it. One card. One hand. Love, Mom. Love, Dad.

Then my mother passed, and my father started signing his own.

The cards themselves aren’t remarkable. There is a version of this story where they contain some perfect sentence that explains everything, but they don’t. They’re cards. Someone chose them at a drugstore. Most of the words inside them were written by someone none of us ever met.

What wasn’t printed was the last line.

Love, Mom.

Love, Dad.

That is the part I kept.

Years later, I decided I wanted those words tattooed on my arm. I didn’t have to search for a sample of their handwriting. I knew exactly where the cards were. I had always known where the cards were.

My original idea was to have Love, Mom and Love, Dad form an infinity symbol, but the tattoo artist told me the writing would have to be much larger than I wanted. My daughter and I started figuring out another design. We decided to put the words beside each other instead.

Then she asked if she could draw the heart that would go between them.

So that is what is on my arm now. My mother’s hand. My daughter’s heart. My father’s hand.

It wasn’t until later that I realized the two signatures aren’t really a matching pair. My mother’s comes from the years when both of my parents were alive, when she signed for both of them without any of us giving it a second thought. My father’s comes from the years after she passed, when there was nobody there to sign for him anymore.

When the tattoo was finished, I cried. I still look at it all the time. It reminds me how very much I was loved, but lately I have been thinking about something else.

I had been preserving those words for decades before I had any idea I would someday put them on my skin.

I thought I was keeping cards.

I was keeping their hands.

And now my daughter’s hand is there too, right between them.

I had been doing it for thirty years before I knew what it was.

Keeping them.

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Reach for Release when you have been pushing on something for a while and it has not moved, and you are starting to suspect it is never going to move, and putting it down feels uncomfortably like agreeing that it is fine.

It is not fine. Shikata ga nai has no opinion about whether something is acceptable. It is a question about where your arms actually reach.

Take what feels useful. Leave what does not.

The choice is always yours.

Shikata ga nai

What Is Ours to Change

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
Reinhold Niebuhr

Shikata ga nai is releasing what cannot be changed and returning your energy to what is still within reach.

I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of my life trying to change things I had absolutely no control over.

And I have several advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. in psychology. You’d think I would know better.

Apparently, knowing something and actually putting it into practice are two very different things.

I’m still working on that.

Shikata ga nai
what is ours to change

Bad things can happen
we can try to help manage
when help is allowed

Try It Once

Name one thing you wish were different and cannot change. Keep it small. A rained-out plan will do. Then name one thing, however minor, that is still yours to choose. You do not have to feel any particular way about either of them.

Sit With It

Where in your life are you trying to change something that may not be yours to change?

What might change for you if you stopped confusing acceptance with approval?

What Is Shikata ga nai 仕方がない

Shikata ga nai is usually translated as it cannot be helped, which is accurate and does the phrase no favours at all. In English it comes out sounding like a shrug, and a shrug is roughly the opposite of what is meant.

It is not agreement. It does not say the situation is acceptable, or fair, or survivable, or anybody’s fault. It has no opinion on any of that.

What it marks is a boundary, and the boundary runs between outcomes rather than between actions. You can speak, ask, argue, leave, try again, and try again after that. What you cannot do is decide what any of it produces in somebody else.

Finding that line does not make you calm about where it falls. It only stops you spending yourself on the part that was never going to answer.

You are allowed to find the edge and remain absolutely furious about where it is.

A Week with Shikata ga nai

Seven days of putting things down

This week takes things off rather than adding them, and there is less on the page by Sunday than there was on Monday. Start it with something small. A cancelled plan. A decision somebody else made. An opinion you are never going to talk anybody out of. The enormous thing in your life is not the one to practise on.

Day One · Smaller

The largest thing you cannot change is not the one to practise on.

There is a temptation with a week like this one to bring the big one. The situation that has been sitting on your chest for two years. Do not bring that one.

Bring something ordinary instead. The flight that got moved. The meeting that went exactly the way you knew it was going to go. Your brother-in-law’s opinion about schools, which he is going to have again at Thanksgiving. And before anything else, here is what this week is not.

Deciding that something will not change is not the same as deciding it is acceptable. Those two got tangled together somewhere a long time ago and they have never properly come apart. You can put a thing down and go on thinking it is outrageous. Both of your hands are free and your opinion is entirely intact.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Pick one small stuck thing. A disrupted plan, a decision that was not yours, an opinion you are not going to shift.

Not the hardest thing in your life. That one is not for this week, and leaving it out is not you doing the week badly.

Write it down in one sentence, with no opinion attached to it yet.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What did I choose, and why that one?

Day Two · Sort

Inside a stuck situation there is often a part that is yours and a part that was never offered to you. Most stuck things are not one thing. They are three or four things that turned up together in the same bag, and some of them have your name on them and some of them never did.

The flight got moved, which was not yours. Whether you rebook tonight or in the morning is yours. How your sister feels about the whole business is hers, has been hers the entire time, and was never on offer.

And the line runs between outcomes rather than between actions. You can influence a great deal that you do not control. You can say the thing, make the case, ask for the change. What you cannot do is decide how any of it lands. The question this week is which of your effort is still useful and still yours to choose.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Make two lists. Mine to do, and not mine to decide.

Be honest about the second one even where it holds things you have strong opinions about. A strong opinion is not the same thing as a handle. Then draw a line through the second list. Not through the feelings, and not through anything you might still say or do. Through the outcomes.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What ended up on the second list?

Day Three · Effort

Effort spent on a part you do not control costs the same as any other effort.

Here is the part nobody mentions. Everything you spend on the second list is billed at exactly the same rate as everything else.

Some of that spending earns its keep. Drafting the message is often how you find out what you actually think. Telling somebody the whole story is sometimes how it stops being fog. The first few times through, the rehearsing is working for you. It is the fourth time, and the ninth, that are worth a look. The pass where nothing new arrives and you are running it again mainly because it is already running.

You will know which is which. It is the version you come out of more tired than you went in.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Find the loop that has stopped giving you anything. The conversation rehearsed to death, the draft rewritten eleven times, the retelling that no longer clarifies a thing.

Take one day off from that one. Just the one. Anything still doing real work for you, carry on doing.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

Which version of it is still telling me something?

Day Four · Down

Putting something down is done with the hands before it is done with the feeling. This is where the week turns, and it turns on something physical rather than something spiritual.

You do not put a thing down by achieving peace about it. You put it down by closing the tab. Leaving the thread. Not answering tonight. Taking the folder off the desk and putting it in a drawer where it cannot sit there looking at you. The feeling arrives later, or it does not arrive at all, and either way the hands can go first.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Put down one piece of it today, using your actual hands. Close the tab, leave the thread, move the folder, mute the thing until tomorrow.

Choose the smallest piece rather than the whole business. If you pick it up an hour later, that is information rather than failure. And if it turns out the thing genuinely needs you tomorrow, pick it up properly. Putting something down was never a promise never to touch it again.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What did I put down, and what did my hands do instead?

Day Five · Stays

The feeling may not leave when the effort does, and that is not evidence you did it wrong.

Nobody tells you this part, so here it is.

You can do all of it correctly. Sort the lists, stop the loop, close the tab, and still be entirely furious about the thing on Thursday afternoon. The effort stopped. The feeling did not get the memo. That is not the week failing. That is you not faking it. Caring about something you have no way to change is an ordinary situation to be in, it is uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable about it is not a piece of homework you have left unfinished.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Take the requirement off. Nothing about today asks you to feel better about any of it. If the feeling turns up, it can be there without you reopening the file. That is the removal today. Not the feeling. The requirement.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What did I feel today, with nothing to do about it?

Day Six · Reach

Something usually remains inside your reach, even when it is not the thing you wanted.

What is left is usually not the thing you were reaching for. It sits off to one side, it is smaller, and it is easy to walk straight past on the way to the thing you cannot have.

You may not be able to change the decision. You can decide whether to be in the room when it is announced. You may not be able to fix the schedule. You can eat something beforehand instead of afterward. You may not be able to change what she decides. You can stop asking her every single week, which frees up a genuinely surprising amount of a Sunday.

None of those is a solution, and none of them is nothing. They are the part that was yours the whole time, sitting underneath the part that was not.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Choose one thing that is available to you today, and do that. It does not have to be the one that would fix it. It only has to be yours. If nothing is available today, that is an answer too, and the day is still yours.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What was actually mine to do?

Day Seven · Left

What is not yours can stay where it is. It does not need you standing over it.

Six days of taking things off. The situation has very likely not changed at all, which is the premise of the week rather than a disappointing result.

What may have changed is how much of it you have been carrying around with you. The rest is still out there, being exactly as unacceptable as it was on Monday. It simply does not require you standing next to it, supervising.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Nothing today. Leave the rest where it is. No reviewing the lists, no checking whether anything moved, no working out what the week meant. Keep the RELEASE card somewhere you may come across it again.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What is out there right now that does not need me watching it?

Reflection

Shikata ga nai is not agreement. It is finding the edge of your own reach and stopping there, which is a very different thing from deciding that whatever is on the other side is fine.

And you can put something down and go on thinking it is appalling. Nobody checks.

When You Forget

You will forget, and this one forgets by picking things back up.

Not deliberately. Somebody mentions it. A message arrives. You are doing something else entirely and there it is again, fully assembled, with all of its original attachments, and you are back to drafting the reply you are not going to send.

Nothing is lost. There was no practice here to keep up, only things set down, and they can be set down again as many times as it takes.

It is going to be more times than you think.

Make the two lists. Cross out the second one.

That is all of it.

This guide offers reflection, education, and gentle practice. It is not medical or psychological treatment, and reading it does not create a clinical relationship of any kind. The author is not acting as your therapist, your counselor, or your physician.

The sunrise was not spectacular. I wish I could tell you that after thirty years of waiting, the sky put on some magnificent show just for me. It didn’t. It was pretty and soft, and the city slowly changed from dark to morning as I walked. I took pictures anyway. Lots of them. The bridge, the river, the buildings, the lights disappearing as the sky got brighter. Some of the photographs were beautiful.

And honestly, it didn’t matter that the sunrise wasn’t spectacular. I was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise. After wanting to do it for thirty years, I was finally there.

By the time I reached Brooklyn, it was about 6:30, and I was starving. I had read about a great bagel place in DUMBO, so I walked over. It didn’t open until seven. Apparently, neither did anything else. Who knew?

So I found a stoop across the street and sat down to wait. It was Brooklyn, after all.

I had Taylor in my ears. folklore, to be exact. I sat there listening, watching the street and waiting for someone to unlock the door across from me. The album ended. The next song that randomly came on was “All Too Well (Ten Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version).” Or, for those of us who apparently have no problem remembering that many letters, ATWTMVTV.

I looked at my watch.

6:50.

I had exactly ten minutes until the bagel shop opened.

I laughed.

Ten minutes of Taylor. Ten minutes until bagels.

So I sat there and listened. I wasn’t waiting impatiently anymore. I wasn’t checking the door or wondering whether maybe they would open a few minutes early. I had exactly the right amount of time for exactly the song that had decided to play.

When Taylor finished, I got up, crossed the street and got my everything bagel.

And yes, the bagel was divine.

I went out that morning for the sunrise. I had waited thirty years to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge as the sun came up, so of course I thought that would be the part I remembered. And I do remember it. I have the photographs to prove I was there.

But I also remember those ten minutes on the stoop.

I don’t think they taught me anything. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. The universe didn’t reveal some enormous secret to me. A song happened to be exactly as long as I needed it to be, and for ten minutes on an ordinary Brooklyn morning, that felt absolutely perfect.

There are photographs of the bridge. There are photographs of the sunrise and the city waking up around me. There isn’t a photograph of the stoop.

I couldn’t take one. I was sitting on it.

Maybe that’s why I remember those ten minutes so clearly. For once, I wasn’t standing outside the moment trying to capture it. I was just inside it, hungry, with Taylor in my ears, waiting for a bagel shop to open. Ten minutes of Taylor. Ten minutes until bagels.

And no picture at all.

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The Sacred Pause, the Space Between

When You Might Reach for This

Reach for Space when everything feels immediate. When demands, thoughts, and feelings crowd together and you find yourself responding before you have had time to recognize what you need.

Ma does not ask you to clear your life. It begins with noticing that even the smallest pause can hold something.

Take what feels useful. Leave what does not.

The choice is always yours.

Ma

The Sacred Pause, the Space Between

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Anonymous

The Japanese concept of the charged, essential space between, the interval that gives shape to everything around it.

I love the idea of making space in my life.

Unfortunately, every time I find a little space, I immediately think of six things I could be doing with it.

Apparently, the concept of doing absolutely nothing is something I still need to work on.

Which is a little ridiculous, considering I teach mindfulness.

Ma
the sacred pause, the space between

before I answered
the silence held what I could not
it knew before me

Try It Once

Before answering one text or email, pause long enough to take a breath. Not to compose a better response. Not to change what you feel. Just to notice the space before the words.

Sit With It

Where does space already exist in your life?

Has anyone ever held space open for you when you could not find it yourself?

What Is Ma 間

Ma is a Japanese word often translated as pause, interval, or negative space. Each translation comes close, but none holds the whole idea.

Ma is not simply an empty place. It is the space that allows everything around it to take shape. It is the silence that lets a note be heard, the opening that lets an object be seen, and the pause that allows a thought or feeling to become clear.

Ma can exist in a room, a conversation, a piece of music, or a moment in time. It does not ask us to create emptiness everywhere. It asks us to notice that what happens between things is part of the meaning.

Without Ma, everything runs together. With it, there is room to recognize what is already there.

A Week with Ma

Seven small invitations to notice the space already present

You may begin anywhere. You may skip a day, repeat one, or simply read. This is a frame, not a contract.

Day One · Notice

You have not been missing Ma. You may simply have been moving past it.

There are small pauses already built into your day. The few seconds between the closing and opening of elevator doors. The minute it takes the kettle to boil. A red light. A line at the store. The brief wait for a page to load.

We often do not experience these moments as pauses. We experience them as obstacles to whatever we are trying to do next. So we fill them. We check our phones. Answer a text. Scan a headline. Begin planning the next task.

Today is only about noticing what is already there.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Identify three pauses you would ordinarily fill. When each one arrives, try not to reach for your phone or begin something else. Let the pause remain a pause. It will not last long. It does not need to.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

Which pause was hardest not to fill?

Day Two · Body

Ma can be noticed in the rhythm of breathing. There is a small transition between one breath and the next. You do not need to lengthen it, control it, or breathe in a particular way. Simply noticing the rhythm may help bring your attention back to your body. Nothing needs to be forced, and nothing needs to be held.

TODAY’S INVITATION

At one point today, pause for ninety seconds and notice your breathing.

Let the breath arrive and leave at its own pace. Notice the small transition between one breath and the next. If focusing on your breath feels uncomfortable, place your feet on the floor and notice the support beneath them instead.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What did I notice when I stopped and paid attention to my body?

Day Three · Space

An empty surface is not unfinished.

Everything within view may ask for some portion of your attention, even when you are not consciously studying it. An open space gives the eyes fewer things to hold at once, and for some people that can make a room feel quieter.

In Japanese aesthetics, the open space around an object is part of the composition. It allows what is present to be seen more clearly. You do not need to redesign your home or begin organizing it.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Choose one small surface. A nightstand, a corner of the kitchen counter, the edge of your desk, or part of the bathroom vanity. Remove what does not need to be there right now. You do not have to sort, discard, or find permanent homes for anything. Leave the space open for the rest of the day. Notice it when you pass.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What became easier to see because there was space around it?

Day Four · Time

Not every open moment is waiting to be filled.

We often treat time as valuable only when something happens inside it. An unscheduled stretch becomes an opportunity to finish one more task, answer one more message, or prepare for whatever comes next. Temporal Ma is the space that allows one part of the day to end before another begins.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Leave a small opening between two things today.

It might be five minutes after work before you begin the trip home, a pause after dinner before cleaning the kitchen, or a few quiet minutes between closing your computer and turning on the television. Do not decide in advance what the opening is for. Let one thing finish before the next begins.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What did I notice when I allowed one part of my day to end before beginning another?

Day Five · Voice

Not every silence is yours to fill.

There is a moment in many conversations when something becomes quiet. Someone finishes speaking. A question has been asked, but the answer has not arrived. Something honest has been said, and the words need a moment to settle. Silence can feel uncomfortable, especially if you are accustomed to smoothing conversations, answering quickly, or making other people feel at ease.

But silence is not necessarily a failure of conversation. Sometimes it is part of listening.

TODAY’S INVITATION

In one conversation today, allow a pause to remain for a few seconds longer than you ordinarily would. You may notice an urge to answer, explain, apologize, laugh, or ask another question. You do not have to judge that urge or resist it perfectly. Simply notice it before deciding what comes next.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What happened when I did not immediately fill the silence?

Day Six · Input

It can be difficult to hear your own thoughts when something is always coming in.

Podcasts, audiobooks, music, news, television, and social media can entertain us, teach us, and keep us company. They can also fill nearly every available silence. Mental Ma is not the absence of thought. It is a little space in which your own thoughts have a chance to arrive.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Choose one ordinary activity that you usually accompany with input. Drive, cook, wash, fold laundry, or drink your morning coffee without adding anything to the space. You do not need to give up all input for the day. Simply let one familiar activity remain quiet.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What appeared when nothing else was coming in?

Day Seven · Rhythm

Ma is not something you complete.

Over the past several days, you may have noticed space in a breath, a room, a conversation, a transition, or a quiet moment without input. Perhaps one encounter stayed with you. Perhaps none did yet. The purpose of the week was not to create a new routine. It was to notice that pauses already exist and that you are allowed to let some of them remain open.

TODAY’S INVITATION

Look back at the six previous days and choose one moment you would like to remember. Not one you promise to repeat every day. Simply one that showed you something about how space feels in your life. Keep the SPACE card somewhere you may encounter it again.

TONIGHT, SIT WITH ONE QUESTION

What did I notice this week that I want to remember?

Reflection

Ma is not a technique or a practice. It is a recognition.

The pause was already there. What changes is whether you can find it.

When You Forget

You may miss a day. You may set this guide down for a week or discover it again months from now.

The seven days are invitations, not a sequence you must complete correctly. You do not have to return to Day One unless you want to. Open to any page. Choose one small encounter with space. Or choose none today.

Ma has not gone anywhere. The next pause will arrive without needing you to earn it.

When you notice it, you can let it remain open for a moment..

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No assignments to turn in. No grades. And absolutely no requirement to finish all seven days.

Take what feels useful. Leave what doesn’t.

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One day I was scrolling when I saw this really cool photograph taken at Washington Square Park. It showed the arch, and perfectly framed through the opening was One World Trade Center in its entirety. I was amazed. I was also a little shocked that I had never noticed the view before because I find myself near that arch pretty often. The park is a short walk from work, and having lunch outside makes me happy.

So one day I ventured out with my camera because I wanted that photograph.

I walked to the park and stood where it looked like the photographer must have been standing. No tower. What I did see was a very large building blocking everything behind the arch. So I moved. I stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue. I tried the other side of the street. I walked two or three blocks north. I moved left. I moved right. At one point I knelt down on the ground and almost got hit by a bicyclist.

I was committed.

And still, no tower.

I kept changing my perspective because I was sure there had to be an angle I was missing. Maybe the photographer had used a telephoto lens. Maybe I needed to be farther back. Maybe I needed to be lower. I kept looking for the place where someone could stand and see what I had seen in that photograph.

There wasn’t one.

I went looking for a photograph. I found the place where the photographer could never have stood.

I was so disappointed. I really wanted that cool-looking photograph. But I was also more than a little peeved. The image had to have been generated or significantly fabricated, and nothing in the post said that. It presented itself as a photograph of New York City, taken from a place where, apparently, no photographer had ever been standing.

Not everything on the internet is real. (duh, Sam)

I know that. Of course I know that. I also know photographs aren’t perfect records of reality. I crop mine. I sometimes remove something distracting. I choose where to stand, what to include and what to leave outside the frame. Every photograph is already a decision about what someone else gets to see.

But this felt different.

There is a difference between perspective and distortion. I had changed my perspective over and over that afternoon, and every new position showed me something slightly different. What none of them showed me was the photograph I had been promised. There was no angle I hadn’t found and no lens I hadn’t thought to use. The view itself didn’t exist.

Maybe that’s why it bothered me as much as it did. The photograph hadn’t simply made Washington Square Park prettier. It had sent me looking for a place that wasn’t there.

I still look at photographs for places I want to visit. I still take my camera out hoping to come home with something beautiful. And I will absolutely still kneel in ridiculous places to get the shot, although perhaps not directly in the path of a bicyclist.

But now I look twice.

Not because I need every photograph to prove itself to me. I think I just want to know that there was once a person standing somewhere on the other side of it.

I have two close friends. Maybe three, depending on how we’re defining the term.

One lives in another state.

And occasionally, when I see those photographs of nine women laughing around a table, I wonder if I missed something. Was there a sign-up sheet? Did everyone join a club in their forties that nobody told me about?

Because somewhere along the way, I apparently missed the memo.

I see these groups everywhere. Women who have known each other since college, women who vacation together every September, women who somehow manage to coordinate the schedules of eight adults for an entire weekend. I have my high school besties, my first job besties, but I have trouble coordinating lunch with one person, so perhaps that explains part of it.

And I wonder about those friendships. Not because I doubt they’re real, but because photographs have a way of making other people’s lives look wonderfully complete. Everyone is smiling. Everyone appears delighted to be there. Nobody is arguing about where to eat or who forgot to make the reservation.

Of course, I have no idea what happens when the camera goes away. Maybe all nine women are genuinely close. Maybe three of them haven’t spoken since the last gathering. Maybe one of them spent the entire night wondering why she agreed to come.

The photograph doesn’t tell me any of that.

It just tells me nine women were together long enough for someone to take a picture. And yet, somehow, I occasionally find myself using that photograph to measure something about my own life. Which is ridiculous when I think about it.

The other part of this is that I actually like being alone.

I like my quiet mornings. I like sitting outside with my coffee, watching the sky change colors. I like wandering through gardens without feeling like I can’t stand in front of a particularly beautiful flower because I can spend an unreasonable amount of time photographing the same rose from six different angles, and there’s nobody standing behind me asking if I’m finished. And for the most part I spend my days surrounded by teenagers. If you’ve never spent seven hours in a high school, let me assure you, there is no shortage of human interaction. Someone always has a question, a problem, an opinion, or an urgent need to tell me something that could absolutely have waited until tomorrow.

And then I come home to my own teenager.

Fortunately, I happen to like that one.

But I still treasure my quiet time. Sometimes I enjoy it so much that I wonder if I’m a little strange. Other women seem to be organizing dinners and weekends away, and I’m perfectly content to stay home.

Is that weird?

Maybe. But I suspect there are quite a few women who feel exactly the same way and just aren’t saying it.

It’s wonderful. But there’s this persistent suggestion that enjoying your own company is something you should eventually overcome. Get out more. Join a group. Meet people. Make plans.

Why?

I’m not opposed to people. Well, not all people. But I don’t necessarily want to spend every available hour with them.

Sometimes I go somewhere, enjoy myself perfectly well, and still feel an enormous sense of relief when I get home. I take off my shoes, settle into my favorite spot, and think how lovely it is that nobody needs anything from me for the next hour. That doesn’t mean I had a terrible time. It means I like coming home.

And I think there’s a difference between being lonely and being alone, although we don’t always give women permission to make that distinction for themselves.

There have certainly been times in my life when I’ve felt lonely. I don’t think anyone gets through six decades without experiencing that particular ache. But loneliness doesn’t necessarily disappear because you’re surrounded by people. I’ve felt more alone in a room full of people than I have sitting by myself watching the sunrise.

What matters, at least to me, is knowing that there are people I can reach for when I need them.

Not necessarily nine. Not even five. Just the ones who know me. The friends who don’t require a lengthy explanation because they’ve already heard the first seventeen chapters of the story. The ones who can tell something is wrong by the way I answer the phone. The ones who know when I need advice and when I just need someone to agree that the situation is completely absurd.

Especially that last one. I appreciate good judgment, but sometimes I need a witness.

And I hope I’m that person for them, too.

Because friendship isn’t just about having someone who will show up for you. It’s about wanting to show up for someone else. It’s remembering the appointment they were worried about, asking how their mother is doing, or knowing that sometimes the best thing you can offer is company without conversation.

I think about the difference between the people I’d invite to a birthday dinner and the people I’d call from a hospital at eleven o’clock at night. Those aren’t necessarily the same people.

And that’s okay.

Some friendships are wonderful because they’re easy and light. Some are built around shared interests, a workplace, or a particular time in our lives. Others become something deeper, something that survives years, distance, disagreements, and all the changes that come with getting older.

They don’t all have to serve the same purpose.

Maybe that’s what I’ve come to understand about friendship at this age. I don’t need every relationship to become a lifelong bond, and I don’t need to turn every pleasant acquaintance into another obligation on my calendar. Because I can spend an entire Saturday happily by myself without wondering whether I should be doing something more socially acceptable.

I still enjoy seeing those photographs of women gathered around enormous tables. I hope they’re having a wonderful time. I hope their friendships are everything they appear to be. But I no longer want to look at those pictures and assume there’s something missing from my own life.

My friendships may not fill a table for nine. They might not produce an annual vacation photograph. And if matching T-shirts are a requirement, I’d have to seriously think about it, unless I am designing it.

But I know who I can call when life becomes difficult. I know who will laugh with me when something is ridiculous and who will sit with me when nothing is funny.

And I know whose calls I’ll answer.

Maybe that’s the better way to count.

Not how many people are in the photograph, but how many people know what your life looks like when nobody is taking one.

All photos posted on Sage Lotus Press, are my orignial photos.

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Take my hair, for example.

Earlier this week, I went for a haircut and came home missing approximately a year of hair growth. I was not happy. I had given very explicit instructions with a photo of what I wanted. Apparently that was not enough evidence for the hairdresser. I walked out less than pleased. That was Tuesday.

I woke up this morning and I decided I actually like my hair. Quite a lot, in fact.

Does that mean the hairdresser was right? Absolutely not.

I can believe she cut it too short and still think I look fabulous. Both things are true, and I see no reason to pick one.

I’ve realized I do this with just about everything.

I love being a teacher. After over thirty years, I also occasionally wonder how I’ve managed to spend so much of my adult life surrounded by teenagers asking questions whose answers are on the board directly in front of them. Although they are hand written, which is a whole different problem.

I love people. Well, certain people. Sometimes. Under very special circumstances. I also find humanity absolutely exhausting.

I love my independence, and I love having someone to share my life with. I can be grateful for what I have and still grieve what I’ve lost. I can be happy about where I am and wish some things had turned out differently.

For a long time, I thought I was supposed to choose. That one feeling had to be more correct than the other. That if I was grateful, I shouldn’t complain. If I was happy, I shouldn’t be sad. If I loved something, I shouldn’t occasionally want to run away.

But that’s never really been how life works for me.

So I’m calling this little corner of my writing Two Truths.

A place for the things that exist together, even when they are clearly in opposition. The funny ones, the uncomfortable ones, and the ones that take a little longer to admit.

I don’t promise to resolve any of them and I am not convinced they need resolving.

And just for the record, I still think she cut my hair too short.

I had lost my daughter for three years. She came back, and we’d had a Mother’s Day or two together since then, but this was something we used to do. She wanted to do it again, and she wanted to do it on Mother’s Day. In my head, that felt like a little victory. After the years when I had not been allowed to be her mother, here she was choosing to spend that day beside me.

When she was younger, we sometimes painted canvases that belonged together. We each worked on one, and when we put them side by side, they made a larger picture. When I saw the mommy and baby giraffe painting, I knew that was the one I wanted us to do. One canvas held the baby and one held the mommy. We would each paint our own, and then bring them together.

Eleven years earlier, she had covered our Mother’s Day LOVE painting in dots while I sat beside her worrying that she was ruining it. Those dots became my favorite part. Now we were sitting beside each other again, and for the first time in all our years of painting together, hers was better than mine. I can admit that. Apparently, she had been growing up while I was waiting to get back to this.
We laughed and we cried. We made a candle, too, and named it Hugs. I kept finding myself back in that familiar feeling of being next to her, doing something we had done so many times before. During those three years apart, I would not have believed someone who told me we would have another day like this. I wanted it, of course. But wanting something and believing it will happen are very different things.

I kept reaching out anyway. I texted and called, and I never stopped loving her, even when I didn’t know whether any of it was reaching her. She has since told me it was. My continuing to be there made a difference, even when she couldn’t acknowledge it. I know that now. While it was happening, I had no way of knowing.

The giraffes hang on my bedroom wall beside the painting with her little hand, her little feet, and all those dots. They are my favorite thing about those walls. I see the child she was when we made the first painting, and I remember sitting beside the daughter who chose to paint with me again.
We each painted our own giraffe. Together, they make one picture.

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She came back. We have built a life together again, and much of that life is happy. We laugh, go places, send each other things from opposite ends of the apartment, and call ourselves besties. I love the ordinary parts of being her mother because I know what it felt like to lose them. Most days, that earlier life feels far enough away that I can enjoy this one.

Then we had an argument, and I discovered how close it still was.

I felt heartbroken and angry. I was trying to discuss something happening in our home now, but I was also feeling the fear of a time when I could not reach my daughter, could not be part of her everyday life, and could not know whether we would ever find our way back to each other. The conversation was happening in the present. Much of what hurt belonged to those years.

I have a doctorate in psychology. I can look back afterward and recognize some of what was happening. During the argument, I was a mother who was frightened and hurt. Knowing about trauma did not give me a comfortable distance from my own.

Afterward, I also learned that my comments about money had touched something painful that I had not understood. I could see more of the conversation once we were out of it, including the effect of words I had thought were practical. That understanding mattered. It did not immediately settle what I was feeling.

This is what surprises me about living with the effects of trauma. I can have months of evidence that my life has changed. I can feel close to someone, trust what we have rebuilt, and be grateful for the home we share. Then a sentence reaches an old fear, and the hurt feels much nearer than I expected.

At first, that makes me question whether I have made as much progress as I thought. If I am still capable of hurting this much, what has all that healing done?

But when I look at our actual life, I can see what has changed. We have ordinary evenings together. We have plans, jokes, and things we look forward to. I can enjoy being her mother. The argument did not erase those things, even though I had difficulty feeling them while I was upset.

My daughter will eventually have a home of her own, and I want her to have a life she chooses. I also know that the subject of her leaving reaches something tender in me. I want to understand that fear well enough to give her room to grow without making it something she has to manage for me. I want room for my own hurt too.

I don’t have a tidy resolution. I know more now about what happened in that conversation, and I still wish it had not hurt so much. Understanding and feeling better have their own timelines, apparently, and mine were not moving together this week.

Tonight she is sleeping, and I am at the computer writing. It is an ordinary evening in the home we share. I am grateful to be here, even while I am still working through what happened.

We have made a great deal of room for happiness. There are also places in me that still need care.

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Complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or CPTSD, can develop after prolonged or repeated trauma. Its effects can reach into our relationships long after the experiences themselves have ended.

If you are struggling with PTSD, CPTSD, or painful reactions you don’t yet understand, you deserve support. A qualified mental health professional with experience in trauma can help you understand what is happening and explore treatment. You don’t have to wait until you can no longer manage to ask for help.

I am writing about a moment that still hurt. That does not mean nothing has changed, or that nothing can help. It means there is still something here that needs care.

My mother chairs the section on my body. She never needed to say very much to make her opinion known. She had a way of looking at my plate, and somehow that look is still available to me almost twenty years after she passed. My ex-husband is in charge of tone. He is less interested in what I said than in how I said it, and he can find something to review in a perfectly ordinary conversation.

A few students sit in, usually one at a time. I know that something a seventeen-year-old said came from a seventeen-year-old, but apparently that does not prevent it from being brought up years later. There is a doctor from Florida who didn’t believe my daughter, or me. He gets about four minutes. Reluctantly. And there is a principal who is actually several principals I have worked with or for, combined into one committee member. Twenty-nine years in education will give you enough material for that.

My daughter joined too, which I suppose I should have expected, although I was not truly ready for it. In real life, she is mostly nonjudgmental. The committee has selected the version of her from the occasional judgmental day and given that version a permanent seat.

She tells me I am talking too loudly. She tells me I am not walking correctly in the street, as though I had not been doing it for years before she came along. There are things that need completing, and her preferred timeline is usually quicker than mine. Sometimes she has the same look as my mother, which is particularly interesting because they never met. They share a name, but their paths never crossed. Apparently, they have found plenty to agree on anyway.

My father sometimes joins them. He was usually supportive, but when he disapproved of something, he could be harsh. Other times he is the one trying to smooth everything out before the presentation gets to me. There can be an entire conversation between my parents and my daughter in which I somehow feel left out, despite the fact that the whole thing is happening in my own head.

Then there is the member who sounds exactly like me. She is the one who wonders whether everybody else was right. I don’t always notice when she joins in, because by then their opinions have started to sound like my own.

Here is the part that cracks me up. I have a doctorate in psychology. I have taught this material and can explain quite a bit about what is happening. Knowing what something is and making it stop, however, are two very different things. Who knew?

For a long time, I argued with them. I defended myself to people who were not there, revisited conversations that had ended years before, and came up with excellent responses long after anyone could hear them. Nobody ever conceded. The committee has never been particularly interested in my closing argument.

Now I try to take attendance before I start defending myself. That is my mother. That is my ex-husband. That is a doctor who was wrong about us. Naming the voice helps me remember that it came from somewhere. It is an opinion I remember, or a look I learned to interpret, and I can notice it without treating it as a fact about who I am.

I would love to tell you that I always manage this gracefully. I do not. Sometimes my daughter and my mother present a united front, and I listen. Sometimes I answer. Sometimes I spend far too long explaining myself to an audience that has no intention of changing its mind.

Eventually the meeting ends, or I stop paying attention. The cats join me then, for the cuddles I sometimes need after everyone else has had their go. They have very little interest in my tone, my timing, or what I should have said on a Tuesday ten years ago.

They would like me to sit still. For once, that is a request I am happy to meet.

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My daughter’s tuition from the previous semester hadn’t been paid, and we had no idea. No letter had reached us. It might have gone to her dad, who has control over her prepaid plan, but we found out when she tried to register for classes and couldn’t. He tried to resolve it over the phone without success, so she knew she would have to go to the school and take care of it in person.

I asked if she wanted me to come, and she said okay. We stopped for lunch first, then walked toward the school. Somewhere along the way, the plan changed. She told me she didn’t want me to come inside. Actually, she didn’t even want me walking up to the building with her. I was relegated to the park outside.

I was half sad and half proud. I was so happy that she felt confident enough to take care of this herself. There was an unpaid bill, a hold on her account, and a semester she needed to register for, and she wanted to be the one to walk in and figure it out. I also knew I could help. I’ve worked in education for a very long time, and finding the right person to untangle a school problem is familiar territory for me. But she had asked me to wait outside, and I could hear that she meant it.

So I stayed in the park and took pictures of the flowers. Eventually, I casually made my way over to the building and sat outside. Apparently, I could respect the boundary and still negotiate the distance. I didn’t go in, though. This was hers to do, even with Mama sitting a little closer than originally requested.

It’s a strange feeling to be happy about something that also makes you sad. I wanted her to feel capable. I wanted her to know she could ask questions, find the right person, and handle a problem without me beside her. But there I was, having been given exactly what I wanted for her, missing the little girl who would have needed me to come in.

Then she came out smiling. She told me she had been so nervous when she first went in that she almost cried. But she composed herself, asked for help, and found the person who handled prepaid accounts. She got it done. The hold was released, and she registered for her classes.

Hearing that she had been nervous made me even prouder. From outside, I had seen her walk into the building. Now I knew what it had taken for her to stay there and work it out. She had wanted to do it herself, and she had followed through even when it was difficult.

My baby was growing up enough not to need me for this. I was happy for her, and a little sad for me. I don’t think either feeling needed to disappear. When she came out, I was there to hear the whole story, and I was very glad I hadn’t gone inside.

Shikata ga nai is about recognizing what is beyond our control. That afternoon, I could offer to come along, and I could be there afterward. What happened inside the building belonged to her.

Purchase Release - Shikata ga nai

When we go to an arena, I look for accessibility tickets. We did it for Taylor. We did it for Bruce Springsteen. We did it for a baseball game. It’s part of planning when she’s coming with me, as ordinary as remembering the tickets. When I go somewhere alone, somehow all those questions disappear. I’ll stand for two hours or walk twenty blocks, and most of the time I’m okay. When I’m not, I get through it. It rarely occurs to me that I could have planned it differently.

I recently received an official diagnosis of the same syndrome my daughter has. It wasn’t a surprise. I’d recognized myself in it when she was diagnosed, but recognizing it and including myself in the planning seem to be two different things. I’ve lived in this body for sixty-three years. Whatever hurt was what hurt. Whatever I could manage was what I managed. I didn’t have a name for it, and I got very used to getting on with things.

For my daughter, I want an evening she can enjoy without having to push through pain to be part of it. For myself, pushing through still seems like an acceptable plan. I hadn’t noticed that difference until I started thinking about this outing. We have the same syndrome, but only one of us routinely gets considered when I’m figuring out where to go.

I’d like to tell you that realizing this means I’ll remember to think about myself from now on. I know me. I’ll probably be halfway through another twenty-block walk before the thought arrives. But now I have a question I didn’t have before: while I’m looking for somewhere my daughter can sit, can I remember that I’m allowed to sit beside her—not because I’ve earned the rest, and not because I’ve reached my limit, but because my comfort belongs in the plan too?

Omoiyari is kindness that begins with noticing what another person might need. I’ve practiced it so instinctively for my daughter that I forgot it was a way of moving through the world, not a role reserved for me to offer someone else. Maybe extending it to myself begins with the same small act: noticing. The distance. The pain. The need for a chair. The person who has been there all along. When I plan for her comfort, I want to remember to leave room for mine.