These offerings include:

🌀Our May 6 online workshop on Marking Complicated Mother’s Day

🧶 Our May 12 paid-subscriber circle on Mindful Communication

🍄 IRL offerings here in Central Mass in June and beyond (!!)

May these be of benefit to you as we welcome in this season of warmer weather, here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the bounty it has to bring.

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🌀For Mentorship members and a la carte ticket-holders: Our May expert-led workshop is coming up this Wednesday 5/6 at 12pm-1:30pm EST (11am CST/10am MST/9am PST)

The topic will be Marking Complicated Mother’s Day: Tools for Self Compassion.

About this workshop:

Parents and caregivers deserve a space to mark Mother’s Day in the way that feels authentic for us–especially if it’s complicated. Together, we will talk about what it means if we do not neatly fit into the boxes prescribed for women and femmes on this day. We will share our stories of struggle, estrangement, loss and everyday awkwardness. We will learn how to harness the power of both fierce and tender self-compassion practices to bring healing awareness to what feels hard about this day.

About our guest expert for this workshop:

Lisa Sibbett (she/her) is a career educator, proud auntie, and longtime meditator. She lives on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish people (Seattle, WA). Lisa is the founder of The Auntie Bulletin, a newsletter and community for people who offer meaningful care to children who are not their biological kids – also known as alloparents. Lisa’s readership includes extended biological family members, child-free chosen family members, grandparents, foster parents, godparents, step-parents, and educators, who spend significant amounts of time helping out with other people’s kids. It also includes people who have decided, after long and difficult family-building journeys, to embrace a different kind of caregiving path.

Read my interview with Lisa about why Mother’s Day is so complicated here.

During our 90 minutes together, we will:

• Set intentions for our time together and share how they relate to our current caregiving contexts

• Engage in guided, grounding, beginner-friendly meditation techniques

• Participate in expert-led interactive discussions

• Write, compose, draw or otherwise integrate the insights from our session through creative meaning-making practices

• Share our insights in community with other participants that really Get It

To access all expert-led workshops at In Tending, you can:

• Book them a la carte via Humanitix (link here)

• Bring a friend or get 50% off a single ticket if you’re a paid subscriber to In Tending — you’ll find discount codes for each workshop just past the paywall

• Get all of these for free with a Mentorship Level subscription, which functions like a 2026 season pass for all workshops, including those already in the archive, and comes with a 1:1 personalized support session from me, to help you figure out how to apply the insights from our workshop(s) together to your unique caregiving context

No prior writing or meditation experience is needed for these workshops. Recordings will be available for those who can’t join us in person.

Note: I’ve heard from folks in this community that it can be hard to find their workshop info in their inboxes. So, I’ll be marking events, emails and chat threads related to our expert-led workshops and other Mentorship level content with this emoji (🌀), in honor of the concept of opanayiko in Buddhist philosophy, which translates to “leading ever inwards toward the source.” Our goal is to create workshops with this quality—the ability to help you deepen your practice through longer meditation sessions, opportunities to write and share, and more meaningful connections with other wisdom-holders in this community.

You can read more about how the concept of opanyiko connects to some of the larger frameworks of meditation + writing practice you’ll encounter in In Tending workshops here.

🧶 For all paid subscribers: Our May circle is coming up on Tuesday 5/12 at 12pm-1pm EST!

The topic will be Mindful Communication: Navigating Challenging Conversations with Clarity and Compassion (Special Mother’s Day Edition!).

During our hour together, we will:

• Share the joys and hardships of our cargiving contexts

• Engage in guided discussion + beginner-friendly meditation

• Share insights and questions that arise in practice

• Have time to finish our coffee/lunch, maybe for the first time that week

To access our monthly circles, you can:

• Upgrade to a paid subscription, which amounts to a $7.50 monthly donation or a $75 annual donation, to support these monthly circles

• Scroll down if you’re already a paid subscriber — the Zoom registration links are just past the paywall

• Sign up to receive the link via this form — which offers other low-to-no-cost options for entry

Recordings will be made available here for those who can’t join us in person, but still want to engage in guided meditation and hear from other caregivers who Get It.

For future reference, I’ll be marking all events, emails and chat threads with paid-subscriber community info with this emoji (🧶), a nod to the Korean concept of in yeon, the red thread that connects us all. You can read more about that here.

🍄 For readers based in New England, or traveling through this summer: Come sit next to us at the Yoga Nook in Bolton, MA!

Upcoming classes in Central Mass

Sunday, 6/7 @ 11:15am EST

Sunday 7/5 @ 11:15am EST

Sunday 8/2 @ 11:15am EST

Sunday 9/6 @ 11:15am EST

All classes will be held in-studio. The drop-in rate for single classes at the Yoga Nook is $20. You can book them a la carte by visiting the schedule here. That said, you can save a bit on each one by booking a multi-class package here.

Note: For future reference. I’ll be marking events, emails and chat threads with in-person community info with this emoji (🍄) in a nod to the notion of the mycelial web. You can read more about this concept here.

P.S. Catch me at the Self-Worthy Summit May 28-30—a free event for highly sensitive humans

My friend of is pulling together a three-day slate of talented speakers who will be speaking to the experience of being a highly sensitive person, or “orchid.” It’s free of charge (for a limited time). Check out this awesome lineup! (My work will be featured on Day 3.)

Your turn: What seeds (literal or symbolic) are you planting this spring? I’d love to hear more!

Leave a comment

Paid subscribers, keep scrolling for Zoom links and discount codes. Free subscribers, you can upgrade to any paid subscription tier to see what’s past the paywall by clicking here.

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It’s been a while since we had the opportunity to posse up, catch up on each other’s lives, meditate together, and share insights afterward. But as luck would have it (St. Patrick’s pun slightly intended), our caregiver circles are returning today!

We’ll be gathering on Zoom today, Tuesday March 17, from 12pm-1pm EST.

The theme this time around is Practicing for Clarity. I’ll be offering some beginner-friendly pointers on how to create an inner anchor for stormy seasons. It’s the perfect circle to join if you’re new, and it’s also a great chance to reconnect with community if you’ve been in hibernation mode lately.

As always, there will be a particular emphasis on applying these teachings to the context of caring for kids, adults, or both.

» Important: To ensure our circle remains a secure container for all, I’m now inviting folks to pre-register. The registration link can be found just past the paywall. «

New to In Tending? Here’s how these circles work

Our monthly drop-in circles are a monthly staple here at In Tending. These hour-long gatherings are for anyone who cares for kids, cares for adults, or (raises hand) cares for both simultaneously.

During our hour together, we:

• Share the joys and hardships of our caregiving contexts

• Engage in guided discussion + beginner-friendly meditation

• Share insights and questions that arise in practice

• Have time to finish our coffee/lunch, maybe for the first time that week

To access our monthly circles, you can:

• Upgrade to a paid subscription, which amounts to a $7.50 monthly donation or a $75 annual donation, to support these monthly circles

• Scroll down if you’re already a paid subscriber — the Zoom registration links are just past the paywall

• Sign up to receive the link via this form — which offers other low-to-no-cost options for entry

Note: Recordings will be made available here for those who can’t join us in person, but still want to engage in guided meditation and hear from other caregivers who Get It.

Subscribe now

A bit more on today’s topic

If you browse any modern meditation app, it seems like there are approximately one million ways to re-center yourself amid chaotic times like this.

If you’re bringing your attention to some ever-changing aspect of the body or mind like the breath, though, you’re likely just practicing śamatha-vipassanā meditation. (Samatha means “tranquility” in Sanskrit; vipassanā means “insight.”)

Cultivating śamatha (tranquility) is about training one’s focus, bringing one’s attention back to an anchor when it wanders.

Vipassanā (insight) is linked to the complementary action of noticing how things in one’s awareness shift and transform, without getting tossed away by them.

Practicing both together doesn’t mean that you become permanently chill. It means you become more like the lighthouse in the storm, and less like the storm itself.

In this next circle, I’ll be sharing some research-backed practices on Zoom that can help to support clarity amid stormy seasons.

If it’s your coffee or lunch break, feel free to snack and chat. If you’ve gotta come late or leave early, all good.

What matters is that we come together in community right now, even asynchronous or digital community, rather than sitting alone in our offices and houses, wondering if we’re the only ones who are freaking out or feeling overwhelmed right now (we’re not).

What matters is that we leave feeling a little steadier and lighter, with more clarity, insight, and even tranquility than we did before—so that we can bring calm back to the fray, as an act of resistance.

P.S. Save the date for our next two monthly circles!

• April 14: Practicing for Compassion: Cultivating Loving-Kindness for Self and Others, 12pm-1pm EST

• May 12: Mindful Communication: Navigating Challenging Conversations with Clarity and Compassion, 12pm-1pm EST

Subscribe now

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Paid subscribers, scroll on for the Zoom info for tomorrow’s circle, as well as the pre-registration info for April and May’s circles. Free subscribers, you’re welcome to upgrade now to get the Zoom link and join us today.

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Perhaps not-coincidentally, I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately from my meditation students that all boil down to one question:

How do I work with all of this?

There are as many ways to answer this as there are people in the world. Many of us here at In Tending feel grounded by engaging in some sort of mindful sitting or movement practice. We talk about that a lot here.

But I also want to offer this:

Sometimes we forget that just feeling what we feel, without adding additional self-blame or aggression, is a skillful way to work with what is.

So if you’ve been feeling anxiety, anger or grief lately, you’re not doing it wrong.

The reason why it feels wrong is because we’re not wired to feel all of this this alone.

Subscribe now

In Tending exists because I think we all deserve a place where it’s OK to feel what we’re really feeling, without feeling alone in it.

And these offerings below exist because I think that those of us who spend so much time holding things together for others, amidst constant chaos, are just as worthy of being held.

DROP-IN PARENT/CAREGIVER CIRCLES

Our monthly drop-in circles are a monthly staple here at In Tending. These hour-long gatherings are for anyone who cares for kids, cares for adults, or (raises hand) cares for both simultaneously.

During our hour together, we:

• Share the joys and hardships of our caregiving contexts

• Engage in guided discussion + beginner-friendly meditation

• Share insights and questions that arise in practice

• Have time to finish our coffee/lunch, maybe for the first time that week

To access our monthly circles, you can:

• Upgrade to a paid subscription, which amounts to a $7.50 monthly donation or a $75 annual donation, to support these monthly circles

• Scroll down if you’re already a paid subscriber — the Zoom registration links are just past the paywall

• Sign up to receive the link via this form — which offers other low-to-no-cost options for entry

Note: Recordings will be made available here for those who can’t join us in person, but still want to engage in guided meditation and hear from other caregivers who Get It.

SPRING CIRCLE LINEUP

• MARCH: Tuesday 3/17, 12pm-1pm EST: Practicing for Clarity: Creating an Anchor for Stormy Seasons

• APRIL: Tuesday 4/14 at 12pm-1pm EST: Practicing for Compassion: Cultivating Loving-Kindness for Self and Others

• MAY: Tuesday 5/12 at 12pm-1pm EST: Mindful Communication: Navigating Challenging Conversations with Clarity and Compassion (Special Mother’s Day Edition!)

EXPERT-LED WORKSHOPS

Expert-led workshops are a new offering at In Tending. These 90-min gatherings are for parents/caregivers who are:

• Interested in going deeper with some of the topics we discuss at In Tending

• Looking for support from experts in fields like mental health, community-building and more that are aligned with a compassionate, contemplative approach to parenting/caregiving

• Active, experiential learners who want to move, breathe, write and create together via an interactive, embodied experience, not a one-way lecture-based exchange

During our 90 minutes together, we:

• Set intentions for our time together and share how they relate to our current caregiving contexts

• Engage in guided, grounding, beginner-friendly meditation techniques

• Participate in expert-led interactive discussions

• Write, compose, draw or otherwise integrate the insights from our session through creative meaning-making practices

• Share our insights in community with other participants that really Get It

To access these expert-led workshops, you can:

• Book them a la carte via the Humanitix links below

• Bring a friend or get 50% off a single ticket if you’re a paid subscriber to In Tending — you’ll find discount codes for each workshop just past the paywall

• Get all of these for free with a Mentorship Level subscription, which functions like a 2026 season pass for all workshops, including those already in the archive, and comes with a 1:1 personalized support session from me, to help you figure out how to apply the insights from our workshop(s) together to your unique caregiving context

Note: No prior writing or meditation experience is needed for these workshops. Recordings will be available for those who can’t join us in person.

SPRING WORKSHOP LINEUP

Re-Claiming Our Power: A Meditation + Writing Workshop

Wednesday 3/25, 12pm-1:30pm EST (11am CST/10am MST/9am PST)

About this workshop:

Capitalism and patriarchy love to tell us, especially women, that there is an expiration date on our personal power. That our wisdom and talents become irrelevant at midlife simply because our bodies and faces look different. That we need to buy new things for those bodies and faces in order to become “relevant” again. In this workshop, we put our K-12 teacher hats back on to share stories from history that reveal that our communities have always needed our gifts, and they always will.

About our guest expert for this workshop:

Kate Carson (she/her) is a somatic love, sex, and relationship coach. After experiencing major shifts in identity and intimacy in her marriage following a late pregnancy loss, Kate left a career in science and engineering and education and re-trained as a coach, supporting women moving through other major life transitions, from pregnancy loss and infertility to menopause and cancer treatment. Kate’s work focuses on how to work with big life changes that feel out of our control, and how we can still live well, connected and alive inside of exactly what’s happening right now.

Read more about Kate in Part One and Part Two of her interview with In Tending.

»Register here for Re-Claiming Our Power on 3/25.

Clearing Space for Grief: A Meditation + Writing Workshop

Wednesday 4/1, 12pm-1:30pm EST (11am CST/10am MST/9am PST)

About this workshop:

In grief, we need the time and space be held in community, a space big enough to hold both our grief and your love. In this space, you will be supported in creating your own rituals and writing practices to help you heal what hurts, while also sustaining your ongoing connection to what still matters.

About our guest expert for this workshop:

Emily Marlowe, LCSW, PMH-C (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker based in Louisville, KY, who specializes in trauma therapy. In 2021 she experienced the devastating loss of her first pregnancy when she was 21 weeks pregnant. This experience, while earth shattering, has allowed her to re-grow into someone who is able to truly witness and hold grief. Since then, she has been honored to guide others along their paths of grief and healing through her work as a support group facilitator.

»Register here for Clearing Space for Grief on 4/1.

Tending Your Spiritual Truth: A Meditation + Writing Workshop

Wednesday 4/8, 12pm-1:30pm EST (11am CST/10am MST/9am PST)

Have you ever felt like parts of your spirituality don’t fit neatly into one category or tradition? Many subscribers to In Tending feel this way. In this space, you will be supported in creating your own rituals and writing practices to help you understand your spiritual origin story in all of its complexities, nuances, and contradictions. You’ll be guided through writing exercises and discussion that will help you discover your inner resources, understand your spiritual influences, and uncover the practices that already support you. You’ll walk away with a few pages of writing and hopefully, a deeper understanding of your relationship with the numinous.

About our guest expert for this workshop:

(she/her) is a teacher, fiction writer, and essayist who has practiced Tibetan Buddhism for over twenty years. Sarah is passionate about facilitating and guiding others to connect with their innate creativity, joy, and wholeness, especially in times of difficulty and loss. Her writing has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, Tricycle, EPOCH, Michigan Quarterly Review, Crazyhorse, West Branch and other publications. She teaches creative writing as an artist-in-residence at Northwestern University and at StoryStudio Chicago. She is currently revising her first novel and is working on an essay collection on dharma practice and lived experience. Sarah writes about dharma practice, writing for wonder and amazement, and spiritual ecology on her monthly Substack, (sarahkokernot.substack.com). You can visit Sarah’s website at sarahkokernot.com to read more about her work, teaching, and projects.

» Register here for Tending Your Spiritual Truth on 4/8.

Marking Complicated Mother’s Day: Tools for Self-Compassion

Wednesday 5/6 12pm-1:30pm EST (11am CST/10am MST/9am PST)

About this workshop:

Parents and caregivers deserve a space to mark Mother’s Day in the way that feels authentic for us–especially if it’s complicated. Together, we will talk about what it means if we do not neatly fit into the boxes prescribed for women and femmes on this day. We will share our stories of struggle, estrangement, loss and everyday awkwardness. We will learn how to harness the power of both fierce and tender self-compassion practices to bring healing awareness to what feels hard about this day.

About our guest expert for this workshop:

(she/her) is a career educator, proud auntie, and longtime meditator. She lives on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish people (Seattle, WA). Lisa is the founder of , a newsletter and community for people who offer meaningful care to children who are not their biological kids – also known as alloparents. Lisa’s readership includes extended biological family members, child-free chosen family members, grandparents, foster parents, godparents, step-parents, and educators, who spend significant amounts of time helping out with other people’s kids. It also includes people who have decided, after long and difficult family-building journeys, to embrace a different kind of caregiving path.

Read my interview with Lisa about why Mother’s Day is so complicated here.

»Register for Marking Complicated Mother’s Day on 5/6 here.

Paid subscribers, keep scrolling for Zoom links and discount codes. Free subscribers, you can upgrade to any paid subscription tier to see what’s past the paywall by clicking here.

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Flash forward to the present, and I’m now my mother’s only living child. My mother has just moved in with us. She is relatively healthy, but still suffers from some health conditions that make it dangerous for her to live alone. I am much less lonely now. I live with my partner and my young son, and we have many friends and family members around.

I still long to be in community with other people who really get it, when it comes to the particular challenge of caring for someone who is ill, disabled, aging or all three. I’ve also learned that if sandwich generation caregivers want community, we’re going to have to make it ourselves.

Consider:

• Caring for adults does not often come with the same informal networks of support as caring for children does. Moms groups and text chains abound; online groups for caregivers of adults are often much harder to find.

• Caring for children, while it can be difficult, is a skillset possessed by many people, from teenagers to grandparents. Caring for sick or disabled adults, however, is a more specialized skillset, making free or affordable community-based care harder to find.

• There seems to be more social stigma around taking time off to care for the elderly. We have made some progress culturally when it comes to using paid time off to care for a sick kid, but only recently, I was on a Zoom call with someone who apologized for having to step away to take a call from a doctor on behalf of her aging mother. (I reassured her that apologies were not necessary.)

• Caring for an adult who is ill, aging or disabled often means balancing this responsibility alongside all of our other ones—like making money to support ourselves, attending our own doctor’s appointments, and showing up for our other loved ones. It is a huge challenge to stay centered when this is the case—to constantly come back to ourselves, to our own fragile bodies, to the present moment—when so many other things clamor for our attention.

I firmly believe that in order to survive this difficult caregiving context, we need and deserve sanghas that can help us hold what is heavy. Sangha is a Sanskrit word that originally referred to communities of monastics who practiced meditation together; colloquially, it can also be used to refer to any group of fellow travelers who share a set of values and intentions, meeting together for mutual aid.

Read on for more details.

Who, what, where & when

Our Tending Adults sangha circle will meet monthly for the next four months, then break for summer.

Each session includes:

• Time for introductions + Intention-setting (Feel free to bring your lunch for this part if you’re on the East Coast)

• Discussion

• Guided practice

• Q+A

Here are the logistics and topics for our next meet-ups:

• Tuesday 2/10 at 12pm-1pm: How mindfulness can help us age gracefully

• Tuesday 3/17 at 12pm-1pm: Cultivating tranquility and insight, on and off the cushion

• Tuesday 4/14 at 12pm-1pm: Building resilience through metta (loving-kindness) meditation

• Tuesday 5/12 at 12pm-1pm: Mother’s Day Debrief/Mindful communication with family members

How to join

Tending Adults circles will continue to be free for paid newsletter subscribers (at any level). Paid subscribers can scroll down to see the Zoom link, just past the paywall, as can anyone who upgrades their subscription here.

My goal is to record these calls for posterity for paid subscribers at all levels, so that others who can’t make it at this time can still participate and get the benefits of being in community. So if you want to do the above but can’t just make it at 12pm EST, we’ve got you covered.

Note: Paid subscriptions cover these monthly circle offerings and get you discount codes for some of our upcoming paid things, like this meditation + writing workshop on Re-Imagining Intimacy later in Feb, and this one on Re-Claiming Our Power.

I want to upgrade and come to all

If you wish to make one-time donation to support folks in Minneapolis this month, you can also make a donation here for $25 or more and send the receipt to ryanroseweaver [at] substack [dot] com, and I’ll upgrade your membership for the month. (Meaning, if you’re a free subscriber, you get to join this circle and test-drive the rest of the paid experience; if you’re already paid subscriber, you get to test-drive the Mentorship Program, which gives you instant access to this workshop replay + a 1:1 support session from me.)

I want to help MN!

That said, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. If you can’t contribute financially at this time but would like to join us for this sangha series, just email me or DM me and we’ll get you sorted.

But wait, I still have questions

Please visit this FAQ post, which has many common questions and answers about our circles, and how they work.

You may also be interested in this post about why we launched this circle series, this post about caring for someone who is terminally ill, this resource roundup on navigating difficult family dynamics, and this roundup of resources on sitting with grief.

If you still need more info after reading all of that, please post your questions below!

Meanwhile, paid subscribers can scroll on to get the Zoom link for 2/10 and a discount code for our 2/28 workshop.

Subscribe now

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Today we’ll be wrapping up 2025 by talking about how we might help each other stay sane during the holiday season, and on into 2026. We’ll be doing so by discussing burnout prevention—defining it together, briefly trying some techniques that can slow the train to Burnout Town on an individual level, and also discussing larger cultural and structural aspects of burnout that aren’t ours to face alone.

We’ll be meeting on Zoom today at 10:30EST/9:30CST/8:30MST/7:30PST. To make it easier to join, I’ve included the Zoom link for this one beneath the paywall below for all paid subscribers.

All you need to do is hop on. And if you’re not a paid subscriber yet, now’s your chance to join our crew of contemplative caregivers with a click.

In the meantime, a few invitations:

1. Check out the two most recent interviews on In Tending, with the incredible Ash Brandin (aka ) and Kelly Banks (of ). Both have been incredibly generous with their time and ideas. Ash has summed up several insights from their recent book, Power On, and Kelly Banks has shared tips from her ADHD coaching practice that normally live behind a paywall. Both interviews touch on both individual and structural elements of caregiver burnout in ways that I found meaningful and practical.

2. Check out the graphic below, then consider the prompts that follow.

Prompts:

Which match are you in this season?

Which elements of this picture speak most to you?

If you could draw a picture representing your own experiences with burnout, would it look like this—or something else?

I’d love to hear your thoughts when we hop on Zoom today. Or, if you can’t make it today, please post your thoughts in the comments below.

Leave a comment

Hope to see you there,

Ryan

P.S. Paid subscribers, keep scrolling for the Zoom invite to join us today!

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If this topic is relevant to you at this time, then you’re in good company. I’m reading Francis Weller’s beautiful book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, and he points out that while losing a loved one is one widely-recognized source of grief, we have many others that often go unmarked in our culture, forms of grief that impact us all.

More personal losses that often go unmarked can include the loss of a relationship, a job, or a state of health. They can also include:

• The places that have not known love. By this, Weller is referring to the parts of us that our caregivers did not appreciate or see. In Internal Family Systems terms, our inner Orphans.

• What we expected and did not receive. Meaning, the things we imagined our future selves would enjoy (dreams, love, children, community), but that we currently do not have and may not get. Our culture resists narratives with this kind of an ache at the center of them, or frames them as “tests” — but as grief group facilitator Jess Van Wyn points out in this interview, this view often leads to “self-flagellation and additional harm. Or even flagellating others who are walking with us — believing like we’re a teacher and we’re motivating them.” Instead, she asks, “What if we just let ourselves exist?”

• The sorrows of the world. Many of us feel enormous grief that stems from our awareness of the bigger collective challenges that humanity is facing, like war and climate change, and that the earth herself is facing alongside us. These forms of grief are nearly impossible to face alone; for this, we need a community strong enough to hold it.

• Ancestral grief. The challenges faced by our ancestors had impacts on them that still ripple down through the generations, impacting us as well. These include the loss of what many of us call “the village,” and the grief, anger and fear that comes with the work of rebuilding it.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a person who can’t relate to this list of sorrows.

That said, if this topic doesn’t call to you this time around, but you know someone else who might benefit from a circle-style Zoom gathering on clearing space for grief, please feel free to direct them to this form, which will put them on the email list to receive the link:

tinyurl.com/tendersangha

If you plan to join, I’d like to invite you to bring along a special object that’s easy to hold, and that brings you comfort, to support you on the call.

Some ideas:

• A special mug

• A shell

• A blanket

• A feather

• A candle or stick of incense

• A piece of jewelry

• A special writing utensil

Please post any questions below. In the meantime, wishing you softness and rest during these hard times.

xoxo,

Ryan

P.S. If you live in Central MA, please come meditate in person with me on Sunday evenings in November! Click here for more info and to register.

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Further reading:

It’s time for our monthly In Tending caregiver circle! We’re looking forward to gathering today with those of you who can join us at 7:30am PST/8:30 MST/9:30 CST/10:30am EST. We’ll be sharing perspectives on intergenerational conversations about care—meaning, connecting more skillfully with our in-laws, parents, adult children, and other folks in our lives.

The Zoom link has been sent to all who have filled out our sign-up form. If you haven’t yet, you can do that now. We’ll share the link with all who sign up before 10am EST.

Send me the link!

For those of you who might appreciate a preview of what we might discuss today, here are a few links that are relevant to this topic, but not required reading:

• A Harbor for Awareness

• Prompt: Loading Cargo, Dropping Cargo

• How Family Drama Unfolds--And How to Heal It

We’ve invited participants to bring a writing tool and something to write on—a notebook, a napkin, the back of your hand, we’re not here to judge.

And if you can, please bring something that meets a need for you -- a water bottle, a snack, a comfy pair of socks. Not only because it may be relevant to this conversation, but because we’re here to remind you that you deserve care, too.

Subscribe now

Who hosts these gatherings, again?

We are parents and educators who are fiercely protective of our fellow caregivers. Our dream is to see us all break free of burnout and live happier, healthier, more liberated lives.

I (Ryan) started writing on Substack because I was myself burned out, after years of doing both paid and unpaid care work in my family and community. I had spent decades doing the eldest sister/daughter thing. (If you know, you know.) I had placed the ashes of a beloved sibling into a desert creek, and those of a daughter-to-be in the soil of my garden. I had taught hundreds of children across one of the most diverse cities in the world, and then taught teachers all around the globe.

I wanted to rest, and I also wanted to tell our stories.

During that time, I met , a fellow educator and parent, through the school our children attended at that time. Over the many playdates and coffee runs that followed, we learned that both of us are experienced facilitators, educators and parents, with a great deal of combined experience in supporting aging parents, loved ones with chronic illnesses, children with special needs, children of color, and queer folks. We both have backgrounds in leading mindfulness and writing work. And we both shared a desire to create third spaces, online and offline, where other caregivers could connect with inner clarity, connect with like-minded folks, and express their creativity and wisdom in ways that benefit not just their kids or careers, but the collective.

Together, we’ve built this newsletter and community for caregivers like us. Like you.

What happens at an In Tending caregiver circle?

Our donation-based circles were designed around the needs and schedules of busy caregivers who are interested in building community. Our aim is to share something that no amount of Instagram scripts and parenting podcasts can provide: a sense of being witnessed, of being understood, of belonging somewhere.

To create this experience, we generally do the following:

• Have a brief preliminary check-in, to hear what kinds of needs (and joys!) folks are bringing into the space.

• Offer some guided meditation, tailored to the group and discussion topic. (No breathy vocals, no New Age flutes, just techniques to help us arrive and drop in together.)

• Have a longer circle-based discussion, with equitable talk time for all. In the past, we’ve chosen topics like caring for kids in K-12, caring for adults, and affirming neurodivergence.

• Brainstorm topics we’d like to discuss for the next gathering. We also discuss anything else that needs to shift to be more responsive to the needs of the people in the group.

I’ve never been to one of these circles, and I’m not sure I can come to all of them. Can I still join today?

Yes! We strive to highlight topics that have wide relevance in our community of caregivers, and to choose times that work for the majority, but we understand that there’s no universal time or topic that will work every time for every person. We’re delighted to have you whenever you can join.

I can’t join today, but I want to come to a future circle. When will you be hosting the next one?

If you can’t make it today, we’ve got two more circles scheduled for 2025:

• Making Space for Grief: October 28 at 10:30am EST

• Burnout Prevention: December 2 at 10:30am EST

We hope to see you at one or both if it serves you!

Do you ever lead caregiver circles offline?

Yes! We’ve facilitated discussions like this for folks in a variety of places, from converted barns to classrooms. Ryan will be hosting an in-person series of circles near her home in Central MA at The Yoga Nook, an incredible community hub just off I-495, on Sunday evenings in November. Please join if you can, and tell your MA-based friends if you can’t!

• Sign up here

• Share the IG post here

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Tasty pork chop recipes? Please share ‘em below.

xoxo,

Ryan + Meredith

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Further reading:

When I was twenty-six, my brother David was diagnosed with brain cancer. My life changed overnight. I had been living a relatively carefree life in Seoul, teaching English and honing my meditation practice with some monks down the road. Suddenly, I found myself boarding a plane to Buffalo, where he was being treated, and figuring out how to care for someone who would eventually lose his ability to speak or move. It was one of the most profoundly lonely seasons of my life.

Flash forward to the present, and I’m now my mother’s only living child. My mother has just moved in with us. She is relatively healthy, but still suffers from some health conditions that make it dangerous for her to live alone. I am much less lonely now. I live with my partner and my young son, and we have many friends and family members around. Still, I long to be in community with other people who really get it, when it comes to this particular challenge.

Because here’s the thing. Even if you’re a Buddhism practitioner like me who attempts to stay connected to others without staying attached to outcomes, the assumption when you’re raising a child or teaching a young student is that you are in some way investing in a future in which they will be more independent.

This is not necessarily the case when you are caring for adults. Often, you are witnessing the growth process as it runs in the reverse: a sick or aging loved one begins to lose one ability after another, until all gets quiet and they return to the earth. Or, you are caring for a loved one with a disability that makes it impossible to predict how they will show up on any given day.

These care scenarios obligate you to stay connected to the present in ways that are not aspirational or theoretical. Because the present is, quite literally, all we have.

At the same time, caring for adults does not often come with the same societal supports as caring for children does. Moms groups abound; groups for caregivers of adults are often much harder to find. Caring for children, while it can be difficult, is a skillset possessed by many people, from teenagers to grandparents; caring for sick or disabled adults, however, is a more specialized skillset, making free or affordable community-based care harder to find. We have made some progress culturally when it comes to using paid time off to care for a sick kid, but only recently, I was on a Zoom call with someone who apologized for having to step away to take a call from a doctor on behalf of her aging mother.

“It won’t become a pattern, I promise,” she said.

But why shouldn’t this be a pattern?

Why shouldn’t we be able to step away from paid work in order to honor the care needs of adults, as we would vulnerable children? What is there to be ashamed of?

The hard part is having to balance this responsibility with all of our other ones. Having to constantly come back to ourselves, to our own fragile bodies, to the present moment, when so many other things clamor for our attention. And we shouldn’t have to do this alone.

This is something I hope we can explore today on in our caregiver circle, which we’ll be holding at 10:30am EST today on Zoom.

If you haven’t gotten on the list to receive these links, please click on the button below to fill out our short intake form, and we’ll hook you up. We hope to see you there.

I want to join an upcoming circle!

That said, even if you're not caring for an adult at the moment, but you are engaged in some other form of care, we'd still like to warmly invite you to sit with us in community. One guiding premise of In Tending is that caregivers have more in common with one another than we have differences between us.

Also, if you can't make it today, or if you have to come late or leave early, please remember that you're always welcome to connect asynchronously with us in the subscriber chat here. We'll aim to share some prompts and resources after the call to get the conversation going and keep it going during this busy month.

xoxo

Ryan + Meredith

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Further reading:

— Jack Kornfield

Confession time: I missed sending out the newsletter last week.

Why? Because I was juggling care for a child with care for an aging parent, without consistent outside childcare.

If you know, you know.

If this struggle sounds similar to the ones you’ve been having lately, here are two things I want you to know:

1) Our ability to show up consistently for our communities is dependent on how consistently our communities can show up for us. We are interdependent beings. You deserve the same compassion and care you extend to others — care that may sometimes make it difficult for you to show up “consistently” in other ways. (Feel free to repeat this to yourself as necessary. I know I need to hear it daily, if not hourly.)

2) We’ll be circling up on Zoom next Tuesday Sept 2 at 10:30am EST to talk about sandwich generation struggles like this. If you’d like to join us for this donation-based circle (which includes a facilitated discussion and some guided meditation), please sign up to get the Zoom link! We’d love to have you.

Sign me up for Sept 2!

This group of caregivers can include those who care for:

• Young adults who are transitioning out of high school, college or another structured container into a less structured environment

• Adult loved ones with disabilities who need ongoing supervision and care

• Adults who are ill and experiencing an increase in support needs

• Adults who are aging and experiencing an increase in support needs

Note: this care does not have to be offered full-time. Many of us are sandwich generation caregivers like me — people who care for children in their home and also regularly check in with an aging loved one, while also finding time to do paid or unpaid work in the community. That struggle is real, too!

If you’re planning on joining, please let us know which topic calls to you most:

If you can’t make this upcoming circle, please mark your calendar for the next ones:

• Navigating cross-generational conversations about care: Tues Sept 30, 10:30am EST

• Making space for grief: Tues Oct 28, 10:30am EST

• Burnout prevention: Dec 2, 10:30am EST (note: this is the week after Thanksgiving)

Finally:

If you’d like to join us in setting some intentions for the month ahead related to caring for yourself while caring for other beings — intentions with which we’re happy to support you in the circle and chat — we’ve started a new thread for that here.

Questions? Comments? Please let us know!

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Related reading:

As I’ve written before, caregivers are the experts on the ways in which our current crises are impacting our most vulnerable community members, and how best to compassionately respond.

We’re also often very tired, and need spaces where we too can be vulnerable and held.

Before I became a parent to a neurodivergent child, I used to head to a Buddhist meditation center in midtown NYC on the regular and take yoga classes a few times a week. This helped me to set down the burdens I was carrying for a while, and exit feeling grounded and resourced again.

Now that I’m six years into this parenting gig, I have slowly come to grasp the ways in which the timing, pacing, pricing structures and overall vibe of these spaces can feel less-than-inclusive for those with caregiving responsibilities — not to mention those who are not also white, able-bodied, young, thin, neurotypical-presenting, and/or upper-middle class.

This leaves out a lot of people.

Enter: In Tending online gatherings.

Our donation-based circles were designed around the needs and schedules of busy caregivers who are interested in building community. Our aim is to share something that no amount of Instagram scripts and parenting podcasts can provide: a sense of being witnessed, of being understood, of belonging somewhere.

Below, please find answers to the FAQs people have asked about these gatherings, as well as information on how to get on the invite list for the next one.

Who counts as a caregiver?

Anyone who spends a significant portion of the day keeping other humans alive.

This means not just parents, or caregivers of aging and ill adults, but grandparents and cool Aunties, teachers and nurses, therapists and body workers, chaplains and rabbis.

In other words: ours is a big tent. We leave it up to you to decide if it’s the one for you.

Who facilitates these gatherings?

Ryan (Weaver) Cherecwich, M.Ed and Meredith Rodriguez. We both use she/her pronouns. We are both experienced facilitators, educators and parents, with a great deal of combined experience in supporting aging parents, loved ones with chronic illnesses, children with special needs, children of color, and queer folks.

We also both have backgrounds in leading mindfulness and writing work, which we love offering during our gatherings.

It is our pleasure to hold the space for you.

What happens during an In Tending online gathering?

We spend an hour or so together. During this hour, we:

• Have a brief preliminary check-in, to hear what kinds of needs (and joys!) folks are bringing into the space.

• Offer some guided meditation, tailored to the group and discussion topic. (No breathy vocals, no New Age flutes, just techniques to help us arrive and drop in together.)

• Have a longer circle-based discussion, with equitable talk time for all. In the past, we’ve chosen topics like caring for kids in K-12, caring for adults, and affirming neurodivergence.

• Brainstorm topics we’d like to discuss for the next gathering. We also discuss anything else that needs to shift to be more responsive to the needs of the people in the group.

Why do people come to these gatherings?

In Tending circle attendees have told us that they come for the following reasons:

• A sense of being seen and affirmed as a caregiver across many spaces – whether we are caring for young kids, struggling partners, patients/students, and/or aging elders.

• A group offering support in beginning or returning to an intentional mindfulness practice as a way of tending to ourselves amidst all of this, as well as a way of bringing peace to our wider communities.

• A group to normalize the inherent tensions between mindfulness and caregiving, as well as the joyful intersections between them.

• A community of people who will Go There, beyond the surface level – offering not just small talk or “venting,” but fun and laughs, a place to share ideas for action, advocacy and art, and gentle accountability when we find any of this hard to access.

• Communion with those who value liberation, equality and justice.

Are there any rules or norms I need to be aware of before joining a circle?

Caregiving is personal; it is also political. We’ve found that having a set of community norms helps to keep our discussions focused on the intentions above, and to set our gatherings apart from other gatherings that may feel more like informal venting sessions or formal workshops.

Please read these norms before you sign up.

• Be you, but also be mindful of others. Be you means that if you are sad and you need to cry, cry. If you are angry and you need to swear, swear. Care work is not always calming, and thus calmness is not required or expected as we discuss and reflect on it. That said, be mindful of how you discuss issues such as gender, race, class, language, family structure, sexual orientation, and religious affiliation hat may also touch others deeply, in ways that are different from yours. Per the norms of the East Bay Meditation Center: “Instead of assuming that our individual and culturally-based collective ways of knowing are the norm, we can choose to mindfully engage with others in culturally humble ways that might help us to learn, grow, respect, and better understand the reasons for their actions and behaviors, while we also become increasingly aware of what motivates our own actions and behaviors.”

  Given that:

• Use “I” statements. It would be very easy, given our current political context, to begin to talk about other groups of people for whom you are either very worried, or towards whom you are feeling anger. In our groups, we aim to stay grounded in sharing the particulars of our own care contexts – what’s hard or joyful for us – rather than making generalizations about what things might be like for other people. This is also a space to explore your lived experience and your values when it comes to care, rather than to cite the thoughts of someone else (i.e. a political figure) who isn’t in the room, or in the work of care, alongside us.

• Connect and care, but don’t compare. This is related to the one above. It’s okay to build on one another’s comments or wisdom, but please don’t compare or frame your situation as better or worse than someone else’s. Your hardest thing is your hardest thing. The same is true for others.

• No fixing or advice unless it is requested. This is a big one for us as caregivers. We are all adults, and it is important to respect our fellow adults by not presuming we know the answers, while also respecting our own time and energy by not offering from an already depleted place. In this space, just listening and speaking from the heart is enough.

• What is said here, stays here; what is learned here, leaves here. Confidentiality is vital for building and maintaining trust and safety. We honor confidentiality in all cases except those in which someone is imminently at risk of harm. That said, wit is OK to share the insights gained from our circles with others — without names or other identifying details.

• Help keep our container secure. To help us ensure that all participants are real humans, we would love it if you turned your camera on to greet the group as you enter the space, and keep it on if you are not in a distracting environment. We would also prefer you choose a space where no other adults can overhear what is being shared. This helps to keep our space workable and confidential for all. That said, if you need to switch your camera off briefly (i.e. if you need to breastfeed a baby and would be more comfortable doing so off-camera), just drop us a note in the chat to let us know so we can respond accordingly.

• Expect and accept non-closure. We aren’t going to solve any of the issues we discuss in a single session. Our intention is to build a community with the capacity to witness us, as we consider the next right thing in our respective communities.

I can’t come to all of the circles. Can I still drop in to one of them?

Yes! We strive to highlight topics that have wide relevance in our community of caregivers, and to choose times that work for the majority, but we understand that there’s no universal time or topic that will work every time for every person. We’re delighted to have you whenever you can join.

Do I have to pay to join?

We welcome donations, in alignment with the longstanding tradition of dana in many mindfulness communities. (See Insight Meditation Society’s explanation of this, for one example.) However, if cost is a barrier, you can indicate this in our circle sign-up form, and we’ll work to get you access to our community, no questions asked.

Where and when do the meetings take place?

Currently, we’re using Zoom and targeting mornings on the East Coast, but we hope to offer more sessions for different time zones and schedules as we build this community.

Okay, I’m in. How do I sign up?

Click the button below to fill our our circle intake form, and we’ll send you the Zoom invite to the next circle!

Come sit next to us!

(Note: If you are a paid subscriber, you do need to fill out the form so we have your contact info, but know that access to this event is included with your subscription — and if you’re not a paid subscriber, you can upgrade below.)

Subscribe now

Do you ever lead parent/caregiver circles offline?

Yes! We’ve facilitated discussions like this for folks in a variety of places, from converted barns to classrooms. If you’d like to get in touch with us about a potential in-person circle, please shoot us a DM on Substack and we’ll go from there.

I have a question that’s not on this list. How can I ask it?

If you received this via email, just hit “reply” and it will come to our inboxes. If you’re viewing this in a browser, drop a comment below and we’ll happily respond.

Leave a comment

We look forward to meeting you!

xoxo, Ryan and Meredith

Further reading:

Often, in conversations about burnout, the source is presumed to be some combination of poor boundaries and an inability to delegate. Clock out when your workday ends at five and not a moment later! Let your husband clean the bathroom however he wants!

I am more than happy to let my husband clean the bathroom however he wants. There is no self-help book, however, that has yet to solve for the current multi-crisis. Because much of the burnout in our community of open-hearted caregivers, as and I (Ryan) discussed a while back on Substack Live, comes from being forced to bear witness to the suffering of other caregivers,

day

after

day

after

day

while the people who have the power to stop the suffering do not stop it.

For years, many of us have turned to podcasts and video hot takes to make sense of what we’re feeling, and to social media when it’s time to express our feelings and find others who feel as we do. But as skillfully puts it here, these sources of one-way pseudo-connection can be fraught and dissatisfying:

I AM ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED/AND ALSO I AM IN ITALY, we shout at each other in an infinite loop… Are we being performative? Of course we are. At all times. We are performative because we are aware that we are being perceived. And perception, in turn, is a form of connection, though that’s easy to forget…

Some of us are barely getting by. Some of us are fortunate in some ways and vulnerable in others. Our situations are not equivalent. But none of us have figured it out, this art of navigating our own complicated lives while also bearing witness to a world in pain. If we had, we would not be stuck here together.

We are all both sacred and calamitous, I fear. We are mucking our way through it. Together, but pretending to be apart.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of pretending, in general. Of numbing and masking and calling that “normal.” Of being apart instead of a part of something. Of trying to fit everything that I feel in this moment into a tiny square, and calling that connection.

Especially what I think many of us are craving is a circle.

A circle of people who we can see each other’s facial expressions. Who know each other’s names. Who have more context about each other’s lives beyond “I AM ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED/AND ALSO I AM IN ITALY.”

I want to exist in a space that doesn’t just strip-mine my mind for attention and sell it to Meta. I want to give and receive true belonging.

To that end, we’d like to invite you to save the date for our upcoming In Tending gatherings, starting with the next one on Tuesday August 5th at 10:30am EST on Zoom.

We’ve chosen topics for these circles that we know are important to our community members, such as caring for kids under five, and caring locally while thinking globally. In the months to come, we’ll be talking about:

• Affirming neurodivergence (ours and/or our kids'): Tues August 5th, 10:30am EST

• Caring for other adults: Tues Sept 2, 10:30am EST

• Navigating cross-generational conversations about care: Tues Sept 30, 10:30am EST

• Making space for grief: Tues Oct 28, 10:30am EST

• Burnout prevention: Dec 2, 10:30am EST (note: this is the week after Thanksgiving)

Note: if you’re not signed up to get the Zoom invites for our community gatherings, please click the button below to get on the invite list, which keeps the Zoom container secure and workable for all.

Sign me up for Zoom invites!

Why neurodivergence? Why now?

• Firstly, because summer is an insidiously difficult time for neurodivergent (aka “ND”) caregivers. And we all deserve more support than we’re getting. (See last week’s post for the many reasons why families with one or more neurodivergent members may be feeling especially burned out.)

• Secondly, because the start of the school year is coming up shortly after this circle for some families, and that is often a very difficult time for neurodivergent children. As they adjust to new communities and expectations, their caregivers must advocate for their needs to be met. (See my interview series about caring for neurodivergent kids with , the brains behind , here, here and here.)

• Thirdly, because this world needs all of us to use the full array of our gifts, including those that are associated with our neurodivergence. Indigenous communities have long noticed traits like unusual sensory sensitivity — often but not always associated with diagnoses like ADHD and autism — in a minority of their community members. Many have prized these traits. History has shown that people who see the world in unusual ways can often see solutions and perspectives in ways that others cannot. It’s time to surface and share those perspectives with each other, and with other people who can benefit from seeing the world through a more inclusive and sensitive lens. (See this post for more resources on being “sensitive” in a world that often…isn’t.)

If you’d like to attend the Aug 5 circle, please let us know which one of these topics calls to you most via the poll below. We also welcome your thoughts in the comments.

Hope to see you next week!

xoxo

Ryan + Meredith

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This week, you’re getting a conversation between Meredith and I about invitations.

As two neurodivergent parents, with a handful of neurodivergent kids between us, we’ve got a lot going on this summer, and are finding that we need to bring an additional layer of mindfulness to the f@#$s we’re choosing to give, and the RSVPs we’re choosing to send.

[A note on terminology: By “neurodivergent,” we mean “people whose brains work differently from those that are considered ‘typical.’” To us, it’s a big-tent, non-pathologizing term, meant to include a wide array of what we might also call “developmental variations” in education. These can include but are not limited to autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and learning disabilities.]

As we’ve shared before on Notes and IG, summer can be insidiously tough for neurodivergent folks.

Here are a few bullets from my infinite list of reasons why:

• Fun things like the pool and the beach can come with some not-so-fun sensory challenges (bug bites!), which can lead to low-key daylong discomfort and sleep disturbances in adults, and meltdowns in children.

• The constant changes in individual routine and family schedules can present big executive functioning challenges; we can find ourselves constantly late, losing things more often, and sometimes criticizing ourselves (or our loved ones) for simply being human.

• There are significant challenges facing other caregivers in other places this summer, from ICE raids to starvation in G@za. I am feeling the weight of these injustices deeply, and I know this is adding to the mental load for other extra-empathic folks, while also making it harder for us to show ourselves self-compassion for our own struggles.

As a result, I'm seeing more caregiver burnout this summer than I can recall since the summer of 2020, when we literally had to do and figure out everything ourselves, with no help from community. Particularly in families where at least one member is neurodivergent.

When people are burned out, they feel both less happy and less effective, which becomes a vicious cycle and self-fulfilling prophecy. Even the fun things on offer seem to feel less fun, the mistakes seem higher-stakes than they really are, and the really bad stuff out there seems even badder. This level of burnout also makes it harder to actually respond to the injustices of the world, but makes the guilt of not doing so more and more acute.

One saving grace: it’s not 2020, so we don't have to do everything ourselves this summer. We can do this in community. And that’s what we aim to offer this month: a space to face these unique challenges together, instead of all by ourselves.

Our next In Tending group will focuses on the topic of affirming neurodiversity. Because we need more places where we can share our struggles without fear of judgement, reflect on which tools we might already have at our disposal to tend to our increasingly frayed nervous systems (and political systems) and give ourselves permission to simply exist in a neurodiversity affirming space.

It is also our hope that by talking and meditating together, we can collectively move into a mental space of “tend and befriend” instead of “fight/flight/be really mean to myself or others for no reason.”

If this sounds good to you, we hope you can join us at our next donation-based caregiver circle, on August 5 at 10:30am EST, where we’ll dig into all of this together. (To get on the list to receive the Zoom invite for this, click here.)

We also hope you’ll join us in the asynchronous conversation we’ve started below, and in our subscriber chat, about how we each process invitations in unique ways, and what we can do to sustain connections to our communities this summer, even if we know for sure that we won’t be RSVP-ing yes to the next party.

Meredith: When we celebrated my oldest daughter’s Quinceañera, it was a deeply meaningful day for our family. We poured love into the preparations, and sent both beautiful paper invitations (designed by my daughter herself) and personal emails to each person we truly hoped would attend.

It was a real invitation—heartfelt, considered, specific.

That experience lives in sharp contrast with the flurry of calendar invites that roll in as the end of summer approaches. If I’m not careful, I’ll say yes to everything simply because the time is technically “available.”

But availability doesn’t equal alignment.

My intention isn’t just to show up to everything that fits.

My intention this August is to consider what truly fosters connection—to myself, to my family, to my community.

As we discussed last week, sometimes that means knowing what doesn’t foster connection. For example, I’m kind of known as the person who declines birthday party invitations for my kids. It’s not that I don’t want to celebrate their friends or be part of their joy—but the format rarely feels like the best way to connect. The chaos of 25 kids in a trampoline park doesn’t build the feeling of community I want to nurture, and it usually doesn’t serve my children either. Hot take, I know.

I have learned that before I say yes to something like this, I need to ask myself: Is this truly going to serve my long-term goals for connection? Or am I just afraid to temporarily disappoint someone?

I also need to remind myself that not every invitation is a summons. That someone else writing something on their calendar does not override what I’ve already chosen for mine. Even and especially when that choice is simply to rest.

The chaos of 25 kids in a trampoline park doesn’t build the feeling of community I want to nurture, and it usually doesn’t serve my children either. — Meredith Rodriguez

Ryan: I love your language here: “An invitation is not a summons.”

I also love the idea of asking myself, before I RSVP: “Does this actually build connection?” and “Will it actually serve the needs of my family, for us to be there?”

You and I are both neurodivergent, which also adds an additional layer of complexity that is worth naming here, especially because we’re about to have an August circle meetup all about it.

Here’s one tension I notice for us: We know that building community is inconvenient. And that it’s okay to sacrifice some individual comforts for the sake of building something bigger together. We talked about that here and here.

I think of constructive inconveniences as looking like:

• Attending an important decision-making meeting in your work, school or faith community even if it means having to adjust a commute or meal schedule

• Tolerating the irritating-but-not-ultimately-harmful behaviors of people that are different from you

• Finding a compromise between your caregiving style and that of someone else involved in your loved one’s care, so that you can have the help you need

At the same time, being forced to mask for the sake of community is painful, and often takes so much effort for us neurodivergent folks that it feels hard to honor that intention to connect.

By masking, I mean making a big effort to appear “neurotypical,” however our culture or context defines that. This can look like:

• Forcing oneself or ones’ kids to make eye contact, or receive touch, even when that’s deeply uncomfortable, to avoid “hurting so-and-so’s feelings”

• Staying at a event with loud noises or bright lights even past the point of overstimulation, because you’re “supposed to”

• Dressing in fabrics, garments or shoes that feel deeply uncomfortable or misaligned with one’s gender presentation, because “it’s polite”

• Suppressing the urge to stim (i.e. flapping one’s hands) in public, because it will draw unwanted attention or criticism

• Coming up with a cover story for why you were late, lost the invite, made a wrong turn, forgot the gift, etc. because openly sharing about your executive functioning challenges would not be well received

There’s a sweet spot there, between choosing to spend some of our time experiencing the kind of constructive discomfort that builds community, and some of our time experiencing the kind of un-pressured, neurodiversity-affirming, come-as-you-are ease that reconnects us to ourselves. We also have to help each one of our kids to find that sweet spot for themselves.

Another tension I notice is that sometimes those sweet spots don’t overlap with ours! Which can bring both difficulties and opportunities.

For example: we’re actually the ones hosting a housewarming/birthday party for my kid this week, and it’s been so sweet to see the ways in which my friends, many of whom have neurodivergent children or are neurodivergent themselves, are thinking about how to approach the event from a place of radical acceptance vs. pushing themselves past capacity. For example:

• Some are bringing only the extroverted members of their families, because the introverts would be miserable but the extroverts will have fun.

• Some are coming early or late to avoid the peak sensory overload that comes with a party full of kids.

• Some are texting ahead to see if we’ll have the adaptive equipment or spaces on hand that they need, or if it makes sense to bring their own.

• Some are declining with deep regret, and yet still trusting us with their thought process about why the event’s not right for them this time.

People who are comfortable saying no to the gatherings that won’t serve them, or modifying their approach to gatherings so that they don’t require so much masking, are ironically the people with whom I am the most excited to build community. Because ideally we’d all be bringing this lens to our gatherings, this sense of “How can we make this event inclusive and accessible for as many people as possible, while also making it safe to say no?” Versus “How many people can we cram in the door? What levers of anxiety, obligation and shame can we use to get them there and keep them there?”

Which also makes me think of one of my favorite bangers by Courtney Barnett, “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party,” which feels relevant here:

Ryan: If we back up and rewind, having a neurodivergent mind can also impact the way we receive invitations in the first place, which you named at the start, Meredith.

Some of us really do interpret invitations as summons. I.e., some of us carry a“subjugation schema” that kept us safe as younger children, but now causes us to interpret even the gentlest, most invitational language as a demand we must obey. Those of us who live with obsessive-compulsive thought patterns may also go back and forth for weeks about what the “right” response to a party invite might be, the “right” gift, or how to behave in the “right” way once there.

On the other hand, some of us have a persistent demand for autonomy that makes us feel anxious and resistant to saying yes to anything, even when it comes to meeting the survival needs of our own bodies.

And some of us have executive functioning struggles that make it difficult simply to keep track of the invitations and calendar in the first place.

In my experience, just knowing and accepting your own mind and body can be so liberating in each one of these cases, vs letting your habitual mind-states own you. Because when you know yourself well, then the process you follow to get to “yes” or “no” can feel like a process of loving re-parenting, rather than a terrifying social exercise that might result in your exile from the community.

As neuro-affirming coach Jessica Goguillon puts it, it’s okay to ask ourselves:

• Do I have the time?

• Do I have the energy?

• Do I have the capacity/capability?

• Is this a priority for me right now?

Often, if I can come to terms with my answers for the above, I find I do a better job of conveying my answers to other people. Answers that don’t come dripping with apology or irritation, or that totally disregard the other person’s feelings in the matter.

I also personally love being trusted enough to be included in someone’s else’s thought process about whether or not they’re going to come to the party, even if they don’t ultimately go.

Which means that I now get to have the kind of neurodiversity-affirming life as an adult that I wish I could have had as a child. A life in which responding to an invitation with a thoughtful “no,” one that helps both parties get to know each other’s minds and bodies better, can actually build more connection than a knee-jerk “yes.”

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In the chat this week, we’d love to dig into this more deeply with you. For our next cycle of intentions, we invite (invite! not demand!) you to consider:

• What literal or figurative invitations are arriving in your life? These could be literal party invitations, but they could be small bids for connection: the invitation to play with Legos from your child, the invitation to ask for help from a loved one if you’re going through a hard time, the invitation from a tree to sit beneath it for a while instead of scurrying on?

• What do you notice about the way your body and mind are reacting to the invitations you’re receiving in this situation? Which invoke an expansive, windows-open feeling? Which invoke a sense of contraction? What other sensations and thoughts arise when you bring this invitation to mind? (This short mind-body practice can help you to answer this question.)

• What would happen if you honored that reaction and RSVP’d accordingly?

• What would happen if you shared your insights about yourself, and your thought process about what the invitation entails, with the one inviting you, in a way that invites further connection (even if you are choosing to say “no”)?

In the meantime, a few reminders:

• We’ll circle up on Zoom on August 5 at 10:30am EST to talk about the challenges of affirming neurodivergence (ours and/or our kids'). If you haven’t signed up to get the link yet, you can do so here.

• Can’t make it? No worries. We’ve got several more gatherings coming up. Each one includes time for grounding meditation, a facilitated circle discussion, and other opportunities to continue the conversation with other likeminded caregivers. Here’s where you can find us for the rest of 2025:

  • Caring for other adults: Tues Sept 2, 10:30am EST

  • Navigating cross-generational conversations about care: Tues Sept 30, 10:30am EST

  • Making space for grief: Tues Oct 28, 10:30am EST

  • Burnout prevention: Dec 2, 10:30am EST (note: this is the week after Thanksgiving)

We hope to see you at one or many of these gatherings soon!

Clearing space at In Tending in August

We’ll be dropping back to a slightly looser and less-frequent summer publishing schedule for the next month, in order to more deeply reflect on what will make our community inclusive and accessible for all.

When we return, we’d love to know:

Thank you for reading, and we look forward to hearing from you soon!

xoxo

Ryan + Meredith

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We’ll also be dropping back to a slightly looser and less-frequent summer publishing schedule for the next month. Our intention is to have more time and space to take in all of the joys (lake swims!) and to respond to the difficulties (summer childcare gaps!) that come with caregiving for us, and many people who read here.

We’re also hoping to step back and ore deeply reflect on how In Tending can best continue our mission of caring locally while thinking globally, given the challenges that are arising for caregivers around the world in this historical moment.

To give us your thoughts on that, please click on the poll below, or reply directly to this email. We value your feedback!

— Ryan

“I want to fulfill the needs of everybody around me and be sure everyone else is happy, but I don’t have the capacity to do it the way that I used to. I have to learn to be OK with that.” — Melani Sanders

There are things I (Meredith) care about right now with my whole heart.

But not everything. Not like before.

As a teacher and then a parent, I used to notice and care about every mess, every email, every moment that seemed like it might matter. That kind of caring drained me, made it hard to actually connect with the people and places I was trying to show up for.

Now I’m here — in the house we rent every summer. My 6-year-old’s bike is tossed by the back door. Swimsuits and towels are drying over the fence. There are walkie talkies on the porch table. And yet, “the mess” is not what I’m noticing.

I’m noticing now that the kids are older. The days stretch wider. There’s space to see things clearly. With this clarity, I can see now that it’s possible to shift my attention to caring about what matters — and to let the rest go.

I have been drawing inspiration for this shift from our monthly “F@#$s We’re No Longer Giving” threads, as well as Melani Sanders’ “We Do not Care Club” on Instagram. I regularly DM her posts to friends who get it, and love reading the comments from other likeminded caregivers. It seems I’m not alone, either: she was recently profiled by the New York Times, and has been making the morning show rounds as well, due to the rapid growth of her audience. Of course, there’s some shock value inherent in witnessing a caregiver appear to throw up her hands and just “not care,” but there’s more nuance to Sanders’ message than meets the eye. Sanders is not advocating for not caring about anything. She is pushing back on a culture that pushes us to care too much about everything.

As recently wrote in this piece about Sanders, pointing out the pragmatism inherent in her message:

“By not caring, you free yourself to care—and fight—about what matters.”

When I taught fourth grade, I encouraged my students to find their “thing” — the subject or idea or creative spark they could pour themselves into. What I really meant, though I didn’t know it then, was this:

Find what connects you to something bigger than yourself. Find the thing that makes you say yes so loudly, deep down inside of yourself, that when the time comes to say no to someone or something, you know which no’s are worth it.

So, now I’m trying to follow my own advice, like I’m a 4th grader. This summer, I’m trying to find my new “thing.” My big loud yes.

This, to me, is the reason why we practice saying no to something every month. Not so that we can deaden our ability to care about the world, but so that we can clear enough space inside of ourselves to ask: what is so alive in me that I’ll gladly say no to everything else to protect it?

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Join the chat!

If this line of thinking calls to you, please drop your f@#$S in the chat, along with your thoughts on the following:

• What matters to you so deeply that it guides how you spend your energy?

• What are you willing to clear space for, sacrifice comfort for, or show up fully inside of?

• How will not giving this month’s particular f@#$ clear the way for you to do that?

Clearing space at In Tending in August

There are so many things worth caring about in our world right now. So, as mentioned above, we’ll also dropping back to a slightly looser and less-frequent summer publishing schedule for the next month, in order to have more time and space to deeply reflect and skillfully respond to it all. (Note: We’ll still be hosting our usual monthly caregiver circle on Tuesday, August 5; more on that below.)

When we return, we’d love to know:

The poll doesn’t allow for much nuance, so we’re including the below rationale to give a better sense of what we’re asking and why:

• Currently we’re sending you one Community Tuesday chat prompt each week, as well as an additional long-read of some sort (an essay, an interview). We’re enjoying this. We know you are too. At the same time, we’re interested in exploring other possibilities that might serve us all better.

• We know that some people would like for the community and caregiver education aspects of In Tending to be more robust (and potentially paywalled for privacy). Some people love the weekly chats just as they are but don’t have the bandwidth for a weekly longread. Some people love the longreads but don’t feel drawn to the chat. Some people are just happy to hear from us each week, regardless of format. And some people might prefer to hear from us less than that, simply because they don’t currently have time to read a newsletter every week. We know you’re all out there; we’re just curious as to how many of you fit each description, so we can plan our editorial calendar* accordingly.

*By editorial calendar, I mean a piece of paper sitting on my desk that is currently being used as a coaster.

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In the meantime, a few reminders:

• We’ll circle up on Zoom on August 5 at 10:30am EST to talk about the challenges of affirming neurodivergence (ours and/or our kids'). If you haven’t signed up to get the link yet, you can do so here.

• Can’t make it? No worries. We’ve got several more gatherings coming up. Each one includes time for grounding meditation, a facilitated circle discussion, and other opportunities to continue the conversation with other likeminded caregivers. Here’s where you can find us for the rest of 2025:

  • Caring for other adults: Tues Sept 2, 10:30am EST

  • Navigating cross-generational conversations about care: Tues Sept 30, 10:30am EST

  • Making space for grief: Tues Oct 28, 10:30am EST

  • Burnout prevention: Dec 2, 10:30am EST (note: this is the week after Thanksgiving)

We hope to see you at one or many of these gatherings soon!

xoxo, Ryan + Meredith

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So, this week, and I will be meeting up for a lunch date to continue a conversation we began at our In Tending gathering on Zoom this week: caring locally, thinking globally. It was such a rich discussion. While these circles are confidential, and will remain so, we felt as though the time was ripe to continue exploring a few of the ideas that arose, and that seem to be arising in many conversations we’ve been having. These topics, which we’ll discuss at 12pm, include:

• How much caregivers are holding in this moment

• An often-overlooked loving-kindness meditation technique that can help

• The resistance that arises when we attempt to “take time for ourselves,” and how we can borrow a technique from the Internal Family Systems model to work with it

• The work of Joanna Macy, who has moved into hospice care this week (for more context, see this moving piece by ). Joanna Macy, an eco-activist and meditator, worked for long years to articulate the complementarity between activists doing “blocking” work and caregivers doing “building” work, as we strive together for collective liberation. Her work deeply informs the way we think about things at In Tending.

If you’d like to join us today on Substack Live to talk about all of this and more, click the button below.

Let's do lunch!

Annoying disclaimer: you’ll need to have the Substack app and a phone to access it. This should help you do so if you don’t have the app already.

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If you can’t make it at 12pm EST, that’s OK too! We’ve got an asynchronous chat going 24/7 for caregivers who have to work while they have childcare, care for kids or other adults when they’re not working, and attempt to get some sleep in the slim margins in between.

This should help you find your way to our online community if you’re not already chatting with us on the regular.

In any case, we hope to connect with you sometime this week. And in the meantime, may your week be one in which you find a balance between effort and ease, stillness and movement, alone time and good company.

xoxo

Ryan + Meredith

Further reading:

At the same time, Meredith reminds us below, as adults, we do know some things. Many of us have in fact spent years studying, training, and gaining experience and expertise in at least one discipline, sometimes several. Many of us know at least one way to work with the raw material of reality, to spin it into something edible, useful, informative or inspiring.

Two things can be true at the same time.

When it feels like so much is falling apart all around us, how paradoxically empowering it feels to lie down on the cool floor of what we’ve already built. To allow the hours we’ve already spent in the dance studio, the garden, the kitchen, or on the cushion, to hold us, and to carry us, into an uncertain future.

— Ryan

"We can make ourselves miserable or we can make ourselves strong. The amount of effort is the same." — Pema Chödrön

I (Meredith) trained as a dancer. From grade school through graduation, I spent five hours after school in the studio, and most of my weekend time rehearsing and working on technique.

The work paid off; dance turned out to be my ticket from Kansas to New York City.

That was more than 25 years ago. I don’t dance very often anymore, except in my kitchen with my kids. A few weeks ago, though, a new friend invited me to an open level hip hop class. All the stars aligned: my calendar was blank, the class was low cost, I had childcare, and the studio was 5 minutes from my house.

It was so good. But it was also really hard.

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a dance class, but there’s a mirror. Like, a giant mirror taking up an entire wall. For the duration of the class, you’re faced with this reflection of yourself, learning something new, fumbling through it, sometimes appreciating your body doing exactly what you want…and sometimes not.

The beauty is that, after you warm up, you work on one dance. One song, over and over, for an hour and a half. Until you really have it.

During the class, every time we struggled with the elaborate hip-hop footwork, the instructor kept reminding us: “Trust your feet.” He must have said it thirty times. And every time I heard it, my mind would flash back to the studios I grew up in, the mirrors reflecting me as a 10-year-old…a 15-year-old…and an 18 year old who made it all the way to NYC.

I trained for this, I reminded myself. My feet know what to do. I can trust them.

We train so that, eventually, we can let go. We sweat and drill and try again, not so we can control every movement, but so we don’t have to.

As with any training, we also carry these lessons in letting go into the rest of our lives. Parenting. Writing. Cooking dinner. Even just making it through a rough morning.

We build systems, routines, muscle memory—not because we are trying to become perfect, but because we’re actually trying to let go of looking at and evaluating everything as if we are outside of it. We are trying to let go of how we look in the proverbial mirror. About how other people are doing it. About whether the choreography is “right.”

That moment, where hard training meets ease and presence and embodiment and flow — that’s when it gets beautiful. That’s where it gets fun! That’s when it becomes art.

My point is: I’m realizing that all of those hours in the studio, for me, were never just about getting good. They were about getting free.

And when the goal is getting free, discipline is not the destination. It is simply the doorway.

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In the subscriber chat this week, we’d like to invite you to consider and share:

• What have you trained for — or lived through — that has taught you to trust yourself, even when the going gets tough? Your intuition, your muscle memory, your skill?

• Where are the places in your life (if any) where it feels safe to experiment with trusting that you have what you need -- experience, training -- to respond skillfully to reality in this moment? To move and flow through the proverbial choreography you already know, without looking in the mirror to see if what you're doing is "right"?

We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

In the meantime, a few reminders:

• We’ll circle up on Zoom today at 10:30am EST to talk about the challenges of caring locally while thinking globally (the topic chosen by our community via the poll in his post). If you haven’t signed up to get the link yet, you can do so until 9:30am EST today here.

• Can’t make it today? No worries. We’ve got several more gatherings coming up. Each one includes time for grounding meditation, a facilitated circle discussion, and other opportunities to continue the conversation with other likeminded caregivers. Here’s where you can find us for the rest of 2025:

  • Affirming neurodivergence (ours and/or our kids'): Tues August 5th, 10:30am EST

  • Caring for other adults: Tues Sept 2, 10:30am EST

  • Navigating cross-generational conversations about care: Tues Sept 30, 10:30am EST

  • Making space for grief: Tues Oct 28, 10:30am EST

  • Burnout prevention: Dec 2, 10:30am EST (note: this is the week after Thanksgiving)

We hope to see you at one or many of these gatherings soon!

xoxo

Ryan + Meredith

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There’s a lot to figure out.

I have been trying to touch in with gratitude for the systems already in place. Our lungs continue to breathe, unbidden. Our new home’s air conditioning thankfully works. As we drive through our new neighborhood, we see other signs of interdependent systems: Pride flags, little free libraries, hand-painted signs advertising eggs from a neighbor’s chickens.

And yet, I also feel a sense of sadness and confusion when I zoom further out. At what point does this expansive, life-giving sense of “us” give way to a brittle, boxed-in story about “them,” leading politicians to strip elderly folks of their healthcare, or prevent starving mothers and children in Gaza from getting food?

I have also noticed many moments in which my sense of compassion quietly curdles into self-criticism or even shame: Why aren’t I doing more to stop this from happening? Who am I to enjoy all of this when it cannot be shared with all of us?

Accountability is very important in community-building, of course. But shame doesn’t build; it isolates. And those who are suffering need us to come together and act collectively on their behalf. Now more than ever.

As reminds us here:

[W]hat would Martin Luther King Jr. have been without masses of organized people? A pastor. What would George Washington have been without the forces of history culminating in millions of colonists willing to fight for independence? A plantation owner.

In this light, it makes more sense to mark the Fourth of July in America as a day of interdependence, not independence. So that’s what I’ll be doing this year. I am reminding the more fearful or anxious parts of me that my work is to find the others who feel as I do, not to find all the answers and know what to do.

This week, I’m looking forward to hosting my friend Jonny Adler, an anti-racist social studies teacher who appeared in this interview a few months back, and offered us this syllabus for the resistance. If anyone will have insight into this historical moment, it’s a history teacher. After that, my mom — who taught me some of my earliest lessons in feminist social critique — will be moving in with us for a time, so that we can offer support to one another, even as the social safety net around us threatens to fall apart. Members of our community here at In Tending will also be gathering on Zoom next Tuesday, and I am looking forward to seeing what kind of support we can offer each other.

To that end, a few links and reminders:

We’ll be getting together for our July In Tending gathering next Tuesday, July 8 at 10:30am EST on Zoom, with a particular focus on caring for kids in K-12.

If you’re planning to attend, please vote for the topic you’d like to discuss below.

If you haven’t yet signed up for our Zoom gathering mailing list (which is separate from this newsletter list), please do so here by Tuesday July 8 at 9am to receive the Zoom link.

Can’t make it? Please swing by the In Tending subscriber chat, where we’re reflecting on how we’re rebuilding the support systems in our lives that were lost to 2020.

There’s also an extensive archive of posts here at In Tending that speak to the power of sangha to support us as we attempt to build a better world for our children. We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Here’s a few:

Many other incredible writers are also speaking this week about the intersections between community and compassionate action. Here are a few links I loved this week:

• ’s deep dive on interdependence “as root, path, and liberation.” She’ll be exploring this theme all month in , and hosting a “moonlit sit” on July 10 along these lines.

• ’s gentle parenting of reluctant Republican lawmakers who aren’t ready to use their “purple voices” to put a stop to harmful legislation

• This beautiful piece on the metaphor of dirt, by

• This exploration of what “agency” means in midlife, when you are engaged in the care of both kids and elders, by

• An inquiry into the difference between offering prayers vs. making demands, and accepting that regardless of which we choose, we cannot control every outcome, by

• A list of ways in which Buddhist sanghas can be more vocal in calling for ceasefire in Gaza, by

• A similar call to action and an acknowledgement of our deep collective suffering by , who writes, ““Millions around the world witness, hearts breaking, knowing we could not stop the slaughter. Not because we didn’t care, but because we had no access to the levers of power.” For those similarly touched, and similarly frustrated with this lack of access to the levers of power, Thanissara will also be hosting a Liberation Circle on Tuesday July 8 (details here).

May we find the others, whatever that looks like for us this week. May we know that even as we suffer, we remain interdependent, connected to one another in an unbreakable web.

And regardless of whether we choose to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July, commemorating a season of resistance that has come and gone, may the flickering candles of our desire to build a happier, healthier, more liberated future for ourselves and our children remain lit.

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— Ryan

The term “support system” is one of those things I (Meredith) didn’t think much about before the world shut down in 2020. Then, honestly, I didn’t think much about it because I was too busy being it: creating all of the systems and providing the support.

It was a bummer not being able to take my youngest baby (who had his first birthday in March 2020) to library story time or play groups. But as a whole, I felt an odd relief at not needing to code-switch between our home lives and the outside world, at not having to interact with the outside world much at all. To the extent that anyone was in charge, I was now in charge, so I set up our days around Zoom school and playing in the yard, so that my husband could work on Microsoft Teams. I felt self sufficient. My identity as a mother of four developed around that sense of self sufficiency, that “I am the support system” point of view.

Here we are, five and a half years later, and this is not that. The school year that just ended saw me driving all four of my kids to school each day, then picking them up in the afternoons, often at two or three different times. I drove back and forth to tae kwon do classes so many times that I still sometimes end up there by accident when I’m driving and my mind wanders. During the school year, the orchestrated chaos of snack, homework, extracurriculars, and bedtime flies off the rails when something like traffic shifts the schedule by three minutes.

But now it’s summer. I can breathe.

Now, I can go days without getting in my car and obsessively checking the ETA on my maps app. Three of my four kids are now at camp instead of hanging around at home. In this moment, I have a short window where I am able to reflect on how things are going for our family. I can sit on the deck with my coffee, and begin to untangle the complex web of kid stuff, marriage stuff, parent stuff. I can meditate.

One big thought keeps running through my mind is this: I don’t want to enter into another school year with me, myself, and I as the support system. Instead, I can knit together a system that works for me. I have done a lot of work in this regard during the past few years, particularly within my neighborhood. My husband and I got our neighborhood association up and running again. I made our home the “neighborhood hub” for our kids. I am currently in the process of creating a non-partisan community group to encourage civic participation in my city.

Getting to know the people who are physically close to me has made it obvious that we are all so busy now; another way that this is not that. Ironically, this presents a new obstacle to getting outside support. What has changed is that I now understand that I can’t continue to be “the helper” without asking for help as well.

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Now that the term “support system” is on that I use regularly, I am able to play with the thought of interconnected systems. My family system, my community system, and my personal systems can all be spools from which I weave together a support system. As the systems in which I participate intertwine, my hope is that they all become stronger.

So now, I’m wondering: What does your current support system look like? How does it differ from the one you had in 2020? How has the way you think about terms like “support system” or “mutual aid” changed shape during that time? Please tell us more in the chat:

— Meredith

Weaving our threads together: join us for an upcoming In Tending gathering on Zoom!

If you are a caregiver who is moving through a season of clearing out more space in your life to touch in with clarity, community and creativity, and you’d like to find other likeminded people who are doing the same, please join us for a synchronous version of these chats on Zoom, which we host every month. We’ve chosen themes for each monthly gathering that appear again and again in our community, so that we can explore them in-depth within smaller groups. Each session includes some grounding meditation, a facilitated circle-format discussion, and additional meditation or writing prompts as desired by the group. It’s become one of our favorite forms of mutual aid, and we’d love for you to be a part of it.

• Caring for K-12 kids: Tues July 8, 10:30am EST

• Affirming neurodivergence (ours and/or our kids'): Tues August 5th, 10:30am EST

• Caring for other adults: Tues Sept 2, 10:30am EST

• Navigating cross-generational conversations about care: Tues Sept 30, 10:30am EST

• Making space for grief: Tues Oct 28, 10:30am EST

• Burnout prevention: Dec 2, 10:30am EST (note: this is the week after Thanksgiving)

If you’re not signed up to get the Zoom invites for our community gatherings, please click the button below to get on the invite list, which keeps the Zoom container secure and workable for all. We can’t wait to see you!

Sign me up for Zoom invites!

Related reading:

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Welcome to summer—where every day seems to offer a thousand tiny choices. Or maybe it’s a thousand decisions.

There’s a difference, right?

The word choice feels expansive to me—open, exciting with possibility.

But when I say decision-making, the same situation feels heavier, like something I am responsible for.

The truth? Both are real.

I’ve been noticing where I feel pulled between two paths. Where one feels like a should, and the other feels like a breath.

Right now, I’m embracing the practice of choosing what feels expansive.

That’s looked like:

• Serving a snack dinner instead of following through with grilled burgers, corn on the cob, and watermelon—because even though that sounded summery and fun, it also felt like a lot.

• Putting up an auto-responder on my email, even though I’m not in a traditional job—because otherwise I’d keep seeing those unread messages and feeling quietly guilty for not responding.

• Skipping a road trip I was genuinely excited about—because pulling it off would’ve meant dealing with my check-engine light, packing the car with four kids AND our stuff, and somehow getting everyone ready for camp on the tail end of it. My body said no.

In each of those moments, I could feel the shift—between “I should push through this” and “I get to choose.”

When I paused to reframe it as a choice, even just in my mind, it opened up space. My shoulders moved down and back. I took a breath.

So as you set your summer intentions, here’s my invitation to consider:

• Where are you feeling pulled between two things?

• What happens when you shift from “I have to figure this out” to “I get to choose?”

• How does your body respond when you say it that way?

• What intentions suggest themselves after you ask and answer these questions for yourself?

Can’t wait to hear what you think in the chat.

— Meredith

Also: Save the Date for Our Upcoming Circle Series!

Our last circle of caregivers was so delightful that we’ve decided to keep the Tuesday morning time the same for the rest of 2025. Please save the date for these upcoming conversations!

• Caring for K-12 kids: Tues July 8, 10:30am EST

• Affirming neurodivergence (ours and/or our kids'): Tues August 5th, 10:30am EST

• Caring for other adults: Tues Sept 2, 10:30am EST

• Navigating cross-generational conversations about care: Tues Sept 30, 10:30am EST

• Making space for grief: Tues Oct 28, 10:30am EST

• Burnout prevention: Dec 2, 10:30am EST (note: this is the week after Thanksgiving)

If you’re not signed up to get the Zoom invites for our community gatherings, please click the button below to get on the invite list, which keeps the Zoom container secure and workable for all. We can’t wait to see you!

Sign me up for Zoom invites!

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If you can’t make it, we invite you to join the discussion in the chat this week, which has a similar focus: responding in ways that align with our values and best selves, vs. simply reacting. Read on for the prompt and chat discussion!

Last week, I talked to about a metaphor I often use when talking to people about the nature of creating and caregiving: rafting through rapids.

This week, I’d like to invite us to think about how we show up during tough tending seasons — including before, during and after.

Here’s a snippet from that conversation:

Ryan: I grew up whitewater rafting, so I often talk about [caregiving] in terms of river rafting. You’re not climbing to somewhere where you can rest forever. You’re navigating a terrain in which there are constant rapids.

With rapids, often you can scout them before you go in. You can walk the length of them. You can try to have a plan.

Then, you go through the rapid. Maybe it goes well. Maybe you flip and you lose all your beer. Tragic! And your first aid kit, or your favorite hiking boots, or whatever. Still, if you emerge with your life, it's a good river trip.

Then, there's a process called eddying out, where you float to the next calm place on the shore, and you pull up, and there’s an aftercare piece.

I think of this [moment in my life] as more of an eddying out than, “Ah, I've reached the plateau of forever perfection.” In this eddy, there’s really an existential questioning of, “Who am I now?” It can feel hard, though, to have the mental space or the practices to sense into, “What do I want? What do I most need?”

To recap, with tough tending seasons, there are many opportunities and ways to be present.

For example:

• Being present as we consider our intentions and the challenge or project we are about to undertake — if we’re lucky enough to see it coming, that is. This can include:

  • initiating whatever tasks and planning conversations are ours to initiate with others who share our “boat”

  • introducing new “crew members” to each other and helping them to build trust

• Being present as we breathe and move through the active stages of the challenge or project. In this stage, we’re not so much tinkering with how we want to go about things as actually going about them, taking in all relevant information from our surroundings and the people “rowing” alongside us while trying not to flip. Common rapids can include:

  • Attending the big meeting

  • Having the hard conversation

  • Moving to a new location

  • Experiencing changes to our support system and/or childcare schedule

  • Grappling with a new diagnosis or illness

  • Welcoming a new family member

  • Grieving a loss

• Being present with the aftermath of a tough tending season. This can look like:

  • reflecting on what went well

  • respectfully communicating any necessary feedback

  • re-regulating our nervous systems

  • offering support for the aftercare of others in the “boat” who may be feeling distressed

  • celebrating what went well and/or widening our perspective to include gratitude for what came before

  • allowing ourselves to rest and re-set before jumping into the next stage of scouting.

Many of us have areas of strength and areas of struggle when it comes to the stages above.

• Some of us are excellent at intention-setting, and incredible in a crisis, but when we exit the rapids, we struggle to rest and re-set.

• Some of us might struggle to show up for the scouting stages or identify more strongly with a “spontaneous” approach.

• Some of us might freeze and drop our oars out of fear or overwhelm, even when we know we’re supposed to be rowing through a rapid. Afterwards, we might be flooded with shame.

• Some might be more than happy to savor a moment of solitude at the end of the process, but then become attached to the feeling of being eddied out, resisting the call to keep going down the river even, as the sun begins to set or food supplies begin to dwindle.

We're halfway through our current monthly cycle of intention-setting, and this is sometimes where the proverbial "waters" can get rough. This is especially true as the seasons change (and along with them, often our schedules and support systems).

There are as many ways to approach tough transitions as there are tenders in this community. Are there patterns that you notice in terms of how *you* tend to show up in the rapids? Are you a planner or a "pantser”? Someone who's great in a crisis or looks to others to lead? Someone who loves the exhale at the end of a hard season or someone who tends to keep a constant lookout for the next big challenge to come?

Note: There’s no judgement implied in this prompt. Just an invitation for us to get curious, while also meeting our habitual patterns with compassion. And to learn from one another, if there are approaches you notice in yourself that have helped you meet life's hard moments with more mindfulness, resilience and empathy.

If you’re ready to jump into the chat, you can do so here.

And if you’re interested in going deeper with this topic, stay tuned for my upcoming interview with , in which we dive more deeply into the ways in which we can work with our fear to show up more fully in our lives and relationships. Subscribe here to get that sent straight to your inbox! And stay safe out there in the rapids, everyone.

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Related reading:

– Václav Havel

Last week, we set intentions for the summer, which for many caregivers of young children starts this week, as some daycares close their doors. (There’s still time to jump into that thread here; paid subscribers also received a downloadable/printable journaling page to support their process.)

For this week’s Mutual Aid thread, we’d like to invite our community members to support one another in noticing what is already here.

In particular, we’d like to invite you to share one thing that’s giving you wise hope.

Setting intentions for the future and finding wise hope in the moment are two sides of the same coin, in our world. With both, the invitation is to allow ourselves to relate to ourselves and others with integrity and a sense of agency, while meeting reality with equanimity.

The invitation is to accept, on the one hand, that we alone are responsible for our actions, and for the ways in which those actions support or don’t support our practices, while also accepting, on the other hand, that we did not create the external conditions in which we make our choices, nor can we alone influence the outcome of our shared human predicament.

The invitation is to remember that in addition to the harms of the world and the challenges we face as caregivers, there is also resilience, and beauty, and beings who are willing to put their time and energy on the line to ease others’ suffering. (Like you, the caregivers in our community, who give us wise hope every day.)

Photos of the things that are giving you hope are especially welcome! Show us the birds’ nest outside your window, the protest signs you spotted last weekend, or anything else that offers us a glimpse of the glimmers that are keeping you going, or the things you are savoring in spite of ::: gestures widely to everything :::. Because we could all use more of that.

To read more about wise hope, a term that comes from the work of Zen chaplain Roshi Joan Halifax, click here. I also appreciated reading this lovely take on the relationship between rebellion and hope this week from , another great Zen thinker and writer based in New Mexico.

If you’re a caregiver for kids aged 0-5, we’ve got an additional invitation and poll for you below. If you’re ready to jump into the chat now, however, here’s the portal:

Our first gathering for caregivers of children aged five and below on June 10 at 10:30am EST. If you haven’t signed up to receive Zoom invites for our gatherings, please click here.

If you are in this category of caregivers or have been in the past, we’d love your feedback on which topic feels most relevant for us to discuss.

This poll below contains some of the topics we’ve been considering, drawn from our post and discussion about this here.

You can vote on a topic for our meet-up below with a click; if your topic of interest is not on the list, please post it in a comment below!

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In case you missed it:

Meredith Rodriguez, my fearless In Tending co-pilot, recently sat down with me to talk about her wealth of experiences in caregiving, from running a classroom to becoming a mom before most of her friends to juggling the needs of four kids aged five to fifteen. I hope you’ll read on, and find yourself loving her perspective as much as I do. We’ll both be in attendance on June 10; we look forward to continuing the conversation with you!