While I really revere Buddhist teachers who lived and died before I was born, there is something really special about learning alongside a contemporary. is such a teacher. In our 20s, we both lived in NYC; I took my refuge vows at the meditation center where he taught. At that time, I was grateful for his relatable guidance on things like dating and dealing with hard bosses while Buddhist, as captured in books like The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, published in 2012.

Now, we’ve both moved up into the bucolic, hilly region that stretches from the Hudson Valley, where Lodro lives, to Central MA, where I live. We’re trying to figure out how to build community in our respective rural areas. We’re entering our sandwich generation years, caring for small children while also tending aging adults. And fortunately, once again, Lodro is out with a new book that feels just-right for the times.

Lodro’s new book is called You Are Good, You Are Enough: Free Yourself from the Trap of Doubt and Return to Basic Goodness. Basic goodness, for the uninitiated, may sound sweet and Dr. Becky-ish—aww, everyone’s good inside! But the way it’s practiced by Buddhists is also quite radical. The Buddhist notion of basic goodness is the theological opposite of the Christian notion of original sin, which is a pretty consequential difference—one Buddhist-leaning parents need to consider if their extended family members expect their babies to get baptized. (I talk about how our mixed-tradition family is processing that one below.) It also invites us to consider that the politicians we dislike, the exes who still dislike us, and society at large are actually not f***’d up, but basically good.

Yeah. I know. I too still have questions. I asked a lot of them in the interview that follows, in which Lodro and I discuss:

• What it was like for Lodro to grow up in a flourishing community of meditators

• How becoming a parent influenced Lodro’s perspective on basic goodness

• How the Buddha himself confronted self-doubt

• How a golden Buddha statue became a guiding metaphor for the book

• Wrestling with our own inner critics as parents

• Removing the “second arrow” of judging ourselves for having a hard time, especially when caring for kids and aging adults simultaneously

• How to explain basic goodness to our children

• How basic goodness can help us feel less antagonistic toward “society” …

• ….And also like more effective activists—even when we’re not able to get out in the streets

I also want to note that Lodro’s wife, , is also a meditator and author who has offered me some excellent guidance as a teacher. Please look her up too!

Note: The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. It may still be cut short by some e-mail clients, so is best viewed in a browser. Alternatively, if you’d like to listen to the full un-cut audio, you can do so here.

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Ryan: Hi, Lodro.

Lodro: Hey, thanks for having me on this thing.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. How are you doing?

Lodro: I’m good. I am. But it’s so funny. On my very first book tour, someone invited me to do something in North Carolina, and I was like, yes, I can fit it in. I’ve got all these other plates spinning. And she was a meditation teacher. I’m a meditation teacher. And she said, it’s so interesting, us Buddhists all running around trying to get people to slow down. And I was like, I do feel a little bit like I am running around like crazy trying to get people to slow down.

But I am also slowing down, particularly now that the weather is changing and I can actually take some good fresh air outside.

Ryan: That’s very validating, because I too feel like I am running around very quickly trying to remind people to slow down.

Ryan: So you live in the Hudson Valley now, but where did you grow up?

Lodro: I’m originally from New York City. I was born and raised and we moved upstate when I was 9 years old. My mother—we’ll probably get to this—she’s a little bit older at this point, and she’s living about 20-25 minutes away from here. So we didn’t move up here solely because she’s here, but it is really helpful that we are now here.

On being raised by meditators

Ryan: What was it like for you to grow up in New York City? Particularly as the child of Buddhist meditators, which is a pretty unique experience to have there.

Lodro: Yeah, it is. I don’t have anything to compare it to, obviously, right? But I do recognize that it’s very unique that, as you mentioned, before I was even born, my parents were practicing Buddhism and meditation. So it was in the air when I was growing up, and not something that was ever pushed upon me.

But the story goes, at least this is how my mother tells it, that she found me sitting in darkness facing a wall. Other parents might have gotten creeped out by that sort of thing, but they sort of left me to my own devices.

And at dinner that night, they said, what were you doing? And I said, I was meditating. And they said, explain what that means. And I said, well, I was noticing that I was breathing, and when I got distracted, I came back and noticed that I was breathing. They’re like, yes, that’s it. So I started at a young age.

Growing up in New York City, there was a lot of Buddhist community, believe it or not. I think probably more so than where I am now, for example, in upstate New York. And it felt very vibrant that there was a supportive culture for kids meditating. And there were little meditation things for families, and things like that. So it always was just sort of part of the culture, as opposed to a thing that just my family did, which I think is really unique.

Ryan: That is really unique. And I think one of the reasons why I felt there was the need to create In Tending is that for so many of us, we live in either places that are geographically distant from cities. Or it’s just not the kind of place where there’s a critical mass of contemplative parents and caregivers who want to get together, and maybe chip in on some childcare. I would love to see that blossom into the kind of scene that you’re describing; that’s really wonderful.

Lodro: I’m a big advocate for people creating the communities that they don’t see in the world around them. And I also would go so far as to say all the writing that I do is basically, “Why isn’t anyone having this conversation. We should be having this conversation. I guess we’ll start, right? Right.”

So this has that same quality. I mean, with In Tending, people go to it—I go to it—for the types of conversations that we’re not having elsewhere. And I think it’s really beautiful what you’re building.

Ryan: Thank you so much. That’s really high praise coming from you.

I’m curious just to hear more about this community that was so supportive of kids when you were growing up. What did that look like just logistically? How did the grown-ups make it happen? What was it like to be a kid in that community?

Lodro: It was admittedly a lot of like, “Okay, the adults are going to go do the serious meditation thing in the other room. Someone’s got to stay behind and hang out with the kids.”

Michael Carroll was one of those guys who was like, “You know what, I’ll stay behind with the kids.” And very sweetly, he would take us out and do basic open awareness mindfulness stuff with the kids. Where he’d say, “What do you notice? What do you gravitate towards on the street of New York What colors do you notice? What do you see? How do you engage with your world?”My mother always jokes that that means that we basically ended up playing with trash.

Many years later, I reconnected with him. And he is such a wonderful mentor to me at this point. That was when I was 3 to 6 years old, and now I’m 43, and that’s an incredible relationship to have still. This person’s not just like, “Oh, I remember you when you were a kid, and I used to let you play with trash,” but also, “I have noticed certain things about you over these decades, and I’m going to sort of reflect them to you and see what you think.” I’m very thankful for that relationship now.

Ryan: That truly is a very singular and amazing relationship to have had.

I’m also trying to picture that trash on the street. What part of New York City was that?

Lodro: I was in the Upper East, and I think that was more Midtown at that point that people were gathering.

Ryan: Midtown East, West?

Lodro: Ryan. I was 3 to 6 years old.

Ryan: Okay, fair enough. You’re like, “I think, I think there was a park, maybe.” So I’m picturing, you know, like bagel wrappers and coffee cups.

I ask because I once taught at a very fancy private school in Midtown overlooking the park. And do you know what we were doing for fifty grand a year inside? We were playing with trash.

Lodro: No.

Ryan: We were doing “junk construction.” It’s like, a whole thing. So, you were getting the finest education that New York City could provide.

And in addition, having this wonderful elder in your life. Like, God bless the people that will stay with the kids so that the grownups can meditate, right? I think we need that ingredient, for sure, in the communities that we’re building.

Who else took care of you?

Lodro: I want to give my parents credit where it’s due, that they really raised me in this culture of—and this is a term that we’re going to keep probably coming up against today—basic goodness.

I think the meditation was helpful, but it was really these two individuals who decided, in how I relate to this child, that they are basically good, whole, complete, as is. Not my kid’s a mess, or not there’s something fundamentally wrong, or maybe we should worry about this sort of thing with the kid. If things go wrong—and they do, because kids will do stuff—it means that the kid made a mistake, not that this is a bad kid or that this kid is in need of fixing. And I think that point of view is probably the best gift that they actually gave me.

That view is the topic of this book, You Are Good, You Are Enough, which is my brand new one that I’ve been working on for a gazillion years, because it really is in my mind. Like, the thing that I have learned over the decades of meditation practice, teaching Buddhism, all of it, it all sort of boils down to this: do we regard ourselves with a sense of compassion and understanding that we are basically good? Or do we think that there’s something fundamentally wrong with us and are always chasing things to try and fix and hold that up?

I think the fact that [basic goodness] was imbued in me very young is an incredible gift, and probably the best gift I could have received.

Ryan: Absolutely. And, I’m really hearing the interplay between your family and also the community that reinforced that.

The thing that I have learned over the decades of meditation practice, teaching Buddhism, all of it, it all sort of boils down to this: do we regard ourselves with a sense of compassion and understanding that we are basically good? Or do we think that there’s something fundamentally wrong with us and are always chasing things to try and fix and hold that up? — Lodro Rinzler

Ryan: I think that many people that come to In Tending have had very different religious experiences—where their basic goodness was not affirmed, and where really, their church community made belonging very conditional on a certain way that they needed to be in the world. Like a certain gender presentation, or certain kinds of behaviors that we do and don’t engage in. Not because they’re skillful or unskillful, but because somebody long ago made up a rule about it.

[Audio note: Dogs start barking, doubting basic goodness of intruders in yard]

Lodro: So I have a friend who came to my meditation stuff and started doing classes with me, and ultimately did a teacher training with me. And he told me—he is queer—that he grew up with the message, first, that something’s very fundamentally wrong with you, that you like boys.

And then, even when he came out, there was some sense of, oh, we accept you for you, but there is still something subtle there, of like, but maybe something’s wrong or broken. Like, okay, some people are accepting me, but …dot dot dot.

When he first heard of this topic of basic goodness, the idea that actually you were born 100% whole, complete, good as-is—and then a lot of societal whispers came into your ear saying that’s not true—it radically changed his entire life. And I don’t mean to be like, this is the book that’ll change your life, but it has this quality, of that shift in view.

We don’t even realize how much we’ve bought into those stories that we’re not enough, that we’re not good enough, that we always need to do more, that we’ll never be successful, that actually if everyone knew X, Y, and Z about us, they wouldn’t invite us onto their team, be in a relationship with us, be friends with us, whatever. That is effed up that we all carry that with us. And then we also think it’s all only me that has that.

So this whole book is about how do we let go of that—what we call the trap of doubt—long enough to reconnect to that initial state of, oh yeah, I am okay as I am, and to live our life through that lens?

I think the communities that I grew up with, I think that’s really the gift that they gave to me.

Ryan: Absolutely. And now, what an amazing inheritance to give to your daughter.

How becoming a parent influenced Lodro’s perspective on basic goodness

Ryan: So now, you have a 2.5-year-old daughter. Do you feel that wanting to focus on this topic coincided with your parenthood journey at all? How has your parenthood journey informed how important this topic is to you?

Lodro: I started writing this book before my daughter was even born. And then it changed pretty radically once she was.

When a kid is born, we see the reality of basic goodness. No kid comes into this world believing that they’re not enough, that something’s broken within them. That is something that they learn. It’s been fascinating and heartbreaking to see my daughter, at this point, start to engage her world fully, and to have moments of unbridled confidence that she is awesome as she is. And then to come up against a situation where a kid steals her toy, where she feels awkward in a group, or whatever, and to watch that sense of doubt start to creep in. I’m like, “Oh no, it happens this young!” You know?

And we could do the best job we can in terms of trying to make sure this kid knows that she is basically good, and there will still be other people at work, her friends, her peers, that might and will probably undermine some of that language. And it’s terrifying, because we all go through this.

How the Buddha himself confronted self-doubt

Ryan: In your book, you talk about the fact that people have been noticing this for thousands of years, about basic goodness as obviously predating the Buddha. The Buddha didn’t invent basic goodness; he articulated it. And then the concept was articulated again and again, in different ways, as a place to come back to. As kind of a North Star within the Buddhist tradition.

You also talk about the fact that doubt has been with us, too, for a really long time. That within the story of the Buddha, doubt is even personified, as the demon Mara. And that one of the final obstacles that he had to come up against, before enlightenment, was really doubt in his own basic goodness and what he had to say, what he had to share.

So Mara is here in these big mythological stories, but also Mara is here in our playgroups, and on the playground and in interactions with teachers that maybe are not being diplomatic, or whatever. Mara is old, and also still here.

I’m curious to have you speak about that kind of duality—which eventually maybe we would transcend as Buddhists. This sort of dance between doubt and basic goodness, and how that has been talked about in Buddhist literature. I know that you are so good at making ancient sutras so relevant to us and explaining them in this very relatable way. So what has already been said about this? And where does your commentary fit into that tradition?

Lodro: That’s very kind of you.

I remember, since we were just talking about my parents, when I was young, I asked how we came to be. It was one of these very big philosophical questions for a 6-year-old. And my mother said, “Well, we were awake, and then we second-guessed ourselves, and then ignorance was born.”

I love that answer, because it is that sense of, fundamentally, we are awake. The story of the Buddha is a story of someone who discovered that wakefulness within himself. It’s not like he transcended everyday concerns and thus went to a higher state of being. He was like, Oh, I’ve been good all along. I am inherently wakeful.

At the time where the Buddha started to really understand that, he’s sitting under this tree, and [sees] Mara, who is either an actual being, or just the way that we talk about the various obstacles that come up when we actually start to address some of the things going on with us. When we start to meditate, for example. So all of a sudden, lots of versions of passion came up, and tried to take the Buddha’s mind away from this topic, and he backhanded that away very gently. And then same thing, with aggression, and different versions of that. And finally, Mara said to the Buddha, or soon-to-be Buddha, ‘Who do you think you are anyway? You think you’re worthy enough that you of all people get to wake up and become fully awake, to become a Buddha?”

It’s in that moment that the Buddha is said to have touched the ground and it literally shuddered under him. There was this sense of real confidence—that I’m inherently worthy, that I’m inherently awake, all beings are inherently awake, and it’s not just me. And Mara is like, “Okay, enough, this guy’s too much,” and fled. And that’s the moment that the Buddha was then able to see his way through the last obstacles and become fully awake.

So I think I’m talking about a very big topic of enlightenment, reconnecting to “Buddha nature.” And in the West, starting in the ‘70s, we started referring to that as basic goodness. That is a term that started with the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and then has spread wildly. Even the last two decades, you see Tibetan Buddhist teachers use it, Insight meditation teachers, Zen teachers. It’s sort of entered the common parlance for a reference to that sense of underneath all of this, we are already all complete as is.

So the duality that you’re referring to is that sense of, we could say, Mara and the Buddha. But we could also just say it’s that little voice inside us that says you’re doing this wrong or you shouldn’t have said that on that podcast.

Once we let go of that, just even for a second, we can say, “No, actually, that’s not real. What’s real right now is I’m sitting down with a friend, I’m having a meal, I’m driving my car. I can be with that.” And that can even allow us to come back to that sense of wholeness and completeness.

How a golden Buddha statue became a guiding metaphor

Lodro: I share another story in the book right at the beginning—and forgive me if people already know this one—from Thailand, where in the mid-20th century, these monastics were moving this large clay Buddha statue. And they dropped it. It actually fell, and it cracked open. They started examining the cracks, and they saw that there was some sort of glimmering happening underneath the clay. They chipped gently away at it. And they were like, “There is solid gold underneath this clay.”

It came out that centuries earlier, to protect the statue from invading tribes, it’d been covered over in clay to disguise its value. And then people over time forgot the true nature of what this thing was. And now people travel all from all over the world, to see the statue that happened to be gold all along.

That’s who we are. We’ve forgotten we are gold. We have covered ourselves in layers of focusing on our imperfections, or our flaws, or the thing that we did, where we are never going to let ourselves off the hook for whatever it is. We are taught implicitly, explicitly, that we are not enough as we are. And then we start searching outside ourselves for happiness, contentment, instead of actually saying, “Well, if I actually just let go of some of these stories, I could reveal that true golden nature underneath.” That’s what basic goodness is.

Ryan: I love the image of the golden Buddha covered over with clay—and clay that was originally put on to protect the Buddha. Because that’s what so many of our protective mechanisms are about, right? It’s about protecting something vulnerable in us.

Even our inner critics, in a sort of Internal Family Systems theory way, can be thought of as protectors. They’re trying to protect us from messing up, looking bad, hurting somebody, right?

But over time, it’s like we forget that there was anything underneath the clay. And that the clay was there, perhaps temporarily, to protect something that was vulnerable, and we might not need that anymore.

Lodro: Yes.

On wrestling with our own inner critics as parents

Ryan: You talk in particular about just wrestling with your own inner critic in ways that I found really, really relatable.

I have followed your work since I was in my 20s. And even when I was meditating, I was always still doing things in my 20s that weren’t that cool, and that I regret. And I still think about them. And you write about that too, in ways that I really appreciated.

Now that we’re parents, it also feels like there’s this inner critic voice that’s constantly monitoring the choices that we make as parents, because the stakes are higher. When we make choices, they impact this little being that is very vulnerable.

You and I also both care for aging parents, and the stakes of the decisions that we make also ripple outward to them. So even though we’re maybe older and wiser, and not making the same kinds of 20-something mistakes, there might be fewer in quantity, but the rippling effects of them, the impact of them, the consequences of them, feel bigger.

I’m wondering if you could talk about what your experience of your own inner critic, your own sort of clay has been like, as you’ve transitioned into parenthood, and how you work with it now?

Lodro: Gosh, it’s a really brilliant question. Thank you for that one. I do think that there’s a couple aspects of this.

[Dogs bark again, reminding us that pets too are part of this pile of adult responsibility.]

I think there’s a couple layers to this.

One is that sense of making peace with past versions of ourselves. Apparently every cell in this body dies, and is replaced over a period of 7 years. I think of myself as one continuous thread, but the reality of the situation is that this was two bodies ago, in our 20s. And doesn’t mean that I’m dead and reborn or anything. It’s just a sense of I need to give myself grace, and realize that I am constantly growing and understanding more and more of this world and how to be in this world as I practice and as I age.

Those two things have gone really hand in hand as someone who’s grown up meditating. The meditation, I think, has helped me start to see where my habitual ways of doing things aren’t working, and to sort of undercut some of those tendencies that aren’t, and also to strengthen the ones that are. To be honest, it goes both ways.

There’s some discernment that arises out of meditation: Here’s what I want to cultivate more of. Here’s what I want to cut down or cut out. And now that we are the age that we are, and we are taking care of older parents and also young beings, I do find that the same sort of tendencies come out. Like, when I am stressed or overwhelmed, my fuse is shorter, right? But I know that about myself at this point. So I also know—I’m gonna refer to my kid here—I’m gonna set you up with your Tonie box over here. I’m just going to step outside for a minute, and come back to the breath for a few minutes, particularly now that it’s nice out, and let the sun actually hit me. Then I’ll come back in.And now we’re going to go and try and talk you into going to music class again.

But there’s some sense of, “Oh my gosh, I know my tendencies so much better than I used to. I also know that it’s entirely within my control to make better choices.”

And I think this is an area where so many of us get stuck. For example, people will say, “I’m an anxious person,” or “I’m an angry person,” whatever their thing may be. And that becomes an identity marker that, frankly, they just buy into wholesale, as opposed to, “This is something I’m working on.”

I think just having that view throughout that “Oh no, I’m not an anxious person. I’m a basically good person who gets anxious sometimes,” it makes the whole situation so much more workable. “Oh, when my mind wanders, that means that it’s up to me. I have the choice to continue to spiral about the thing, or acknowledge the thing and come back to what’s happening right now.” There is just, again, a sort of lessening of that harm.

Because, as you noted, the impact is so much greater. The last thing I ever want is for my child to feel afraid because I snapped or something, or that my child would ever feel ignored because I’m too lost in my head to be there with her, or whatever the thing may be. I feel like I’ve been meditating for a couple decades now to train me for the demand of a being who’s like, “Please be 100% present and here with me, in an open and emotionally available way.” It’s like, okay, this is the thing I’ve been training for.

I feel like I’ve been meditating for a couple decades now to train me for the demand of a being who’s like, “Please be 100% present and here with me, in an open and emotionally available way.” — Lodro Rinzler on parenting a toddler

Lodro: I will say, because that makes me sound like I’m really good at this, I’m better at this point with my daughter than I am with my mother who has dementia, and some of the unintentional—it has to be considered unintentional, because of the dementia—abuse that I experience at her hands. She’s in sort of a late stage, and can at times be very mean and very cutting, and threaten to do things that she ultimately would never in her right mind do.

My wife says a lot of wise things. One of them is, “Our family knows how to push our buttons because they’re the ones that installed them there in the first place.” So I am walking this tightrope walk of not necessarily allowing those buttons to get pushed too deeply, or if they are, to reset them as quickly as I can, so that I don’t do anything that would ever negatively impact my mother. And then to also make sure that I’m not installing these sorts of buttons in my child. But there are often times when both of them are demanding my attention at the same time. It’s hard. It’s definitely hard. And if there’s ever a place to talk about it, it’s here on In Tending.

Ryan: Thank you for saying that. And again, it’s very validating to hear that somebody who has been meditating for literally ever finds that to be difficult.

And I share that sense that it is often much easier to touch into the basic goodness of children, in my experience—and this may not be true for everybody—than it is to touch into the basic goodness of our elders, particularly ones who are closest to us. It feels as though there’s just so many more layers of clay.

Lodro: Exactly. Thank you. That’s it. It’s the layers of clay. It’s real.

And I mean, listen, I think we just all have to be very real about these conversations. It doesn’t make us worse practitioners for admitting that at times, that cutting thing from the elder parent hurts. It’s very human. We’re all humans.

A while ago, I have a friend who is in creative directing, and he asked. “Well, what’s the brand for your book, and for you doing the new book?” I was like, “I’m just a human. I’m a very human human. There’s no brand there.”

But if you had to put a label on it, it’s that I will be entirely honest about the humanity of it all. And I can believe that I’m 100% basically good, and also challenged at times, and I don’t have to be perfect.

Ryan: And I do feel like that is something that feels as though it’s a pressure, one that people who are engaged in mindfulness then put on themselves.

If you’ve been meditating for a while and you still get hooked by these incredibly challenging things that come up in caregiving, then I find that sometimes it makes us more prone to self-criticism, because there’s this narrative that I should be better at this. I should be more mindful. I should be more compassionate.

Lodro: Right.

On removing the “second arrow” of judging ourselves for having a hard time

Ryan: I wonder if we could talk a little bit about the second arrow, because I think that’s what we’re talking about.

Lodro: Yeah, absolutely. So it’s a beautiful analogy that I find myself saying to people like a couple of times a week at this point, because so many of us struggle with this.

So, imagine going through this field and out of nowhere an arrow comes and hits you in the arm. Now, the thing objectively we know she should do is we should take the arrow out and tend to our healing. The thing that we often do instead is we say, “Who shot that arrow? I bet it was Charles. Charles has always been out to get me. It’s absolutely that person. This is totally like them. When I get back to the office, I’m going to tell everyone what a jerk Charles is.I’m going to turn everyone against him. And he can’t do this. He can’t get away with it.” And that is the second arrow.

The first arrow is there is suffering that happens as part of life. The Buddha said right out the gate, there’s going to be aging and sickness and death, and all sorts of things that are going to shift under your feet, and real-world events that are suffering. They just are. What do you do in response to that? What we often do is we give in to the second arrow.

So the first arrow is: there’s suffering as part of life. The second arrow is: there’s then suffering that we layer on top, in our own mind, that we don’t necessarily need to engage in.

We don’t need to go to that story. In fact, if we didn’t go to that story, it’d be a lot easier to pluck that arrow out and tend to our healing.

It’s the second arrow that is where a lot of us struggle. Not just, “Oh my God, I can’t believe that I lost that client,” but “Oh my God, I lost that client because I’m not good at my job, and everyone hates me. And no one’s going to want to work with me.” That’s the second arrow, right?

Ryan: Right. Yeah. That’s Mara showing up.

Lodro: Yeah. All of it. Yes.

Ryan: I think that it’s just really important to talk about that. Because I do think that when we talk about basic goodness, it’s not just a neat idea. It really is a pretty radical reframing of the way that we see harm and responsibility.

I think of the two stories as, one, the who’s bad and who’s to blame story. And again, in some religious traditions, that’s the story. And there’s a lot of discussion around who’s bad and who’s to blame, and also who’s good and who is worthy, or worthier, of the good things. And so that’s one story. And I think we’re living in that story, and we can see that from the way that children are disciplined to our carceral system.

And then there’s another story, which is: what are the needs and how can I meet them? Right? Like, so thinking, would it make more sense to pay attention to the fact that I need a doctor right now for this arrow? Or is it more important that I track down the person who shot it, or blame myself for being so eminently shootable?

I think that the shift towards what do we need and how do we meet the needs is really radical.

“So the first arrow is: there’s suffering as part of life. The second arrow is: there’s then suffering that we layer on top, in our own mind, that we don’t necessarily need to engage in.” — Lodro Rinzler

Ryan: Just to share a personal story from our family; my husband was raised Catholic, and he’s got this christening outfit—like, the whole nine yards—that has been passed down in his family forever. And his family asked us, would we like these garments? As in: are we choosing to go through that ceremony?

Being a Buddhist married to a fairly casual Catholic person, sometimes it makes sense to be like, “You know what, sure. let’s do it for the ‘gram, let’s give them some pictures.” But with this one, I’m like, “I really can’t back it.” Because the whole idea of baptism is that you’re born bad, and then you need to do these things in order to make the bad go away. And as a Buddhist, it really came back to basic goodness for me.

So I’m like, “With all due respect to your family traditions, that’s not what I believe. And that’s not the story that we’re going to tell in our home, and that’s not the reality that we’re going to raise our child in.”

And that’s a choice that we made fairly early on as parents. And I come back to that all the time.

In so many ways, the spiritual traditions of the world all point to this idea that we should be kind to ourselves and other people. And yet, without basic goodness being a bedrock part of the spiritual community, I think we can really kind of start to drift.

And that’s why I think this book is so important, because I don’t think that somebody in this era has really articulated what basic goodness is and what basic goodness isn’t. And also articulated, potentially, the objections that somebody raised in the who’s bad and who’s to blame story, through no choice of their own, would bring. “But what about this? What about this?”

Frequently asked questions—and objections—about basic goodness

Ryan: I’m curious to know what kinds of common questions you get when you say, actually, everybody’s basically good inside.

For example, I know you get a lot of questions about political leaders. I’m wondering if there are other objections that people have where they’re like, “Well, but in my special case, I am actually worthy of second arrowing. I really am terrible.”

Lodro: I haven’t found a lot of people who admit that. I think that people can be skeptical, and the way that they are skeptical about their own basic goodness is that they then say, well, what about this person?

Ryan: That’s so interesting.

Lodro: They’re trying to poke a hole somewhere, because they may not necessarily buy into the fact that they’re basically good. Sometimes it’s independent of those things, but sometimes people say, I can’t believe that my ex would be basically good. It becomes more personal, right? Right. Like, you haven’t met my ex. Like this person is really manipulative or whatever it is.

With that situation. I’m reminded of a story. It’s a horrible story, but I’ll share it.

I was on a book tour some years ago, and there’s the questions you noted I get quite frequently. At the time, it was, “What about Hitler? Hitler can’t be basically good.” Which we can get into if you want. We had some conversation about it, and I sort of said the perspective that I normally share.

On the way home, the person who was hosting me on that book tour said, “I’m so glad you said that. I don’t know if it’s relevant, but—” And she shared that she had married someone who had kids, and she also had kids, and it became a blended family. And one of her step-kids fell in with a very bad crowd in his late teenage years, and they were doing drugs, and they murdered someone. I’m basically just going towards a euphemistic version of the story because I don’t know the gory details of this, but it was gory, and sort of an unforgivable crime.

And he went to jail, and she went to visit him in jail, and found a completely closed-off human being who was not at all recognizable to her. And she had heard that thing about basic goodness. And she was like, “I don’t know, maybe not. Maybe we can just forget it. Maybe it’s something that comes and goes. Maybe it’s not always there.…but this is also my kid, and I’m going to keep coming back as much as I can.”

So she would regularly visit, and he would receive her, and It would continue on like that for some months. And then at one point, he asked about the family dog, and that was the entry point. They talked about the dog a lot. And then a couple of visits later, he asked if she could bring art supplies. He hadn’t done anything artistic in years. And she brought them, and he began painting.

And gradually—and it was still in process at the time that I was visiting— she said, “I’ve seen him come back to himself. To who this kid was, and that basic goodness that I saw before. I’m seeing it again.”

So I think of that. Because there are extreme cases, where people can get extremely confused about their basic nature. And going back to, “What about Hitler” or “What about that world-threatening politician?” It’s same sort of story. Like, this is not someone who’s doing well, folks. This is not someone who’s in touch with basic goodness and deciding to harm a lot of people. Those sorts of decisions come when we are feeling at our worst, quite frankly. When we’re so ignorant to the way that our actions are affecting others that we cause harm.

I’ve been there. You’ve been there. Like, maybe we aren’t at that scale of that world-threatening politician, but it is still similar. We can say that we feel not-good, and we are trying to make ourselves happy in ways that are not actually making anyone happy. That is something I know, something I see in others, and something I definitely see in the people that we would normally try and villainize.

So the story of this teenage kid who’s now in his 20s, it is a situation where it’s like, “It’s nice to remember that people can come back to themselves.” I’m not even going to say redeemed. I’m not going to say that this person should be forgiven. I’m just saying that they can come back to that sense of, “Oh, underneath some of these things I’ve gotten swept up in, I don’t only have to act from pain.”

Ryan: I can actually come back to something else. Yeah, absolutely.

How to explain basic goodness to our children

Ryan: And honestly, word for word, that is the description of why sometimes people do bad things that I’ve given to my 6-year-old son.

Like, if we’re talking about ICE, or if we’re seeing something in Star Wars that just doesn’t seem right. Even within Disney movies, you will see people dressed up as police who are supposed to be helpers, doing reprehensible things. And so the question is always, “Why would they do that, Mama?”

And so to me, I think it’s a much more legible, developmentally appropriate way to explain the world to a kid, to say, “Well, you know how sometimes you want more than you really need? You know how sometimes you feel really mad and you want to hit? You know how sometimes, like, you just don’t feel like being part of the solution process and you’d rather just go play Minecraft? Well, other people have those things going on inside of them too. And sometimes, they don’t have very nice mommies and daddies who are helping them learn to work with their minds, and so they just get bigger and bigger until they touch huge parts of the world.”

And I don’t know what your experience has been in talking to people about it, but even my 6-year-old seems to be able to really grasp that. Because it isn’t like, wow, this is an unimaginable evil that’s out there, right? It’s like Thich Nhat Hanh said: the real enemies of man are inside of us. They’re greed, aggression, delusion, cupidity.

And then it’s not about who’s bad and who’s to blame. It’s what’s needed? I think sometimes it’s about meeting the needs of the person that’s suffering and acting out. You brought up your aging parent—where it’s like, do we need to really get granular about why this person who is experiencing cognitive and physical decline is acting like a person who’s in cognitive and physical decline? I think we know why that is.

Lodro: Exactly.

Ryan: So it’s more about, what do we need to do? What’s needed? And I think that by shifting into that story, even if you aren’t fully in touch with that person’s basic goodness, you’re still acting out of your own, which is something.

And that’s something that we tell our son too: that we act in kind ways, not because the other person has shown us they deserve it, but because that’s the people that we’ve decided to be.

And truly, sometimes I can’t really touch into a sense that somebody deserves my kindness, but it’s who I’ve decided to be. And that feels more accessible to me. It’s a habit I’ve developed, right? If we’re Buddhists talking about habits, it’s like, well, my habit is, this is how I’m going to relate to somebody who seems like they’re really suffering.

Not always, to be clear, not always—as my husband will tell you. But if we shift into being inside of a different story, then different choices become possible for us.

Lodro: Yeah, 100%. And I think what you just said nailed that answer. We have to make it human, as opposed to something vague out there—that person, that politician, that we’ll never meet. It’s more like, “Have you ever acted out of impulse, hurt, whatever, and caused yourself harm? Yes. Have you ever done that and unintentionally harm someone else? Yes. Cool. So not same same, because the scope is different, but there is some similar come-from.” And then people start to say, “Oh, now there’s an inroad toward, if not compassion, at least understanding.”

Ryan: Yeah, right, exactly. It’s context. It’s not an excuse.

But I think the less we can be overwhelmed and confused and alienated from the actions of the people that are engaging in harm, the more we have a working theory for how these things arise, I think the more effective we can be in the world and taking action around it.

Lodro: I think that’s really the scope of it.

“Everyone is baby”

Lodro: So this book goes from, okay, I’m basically good, I can reconnect to my basic goodness, and then—well, there’s also all these other people in the world, and they’re basically good too. So there’s the people I like, and there’s the people I don’t like—which is hopefully a very small number of people.

And then this massive group of people called everyone else. The people that are riding their bikes by right now, or who I run into the grocery store, or whatever. And for them, they have the main character energy for their life. But for me, they’re a background player, right? But I treat them as all equally worthy of respect.

I think I shared at one point this piece that I wrote for the Substack that we do called The Laundry. And it was the best advice that my teacher, Kilung Rinpoche, gave me. I said, “I’m worried that when this child comes, I’m not going to be able to do long retreats and meditate as many hours a day as I currently am.” And he was like, “Uh, yeah. You’re not.” But here’s the thing, he said, and he was right: “Be attentive to baby. Just be present to baby.”

In those early months, I’d get in little bits of practice here and there, and it was like, “Okay, but now there’s this being right here, and this is the practice right now. I’m just 100% here with this being who at that point, at all communicative or communicates in different ways I’m trying to understand and make sense of—but there’s some sense of, okay, that’s the practice.”

And the more I started leaning into that practice, and the more we would be out in the world together, I’d be giving 100% attention to this being, and then there’s someone smiling at us in the other lane of the grocery store. And then all of a sudden, I find myself giving my full attention to that baby. Right? Like there’s some sort of shift that started happening of like, “Oh my gosh, all these quote-unquote strangers are also baby. Can I also recognize the goodness, and be as present as possible, with all of these beings?”

And then ultimately, society is made up of me, plus the people I like, the people I dislike, and the people I don’t know. That’s society. It’s not something massive out there. It is so human, and it’s us.

It’s us here in a mini-society on a podcast, talking about this for the Substack. It’s us, and people listening or people reading this later. They are part of this community too. They are actively caring about these issues, and they’re engaged with us. And then ideally, that then ripples into their family, or that then ripples into their care, or that then ripples into whatever work they do. And that society also is affected. So their family society, their work society, their caretaking society, whatever it is. And we all have those.

And that’s what society is. It’s a thousand bazillion little mini-societies that we’re all actively co-creating.

“We are always having an impact”

Lodro: And so there is some sense, going back a thousand questions, of trying to show up as best we can, knowing that we are always having an impact. This is the Buddhist truth of interdependence. If I came on distracted and annoyed about something from earlier, that would have a ripple effect in our conversation, and that would have a ripple effect on people listening, and so on. If I come in like, “I’m going to be fully authentic with Ryan, I’m just going to show up as open-heartedly as possible”— hopefully that then has the ripple effect in a positive way.

Ryan: Yes. And I think that feels so small and it feels so big.

Like, we were talking about how the decisions that we make in this position in our lives sometimes feel so small. I can’t tell you how many parents I talk to who are like, “I’m not out in the streets protesting and I feel like a failure as an activist,” you know? We can feel so helpless and inadequate when we are just buried in care tasks, because we’re not engaging civically the way we were in our 20s, right? Or our 30s.

And yet at the same time, there is a school of thought, and you can kind of balance the two perspectives, that every action I take as a parent right now is going to have enormous ripple effects that I cannot predict. Every decision I make, like you said, to step out and sit on the porch for 5 minutes, which I definitely did before this, for the reasons you name, can have these ripple effects.

And there’s also just that huge middle ground, between me and the political leader I deeply distrust. There’s this whole map of people that I can have a positive impact on.

And it’s almost like working a mathematical proof, where it’s like, “Well, if I’m basically good and I’m down with that, and that political leader is basically good, and I can at least experiment with that being true, then every single person in between is basically good, which means that … society is basically good?” Which is the bold claim that you make.

For me, it’s like—wow, that’s a much more manageable way to think about it, particularly as a woman, where it really does feel like society is this thing that is just pushing down on me, and all I can do is push a little back, and try not to crack. It’s like, “Oh yeah, I am part of all these societies.”

And it makes me think of adrienne maree brown talking about murmurations, and how actually as an activist, we can look to join a murmuration. Right? These sort of bubbling-up experiences of people, all at once, awakening to basic goodness—all at the same time, potentially in the same place, around the same issue. And suddenly you have Selma. You have the protests around George Floyd. You have these huge bubbling-ups that you can take part in.

And not every protest is going to be a murmuration, But I also think that it might just be knowing what murmuration you’re a part of that helps you feel as though your daily experiences of basic goodness are actually connected to something bigger—and that something bigger is going to maybe have an impact on something that feels really existentially huge, like climate change.

Ryan: So, You have 2 minutes left. Please tell me your thoughts on how basic goodness connects to questions like, how do we deal with climate change? No pressure!

Lodro: Yeah, no pressure.

I’ve made reference to throwing a stone in a pool of water, and that we don’t always see where the ripples will go. And the beautiful thing about the truth of interdependence is that we could march in the streets, we could write something politically active or positive on social media, it all has a ripple.

I think because we are in a Western society that wants to maximize productivity, we want the biggest ripple that we possibly can with the least amount of time. And I think it’s a very hard thing to do. Because, as you noted, many of us feel like, I only have so much time. I’m raising a child, I’m caring for an elder. Or there’s any number of things that take up all the other non-working hours of the day.

This push-pull is insane, don’t get me wrong. I have no idea how I have time for anything. But it starts to become, for me at least, less about what do I need to do and more how do I show up? Who do I want to be?

I once heard this described as the difference between resume and eulogy qualities. Resume qualities: here’s the things I got done, I sold this many books, or I made this many sales in Q2, or whatever your thing may be. A eulogy quality is: what do you want people to remember about you after you died? What do you want them to say? That you are a loving person, that you are kind, that you showed up and tried to make a difference.

That doesn’t get limited to going to that one march. It’s an everyday occurrence. Whoever you encounter, whether it’s someone who is on the other side of the political aisle in the grocery store, or calling your senator, it is how we show up that is going to have a ripple effect.

That’s the beautiful thing of the truth of interdependence. Just because we don’t see it all, just because there isn’t an immediate gratification, doesn’t mean that we’re constantly having having a positive impact, when we embody the qualities that we actually want to see in the world.

Ryan: Thank you for that. I think that’s a beautiful note to end on. And not only because I know you have to go—speaking of having very limited time.

Lodro: I mean, I could do this forever, but I meet with meditation students throughout the day, and I don’t want to keep them waiting either. If I’m talking about trying to be kind and generous, I should show up too for them.

Ryan: “Lodro was very punctual throughout his life.”

Lodro: That’s all I want.

Ryan: Okay, we’ll make a note.

Lodro: Though it’s probably more like, “Lodro was always one minute late.”

Ryan: Yeah, same.

Well, this was wonderful, and please do come back. And, thank you for taking the time. I can’t wait for your book to come out. Will you just tell us when it’ll be out, where it’ll be out, where we can find it? Where we can find you online?

Lodro: Yes. So You Are Good, You Are Enough— what’s the full subtitle here? Free Yourself from the Trap of Doubt and Return to Basic Goodness. It is so long, that title. I’m okay with it though.

You Are Good, You Are Enough comes out March 24th and is found wherever you get books. So you could go to bookshop.org, you could go to Barnes Noble, you could go to Amazon if you want to do that sort of It’s up to you. But if you do decide to pick it up, please feel free to reach out.

There’s lodrorinzler.com, which is probably the best place to find me. And you’ll also find free guided meditations on that page, for the book that are included there. There’s meditations in the book, and then I guide you in them if you prefer to listen to me give it.

And I’m also on Instagram as @lodrorinzler and also Facebook as LodroRinzlerSpeaks, and to some extent X and Bluesky, although perhaps less so.

If you do pick up the book, please feel free to reach out to me. I love hearing from people who engage in this work. I want to have that dialogue. It means so much to me that people still reach out from books that came out a million years ago. And it is that sense of throwing a book into the world, and this big stone falls into the pool of water, and I don’t know where the ripples will go. So if you are inspired by it, and you want to reach out to me, I would love to hear and see that ripple.

Ryan: Thank you so much. And you’re also my neighbor on Substack at The Laundry with your beautiful and amazing wife , who I really love and appreciate.

So yeah, lots of places to find you and tell you about the ripple effects that you’re having. I hope you get to hear that as a result of this book. And we’ll let you go now, with all apologies to your meditation students. You can just blame it on me. I’m bad, and I’m to blame!

Lodro: Perfect. Thank you so much.

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• A mother

• A writer

• A Buddhist meditator

• A person who’s into witchy shit

Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to run into , who instantly made me feel less alone.

Sarah’s a Southerner who was born into a Christian lineage, then raised by two queer moms. She practiced paganism in her teens. She came to Tibetan Buddhism a few years later. Now she writes a newsletter, , where she braids all of these spiritual strands together. Sarah’s work has also appeared in places like The Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, and Tricycle.

Sarah also teaches writing, as an artist-in-residence at Northwestern University, and at StoryStudio Chicago. In fact, next Wednesday 4/8 at 12pm, I’ll have the pleasure of co-teaching a workshop with Sarah called Tending Your Spiritual Truth. It’s designed especially for folks like us, and for so many people who read both of our newsletters—people who don’t fit neatly into any one particular tradition or box.

Save your spot for 4/8 here

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In our interview below, Sarah and I also talk more about the ways in which Buddhism intersects with our love for all that is wild and witchy—and how, as two life-long outsiders, we’ve both found a home in the place where these spiritual traditions come together.

Ryan: Where did you grow up? What was it like for you to grow there?

Sarah: I grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s in a family with two mothers in Lexington, Kentucky. My mothers’ relationship was queer platonic—one mother identified as straight, one mother identified as bisexual. I was conceived through a sperm donation.

Needless to say, this is an unusual situation to grow up in anywhere, but in Kentucky—especially pre-marriage equality—it was weird and difficult. I did not grow up with language to explain my family or see other families like mine, and we passed as straight for safety. In elementary school, I was sheltered from homophobia, but as an adolescent, I’d hear people use the word “gay” as a pejorative. The situation felt both very invisible and unacknowledged by my parents, which added to the complexity.

One thing that always helped me was feeling deeply connected to nature. I found an experience of solace and kinship there. Central Kentucky is gorgeous. It’s filled with hidden limestone caves, cliffs, sink-holes, and underground networks of springs, and to the east you have the foothills of the Appalachian mountains and places like Red River Gorge.

Later, when I would go to college at the University of Kentucky, I found pockets of weirdness and subversion in Lexington, its long queer history, and the incredibly rich literary world of Kentucky—which includes writers like bell hooks, Wendell Barry, Barbara Kingsolver.

Now, I am beyond grateful that I did not have a normal childhood. It’s been very freeing. I had to learn to self-define in a way that I don’t think I would have if I grew up in a straight, conventional nuclear family. Because I had to always consider how others would perceive me before sharing my experience with them, I became a more flexible thinker. It made me a better reader of people. It also helped me understand how trapped we can be by unexamined concepts, heteronormativity, and group-think. So many people live in prisons of convention.

Ryan: I can strongly, strongly relate to this as a non-Mormon who grew up in a heavily LDS community in Utah. Being able to head to the desert and get away from it all, and to feel that I belonged to all of life there, was life-saving for me.

Growing up as a permanent “outsider” also taught me how to find refuge within myself, or with other like-minded folks who could mirror back to me my basic goodness. For me, this person was my paternal grandmother. Who were some of the first people who affirmed your basic goodness?

Sarah: My mother Kathleen is the most influential person in my life. She passed away in 2014, a year before my first child was born. She was extraordinary—an exceptionally warm, powerful, and determined person. She grew up very poor in the rural south, and eventually earned a Ph.D. in biology, then went to medical school at the age of 35 to become a psychiatrist. One time she received a root canal without anesthetic or laughing gas because she was able to use self-hypnosis. That’s how tough she was.

She was also incredibly sweet, in the way that so many Appalachian women are. Think about Dolly Parton’s attitude, but in the body of a queer, soft butch woman who doesn’t wear makeup.

Ryan: Holy cow. A queer butch Dolly Parton? She sounds amazing.

How did you find your way to Buddhism from there?

Sarah: My mother K. was the daughter of two ministers in the Christian Church, also known as The Disciples of Christ. We didn’t go to church very often. She would have rather gone fishing or dig around in our tomato garden. She was very aware that Christianity was telling a story about the human condition through symbolism, and I was taught not to take anything too literally. At the same time, she considered herself a devout Christian. I don’t think she ever ended a phone conversation with me without a “God bless you.” I think she was always a little confused and hurt about why I didn’t feel at home in Christianity.

But Jesus just didn’t make sense to me as a young person. As a teenager, I felt most at-home and connected to the divine in nature. So paganism made sense to me, and much of it still does—especially the energies of the seasons, and moon cycles, and not seeing the divine only as male.

In college, I did my own research, and felt duped to learn that so much of the histories of Wicca and paganism were either revivalist speculations or exaggerations. These exaggerated histories actually have a lot of truth buried in them—a lot of land-based traditions did survive imperial Christianity—but at the time, I was just super turned off.

So I arrived at Buddhism disappointed. I just felt like, I am so done with all these stories. I wanted to get at the heart of some questions I had as an angsty young person. What’s the nature of existence? And why does it seem like reality is always playing a trick on me? And what’s this feeling that I get when I’m out in the woods, just sitting there by myself, and I suddenly feel like I’m not alone but a part of something much greater than myself?

At that time, I picked up Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and I was hooked. So I started thinking of myself as a Buddhist by the age of 19.

Ryan: For those who don’t know, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche is a well-known (and some would say infamous) teacher in the Tibetan tradition, which is just one of several strands of Buddhism that have made their way to the West.

For example, there’s also Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced in countries like Sri Lanka and has been popularized by Western Vipassana teachers like Sharon Salzberg and Tara Brach. There’s also the Zen traditions of Eastern Asia, popularized by beat poets like Allen Ginsberg and dharma teachers like Suzuki Roshi. The Dalai Lama belongs to the Tibetan tradition. While they have much in common, they all have slightly different histories, flavors and forms. [Note: You can learn more about these nuances through the work of here.]

What about Tibetan Buddhism in particular makes it feel like the most congenial strand of Buddhism for you, Sarah? And are there any aspects of it that you don’t love, but are willing to accept, given the other benefits you receive from it?

Sarah: With Tibetan Buddhism, I don’t feel like I converted to another religion. I feel like I discovered a worldview that echoed an innate perspective that had already existed within myself. The tradition is colorful, beautiful, rich, brave, compassionate, wise, relational, and full of good stories and art. I love the way Tibetan Buddhism makes me feel a sense of wonder about myself, others, the natural world, and the mystery of all that I don’t know or understand. It allows me to experience whatever it is that’s happening before me in a more relaxed way, even when things are terrible. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it hard to be bored on this path. I’m often surprised here.

I don’t know of any other Buddhist tradition that embraces contradictions so well. It doesn’t seem to divide intuition from reason in the way that so many Western systems do. It embraces pluralistic forms of knowing. It can be both very simple, like Zen, or baroquely complex, like the most ornate Hindu temple.

It’s also probably the only religion I know of that recognizes its own artifice. Meaning that dharma practice is a kind of lie that tells the truth—it’s an art. The methods and path all lead to something ineffable.

Like all religions, Tibetan Buddhism has problems because it’s made up of human beings and we’re not perfect. Any religion that is highly institutionalized is going to be prone to the same corruption that we find everywhere: greed, materialism, sectarianism, and the misuse and abuse of power. Patriarchy is a gigantic problem. But there’s also reverence and respect for female Buddhas and teachers like Yeshe Tsogyal, Machig Labdron, Sera Khandro, Ani Shugsep, and Ayu Khandro.

My biggest bone to pick with western Tibetan Buddhism is that it can feel so elite. I’ve often found many sanghas (spiritual communities) to be financially inaccessible to working class and middle-class people. I don’t think that these should just be available for coastal big-city-people, or highly educated people, or upper-middle class people, or white people. Everyone should have access to these teachings if they sincerely want them. The point is to liberate beings, not to join a wealthy country club.

At the same time, we need to be generous to teachers because they work incredibly hard and we wouldn’t have our dharma practice without them. When you give dāna to a teacher, you’re not just supporting them, you’re also supporting the existence of dharma in the world. You’re supporting countless beings.

“My biggest bone to pick with western Tibetan Buddhism is that it can feel so elite. I’ve often found many sanghas to be financially inaccessible to working class and middle-class people… Everyone should have access to these teachings if they sincerely want them. The point is to liberate beings, not to join a wealthy country club.” — Sarah Kokernot

Ryan: You and I share this commitment to social justice and accessibility in the mindfulness world. How does this show up in the work you do today? How did you come to do this work?

Sarah: After college, I thought I would get a degree in public policy or urban planning, and my first job was helping to run a canvassing office for the Democratic National Committee. Shortly after that I applied to a bilingual English/Spanish teaching fellowship on a whim. I’ve been doing some form of teaching ever since. My career started in elementary education, teaching four-year-olds and then second graders. If you can teach small children, you can teach anyone, and anything.

Right now I have a teaching gig as an artist in residence at Northwestern University, and I also teach at StoryStudio, a nonprofit creative writing center where I also work as a grant writer and consultant. Additionally, I have a micro-business, coaching and consulting writers. I especially love helping writers when they feel blocked or have faced rejection.

Ryan: How do your caregiving duties intersect with this work?

Sarah: My kids are four and ten. My schedule is bonkers. I get a lot of writing and work done while my kids are either playing or watching TV.

I also have an amazing husband who is also an incredible co-parent. We do our best to split parenting equally. It doesn’t always happen, but that’s the goal. Same-sex households, like the one I grew up in, tend to divide parenting and labor more equally than straight households. I told my husband that I didn’t want to get married to a man unless he was willing to be in a lesbian relationship with me. If it wasn’t for his willingness to support my work, I’d get nothing done.

Ryan: Behind every mom-writer who is getting anything done is, ideally, a partner who is doing the work too.

I’d love to talk more about how you’ve braided together all of these strands—your writing work, your caregiving work, your meditation practice—via your Substack newsletter, . You had me at “Buddhism, but make it wild and witchy,” which is your tagline for this project. Where is the overlap between “wild,” “witchy” and “Buddhism”? Where are the tensions or contradictions, as you see them?

Sarah: The “wild” in the title is inspired by ecological approaches that believe in re-wilding ecosystems in order to restore them from human disruption and misuse. “Wild,” in this sense, reminds me of Dzogchen, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice that entails resting into open-awareness. This is sometimes called resting in “the natural state,” and I think of it sometimes as resting into this primordial, wild state. It is a lushly rich, vast, fecund state of awareness, where we release our conditioning and habits.

I don’t really see “wild” contradicting the form of Buddhism I practice. Yogins (accomplished practitioners) like Shabkar and Longchenpa instruct us to practice high in the mountains or deep in the forest. I think this instruction to go to the wild is to help us find the qualities of these places mirrored within ourselves, and ourselves mirrored in these places. The kind of freedom and awe we experience in wild places is always available to us, no matter where we are.

I chose the word “witchy” for the tagline for a few reasons. First, because it’s a silly word and so many dharma practitioners are just way too damned serious for my tastes. I hope “witchy” turns those serious people off from my work. It’s a word that acts like a protector. For years, I was a little embarrassed that I was one of those girls in high school who quietly went around thinking of herself as a witch and who felt so deeply connected with nature, but now I’m embarrassed that I was ever embarrassed. My fourteen-year-old self was actually right about a lot of things.

In fact, the “witch,” as archetype, suggests that we can find great power, clarity, and wisdom in the liminal places outside of normative society. The original Anglo-Saxon term for “witch” simply meant a wise person. You’ll notice that in folklore, a witch usually lives in the woods away from the village. Similarly, in Tibetan Buddhism, yogins and yoginis have historically practiced in liminal places such as charnel grounds, caves, and mountains. These are undesirable places for most people. But when we practice in places that feel exiled or remote, we have a vantage point that allows us to see things with greater clarity. This is true both literally and metaphorically.

My feeling is that if we can find wisdom and contentment in liminal, unwanted places, we can find wisdom and contentment anywhere. This helps us benefit others.

So it could be more accurate for me to say “Buddhism is wild and witchy.” However, I’m aware that I’m sometimes speaking to readers who are under the impression that all of dharma is a kind of purely analytical practice, without animism, magic, and intuition—all things which we tend to label as wild, witchy, and feminine.

I think it’s great that so many people have found secular Buddhism beneficial, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that this isn’t the only form of Buddhism. There’s enough room for all of us here.

Ryan: Have you encountered any texts and/or teachers that have helped you feel seen and supported in this way of practicing?

Sarah: Lama Justin von Budjoss is my primary Dzogchen teacher and he's amazing. He's also a parent with three kids of his own. Lama Lena has recordings of her teachings on her website, which are fantastic, and please make sure that you generously offer her dana, because she doesn’t charge for her teachings. I love the writing of Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, who has many great courses. Lama Tasha Schumann, who is a student of Lama Lena and Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, is also fantastic, and writes the newsletter here on Substack.

Ryan: Speaking of people who set out to practice in the wild, I’d love to get your thoughts about one of the trickiest bits of Buddhism for many practitioners: the Buddha’s own origin story, and in particular, his choice to leave his family behind in order to seek enlightenment. What do you make of this as a parent yourself, and as a fiction writer who thinks deeply about how characters’ choices impact narrative?

Sarah: It’s my understanding that among the aristocracy in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and medieval Europe, there were rarely ever “love marriages.” Marriages were business deals between kingdoms. I am not well-educated about the Buddha’s time period in India, but given that he was a prince in a rigid, caste-based system, I doubt that the future Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, met his wife at a friend’s birthday party and then went out on a date and fell in love. Given the transactional-like nature of these marriages, I’m not sure if he would have experienced the same bonds that we do with our partners.

According to the traditional story, the realities of old age, sickness, death and loss had been hidden from the Buddha until his adulthood. He must have felt completely gaslit by that charade. So it sounds like the Buddha was compelled to leave his home because he felt a bit crazy. He realized that he was in a system that caused harm to himself and others, and that wealth and power don’t give people lasting happiness. So he defected from the status quo.

Also, I’m not sure if you’ve met a rich man on a quest for enlightenment. Some of them are lovely, but some of them can be insufferable. It might have been a relief for the Buddha’s wife to have Siddhartha gone for a few years! I’m so impatient—I probably would have kicked him out of the house myself.

Ryan: I am laughing so hard right now.

Sarah: Like, how could you really not know we are all going to get old and sick and die?

So I’m okay with him not living up to the standards of today’s ideas of a good father or a good partner. I revere him because of what he’s given the world.

What’s most important to me about Siddhartha Gautama isn’t so much him as a person, but rather this discovery of “Buddha nature,” which is the inherently awakened nature of all sentient beings. Everyone’s true nature is exactly like that of the historical Buddha. I find it highly likely that someone—perhaps many people—discovered Buddha-nature before Siddhartha did, but they didn’t have either his social stature or his ability to explain these insights to others.

Ryan: To what degree do you think leaving home, or going on retreat, is still beneficial for someone who is on this path—even for those of us who can’t or won’t leave our families for years at a time?

Sarah: For me it’s essential to go on retreat now and then, even if it’s just for a few days at home. Practicing dharma is about becoming friends with your awakened mind. You can’t do that if you don’t spend some time alone with yourself. It’s worth inconveniencing your family for a few days, because you’ll come back from the retreat as a more steady, open presence.

Ryan: That has been my experience as well. Thanks for putting words to it in this way.

Some people don’t know that within Buddhism, there are traditionally four communities of practitioners. There are male and female householders, as well as male and female monastics—monks and nuns. The rules we follow are different, even if the basic path we’re following is supposedly the same. Monastics obviously spend much more time on retreat and in meditation than we do. Do you think the householder path is harder, or easier, given this difference?

Sarah: There are obstacles in both of these paths. I’m not convinced that the monastic path is somehow easier than a household path or vice versa. It seems to me that the monastic path is a kind of skillful means for some people, meaning that there are certain people for whom a monastic life is very conducive to experiencing awakened mind. But that isn’t the case for everyone.

Ryan: Are there any ways in which you think that householders might better leverage our position in the world for collective liberation?

Sarah: Bodhichitta, or compassion, is central to dharma practice, so this makes our lives as laypeople rich with opportunity, because life in the world is both exciting and difficult. My feeling is that I probably have more disturbing emotions to work with as a layperson than if I was in a cave or nunnery somewhere—and that’s a good thing. If I can work with those disturbing emotions skillfully, I can discover their true nature, and be of benefit to others in a direct way.

That said, compassion doesn’t mean that we coddle someone harmful or tolerate someone’s bullshit. It means that we wish them to be free from suffering. That’s it. And this wish includes all the people who are irritating, cruel, or violent.

Like, forget Buddha-nature for a second and just consider the fact that the ICE agents who are hurting people were once babies. At one point they were shiny, innocent, and sweet. Something terrible must have happened to these agents, because they’ve ended up in a kind of delusion that makes them think they need to kidnap five-year-olds and shoot innocent people in order to keep our country safe. I want them to be free of that delusion, which is also causing them suffering.

I’m a naturally fiery person, so without this practice, I’d probably be consumed with anger at ICE agents right now, and that high level of rage wouldn’t do me any good. I’d probably just get heart disease or an ulcer. We can act in ways that are more skillful and effective when we’re not feeling tortured by our own emotions. So, in my experience, deeply experiencing spaciousness and compassion help us laypeople both ease our own suffering, and ease the suffering of others.

That said, I don’t ultimately make a distinction between engaged Buddhism and Buddhism that is practiced for years in solitude or the cloisters of monastic life. If you are existing, you are engaging. I think that solitary monastics are changing the world by transforming their own suffering, and it can’t be underestimated how powerful that is, or how it affects other beings.

Ryan: I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on this. In what ways do you think a solitary practitioner waking up impacts the world at large?

Sarah: There is really no such thing as a solitary practitioner. Everyone depends on someone else. Interdependence is one of the most profound insights of Buddhism. In my limited experience, it’s through solitude that the lonely “I” is disrupted, and an incredible connection with all phenomena can be experienced. If we can have confidence in that experience, we will then have a greater capacity to naturally benefit others.

Ryan: One paradox I struggle with, within the context of interdependence, is the need to respect our interconnectedness while also knowing that I can’t do other people’s work—spiritual or otherwise—for them. To believe that I can or should is to engage in what Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called “idiot compassion.” How do you navigate this? How do we let other people, including our children, walk the unique and winding spiritual path that is theirs to walk, as we have walked ours—without getting in the way?

Sarah: I think idiot compassion is our desire to want to “fix” problems for people, and that idiot compassion doesn’t arise from true compassion, but from a sense of guilt, avoidance, or control.

One of the things I’ve learned from practicing Dzogchen is that we are much more capable of supporting ourselves and others through pain or confusion when we are tapped into our own openness. As Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche says, we have to be able to “host” our discomfort and suffering with love and openness before we can benefit others in this way. When we touch that stable, compassionate openness—the nature of mind—we are more likely to help people find the space in themselves to experience, release, and heal their suffering. We don’t have to abandon ourselves to benefit others, which is what happens with idiot compassion.

I think this also involves realizing the limitations of a situation. Like the Serenity Prayer, we have to have the courage to know what we can change, and the wisdom to accept what we can’t.

Ryan: So well put. I’m anticipating that it will take much, if not all, of my lifetime for me to learn to practice this skillfully.

Sarah: Same here! May it be so!

Where can people find you if they want to engage further with your work?

My website: sarahkokernot.com

My IG: @yes_like_coconut

And here on Substack at !

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Today is my brother David’s birthday. He would have been thirty-eight. Instead, he passed away at age twenty-six from brain cancer.

That was thirteen years ago. Long enough for me to have tried almost every which way there is to figure out how to mark the day.

I’ve tried:

• Taking the day off

• Not taking the day off

• “Staying busy” through service to others

• Ugly crying and binge-watching bad TV

• Doing the same thing every year to create a tradition

• Getting very frustrated that life is getting in the way of me maintaining the tradition

• Writing an eloquent post about how amazing he was, watching the likes roll in, and feeling weird about that

• Not writing anything, and feeling weird about that

When I lost a daughter-to-be in late pregnancy a few years ago, I ran through the same set of experiments. I gardened. I didn’t garden. I wrote. I didn’t write.

The difference for me in this more recent season of grief is that I had a dedicated support group of people who were moving through it with me. Suddenly, I had a chorus of voices on WhatsApp telling me that it was okay to do nothing, and also telling me how beautiful my grief garden had become. Who could validate every effort I was able to make, and who could also give me permission to let some days, in that hard season, just be easy ones.

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Now, my friend Emily Marlowe, whom I met in that long-ago support group, co-facilitates perinatal loss groups alongside me. We’ve “graduated” over fifty bereaved people and watched them bloom again from the ashes of their loss. And one thing we always tell our participants now is this:

Grief will find a way to express itself. It’s not a matter of if, but when, and how. But we do have some agency when it comes to creating space for grief’s expression.

We get to choose how we direct the cold howling wind of it. We can allow it to knock down something good that we’ve created. Or we can allow it to be a windmill, powering us through the creation of something good in our loved one’s name.

Even if, as points out here, that good thing is just our own continued existence.

This week, Emily and I are co-hosting a one-off workshop called Clearing Space for Grief, in which we invite participants to share their stories, to discuss real-life examples of rituals that you can right-size for your current level of energy and capacity, and to write something short and true in our session together, which you can share or not share with the others.

Join us on Weds 4/1

In the interview that follows, I’ve invited Emily to speak on some of the themes that we’ll cover in the workshop, and that often arise in the context of our ongoing grief work. These include:

• How to co-create grief rituals with nature (even and especially when you don’t consider yourself “religious”)

• How to know the difference between typical (albeit sometimes unpleasant) symptoms of grief, and symptoms that may merit more professional attention and support

• The inherent benefits of telling your story (even if you don’t plan to share it publicly)

• On the power of being witnessed in community (and what to do if your community isn’t showing up for you the way you need them to)

Note: Some email clients may cut off the end of this interview, so it’s best viewed in a browser. Alternatively, if you’d like to listen to the full audio, you can do so here.

Ryan: Tell me more about you as a gardener.

Emily: Oh, me as a gardener. I learned it from my mom, and I don’t remember it being a super intentional, like, “Come out to my garden, daughter, and I’m gonna teach you how to work with the earth.” It was just like, she was always doing it. And I loved being outside, so I just kind of followed her around and also fell in love with it.

And now I am very intentional, as you know, with gardening practice as it relates to my loss. Every May 7th, which was my due date, I still— this will be my 4th year—I take the day off work, and I just have the intention of putting my hands in dirt, whatever that looks like.

If the weather’s shitty, then maybe I just run to Kroger and buy some hanging plants for the porch. That was what I did actually the year that I was freshly postpartum with my living daughter. I didn’t have a whole lot of energy to get out and really pull weeds, do a whole lot of gardening, so I just bought some hanging plants and that was my intentional way of gardening for Xavier.

I mean, my mom still gets out there. Her yard is beautiful. Mine is not so much. I need to get out there this time of year. I’m anxious to get out there and start my gardening.

Ryan: I feel that too, although it’s probably much sunnier down there than it is up here. It’s not really warm in New England.

Co-creating rituals with nature

Ryan: Can you say more about how working with nature in the early stages of your grief after losing Xavier really was a big part of your healing journey?

You and I met because we were in the same support group, for the same terrible kind of late loss, and we were kind of the green thumbs in the group. And that’s what we bonded over initially. You always had this plant wall behind you that was so evocative. It’s like this apothecary wall, and I was just like–that’s her, that’s my friend.

Emily: Oh, that’s so sweet. I love that.

So it just kind of happened, I guess, naturally. My loss was like, dead winter, literally on the winter solstice. And so there’s not a whole lot of outside gardening that can be done here in Kentucky at that time. So I had this little altar for Xavier, and just put little trinkets around it, and some of my houseplants. And then my sister gave me a plant as a kind of a grief gift. So I just started surrounding him–his remains are on there as well–with these little plants. And it just made me happy.

I feel like after this type of loss, you’re left with this urge to nurture at a biological level. And so when you go through a pregnancy loss and you have this urge to nurture, and you don’t have a live baby in your arms to do that with, I had to find ways to pour that energy out some way or another. So the plants kind of took that for me.

Then as it got warmer–his due date is in the height of spring, May 7th here–it’s very warm and sunny, and things are in bloom everywhere. So I kind of took that energy that I had, making his altar, outside into the yard, and planted things that I can see, through the cycles of nature. So some plants that come back every year die in the winter, bloom in the spring. So just kind of honoring that cycle along with the cycle of life, and the cycles of my grief. I’ve just found a lot of comfort in that comparison.

Ryan: Thank you. I love that image of having a plant that dies in the winter and arrives back in the spring, and it being cyclical.

And you and I talk about that too, in that grief can feel wave-like or cyclical rather than linear. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard from people, “I thought it was getting better and then it got bad again–and does that mean I’m going backwards in my grief?”

And I just wonder if that visual itself is causing suffering—this sort of linear, almost train station image of grief. Like, “Here we are at this station, and we’re never going back.” And really it is more cyclical, in that a garden changes over time. It’s never quite the same plant twice. And yet we do kind of revisit similar themes year after year.

I wonder how you conceive of grief as being in alignment with that seasonal cycle, rather than being linear.

Emily: So I’m leading a group right now, a grief support group, and there are a couple participants who are 10+ years out from their loss. And I think very much like you said, they feel like something’s wrong because they’ve been stuck, or they feel like they should be “over it” by now.

As we know, and as we’ve seen, it can come in waves. And there are certainly things that you can get stuck on in the grieving process, if you don’t have the tools or you don’t have the support that’s needed. But once those are in place, [with] just the passage of time, it is going to come in waves.

And it’s going to be cyclical in terms of just kind of developing your tools over time as well, on how to cope with grief–that is going to change. You’re going to learn new things. You’re going to try things that maybe didn’t work in the past, that now all of a sudden they work.

So yeah, we’re getting away from the linear, the stages of grief, the check mark, going down the list of all the things–because it’s not like that at all.

What is and isn’t healthy when it comes to grieving?

Ryan: Thank you. And that actually brings me to another thing that I think a lot of people who are grieving wonder, which is:

How much of the experience that I’m having is really not a pathological experience–it just is grief, it is just what grief feels like?

So, for example, we know that deep, deep fatigue can be an experience that comes along with grief that’s not pathological. It’s not necessarily something that we have to quote-unquote worry about. It arrives and it leaves on its own schedule, and it’s just part of this huge energetic shift that you’re experiencing in your life with regards to an important relationship that has changed form.

And at the same time, we do give some pointers on: when should you worry?

What’s the difference between being in a place within a cycle that’s not linear, and really being stuck somewhere–of having an experience of grief that’s either not moving and transforming, where it’s located itself outside of that cyclical process, or it’s actively destructive?

Emily: Yeah, that can be so tough. There’s a whole module on that, as you know, in our support groups. And I feel like that’s one of my favorites, just because I have a background in clinical therapy.

There are signs–warning signs to look out for–when it is more than just normal grief. One of the biggest things to look out for is if your grief is or has consistently impacted your ability to function on a daily basis for an extended period of time. So like 3 months, 6 months out—if it’s every single day that you’re feeling like you’re not really going through waves, but it’s like a tidal wave the whole time, that may be a sign to get extra support, whether that’s through therapy, medication management, or other types more intensive, specialized, narrowing or scoping in on specific symptoms that you’re having, to help cope with that. To feel and to get yourself unstuck, so that then you can continue to go through the rest of what is normal grief.

Ryan: Thank you.

Something that I think that we both really try to invite participants in our groups to think about is that grief is going to find expression. And it’s really just a question of what kind of expression it’s going to find.

And so that experience of being in bed for 6 months–that is grief finding its expression. And there’s also an opportunity to choose consciously how we would like for our grief to find its expression.

Sometimes I think of what we offer to participants, in terms of supporting them with creating rituals and supporting them in doing some reflective writing, I almost think of it as preventative care. Because it is very early on in the process introducing this idea of agency.

You didn’t choose this grief. Very often there’s a grappling with, “Did I cause this grief?” And we invite people to, to sit with that question in whatever way feels right for their particular spiritual background. But also, “What am I going to do with this grief?” Like you said, if I have this deep need to nurture, and I don’t have this living person in front of me to direct that towards, where do I direct that energy?

Meeting yourself where you are in grieving

Ryan: I’m wondering if we could talk a little bit about how to create some very basic rituals for actually making a physical space where grief can be felt.

You described the experience of creating an altar, near a bonfire, with physical objects that represented both grief and the support you were receiving around that grief. And you and I talk about just inviting people to look around their lived environment, and to think about the routines they already have, as a way to bring in ritual, rather than feeling like they have to like go start a whole nonprofit right away–which sometimes feels like the right thing to do, because this grief is so enormous and so should our response to it be. But sometimes, again, we’re so exhausted that that’s just not really possible, right?

So what’s the middle path in terms of creating rituals that feel like they acknowledge and gesture at the enormity of what this loss means to us, but also honor the fact that fatigue is a part of the grieving experience, and we may not have a huge amount of physical energy to put towards the creation in the beginning?

Emily: I think meeting yourself where you’re at in every part of the grieving process is so important, and it’s a great starting point.

If you have all these ideas and goals, like starting the nonprofit, and then you wake up and you just can’t get out of bed, then that can add to these really difficult emotions. You might feel guilty because you can’t do this thing that you yesterday were all gung-ho about. But today is just not the day. So meeting yourself where you’re at, at any given moment.

Make different plans for different states. You can’t predict the future. You don’t know how you’re going to be feeling tomorrow. But, for example, if it’s a stay-in-bed day, maybe just taking a few deep breaths, and doing a meditation in bed, is how you’re going to express your grief that day. Maybe you are feeling more energetic, and you can buy some soil, buy some plants, and maybe that’s your gardening day. So having multiple ideas, multiple plans, I think can be really helpful.

And also, like the meditation, it doesn’t have to be a physical space that you can see and visit. It certainly can be. For me, that is really helpful. I’m adding to my altar all the time with little things that I pick up along my journey. But maybe there’s a dedicated journal that you have, and you do some writing exercises, and that’s the space that you’re creating for this grief. And maybe it’s a meditation practice, so it’s a space in your mind and body.

So again, just meeting yourself where you’re at, and knowing what works for you and what doesn’t. Maybe you don’t like gardening. Maybe you’re not a writer. Maybe you’re an artist. Finding the things that you already enjoy, that are going to make you happy, or at least feel a little bit calm, and just starting there and seeing what happens.

Ryan: You and I have a part of our facilitation experience that we do_, that we call the Saddest Show and Tell, where people actually bring their ritual objects that they’re gathering, or different things that they’ve created in memory. I see such enormous creativity within the ways in which people in our groups express their grief.

And as you said, it doesn’t have to be writing if writing is not your modality. People have woven blankets, they have made jewelry, they have created art on a beach, they have had a tree in town dedicated to the memory of their lost one.

I’m wondering if you can think of other examples that aren’t within that frame of “make an altar, write in a journal.” I do want to ask you about those two things in a minute because I do think those two things are accessible and concrete, for people to imagine what that could look like. But what are some other more off-the-beaten-path options that you’ve seen and really loved?

Emily: I can’t remember if she was in one that we co-facilitated, but there was a woman who did a full–it had to have been like 4-foot by 2 or 3-foot painting, an oil painting on canvas. It was very abstract, but I have chills thinking about it, it was so beautiful.

Ryan: I was there. It just felt like the painting reached through the screen and grabbed you.

Emily: Yes.

Ryan: So visceral.

Emily: Yeah. And everybody in the group, I think, had a similar reaction, because we all felt the emotion that went into it. She was in art school, she did it for a project, and her teacher and her classmates didn’t really know the emotion or the story even behind it. So just her sharing that with our group,_, and then the way our group responded to it, was just really beautiful. I will remember that forever.

Some other examples: I think you said weaving blankets, knitting. We get a lot of crochet. You end up with this cozy blanket that looks really pretty, but it also takes so much time. And, you know, moving your hands, working with your hands, it’s repetitive. It’s almost like you have to be in a meditative state to really make a decent-sized blanket. I don’t know if you’ve ever crocheted, but it can take a long time, every stitch of that crochet blanket. When they show things like that, I can see that. I appreciate every stitch that went into that. And it makes it just so much more meaningful and beautiful than somebody else looking at that blanket.

So it may be pretty and cozy and warm, but there’s just so much deeper meaning, when you’re creating something with this grief.

Ryan: And, I’m hearing that same sort of nurturing energy, directed outward.

I’m also thinking about just the power of visual art to bring us back into our prefrontal cortex– where very often, when we’ve experienced trauma, it’s like the shards of that experience, the memory of it, the pain of it, are just rattling around. The broken pieces are just rattling around in our minds. The science behind EMDR suggests that when you are able to consciously process those memories, while keeping your eyes engaged on the visual field_, with bilateral stimulation [meaning, moving your gaze from side to side], it can really help to reduce intrusive thoughts, reduce the enormity of those feelings as they sit in you, without you having to repress them.

So I think often about the ways in which people have told us that they just intuitively started walking in the forest, for example–which was one of my coping mechanisms, right? So there’s a visual field, I’m walking, there’s that bilateral stimulation piece. People start biking, same idea. They do puzzles, same idea. So I think people really intuitively find their way to the rituals that are going to be most healing and most accessible for them.

And a lot of what we’re doing is just reflecting back to them the intuition that they’re already showing in making those choices, and affirming that, yes, that is a ritual. Doing puzzles with your husband on Thursday nights is a ritual of healing and grief. And it sure beats not talking about it at all or honoring it at all.

The inherent power of telling your grief story

Ryan: You and I have talked about the power of narrative therapy, and that just putting words on paper, telling the story, is another way to kind of call those shards back from where they’re scattered in the mind, and really bring them into the prefrontal cortex where meaning-making can occur, and where we can experience a lessening of the more distressing aspects of trauma.

I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the science behind narrative therapy, and how to do it, even for people that don’t consider themselves quote-unquote writers, and have no intention of publishing what they’re writing–or maybe even showing it to anybody.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. So you’re right, there is something cognitively, in the brain, that happens when we take these pieces, these shards, and have to, when we’re writing out our story, put things in chronological order. Before we do that, or if we don’t do that, then we are just kind of left with our brains thinking of trauma in an hierarchy of emotion. So, what were the most upsetting things throughout this whole process? Those are going to be at the forefront of our minds sometimes. And then all these other details, that are very important parts of your story, are just not thought about as much, necessarily. And so narrative therapy helps us organize our thoughts, which right there can feel really good, really therapeutic.

And then, if you can get to the point where you share this story with somebody else, like a therapist, or anybody who you trust, just having our story witnessed and listened to and validated is hugely therapeutic. And better yet, if you can say your story out loud–whether you read from what you’ve written, or you’re just able to kind of recite and tell your story start to finish without interruption–it has all kinds of benefits.

And the more you expose yourself to these memories, the easier it is to then cope with the emotions that come up with these memories. It’s essentially exposure therapy, without exposing you to the actual trauma, of course. With PTSD, for example, you’re not being traumatized because the trauma is happening over and over and over. You’re traumatized because the memories are on repeat in your mind. The memories are what is causing the traumatic response.

And so it’s kind of reclaiming these memories, reorganizing these memories, and then coping with them in a way where you have the control. Where you’re the one writing the words, you’re the one saying these words out loud, you’re the one choosing the people who you’re going to share your story with. You are in control. And, you know, when you go through a traumatic event, control is oftentimes not even in the picture. So again, just kind of reclaiming these memories, and the sense of control, in and of itself, is really, really powerful.

If you’re sharing with a therapist and you’re doing very structured narrative therapy, another part of that is, as you’re sharing your story, the therapist can help you identify some parts of your story or parts of your inner monologue that you’re letting out, and the therapist can kind of point out some unhelpful or untrue thoughts that are mixed up in these memories. Thoughts such as, “Was this my fault? Should I have done something differently? Could I have done or not done X, Y, and Z and had a better outcome? Am I a bad person because this happened?”

All these thoughts, as you know, that can be really natural, and may feel very true at the time. A therapist can help you process through those and maybe find opportunities to reframe the way we think about what happened to us–and maybe just flat out change the way we think about it.

Ryan: I think that that’s really powerful to note–in that when we are writing for ourselves, we’re writing a draft, and it might be sort of what Brené Brown calls the “shitty first draft.” Like, it’s not perfect, and it may contain maladaptive schema. It may contain beliefs that are themselves the fruits of trauma. They’re the kinds of beliefs that we come away with when we have been traumatized. And so I think it’s powerful to write that out.

But as you said, there’s a collective witnessing piece, in that somebody else is very gently taking the seat of an editor, a really kind editor. And they’re taking–maybe not a red pen, but a nicer color, and circling: “I don’t think you need this,” or “Here’s another way to look at it–let’s revise this, let’s try some different language.” And I think that that’s really important.

Even within our groups, we tend to just hold space and allow people to make meaning that is appropriate to them. But one of the things where it’s kind of a bottom line for you and me is when we sense that somebody is engaging in some sort of maladaptive schema formation– when they’re starting to say really mean things to themselves–then we’ll pause them.

And I think that that’s also really powerful for other participants to see, because those participants may have been experiencing some of the same intrusive thoughts. They might be forming some of the same beliefs.

And it’s not so much that we’re saving them from ever having those beliefs again. We don’t hold that kind of authority over other people’s stories, their inner space. But I think there’s something really powerful in just the gentle interruption, and the introduction of the idea that there might actually be another way to look at it. And then handing that back as a choice.

And as you said, when we talk about trauma involving a loss of control, it’s not like we’re like these Type A people and suddenly, oh no, we have been made to wear a sweater that has a stain on it, and that’s a loss of control. You know that I’m a Buddhist, and so obviously I think there’s a certain amount of seeking of control that leads to suffering, and pursuing it isn’t adaptive.

But when you and I are talking about this word control, I think what we’re really talking about is choice, intentionality, and agency. And in particular, when we’re talking with the populations that we work with. Where they may have had to choose a termination for medical reasons and that is then framed as a “choice,” but it doesn’t feel like a choice, to try to find a way to compassionately end a pregnancy with a baby who is not going to be able to breathe once they’re born. That doesn’t feel like a choice. It’s a traumatic situation because real choice, the kinds of choices you would want to choose from, the kinds of options you would like to have, are taken away. You’re left with much more scary choices.

And sometimes, in trauma, our bodies also make choices for us so quickly. And later we might think, “If I could do it over again, maybe I would do it differently.”

But we’re talking about a loss of agency. We’re talking about a situation in which we are not able to act in alignment with what our values are, and what we would want for ourselves, or anybody that we love.

And so, as you’ve said, it can be a real act of self-compassion to begin to create a draft where we not only highlight the things that happened to us, but also any areas of resilience that we might have shown.

And also allowing ourselves to develop those paths to resilience afterwards, even just in the form of “I’m going to make a blanket in honor and memory of this person. I’m not going to accept the narrative that I’m a bad person because I made this choice, and I don’t love my baby.” It can be a real act of agency and resistance and resilience to continue loving a baby even after you’ve chosen to end a pregnancy, as a way of saying, “I’m still parenting this baby.”

I think that being witnessed communally is so powerful, because you’re being seen as the nurturing person that you want to be, and you’re being witnessed in the strength that maybe you don’t even see in yourself yet. And you’re also being checked in the ways that you might be starting to turn on yourself, because sometimes it’s easier to believe that you did have control over the situation, and you just really messed up. We can start to kind of interrupt that and say, nobody would choose this. Nobody would choose to conceive a baby who can’t breathe after they’re born. No one would choose this.

Emily: Right. Yeah.

On being witnessed in community

Ryan: I think that there’s just a kindness that can feel so good to allow from the outside, when we’re going through grief. I think there’s a natural tendency to just need more time alone, and to just be a little bit more inwardly focused with our energy. There’s a gathering-in that can feel almost strange to those of us that are ordinarily very social, or very outwardly focused. But I think that there’s also such a profound need for communal witnessing of grief.

And I wonder if we could talk about that a little bit, because some of our rituals that we might create or some of the writing that we might do, we might do it in solitude. And it might feel really meaningful to be able to just work with nature, work with our art, in ways that are meditative, like you said, where we’re really allowing ourselves to be anchored in what we’re doing, and not necessarily narrating every bit of it.

But the challenge with some of the forms of grief that we work with, and some of the forms of grief that we see in the world, is that those griefs are stigmatized. And so it can be really hard to figure out who is going to gather around me to mark the passing of this baby that I had to say goodbye to far too soon. Some people in our lives might be badass enough to be able to show up and hold that space for us, but I think sometimes those of us who go through stigmatized grief have a very ugly wake-up call, which is that a lot of the people in our lives, because we live in a very grief-averse culture, don’t have the ability to stand in a circle and hold that space for us.

In the past, maybe our best friend could have been that compassionate witness to our story. But in this case, maybe our best friend also just had a baby, and isn’t the right person. That’s very common in our groups. Or in the past, you might have been able to come to your parents with a story, and they might have been able to hold you, but in this case, generationally, they were not given the tools to show up.

I’ve seen this happen with pregnancy loss. I’ve seen it happen with people who are getting divorced. I’ve seen it with people who have lost loved ones to more stigmatized causes, like mental illness or drug use. And those are some of the most painful losses to experience. And I think it just adds insult to injury that sometimes those losses are compounded by the fact that we’re not surrounded by people who can communally witness us, and hold us, and co-create rituals with us.

And so sometimes we can get stuck not because we ourselves are coping poorly, but because the people around us can’t play the role that humans have played in ritual for millennia, which is to get together and help this person cross the threshold.

I just think that there are some thresholds that are really difficult for us to cross all alone.

Emily: Yeah.

Ryan: I’m wondering if you have any advice for people who would love to be held in community, but maybe don’t have a community right now, in this moment, who can hold them and witness them. What are some choices? Where can we still find some agency?

Emily: It can certainly be so isolating, even if like you said, if you’ve got this huge family and friend support system, and they just don’t understand. Or in all of these other circumstances, they can’t show up for you. It can be so isolating.

So, just kind of taking inventory of the people in your life–not just the typical go-tos, the partner, best friends, parents, siblings, but even in the outer circles a little bit. Because people are going to surprise you. It certainly happened for me. When we lead our support groups, this is a common theme with every single person–that people are going to surprise you. Unfortunately, in negative ways, but also in positive ways. So there may be a coworker that you’ve never really jived with that sends you cards every year now and made a point to check in on you, where now that relationship has improved and deepened through all of this. So just kind of taking inventory of who is in your circle, who are in your circles, and really leaning on and into those relationships that are supportive and nourishing.

And maybe the best friend is not a good resource right now. So maybe taking a break from that relationship. It doesn’t have to be permanent. I know we talk about all of this in one of our modules. But some relationships are just meant to be seasonal. Maybe you come back to that relationship once you’re able to integrate your grief a little bit more, or maybe not. But just really focusing on the relationships that are going to be nourishing to you in this moment.

And understanding that you may have to reach outside of your typical go-to circle. And that that’s okay. And if you are getting further and further out of your circles, and still not having much luck, thankfully in the age of the internet, that’s how I found RTZ Hope–through hashtags that I didn’t even know existed, before I went through this type of loss. So, finding an online support community, joining a support group, that can just be a lifeline.

Join us on Weds 4/1

Ryan: I was just thinking about those two things.

First, that there’s so much grace and mystery involved in how people show up after grief, who shows up, and in particular, who comes in either from a sort of outer ring of your social circle. Or, secondly, who you meet because of your grief, because you’re seeking out people who know without having to be told what this is like. Who have an embodied understanding of it, the way that you do. That can be so settling for the nervous system.

Our experience with RTZ very directly led to the creation of In Tending, because that was so powerful to me to see. I was somebody who had been in therapy forever, who would do all the things, all the journaling, all the self-care. Like, I was doing it all. And I also had a pretty wide circle of humans in my life. I had 90 students at the time. I was not lacking for human beings. But of course, not all of them had the capacity to hold space, nor would that have been appropriate.

And so I really feel as though circles of people who get it without having to be told are a real missing link in the mental health conversations that we need to be having. Particularly in these family-building years, where, because of the structure of the nuclear family, we get married, and our partner does not have our same physiology a lot of the time, if we’re in a hetero coupling. We might just be investing time in our jobs, and in building our marriage, and then suddenly, we have this wild experience that is so deeply personal. Either we’re going through infertility or we’re going through pregnancy loss, or both, and it can feel so isolating. And I think that that experience is in and of itself very traumatic, because there’s no communal witness who really gets it.

So I think that support groups, like the one that we run and the ones that are sort of popping up like mushrooms over here at In Tending are, I think, just part of that grace. They’re part of that adaptive human response to what’s missing, and what we need in order to keep taking our place in these cycles of loss and renewal. We need to be surrounded by a circle of people who get it, and who can kind of almost create this portal through which we can pass.

To be clear, we’re not getting paid by RTZ Hope to promote this. This is just something that you and I really believe in. Where I would just put a very strong plug in for finding people who get it without having to be told. And if they don’t exist in your life, the internet exists. And somebody is going to get it.

This makes me think of the essay that wrote about pregnancy loss, “How You Get Unstuck.” In it, she talks about that. She talks about how other people in the world don’t live on the same planet as you. You live on planet My Baby Died. And what you need is to find other people who live on that planet too. And other people who have lived on some planets that are not here as well. And that’s how you get unstuck–by finding the others. That’s just been such a powerful experience for me.

I think that being witnessed communally is so powerful, because you’re being seen as the nurturing person that you want to be, and you’re being witnessed in the strength that maybe you don’t even see in yourself yet. And you’re also being checked in the ways that you might be starting to turn on yourself, because sometimes it’s easier to believe that you did have control over the situation, and you just really messed up. We can start to kind of interrupt that and say, nobody would choose this.

Becoming kintsugi

Ryan: How do you feel like you knew that you were ready to move from bearing witness to your own grief to facilitating grief work with other people?

Emily: Gosh, great question.

I think because of my clinical background as a therapist, it was almost right away. Like, before I was probably even done as a participant in the group, I was like, I want to do this. This can be my niche now. This is the population I want to work with, who I can speak with so much, because I have the lived experience. I just felt like it was a calling, a little bit.

And I had, not necessarily because of my loss, around that same time, switched jobs. I was no longer doing direct therapy. I switched to a case management role. I was really kind of missing a lot of aspects of the therapy work. So this was just kind of a perfect scenario where I can keep those therapy muscles worked out, and do something that I’m really passionate about. And it also, maybe selfishly, is still helping in my own grief. getting to share my story with other people, and being witness to the stories of others, is still really healing for my own grief journey.

Ryan: I felt that too, that call.

And I think it’s interesting that both you and I, at that time, moved into roles that were not so intensive. Where I was in the classroom, I had my 90 students, I graduated them, and I said, “I’m going to take a year off from the classroom to be with my living son.” And for you, you stepped away from actively working with people in a therapeutic setting to case management. I think that that’s really common, where people intuitively feel the need for a career shift—very often a career shift towards deeper meaning, but also less energetic investment, after losses like ours.

And yet I think that it really is just a fundamental part of you and me, to be nurturing and to hold space. And I felt the temporary loss of that after my grief. I felt broken. How could I hold anything? But our friend Jess Van Wyen talks about the experience of thinking of the grief experience as being like kintsugi, where the vessel that we were is smashed–and then over time, we find the pieces, we catalog the pieces, we number the pieces, and we seal them back together with gold. And then that vessel not only can hold things again, but is a work of art now, that’s really unique.

And to witness that in me, to witness that in you, from our very first group together, and to witness that in our participants’ experience too–I mean, we’ve done so many groups now–we’re seeing how people’s lives have been completely transformed. From that first call, where you log in, and your entire face is just gray, and you maybe haven’t washed your hair in a week, and you start to slowly realize that there are ten other people who also haven’t washed their hair in a week–going from that experience, to seeing them change their jobs, to travel, to change their relationship status. Sometimes there’s a new baby in the mix. But sometimes they decide that actually, they’d like to direct their nurturing energies in a different direction. There’s really nothing like it. I’ll never get tired of it.

Emily: It’s so beautiful.

Ryan: It’s so beautiful. And it is like gardening, right? You plant this little seed, and you hope that it grows.

And particularly after a loss like ours where it didn’t grow the way that we wanted it to, to watch all these other seeds of healing that we’ve been able to foster and tend, and now they’re these sturdy beings–I just think that that’s really an important form of activist work that doesn’t get talked about enough in the reproductive justice space.

There’s a lot of focus on policy, and absolutely, I think that’s really important, obviously. To protect our choices and to protect our access to medical care in the acute moments of our loss, of our great cost and peril. And at the same time, I think that we’re not really focused enough on survivorship in the reproductive justice community.

Like, how do we take care of people after they’ve had the abortion for which they’ve had to cross state lines? How do we remind people of their basic goodness after they have had to sign paperwork attesting that they’re making a choice that they don’t feel that they’re making? How do we help people heal from the epistemological violence that is being levied in their direction? And how do we help them become whole again?

I think that’s a conversation that I didn’t know needed to happen until I was in it. Now I feel like it’s a conversation that you and I have all the time.

How grief changes how we show up for others

Ryan: This has also changed the way I show up for other people. I don’t know if that’s true for you, but I am like, first in line with the soup and the blanket and the socks now when somebody’s going through it. Because I know what it means to be cared for and seen.

Do you find that too? How has your response to other people’s acute experiences of grief changed?

Emily: Before my loss, I was doing direct therapy and I had some basic knowledge, basic training in grief and loss, and I think I could get by in supporting others. But after going through such a significant loss, it’s on another level. I’m just so much more brave, in a way.

I’m just speaking from my own experience, but I definitely was admittedly the type of person that would kind of back away and be like, “They’ll reach out if they need help. I don’t know what to say, so I’m not going to say anything at all.” And that has completely been a 180 for me. I will reach out. I will continue to reach out. I will respect your boundaries. I will help you decide if you need to make boundaries with other people. So I think going through this has really improved the way that I can show up for the people who I love and care about when–unfortunately not if, but when–these people experience grief.

Ryan: Because we all will, right? From my spiritual perspective, Buddhists are always talking about death, and this idea that we’re all going to get old–God willing. And we’re all going to get sick–I have a stuffy nose right now. And we’re all going to experience death. So these are skills that every living being needs to have, because there’s no life that isn’t going to be touched by these forces.

It also makes me think of the idea of the bodhisattva, which exists in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition–of somebody who is steps away from enlightenment, but chooses to turn in the other direction, and work towards the enlightenment of others. To help people across the threshold.

I know that you have a special relationship with the bodhisattva Jizō. You sent me a little statue of Jizō at one point. And I wonder if we could end on just thinking about that. Thinking about how this has impacted your spirituality. Because very often there’s a reckoning, where our relationship to spirituality may or may not be everything that we need, to respond to this trauma that’s happening right now.

How did you go from being raised Catholic to sending out Jizō statues?

Emily: I think even in high school–I went to a Catholic high school–they did an excellent job of teaching critical thinking. It was okay to ask really big questions. Even if it’s against the foundational rules of Catholicism. So even as a young adult, and into the rest of my life, I’ve always been kind of a spiritual kind of explorer–but never really found anything that stuck. I was just asking questions to the universe–like, what is the meaning? Big questions, right?

After this loss, those questions may not necessarily have been answered. But I have found, I think, pathways to where I could maybe get those answers one day.

And nature, connecting with nature, has been a huge part of my shift in spirituality. As I mentioned, we lost our son on the winter solstice, which was such a profoundly symbolic thing for me. Quite literally the darkest day of the year, and the darkest day of my life. The symbolism there has really been almost sacred to me. And navigating my initial grief through that first year and how it kind of matched the weather outside, and the changing seasons, was just really special. That’s how I came to decide to garden on his due date–to just really feel that connection with the changing seasons. So I think my spirituality now is very nature-based.

And the little Jizō sculpture was actually from a meditation teacher of mine, who gave me my first little—actually, I have it right here. It’s literally a rock. And this artist paints the little cherry blossom and little Jizo face on there. It was the most thoughtful grief gift that anybody got me.

And I did some background research on this little deity. He’s pictured a lot of times wearing these robes with big pockets. And his task is to carry the souls of children, or babies who die in pregnancy, into the afterlife. These little souls that may need some help crossing into the next, whatever that looks like. He sticks them in his pockets, and guides them, and carries them into the next realm.

And he’s always pictured with a little smile on his face. It’s like a happy, joyful deity. And that just really resonated with me. So now I try to send my own. I got connected with the artist who makes these, and I try to send little gifts to the group participants for their own little altars, or to put in their own gardens.

Ryan: That’s beautiful and very full circle. It feels like at one point we were carried by Jizō, and now we are maybe perhaps assisting in that work. And it’s a tragedy to lose a child too young. But it’s also an honor to be part of this threshold work.

Emily: Very. Very.

Ryan: And it feels like a calling. It feels like it chose me, as much as I chose it. And I feel that from you. So what a joy that we get to do it together

Emily: Yes, truly.

Ryan: Well, thank you, Emily. I’m deeply bowing to you, for your time. And I’m looking forward to our upcoming workshop, where we’ll go more deeply into all of this, and support people in their own meaning-making and threshold work.

Emily: Yes, me too. Thank you so much.

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Join us on Weds 4/1

My lane in this newsletter is exploring the intersections between sometimes-idealistic mindfulness teachings and the messy realities of parenting and caregiving.

My friend Dacy’s lane might seem to be geographically distant from this: her newsletter, , is about clothes and fashion.

As it turns out, though, one of the messy realities of our lives, one that often stubbornly resists our attempts to be quote-unquote mindful about it, is — yep, you guessed it, clothes.

In this conversation, which began as a way for me to chat casually to Dacy about my newfound love for ThredUp — which is pretty Buddhist-y, for a for-profit company, as we’ll see — we also found ourselves talking about that. About what lies beneath the anxieties and the joys we get from clothing, and the surprising ways in which we can bring mindfulness to those feelings and sensations.

In this interview, you’ll hear us touch on:

• How shopping secondhand can give us the permission we need to embrace our impermanent bodies—without contributing to environmental degradation

• How starting over is difficult, inevitable, and liberating—whether we’re coming back to the breath on the cushion or coming back to the Pinterest page/drawing board in a new season of embodiment

• How body grief can feel specific and personal—but also remind us of our common humanity with others

• How having clothes that don’t fit can pull us out of the present moment—and destabilize our mental health

• How we can set up systems to meet our needs and our family’s needs in seasons of chronic illness as an act of self-compassion—in ways that Dacy and I enjoy getting very granular about, as two people who suffer from chronic fatigue

• How donating and re-selling clothes can pay dividends for our healing—even if we probably won’t make a financial fortune reselling our most special items

• How we don’t have to care about style in order to care about ourselves, our ideas, and our right to self-renewal. Hermit crabs must shed their old shells to grow. Deciduous trees must release old leaves in order to recycle their nutrients into new leaves. Why should we try to locate ourselves outside of this cycle? And as Dacy asks—what’s the alternative?

Read on for more of this rich conversation, and opportunities at the end of the post to work with me and other expert space-holders to further metabolize grief and other complicated emotions this spring.

On giving ourselves permission to embrace our changing bodies

Ryan: So the reason that I came to your work is that I, as you know, run a newsletter that’s about parents and caregivers and the things that they need.

Dacy: Great newsletter, everyone should subscribe.

Ryan: So one of the things that we need is clothes, turns out.

I had been through a pretty rocky family building journey, and it left me with an entirely different body than I had before. A lot of us know that we can’t just bounce back to our pre-pregnancy selves, but my body was not going back even to my post-pregnancy body, because of different things that had happened to me.

In the past I had spent time curating what I’ve described to you as a Cool Girl wardrobe. I used to be a journalist. I wrote about music and food. I had, like, a whole vibe. And suddenly I couldn’t wear those things anymore—and they also didn’t really feel like me. So I really needed a complete wardrobe overhaul.

But you and I have talked about the fact that we come from backgrounds of activism. I grew up in a family of environmentalists. Fashion was not necessarily a huge priority in our house. And so I really was in this bind, where I didn’t want to be consumerist—whatever that word means, right—but I needed everything. I needed new pants. I needed new shoes. I needed every season, because my entire body had changed. And I was really struggling with that.

And so I really came to ThredUp around the same time that I came to your work. Because what I write about a lot is Engaged Buddhism, meditation, mindfulness. Not in like, a sanctimommy, gross way, but just in a sense of like, I really want to pay attention to this. I really want to think about this.

I wasn’t really clicking with a lot of sort of fashion bloggers out there. [But] when I came across your work, I was like, YES. I probably even searched for “mindful approaches to clothing.” And the magic of SEO brought me to you.

I just really appreciated the fact that there was such permission given in your work. Both to just buy what you need secondhand, if you’re feeling icky about the consumerist aspect of it, and also pointing out that the most sustainable clothes that you can wear are the clothes that you will actually wear.

It really gave me a lot of permission to think, “Okay, if I take the brakes off and just say, ‘I’m just going to buy whatever I need secondhand and I’m going to allow myself to do that without guilt,’ it really opened things up for me.

And so what was really kind of cool about [Thredup] was that I could start by loading up on credits by sending the clothes that no longer fit me. It was really quite therapeutic to take these clothes and say, “I’m not going back. This is a prior version of me.”

And I love her. Sometimes I miss her. But l was sort of doing the Marie Kondo thing: “Thank you for your service.” Like, “Bye, American Apparel tank top from when I was cute and hot in the early aughts. Bye. Instead, I’m going to be buying some sensible sweaters that I can machine wash because I have a small child.”

On starting again, from scratch

Dacy: How many of us have had those kind of body shifts? Mine has been very gradual over time—like, okay, this season I need some new pants and oh, next year my winter coat doesn’t fit anymore. But I think so many people, especially with health problems and with trauma, have a more sudden change. And it is so disorienting to have to start from scratch.

I’m grateful that you were able to give yourself the permission. Because I always say: what’s the alternative? What are you going to do? Beat yourself up and then wear too-small clothes in the meantime? There is no alternative.

And the fact that ThredUp is there, and other secondhand sites, to provide an alternative to buying an all-new wardrobe—which by the way, sometimes is necessary also—I’m grateful for that for you.

… You and I both know this and talk about this, about how with everything, it’s more than the clothes, right? It’s always more than the clothes.

A rupture, a reckoning—and a connection to common humanity

Dacy: And so we got on this call to talk about ThredUp, but now I want to ask you a little bit more about body grief. Because you had such a—as the Center for Body Trust organization calls it—you had such a rupture with your body, and a reckoning.

You mentioned kind of packing those things up and sending them off. Was that a piece of grieving for you?

Ryan: Yes, definitely. Definitely. And I think body grief is real.

And I also think, when I talk about meditation, I try to make a distinction between self-pity—which is like, why is this happening to me, poor me, I alone am being singled out for this punishment—and self-compassion, which really has a common humanity piece. And so yes, body grief can be a very individual experience, because we’ve had these individual experiences of maybe privilege and being in a smaller body. But it can also really connect us to people, you know?

If we think about self-compassion as being like, “What hurts, who else feels this, and what’s the medicine”—the thing that hurt the most was just not having an experience of body neutrality, which I’ve talked to you about. Where the waistband is cutting in if I’m trying to wear something that’s too small. Or if I’m trying to put something on that was from a pregnancy that did not end in a living child, then those clothes are so loaded.

And so if I only have clothing that feels like these sort-of shells, like two hermit crab shells ago, and those are my only options, then I really can’t come into the present moment.

I also can’t focus on what I do have to say, even though I don’t primarily write about style. I think that the point that you’ve made is that you don’t have to care about style. This is actually about letting clothing recede into the background, so that you can focus on what you do care about.

Because otherwise, as you’ve said, when people go through a body rupture, it can be very preoccupying. It can be re-triggering. People have talked with both of us about the fact that going on a medication that helps bring down the food noise for them, and has freed up all of these mental resources to start businesses or find themselves. I experienced a lot of clothing noise that I didn’t necessarily choose, and it wasn’t because I was necessarily a vain person who was trying to win at fashion. It was just that there was so much sensory stimuli that was so incredibly distracting, and was so tied to the rupture, that I needed softness immediately. Spaciousness.

And luckily, I welcome the wide-leg-pant-with-elastic-waist. You and I are looking for the perfect elastic waist barrel jean at the same time. I welcome our new wide leg pant overlords. It’s been such a good time.

Dacy: It really is. Yeah.

Ryan: So it’s also just about embracing what is new and fresh in the moment for all femme-identified people, in terms of how there’s just looser silhouettes now than there were when I was younger. And that coincides with my needs right now.

Dacy: It’s really amazing. The fact that elastic waist pants are not taboo anymore and the fact that sneakers are cool—if I had had that in the early 2000s, my feet would be much healthier.

How “body checking” takes us out of the present moment

Dacy: I love this concept that you named of those past selves being like hermit crab shells. Like. you grow and you move out of those previous homes. And they were comfortable when you were in there, but you need a new home. I love that…

just wrote a piece about body checking, and the way that clothes are too small can really impede your growth in an intuitive eating and anti-diet journey. And I talk about that a lot with clients … [about how] when you are constantly pulling or tugging or pushing against clothing, like you said, it pulls you out of your present moment. And that, in the body image world, is called body checking. It’s something that is that we want to cut down on, because it really is something that can really turn your day bad…

I love that we know each other so well, [so] you also know that my bottom line, when we’re considering anything to do with ethics or environmental concerns, my bottom line is always going to be the person’s mental health. And I believe clothes that fit is part of having a healthy mind, because of the things we just spoke about. If you don’t have that, if you are curled up in bed and don’t want to get out of bed because you feel so bad about your body, you are unable at that point to not only take care of yourself and the community around you, but you’re certainly unable to go out and work for any of the efforts that you believe are going to make the world a better place, right? So to me, that’s where it all starts.

On clothing yourself while chronically ill

Dacy: There’s now some moralization and some guilt even around shopping secondhand, right? Like, now people are saying you can shop secondhand too much. Whether that’s a systemic or an individual problem is something that I’m going to be writing about soon. But I just kind of want to reiterate that for you, having that was what saved you in that situation.

Ryan: Yes. And, to talk about the experience of just kind of being in your bed and not knowing what to do—you and I both struggle with chronic fatigue and chronic illness.

The medication that I take to be well is also one of the reasons why I am in a bigger body, so I also just want to name that—that you can’t look at somebody’s body and think, “Oh, they’re healthy because they’re thinner.” They might be on medication that is literally life-saving, and sometimes those medications come with side effects—so full disclosure.

But chronic fatigue is still a huge part of my life. And so being a caregiver, I cannot spend like hours upon hours just browsing stores, pulling on clothes that have that tight, doesn’t-fit quality. That would not have been great for my mental health as well.

.. So I started very much just lying in my bed, making collages the way that you invite your one-on-one clients to do. I’m an elder millennial, so I was using Pinterest. There’s probably cooler tools out there, but that’s what I was doing. And that was really helpful because then, you know, you, as you said to your clients, you start to notice patterns. You start to notice colors that you like.

In fact, the fact that I was noticing patterns in those colors also actually led to the current design of In Tending. Our friend helped me work with that. I was like, “I just think I really love these five colors. They just keep appearing.”

Dacy: Oh my God. The same thing is happening for me right now. I look at my outfit every day and I’m like, “Okay, these are my branding colors.”

Ryan: Really? Amazing!

Ryan: So the clothing piece ended up actually being a substantial part of, of what led to me thinking about how, visually, I wanted to welcome people into the mindfulness space that I run.

In any case, I pinned and pinned, and then sort of knew what I was looking for. And then I could just create searches within ThredUp… [because] I got places to be. I gotta take my kids somewhere. And so then, you wake up in the morning and it’s auto-populated with clothes that are your exact measurements. You don’t have to look at anything else. You don’t have to be like, “Oh no, it’s sold out in my size,” or “Oh no, this shitty brand doesn’t carry my size, because it’s not size inclusive.” Literally all of these jumpsuits are my exact unusual measurements. And that’s just so nice.

Dacy: I mean, I’m Gen X, but I still think Pinterest is the best tool. So that’s what you did. You kind of collected a bunch of things that you liked the look of.

Just to remind people: we want to try and do that with a neutral mind where we’re not placing judgment on the bodies in these photos. We’re just trying to look at the clothing and whether it appeals to us somewhere in our gut. We want to try and block out the thoughts that say, “Well, I would never look good in that,” or “That doesn’t come in my size,” or “I have nowhere to wear that.” When we’re pinning, we want to try and just be as free and open as we can.

Ryan: I will say, it is really nice because the clothes are not on models [in Thredup]. They’re just on a mannequin.

Dacy: Interesting point.

Ryan: So really the clothes are foregrounded, and your internalized bias machine is not being fed any sort of preconceived notions about who can wear these clothes or who wore them before.

Dacy: Yeah, that’s a really good point.

…

Ryan: Also, to your point, most of the people on my Pinterest page are like, elderly Japanese men. So it’s a lot of oversized quilted denim.

Dacy: I love that. That’s such a vibe. Like, you don’t have to choose 3 words for your style. What Ryan just said is like the perfect mental image. It’s like, “Okay, would that man wear this? Okay. Check.”

Ryan: I also lived in Korea for a while, and the women in Korea who are middle-aged, it is understood that they can wear anything that they want. Like, “Are you wearing a visor and also florals and also sparkly clogs? Go off.”

On practicing non-grasping and generosity with clothing

Dacy: Now tell me, talk a little bit about the, sending your stuff to [Thredup] and getting credit? Because some people have mentioned kind of wanting to do that.

Ryan: Yes. So again, busy business owner and caregiver here. If I do not have to drive and drop off donations and also go to the UPS store with my returns, that is like a huge win for me. Particularly because I live in a rural area. So that is like 40 minutes saved right there.

…It’s great for getting rid of kids’ clothes that you’re not using anymore because they’re teensy. Like, you can fit 20 things in the top of a returns box, easily, right? Onesies, little tiny shoes.

Which again is its own kind of grief, right? It’s a different kind of grief. Like, “Oh, I won’t have a little person wearing these shoes.” But it’s also like, “Yep, and now these clothes get to support me in wearing new clothes that fit the body that I have, because I made that tiny person.

Dacy: Right. You turn those things into credit that you can then use to buy yourself things for your changing body, the things that your kid’s body has changed out of. I love that.

Ryan: There’s just something poetic about that.

Dacy: A big question that always comes up for clients and readers and people in my group programs is: okay, you’ve done a big closet edit and you’ve gotten rid of the stuff that is giving you grief. What do you do with it? How do you dispose of it?

That is a big article to be written. And it’s a video I just made for my online group yesterday. But short answer, relevant today, is that ThredUp is a good place. If you are overwhelmed, if you have a chronic illness, if you have a very busy life, ThredUp is a great place… Having low expectations for resale is something everyone has to get used to across the board.. I got $2 for a nice 100% cotton Gap sweater. [But] if you can take that chore off your plate, I think that is really valuable, again, for mental health, which is what we’re working on here.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely.

I think it’s definitely a situation where sometimes we let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Where, especially if something has so much sentimental value to us, we have all these memories in it. Or it was our first “fancy thing” that we bought with our money. There’s just so many associations that we can have with things, where we would really like for the outside world to validate how special this item is to us, by paying us money. And I agree with you that I think that that’s not the most helpful, adaptive way to go about it.

I think that we can honor that. We can have a moment. We can feel our feelings about it. And then I think there’s an opportunity to practice non-grasping and generosity. These clothes are going to go somewhere where they are going to be useful to someone, which they are not going to do if they are sitting in your basement.

Dacy: Yep.

On letting ourselves be renewed

Dacy: I think everybody got so much out of this. I’m so excited. Thanks to everyone who did join us and I can’t wait to have this posted for everyone else too.

Ryan: Thank you for having me. There’s so much mindfulness that’s involved in getting dressed. And I think that that’s what I would say to end things. That these things can sort of be seen as like, “The mindful people are over here, drinking their lemon water, and then the rest of us are over here, with our petty worldly concerns.” But there is an enormous amount of mindfulness involved in every single thing that we’ve talked about.

Everything from working with self-compassion, to working with non-grasping and generosity, to really releasing old stories from the past and coming back into the present moment, and using all of these skillful means to get there.

What I would also say is that you’ve given me is permission to work with my changing body, accept my changing body, and not to put weird, diet culture-y, “less buying things is always better” purity narratives on top of that. You’ve really just allowed me to work with what is in a way that is relatively drama-free.

It feels like such a beautiful first full circle moment, to be coming and speaking on this with you, because this really tricky season that I was moving through brought me to your work, and brought me to you. And now we have this really nourishing friendship.

I like things that are cyclical like that. I like just sending things that you’re finished with and letting those things be composted. And then it’s like the spring now. The the leaves that drop from prior seasons of our lives can be recycled and arise as new freshness. And I think everybody deserves that.

And actually, to locate yourself outside of that cycle—why, why, why would you do that? You deserve freshness and renewal just like every other living being.

Dacy: Exactly.

Ryan: Do it whatever way works for you. But allow yourself to be renewed, I guess is what I would say. We’re all worthy of that.

Dacy: Okay. That’s the title. Love you, Ryan.

Ryan: Thank you.

Dacy: Yes, you too. Have a great day everyone.

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If you liked this interview, I hope you’ll join me and my friends for our upcoming spring workshop series. Scroll down for more info!

Clearing Space for Grief: A Meditation + Writing Workshop

With Emily Marlowe, LCSW, PMH-C

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.

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

Tending Your Spiritual Truth: A Meditation + Writing Workshop

With of

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.

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

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

With of

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.

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.

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and I live on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, but the contours of her story will be familiar to many readers here at In Tending.

• She’s an oldest daughter who grew up caring for siblings.

• She places a high premium on time spent with chosen family.

• She’s a natural community-builder who goes out of her way to uplift the work of others.

Clare is also a trauma survivor many times over, and the creator of . Her work focuses less on the nitty-gritty contours of the traumatic events she and others have experienced, and more on the process of healing from them. Given this, we don’t discuss the details of her experiences with abuse below, but we do discuss the fact of it happening, so we invite you to take care of yourselves as you read.

What Clare and I chose to discuss at length is the importance of revising our approach to ambition, career, and the notion of “entrepreneurship” following experiences of trauma, in ways that honor the fact that there are often more important things, to a survivor, than money and status.

Speaking from our shared lived experience, Clare and I talk about these facets of life after trauma:

• How we often need to turn our energies inward for an extended period to care for ourselves after loss, particularly when we lose an important caregiver figure

• How sometimes we dream of making something meaningful from our trauma right away, but we also have to be patient with the pace our own recovery along the way

• The constellation of projects she’s built to support survivors, including her Artist’s Way gatherings, trauma-informed yoga classes, Monthly Creative Gatherings, and the SurvivorStack newsletter directory

We also talk about what it’s like to pursue fertility treatment in Ireland as one half of a queer couple, and about The Ideas Academy, an accelerator program for early stage social entrepreneurs in Ireland that might serve as a model for other communities who wish to support trauma-informed healing work.

I loved this conversation with Clare, and I hope you will too!

P.S. If the topic of re-thinking ambition calls to you, you may be interested in Re-Claiming Our Power, a meditation and writing workshop I’m cohosting on March 25 with our fellow trauma survivor Kate Carson. If you’re in a place of self-tending following trauma or loss, Clearing Space for Grief, a workshop co-hosted therapist Emily Marlowe on April 1, may also be of interest. These workshops are free for all members of the In Tending Mentorship Program, and sliding-scale pricing is available for all others who wish to attend.

Ryan: Where did you grow up? What else grows there? What was it like for you to grow there?

Clare: I grew up in rural Ireland in the late 1980s. In some ways, it was idyllic. I was surrounded by nature, and had my three younger siblings to play and fight with.

But childhood was a painful chapter for me. I was sexually abused as a young child. And though I didn’t have this language then, I found the omnipresence of the Catholic Church and the misogynistic—or some might say “traditional”—values of that era deeply oppressive. As a young queer kid, it wasn’t easy to try to become myself in that context. I wrote about this time in my life in an essay about coming out for the Huffington Post.

Ryan: I really loved that Huffington Post essay, and I hope folks will take the time to read it after this. You weave together so many strands, from the pain of sexual abuse to the joys of coming out as queer, in ways that are beautiful and healing to read.

Who first tended you?

Clare: My mother. She died in a car accident when I was 19, but she was a steady, reassuring presence throughout my childhood. I was her first-born, and we were always very tightly connected. Of course there were moments when we clashed; in a lot of ways, she was very different from me. But there was an unbreakable foundation of love, support and trust between us.

When I got married last summer, I wanted to honour the role she’d played in my life. During our ceremony, I spoke about all the things Mam taught me, how I still feel her presence, and how she showed me what it means to build a happy, meaningful life.

Ryan: What is your earliest memory of tending another being?

Clare: I’m the eldest of four children, so I have strong memories of being part of a happy, rumpunctious brood of young children. There were moments that I hated the noise and chaos of a large family, but there were many other moments when I loved the joyful camaraderie of it.

I did often take care of my siblings—babysitting, and helping with practical tasks. But I also enjoyed being the one who got to do things first and share what I’d figured out with them. Whenever I’m in a big group, I feel that eldest daughter energy bubble to the top and I have to remind myself not to be too bossy—while secretly thinking “Oh, I know a better way to do this!” I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Definitely not the only one–I’m an eldest daughter as well, and feel that same impulse often! Also, I love the word rumpunctious.

What or whom have you most loved tending since?

Clare: This might seem like an odd answer, but I’d have to say myself.

When my mother died, I lost the only person who’d ever really taken care of me. I grieved and raged and cried about that for more than a decade, before I realised that I was going to have to take care of myself, and that I might be worthy of that care.

I’ve been through a lot of other things in my life in addition to that, as I’ve mentioned–sexual violence, workplace trauma. I’m sure there will be many more difficult chapters in my life. But I doubt anything could be as painful as the years when it felt like I had no safe place to land in this world.

When the bottom fell out of my life, I had to figure out a way to keep going. I decided to take all the ambition I’d poured into my career and instead invest it in rebuilding my life. It took many years of hard work, therapy and lots of trial and error, but I am so proud of the life I’ve remade for myself.

My work today is motivated by the desire to make recovery from trauma a little easier on the next person. That’s what keeps me going through the ups and downs of trying to build a new framework for what recovery might look like.

At the moment, I also care for our cat Martino, my community and the people I love. It’s important to me to be the friend who shows up–usually with baked goods!—when someone is going through a hard moment. Chosen family is so important in queer circles and so I devote a lot of time, energy and attention towards nourishing those relationships.

Ryan: You’ve written very movingly about how coming out, and then finding your partner, has been a healing process in and of itself.

How did you meet your partner? What has it been like for you two to make a life in Ireland?

Clare: I first met her at an in person gathering of queer women and non-binary folks who would get together at a local park with drinks, snacks and games on lazy Sunday afternoons during the pandemic. It was a great way to meet new people, and to stave off the isolation that came with living alone and being unemployed during that time.

My wife and I have since built a beautiful life together in Dublin. We have great friends, a beautiful home by the park, and take regular trips back to Rome to spend time with my wife’s parents and extended family.

In general, Ireland is quite queer-friendly, but there are certainly moments when we face homophobia and discrimination. For example, the Irish government provides funding for heterosexual couples who would like to use IVF to have a family. The same funding isn’t available to queer couples. I didn’t think this kind of bare-faced discrimination would be allowed in 2026, but I was wrong. We also recently tried to hire a someone to do some work in our home, but she didn’t want the job when she realised we were a gay couple. These pockets of discrimination can be quite painful to deal with when they do arise.

Ryan: I’m so sorry to hear that this has been your experience, with discrimination generally and with IVF specifically. As a fellow fertility warrior, I have heard so many stories like this, and it’s very upsetting.

That said, gentle congratulations on your pregnancy. [Clare is pregnant now, and due in April.]

Ryan: I’d love to talk more about your other major creative endeavor: , your transformative and heartfelt newsletter. How did this project come to be?

Clare: Life after Trauma has been my dream for more than a decade. I’ve always wanted to create a survivor-centred resource that could counter some of the prevailing media narratives about the impact of trauma, particularly sexual violence. I remember sketching out names and logo ideas years ago. It wasn’t the right time for me to start this project then—my own recovery was still too fragile!—but I found the courage to share my story publicly in January 2023, and later that year, I started Life after Trauma.

My goal is to provide stories, resources and community for people finding their way through trauma. I love to host community events, like The Artist’s Way, trauma-informed yoga classes and our Monthly Creative Gatherings.

Ryan: What work-life tensions, if any, have arisen as you’ve moved more deeply into this work?

I think a lot about the emotional sustainability of my work. For example, I used to volunteer with the Rape Crisis Centre here in Dublin. I worked on the phone line taking calls from survivors in crisis, and I accompanied people to the hospital, where they were treated for their injuries. It was deeply fulfilling work, but very emotionally taxing too.

Right now, I’m really happy and proud to be doing meaningful work in a sustainable way. I don’t want to build something useful, only to put my own recovery in jeopardy because I’m passionate about helping others. Burnout serves no one, and I know this work is only sustainable when I’m taking good care of myself.

I’m also still trying to find a way to make this work more financially sustainable as well. I’ve gotten some great support from organisations that support social entrepreneurs here in Ireland, and they’re always asking about how my work can scale. However, I remember telling an advisor that it didn’t work for me to write a business plan for Life After Trauma. I couldn’t be guided only by financial targets or external deadlines. I needed to make my plans, but hold them loosely. I needed to make time to check in with myself through journaling, long walks in nature, in conversations with the people close to me and on my yoga mat.

I’m not selling sausages, or trying to scale a widget-making factory. I’m trying to figure out new ways of thinking and talking about trauma, and how our lives don’t need to be defined by it. The work requires deep personal commitment, presence and a willingness to change and evolve. So I continue to balance my work with a commitment to caring for myself.

Ryan: Your words here resonate deeply. I think many of us are moving through a similar process of re-defining success, in ways that prioritize making a positive, sustainable impact on our communities over time vs. making a bunch of money quickly. You have also used the language of “social entrepreneurship” to frame this approach to work. Can you explain this term for folks who are unfamiliar?

Clare: This is a great question. Many folks haven’t heard about social entrepreneurship so when I talk about it, I often find it easier to describe it as entrepreneurship with a mission. We all have an understanding of what entrepreneurs do, and I think those attributes—skills, mindset, ambition—are what’s needed to create lasting social change. That said, I worry that we minimise the more important, heart-led aspects of this work when we use language that situates it in the world of business. Part of what great social change-makers do is to create a narrative framework for a new version of our world. I don’t think this can be done alone, but I’m deeply curious about how it might evolve through community.

To be clear, I would love to make a sustainable living from this work. It would be deeply meaningful to see it scale and grow beyond my little office. But it’s about so much more than making money and hitting milestones. This work is about supporting our most core selves. It is personal, intimate, sacred work. It’s so much more important than business plans or financial targets.

To put it more personally, I am constantly amazed by how much my life has changed since I began working through my trauma. How much I have changed. The scale of the transformation is astounding to me, and I know many survivors feel similarly. What might this kind of change look like on a societal level? It feels wrong to situate change of this magnitude in the realm of capitalism and commerce. It’s about something much more profound than that.

Ryan: You mentioned above that you have received some additional external support for Life After Trauma, so clearly this rippling-outward effect is already underway. Which entities have been able to provide financial support for this project already? What other funding sources exist where you are?

Clare: The world of funding can be so opaque, so I’m really happy to talk about this.

In 2024 I was awarded a place on The Ideas Academy, an accelerator programme for early stage social entrepreneurs here in Ireland. I completed a 6 month programme of training which culminated in pitching 4 potential investors Dragons Den style.

Thinking about the pitch in advance, I was terrified. Was someone going to challenge my experience of sexual violence? Would they want to know all the horrible details of what happened? Would the panel of investors have the skills to be sensitive to my trauma while also interrogating the validity of my approach? I did a lot of work in advance to prepare my pitch. I practised responding to difficult questions, and role played how I could gently assert my boundaries even if it meant that I damaged my chances of getting funding.

In the end, it was a really positive experience. I was successfully awarded €4,000, out of a maximum potential award of €5,000. I used the money to hire experts to help me to professionalise my work and to host trauma informed yoga classes. The experience was also invaluable in terms of the confidence it gave me, to secure investment from a panel of strangers who felt that my work mattered and was worth supporting.

I am continuing to apply for other grants and funding opportunities, as well as trying to find ways to make my Substack income more sustainable. I want my work to be accessible to everyone who needs it, and always offer complimentary access to those who can’t afford to pay. In order to do that, I ask the folks who find value in the work and can afford to contribute to chip in a few quid each month. This isn’t financially sustainable yet, but I hope it might be someday.

Ryan: One of the things I admire about you is how much you also lift up other people writing about life after trauma–in particular, through the curation of SurvivorStack, a directory of people who are writing on this topic on Substack.

How did this additional project idea come about for you? What has it been like to curate this directory? What have the writers within this directory added to your framework that wasn’t there before?

Clare: Thank you for shouting out SurvivorStack. I’m really proud of this project, which was only possible thanks to the input and suggestions of the wider Life After Trauma community.

Like many aspects of my work, the idea came from my own experience. When I first started trying to recover from the sexual violence I’d experienced in childhood, I really struggled to find accurate information. This was in the 2000s, before #MeToo, before #BelieveSurvivors, before there was any kind of public conversation about trauma and recovery. I read what I could—mostly academic books, and the occasional memoir—but I was desperate for other survivors’ stories. SurvivorStack is the resource I wish I had back then. It’s about honouring our collective voices and finding recovery in community.

There are thousands of writers on this platform, all toiling away in our separate silos. I wanted to find a way to bring us together, so we can read, share and amplify our work. SurvivorStack is currently home to more than 100 newsletters, so to be honest, one of my biggest challenges is keeping up with all the great work that’s being done. I wish there were more hours in the day to read and celebrate all the survivors who are writing about finding recovery after trauma.

Ryan: Are there other writers, teachers or activists beyond the Substack universe that you admire, who are working to support survivors?

Clare: Tarana Burke’s work has been transformational for me. Too many people know of the #MeToo Movement only through how the media has misrepresented it, but if you listen to Tarana’s own voice on these topics, she is deeply inspiring. Her work is laser-focused on survivors and their healing. She talks about the importance of joy, community and finding recovery through action. If you haven’t made the time to watch her talks on YouTube, read her memoir, Unbound, or hear her be interviewed about her work, I really recommend it.

Ryan: How do you come home to yourself after a day of immersing yourself in the world of trauma and survivorship? Do you have contemplative practices, journaling practices, movement practices etc. that ground you?

Clare: Journaling is my starting point, always. I’ve been writing my Morning Pages, which I discovered through The Artist’s Way, for more than a decade. Last year I hosted community exploration of Julia Cameron’s book, which was immensely fulfilling. I’m hoping to do it again! For me, Morning Pages are a powerful way to connect with myself more deeply so I start almost everyday with that.

I also try to prioritise a nice, long walk in nature, ideally with only my wife, a friend or my thoughts for company. I find reading deeply restorative, and I love to get together with friends and experience the world outside my little mental bubble. In the evenings, I am usually completely pooped, so ideally I have dinner with my love and collapse on the couch to watch 20 minutes of a show before I start snoring.

That said, I also love my work. It’s deeply fulfilling, and I feel so lucky that I get to do it.

Ryan: Where can people find you if they want to engage further with your work?

Clare: The best place to connect with me is through my newsletter. I play a little on Instagram and LinkedIn, and also have a website but my newsletter is my homebase.

Your turn: In what ways have you redefined ambition over the course of your career? What would it look like to celebrate the social impact of what you do from the monetary rewards you receive for your labor? What other questions do you have for Clare? We’d love to know!

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Bodies change. Through puberty, through parenthood, through midlife and on into old age, if we’re lucky. Intellectually, we know this. Experientially, we see this all around us. But our current culture tells all of us, women in particular, that our bodies should forever look the same, and ideally as young as possible. And our wardrobes? Naturally, they too should be “timeless.”

This fantastical line of thinking creates a lot of cognitive dissonance for many of us as we move through the real world, where change is a constant. In my experience, it also feeds the kind of doubt that stops us from doing what we’re meant to do in the world. Because the assignment before us seems impossible.

How are we supposed to gracefully accept impermanence, when we’re also expected to fight it, on the battlefield of our own bodies?

Enter style consultant Dacy Gillespie, who aims to bring sanity to our insane status quo.

Many of Dacy’s clients are people who resent the double-bind above, and feel drained by so many others. For example:

• We would prefer never to buy new clothes again, but our old clothes no longer fit.

• We’d love to shop local or buy secondhand, but no stores near us carry our size.

• We don’t want to pollute the earth with fast fashion, but we’re on a real-world budget.

• We may not care about trends or impressing men, but we still want to be taken seriously online as we do our good work in the world.

Dacy often invites her readers and clients to step back from these cognitive concerns, for just a moment, and return to our bodies. To notice how fabric is making contact with our feet, our bellies, our arms. To bring awareness to which clothing-related challenges trigger sensory overwhelm or self-critical thoughts.

From there, she invites us to embrace the idea that everyone, in every body, deserves clothes that fit. That dressing ourselves with dignity, regardless of our current shape and size, is an act of loving rebellion against a system that tells us that this privilege is only reserved for the (thin, white) few.

This is why Dacy’s business is called The Mindful Closet. Because, as she’s taught me, getting dressed does not have to look like an exercise in trying to control the uncontrollable. It can be a place where we practice embracing changes in our bodies with kind, non-judgmental awareness—as we would any other object of mindfulness.

In this interview, Dacy walks us through more of the particulars of her perspective on this, touching on:

• How growing up with “activist-minded” parents informs her work now

• How being neurodivergent impacts the way she and her clients think about style

• The questions she invites her clients to ask and answer in order to gain insight into what they really need

P.S. I’ve also included more info at the end about Dacy’s upcoming group program, where people get to work more closely with her while also connecting with like-minded folks who are asking and answering the same mindful questions about clothing. Enrollment is open now through March 2.

P.P.S. If you’re interested in how this topic dovetails with that of re-imagining intimacy—the way we are in our bodies when we’re with the people we love—you may also enjoy tomorrow’s In Tending workshop, Re-Imagining Intimacy! Details here.

Ryan: What is your earliest memory of tending another being?

Dacy: Two things come to mind.

First, I remember being absolutely enamored with my baby sister, who was 5 years younger than me. I really wanted her to be my baby and I wanted to cuddle and hold her all the time.

The other thing that comes up is that when I was around 7 or 8, my father got hurt badly in an accident at the shipyard he worked at. He was bedridden for a year. I wouldn’t say I was really tending him, but there was a lot of ferrying things back and forth and being called to help.

Ryan: What or whom have you most loved tending since?

Dacy: From a very early age, I loved tending to my surroundings. My parents weren’t very interested in aesthetics, but I would decorate and rearrange my room constantly.

Unfortunately, until I had children, I then spent most of my tending energy on men, certainly not on myself. I eventually figured out that I couldn’t give so much and not get anything back.

Ryan: That insight seems connected to the work you’re currently doing. You write a very popular newsletter on Substack called unflattering, and you chose this name because, as you write, “I want us to reject the concept of flattering as it is commonly used (i.e. clothing used to make your body look smaller).” In this way, your work and mine are very aligned. We’re both inviting people to come home to our real bodies, not to fight reality.

How’d you get into this work?

Dacy: My parents were very activist-minded. My dad had been a labor organizer at his shipyard. If it hadn’t been for that perspective, I probably would have gone into fashion out of high school. However, I didn’t want to disappoint them, and so I went into the field of classical music, which did less harm than the fashion industry.

Then, I worked as a classical musician and educator until my mid-thirties, when I burned out for the last of several times in that field. My husband and my therapist both encouraged me to overcome my imposter syndrome and give work I loved a chance.

Ryan: As a survivor of K-12 education burnout, I can completely relate.

You and I have recently talked about the fact that we also both identify as sensitive, neurodivergent caregivers who need a lot of downtime to be our best selves. How does being neurodivergent impact the way you show up for yourself? For your kids? For your clients?

Dacy: It took me until I was in my mid-30s, around the time I was burning out, to realize all of my neurodivergences. It took years longer to actually give myself the permission to take the time I needed.

I never take for granted the ability to arrange my schedule for my needs, as it’s not possible for so many people in so many jobs. When I’m working with clients, I have the luxury of being able to only schedule four or five appointments a week. I don’t have the capacity to do work for a full 8 hours a day, and I try to schedule rest every day. Having child care has also been a necessity because of the overstimulation and emotional drain that parenting can be.

If I do over-schedule myself, the result is I’m not present when I’m with my kids, because I’m thinking of all the things I need to be doing instead. If I’ve had a long stretch of parenting without childcare, I’m drained by the time I can finally get back to work.

Ryan: Engaging with your work, as a neurodivergent person, has led me to notice just how much mindfulness I have to bring to the process of simply getting dressed in the morning. Noticing, for example, that something is really physically uncomfortable to wear, rather than suppressing that information and heading out in pants that are too tight or heels that are too totter-y.

Dacy: In my experience, I have found that neurodivergent people are much more aware of what causes them discomfort than neurotypical people. However, those of us socialized as female have been conditioned to ignore discomfort in order to prioritize meeting the needs of others before our own.

Ryan: I would imagine that sometimes, these reflections lead to the realization that folks need to purchase different clothes that are more supportive. However, I know that buying new clothes can lead to a lot of eco-anxiety around consumerism and clothing waste. Part of your work, as a result, involves helping conscientious clients to find a middle path between purchasing clothes that are “ethical,” and clothes that are affordable. Can you tell us more about this?

Dacy: This is especially hard for conscious and mindful people, because we are concerned about waste, consumerism, and overproduction. Having grown up in not only a progressive household, but a frugal one, I have all of the same concerns.

However, what I’ve come to see over years of working with women, is that there is nothing else that makes such a tangible difference in how you feel about your body than how your clothes fit. I believe very strongly that we can’t go out into the world and do our good work when we feel bad about ourselves, so that makes it a priority for me. There are also plenty of ways to buy new clothes for a new size ethically, whether from ethical brands or secondhand.

“I believe very strongly that we can’t go out into the world and do our good work when we feel bad about ourselves.” —

Ryan: Another thing I really love about your work, which I talked about up top, is your repeated emphasis on the fact that “bodies will keep changing.” Because of this, you are constantly reminding people that they are allowed to buy new clothes when their bodies change–including when they gain weight.

Why is this one so hard to accept? How do you help clients embrace what Buddhist might call “the truth of impermanence,” when it comes to their bodies’ shape and size?

Dacy: We’ve been taught in this society to believe that bodies shouldn’t change. This is reinforced by the media, movies, tv, influencers, social media, etc., but we know that growing things change and evolve constantly. Our bodies are meant to change to protect us in different phases of our life – puberty, childbearing years, menopause, aging. Just look at the people around you. I would bet that most of them have changed, but we keep resisting what is because of our conditioning.

Ryan: It’s so interesting to see how discussions about fashion, which can be considered quite frivolous, can take on philosophical or political depth when you look deeply into that conditioning.

In addition to touching on political issues like consumerism, you and I have also connected over our shared understanding that fatphobia and weight bias are rooted in historical and structural racism. Getting dressed is political!

How do you explain these heady historical and philosophical concepts to your readers and clients—and in particular, people with racial or thin privilege who may be unaware of these connections?

Dacy: I think, less than explaining, I’m asking questions.

For instance, if someone turns to look at their side view in a mirror—everyone does it!—I might ask, where do you think the idea came from that women should only have two dimensions? We can then trace that back to women being only perceived as objects, or women who are most in the public eye—like models or actresses—looking a way that is only possible for a small percentage of the population.

Or, if someone feels badly that their body isn’t “balanced”, we might talk about where the perception of an hourglass being the ideal body came from. Spoiler alert: European white men hundreds of years ago.

If I’m working with a woman of color who’s concerned about being perceived as an expert in her workplace, we’ll talk about the ways that her experience and knowledge might allow her to deviate from some of the white supremacist norms expected in the workplace—for example, unnaturally straight hair, tailored clothes, nothing too “loud.”

I love the way you also feature some examples of these style stories in your newsletter from real, diverse folks. For example, this one with my friend about how being a writer and mother impacts her personal style.

What advice do you have for folks who are down for the cause of body liberation, but may still feel very activated or distressed during times of year when diet culture feels loud, or when their doctors bring up a drug like Ozempic.

Dacy: GLP-1’s are disrupting many people’s body contentment. More than ever, we’re seeing bodies drastically change around us. Even women who’ve worked for years on body acceptance are having GLP-1s recommended to them for medical reasons. Add to that the fact that many of us have been immersed in diet culture ideals for 30, 40, 50 years, and it makes sense that it’s hard to feel total body acceptance. Shifting away from those ideals won’t happen overnight. I recommend picking a few values around bodies to keep reminding yourself about: all bodies are worthy of love and respect, my value as a human is because I exist, not because I look a certain way, etc.

Are there other folks out there writing about bodies, clothing and/or mindfulness in a way you admire?

In terms of creators, I admire the work of (The Liberation Collective, The Body Liberation Project), (Burnt Toast, Fat Talk), (Burnt Toast, Big Undies), and Tiffany Ima.

In terms of books, I also recommend More Than a Body by Lindsey and Leslie Kite, and The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor.

Where can people find you if they want to engage further with your work?

On Substack: dacygillespie.substack.com

My website: mindfulcloset.com,

On Instagram: @mindfulcloset

On Tiktok: @mindfulcloset

I also want to share that my group program, Making Space, opens for enrollment today! It’s an 8-week asynchronous program that leads participants through the process of defining their style, editing their closet, and learning to shop mindfully, all through an anti-diet, weight inclusive lens. There is a sliding scale for the fee. You can find more info and enroll at mindfulcloset.com/making-space. The last day to enroll is March 2nd.

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What is your style story? How has your notion of “style” changed over time? What is the biggest challenge you face when it comes to dressing your body with dignity? We’d love to know.

During the peak of Nazism, an Austrian psychologist named Wilhelm Reich set out to figure out the psychological reasons why fascism seemed so popular in Germany. As a protégé of Sigmund Freud’s, he came to a very Freudian conclusion in his 1933 work, The Mass Psychology of Fascism: if you want to control a populace, begin in the bedroom.

While Reich was later discredited, a broken clock can still be right twice a day. He noted presciently, for example, that men who lack a healthy outlet for sexuality under fascism might be pushed to direct their repressed energies into attacking whatever vulnerable, marginalized “enemy” is most convenient for the state’s purposes—i.e., immigrants. A fascist state might also push women to focus purely on procreative sex, while policing other forms of connection that don’t produce more workers or breeders for the state—protected sex for pleasure, queer relationships.

These political dynamics, I fear, are creeping back into our personal lives today. As put it recently here:

In the grip of patriarchy, too often men and women enact toxic romantic dynamics that are very similar to what we accept in the global order: Surveillance. Disregard of boundaries. Economic dependence. Looming threat of physical force. Or simply the more casual, insidious assumption that the wealthier and more powerful entity is going to set the agenda, do the most talking, and direct what to do.

I wonder how many of us can tick off the statements above that apply to us, or to our friends’ relationships.

Dynamics of excessive control, dependence, or threat in our relationships—all are signs that the occupation is not just out there, somewhere far away. They are a sign that it is in here, too. They show us that in here and out there is a false binary. As Audre Lorde reminds us, the personal is always political.

Here’s a related theory I have: Parents who are not feeling confident enough to speak up publicly may also be struggling to find a sense of ground, care and connection in their private lives. They may feel disassociated, unrooted, floating—fearful of losing what little nourishment they’re receiving if they put a foot wrong, in either sphere. In order to overcome fear and avoidance, many parents need to directly experience the truth that all bodies are worthy of care.

So, how do we help more people learn to give and receive unconditional care? How do we start right where we are?

My friend Kate Carson is my go-to source of wisdom on this topic—meaning, the place where relational intimacy and political resiliency come together.

Kate’s a coach and activist who lost her daughter Laurel in late pregnancy, and has since gone on to walk thousands of other loss parents through their grief as a sex and relationships coach. She has also become a tireless advocate for reproductive justice, fighting to ensure that people with uteruses in America continue to have as much agency over their bodies as possible. (Kate and I talked more about her personal story here a few months ago.)

In this followup conversation, I talk with Kate about how we might untangle some of the dynamics Anya articulates above. I.e.:

• How Kate learned to “re-wire” feelings of safety into her body through feeling radically accepted by her partner

• How we can re-imagine intimacy in midlife as a subversive space of curiosity, rather than a place of guilt or “going through the motions”

• How we can experience safe, gentle connection in ways that may include penetrative sex, but don’t require it

• How Kate guides clients to re-learn how to give and receive in ways that really work for their partners, even when this has been hard before

P.S. If all of this sounds good to you, we’ve also got a workshop series in the works on this topic, kicking off tomorrow, Jan 28 at 12pm EST. More details at the end of this post!

Kate’s story

Ryan: Kate, in my experience, in seasons of grief or trauma, sex has been the last thing on my mind. And right now, we are moving through grief and trauma on a national scale. It seems almost decadent to be talking about getting laid in the midst of all of this. But for you, sexuality has been a powerful path of healing post-loss. Of re-claiming your self-worth and autonomy and power as a woman. This is also clearly needed now.

Can you help us understand here how this came to be, so that some of us might be able to follow your bread crumb trail here?

Kate: This is so close to my heart. Because sexual healing is a real thing.

When my baby, Laurel, was found to be sick, it felt like this was my fault—my body’s fault. Then, when I chose to let her go, to find somewhere legal and safe to release her spirit and then her body from my body, it felt like my body was a tomb in which her body rested, dead, for three days. After, it felt like my body was the scene of the crime. My body continued to look pregnant for many weeks, and people would comment on it, and ask about it, and I would have to tell them that she was already dead.

It was so, so awful.

My husband and I, who had been so together in crisis, felt like we were on different planets in grief. He was a high-functioning griever. He went to work. He could stand upright and move throughout his day like a pretty normal person. I was a basket-case griever, collapsing to the floor in my tears, dragging myself out of bed in the morning, wailing like an animal at night. There were even parts of me that rejected healing, little voices whispering in my ear: “If you ever feel good again, you’re forgetting Laurel. Stay in the tortured-place, because that’s where she is.”

Our griefs were diametrically opposed, and it made us both feel so lonely, so misunderstood, and so afraid that we wouldn’t make it through.

When my husband and I would try to talk about our troubles, it just devolved into feeling hurt and lonely and misunderstood. But when we touched, I felt him close. There was nothing left to say. It was the one place we could meet and really feel together. It was a kind of comfort we could give each other that went beyond words.

I still don’t know how to heal a broken heart—but this taught me one way to heal the body. Pleasure is so, so kind to the body. Going through the actions of comfort and pleasure, surrender and ecstasy makes peace with the body in a way that no amount of positive affirmations ever could. To layer pleasure with enormous, painful emotions like sadness is also to wire them together in the body as safe.

In that place, the story of that little voice—the voice that says that I’m forgetting my daughter—feels so obviously incorrect. Sex helped me feel my grief as love. That there’s really no end date or expiration on love. It’s safe to let the sadness rise and fall as it will, because the love is infinite.

I want to be very clear, though, that I’m not rushing anyone to put anything in her vagina after grief or trauma. I see sex as far more expansive than a penis in a vagina. I am encouraging her to feel her physical body, to receive whatever good things are here for her.

That said, all the trauma data shows that we can increase the efficacy of any healing technique by bringing in trusted loved ones, so partnered sexual healing can be particularly potent here. When the triggers are literally in the pelvis, when the memories come flooding, and when there’s just love, and gentleness, pleasurable touch, that does so much for integrating the experience of trauma.

I also share that if and when we do open ourselves to vaginal touch, there can be tears. There can be flashbacks. But I teach a lot about the cry-gasm, too—how healthy and normal it is, what a good sign it is if you have one, and how healing it can be, to be met and approved of by your partner in that intense reaction.

Ryan: Thank you for sharing all of this. This is what so many of us long for, right? To be met and approved of by our partners in a moment of imperfection. This is the kind of experience that pushes back on the authoritarian narrative that you have to look and behave a certain way in order to be worthy of care.

I think when we are rooted in that kind of care, in that kind of unconditional security and acceptance, everyday men and women become very, very powerful indeed. And I can’t think of a situation that would require more radical acceptance than two people coming together after a loss that, as you say, turned your body into “the scene of a crime,” and re-claiming that place for love.

Re-imagining intimacy in midlife

Ryan: Lately, you and I have been talking about what it means to be mothers who arriving in this midlife phase of our lives. One topic that comes up a lot in conversations with people in this phase is energy, or libido. Some people experience a drop. Some people experience a spike. How do you help people continue to tap into this source of energy, even as their bodies change?

Kate: I really think that we need to be able to maintain pleasure and connection through life. But if we try to make it look like a youthful version of sexuality, it’s going to hurt our bodies, and it’s going to be terrible for our souls.

So, for example, a lot of women may be experiencing painful sex in midlife, even if they never have before. So when we talk about sex and aging, we do have to talk about that. Everyone’s so obsessed with their forehead tissue, but I am much more obsessed with my vagina tissue for this reason, personally!

Men can also have huge confronting issues. Erection may become harder. They may experience prostate cancer, and if they have to have interventions on the prostate cancer, that might really screw up libido. Similarly, if a woman has had breast cancer, she will have been effectively chemically castrated by the treatment.

So a big part of re-claiming intimacy at this age and stage is understanding, “I’m gonna have to find a whole ‘nother way.”

My clients all want to find the new way. That’s why they come to me.

On the other hand, to be honest, several of my friends are like, “No, I don’t want to find a new way. I just want to give up.”

Ryan: Wow, that’s so interesting. And it reminds me of a conversation I had with Emily Eley, in which we talked about how hard it is for people to move from the old way of doing business under extractive capitalism to the new way, whatever that might be. We are discovering that “new way” one step at a time, and that uncertainty can elicit different reactions from everyone.

So I wonder where each person reading here might fall on this continuum. Also, what if we’re someone who falls in the middle of the continuum—if we’re feeling like we might just need a minute, i.e. amid grief or trauma, to regroup?

Kate: Taking a break can absolutely be part of this process. There are some women I work with in midlife who absolutely should not be having penetrative sex, for various reasons. Sometimes they get back to a place where they can again, and sometimes they don’t. I’m less interested in that and more interested in what’s here for her, regardless.

My work here may also involve winning over her partner. Which we always do.

Sometimes—and here I'm just generalizing about a heterosexual couple—at first he’s like, “Aw, man, I don’t know. Penetrative sex is so important to me.” But what a lot of men don’t realize is that it’s actually intimacy that’s important to them. And that’s a very vulnerable thing to say. Intimacy you can have no matter what.

Ryan: I love that. And when the focus is intimacy rather than p-in-the-v intercourse, what does that open up for a couple?

For example, I imagine there can be a pivot from “What are you doing with your body?” to “What is this actually feeling like in your body?”

Kate: Yes. And also: “What is it like, between us?”

Ryan: That pivot—from “How is this supposed to look?” to “How do we feel?”—sounds like part of “the new way.” I think for so many of us, we were never taught to think about sexuality like that. It certainly feels more liberatory.

“Let’s have no goals. Let’s have pure curiosity.”

I’m also wondering if there’s a shift in midlife once you decide, as a couple, that you are finished with procreative sex. One or both of you are done making babies with your body. In a way, this decision comes with its own waves of grief. But it also means that sex in midlife doesn’t have to be focused on any particular outcome. There might be more opportunities to take breaks, as we talked about—and there may also be more room for curiosity, around what emerges after that.

Kate: Yes. This can even begin with an experiment where you say, “Let’s take the orgasm out of it. Let’s have no goals. Let’s have pure curiosity.”

And to be clear, I don’t mean to say you always have to take the orgasm out of it. I love orgasms. They’re, like, my favorite thing in the whole world. But paradoxically—there are a lot of paradoxes in this work—my path to having more and better ones has been to take the pressure off of it, to take the end goal off of it, to explore the road of it.

I think that’s why so many of my friends are like, “It’s not worth the effort.” Because it does take time, and it does take practice.

Ryan: Here I wonder too about the question of low libido, or even disassociation from the body. I wonder if for folks who feel this way, it’s like you’re describing baking an elaborate cake—but they don’t feel hungry.

Kate: Yes. And there’s a risk of misinterpreting what I’m saying. Someone might feel like, “You’re trying to feed me cake when I’m not hungry!” When really, I’m like, “But doesn’t it still smell good in the kitchen?” Because there is still joy in there. If you slow down, you’ll find it’s still here for you. And if enough time passes, and you stay here, you may get hungry again.

This is also what we talk about when we talk about responsive desire—meaning, desire that arises within the act of intimacy, not as the precursor to it. It’s not just responding to feelings of desire that are randomly passing though. It’s choosing to engage in attentive time, together.

At the same time, sometimes when her libido is non-existent, and particularly when sex feels dangerous to her because it’s been hurting lately, a lot of guilt can also build up. In that case, one of the most empowering things to do in that case can be to give intimate touch. Not of your vagina—your attention. To give your hands, your touch, your kisses. To give the things that actually feel good to give.

And of course, it’s great if things feel somewhat equitable over time. But it’s more important that each person is fully capable of inhabiting giving, and fully capable of inhabiting receiving.

Ryan: Here we’re assuming that some form of giving does feel good, right? If not, then there’s probably other issues in the partnership that need resolving.

Kate: And part of that is, again, because they’re often all caught up in guilt. Part of it is also habit: “Oh, blowjobs have never been his thing,” or “She doesn’t really get off on oral sex.” But part of it might also be, “Well, I think I’m doing it wrong anyway.”

In this case, practice itself can help. With my clients, I even offer guided practice, which is a little edgy.

Ryan: How does guided intimacy practice work?

Kate: They can turn off their camera, they can turn off their microphone, they can turn off my screen—whatever they can do to feel as far removed from me as possible. I also always have a pre-recorded audio that they can use on their own if they need that level of privacy.

It’s still weird for a lot of people to have someone else’s voice in their bedroom. But often they really want to do it. They just avoid it because it’s been scary for so long.

And I guide it much like a meditation, directing their gaze. The one giving the touch is the one looking. So if she’s giving the touch, she’s looking at her partner. Watching for micro expressions. The partner’s job is just to receive, and not to have an orgasm. We actually avoid it on purpose.

That dynamic completely shifts the way most people are with each other in intimacy in the bedroom. And once it’s completely shifted, a whole world of possibility opens up. Because both positions are extremely empowering, and tender, in a way that nobody expected them to be.

You learn that you can cultivate curiosity about your own body’s erotic potential, sensory feelings, and responsiveness. You can have curiosity about your partner’s body, about your partner’s feelings and senses. Each of those positions is unique and important, and can completely transform your sex life.

Ryan: It is amazing to me how many of our interviews come back to this important theme: Curiosity is the antidote for guilt.

It also sounds like cultivating this kind of open-ended, courageous, non-linear, mutually respectful connection in our personal lives can serve as an important counter-balance for the feelings of helplessness, disconnection and despair we may be feeling in this political season. Which, again, might help refuel us for the resistance ahead.

In any case, I think these insights have implications in spaces far beyond the bedroom.

Speaking of which: where else, besides the bedroom, have you come to find a sense of healing, creativity or freedom in your own body over time?

Kate: Beauty in all forms. I love to create art that comes from nature. Written beauty. Decorated beauty. Photographed beauty. Many years ago, I bought a cheap little macro lens for my phone, and I went around with my nose in the dew drops snapping big pictures of tiny things. I also love climbing trees. Being outside. Intense wind. Swimming in the ocean. I like to be buffeted about a little by nature.

Where can people find you if they want to engage further with your work?

• You can find me at www.nightbloomcoaching.com + www.nightbloomcoaching.net (I’m in the process of combining the two)

• @Nightbloomcoaching on Instagram

• KateCSays on Facebook and Reddit

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Recently, Kate and I decided we’d like to open up conversations like this to others in this community. So, in the next few weeks, we’ll be hosting the following workshops:

Coming Home to the Body – Weds January 28 (tomorrow!) at 12pm EST (recording available)

This mindfulness and writing workshop is for those who are interested in learning meditation and somatic practices for coming home to the body, and remembering our deep connection to the living world around us. From there, we will also explore ways to divest from hierarchical systems that deem some bodies more worthy of care than others.

Re-Imagining Intimacy – February 25 at 12pm EST (recording available)

One of the ways in which the patriarchy keeps us all on the treadmill, distracted from larger political battles, is by telling us that if we don’t work hard to remain attractive, available and youthful-looking, we will die alone (see: “childless cat ladies”). In this meditation and writing workshop, we’ll explore less coercive, more equitable, and more trauma-informed ways of giving and receiving caring touch, with someone you love or even on your own. When we are rooted firmly in relationships of care, care that we don’t have to earn by having the right kind of body, we become more powerful.

Note: This workshop falls within the same month as Valentine’s Day; you might even invite a loved one to purchase this for you if you’d like to come, and then share the learnings with them.

Reclaiming Our Power – March 25 at 12pm EST (recording available)

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. Then we’ll spend some time writing new narratives of power for ourselves.

How to join us for these upcoming workshops

These workshops are a brand-new offering here at In Tending! Here’s a few pricing options we’ll be trying out for this series.

Sign up for each workshop a la carte:

These will be offered on a sliding scale, from $1-25. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Paid subscribers to the newsletter will also receive a discount code that allows you to bring a friend.

—> Purchase your ticket for Coming Home to the Body here.

—> Purchase your ticket for Re-Imagining Intimacy here.

—> Purchase your ticket for Re-Claiming Our Power here.

—> Upgrade from free to paid to receive your discount code (via separate email).

Sign up for the 3-workshop series:

Don’t want to spring for a subscription today? You can still get a discount on these workshops by booking all three together.

—> Choose the “Reclaiming Our Time” 3-workshop series option at checkout here.

Join the Mentorship program:

This is a new offering for 2026 as well, and one that I’m excited about. This allows me to provide you with a personalized 1:1 support session to kick things off, and to provide you with open access to every single workshop in 2026 after that (including video and recordings if you cannot attend in-person). Plus, you get all the other paid subscriber benefits—everything from creative prompts and playlists to interview sneak peeks and curated reading lists.

From now until the end of January, I’ll be letting you name your own price (from $75-275) for your annual Mentorship program subscription, making this the best offer of the three.

—> Upgrade your subscription now and receive a code granting you free access to ALL In Tending workshops in 2026 (via separate email).

Save the date!

For those opting to join the Mentorship program in 2026, you’ll be getting a huge amount of value out of it in the coming months, as we’ve got a great slate of other workshops planned. (Other folks can still sign up for each one a la carte.) Registration info and paid subscriber discount codes coming soon, but for now, please save the dates for the following:

• Thursday, March 26 at 12pm EST: Rituals and Writing for Grief, with Emily Marlowe

• Wednesday, April 8 at 12pm EST: Tending Your Spiritual Truth, with Sarah Kokernot

• Wednesday, May 6 at 12pm EST: Marking Complicated Mothers Day, with Lisa Sibbett

• Thursday, June 4 at 12pm EST: Where Mindfulness Meets Internal Family Systems, with Jeremy Mohler

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Please let us know. And we hope to see you on Jan 28!

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— Kelly Banks

I first came to know the work of , the author of , through her pithy, accurate and snort-laugh-inducing observations about what it’s like to be neurodivergent on Substack Notes. Here’s one example:

In this interview, I’ve invited Kelly to reflect with me about burnout, and how common this phenomenon is in caregivers, particularly those of us who are neurodivergent.

If this describes you, or someone you love, I hope you’ll read on for more insights on:

• How we can break free of burnout by helping our brains to discern the difference between “good enough” and “unrealistically perfect”

• How we can create systems that support our executive functioning, without overtaxing it

• How we can teach our children to side-step the perfectionism-to-procrastination loop while still getting their chores done, especially those who are also neurodivergent

In true ADHD fashion, I’ve also invited Kelly to sum up some of her shortest and best suggestions at the end, in a neurodivergent-brain-friendly section we’ve titled TL;DR (as in too long, didn’t read). I promise you, they’re worth it!

Before we jump into Kelly’s interview, some housekeeping notes:

• Please join our next donation-based caregiver circle on Tuesday, December 2nd at 10:30am EST on Zoom. We’ll be discussing burnout prevention. To learn more about what goes down during our circles, click here. To get on the list to receive our Zoom invites, please click here.

• Please save the date for our first workshop of 2026: Coming Home to the Body in Midlife on Thursday, January 29th at 12pm EST, with the incredible Kate Carson. More details coming soon!

Ryan: Where did you grow up? What else grows there? What was it like for you to grow there?

Kelly: I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. One thing that tends to grow there and in many other parts of the Midwest, at least in my experience, is generations of people who don’t feel comfortable sharing their feelings. And as someone with ADHD, OCD, and on-and-off depression, I’ve had a lot of big feelings, which I didn’t always have an outlet for growing up.

In my household, big feelings were treated as disruptions. It was very much a vibe of: If you’re experiencing anything other than pleasantness, leave the group and deal with it alone so you don’t spill that unpleasantness onto any of us.

I don’t blame anyone for that response; it was learned through generations of emotional suppression. It’s how my parents were parented and how their parents were parented. My parents did the best they could with the emotional equipment they had, and they generally did a fantastic job. I’m immensely grateful to them.

Ryan: I can strongly relate to this. Probably not a coincidence that those of us who felt repressed by these kinds of cultural expectations–to keep it superficial and pleasant, or to keep it to yourself–went on to be writers!

Who were some of the first people who tended you?

Well, I was lucky enough to have a mom and dad who had a pretty great relationship and still do. My dad was a doctor and my mom was a CRNA, so they worked long hours while supporting my two siblings and I, and we also had a nanny, who was one of my most formative caretakers. She really supported me on a daily basis, helping me unpack school problems and drama with deep care, curiosity, and interest. She was like a second mom.

Ryan: What is your earliest memory of tending another being? And what have you loved tending most since?

Kelly: Definitely my dog, Reggie. He was my soul dog, and he was often the only thing keeping me alive during some deeply depressive periods in my life. My care for him is literally what kept me moving when I thought I couldn’t take another step.

Reggie crossed the rainbow bridge years ago, but I now live with three miscreant chihuahua rescues. They’re just the cutest, funniest, weirdest little creatures. I feel so lucky to come home to and hang out with them all the time.

Ryan: They are so funny and weird! I live with one too.

So, fast forward to your current career, in which you tend folks with ADHD as a coach. What tensions, if any, exist between your own ADHD brain and the work that you do?

Kelly: True to ADHD form: all of the tensions and none of the tensions! I’m incredibly lucky that the work I do is well-aligned with my ADHD brain because it has many of the ingredients that motivate us: novelty, passion, purpose, flexibility, and autonomy.

That said, it also comes with challenges that are at odds with ADHD, like the need to establish and maintain my own systems, deadlines, and routines, even though my ADHD gremlin is constantly yelling: You made these, so you can just ignore them! Maybe you should start a different business so you don’t have to send that email!

I also experience rejection sensitivity to a large degree, which has been increasingly challenging as my platform’s grown. When a post doesn’t perform, it’s very hard for me not to default to: everyone hates me and thinks I’m stupid and they’re all talking about it right now.

Ryan: I can strongly relate to this! Given how genuinely stressful it is to be a woman doing literally anything in public, especially a neurodivergent woman, and a woman with a sizable audience like yours, how do you stay grounded?

Kelly: I do meditate and commune with nature and exercise regularly, but after a long day of work, most of the time I just want to bury myself in my dogs and watch Bravo while working on my latest hobby fixation: crocheting amigurumis. I’m deeply introverted, so this alone time is sacred to me. It refills my cup and helps me feel like myself again.

Ryan: Thank you for sharing this. I find in this community, creative hobbies or gentle movement can sometimes be more regulating and realistic for busy caregivers than sitting meditation. There’s also strong evidence to suggest that petting dogs is amazing for your nervous system! It’s all about balance, right?

De-stigmatizing “inconsistency”

Ryan: Relatedly, one thing you and I both find in our communities is the widespread fear and shame that come with being “inconsistent” as a neurodivergent person.

Caregivers are constantly getting interrupted, and most caregivers struggle with this—but this frequent task-switching is especially hard on some neurodivergent brains. On a day to day basis, we might give ourselves some grace for this, but at some point, we might realize that we’ve been so distracted that we never finished that scrapbook of our baby’s first year. It brings up a feeling of being less-than: Do I just love my baby less than other parents?

You feel strongly about de-stigmatizing this notion of being “inconsistent.” What do you want neurodivergent readers to take away on this topic?

Kelly: It’s easy to assume everyone else has it all together, that everyone else is absolutely nailing caregiving and you’re just over here frazzled, scattered, and falling short. But that’s simply not true. Our highlight-reel-obsessed culture drives many of us to be vocal about our accomplishments and dead silent about our struggles, so it’s easy to think no one else is struggling, but you’re far from alone in feeling this way.

I also want neurodivergent parents to know that the interrupted, scattered nature of caregiving doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re doing it with a brain that processes things differently while navigating a role for which constant interruption is inherent.

I often advise folks to zoom out from the single unfinished project and notice the overall pattern of care: you’ve been showing up, improvising, adapting, and loving in a thousand small, invisible ways. That is consistency. Just not the linear kind we were taught to measure ourselves against.

Creating systems for neurodivergent brains and bodies

Ryan: “Maintaining a consistent routine” also often feels like a huge lift when you’re a neurodivergent caregiver. Laundry can happen at any time during the week, but ensuring your loved ones take their medication on time, or get dropped off on time to appointments, doesn’t work that way. How do you advise your clients to build a routine with ADHD that’s sustainable?

Kelly: I think one of the keys is to stop treating routines as these monolithic things where everything has to happen at the same time every day. That’s just not realistic for most neurodivergent brains, and it sets us up for failure and shame when we inevitably can’t maintain that level of rigidity.

Instead, I encourage folks to think about their responsibilities in two categories: things that must happen at specific times, and everything else that just needs to happen sometime.

For the rigid stuff, like medications, appointments, and school pickup times, we need robust support systems that don’t rely on our brain to remember. Think: alarms, visual reminders, putting the medication bottle next to the coffee maker, whatever external scaffolding you need. Also, when it comes to ADHD, the more visual the support system, the better. For instance, a calendar on the wall will probably feel more helpful and supportive than one on your phone because you actually see it each day.

Allowing yourself to be flexible with everything else is just as key to making this work because it prevents burnout, shame, and overwhelm.

That flexibility often means having different routines based on your energy level. A high-energy routine might look like doing your full morning sequence: exercising, showering, getting dressed in real clothes, and sitting down for breakfast instead of eating on the go.

On a medium-energy day, maybe you skip the workout and shower and splash your face instead, throw on comfortable clothes, and grab breakfast to-go, but you’re still hitting your main anchors: getting the kids ready around the same time, leaving for school drop-off within your usual window, and having some kind of midday reset even if it’s briefer than usual.

And on low-energy days, or what I like to call “potato days,” you’re running your bare-bones routine. Morning might look like staying in pajamas and ensuring everyone gets fed and out the door by whatever means necessary, knowing they might be a little late and that’s okay.

This flexibility can also apply to when certain parts of your routine happen. Maybe your ideal routine has you doing dishes right after dinner, but on some days, that’s when your executive functioning is completely tapped out. So instead of forcing it and feeling terrible when you can’t, give yourself permission to do them in the morning when you have more capacity.

This flexibility changes a routine into something that adapts with you, rather than collapsing and breeding shame the moment life gets unpredictable.

Unlinking “perfection” and “emotional safety”

Ryan: You’ve touched on other reasons why ADHD perfectionism leads to overthinking, avoidance, and burnout. How do you think this vicious cycle gets started? What kinds of thoughts or inner narratives keep it going? How can caregivers get off this hamster wheel, as would call it?

Kelly: I think this cycle often starts in childhood, when kids with ADHD often get feedback that we’re “not living up to our potential” or we “could do better if we just tried harder.” We internalize this message that we’re capable of so much—we just need to try harder, focus more, and be more disciplined. Meanwhile, throughout our lives, we’ve fallen short on lots of projects, systems, and promises.

Because we keep getting the feedback that high levels of performance are not only possible but expected of us, and anything less is a personal failure, we overcompensate. We try to do the absolute most to prove to ourselves and others how much we’re capable of. We set impossibly high standards for ourselves. And then, our ADHD brains struggle with the executive function needed to execute them. In particular, we might struggle to even get started if we can’t see how to finish something perfectly. Then, when we inevitably don’t meet our own impossible standards as a result, shame says: “See? I knew you couldn’t do it. You’re just lazy and undisciplined.”

This creates a loop. Perfectionism and unrealistic standards lead to procrastination. This leads to shame. This makes us set even higher standards next time. This makes the task feel even more overwhelming. And round and round we go.

Getting off this hamster wheel means first challenging the belief that perfect execution is even possible, because it’s not. Aiming for perfection is just the brain’s way of trying to create safety through control, but it’s a setup for failure and shame because perfection is impossible to achieve. True, long-term emotional safety comes from giving yourself permission to be flexible and messy and imperfect.

From there, it’s about practicing being “good enough” over “flawless.” As your brain collects more and more data that proves that that things don’t fall apart when you ease up, you rewire the perfectionism loop. Over time, you learn that we can start small, messily, or chaotically, adapt midstream, and still end up somewhere worthwhile.

Unless we practice intentionally doing this, we tend not to learn it.

Ryan: This feels so important that I want to re-state it again: We unlearn perfectionism by practicing manageable moments of “messiness,” and teaching our adult selves (and perhaps our scared younger parts) that we can survive it. We make greater thriving possible because of this ongoing practice with easing up—not in spite ofit.

Modeling healthy functioning for our neurodivergent children

Ryan: I’m curious about how I can model healthy, non-hamsterish expectations of myself for my six year old son, who is also neurodivergent.

For example, we have been exploring the concept of chores with him lately, at his request. Often, when we suggest ideas for him—emptying the compost, weeding the garden—he throws up his hands and yells, “BOOO-RING!” While I try to keep a straight face in these situations, really, I feel like he’s just amplified the sound my own neurodivergent brain makes when I tell it that it’s time to scrub the toilets. “BOOO-RING!” And I know that many adults reading this feel the same way about housecleaning, because it comes up all the time in our caregiver support circles.

At the same time, we do need to scrub the toilets…right? What advice do you have for those of us who would like to create an ADHD-friendly home that works WITH our brains, and not against it?

Kelly: I love this question so much because your son’s “BOOO-RING!” is also the most accurate portrayal of the ADHD brain’s protest against tasks that offer zero novelty or interest.

When I work with clients on this, we start by shifting from motivation-based systems to momentum-based ones. Motivation is rare and fickle because it depends on interest and purpose, but momentum can often be engineered. For example, it can help to pair boring tasks with mild stimulation like an audiobook or music. Or use sensory cues, like scented cleaners, comfy gloves, and lighting to make it slightly more comfortable.

Most importantly, whenever possible, remove any friction between you and the thing you want to do e.g. Keep cleaning supplies within reach in multiple rooms so “clean the bathroom” becomes “grab the wipes that are right there and do one surface before you leave the room.”

When it comes to modeling with your son, it might help to practice showing him that it’s okay to say “this is boring, but I can still do five minutes,” and to celebrate momentum rather than completion.

It may also help to gamify it together: pick a playlist, race the timer, or do a “bored chore swap” where you each take on something the other dislikes. That way, you’re teaching him that boring doesn’t have to mean impossible. It just means the brain needs a little (or a lot of) help getting started. For example, I remember that my own parents could get me to do almost anything if they timed me!

TL;DR

Ryan: I want to conclude this interview on a note of gratitude, because you have offered us so many practical suggestions for ways to reduce burnout by working in partnership with our minds, rather than against them. I also want to provide a chance to sum up here, for neurodivergent folks who, like me, sometimes need to skim to get to the good stuff at the end.

So, if someone reading this only has ten or fifteen minutes to do something nice for their brains—something that helps put the brakes on the fast train to burnout—what is one go-to practice you recommend?

Oooooh. A few things come to mind, but the first to jump out is to engage in play! Neurodivergent brains are constantly self-monitoring, trying to make things work from within systems that aren’t designed for us, and denying our own needs and desires. This can tamp down our senses of curiosity, play, wonder, and creativity, which is where our brains really open up and thrive. So, doing something that feels like play can be incredibly rejuvenating and restorative, because it gives our brain full permission to wander, explore, and engage in things it enjoys.

For me, play usually looks like experimenting with different hobbies. I used to carry so much shame around only doing a hobby for a few weeks, then quitting when the novelty wore off. But over time and lots of therapy, I’ve realized that I don’t need to do a hobby for a lifetime, or even a month, for it to be worthwhile. As long as I enjoyed myself and spent within my means, it was worth it because it filled my cup during that moment.

Ryan: I love that. And I hope your current love affair with amirigumis gives you so much joy!

Speaking of joy, are there other people you admire that are working in this space, who do work that brings you joy?

I’m currently writing a book about what I call “chaotic discipline,” and I often tell my editor and agent that KC Davis’ How to Keep House While Drowning is my North Star for the book. Her book does such a great job of offering practical, compassionate, and shame-free approaches to keeping a household going when you have ADHD or other challenges. It’s one that I recommend more than any other.

Ryan: I too love How to Keep House While Drowning and recommend it constantly!

Kelly: There are so many other folks who come to mind as well, like Rebecca King, aka @adhd.nutrionist, a registered dietician who specializes in ADHD and offers practical strategies for figuring out this food thing we need to address every single day of our lives. I also really admire Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, whose work around different types of rest (e.g. physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative, and spiritual) has helped me figure out how to actually rest in an ADHD-friendly way.

Ryan: Where can people find you if they want to engage further with your work?

• Substack

• Instagram

• Threads

• My website

Leave a comment

Last week, I began Part One of an inspiring conversation with Ash Brandin, the author of Power On and the brains behind , about the power of bringing curiosity instead of shame to moments of parental guilt and burnout.

We also talked about how the screen time conversation connects to other feminist issues and writers, such as and her work on the leisure gap, on the notion of rest as resistance, on what she calls Human Giver Syndrome in her book, and Amelia and on the burnout-inducing impact of that concept. As it turns out, there are so many other more ways to think about screen time, with both critical thinking and compassion, that take us beyond the “good-bad” binary that typically flattens caregiver conversations about tech.

In this part of the interview, we explore the gray areas between “good” and “bad” tech use and parenting in greater detail, making connections between the way we talk about tech and the way we talk about food (something Ash discussed recently with , who writes about dismantling diet culture). We also place Ash’s work in conversation with that of mindfulness experts and Kristin Neff, and their frameworks for thinking about habits and emotional resilience.

I’ve talked to so many people about this interview since Ash and I chatted, and I know I’m going to be linking back to this two-part series many times in the future as well. I feel like I’ve taken away not just wisdom on screen time from Ash, but wisdom about parenting in general, wisdom that can be applied to such a wide variety of things.

I hope this conversation helps you, too, to break free of binary good-bad thinking and unnecessary waves of shame—about yourself, about your parenting, and about using technology to meet the needs of your family members. Instead, may it offer you a heaping serving of critical thinking, curiosity, and self-compassion. I know it did for me.

Before we jump into Ash’s interview, some housekeeping notes:

• Be sure to mark your calendars for our next donation-based caregiver circle on Tuesday, December 2nd at 10:30am EST on Zoom. We’ll be discussing burnout prevention. To learn more about what goes down during our circles, click here. To get on the list to receive our Zoom invites, please click here.

• Please save the date for our first workshop of 2026: Coming Home to the Body in Midlife on Thursday, January 29th at 12pm EST, with the incredible Kate Carson. More details coming soon!

Okay, back to the brilliant Ash!

Ryan: In the first part of this interview, we established that caregivers get to have needs. That women in particular, and women of color especially, deserve rest. And that tech can be used as a tool to meet those needs.

And yet, I’m betting there are still some people out there who won’t buy this argument. Not because they have a problem with women meeting their needs per se–at least not in a way they’d publicly admit–but because they still have this notion that these needs should be done without screens, in a way that is “better.” I’d love to talk about that with you.

When you spoke recently with Virginia Sole-Smith, who writes about fatphobia and diet culture in America, you both compared this attitude, quite accurately, to the way that Americans feel about food. This attitude that of course, you should eat when you’re hungry–as long as what you’re eating is kale and avocado toast, and not evil processed food.

In both kinds of discourse, consumption of the “wrong” thing still equals bad, and less consumption overall still equals best. Which is a very binary, moralizing view of things.

Ash: Yep, 1000%.

Ryan: So how can we begin to soften this stance of techno-orthorexia, to look at the gray area between “good” and “bad” when it comes to tech? How can we balance critical thinking and compassion? How can caregivers learn how to discern what truly harmful tech content or kid behavior looks like, and to distinguish this from the many ambient, not-so-real, pearl-clutchy, diet-culture-adjacent, “all screen time is bad” beliefs that are circulating out there?

Ash: Oh, God.

Ryan: I mean, I know you wrote an entire book about this, so maybe this question is not entirely fair.

Ash: I know. I’m taking a second to just think about which way I want to answer this.

[Long, thoughtful pause.]

Ash: So I have a whole chapter in the book that’s devoted to “The Research.” But I honestly don’t really like talking about it very much, because very quickly, it becomes clear that this kind of aversion isn’t about the research at all. It’s much more about our own moral associations with screens. I’ve seen this happen in real time, where even if you give someone something that’s kind of irrefutable, or shows that actually, this piece of evidence was biased, or outdated, et cetera, people will say, “Well, I still don’t believe it. Well, it’s still bad.”

So I think this goes back to being able to be curious about this question of, “What is it that I’m most afraid of?”

Because otherwise, I could tell a caregiver, you should be caring about this. You don’t need to be caring as much about that other thing. But in some ways I might just give somebody else another thing to fear.

So if there’s something they’re already really, really worried about, then I mean, maybe start there. Because we can have a bad relationship with anything, right? We can have an unhealthy, unsustainable relationship with exercise, which can be beneficial in other contexts. So often, it’s not about the thing, it’s about our relationship with the thing.

That’s one of the reasons that I don’t like advice that is so myopic, and so focused on, like, the number of minutes, the pace of the show, the rating, the this, the that. Because you can have a child who is watching, or playing something, for an “acceptable” number of minutes, but that’s not the real issue.

To go back to what you said earlier about Fortnite and kids in the Bronx, if Fortnite is the only way that a kid will be able to socialize with their friends, that relationship to Fortnite is more concerning to me than how many minutes they’re playing it. I’m more concerned about the fact that this is the only way that this child can feel connected to other people outside of school.

This might be because of circumstances beyond their control, right? It might be because they have to go home, and then they can’t leave the apartment, because there’s not a caregiver at home to go with them, and they don’t have a safe alternative. But it also might be because this child thinks, “If I want to feel like I’m in a group, if I want to feel like I belong, I have to play Fortnite.” I’d want to zoom out and think, “Are they able to meet this need in other ways? And do they know what need it is they’re meeting with Fortnite?”

For a kid who is very attached to Fortnite, I might ask: would this be as fun if you played it by yourself? If no, then okay, maybe it’s not just about the specific game. Maybe it’s that this is how you get to see other people. Do other activities or hobbies you engage in make you feel this way? Meaning, do you have more ways of meeting this need? Are you getting a variety of things? Because like food, it’s not so much that one food is “bad,” but moreso that we don’t want any one thing to be the only way of meeting a need.

So, paying more attention to our relationship with the thing than than a seemingly objective metric, I think, can go a long way.

Ryan: Thank you so much for answering that question in that way. You just took a question that somebody might have about your work, and you modeled the shift in thinking that you yourself have gone through, and the non-hierarchical approach that you take as a musician, parent and teacher. Like, “I see that you would like to hand me the expert crown, but I’m going to hand it back to you. I also get the question you’re asking me, but let me offer a more empowering way for you as a caregiver to frame this question, and to answer it yourself, by noticing what’s happening in your home with your child.”

This is the Simone Biles jump that I’ve seen you make over and over again in this book. It is really taking us from “Here’s how we normally think about this” to “Actually, here’s a different, more spacious way to think about this.” That, to me, is a powerful act of mindfulness.

Using mindful inquiry to make decisions about screen time

Ryan: At the heart of your work is noticing, right? You have written that notice is a workhorse word in your house.

Ash: Oh, yes.

Ryan: If we are going to begin a mindful inquiry about whether our children’s tech habits need to change, then beginning with noticing makes a lot of sense here. It is also very consistent with the way mindfulness and addiction expert Jud Brewer thinks about analyzing habits as well.

In his parlance, bringing mindfulness to habits, both beneficial and harmful, begins with noticing: What’s the cue? What’s happening inside? What’s happening first? Or, as you might say: what’s the need?

After that, it’s about noticing: what’s the response? What’s the behavior that is usually triggered when that cue arises? This can lead to noticing, “Oh, whenever I feel stressed, I pick up my phone.” Or, “Oh, whenever I feel like my teachers were super extra bossy at school, I really want to have more autonomy and be on my own tablet. I don’t want to watch movies with other people.”

Finally, there’s a gentle inquiry: well, is that good, or not?

Ultimately, you have to kind of co-define “good” with your child. But it’s the same kind of tuning in, and trying to know, as you might try on if you were intuitively eating: How do I feel when I eat this food?

With tech, this intuitive inquiry might look like: How do you feel when you play Fortnite? What is it giving you? What are you getting out of this? Does that need to change? If so, is it even possible to change it?

Ash: Right.

Ryan: As you’ve said, sometimes I can’t come up with an alternative to the tablet for my kid tomorrow. I have to go to work. If so, let’s at least lose the guilt and blame about it.

However, if change is necessary and possible, then you provide a whole framework, in your book, for different ways that you can do that.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I took away from the book is that this part really is all about bringing mindfulness to this question of, “What is the relationship that is unfolding between my child and the thing that we’re talking about?” Not just about the research, which is very noisy, as you’ve noted, anyway. Or the ratings for this or that new thing, because there’s going to be a million new things. You talk about that being overwhelming for caregivers.

As with any new friend that’s coming into our child’s lives, we don’t necessarily know everything about that person. But staying curious about the relationship probably makes more sense than making hard and fast rules about how you can be friends with this kind of person, and you can’t be friends with this other kind of person.

Ash: Yeah. And I completely get the urge—because it’s a place that’s very easy for me to go to—of wanting those hard and fast rules. Because ultimately, we don’t want to do it wrong, right? Especially when we’re talking about kids, we feel—rightfully, for obviously good reasons—that we want to do right by our kids, and don’t want to do something that could be harmful. That’s obviously not a bad instinct.

And, we are fed a lot of messaging that implies that one quick decision made in isolation is going to be some flipping a switch that we can never possibly undo. I can think of very few things in parenting where something is going to have that demonstrable an impact. If something were going to have that demonstrable an impact, it’s probably more related to our relationship with our child or our own reaction than serving the wrong food, or allowing the wrong show once or twice in isolation.

What is probably significantly more impactful is being able to model being willing to say, “I don’t know,” or “That didn’t work, so I’ll try something different.” We kind of don’t want that to be happening, with our child as the medium, right? I understand that. And, we also recognize that that’s also true, that this is what’s happening, even if we don’t want it to be true.

And I think even if we are allowing ourselves permission to say, “Okay, well, maybe I do let them play, but it might go poorly, and then I guess we figure it out together”—there’s obviously a real dysregulating loss of control in that. That feels so scary too. We still think, “But will I know what to do? And what if it’s something I can’t handle?” We can anxiety-spiral about all of those things. But there’s no amount of preparation that we could possibly do that’s going to prevent every eventuality, right?

So, obviously, in ways that are developmentally appropriate, I think the more that we can find ways of getting in there and sitting in the mess sometimes with our kids, and saying, “All right, well, that did not go the way we wanted it to, and what can we try next, and what can we do differently?”—that curiosity can inoculate us from self-blame.

I think it then also immediately does that for our kids, because we might be quick to blame ourselves, but we don’t want to see our kids do that. And so getting into that with them, and sitting in that with them, is such a powerful way of showing that they’re not having to do this on their own, and that if something doesn’t work, that there’s not going to be shame for them either. It’s just information. We can get playful and curious about it.

That’s a much more sustainable lifelong skill that we want our kids to have, and we also deserve that as well.

“We are fed a lot of messaging that implies that one quick decision made in isolation is going to be some flipping a switch that we can never possibly undo…If something were going to have that demonstrable an impact, it’s probably more related to our relationship with our child or our own reaction than serving the wrong food, or allowing the wrong show once or twice in isolation. What is probably significantly more impactful is being able to model being willing to say, “I don’t know,” or “That didn’t work, so I’ll try something different.” — Ash Brandin

How self-compassion meditation can support us—and our kids—with tech

Ryan: What I’m hearing is that when we are really trying to over-research, and then really script everything out and make sure that we don’t make any mistakes—which brings us back to diet culture, and orthorexia, and the endless parental quest to get it “right” instead of tolerating uncertainty—we’re missing this opportunity to sit next to a kid and model self-compassion. Which makes me think of mindfulness researcher Kristin Neff.

Neff has found that the three most essential components of cultivating self-compassion center on these three questions:

What hurts?

Who else feels this?

And what’s the medicine?

This aligns pretty perfectly with what you’re saying.

So for example, you have a kid who has now flamed out in Fortnite, and his friends said something really mean because he didn’t do what they wanted him to do successfully. And, now, you’re sitting together on the floor, and there’s an opportunity and there’s agency for a caregiver in that situation to say, like, “Wow. Something big just happened. It looks like you’re having a big feeling about it. What do you think that feeling is?” This is language I’ve heard you use. In other words: what hurts?

And then, there’s a chance to connect to common humanity, to the notion that other people feel this too. An adult might say, “Well, I don’t know anything about Fortnite, but I definitely know what it’s like when my friends are really frustrated that I’m not doing what they think I should be doing.” Maybe there’s even ground for telling a story about that, as your grandparents did across the years and generations with you. Different details, same problems and conclusions.

And then, there’s a chance to ask: “What do you think would help?” As in: What’s the medicine? And really co-creating that answer with a kid, helping them reclaim their own agency, in a moment that might otherwise feel really disempowering and without-choice for them.

In my mind, in that moment, a parent might lack outdoor access, or they might lack additional caregiver support, but they don’t lack agency, and they don’t lack the materials they need to be an incredible caregiver in that moment. They have everything they need to teach into a powerful and protective set of skills. With screens as the place of practice.

Ash: And frankly, we want all the ways we can practice that, right? Because then we can show kids that these are often skills that transfer to every part of their lives.

Adults are very quick, I think, to silo things, particularly related to technology. Like, “Oh, video games are over here, and social media is over there, and this thing is over here.” As if they’re all very different. Kids now do not see those as being different. Often they treat them like there’s not a lot of strict borders between them.

At the same time, I think kids do sometimes struggle to see this sort of skill transfer across different parts of their lives. For example, a student might not understand how listening to instructions in a classroom and listening to instructions from your soccer coach are in fact the same skill. They don’t realize it because school feels so separate to them from soccer. And there’s so much opportunity in the world of technology for our kids to show them how those skills are present, and can be practiced and then transferred to other parts of their lives, so that they’re not seeing them as completely separate. We want them to be able to blend those skills across different parts of their lives.

A naysayer could say, well, kids can practice life skills outside of a screen. Absolutely, they could, and they will. But just as practicing life skills on a screen does not negate practicing them outside of a screen, the reverse of that is also true. We don’t want kids to ignore an opportunity to practice a skill in a digital world just because it’s in a digital world.

Ryan: Absolutely. In a similar vein, I really appreciate the way that you’ve also established the benefits of discussing screen time more neutrally, right? When talking about soccer versus Fortnite, for example, you note that they’re both leisure activities, and thus equally valid. This has the benefit of kind of taking screen time off this pedestal where it becomes The Precious, and kids get very fixated on it. Not because that’s how they experience reality, but because that’s how we as caregivers are talking about it.

Ash: Yes. We also need them to be able to practice skills in those digital worlds because they’re not going anywhere.

Ryan: That’s something you often point out as well, with a lot of pragmatism and acceptance—that they will almost certainly be digital citizens in the future, in one way or another. And we can either teach them how to be good ones, or not.

Even though we might be sort of like the digital immigrant parents, who remember another way, a time before the internet, and thus the old ways and the new ways do feel very bifurcated in our minds. For them, they are the first-generation citizens who live much of their lives there, in this digital world, and they need to be given the skills and tools to succeed in the hybrid landscape that we now inhabit.

Ash: Right.

Ryan: I think your book’s coming at such a beautiful time, given all of this.

I think this is a moment where a lot of people like us who were raised in the 90s are starting to reckon with our own relationships with screens, as the first so-called digital natives—when really, we are the first digital immigrants.

We’re also healing from the pandemic, and what that was like, and what it showed us about our frayed community networks.

It’s also a moment where we as Millennial parents and teachers are stepping into the responsibility, and the opportunity, of what it is to raise this next generation of digital citizens.

In this moment, what I’m taking away from your work is that there are so many applicable mindfulness skills that can be applied by kids in a digital space, and they aren’t cheapened just because it’s a digital space.

Ash: Exactly.

Ryan: This means that of course, we continue to proceed with awareness and even caution sometimes, but that the digital world doesn’t have to remain a source of constant fear or aversion either, just because it has been in the recent past. We have the collective power, right here in the present, to make it a place of possibility.

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Even before the recent publication of their incredible book about parenting and technology, Power On, I had been an admirer of Ash Brandin (they/them), also known as . Rather than clutching their pearls about how Screen Time Is Rotting All Kids’ Brains—a very binary view of a complex topic—Ash has been breaking down how to set boundaries, model and teach life skills, and most importantly, get curious alongside our kids when it comes to tech, in ways that mirror my own Middle Path approach to parenting. Which is to say, in Buddhist terms, “not too tight, not too loose.”

I also feel as though I could tell parts of Ash’s educator-to-parenting-writer origin story from memory, because it is so similar to mine. Ash and I both taught middle school remotely during the pandemic while trying to parent. We were both teaching seventh graders—Lord help us—and we both had to occupy our own kids while doing so. My son was a baby, but Ash had a three-year-old who wasn’t as willing to nap three times a day, so they were in a pickle.

In Power On, Ash opens the book with a scene from those early lockdown days that immediately drew me in. The scene begins with them finding an off-screen, delightful, developmentally appropriate activity for their young child to complete during their workday—as one might expect from a parent who’s also a teacher. They set their kid all up with the activity, and then went off to try to figure out how to teach middle school online.

But then, wouldn’t you know it, Ash’s child actually wanted to talk to them about the fun activity they were doing. And Ash couldn’t respond to both their child and their students at the same time.

In the book, Ash describes getting more and more stressed out, because so many things were in conflict in that moment—their needs, their students’ needs, their kid’s needs.

But then, there’s a fait accompli: Ash’s partner came in and handed their child a screen.

At first, in the book, Ash described feeling relief. “Oh. All of the needs have now been met. My child has something for them to do that’s engaging. My partner can continue on with their call. I can now meet the needs of my students.”

But then, Ash felt swamped by a wave of guilt and shame. A wave many of us know intimately: Oh man. I just took the “easy way out.” Am I a bad parent?

Fortunately for us as readers, Ash chose to get curious about that guilt, rather than get hijacked by it.

As a classically-trained musician, Ash honed in on the nuances of their parenting performance: “Wait a minute. My partner’s not feeling this. I’m feeling this. We’re two musicians in the same orchestra. Both playing together. Why is guilt a part of my performance? And who is that serving?”

That ah-ha moment inspired Ash to create reams of helpful content for parents about approaching screen time with pragmatism, critical thinking, and compassion.

In this interview, we consider on how we might, as caregivers, begin to swap curiosity for guilt in some of our most difficult parenting moments—and to honor the fact that sometimes, it’s OK to use technology to meet the needs of our family members. Including our own needs.

Our conversation was so rich that I’ve split it into two parts – with one coming out this week, and another during the week of Thanksgiving, when family conflict and holiday-related burnout can often be at an all-time high. May it be of benefit to you as you travel, host, or skip the day altogether—and bring you not a forkful of extra guilt in the process.

Before we jump into Ash’s interview, some housekeeping notes:

• Be sure to mark your calendars for our next donation-based caregiver circle on Tuesday, December 2nd at 10:30am EST on Zoom. We’ll be discussing burnout prevention. To learn more about what goes down during our circles, click here. To get on the list to receive our Zoom invites, please click here.

• Please save the date for our first workshop of 2026: Coming Home to the Body in Midlife on Thursday, January 29th at 12pm EST, with the incredible Kate Carson. More details coming soon!

Okay, back to the brilliant Ash!

Ryan: Where did you grow up, and what else grows there?

Ash: I grew up in a suburb in the Denver area and I’m not too far from there now. Our house, when I was growing up, backed up to this open-space belt between our neighborhood and the one behind us. And honestly, what probably grew there was weeds. In my kid brain, they looked like wheat. They had these little fronds on the top, and I would play so many games with those.

Ryan: As someone who also grew up in the Mountain West, I too grew up playing in that non-specific wheat, and now I feel the need to call my dad and ask him about it.

Ash: My family also had a big garden when I was a kid. Every year, we grew something different, and it was kind of fun to explore what was going to pop up in there.

Ryan: Probably there’s a metaphor in there. Maybe we’ll circle back to it.

What kinds of caregivers did you have in your life?

Ash: My mom was definitely the default caregiver. She worked a little less. So she was tending to my needs in a very typical, maternal way.

When I was a young child, I think my dad was tending to my attention. My dad was a music teacher, so there was a lot of singing songs, and coming up with little games to play together, and listening to music together while Mom was making dinner, or getting a break.

I also spent a fair amount of time with my paternal grandparents, mostly my paternal grandmother. They had an acre of land, and neighbors with horses in the back, which is a lovely memory. My paternal grandparents were born at the turn of the 20th century, and there was a lot of asking them for stories, and hearing these stories that felt kind of apocryphal, in terms of how removed from my reality they were, but that all had morals in them. So I felt like they were kind of tending to my conscience, while my parents were tending to my needs in other ways.

Ryan: I love thinking of the different ways that we tend. Because sometimes we think of care work as being very physical–as in, it’s changing a diaper, or it’s making a meal. And it is those things. But tending a child’s attention is also a form of care labor. Noticing how a child’s mind is working in its own unique ways is such a teacherly skill. And it can be done in this really beautiful way, one that is much like gardening–just seeing what’s growing, and deciding to water it, or not.

That ethos really seems to come through in the way that you talk about affirming kids’ interests with tech in your book. There’s a sense that you’re encouraging us to see that kids’ tech interests are seeds. We can tend their attention accordingly. We can notice, “Is this the kind of child who really likes open-ended sandbox games? Is this the kind of child who really likes competitive, very structured kinds of games?”

Your work has offered so much spaciousness for me as a parent in this regard, in terms of transforming this conversation about screens from one that is fear-based and guilt-based–a status quo which we’ll get to in a moment–into a conversation that is possibility-based. “Oh, what seeds are we planting here, on this device? How do we take care of them? How do we make sure that things don’t get into the garden that we don’t want there?”

“To me, education is empowerment”

Ryan: What led you to become an educator, and to develop your own way of tending other humans?

Ash: I was raised by two educators who were also musicians. My dad was a band director. I was a very serious classical musician. So I got a lot of practice in that world, and in pedagogy. I started teaching in some capacity when I was in high school, starting private lessons with other students. Later I became a music educator professionally. I think I was able to sense a certain feeling of purpose through that, in a way that probably is true for many people in aspects of caregiving or tending.

I was also really drawn to the mystery of it. Figuring out how to do something very practically or physiologically that would have an artistic impact, like music, or martial arts–I found that so fascinating. If you want something to sound sweeter, that sounds so abstract and amorphous. But as a violinist, it comes down to bow placement, and contact point, and speed, and how much hair is on the string. I found that so captivating, how it became like a puzzle.

Then, realizing that by doing that, I also had the potential to help someone gain their own insight as a teacher of that—I found that endlessly fascinating too. To me, education is empowerment, right? Education should be empowering, no matter what skill we’re trying to impart to someone. That to me is the goal–that they know themselves better, are able to do something for themselves, et cetera.

After that, I went into parenting and saw that happen all over again. Except now instead of looking at one isolated skill at a time, now it’s like, every skill, all the time.

Ryan: Every skill, all of the time. Yes!

Ash: In the same way that I may have taught someone something very technical on an instrument, and then reflected on how that works in my own musical practice, I think the tending of parenting is very much an experience of imparting skills to someone else, but also perhaps seeing the signs that, “Oh, maybe I do need to be doing some of my own reparenting, or more of my own skill building.”

This connects to another thing I really love about music, and much of arts education: it’s very egalitarian. Yes, there will be an instructor who is better, right? But everybody is always working at something, including the instructor. Everybody’s improving. There’s always something that you can be refining or rethinking about or coming back to in some way.

I think every child benefits from someone in their life–an educator, a caregiver–who is willing to acknowledge that, that we’re all in this together somewhere. That you don’t reach an end point of, “I’ve done it, I’ve become an adult, I’m done.” I think having a caregiver or someone in your life who’s willing to say, “I need to be better at that,” or “I made a mistake,” or “I don’t know,” or “I’m working on this,” is so, so, so powerful.

I think in my own parenting, that’s something that was very hard for me to recognize. It is probably the biggest, most impactful shift I made for my child, and also for myself. Of being able to have that kind of vulnerability, and to keep learning through your own parenting. It’s such a gift I think we can give ourselves, as well as our kids.

Ryan: Absolutely. Unlearning this idea that you have to be finished, and you have to be the authority, and that you are sort of beyond inquiry or reproach because you are an adult–I have watched so many teachers and parents go through that unlearning. Of realizing, “Oh, I don’t have to dominate in order to lead.”

For myself, as a writer who has also taught her craft to students, I’m reflecting now on how the best conversations I’ve had with kids have had this “we’re all in this together” quality to them. They’ve involved pulling up a chair alongside them when they are running into to a very predictable writing struggle, and just saying, “Yeah, it’s like that sometimes, isn’t it?” And they’d look at me with their big eyes and go, “Yeah.” And then I’d say, “Well, that’s how you know you’re a real writer, because you’re coming up against this common writerly struggle.” And they’re like, “Really?” And they’d sit up a little straighter.

What’s amazing is that I haven’t really taught them anything, strictly speaking. I’ve just affirmed them, and shared my vulnerability, and witnessed their vulnerability, in a way that is not fearful.

To me, that’s also really what mindfulness is, whether we’re doing it with ourselves or doing it with a child. Just being with the vulnerability that’s here, in a non-fearful way.

What I learned from your book is that these moments are also happening all the time with screens. We constantly have the opportunity to go sit next to a kid, and bear witness a struggle–for example, they’ve just lost a game. Maybe they’re having big feelings about it. And instead of yelling at them, “The screen is causing this struggle! We’re throwing the screen away!” we get to pull up a chair next to them and say, “Wow, what’s going on?” And then, when they describe a very predictable struggle—I can’t solve the puzzle, my friends are mad at me—we can say, “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ve had to work with that sense of loss and frustration too. And I’m still working on it.”

Ash: Yes. I feel like that’s a good thing for kids to see modeled. As well as continuing to model that kind of neutral curiosity, as an adult, around what happens next. “Okay, this is the outcome I want when it comes to teaching my kids how to use technology skillfully, so what can I try?” And knowing that that experimentation is not going to be simple, but if I try something and it doesn’t work, I can try something else.

Ryan: Right. In art, in parenting, in education, in digital gaming, et cetera, we’re showing kids that we’re all just doing a series of experiments, and seeing what happens.

“I think every child benefits from someone in their life–an educator, a caregiver–who is willing to acknowledge that, that we’re all in this together somewhere. That you don’t reach an end point of, ‘I’ve done it, I’ve become an adult, I’m done.’” — Ash Brandin

Replacing screen-related guilt with curiosity

Ryan: I would love to talk more about curiosity as an antidote to guilt, and in particular the story that you tell in the beginning of your book about that.

In the intro to this interview, I’ve summarized this moment for readers, but I really do hope they get the book and read it themselves, in all of its relatable and tragicomic detail.

This story hooked me from the start, because it showed me, “All right, Ash gets it.” You pulled up a chair next to me and shared that you are a fellow practitioner. That you too were vulnerable and unsure.

Ash: Not in my ivory tower.

Ryan: Not looking at the research and then telling moms, in particular, what they should be doing to make sure their kids do not become anxious. Which is in and of itself a guilt-inducing framing: if this bad thing happens, it’s 100% your fault.

Instead, you brought curiosity in place of the guilt. And it seems like that was the seed of the book.

From there, you charted your inquiry process, your curiosity about, “What is going on here?” And just uncovered more and more nuances along the way.

You come to, I think, some pretty common sense conclusions, like the ones we’ve discussed above. For example, actually talking to your child about what they’re doing in a non-judgemental way is better than throwing their tablet out the window or choosing to live off-grid.

That said, some of this may conflict with what I think of as the bougie-parent-ocracy, where everyone has heard a thing or they’ve read a thing about screens being “bad” no matter what—but it’s all watered down in a way that is not particularly rigorous or even ideologically consistent. This melange of half-digested ideas lives inside of us, and it has this moral weight, and it gets activated when we feel guilt arising, and so we blame “screens” without really honing in on the nuances of why we’re doing that, as you do in the book.

“Blame is not a long-term solution”

Ryan: We’ll talk about some of the research and tools you offer us in a minute, but for now, going back to the beginning of your inquiry: I’m really curious about what is happening with us when we feel guilty in a screen time scenario like the one that you described. What have you learned through the creation of this book about guilt in that specific scenario?

As in: there’s a need. I gave the screen. It met the need. Meeting needs reduces conflict. And yet, when we give kids a screen, there’s still sometimes this internal conflict going on inside. A conflict that often takes our critical thinking faculties offline. What’s up with that?

Ash: My armchair psychologist theory is that for default caregivers or people raised and socialized as women, there’s this feeling of, “I shouldn’t be putting on my oxygen mask before someone else. My needs should come last.” That was my first thought in that moment. When my spouse ran into the room and threw a tablet at my child and ran back out, my first feeling was of failure. Like, “I shouldn’t have needed to use that, because it would be for me. It would benefit me. And I should be able to find another way around all these shoulds, right?”

There was also a feeling of having used a finite resource. “If I use that now, then I can’t justify using it later, right?”

Getting curious about what we’re afraid of in that moment, we could say, “I’m afraid it’s going to rot their brain.” But in that isolated moment, am I really afraid of that? If you’re a family who owns a tablet and headphones, that’s probably not your fear.

Was I really afraid that my child was going to watch 30 minutes of something and do irreparable harm? No, that was probably not actually my fear. My fear in that moment was of my personal failure as a caregiver. Because I was allowing my needs to supersede my child’s.

I think what allowed me to be curious in that moment was recognizing that in that particular instance, going to that place of guilt or shame wasn’t going to help.

That’s now something I point out a lot in my work. “Like, hey, if you want to blame the screen, I get it. If I’ve allowed it and my kid’s having a hard time, it hurts to think, ‘This is a reflection of my parenting and therefore me by extension.’ It feels good to say, ‘I have found the problem and the problem is the screen,’ because then the problem isn’t my kid and it’s not me, right? If I can blame the screen, it offloads the shame. But it also doesn’t help at all. Like, okay, cool, it’s the screen’s fault, but what am I going to do when this happens tomorrow?

Ryan: Right? It might neutralize the feeling of guilt in the moment, but it doesn’t meet the needs that are still here.

Ash: If we’re in a place where we have alternatives, that’s one thing. But in that particular scenario, I had to sign back in the next day. The 13-year-olds were returning. I had to think to myself, “Okay, cool. That didn’t work. What are you going to do tomorrow?”

And I think I recognized in that moment, I’ve got nothing. I have no alternative except more of this. Trying to be in two places will lead to me getting disregulated, and to my three-year-old getting yelled at for being three in their own home, which is not at all fair. That’s not sustainable. In that moment, I could see that. And I could see that absent having another caregiver, or having safe access to the outdoors, here was a tool that was coming in that could meet all the needs in this moment.

So, we continued using screen time in the pandemic and even after, because then it was like, “Okay, that half hour is now going to be how I get a moment to myself, or take a shower, or eat lunch, or prep something, or reset the house.”

This in turn also made me realize that if I’m spending 30 minutes focused on these other tasks, while my child watches a screen, that then allows me to be a better caregiver and a more regulated one. That is a direct benefit to my child. And it’s also therefore benefiting all of us. On the other hand, if I’m martyring myself, and giving more than I have, my kid is not going to ultimately not end up with the best version of me.

Over time, this also allowed us to show our kids that leisure can and should be a part of our lives, without us feeling like it’s only worthy of doing if we’ve achieved enough. Because it benefits all of us. It kind of forced that modeling, which I think is also really important for kids.

On the radical notion that women are people

Ryan: You’re really great about using acronyms and mantras and repeating them–it’s one pedagogical move I see you making throughout the book–and the phrase beneficial and sustainable appears so many times. And you make it clear that for screen time usage to work, it must be beneficial and sustainable for everyone.

I think what I’m hearing you say, and what I’m agreeing with, is that there is something about being socialized as a woman in this culture that leads to a sense of guilt that arises when we include ourselves in the circle of “everyone.” Because we’re not supposed to be in this circle that includes everyone.

By putting ourselves into the circle, we haven’t done anything morally wrong. We’re actually doing something that is making whatever we’re doing sustainable and healthy. But we also know that there’s a penalty that has typically been leveled at us, often from birth, depending on your gender socialization and your experience with gender, for including yourself in “everyone.” That penalty often looks like shame. Like being called selfish.

Over time, the lesson we learn is that “beneficial for everyone” isn’t supposed to include you. “Sustainable for everyone” isn’t supposed to include you. It’s your job to bring about those conditions for others, but you don’t get to be included in receiving and thriving under those conditions. Especially when thriving looks like solitude, leisure or rest.

There’s a raft of research that bears this out. There are also many incredible writers here on Substack who have been talking about this for years. For just a few examples, see on the leisure gap, on what she calls Human Giver Syndrome in her book, and Amelia and on the burnout-inducing impact of that concept. There’s also writing on rest as resistance, particularly for Black women. Your book finally brings family tech use into that larger conversation.

In many tech-related scenarios, I could see guilt functioning like a misguided inner protector, in an Internal Family Systems sense, warning us away from the electrified edge of “everyone,” lest we get zapped when trying to enter in.

Given that, I think that it’s one of the most quietly radical parts of your work, the fact that you say actually, mothers are allowed to have needs.

As you note, mothers are the ones meeting the lion’s share of the physical and emotional needs in the home, according to the research. They also tend to be the most disproportionately penalized for using technology to meet those needs, and to fill in the gaps between their capacity and what they’re expected to do. So in fact, thinking critically about this and allowing ourselves to have needs, as mothers, is potentially a way to reparent ourselves.

I think your book also shows how the current discourse around screen time, as a tool for rest and leisure, intersects with conversations we are already having within intersectional feminism about those same topics.

When I taught students in the Bronx, for example, my students did not necessarily have access to multiple caregivers in the home with complementary skills, or to a safe outdoor space, as part of the picture, as you and I did. It’s distinctly unfeminist, and quite classist, to me, to turn to a single mother in the Bronx who’s working two jobs, who cannot let her child out of the apartment because of actual gun violence in the neighborhood, to say, “Well, your kid shouldn’t be playing Fortnite, because there’s fictional guns in it.” When what she needs is rest, and what Fortnite is and can be is an experience of kids getting together in a safe digital space to essentially play in the park, in ways that, as you’ve shown, do not inexorably lead to violence in the real life.

Why should a single mom in the Bronx not get to have her needs met? Why should that child not get to have his needs met? Simply because the bougie-parent-ocracy has decided that it should be that way?

Ash: It’s so much simpler to put that blame on the individual, right? When that is a problem that in many ways is created by individualism, by a society that is not prioritizing collectivism or the needs of the most vulnerable. And then is turning around and saying more individualism will fix the problem. And saying essentially, well, if you just worked harder or cared more, that you would figure it out.

The barriers families face are so much more significant than that. If the barrier is lack of access to the outdoors, or lack of a high enough income that a parent can be home more, or all of the possible systemic inequities that are contributing and are creating these barriers, that is so much harder to solve. And that requires not just a collective approach, but also that we care about other people’s needs, and not just about whether or not we have that same need to meet.

It’s not a pithy sound bite. I get it. But as I’ve said, blame is not a long term solution.

Ryan: Yes. If we are shaming ourselves for needing to be in the circle of care, or blaming other people for needing to be in the circle of care, we are not looking to the societal forces that tell us we are unworthy of being in the circle of care and meeting our needs in the first place as the actual culprits. That doesn’t solve our problem.

Whereas screen time, when done intentionally, with information, but also with a sense of acceptance regarding our actual lived reality, can be a way for us to sometimes make an unbearable situation, in this messed up system, a little bit more bearable.

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If you liked Part One of this interview, you are really going to love Part Two, in which we talk about the ways in which Ash’s work dovetails with that of mindfulness experts and Kristin Neff, as well as , who writes about dismantling diet culture.

—> To keep reading Part Two, click here!

— Kate Carson, grief mentor and activist

When I entered the bardo of post-babyloss grief three years ago, many people asked me if I had already encountered the work of Kate Carson.

Have you met her?

Have you read her stuff?

She’s like, the expert at this.

And also the nicest person ever.

Kate, as it turns out, lost her own beloved daughter, Laurel, in her 35th week of pregnancy, several years ago. She has gone on to mentor thousands of loss parents through her Facebook community, as well as her private coaching practice, Nightbloom Coaching.

This makes us colleagues, as I now work with perinatal loss survivors myself, and we both engage in storytelling-as-activism in collaboration with organizations like .

Here’s the real kicker, though: Kate is now also my new neighbor. She lives just a few minutes away from me in Central MA.

Sometimes, the synchronicities that arise in this world of what Kate calls “purpose-work” truly astonish me in this way.

Kate and I connected recently for this interview so that I could hear firsthand from her about what grief has taught her, both about the nature of life as well as about how to help other people keep living when someone they love has died. I had a feeling that her wisdom might serve all of us who are missing someone we love, as the holidays approach.

In this interview, Kate offers her own hard-won personal framework for working with loss and healing. Rather than sorting feelings and experiences into the good old Five Stages of Grief, she thinks of grief and healing in ways that make me think of the rings of bark on a tree.

At first, she says, you’re in “total nervous system meltdown.” Then, you enter the place where people think you’re doing better—but you know that you’re still doing pretty bad. Then, one day, she says, you realize, “I’ve grown big enough to hold this terrible thing.”

As we spoke, I realized that this trajectory feels true for me, too. I lost my daughter-to-be in 2022, three years ago. I spent about a year in meltdown mode. I started writing again in 2023, which helped me to heal primarily because I heard from others that it helped them too. I re-named my newsletter In Tending in 2024, shifting its focus away from my own storytelling-as-advocacy to a focus on advocating for the wellbeing of all caregivers. Now, three years on, I’m working with a remarkable, compassionate business coach to create a sustainable long-term structure around this enterprise. My healing work has become my purpose-work.

I think there are many others like us out there. If you are reading, you may be such a person, or you dream of one day becoming one. The kind of person who has been through the storms of change, illness and death, and knows that these things cannot be avoided, just weathered. The kind of person who has taken the torn-up boards of their broken life, and used them to build a lighthouse for someone else.

For me, and for so many others who have been lost at sea, Kate is a lighthouse. May the glimmers of healing she offers here help to guide you home.

Before we jump into Kate’s interview, some housekeeping notes:

• If you live in Central MA, please come meditate in person with me on Sunday evenings at 7pm in November! Click here for more info and to register.

• Be sure to mark your calendars for our next donation-based caregiver circle on Tuesday, December 2nd at 10:30am EST on Zoom. We’ll be discussing burnout prevention. To learn more about what goes down during our circles, click here. To get on the list to receive our Zoom invites, please click here.

• Please save the date for our first gathering of 2026: a conversation and workshop with Kate Carson on Coming Home to the Body in Midlife on Thursday, January 29th at 12pm EST. We’re so excited to talk more about a topic that feels relevant to us and to so many other people we know, especially at a time of year when we are inundated with more negative, critical messaging about our bodies. (More details to come in future newsletter posts, so stay tuned and subscribe if you haven’t already!)

Okay, back to today’s conversation!

Ryan: Where did you grow up? What else grows there? What was it like for you to grow there?

Kate: I grew up in suburban/semi-rural Massachusetts. I had an objectively excellent childhood. I had the freedom to traipse around in the woods and in the fields after school every day, climbing trees and catching frogs. Excellent public education with teachers who inspired me and cared about me. A stable, supportive family who met my material and emotional needs. I won the lottery being born how and when and where and to whom I was.

That said, I still found plenty to complain about. I felt socially stifled in a place where every single person remembers every thing that has happened to everybody since grade school. I thought people who returned to their hometown to live were nuts. I went away to college and really enjoyed the fresh start of meeting a whole new range of people.

Now, 20 years after graduating, I’m living in a town just like the one I grew up in, and my daughters have the same critiques of semi-rural Massachusetts life that I had. I can only hope they see their childhoods as objectively excellent, too, by the time they’re 42.

Ryan: What is your earliest memory of tending another being?

Kate: The first memory I have of anything that could be called tending is a kind of death-work. I think I was in middle school. My beloved cat Milo was hit by a car. I ran out to find him dead, but still warm.

Milo had been a deeply faithful cat. He’d trot at my heels when I went out to the fields and forest to play. He’d accompany me to the edge of his territory, then stand guard meowing until I came back. I always made sure to come back the same way I left so that he wouldn’t stay out all night worrying. He had a gap in his lip through which he would drool while he purred. I had to put a towel down every time he dug in for snuggles. I was devastated that he died.

That day, I picked him up. He looked perfect, but was very limp. I brought him inside, and my parents got a box for him. I curled him up in the box.

Soon after, I was walking on a farm where there were miniature pumpkins growing. In the moment, I felt moved to pick a little pumpkin to bring it back to Milo’s grave. I picked out the prettiest one, put it in my pocket, and kept walking.

That day, the farmer was in the field. He came blazing over, telling me that I was a thief. I was absolutely mortified. I didn’t fess up to the pumpkin in my pocket, even though we both knew. But I left it in the woods, because I didn’t want to bring home stolen goods either. This thwarted tending impulse was cemented in my brain forever by shame.

Ryan: What or whom have you most loved tending since?

Kate: When I was a teenager and young adult, I loved working with kids. I was a swim teacher, a diving coach, a babysitter, and camp counselor. I also did some environmental volunteering, and spent a lot of time up a tree with one friend in particular, imagining the spirits in everything.

These days, I tend an awful lot, to the point of exhaustion sometimes. I have my own living children, the memory of my deceased daughter, my husband, my home, our elderly cat, 10 chickens, and 3,000 grieving parents.

Grief work still speaks to me the most, perhaps because it’s so under-served by the world at large. Where I lack, someone will step in in the joyful, proud, fun moments of caring for kids and pets. But for the bereaved, not everyone has it in them to show up and tend, to get right up close to the rawest grief and sit down to listen.

Ryan: In your practice with Nightbloom Coaching now, what kinds of grief do people ask you to tend with them?

Kate: All manner of taboo and tender problems: aging, disease, sexual dysfunction, hurting or failing relationships. I love so much to work with what the world doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to talk about. I love so much to delve deep into that and say: you’re not alone. I’m here.

“It was like she was falling down the stairs over and over, all of the time, without ever stopping”

Ryan: As you touched on above, you and I both lost daughters-to-be in late pregnancy. I imagine this is one reason why you and I both feel called to talk about the kinds of grief that feel stigmatized or taboo.

What, if anything, would you like to share about your own path to family-building, and what it taught you about grief?

Kate: I can honestly talk for hours about my reproductive journey, but I’ll try to be brief.

My husband and I married young, at 22 and 23, and we wanted a big family, with four kids. It started well, with my first pregnancy being one of those textbook pregnancies: queasy at first, blooming into glowing lovely later stages. Our first daughter was born in 2009, when I was studying towards a PhD in metabolic engineering. Elsie was an easy baby. All my problems were normal, common, mundane problems.

Then, I had three miscarriages in the years after I had Elsie. One needed help in the form of a D&C, when the miscarriage just wouldn’t complete on its own. Two were spontaneous. Each was increasingly scary, because I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to have another child again, and I deeply wanted to have more kids.

When I finally got a “sticky” pregnancy, it was fraught with the anxiety of the previous losses. I got labeled as an “anxious patient,” and I think that ended up being part of the problems that arose. All testing came back healthy until our anatomy scan, when a red flag was raised, but upon a Level 2 ultrasound, the concern was dismissed. I was told to enjoy my pregnancy, and that I didn’t need to come in for further testing.

But it kept eating at me. What if the problems were actually there? I just couldn’t shake it. I had tangible concerns to point to as well. This pregnancy was very different from my healthy glowing pregnancy before. I was sick through 25 weeks. And the movements of my baby were so strange. They were constant. No rest. No sleep. And spastic. One of my friends described it in this way: “It was like she was falling down the stairs over and over, all of the time, without ever stopping.”

My midwife didn’t like how worried I was, so she scheduled me for a “peace of mind” ultrasound, which was rescheduled again and again because the hospital had to make room for emergencies. By the time they brought me in, I was 35 weeks pregnant.

They found that my baby’s brain had not developed properly. She had two different sets of brain anomalies: Dandy Walker Malformation, and Agenesis of the Corpus Collosum. The latter is a seizure disorder, and probably explains the weird and constant movement. My baby was not ever expected to walk, talk, support the weight of her own head, or swallow.

“Then what can she do?” I asked the neurologist. “Does a baby like mine just sleep all day?”

He winced. “Babies like your baby are not often comfortable enough to sleep.”

She would die in a dozen different ways, all of them because of her disorders. She would die. And yet, they would not call this diagnosis fatal. And because they would not call it fatal, I was offered neither palliative care for my baby, who would never swallow, nor abortion care to prevent her suffering. I had to travel from Boston to Colorado to access the abortion care that I needed to give my baby peace.

I was in my 36th week of pregnancy for the 4-day outpatient procedure. It was absolutely devastating, but it was humane. It was gentle. It was kind. I was able to induce a stillbirth through euthanizing injection, and then very gradual dilation and induction of labor.

I came home to my 30th birthday with an empty womb and empty arms and the enormous weight of taboo on my shoulders. The hardest thing I hope I ever have to experience.

The grief integration for this took me many years. I fortunately went on to have one otherwise healthy pregnancy, and my youngest daughter is now 11 years old. But this is not a happy ending. The story of the baby who came before her will always be a sad story.

My life is full of all sorts of stories now. The work of integration is the work of making myself big enough to hold them all.

“The more mortals we get showing up to help as they can, the better”

Ryan: What kind of compassion did you feel you needed as a loss parent and did not necessarily get?

Kate: Oof. I needed grace.

I was so lonely. I needed connection. And I got more than just about anyone I know. My friends, my family, my family-friends—they’re fantastic. Appropriate. Sensitive. Brave. And still, it’s lonesome.

I needed different things on different days, so I needed my friends to be able to roll with the punches and take me as I was each and every day. I needed to be able to talk about my baby sometimes, and at other times, I needed distractions from my tragedy. I needed everyone to be brave enough to be near me when I was sad and weird and awkward, and brave enough to look at me without pity, even as many people’s worst nightmare was playing out right in front of them.

I also needed so much cultural support and reassurance. I needed to know that my community wasn’t going to expose me to danger because of my abortion. That they’d protect me, both with their votes and with their social interactions.

I’m lucky that I got a lot of this, but the needs of any grieving mother are so much greater than mere mortals can meet. So the more mortals we get showing up to help as they can, the better.

Ryan: Were there any sources of love and compassion you received in your grief that surprised you?

Kate: Many. So many. Especially my neighbors.

I lived, at the time, in a very Catholic neighborhood, which is typical for Boston. Everybody knows that the Church itself has been a nightmare for women who have abortions. And even though I had not spoken a word of the abortion to them, everyone had seen the taxi pull up. Everyone had heard me wailing. They all knew. But don’t you know that nearly every single neighbor I had showed up to protect me and support me as they could?

The older Irish Catholic woman at the top of the street, with a zillion stories about all the infamous Boston stuff—The Winter Hill Gang, the priest abuse scandal—told me about her stillbirth. The fireman and his wife across the street also said such specific and understanding words. The Italian neighbors next door made me food. The gay guys on the other side of us told off some proselytizer who tried to knock on the door while a friend visited me in the depths of grief. The Buddhist lesbians in the back chanted for me, and still, to this day, send me encouragement when they see my activism. And the Jewish neighbor with the adult son with brain anomalies—she was so kind to me. So, so kind. She treated me like her peer, another mother of a disabled child. I held her hand and brought her food when her own son died ten years later.

I didn’t expect a super Catholic neighborhood of mostly old-timers to show up for me, but the loyalty and protection of this Boston culture is just amazing.

Ryan: How has your experience of grief and healing from your loss unfolded over time, from acute loss to where you are now?

Kate: I can’t even remember the early days clearly. It’s all lost in the fog of grief. I recognize it in the stories of other women in my support group. The go-through-the-motions. The feed-the-body-if-you-can. The absolute devastation of having to realize, all over again, from nothing, that your baby is dead and gone. My darkest days were about 8-12 weeks in, when the numbness wore off. There was so much more to feel.

Unfortunately, I had a therapist at the time who didn’t know grief. Not really. Not the life shattering, out-of-order, heavy-responsibility grief of this particular loss. And, I was a recent engineering grad. Not yet a feelings professional myself. I didn’t know about grief either.

But grief itself is a powerful teacher. Grief taught me parts-work by blowing my ego into distinct and separate characters. Grief taught me surrender by giving me more than I could handle. Grief taught me bravery by turning up my terror with absolutely no way to escape. Grief taught me compassion by opening my heart. Grief showed me how much I can love, for grief is, itself, love.

“The antidote to taboo is connection”

Kate: Now, I talk about grief in three phases:

First, there’s early stage grief, when the nervous system is just in total meltdown all of the time. For me, this lasted about a year. I was visibly a wreck.

Then, there’s middle stage grief. This is when people start to think I’m doing better because I’m more often regulated than I used to be. But the load is still so, so heavy, still all-consuming. For me, this was years two and three.

Finally, there’s later-stage grief, when I’ve grown big enough to hold this terrible thing. At that point, it’s up to me if I want to make my own meaning of it through purpose-work. I do, and that has been my focus, ever since that third year.

Today, life is mundane, and I celebrate that. I love and cherish my boring life. What an absolute blessing to be boring.

And, I work and I fight and I build purpose out of the senseless. Helping people is my grief work now.

Ryan: What did it look like for you to move from tending your own grief to helping others to tend theirs—to shift your career in the direction of what you call “purpose-work”? And what helps you sustain this work now, when it gets hard?

Kate: I talk a lot about the gifts of loss. And by that, I don’t mean to force sunshine into the dark places. Rather, this horrible thing happened, and I would never have chosen it, but it does have gifts, and by God I am going to accept and fully embrace every single one of them that comes my way. I’ve earned it. Purpose is my greatest gift from losing Laurel.

I do so much that is purpose-work now. A lot of activism, a lot of it for reproductive freedom. But the very root of my purpose is this: I want to break down taboo. The antidote to taboo is connection. I support other loss parents because it is the most powerful way I can support my purpose. Healing them heals me and heals the world at large.

Ryan: How can people who are not loss parents, but who want to support the loss parents in their lives, be supportive of their healing journeys on a person-to-person level?

Kate: It is impossible to give a universal “do this” list, as grief is fickle and changing and presents differently from person to person, day to day. But nobody expects you to fix a dead baby. It’s still better to show up and try than to do nothing at all. I would say that sending a card is about the safest thing to do. The griever can open it when she’s ready. Can save it as evidence that she is remembered. That she’s held in community.

I also asked a friend if she would put Laurel’s birthday on her calendar and send me a card the following year. She has sent me a card every year since. For me, this commitment to remembering year after year is incredibly meaningful.

It also helps to ask if they chose a name, and to say the name if they did. People think they shouldn’t “remind” us of our baby’s death, but you can’t remind someone of what was never forgotten. In the thirteen years since my baby died, there’s not been one day when I forgot. Most of the time, when the bereaved stops talking about a loss, it’s not because she’s over it. It’s because she realizes that it makes other people uncomfortable to hear about it.

Recognizing that this is potentially a dad’s loss, too, is really important. Some dads do and some dads don’t experience babyloss as a death in the family. But all dads experience this weird phenomenon where everyone asks “How’s your wife doing?” And nobody asks, “How are you holding up?”

Some other ways to help: ask if there’s any childcare needed. Bring food. Ask if she wants help disseminating information and become a point-person. Ask if she needs help finding or vetting resources, like calling a local infant loss support group to make sure that TFMR moms are welcome there. You can also offer to bring her to a funeral home to pick up ashes, if there are any, or to write letters to the insurance company to contest denials of coverage, which are common in babyloss situations. These are actions that do help. So suggest something practical, and you may get a “yes, please.”

The one thing I would avoid is sharing sentiments like “everything happens for a reason.” Instead, find ways to say, “This hurts so much. I’m so sorry. I love you. I’m here.”

Ryan: We also know the personal is also political when it comes to pregnancy and infant loss. So, how can people support loss parents on a policy level?

Kate: It is so dire right now. The most important thing to understand, if you want to be an advocate for reproductive rights, is that our abortion policy indirectly determines what’s available for all of our maternal healthcare.

Best practice for safe miscarriage often requires the same medications as are used to induce abortion. Procedures like the D&C and D&E are used to stop bleeding in a postpartum hemorrhage. This is one of the most common life-saving interventions that exists in obstetrics. Yet it’s put under political attack all the time because it is also procedural abortion.

So, however you feel about abortion, restricting abortion care restricts best-practice care for all pregnancy and miscarriage care. Your wife, your daughter, your sister will be in greater danger of dying from pregnancy wherever abortion care is restricted.

Another thing to note: Some forms of restriction aren’t as obvious as trying to outlaw important medicines and procedures. Some of it’s downright sneaky. For example, going after how remains are disposed of in the case of a pregnancy loss. “You shouldn’t flush a baby down a toilet” sounds like common sense, until you start talking to your friends and realize how common miscarriage is, how hard it is to tell whether you’re passing a fetus or a blood clot, and the absolute state of shock that you’re in, if you’re standing over the toilet when your miscarriage labor has finally completed. Many, many of us flush. So these laws like these fetal remains laws make it a legal liability just to be a woman of reproductive age.

Now, we’re seeing women get arrested for how they navigate their miscarriages in a state of shock. We’re seeing women allowed to develop life-threatening infections because doctors are hesitant to use the best-practice medicine. We’re seeing women die who could so easily have been saved, as their doctors sit around twisting their pearls and saying, “Oh I’m so sorry, we just can’t.”

They could. In abortion-restrictive states, they don’t.

In my case, I often hear, “But there are exceptions for cases like yours!” Meaning that even if well-meaning people may think, “well there has to be a limit” on gestational age at the time of the procedure, you also have my case, where these brain anomalies weren’t even picked up until 35 weeks. The problem is that “exceptions” do not get applied.

“Rape and incest” is another meaningless exception, because you’d have to prove it in a court of law first, and abortion is needed in a timely fashion. We all know that convicting rapists almost never happens, and in the case of incest, we’re probably talking about a minor whose legal guardian is her perpetrator. How is she going to make it through the courts?

Beware also of using words like “lethal” for fetal anomalies, or “life-threatening” for maternal pregnancy emergency. My daughter’s condition would have killed her a dozen different ways. There was a 97% chance that this would occur within a few days of birth, and almost certainly by the age of 3. But my doctor impressed upon me that this does not count as “lethal.” And I’ve supported women whose doctors waited a week for their organs to fail before they’d consider their emergency life-threatening, even though every single person in that situation knew that was the direction it was heading.

These words do not get applied the way you think they will. It is dangerous to let politicians make a popularity contest out of maternal healthcare. These issues are so nuanced and so heavy that the only appropriate place to rest them is in the hands of the family.

Ryan: I could not agree more. And I also know, given our shared experiences, that having to explain to people why you should be alive is existentially exhausting work.

So, how do you come home to yourself after a hard day of tending? Meaning: How do you tend to your physical body, and your interior life?

Kate: LOL. Not well enough. It’s such a temptation to just pretend I’m immune to the pressures of tending and above having needs myself. I have all the tools, and yet, do I use them for myself?

Ryan: I think many people reading this can likely relate to what you’re saying.

Kate: Right now, today, here’s what I’m doing: I keep an early bedtime, and I keep it sacred. Am I addicted to the internet just like everybody else? Yes. But my screens are off one hour before bedtime. I have special evening lighting: low, pink, amber. A lot of evenings I take a bath with magnesium salts, or use a massage ball to get at my vagus nerve. I supplement with progesterone—which is not for everyone, but great for me.

Then, in the morning, I always walk my daughter to the bus stop, even though she’s plenty old enough to walk herself. In the days of work-from-home, it can be extra effort to put ourselves in fresh air and natural light. So I go with her daily.

There have been times of my life where I did more, when I kept my sexual energy practice active or did sitting meditation. There have been times when I went to yoga several times a week. Today isn’t that time, so I stick to my basic nervous system triage practices, and know that the big guns of self-care are there for me when I’m ready.

Ryan: What communities or sanghas keep you sane?

Kate: For grief, I’d say the community I help hold, Ending A Wanted Pregnancy online. For activism, the group I host, Activist Posse, and all manner of events hosted by , and the many incredible women’s rights and abortion rights orgs I work with.

For life, my friends and my family. Everyone needs friends who listen, friends who distract, friends who reveal truth, friends who direct to solutions, friends who take a shitstorm and make it funny. I am blessed with all.

Where can people find you if they want to engage further with your work?

• You can find me at www.nightbloomcoaching.com + www.nightbloomcoaching.net (I’m in the process of combining the two)

• @Nightbloomcoaching on Instagram

• KateCSays on Facebook and Reddit

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— Emily Eley

Over the past six months or so, I have come to the startling realization that I have become a small business owner.

Here’s the damning evidence:

• I write this free-to-low-cost newsletter, offering insights on the intersection of mindfulness and care, which is supported by many very kind subscribers now (maybe even you!).

• I offer low-cost, donation-based caregiver circles once a month, and in 2026, I’d like to offer more, in a way that remains financially accessible to a wide range of folks.

• I offer cohort-based group containers, workshops and consulting services for a wide variety of helping/healing organizations, from schools to reproductive justice nonprofits. I plan to keep doing this as a way to supplement my income from the first two things.

• I’m finishing up a yearlong meditation teacher training, which has me thinking about offering 1:1 support as well. This would also allow me to tailor sessions to the specific concerns of folks in this community, such as combining mindfulness practice with parent coaching for new parents and people with kids in K-12, executive function coaching for neurodivergent caregivers and their kids, caregiver burnout prevention for folks who tend adults, and trauma-informed care for the many folks who find traditional mindfulness techniques and/or communities hard to access.

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It has been obvious to many of my loved ones, for quite some time, that all of this adds up to a business, and I am its founder. Many have throttled me with some version of the sentiment, “Just own it, girl!”

But this new reality has been hard for me to accept, because nothing about the words “business” or “founder” feels like home to me, even if this career structure actually…does.

Business as usual often means pricing offerings like the ones above in a way that makes them inaccessible to the people who really need them. Business as usual means under-valuing the labor and expertise of caregivers and creative people, while over-valuing the kinds of work that produce gains in stock value, and fostering animosity instead of solidarity between them. Business as usual means under-paying women and people of color, while over-paying men in a way that pushes them to define their self-worth by the size of their paycheck, and stunts their ability to connect and care for others. Business as usual means that some people hoard more resources than they need while others go hungry, creating fertile ground for violence and hatred to take root.

I don’t want to own any part of that, girl. The fact that so many founders still desperately do is, in my view, a big part of the problem.

In my early 20s and 30s, my aversion to capitalism led me to avoid money in general. I’ve tried growing my own food, only buying clothes secondhand, boycotting Amazon, and bartering my services whenever possible. I still really enjoy these things and think they’re worthwhile.

Running a fledgling business has taught me that when it comes to making money vs. spending it, avoidance is not an effective anti-capitalist resistance strategy. Choosing to under-sell my offerings and to manage my business books badly doesn’t hurt capitalism one bit—it just hurts me. It also makes it more likely that I’ll abandon my effort to create something better and go back to grudgingly accepting the status quo.

So, what’s a girl to do?

Enter: Emily Eley, anti-capitalist business coach.

Emily is a born-and-raised Vermonter, a mom to two kids, and an activist and organizer. She also knows her way around a spreadsheet like nobody’s business. Emily’s work is rooted in the belief that small business can be a tool for liberation, and a way to practice the world we’re trying to build: one grounded in care, interdependence, and enoughness.

Emily is currently helping me work through In Tending’s awkward growing pains. As Emily explains in this interview, her approach to “anti-capitalist business coaching” is not one in which people do not make money. It’s one that prioritizes healthy reciprocity and exchange over cancerous levels of growth and exploitation. It’s not a return to the Stone Age, but a re-imagining of previous ways of being in community that are more equitable, and that do a better job of actually taking care of people and our earth than this current economic system. And it’s an approach that has helped me to replace my anti-capitalist avoidance of money with compassion, curiosity, and a newfound sense of agency and creativity. It has helped me to cultivate a sense of wise hope and newfound confidence in the ability of conscientious caregivers like me to begin building a better world for our kids in the present moment, without going broke.

The conversation between Emily and I that follows here offers a rare glimpse into the ways in which the proverbial sausage gets made around here, as I try to make it according to the recipe above. It also, I hope, offers a galvanizing glimpse into the care-centered future that Emily and I are both trying to create.

Ryan: Where did you grow up, and what else grows there?

Emily: I was born in Burlington, Vermont, where I am right now. Now, we live in the New North End, just above downtown and the Old North End of Burlington. We’re also on the land of Abenaki people here.

I had grown up in the South End, where the houses are very big, and very tall, more Victorian-looking. Meanwhile, in the New North End, it’s a bunch of tiny little ranches. It was traditionally a very blue-collar, working-class area, and has also been the most conservative district in Burlington. It is the least steeped in wealth out of all of the districts in the area. And now it is slowly flipping and turning over. It’s the only affordable place left to buy a home, though recently, it’s become less-affordable.

So here, you’ll see a family with young children like ours–I have a two and a five year old–and then a neighbor like ours, who is right next door is 95 and lives alone. She’s actually in transition to moving into a supported living home. There’s a lot of that out here.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the spread of homesteading across Millennial households as well. So the other things that grow here that are really top of mind right now are stone fruits, as I am slowly trying to acquire them on our little plot of land. We also have a chicken coop, and my goal right now is for every other inch of our yard to be covered in something productive and something edible. And yet in the next yard over, it’s like, there’s nothing. It’s just grass. A lot of grass that is way too green, and shouldn’t be that green. And so it’s a very interesting neighborhood right now in that way too. It’s a lot of “what used to be” next to a lot of “what is now.”

Ryan: That’s such an evocative image: the green “perfect grass” next to a lawn that is riotous with stone fruit and chickens and kids and other edible plants.

Emily: Yeah. And decaying sunflowers. Some people here were like, “You need to pull those nasty, ugly, decaying sunflowers down.” And I was like, “Oh, no. The birds and the squirrels come in and eat the seeds.” The kids and I have had so much fun watching the squirrels climb up; the stem is leaning over, and they’re pulling the seeds out as fast as they can.

Ryan: I’m wearing a shirt that has mushrooms on it, because I share this view that there can be a lot of beauty and connection and nourishment in decay. And yet our culture doesn’t like to see that. That’s also something that I would love to talk to you about.

Emily: Moving into this neighborhood and into this property five years ago forced me to confront some classist ideas that I myself had internally about that. This was our first year of really gardening and growing food, and I realized I had a lot of class-based ideas around what beauty looked like in landscaping. Like, how, why and when do things need to be neat or organized? Why and when do things need to be composted or pruned or removed?

For example, this year, we’re not raking. And there’s some neighbors that are like, “That looks so messy. Why aren’t you raking?” We also don’t mow our grass very often. The things I used to think were really important, and really signified beauty, have drastically shifted since becoming a homeowner out here.

Ryan: I have a whole thing with leaves as well. I know that I’m leaving them on my lawn because they make sense here, from an ecological perspective.

Emily: Yeah. There are tiny little organisms who lay their eggs there, and they give the trees nutrients, as their decomposing bodies provide food for the ground.

Ryan: Yes! But then you have people who have their own, as you said, sort of hierarchical ideas about what’s “good” and what’s “not good.” And they’re out here judging.

The pesticide economy and the chicken-and-peaches economy

Ryan: This leads me to a question I’d love to ask you, which is: how do we have a respectful conversation with our loved ones and neighbors, in a sort of heterogeneous economic community like the one you’re in or the one I’m in, that are respectful, about the different ways in which we engage with our shared ecosystem? Both in our literal natural ecosystems, as well as the human economic systems we exist in? Because I know I don’t want to engage in that same kind of judgmental, hierarchical way that someone might be bringing to me. Like, “Oh yeah, you think you’re better than me because my lawn looks messy? Well, I think I’m better than you because I’m not destroying the earth.” That’s not helpful. So I sit with this one all the time.

Emily: Well, I think what I’ve found across time, whether through activism or organizing or my role as a business coach, is that basically no one ever wants unsolicited advice, right? No one ever wants to be told to do something differently when they haven’t sought that out or asked for information on how to do that differently. And so I think a lot about where I’m placing my energy when I am explaining something, or when I am offering alternatives to doing something in a certain way, whether it’s economic or otherwise. I’m choosing my audience pretty carefully.

So, for instance, there’s a man two houses over who I would guess is in his late eighties. His name is Ned. He is a very sweet man. The amount of pesticides he is spraying–it’s stunning, honestly. It’s scary. But then in the same moment, he’s bringing two Tootsie Roll pops over for my two kids, right? With folks like that, I’m constantly putting feelers out there to see if there’s room for a conversation. And if I feel like there really isn’t room for a conversation, I’m not going to try. I’m not going to waste my energy there. I’m going to go find someone where there is room for the conversation.

I think there’s a surprisingly large amount of people out there for whom there is a lot of room for conversation around these topics. But I think sometimes we identify or pick out–and I know my partner does this–the ones that are never going to budge. And we push and we push and we push and we push. And a couple different things can come out of that.

One can be a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s like, “See, I tried, and it didn’t work, and they didn’t listen, so what’s the point?” We can become nihilistic that way, right?

It can also kind of make us more dogmatic in our own beliefs and create even moments of separation between us and someone else.

So I think it’s important that we see that whether as a business owner, or as an activist, or as an organizer, or as a parent, there’s so much room for movement, but it requires patience and intimacy and time and repetition.

Here I think of my parents who are Boomers. My mom is turning 80 next month, and my dad’s 81. They have always been registered Democrats and liberals. I remember four years ago when I first started calling myself an anti-capitalist, my dad had asked a few times what I meant by that. We come over every Sunday for dinner with our boys. We go to their house and they cook. And one Sunday he goes, “I think what you mean is conscious capitalism. I don’t think you mean anti-capitalism. I think what you mean is that there can be a good version of capitalism.” And I was like, “No, Dad. There isn’t a good version of capitalism.”

And now, fast forward four years of this constant conversation every Sunday around politics, around economics, around justice, and he’s like, “I think we need to be socialists.” And I’m like, “Yeah, Dad, we do.”

I also can’t tell you the amount of times I have to introduce myself and people are like, “What do you do?” And I’m like, “I’m an anti-capitalist business coach.” And then it’s always like, “What is that?”

For example, I went to a networking event last week, and there was this woman who was in her 70s, and she was so perplexed by what I was saying. But if you can find the kernels that connect to them, you can start to explain your viewpoint. For her, I know she’s a business owner. I know that she had a brick and mortar shop downtown for 25 years before being pushed out by things like Amazon, online shopping, fast fashion, and all that jazz. So that’s an opportunity that I can grab. I can just ask questions like, “How did that affect you, having all of these chain stores all of a sudden move into Burlington? What was that like for you?” So asking questions, being curious, finding those points of connection: that’s how we bridge that gap.

And of course, you can have the argument that we don’t fucking have the time to do this, right? Like, the planet is burning now, so we don’t have time to build these relationships and slowly convert people. And I get that. I think that’s why our organizing has to be multifaceted, right? There has to be some element of direct action.

But we can’t be defensive and snarky. We can’t set out to make people feel bad or feel small. And I think sometimes, the Left can be that way. They can be kind of like, “I’m smarter than you, and I’m gonna make you feel like an idiot, and I’m gonna prove my point that I’m right.” And that doesn’t usually get anyone anywhere in any type of relationship, you know?

Ryan: I think you’re right about that. And so, in thinking about a one-off cocktail party conversation, I’m hearing that there might be a moment of mindfulness inherent in this, where we’re attuning to ourselves and to others. We’re saying to ourselves, “You know, unless this soil is already very soft and ready to go, I’m probably not going to plant anything successfully here. It’s probably not a good use of my digging energy.”

Maybe in that situation it’s about finding a different point of connection, as you said. Maybe the way that we approach work isn’t going to be that point of connection, but maybe we can talk about our kids, or maybe we can talk about the food at the party, and have a moment of connection regardless. By prioritizing connection, we’re still pushing back against this impulse to sort every person we’re talking to into an hierarchy, ideally one where we’re on top.

What I’m also hearing is that there’s another way we can approach relationships in our lives that are more important and enduring, where this foundation of connection has already been laid. Relationships with your childhood friends, your older relatives, the person who lives on your block. People who don’t need to be canceled, but whose causes and conditions are just so different from ours in this moment that of course they would have different views. I’m hearing in this instance that the conversation becomes more about gentle repeated exposure to each other’s ideas, and cultivating a stance of mutual receptivity.

Emily: Yeah. I agree.

“I think it’s important that we see that whether as a business owner, or as an activist, or as an organizer, or as a parent, there’s so much room for movement, but it requires patience and intimacy and time and repetition.” — Emily Eley, anti-capitalist business coach

And, I also think there are certain things that it’s okay to just stop doing. Like, in previous years, we’ve been invited to go to a Dartmouth football game at Dartmouth by my mother-in-law. This year I was like, “There’s just no element of that activity that is in alignment with who we are. Not the sport itself, not the Ivy League institution that we would be going to, and not the conversations that are going to be had there. That’s not interesting to me anymore. And I think it’s okay for us to just stop doing that altogether. Even if it does mean seeing family, we could see family in a different way. We don’t need to participate in that. Especially if there’s money involved. I don’t want my money going there either.”

So, I’m always looking for room to shift class consciousness in any capacity, anywhere I am. And sometimes, there isn’t room. And I’m just going to be done with that. And that’s okay too. Because I’m not trying to martyr myself all over the place. I’m not trying to keep every relationship alive and well, if that relationship is no longer a representation of who we are in the world.

Ryan: Right. We can let it be the sunflower that is out there rotting in the back. It’s still going to feed somebody. It’s just no longer serving us in the same way.

And yet, maybe for some of us, there’s still a fear and aversion to allowing certain traditions or relationships to be composted.

Emily: We have been facing that. For example, we stopped celebrating Christian-based holidays in the last year and a half. It’s been really, really tough, because my partner’s side of the family are Born-Again Christians. For things like Christmas, or even Thanksgiving, surprisingly, it’s been really tough to find a version of these holidays that work for us as our immediate family. It’s also been hard explaining to my five-year-old why we no longer celebrate Christmas. Unfortunately, he has enough memories of Christmas to now feel like he’s missing out and losing out. Which really is just about the gifts, which is just about consumerism, which is, again, rooted in capitalism.

So we’ve been working on evolving our approach to how we do ceremony, and how we celebrate the passing of time. And that’s tough when you’ve got family members that are like, “Um no, absolutely not.” I feel like we’re moving into the part of the year where we walk a really delicate line between our family and my partner’s family.

Ryan: Absolutely. And I know so many other caregivers feel that. In the In Tending community, there are a lot of caregivers who really deeply resent the cognitive load that comes with high levels of holiday consumption. They resent the overstimulation that comes with being in the environments where that consumption takes place. They resent the performative aspect of it. Many of us who are neurodivergent really chafe at anything where the performance is different than what feels real inside.

Emily: That’s an interesting way to explain it.

Ryan: I mean, I think many principled people feel that way, but also, if you are living in an environment where your brain is telling you one thing is true, and then you see people performing in a way that undermines what you sense to be true, it creates a sense of hyper-vigilance and almost panic, or irritation and crankiness.

So, I think a lot of us are trying to find, during this season, a way to right-size traditions and ceremonies and rituals, without losing traditions and ceremonies and rituals. I think rituals are just a really important part of being human.

For example, we too have skipped Thanksgiving in the past, but we didn’t replace it with anything–any sort of communal celebration of fall. We had a normal day, ate our usual food, though we did fill the bird-feeders to thank the land. This was during the pandemic where we could kind of do that kind of experimentation. And it felt good to divest from a holiday where, as a former history teacher, I’m not fond of it anyway.

At the same time, it felt like there was a missing feeling of a more rich, communal, seasonal ritual. And I do think that that was felt by my family members. My son was too young to really have a framework of expectation, but it felt like I had taken something away without putting something else in its place that felt right.

I think what we’re touching on is a dilemma that many of us face as we’re looking at the pesticide lawn economy versus the chickens-and-peaches economy. Like, okay, I know I don’t want to participate in the first one, but what’s like, Step One to get to the second one?

Where do we start to plant something new?

Ryan: To bring this all back to anti-capitalist business practices: It is really hard out there for people in our community who have to get that next paycheck to keep a roof over their kids’ heads, but who absolutely do not want to keep giving their energy toward the thing that they’re making the money from. The one positive aspect of this sense of dissatisfaction is that it’s softening the ground, creating the conditions for the kind of conversation that we’re having to really take root in those people’s lives. These are the people that are like, “Show me, Emily! How do I get from the pesticide lawn to the chicken-and-peach lawn—while also still ensuring that I also still have a house to live in?”

Emily: What you’re describing is the question of, “How do I be anti-capitalist while continuing to exist in a capitalist system waiting for socialism to come?”

Ryan: Yes.

Emily: That question can look like,”In my business, how do I do those pieces?” But as we’ve discussed, it can also appear in my friendships, in my relationships, in my life.

I was actually just commenting to my partner about a networking event I attended last week where this came up. I was really surprised, because there were maybe about 20 women in the room, and every single one of them was a health coach in some capacity. Every single one of them. And I could see for many of them the kind of the panic they were experiencing, as each person introduced themselves to the group. Like “Oh f@#k, I’m another health coach. What am I going to say? How am I any different than all of these other people?”

One of the things that many of us are missing at that moment is that there’s a reason that room was filled with health coaches. There’s a reason that they are all women, or women-identifying. There’s a reason that we’re seeing this trend or balloon in solo-preneur women who are drawn to caregiving work. It’s because this work touches all of the spaces in which capitalism is inherently built to hurt and fail us. The things that capitalism cannot provide, these women are identifying these holes and trying desperately to create businesses out of those needs. But unfortunately, our economic system is still not set up to value those types of businesses in a way that would be necessary in order for them to fully provide financially. Does that make sense?

Ryan: Absolutely. And I think that’s a hard pill to swallow. For me, and for many others who are exploring this kind of work.

Emily: It’s a hard pill to swallow. And so what I am seeing is I’m constantly getting client inquiries, from women specifically, that are in these kinds of health and wellness spaces. Sometimes their work is helping people set boundaries. Sometimes it’s helping people create better habits. Sometimes it’s around nutrition. Sometimes it’s more around therapy, massage, or acupuncture.

In a post-capitalist world, these things would be provided for regularly, right? And it wouldn’t be something that costs thousands of dollars to access. These would just be the basic necessities that all of us have access to, in order to make us well-rounded healthy beings.

The problem is we don’t live in that society yet.

So, we have all of these women trying to provide these services, but the people they are trying to provide those services to don’t have the disposable income to purchase those services. And so then we then get kind of stuck. Like, “What do I do with that? I see the need, I see that people are ill and unwell. I think I can help in some capacity. I feel like this is my gift to give, but there’s not really a ‘market’ for it.” If we were to use that term.

“There’s a reason that we’re seeing this trend or balloon in solo-preneur women who are drawn to caregiving work. It’s because this work touches all of the spaces in which capitalism is inherently built to hurt and fail us.” — Emily Eley, anti-capitalist business coach

There are a couple of ways that we can go that I suggest.

One is being really pragmatic and pulling in a part-time job. Like, is there some sort of W2 or 1099 work that’s not super painful for you to engage with, while you take some time to experiment with this idea that you have?

I think for some reason, for a lot of folks, that feels like a failure, or embarrassing, or like you haven’t been able to cut it. But I just celebrated eight years in business, and I’ve taken on a W2 position twice during those eight years. There’s no human out there that has said, “You have to be fully self-employed 100% of the time, all the time, in order to be a business owner.” Like, that’s just absurd. That’s not the economy we live in anymore. That was true for my parents. Both my parents were solopreneurs. They grew great businesses. But they didn’t have to multitask multiple jobs while doing that because nothing cost that much then. They had no student loan debt. They didn’t have medical debt. We just live in a very different time.

Purely from a business creation standpoint, it’s very hard to be creative and come up with something unique when you’ve got this huge weight of finances just looming over you. This feeling of, “Well, you better produce something with that, quick!” And so if we can remove, or alleviate, or shift that pressure at all with a part-time job, that can be really helpful. At that point, the question then becomes, “How do we make those two things work together?”

The other thing is—and I don’t know how much I love this advice, but the advice is true regardless—we do have to figure out a way to make the business feel unique enough, and clear enough, and needed enough, to justify paying for it. And that’s hard. That’s what I spend a lot of time doing–helping clients figure all of that out. For example, I have a client right now who’s doing really well, and it’s because she’s niched down so far that there’s not a lot of other humans doing what she’s doing.

I still struggle with this idea that everybody has to be unique. That’s probably a version of individualism, if we were to dig into that. Which is the problem. And, yet, if our offering is not unique, it becomes swept up with the rest of it. So there’s this push and pull that we’re working with there.

Capitalism requires us to constantly be handling painful truths and deep contradictions all the time, every day, and I think that’s one of them. That at this moment in time, it’s not enough to just have an idea, and just want to help. We also have to figure out, “Is it financially sound? Are people really going to engage with this? And exchange money for it?” And that’s tough.

Ryan: What I’m hearing is that some of this stuck-ness that some of us are feeling is actually a powerful sense of intuition about the realities of capitalism. Why would I leave my secure day job in order to not make money, doing something that, as you said, may not be rewarded by capitalism anyway? We might not like this reality, but we are clearly seeing reality, based on what you’re saying.

Sometimes, there really isn’t ground to plant this thing that I want to plant. Even though the thing I want to plant would be very beautiful, and I can see it all growing tall in my mind. The ecosystem that we have is not going to nourish that vision sufficiently.

What I’m also hearing you offer is a way to simply work with what is, right now, with present-moment awareness. You’re saying, “Okay, well, what else can you grow right now? Can you spend a few seasons growing this other cash crop that’s going to prepare the ground for the next phase, and that’s also going to feed your family right now?”

At the same time, you’re also offering a way out of a false binary that keeps many of us trapped in this place where we’re very fixated on what seem to be the only choices: Door Number One, or Door Number Two. Stay at my job, start a business. When in fact, in my own experience, if I sit with the actual reality of things long enough without succumbing to that kind of narrowed vision, often, it’s Door Number Three that opens gently, off in the periphery.

I’m hearing that one potential Door Number Three is, you could move to doing the same thing you’re doing, but doing it 75% of the time, or 50% of the time.

And of course, you’d still have to work that out, with your partner or whoever else is interdependent with you. This is why you have people look at their personal finances as a part of being ethical small business owners. Step One also involves getting real about what your life actually costs.

But assuming you have some room to move a few numbers around, rather than making a drastic change, maybe you can spend 25 percent of your time building this thing that feeds you, or could feed you, or that simply brings you joy and meets your need for beauty, in the world that you already live in.

I do think that that also takes us back to the question of, “How do you get from the pesticide-filled lawn to the lawn filled with stone fruit and chickens?” What I’m hearing you say is, “Well, not overnight. So can you just focus on learning how to build a chicken coop without ripping the whole thing up?” Because that is how that kind of change actually happens.

Emily: Yeah. If you look at the last eight years that my business has been alive, there have been so many versions of the business that all had to happen in order for me to get to where I am today.

A lot of the time I try to help folks find part-time work that is adjacent to the thing they’re trying to plant. In my case, I worked as a bike lobbyist in New Jersey, writing copy to lobby for bike infrastructure in a state that hates bicycles. To me, that was at least adjacent to my desires for affordability and environmentalism. And, I love being on my bike. I bike every day, everywhere I go. I’m about to hit a thousand miles on my new e-bike that I got this year. A thousand miles I wasn’t in a car. It’s just amazing. The work itself sucked, and I struggled with it. My manager was very difficult, and, as many nonprofit spaces are, it was chaotic. But it paid enough, and my partner made enough, to kind of float us, between those two things. We were able to give me almost a year to figure out what this thing was that I wanted to do.

That thing, my business, has evolved multiple times since then. And there have been other times, like I said, that I’ve had to tap back into some W2 work, or take on more consulting work.

I also tried becoming a business coach for people trying to scale to six or seven figures. That was what I was counseled to do by my own business coach. That’s where the money is, right? But I was like, “I hate this. I don’t want to work with these people. I don’t like their problems. I don’t like their desires. I don’t like anything about it.” So then I was like, “Okay, well, the people I like don’t have any money. So how do I work with them?”

This led me to learning that if what you want to offer is something that people either can’t afford, or can’t yet justify paying for, you can also look to see, “Is there someone else that would pay for it?” Because most of my clients have experienced either generational poverty or are financially insecure. I know that about them. And I know that those are the people I want to serve. So my question became, “How do I get that paid for?” That sent me down a long line of asking for sponsorships, asking for donations, and finding grants to apply for. And I eventually found a state institution that will support a lot of my work.

Another thing I have found is that even though I target myself to folks who are financially insecure, given enough opportunities for sliding scale, a lot of those folks pay. They’re like, “Yeah, I’m in. I will do this. I don’t have a lot, but here’s what I have.” And I’ve created structures that make it so that that’s enough. They don’t need to pay more than that for this to work.

“Stop exploiting your own labor"

Emily: I really love thinking about the term post-capitalism. It’s like, “What comes after the economic system we have right now?” For some of that, we can find answers in previous versions of civilization. Capitalism is only a couple hundred years old. It feels innate to us because it’s been around as long as we’ve been around, for anyone that’s alive right now. But it’s really not old in terms of an economic system. Whereas commerce has been around for thousands of years, right? People were bartering and trading and finding different ways to move goods and services around, well before capitalism. And they were doing those things in many ways that were much more egalitarian, and much more useful to the common good, than we are now. So we have those examples to pull from.

But then we also have our imagination, right? We can think about Octavia Butler, and using our imagination to create fantasy-fiction worlds that allow us to dream of what we could be. So I encourage us to also be thinking, “What have I not thought of yet? How else could this work? How else could I get my needs met, and meet the needs of the people that I’m trying to serve?”

One issue is that clients will come to me and they’re like,”I’ve been doing everything pro bono,” or “I’m giving everything away for free,” or “I’m doing everything sliding-scale and everyone’s choosing the very bottom of the sliding scale.”

Ryan: Right. I see this all the time.

Emily: And then they’re burned out, and they’re exhausted, and they don’t have any more to give, whether from their person or financially. They’ve just gone all the way down to the bottom. And I think if we think of a post-capitalist economy, if we think of anti-capitalism, anti-capitalism is not anti-money, right? It’s not anti-commerce. It’s anti-exploitation. And that means exploitation of you, too.

So, post-capitalism also means stop exploiting your own labor. We’re not going to exploit other people either. We’re looking for solutions that meet my needs and meet the needs of the people that I’m serving. Not just one, not just the other. Both of us together.

Ryan: That makes so much sense. This also makes me think of so many of my peers who are writing here on Substack about care-adjacent topics. For example, in food, you’re supposed to be doing it for the joy of it. In education, you’re supposed to be doing it for the love of the kids. What that really means is “We don’t have to pay you.” Even when we leave these environments, this ethos has socialized us to accept less money for our labor than our white-collar peers in other career fields might.

One person I really admire who is tacking against this trend is my friend , a former Eater editor who writes the brilliant newsletter here on Substack. She has so many great contacts, so she has all of these recipe developers contributing to her newsletter, and she turned on paid subscriptions immediately after her launch, so that she could pay them. She broke even on her costs very early on and has reached 1,000 subscribers in the first year of this project.

I would love for this project to consistently be contributing to her own family’s well-being, because she’s not commissioning these beautiful recipes just out of the goodness of her heart. This is her work. And yet it’s hard for me to accept that other people might also want this for me as well.

So, for people like me who are trying to follow Hillary’s example: When do you start asking people to be in reciprocity with you, through paying you or even bartering with you, versus just giving everything away for free as a way to build your email list? When do you tend to see this free-to-paid shift happen for the folks you coach? And how have you helped folks to find ethical ways to talk about that, to make that invitation to folks in their audiences in ways that feel aligned with the generous ethos they’re already trying to bring?

Emily: I mean, for me, I would probably want to get that out there as quickly as possible. Because the longer we go on offering our labor for free, the harder it can become for people to shift and understand paying for that labor. I think we can bypass that by being very explicit and transparent around the labor that goes in, and why we’re expecting some sort of compensation for that labor.

For example, there’s a whole section on my sales page on my website for my coaching that explains and breaks down why the pricing is what the pricing is. It explains where that money goes. It explains what that money covers. So the move is having a lot of transparency around what you are asking for and where that money is going. Like, basically, why do you need it? We’re trying to justify that exchange.

And then, ideally, we have tiered approaches. I love it if a business always has something for free. I think that’s really helpful. Not just from an accessibility perspective, but also purely from a marketing perspective and a business strategy perspective. It’s smart to have a way that people can engage with you and your business with no risk, basically. It can signal trustworthiness. And then hopefully we’re backing that trustworthiness up with real trust.

Then, I love to see something that is either sliding-scale or lower price point.

After that, I love to know that you’re also covering your needs, whether that’s a third tier of your services or product, or an audience that is large enough for that second tier, the tier that is low cost or sliding scale, to support the needs of your household.

So I think for folks who are getting ready to do this, I would encourage them to come up with an email campaign timeline with the aim of starting to expose what goes on behind the scenes, and the labor that goes into each of these things. Then I would start to prepare folks. Like, “Hey, this transition is coming. This is what I’d like to ask of you. This is why. And this is the start date of when I’m going to start asking for that.”

And then, trust that yeah, you’re going to lose some folks–and that’s okay. It’s possible that those folks that have already been there aren’t gonna pay. But that doesn’t mean you can’t start instituting a pay structure and attracting new humans who are paying, you know? Sometimes we have to be okay with letting go of what we built a little bit, in order to step into what we’re ready to build now. And shift to welcoming new humans coming in, with the expectation that there is going to be some sort of financial trade.

Ryan: This goes back to the thing you were saying about traditions and relationships, right? Where sometimes, the effort that goes into maintaining relationships that might not be sustainable would be better put towards building new relationships that are going to be more sustainable, or where there is going to be more ground for reciprocity.

Building the confidence that we can survive big change

Ryan: I know that for some reading here, there may still be much inner resistance to what we’re saying here. We don’t like grief and loss in our culture. It sounds like you are somebody who allows that flow, and that change, and who has a pretty powerful practice around working with impermanence and uncertainty. So, how do you work with those things within yourself? And how do you guide clients just to be with the grief of change?

As I’m asking this, I’m realizing I mean this in both a macro and micro sense. As the Buddhist scholar and ecologist Joanna Macy would say, we seem to be entering what she calls The Great Turning, in which our culture must make a shift: we have to change the way we’re relating with each other and the land, or risk destroying it all.

So, how do you walk alongside people in that? And then, how do you walk alongside individuals with these smaller pivots? Like, yeah, as part of the Great Turning and the building of a post-capitalist future, you might lose your five most engaged commenters. And for a while, maybe you won’t have those same engaged commenters because some of your posts will be paid ones. How do you work with the grief and fear that arise with change, when these forces are impacting us at such huge levels and also on such daily, frustrating levels, without getting overwhelmed by it all?

Emily: I struggle with the word “abundance” because it just feels very woo woo and weird and trite, but I do think a lot about the question of, “How do we build confidence?”

I actually had a new client start yesterday, and we’re doing a confidence-building activity together before we really dig into a lot of the businessy work. And so for the next 14 days, at the end of the day, she’s going to write down three to five things that she did well, or successfully. I told her, “It can be whatever the f@#k you want. It doesn’t have to be business related. But it’s nice if you can get a couple in there.” Because studies have found that confidence is created by having successful experiences, right? So the more successful experiences we have, the more our brain says, “Oh, another successful experience is possible.”

In business, what that transfers into is the understanding that we need to have enough successful experiences in the business world to believe that more successful experiences are possible. This is harder for some. For me, I’ve been doing this for eight years, and if I can do it for eight years, I sure as hell can figure out next month. I sure as hell can figure out whatever this next hurdle is. Like, look at my track record–I’ve got this! I can do this.

Also: There are more people out there. There are more ideas. There’s like, 8 billion people in the world. That seems like a lot of humans to me. There are literally limitless ideas and ways that we could go about building the business, or people that we could find to engage with.

I also believe there is truly limitless money out there. We do not have a money problem in our world. There’s plenty of f@#king money. Where it’s being allocated is a problem, right? And that’s something we can work on. But we don’t have a supply issue.

Similarly, there’s plenty of readers out there. We just need to now set up a framework that allows for the right readers to be coming in.

Ryan: I love that. And while I know we’re coming to the end of this interview, I’m going to embrace that sense of limitlessness, because I also feel like there’s limitless opportunities ahead for us to dig into these ideas you have even further.

In the meantime, I’m so grateful that you’re blazing a trail for those of us that are asking ourselves, “Where is the distant valley that doesn’t suck so bad? Does it exist?”

Emily: It does.

Ryan: I hope so. And as you said, finding it doesn’t just involve looking to the future for novel answers. Freedom dreaming, in the parlance of folks like Robin D.G. Kelly and Bettina S. Love, is so essential. But navigating changes in our business and economic system also means really knowing our past, and our lineage, and drawing from the roots of our prior successes and growth, and then growing forward. It’s all here.

Emily: It’s all about coming up with solutions for today while we also come up with new systems for tomorrow, you know? Because we also got to keep the lights on right now.

Ryan: Yes, we do. Somehow.

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Want to chat with Emily about your work/money situation? Here are a few upcoming online events where you’ll find her:

• How to Price Your Services Workshop: Fair, Sustainable Pricing for Service-Based Businesses (Nov 5)

• Free anti-capitalist office hours (Nov 6)

• Liberatory Finance Workshop (Jan 8)

And here are Emily’s ongoing offerings:

• Anti-Capitalist Business Coaching: One-on-one support for building a business that sustains you and your community. (Note: Business Coaching for Vermonters is often fully covered by VSAC grants for non-degree programs.)

• Office Hours: A monthly drop-in space to share what you’ve been working on, get support, and be witnessed.

• Free Workshop Library: Replays and resources from past sessions on pricing, marketing, planning, and more.

• Newsletter: Weekly reflections on anti-capitalist business, community care, and organizing.

• Let’s Chat: Book a 30-minute call to connect about your work or ask questions.

• Emily’s website

Have a question for me or for Emily about being an anti-capitalist business owner? Please feel free to post it below. We hope to have her back to answer more of your questions at a future date!

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I’ve used this song countless times in my own lessons, and have even had the opportunity to collaborate with Fyütch (who used to teach down the hall from me) on creating lessons together that center joy, wisdom and compassion. Give this song a quick play, and you’ll soon see why:

Now that you’re awake and, I hope, nodding your head along, let’s get into it!

Ryan: Where did you grow up? What else grows there? What was it like for you to grow there?

Fyütch: I was born in Gary, Indiana, and lived there until age eight. Gary is a “chocolate city,” as Parliament Funkadelic refers to it. A Black suburb outside of Chicago that flourished during the 60s and 70s with the steel mill, but eventually fell on harder times after it closed down. As a kid, it was the “murder capital” of the US, but I inversely knew it for community and spirituality. My family was close, and my grandpa and uncle were pastors of the Church of Gary.

Then we moved to Nashville, aka Music City. That’s where I began my musical journey, from starting a band in high school, to attending Belmont University’s Music Business program.

As much as I loved growing up there too, it’s the city that showed me the evils of racism. That dichotomy informs a lot of the social justice work I do today. Hip-hop is activism, birthed out of oppression, with artists expressing the reality of their environments, spreading knowledge, and building community. I honor that tradition in my work.

What is your earliest memory of tending another being?

My sister is 2 years younger than me! We have this picture of me holding her in the hospital when she was born. I remember celebrating early birthdays with her, and walking around the house playing.

What or whom have you most loved tending since?

In July 2017, I became a Dad! My daughter Aura slowed me down while also aligning my focus and time management with my priorities.

Are there other fathers in real life that you admire, that inspire you as a Black dad?

My Dad is the benchmark for manhood. He is a musician and hard worker. I’ve witnessed him sacrifice to keep food on the table.

My friend Pierce Freelon is also huge a inspiration. My friend 123 Andres, who creates children’s music in Spanish, introduced me to him. We immediately hit it off as kindred spirits. Pierce is a fellow Grammy-nominated family music artist and dad. He is a hip-hop head, social justice warrior, author, former Durham city councilman, and so much more. I look to him for career and life possibilities. There’s so much I want to accomplish that he already has.

Are there particular depictions of your fatherhood experience that you’ve found resonant in art, music, film, books, etc?

This is random, but Hook is one of my all-time favorite movies. Robin Williams as Peter Pan has been away from Neverland so long that he’s forgotten he can fly, fight and crow. Over the course of the movie, he has to rediscover his imagination and childhood. This helps him connect with his own children.

That theme of never growing up resonates with me as a Dad. I know I have a limited time where my daughter wants to hold my hand, fly her around the house, and play dolls and action figures. I try to be present and playful with her, despite stress and life demands.

Many people who read In Tending are creative people who are parents or would-be parents, struggling to carve out time to make their art. In what ways did becoming a parent most impact you as an artist?

I had to adjust to parenting. I was selfish those first few months. I have to credit my daughter’s mom for taking the burden. I hadn’t fully adjusted to adulthood responsibilities while in pursuit of my music dreams. Eventually, though, I reached a new level of discipline as a Dad. In fact, that discipline was the focus I needed to level up my career.

Now, as a full-time artist, I’ve instinctively included my daughter in my career as much as I can. She took an interest in making music, so I started taking her on the road with me during school breaks, and recording music with her for fun. Now we have a whole father-daughter album and perform together.

The music is a tool for bonding and teaching her to follow her heart, practice what she wants to get better at, and even teaching her the value of money and saving.

You and I have talked about how the discipline you developed during the early years of Aura’s life has led to some other huge career wins as well: an appearance on The Today Show, a Kids Jam show on PBS, multiple Grammy nominations. You even recently added “Sesame Street composer” to your resume! You have also mentioned how good it has felt to you as a son, to take your parents along to enjoy these wins with you. It’s a whole intergenerational love story — the good kind of family drama.

How did your parents’ support as caregivers contribute to the way your creative career is unfolding now?

They provide a great balance. My Dad, who is a musician, encouraged me to go full speed ahead towards my music dreams. My Mom is a bit more practical, and encouraged me towards a Music Business program so I’d have a business degree to fall back on. As I was finding my way in the world, I definitely took some risky turns creatively that I thought disappointed them. But they have remained ultra supportive since I started writing raps in my room in 7th grade.

I know they also both sacrificed a lot. I feel some responsibility to return the love they give, and I want them to share in any success I have. My Dad had so many music goals that he never quite reached, but since I’m an extension of him, it’s always been, “We got nominated for a Grammy.”

Now you’re able to focus on making and performing music full time, which is amazing. But when you and I became friends, we were both in a season of transition. I was teaching eighth grade humanities in the Bronx, and planning to take some time off to work on my own writing and parenting post-pandemic. You were teaching a class on slam poetry right next door, and writing your own songs on the side.

One of those songs is “Indigenous People’s Day,” which was the perfect way to help our students understand why many people no longer want to honor Columbus in October. It gives context, invites inquiry, and models collaborating with Native artists, showcasing their artistry in the here-and-now rather than treating them as historical artifacts, to be discussed in the third person. Yet it’s also technically a great song from a hip-hop perspective, which makes it extra engaging, especially for students like ours, for whom hip-hop is already an important part of the way they language and learn.

I was thrilled when you wanted to collaborate with me, too, on creating resources that would help kids who struggled with language-based learning disabilities to pick up what you were putting down.

(Note: those materials are still available on Fyutch’s website—check them out here!)

Can you say more about what kinds of history-meets-hiphop material you were creating at that time?

At that time, I was writing songs that could double as curriculum, because that’s the grind I was on: If teaching is my day job, how can I make it an extension of my artistry? What are the discussions I want to have with both my students and the world? How do I want to challenge the passive population with anti-racism? Who can I collaborate with to help me tell these stories and send these vibes out in the world? How do I cut through the content clutter?

I discovered a formula of releasing relevant, educational songs and videos during popular holidays and months: Black History Month, Earth Day, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Juneteenth, Kwanzaa. My entire life is dedicated to dismantling white supremacy through Black joy, family history, social justice, and self awareness; this was the first project that clearly defined my mission. I had to research heavily. Researching for lesson plans became the foundation for the music. I was learning as I was creating. Then I would share it with my students, my daughter, and the world for immediate feedback.

The music reached thousands of like-minded parents, educators, and creators. And it allowed me to go full-time as an artist.

Could we talk in particular about how “Indigenous People’s Day Rap” came to be, and about your process with that? You’ve shared a bit with me about this, but I’d love for other people who are reading, who also sit at the intersection of art and education, to be able to follow your bread crumb trail a little bit here.

I wanted to create a song addressing why we should no longer acknowledge Columbus Day. I knew it would resonate with my students and start a conversation with the general public. I heavily researched the topic, made the beat, and wrote the lyrics in a couple days. I made a visually engaging music video and uploaded it to YouTube a few weeks before Indigenous People’s Day, and watched the view count skyrocket through the holiday.

Most of the views were from Google Classroom links, which meant educators were adding my song to their virtual lesson plans. It was such a huge honor for teachers to use my song as lesson material.

Having a career in music, and in many other artistic fields, comes with a lot of ups and downs, of having to re-invent ourselves in order to survive. We also have to balance our creative work with our paid gigs and parenting, as you did. How do you know when it’s time to take advantage of a moment of creative momentum while it’s there, to send your energy in that direction? How do you shift your focus or maintain equanimity when the momentum isn’t there, and/or your home life needs more attention?

After years of rejection in the entertainment industry, I’ve developed a bad habit of not getting too excited at the possibility of things working out. During waves of career success, there’s a release of that tension and discouragement. When the momentum is there, it feels like validation. Preparation meeting opportunity. The conversations flow. The creative process isn’t forced. Movement is fluid. Connections are automatic. I spend so much time grounding myself in general that when that momentum arrives, it’s like, this is the time to float for a bit and just go.

That said, with the success that me and my daughter are having, the momentum is palpable — she is such a superstar — and yet it is also so grounded, because we are not doing it for fame or recognition. It’s purely fun, and a way to bond. The exposure and press is a huge plus. But if she wants to stop making music today, that’s completely fine.

What communities or sanghas keep you sane during your ups and downs?

Currently, my tribe is other creative parents. Kaitlin Becker, Emmy-nominated artist and writer, most known as Meekah from the Blippi universe—that’s my girl. We have the realest convos about this crazy industry. We have even collaborated on some projects together, like my Once Upon a Beat podcast, where we re-tell classic fairy tales as hip-hop songs. She also joined me for a song, “Harmony,” on my and my daughter’s latest album!

What goals do you have for yourself now at this point?

I’m ready for television. I want to write, produce, host, and star in all-ages media. I want to write and produce music for more artists. I want to score movie soundtracks like Randy Newman and Lin-Manuel. I envision limitless creativity in multiple spaces. Telling stories in as many mediums as possible. I see Fyütch as a multi-platform brand for fun and accessible edu-tainment and feel-good content. I want to create a curriculum for schools, shows for Netflix and other networks. I want a global network of like-minded people. I want to elevate other creators and educators to reach their potential.

At the same time, I want to let my career flow. Follow what feels good and genuine. Stay open to possibilities. Living in that authentic space has given me the strongest foundation. Thankfully, I feel like I’ve hit my stride.

How do you come home to yourself after a hard day of touring, singing or creating? Meaning: How do you tend to your physical body and your interior life amidst all of this external activity and success?

I’m trying to get more sleep. I love waking up early to work out. I like watching TV during down time. That helps me decompress. I like window shopping. Just trying on clothes and shoes and maybe buying something—but maybe not, haha.

Where can people find you if they want to engage further with your work?

www.fyutch.com

instagram.com/fyutch

youtube.com/fyutch

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— Vanessa Downing, co-founder, Outer Frequencies

The writer Mike Fournier and I met in the early aughts, while we were both working for a small digital publication. I was an editor there, and he was on our writing team, which means that I was technically his boss. But I was also a bit in awe of Mike. By that time, Mike had written a book on The Minutemen for the 33 1/3 series and scored a gig teaching punk history at Tufts, which added up to near-infinite indie cred in my mind. But Mike is deeply humble and deeply kind, despite his many accomplishments. He’d always rather talk about the new bands he’s been listening to than about himself, which is how he got those gigs in the first place.

For this interview, I was able to convince Mike, his partner Rebecca Griffin, and their friend Vanessa Downing to talk about not only themselves but their latest project, Outer Frequencies, which aims to bring more punk music to the decidedly un-punk shores of Cape Cod. While it’s definitely a unique setup—their main venue is a church, of all places—I think there are lessons we can all learn from their approach to community-building that transcend that particular scene.

While the venues and crowds here may be smaller than nearby Boston and Providence, the team does throw in some special perks to entice performers to come out to this thin strip of land, off the coast of Massachusetts: a free place to crash, and some home-cooked meals, no small deal when you’re touring for weeks and living on fast food.

“Mike and Rebecca have been incredibly generous and hospitable, offering their home and even taking them out sightseeing,” Vanessa tells me. “It’s a very special aspect of Outer Frequencies that touring artists receive this personal and heartfelt treatment. We really see these artists more as friends, peers and part of our greater indie/punk DIY family.”

Like many of us, the Outer Frequencies folks are balancing their community-tending work alongside various other priorities. Mike still writes about music, plays in a band called Plaza with Rebecca, and tries to fit in a regular meditation and yoga routine. When she’s not scoping out new venues or jamming with Mike in the basement, Rebecca stays busy with her work as an educator and radio show host. Vanessa’s a parent to a young kid, and plays in the band Samuel S.C.

Those of us who dream of starting similar community-minded projects, but feel like we don’t have time, that we’re liable to fail, that no one will come, or that we might just end up lookin’ a little silly, can learn a lot from the punk-influenced approach of Outer Frequencies: just find a venue, tell your friends to show up, and figure it out from there. And be sure to take care of yourself as well as you aim to take care of your scene.

As Mike himself says in the interview below, “I think it’s easy to talk yourself out of doing something like this. I’m here to talk you into it.”

Ryan: Where did you grow up? What else grows there? What was it like for you to grow there?

Mike: I grew up in the Boston suburbs until I was thirteen. I was miserable, but didn’t know it at the time because I didn’t have anything to compare it to. When my parents and I moved to New Hampshire, it took me a while to adjust. I assumed, thankfully incorrectly, that the daily cruelty I dealt with would be part of my life. Thank goodness it wasn’t.

Rebecca: We moved around the Midwest a lot before I was 9—so mostly corn and soybeans. Then we moved to Upton, Massachusetts—so mostly trees. I thought Massachusetts looked very haunted compared to Illinois.

Vanessa: I grew up in Herndon, VA – a small town in Fairfax County, about 40 minutes outside of DC. At the time, I thought Herndon was the best place in the world for a kid to grow up…small, safe, with some vestiges of its rural past. I remember thinking that one day I would move back there as an adult.

Of course, everything changed after I went off to college, came out, discovered punk rock and felt the urban pull. When the massive expansion of the DC suburban bubble and office park boom took over pretty much all of Northern VA in the 90’s and 2000’s, any small-town charm Herndon once had all but disappeared. I don’t think I could find my way around or recognize much if I went back now.

Ryan: What is your earliest memory of tending another being?

Mike: We always had a cat, though I wasn’t always involved in the day-to-day care of it. Certainly not the litterbox aspect.

Rebecca: Every year I’d win goldfish or two at the school fair in Illinois. I loved them, but they always died pretty quickly.

Vanessa: We had pets my whole life, but the first that I suppose was “mine” was an orange tabby cat we got from a pet store at the mall, because it was the 70’s and my parents didn’t know any better. I named him Andy after my Girl Scout camp counselor…notably, my first female crush!

Ryan: What or whom have you most loved tending since?

Mike: I had a great time as a camp counsellor in my early twenties, teaching kids about ecology and conservation. Since then, I’ve gotten into teaching, which rules—my first gig was teaching punk rock history at Tufts. Since then, I’ve taught film, literature, and English composition.

Rebecca: I teach English at Cape Cod Community College. I love the students and seeing their successes, both large and small.

Vanessa: Well, right now I’d have to say tending to my 3 ½ year old son, Geo. I've never had an experience quite as challenging and rewarding as parenting a tiny human from birth!

Ryan: Right now, you’re working to create something very unprecedented in our sleepy area of Cape Cod – an all-ages music series called Outer Frequencies. How did this project come about? How is it going so far?

Mike: I was a fan of Vanessa’s band Samuel S.C. when they were active, but never got a chance to see them play. Well, turns out Vanessa lives a few towns over from us on-Cape. We met through Instagram and started hanging out, and from there the three of us had the idea of trying to get some shows happening here.

Rebecca: When we lived in other parts of New England, we came across a lot more original and loud music. We wanted more shows like that to go and see! Mike and Vanessa have lots of mutual friends and contacts. It all just seemed more possible when we could work together.

Vanessa: Like Mike said, it was so refreshing to meet people at this age on the Cape with mutual interests and similar musical backgrounds. We just started throwing this idea around of starting up something loosely inspired by what the Positive Force folks have been doing for decades down in DC: all-ages concert events, often coupled with social activism, and benefiting local non-profits. And then we all got excited!

Ryan: What kinds of venues have you been using to host the series? How did your relationship with those venue(s) come about?

Mike: I think we all come from the days when kids rented granges, VFW halls and churches to put on shows. I made a list of all the places on-Cape that rent space and started making cold calls. The very first place we called was Christ Church Episcopal in Harwich Port. It’s a great space, and our friend who works there, Lisa Berman, has been so supportive of us bringing noisy punk rock to what’s normally a very quiet space.

Vanessa: It’s been interesting and fun to explore different spaces as possibilities, too. Having lived on the Cape for 20 years and worked with various arts nonprofits, I’ve either performed in or produced events in cool performance venues. We’ve also had very positive conversations with private businesses like coffee shops and galleries who are interested in being involved, and other less obvious venues like Lower Cape TV in Orleans. They’ve got a very cool new space there full of potential.

My hope is that over time we are able to produce events in a variety of spaces and towns, so that we can reach and include as many people in this series as possible.

Ryan: When national acts come through, where do they stay? Where do they eat?

Mike: So far, all the acts have stayed at our house. We really like cooking for people (another form of tending!), so we usually prepare at least one meal for musicians. Plus the Cape has no shortage of great breakfast and coffee spots, so we’ve been to Nirvana, to Bread & Roses, to Grumpy’s.

Ryan: Have you met any new friends as a result of hosting these events?

Mike: Oh, totally. I think we all knew there were people with similar mindsets to ours on-Cape. It was just a matter of finding them. Since we started doing shows, we’ve met all kinds of great folks from all over the Cape: music fans and artists and writers and musicians. It’s one of the best things about Outer Frequencies.

Vanessa: It’s been really wonderful.

Rebecca: The Cape seems a lot smaller now that we’ve started doing these shows. It’s great coming across these networks of folks that are already in place.

Ryan: What do you think the most positive and/or powerful impacts of the series have been thus far on the Cape Cod community? On the artists themselves?

Rebecca: It’s fun to travel around and hang up flyers because people are starting to know us and get excited to see the shows. Lots of folks have told us they are psyched to have new and different types of music options in the area. We hope to continue growing connections for everyone.

Mike: I hope people are feeling like there’s a grassroots community of like-minded folks they can tap into for joy and comfort and mutual aid. And I hope that the artists see this, as well.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the Cape is close to Boston, close to Providence – I think that bands and musicians dig having a chance to see someplace new as they move between their more established fanbases.

Vanessa: I would add that the all-ages aspect has been something I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on. So much of the music scene on the Cape centers around bars and eating establishments, or is really just about “entertainment” for adults only, or in some cases, children only. Not that any of that is bad. We wanted to do something that centers squarely on the artists and the community, bringing all kinds of people together to experience something unique, and without a prohibitive ticket price attached.

It’s not a novel idea, and of course there are plenty of amazing non-profit arts and performance centers doing similar work. Still, I feel what we are aiming for is special.

Ryan: If someone wanted to re-create a community or sangha similar to the one you’ve created, how might you lay out a list of ingredients and/or a recipe to cook this up in their area?

Mike: I think it’s easy to talk yourself out of doing something like this. I’m here to talk you into it.

Find a few friends who can help you chip in and rent a space. You can rent or buy a PA system—a few microphones, a set of speakers and a soundboard. These can be found on Craigslist pretty easily. Or skip the rental entirely and do a show at a house, in a garage, or a basement.

Ask bands you like if they’ll play – or, better yet, start your own band, even if you don’t know how to play anything. You don’t need to know how to play to say something. Or skip the bands entirely and have a poetry reading, performance art—anything you want.

Rebecca: It’s not as hard as you think it will be. Be honest with those willing to trust you (i.e., those willing to rent you a church space, even if they don’t share your taste in music). If it’s going to be loud, tell them up front it will be loud. Have faith that people who share your interests will eventually find you. Bring trash bags.

Vanessa: Mike and Rebecca nailed it. I’d add - be as open to all ideas, while also having a clear vision of what your goals are. It’s not hard to marry the two. Find people who share your ideals and go from there. Get excited and be willing to take risks. Remember that things take time, but things don’t just “happen” unless someone takes the wheel—so be the driver (or essential co-pilot!). Treat the endeavor with the same level of seriousness and passion you would for a new job or relationship. The artists, the spaces, the support and the interest in creating something fun and new - they are all out there waiting to join you and help the ‘thing’ succeed. And from there, it will likely evolve beyond what you initially imagined.

It’s not as hard as you think it will be. Be honest with those willing to trust you. If it’s going to be loud, tell them up front it will be loud. Have faith that people who share your interests will eventually find you. And bring trash bags. — Rebecca Griffin, co-founder, Outer Frequencies

Ryan: Are there other people you admire that are working in or writing about the DIY concert space?

Mike: The shining light is 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley, which has been running all-ages punk shows since the late ‘80s. In the ‘90s, my pal Ed McNamara was one of a bunch of folks in Worcester that started The Space, a non-profit arts spot where all the best bands of the era played. In Washington DC, a space called Rhizome has also been doing a lot of great DIY shows.

Vanessa: My band has been touring a bunch the last couple of years and I’ve been the principal booker. Through my research, networking and outreach I’ve discovered DIY events in a variety of settings: house shows, skate parks, multi-purpose arts spaces (often managed by a collective), historical buildings, record shops, even bike shops! One of our favorite shows was in a small basement room underneath a head shop (!!) in Wilkes-Barre, PA. It was about as DIY as it gets, and the vibe and energy of the room was incredible.

Ryan: When you’re feeling bummed about the state of the world, what song(s) do you listen to in order to rekindle some hope?

Mike: So many to choose from here. During the pandemic, the Coriky LP was a fantastic balm.

Rebecca: Stevie Wonder.

Vanessa: I truly haven’t given up hope…but I am definitely angry, exasperated and worried for the future of my child. So at the moment, I’m more interested in finding ways to channel angst into action, to at least temporarily upend that feeling of paralyzation. For those moments I’ll throw on a classic, like Public Enemy or Fugazi.

You don’t need to know how to play to say something.

— Mike Fournier, co-founder, Outer Frequencies

Ryan: It can be easy to lose sight of yourself when you’re sending all this tending energy outwards. How do you all come home to your physical bodies after all this community-building?

Mike: I used to run, but my knees can’t handle it any more, so now it’s biking, weightlifting and yoga. Eating lots of fruits and raw vegetables.

Rebecca: I go for walks in the woods.

Vanessa: My exercise regimen is off and on…when I’m in a good rhythm, it’s running, floor mat exercises and very light work with free weights. I kind of hate exercising mostly because of the time it consumes, and generally find it boring… but my mind and body definitely need it, especially at this age.

Ryan: Clearly you all value art and creativity. How do you tend to your own interior life and creative projects?

Mike: I’ve been an off-and-on journaler for years. I was most consistent during the pandemic, because the days tended to blend together and I knew I wouldn’t remember a lot of what was happening unless I wrote it down. I’ve been writing narrative vignettes in some form since the late ’90s, mostly in print zines. I love creating punk artifacts: zines and flyers for shows and, more recently, t-shirts—I took a silkscreening class last year so I could print shirts for me and Rebecca’s band Plaza. As I write this, I’m winding down a project where I sent a one page zine to friends every month for fifty months. Speaking of which, I also love the songwriting process. We’ve been working on a bunch of new songs to play at upcoming shows – so much fun. All this plus meditation, which I now stack atop yoga.

Rebecca: Finding music for my radio show and sitting with our cats. Talking on the phone with my brother. Poetry. Photography. Collaging/making books. Making music with Mike.

Vanessa: I love creating connections between people, though that sounds super cheesy and maybe a tad self-important. When they happen, usually accidentally, something lights up in me that takes over and feels really great, and I know I’m doing something meaningful. I think that’s part of why starting Outer Frequencies with Mike and Bec was so attractive.

I also love making music with friends who are endlessly more talented, and pushing past my own bounds (or at least perceptions) of mediocrity. It doesn’t need to be amazing or earth shattering or life changing. The perpetual risk of mediocrity aside, I just want to keep going and making music to the best of my ability with people I enjoy spending time with.

Connecting in a meaningful way with family and friends, and checking in on people is also critical to the health of my inner life. Plus, watching my three-year-old child play and grow and change with amazement, joyful wonder and only occasionally murderous eyes.

I should probably be in therapy and doing yoga like every other liberal mid white woman over 40, but who has the time?

I should probably be in therapy and doing yoga like every other liberal mid white woman over 40, but who has the time?

— Vanessa Downing, co-founder, Outer Frequencies

To what mentors, teachers or texts do you turn when you’re looking for inspiration?

Mike: There are so many! Fugazi was a band from Washington DC that reached a huge number of people through keeping door prices low, maintaining control of their affairs and touring relentlessly – their ethos was years ahead of its time and continues to resonate. Similarly, the Minutemen, from San Pedro CA, were a bunch of regular dudes who made some of the best music ever by keeping expenses low and touring sustainably – they jam econo.

Jen Angel passed away in 2023. She was an author and organizer who I respected and admired. Her zine Fucktooth was a big inspiration on my understanding of social issues, as well as my writing. And Aaron Cometbus’ long-running zine Cometbus continues to provide inspiration.

Rebecca: I keep going back to Emily Dickinson.

Vanessa: I’ve met some pretty incredible people in my life who at any given time I could call upon for mentorship or just damn good advice, including my own parents. I’m generally inspired by those who seem to create good stuff effortlessly—art, good vibes, whatever—but clearly work very hard, on top of any ungodly talent they might possess. And people who are relentlessly kind, open, curious and positive—regardless of how shitty things might be around them—they make me want to work harder. Mike and Rebecca are great examples!

Besides Outer Frequencies, what communities or sanghas keep you sane?

Mike: I’ve been writing for Razorcake for more than ten years – it’s America’s only non-profit punk magazine. Razorcake embodies the best of punk’s do-it-yourself ethos and unites a crew of contributors from all over the world. I’ve met so many great people through my time writing for the mag – it’s the punk community I always dreamed of finding, and I’m grateful to be part of it.

Rebecca: My poetry group of mostly elder women, students in the Creative Writing Club I advise at the college.

Vanessa: I operate best on the “micro” level, keeping my community small and tending to it, feeling safe and providing that feeling of safety and comfort to those around me. I like knowing who my neighbors are and giving a shit about them. On a macro level, I’m gay but I don’t really know much about the gay “community” apart from a lot of people have hated us, or been afraid of us, or wanted to be us, or wanted to hurt us, but it’s such a diverse group of people. I certainly connected to the punk/hardcore community when I was in my early 20’s, because I always felt like an outsider and these were definitely a bunch of misfits. The music was secondary and didn’t always resonate, but many of the ideas and attitudes did.

Ryan: What makes you feel the most free?

Mike: Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about a lyric from Operation Ivy’s “Sound System”: “to resist despair in this world is what it is to be free.”

Rebecca: Riding my bike.

Vanessa: Honestly, when I’m on stage playing loud, wall-of-sound, amp driven music, drums rattling behind, surrounded by all this chaos and finding the thread of my voice pushing just through there, my mind and body loose and detached from any self-consciousness or worry—I’ve never felt so free as when that’s clicking. It doesn’t happen every show, and sometimes just for a moment here or there, sandwiched by “Oh shit, does this sound good? Did we fuck that part up? Do I look stupid? Will I fall down?” But occasionally you get a real run of it, and it’s an unbelievable feeling that you never want to end.

Where can people find you if they want to engage further with your work?

Mike: I’m at michaeltfournier.org and at @xfournierx and @policymakercapecod on IG.

Rebecca: I have a radio show on Cape Cod Community College’s radio station, 90.7 WKKL, on Sundays from 10 am-noon. It’s called Eclectic Kitchen.

Vanessa: My band, Samuel S.C. can be found on Bandcamp and all the streaming services, shitty as they might be. We’re also on social media. I’m at @samuel.sc.theband and @vadog22 on Instagram.

And of course, you can find all three on Outer Frequencies.

The next OF show is Dar Sombra and MiniBeast, ex-Mission of Burma, Volcano Suns, plus a local opener, on Friday Sept 5 — so mark your calendars now.

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Recently, we’ve been talking about what it’s like for caregivers to move through tough tending seasons — like the transition from school year to summer — and give themselves a break.

But what if you’re the sort of person who struggles to enter the fray in the first place? Who’d rather sneak into your office or bathroom and hide out, or scroll on your phone, than move closer to a challenging situation, or even to a person with whom you have a loving relationship?

Many of us have this tendency towards avoidance. This can be both a source of shame for the avoidant person, and a source of deep frustration for the people who depend on them.

In particular, avoidance can play a large role in driving conflict within families, where some members are stuck in hypervigilance, habitually doing more than their share, while other members may be stuck in overwhelm and avoidance, and struggling to self-regulate enough to show up.

When I think about this topic, I think about Jeremy Mohler, who writes the newsletter . As the title suggests, Jeremy’s not above making political references or generating eye-catching headlines to reel in readers. At the same time, Jeremy often writes movingly in his newsletter about his struggles with shyness, avoidance, and a deep desire to withdraw from being seen–the same struggles shared by many of his readers.

Jeremy recently agreed to dive more deeply into the topic of avoidance with me. In the interview below, we discuss:

• How Jeremy’s healing his own avoidance within his current relationship

• What avoidance actually is, and what this might have to do with the Buddhist concept of aversion

• The mindfulness practices, texts and teachers that have guided him and his clients toward healing, and

• How we might balance the need to tend to our own nervous systems with the obligations we have to one another to show up in relationship and community

May our conversation be of benefit to anyone who is struggling to be vocal, visible and vulnerable right now—but is trying their best to do it anyway.

Ryan: Where did you grow up? What else grows there? What was it like for you to grow there?

Jeremy: I love that second question! I grew up in a small town on the edge of the suburbs outside of Washington, D.C. It’s called La Plata, pronounced “La Play-ta,” in a quiet neighborhood across from a Christmas tree farm. Other things that grow in that part of southern Maryland: lots of corn, soybeans, red oak trees, good-hearted people, right-wing politics, and racism.

I mostly didn’t like growing up there. I was safe, cared for, and had the resources I needed. But I got the sense sometime early in high school that the culture was pretty limiting. I couldn’t wait to get out and see the world.

Ryan: What is your earliest memory of tending another being?

Jeremy: I remember feeling sad that my parents had thrown away my broken toy radio. As I saw it in the trash along with napkins, chunks of food, and clumps of dog hair, I felt sorry for it. I’d been keeping on my toy shelf even though it had stopped working. In a sense, I’d been tending to it. It was a living thing, to my kid understanding of the world.

That’s a cherished memory, because it’s my earliest memory of feeling something like what people mean when they use the word “spirituality.” It’s a distinct memory of feeling interconnected with everything else, even a plastic toy radio. It’s a perspective I try to remind myself of today as an adult, with occasional success.

Ryan: What or whom have you most loved tending since?

Jeremy: Easy answer: my partner, Kelsey. Loving and tending for her has been the biggest gift I’ve ever received. Her courage, open-heartedness, and communication skills have not only taught me so much about human relationships but also helped me rewire my nervous system.

I’m far less avoidant than I’ve been in prior relationships. I now more often than not want to step toward and not away from emotional connection. And if my nervous system doesn’t have the capacity, I’m able to tell her without her reacting from an insecure place. Her secure heart is making my heart more secure every day.

I also cook new recipes and make them my own. I made a mung bean soup the other day that blew my mind and warmed my stomach. It had kimchi and chili crisp on top. Shoutout to the Substack newsetter .

Ryan: Ooh, love a food newsletter rec. And having lived in Seoul, I love me some kimchi.

What about your practices of self-tending? I know you’re a meditator. How did you come to meditation? What does your practice look like these days?

Jeremy: I started meditating daily after attending a weekend silent meditation retreat. Now I meditate for 35 minutes in the morning and afternoon. I sit in a chair, set a timer on the app Insight Timer, and let my mind wander, while occasionally remembering to notice how my breath and body feel or what I hear with my ears.

Usually, about 25-30 minutes in, I notice a sort of downshift in my nervous system. The tension in my body starts to fade, and my mind stops moving so fast. The sort of meditation I practice is called Vipassana, and I add in a little Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, the type of therapy I’m trained in.

Without meditation, I’m an anxious wreck, far less present with people, super tense in my body, and avoidant.

Ryan: Your Substack newsletter, , features stories about your own life, stories from your practice as a therapist, and Q&As with readers. One theme I have noticed across these different formats lately is this topic of avoidance, and how this arises in men. How do you define avoidance?

Jeremy: For me, avoidance is one way we can relate to connection with others. And when I say “connection,” I mean connecting in a way that is emotionally attuned. And when I say “attuned,” I mean feeling safe, trusting, seen, and heard. Avoidance is pulling away to find space rather than moving closer in to feel intimacy.

Even though I love her deeply, I often feel avoidant with my partner. She moves in for a hug or kiss, and it’s almost like there’s a magnetic force pulling me away from her. She brings up something about a conflict at her job, and I immediately want to go back downstairs to my office, or look at Instagram on my phone.

Yet, at the same time, I so deeply want to connect with her. I love her. It’s just a part of me that wants to pull away. A part of me that I sense is trying to protect me somehow, and keep me safe and comfortable.

I’m still learning about how this part of me got developed early on in my life. But as a relatively new therapist who mostly works with cisgender men, I’m picking up on a pattern. It seems like more men than not are avoidant in this way. I’m really curious about why. My hunch is it has something to do with patriarchy and capitalism, how boys and men are socialized to be certain ways to fit into our political and economic systems.

Ryan: For folks who are unfamiliar with the world of attachment theory, from which terms like “avoidant” arose and then entered the popular lexicon – what does it mean to be avoidantly attached, versus securely attached?

Jeremy: Attachment theory comes out of research in developmental psychology. It’s become a bit of a pop psychology trend recently, with folks diagnosing themselves through online tests. So, there’s a lot of confusion and binary thinking about it right now, unfortunately.

I like to think of it this way: Everyone falls on a spectrum of attachment “styles.” On one end is “secure,” being able to trust others, feeling comfortable with emotional closeness, and communicating needs in a clear, healthy way. At the other end are the “insecure” styles: “avoidant,” “anxious,” and “disorganized.”

Those with an avoidant style (like me) tend to be noncommittal, standoffish, and distant. We’re prone to avoiding conflict, canceling plans, not responding to calls/texts, and ghosting. We’re more likely to turn to drinking alone, YouTube, video games, and other forms of numbing out when we’re stressed. But we also can have moments of feeling secure depending on the other person or people we’re in relationship with.

And it’s not a fixed thing. I’ve become more secure over time through going to therapy and working with my partner on our relationship.

Ryan: I’m thinking here of your broken radio, the one that you kept on the shelf as a boy. You must have had some hope in that radio’s redemption, in its inherent value, even when it wasn’t working so well. Some sense that when we love something, we don’t just throw it away. I wonder if this comes through in the work you’re doing on these parts of yourself, and with your clients, that make finding connection hard.

Ryan: I’m also thinking here that some of what we experience as avoidance might be termed aversion – one of the so-called Three Poisons in Buddhism.

It’s part of our human nature, this feeling that we need to get away from something. Yet in the Buddhist tradition in which I meditate, we’re invited to explore the line between what is truly unsafe, and what is merely uncomfortable but workable, rather than habitually following that aversive urge to flinch, fidget or flee every time.

Could this kind of practice be a support to someone who is avoidant? And is there a difference between being the kind of person who habitually avoids the merely uncomfortable, and being “an avoidant person”?

Jeremy: I’m not certain about this, but I think they’re the same thing. When I’m feeling avoidant, it feels uncomfortable to be physically or (especially) emotionally close with someone else. I’d go as far as saying it feels threatening.

My thoughts on this are emerging as I answer this question. But I think the framing of safety might still be better and more useful than comfort.

Something arises in me when I think about my avoidant tendencies as moving away from discomfort. An inner voice shames me and says I should be able to handle discomfort. But if I think of it as moving away from something that feels unsafe to my nervous system, it’s less shaming. I can have a little compassion toward myself, which is the root of healing.

Ryan: So, it sounds like the work begins with acknowledging that some forms of connection feel unsafe to some of us, and that this makes sense given our prior conditioning, rather than judging it.

I would also imagine that working skillfully with avoidance can help us to create more safety for others. For example, I've appreciated your discussions in your newsletter of the ways in which avoidance can lead to difficulties with repairing relationships, for men in particular, which can make things unsafe for the people around them. It can be hard for some avoidant people to say “I’m sorry.”

How do you think folks can learn this important skill? What tends to get in the way?

Jeremy: The avoidance gets in the way. And the more I learn about my own avoidance, and similar behaviors that friends and clients struggle with, the more I’m learning it’s in the nervous system.

I can want to repair. I can want to say, “I’m sorry.” But if my nervous system doesn’t feel safe—and therefore, open and available for connection—then it can feel almost impossible to move toward and be vulnerable with my partner, or whoever I’m wanting to repair with.

What gets in the way is men being socialized to avoid these types of intimate moments and encounters. We’re scared of them. Our nervous system is scared of them. It’s an uphill battle. But our lives can be so much more if we commit to it.

So, I think it takes nervous system work. It takes experience. It takes practice with other people. Individual practices like meditation can make a huge difference. But men need to also be in groups together—men’s groups, therapy groups, support groups. Couples therapy can help too.

What also gets in the way is our capitalist society. There’s so little time to do anything outside of work and “adulting,” all the stuff we have to do outside of work like raising kids with little support, forever cleaning the house, haggling with health insurance companies, and so much more.

Until we organize in our workplaces and neighborhoods to create what Martin Luther King Jr. called a “radical redistribution of political and economic power,” everyone will struggle to have time and energy to build the relationships and community we so badly want.

Ryan: Absolutely. What communities or sanghas are keeping you sane in the meantime?

Jeremy: Working through and healing trauma alongside other men is such a powerful, fun space for me. Otherwise, it’s other writers on Substack and folks on Instagram who write and share about similar topics.

Ryan: Relatedly, are there other people you admire that are working to help “make men emotional again,” either as authors or teachers or both?

Jeremy: I tend to recommend these books to men who are looking to go down a similar path that I’m headed down:

• No Bad Parts, by Richard Schwartz

• You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For, by Richard Schwartz

• The Will to Change, by bell hooks

• Revolution at Point Zero, by Silvia Federici

For more information on how to rewire your nervous system and transform your attachment style, I also love Sarah Baldwin’s work. Her Instagram is great.

Ryan: To what other mentors, teachers or texts do you turn when you’re looking for inspiration, as a meditator and a writer?

Jeremy: I owe so much to Hugh Byrne and Tara Brach, who were my first meditation teachers. Tara’s book Radical Acceptance was and still is a huge foundational text for me.

These days I also often turn to other therapists who use and write about Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. I find it extremely inspirational to hear their experiences, not necessarily as therapists but as human beings healing their own trauma.

I also am inspired by socialist feminists, like Nancy Fraser and Silvia Federici. When I read their work, it starts to make sense to me why our society works the way it does, why it’s so unequal, violent, and exploitative, and why it’s so hard for so many of us to make a difference. They give me a whiff of hope that a different society is possible.

Ryan: Radical Acceptance is a sacred text for me as well.

Where can people find you if they want to engage further with your work?

Jeremy: Here on Substack, as well as on Instagram, at @mens.relationship.therapist, and my website, which is jeremymohler.blog.

What other questions do you have for Jeremy? Any other recommended reads to share on meditation vis a vis avoidance or masculinity? Please let us know in the comments.

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Last week, I shared a conversation with my friend , author of the compassionate and pragmatic newsletter, that centered on the experience of advocating for the people we love, and then re-regulating ourselves afterward.

Even after I mowed down a plate of curly fries, though — one of my preferred self-care rituals — I still found myself feeling activated, hypervigilant, and on-edge after my latest care challenge (navigating a high-stakes IEP meeting for my son, about which I shared tips with Kate in this podcast episode).

Feeling unable to rest, even when we have the rare opportunity to rest, is a daily reality for many caregivers, and it is one that has led to burnout for me far too many times.

So, now feels like the perfect time to share another conversation I had with Kate about how caregivers can access creative flow as a form of rest, and as an essential way to prevent burnout.

Atypical Kids, Mindful Parents

What Can Bluey and Lizzo Teach Us About Perfection, Burnout, and Creativity?

I recently had the privilege of speaking with Ryan Rose Weaver, a writer, educator, and fellow parent of a neurodivergent kid…

Listen now

a year ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Kate Lynch and Ryan Rose Weaver (she/hers)

We also talk about some of the common challenges we face as we begin to shift from doing to being. I spoke about having to unlearn the idea that I should always be trying to climb to some new level of achievement, or to be constantly scanning the environment for threats to my loved ones instead of going inward; Kate spoke about confronting her people-pleasing habits and her inner creative critic.

We don’t demonize our deeply-ingrained survival patterns here, but we do drop into a deeper line of inquiry about how well they’re supporting our survival in the present — or not.

I grew up whitewater rafting with my family, and one key parenting metaphor I reference below is the experience of approaching a rapid, moving through it, and then intentionally “eddying out” afterwards. If you are someone who’s excellent at planning and great in a crisis, but who, like me, struggles to take time to return to yourself after life’s “rapids,” may this conversation be of benefit to you.

Note: The highlights from our conversation below have been condensed and edited for length and clarity. For the full, un-cut version (and some good laughs), I invite you to hop over to Kate’s podcast series here. Kate also has a plethora of other great tips for caregivers of neurodivergent kids on her YouTube channel, which you can find here. And if you missed my full-length podcast ep with Kate about navigating IEP meetings with some modicum of mindfulness, be sure to check that out here.

EMBRACING THE NOTION OF “EDDYING OUT”

Kate: Burnout is something I'm very interested in. Especially for parents of neurodivergent kids…When I'm feeling more fulfilled, I can show up with more presence and openness with my kid or with anyone else. I feel like what I have to share coming from that place is so much richer and more meaningful than what I have to share when my cup is empty.

I really didn't even think about it until my son was in kindergarten. I was in activation or shutdown, but mostly activation. I was in fight or flight, a lot of anxiety, a lot of looking for answers outside of myself.

It wasn't until I had a little bit of time–even though it wasn't the perfection I thought it would be, there was still a lot of advocating to be done–that I could go, “Okay, what is there for me? How am I going to find fulfillment as Kate?”

Ryan: I'm in that place now, where my child has just started kindergarten. It's a real milestone moment when there’s no other little people at home. There's a feeling that you've kind of swum across a great river with this child on your back.

That said, there’s always more to be done. He just had an altercation in line just yesterday. Something I joke about with my husband is, “There's no plateau of forever perfection that we're climbing to, and we just get to set up a whole civilization there.”

I grew up whitewater rafting, so with parents, I often talk about it in terms of river rafting instead. 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 transition to kindergarten 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?”

I had the good fortune to have to attend a training at the Omega Institute recently, which included a lot of silent meditation. This allowed me to digest the big meal of the last five years. Particularly those of us who had children during the pandemic. There's a lot to process!

I know that it's not within everybody's ability to go away for five days, or to go on retreat. I will put a plug in for Omega because you can camp there very affordably, and sometimes bring your kids. But I grew up the child of two broke social workers, and often, creating space for this kind of exhale was just about throwing our stuff in a pickup truck, and going out camping, and just experiencing some quietude on a patch of public land.

Kate: I worked at the Omega Institute for a season, and I actually was married in the sanctuary there. So that's a very special place for us. I used to go back every year and teach yoga for a while. I love the idea of having a retreat, and really having time to digest that experience of getting to that point.

UNLEARNING THE HABITS THAT STOP US FROM RESTING

Kate: There's so much lack of control and uncertainty in parenting. The upside of parenting an atypical child is that we get kicked off the hamster wheel of achievement. Because there's no such thing as perfection.

Ryan: There's no such thing. And I think that there's a grief in that, in recognizing how much we sacrificed for the sake of that mission before awakening to this truth. There's a lot of letting go of the habitual patterns of achievement. Patterns that might still be in place, even though we don't believe that there's somewhere to climb to. Because that's still what I've been training to do my whole life.

And so this time in our lives is also about learning to rest, and wait, and fill ourselves up.

I think that awakening has come through my motherhood journey, through parenting an atypical child and experiencing pregnancy loss, and I am grateful. I see a similar process unfolding with friends who are moving through divorce. I don't believe in having to find a silver lining for grief, but I do think that this awakening comes for many of us in one way or another. And the conversations to be had on the other side of it are so beautiful and so different from the ones I was having before.

This is how In Tending really came to be, as a place for us to have those kinds of conversations.

Kate: When you were talking about habits, I was thinking about my people pleasing habits, and how I've done so much work to deconstruct those patterns, and they keep coming back. It's this real reactivity.

Ryan: I'm so glad that you named people pleasing as a kind of reactivity, because I think that it is. It’s often a trauma response. And there's so many good reasons why we would people-please. My partner and I talk about that all the time. I think that's another lifelong unlearning.

Kate: It's another thing that really can lead to burnout.

Ryan: Yes. Absolutely. And I think it can also be driven by the guilt we were talking about before, of not being enough as a parent. “I should be doing something more, so I can't turn towards myself. I need to be turning towards these other people.”

For me, when I was growing up, that was true. I was very much a caregiver for my little brother. It was not imagined. I very often needed to make us food, or we would not eat.

Kate: Not optional.

Ryan: Not optional. I think many caregivers have this lived experience, and an embodied sense of, “If I let down my guard and I go inward, something bad could happen on the outside.”

Kate: Or if I choose myself. I will be shunned.

Ryan: Yes. I'll be seen as selfish.

Kate: Yeah. And “selfishness” is worse than any of the other bad words. Because at least I know for me, being “selfish” meant not having connection. Being deprived of connection.

Ryan: Absolutely. And connection is vital. So many of these things that we've done were in service of belonging.

Typically, I find that if people define themselves as caregivers, they have a background very similar to the ones we've just talked about, where there was a real need for care within our families of origin, a need that we stepped into. There was a skill-set developed there, that then became a career, or a vocation, or an orientation towards parenting.

That is something that can become very challenged if you experience infertility, or if you experience pregnancy loss, or if you experience having an atypical child. Those are moments of awakening, as we’ve said, where you are not only trying to figure out how to live into a future that you never imagined, you're also casting that light of awareness backwards, reflecting on your story and how you got here.

A lot of the work that I do with caregivers now is in that place. on Substack calls it The Portal.

There's a specific awakening experience that many people with caregiver identities move through that involves really evaluating: what is a balance between self and other that feels sustainable? And what's the difference between that and the messages that I've received in the past? And then, how do I use mindfulness to create a tiny bit of space between the conditioning that I've received, and the balance that I need?

I'm almost 40, so my goal is to live at least another 40 years. It makes sense to ask: How can I survive now?

Kate: Yeah, and if, not for ourselves, then for our kids who need us.

REDEFINING CREATIVITY FOR SELF-CARE

Kate: You once wrote to me that you see creativity as “preventative care for caregiver burnout, particularly for preventing the burnout that is so common among people who love and work with atypical kids.” As you said, “[Parenting atypical kids] can be a grind. We can't snap our fingers and feel self regulated and present all the time. They can have big feelings, and sometimes the way the world relates to them gives us big feelings. So we need community, but we also need support in cultivating the personal practices that help us recenter, because the work of loving atypical kids will knock us down time and time again.”

Do you have something else to say about your creative process that you'd like to share to help parents find their own? Because I think it's such a scary word for a lot of people. My experience has been extremely fraught, with creativity.

Ryan: Tell me more.

Kate: There's the stuff that's just for us that comes out. But then if we want to get it out in the world, there's so much shame around it. With this process of writing this book, and then trying to get this book out in the world, I'm unable to control the outcome at this point.

I know for other parents, it's like, “Somebody when I was three told me I was bad at drawing and so by the time I was in middle school, it totally fizzled, and I've never drawn since.”

Ryan: That makes me think of the Bluey episode “Dragon,” where the kids are drawing, and the parents are invited to participate, and there's a pretty big difference in terms of how one parent was socialized over another around art, and the episode is really all about that.

Kate: Ooh. I've been determined to watch Bluey. [My teenage son] Ocean's too old, but I’d just watch it on my own. I've never seen an episode.

Ryan: I have actually used Bluey episodes often in my teaching with adolescents, because the episodes are so short and so rich. I am also totally that parent that will not stop talking about how brilliant Bluey is. I'm really annoying in that way. People have said it's a show for grown ups about parenting, and kids just happen to like it, and I tend to agree.

Ryan: I’ve learned to become much more granular when I define and talk about creativity, through teaching kids how to write. Often, they get really overwhelmed with even writing an essay. For us, a five-paragraph essay is another day in the office, but for a sixth grader, you might as well tell them to climb Mount Everest. They're really struggling with it, some of them, and so we break the process down into brainstorming, drafting, revising or “adding on,” editing, and pre-publishing preparation.

When I think about being in a creative flow state, I think about it as doing work that's primarily in the brainstorming or drafting phase, with no necessary connection to publishing. Even revising is still, I think, often connected to being in a flow state too. It's about having an idea like, “Oh, maybe I'll add a flashback to that passage,” or “What if I changed the narrator?” You're still in that “what if” space in revising. You still have access to beginner's mind. It's more like play.

Kate: Like Morning Pages?

Ryan: Morning Pages, yeah! Though for everybody it's different. The way that I tend to think of it is, it’s more about how it feels than what it looks like. It's more about the somatic experience of flow.

When we talk about flow, it's that sense that time vanishes. Our brains are in this joyful getting-bathed-in-happy chemicals kind of place. There's no sense of clenching. We could do it forever. It's like, you wake up and it’s time to go get your kid from the bus. And that's a really beautiful state. That’s the kind of creativity that can help to heal burnout.

Being in a creative flow state is a very restful mind state—that doesn't look to the outside world like rest. So it also feels safer to many people than actually resting. Even though we need that too, and our bodies crave it, the fact is that I can be sitting at my computer in flow state, and I look to the rest of my household like I'm quote-unquote “doing work.”

This often makes “creativity” a more accessible stop on the journey to self regulation for parents that have been going like 100 miles an hour, versus sitting and meditating for 15 minutes. Particularly people that are already in the burnout phase, where it's like, “I just quit my job. I just Jerry Maguire’d it out of there.” And then those people are like, “Now what?”

I know that for me, when I left the classroom, doing sitting meditation then felt really inaccessible to me. I was looking for something that fell between a hundred miles an hour and what felt like zero miles an hour, which would have felt like crashing into a brick wall. Those things were writing and yoga and dancing. Things that still felt like I was “doing something.”

For those of us that are unlearning productivity and grind culture, “doing something” brings up less guilt than doing quote-unquote “nothing.” Even if we know meditation is not “doing nothing,” there are less headwinds of guilt that we have to fight against. If you're socialized as a woman, dancing can be rationalized as exercise: “Oh, I'm getting healthy.” Or whatever story you need to tell yourself, to signal to others, “I’m still following the rules.” Or at least it looks that way.

Once you’re outside your body looking at yourself doing the thing, though, then you're probably not still in flow state. So actually getting the benefits of flow also means allowing ourselves to have kind of a wall between brainstorming, drafting and revising, and everything else – where editing and publishing the thing is for mañana. If the goal is to heal from burnout, how the work itself looks to others is less important than how it feels to you.

ON THE PRESSURE TO “BE CONSISTENT”

Kate: I wonder if a lot of parents might also start to get into a shame spiral if they're not being “consistent” with something creative, or not doing something “right.”

Ryan: We've all kind of absorbed ideas of what an artist looks like at work. A lot of those images that I've absorbed, at least, are of male writers who had a lot of support. They may not have had children, and probably didn't face any social pressure to create or tend to them. Whereas, if you read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, she didn't even have children, but she still wrote about the fact that there needs to be a form of literature that's more congenial to the way that women's lives work, where you can pick it up and put it down. And it can fit into your life.

has written a lot about this as well, about embracing interruptions and thinking about what interruptions add to the creative process. They're almost their own contribution to the medium. They're another ingredient in the creative process.

For example, I love Lizzo, and very often in a Lizzo song, there'll be some little outtake or some laughing, and it's clear that those are the things that happened in the interstitial spaces in the recording room. And they became part of the art.

So, can we make art that's more like a Lizzo song than a Hemingway novel? Because I don't know that that man spent very much time changing diapers. And that's okay.

Can we also ask ourselves: is this shame about consistency or work quality an indicator that I'm not doing the best work I personally could be, within the very real constraints of my life, constraints that I have already worked very hard to accept and embrace? Or is this shame actually just me internalizing responsibility for the gap between what that male writer was able to do in 1940 and what my life looks like?

It's not easy to let that go, but at least we can try to find that little space, with mindfulness, of, “This is just a thought. Is it real? Is there evidence?”

Kate: “Is that really true?”

Ryan: Yes. I think this is also a place where we can have an evidence-based conversation. “What is realistic and real about my practice, and what is stuff that I grew up with, things that I haven't really challenged?” I think that for every creative person with children, that is part of the work.

There's a lot of unlearning that happens as you're learning how to tend your creative craft. It's unlearning messages about what that craft is, how it “should” look, how it should be evaluated. It's part and parcel of so much that's happening in modern feminism: unlearning diet culture, unlearning grind culture, unlearning white supremacy. It's another aspect of liberation work and activist work, to allow your creative practice to be what it is.

Kate: Plus, unlearning the expectation that the house has to be clean.

Ryan: Also that. And if you don't carry that expectation, but somebody in your life does, then they don't get to come to your house anymore.

“I CAN’T CARE ABOUT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK AND STAY SANE AT THE SAME TIME”

Kate: I think actually being a parent of a neurodivergent kid has really helped me care less about that external gaze, about what other people think. I can't care about what other people think and stay sane, at the same time.

Ryan: Yes. At least around things that are safe to let go. For example, a person of color being aware of how they're being perceived as a parent on the train – I think those things are not necessarily safe to let go. But I do think it's safe to let go of that gaze in our own homes, the one inside of us that is telling us, “This doesn't look like Pinterest!”

Kate: Yeah, I've had some wonderful conversations about the supermarket meltdown, and the difference between being white and being a person of color. It becomes a much different situation.

I really think either way, we're aware of other people, but stepping in and being confident – like, "We’ve got this” – is more protective than being afraid, and trying to fix it, to make it sanitized for public consumption. Even saying aloud to the child, "We've got this," shows the other people around that they don't have to find a solution, because you've already got the solution.

Ryan: That connects to what you're saying about a clean house, too, versus one that may be more cluttered. I'm imagining the judgy neighbor, the in-law, or the mom from playgroup coming in, and just having that conversation with them. “Yeah, we've been having a lot of fun around here.”

Kate: That's a great way to put it.

Ryan: “Isn't it neat? Oh yeah, let me show you this Lego creation.” And just making it clear that creativity is what you value.

Kate: Yeah. Putting our values front and center, rather than someone else's values, or even imagined imposed values we're projecting.

Ryan: Yeah. And, understanding that there's very few values that are absolute. Cleanliness, hygiene, those are very important. And, what's the opportunity cost of pursuing those to the very end? Probably some creativity and spontaneity. Children feeling at ease, having a place they can make mistakes.

So, if cleanliness is a value for you personally, it might be about noticing, “Are there any parts of you that feel silenced by your tireless pursuit or performance of that value?”

It's a lot of internal conversations. A lot of mindfulness before you even get to the easel or the computer or the guitar.

EDDYING OUT WITH OTHER CREATIVE CAREGIVERS

Kate: How does gathering together, or, being in community around that conversation, help with this?

Ryan: It’s really helpful for people that are in caregiving work to let each other in, because then you're conceptualizing what's possible and what's quote-unquote normal together. “What are my other creative caregiver friends doing?” is a much more accurate measure of what my own creative practice could potentially look like, versus “What do I see in this person's Instagram presence?”

Kate: You're talking about modeling. If Hemingway is the only model we have, then we’re thinking that it's supposed to be his way. But if we have a group of other caregivers, or people believing in a different way, then we've got those models that we can see, and that becomes our sangha.

Ryan: Yes. Sangha is forming community with people traveling our path, that we've chosen. With sangha, we’re all trying to take some steps, whenever we can, towards coming home to ourselves.

Sometimes it can be really helpful just to be witnessed in your struggle along the way, too. Just to be able to say, “This week was so fucking hard,” and have people in your sangha go, “Yeah, it is so fucking hard.” Instead of “Have you tried…?”

Kate: With somebody who gets it, you don't have to explain.

Ryan: Yes. It’s not your mom who did it forty years ago, under entirely different parenting conditions, and who only has the most gauzy memories of parenting. And not Susie down the street, who isn't trying to do what you're doing creatively.

Going back to my grad school training as an educator, Lev Vygotsky was a researcher who talked about the idea of the “zone of proximal development.” Briefly, this means that as we enter into a new phase, we tend to learn most from the people that are in that phase with us, and people that are just ahead. We tend to learn more from those people than we do from teachers. Research has shown, for example, that children tend to acquire more vocabulary when they are in a mixed-age group of peers than they do from direct instruction from adult teachers.

So, in many ways, the group is the class. And thus sometimes just creating the container for those discussions to happen in the eddies of our lives – discussions like this – is enough.

Leave a comment

Further reading/listening:

Atypical Kids, Mindful Parents

What Can Bluey and Lizzo Teach Us About Perfection, Burnout, and Creativity?

I recently had the privilege of speaking with Ryan Rose Weaver, a writer, educator, and fellow parent of a neurodivergent kid…

Listen now

a year ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Kate Lynch and Ryan Rose Weaver (she/hers)

Atypical Kids, Mindful Parents

Courage and Compassion - a Guide for Parents Navigating the IEP Process

“I want you to know that this is not the wholeness of your child, and this is not all I see in them. We are here to do a job…

Listen now

a year ago · 3 likes · 6 comments · Kate Lynch and Ryan Rose Weaver (she/hers)

That said, there are real equity issues that can arise when a “one size fits all” approach fails to actually fit all. As caregivers and community-tenders, it is incumbent upon us to find a middle way.

In my case, my child, who is neurodivergent, has always struggled to stay steady during morning meeting, a common issue for many active children; to stay self-regulated during transitions, a common time of trouble for many kids who are sensitive to touch and noise; and to negotiate social situations on the playground skillfully. My child’s learning needs are not needs he chose to have, and to penalize him for them would further discourage him from seeing school as a place where he can belong and succeed. Conversely, providing my son with school-based accommodations such as flexible or preferential seating during direct instruction, visual schedules and noise-canceling headphones to support him through transitions, and small group social skills instruction provided by a school counselor, can all help him to access the curriculum on offer in his classroom.

Enter: the Individualized Education Plan (IEP). IEPs lay all of this out: the struggles a child is having, the supports that are needed, a plan for how to provide all of that within a given education setting. IEPs are essentially a highly technical “How to Care for This Unique Kid” guide for school staff.

Sounds great, right? It can be, but as and I discuss below, it can also be stressful to put these plans together. First, a team of folks has to gather data on your child — a process that’s often painless for them, but can be painful when it comes time to hear the results. (No one likes to hear that their child is having a hard time in school, but sometimes this is the case.) These team members will use the results of their testing to co-author an individualized plan for your child with you — but only if the data supports it, which it may not. So, while your thoughts as a parent/guardian carry special weight in the IEP process, it can also bring up waves of vulnerability and reactivity that can require a significant amount of self-tending.

Given the high-stakes nature of these meetings for parents of “atypical kids,” as Kate calls them, we decided to get together after my most recent IEP meeting to walk folks through the ways in which we prepare for, breathe through, and debrief after these meetings. While we use the term “ritual” a lot, my hope is that these ideas sound pragmatic rather than precious (example: one of my rituals includes eating a huge pile of curly fries).

We recorded this interview during a Nor’easter on my end (#Massachusetts), so the video contains some technical difficulties. Given that, I’ve included highlights from the transcript below to allow folks to quickly scan for the info in which they are most interested.

May this debrief video and transcript be of benefit to all home grownups and school grownups who know the particular struggle of bridging the gap between school communities and “atypical” children, and who are looking for ways to suffer a little less throughout this process.

INTRO: WHEN RYAN MET KATE

(Note: in the video, intros begin at 2:20)

Ryan: I'd love to just kind of touch on how we came to this topic briefly. You and I know each other as writers. I really admired your writing, and I was sort of lurking in your comments section for a while as I was starting my own Substack, and then reached out to you as I was going through the first [Individualized Education Plan] process with my son when he was in pre-K. And you were such an amazing support to me.

When we decided to get together for our podcast episode, the plan was to connect as writers and to talk about our practices, and how they were supporting us as parents of children with special needs. But it kind of became one of those sped-mom conversations where it's just like, “Oh, man, do you like your school? Are they doing a good job? What does your kid’s IEP look like?”

This then organically became a conversation about how we as practitioners of mindfulness approach something that is dysregulating, or can be dysregulating.

IEP MEETINGS 101

Ryan: For folks who might be in the process of getting their kids evaluated, or may just want to learn more, an IEP is an individualized education program that we devise for children who need sort of a tailored approach to their education.

Typically, as an educator in K-12, working in a gen ed setting, we're receiving a child who may have ADHD, or they may have an ASD diagnosis, or they may be dyslexic. And so we are getting together to look at documents, look at different ways of evaluating that child. You have a school psychologist assess them, a special education teacher assess them, sometimes an occupational therapist will chime in, depending on what you want, or a speech-language pathologist. And then everyone will come together to talk about how these are the strengths, these are the areas of struggle, and what kind of supports are needed. And then you together write a legal document that encodes that for the rest of the school year and for the next calendar year.

It’s designed to be supportive, and sometimes it doesn't feel that way. Because you're being confronted with all this information all at once about your child, some of which is kind of hard to hear, especially if you're hearing about their areas of struggle. You may come with an agenda or an intention for your child; you may really want certain services for your child or a certain setting for your child. And [while] the process is designed to honor your wishes as a parent, the data may not always support you getting what you hoped for.

Kate: And it's not just the data. Sometimes it's like, the school doesn't employ that particular therapist, and so they want to dissuade you from having it on their IEP. Which is illegal, but still happens. Or the school doesn't offer a certain configuration of the class, and so they try and change what your child's is. But the child is supposed to be the center whatever the child's individual needs are, to access a free and appropriate public education [also known as FAPE].

This is all in the U.S., of course. If you're coming in from other places, they might have different names. Feel free to put in the chat what's different for you. We'd love to hear about it, because I'm very U.S.-centric and even New York State-centric.

Ryan: I was too [until recently], so I'm now learning about Massachusetts, and the ins and outs and differences in terms of what settings are on offer.

DROPPING INTO THE BODY

Kate: So before we go on, this is feeling to me very much “in my head.” And I'd love to just have an opportunity for us to get into our bodies a little bit. We're not going to jump up and down this time [which we totally did in our podcast episode], but you can do some shaking, some grounding, for self-regulation–for that feeling of not getting kind of stuck in our heads, but feeling in our body.

So I invite you to kind of wiggle your toes a little. Just feel your toes. Maybe if you can, even circle your feet on your ankles, if that's available…

[Note: Kate’s meditation can be found in the video above, from 7:33-8:59]

Kate: Ryan, how are you feeling? I'd love to hear. Like immediately before the IEP meeting, immediately afterward, and then how you're feeling today too, because that was yesterday, right?

BEFORE THE MEETING

Ryan: Yes. So I noticed that in the few hours leading up to the IEP meeting, I felt a sort of a sense of holding and tension. I know that my son has a great team and we would be walking into a mostly supportive space, which is a privilege. Not everybody has that. But I think I was aware of the stakes. You know, it's not where as a meditator, I feel I can be unattached. I am attached. I want things for my child. They're specific. I'm hoping to get them. And so there's tension and a holding that comes along with that.

I'm fortunate that my husband is usually the driver in our family, so often if we're driving to his school, I'll push my feet into the ground, feel my hands on my thighs, and roll my shoulders back. Because if I'm protecting my heart, which, of course [I might] in this scenario, I might be rolling my shoulders forward and breathing shallowly. So I’m [opening them up], sending my body the message that it’s safe.

DURING THE MEETING

Then, during the meeting, I relaxed somewhat just because I had the privilege of sitting around a table with the human beings in the meeting.

That has not necessarily always been my experience as a teacher. For folks who don't know, I was a middle school teacher for quite a while. I [most recently] worked in an all-inclusion setting, so the whole school was co-taught from top to bottom, and many of our students had IEPs. I would frequently be on the call to talk about literacy. And it makes a really big difference when you're hunched over a conference call telephone setup, and you can't really see the faces of the people involved. Maybe the person chairing the meeting is a stranger, which is often the case. School psychologists will often run the meeting, but they're not always based in the school. And so it's talking to a bunch of strangers about a child that you care deeply about, and sometimes they've never met them, or met them only briefly.

[In my case], all of the people in the room, with my child, they've taken the time to get to know him throughout the year. The principal chose to attend, which is really unusual. That's not typically someone you can expect to be sitting in with your child's IEP team. But in this case, the principal has a special relationship with my child. So she chose to be there. And she's also new this year. So I think she's sort of learning about how the team functions, which is fine.

I was telling you before that our conversation really inspired me to make note of my child's strengths before I went into the room. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you write a letter–

Kate: Yeah, or just a list. It’s usually afterward, if I'm feeling kind of like I need to slough off some of the yucky feelings after the meeting.

I'll write either a letter, or just a list of all of my kids' strengths, that really didn't get to be highlighted during the meeting. Because we were advocating for services, and when they start to hear, “Oh so-and-so is doing really well in such-and-such,” they might think that that child is doing as well as their peers, when what we mean is they're doing really well compared to their past self, and they continue to need these services in order to progress, right? It's not like, “Oh, they're done and they don't need any help anymore.”

Ryan: Exactly. When they start saying, “Oh, they're starting to reach these grade level benchmarks…” you're like, “Do not take my free [occupational therapy] away.”

Kate: It's not even that it's free, although that is important, but that it is integrated into the school, and that makes that OT, especially if it's for sensory integration, it makes it possible to access learning. And gosh, so many people don't understand that.

Ryan: Yes. It's just more eyes on your child with more areas of expertise. My child has sensory integration issues, and sometimes the OT can really be their greatest champion.

[Note: In the video, storm-related technical difficulties ensue from 14:44-16:46]

THE POWER OF PREVIEWING

Ryan: I just want to honor somebody in the chat had said, “To help you feel calmer in the future, you should get ample warning if those services are going to be removed.” And yes, that is an ideal scenario. Yet this process is so different, every single time I've gone through it, just based on who is being assessed, who is doing the assessing, who is doing the communicating, what kinds of communication lines are or are not open between the family and the [teacher]. So something that is highly regulated still ends up being very unique. And very unpredictable.

So part of it, I think, is just accepting that there will be some surprises and also acknowledging if you have the kind of background where surprises are incredibly challenging, it can be helpful to do something that I suggested on the podcast, which is just scheduling sort of a preview call with whoever is on the team, somebody that you trust, and saying, “Can you please go over this with me? Can you help me know what to expect?” Especially if it is your first meeting.

And if you have this ritual of writing down a list of your child's strengths, it can also be a place to elicit that, and just say, “You know, I would really love to write down a list of strengths to carry with me into the meeting or afterwards, to remind myself and my child of their wholeness. Can you help me make that list?”

AFTER THE MEETING

Ryan: The outcome of the meeting was positive, and we got the supports that we wanted for our son. We felt he was affirmed in his strengths and that there was a plan to support his areas of relative strength. There are some areas where he would benefit from being exposed to curriculum that's above grade level. I was really happy to see that that was being supported along with his areas of struggle–that we weren't just hyper focused on that.

And so there was really a whoosh feeling after the meeting.

Sometimes for me it can be hard for me to move out of fight or flight, and something that is helpful for me is to have a warming food as a somatic way back into my body. And so we went to get burgers.

Kate: Comfort food.

Ryan: Oh yeah. I wasn’t having, like, golden milk and some avocado toast or something. We straight up went and had curly fries. So there was that.

And then, when we got home I crawled into bed. I had taken the afternoon off. I have a heating pad that I use. I have a weighted blanket. And I just crawled in there, and I fell asleep for three hours.

Kate: Yes! That sounds delicious and just right.

So even when it's a positive outcome, it's still a stress on your nervous system, right?

Ryan: Yes. And even if this isn't my first rodeo, right? Like, I've done this so many times. But with my own child, it’s different. Being in the parent's seat is very different than being in the teacher's seat. They're both stressful, but being in the parent's seat is magnitudes harder.

THE NEXT DAY

Kate: So how are you feeling today?

Ryan: Today, I think that what I'm feeling is a desire to move. I do [somatic] shaking after a big meeting, to sort of move the energy. So even though I'm still very tired today, I will probably do a yoga practice, or I might just, like, go shake it up and down in the bathroom.

Kate: You can shake right here if you want to.

Ryan: Look, I don't want to compromise our sound any more than we already have. [Laughs.]

But yeah, so there's sort of that emotional hangover.

Kate: It's still vulnerable, right? Even though you were in a place that felt like friends instead of foes. I mean, there have been times I've been in IEP meetings–it hasn't been that many lately, for sure–but there definitely have been times I've been in IEP meetings and I feel like, “We're on opposite sides of a battle.” And I know lots of other parents have felt that.

Ryan: Yes. Yes.

Kate: So the advice to have a check-in beforehand is fantastic. And I always do try to establish a relationship with people. You know, they're people. Yeah, they're doing a job. Yeah, they're the experts. But ultimately, they're people. And when we have a relationship, it feels less antagonistic.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely.

HOW IEPS ARE USED AFTER THEY’RE MADE

Kate: So when we were talking about the IEP, you were talking about the services. That's usually the main thing people are focused on. What about the goals?

Ryan: So again, I know probably people on this call are familiar with the process, and that's why you're here. But if not, you get the areas of struggle, you figure out which supports are needed, and then you sort of write the recipe [for what their tailored education will look like, with related goals].

I really appreciate that it isn't sort of left open-ended and fuzzy in terms of what the plan is meant to accomplish. But everybody writes goals differently. And I have, like, feelings and thoughts about that as a teacher… It can also be very difficult [for teachers] to track IEP goals. So again, I appreciate the spirit of it, and in practice it doesn’t always work.

So with my son, many of his goals are around his socio-emotional well-being and learning. … He’s very funny and very engaging and silly… but sometimes he misses social cues and struggles with emotional self-regulation. So as you said, it's really helpful to have providers that are in the school because you can go and meet in a room outside of the classroom where they can really internalize the skills, but then [school counselors] can push in and they help kids actually practice the skills in the general classroom environment. That generalizing piece is really, really tricky. So I'm excited to see what's in store.

For me, though, the primary benefit of the IEP is because we're moving to a new district and there will be teachers that don't know my son, and it's important for him to be seen.

And of course, an IEP, as we've established [in the podcast], it's not the end-all be-all. It's not a biblical document. It's a snapshot. But it is something that you can come back to.

[For example], I have a neurodivergent child who, because of his sensory issues, will sometimes have meltdowns. And sometimes, because he has some tactile defensiveness, if a kid's too close to him in line, he might lash out. And those moments are when I get the calls home. And it's important for me to circle back and say, “You know, these are known issues that are related to his sensory integration struggles. These are not behavioral decisions that he's making. He's not making a choice to shove another kid away from him.”

Kate: Yeah, exactly.

Ryan: So it's helping them understand: when is a consequence appropriate? And when is more support appropriate? Because certainly there are some situations in which consequences are appropriate. But there is a gap between research and practice in terms of teachers really understanding how sensory integration issues play into behavior in the classroom, and how much kids can control, and how much is beyond their control. So [the IEP] is there as a protection for him, should there be concerns about his behavior.

Because right now we're really working on making sure that he can hold his head up high in the classroom, that he feels like he's an important, valued, loved member of the community. Which I can't control fully as a parent, because I'm not there in the classroom. But it does sort of feel like I'm sending him with something, going into that environment, that’s like a protective cloak or something.

Kate: Yes, exactly.

Ryan: Even if the teachers don't necessarily apply it in the way that I am hoping, it's something that I can use and apply in conversations should it come up. [I can say], “It’s right here, in this legal document.” [And a teacher can say], “Yes, I probably should have, you know, looked at that, and done it.”

Kate: I feel like consequences, especially in school, are about how the adult is feeling, not about what's best for the child. But that's a totally different conversation we can have.

Ryan: We could have that conversation.

Kate: Yeah, we should.

ADVOCATING FOR CHILD-AFFIRMING LANGUAGE AND INCLUSION

Kate: I'm trying to remember who I learned this from or who I heard this from: “By reading the IEP you should know an ideal gift to give a child for their birthday.” I just love that. Like, it's not just about their deficits. It's about getting a picture of them that would give you enough information to be able to buy them a birthday gift.

Ryan: I love that. That's beautiful. A picture of a whole child, and not just, “Here is a collection of struggles and headaches that you're going to have, and ways that we're going to control them, and make the teacher's life easier.”

Kate: And how many times they're going to have OT, and for how long. Those are important, and that's usually what we're advocating for, but I've advocated for other things too.

One of them, when the goals are about deficits, is “Can we make it more neurodivergence affirming? In some way that is …about how to help him feel safer and give him the agency he needs to do what he needs so he can learn and be part of the community, rather than just something that's distracting others?”

Ryan: Right. The goal isn't, “Be less distracting to other kids.” The goal is, “Integrate into the school community.”

Kate: I remember there one year that Ocean had a very experienced teacher, and I went into the classroom for something, and they all went back to their desks to do a writing assignment. And I went over and I said, “Ocean, this is your chair!” And all the kids at his table said, “No, Ocean's Mama. He does not sit while he's writing. Ocean stands at the desk while he's writing. That's how he does writing.” Inclusion had really been just embedded into the culture of the classroom.

Ryan: I love that. My son also stands when he writes, so shout out to flexible seating preferences, too.

I love the phrase “neurodiversity-affirming.” It's one that I think I've picked up from you, and that I have been using more when I talk about this process with my partner. He's a wonderful dad, very involved. He’ll read all the books, do all the things. But I think that there's such a difference when you think about neurodiversity-affirming language, versus some of the language that people will use by default [in books] that is more pathologizing, or it's more Othering. There are so many things that our neurodivergent children can do that aren't connected to a pathology, that are just connected to a difference. Or at Bank Street [the education school where I received my graduate degrees], we would call it a “developmental variation.”

I read a book recently that [put it this way]: “It’s really helpful to know that you're a zebra and not just a weird horse.”

Kate: Right.

Ryan: So when I think about neurodiversity affirming language, I think about it as being descriptive – in that what we're talking about is a zebra. We're not talking about a disordered horse. We're talking about a different being.

I think it is such a great practice to really think about the language of this document, and what an act of political resistance it is to think, “Can we really interrogate, on a line by line level, whether this is pathologizing language or whether this is affirming language?”

INCLUDING TEENS IN THE PROCESS

Kate: We had [Ocean’s] first high school IEP meeting, and he was sitting there.

Ryan: How was that?

Kate: He just seemed bored, but he had an opportunity to talk about how he thought he was doing. They had some good guided questions. It wasn't just, like, “How are you doing?” They would read part of the IEP, and then ask him what he thought of that, and what supports he thought were appropriate. I was really appreciative that this school that has the neurodiversity affirming – not just language, but perspective, really down. They've been doing this a long time.

So sure, he was bored, but I'm really glad that he got to stay in it. And then he was able to leave when we were done with the more interesting part and got down to brass tacks. It was a nice way to ease him into having more agency over his own document. It's really his. It's not ours.

Ryan: And it's totally appropriate for a 14 year old to be metacognitive about what supports them, and to be able to self-advocate.

Kate: To the extent that he can.

Ryan: Exactly. Within the range of their ability to do so. To be able to remind a teacher, “You know, I'm supposed to get a standing desk.”

Kate: Right. He's a great advocate for himself.

GRATITUDE FOR OUR SPED MOM FRIENDS

Kate: When I enticed you to come on today, I said, “Even for five minutes.” So I just want to express my appreciation for you coming on.

Ryan: I appreciate you too, Kate. We were talking before the call about how this is something that sped moms who've been in the game a while kind of learn to do for each other. Like, you know that your friend's going to get their documents a couple days before their meeting date. The meeting date's a big deal. They're probably going to need some aftercare on that day. And then there might be some verbal processing that needs to happen to keep moving the energy. And so I just appreciate that you did that for me. It's something I do for friends, and you knew that to do that for me.

So I think that’s really a takeaway too, is that that's something we can ask our friends to do. It's something we can do for our friends who are in these trenches with us. Just to debrief with them and let them speak on it.

I do think you also have a really beautiful way of coming back to the body, because this is such a thinky process. It's such a verbally mediated process. There's paperwork, there's email –

Kate: And emotion, right?

Ryan: So much emotion. And it can be really kind of an out of body experience. You can kind of go up here [motions to brain]. So I do just really appreciate the way that you really organically embed those moments into our conversations. That's something that is aspirational for me as a friend. If I have a friend sitting across from me who gets into that place of “And then…and what if…?!” and they're spiraling, sometimes the impulse is to add more words. “What if we tried this? Do you need this?”

I think your really organic invitations to drop into the body, they might not come naturally to some of us in our conversations with our loved ones, but it's something that I'm trying to do more of. Just to lean into the meditation teacher side of me and to say, “You know, I actually don't know. I really don't know what's going to happen. We can't know. But do you want to put your head in my lap and we'll breathe? Check in with our feet and see what's happening with them, and with our breath, see what's happening with that?”

It can seem so twee and precious sometimes, that guidance that I give, but it's so useful.

Kate: When you said put, “Put your head in my lap,” it melted something in me.

What I'm doing right now to regulate myself is so different from that. I'm making these little lines in my hand from squeezing so hard with my thumb. That is what is keeping me regulated, what's keeping me grounded in my body, and not having that out of body kind of experience.

And, if you do have an out of body experience, it's totally understandable. That's a protective mechanism, right? Sometimes we do leave, and come back, and we're like, “Where was I?”

Ryan: You said something so permissioning when I interviewed you, where you said, “Sometimes your body and your mind just need some space from one another.”

And I'm just like, “Yeah. My body's on that couch. My brain is on this couch. They're reading different magazines.” And we do need that. There's such a spirit of “It’s all okay,” with you and your practice, and it's something that I really admire.

CONTINUING TO INTEGRATE IN THE MONTHS AND YEARS AHEAD

Ryan: This process can just bring up so much, and it can bring up emotions that are really uncomfortable. It can bring up grief. It can bring up rage. It can bring up jealousy. It can bring up fear and anxiety. It can really stir the sediment up from the bottom.

Kate: There are two different things that come up when I talk to parents. One is, “I need to fight to get all of the services I can for my kids, so they get the most help.” And then there's the other side. It's like, “No, my child does not need that, and how dare you? Don't try and put my child in a box. Don't try to pull my child out of a general education setting. Don't try and put my child in a 6:1:1.” Or whatever.

[The latter] is totally valid because of what has happened in the past, especially with underrepresented groups, children of color, being put in the basement, not taught, not educated, and diagnosed with things that were just about keeping them excluded from being educated and being cared for and being supported.

So thank goodness that is mostly different now because of the laws that are in place [see: the history of legal protections for students with special needs here]. It has changed. But people's thinking is still often that way, with good reason.

Ryan: So much of it brings up our own trauma histories as students as well. As you said, even intergenerational trauma, entire marginalized communities and their experiences with schooling. There can be a lot of fear that's very valid, as you said.

Kate: And we all are swimming in the soup of ableism. We can't help it. We grew up in an ableist culture.

Ryan: I think it's very to a person and it's all okay. There is grief, because whenever we receive new information about our children that contradicts whatever we imagined before we had children, then there's a period of integration.

So you let them know [as a teacher] that their kid is struggling in school and you'd like to refer them, for evaluation and [sometimes], they're like, “Okay, fine, whatever,” and it's no big deal, [but] for some of them it takes years. I’ve had students where they come to me in seventh or eighth grade, and I’m seeing some challenges, and I ask the prior years’ teachers, “Did you ever bring up evaluation”?” And the sixth grade teacher says “Yes, we talked about it,” and the fifth grade teacher says “Yes,” and the fourth grade teacher says, “Yes we talked about it,” and that parent is still integrating new information and deciding what to do about it.

It's all common. There's no one speed or way. There's a range of [how parents] process things, which is kind of what we started talking about at the top of the call.

HOW OUR BODIES CAN PROTECT US THROUGH THIS PROCESS

Ryan: Going back to the body, I think that it's okay for parents to slow things down and check in with themselves. Like, “Is this suggestion making my body constrict?”

[See: this Windows Open, Windows Closed meditation]

If, for example, they had told me, “We think your child would be better off in a 12:1:1 setting,” I think I would have questioned that. For some children, it's very appropriate, and for Neil, I don't think it would be.

Whereas when they said, “We would really like to bring back the OT services he had two years ago; we think that he would really benefit,” there was such a sense of relief, because he really did benefit.

Kate: That's great.

Ryan: So even within a meeting where you're being offered services or setting recommendations or whatever, I think it's okay to really slow down the tape and say, “What's involved with that? Can you paint me a picture of what my child's day-to-day would actually look like if that were the case?” And then to check in with my body and ask myself, ‘Do I see that [for my child]?”

As you said, some of it might be internalized ableism. Like, “Well that would just mark them as different, and I don't think I would like that.” Versus, “No, I think my child wouldn't thrive under those conditions.” It would be too much. Or it would be too restrictive. Or it wouldn't be enough. Or I'm not hearing that these certain things are going to be supported to the degree that I want them to be.

So I think our bodies are really important protectors for us in these rooms.

And the practices that you offer are so helpful, and the reminders to come back to it are so helpful, because I don't know if it's my default even [to do that], you know?

Kate: I've been a yoga teacher for over 20 years and still, those first couple of years, I was not regulated, and it didn't occur to me to come back to my body during those meetings. I was just in complete panic and feeling so insecure. It's nice to be in a different place, and it's nice to be in this place with you.

Ryan: It’s great just to get to hear about your variety of experiences. My son is still very young, and I am so grateful to hear from folks who have been through this process many times, and have had that variety of experiences that we talked about. You've seen the good, you've seen the bad, you've had some positive meetings, [and] you've had some where you probably wanted to burn a whole thing down.

Kate: Or get up and run out of there.

SOMETIMES, THINGS WORK OUT

Kate: One thing that I didn't bring up during [our podcast episode on IEPs] that I would like to share is that I've spent days writing and researching and preparing, preparing, preparing on a mental level for these meetings.

And then I had this one meeting where my email completely stopped working. And the representative from the school called me and said, “I just wanted to remind you that we have this meeting in two hours.”

And I didn't want to cancel it, but I was just so overwhelmed by all the things. And I know this sounds like the most cliche self care advice, but I did not have time for preparation, so instead I really honored my nervous system and I got in a hot bath. I had, like, 20 minutes. I was like, “I'm going to soak, I'm going to dry off, get dressed, and sit in front of my computer.” And that was one of the best IEP meetings I think I've had.

Ryan: That makes all kinds of sense to me, that you did that. It is amazing how much better things can go when we bring a regulated nervous system to the proceedings.

And sometimes that is absolutely beyond our capacity and not realistic. Like, somebody else better bring it. That's not what I'm bringing to the potluck today.

Kate: And often it's nobody in the room.

Ryan: Yes. But you claimed such agency in that moment. It wasn't aggressive agency. It was soft, it was loving yourself, and that's what you brought.

Kate: Yeah, it all worked out. I love having the perspective of knowing, “Well, you know what? Things worked out. It wasn't the end of the world.”

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This interview below is Part Two of a series I’m doing with my go-to Mom Advice Friend Meredith, a La Leche League facilitator and parenting coach who also co-pilots our In Tending gatherings on Zoom with me.

In this conversation, we focus on living in alignment with our values as a way of streamlining our parenting in the K-12 years.

I will also get to discuss the notion of parenting and teaching from a heart-centered place as it pertains to supporting our neurodivergent kids in K-12 with Kate Lynch of today (Thurs 5/22) at 1pm EST.

It is always a privilege to get to support this community of caregivers. To hear more about what other kinds of support we need in the K-12 years, I hope you’ll read on.

ON ENTERING THE K-12 YEARS

Ryan: So, at the time that we’re recording this, your four school-age kids are on a school break, and they are all at home with you. Yet we’re having this lengthy Zoom call between friends.

Please tell us, Meredith, what is your secret? What’s the secret to raising four school-age kids without losing all sense of self and sanity?

Meredith: I mean, them being on break just means less driving for me, honestly.

Ryan: You do do a lot of driving. Luckily, you also call me a lot from the road! Just an example of the juggling you do on the regular.

So, for the record, can you list off kids and ages?

Meredith: Elliot just went to kindergarten. Dahlia is in third grade. Ethan is in sixth grade, which is the beginning of middle school at our school. And Alice is in ninth grade, which is the first year of high school.

Ryan: All four kids are at an independent school in Riverdale, a part of NYC that is home to some very fancy families and schools. But you don’t live there, which is why you’re always driving. And you’re more likely to rock ripped jeans and Doc Martens than a Prada purse and Louboutins. So I’m curious as to how you ended up choosing this school. Because one big community-related challenge for parents of K-12 kids is this one, right? Figuring out where we and our kids fit in, school-wise.

For some families, they land in a school community not by choice but due to other factors, like housing insecurity or a partner’s job, and need to make it work. For others, they may have more freedom to select the neighborhood in which their zoned school is located, or to participate in school choice or charter lotteries, or to decide between public or private, at some point in their parenting journey.

So let’s start there. How did you end up at this school? And what makes yours workable for you?

WHAT MAKES A K-12 SCHOOL WORKABLE?

Meredith: Being a public school teacher, I was all set to send my kids there. But then we read an article in the New York Times that was written by the former head of school for where my kids are now, and we liked what he had to say about education, and the school’s philosophy. So when we had the opportunity to apply, through a free diversity program that sort of walked us through and had our back through the application process, we moved schools. Because my kids are Mexican-American, as a part of the process, we had to submit my husband's birth certificate to show that yes, they really are diverse. And we had to repeat that for our three other children, who also attend the school now.

I am incredibly relieved that we did, because at this particular school, I'm able to push where pushing is needed. The commitment to difficult discussions is very real. It is not perfect, but it is very much a place where I feel like I can grow, my family can grow, and the school can grow.

One of the values of the school is outdoor education and stewardship, for example, so kindergarteners spend all day Friday, rain or shine, outdoors in the park along the Hudson River. There’s this sense that they are becoming stewards of something so much bigger than their tiny 5-year-old selves. For us, it feels like, “Yes! That right there, this is why we’re here.”

Still, though, it can be hard. We ask ourselves if it is still workable every single year before we sign the school contract for the next year. But “yes” has been the answer so far.

Ryan: Now, you've had four kids go through kindergarten, so four very different kids in the same environment. What do you think are the constants, and what do you think are the variables, when it comes to beginning your K-12 journey with your kid?

Meredith: These years come with some funny tensions, between the individuals in the community and the community itself. Kids are learning to be community members, and yet at parent meetings, parents will push back on this or that community practice.

I’m always amused when admin is sort of like, “Yeah, but you choose to send your kids here, and this is the way we do it.” Like, we get that your kid will only eat plain bagels, and we’ll figure that out, but we’re not going to start serving plain bagels if that’s not what we do here.

In K-12, parents are coming to understand that a school is a place that is allowed to set some expectations and non-negotiables – and they as parents are also allowed to do that.

Ryan: I think that that's something that's really important to highlight. I have seen situations in schools where you have ten different parents and they want ten different things out of the school. And I have seen schools that try to be ten different things to those ten different parents – typically private schools where parents are paying customers – and inevitably, nine of them are really dissatisfied.

I've also seen schools that do what you just described. They say, “Look, we may not be right for every family and we may not be right for you. We are, however, about something. And we are a school for people who are also about that thing.”

Sometimes that thing is a set of secular values. Sometimes it’s a set of religious values. And sometimes, real talk, it’s about the cult of capitalism, about manufacturing privilege and maintaining it for your family, with everything at the school being organized toward that end, which can feel gross.

In any case, the school is about something, and they get to be about it. And at any given time you might have five parents that are sort of upset about that, and maybe two will leave. But there are usually also five parents that are like, “Yeah, this is what we signed up for.”

So ironically, schools that do less to please everyone end up pleasing more people, because they're doing what a good parent does. Which is to say, they’re comfortable with saying, “This is what we do around here and this is your part in it. We’re open to your ideas, but we’re not going to completely change direction simply because someone here is having a tantrum.”

I see this divide happening in families at this age and stage, too. Some are getting ripped apart by the different demands of their children’s schedules. They’re losing the weekday dinners and lazy Sunday mornings that used to stitch them back together after long days apart. In other families, there’s a different vibe, in which adults say, “There is gonna be some baseline thing that we're about, and everybody gets to express that in their own way, but not at the expense of the thing that we're about.”

Meredith: I think that comes through so much from my kids’ school. It's very clear there that you will hear the word no from time to time, because what's right for you may not be right for our community, and your individual goal may not serve this particular community at this time.

For example, this is the first year that there have been no cell phones allowed anywhere on any of the campuses of this school. The school said, “Here's the research. We're not basing this on our whim today. We know that this is the right move. Join us or don't. It's gonna go into effect next year.” That was new to a lot of parents. Some did leave. But the rationale was that the new rule would give something to kids and families, even if it was also removing other options.

CARING FOR THE WHOLE VS. CATERING TO THE INDIVIDUAL

Meredith: I think when you are at the head of a family with so many different needs, this is also necessary. It’s easy to default to solving for “How do I help this individual kid?” But in reality it is often easier to make things work when we look at the collective and ask, “How can we help all of us?”

For example, connection is a value in our family. It’s our job to figure out how this looks when you're five, how it looks when you're nine, here's how it looks when you're 15. If you’re nine, does the fact that you want to go do tae kwon do four times a week serve our family connection? Or is it standing in the way? If it's standing in the way, we need to do something about it. Does the fact that you are 15 years old and want to be on your laptop 24/7 serve connection, or hinder it? Same deal.

Ryan: I am with you. I think that understanding also comes from us being educators who know that even when you’re designing a lesson that feels right for the majority of your students, there's still often gonna be three kids in the back that are wailing, “What? Why?” But you learn that that’s okay. Because tomorrow, you’ve got something planned that they’re gonna love.

So, even before I had a kid, I had a lot of practice with saying, “You get to not like this choice. That’s not threatening to me. It’s cool. We’re cool.” And, at the same time, teachers also get a lot of practice with saying, “We’re also not changing the current plans based on your dislike of them. We’re taking your feedback into consideration for the next set of plans.”

I wonder if this is part of the work of caregiving in the K-12 years too – developing a tolerance at different ages and stages for kids to have autonomy in terms of how they feel as individuals about your decisions, but without changing the decisions themselves, if those decisions are grounded in a skillful understanding of what the whole group needs.

Otherwise, I feel like you’d just constantly be paralyzed or frustrated. Like, “Well, this kid doesn't wanna go to the beach, so I guess none of us are going to the beach!” That serves no one.

I also think developing this tolerance for others’ discomfort helps us as adults to create a space and schedule that works for us. Among mothers of K-12 kids who are newly in full-time school, I’m seeing more and more this energy of, “No, I will not be canceling my new pottery class so that you can do two more days of tae kwon do.” I love that for us.

CARING FOR OURSELVES

Ryan: At the same time, including our own wants and needs in the equation is another step that sometimes gets skipped for some parents as they’re adjusting to the K-12 years. There are so many fun things that kids can do, and yet some parents aren’t yet making sure that they too get to do some fun things.

And I get it. Sometimes there's so many competing demands that it feels like, “Well, I don't wanna introduce my own demands into the situation, 'cause that's just gonna make solving this particular problem harder.” But if we continuously neglect our needs, then that makes life harder in the long run.

I see that you do a really good job of being flexible and willing to support all four kids in their endeavors, Meredith. You do do a fair bit of driving them around to their different things. But as we’ve said, you're also talking to me while you're driving around. And you do a pretty good job of still centering the things that are important to you as an individual, and tolerating the fact that sometimes that is going to impact your children–one or all.

So, how do you do that? How do you, as a mother of four, continue to make space for things that are important to you?

Meredith: I think a non-negotiable for me is — and people are probably gonna have opinions about this – I often tell my children, I don't work for you. I am an entire person all on my own. That doesn't change. I choose to be your mom and I choose to do a lot of things for you, but you're not my boss. I get to make choices and so do you. We are in relationship together.

This is also something I say as a La Leche League facilitator, because this really begins in the newborn years. This is a partnership. There's two of you in this nursing relationship, or three if you have twins, or whatever. When it stops working for any of the parties involved, it's time to re-evaluate. That could be them. But it could also be you. Because you do not exist only to serve your children.

That is a really, really important start to our relationships with our kids. For my youngest, when it is assumed that I am going to listen to the music that my five-year-old wants to listen to in the backseat while I’m driving him around, and nothing else, there's something off there. But I can teach him that we can make a compromise and make a playlist together.

I also now have a fifteen-year-old who finished an exam at 1:30, while I was in a writing circle. I texted her, “I’ll be there at two.” The expectation is that she’ll find something to make the waiting doable for her. And thus her response back was sort of the opposite of entitlement. “Can't wait to hear about writing circle, I'm gonna be at the library.”

So, in addition to valuing connection, there’s also this year-by-year development of respecting autonomy on all levels in the family. That is also a learning process. That's the work that I get to do as a parent. I get to say, “Here's who I am, here's what makes up me, and here's what I really hold onto and want the world to see.” And that world includes my children.

So far it seems to be working – not perfectly, but like a conversation that never stops.

Ryan: What I'm hearing is that to get that sense of autonomy and space for yourself, you're putting in some time upfront to create that, and to teach into it with all your kids. It doesn’t just happen. It starts with the five-year-old that's like, “Why can't I listen to my own music all the time?” Which is very much my own five-year-old right now. At that age and stage, it’s about being sort of being a broken record and saying, over and over, “You're not the only person in the car. You're not the only person in the car. You're not the only person in the car.” It takes fifteen years of explicit teaching to make that fifteen-year-old who has learned to say, “Enjoy your writing class!”

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO COLLABORATE IN YOUR OWN OPPRESSION

Ryan: I’d like to pivot to talking about how sane and yet how counter-cultural your approach is, Meredith, when it comes to thinking about how mothers of large families are supposed to feel and function. And conversely, how mothers of only children, like me, are supposed to feel and function. Because in some ways, the script of maternal self-negation is the same no matter how many kids you have, and in some ways, there’s an hierarchy there that I find really problematic.

One thing I notice is that people assume that when my child is struggling to share, or being assertive when it comes to telling kids how and what he wants to play, stem from a lack of pushback in our home, a sense that he’s doing it because he’s “spoiled.”

In some ways, sure, it would be easier for me if we had living children that were also doing the “not the only one in the car” labor alongside me. But in my mind, we owe that to my son regardless. These only-child assumptions suggest to me that many people carry around the idea that parents don’t have strong desires of their own, at least ones that would contradict or compete with their children’s desires.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m completely okay with telling my kid no, and playing my own music in the car. But I also know that it’s developmentally appropriate for all children to struggle with sharing. And my child is neurodivergent, so there are some aspects of social interaction and cognitive flexibility that come along with that. They’re his factory settings. There’s nothing inherently wrong with our child or our family, and yet we’re constantly subjected to the toxic notion that parents of only children should have more kids whether or not it is physically or financially wise to do so, so that we can “fix him” or better align with someone else’s idea of “enough.”

The flipside of this is something I see when I’m spending time with mothers who have three or more children. I never feel this from you, but sometimes, from them, I feel that there’s an assumption that the difficulty of your parenting journey correlates primarily with the number of children you have. Or that the more children you have, the less space as a mother you get to take up in your family. Ironically, when people like this come to adult parenting spaces, they often use this narrative to justify taking up more space. There’s a sense of, “Well, I’m suffering the most! Obviously!”

I think when we leave the checklist mentality of parenting behind—which we talked about in Part One of this interview—then we have to trouble this idea that our worth as parents comes from having lots of kids who have lots of activities. And if we do that, we also have to leave behind this idea that we get to engage in this kind of self-aggrandizing martyrdom around that.

The truth I’ve learned from facilitating lots of parenting groups is that having a lot of kids is hard, and having one child with significant needs is hard too. I’ve learned that having an unplanned pregnancy, or two under two, is hard, and it is also hard to lose a pregnancy, or to conceive a child after multiple IVF attempts, or to not be able to grow your family even if you’d like to. In all of these cases, I do not think it is a foregone conclusion that a mother must lose her agency. But that narrative is so prevalent regardless.

And of course, there are structural reasons why all of these things are hard that we cannot escape. It’s not all self-created suffering. But you do not have to collaborate in your own oppression inside the four walls of your own home, inside of your own mind. I think if you live with people who do think you should erase yourself, or you expect this of yourself, then as you said, something is off, and you have to address that more directly with the people in question. Venting to friends can help you prepare for that conversation, but it’s not a substitute for that conversation.

Meredith: When I hear, “Ugh, it's so hard to be a mom,” I think, “Dude, it's hard to be a person. Full stop.” And there is a range in all of it.

EVERYONE HAS AGENCY

Meredith: That sneaky-gold-star, super-mom thing has driven me crazy forever, because the individual in me just absolutely bristles at it. What I am doing for my four kids – it’s not a “super mom” thing. It’s a Meredith thing. I am choosing to live my life in such a way that every morning I wake up and I'm like, “Wow, do I have a whole lot of choices to make.”

And some of them are real annoying. Like, I wish I didn't have to drive to school in 40 minute traffic. Sometimes I do get stuck in that, and I spin my wheels, and I'm like, “God, this traffic!” and I'm texting my friend about it. But on some days I'm able to be like, “What would I rather do, stay at home and homeschool 'em? That would be a whole ‘nother set of choices to make.”

I think what's really important for me, too, is that I have a partner in all of this who also sees nothing but options. And then also does this real annoying thing by reminding me, “You get to choose.” Which makes me think, “Yes, but I would love instructions right about now. Just tell me what I have to do so I don't have to think about it. Take the responsibility.” But he’s like, “Trust your instincts! If you wanna homeschool these kids, go ahead, that's fine.” And then in my own mind I'm like, “Yes, but what about blah blah blah blah.”

And where I land is that I don't wanna give some other things up to do that. And that is the crux of it.

Everyone has the agency to ask: as an individual person, what am I willing to participate in? What systems am I willing to be a part of, to uphold? What am I willing to actively tear down? And then to live with that.

Ryan: I wonder what it looks like when you coach other parents of school-age children through this. You’ve just gotten certified with Simplicity Parenting; could you describe what that is in a nutshell and why you were drawn to this approach?

[Meredith’s youngest son wanders in at this point, and wants to join the call. She sends him off to pack his backpack for their afternoon playdate.]

Meredith: So Simplicity Parenting is a book written by Kim John Payne, who is a psychologist and social worker who has a wealth of experience in terms of understanding child development, family systems and education. He talks a lot about keeping all of the systems in which we are raising children very simple, hence Simplicity Parenting.

I’ve dipped in and out of both the book and the philosophy ever since my oldest was about two. At first, I thought, “I don't get this at all,” because as a newer parent I was looking for answers. “What am I supposed to be doing? What's the right move here?” And that's not necessarily what this provides.

I'm still not gonna agree with every single thing in it, but it provides a way of thinking about things that feels more supportive and helpful to what I'm doing now.

Ryan: What is that way of thinking about things, and how does it change your parenting practice to think in this way?

For example, you told me recently about a client who is really struggling with the sense that they can and should “have it all.” They have a young child, they are trying to balance things at work, they want to have a perfectly clean home, they want to host beautiful dinners with their friends … and they are finding that they just don't have enough time and energy to do all of those things. They felt really sad about that. So they came to you.

How do you reframe that dilemma, within the Simplicity Parenting framework? How do you view that kind of suffering and skillfully work with it?

Meredith: I think it first comes down to asking a lot of questions that amount to holding up a mirror. Some people are ready to see what they're saying about “having it all” and how, if this were their best friend, they would be like, “No, no, no, you don't need to do all that. You're doing too much.” Other people need time. Sometimes, people can’t quite see what their values and their choices even are.

That kind of conversation is nuanced. It’s about getting to the heart of what is important to you over time. What kind of person-slash-parent do you want to be? What would make you feel confident and successful?

Even words like “confident” and “successful” are so loaded–you get a picture in your head–so the work is also dismantling that picture, and painting your own picture. What do I look like as a version of myself that feels successful and confident?”

Ryan: It sounds like that work is probably very appropriate to do either for the first time, or as kind of a self check-in, as your children enter these K-12 years. People with kids over five have been parents for a while. At this point, it's an established part of your identity. But maybe you've lost touch with other aspects of your identity by now. Maybe you need to revisit what some of your values are, because real life has challenged and transformed some of them. Maybe you need to grieve some of the selves that are gone for good.

Relatedly, that is very much what we’re talking about in this week’s subscriber chat — not becoming “the obsessed exes to our former selves,” as you hilariously put it.

This all adds simplicity because you're only making choices based on who you are now, versus simultaneously trying to be something you were. But it’s not simple emotionally. Having a coach like you would certainly help.

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WHAT IS YOUR WHY?

Meredith: Right. And it goes so far as to have this lofty ideal of then being a little bit cycle breaker-ish, in terms of teaching our kids that way of being as well. So that hopefully, they are growing up with this values-based reflection just being sort of ingrained. It’s about creating a space in which it is my job to say, “Here's why I do it this way. Tell me about your way. This is my why. What is your why?”

Ryan: Yes. We need communities in which there can be different whys, but there’s no sense of someone’s “ought” overriding someone else’s.

Two people sharing their “why” and “how” is also very different from a situation I think many of us find ourselves in when we’re talking to other parents, even our own co-parent, where one of us is talking about engaging in a task that’s connected to a deeply-held set of values, and another parent is taking action from a place that is harried, or reactive, in which the why is conspicuously missing.

Meredith: Yes. And when we feel that lack as parents, I think we can get really almost defensive about that. Because someone’s holding up the mirror and showing us where our “why” is missing, right?

Ryan: Right. Going back to the example of playing travel soccer in Part One of this conversation–that could be something that feels very aligned for you and your family. But so often I hear, “Ugh, I don't know why we're doing travel soccer. My kid really wanted to, and when I pushed back, they had a tantrum, and … and now we're doing travel soccer.”

I think that allowing a tendency towards non-confrontation to dominate your life is both really understandable and really self-defeating. We live in a capitalist patriarchy. If we’re women, somebody's always gonna be mad at us, and want more and more from us, until we are all liberated, together.

I would imagine in your house, with four children and a partner, somebody is mad at you all the time. Elliot is mad at you right now, in fact, because he wants to hang out with you, and you’re talking to me instead, because you value connection. His older sister is mad because she didn’t want to help him get his snack while you were talking to me, and I heard you tell her that she had to, because she has that role to play within your family’s system of values.

But as we’ve established, it’s okay to make one or all of the kids mad. Discomfort or displeasure is not danger. Kids can survive it. And we can survive them feeling it. Sanity at this age sometimes looks like simply breathing through someone else’s displeasure in the face of you flexing your agency and centering your values, and letting that be. Then eventually, letting it pass. It’s not about always keeping everyone “calm,” including yourself, in the moment. It’s about playing a long game in which you are ultimately at peace with yourself, because you are living in integrity with your values, and showing your kids how to do that, too.

Meredith: All of that. It’s okay for them to be mad. It’s also about acknowledging the fact that sometimes I'm the one who’s mad, because like, what are you yelling about? I want some peace and quiet. But here we are.

[Elliott arrives, with his snack bag packed.]

Elliott: I packed two bananas, two cheese sticks and two Gatorades.

Ryan: What else is in there? Like, what do you value, Elliot? What's going in your backpack? Because, you know, you’re the one that has to carry it around.

Elliott: I also packed two oranges, because I want to stay healthy.

Ryan: Healthy is a great value to have. Stay ahead of that scurvy, Elliott!

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– Meredith Rodriguez

I first met during one of the most difficult seasons of my life as a parent. I had left the classroom for what I imagined would be a short sabbatical when my son was three. But then, we learned, he could not tolerate a full day of daycare without melting down or lashing out. On many days, I’d pick him up before lunch, and then head back home to attempt some version of home-schooling with him for the rest of the day. The possibility of returning to paid work became an ever-vanishing mirage. This Substack was created in the cracks and crevices of that year; I wrote whenever he napped.

Meredith was the head of the parents’ association at that first preschool, and over that year, she reached out to me many times to offer support and care. Like me, she was an educator who had taken time off to care for her four kids. Like me, she was also bursting with creative energy, and the desire to build community with other down-to-earth adults who were moving through tough care seasons.

When I decided to begin hosting Zoom meet-ups to connect caregivers who subscribe to In Tending, the choice to ask Meredith to co-facilitate these sessions with me felt like a no-brainer. She’s run La Leche League groups, taught in K-12 classrooms, raised four kind and creative children, currently aged five to fifteen, and also plays a meaningful caregiving role for her partner’s parents, who live nearby. She’s got every stage of the caregiving lifespan covered. Yet she manages to (a) make it look easy and (b) stay pretty humble about it. Truly the unicorn of collaborators.

In this conversation — which is truly a conversation, rather than a traditional interview — Meredith and I talk about what she’s learned about building communities that include and support new parents.

I hope you’ll read on for Meredith’s insights on:

• Learning to parent in a way that is guided by our own intentions vs. a drive to meet external expectations

• The surprising commonalities between Alcoholics Anonymous and La Leche League

• Discerning the difference between what we can control and what we need to accept as caregivers

• A reframe that can help us feel less competitive with other parents

• How to deal with negative feedback from your kid’s pre-K teachers

• The ways in which “bounce back culture” can discourage us from finding real community

P.S. Be sure to scroll to the end for an invitation to join us and other caregivers in the birth-to-five trenches for an open discussion on Zoom in June!

In the meantime, let’s get into it!

WHAT DO NEW PARENTS NEED?

Ryan: So, you've been a parent for 15 years. I've been a parent for six. We've both been educators for many years as well, so we’ve built communities for kids and families besides our own.

What kind of community were you seeking when you had your first kid? What did you need?

Meredith: We were among the first of our friends to have kids. I didn't really know what I was doing. So the experience of having my mom, who parented through the La Leche League (LLL) in the early eighties, come and show me some things was helpful. She was there to remind me, “Your only job is to feed the baby.”

I've been in both AA and La Leche League support group spaces now, and in both, those little slogans that stick in your head, that keep you going, are everything. One from LLL is:“This is where you're gonna see a range of normal.” That idea — a range of normal — has stuck with me forever.

Just like AA, LLL also has their version of “take what you like, and leave the rest.” And there is a similar ethos of radical acceptance. We’re all doing the same thing. We’re all doing it near each other and together. Our process will overlap at points, and it will be very separate at points.

That space was really helpful in encouraging me to trust my own instincts. It acknowledged that we're all just kind of doing this very natural-ish sort of a thing in a very unnatural sort of system. And so, how do we live that out? You have to do you, but it gave examples of ways that it could be done.

Ryan: So for somebody who has never been to a La Leche League meeting, what is the structure and the range of parenting experiences a new parent could expect to see? Especially in a diverse, liberal NYC-area community like ours?

Meredith: We are seeing everyone from people who are thinking about having a child – either by getting pregnant, or adopting, or whatever – all the way through people who have 5 and 6 year olds who’ve done extended breastfeeding and are ready to stop. An incredibly large range.

The structure is, basically, we give an opening welcome. We explain, “Here's what we do here, and here's our norms. We're gonna share the floor, and each person is not gonna take up too much space. You're welcome to share your experiences, but we're not really here to give advice for other people. Just let us know what's working for you, and what you're struggling with.” Then at the end, it's very much a play group. There's always babies and siblings, all welcome.

We meet in library meeting rooms, church libraries, synagogues, people's houses, parks—wherever we can find a space, basically. And it's also gone a little bit more virtual. Again, sort of like AA, you can always find an online meeting, so location doesn’t matter as much at this point. But as an international organization, we're really trying to figure out how to maintain that long-term connection between people in a community.

For example, after this interview, I'm heading to a friend's house, and she also has a 15 year old. We met at a La Leche League meeting when our kids were 3 months old. Since then we’ve made different choices, instilled different values and rhythms and norms for our families – for example, this friend that I'm going to see, she ended up homeschooling and moving to a very remote location – but when everything else is taken away, we’re still there for each other. That’s something really incredible and hard to find–long term friends for both us and for our kids and family.

Ryan: That is rare. What did that teach you about maintaining the friendships you make in the baby stage?

Meredith: It helps to meet in a group that is a source of both acceptance and support, one that sets people up to parent in a way that is intentional, that comes from what you want to do and what you feel is right. Rather than parenting using a sort of checklist mentality, where you’re meeting everyone else’s external expectations.

Ryan: As we both know, that checklist has no end. After you become pregnant, then it's about, What kind of birth are you having? Then breastfeeding becomes yet another test of your gender performance. The next test might be about assessing how adorably and photogenically you dress the baby, and then it becomes how you are choosing childcare or maintaining your home. It’s endless.

So with people who are in this pre-parenthood and postpartum place, it feels very important and liberatory to begin the work of turning inward and creating our own definitions of success, our own set of values and benchmarks, rather than constantly trying to keep up with other people’s expectations.

I also think this can set the stage for people to relate to their children differently, right? Somebody who's parenting with a checklist in mind for their child is a very different kind of parent than somebody who's parenting in a way where things are a bit more open-ended, where they’re teaching the child to attune to their own inner voice.

Meredith: There is something so comforting and grounding in that. In being around other people who understand that parenting is a journey, one on which you only have to decide what you're doing right now. You don't have to think about tomorrow. You don't have to think about a week from now. You don't have to think about when this kid is ten. Just right now.

Ryan: That also feels another potential point of connection to AA, and its focus on One Step At A Time. As well as the Serenity Prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept what I can't change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Discerning the difference between what I can control and what I need to accept is something that you and I talk a lot about with parenting, too. As educators who have worked with a lot of children, we know there’s some stuff about caregiving that just is. Regardless of how well you're performing or not performing each item on the checklist. Regardless of how much money you have, how many barre workouts you are or are not doing, how good of a planner you are. All you can do is accept certain things. But then there's also parts where you have agency, agency that you may not always see sometimes.

Now that you've gone through the newborn-to-2 stage four times, what patterns do you notice in terms of what requires acceptance when you have a new baby, and where we may have more agency?

Meredith: You have to accept that you cannot get away from connection with your child or children. You can't escape it. You can try. But whatever happens, the connection’s just gonna be a different version of connection. And having that connection with someone that you're in charge of is really really tough. Because you feel so much responsibility for it. I think that's really hard for a lot of people. Many parents are quite shocked by what that actually is like in reality. There's no “easier” way to do it.

What are the parts that you can be more flowy about? Basically everything else.

Of course, sometimes that connection doesn't come naturally or easily, for a lot of us! Having four kids, it even now happens more naturally and easier for me with some of my kids than with others. But there's not a lot that you can do as a parent, if you start from connection, that you can mess up irrevocably.

Ryan: I can see how, if you hold this view, then relating to other new parents becomes easier, less competitive. You no longer have to feel so defensive about the specific choices you’re making. We’re all just trying to tend these sacred connections, with our own unique children, the best way we know how. That looks different for everyone, but the intention is often the same underneath.

Meredith: Yes. Right now, I’m enjoying a kind of second adolescence, figuring out who I am now that my youngest is in kindergarten—what I want to wear now, who I want to attract as a friend. But that’s built atop a foundation of understanding myself as a mother. I think when you have someone with a kid in that newborn to two phase, they're not there yet, right? That parent is not quite on solid footing in terms of this new identity. It can be almost like middle school, where we’re all trying to decide: Am I like them? Or am I like them? You don't understand yet that all of those groups are actually flexible and fluid at some point.

Ryan: No surprise, then, that as we cultivate our own community here at In Tending, it’s our goal to offer support for folks in all stages of caregiving, in that same space of radical acceptance and support. Because everyone, not just breastfeeding parents of newborns or Buddhist monks, deserves to have that kind of community.

THE PRESCHOOL YEARS

Ryan: I'd love to talk a little bit about the preschool years, ages 2-5 or so. In a way, they’re an extension of the newborn years, and in a way, they’re an introduction to the K-12 years.

When you have a preschooler you may still be breastfeeding them, or they may be well on their way to making their own PB&J sandwiches. Or both. You may still be in that space of like, “Holy cow, this is really intense and new,” and you may have some days where you think, “Hey, I’m really getting the hang of this!” Toddlers are not as fragile as babies, which can be a relief, but emotionally, they can be more demanding, which can be hard when you’re already sleep-deprived.

For a lot of parents, this age and stage also involves a transition to preschool. This means it’s the first time parents are getting substantive feedback on their child from someone outside of their families. Sometimes, that’s a positive experience. Oh, so and so is such a great artist! Sometimes, that involves getting a lot of feedback about how your child is not fitting the mold or measuring up in some way.

For me, as the parent of a neurodivergent child who did not fit the mold, those years were really intense.

It was during these years that we met, though, luckily, which made them better.

Meredith: Yes!

Ryan: To be fair, the school where we met was very open-minded and lovely in many ways. It had a diverse parent body, diverse staff, and a great nature playground. Everything a teacher-mom like me would want, on paper. However, on many days, the messaging still came down to, “Well, we still need him to put the tasteful wooden beads on the string, and he's not doing it. And we don't like that. Will you tell him he needs to do as he’s told?”

Fortunately, as an educator, I could say, “You know, I think this might be a can’t, not a won’t. He may have some fine motor issues getting in the way of him accessing your tasteful wooden beads activity. Why don't we have him evaluated to see if he needs occupational therapy?” It was, in many ways, like any other teacher-to-teacher conversation. And lo and behold, he had fine motor issues and qualified for free occupational therapy, provided by the school district.

For other parents, however, including my own partner, hearing that your kid is different, in a way that teachers consider negative, feels so shaming, and so isolating, especially if you don’t know of any other parents that are getting this kind of feedback.

I'm wondering how you’ve moved through this age and stage, having had four children go through their preschool years and being a leader at our kids’ school.

What did you need from preschool, in the beginning? What did you get? What did you not get? What are some areas of unmet need that you think remain for people with kids in this age bracket?

Meredith: I think there's this bridge from the birth-to-two stage to the preschool years where it gets real, right? You have a more developed identity as a parent. During that time, you’re asking yourself, “What kind of a system is my family going to operate under?” And then that system is tested when you put them in preschool.

I know a whole lot of preschools, and I know zero perfect preschools. In my experience there's no way of escaping the tension that comes when you hand your child over to a different institution. There will be boundaries there that you bump up against.

I have this very distinct memory of being told when my oldest was in preschool, that first week or two, “That's not how you're supposed to do it.” That was a very core memory. I remember where I was standing, even. And I remember being like, “Okay, that's not how we do it here. Big difference.”

Then I remember asking myself: “Do I want to be here? Do I want my kid here? If so, is this difference something I can accept? Is that something that I can talk to my kid about and say, ‘Hey, In different places, we do things differently’?” I had the kind of three year old who I could absolutely have that conversation with, and it felt like a good conversation to have. I was also able, as a parent, to hear what that other person was saying, and not take it as, “You're terrible if you're not doing this right.”

I think that there will always be those moments. We can't escape them. So the important part there is how we receive them, based on how kind of solid we are inside.

I think that where that work, the work of becoming solid inside, is really necessary in birth to two. We need for families and parents to understand where to look for information, to know the wide menu available, and to be making solid decisions, all before they go into an educational setting where they're going to have to receive all of this feedback. That way, you can think, “I agree with that. I don't agree with that.” We also need to know when it’s time to say, “Thanks for your time, this isn’t the right place.”

Of course, sometimes this choice isn't available for a lot of people, even though it should be. I ended up at that particular school because I had to pick up my own class as a teacher at 8am, and literally could find no other place to put my kid. I had to make it work, which is how I came to the understanding of, “Well, then, you're going to get all of me, and all of my kid. And we're gonna have a lot of conversations, educator to educator as well as parent to educator. And our kid will change in the way that we want them to change, and in the way that they want to change–and, you're gonna change in the way that you receive that, in a lot of ways.”

So I do think that the idea that you raise your kid, and you hold on to that agency even when they go into other settings, is incredibly important. Not just for you, your family, your kid, but literally for all of us. Like, I want your kid to stay your kid, because he brings something to the table that no one else can. Same with my kids, same with everybody's kids.

Thank goodness, at that time that was really welcomed and understood. I've been in other settings later, in that same kid’s educational journey, where that was not the case, and I was fighting against a brick wall. But for all involved, I think that discourse has to be expected.

We need for families and parents to understand where to look for information, to know the wide menu available, and to be making solid decisions, all before they go into an educational setting where they're going to have to receive all of this feedback. That way, you can think, “I agree with that. I don't agree with that.” We also need to know when it’s time to say, “Thanks for your time, this isn’t the right place.”

– Meredith Rodriguez

Ryan: I think that respectful, open discourse is what makes a school community ultimately workable. Heck, it’s what makes all kinds of relationships workable. By which I mean, you have to be able to ask yourself: can there be dialogue here? And then out of that dialogue can there be movement?

Meredith: Right.

Ryan: So in this case, a preschool parent needs to first be able to ask themselves, “Is this teacher, or this school, even receptive to feedback from me as a parent?” Because some teachers want all of the feedback, and some schools are incredibly accountable to their parent body. And at some schools, the principal doesn't ever pick up the phone, and in some classrooms, the teacher is really sort of a benevolent dictator, and parents are seen as foot soldiers who are there to carry out their commands. In these communities, any other kind of power relationship, any exchange between seeming equals, is really not welcome.

Obviously the latter situation is very tricky. If “our way or the highway” is the entire school’s approach, it can be difficult to have your child there. That said, I think it's inevitable that if you are not homeschooling your child, you will encounter many styles of holding power, even in very progressive institutions, that are unlike your own. Because most of us are products of a culture in which hierarchical power relationships is taught and encouraged and reinforced, and in which respectful discourse between equals is unfortunately less so.

So, in addition to asking themselves whether school can provide a place for respectful discourse and a sense of meeting parents halfway, parents, I imagine, may still need a third space where they get to process some of the challenges or questions that are coming up with their child’s school experience. Ideally, they’d have access to a community of fellow caregivers who can help them to think all of this through without really telling them what to do.

For example, in recovery communities, which we were talking about before, people will never explicitly tell you, “Yes, get divorced,” or “No, don’t quit your job.” They’ll simply remind you that your intention is to stay sober, and it’s your job to decide how to support that intention in your life.

In this case, that community of caregivers would remind you that your intention is to care for and connect to your child, and it’s your job to decide how to support that, and where school fits in.

These communities do exist, but in my experience, they’re rare treasures, rather than being something everyone can easily find and access.

Meredith: I don't know that I realized how important it would be for me as a parent to have multiple groups, multiple communities to rely on, during this age and stage.

I think especially here in this time and place, the sort of expectation is to find a school community that is your primary community. I have not found that. That was one of the reasons why I became the parent association leader. I knew that people would be looking for that. And, I concluded that is not a realistic expectation, to be honest with you. I'm super glad it brought us together. And I have met a couple of my other really good friends through my kids’ school. But they weren’t through the parents’ association. They were mostly made during those bristly parts, when I was feeling that sense of, “Yes, I'm having that same situation, too. How are you dealing with that? What's going on there?” If they were in different classrooms, we became friends by asking ourselves, “Is this a school culture thing? What's going on? What do we wish it was? And how do we deal with that?”

School is not my comfy place, and I’ve come to accept that. It's not that for my kids, either. And that's okay. We don't always have to be in our comfy place. The question is now: what community do we need outside of this school community to be able to be fortified, going into that situation? And what are we hoping to get out of it?

Ryan: I feel such relief to hear you say that. Even now, I’m realizing I still really long for my son's school community to help me to connect with other likeminded adults. But I agree that it feels as though that's more of a nice-to-have that arises spontaneously, rather than a realistic and set expectation to bring to all schools.

What you’re describing feels bit more like the set of expectations you’d bring to a workplace. You know you’re going to find some people you enjoy and connect with. But it won’t be all the time, and it won’t be with everyone. You also know that personal joy and connection may not be the main reason why you’re there.

In a way, the relationship between parent organizations and schools is very business-like. Often parents are understood to be primarily supporting the structure of power, either financially or in other ways, to sort of extend the logistical and financial capacity of the school, and to provide more resources for children.

Of course, sometimes parent associations can also support or convene a dialogue. For example, you supported me and a group of parents who wanted to push for more outdoor time at our school, and found a way to bring it up tactfully to the director. But even those conversations are primarily focused on making the community experience for children great. Not adults.

I wonder, if we knew our kids’ school wasn't going to fill our social vacuum as adults, if there might be a little bit more motivation with parents of children in this age group to create and sustain that elsewhere.

Meredith: Absolutely. And it is possible to find groups that want to do that outside of school. Library storytime, for example, can be a place where that happens, I think, or the playground you go to on a weekend morning. Back in the day, when my oldest two were toddlers, we created our own through meetup.com, and it was a really, really supportive group.

It’s not accidental, though, that when our kids went to kindergarten, we disbanded.

Ryan: Yes. It’s sad when that happens! Though I think with these containers, it's okay for them to be ephemeral. When we think about scaffolds in learning or building, we don't need the scaffolds forever. The scaffolds can come off when we've reached a certain level of sturdiness. But we can’t deny that when our kids are in preschool, we really need them.

I also want to point out that moms are not the only ones who need this. Male partners may even need it more! And they too can be the ones to create these inroads where they don’t exist. It’s not just up to moms to cook community up from scratch during the preschool years.

For example, my husband really needed a community when we became parents, and sought it out even before I did. He joined and became a facilitator of a dad's group. And fortunately for me, the kinds of dads that want to get together and talk about their feelings, unsurprisingly, have the most awesome partners. Those partners created their own literal sister group. And those became the people that got me through my preschool years, and that are still really walking beside me.

Now that my son is in kindergarten and we’ve moved, those scaffolds have come down – in part because our facilitator herself has gone back to teaching – but the stability they’ve provided remains a part of me and I think it always will.

WHAT STANDS BETWEEN AMERICAN PARENTS AND COMMUNITY?

Ryan: What gets in the way of everyone creating this kind of community, one that can hold new parents? You and I have talked about the fact that one common enemy of this kind of connection, in America at least, is busyness.

Meredith: Yes.

Ryan: Sometimes our lives are busy due to unavoidable factors – someone is sick, we’re moving, there’s a new member of the family. But sometimes our lives are busy because we’re still invested in a checklist approach to parenting that puts individual activities, often related to achievement, ahead of connection. The house is a mess, we're redoing our kitchen. So and so is doing travel sports, so we're gone all weekend.

In all fairness, I think many people put so many items on their checklists because they are seeking a deep sense of groundedness and belonging, and they want that for their children. But it feels like many individual pursuits and activities don’t actually scratch that itch. I think people don’t even always realize that simply building authentic connections would scratch it, for free.

Of course, there are people who do get it, who are “group people” like you and me. For example, I have so many teachers in the perinatal grief groups I facilitate. And it's not because only teachers are losing pregnancies! It's because teachers understand that when you get hurt, you need to heal in community, and when you heal in community, it’s really helpful to have a set of norms and someone to hold the space. They’re reaching out for the right medicine, and it’s so gratifying to see it working.

But for other modern parents, sometimes it feels like you have to put “community” on a spoon and make airplane sounds to get people to feel excited about taking the medicine. They’re suspicious, they’re resistant, they’re avoidant. I have all these other things to do.

Like you, I don’t like to be prescriptive when it comes to parenting, but I will say that I think we all deserve to have the necessary support to do the job. People have had a lot of community for millennia, up until very recently, and it is a vital support. Community really does deliver in that it will often make you feel better about all the stuff that you currently feel bad about. You can’t always say that about a kitchen remodel.

Meredith: In other countries, they do a lot of things right, in terms of conveying this message to new parents. They send the nurse to your house. They hook you up with a support group right away, whether you connect with it or not. The expectation is there.

In America, we have bounce-back culture. There’s a sense that you'll get back to what you were doing, and you'll just do this, too. That is false. You do not just do this too.

If you're expecting to be the same as you were, and be this new person, then you don’t go searching for community. You think, if I can just find the right planner, or if I can just find the right childcare situation, I can do it. You almost have this idea that you can—or you have to—remove yourself from the whole parenting gig and like, put it on autopilot, so you can go back to what you were doing before. But that's not life.

Ryan: Yes. It's a whole new way of living. It’s not possible to go back. So really where your agency lies is in deciding to support the person that you’re becoming, or to not support her. Community is one shape that support can take.

Meredith: Exactly.

Ryan: Related to what you were saying, too, about bounce-back culture – I think that the shock of new parenthood is still going on in the preschool years. People may even think in their minds, before they have a new baby, “Okay, well, this will be a big change, for one or two years, and then I'll go back to work when my kid goes to school, and then I'll bounce back to my prior body, and, and…” But it doesn’t always work out like that. And so the preschool years bring an unexpected wave of pressure we place on ourselves that isn’t necessarily even present when our kids are first born.

Speaking for myself, when I put my son in school, I had very unrealistic expectations of how much exercising and writing I would do in the few hours that he was away from me. Spoiler alert: I did not do those things to the degree that I thought that I would. I had to surrender to the fact that he still needed me, and that I was still undergoing a big change to my prior movement and creative routines that would not ratchet backwards.

Now that I’ve been a mother for five years, I’m more comfortable with centering the work I do as a mother, and letting other things I do unfold around that. I don’t mean this in a sort of subservient trad-wife way. I mean that it doesn’t make pragmatic sense not to center a role that is so non-negotiable anyway. Someone else can do my paid work if I’m sick. I can skip a workout or a Substack post. But as a parent, the buck stops at me. If I choose to arrange my life in a way that doesn't acknowledge that, then things fall apart anyway. So I might as well embrace that this is my life now, and then build my community supports in accordingly.

To be clear: it’s a good life. It’s the one I longed for, before I became a mother, and when I was struggling so intensely to become one. It helps, during the tough toddler years, to remember that too.

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Interested in continuing the conversation? We are too!

As summer approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re feeling called to shift our gathering time from the evening hours (as longer days often mean later bedtimes) to the mornings (when those of us in the U.S. are more likely to have at least half-day childcare).

Subscribers who care for kids five and under are invited to join us on June 10 at 10:30am EST on Zoom to discuss the insights in this interview, and other ways in which we can build communities (here at In Tending, and IRL) that better support young children and the grownups who love them.

In the coming months, we’re hoping to host a similar July gathering for people who care for kids in grades K-12, an August gathering focused on supporting neurodivergent kids and/or adults, and a September gathering focused on those of us who care for elders. Stay tuned for more info on that!

If you’re interested in joining us for any of our upcoming summer gatherings and connecting with like-minded caregivers — people who value introspection, honesty, laughter, connection, creativity, and social justice — please fill out this form so that we can send you the Zoom link, if you haven’t already.

I want in!

Hope to see you this summer for one or all of the gatherings above!

—

Lisa Sibbett and I have a lot in common. Both of us come from generations of career caregivers, and have spent long hours tending to elderly relatives and carrying other people’s little kids around in our arms. Both of us now write about the importance of care in our newsletters. And we’re both pretty into mindfulness, too.

Yet one of the things I most admire about Lisa and her newsletter, , is the way that she speaks for an important constituency here on Substack in a way that no one else can: people who offer meaningful care to children who are not their biological kids, also known as alloparents. Or, if you prefer: Aunties.

Lisa’s readership includes extended biological family members, child-free chosen family members, 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.

I was thrilled when Lisa suggested we get together to talk about the results of her recent readers’ survey, in which Aunties told story after story about why Mother’s Day feels especially fraught for them. And because one conversation didn’t feel like enough for this topic, we’ll also be hosting a Substack Live conversation next week in advance of Mother’s Day, on Tuesday May 6 at 11amPST/2pm EST. (Click here to add it to your calendar!)

During that time, we’ll dig more deeply into Lisa’s survey results, and talk in greater detail about ways in which we might ease our suffering and that of others, on this complicated day. As someone who feels fiercely protective of the alloparents, loss parents, and infertility warriors in my life (and has done time as all three myself), I want to see all of the Aunties get their flowers this year.

Ryan: Where did you grow up? What else grows there? What was it like for you to grow there?

Lisa: I grew up in a small beach town on the Salish Sea (otherwise known as Puget Sound), in the Pacific Northwest corner of the United States. At low tide, the vast tide flats are patched with colonies of sand dollars and flattened forests of eel grass. The landscape of the Salish Sea tideflats is the landscape of my soul. I am totally at home there.

Despite the idyllic landscape, I struggled socially as a kid. I always felt at home with my parents and my five siblings and our extended family, but at school I was bullied and excluded. While I still have to work through that trauma with my therapist from time to time, I’m also weirdly grateful for my social struggles as a kid, because I learned early and the hard way to make wise choices about who you befriend. By high school, I started to figure things out, and I’m still close to many of my high school friends 30 years later.

What is your earliest memory of tending another being?

I was only two when I became a big sister, but I remember being so excited. I adored my little brother, and lovingly called him “Boo Boo.” I have a memory of pushing him in the stroller on the day our dad brought him home, but I think that’s probably a manufactured memory based on a photograph. I remember comforting him whenever we’d have a babysitter – singing and hugging him and assuring him that our parents would be back soon.

What or whom have you most loved tending since?

When I was a kid, I babysat my three younger siblings, their friends, and lots of kids around town. I wriggled out of attending Sunday School by volunteering in the church nursery as often as possible. In high school, I logged many hours nannying for the family across the street, and my older brother had his first of four children. I became a godmother in my mid-20s, and have always taken that role very seriously. In my late 20s, I was a live-in caretaker for my wonderful Grandma Jean, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve also cared for other elders in my family, as well as many beloved kids. Professionally, I’ve been a teacher in one form or another for over twenty years, and in the public sphere, I’ve been involved in community organizing for almost that long. I couldn’t say which of these care roles I have loved most – all have been essential in their season.

You and I now both write newsletters that focus on the importance of care and caregivers. As noted above, focuses on “aunties” or alloparents – people who play an essential role in the care of people to whom they’re not biologically related.

Can you tell us more about how you came to be fascinated by this topic?

I’ve often had care roles in my life, but it wasn’t until I started living in co-housing and spending several hours a week with the kids in our community that I started wrestling with what my role meant. I had recently lost multiple pregnancies. When we finally let go of having kids, there was a lot of loss and grief, but it also eventually freed up space to recognize and lean into the abundant networks of care we already had. Once I knew I wasn’t going to be a mom, I was able to start thinking more deeply about what it means to be an Auntie.

The idea for The Auntie Bulletin started as a little whisper in the mind – “What if I write a newsletter about loving other people’s children?” – and almost immediately became something I had to do. When you’re out and about in the world with other people’s children – especially if they’re not technically family – you are illegible to others. People think you must be the kids’ parent, or their aunt, or their nanny; other options don’t occur to them. In the case of male Aunties – whom I suppose we can call uncles if we must 😉 – the illegibility they experience is compounded by others’ deep suspicions about what they’re even up to.

A beautiful side-effect of writing The Auntie Bulletin is that my role has become so much more legible to myself. I had not recognized how isolated I was, and then I started this newsletter, and then suddenly I was meeting all these other Aunties who had experiences like mine! And different from mine! Amazing!

This project has led to repeated perspective shifts. I realized that Aunties like me actually have a ton in common with other alloparents, including grandparents and other extended family, step-parents, foster parents, godparents, educators, and childcare providers. Then I realized that alloparents being able to talk amongst ourselves is really important, but also that we need spaces for parents and alloparents to connect and position ourselves as members of the same team. And then I realized that the conversation about care and kinship shouldn’t just be about children but also about building loving relationships with our elders and people of all generations.

The thing keeps unfolding and expanding, and there keep being more vistas to explore.

How do you tend to your physical body, and your interior life, so that you can sustain your various care commitments?

I am a full-on introvert, easily overstimulated by light, sound, people, and anything unexpected. If I don’t come home to myself and reset often, I quickly lose my ability to show up and care for others. I’m an avid lifelong fiction reader, and function best when I can curl up and read for at least a few hours every day. As my symptoms of chronic illness have gotten worse over the past few years, I’ve also found a wonderful community of chronically ill, disabled, fat, and elderly acquaintances at the pool, and regular but time-limited interactions with my water aerobics buddies are great for my mental health.

Finally, practicing meditation for many years has made the act of coming home to my body and breath a genuine refuge. Many people struggle to make meditation into a daily practice, but for me – at long last – the key was to let go of trying to do it right. Once I had super low standards for my meditation practice, it became easy-peasy. As dharma teacher Jack Kornfield has said, “You put your ass on the cushion and you take what you get.” But I don’t even put my ass on the cushion, usually – I meditate in bed.

Yes! Normalize lying-down meditation. I wish more people would.

Speaking of hanging around with like-minded people — whose work do you read when you need community-tending inspiration?

There are so many amazing people writing about care today. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Atul Gawande, and adrienne maree brown are major inspirations. I loved, loved, loved Angela Garbes’s books Like a Mother and Essential Labor. And there’s a very deep bench of wise folks writing about care work here on Substack. My must-reads include , , , , , , , , and , , , , Victoria of (which is a truly amazing and comprehensive resource for caretakers of adults), and of course your friend and mine, the excellent !

Aww, shucks! That is a deep bench indeed. I’m honored to be on it.

This feels like a good time to transition to talking about Mother’s Day. I’m wondering if you had caregivers in your own childhood who influence the way you think about care now. How do you honor, or choose not to honor, that inheritance on Mother’s Day?

I was fortunate to be raised by multiple wise, compassionate, loving, wonderful women. My mom, both of my grandmothers, and some aunts were educators, and they modeled for me from the beginning how to really turn toward children, love them, and pay attention to their ideas and questions about the world.

The family I was raised in is not very oriented toward rituals and celebrations. Over the past several years, my mom and I have agreed not to give gifts to each other at all, for any holiday, and it’s an enormous relief to both of us. We prefer a call or meal together – the gift of quality time and attention.

You and I have both had experiences with loss and/or infertility, as have many members of our respective newsletter communities. It feels good to be in a healing space around that, and I think those experiences make you forever aware of how shitty Mother’s Day can feel when you’d like to be a biological parent and yet you are not. What has your mileage been like here?

Losing multiple pregnancies in rapid succession was one of the hardest seasons of my life. Right on the heels of that, my partner and I had to decide whether to pursue IVF, whether to try to adopt, or neither. So I had some hard Mothers Days there for a few years, although really it was the everyday celebrations of motherhood that were hardest for me. I remember being at a women’s gathering while I was pregnant for the second or third time in a row, not ready to tell anyone, and terrified of losing the baby (which I subsequently did). There was another pregnant woman there, several months further along than me, and everyone was talking and laughing excitedly about her coming baby. I longed to be able to say, “I’m having a baby too!” and join that sisterhood of mothers. Instead I had to sit there vibrating with anxiety and pretending to be glad.

Stuff like this happens all the time to people who are involuntarily childless – Mothers Day is just extra brutal. Something like a quarter of Auntie Bulletin readers report being unable to have children despite longing to do so, and I have heard from many who struggle with a deep ongoing sense of grief and loss.

I’m very, very fortunate that I was able to come to a place of true steadiness as a non-parent. My partner realized before I did that parenthood was not the path for us, and I was grateful one of us had finally found clarity. Over the past few years, as I’ve experienced significant worsening of symptoms of chronic illness, I’ve found that, for me, Auntiehood is a wonderful middle path between parenting and childlessness.

Mother’s Day can also bring up a lot for people who are child-free even if it is by choice. Are there any particular pain points for folks in your community around this day that their parent friends need to be more aware of and thoughtful about?

Oof, there are so many pain points around Mothers Day in the Auntie and alloparent community. In my recent survey, readers had such important answers, which were pretty wrenching to read. For example:

• Several people reported not being able to have kids of their own and how hard Mothers Day is for them.

• Some wrote about feelings of non-belonging, and there was a big range of reactions to what one called the “honorary mention” – that is, appreciations for non-mothers on Mothers Day that may or may not feel genuine and heartfelt.

• Many wrote about the ways Aunties are so often made invisible or marginalized, never getting our own day.

• My heart really goes out to the stepmoms who shared about never being “mom enough” to fully count on Mothers Day.

Mothers Day isn’t only complicated for people without children, though; it’s also complicated for many parents. A lot of this has to do with people’s grief over their relationships with their own mothers. Several people who responded to The Auntie Bulletin survey talked about:

• Having difficult relationships with their own mothers, and wanting to spend the day with chosen mothers who are more affirming to them instead, and feeling torn about that.

• Having to choose between different mothers and mother figures in other ways (i.e. one person with two moms who divorced when they were little, and who has spent their whole life since being pulled between competing mothers on Mothers Day).

• Being queer and wanting to be affirmed in their identities by their mothers

• Being transgender navigating Mothers Day during and after a gender transition.

• Grieving over having lost their mom. (One person, adopted as a baby, also talked about the grief of never having met their biological mother in the first place.)

I’m looking forward to talking with you about this more on Substack Live next week, Ryan. And to all the Aunties and all the people who love us, I’m grateful we are not alone.

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