From Director to Consultant

Even though I’m a twin, I identify as the eldest (by thirteen minutes) in my family. I’ve always been incredibly capable, competent, and directed. I make plans, set goals, and get things done.

Parenting has been no exception. From the get go, I’ve had it all planned out and, when things haven’t gone as planned, I’ve pivoted and made new plans, better plans. And that’s the way it’s been for eighteen years. 

I could cry as I write this because I have no parenting plan anymore. My daughter is eighteen and she doesn’t need me to direct her life. My planning persona has collapsed into itself. The columns and rows in this spreadsheet are filled with error messages. The calendar is covered with ink smears and gibberish. The car is out of gas and I don’t have any of the right clothes to wear.

I feel totally out of control, like I don’t understand my job. I’ve been listening to self-help and parenting podcasts like a med student cramming for the boards. I recently heard a parenting expert say that when our kids get ready to leave home we have to convert from being the director of their lives to the consultants.

The key here is that to be a consultant you have to be consulted. In other words, you have to be asked for advice or support or guidance. Sure, we can try to continue to direct our children’s lives but their reaction will likely be to do the exact opposite of what we say in a defiant show of independence and autonomy.

Moving from director to consultant is fucking hard for me. I have to don a verbal straight jacket to keep myself from barking directions and next steps. I’ve been pretty good about it lately because I am trying really hard. But if I’m honest, it feels totally out of body. I feel like I’m trying to quit smoking or eating sugar. My habit, my total addiction to directing my daughter is deprived every day. I’m tweaking from the withdrawals.

I keep telling myself that it will get easier with time. I will stop craving the need to direct my child’s life. I will wake up and my need for the rush of motherhood will be gone. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m committed to keep trying.

I truly want to move from director to consultant. I worry that if I don’t I’ll miss the opportunity to really know my daughter. Whenever I hear those parenting experts share wisdom on best parenting practices, I think to myself, “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck! I did this completely wrong and now my daughter is completely cooked and what if I’ve ruined her by not doing all of those things I should have done?” 

This rabbit hole thinking fuels my desire to continue directing. If I can get a little bit more parenting in, maybe I can salvage all of my missteps. I know this is crazy. At this point, I can’t salvage anything but my future relationship with my practically grown daughter. 

Last night my daughter was doing homework and the dining room table, writing an essay for her Language Arts class. I really wanted to sit opposite of her and help. It’s been years since I’ve helped her with school work. But working on curbing my addiction, I took my laptop into the living room, plugged in my air pods and watched the final season of the Morning Show. 

A few minutes into my show, my daughter hollered, “How do you spell commiserate?” I put my show on pause and we went back and forth about how she’d spelled it, etc. Then it happened again with another word and then another. Eventually I turned the volume down on my show and put the subtitles on so I could hear her when she needed help.

“This is consulting,” I thought to myself happily as I sunk into the couch half-watching a show I didn’t really care about. “She’s in control of the asking.”

It was a small example, but an important one. I got it right this time and it felt good. This consultancy period is an important new stage of parenting that I can honor or ignore.

In one of my recent podcasts I heard that parents get 70% wrong and 30% right. These statistics made me feel hopeful, like maybe I’m in the realm of normal. Parenting has never been simple, but it’s never been this hard. Making this shift from director to consultant is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Will I achieve a 30% success rate? I’m trying. I’m really trying. 

Connection at a Cellular Level

 

My daughter said yesterday, ‘Mom, will you get a dog when I go to college?” The week before she said, “Mom, are you going to be okay when I’m gone?” 

“I’ll be fine,” I tell her, “I’m already preparing. I just started a painting class!”

I’m very attached. For years I’ve felt self-conscious about how much I love my daughter. Even when she is a total asshole, I love her. I try to minimize my love, to be more chill, like a cool mom who has a balanced life — mother and professional, partner and parent, friend and family member. 

When I was voicing my anticipation about my daughter leaving for college with a friend the other day, she shared some wonderful wisdom. This friend is in her sixties and has two sons in their late twenties. As we talked about my daughter’s upcoming transition to college, she said, “Motherhood….It’s something,” and then described how, the first time she saw one of her sons after two years of COVID separation she laid hands all over him. “It was carnal,” she said, “I had to touch him all over,” she said patting the air in front of her, “I actually read that the we share cells with our babies until they are twenty-seven years old.”

Hearing my friend say this was strangely affirming, like maybe my attachment to my daughter is biological, something I can’t control. I felt a physical sigh of relief. Maybe there is nothing really wrong with me after all. I’ve been thinking about this for the last couple of days and decided to do some research. 

What I found on the world wide web was fascinating. For example, while the majority of the cells that come from the fetus are destroyed by the mom’s immune system, some stay and become embedded in various organs, and become a part of the mother. 

According to the article I read, beginning in the early weeks of pregnancy, the fetus transfers cells to the mother and vice versa. The fetal cells have been found to stay in the mother’s body beyond the time of pregnancy, sometimes for many years (even decades) after birth. The mom’s cells also stay in the baby’s blood and tissues for decades. In one study, more than half of adults still had maternal cells in their blood.

This phenomenon blew my mind and warmed my heart. I found great comfort and affirmation in this newfound piece of scientific knowledge. Today when I was sitting on the couch with my daughter on a rare Saturday morning when we were both home in the same room with the same idea to chat, she stretched her long legs out next to my long legs and our skin touched in the two inches between her pants and socks and my pants and her socks. 

“We’re connected,” I thought to myself. “A little bit of me is inside of her and a little bit of her is inside of me.” I know other mothers (and children) must feel the same way. I know that for me, even when I have been ragingly angry or brutally disappointed by my mother, I still feel connected to her. There’s still something visceral that keeps me longing for her. I think she feels the same way about me and my sisters. 

One could argue that a bunch of random cells living in the liver or the pancreas doesn’t mean much, that it’s just a simple biological phenomenon and there is not necessarily an emotional impact. That could be true, but I don’t like that argument as much as the one my friend shared. 

I thought about my friend patting her tall son’s shoulders and arms and back and head, putting her open palms on his whiskered cheeks. Like coming home to the familiar smells, shapes, and sounds that you know so well you don’t even have to know that you know them. They are just there. 

When my daughter goes to college she probably won’t come home for any longer than a few months in the summer and then maybe a week or two for visits. This is what I am preparing myself for. I feel scared and sad and excited and worried. I’ll MISS her. It will be an entirely new experience to be so far away. 

I know I’ll be okay. I’ll get a dog. I’ll take another painting class. I’ll start a new hobby. But I will be okay. This strange, unrelenting attachment I feel, that I’ve always felt, is okay. Even though my daughter was born eighteen years ago, I’m still attached. I’m still connected.

And so is she.

Snorkel Walking

Since I returned to the rainy Northwest from my sunny adventure in December I’ve taken to walking in the dark. I walk both in the morning and in the evening. I call it ‘snorkel walking’ because, in the dark, I discover things I don’t see while walking in the light.

Last night after dinner I walked up a busy street towards the bookstore near my house. On the way back I passed a neighborhood staircase that I frequently use as a shortcut to get to the main street. In the dark, surrounded by trees and bushes it looked like an ocean cave, so dark I’d have to spend some time there, adjusting my eyes to see anything.

This morning even though it was raining, I felt called to walk in the dark. I walked the lake, without a headlamp today, trusting my eyes would be enough. My glasses fogged up and I had to keep clearing them so I could see, just like a snorkel mask that fills with water now and again.

There was a float of coots treading water close to shore and a few beyond doing a dance that looked like running bases for water fowl. I was reminded of a school of fish under the sea, most of them gliding together with their magical proprioceptive sensibilities, but always one or two making their own path away from the others.

A few days ago on my walk I was surprised to come upon the silhouette of a great blue heron on a fallen tree just a few feet from shore. She stood perfectly still enjoying the quiet and I stood still watching her until she sensed me and flew away, her great prehistoric wings taking her to a less disturbed home.

In the dark there is a quiet that doesn’t exist in the light. Usually I only see one or two people on my snorkel walks. Unlike my walks in the daytime where I make eye contact with nearly everyone and say hello or what a beautiful day, in the dark everyone seems more internal, moving through their own private meditation.

I grew up in a big city, in a neighborhood with lots of crime. I learned to be afraid of the outside dark. I was taught to fear every corner, the hollows behind every bunch of bushes, viaducts, empty doorways, even parked cars. 

I still fear the dark a little bit. I always take the more travelled path and I trust my instincts if something doesn’t feel right. I wouldn’t venture into something that felt like an ocean cave. But more that the smidgeon of fear I still carry in my skin, I feel awake and alive on my snorkel walks.

In the dark my senses are reversed. I can hear things before I see them. Everything is in slow motion. It takes time to truly know what I’m seeing or hearing. It’s a slow unfolding, giving me time to digest every part of the experience instead of just the final image.

There are no photo ops with snorkel walking, no ways to capture the beauty. The sensory experiences are absorbed with each step, filling me as I go. Sometimes I walk so that I can see the sun come up on my return towards home. On those days I love walking into the light, taking my final steps towards the start of my busy day with the sun. 

But many days it is still dark when I return home in the mornings. That used to make me sad. I told myself that I longed for the light, believing it was a necessary part of happiness, like a sunshine emoji at the end of a text. But I have a new understanding now. In the darkness there is quiet, stillness, and great beauty. Like the mystery of the ocean, there is a comforting darkness and room for deep discovery in snorkel walking.

Momentary Madness

 

Since arriving to my 50s I feel wise in many areas of my life. Most days I walk around with a fairly solid sense of self. This is a very different feeling from how I felt in my younger years. I attribute this grounded feeling to the wisdom that comes with menopause. In addition to our years of lived experience, hormonal changes help us to cut out the bullshit and see a little more clearly. 

I’ve embraced menopause. I’ve learned a lot about how my body is changing in both good and not-so-good ways. I’ve learned to pay attention to how my attitude and approach to life have changed for the better as I’ve aged. 

By the time women reach our 50s there is so much we know. I, for example, am aware of so much more than I was in my thirties or forties. I know what kind of people I like to hang out with. I know what really bugs me. I know that I need to exercise and what kind of exercise I need. I know that a size bigger usually fits better. I know that I can’t drink red wine or eat dairy. For me, menopause has been mostly positive, a period of great emotional awareness and understanding.  

But last week I had a spontaneous existential crisis. As cliche as this is, my crisis happened on New Year’s Eve day. It started with a small disagreement with my partner Nancy and then another one with my daughter. I fell apart. I completely lost my emotional center of gravity. That menopausal sense of knowing I’d grown accustomed to living with was suddenly gone. My sense of psychic grounding was out to sea, bobbing across the waves like a buoy who’s anchor has been clipped.

In just a few short moments I went from feeling like a sage elder to an insecure, acne-afflicted middle schooler with sweaty palms and body odor. I felt completely out of place in my own body. Like the split-second switch of the mom and daughter in Freaky Friday, I instantly lost all sense of certainty. All I knew was how much I didn’t know. “Was this hormones?,” I wondered to myself. Was this the dark side of menopause my friends have been telling me about?

My cortisol soaked brain rattled question after question: Where will I be in ten years? Will I have the same job? Will I have any job? Will I have dementia or bad knees? Will I still be able to do yoga? Will my mother be okay? Nancy? My daughter? What will happen when she goes to college next year? Will she be happy? Will she feel lost? Will she find a partner and be happy? Did my divorce ruin her chances to have a happy marriage one day? The questions went on and on. I was drowning in a sea of insecurity. I could only see myself as a failure — as a mother, a partner, a human.

I remember a friend telling me once that at the start of her menopause she’d almost abandoned her entire family in Sweden thinking they’d be better off without her. I suddenly understood this feeling. Where did this crisis of confidence come from? And why now? I tried to distract myself with an art project, then with errands. I picked fight after fight with Nancy. 

I wandered the house praying for peace of mind. I prayed in the bathroom. I prayed in the kitchen. I went to my office and lit a candle and wrote in my journal. Then I did yoga. I prayed again. I asked the universe to give me some light, to clear some kind of path for me so I could see clearly again. 

As the hours ticked on and it got time to get ready to go out for New Year’s Eve, I felt beaten down. I found Nancy on the couch and collapsed next to her. “I’m lost,” I said. And then the tears came. I cried and cried and cried about how lost and scared I felt. I cried about all of the things I don’t have control over, things in the future I don’t know, would never know before they happen. Nancy just listened and let me cry and then it was time to get dressed to go to our party. 

I managed to put on a fancy outfit and my grandmother’s special jewelry that I rarely wear. I felt exhausted but strangely more myself than I had all day. Crying had made it better. Acknowledging my lostness made me feel less lost. Saying out loud all the things I was scared and worried about shrunk them down to a manageable size. 

Maybe my New Year’s Eve crisis was a lesson from menopause. Maybe my hormones were telling me not to get too cocky; that this journey isn’t over yet. “You know a lot,” those frisky hormones whispered to me as my momentary madness subsided and my sanity slowly returned, “but you don’t know everything.” 

Awe Begets Awe

 

A few weeks ago I returned from a trip of a lifetime to the Galapagos Islands. While I was basking in the sunny beauty of life on the equator, my home city of Seattle was getting pummeled by a bizarre weather system that redered the entire city a village covered in ice. The airport and all public transportation shut down. People were stuck in their homes. As we prepared to leave Ecuador we faced the very real possibility that our plane would be severely delayed or redirected.

But we did manage to get home with minimal delays. When we arrived it was freezing cold, raining and very gray. In the winter months in Seattle the sun doesn’t rise until nearly 8am and it sets close to 4pm. The hours of daylight that we do have are often gray and overcast. Although Seattle, nicknamed The Emerald City for it’s greenery, is one of the most beautiful cities in the world surrounded by mountains and water, Seattlites love to complain about our weather. For months every year we feel desperate for sunshine and warmth.

Yesterday, New Year’s Day, I took a long walk with a friend around the park by my house. The sky and the mountains, the lake and the trees, were profoundly beautiful. I kept seeing new images — fog on the lake or a bird on a branch, and saying to my friend, “Isn’t that beautiful?!!!”

Later in the day, I did the polar bear plunge into the frigid glacial lake down the hill from my house. My partner Nancy, ever supportive but not interested in cold plunging, accompanied me and took photos. When we looked at the photos later we were both awed by how stunningly beautiful our little world is. Though we’d stood looking at the lake together in real time hundreds of times, we kept talking about it, how amazing it was. We see this very same lake every single day, yet we were rendered speechless.

When we were in the Galapagos Islands we found ourselves in a state of constant awe. On the top deck of our boat the Frigate birds flew so close that we could see the red neck of the male; we could practically touch their tail feathers.

We grew accustomed to swimming with sea turtles and sea lions. The sea lions swam so close to us that we couldn’t follow the naturalist’s rules to stay two meters away. They circled around us while we swam, brushing us as they glided by like goofy water ballerinas.

This morning, on an impulse Nancy and I headed for the mountains to cross country ski. As we drove east, away from the city, the Cascade mountains were crystal clear, snow-covered peaks sharp like birds’ beaks. We could see Mount Baker to the north and Mount Rainier to the south. We hadn’t even reached our destination; we were still on the freeway and we were both awestruck, floored by the absolute beauty everywhere around us. 

“Do you think we’re so affected by this natural beauty because we just got back from experiencing so much natural beauty?” I asked Nancy.

It felt like a muscle had been activated, like we were primed to see and feel the magic of nature. Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix and Heartbreak, among many other publications, talks about awe as the antidote to grief, sadness and loneliness. In her quest for healing, Williams finds great solace from being in nature. She is able to recover from her heartbreak by immersing herself in the natural world.

Awe. I get it. Connecting to nature is comforting. There is a bigness in the world that I have no control over. I cannot say when the clouds will form shadows on the lake or when the sunrise will make Mount Baker bubblegum pink. It just happens when it happens. 

Sometimes I see a moment in nature and I’m too busy to stop and notice. And other times, like this week, I can feel my breath stop and my body freeze to capture the moment. The awe that opened up in me on our trip to Ecuador has stayed alive in me. 

During our time in the Galapagos I felt healed, more connected to myself , to my family, and to my senses. Food tasted better. I didn’t need as much sleep. I had boundless energy for snorkeling and hiking. I felt restored. I was less distracted by my phone and more present to the people and animals around me. 

Tomorrow I go back to work. I’ll drive along the lake to get there. There will be an opportunity during my workday to take a walk after lunch. There will be a sunrise and a sunset. There will be many moments when I can stop and notice nature's beauty; moments when I can experience awe.

I wonder how long I can ride this wave of awe. In her TED talk Florence Williams reports that the Finish government recommends a full five-hours each month in the forest for good mental health. It’s a national policy. Five hours is 300 minutes. That’s just ten minutes a day in nature. I think can manage that. I can definitely manage that but  honestly, I don’t think ten minutes of awe will be enough for me. Not anymore.