Avoiding Appearances

March 11, 2023

If you've grown up in Christian culture, you've probably heard the phrase that we are to "avoid the appearance of evil." This is why I wasn't allowed to take walks with a boy alone in high school or wear black nail polish, and why it was wrong for opposite genders to be roommates or for male church leaders to give girls rides home from youth group by themselves.

I think it's also why I wasn't allowed to confide in anyone about issues I had with authority figures in my life. Not to avoid the appearance of being "evil" myself, but to protect those in authority from having their "evil" (i.e., often simply "imperfect" or "human") behavior exposed.

I don't mean I was asked to keep silent about problems like sexual harassment or discrimination. I'm talking about not being allowed to vent to my friends—or even other adults in my life—about relationship conflicts I went through if they involved adult leadership. There is profound isolation in having your communication privileges taken away or your conversations eavesdropped on so that an authority figure can be protected from your "talking bad about them."

Will teenagers "talk bad" about adults in their lives? Absolutely. Will all of that talk be fair, accurate, or constructive? Absolutely not. Should teenagers still be allowed to have outlets for their frustrations? I believe so.

I'm a big believer in the truth coming out. If adults are truly acting unjustly, people will find out; no amount of damage control can prevent that. If adults are being mischaracterized by a petty teenager, that'll come out too.

The worst thing that can happen is raising an adult who thinks that discussing emotional damage inflicted by adults is sinful.

I recently started therapy. In the first or second session, my therapist asked me to clarify what I meant about someone. It took me five minutes to convey the impression I needed to, because I wandered alllllllllllll around the perimeter using euphemisms, "maybes," and "I don't know, but I guesses."

When I was finished, my therapist still wasn't completely clear on what I meant, but she said, "You said a lot, but it's like you were apologizing the whole time, or trying to qualify what you said. Why do you think you do that?"

I had to think about it for a second, but then I told her what I'm telling you now: I guess I'd internalized that speaking unflatteringly about authority figures is sinful, petty, and inappropriate.

"That's not true," she said, looking me right in the eyes.

"Oh," I said.

People have told me for years that everyone should go to therapy—maybe not long-term, but at least to check in with how they think and feel. We all have cognitive distortions: thought patterns or beliefs that aren't the healthiest. If we don't go to therapy, we might never know that our minds and lives could be better. I'm finally at a place where I can see if "people" have been right about therapy. Turns out they were.

I guess the message of this blog post is two-fold:

1) Isolating angry teenagers for the sake of your own reputation is gross.
2) Go to therapy.

~Stephanie

Facing Demons: Feel the Feelings

Gabe and I don't believe in distracting Elle from her feelings.

There's definitely a place for redirection ("We're not gonna play in the trash can, but you can pull things out of the recycling"; "We're all done with chalk for now, but we can read a book when we go inside"), but if Elle is crying/scared/throwing a fit, we think it's important that she feel those feelings and process them, rather than cheer up at any cost.

To me, this goes along with the "meltdowns are not teachable moments" idea I touched on in The Riskiest Post to Date. When Elle is in the middle of big feelings, I try to hold her (if she's open to that) and say absolutely nothing, at first. I want her to know that her big feelings don't scare me, I can handle her even when she's difficult, and I'll be on the other side when she gets there too, but talking to her does nothing but contribute to overstimulation; she can't actually hear me in the moment.

After she's felt her feelings and begins to calm down, we'll either talk about what went wrong—like if she fell out of a chair, I show her why she fell and what she can do differently next time—or move on to something happier. We don't want Elle to be an adult who can't stand to be in her feelings long enough to come to peace with them and move on healthily.

Well.

Sunday night, Gabe and I got into a stupid fight after Elle went down. Afterwards, he stayed in the living room and I went upstairs to tidy up Elle's room. I walked up the steps, seething, and pulled out my phone to get a podcast going to take my mind off things.

Oh.

In the middle of Elle's room, I realized I was doing the exact thing we don't want Elle to do. Instead of sitting with my feelings and sorting through what they were trying to tell me, I wanted to drown them out with the story of someone getting murdered.

I put my phone down and sat with a sigh.

"Fine," I muttered. "What am I feeling?" I was mad, frustrated, discouraged, a little sheepish. The fight was stupid, but I could see how it had happened. I knew a podcast wasn't going to make me feel better, nor was the TV I planned to watch after cleaning Elle's room.

I picked up my phone again and texted Gabe: "Well that was a terrible way to end the weekend."

He responded with three texts in a row, honoring my side of things, owning his own, and offering to talk it through if I wanted to come down and talk. I did, so we did. None of that would have happened if I hadn't forced myself to face my feelings instead of distracting myself.

People talk about the importance of "feeling your feelings" instead of "thinking your feelings," and I'm not good at that. I don't quite understand what it means. I don't know if what I did Sunday night was feeling my feelings or thinking them, but either way, I know it was a step in a right direction. Too often I try to ignore my feelings because they're inconvenient/annoying/confusing/inevitable. I don't want Elle to do that, but if I'm going to teach her a better way, I'm gonna have to start some trial and error.

~Stephanie

How a Can of Tuna Changed My Life

When I was nineteen, I broke up with a guy over a can of tuna.

I'd been dating this guy for about a year, and we had a history that went back even farther. I loved him an unfortunate amount, but for a few months I'd been wrestling with the sense that I needed to end things. There was a maturity gap, a values gap, and a lying cavern that were all widening rather than closing up.

One day I was home from college at my parents' house hanging out with my boyfriend. I guess it was lunchtime or something and I wanted to eat but he didn't, so I just decided to have a can of tuna. I drained it over the sink, looking out into the living room where my boyfriend lay on the couch. Suddenly he sat up, glaring.

"Are you having tuna?" he asked, looking for all the world like I was preparing glass smeared with gonorrhea*.

I frowned. "Yeah? Why?"

"That's disgusting," he said. "I have to smell that. Why would you do that?"

I don't remember the specifics of what happened after that, but I remember the feeling of a puzzle piece sliding into place in my brain. It wasn't about the tuna—he's not wrong, tuna is a really strong smell and if you hate it, ew—but I suddenly saw a stark portrait of someone too selfish to be gentle, too crass to be kind. I think I probably called him out for being rude, but it didn't become a fight. The rest of the visit was unremarkable.

But later that afternoon, after he'd gone home, I was crying in the kitchen and talking to my mom and Sarah. Again, I don't remember the specifics, but I felt a certainty so unshakeable it became urgent. I needed to break up with him right then. I'd been thinking about it for months, but the tuna incident had set the decision in motion and it was gaining speed like a boulder down a mountain. I have a vague recollection of my mom...not trying to dissuade me, but wanting to make sure I was sure, because from the outside it had come on so quickly. I lived kind of far away from the guy but I knew I wanted to do this in person, so it was a not insignificant time commitment.

But I was sure.

I wrote him a letter, met him at a Starbucks, and he read the letter sitting in the passenger seat of my silver Kia Soul.

After he read it, he nodded, folded it up, and got out of the car.

We were broken up.

Technically.

It would be another nine months before it stuck. The official relationship was like most teen romances: intense, a little immature, but overall pretty healthy. However, the April through December after the breakup was a toxic cesspool of manipulation, guilt, emotional abuse, tears, ultimatums that didn't stick, false hopes, secret meetings, text fights, stomachaches, and bad decisions. One of the very last conversations we ever had was over text, and included this little gem, recreated by ChatGPT from one of my word-for-word journaling sessions.

I never spoke much about this relationship, mostly because no one ever asked me. They asked other people about it, but no one asked me what had happened or how I was. Privacy is nice, but...it does make escape from abuse kind of tricky.

I honestly don't know why I'm talking about this now, or what the point of the post is. It was inspired by a TikTok of a girl being like, "Here's an example of abuse that doesn't sound like abuse" and it reminded me of the tuna story (which I would NOT consider abuse; the TikTok just brought it to mind). I certainly don't want to cast bad juju on my ex-boyfriend. I haven't seen him in years, but I guess I hope he's happy. We both had a LOT of growing up to do and I hope he found people to support him through it like I did.

I guess the point of this post is
1) Listen to your gut when it comes to red flags. If someone berates you for eating tuna, they may also try to convince you that your beliefs are "f*cking incorrect" if inconvenient for them.

2) Remember that you never really know what someone else is going through.

~ Stephanie

*Thanks Ali Hazelwood for this metaphor that lives rent-free in my head.

Face Your Demons, or They'll Raise Your Children

A few weeks ago, Elle wouldn't stop putting food in her hair at lunch.

I asked her to stop, but she's a baby and every time she hears the word "hair"—even if it's in the sentence "Please stop touching your hair"—she touches her hair.

That's kinda on me, but I was still annoyed, so when it came time to clean her up, I wasn't particularly slow and patient as I wiped down her hair, head, and face.

After I finished, I turned my attention to her dishes but saw her hitting herself in the head out of the corner of my eye.

"Oh, baby!" I cried, instantly sad. "Be gentle to your head!"

And it hit me like a ton of bricks: she was doing to herself what she felt like I'd been doing. While I was not even close to "hitting" her in the head, that's what it felt like to her. She was copying me.

If I want her to be gentle to her head, I have to be gentle to her head.

Elle copies everything. She notices when a sock is hanging over the side of the hamper and flips it all the way into the basket, like I do. She mimics our facial expressions when we're talking at dinner. If I want her to take a drink of water, all I have to do is take a sip myself. I killed a spider with a shoe the other day, and the next thing I know she's whacking a shoe against the floor.

I saw a chilling meme the other day that said, "Face your demons, or they'll raise your children." That's the weirdest part of parenting so far. I've believed that concept for years, but it's manifesting in more (and more tangible) ways than I expected. I knew I needed to transform myself in terms of frustration intolerance, anger management, and body image, but...now I'm seeing that I need to transform myself in everything. If I don't want Elle to think/do/say/tolerate something, I can't do it either. Kids don't do what you SAY; they do what you DO. I can't just believe the talk, I have to walk the walk.

And it's like dang, faking it for her is hard enough. Now I have to change for REAL?

Fortunately, I'm sort of a self-improvement junkie. That's what this blog is all about.

Unfortunately, I am real messed up 😂 I feel a "Facing My Demons" series or something coming soon.

*raises a glass of creatine mixed with strawberry lemonade* Let's do this.

~Stephanie

In Which I Attack Some of You, Probably

I don't understand when people lie to children as a joke.

If you do that, you will probably feel uncomfortable or attacked by this post, but honestly I'm not even sorry XD I think you should stop.

"How is the baby eating in the bedroom?" asks a four-year-old girl.
"Moms make food for their babies with their breasts," someone answers.
"Yeah," someone else chimes in. "Their boobs produce sandwiches."
Everyone laughs and moves on. The girl is left confused and misinformed about how her body works.

"What does that button do?" asks a little boy as he points to the trip meter reset button in the car.
"Oh, that?" says an older brother, smirking. "That's the self-destruct button."
The joke continues for years, leading the boy to have a panic attack when someone pushes it later.

"What's that?" asks a toddler when a motorcycle drives by in the distance.
"A velociraptor," says a neighbor. "Or maybe aliens."
The toddler frowns, knowing that's probably not true, but a little tendril of fear grows in her belly and resurfaces every time she hears that sound.

Some adults do this because they think it's funny. Here is what's actually happening: they have power (knowledge, life experience, an understanding of irony and sarcasm), and they're using it to abuse someone weaker (uninformed, innocent, still learning social rules).

When is that ever funny? Does it make you feel clever to perform for other adults nearby at the expense of a child? Do you feel smarter when you exploit the ignorance of someone a quarter your age? Do you feel powerful when a little person comes to you for help understanding the world and you make them the butt of a joke instead?

"Oh come on," you say. "It's not that serious. They're gonna have to learn about humor sometime."

Yeah, absolutely. In general, humor is a natural development. Once kids know how the world does work, they'll recognize the irony and sarcasm in hearing jokes about how it doesn't.

But you're not helping them develop that skill when you lie to them for funzies. Instead, you teach them that you're not trustworthy. You teach them that adults are there to mock them, not help them. You teach them that they don't speak the language everyone else does, but without offering to translate. The child will have to filter everything you say through the lens of "this might be a joke...he might be making fun of me...that might not be real..." The child will watch you say something and smirk at the people around you, and maybe she'll smile hopefully, trying to be part of what's happening, but she still doesn't know the truth.

The joke might never come up again, or the child might go on to have a panic attack. He might still choose to trust you later, but it will always come with a pit in his stomach as he takes the gamble.

Lying to a child as a joke is such a weak, cowardly, mean form of humor to me. Like, congratulations, you lied to someone who doesn't know any better? Do you also do their 5-piece peg puzzles faster than them and say, "HA HA"?

Do better with your knowledge. Do better with your experience. If there's an innocence-exploiting zinger just absolutely burning a hole in your brain, go ahead and make the joke, I guess, but at least circle back to tell the child the truth. Don't make them a prop for your stand-up routine.

Whew. We haven't heard from the Eight version of Stephanie in a while. I'm glad to know she's still here, and glad she has an ENFJ cohost for the day-to-day.

~Stephanie

P.S. I know the image isn't of a velociraptor, but it fits the color scheme of the blog 😂

Toddler Talk: Rewiring My Brain

One of the trends in millennial parenting is reframing the way we speak. In a lot of ways, I find the practice overwhelming and...overcomplicated. Don't tell your kids you're proud of them, because that teaches them to seek external validation. Don't tell your daughters they're pretty, because that might suggest their value lies in their looks. Don't tell them what NOT to do, because toddler brains have trouble interpreting negatives. Instead, say "You must be so proud of yourself," tell your daughters they're brave and smart, and tell toddlers what you WANT them to do instead.

I happen to believe in most of the suggested linguistic changes. The theories are backed by neuroscience and behavioral therapists.

However, there are simply too many things to keep track of as a parent. I cannot be mentally diagramming a sentence or putting it through Mr. Rogers' nine rules of speaking to children every time I need to reign in the chaos of breakfast. (I mean, I do try, and it's getting faster and easier, but...come on.)

Instead of doing an entire syntax extreme makeover, I've decided to focus on two changes: 1) stating what I want Elle TO do instead of what I want her NOT to do, and—the one I really want to talk about here— 2) being very intentional about the words "want" versus "need."

I don't know when I first noticed it, but there's a lot of misuse of "need" going around, especially when it comes to kids. It's not "Do you need more raspberries?" it's "Do you want more raspberries?" It's not "Do you need to hold the pretty necklace?" it's "Do you want to hold the pretty necklace?" Conflating the words isn't just confusing to someone learning language for the first time, I think it might be harmful to the person's mind, maybe even her soul.

Every day we're tricked into thinking we need something that we just want. There are real needs, like food, water, air, medicine, community, God, but we don't need to stop and get food just because we're hungry and we're out, or redo the entire bathroom because we had to replace the countertop, or buy a brand new dress because we're going to a wedding.

But even less obvious, I don't NEED Elle to let go of my hand so that I can do the dishes. I WANT Elle to let go of my hand because I WANT to do the dishes right now. The sentence goes from "Mama needs you to let go of her hand" to "Mama wants to use both hands to do the dishes."

"Needs" are vital, desperate, not particularly open to negotiation. That is not the way I want my daughter—or myself—to view life. "Wants" are choices: they return our power to us; they acknowledge that our desire is within our own boundaries. If I say that I WANT to use both hands to do the dishes, I am recognizing that it's a desire that comes from ME, not a need that must be met by someone else. In fact, I can choose to prioritize something else over my desire. I can decide that it is more important to honor Elle's craving for affection right now than it is to get the dishes done right away.

Stating things as "wants" helps me to hear what's really going on. When I say, "Mama wants to get dressed so we can leave" instead of "Mama needs to get dressed," I hear that being on time is important to me—but it isn't a need. I have the privilege of choosing punctuality for something that I want to do. The situation becomes a gift instead of a burden. It is within my power to decide do something, and within my power to prioritize being on time, and within my power to put Elle down and get dressed to make it happen. All of those are MY choices, none of them are imperatives, and none of them are Elle's problem to manage.

If we're running late, it's not because Elle made a mess at breakfast or acted like a rabid ferret when I tried to put her clothes on; it's because I chose to give her yogurt and only allot five minutes for getting her dressed. I don't NEED her to cooperate with me; I WANT her to, and I want to raise her in a way that makes her truly aware of the difference. We can achieve needs as a team, sure, but there's something sweeter and more intimate about achieving wants together. There's less pressure, less guilt, more joy.

At least that's the hope. And even if using want/need appropriately does nothing for Elle's brain, it's doing a whole lot for mine.

~Stephanie

"That's Kinda on Me"

A few years ago, I saw this TikTok. In it, a guy hands his 18-ish-month-old niece a little bottle of orange juice and lets her pour it into a martini glass, which she does...but she sloshes it over the glass, onto the glass, around the glass, and keeps pouring even as the uncle gasps and tries to salvage the situation. There's a moment where they both look at the camera, and then the uncle says something that has changed my brain chemistry when parenting:

"For some reason..." he says calmly. "I didn't think you'd pour the whole thing. That's kinda on me."

That's kinda on me.

Babies are gonna be babies. Kids are gonna be kids. If an adult doesn't want something to happen, it is their responsibility—as the one with life experience and impulse control—to prevent it from happening.

If you give a baby an open bottle of orange juice, it is not their fault when it ends up all over the table.
If you put your Starbucks drink in the Target cart cupholder, it is not the baby's fault when it gets thrown on the floor.
If you let a baby help unload the dishwasher, it is not the baby's fault when she drops a bowl and breaks it.
If you have unregulated emotions, it is not the baby's fault when you feel like screaming.

At first, I would've assumed that this mentality would make me MORE stressed out. Like, great—so everything is MY fault. How is that better? But I've actually found that it allows me to let go of a lot of anger toward my baby.

First of all, the phrase "that's kinda on me" feels like lighthearted closure. You've acknowledged the situation, you've chalked it up to living and learning, and you're poised to move on. It's like an anti-dwelling motto.

Second, taking ownership means that it isn't the baby's job to change anything; it's yours. Maybe you need to hold your match latte in your hand if you know your baby is in a "throwing things" phase. Maybe you need to set different boundaries ("Elle can help unload the silverware, but only Mama unloads the dishes"). It is not the baby's fault.

And if it's not the baby's fault, then it doesn't make sense to be angry at her.

I really struggle with anger. I grew up with the mentality that people can cause you to be angry, and it is then their fault—not yours—if you're snippy or impatient or mean to them. I truly believed that provoking anger was a transgression, and that people were justified in being angry at the transgressor. They caused the anger by being annoying/tardy/inconsiderate/stupid so they get to suffer. Or, even if someone is mad and it isn't another person's fault, it's still okay to act angry at or around them because anger is simply the natural and unavoidable outcome of someone or something tripping a trigger.

Then I married a man who believes that there is NEVER an excuse to be rude. I'm not exaggerating. Gabe dead-ass thinks that it's never okay to be unkind, no matter how angry or frustrated or tired you are. And he lives that way. Gabe has genuinely never been mean to me. We have been married for a decade next month, and he has never been mean to me.

I've known for years that I needed to get my anger issues under control, but having Elle made it absolutely crucial. I do not want my moods or frustrations to be the weather in our home. I do not want Elle to wonder if she's going to get the patient version of mom or the pissy version. I do not want to model being at the mercy of my emotions, demanding that she control herself when I cannot.

Thanks to Jesus, Gabe, TheYeetBaby, the book Good Inside, and baby Elle, I'm trying to change. I'm trying to believe that people can't "make" me angry; anger happens inside MY mind. If someone is annoying me, it is still my responsibility to control myself. If someone is rude to me, it is still my responsibility to choose kindness.

This is SUCH a steep uphill battle, but I'm proud of myself for climbing. I blew my own mind by not getting externally mad at Elle when she chucked my drink. I literally said, "That's kinda on me. Mama should not have put her drink there" and went to find a Target associate to tell about the spill. Was I seething inside? Yes, I was. It had already been a tough week and we're being really careful with money and I'd been thinking about that matcha latte since the day before. All I wanted was to have a few pleasant minutes in Target, and my baby ruined it by doing what I had repeatedly asked her not to do.

But she's a baby. And my anger is my problem, not hers. And it is never okay to be unkind.

It's after 10pm and I've reorganized this post three different times and it still doesn't feel right and I'm tempted to use ChatGPT to help me but it's really important to me that I maintain the ability to express myself in a clear and orderly and beautiful way, and I don't know if I've done that, but there's SOMETHING here and I hope it makes sense to you, and I'm really tired and I'm going to bed now.

~Stephanie

First Year of Parenting: I'm Glad We...

Maybe this post will be interesting, maybe it will come off like bragging. (That's actually one of the weirdly isolating things I've noticed about parenthood: if you talk about what's going well, it feels prideful or naive. If you talk about what's going poorly, it sounds like complaining or ingratitude.) When we were expecting Baby Elle, I loved reading about or watching other parents' lifestyles and techniques, sometimes because I wanted to emulate them, sometimes because I wanted to hate them. You're welcome to do either as well XD

I'm Glad We...
Prioritized pregnancy and postpartum core work - I took core and pelvic floor work SO seriously during these seasons, and it paid me back a hundred fold. I had no diastasis recti (ab separation) while pregnant, and I do not pee myself when I jump today. Those first few weeks post-pushing, I was shocked at how much I relied on my abs. I needed them to lean forward to reach my water, to brace my core when changing positions with Elle, to support my organs as they healed. If you're pregnant, I cannot recommend core and pelvic floor work enough. (This realization also had me in AWE of c-section mamas, who have to go through postpartum AND surgery recovery AND can't use their abs for weeks?! Y'all are another level of superwomen, for real.)

Chose baby-led weaning - I was weirdly excited to try this approach to food, and we've LOVED it! Elle is so good at using utensils, makes very little mess AT THIS POINT (unless she loves the food too much to contain herself), and likes trying new foods. I hear the toddler years are going to have us doing a 180 on most of that, but so far we've had a lot of fun and I'm glad we used this approach 😂 I will say if you're going to go this route, you gotta make peace with the mess ahead of time. There's going to be a lot of wiping and spraying and changing clothes and finding shreds of cheese and dried yogurt and grains of rice around your house for...maybe ever.

Let Elle go barefoot - Elle has, uh, almost never worn shoes. She has tried shoes ON, and she's walked around the house in them for fun, and she wore them once to a park because its surface was asphalty, but that's it. Barefoot is supposed to be really good for brain development and body awareness, and y'all know we love us some of that. All winter long it was socks only; around the house and in the yard and on the sidewalk and at the library and at the coffee shop it's been barefoot. Maybe that's gross, but as my friend Meghan said, "That's what wipes are for" 😂 

Avoided screen time - I don't think there's any way to write this bullet point without sounding judgy, but Elle has never watched a screen. We don't have the TV on when she's in the room, we try not to use our phones around her, and we sit her with her back to the TVs at restaurants. This was REALLY difficult at first. I didn't realize how much TV I'd gotten used to watching during the day until we had Elle, but thankfully it's gotten easier the longer we've done it. Who's to say what's personality and what's environment, but Elle is the queen of less-is-more entertainment. She finds delight in very simple things, like holding mulch, or moving tea bags from one chair to another, or seeing how things look different through the mesh on the back of our camp chair. She likes people watching and is extremely easy to keep engaged. Again, this could have nothing to do with screens/no screens, but we've only been happy about this decision.

If we're able to get pregnant again one day, it'll be interesting to see which of these things we do again, and which are first-time-parent privileges. For example, it would be a lot more difficult to fit in a daily core work regimen with a toddler, or keep a toddler quiet during a baby's nap time without screens. I hope one day we'll get to find out—but not for a couple of years at least, please Lawd 🤣

~Stephanie

First Year of Parenting: Regrets

Baby (Toddler?!) Elle is a year old. Gabe and I are now only new parents, not BRAND-new parents. Do I feel like I know a lot about babies now? Uh. So here's the thing:

What I now know is that every baby is so different that what I have learned will most likely be useless to anyone else 😂 Like I don't even feel an URGE to share advice about the first year. Do I know a lot about MY baby? Yeah, I do. I know the almost imperceptible differences between her saying "buzz" for a bee and "ssss" for a snake, and "All Done" hands versus "the wipers on the bus" hands. I know she loves hair accessories and hates when it's time to put her toothbrush away. I know that she poops fifteen minutes after morning milk and starts walking like a drunk when she's getting sleepy. I am an expert on Elle, and none of it will help anyone else.

So when I started thinking about processing any regrets or non-regrets from the past year, it felt pointless, because my experience may not apply to anyone else. But then I remembered that I haven't journaled a single time all year and this blog has become just as much for me as anyone else, so I'm going to do it anyway.

Things I Regret
Stopping the bottle - We saw a lactation consultant when Elle was about two months old (highly recommend Growing Families Lactation if you're looking) and she told us to continue our practice of giving Elle a bottle at least once a day so that she didn't start bottle refusing. We did...until we didn't. We went a couple of weeks without giving Elle a bottle, and sure enough, she started refusing it. And never went back. I have not been able to spend more than five hours away from Elle since August 2025, and Gabe and I haven't been on a date/out together alone since September 13, 2025. I have very few regrets from the first year, and this is one of them.

Letting Elle walk around with stick-like objects in her mouth - This is very niche 😂 But ever since she started assisted walking at about ten months, Elle has liked popping something into her mouth and walking around with it. When Gabe's nurse older sister visited, she mentioned that that made her nervous in her own kids, because of injuries she'd seen from kids falling with sticks (or even toothbrushes) in their mouths. I didn't want to cross that bridge at the time because we were already crossing a thousand other bridges, and on very little sleep. However, now that she's beginning to walk on her own, I am scared and I wish I hadn't let this habit develop. I'm now going to have to undo it for the sake of safety, and it's going to seem very unfair to poor Elle.

Not having the granulation tissue cauterized right away - Look, in all my years of pregnancy/birth/postpartum research I had never heard of this (and I would NOT Google it if I were you), but sometimes postpartum scar tissue Down There can apparently turn into "granulation tissue" and it's red and painful and has to be removed with silver nitrate. The doctor discovered it at my six-week postpartum visit and I declined the procedure because he made it sound like maybe it would resolve on its own, and obviously no one WANTS to have part of their downstairs burned off, but NO IT DOES NOT RESOLVE ON ITS OWN, and in fact IT ACTUALLY GROWS LARGER?! So I eventually had to have the procedure done anyway, and at that point it took three treatments and was super painful. If I'd done it right away when it was tiny, it would've been almost painless. So, if this ever comes up for you, just do it, day of.

Things I Don't Regret
Co-sleeping - We did not plan to co-sleep. We didn't, in fact, co-sleep for the first four–five months, but when Elle's sleep started to deteriorate so badly, it became the only way anyone could get rest. Now, Elle starts out in her crib and occasionally makes it all the way through the night, but often gets transferred to our bed around 5–6am, and I honestly have no regrets. I know we genuinely tried our best to avoid it. We couldn't have done anything else, and now I have months of sweet memories to treasure in my heart forever: her warm, squishy arms next to me; her little fingers on the nape of my neck; her full-body stretch + stank face combo; the look of groggy joy when she wakes up for the day and sees me first thing. I know she'll sleep independently one day, but until then we're helping her build a strong, secure nervous system night by night.

Not doing a newborn (or soon after) photoshoot - For a split second, I actually had this typed in the Regrets section, but as I thought about it, I don't think I do. Now, do I wish I had some photos of Elle by the amazing Haleigh Nicole Photography? Absolutely, because she's a genius and would majestically immortalize our family. But do I actually sit here and regret not doing it? No, not really. We all took lots of pictures of baby Elle, and while they pale in comparison to "real" photos, we needed/need our money for other things, and that's okay.

Buying almost zero baby clothes - This is such a privileged thing to be able to say! Between baby showers, grandparents, and SO MANY HAND-ME-DOWNS, I think Gabe and I have spent maybe $50 total on baby clothes in the first year. Before Elle was born, I worried that I wasn't buying enough; it didn't happen to be one of my temptations. Buying her products like bowls and spoons? Yes. Fancy sunscreens? Yes. Bows and headbands? Yes. But I never felt drawn to buy clothes, and that has worked out just fine. Between my sister and our friend Jana, I've had a steady stream of girl clothes that I get to sort through and hang up or fold every couple of months and I LOVE that. It makes me feel loved, calls me back to my childhood of passing clothes to Sarah and Katie, and reminds me of the importance of community. I love that there are pictures of Grace or Alee wearing the same outfit Elle has on. Babyhood of the traveling rompers forever!

Honestly, I'm proud of this list. My regrets feel reasonable, but not devastating. My "don't regrets" make sense. As I wrote, I did think of another angle: things I'm glad we DID do, and things I'm glad we DIDN'T do. Maybe I'll write about that too.

In, like, what? three more months? XD

~Stephanie

Maybe I Shouldn't Write for a Living Anymore

"So," I said to Gabe, relatively out of the blue, as I do. "I was thinking about the part in Friends where [Character] decides to quit, and the boss is like, 'What if I gave you a better position?' and [Character] says, 'I want my own office. And an assistant. And an expense account' and the boss is like 'Done!' And then I was thinking about [Friend We Know In Real Life] and how his company wanted him back so much that they told him to name his price, he gave them an outrageous figure, and they actually agreed. I...I've never been that good at my job. I've never been so good that a company would do anything to keep me, so good that I could call the shots. And what's more, I've never cared to BE that good. But shouldn't I WANT to be that good? Shouldn't I want to excel at what I do?"

The conversation went on, and then landed here:

"You seem, in general," Gabe said. "And I don't want this to come out meanly, but you're in general a lot less passionate than you used to be."

"Oh, absolutely," I agreed. "Every single thing I think about, the first reaction I have is 'I'm tired.' The Fire Faery Story, work, dance, working out, church. I'm just tired. I don't wanna do ANYTHING. Ever."

"I'm sorry I keep coming back to this," Gabe said. "But I'm gonna say it again: you're burnt out."

burnout (n): 2a: "exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration"

And I know he's right. It's not (just) depression; it's burnout.

My natural inclination is to think I'm lazy, not burnt out. "Everyone has responsibilities," I tell myself. "You don't get to pull a millennial and label it 'burnout' and use it as an excuse to do nothing for six months."

But also I know this isn't how being alive is supposed to feel. This isn't how God created me to feel. Something IS wrong. Who I am at my core is passionate, willing and excited to do hard things. But gah, I haven't had the energy to spare for my Core Self in years.

I would chalk this up to baby blues/losing my pink/adapting to being a mom, but I've felt this way since around Covid, whether or not the pandemic actually contributed.

So what did cause this burnout? The thing I keep coming back to is my work, but I don't want that to be the answer, for a lot of reasons. 1) I love the mission of Classical Conversations, 2) I love(d) my team, 3) I loved my role on my team, 4) the company does a phenomenal job of supporting work/life balance and seeing its employees first as people, then as workers. There's no reason my job should have burnt me out, but somewhere along the line, it started feeling more soul-sucking than makes any sense.

Is it that I'm not cut out to do the same thing for that long? I was assistant editor for 4–5 years, then a curriculum developer for 4–5 years. Those don't feel like long enough stretches to burn a person out. Maybe I switched roles at the right time to prevent burnout the first time, and it was simply time to switch again, only I transitioned to stay-at-home mom instead? Maybe this is the transition I need?

Every time there was a new process or metric or idea at work, I was over it before the announcement even concluded. I was tired. I didn't want to figure it out. I didn't want to comply. I wanted to find any cut-able corners, any excuse to defer or delay. That's not the kind of attitude I used to have. It used to be that if I didn't have the energy to comply, I at least had the energy to resist XD The last few years I've felt like my soul has had a flat tire. The project I'd been working on for the last few years—

Ohhhhh.

Oh.

It's that. It's that project.

I LOVE the vision for a work project. It has to do with writing, and y'all know I'm passionate about writing—probably more than anything else. Writing, stories, characters, growth. This project perfectly aligned with my passions, but I wasn't the one who got to call the shots. Frankly, my team and my boss weren't always either. We served the masters of classical education and the company's owner. My role was to contribute and create, but someone else's vision, even if I disagreed with it. Toward the end, that happened more and more. The project drifted farther and farther from what I wanted it to be, and what I had originally made it. Lots of revisions, lots of shoehorning. My square peg vision in a round hole mandate.

That's hard for me.

It's really hard to lease out your passion, to hand the reins to someone else when your desired destinations aren't the same. After a while, it starts to make you hate your passion, because your passion just reminds you of the cage you're in. It's easier to close your eyes than see a view interrupted by bars.

As Gabe said, I've been so stressed for so long that if anything even comes close to brushing against a stressor, I'm over it. Get it away from me. I hate it.

Maybe I'm not cut out to use my passions for hire...at least not the way they have been.

This post was basically supposed to say, "Hey guys, I'm burned out. I don't know why, but let's go on a journey together to get my spark back and if you're feeling the same way, we can encourage each other!"

Instead it's become "Hey guys, I'm burned out. I don't know why—op, maybe I do and maybe I shouldn't write for a living any more?"

I don't necessarily think I'm landing on that for good, but I do want to circle back to the post's original intent: recovery from burn out. I don't know how to do that yet, but I want to think about it (and blog about it), and then document the journey, because visibility helps me stay accountable.

Random initial thoughts that I can hear over the baby screaming at her dad despite doing so well for the first hour of nighttime sleep:

• drinking enough water
• eating protein at every meal
• going outside
• doing tasks intentionally slowly
• finding a rhythm with Bible time
• getting enough sleep
• scheduling coffee dates with friends

Maybe I'll sort recovery ideas into mind/body/heart categories? Maybe I'll try to integrate one new good habit per week?

Leave it to me to turn burnout recovery into a project. Don't worry, I'll work on it.

~Stephanie

Re: I Quit My Job

On January 8, I started a post called "I Quit My Job." I worked on the post once or twice, never finished it, and then I had to send my laptop back because it belonged to the company. For the last five weeks, I've been without a laptop for the first time in about seventeen years.

I didn't consider how difficult that would be for me. I used to be an avid journaler, from childhood until a few years ago. I don't know why I stopped except maybe depression, but blogging replaced the practice. It's not the SAME as journaling, because writing for the public is necessarily different than writing to yourself (or to no one), although I admit even my journaling style is sort of...self-conscious? I write as if someone might read it, not in terms of content, but style.

Anyway, that's sort of a tangent. The point is, for the first time in more than half my life, I found myself without an outlet.

A laptop has been like my right arm for a long, long time. Yeah, the particular one I had for the last nine and a half years (replaced periodically) was company property, but—and maybe I'm not supposed to say this?—I also used it for personal writing in my off time, and watched YouTube on it over lunch. I blogged on it. I checked Facebook on it. I organized photos for our annual Happy New Year cards on it. The images for this blog were stored on it. I bought baby shower and birthday gifts on it. It had all my browser bookmarks. It's how I accessed the documents I needed to do my job. It was my brain.

All the sudden, I had quit the job I would have had for a decade in June, which was at the company through which I'd been schooled since I was ten years old, and had to give up the piece of hardware that stored and helped process the thoughts in my increasingly colander-like mom brain.

Was it a relief to quit? Unbelievably so. I went from doing two jobs—mothering and curriculum developing—poorly and waking up every day feeling like a stack of Copper Lodge Library books was piled on my chest, taking meetings camera off and "in listen only mode, sorry" so my baby could sleep on my chest, rushing through baby-led weaning breakfasts of yogurt with raspberries so I could try to rewrite sections of a writing book I'd been developing for four years to...

Waking up to freedom. Not living under the crushing weight of nap math married to meeting math. Breakfasts that could take as long as they needed to, followed by clean-ups completely devoid of urgency. Walks. Target runs. Brushing my teeth every day.

But also...a weird void. A shapeless silence. Not because of a lack of work, but because of a lack of writing.

I had a lot of feelings about quitting my job, which I had started to process in the "I Quit My Job" draft, but had to abandon. Could I have used Gabe's laptop? Absolutely, and I did, for some things, because I am still working a tiny handful of hours a week as a contractor. But using a different interface without all my bookmarks and documents and trackpad settings felt like trying to write a dissertation in crayon with my left hand. I could do what I HAD to do, but no way was I going to try to blog. So the thoughts sat unprocessed.

In a way, I might be glad? I haven't read over the "I Quit" draft, but I know it's disorganized and filled with lots of guilt and catharsis/validation seeking. I didn't go out at work the way I wanted to. I ran myself into the ground and then resigned knowing there was much that my team needed me to do that I never would. I'm embarrassed and sad.

But now that I've had six weeks to settle, I care less. I've gotten some distance. There's no way I could've continued the way I was. I am so much happier. Elle is getting a much better mother. Classical education will always be there. Zero regrets.

I guess the biggest lesson I've learned so far is how important writing is to me. I've always known that on an intellectual level, but I've been reacquainted with the fact on a gut level. My mind has not been well for last few weeks, and I can feel it unfurling and breathing a sigh of relief with this post. I have so much to say, so much I need to bring out in the light of words and examine.

I've had four blogs since I was fourteen, each unintentionally paired with an era of my life, although they overlapped. The first was called Carpe Diem and it was naive and bubbly and random, exactly what you'd expect from a girl in 2008. The next one began in 2011, I think, and was called Pandora (a darker, sadder, grittier side of myself, but theoretically paired with hope), renamed to Peripeteia ("a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances") when I felt like I had synthesized the light and dark sides of myself. (You'll notice this blog isn't linked. I've set it to "private." We don't talk about the Peripeteia phase now XD) Then there was Reason in the Rhyme, from 2013–2020ish. I guess I'd call that my thoughtful, sort of academic stage. Then we have Becoming Me, from 2019–today.

I'm beginning a new era now, and normally I'd start a new blog. However, this one is different, because it's always been about changing, growing, becoming. Maybe this is my forever blog home.

One thing is for sure: writing is my sanity, and I don't intend to go this long without a dose ever again.

~Stephanie