How a lost a brother and gained a sister-- in one day

May 2012

The most poignant moments of my life tend to sneak up on me. Granted, some of them I'm able to see coming: for example, my wedding day, and the days I met each of my sweet babies. I knew in advance that these life-altering days would unforgettable, but I had no idea which specific parts of these days would get seared into my memory. I find that it's usually some small detail, something I wouldn't have predicted would be important, that ends up claiming the honor of making a wrinkle in my brain. Almost always, it's something that moves me deeply and unexpectedly. For example, I remember the receiving line at my wedding much more than I remember the exchanging of rings or vows or the first dance. In my mind's eye are the tears coming out of my grandpa's eyes, the spring in my mother-in-law's step. I can still hear the voices and laughter echoing in the back of the church. From Evie's birth, I recall the weight of her being lifted off of me, out of me, and the intense relief of being able to draw a deep breath. And with Jonah, I think of this song that my hospital bracelet played when I pushed my bracelet to his (a neat safety feature, so no weirdo can sneak off with a baby that's not theirs)-- which gave me a little thrill of joy every time we did it. How could I have possibly predicted that of all of the moments, these would be the ones that persisted? The ones that I can readily recall?  Yet my life as I know it is woven out of a million tiny details like this.

Last Saturday some new memories got woven into my life tapestry. My brother got married. Because I'm mostly not an idiot, I knew that the day would bring on lots of feels, and would leave me with lots of good stuff to look back on. Yet, as usual, there was this sucker-punching moment that caught me off guard. It happened at a time that I would have expected to be routine, cursory, a mundane detail: standing in line, waiting to walk down the aisle for the processional. Up to and even including that point, the day had been hellishly hectic. My existence as a human being had been reduced to that of a frazzled and purple-gowned personal assistant for my immediate family: the management of hair, clothes, everyone being at the right place at the right time, plus attempts at gracefully maneuvering the egos and bodily functions of two small kids in formal attire. (Have you ever tried to help a coiffed and incredibly stubborn 4-year old flower girl go pee? Not for the faint of heart.). After Evie disappeared for the umpteenth time and required a cursory search party, I began to fantasize about propping my feet up on a church pew and downing Morgan ‘n’ diets until smiling came easy again.

Yet as the service started, the noise in my head finally quieted down. I stopped, and for the first time looked, really looked, around me. I saw my Mom. She was striking in her mother-of-the-groom attire; that much I had already seen. Now, though, I Saw. I saw through all of the formality and fuss and noticed her fragility. Her pride, her tears, the bittersweetness of seeing her son happy yet so grown up. I saw Dad, farmer-gone-debonair in his tux and cufflinks, his eyes glistening and red-rimmed as he waited with Mom. For a man I have never seen cry, he seemed markedly unabashed about wearing his heart on his sleeve. The therapist in me smiled while the little girl in me wanted to comfort her daddy. Cue my own tears, the cup of my emotion finally runneth over as my parents made their way down the aisle ahead of me.

That’s when I got my sock in the gut: “my little brother is getting married.” In the span of seconds my mind flipped through the catalog of memories that I have stored for Nate. I remembered him as a guileless toddler, following me around the house because I held his tractors captive; as the little guy who ran around with these two other little guys, all in MC Hammer pants and neon t-shirts, who my friends and I labelled "the junior mafia." As a teen stumbling drunk and breaking one of Mom’s fancy lamps, spurring a ten-year secret between he and I, one that we guarded carefully until we were sure we were beyond the statute of limitations on such things. I recalled him leaving home, moving into his first apartment, experimenting with different hobbies and jobs and lifestyles until he found what fit for him. Over the years he became a person I not only loved, but also liked-- he became one of my closest friends. He was no longer a child in any way. He hadn’t been for a long time, but this fact finally hit home for me as I stood looking down the long aisle at that nervous and joyful man who stood waiting at the altar. I felt a pang of loss. Our past was gone. Our little Michl family of four was no more.

In almost the same breath, I thought of all I was about to gain.  Before I started my walk down the aisle, I looked back and saw Abby. The beginnings of tears were in her eyes as she clutched her father’s arm. My heart squeezed when I looked at her, and I remembered that already, I loved her like a sister. I wanted her to be in my family. I was happy to say goodbye to the past if it meant that she would be a part of our future.

And this is the snapshot image that will remain when I look back on the day: crying with my parents as we said goodbye to the past and hello to the future. I’ll remember other things, like Evie crawling under a pew and screaming during the ceremony, like the best man’s speech, like losing and serendipitously finding my sunglasses (on one of the groomsmen's faces at 11 PM), like eating a Skittle that I thought was a Reese’s Pieces (and this, my friends, is not a good surprise if you’re me). It was a day filled with stress and joy, dirty jokes and cocktails, old family and new family. It was an honor to be a part of it. Though I did have to let go of my “baby” brother, I got him back as a peer and friend, and I also got a sister-- I'd say that's a hell of a deal, and I couldn't be happier about it. 

Cheers, once again, to Nate and Abby!!

Originally published 5/6/2012 on ideclarelifecrisis.blogspot.com. Edited 5/1/2017.

Worst field trip sponsor ever

So, I’m a mom. Two conglomerations of matter and soul took root within me, and I grew lives where lives hadn’t previously existed.

(The above sentiment will be the most beautiful part of this post. It’s all downhill from here.)

I sort of thought that since I had CREATED and GROWN LIVES, this process, by virtue of what it is, would automatically impart to me a new skill set, a sacred wisdom: the gift of knowing how to be good with kids. Not just mine; other people’s, too.

As it turns out: nope.

First, a series of disclaimers:

DISCLAIMER 1: It's not that I don't like kids. I really do. They're fantastic, and funny, and I believe they are the very fabric of our society. But, let's face it: You can really, really like something and not be good at it. For example, after years of denying it, I will admit to you all that I love to dance. Does that mean I'm good at it? Oh, heavens no. Though the ardent whispers of my sometimes-weekend lover Captain Morgan tries to convince me otherwise.

DISCLAIMER 2: If you leave your kids in my care, I'm not going to ruin them. Just don't expect them to be writing home about my awesomeness. Expect more something to the effect of: "Um, Evie's mom is kind of weird. She kept trying to tell me about women's revolutions and was singing something that she called Hamilton."

DISCLAIMER 3: Age matters. I'm good with babies and toddlers, because I'm not above a long game of peek-a-boo or a rollicking ten verses of Where Is Thumbkin. I speak the language of the very young, and they usually like me okay, because I smile a lot and am kind of a goober. And teens, they're fine too. There's around an 85% chance that they're going to be into Harry Potter (or other nerdy fandom), sports, shopping, music, or theater, and I can work with any of those variables.

But that 6-12 year old age? Man, those kids throw me for a loop. They're like sharks: they fascinate me and I'd spend all day watching them behind glass, but do I wanna get in a tank with one and see what happens? No sir. I do not.

DISCLAIMER 4: I have two kids in the baffling 6-12 year old age range, yet I make every effort to be what is, in my understanding, a Good Mom.

And it is because of this last bit that I sometimes, despite my obvious shortcomings in the realm of all things kid, occasionally volunteer for stuff at my kids' school. Isn't that what Good Moms do? That being said, I can’t shake the feeling that when I show up for these things the people in charge are all like "Oh no. Not her." If this is indeed the internal monologue of teachers and other parents I've volunteered with, I wouldn't blame them. I deserve it, you guys. I’m terrible. Honestly. I’m the worst parent sponsor on Earth. 

Allow me to demonstrate: Last week, I volunteered to go with my kids’ school to their annual “Ride the Waves” event, which is a field trip to one of the indoor YMCA pools. I’ve gone every year, so this was my fourth time. When my kids were little, I was a Cool Mom at this event. My kids wanted to play with me, and then their friends did too, and I figured out what to do because the kids were so engaging. This year, when I rolled in, Evie acknowledged me with a wave and a grin but was too busy with her own clique to pay me much mind. As for Jonah, he looked over at me once and then his eyes slid away, like I was a stranger. I realized that my Cool Mom days were a thing of the past.

So, mostly I sat on the ledge dangling my feet in the water, staring awkwardly around at this pool full of kids, wondering what it was that I was supposed to do.

Another mom stood near one edge of the pool, tossing rings in for the kids to dive in and retrieve, a game that a bunch of kids were clearly really into. It seemed like she knew what she was doing. I wondered: is there a game I should be playing with the kids? I had no idea what kind of game or activity would be fun for them. Pool charades? Would You Rather? Maybe a quick round of Settlers of Catan, poolside?  I chose to sit back and quietly observe.

At one point a tiny girl, shivering and crying, made her way around my post. Since I was in my swimsuit and a lot of the sponsors weren’t, I thought I should take it upon myself to help her out. I held her hand and walked around the pool with her, and she temporarily calmed down. But then she started crying again. I squatted down so that we were at eye level, because I’ve heard that’s a thing you’re supposed to do with kids. And I said, “My name is Allison. What’s your name?”

Trying to talk to her? That was my first mistake. She lurched away from me and started crying harder. I went for a distraction route. I asked her favorite color. I asked about her family. I asked, did she have any brothers or sisters? She said she had a sister. I said, “What’s your sister’s name?”

And she said, “I DON’T KNOW!!!” Then she started crying so hard that a teacher had to come manually remove her from the pool.

I thought that went pretty well.

I spent the rest of the time lurking around my third grade daughter. My behavior was probably only moderately creepy. I felt like a kid on the fringe: wanting to join in, but waiting for the cool kids to welcome me to the inner sanctum. Turns out that third graders aren’t super jazzed about awkward 34-year old psychologists who like talking about universal health care and the latest Barbara Kingsolver novel.

And yet, there was one golden opportunity, a time I could have stepped up and been a grown-up. A few kids caused some commotion by climbing OVER the pool rope, instead of going UNDER it, which was AGAINST THE RULES. However, during this event I’d been spacing out and thinking about fried fish and peanut butter cups in ice cream and also wondering what it would have been like to have lived in New Jersey in the 1970s. By the time I realized there was commotion, the teachers, fully dressed, from the side of the pool, had taken care of the scene that had unfolded literally five feet in front of me, in the middle of the pool. #winning

Other school volunteering that I’ve done went about as well as Ride the Waves did. I helped out at a classroom Thanksgiving party when Evie was in Kindergarten. I, per usual, didn’t know what to do with the kids, so I just let them stick foam stickers all over my face. It made them laugh, and that was a step up from my usual performance.

And then we all got in trouble with the teacher and the other sponsors, because apparently that wasn’t what we were supposed to do with the stickers. *shrugs*

Another time, we were hosting a sleepover for Evie at our house, and during the half-hour that my husband ran out to the store to get ice cream, the girls started bickering at each other. They split off into tiny-but-brutal feminine gangs, the Bloods raging up in the piano room while the Crips staged a hostile take-over of the downstairs TV room. One lone soldier stood by the door and said she wanted to go home.

I was paralyzed. What do you do when a group of 7-year olds that’s supposed to be cohesive and BFFs-4-Life all of the sudden goes full on gang war? I stood in the kitchen, wide eyed, watching it all go down, and thought, “Oh no.” And that was as far as my thinking went. It stalled out on “ohhhh nooooo” and looped.

So I didn’t do anything. I stood there and watched as the Bloods yelled and the Crips taunted. The lone soldier at the door glared at me, accusatorily. My husband came home, took one look at the scene, and immediately engaged them all in some kind of fun joint activity that mended fences and prevented drive bys. Jeb knows how terrible I am with kids. Dude’s got a fricking degree in education, taught for 8 years in public schools, and also worked with elementary-aged kids as a teacher-naturalist for several summers. He’s got a leg up on this whole “I know how to talk to kids” thing. (When I said to him, as I was brainstorming for this post, “Man, I’m really awkward with kids,” he said, “Yeah, I’ve seen.”)

I think that probably even if I did have all the right kinds of education, mixing with kids still wouldn’t be a strength of mine. Hell, even when I was a kid I sucked at talking to other kids. I didn’t even realize this about myself until I saw video evidence of me on a day of preschool. My peers are running amok, parading around in dress-up clothes, smashing playdough between their hands, giggling, laughing, skipping, dancing. I’m sitting crosslegged on the floor next to the teacher, a very serious, doleful expression on my face, no doubt engaging her in a conversation about the Chernobyl disaster or Ronald Reagan’s diplomatic progress with Gorbachev.

Yet somehow, between the field trips and class parties, I always forget my deficits. Enough time goes by between volunteering events that I get myself to thinking, “This won’t be so bad!” and “You can totally do this!” It’s like how a woman can forget the pain of childbirth, only to be rudely awakened when it’s upon her again. (Or so I've heard. I don't actually know. My kids came out the sunroof, thank you very much.) Or, like that time at the age of 21 I decided I was a master roller skater and should totally go to a rink, even though I hadn’t skated for 13 years and had been absolutely awful at it in my childhood. In case it’s not obvious how this excellent choice panned out: Immediately upon entering the rink on skates, I fell and hit my head. I cried for a long time. Mostly because my head hurt, but also because I was really embarrassed, but also because I was drunk.  

Pre-skate optimism

Post-skate realism (and pain)

It seems that optimism comes for me in the stretches between life events. Optimism, with a splash of denial, and a misplaced confidence chaser.  Maybe adding a stiff shot of realism to the optimism cocktail could help, the next time I think about school volunteering. Maybe I could volunteer for a task better suited to my strengths….like, maybe I could organize the library. Or just read the library. I don’t know.

There's this part of me that wants to be more of a kid person. This is the Pollyanna part of me that thinks that maybe, if I take the right class or read the right book or observe the right people, I could become Kid Competent. The other part of me-- the louder part, the bigger part, the part that talks like Doctor Phil-- is pretty sure that it's time to settle up with reality. I’m 34 years old, I’ve got two kids of my own, I have seven nephews and a niece (all of whom I’ve had ample opportunities to practice with), a PhD IN EFFING TALKING TO PEOPLE, and I’ve still got nothing.

Chances are, when it comes to me and kids: this is as good as it’s gonna get.

Change isn't linear, and that sucks

Sometimes I feel like a broken record in my work as a therapist. I end up saying the same things, over and over again, day in and day out. Don’t get me wrong: I say a lot of weird and different stuff every day, too. My head is honestly just too chaotic-- any number of different words and pictures and songs and feelings and ideas and shit are flying around up in there at any given moment-- to be all that repetitive.

Yet, some interventions are so “Allison-style” that I end up using them with most of my clients—hence the broken-record feeling I've got going on. I’m big on self-compassion, so I end up saying “Would you talk like that to your best friend if she was going through what you’re going through?” I'm hip on self-awareness and values as in-roads to making lasting change, so I hear myself saying, “I think it would be helpful if we spend some time identifying the things you deeply care about, the things you want to build your life around.”  And, I'm pragmatic. I accept that people are inherently messy, and so is change. Thus, the  “progress isn’t linear” talk, which is one that I have with almost every client.

Here’s what sets the scene for the “progress isn’t linear” shtick: after a couple of sessions, a client comes in saying he's feeling better. He's probably feeling lighter, freer, because he has someone to talk to now. Maybe he's also experimented with a coping skill or two that he's learned in session. This relief lasts for a few days, or maybe a few weeks, sometimes even months. Yet, inevitably, the client falters, and that relief slips through his fingers. He has a bad day. If he struggles with alcoholism, he's picked up a bottle. If he struggles with depression, he's struggled to get out of bed. If he has post-traumatic stress, he's had a series of disturbing flashbacks. And he'd thought that these behaviors or symptoms were gone, that he'd kicked them. He comes in, head hanging, and tells me that he’s failed. He’s “back at square one.” He is demoralized and dejected and questioning if he really can change, if he really can heal. Sometimes he wants to quit trying.

And I, though I feel empathy for my client, am unfazed by his revelations. I know that this is how it goes. I’ve seen this happen so many times, in fact, that I would argue until I’m blue in the face that progress simply isn’t linear. And that sucks, because we so want progress to be linear. We want to see ourselves on a steady road to recovery, to see improvement every day.

We want progress to look like this:

But what progress really looks like is usually this:

Or even this:

I'm not entirely sure what this means. I'm pretty sure the line might
even suggest that going back in time was involved. The point is:
Progress is messy. Just go with it. 

In other words, progress can be a real bitch.

I tell clients about this. I draw these pictures. I attempt to normalize their setbacks. Usually, I can get clients to jump on this bandwagon with me. They are able to see how yes, they are human and yes, change is hard, and no, this return to old behavior does not necessarily mean they are at square one. It means they are on square 34 but had a bump in the road.

So, I hang my hat on getting my clients to buy this, so that they will go easy on themselves, and so that they keep their hope alive. And not just because I believe it's good for them, but because I actually believe it. Which all makes me very embarrassed to admit that I CAN'T EVEN DRINK MY OWN MEDICINE. Why is it so hard?  I wonder why, when I have a bad day, it is damn-near impossible to see this as normal, human, to be expected?

You know, being a therapist is nothing if it isn’t being the world’s biggest hypocrite, on a daily basis.

I’ve had a couple of challenging days lately with my journey out of depression (click here to read more about that), which caught me off guard—because things had been going so great! For the past couple of months, I’ve been riding waves of positivity. I have a new nephew to love on. My cousins and I had an epic Harry Potter Trivia night, and I was victorious! (eat it, Noah! And you’ll get me next time, Kevin. BTW, I have the best ever cousins). I BOUGHT TICKETS TO HAMILTON: THE MUSICAL (Chicago), which is a total bucket list thing for me. I’m writing more than I ever have, and better yet, I’m having meaningful conversations with friends (and even strangers!) about what I’ve written. I’ve played volleyball and baked brownies and sang Happy Birthday and chatted around firepits and taken long walks and sang on a stage and giggled with my friends and snuggled with my kiddos and did sun salutations daily. These experiences are giving me fuel, are helping me to heal. My energy level is good, my productivity at work and at home has improved immensely.   I feel smiley, a lot, and have possibly already laughed more this year than I did in 2016 altogether. Hope is winning the battle over fear and self-deprecation.

But even given all of that, I’m apparently not immune to bad days. Sometimes unwelcome stressful events go ahead and let themselves in and knock me over. If I were a football team, this would be a rebuilding year for me. So the quarterback gets hit a lot. His O line is injured, and slow. My playcalling is still all wonky, and sometimes, Bo Pelini shows up and starts railing on everyone.

Though more resilient than I would have been six months ago, going through The Depression of 2016 has left me more vulnerable, still, than I’d like. Some days it’s still hard to adjust my sails when the wind blows. Some days, I still want to crawl into my bed, cover up with the quilt that my great-grandma sewed from scraps of her clothing, and hide from everyone, everything. Some days, I hate on myself, really hate on myself, with the heat of a thousand suns, or I doubt myself with such fury that there’s not a lot of me left at the end of it.

Fortunately, these days, or stretches of days, have been few and far between. But they do happen.

And I’m going to falter again, no matter how hard I rail against that possibility. Not every day can I possibly go skipping into the sunset, in search of my ponies and rainbows. Tomorrow will not necessarily be “better” than today. I don’t get that guarantee, and neither do you. Sure, we can hope for it. We can even work for it (and we should!)—we can use good coping skills, and talk to ourselves kindly, and practice sound self-care and do everything “right”—and still, we get no guarantees.

Because change isn’t fucking linear, you guys. I so wish it was, but it’s not.

The good news is this: If you, like me, have faltered lately, you’re not alone. All this means is that you’re “normal.” You’re human. This is happening to all of us, all the time, but we’re mostly too ashamed to talk about it. This isn’t square one. This is a bump in the road. Maybe tomorrow will be kinder, maybe it won’t—but some tomorrow will be kinder, if you keep working at whatever your battle is. I promise.

Maybe if I say these things enough times, to you all, to my clients, and to myself, I'll start to apply them more readily to my life, too. :) It would seem that perhaps being a broken record does have its advantages.

Pray For My Accountant

2/9/2017

Today started as many others do. A few clients in the morning. An uninspired Healthy Choice meal for lunch. A little witty repartee with Megan, my across-the-hall fellow psychologist and valued friend. We were talking about how many hats Megan bought for her son this year, which is a subject that we cover a lot, because I think she buys too many hats and I tend to bring up the same subjects over and over. I bet she gets sick of that. So anyway, it was business as usual until she said, "I've gotta work on my taxes today."

I gulped.“Your taxes. Does that mean…Tom’s coming?”

“Yeah, Tom’s coming.”

Tom’s coming. Two words. Infinite fear.

Tom is our accountant.

Please let it be known that my fear has very little to do with Tom himself. Tom is a lovely man.  He is smart, patient, and tactful. He helps me to make good financial choices. In fact, I think if everyone could have Tom in their lives, they’d probably be a lot better off.

So no, it’s not Tom per sé that gives me pause. It’s the stuff I find myself having to say to Tom. Like, “Oops, I totally forgot to send you that mileage number again,” or “Can you explain how SIMPLE IRAs work, one more time?” (I’d already asked like 9 times), or “Wait, was I supposed to mail a check for that last week?”

“Ah, shit,” I said, trying to figure out how I was going to not look like an idiot in front of Tom. Again. And this time was bound to be especially bad, because I’d been harboring a secret.

You see, I didn’t get into psychology to be a businesswoman. I really didn’t. In my ten years of higher education, I didn’t take one—not even one!— course in business. Every lick of business knowledge I have is from way back in the day, when I took Accounting I and II in high school. 

So what did I do, immediately upon graduating with my PhD? Open a business. YOLO.

That’s where Tom comes in. He’s a powerhouse of financial knowledge. Incredibly helpful? YES. A bit intimidating? Also yes.

So, I’m usually nervous when Tom comes to visit, and nerves make me more clunky than I already am.  My mouth runs ahead of my brain, and I'm pretty sure I make a lot of weird, strained faces. Also, I’m inherently socially awkward, namely because I SUCK at socially acceptable small talk. Which I didn’t even realize about myself until I learned about some of the most common American social scripts in a multicultural communication class in undergrad and realized I was DOING THEM ALL WRONG. For example, when an American says “How are you?”, in passing,  it is meant to be a greeting, not a legitimate question. You are supposed to reply, “Fine, thanks. How are you?”

You guys, this info blew my mind. I’d always thought that when people asked how I was, my job was to be honest and forthcoming, you know, like “Actually, terrible, because I’ve got cramps and my TV show didn’t record last night and I’m also feeling really insecure about this conversation that I had with a friend this morning.”

But at least now I understand why so many folks in undergrad stopped asking how I was when I saw them in the hall.

Anyway.

Before I’d even had a chance to formulate a plan for disclosing my shameful secret to Tom, the office door bell rang.

“Is that him?” I mouthed to Megan, standing in the threshold of my doorway, out of the line of sight of the waiting room and hallway.

Megan nodded.

I took a deep breath and stepped out of my doorway, and there, just ten feet away from me, was Tom. I smiled my most winning smile.

“Tom! Hi!”

“Hello there!” His tone was friendly, but I caught the way he froze, just a little.

Imagine this from his perspective: you go to a client’s office, and on your way down the hall to her door, another of your clients, NOT the one you were supposed to be meeting with, comes popping out of nowhere, smiling hugely, saying your name like she knew you were coming. Creepy, amiright?

“I was going to email you today," I said. It was almost the truth. 

“Oh, were you? I was starting to think you were avoiding me!”

I knew he was joking but SHIT did I feel called out. Dude saw right through me.

I eased into my confession. Started with a positive. “I put some money into my retirement account!”

He smiled. “Okay, that’s good!” He looked at me expectantly...probably because I was blocking his way into Megan’s office. 

I did that smile that’s not really a smile, but more of a baring of teeth. I guess it’s a grimace? It looks like this:

“Okay, so another thing. I’m a little behind on my Quickbooks for the year.” 

Tom, because he is a lovely man, once spent well over an hour in my office teaching me how to use Quickbooks. For a few years I’d been able to use it on my own with relative proficiency. Then 2016 happened. (Author’s Note: If you’re new to me, or to the blog: 2016 was not my best year. Read this if you want to know why.)

He furrowed his brow, just a little. “All right, like how far behind are we talking?”

“Ummm…pretty behind.”

“When’s the last time you updated it?”

“December.”

“Oh, that’s not bad. You can get that caught up.”

“No…like last December. December 2015.” More teeth baring.

“Ookkay.” He narrowed his eyes. Not unkindly, just kind of a “what in the hell should we do with this?” kind of face. It felt like the time I drove my dad’s pickup into a snowdrift in the country and got it stuck. Just like back then, I’d done a bad thing, and there was nothing to do but come clean.

Tom was nowhere near as pissed as my dad had been the night of the truck in the snowdrift. Tom didn’t say “Fuck” even one time.

Yet despite Tom's total lack of criticism, my need to please rushed forth and started pushing nonsense out of my mouth. “I’ve got all of my bank statements! I could go through and get it all caught up really quick! Should I? I can! I definitely can. Yep. But, I mean…does it make more sense for me to do it, or for me to just have you do it, at this point?”

He paused, considering this. “I think it’s probably best if you just get me the statements, and I’ll do it. It’ll save time for you, anyway.”

Later that day, Tom and I came up with a system that will work better for me for the upcoming tax year-- which includes not trying to do my own Quickbooks from now on. This will cost me a little more in terms of what I pay him, but will be worth the savings of time and guilt.

Before he left, he flipped through the bank statements I'd managed to find for him. “What’s this Capital One deposit?”

“Distribution. That’s just a regular deposit into a savings account.” Ah, the thrill of competence!

“And how about this $22.30 at Super Saver?”

I squirmed. “Umm….pretty sure that was office supplies and postage.” And Tom, if you’re reading this, it was definitely also two large bags of Hershey’s Kisses, which I DO hand out to clients on the regular. Total business expense.

I started to get nervous thinking about Tom going through all of my bank statements. Tom was now going to know every time I went out to eat. He’s going to know every cent that I spent on every book, every training, EVERY BAG OF CHOCOLATE. When you really get down to it, your accountant is like a benevolent Big Brother—not the genetic type, the Orwellian type. So you’d better damn-well have someone you trust. Thank goodness I trust Tom.

Trust aside, I was still jittery thinking about the Big Brothery aspects and also still feeling sort of like a daughter having just admitted some grave error to her father.

So I started rambling on about all kinds of weird shit, I don’t even know what, but I do know that it got worse and worse as it went along, culminating in me comparing Tom to a priest who had just absolved me of all of my financial sins, literally crossing myself, and saying “I’m not even Catholic, but I guess I’m Catholic today.”

Yep. That happened. My Protestant ass crossed myself in front of my accountant and pretended that he was a priest. (WTF?)

To be fair, he did give me permission to throw all of my guilt away. I mean, was crossing myself after that situation really so wrong? (Hint: Yes.)

After assigning me three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers (not really), Tom left, and I have to imagine he was relieved. Ultimately, I was also relieved, but not because of his absence, but rather, because I’d “come clean” and it really wasn’t all that big of a deal. All of the meetings with Tom are like that: we hold our breath, we talk about the financial truths of the situation at hand, he tells us what to do in that calm, no-nonsense way that he does, and then we all move on with our lives. Sometimes we do what he says. Sometimes we don’t. But even when we fail he helps us figure out what the next best step is.

Best accountant ever.

Lucky Megan: she got to hear the entire "I'm Catholic today" shitshow go down. Given the proximity between her door and mine, she Very Often sees me making an ass of myself.

And, lucky me, Megan thinks I’m “cute awkward.” I want to believe her, but somehow her sentiment smacks of that way that parents think the weird things their kids do are cute. But I guess that’d make me Megan’s kid in this scenario, and that doesn’t really work because we’re not like that, and plus if I was her kid she’d start bringing me all of these hats and dear god, please don’t let her buy any more hats.

Cute awkward, actual awkward, whatever I am--I’ve accepted it’s how I’ll always be. Even with my accountant. Especially with my accountant. If you think about it, say a prayer for Tom tonight. When it comes to our office, he needs all the help he can get. And it’s tax season, y’all. 

***
UPDATE: TOM READ AND APPROVED OF THIS POST (see the comments below). I FEEL LIKE I HAVE WON AT LIFE. Quickbooks be damned.

Dear Cason, Thank you

Dear Cason---

I’m not sure my words can do justice in expressing all that I feel for you, and all that I have to thank you for. However, since I was never one to back down from a challenge, I’ll give it my best shot.

The year you were born, 2016, was not my favorite year. The day that I learned you were with us, that you were growing inside of your mom, was a good day—one of my very favorite days of 2016, all because of you. Also, the day you were born was one of my top days ever. It was the in-between, buddy—those in-between days were pretty sketchy. 

I spent a lot of 2016 feeling sad. It was the type of sadness that I had a hard time understanding, because it didn’t make sense to me. I could look at my life and see that I had everything I’d ever wanted, and still, I cried every single day. I felt lost. Nothing felt right. But, because the sadness defied logic, I went on for a long time pretending that it wasn’t there. Turns out, pretending that something isn’t there doesn’t make it actually not there. Looking away from something doesn’t help it to go away.

Naming things, facing things—now there's a place to start. Once I finally admitted to myself that I was depressed—and not just a little bit, we're talking really, really depressed— I could do something about it. Depression blows, kiddo. I hope you never get it. If you ever do, it’s okay—about one out of every two Americans has a mental health problem at some point in their lifespan, and the most common bugger is depression. I know, what a raw deal. Anyway, at least you know who to talk to if it happens to you. (Note: That’s me. I’ll help you figure it out.)

I got some help for the depression, and I started to feel better. I made some decisions about what I wanted for myself, and that helped me to feel better too. By December fifth, the day you joined us in this world, I was well on the road to recovery. I wasn’t quite where I wanted to be, but I was feeling a lot more like me again. 

You were born on a Monday, which is my writing day. At 8:30 AM, the first exciting thing happened: I hit my 2016 fiction-writing goal of 80,000 words, a goal that I didn't know if I'd be able to reach. It felt like a victory over depression to have done this. At 9 AM, the second awesome thing happened: I picked up my phone and saw that I had a message from your dad, alerting me that you were on your way! I don’t know when I’ve last had such a moving, gratifying morning. I’ll never forget it: the smell of coffee, the joyous pounding of my heart as I typed the sentence that brought me to my goal, the way that my feet danced a silly jig under the table at the Mill when I got your dad's text, the dirty look the dude at the next table shot me because I was making too much noise.

And yet, even starting the day off with that kind of excitement didn’t prepare me for meeting you later that day. Something happened at the moment that I first saw your chubby cheeks and soft blonde hair. Something moved and shifted inside of me, like when marbles in a jar that have come to rest in a precarious position get bumped and suddenly all fall into a more secure place. My feet felt firmly anchored to the ground for the first time in at least a year, maybe longer.

I don’t know what you did to me, Cason, but I sure am grateful that you did it.

Maybe it was your innocence, your newness, the idea that you have a whole big life in front of you to live. This feels hopeful to me, the idea of you experiencing things for the first time, learning about our world, making it your own. Maybe I was able to see the world through your eyes, and I liked what I saw.

Maybe it was the dreams that came true when you came into the world. You were (and are) so very wanted. You made parents out of two of my favorite people in the world. You made thrice grandparents out of two of my other favorites. As for me, I had wanted to be an aunt so badly I could taste it. It was one of my not-so-secret secret wishes for 2016. (I even wrote it in my YearCompass year planning guide in January 2016—and choosing goals and wishes that I can’t control is NOT something I usually do.) I might be shortsighted, but I don’t think I wanted it for me. I wanted it for my brother, and for my sister-in-law, who I knew were going to be loving, doting parents. (And true to form, they are. As you know.)

Maybe it was the idea that your presence has given me an added purpose in life: to support your parents, to love and care for you. To let you do things at my house that your parents won’t let you do at theirs. (How long until you can eat ice cream? Like, maybe one more month? Haha. Don’t tell your mom I said that.) Maybe I’ll take you to your first R-rated movie. Maybe I’ll drive you home the first time you do something stupid in your teenage years. I guess we’ve got a few years to figure these things out. Let's start with the ice cream thing, though. (Shh. Seriously, your mom will kill me if she finds out.)

Every week since you’ve been here on Earth, I’ve gotten better and better. Your remind me that even though life is hard and painful, in some ways it’s simple and good. Your facial expressions and noises make me laugh. This weekend you smiled a great big smile at me and melted my heart. One time you peed all over me, and weirdly even that brought me a twisted kind of joy— hold on, let me explain, because I know that sounds weird. It happened while you were sleeping on my chest, and I was sleeping too, and we were both so soundly out that not even pee woke us up. It was nice to have slept that soundly, and to have been trusted that completely, pee and all.

I mean, no pressure here, buddy. I don’t expect you to be the lifelong key to my happiness or anything like that. Other stuff in my life makes a big difference. Your cousins Evie and Jonah bring me joy every day, and so does your uncle Jeb.  Your grandma and grandpa dole out healthy doses of unconditional love and unwavering support. (You’ll see.) And your parents are dear to me. They’re my best friends and they always have my back.

Importantly, I’ve learned even with the support of all of my family and friends, I’ve ultimately got to take care of myself, too. I’ve got to set limits. I’ve got to say “no” sometimes and “yes” at other times (a lot of times I mess up when I should be saying what. Perennial issue. Probably won’t be resolved by the time you read this, but I’m working on it). I need time to be alone, to think and to write and to exercise and to find my center. I also need time to be goofy with my friends. I’m doing all of that now, too, and it all helps.

Yet, I know that someday, when I look back on 2016 and all that came with it, I will credit you, Cason, with helping me to get unlost, with helping me to plant my feet firmly on the ground again. And all you had to do is show up. I imagine there’s no way I can ever repay you for this, but I’ll be damned if I don’t spend the rest of my life trying.

With so much love,

Aunt Allison

The night I became a Real Person (according to my grandma)

Probably most people don’t look back on their grandparents’ 50^th wedding anniversary party as “this time I got really hammered and made questionable decisions.”

But I’m not most people.

Ten years ago this month, we celebrated Nick and Doris Nicholas’s half-century of wedded bliss. I was twenty-four, newly married, and far worse at moderation than I am now. (Which, if you’ve ever been to a bar with me, should be concerning.) We’d rented a hall for this—and not just any hall, the Exeter Legion Hall.

The Exeter Legion Hall is an old, quaint party venue, and the only game in town. It’s pretty standard for a reception hall: partitioned bar area at the front, a big open space with a wood floor in the middle, a kitchen and bathrooms in the back. It perpetually smells of burnt coffee and old men’s cologne. But oh, how I wish its blue carpeted walls could talk. That hall has no doubt been a keen observer of Exeter’s unfolding history—family arguments, the beginnings and endings of social movements, the first meetings of lovers and the dissolution of marriages—it’s all taken place under the eyes of those walls.

So much of my own personal history has happened at that hall. Multiple wedding receptions, including my own. The annual Exeter Alumni dance. Proms. Pancake feeds. Estate auctions. Lots of other stuff. That place is a nocturnal creature: sleepy by day (bake sales, funeral lunches), and WILD by night (the fun stuff).  When I roll up to the "The Legion" after sundown, my body is conditioned to expect multiple strong drinks. Preferably drinks that feature bright green vodka, and preferably served by Stub Moore, a legendary drink mixologist of Exeter.

Yet, even though this was a nighttime event held at our town’s Monument to Public Drunkenness, it was my grandparents’ anniversary party. A family event, and also a community event. The thing you have to understand about my hometown, Exeter (population ~600), is that when there’s an event at the Legion Hall, all are welcome. It isn’t really an invite-only kind of venue. If you live in Exeter and you know the people being celebrated, and you don’t have anything else to do, you go up to Legion and say the obligatory “congrats” to whoever, then you drink Stub Moore drinks with your friends.

So I could expect, on that evening, to be in the company of all of my family and a big chunk of Exeter’s AARP crowd. All of whom knew me as a Good Girl. I’d been the valedictorian. I’d gotten a full ride to college. I’d never been in legal trouble. I’d married my high school sweetheart. I was working on a PhD in therapy. I helped people. Good. Girl.

I was left with two basic options on how to spend the evening of my grandparents’ soiree: Uphold my Good Girl image, or do the Legion Hall as it is meant to be done.

Here’s a clue as to the choice I made:

The real win here is my mom's face.

Those little bottles of liquor get me every time. It’s like I get thrown off by their cuteness and tininess  (“Oh look at you, you’re just a little guy!”) and forget how much of a punch they pack. I drank three or four of them, whatever I had in my purse, because gosh darnit, they’re so petite and tasty.

And then someone brought me a couple of Stub drinks. I was thirsty, and they were wet.

And then I became the world’s best dancer. So did my brother. It’s hard to describe what happened that night, to the tune of Sinatra’s New York, New York. I can say that there were many Ginger Rogers inspired jumps, and lots of frolicking and pirouetting (it was pirouetting in my mind, at least) on my part. I’m pretty sure there was some high kicking at the end—you know—“These little town bluuuues…are melting awayyyyy…” Both my brother and I fell at some point during the song.  We made Nicholas family history that night. Sadly, someone got this on video, so we could not preserve the graceful images that our mind would have saved for us. We’ve got the real, raw, ridiculous truth of it, now stowed somewhere in our parents’ entertainment center.

And here's a few pics of the raw, ridiculous truth

I think New York New York happened at like 9 PM, while most of the party guests were still milling around. This means that a big chunk of the Exeter geriatric population got to see me act as stupid as I ever have. My reputation was officially sullied. I don’t know if it’s ever recovered.

The night progressed. I sidled up to Exeter’s part-time police officer, a man I’d never actually met and wouldn’t have recognized, save his uniform. Leaning against the wall near the men’s room, I informed him, in a slurred voice, that he “couldn’t do anything to me, because I was the mayor’s daughter.” All of which was technically true, but incredibly unnecessary. I was of-age and not doing anything illegal (because being stupid isn’t illegal, and neither is bad dancing). I think the uniform and the liquor made me regress a few years, and I’d forgotten after all the years of illicit drinking in that Legion Hall, that I was, in fact, old enough.  Also, I think I seriously overestimated my dad’s power to get me out of stuff (if I had been doing anything illegal). I mean, being the mayor of Exeter is something, but it’s not like he’s Johnnie Cochran or anything.  “If the liquor’s legit, you must acquit!”

Still later in the night, my grandmother caught me scrounging for potato chips in the hall kitchen. Because I’m a maudlin drunk when I’ve had too much, I started crying. I told her that I never wanted anything to change and I didn’t want her to ever die. Drunk as I was, I remember saying this, because I remember feeling it and at that moment it was the rawest, most vulnerable wish inside of me. I was happy and I wanted things to stay the same. Grandma was a good sport. She laughed, hugged me, and wiped away my tears and the remnant potato chip crumbs that dotted my dress. She told me that everything changes, and it has to because “that’s life.”  Then she escorted me into the bathroom and made me put cold water on my face, because “you’re a mess, Alli.”

Eventually, the party died down and the hall cleared out. The drinking-aged cousins and I retired to my aunt’s for the after-party. (You know you have won at life when there is an after-party to your grandparent’s 50^th wedding anniversary. Seriously.)  I mostly dozed on the couch, exhausted from all of my socially inappropriate interactions and sweet dance moves. My brother and cousin drank wine and milk, per their report, because it’s all they could find. They sat together at the table, loudly quoting movies, one of them saying “Go back to your home on whore island!” I, because I hadn't (AND STILL HAVEN'T) seen Anchorman, didn't understand that this was a movie quote and took it as a statement directed at me. I sat up and told them that “I wasn’t a whore and had never been a whore!” And then I laid back down and went back to sleep, though it wasn’t great sleep, because someone kept yelling “Porkasaurus Rex!”

At about ten AM the next day, I awoke with a headache, cottonmouth, and a vague sense that I should be embarrassed but not completely sure of why. Images of the previous evening came back in fits and starts, with family merrily filling in the blanks of moments I’d forgotten. Someone got the New York, New York video out and made me and my brother watch it. Oh, the horror.

I’d hoped for a quiet, dim, salty lunch at home at my Mom’s, a meal that would help me recover my electrolytes and my pride. Mom announced we were going to the Community Spaghetti Feed. And where, pray tell, did that event take place? The Exeter Fucking Legion Hall. So, I got to walk immediately back into the scene of my public shame, and lucky for me, many of the same townspeople who had witnessed my antics the night before were there again. I wore a baseball cap and a big sweatshirt, incognito-like, and tried to keep my head down. My aunt and uncle applauded when I walked in, effectively blowing my cover. I’ll never forget the looks of frank disapproval, those pursed lips, those narrowed eyes, on the faces of Exeter’s Holier Than Thou delegation, and also the subdued laughter, the twinkling eyes, of Exeter’s “I have a good sense of humor” crowd.

I didn’t say much to anyone. Mouth too dry, brain too foggy, embarrassment too stifling.

But my grandma was there, and I talked to her. I told her I was sorry about the way I’d acted. She said to me, and I’ll never, in my whole life, forget this: “Alli, last night made me realize that you’re a real person.”

A real person.

Like when the Velveteen Rabbit had been held and played with for so long that he wore out, but then, because the boy had truly loved him, he became real.

I’d lived a life wound so tightly, guarded my “good girl” image so closely, that I’d at times forgotten to just be a person, a person with vulnerabilities and heartache and desperate, secret fears and wishes. Yet when my grandma saw all of that wear, all of that crazy, she loved me just the same. Unfortunately, it took a lot of liquor to bring the realness out of the twenty-four-year-old me. Over the years I’ve been working on accessing my authenticity while sober, because I've realized I’d rather be real than perfect.

There’s nothing I would go back and change about that night, even if I could save myself from embarrassment and one spectacular hangover. Ten years later, I’m so grateful for the honest conversations with my grandmother and for that unforgettable (literally—the family won’t let us forget it) dance with my brother. I’m not as glad that the town cop du jour only knew me as a lush, but whatever, I’m pretty sure my dad fired him anyway. (I’m totally making that up. But Dad could have fired him. Because he did have the power to do that.)

We’re coming up on Grandma and Grandpa’s 60^th wedding anniversary, and guess what? We’re having another party. This time it’s on a Sunday afternoon, there's no dance, and it's not at the Legion Hall. I think grandma might appreciate it if I didn’t get quite so “real” this time around—but I’ll ask her.

And to be safe: Someone lock down the Captain Morgan.

Does it get any real-er than this?

***

A few more pics from the night, for posterity's sake:

Ladies: Please stop diminishing yourselves

Every day I bear witness to you, women of my life--clients, friends, and family--going to great lengths to make yourselves smaller, because you think it will make you feel better. I don’t just mean that you are attempting to diminish yourselves size and weight wise, though that’s part of it. I mean I watch you literally shrinking, in body, mind, spirit.

You try to keep your ideas "reasonable," rather than big, innovative, ambitious. You try to tame your hearts and your passions, because you want to be seen as calm and cool- maybe because you want to feel "in control," maybe because you've learned from others that you are "too big," emotionally. You were told your emotions or needs took up too much space, so you squish them down, subjugate them until they are no more than an echo at the bottom of a dark glass jar.

You bend to your partners’ wills, while squelching your own needs, because that’s “what women do” (especially moms!). You try to be everything to everyone (and of course, fail at this impossible task), and in the meantime, you lose all allegiance to yourselves. You assume that by being less—of everything—you will somehow be worth more in the eyes of others.

You apologize too much. I am also extremely guilty of the crime of being overly apologetic. We say “I’m sorry” for everything, and most of the time, we have nothing to be sorry for. It’s like women live in this apologetic bubble in which we assume that our default position is wrong. With every apology we shrink ourselves by assuming the one-down position, by taking responsibility for a situation that might not even be ours to claim.

And of course, you are trying to be physically smaller. Sometimes a weight loss goal is very healthy and proactive: You want to be able to run with your children and not be winded. You want to be able to feel more comfortable on airplanes and at sporting events. You want to keep your heart healthy. I applaud these goals. They are great goals.

Ninety percent of the time, though, what I hear is: You want to be thinner. You want to get into a smaller size of bridesmaid dress for your sister’s wedding. You want to look desirable. These goals break my heart a little bit.

Why? Why does your goal of being smaller shatter me? Couple of reasons, first of them being that I can relate. Body image and I have not always had the most friendly relationship, so I feel extreme empathy for those of you in this situation. The other reason is that with those goals of being smaller, there’s an unspoken assumption that smaller is better. That you will be somehow be worth more, to yourselves or others, if you were just fifteen pounds lighter or a couple of dress sizes smaller.

No, ladies. No. You are the same you, the same powerful, wonderful, gloriously messy and flawed you, no matter what you are packaged in. Your worth is immutable. Your power is unassailable—you just need to realize it to grasp it. It’s always there for you. Just reach out and grab what's been yours all along.

And furthermore: your body is not a conversation piece, or a piece of art. It’s not here to be looked at, picked apart, criticized, approved or disapproved of. That’s not what it’s for. Our bodies are meant for doing things. They’re meant for gardening and walking and playing sports and cooking and lifting and reading and thinking and talking. We have bodies so that we can live, not so we can be looked at. Ladies, you are so much more than an object.

The other half of this equation? Stop objectifying other women. Please, for the love of God, stop this.

Let me share with you an example of how we inadvertently objectivity each other: I was working with a client in her mid-twenties last year, and one of her goals was to lose weight. She had good rationale for wanting the weight loss – she had just learned she was pre-diabetic and wanted to lower her risk— and so I supported her in working on this. She worked hard on a nutrition and exercise plan. She dropped many pounds and several dress sizes, and she and others could see the difference in her body. She felt better about herself, and she felt physically better as well. One day she said to me, “Allison, I have to ask: why don’t you ever say anything about my body? I know you’re on my side, and I know our work has been a big part of why I’ve been able to lose weight. But you never say anything about how I look. Do you notice the changes?”

And I said, “I can see how it might make you nervous that I don’t give you feedback about your body. You’re used to getting that kind of feedback from others?”

She said, “Yeah. It makes me feel good.”

And I said, “That makes sense. Of course it feels good to get compliments. Here’s something I want you to know, though: I will feel the same about you no matter what your body looks like. I’m happy for you in your weight loss, because you set a goal and have achieved it, and you clearly feel better, and that’s great! Yet, I thought the world of you before you lost weight. And I think the world of you now. Your worth to me is the same.”

The client started to cry. She said she’d never thought of herself as always worthwhile, regardless of her weight. She began to discuss how to others, especially her mother, her value seemed to be all tied up in her weight. Her mother seemed to like her more when she weighed less. She gave more compliments and wanted to go on more shopping trips and just overall seemed to like client more when client was at a smaller size. And she noticed mother’s disapproval at times when she was larger: a purse of the lips, a way that her mother had of tugging her shirts down “because your love handles are showing.”

Now, to be fair: I don’t think this client’s mother is a terrible person. I really don’t. I think the client's mom really cared about my client and wanted good things for her. Yet, I think that the mother is a victim of perfectionism, societal brainwashing, and doing a poor job of stopping to think about all the ways in which her actions could affect her child. No doubt someone objectified the mom at some point, too.

And I think that most of us, if we’re being honest, have probably acted like that mom at some point. Maybe not in such blatant ways, but I bet you’ve done it. Have you never gossiped with your cousins about your other cousin’s recent weight gain?  Have you never sized up the other ladies in the gym, at the office, at school? Have you never internally ragged on another woman for choosing to wearing clothes that you found to be unflattering on her?

Ladies, look deep within yourself and really give yourself an honest appraisal: do you value your friends, your mothers, your daughters more when they weigh less? And even if you don’t truly value them more, do you compliment them more? Want to spend more time with them? Accidentally give them the impression that they are better if they are smaller? If you look inside and see that you do, you wouldn’t be alone: all of us have been conditioned to do this shit. It’s just time to de-condition. Declare a moratorium on hating on your own body, and you might find that it’s easier to not hate on others’. Make a pact with your friends to not bitch about your bodies when you’re together. Agree not to objectify yourselves or others.

I also want you to know that to judge is human-- we're all doing it, all the time. It's adaptive, in many ways-- we're trying to put things into categories so that we know how to interact with our worlds efficiently. So yeah, your brain is going to keep popping off objectifying thoughts: "too fat," "too emotional" "too much," towards yourself and others. You won't be able to stop the thought parade. What you can do? Stop drinking the kool-aid. Stop buying into those thoughts. Recognize that thoughts are just thoughts and don't necessarily represent "the truth"-- about anything. Accept that you are inherently judgmental but that you can work towards being more compassionate with yourself and others. 

Being smaller won’t make you a better person. It absolutely won’t. So blow your hair out and wear it big. Take up space. Spread your legs at a basketball game like the dudes do—there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. (Dudes blame their packages for the leg spread phenomenon, but I don’t buy it. No dude’s package is big enough to warrant that much spread.) Wear a shirt because you like the way you feel in it. Unapologetically say your piece at your next work meeting. Tell your family how you feel and ask for what you want. Assert your needs with your friends. Dream big, smile big, laugh loudly, talk with your hands. Let enthusiasm light up your face. Don’t be delicate—be vast and brilliant.

You’re a person of worth, all the time.

Get it, girls.