Tag Archive for: Michelle O’Neil

Equanimity

My word of the day.

Equanimity.

But it didn’t start out that way.  I awoke in the darkness for the fourth day in a row cursing Daylight Savings Time and the way it thrusts me back into a cycle of waking before the sun just when my mood has begun to lift.  I awoke to another day of Bubba in a different state altogether, missing his solid presence next to mine in bed and calculating the hours until the airplane’s wheels touch down in this city with him inside.

And then I got to kiss my girls awake.  Both of them, teenage-years-be-damned.  I got to lean over Lola’s warm, round cheeks that won’t lose their plumpness for another year perhaps and brush my lips across them, murmuring to her that it is time to get up.  I headed upstairs to stumble over books and underwear strewn across Eve’s floor, making my way to a precarious perch on the side of her bed and press my lips firmly on her forehead, oily with hormones and sleep.  I am so blessed.

We all did what we do, packing lunches, gathering homework and water bottles, steaming milk, walking the dog around the block, sliding in to the car for the short ride to school.

As soon as the girls shut the car doors, I flipped on NPR (they can’t stand to listen to it in the morning whereas I consider it breakfast) and heard that a Senate committee has approved an assault weapons ban that will now head to a full vote.  I listened to a story about the rape case in Ohio and another about the scores of individuals perhaps wrongly convicted because of tainted or fabricated evidence in a Massachusetts lab.  And I wondered…

What if we are all doing the things we are supposed to be doing right now?
What if humanity is pushing along at precisely the pace it needs to be?

I don’t mean to say that there isn’t injustice or incredible suffering in the world for so many people.
I don’t mean to imply that I don’t care about all of it.

But when I look around I see so much beauty and love. I truly feel an emergence of a better place, better working conditions for so many, more equality for individuals who have historically been disenfranchised, more awareness of our collective connection to each other.  And we couldn’t have that without all that has gone before.  We can only work at a certain pace to effect change and I believe that there is a building of energy and will like a tide coming in to sweep the beach. And just like a tide, it will retreat and build again and again.

I see people all over working to make their own lives better and to improve the lives of others and I am buoyed.  It is only by accepting the place where we find ourselves that we can hope to move forward.  Alicia wrote on her blog about some of the real challenges she faces in her everyday life with a special needs daughter, and she wrote about it with equanimity.  She wasn’t railing against her daughter or whatever “god” or “fate” set her up to have the unique behaviors she has, she was simply accepting, sitting back and looking at her own life with clear eyes.  I know so many other parents who do that every day – Elizabeth, Carrie, Michelle.  They absolutely have to marshal their strength to fight for things from time to time. They are all amazing advocates for their children and tremendously committed to finding resources and pushing for change and I am in awe of them all.  But they can’t be effective unless they first understand who they are fighting for. And that takes equanimity.  The ability to look at your life for what it is and find the beauty mixed in with the difficulty. The ability to seek the eye of the tornado and sit there while all swirls around you, knowing that it simply can’t be any different than it is right now, but it will most certainly be different over time.

Today I am finding solace and peace in knowing that the world is what it is right now because that’s where it is supposed to be.  Progress comes on the heels of many feet marching together for the long haul, but we can’t walk if we don’t recognize the ground we’re standing on.

Equanimity.

Shedding Her Skin

Lola is comfortable in her own skin. Emotionally. By that, I mean to say that she is quirky, irreverent, and more than a little bit unique and she is perfectly okay with that. She has no desire to change the core of her personality to better fit anyone else’s idea of how she ought to dress or what she should find funny and she generally celebrates the ways in which she sees the world differently from most people.

She is occasionally terrifically uncomfortable in her own skin physically.  She struggles with sensory perceptions in ways that I can’t possibly understand but have learned to recognize. She hates the volume of sound in a movie theater. She is overwhelmed by the lights and sounds and smells and people offering her samples at Costco. She is very particular about the kinds of clothing she is willing to wear and can be a little obsessive about making things “even.”

Over the years she has taught herself ways to accommodate and/or avoid the things that drive her batty and in many cases she has challenged herself to endure some very uncomfortable situations in an effort to desensitize herself.  She has come a very long way in learning to tolerate things that were once unthinkable but a few sticking points remain.

She is terribly susceptible to motion sickness (but in one shining example of her courage and willingness to not let it diminish her experiences, she went on a three-day sailing trip with her class early in the school year and had a fabulous time despite some bouts with nausea).

She also struggles with transitions.  I have written about this before, especially with respect to the transition out of the school year and into the summer and vice versa.  We generally have a few days of teeth-grinding frustration before she can settle in to the new phase she has entered and it generally takes me by surprise despite the fact that it happens every year.

And so I ought to have considered that when Bubba and I decided to spring a surprise vacation on the girls for their mid-winter break.  We planned the week in Hawaii with glee, whispering and snickering together about the major secret we were keeping.  We orchestrated everything without them getting suspicious – arranging for the dog to be boarded and someone to housesit for us and yet another friend to hamster-sit – and the night before we were to leave we told them to pack their bags. We were heading to one of their favorite places for nine days and they had better dig out shorts and tanks and swimsuits.

They were ecstatic and so were we. We had managed to pull of an enormous coup!  What fun.

And it has been, but by Day 3, Lola was a little on edge. She had spent two full days jettisoning herself between the ocean and the pool, lying in the sunshine reading and going for walks on the beach with Eve. Bubba and I were enjoying our newfound freedom now that the girls were responsible enough to go off together for a few hours at a time and we were soaking up every lazy moment.

As is their ritual, Bubba and Eve woke before sunrise and headed out for a beach walk together.  Lola and I lazily made our way into our swimsuits and promised to join them shortly.  And that’s when it hit. First, Lola complained that her hair wouldn’t stay down and she was clearly agitated.  I rolled my eyes, dropped the beach bag and wet a washcloth thoroughly to plaster it down.

“As soon as it dries it’s going to stick up all over again!” she yelled.  I shushed her, worried that she had just woken up the neighbors.  She stomped her foot.

Then the strings on her bikini bottom made an “uncomfortable lump” underneath her shorts and she tugged and fussed and picked at it as enormous tears formed in her eyes.  I shifted from one foot to the next, shushing her again so she wouldn’t bug the neighbors.

“I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE NEIGHBORS!” she shouted and I found myself at a crossroads.  Mentally cataloguing the morning’s catastrophes, from itchy, sandy flip flops to hair disasters to sunburned shoulders to this, I realized what this was.  My friend Michelle’s words appeared in my head:

Where there is (bad) behavior, there is pain.


Oh, yeah. This had all the earmarks of a classic SPD meltdown.  Each of these petty things would normally not phase her. She wasn’t trying to be difficult. She was hurting.

I put down my bag again and joined her on the bed where she was face down, sobbing with spine-shaking gulps.

“I think that this might be what it looks like to be uncomfortable in your own skin. Do you think so?”  I kissed her on the top of her head.  She nodded emphatically.

“I-i-i don’t know what to dooooo,” she wailed pathetically and my heart broke open a little.  For the moment, I could completely forget about whether Eve and Bubba were getting impatient with us. I had to help her.

“I’m sorry we sprung this trip on you and I know you want to enjoy it.  I think that you are growing up a lot right now and maybe you’re a little too big to be in this skin anymore.  You think?”

I asked her whether she wanted to picture herself as a snail who had outgrown its shell or a snake who needed to shed its old skin.  She chose snail.  And I had her close her eyes and breathe deeply three times.

“Picture yourself as a snail.  Your shell can be any color you want and when you look next to you, you see a different, bigger shell.  Take a minute to create that bigger shell in your mind’s eye. What colors does it have? What is its shape? Is it smooth or spiky? Long and lean or tall and round?  Don’t tell me. Just picture it in your mind.  Now take a moment to feel what it feels like to be in your current, small shell.  It’s a little too tight and restrictive, isn’t it?  I want you to take a deep breath in and when you let that breath all the way out, your old shell is just going to pop right off your back and roll to the side.  When it does, I want you to look at it and silently thank it for protecting you all this time.  Be grateful for all it was for you and let it know that it was important, but that you don’t need it anymore.  Now, before you turn your attention to the new shell, I want you to focus on how great it feels to be out of the old one.  It’s a little scary because you’re pretty vulnerable, but you’re safe for now.  Just take some deep, deep breaths and stretch your self out into this new, open space with each exhale.  When you’re ready, slip into your new beautiful shell and feel the cool, smooth inside that was made just for you.  Take a moment to wiggle around in it and orient yourself.  Feel how it’s not too heavy for your back and it feels expansive and comfortable.  When you are ready, thank the new shell for being there and open your eyes.”

Lola sat up slowly and looked at me with a grin.  “Thanks, Mom. I just needed to stretch my spirit.”

She got up, pulled a loose skirt over her bikini bottoms, slipped her feet into her flip flops and held out her hand.

Times like that are an important reminder for me that it is so much more vital to take the time and address how we feel when we’re feeling it than to try and shove those uncomfortable emotions out of sight.  It took maybe three minutes to interrupt her obvious physical discomfort and turn it around and it was more than worth it.  Maybe next time she’ll be able to do it herself. Maybe I’ll have to help a few more times before she’s got it down.  I’m just grateful to have been given the gift of being her mom for now because I’m learning just as much as she is about what it takes to be sensitive in the world.

Books. Beautiful Books.



For those of you who don’t know about Michelle O’Neil, let me introduce you. She is a beautiful soul, mother of two children, wife to a darling man, and brilliant writer. She is many more things than that, but I’ll let you find her blog if you so desire. The purpose of this particular post is to draw your attention to her new book. She has written a deeply touching, funny memoir that anyone who enjoys memoir ought to read. Just in case you’re looking for a book to wind down the dog days of summer, I suggest you head right to Amazon via the link above and buy this book.

The other link I found today, completely by accident, will be of great interest to those of you who love photography. Especially if you take gorgeous pictures and aren’t much of a Crafty McScrapbooker (like me – I’m hopeless at it). If this sounds like you, or if you just have a few minutes on your hands, please go check out Blurb. They will help you put together a book (yes, actually bound) of your photos or artwork, add some text, and ship as many copies to you as you want for less than $3 each. You can sell them, give them away, line the chicken coop with them – whatever you want. What a cool gift that would be for a wedding party or a sweet sixteen or a 50th anniversary….Wait! Hmmm, I’ve got one of those coming up. Gotta go!