Cast of Characters

I consider myself a relationship-oriented person.  On personality inventories, I max out the scale for Extroverted.  People are my bread and butter.  I'm who I am because of the incredible people I've gotten to spend time with.

I used to feel worried about this.  Somewhere along the way I heard that mature, confident people enjoy quiet times of solitude.  And I assumed I hated solitude because I hated the person I was left alone with.  Actually, as I type this I recall a grad school professor who based my grade solely on the amount of time I could spend in silence.  Somehow, I passed that course.  And while I'm not known for my silence, I do hope I've gotten better at listening.  But not at being alone.  Even in my alone moments (which, don't happen often--see below) I invite people into that space through music or books.  Despite incredible mentors and research touting the power of "being still" and meditation, it's just not how I roll.  I'm just beginning to trust it's because of my love affair with humans and NOT because insecurities in myself.

So, if you stick around for any portion of this journey, you'll hear about my people.  Because their stories leave footprints on my stories, you'll hear about them.  Because their stories are not my stories, I'll place a high priority on privacy.   So, I thought a little intro to my "inner circle" seems appropriate.  May I introduce:

Partner
Wow.  Partner and I crossed paths several times in high school & we both thought the other was out of our league.  I like to think our opinions of ourselves grew enough to take the risk at a relationship with each other.  We dated for years.  The hopeless romantic tone of this time period is captured in our song.   We married in 2007.  It might have been sooner, but Partner wanted to be a Pastor.  And there was a lot of arguing soul-searching that took place before I could reconcile a future as a Pastor's wife.  True to form, it wasn't a conclusion I came to in a self-reflective moment of meditation.  It was a conclusion I came to when I stopped talking and started listening and I heard Partner say "I am just as committed to being a therapist's husband as I'm hoping you want to be as a pastor's wife."  So we said yes.  Partner is a pastor.  Partner is the most patient person I know.  Partner brings me back to center.  Partner has seen the best and worst versions of me and keeps showing up.  I have too much to lose to question his motives.    

Kiddo 1.0
Kiddo 1.0 came into my life in 2009.  Medical complications on her birth day made it the scariest day of my life.  The silver lining is our relationship has steadily improved from that point.  Kiddo 1.0 opened my eyes and heart to the emotional roller coaster that is parenting a creature without a fully developed frontal lobe (newsflash--this is the case with any human under the age of 21).  Kiddo 1.0 is cautiously independent, brilliant, and spends her free time creating legos and marking days off her calendar.

Kiddo 2.0
Kiddo 2.0 entered the scene in 2012.  During my pregnancy, I was terrified.  During her birth, I was empowered and strong and really proud of rewriting history after Kiddo 1.0's birth.  Kiddo 2.0 struggled early on with respiratory and weight gain.  Enough to completely stress us out and trigger my mama shame, but not enough to trigger any residual results.  By 1 month old, she was on target and full steam ahead.  As a toddler, she desperately wants to do things herself and desperately hates being alone.  This makes life very, very complicated.  Kiddo 2.0 has a great sense of humor, is brazenly independent, and will be attending toilet-training boot camp this weekend.  She spends her free time coloring on herself with markers and displacing vital items like nail clippers and cell phones in secret locations around the house.