Of all the places I’ve ever done gongfu tea, my very favorite is my uncle’s living room. A true tea connoisseur, he took a personal interest in educating me and my American partner about tea during our last visit to my hometown of Fuzhou.

And then again, I am ruining the Tea Road by being a complete coffee addict. Coffee is the fuel to a hard long day followed by a harder, longer night. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights. The character of coffee is attitude, a swagger in which priorities have been predetermined.

Moving to Glasgow, Scotland for studies, the first thing I learned from one of my Scottish flatmate who is an artistic hound of the city was that there is no way you will drink from Starbucks or Costa around here if you visited Frida’s.

VIBRANT, ZEALOUS, RELENTLESS

That summer, since I have been postponing on seeing who’s Frida and how good is her coffee, I decided to grab a bus and see with my own eyes (and taste) this mystique coffee shop she’s been telling me about. And there I am, talking with Frida, just in front of the coffee store, not even entering the place, and things are just delightful from the beginning.

SHE OPENED UP THE TEA BOX AND MY EYES MUST HAVE LIT UP. SHE SAW I LIKED HER CHINA COLLECTION, AND SHE VERY MUCH LIKED THIS FACT.

She took pride in telling me how her mother keeps sending her different types and she asked me to choose the one we wanted. The first time I went with her favorite. The woman has some taste.

Thereafter I would simply say “Surprise me.” She hated it when I said that. That made me want to say it even more. I think I was in her room all of 10 times if that. Yet it all mattered so much.

Coffee is the fuel to a hard long day followed by a harder, longer night. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights. The character of coffee is attitude, a swagger in which priorities have been predetermined.

SURPRISE AFTER SURPRISE

Thereafter I would simply say “Surprise me.” She hated it when I said that. That made me want to say it even more. I think I was in her room all of 10 times if that. Yet it all mattered so much.

Coffee is the fuel to a hard long day followed by a harder, longer night. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights. The character of coffee is attitude, a swagger in which priorities have been predetermined. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights.

The post Those beats are made for listening appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Anyone who’s spent a fair amount of time in the world’s hostel dormitories will have met the culprit. He sits there on the bottom bunk, emaciated tanned limbs protruding from a Bintang vest and a pair of baggy pyjama trousers printed with a flailing dragon, and then he starts to witter.

Go to Chinatown, alone, preferably in the late afternoon. Walk around. Go into one of the shops that sells mysterious (to me) herbs and dried things. Buy some condiments or beef jerky or sweet buns for, what, $2. Listen to the grandmas hollering at their children and grandchildren, and the vegetable sellers.

Those events that are always at, like, 11pm on a Wednesday, in the east 30s or something? Go to one. Just go. Go alone if nobody else wants to go. Maybe it will suck, maybe everyone you meet will be obnoxious, but the point is that it is happening, someone is trying something, and even though we all know New York is a terrible place for creative types, it is also a wonderful place for creative types, because sometimes people show up at 11pm on a Wednesday to watch grown adults roll around on a floor in the east 30s.

Walk around. Go into one of the shops that sells mysterious (to me) herbs and dried things. Buy some condiments or beef jerky or sweet buns for, what, $2. He sits there on the bottom bunk, emaciated tanned limbs protruding from a Bintang vest and a pair of baggy pyjama trousers printed with a flailing dragon, and then he starts to witter. Try to remember a place that used to make you feel like you loved New York. If it’s still there, go there. If it’s been turned into a condo or an artisanal mustard store or whatever, try to identify what it was about that place that made you love New York.

He sits there on the bottom bunk, emaciated tanned limbs protruding from a Bintang vest and a pair of baggy pyjama trousers printed with a flailing dragon, and then he starts to witter.

The post New York, Old York appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I‘m a firm believer that how your day goes depends on how you choose to start it. The days I’ve gotten up late and eaten a junky breakfast, my day is usually sluggish and a bit depressing. However, when I wake up early and take the time to gently allow myself to come into the day, I know I have an awesome 24 hours ahead of me. So in typical California fashion, I decided to drive to my exercise. A quick Google search turned up Jack London State Park. If it was named after the author of White Fang and Call of the Wild, it had to kick ass, right?

Chalk one up for the analog experience. I love maps. I buy them just before I leave on any significant trip and they end up cluttering my apartment, living under the bed in plastic bins and shoved in the corners of bookcases. My hotel was in Yountville and I’d done no pre-planning. I asked the concierge for a running or hiking trail nearby, with underwhelming results. So in typical California fashion,I decided to drive to my exercise. A quick Google search turned up Jack London State Park.

Fresh salads and sandwiches everyday until 11 AM

That summer, since I have been postponing on seeing who’s Frida and how good is her coffee, I decided to grab a bus and see with my own eyes (and taste) this mystique coffee shop she’s been telling me about. And there I am, talking with Frida, just in front of the coffee store, not even entering the place, and things are just delightful from the beginning.

The days I’ve gotten up late and eaten a junky breakfast, my day is usually sluggish and a bit depressing. However, when I wake up early and take the time to gently allow myself to come into the day, I know I have an awesome 24 hours ahead of me. Chalk one up for the analog experience. I love maps. I buy them just before I leave on any significant trip and they end up cluttering my apartment, living under the bed in plastic bins and shoved in the corners of bookcases. In example reflecting this is that there was a big street with Caffès, in the part of Athens where I live in, which did not have street lights installed. Although they were struggling for months to fix that, the issue was conviniently solved just a couple of days ago. Coincidence? I do not think so.

The post “Wood Studio” Cafe Opening appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Four fawns stood in the street over the creek in our subdivision as I was driving out for a beer yesterday evening. Four.

I’m told it’s unusual to see four fawns together, all skinny stilts and big ears and spots and not yet savvy about things like streets. Fawns and such have been a relief this week from the blaring dreariness of what humans have been up to.

If you have a pet, this should be a cautionary tale. Americans spent $14.2 billion on veterinary care for their pets in 2013—and that doesn’t include proprietary health diets and food supplements. Put another way, pet owners pay about $850 annually in veterinary expenses per dog, and about $575 per cat. Mysteries like these could be solved by more research, but how can we get vets to pay attention to the studies that have been done? It would help if professional bodies took a strong evidence-based stand.

SO IMAGINE MY SURPRISE WHEN I MOVED TO NEW YORK CITY AND FOUND THAT IT WAS HOST TO A LITANY OF FERAL CRITTERS

I’ve started to think that my gut is an asshole for another reason. If he’s so smart, and always right, why the hell is he holding out on me? What does he know that he isn’t telling my brain? Why does he know things that my brain doesn’t? It’s easy to forget our connection to nature, when so little of what we interact with in our daily lives reminds us of the natural world it’s all built upon — the products we use, the buildings we occupy, the streets we travel.

The first thing that comes to mind is their genuine presence. A child’s laugh, or a dog’s tail wagging, or a cat’s purr all feel like money in the bank to me. I receive palpable pleasure when seeing their joy, and it makes me want to create more of it by playing with them or petting them.

I’m told it’s unusual to see four fawns together, all skinny stilts and big ears and spots and not yet savvy about things like streets. Fawns and such have been a relief this week from the blaring dreariness of what humans have been up to.

If you have a pet, this should be a cautionary tale. Americans spent $14.2 billion on veterinary care for their pets in 2013—and that doesn’t include proprietary health diets and food supplements. Put another way, pet owners pay about $850 annually in veterinary expenses per dog, and about $575 per cat. Mysteries like these could be solved by more research, but how can we get vets to pay attention to the studies that have been done? It would help if professional bodies took a strong evidence-based stand.

And in the end, there is no one to blame, because the Universe will take care of it. 

The post Is your city pet-friendly? appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

No more than three colors, when learning the color blocking collocation, you must stick to the no more than three colors in the whole look rules.

It mostly indicate the bright degree in the colors, various different colors fashion item, not including the black, grey and white colors collocation.There’s a certain aesthetic that we refer to when we think of 90s fashion. High ponytails, abrasive prints, colorblocking and bold jewelry choices. The 1990s were a truly unique and inspiring time to be alive and to be experimenting with fashion.

As for today color-blocking is more frequently seen in the home as a latest thing in interior design. Although some argue that color-blocking is a thing in the past, high fashion figures and enthusiasts believe that this retro trend continues to thrive as a result of the hipster generation, whom revive the trend and turn it into something seen as fashion-forward. Trend revival is the new fad.

The post Color-blocking: a day without black appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Of all the places I’ve ever done gongfu tea, my very favorite is my uncle’s living room. A true tea connoisseur, he took a personal interest in educating me and my American partner about tea during our last visit to my hometown of Fuzhou.

And then again, I am ruining the Tea Road by being a complete coffee addict. Coffee is the fuel to a hard long day followed by a harder, longer night. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights. The character of coffee is attitude, a swagger in which priorities have been predetermined.

Moving to Glasgow, Scotland for studies, the first thing I learned from one of my Scottish flatmate who is an artistic hound of the city was that there is no way you will drink from Starbucks or Costa around here if you visited Frida’s.

VIBRANT, ZEALOUS, RELENTLESS

That summer, since I have been postponing on seeing who’s Frida and how good is her coffee, I decided to grab a bus and see with my own eyes (and taste) this mystique coffee shop she’s been telling me about. And there I am, talking with Frida, just in front of the coffee store, not even entering the place, and things are just delightful from the beginning.

SHE OPENED UP THE TEA BOX AND MY EYES MUST HAVE LIT UP. SHE SAW I LIKED HER CHINA COLLECTION, AND SHE VERY MUCH LIKED THIS FACT.

She took pride in telling me how her mother keeps sending her different types and she asked me to choose the one we wanted. The first time I went with her favorite. The woman has some taste.

Thereafter I would simply say “Surprise me.” She hated it when I said that. That made me want to say it even more. I think I was in her room all of 10 times if that. Yet it all mattered so much.

Coffee is the fuel to a hard long day followed by a harder, longer night. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights. The character of coffee is attitude, a swagger in which priorities have been predetermined.

SURPRISE AFTER SURPRISE

Thereafter I would simply say “Surprise me.” She hated it when I said that. That made me want to say it even more. I think I was in her room all of 10 times if that. Yet it all mattered so much.

Coffee is the fuel to a hard long day followed by a harder, longer night. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights. The character of coffee is attitude, a swagger in which priorities have been predetermined. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights.

And then again, I am ruining the Tea Road by being a complete coffee addict. Coffee is the fuel to a hard long day followed by a harder, longer night. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights. The character of coffee is attitude, a swagger in which priorities have been predetermined.

DON’T STOP ME NOW

She took pride in telling me how her mother keeps sending her different types and she asked me to choose the one we wanted. The first time I went with her favorite. The woman has some taste.

Thereafter I would simply say “Surprise me.” She hated it when I said that. That made me want to say it even more. I think I was in her room all of 10 times if that. Yet it all mattered so much.

Coffee is the fuel to a hard long day followed by a harder, longer night. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights. The character of coffee is attitude, a swagger in which priorities have been predetermined.

The post Deep in the raw fields of Baltimore appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

It’s rare that I forge a friendship with someone from the second camp. And, if they get me on a bad day, their reaction can feel like a gentle kick in the stomach.

I thought about this. Then I thought about my childhood. It turns out that I rode the bus to school nearly 200 days a year for more than 10 years. That’s 2,000 days. I don’t remember most of those days. They blur together.

That summer, since I have been postponing on seeing who’s Frida and how good is her coffee, I decided to grab a bus and see with my own eyes (and taste) this mystique coffee shop she’s been telling me about. And there I am, talking with Frida, just in front of the coffee store, not even entering the place, and things are just delightful from the beginning.

Of all the places I’ve ever done gongfu tea, my very favorite is my uncle’s living room. A true tea connoisseur, he took a personal interest in educating me and my American partner about tea during our last visit to my hometown of Fuzhou.

I thought about this. Then I thought about my childhood. It turns out that I rode the bus to school nearly 200 days a year for more than 10 years. That’s 2,000 days. I don’t remember most of those days. They blur together.

I know my scope is a big one, so maybe it’s hard to apply it to your life. Maybe you have to worry about politics or process. The idea is to understand the “why” that is up in the clouds, and then be obnoxiously proficient at the “how” that is down in the dirt. No matter how narrow your scope is, there will always be stuff in the middle for you to trim away from your thought process.

The post There is no place like the fresh market appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Rarely I forge a friendship with someone from the second camp. And, if they get me on a bad day, their reaction can feel like a gentle kick in the stomach.

I thought about this. Then I thought about my childhood. It turns out that I rode the bus to school nearly 200 days a year for more than 10 years. That’s 2,000 days. I don’t remember most of those days. They blur together.

Because of exactly the same reason, a flat saddle is better than one that has a pre-formed shape.The motor Guzzi California that you see in this picture has a perfect saddle: broad and long and flat, so you can move around to sit in different postures.

My hotel was in Yountville and I’d done no pre-planning. I asked the concierge for a running or hiking trail nearby, with underwhelming results. So in typical California fashion,
I decided to drive to my exercise. A quick Google search turned up Jack London State Park. If it was named after the author of White Fang and Call of the Wild, it had to kick ass, right?

Chalk one up for the analog experience. I love maps. I buy them just before I leave on any significant trip and they end up cluttering my apartment, living under the bed in plastic bins and shoved in the corners of bookcases. Once in a while I try to organize them, and instead get lost in the various topographies, hieroglyphic legends and squiggling lines. Because the truth is, I don’t expect everyone to be like me. Not at all. In fact, you should be focusing on what works for you. Because of exactly the same reason, a flat saddle is better than one that has a pre-formed shape.

I think people ask successful entrepreneurs questions like “What does a day look like for you?” because they think they might hold some secret to success. Some overarching wisdom that will change everything.

The days I’ve gotten up late and eaten a junky breakfast, my day is usually sluggish and a bit depressing. However, when I wake up early and take the time to gently allow myself to come into the day, I know I have an awesome 24 hours ahead of me. I am so afraid to miss that fragment of vision, I will have to sketch it down immediately in my book. And this above, is that vision I have been keeping for a good timing.

I’m a firm believer that how your day goes depends on how you choose to start it. The days I’ve gotten up late and eaten a junky breakfast, my day is usually sluggish and a bit depressing. However, when I wake up early and take the time to gently allow myself to come into the day, I know I have an awesome 24 hours ahead of me.

I buy maps just before I leave on any significant trip and they end up cluttering my apartment

Chalk one up for the analog experience. I love maps. I buy them just before I leave on any significant trip and they end up cluttering my apartment, living under the bed in plastic bins and shoved in the corners of bookcases. Once in a while I try to organize them, and instead get lost in the various topographies, hieroglyphic legends and squiggling lines. Because the truth is, I don’t expect everyone to be like me. Not at all. In fact, you should be focusing on what works for you. Because of exactly the same reason, a flat saddle is better than one that has a pre-formed shape.

I think people ask successful entrepreneurs questions like “What does a day look like for you?” because they think they might hold some secret to success. Some overarching wisdom that will change everything.

The post Dean’s road runner appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Of all the places I’ve ever done gongfu tea, my very favorite is my uncle’s living room. A true tea connoisseur, he took a personal interest in educating me and my American partner about tea during our last visit to my hometown of Fuzhou.

And then again, I am ruining the Tea Road by being a complete coffee addict. Coffee is the fuel to a hard long day followed by a harder, longer night. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights. The character of coffee is attitude, a swagger in which priorities have been predetermined.

Moving to Glasgow, Scotland for studies, the first thing I learned from one of my Scottish flatmate who is an artistic hound of the city was that there is no way you will drink from Starbucks or Costa around here if you visited Frida’s.

Vibrant, zealous, relentless

That summer, since I have been postponing on seeing who’s Frida and how good is her coffee, I decided to grab a bus and see with my own eyes (and taste) this mystique coffee shop she’s been telling me about. And there I am, talking with Frida, just in front of the coffee store, not even entering the place, and things are just delightful from the beginning.

She took pride in telling me how her mother keeps sending her different types and she asked me to choose the one we wanted. The first time I went with her favorite. The woman has some taste.

Surprise after surprise

Thereafter I would simply say “Surprise me.” She hated it when I said that. That made me want to say it even more. I think I was in her room all of 10 times if that. Yet it all mattered so much.

Coffee is the fuel to a hard long day followed by a harder, longer night. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights. The character of coffee is attitude, a swagger in which priorities have been predetermined. Coffee is the cheap addiction to jumpstart mornings, to quicken afternoons, and to prolong midnights.

I know my scope is a big one, so maybe it’s hard to apply it to your life.

Maybe you have to worry about politics or process. The idea is to understand the “why” that is up in the clouds, and then be obnoxiously proficient at the “how” that is down in the dirt. No matter how narrow your scope is, there will always be stuff in the middle for you to trim away from your thought process.

Days in the morning light

The days I’ve gotten up late and eaten a junky breakfast, my day is usually sluggish and a bit depressing. However, when I wake up early and take the time to gently allow myself to come into the day, I know I have an awesome 24 hours ahead of me. I am so afraid to miss that fragment of vision, I will have to sketch it down immediately in my book. And this above, is that vision I have been keeping for a good timing.

There is no place like Frida’s

That summer, since I have been postponing on seeing who’s Frida and how good is her coffee, I decided to grab a bus and see with my own eyes (and taste) this mystique coffee shop she’s been telling me about. And there I am, talking with Frida, just in front of the coffee store, not even entering the place, and things are just delightful from the beginning.

She took pride in telling me how her mother keeps sending her different types and she asked me to choose the one we wanted. The first time I went with her favorite. The woman has some taste.

The post Frida’s coffee shop appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Four fawns stood in the street over the creek in our subdivision as I was driving out for a beer yesterday evening. Four.  I’m told it’s unusual to see four fawns together, all skinny stilts and big ears and spots and not yet savvy about things like streets. Fawns and such have been a relief this week from the blaring dreariness of what humans have been up to.

If you have a pet, this should be a cautionary tale. Americans spent $14.2 billion on veterinary care for their pets in 2013—and that doesn’t include proprietary health diets and food supplements. Put another way, pet owners pay about $850 annually in veterinary expenses per dog, and about $575 per cat.

AND YET AGAIN I WAS ONLY LEFT WITH NATURE

Mysteries like these could be solved by more research, but how can we get vets to pay attention to the studies that have been done? It would help if professional bodies took a strong evidence-based stand.

I’ve started to think that my gut is an asshole for another reason. If he’s so smart, and always right, why the hell is he holding out on me? What does he know that he isn’t telling my brain? Why does he know things that my brain doesn’t?

It’s easy to forget our connection to nature, when so little of what we interact with in our daily lives reminds us of the natural world it’s all built upon

The first thing that comes to mind is their genuine presence. A child’s laugh, or a dog’s tail wagging, or a cat’s purr all feel like money in the bank to me. I receive palpable pleasure when seeing their joy, and it makes me want to create more of it by playing with them or petting them.

It would help if professional bodies took a strong evidence-based stand. I receive palpable pleasure when seeing their joy, and it makes me want to create more of it by playing with them or petting them. Put another way, pet owners pay about $850 annually in veterinary expenses per dog, and about $575 per cat.

Mysteries like these could be solved by more research, but how can we get vets to pay attention to the studies that have been done? It would help if professional bodies took a strong evidence-based stand.

A child’s laugh, or a dog’s tail wagging, or a cat’s purr all feel like money in the bank to me.

I’ve started to think that my gut is an asshole for another reason. If he’s so smart, and always right, why the hell is he holding out on me? What does he know that he isn’t telling my brain? Why does he know things that my brain doesn’t?

If you have a pet, this should be a cautionary tale. Americans spent $14.2 billion on veterinary care for their pets in 2013—and that doesn’t include proprietary health diets and food supplements. Put another way, pet owners pay about $850 annually in veterinary expenses per dog, and about $575 per cat.

The post Love your humble animals appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Heather Christensen

Heather Christensen

@PatTiberi See you tonight at the #TownHall? Wed, Feb 22nd 7:00 pm @ First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus. @OhioDistrict12pic.twitter.com/93z8z24LnV

@PatTiberi See you tonight at the #TownHall? Wed, Feb 22nd 7:00 pm @ First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus. @OhioDistrict12pic.twitter.com/93z8z24LnV

I stopped going to my megachurch and started going to a universalist Unitarian "church". Honestly, I've never felt more welcomed in my life. Some of the best people I've met go there.

Our little mascot Aria. #projecthappy @ Palomar Unitarian Universalist Fellowship https://www.instagram.com/p/BtFqU2JlIbn/?utm_source=ig_twitter_share&igshid=18sjslf549q1u …

My ADHD brain is like an enthusiastic, yellow Lab puppy. All bounce and smiles and cuddles and distractability. Oh, wouldn’t this be fun! And look at that! Can we try it? Now?

I will always have that mind. But now the puppy has a friend—an older, better-trained friend. Pills and skills, working together, are giving me some executive function.

It’s not perfect. The new dog seems to get tired real easy. She doesn’t show up if I haven’t had a good enough night’s sleep.

I’ve only just noticed her in the past few days, but I’m betting if I take good care of her, she’ll take good care of me, too.

The post Bird dog puppy finds a friend appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Just over a year ago, Liesl gave me a set of really good knives for Christmas.

Sometimes when you’ve been together for a long time, presents become part of the narrative. Our story about knives is that Liesl always complains that our knives are as dull as spoons. I know that they’re dull—and I know why they’re dull. I hate handwashing dishes, so our knives go in the dishwasher, where they get dull.

When I opened the knives, I gave her a look, and said, “You’ll handwash these, right?” She assured me that she would—and she hasn’t. Mostly because the kitchen sink is too damn high for her.

We’re still bickering about dull knives and broken dishwashing promises, but one thing has begun to change: I’m using the good knives.

They’re a pain in the ass to handwash—and a pleasure to cut, slice, and chop with.

I’ve been overhauling the kitchen—the whole house, really—and I moved the knives as part of that process. The good knives are out front, and the cheap knives are tucked behind them, making it easier to reach for the right knife for the job.

American consumer culture lures us into more, more, more, before we enjoy the good things we really have. It convinces us of lack, of not enough. It works by promising us that the next thing we buy will make us happier. When that doesn’t happen, well, there must be something else we can buy.

It’s difficult to push back against that tremendous pressure, but it helps if we can slow down and notice what we already have.

Tonight I’m cooking a flank steak that’s been in my freezer for almost a year, part of the quarter share of beef we split with friends. I’ve been avoiding it because I’ve never cooked flank steak before. But we’re making a concerted effort to make our way through the food we have, so tonight it’s flank steak.

I’ll slice it with one of those beautiful knives.

The post Use the good knives appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

This morning before waking I had a preacher’s dream. Ministers each have their own type of preaching-anxiety dreams, and mine are usually endless variations on not having my sermon manuscript with me.

This was a different kind of dream.

It began as a crime drama. While investigating an arson, I met a charming, angry young man and knew he was the arsonist. From what he told me, I guessed that Nutella was the mysterious accelerant we hadn’t been able to identify. Then he and his father showed up at our house—not our house, not my waking-life family. I knew he planned to burn the house down.

Then the dream shifted. Preparing to guest preach, I used the Nutella arsonist story as the heart of my sermon.

I arrived at the church and I was surprised to see many of my colleagues. The congregation’s minister delightedly showed us to our seats, and gave us instructions to read the slips of paper on our chairs, but not talk about what was written on them.

The papers said that each of the ministers present had been invited to preach about Unitarian Universalism. I turned to the colleague sitting next to me—someone with whom I’ve had conflict, who looked strangely faded and diminished—and said that I’d prepared a normal-length sermon, and if we all had, we’d be there all day.

They had prepared just as much, they said, though in the form of notes rather than a manuscript.

In this dream, I was pregnant. During the service, I kept getting up and exiting through a side door into a hallway that was a hospital. After a while, there was a baby in the hallway and newborn cries from several of the rooms. I was confused, then discovered that I had given birth during the service. I didn’t remember it because they had given me Ambien. “Don’t ever do that to anyone again,” I told the nurse. “Being aware during birth, if medically possible, is such an important experience.”

I finally got to see my baby, who somehow didn’t seem like mine. Liesl wanted to name her Sage, which I vetoed because I didn’t want to name my kid after an herb mostly associated with Thanksgiving stuffing.

Returning to the sanctuary, I decided that I would preach extemporaneously about this amazing birth, and how glad I was to raise my children as Unitarian Universalists, treasured and celebrated for their inherent worth and dignity.

I waited my turn, and one of my colleagues stood up to pray—with the usual UU disclaimers and throat-clearing.

With that, I woke up.

I lay in bed, coming back to this reality, and remembered: Sage also means wisdom. In the middle of a church service, I gave birth to wisdom.

Now, writing this, I remember, too: Sage is used to clear a space, to make a home ready for new experiences.

What a dream. The mother of all preacher’s dreams.

The post The mother of all preacher’s dreams appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I’m daunted by the necessary discipline that lies between me and the writing life I want.

I look at writers I admire and sigh, wondering, “Will I ever get there?”

When I am most discouraged, sometimes it helps me to remember that we do not all start at the same place.

Michael Pollan, I tell myself, had a pig.

What does that reminder mean?

In his Netflix show, Cooked, and in the book it’s based on, Pollen tells a story.

While they were summering on Martha’s Vineyard in 1971, Pollen’s father thought it would be funny to buy his son a pig. The pig, whom Michael named Kosher, grew and grew and grew, and as the end of the summer neared, Pollen realized he couldn’t take a huge pig back to his Park Avenue apartment. The co-op board would not approve.

Then he had an idea. He had met James Taylor earlier in the summer, and Taylor had a pig. Maybe Kosher could live with Mona, Taylor’s pig. They gave it a try, and Mona—much older and larger—literally scared Kosher to death.

That last bit is shocking, but it’s not the part of the story that interests me. Do you know what catches my attention?

Summering in Martha’s vineyard.

Park Avenue apartment.

Meeting James Taylor.

When I was a six-month-old baby living in a small house in Avenel, New Jersey, Michael Pollan was summering in Martha’s Vineyard, getting rescued by James Taylor, before returning to his Park Avenue apartment. I grew up with privilege, but not at that level.

We do not all start out in the same place. Life is not a board game where all the pieces gather on a square marked “Start.” We cannot measure our progress, our success in life, by looking at other people.

So the next time you notice yourself comparing yourself to someone else, and coming up short, just tell yourself, “Michael Pollan had a pig.”

Laugh at the absurdity of the story, and keep doing your own work, at your own pace. It is enough.

The post Michael Pollan had a pig appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

When we lived in Alaska, our dog and I took weekly herding lessons. We weren’t very good at it. Herding dogs require a firm hand and a focused mind, and I have neither of those.

But I learned enough that shepherding’s metaphors shape the way I think.

Shepherds and sheepdogs move sheep by applying pressure to the flock, moving from one side to the other, nudging the sheep in the direction they want them to go. No straight lines, just persistent movement toward the goal.

It’s a good metaphor for living with my ADHD brain. It doesn’t do straight lines. Left to its own devices, it wanders and meanders, its attention drawn to the next shiny green mouthful.

I have felt unfocused lately, vaguely going in a direction I like, but with much more distraction. Much less able to choose a healthy habit and stick to it.

My flock of thoughts need the pressure of a trained predator—one that will nip and drive, but not devour.

The post Focus on my what? appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

The second task Harry Potter faces in the Triwizard Tournament takes place at the Great Lake of Hogwarts. Harry, who does not know how to swim, has to rescue his best friend Ron Weasley, held captive under the water by the merpeople who live in the lake.

At the last minute, Harry acquires a handful of gillyweed—which promises to help him swim, and breathe underwater. Desperate to save his friend, Harry stuffs the gillyweed in his mouth—and immediately struggles to breathe air, as gills form in his neck. He looks down, and his feet have become flippers. Delighted, he leaps into the lake, shooting through the dark water with ease.

Harry rescues Ron, then lingers when another champion doesn’t arrive to save her sister. He struggles to the surface, dragging Ron and the young girl with him. By the time his head breaks through the surface of the water, his gills and fins are gone, replaced by lungs and human feet. Helped out of the water, he collapses onto the dock, cold and gasping for air.

——————————

This morning Facebook showed me a picture from six years ago—a night photo I took with my phone from the balcony of our hotel in Kauai. I was pregnant—just a few weeks into the second trimester, reveling in the release from all-day-sickness.

Everything about that first pregnancy was an adventure, a new experience. It was a deep, voluntary dive into the mysteries of parenthood. “Mother” was becoming my new identity, and it was so interesting that I didn’t notice, or didn’t mind, that I was losing track of my non-parental self. “Mama” felt like an addition, rather than something that obscured.

Even after Dub, the novelty of parenting, the never-ending flow of new challenges, new things to learn, kept me from noticing just how much of myself I was losing in this new life of caretaking.

I loved being pregnant with Tea. But we were also trying to sell our house, and I was wrapping up a parish ministry position, and we were trying to find a house.

After he was born, he was a new little being to get to know, and I loved him so much. But I had already learned how to take care of a baby. It was not new. It was not enough to distract me from the fact that I cannot breathe underwater.

Slowly, necessity has driven me persistently toward the surface, my lungs longing for air.

——————————

Mothers and other nurturers of tiny children dive voluntarily into murky waters. We ensure the continuity of our species, at tremendous cost to our bodies, our minds, our career and earning potential.

As our faces break the surface of the water, we need hands to reach down and drag us onto the dock. As we emerge from the early years of parenting, we need towels wrapped around our shivering bodies. We need to hear you celebrate our valor. We need warm beverages and a hearty snack so that we can begin to regain our strength and remember who we are.

——————————

I am not a fish. I am not a whale or a dolphin. I am not even a frog or a duck. I am a human being, and my favorite way of being in the water is a warm bath.

The kids call me Mommy, but my name is Heather Louise. Caring for my family is so much of what I do these days, but it is not who I am.

I have not drowned. I am alive.

Breathing air, I remember myself. Feeling the ground beneath my feet, I remember who I am. With each milestone of the kids’ independence, I reclaim and celebrate myself, forever changed, but still me.

The post The voluntary dive appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

With typical ADHD enthusiasm, I have been working to overhaul my life. Not one thing at a time, but one shiny object after another, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing.

I want to fix ALL THE THINGS at once. I’m great at creating strategies and making plans. But execution? Follow-through? Completing one thing before moving on to the next? Not so much.

And that triggers something else in me: self-loathing.

Forty-eight years of ADHD screw-ups and failures, nurtured in the rich medium of self-hating fundamentalist Christian theology, has created in me deep pockets of self-doubt and worthlessness and despair.

This week a random interaction punctured one of those pockets, and the nastiness inside spilled out. It wasn’t pretty. It reminded both of us that so much self-hatred lurks inside me, waiting for any opportunity to derail my progress and confirm its beliefs.

As I work to develop new skills and habits for coping with ADHD, the way is narrow. If I set my expectations too high, if I track failure rather than success, then self-hatred will kick in, completely destroying what I hoped to create.

The solution? Gentleness with myself. Achievable goals. One thing at a time. Forgiving myself—again, and again, and again.

The post Narrow is the way appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I wanted to load the dishwasher this morning. Instead, Tea and I snuggled under a plushy blanket on the loveseat, cheek-to-cheek—he watched Sophia on Netflix while I wrote a blog post.

He was grumpy when I turned the television off.

He continued to be grumpy for the next hour, so he went down for a nap.

Last night I stayed up too late, finishing some writing that was due this morning. I was so tired that I kept falling asleep between paragraphs. This morning I warned my editor and gave it a once-over before making him wade through whatever silly mistakes sleep deprivation might have created.

I’ve been getting up earlier lately, determined to carve out an hour before I’m on duty with the kids. Tea wakes up before the hour is up, but I’ve told him that he can play in his room while he’s waiting for me to come. I’m not sure how much of that he understands, but beginning to create more boundaries between me and the kids is crucial to my well-being—and theirs.

It feels good to have relatively unrushed time to shower and dress, to take my meds first thing in the morning rather than when I remember several hours later. I’ve been doing the same thing at night—taking more time to prepare for bed, savoring the solitude and the quiet.

But late to bed and early to rise meant that I was tired. Very tired. I needed a nap while Tea napped. I ate a bit of lunch, talked with Liesl, started a project—and abandoned it when I just couldn’t stay awake any longer.

Once I was in bed, sleep came quickly, like falling off a cliff, falling deep deep deep and fast fast fast.  I emerged 30 minutes later, rested enough.

Finally, I got to the dishes—earbuds in, podcast on. The commercials were still playing when I heard Tea call for me. Time’s up.

Liesl went to get him, while I set up his dishwashing station—a dishpan on a small table in the middle of the kitchen, with two bath towels underneath. I gave him most of the plastic dishes, including a small colander that I figured he would think was fun.

I got through all the dishes before he got bored with his, and I started rinsing recycling containers. One of them was a jar of spaghetti sauce with a half-inch of sauce still in it. I opened the lid and the sauce defied gravity, spurting upward toward my face. I felt a splash between my eyebrows and could see some on my glasses.

Hands still wet, I grabbed a towel and wiped my glasses, and dabbed my forehead. I knew I needed to do it then, while I was thinking about it because otherwise I would go to the tile store later still decorated with red sauce.

This is my life, I thought. It comes at me fast. It doesn’t stop. There’s always something. It all passes through my brain at a pace I can’t keep up with, and I drop so many things.

This is my life. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a mirror to make sure that my hurried cleanup was thorough enough.

That’s part of it, too. Rushing makes me do things half-assed. Somehow I need to find ways to slow down.

I can’t keep going through life with red sauce on my face.

The post This is my life appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

This morning as we were enjoying a leisurely breakfast, Dub said, “There’s an owl out there!!! It’s really big and really dark! It’s in the trees!”

I thought she’d spotted one of the pair of big ravens I’d seen earlier in the day, but when we went to investigate, we discovered that it was an enormous juvenile bald eagle. We woke up Liesl, and we all had fun using the binoculars to get a closer look.

When I left to get Tea a glass of water, it flew off—but an adult eagle appeared in a neighboring tree. Liesl said that the young one had been calling to another bird. After a few minutes, the adult flew off, too, clearing the trees on the forested north side of our backyard.

The kids and I put our boots on and went out to explore. I thought the birds might drop a feather or two, particularly the juvenile, who seemed to be molting.

I had only taken a few steps outside when I knew that something else was happening. Way across the yard, near the tall snag where the juvenile had roosted, there was something bright red. Something that hadn’t been there yesterday.

It looked like something newly dead.

With the kids trailing me, I went to investigate. As I got closer, I could see it was a deer, and that the circular flash of red that I had spotted from the side door of our garage was its ribcage, exposed to the sun.

It was a young one. I could see its tiny teeth in its partially open mouth. It lay there sprawled in the grass, ravaged by the wild things that roam this rural part of Northwest Washington.

It wasn’t the eagles that took it down. They were just part of the clean-up crew. Maybe it was the pack of coyotes that we hear every night, sounding like they’re right outside our windows. Or maybe it was the cougar that our neighbors report seeing.

I called Liesl, and told her about the deer, then talked to the kids about what they were seeing. They were at least a hundred feet away, and when I asked them, they said that they didn’t want to get any closer.

We walked past the deer, keeping our distance, and ventured into the forest. There’s a beautiful clearing that isn’t accessible for Liesl, and I wanted to see if there was a place where we could clear the brush so she could get in. There’s a structure back there where the previous owners kept pigs, and there was deer fur there, too.

The deer is along the south property line, in the sun. Countless other animals will take life from its body. Liesl plans to set up a game cam, so that we can watch the predators and scavengers who come to play their part in the transformation of life into death and into life again.

It is the way of nature, wild and cruel and strangely beautiful.

The post The way of nature appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

This post will be easier to understand if you also have ADHD, but if you’re neurotypical, you’re welcome to follow along.

It’s been helpful to me lately to see my working memory as a tiny hopper that only has room for two ping-pong balls. When the third ball comes along, the first ball gets bumped out. I asked Liesl how many ping-pong balls fit in her hopper. She said, “More than five, and less than ten—about seven.”

It’s also been helpful to me to think about my thoughts as loops. When I lose a thought, I pause, and wait for the train to loop around and come back to the station. If I can be easy about that, it’s easier to notice the returning train.

Just now as I was thinking about this, I realized that another image was forming in my mind. Liesl and I have been doing a lot of work with circular saws in the past six months or so.

Suddenly I saw that my “loops” are like the ruthless efficiency of a saw blade—a high-speed iterative process, rapidly cutting through what doesn’t work for me, spitting out the sawdust of failure, in fierce pursuit of what I need.

Holy cow. Now that’s a different way of thinking about my brain.

The post Spitting out the sawdust of failure appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I’m pleased to welcome my first guest blogger, Joseph Erhard-Hudson, who shared this hard-earned wisdom with a group for UU clergy (and those pursuing ordination) with ADHD.

Entering the path to ministry was a daring choice. My ADHD was undiagnosed, and my life as a whole felt like it had come to a disappointing, heartbreaking standstill. I had pretty much given up hope of achieving any career beyond the retail wage position I had devolved into or aspiring to anything that required sustained and complex preparation, planning, and education. I didn’t have name “ADHD” to put on the reasons, but learned helplessness had taken a paralyzing grip on me.

But the call to ministry was relentless, and the encouragement and love of my home congregation made me believe I should try. I dared to push through my fears and begin. I convinced myself, and the gatekeepers, that I had grown out of whatever had caused my Bachelor’s degree to span 13 years. But entering seminary was deja vu all over again. Bewilderment, procrastination, paralysis, vicious self-judgment, shame.

If I’m so fucking smart, why do I always fail at this? (Hint: being smart compensates pretty well, right up until it spectacularly doesn’t.) It all came snowballing back, piling deeper each semester, suffocating me, bringing not only my academic efforts to ruin, but threatening my marriage and family with the same.

The growing public knowledge about adult ADHD finally reached me. Better late than never, even if later sucks. I clawed my way into an affordable assessment, and thankfully, blessedly, after 50 years of life and 40 years of bewilderment, I was diagnosed.

But learning to know and understand my ADHD was not enough, when what I needed more than anything else was healing. Even with the tools and accommodations I am learning to use, I can’t heal my soul, and rebuild my life, and work on school at the same time, when being in school is the source of so many wounds. The scars can’t even form if the stitches keep getting ripped out.

Leaving this path hurts. The failure hurts. The ways I wasn’t present, and hurt my family, hurt me to even think about.

I haven’t even begun to talk about the emotional dysregulation, the rejection-sensitive dysphoria, the grief of time lost because I didn’t know, all the other wounds beyond school and career that I am healing. I have debts that may take the rest of my life to pay, and the prize at the end is lost to me. It all hurts like hell.

But—I’m strangely okay. I’m not saying this in resignation, or anger, or defiance. I’m becoming fine. Leaning into the pain, into the shame, learning to just be with it, is leading me to a place where it doesn’t hurt so much to be hurt, and there’s no shame in carrying so much shame, or in putting it down.

In the moments when I believe in God, I wonder if that relentless call, which I thought was to ordained ministry, was really God’s call towards healing. If Process Theology is a valid framework, then perhaps God is willing to persuade us even into the path of failure, if that’s what it takes to bring us to wholeness on the other side.

It occurs to me there was another call I was answering, the false call of shame. It was the call to somehow, by achieving this impossible goal, I could finally prove I was the person I thought I should have been, the person who was me without the ADHD, the version of me that was successful at the things people expected of me, and actually worthy of anyone’s love. But if that person existed, they wouldn’t be me.

For me, at least, the greatest challenge of Universalism has been the part that is directed toward myself. With my beliefs and actions, I can affirm to everyone that they are worthy—everyone except myself. When we know ourselves truly and well, and hold ourselves precious for precisely who we are, and set aside all notions of success and failure, and see the path that is truly ours before us and can move along it, that is when wholeness begins.

I still feel a call to ministry, but it has less and less of the false call of shame, or the trickster’s call to ordination. There’s a lot of ministry in our world, even paid ministry, that doesn’t need to go through seminary and the credentialing ringer to get to. Maybe if I had been diagnosed a decade or two ago, I could follow that path. But I am here, now, and that’s okay.

This is my path. This. This. This. Mine. Mine. Mine. Here, where I am now, who I am now, this is my new path, through the land on the other side of shame. I don’t have to be the person that could be on a different path. I don’t even have to know the end of the path to follow the call. We ADHDers can be especially good at taking things as they come. I think we can turn that into listening to the call well, even as it evolves and grows with us. Maybe that can be a gift we can teach to others.

“The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine…”

This. Path. Is. Mine. And it is precious to me. Blessed be my path, and blessed be me. And blessed be you, and blessed be your paths as well. I see your challenges, and your pain, and the shame you may be carrying from our ADHD, and I love you all. May you find peace on the path that is truly yours.

I am grateful that my path has been alongside so many beautiful people in UU Ministry, even if it’s clear now my path departs from theirs in this way.

The post Closer to Fine: The Land on the Other Side of Shame appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Last year my therapist started asking me, at every visit, “You having any fun?”

I’d laugh, and say, “Nope.”

Eventually, I realized that I just wasn’t any good at fun. Either I’d never learned, or forgotten how to let loose, kick back, and have a blast doing something.

So I did what we do these days: I asked Facebook.  My friends gave me all kinds of suggestions, and some of them actually sounded like things I might enjoy.

In the time since then, I have had more fun. But lately, I’ve been thinking that question is a hard one for parents of young children.

Do you remember that Nyquil ad? The one that said, “Moms don’t take sick days”? (And yes, there was a dads version of that commercial. No non-binary parent commercial though.)

For whoever is the default parent, there are no sick days. There is no end to the work of child-tending, and every precious hour of respite care, should we be lucky enough to have that, is measured out carefully. We always ask ourselves, “Is this a good use of babysitter time? Is this the best thing that I could be doing with a daycare day?”

There are always dishes and laundry, deadlines and past-due projects—so many things that seem more urgent than self-care of any kind, let alone play.

After five-plus years in the trenches, I’ve decided that there are only two ways that parents get to have fun.

Option one: convince yourself that fun belongs on your to-do list. That it’s not optional. That the well-being of your children depends on your ability to have fun. The oxygen-mask metaphor is so old that we roll our eyes at it, but it’s true. Play is as important as air and water and food and shelter. Without it, parts of us die.

Which leads us to option two: play with your children. I’m not just talking about getting down on the floor with them and making elaborate racetracks. I’m not just talking about doing the things your kids think are fun. Find the places where your joy and their joy overlap. For Liesl, that’s the racetracks. For me, it’s art. It’s liberating to do kid art. The kids and I will sit at a table with a big piece of paper, a bin of crayons, and a timer. Every time the timer rings, we switch chairs, and color there. It’s so much fun—free of the constraints of needing to make “real art.”

Last weekend the kids and I went to something billed as a “Clay Extravaganza.” My daughter and I both tried our hands at a pottery wheel—and loved it. Then we watched skilled potters compete—competitions that were silly and serious at the same time. In the first one, a team of three potters worked together—one operating the pedal controlling the speed, and the other two each using one hand only, working cooperatively to draw the clay evenly upward. In the second one, seven potters sat at wheels—with paper bags over their heads, a silly face drawn on each bag. The timer started, and all but one created beautiful pieces. One potter, when she removed the paper bag, said, “That’s not at all what I was imagining!” The crowd’s favorite was the potter whose piece collapsed. I think he actually won.

Had I been alone, I would have loved to stay and watch more of the competitions. I would have taken longer to explore the exquisite works of art for sale.

But it was time for my son’s nap, so we packed up and went home. He had a snack, then went down easily for a long nap.

Did I want more? Maybe. But if I’d been alone, I would have missed seeing my daughter’s delight and mastery. If I’d been alone, I would have missed a lesson in saying, “It is enough. My heart is full.”

The post Finding my way to full-hearted parenting appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I placed our order yesterday. Four little chicks should arrive during spring break: Buff Orpington, Black Australorp, Barred Plymouth Rock, and Rhode Island Red.

We’re not organized enough yet to build our “real” tiny farm complex (garden, coop, greenhouse), so this spring and summer we’re going to turn the kids’ playground area into a children’s garden.

An arbor gate and fence made of pallets, painted by the kids with free and almost free paint. A weeping mulberry to hide in. Tiny pond. Slide and climbing wall and picnic table and fort from the playground structure. A few raised beds, also made from pallets, where we can raise easy vegetables. Probably a fairy garden or two in there, and a gravel area for toy trucks to do their work. And of course, a cute little coop for the chickens.

Last summer’s ordeal with building Liesl’s shop was just that—an ordeal. Now that it’s done, and Liesl’s setting it up how she wants it, we need to play. We need to build in a way that doesn’t stress our pocketbooks. We need to delight in discounts and free things and reusing materials that might otherwise have been discarded.

We’ll be able to see this charming bit of child-inspired magic from our living and dining room windows, from the heart of our house, a reminder to play and have fun, however each of us does that.

I ordered the chicks today, even though today I don’t really feel well enough to be very playful. I have four minor illnesses, all happening at the same time, and I don’t feel like doing anything. On days like that, if you’re lucky, sometimes you can reach down and find one small thing that brings you joy—and something that gives you something to look forward to. Today, it was four baby chicks that will arrive in about three weeks. In three weeks, we’ll need to have a brooder set up for them in the garage. In three weeks, the kids will be on spring break, and needing something fun to keep themselves busy.

Hooray for baby chicks, and all the other tiny things that give us joy and purpose!

The post A charming bit of child-inspired magic appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

This morning I tumbled down, down, down into a deeper understanding of my ADHD brain.

A few months ago a Reddit thread went viral: “ADHD is like everyone has to hold 100 marbles and you’re the only one without a bag.”  I read the headline and felt like Pippin in LOTR. Bags? There are bags? I’m getting one!

Someone—I think it was ADHD Mama—said that meds give us a bag, but the bag has a hole in it. We don’t care, really, because a bag with a hole is better than no bag at all.

The bag is, of course, working memory, “a cognitive system with a limited capacity that is responsible for temporarily holding information available for processing.” In most ADHD brains, working memory’s capacity is even more limited than that of non-ADHD brains.

An image of my working memory has been forming in my imagination lately. Not a bag, but a hopper of sorts. One with room for two marbles at a time. Room for holding two pieces of information. (Liesl, when I asked her, estimates that her hopper has room for seven or eight marbles.)

A first I thought, yes, two slots, and when a new piece of information comes along, it bumps out one of the marbles already there.

This morning, I realized that it’s more complicated .

Sometimes a marble gets stuck in one—or both—of the slots. In ADHD-speak that’s called hyperfocus. It means that there’s maybe one slot available for new information, or more likely, no slots at all. All the incoming information just bounces off of us, because there’s no room in the hopper. We don’t see it, we don’t hear it. We’re looking at and listening to something else.

There’s another state that affects the availability of the hopper, though, something different than hyperfocus. Hyperfocus is what I’m doing right now, as I write this blog post. The other state is the deep introspection from which the ideas in this blog post emerged.

When I asked myself this morning, “What’s happening with the hopper when I’m in a loose, introspective, wandering, creative space?” the strangest thing happened. A sharp, electric fear surged across my brain, short-circuiting my wondering.

I almost stopped. I almost said, “Well, that’s that. That’s all I’ll understand for now.”

But I didn’t stop. I took a deep breath and began to explore the fear.

That’s when I met the monkeys.

Yes, monkeys.

Now, for those of you whose brains are screwed a little tighter than mine, let me stop for a minute and reassure you.

Twenty years ago, when I was in seminary, I encountered the work of theologian Sallie McFague

“Metaphor,” McFague says, “is a strategy of desperation, not decoration; it is an attempt to say something about the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, an attempt to speak about what we do not know in terms of what we do know.”

Those words stopped me in my tracks. They have stayed with me since, returning when I need them.

Yes, the monkeys are a metaphor. A metaphor for the unfamiliar, the unknown, the undiscovered, the unnamed.

I explore undiscovered interior experience. That is my life’s work. Metaphor is my mother tongue.

With that out of the way, let’s get back to the monkeys.

As I edged my way around the dissolving wall of fear, I saw them.

So many of them, all scurrying around, carrying bright balls of possibility, trying them out in the hopper, stepping back to admire and consider their work, pressing eject, going back for another marble—again and again and again and again.

Sometimes two marbles were such a beautiful, magical combination that a fire lit inside them, sending a flare skyward, toward—somewhere? To consciousness?

The flare is an idea, an image, a string of words. In me, that translates to, “I have to write about that.”

Sometimes the flare is an out-of-nowhere intuition, the work of the monkeys bringing two wildly disparate pieces of information from long-term storage, and putting them together to create something new or solve a mystery.

It’s a great system for the kind of work I like to do—writing and thinking about human experience.

I am so grateful for a glimpse behind the scenes.

What I saw there in that beautiful creative chaos, in that place of intuitive logic, also helped me understand why it is often so hard—and even dangerous sometimes—for me to navigate the exterior world.

Do you know that I drive with the monkeys playing their beautiful game?

How can I keep track of the van in my blind spot if the monkeys are constantly filling my working memory slots with brilliantly colored, flaming marbles? How can I see the bright yellow school zone signs when the marbles have sent up a flare, and I’m hyperfocused on exploring the words and images and ideas that sparks?

That’s the rub. On the one hand, neurodiversity is just that—diversity. Exquisitely beautiful diversity.

On the other hand, neurodiversity lives in a world built for sameness. For the dominant form of sameness. For the form of sameness that means moms with ADHD have to drive their kids around while monkeys are playing marbles in their brains.

(As far as I can tell, the monkeys fashioned the spark of this post from the Reddit thread, the movie Inside Out, and the kids’ TV shows PAW Patrol and DinoTrux.)

The post Today I met my monkeys appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Yesterday a beloved friend said to me that if I want what I say I want from life, “ADHD may not be a get out of jail free card.”

He hesitated before saying it, particularly because it wasn’t a private conversation between the two of us.

He took a chance that I would hear, and trust, the love with which he said it. He wondered if I trusted the other people listening to respect me, even with that uncomfortable truth on the table.

He is someone whose love I trust. In fact, I trust him enough to expect that he will tell me uncomfortable truths, rather than mollycoddling me. I trust that he respects me enough to tell me the truth, in love.

The other people listening? I don’t know them as well, and the trust between us isn’t as deep. But I trust them enough. They are wonderful people.

The question really was, how would I hear what he said? How would I respond to it?

Would I bury its sting in my chest? Would I curl my body around it, protecting it as it festered inside me?

Or would I accept its invitation?

Because it was an invitation—offered to the part of me that wants more from my life. That wants to be free. That wants to stop being so damned scared to live.

There are many things that are hard because I have ADHD. Without diagnosis and treatment, those difficulties—and the failures! So many failures—surrounded me with an ever-increasing sense of helplessness. By the time I started meds last year, it had closed in so tightly around me that I often wanted to die. I felt so painfully broken, and I didn’t believe I could change.

Truth be told, I still feel that way sometimes. But less often.

“ADHD may not be a get out of jail free card,” my friend told me.

You know what I think? Those of us with ADHD don’t exactly read every word. I think I’ve been looking at that card all these years, reading it as “Get out of jail free.”

Now that I look closer, I can see that it really says “Get stuck in jail forever.”

Helplessness is a prison. I lock myself up when I say “I can’t do that. I have ADHD.”

You know what liberates? What breaks me out of jail? Learning to say, instead:

• “I have ADHD, and I can’t do that yet.”
• “I have ADHD, so I can’t do that the way you would do it. But let me think about what I need to give it a try.”
• “I have ADHD, and I’ll never be able to do that particular task. But making sure it gets done is my responsibility.”

I am still so very afraid of failure. I have failed so many times.

But now that I have a name for this struggle and have begun treatment, I can imagine success.

If you have ADHD, and particularly if you have struggled for years, undiagnosed and untreated, I hope you have beloved friends who will risk telling you liberating truths.

If you love someone with ADHD, particularly if that person wasn’t diagnosed until they were an adult, thank you. We need your love so very much. It helps us hear you when you tell us hard truths that can set us free.

The post Turning in my “get out of jail free” card appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I would pull myself up by my bootstraps, really, if I had any bootstraps. Or knew what they were.

For those of us with ADHD, there’s a ginormous gap between what we want, and what we can manage. If we don’t get diagnosed until early adulthood or later, we’ve spent all those years beating ourselves up—and then we learn that we don’t have enough of the get-up-and-go hormone, dopamine.

Sucking it up and making ourselves do something is NEVER going to work for us. We have to be more creative than that. We have to find ways to motivate ourselves that work for a dopamine-deficient brain.

The list varies depending on who you read, but it usually includes interest, novelty, competition, urgency, and play.

I’m a Facebook junkie, and I don’t want to be. I love to read, and Facebook and the interwebs have no bottom. I could—and sometimes do—spend hours and hours falling down one hole after another.

But recently that’s changed. Not because I’ve been working on it, but because I’ve discovered other things I like better than Facebook. I’ve discovered that I like “real” life better than Facebook.

I like doing battle with the invasive blackberry that has killed several of our trees. I like taking apart the rotting playset in our backyard that’s become a hazard. I like cutting back the rosebushes that have gone wild, and planning what I will replace them with.

These things are interesting to me. They’re fun. There’s even a bit of competition—me vs. the blackberry.

You know what? After a day doing all these fun things, I come back to Facebook to find a ridiculous number of notifications. I discover that it feels good to be away from my laptop, on my feet, outdoors, active.

When you have ADHD, chasing virtue is a Sisyphean task. You’ll never catch it. But pleasure? Fun? Challenge? Oh yeah, that’ll work.

Even if you don’t have ADHD, there’s probably something you could use in one of our tricks. Give it a try!

The post The ADHD cure for Facebook junkies appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Yesterday I bought an alpaca. For about five anxious minutes.

My kids and I love going to our local livestock auction. When my daughter has a Monday off from school, we get there early to admire the lambs and goat kids.

Yesterday one of the pens was nearly full of Huacaya alpacas—the ones that look like teddy bears. All male, because the hard facts are that not everyone gets to be a herdsire.

I went to the office to ask about them, and to find out how often they auction alpacas (not often, it turned out). Another woman, overhearing my conversation, said, “Oh, they have alpacas?” I asked if she planned to buy some, and she said, “Oh, I’ll buy them all.”

“Really?” I said. “What will you do with them.”

“You don’t want to know,” she said, before telling me that her family has a raw dogfood business.

Oh.

Fast-forward to the auction, where goat kids were selling for $10, making me think that maybe we should alter our next-year goat plan, and enlist these little guys (yes, males) to help with our blackberry problem. I started texting with Liesl. We started brainstorming about where we might put them.

The goat kids sold, and I watched the other goats get sold, too. Not to the dogfood woman—these other goats went for more money than would allow her to turn a profit.

But then the alpacas came in, and the first three of them went for $10 each. I texted Liesl again.

I should tell you that Liesl loves alpacas.

When the next group of alpacas came in, I gathered up my kids and went to the office for an auction number.  Before I knew it, I had “won” an alpaca for $25, and the auctioneer wanted to know which one I wanted. Flustered, I stood up and made a life or death decision on a whim. I chose one in classic teddy bear brown.

I sat down and texted Liesl. “WHAAAATTTT??????”

Oh-oh.

I looked at the nearest auction employee. “Can I give it back?” I asked.

She didn’t know, and left for the office. We followed. They let me “return” the alpaca, and we left. Before I even got out the door, I tore my auction number in two. I was so embarrassed by my impulsiveness.

But twenty-four hours later, it has become a powerful metaphor. A guiding one that will stick with me. When I’m about to leap into something, I can ask myself, “Is this an alpaca?” Is this a feelings-driven, too-quickly-made decision?

There are three types of ADHD: hyperactive, inattentive, and combination. I have always assumed that I had the inattentive type. Yesterday’s encounter with the alpacas woke me up to the reality that I’m the combination.

Sure I can sit still. But I am driven by my enthusiasms, prone to sudden leaps into unconsidered choices. And I will talk the ears right off your head about whatever I’m currently excited about. That last part is actually a bit worse with the meds. I think they’re lifting some of the depression that was keeping a lid on my exuberance.

It’s a tricky business, sorting out how our brains work. But if we don’t try, we have to figure out how to fit an alpaca in the back of a minivan.

The post Is that an alpaca? appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Yesterday I bought an alpaca. For about five anxious minutes.

My kids and I love going to our local livestock auction. When my daughter has a Monday off from school, we get there early to admire the lambs and goat kids.

Yesterday one of the pens was nearly full of Huacaya alpacas—the ones that look like teddy bears. All male, because the hard facts are that not everyone gets to be a herdsire.

I went to the office to ask about them, and to find out how often they auction alpacas (not often, it turned out). Another woman, overhearing my conversation, said, “Oh, they have alpacas?” I asked if she planned to buy some, and she said, “Oh, I’ll buy them all.”

“Really?” I said. “What will you do with them.”

“You don’t want to know,” she said, before telling me that her family has a raw dogfood business.

Oh.

Fast-forward to the auction, where goat kids were selling for $10, making me think that maybe we should alter our next-year goat plan, and enlist these little guys (yes, males) to help with our blackberry problem. I started texting with Liesl. We started brainstorming about where we might put them.

The goat kids sold, and I watched the other goats get sold, too. Not to the dogfood woman—these other goats went for more money than would allow her to turn a profit.

But then the alpacas came in, and the first three of them went for $10 each. I texted Liesl again.

I should tell you that Liesl loves alpacas.

When the next group of alpacas came in, I gathered up my kids and went to the office for an auction number.  Before I knew it, I had “won” an alpaca for $25, and the auctioneer wanted to know which one I wanted. Flustered, I stood up and made a life or death decision on a whim. I chose one in classic teddy bear brown.

I sat down and texted Liesl. “WHAAAATTTT??????”

Oh-oh.

I looked at the nearest auction employee. “Can I give it back?” I asked.

She didn’t know, and left for the office. We followed. They let me “return” the alpaca, and we left. Before I even got out the door, I tore my auction number in two. I was so embarrassed by my impulsiveness.

But twenty-four hours later, it has become a powerful metaphor. A guiding one that will stick with me. When I’m about to leap into something, I can ask myself, “Is this an alpaca?” Is this a feelings-driven, too-quickly-made decision?

There are three types of ADHD: hyperactive, inattentive, and combination. I have always assumed that I had the inattentive type. Yesterday’s encounter with the alpacas woke me up to the reality that I’m the combination.

Sure I can sit still. But I am driven by my enthusiasms, prone to sudden leaps into unconsidered choices. And I will talk the ears right off your head about whatever I’m currently excited about. That last part is actually a bit worse with the meds. I think they’re lifting some of the depression that was keeping a lid on my exuberance.

It’s a tricky business, sorting out how our brains work. But if we don’t try, we have to figure out how to fit an alpaca in the back of a minivan.

The post Is this an alpaca? appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

We’re not learning to take care of an alpaca this week, but we are learning about baby chicks.

On Monday afternoon, My Pet Chicken notified me that our four chicks had shipped. But there was a scanning problem, so I couldn’t track their progress across the country from Ohio to Washington. We hurriedly readied their brooder and waited.

Less than twenty-four hours later, while I was participating in a Zoom meeting, I got a text from the USPS that the chicks had arrived. Soon I got a phone call from the local post office as well.

When the meeting ended, I played the voicemail for my daughter, who is nearly six. Her body could hardly contain her excitement. We turned on the heat lamp and got in the van.

At the post office, there was a big line. More waiting. Good practice for both of us.

When it was our turn, the postal worker brought the cheeping box to the counter. He cut the strap around the box so I could check on the chicks. Two were fine, and two were not.

One of our local farm stores provided two replacements, so now we have two very young chicks (Red and Honey B.), one slightly older (Chippy), and one that’s about two weeks old (Dot). Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpington, Easter Egger, Silver Laced Wyandotte.

The kids love them. My daughter, in particular, will sit with them in the garage for long stretches of time. She even wants to help clean the brooder!

Late at night, before I go to bed, I check on them one last time, sitting for a while, watching them breathe, listening to their cheeps. It’s a great way to relax at the end of the day.

This is just the beginning of the chicken adventure. More stories to come, I’m sure!

The post Red, Chippy, Dot, and Honey B. Sunshine appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

My grandmother had Alzheimer’s. Now my dad does. I spend a lot of time afraid that there’s a ticking clock in my brain. Particularly because I have always been “forgetful.”

Just now I went into the bedroom to retrieve my phone.

I looked out the window and saw a big clump of something brown that I didn’t remember seeing yesterday. Just dirt, I think.

That made me think about the deer skeleton in our yard, slowly emerging as predators of all sizes have their way. I wondered what I would need to do to ship it to a colleague who treasures animal bones. Would it need to be frozen? I would wear disposable gloves, of course. And some kind of face mask? Would she know what to do with it when it arrived? Would it be better to have someone take it totally down to the bones before shipping?

My thoughts shifted, and there I was, standing in the bedroom, wondering why I was there.

“Why am I here?” I asked myself. I waited, standing still, for the answer to come back around the track. “Ah! Phone!”

As I retrieved the phone, the vividness of this particular brain meander—a decomposing deer—made me laugh. How does a cell phone compete with that?

Depending on who you read, there may, or may not, be a link between ADHD and dementia. The research is not yet clear. But I do know one thing: I have ADHD, and what looks like forgetfulness is actually distractability. I’m also perimenopausal, and dropping estrogen levels make ADHD symptoms worse.

My task is to address what’s happening now so that I am as healthy as possible for whatever comes next.

The post Forgetting: ADHD and dementia appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Sometimes I feel like I’m walking uphill through deep sand with weighted chains wrapped around my ankles, dragging behind me. Maybe you feel that way sometimes, too.

Changing that is not a one-trick fix. It’s a complex problem—the sand, the chains, the weights, the hill.

Today I’m working on one thing that helps: purging the dreads.

You know what I mean? The dreads are all those little nagging tasks that we don’t take care of right away, for one reason or another. We forget. We get the flu. Taking care of kids overwhelms us. The task is unpleasant. It makes us anxious.

So we put it off.

But here’s the thing with dreads. They don’t shrink while we pretend to ignore them. They work their way into our skin, irritating, infecting.

Relief only comes when we figure out that procrastinating feels worse than the unpleasant task itself—or when we get enough practice with pushing through the “I don’t want to” feeling that we discover the particular pleasure of completing a difficult task.

Today I figured out that it would feel fabulous to take a moment to list my dreads—and then work my way through them.

This post is the first of them. I scrawled the rest of them on a bright green index card while I was getting dressed this morning. There are three of them, and getting them done will make me feel great.

How are your dreads? Are they pulling at you, holding you back? Make a list of them. It may be shorter than you imagine. Work through them. Drop the chains. Find a smooth path. Move forward. Keep going.

The world needs you. You don’t have time to slog uphill through the sand. Go get ’em. One task at a time. You can do it.

Ready?

Go!

The post Purge the dreads appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Liesl and I live on ten acres here in Whatcom County, and taking care of that much land is a lot of work.

We have been talking for a while about getting a side-by-side, also called a UTV. We’ve looked at all the models—John Deere, Polaris, Kubota. We’ve thought about options, and how we would use it.

Would we want an enclosed cab? (Probably, since one of the things we’d use it for would be taking the kids to the bus stop in the morning, and it rains a lot here.) Gas or diesel? How much seating? How big of a bed? What kind of dump?

One night a few months ago, Liesl said, “We should get a Japanese mini-truck.”

I was immediately excited about that. I love tiny trucks. Always have.

But then Liesl said, “They’re a manual transmission, and right-seat-drive.”

I balked, partly because I haven’t driven a stick for almost two decades, but mostly because I couldn’t imagine wrapping my head around shifting with my left hand, while the floor pedals were “normal.”

The more I looked at these cute little trucks, though, the more I was willing to give it a try. We took a trip to the nearest dealer with significant inventory, and we all fell in love with a Honda Acty Attack.

For half the money we would spend on a UTV, we would get a vehicle with a much longer bed (six feet), and an enclosed, heated cab. It would be street legal, which would mean that whenever I need gas, I could just take it to the gas station and fill it up, rather than dragging gas cans back and forth. If I needed to run farm errands, like picking up hay and straw, I could do it with the Acty rather than our mini-van.

After a lot of discussion, we decided to go for it. We arranged for a long day of babysitter time, and Liesl and I drove her truck down to Camas, WA, with an empty 6×12 trailer behind us. To give you a sense of scale, the Acty fits on a trailer that size with room to spare.

The Acty is SO MUCH FUN. (And useful too, but the FUN is the best part.)

It wasn’t long before muscle memory kicked in, and shifting gears felt normal again. Soon I was looking for the clutch in our automatic mini-van.

There has also been an unexpected benefit for my ADHD brain. The Acty lets me know immediately if I haven’t been paying attention. It stalls! Nothing in the Acty is automatic. Nothing makes me lazy. The windows are hand-crank. The speedometer is kilometers only. Driving it is a brain on, body engaged experience. ADHD-therapy on wheels.

The post ADHD therapy on wheels appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

A week ago today, the four of us drove out to Ellensburg, Washington, to pick up two Nigerian Dwarf kids.

We have wanted goats for a long time, and this spring I’ve made so much progress beating back the bramble that I was really ready to have some four-legged assistance with the new shoots that sprung up in my wake.

But we had decided to wait until next year, taking it slowly with the chickens, giving ourselves time.

Until a breeder from the Spokane area got in touch with me on Facebook. She had a sale that had fallen through—two siblings, a doe and a wether, Clover and Cinnamon.

The kicker? They were born on my birthday.

We are loving these two little beings, even though we had do scurry to get ready for them.

The human kids think the goat kids are wonderful. The wether loves everyone. The doeling is much more shy. But they’re both adorable.

Between the chickens, and the goats, and the mini-truck, and the garden start-up, I have been spending so much time outside—and so much less time online, so much less time mindlessly scrolling Facebook. It feels wonderful.

The post Goatlings are more fun than Facebook appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I spend so much time looking for things. Things I’ve set down without noticing where, my attention drawn to the next thing.

Today I had a Zoom meeting scheduled for noon, with the four amazing people who are my Ministerial Formation Team. I was ready, I thought. I had printed the agenda, I had a glass of water and a last-minute snack, and my desk was clear enough that I could think.

With a few minutes to spare, I opened Zoom. There’s a problem with your sound, Zoom said, and offered to test my microphones. OK, I said. It had just finished when people began joining the meeting.

In the usual confusion of an online meeting, I didn’t get a chance to figure out if they could hear me. I could hear them. Maybe the problem was fixed? But when my time came to check in, my fears were confirmed. They couldn’t hear me.

So I had to find my phone, to join the audio that way. It wasn’t in the car with my purse and keys. After a few laps through the house, I came back to the group, and used the chat function to fill them in. One of them offered to call my phone—which, it turned out, was underneath my lunch dishes. Because of course it was.

A week earlier I had chosen to focus this meeting on ADHD shame, which derails my vocation as a minister, writer, and encourager of writers.

Here in this moment was an opportunity to run my finger along the long smooth edge of choice. Shame, or self-acceptance?

It was such a gift, perfectly focused, perfectly timed.

Just now I spent about fifteen minutes unable to find my laptop. Fifteen minutes of fruitless, frantic searching. Again the choice. Shame and despair pulled hard. It was difficult, at the end of a long day, to be gracious with myself.

After so many years of undiagnosed ADHD, I have too much practice losing things, too much time living with the frustration of lost things.

I’m so very tired.

I’ve never thought of myself as having the “H” in ADHD, but when I really slow down, I can feel the restlessness drives me always onward to the next thing without finishing the task at hand.

I need time to whisper to my anxious, driven self, “Hush.”

To wrap myself in a blanket of kindness.

To let go, to breathe, to rest.

What I need is stillness.

Hush.

The post What I need is stillness appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Like many people with ADHD, I struggle with remembering things I need to do when I can do them.

I remember that I need to call the kids’ doctor—while I’m in the shower. I remember that I need to call Les Schwab about the minitruck’s tires—while I’m driving. I remember that I need to schedule an eye appointment—when Costco’s optical department is closed.

It takes me forever to move through big tasks because I wait for that magical moment when I remember at exactly the right time.

Now that I have a name for this problem—ADHD—it’s easier to work on solutions.

Last week, I asked my therapist for suggestions. She said, “Well if you’re in the shower and you remember something important, wring out your washcloth and fling it onto the floor. Stepping on the wet washcloth will startle you, and remind you that there was something important that you need to do.”

Brilliant.

(Of course, when I told Liesl about it, expecting her to be impressed, she said, “Oh, I do things like that all the time.” Damn neurotypicals.)

I’m waking up from denial about my brain’s realities. For too long I’ve said, “Oh, I hope I remember . . . ” or “I’ll try to remember . . . .”

Here’s the truth, for me: Hoping and trying don’t work. Do it now, or create a reminder. Waiting for all the pieces to align means that I’m waiting a long time—years, sometimes.

I need to stop waiting, and start doing. I need to stop passively waiting for life to happen to me, and begin actively creating the life I want.

Better late than never, right?

The post Stop waiting for magic appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

As I write this post, my beautiful babies are eating their breakfast at a small table in the living room, and watching TV. We’ve discovered that kids’ TV on Netflix doesn’t have commercials, so that’s my current favorite. They’re eating scrambled eggs and toast with jam. Willa has green grapes, too, but Thomas doesn’t like them.

Thomas woke at six this morning, inconsolable that his favorite transitional object, a forklift, is down at Liesl’s shop rather than in bed with him. Willa, who usually sleeps much later, soon bounced out of her bedroom with a Mother’s Day present she made at school.

Thomas is usually my cheerful morning kid, so it was unusual for them to have switched roles. We found socks and shoes—had to be his current favorite shoes, not the Crocs—and went to retrieve his forklift, saying “Hi” to the goats on the way by.

When we got back, I made them breakfast, made myself breakfast, and turned on the TV.

Yes, I turned on the TV. It gives me time in the morning when I’m not “on.”

My kids get far more screen time than recommended. Every time I see an article with a headline that says, “Experts say any screen time at all is too much,” I say to myself, “Well, when this country gets serious about creating villages to raise children, maybe then experts can lecture parents about screen time.”

Because the truth is that parenting is exhausting. So many demands on your body, your time, your mind, your energy, your creativity, your heart.

When I was considering getting pregnant at “advanced maternal age,” my doctors assured me that I was healthy enough to have kids at 42 and 45. And I was. Came through like a champ. Both kids full term, eight pounds plus, vaginal births without pain meds, etc.

What the doctors don’t tell you is that it’s the parenting, not the pregnancy.

It’s the long-term sleep deprivation. It’s the cracked nipples and stretched body parts. It’s the neediness and the tantrums. It’s the constant worry that you’re screwing up your kids, and the unending supply of parenting advice in books and articles. It’s trying to find the balance between providing freedom and discipline. It’s trying to create an enriched environment without spoiling your kids.

It’s the constant clutter. It’s the gimmies. the whines, the bickering, the pinching, shoving, kicking, and hitting.

It is exhausting. Particularly now that fifty is nineteen months away.

Would I do it differently? Of course not. Willa has just given me two more handmade Mother’s Day cards. Thomas’s blond curls are sparkling in the morning light, as he clutches his toast in tiny hands, holding it upside-down as he takes little bites from the center. Their hugs and snuggles fill my soul. As I watch Willa confidently bound up the stairs onto the bus every morning, I feel like I must be doing something right.

It’s Mother’s Day today, and on FB many of my friends are turning themselves into pretzels trying to make sure no one is hurt or left out by this particular holiday. It frustrates me to no end.

Motherhood (nurturning-parenthood) is hard work. Much of it thankless.

Happy Mother’s Day, nurturing parents. Thank you for giving birth to, adopting, fostering, the next generation. Thanks for creating and raising the kids who will take care of us when we can’t take care of ourselves. Thank you for teaching the children who will try to create solutions to the problems created by past generations.

It’s not the pregnancy or the childbirth, though that is some of the hardest work I’ve ever done. It’s the daily work of nurturing little souls that really takes its toll.

And for that, I say “Thank you, and Happy Mother’s Day!”

The post It’s the parenting, not the pregnancy appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

On Saturday, Willa and I went to Home Depot for coop-building supplies. We found the small things, then walked the length of the store for the 3/4″ sanded ply Liesl wanted.

When we got to the lumber aisles, there were no orange aprons in sight.

Finally I found someone who suggested I ask for help at the pro desk. There was no one at the pro desk. A cashier nearby was not busy, so I asked her to page someone to lumber. We waited in lumber for a reasonable amount of time, then gave up. We purchased the other items on our list and left.

Yesterday, I went back—this time with both kids. The day before I had spotted an amazing deal on a combo kit of Ryobi power tools, and decided that it was time to have my own tools. But I needed to know what kinds of accessories to purchase, and Liesl wasn’t with us.

I asked someone near the registers, and they radioed for assistance. We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, I went in search of someone to ask what was going on. At customer service, I asked, “Are you understaffed this weekend? I came here yesterday and couldn’t find someone to help, and today it’s the same problem.”

She assured me that the staff were likely helping other customers, and radioed. Again.

Back in the tool aisle, we waited. I looked at drill/driver accessory and impact driver accessory sets. I found two that seemed like a great deal. But maybe it was overkill? Frustrated, I put them back, and made my way to the register—where I met the first person who had helped me. “I’m going to give up,” I told them. They said, “I just talked to Roxanne—she’s on her way.”

“Is there a problem with staffing?” I asked.  “Yes,” they said. “They forgot to staff for the Canadian holiday weekend.” Oh! Less than an hour from the border, we get a lot of Canadian shoppers.

“Thank you,” I said. “I had the same problem yesterday, and it helps to know there’s a reason.”

We waited some more. Finally someone showed up—not Roxanne, but an assistant manager, clearly motivated to help us.

He helped me pick out the best beginner set of drill bits and driver bits, and I made sure to tell him how helpful the person at the register had been.

We brought the cart to the self-check register, where the person who had tracked down help for us was assisting shoppers. They removed the anti-theft device on the toolset, then quickly did something on the screen. When I looked closer, I saw that they had discounted the toolset by 25%—a savings of nearly $50!

“Did you just do that?” I asked.

“Yes,” they said. “Most people would have been a lot less patient, a lot less nice about it.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I was grateful, not just for the discount, but also for the affirmation that the personal work I’ve been doing is paying off (literally!). I was able to be assertive, without either swallowing my feelings or expressing them in a sharp-tongued manner. This is new behavior, and it feels good. It feels strong.

Grownups grow too, I tell my kids. We’re still learning, just like you are. Every single day.

The post Good things come, sometimes appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I don’t know what intuition is, but I like it. I’m learning to recognize it. I’m learning to trust it.

One morning last week Thomas, my two-year-old, was jabbering about getting a tiny firetruck, one with a ladder. I didn’t think anything of it. An hour or so later, when nothing in the house or out would console him, we got in the car for a trip to the thrift store. It was Monday, and everything with a green tag was $1.79. When we got to the toy aisle, there it was, in a bag of tiny vehicles: the firetruck, complete with a ladder. Of course, the bag’s sticker was green.

There’s a particular feeling to intuition’s nudge. Do you know what I mean? Have you experienced it?

Yesterday it was the scrap fencing that was exactly the length I needed for a project.

Today it was looking for a podcast to listen to while I painted the chicken coop—and noticing that tug as I scrolled past The Good Life Project. I stopped, swiped, and there it was, the most recent episode, #511, “Stop Hiding, Reclaim Your Voice.”

For the past six months or so, I’ve been living in a surge of serendipity that I cannot explain. The right people appear, the right podcasts appear—heck, even the right firetrucks and fencing appear.

People more traditionally religious than I have language for this kind of experience. Christians call it listening to the Spirit. A UU colleague recently called it “Deep Magic,” writing that she would keep being open to it until she finds a way to believe in it.

Why has my intuition gotten so much more powerful with treatment for ADHD? Isn’t ADHD a curvy, leaping, dancing, darting, unpredictable, intuitive way of thinking? Yes. It is.

But with treatment, I can harness the power of both intuition and executive function. I am more alert to the “ding!” of intuition. I have more energy to seize its gifts.

With treatment, some of the co-morbid depression and anxiety are beginning to lift, and in the bright sunlight, I am more able to see the bounty life offers. Maybe it’s been there all along, and I’ve been too distracted, numb, and afraid to notice.

I don’t know what intuition is, but I like it. I love it when the universe hands out gifts like candy, free for the taking, in all my favorite flavors.

The post I don’t know what intuition is, but I like it appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Last night after the kids were in bed I went back down to Liesl’s shop to put the finishing coat of Candy Apple Red paint on the chicken’s coop. I brought my phone, planning to listen to the Good Life Project podcast that I’d barely started earlier in the day.

“Stop Hiding, Reclaim Your Voice” seemed like an episode worth finishing.  Little did I know how rich it would be for me—and how much it’s dead-on accuracy would freak me out.

How do I explain being drawn to a podcast episode that would address directly the last two blog posts I published?

How do I explain that I would begin listening, but take a break to write a post about intuition, only to return to hear the interview turn to an in-depth discussion of the particulars of how intuition works?

How do I explain that the podcast’s guest would provide a metaphor for what I was describing in my post about shopping for Ryobi tools? That she would talk about women being either bunnies or dragons and I would say, “Yes, that’s it exactly. Those are the extremes I successfully avoided in Home Depot.”

Today, though, was the kicker. The witchiness of it pushed me from laughter to mild panic.

The goats and chickens needed their pens cleaned, so I put on my new overalls, put my phone in the chest pocket (yay, pockets!), gathered up my tools, and got ready to work.

Before I started, I looked for a podcast. Nothing too serious, I thought, remembering the night before. Didn’t feel like a cooking one. Hmmm. Maybe an ADHD one?

Ok, yeah, that sounds right: “Patience, late bloomers, and ADHD.” That’s me, for sure.

Great episode, on my favorite ADHD podcast, really the only one I listen to—Taking Control.

But then, toward the end, one of the co-hosts, Pete Wright, casually mentioned Drew University. Where I received my undergraduate degree. In Psychology.

I finished cleaning the pens, dumped the soiled bedding in the compost pile, and went inside for a shower. Then I googled Pete.

Yup. There it was in his LinkedIn profile. Drew University. Psychology. Right around when I was there.

Freaked out, people. Seriously freaked out. Drew is not a large or well-known university. How is all this happening?

The arc of my life has moved steadily away from woo. But even in typing that sentence there is yet more woo. Something in my unconscious mind chose the word “arc.” Does that mean I will wind up where I began? Will I become a theist again, though a radically changed one?

Being called to change, again, and again, and again—it is so exhausting. I thought I was done.

Apparently not.

Something new is emerging. Something uncomfortable. Something I don’t understand. Uncontainable energy rising. Power that is either mine—or not mine. Neither option easy. Both requiring growth.

Resistance is not exactly futile, but it is counterproductive. It stunts and distorts. It poisons, rots, sickens.

The only real way is forward, into the flow of new life, into the sun and the nourishing rain and the disconcerting serendipity.

The post Freaked out by the woo appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Our house sits one-third of a mile back from a busy, two-lane county road. Yesterday, not long after I pulled out past our mailbox, I saw flashing lights, and with my ADHD reactivity, slammed on the brakes.

When I saw that the lights weren’t an emergency vehicle, I felt momentarily annoyed. It was a wide-load escort, with brighter lights than usual. Behind the flashing lights was a genuinely wide load—half of a house.

Ah, this wide load was part of someone’s home. My annoyance evaporated.

I started thinking—as my ADHD brain does—about the metaphor contained in this brief encounter.

I started thinking about how much energy I have put, over the course of my life, into staying in my lane.

Not “forgive us our transgressions,” but “don’t you dare ever transgress.”

Ugh.

What if the truth is that sometimes we have to travel through lanes not built for the load we carry? Could we accept that about ourselves, and just do the best we can? Could we accept that about each other, and simply move over without much thought when we see someone crossing the center line?

Of course, I’m not talking about people who maliciously choose to inflict pain. I’m talking about necessary transgressions. Necessary because we are human, each in our own way.

ADHD is one of my wide loads. It makes me cross the center line all the time. Now that I know what it is, it’s easier to keep more of myself on my side of the road. But I’m not ever going to do that perfectly.

And neither are you, no matter what makes you wide.

Do your best.

You are forgiven your trespasses.

Safe travels.

The post Wide loads and necessary transgressions appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Yesterday morning my hand slipped, caught on something, I wasn’t paying attention and the blue laundry soap in its clear plastic cup spilled everywhere, including on my shoes.

My shoes were my slides, the ones most easily washed so I rinsed them, not in the laundry room sink but in my bathroom sink, the one that is black and shows every speck of uncleanness and I wondered, “Hey, maybe this laundry soap will clean the sink in a new way, and it will be a discovery from my oops and that’s how a lot of discoveries happen, from mistakes.”

But there wasn’t any miraculous chemical reaction in the sink, not like the satisfying bubble of hydrogen peroxide on a wound, or yes, around the drain in the sink. So it was just an oops and that’s OK, too.

This is how my brain works, how my life is.

Even medicated.

The post This is the way it is appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

The post Brief thoughts on fear appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Two nights ago a rogue wave of despair washed over me. Everything seemed hopeless and I couldn’t imagine a way through.

I’m almost fifty, and I’ve lived with undiagnosed ADHD for all but one of those years. I can’t even begin to count how many “life hacks” I’ve tried. They last a day or two, maybe a week, maybe a month.

ADHD depression tells me, “The house will always be a disaster. You’ll always be at the mercy of your whims and enthusiasms. You’ll never accomplish anything worthwhile. You’ll always disappoint people. You’ll never accomplish anything. You’ll always annoy yourself and the people who live with you. You’ll wind up alone, unable to stand your own company.”

Depression lies, they say. I sure hope that’s true.

I’m almost fifty, and I’ve struggled with depression since my early twenties. I know waves come and go.

I waited it out. I did what I could to feel better—tangible things like loading the dishwasher and reaching out to a friend.

Time, and doing what I could, worked their magic. I still can’t see the way through, but I can imagine that the way will emerge.

The post A particular form of despair appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

After a long hiatus, the kids and I went back to church today—mostly because Willa has been nagging me about it.

The kids had a great time. They both went up to the front for storytime eagerly, without looking back. When they went upstairs for their classes, neither of them was clingy. Last time we were there—back in January—Thomas was not real happy about being left in his classroom.

Downstairs in the sanctuary, the service was about gratitude. Yup. Gratitude.

It was an interesting service to sit through with a fist-sized lump of pain in my chest.

Stay, Heather. Stay. Don’t run. Be with the pain. Notice. Don’t try to change it. It’s just there.

It was a beautiful service. I could sing “What a Wonderful World” at the end, but the very last song was “Zippity-Doo-Dah,” and that was too much to ask of myself.

It’s such a fun song. People around me were clearly having fun singing it. And even though I couldn’t sing it today, I know that’s temporary. Someday, who knows how soon, I’ll be tapping my toes and singing, with a smile on my face. But not today. And that’s OK.

The post Mr. Bluebird’s on my shoulder appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Too many summers ago to count, I spent a week at an ecumenical Benedictine monastery—a retreat from the demands of parish ministry.

I remember the yellow tomatoes that were new to me, served at dinner alongside ordinary red ones. I remember wondering if it was OK to talk at mealtime, and if so, how much.

I remember the jolt as words from Mother Teresa landed directly on an exposed nerve: “Failure is nothing but the kiss of Jesus.”

But what I remember most, and what affects my life most, is the call to live in a rhythm of ora et labora, work and prayer. I cannot hear that phrase, or think about balancing the life of the mind with the life of the body, without seeing my hands reach up to grasp from a tree in the monastery’s orchard, slipping one after another into the bag wrapped around my waist. This was the work assigned to me, the work that balanced the liturgy of the hours.

Lately, I’ve been listening to the History of English podcast. In fact, I was listening to an episode yesterday as I raked long rows of cut grass into piles. It reminded me that the word “ora,” meaning prayer, is related to the word “hour.”  It is a way to structure the day—come to prayer, go to work, come to prayer, go to work.

How do you structure your time? Do you spend most of your waking hours sitting, looking at a screen, thinking? Many of us do. What kind of labora—what kind of physical work—might you add to your day, to balance your mental labor?

For me, it’s raking the lawn and cleaning out the goat pen and moving the chicken tractor to fresh grass. For a colleague of mine, it’s blacksmithing and cooking.

It pulls me out of my mind and into the world. It gets me off the couch and on the move. When I return to my laptop, I do so with eyes that are refreshed, with a body that has moved.

That is my liturgy of the hours, my call to prayer, and my call to work.

The post Ora et labora appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

“Rapture,” for me, does not mean pleasure; it means fear, abandonment, uncertainty, powerlessness.

As a kid, I lived in fear that Jesus could come back at any moment. Maybe my parents would be taken, and I would be left behind. Who would take care of me?

As a teenager, I didn’t expect to fall in love and have kids. Jesus was coming at any moment, like a thief in the night. If we couldn’t make weekend plans without saying, “Lord willing,” how could I trust that my life wasn’t built on sand?

Here’s what I believe now:  Jesus was a teacher and revolutionary whose story was told after he died by those who loved and learned from him. He is alive in the same way that any dead person is alive—in the memories of the living. He is as alive as Isaac Newton and the Buddha and the Prophet Mohammed and William Shakespeare and Vincent Van Gogh. (You might notice that in memory, men live longer.)

Jesus isn’t coming back to rescue me—and he’s not coming back to pull the foundations out from under my life. My life is mine to live.

But liberation doesn’t happen all at once. It’s hard to turn on a dime from helplessness and futility to power and hope. It takes persistence, and the ability to notice when a door to more freedom opens.

Wherever you are on your journey, whatever holds you back from being the fierce you the world needs, I hope to nudge you in the direction of freedom, power, and joy.

Jesus isn’t coming back. Find a plushy, new washcloth. Turn on the hot water. Wash the shame from your face, and see your true self in the mirror.

You are beautiful. You are beloved. You are you.

Let your light shine.

The post About that tagline appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

There is so much pain.

Can you feel it?

I feel it most viscerally in the rage. My own. In others.

Sometimes aimed at me. Sometimes not, and it’s just the sound, the whoosh of air as the words whiz past me. Sometimes I get caught in the crossfire.

———

So many desperate people braving the sea, braving the desert, because home is worse. So much cruelty, so much inhumanity. Such callous determination to hoard resources and power.

While the demise of our species—and so many others—is breathing down our necks.

———

There is so much pain and so little of it is new.

The back of the bus, the sting of the lash, the skin worn raw by shackles. Children torn from parents, people torn from land, walls and fences built across time-worn paths. Dead friends and lovers, closets within closets, rights denied, restored, taken away again. Childbearing without choice, parenting without resources. See-through ceilings that refuse to shatter.

The pain of less than. The pain of the eroded self. Estrangement. Judgment. Powerlessness. Hunger. Fear.

———

My pain starts with religion—from my first breath, from my first cry.

There is nothing good in you. You are powerless. Your every breath depends on a God who names His cruelty Love.

If you have thoughts, keep them to yourself. Cover your head, girl, and learn in silence. And be saved—maybe someday—in childbearing. This is your purpose—to serve God, and to serve your husband, Lord willing. Don’t even think about asserting yourself. Don’t even think about looking for power within yourself. Don’t even think about using it.

Remember? There is nothing good in you.

Oh, and that thing that happened to you, all those years? That was your fault, too. You wanted it, temptress.

———

I was born with ADHD, and for 47 years I thought it was a moral failing.

Something’s wrong with me. Everyone says I’m smart. But I can’t finish anything. I can’t do anything unless someone is breathing over my shoulder, some deadline that scares me enough to focus.

Something’s wrong with me. Everything is such a mess. There’s so much noise, noise, noise, unfiltered noise, unfiltered emotion, unfiltered chaos chaos chaos it hurts it hurts it hurts always

But I have to smile because after all I’m a girl and I have to keep it all together look at my pretty dress see I got good grades because some of it was interesting look I was able to ride passion into success but oh god when things are boring and I still have to do it? Oh, no. No no no.

Always fucking up—always a mess—always destroying, without intention. The van I hit when I was a new driver. The car I totaled during seminary. The two Hondas, totaled, too—the last one hurting someone else whose injury I could not feel I could not let in and I wanted to die because I was so bad, such a terrible person, but they gave me Ativan and it was OK for a little bit.

———

Estrangement sits on top of that.

Somehow some stubborn part of Me survived. That fierce persistence refused to believe I was bad, and found a voice. Refused to believe in that awful God. Chose love.

And lost my family. Lost my spiritual home.

It hurts. More than I can tell you. More than can I let myself feel, most of the time.

———

There is so much pain, and we are compromised by it.

We cannot hear each other, cannot act to save each other, because the pain inside us screams that we will not survive. That we cannot bear it.

Instead, we lash out. We diminish. We scorn. We shame. We judge. We rage.

Because we cannot bear to feel our own pain.

Even though feeling our own pain is the only way through.

Not all at once. But when a window opens, or a door.

———

Lately, for me, all the windows and doors have flung themselves open. All the pain is accessible, raw and putrid. I am ready to expel it, however much it hurts.

I am doing this for myself, first. My Self. My beloved Self.

And I am doing this for you. And you. And you.

When I can hear again over the screaming, let’s meet for coffee.

We each have stories to tell.

The post There is so much pain appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

How can a high school valedictorian have undiagnosed, untreated ADHD? How did I graduate from college summa cum laude, and earn a 90-credit master’s degree with honors?

One simple answer: shame-avoidance.

William Dodson, a psychiatrist who specializes in ADHD, says that people with ADHD have interest-based nervous systems in an importance-based world.

Our attention is like a pollinator—we hover, land intermittently then take off for the next pollen source. The world we live in is not made for hummingbirds and bumblebees. It expects us to submit a flight plan—petunias first, then thistles, clover, etc.

We’re supposed to show up at a pre-planned destination, but those of us with ADHD don’t do pre-planned destinations. Even with treatment, we have interest-based nervous systems. Our goal is “enough pollen,” and our destination is the nearest bright flower.

How does shame help us masquerade as neurotypical? How did it help me succeed—and seemingly thrive—without accommodation?

Here’s an example. I write a weekly column for UU World magazine. I’ve done so for years. Consistently. People with ADHD don’t do consistent.

But I love my editor. I admire him. I want him to think well of me. Shame-avoidance pushes me past considerable procrastination. It is a form of urgency, one of the few things that motivates those of us with ADHD.

Shame-avoidance has been my sidekick for a long time. It herds the bees and butterflies into a narrower channel. It can make me seem like I’ve got my act together—if you don’t look too closely, or ask too many questions.

But here’s the thing about shame: it’s a potent toxin. It may be useful in small doses, but it’s not meant for long term use. Over the long haul, excessive dependence on shame has all kinds of nasty side-effects.

ADHD treatment, both meds and therapy, and the wisdom of wonderful friends (including my editor), have helped me recognize my long-term dependence on shame. They’ve helped me see that in the long-run, shame is an anti-motivator. It is a powerful form of punishment, and punishment creates avoidance.

It’s clearly time to replace shame, but with what? How will I make anything of what’s left of my life without the nip of the herding dog’s teeth?

One answer may be mindful self-compassion. People who don’t know me well read me as calm, but they can’t hear the perpetual scream that lives just under the surface of my skin. My over-stimulated, over-shamed nervous system needs gentleness and kindness, a friend rather than a judge.

The post Replacing shame with mindful self-compassion appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

At the bottom of my screen just now, Google wished me a happy Fourth of July, and then suggested that I might like to “see what America is searching for today.”

Why yes, Google, I would like to see what America is searching for today.

Google summarizes today’s searches this way: “Friends and families across the country will gather for backyard barbecues, parades, and parties in celebration of America’s birthday.”

We have a laid-back plan for today. The kids and I gathered bramble for the goats this morning. Thomas is supposed to be sleeping right now, but instead he’s been demanding graham crackers. Willa is playing Sonic on her tablet. Liesl plans to cut the grass this afternoon. Liesl’s mom is coming for hot dogs and other summer food tonight, and we’re hoping to see fireworks tonight.

Nothing about what we’re doing today feels particularly patriotic, and as I look back, I realize that I’ve always had a complicated history with patriotism.

The Plymouth Brethren among whom I was raised were separatists. They didn’t vote because they were biblical literalists, and the bible told them that they were citizens of heaven. I think I was the first member of my immediate family to vote (which I did in the Bush-Clinton election).

But my grandfather, my father’s dad, didn’t act like a separatist. Sure, he didn’t vote, and he drove an ambulance during World War II since he was a conscientious objector.  But he always stood solemnly for the flag and the anthem, hand over his heart, reciting the pledge, singing along to the national anthem.

He was a history buff who took us to Revolutionary War sites and reenactments. I remember trips to the Ford Mansion, Washington’s Headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey. I remember—vaguely, because I was so young—a historical encampment; I still have the leather-strung cannonball that we bought there.

We brought our lawn chairs to every single holiday parade, joining the crowds from which we supposed to be separate. We celebrated these secular holy days with enthusiasm.

Was it because he was the son of immigrants that he loved the trappings of patriotism? Was it because, as the owner of our town’s department store, he felt that he needed to be a pillar of the community? Or did he just like the history, ritual, and pageantry? He’s long gone, so I’ll probably never know.

Today is a day that celebrates the Declaration of Independence. It’s a very particular story—one that belongs primarily to the white men of thirteen British colonies located on the east coast of North America. It’s not the story of the people who lived here when Europeans arrived. It’s not the story of the white women. It’s not the story of the enslaved Africans whose nominal emancipation would not happen until almost a hundred years later.

It was the story of white male British colonists claiming as their own the rights set down in the Magna Carta more than five hundred years earlier. It is the story of demanding equity and fairness, of resistance to those demands, and of neglecting to extend fairness and equity to others.

It is a continuing story, a complicated story. As we celebrate today, there are human beings on our southern border treated far worse by our government than any 18th century colonist was by the English crown. For what crime? For the crime of migration. For the crime of seeking a better place to live.

We celebrate our own histories of immigration—and deny that opportunity to others. We cheer the historic cry of “no taxation without representation” while denying present day immigrants drivers licenses.

It’s complicated, and not. Today I’ll celebrate all those who have worked to extend freedom, and those who are pouring themselves into that work as I type these words.

The work is not done. It isn’t a long-ago declaration, or even an eventual military victory, that we need to think about today. It’s the ongoing revolution, and the opportunity to participate in undermining oppression and tyranny wherever it crushes people under its boots.

I’m going to enjoy fireworks tonight, and time with family. But I’m clear-eyed about it. I’m not lulled into ra-ra patriotism. I’m listening, thinking, watching, for every opportunity I can get to sign on to the never-ending cause of freedom.

I don’t know about the rest of America, but that’s what I’m searching for today.

The post See what America is searching for today appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Last year my therapist started asking me at every visit, “You having any fun?”

I’d laugh, and say, “Nope.”

Eventually, I realized that I just wasn’t any good at fun. Either I’d never learned, or I’d forgotten how to let loose, kick back, and have a blast doing something.

So I did what we do these days: I asked Facebook. My friends gave me all kinds of suggestions, and some of them actually sounded like things I might enjoy. In the time since then, I have had more fun. But lately, I’ve been thinking that question is a hard one for parents of young children.

Do you remember that Nyquil ad? The one that said, “Moms don’t take sick days”? (And yes, there was a dads version of that commercial. No non-binary parent commercial though.)

For the default parent, there are no sick days. There is no end to the work of child-tending, and every precious hour of respite care, should we be lucky enough to have that, is measured out carefully. We always ask ourselves, “Is this a good use of babysitter time?” There are always dishes and laundry, deadlines and past-due projects—so many things that seem more urgent than self-care of any kind, let alone play.

After five-plus years in the trenches, I’ve decided that there are only two ways that parents get to have fun.

Option one: convince yourself that fun belongs on your to-do list. That it’s not optional. That the well-being of your children depends on your ability to have fun. The oxygen-mask metaphor is so old that we roll our eyes at it, but it’s true. Play is as important as air and water and food and shelter. Without it, parts of us die.

Which leads us to option two: play with your children. I’m not just talking about getting down on the floor with them and making elaborate racetracks. I’m not just talking about doing whatever the things are that your kids think are fun. Find the places where your joy and their joy overlap. For my partner Liesl, that’s the racetracks. For me, it’s art. It’s liberating to do kid art. The kids and I will sit at a table with a big piece of paper, a bin of crayons, and a timer. Every time the timer rings, we switch chairs, and color there. It’s so much fun—free of the constraints of needing to make “real art.”

Last weekend the kids and I went to something billed as a “Clay Extravaganza.” My daughter and I both tried our hands at a pottery wheel—and loved it. Then we watched skilled potters compete—competitions that were silly and serious at the same time. In the first one, a team of three potters worked together—one operating the pedal controlling the speed, and the other two each using one hand only, working cooperatively to draw the clay evenly upward. In the second one, seven potters sat at wheels—with paper bags over their heads, a silly face drawn on each bag. The timer started, and all but one created beautiful pieces. One potter, when she removed the paper bag, said, “That’s not at all what I was imagining!” The crowd’s favorite was the potter whose piece collapsed. I think he actually won.

Had I been alone, I would have loved to stay and watch more of the competitions. I would have taken longer to explore the exquisite works of art for sale.

But it was time for my son’s nap, so we packed up and went home. He had a snack, then went down easily for a long nap.

Did I want more? Maybe. But if I’d been alone, I would have missed seeing my daughter’s delight and mastery. If I’d been alone, I would have missed a lesson in saying, “It is enough. My heart is full.” And if I’d been alone I might have been drawn into judgements of good art and bad, or comparisons between my creations and those of the talented artists I was watching. But my children and I were able to stay with the spirit of art as play, and each of us and our relationships   together came out stronger for it.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211110044111/https://www.questformeaning.org/podcasts/19_09/05.mp3

Every blogging expert will tell you, “You must post regularly!”

It has been two months since my last post, and I have to say, there are exceptions to the post-regularly rule.

This is a life-passed-through-the-fire-of-thought blog. That kind of blog requires living. Sometimes life takes a deep, extended dive, with no promise of returning to the surface.

This summer has been full of the kind of falling apart necessary for healing and the emergence of new life.

I am swimming in the waters of religious and familial trauma. I am working harder than ever before on my own mental health and the health of my closest relationships.

It necessary work. It has to happen before I can move forward into the next stage of my vocational life.

The good news is that I do know what that next stage is.

It’s time to go back to school, to train to be a therapist specializing in religious trauma and its fallout. It’s a decision that gives meaning and purpose to the arc of my life.

But first, I need to heal.

All the low-hanging fruit is gone; now it’s time to gather and process the fruit that’s hidden, and harder to reach.

As I sit in this moment, I hold in one hand an awareness that nothing is promised—and in the other, a sense that everything is possible, and unfolding exactly as it needs to unfold.

The post No promises, and every possibility appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I almost didn’t write today, despite my intention to participate in #NaBloPoMo2019.

You see, I didn’t post yesterday. For me, that meant I had failed, right out of the gate. Even if I were to write every day from now until November 30, there would always be, in my mind, an asterisk next to that accomplishment (*except November 1).

Fuck that shit.

Yesterday is yesterday. Today is today, and I am here, writing.

My goal is 500 words, because my beautiful friend Kenneth sent me a link to Tobias Bucknell’s post, “How Much Should You Write Every Day?” Like me, Bucknell has ADHD. His discovery that slow and steady is more sustainable for him, particularly as he ages, rings true for me.

A few days ago in a Zoom meeting, one of my colleagues described some of her ADHD hacks. She is farther along in the ADHD journey, and her mentorship helps me imagine new workarounds for my ADHD brain.

The examples she shared gave me a deeper way to understand that an ADHD diagnosis is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Having ADHD doesn’t mean saying, “I can’t do that.” It means saying, “I have to do that differently, and yes, differently is likely to be harder.”

Liesl is my daily reminder of this lesson—though it’s taken me a long time to understand that it applies to me. She has lived with spinal cord injury for nearly forty years. “I can’t do that” is rarely her response to a challenge. Working harder is something she accepts as simply part of her reality, though it does come at a price.

I know there are reasons why “I can’t do that” is my go-to response. The helplessness I learned from religion, patriarchy, and early sexual trauma. ADHD’s dopamine deficits that leave me with less of that get-up-and-go neurotransmitter.

But yesterday was yesterday, and tomorrow is tomorrow.  Today is today, and I’ve written 317 words.

Do I feel like writing another 200? Not really. But I will.

I make that choice for myself, but not only for myself.

Last night Willa told me that she wished her room would get clean by magic. All day long yesterday, she kept saying that she “didn’t feel like” doing the work that we asked her to do. It made me realize that I’ve been that kind of example for her—that you wait until you feel like doing something before you do it. If you ever do.

There’s a lot I need to do today. These 500 words. Putting up a curtain rod and curtains. Making a bed. Unloading and loading the dishwasher—more than once. Handwashing the dishes that need special treatment. Planting the trees that have been waiting more than a year to get out of their pots. Nestling the potted herbs into their wintering holes.

Inertia is powerful. It anchors my butt to this couch. It would be so much easier to stay right here.

But Thomas is watching WALL-E, sitting cheek-to-cheek next to me. And I can’t watch that movie without seeing myself in the zoned-out, sedentary people on the space ship, lulled into a comfortable, reclined stupor where they don’t need to propel themselves through the world. Hell, they don’t even need to chew—they sip all their nutrition through a straw.

Big picture, that’s not what I want. But moment-by-moment I choose a life that is not really living.

Time to change that. Today.

The post Today is today appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I live between two truths: routine is absolutely necessary for me to function—and routine is painfully difficult for me to establish.

How do I make time to write? To meditate? To do the PT exercises that keep my meniscus moderately happy?

Try, try, try, try, try. For months. Years. A lifetime.

Then, suddenly, “Click!” All the pieces slide into place and I see the whole, round with possibility.

I looked for kid-free spaces in my schedule. No, not the three-hour midday window when both kids are in school. That time is already spoken for. Not in the evening, in that tiny slice of time after Willa, my night owl, finally falls asleep, and before I crash for the night.  How about mornings, before the kids wake up? I didn’t want to, but it was my last option. So I tried it—and ran into a routine-buster.

Thomas is our family’s most enthusiastic morning person. I can fake it, dragging myself out of bed and into the shower where the hot water wakes me up enough to function. Thomas, on the other hand, is his most genuinely happy self first thing in the morning, fresh from bed, batteries charged.

And first thing in the morning for him varies. Most days lately, sometime around seven a.m.

That “sometime” is the hardest part. If it were more regular, I could grit my teeth and subtract an hour from his wake-up time, and get up then.

I’ve been trying that. Out of bed, into the shower, write, meditate, etc. But invariably he would wander in just as I opened my laptop to write, or popped in my earbuds to breathe through three minutes of Headspace.

Yesterday the pieces finally fell into place and I saw the whole. What if I front-loaded the parts that are hardest to do with a kid underfoot? Headspace, and writing. What if, when he wandered into my bedroom, I was in the shower instead of just beginning to write? Would that work? 

This morning I’m trying it. It’s almost seven, and I’m at three hundred words. Headspace and I have done our thing. I’m sleepy, but a shower will help with that in a few minutes. I’ve got my meds on board, so they should be humming shortly.

It seems to be working. We’ll see how it goes, long-term.

This gestalt brain can be frustrating, for me and for those closest to me. It’s slow. It’s iterative. All those failed attempts. All those almosts, but not quite. For Liesl, whose brain works much more methodically, it seems like I am always dreaming up some grand scheme that falls flat on its face. And many (most?) of them do.

It’s liberating to flip my frame—to see that what’s happening in all those “failures” is information-gathering. To understand that trial and error is unavoidable for me. Necessary, even. It is a slow and unpredictable process, but the whole picture that emerges, in the end, is not something that can be created in any other way.

We are not all the same. In fact, no one of us is exactly like another. No matter where I am in the fail-fail-fail-fail-aha! process, I am absolutely the best me in the world at that moment. Nowhere is there anyone else who is better at being me.

I am a unique treasure, and so are you. Celebrate yourself! I know I’m going to. With a hot shower, and the knowledge that, at least for today, this works.

The post Our beautiful brains appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

When my daughter Willa was born, I was forty-two. We lived in Alaska, an hour’s drive from the hospital. After weeks of Braxton-Hicks contractions, a switch flipped. Mild discomfort became overwhelming contractions, one after another, barely a minute apart. When it was time to push, I pushed for more than three hours before she emerged into the world. With nothing to dull the pain.

Three years and a few months later I did it again—forty-five years old, fast labor, no drugs.

The work I am doing right now to give birth to myself is harder.

I reach for these birth stories as testaments to myself that I am far stronger than I think I am. That I can do this. That in the end, it will be worth it.

Childbirth is a strange experience. Partly involuntary, like vomiting, our bodies determined to wring this tiny human out, to propel them into the world.

At the same time, we cooperate with the body’s fierce urgency. We endure the first part of labor, and then when it comes time to push, we summon every bit of strength and determination within us to bear down, to push and pause, push and pause, push and pause, for as long as it takes.

In a year and a few months, I will be fifty. I feel this impending birthday in the broken-down parts of my body—the knee that demands attention, the stiff pain every morning when I wake up and get out of bed.

But I also feel my age in another kind of disintegration process. My strategies for containing emotional pain are breaking down, and something is calling me inexorably toward something new. To honor the fierce strength it took to get me this far, to keep me alive—and to let go of what is no longer working.

A few months ago I began work with a trauma therapist. I’ve done a lot of therapy over the years. I thought I knew what it is all about. Trauma therapy is a whole new thing. It’s not storytelling. There is still plenty of talking. But it is so much more.

At about the same time as I began that work, I also started playing with the Tarot. It is, for me, an amazing intuitive tool. I work mostly with the Wild Unknown and Sasuraibito decks.

The two of wands in the Sasuraibito deck shows two branches, twisted loosely together. Behind the wands is a symbol I had never seen before—a vegvísir. Wikipedia told me that it was “an Icelandic magical stave intended to help the bearer find their way through rough weather.”

It goes on to say that “The symbol is attested in the Huld Manuscript, collected in Iceland by Geir Vigfusson in 1880 (but consisting of material of earlier origin). A leaf of the manuscript provides an image of the vegvísir, gives its name, and, in prose, declares that “if this sign is carried, one will never lose one’s way in storms or bad weather, even when the way is not known.”

When I read that, I felt an immediate surge of recognition. Giving birth is a storm, and in the middle of it there is a sense of having no idea how this will unfold, with a deep simultaneous knowing that this is how the process of birth has always proceeded inexorably forward.

I don’t know how this work I’m doing will unfold, but I trust the process and am working as hard as I can to cooperate with it.

Mine is not an even remotely unusual journey. Anyone with trauma in their lives (meaning most of us?) may move along a similar path to deeper joy and purpose and wellbeing. Committing to the way of deep, sustained healing frees us to be the kind of people the world so desperately needs.

If you are steeling yourself against the pain of some long-buried wound, I invite you to find yourself a midwife, a doula, a birth coach, a companion. Entrust yourself to their care. This is your journey, but they will be a wise and supportive companion through the worst of the pain. You will not be alone.

You can do this. You are strong enough to fall apart and recreate yourself from the broken pieces, more whole than you have ever been.

You will not lose your way in storms or bad weather, even when the way is not known.

The post Even when the way is not known appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

How do any of us survive childhood trauma?

It’s simple, really. We create containers for our pain.

We do our very best work, determined to protect ourselves at all costs so that we can live. And it works. Somehow. Our creations of tape and paste and scraps of paper somehow make our tiny selves feel safe.

Safe enough. 

By the time we reach adulthood, the shelves in our mind are full of years of such projects, and none of them were built to withstand the test of time.

The pain we stored inside them finds its way past dried-up glue, unsticky tape, and aging paper.

What do we do then? The same thing we did as children, but with an adult’s practical knowledge and aesthetic sense.

Isn’t the Rapture funny?

Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

. . . . [As] the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

 Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.  (Matthew 24:3, 37-42)

It should come as no surprise that one of my favorite containers is storytelling. It gives me distance. It can minimize. It can make it feel like it happened to someone else. Because it did. It happened to that little girl who I can see in my mind, someone who is different than my adult self.

For years—decades—I have talked about the Rapture as if it were a funny story. As if it were hilarious to wonder what would happen to an airplane if the pilot were “caught up in the clouds, to be with the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

In the past few days I have finally accessed the terror my tiny self felt about the idea that my parents might be taken, leaving me behind.

When I say that I accessed the terror, I mean a gasping-for-air, desperate panic. Literally. A physical reaction that left me unable to speak in full voice, forcing the words past the strangling fear. Whispering the words to my therapist as I struggled to stay present, struggled to describe my experience.

For the first twenty-something years of my life, every Sunday night was the same. Gospel meeting. We all gathered, and one of the men would preach about the need to be saved, to accept Jesus into our hearts. There was a formula—admit that we were sinners, and ask to be saved. Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. Simple, right? And yet every week there was an undertow of doubt. Maybe I hadn’t done it right. Maybe it didn’t “take.” Maybe I’d done something wrong that had somehow undone its effectiveness.

Why else would they keep telling me that I needed to be saved? How good did I need to be to make them stop?

How good did I need to be to escape hell? How good did I have to be to ensure that wherever my parents were going to disappear to, I’d go with them?

I was pretty sure I wasn’t that good.

The post One shall be taken, and the other left appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I lived every moment of my young life preparing to be yanked away from everything familiar—or worse yet, left behind with the familiar while my parents were “caught up to be with the Lord.” The people I knew from meeting couldn’t describe their weekend plans without adding “Lord willing” to the end of their sentences.

A few days ago, when I wrote the rough draft of the last post about the terror that created in me, I sat down at my desk to draw a daily tarot card. Guess what came up?

Judgment.

If you know tarot, you’re laughing, right?

Because in the classic Rider-Waite deck, the imagery on the judgment card is clearly related to the idea of being caught up to the clouds. First I saw the angel and the trumpet. Then I saw the naked bodies. Then I saw—what was that, boats? Oh, no, those are not boats. Those are coffins. And that’s not water, it’s a cloud layer. Ohhhhh. This is the dead being raised. Ahhhh.  I get it.

But that wasn’t what I saw at first. Because I didn’t draw from the Rider-Waite deck. I drew from Sasuraibito. And in Stasia Burrington’s deck, there are no clouds, no angels, no naked bodies, no coffins.

Instead, the judgment card is a woman wrapped tightly in a huge, thick blanket, only her head visible.

And the image reminded me immediately of the thick blanket on my therapist’s couch—one that she invites people to wrap themselves in when they feel like they’ve been shoved out of the airlock, their molecules scattering to the far reaches of the universe.

The tightness of the blanket helps us discover our edges. It contains us. It calms us.

Judgment, in this deck, has nothing to do with the afterlife, or with an other-life, somewhere . . . else.

Instead, this card asks Mary Oliver’s well-known question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

The judgment is not one passed on us by someone else. It is the discernment only we can reach, as we find our edges, and learn to listen to our inner voice.

It is asking ourselves, “What have I done with my life? What am I doing with my life? What do I want to do with my life?”

No one can answer those questions for us. We can only answer them for ourselves. As Stasia Burrington writes, we are the master and judge of our own transformation.

“The judgment card,” she writes, “represents knowing what you want and taking responsibility for your actions and life.”

I was raised to believe that my wants and desires were not merely irrelevant, they were dangerous. “My own way” was sinfulness, it was pride. The goal was perfect submission to the Lord’s will.

When I think about it, I realize what a miracle it is that some stubborn part of me survived. That some part of me resisted. That some part of me said, “NO!”

These days, when I catch a glimpse of that part of me, she has a name—Vera, after the detective played by Brenda Blethyn in the British television show. Short, round, and stubborn. Walls and boundaries a mile high. Does things her way, without apology.

She’s a wonderful friend and collaborator in this work of clawing my way out of my childhood’s insanity. Thank you, Vera, for all your years of hard work. I may not have been able to hear you very often, but I’m listening now.

The post Master and judge of our own transformation appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7:13-14, KJV)

One of my son Thomas’s favorite things to say these days is, “That makes no sense.”  He’s three, and learning not just to assert his independence, but to speak up when he disagrees, or doesn’t understand.

There was no room for the corrective of dissent in the Exclusive Brethren communities of my childhood. Truth was singular and unchanging. If you and I disagree, you must be wrong, and I can no longer have any contact with you. Even if you are my sister, my mother, my child.

I watched families divided and friendships abandoned over translations of the bible, pronouns used for God (thee vs you), and any number of ridiculous arguments. There was so much unnecessary pain.

When we encounter ideas that challenge our beliefs, we have two choices: double down, or open up.

Doubling-down is a strategy of stubborn fear. It counts the cost of change and decides it’s too much to pay. Instead of opening the door to the cage and stepping out into freedom, it creates a stronger and more elaborate prison, bending and twisting bars into a contorted tangle of desperation.

Opening up is not without fear. In fact, I know from personal experience that it’s terrifying to step into the unknown, to extend a leg without knowing if our foot will find solid ground. Sometimes opening up means long stretches of freefall, with no guarantee of a soft landing.

Most of my family still lives in an elaborate cage. Each choice we make (for freedom or certainty) builds up new barriers between us. It is a cost paid by both sides.

The way that I have chosen is wide, and full of possibility. It has many points of entry, and many forks in the road. It is a toll road, not a freeway. But it is spacious, and leads to ever more love, ever more joy, ever more peace.

What road do you travel? The wide and curvy one? Or the narrow and strait?

The post The way is wide appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Years ago, in a CPE residency evaluation, my supervisor observed, “Heather has a harsh superego.”

A few months ago, I wrote in my bullet journal, “How many lashes is enough? I don’t know. She never stops.” Tongues of fire—orange, yellow, red—licked the words’ sharp edges.

There are moments lately where the critic’s harsh voice falls silent, and the hot lash stops its biting assault.

Through Kristin Neff’s powerful work on self-compassion, I am learning to say, “This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is a part of life. May I be gentle with myself in this painful moment.”

My therapist’s resolute kindness, her stubborn refusal to allow shame to get a foothold, reinforces these moments of mindful awareness.

When I first started reading tarot, I worried about what they would say. I was afraid that they would confirm the nasty judgments of the lash.

But after a while, I found a new voice in the tarot, one that said, “If the message you perceive in a reading is not one of liberating grace, look again. Keep listening. The message is always love, never shame.”

Does that mean that tarot readings are always easy? Never challenging, never an invitation to stretch, grow—repent even? Of course not. “Liberating grace” is the key. When the cards call you to a more spacious place, you are hearing them correctly. Sometimes the path of self-compassion is smooth and easy, and sometimes it is a rocky, uphill climb. Sometimes it’s a hot bath with a good book—and sometimes it’s the hard-won relief of apologizing, and making amends.

My harsh superego has had nearly fifty years to wreak havoc on my psyche—and my life. I am eager to be free, but the self-compassionate path is one of patience with myself as I unlearn old ways of being.

The post Learning self-compassion appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

The post The care we provide for each other appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

This past Sunday when the kids and I arrived at church, a woman held open the big front doors for us and handed me a green flyer. “Do you know about the parents’ class and potluck today? There’s childcare.”

I knew but had forgotten, and had nothing to contribute. I told myself we couldn’t go.

The kids went upstairs to their classes, and I settled into the sanctuary, singing and swaying, savoring silence and the presence of other souls and bodies. In that warm space, I wondered—did I really believe the event’s organizers would bar the door if I didn’t bring something to the potluck? Of course not.

What made me assume I couldn’t attend? Shame.

Lunch was abundant (many thanks to those who did remember to bring something), and the informal, small-group class about coping with stress was excellent.

The workshop leader, a member of the congregation and a WWU professor, said that a crucial question is, “Do I have control over this situation?” If the answer is yes, I have control, then the next step is problem-solving.  If the answer is no, then the next step is emotional adjustment. Either way, stress decreases.

But that’s not the end. Most of us have habitual, knee-jerk answers to the control question.

Some of us almost always say, “Yes, of course, I have control.” When we persistently answer yes, even when we have no control, we set ourselves up for failure. This is a perfectionist’s shame: I am able to do it all, and do it all well, and I failed.

Others of us almost always say, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t. I want to, but I can’t.” This is the shame carried by those of us who have learned helplessness.

To free ourselves from habits of perfectionism and helplessness, we have to question these initial responses.

You have control? Are you sure?

You can’t do it? Are you sure?

My friend Liz often challenges me to interrogate the story I’m telling myself.

You’re lazy? Hmm. Tell me what you did yesterday. Doesn’t sound lazy to me.

You can’t get things done? Well, you had two goals for November that you met in the first week of the month.

My habitual answer to the control question is “No, I can’t.”  Particularly as a parent. No, I can’t, the baby is napping then. No, I can’t, I don’t have childcare.

Helplessness shrinks our lives—and that bracing question, “Why can’t you do it?”—helps us break out of the prisons we create for ourselves.  “Why can’t I do it?” is the first step in problem-solving—identifying the problem. Once we can do that, we’re almost free.

How do you answer the question, “Do I have control in this situation?” Do you overestimate your power, or underestimate it?

How might your life change if you began asking yourself, “Really? Are you sure?”

The post Interrogate your stories appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

How do you solve a problem like the Bible? How do you come to terms with its mix of exquisite insight and downright nastiness?

Some people focus on Jesus. As in, “Paul was mean, but Jesus, he was all about the love.”

You know what? Jesus said some should-y stuff, too.

Here’s the parable of the sower, from Mark, the oldest and least embroidered of the gospels:

Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. (Mark 4:3-9, KJV)

Not too bad, right? Simple agricultural metaphor, no shaming yet (unless you’re listening closely and hear the words “good ground” or the dig about having ears to hear).

But here’s how Jesus unpacks the parable for his disciples:

The sower soweth the word. And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately they are offended. And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred. (Mark 4:14-20, KJV)

Can you imagine how a kid with undiagnosed ADHD, inattentive type, hears these words? I was a daydreamer, easily distracted, who struggled to stay motivated. I heard the word, and Satan must have snatched it away, because it was gone. Clearly, I was not good ground.

It’s a subtle kind of nasty, this parable and the meaning Jesus gives it.

What if we removed all the moralizing, and recognized the fact that different seeds sprout under different conditions?

Sure, grass seed will grow (almost) wherever and however you scatter it. When we built the shop on our property, digging for water and electricity left long lines of bare ground. I bought a big bag of grass seed from Lowe’s that seemed like the right kind for the conditions, scattered it, and walked away.

But other seeds? You read about how to get them to germinate, and it says things like, “Put them in the freezer for a month” or “Scuff them up with a bit of sand paper.”

Some seeds won’t sprout unless a wildfire races over them, burning off their hard outer coat and clearing out competitors.

It’s not that they’re bad seed, or that the ground is bad. They’re just . . . different. They have different needs.

My mind germinates seeds very slowly. I hear things, but they don’t immediately sprout into action. I tuck them into the soil, and wait. Some of them sprout, eventually.

Almost a year ago, my college roommate Dawn came to visit. We talked all afternoon, and one of the things we talked about was yoga and our aging bodies. She does a lot of yoga, while my practice is more, um, aspirational. We both have had problems with the meniscus in our knees.

Describing her recovery from meniscus surgery and return to yoga, she talked about modifying poses and listening to her body for what felt good.

See there? That’s the seed that has been sitting in my body. Waiting for conditions to be right.

After my surgery, my surgeon sent me home with a list of exercises for rehabbing my knee. I had a small baby (Thomas was still breastfeeding), a new home, and ADHD. Can you guess how well that went?

If I had time, I didn’t remember. If I remembered, I didn’t have time, or couldn’t find the list of exercises.

It’s always been the same way with yoga. What was the “right” sequence of poses? I tried yoga videos, cards, CDs—none of it worked.

Until I began to practice self-compassion and shame-resistance.

Only then did the seed Dawn offered begin to sprout.

It began with the simple fact that I wake up in the morning, and my body hurts. Not just my knee. Back, neck, hands, wrists, ankles—it all hurts.

Eventually, I noticed that it helped to stretch and wiggle while I was still in bed. I started describing this, laughing, as my way of doing yoga.

My trauma therapist begins each of our sessions with breath and movement. Everything we do is a suggestion, not a prescription. An offering, a possibility. There are always options, and the invitation to listen for what my body needs.

And there it was. Permission for yoga to be intuitive. The seed coat split and the first pair of leaves unfolded.

It took a year, and that’s OK. It takes as long as it takes. No judgment. No bad soil, good soil. No good seed, bad seed. Just soil and seed, doing their thing, in their own time.

The post The parable of the sower, revised appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Witch is a hat I wear
on Halloween; five dollars at Goodwill
got me one inhabited by spiders and a mouse.

Witch is a hat I wear but not usually out loud;
it shows up in blurts, in unavoidable lurches,
in hunches, in stubborn rebellion,
in transgression, in escape,
in exile.

Witch is a hat I wear, like Emily:
tell the truth, but tell it slant:
the truth must dazzle gradually.

Witch is a hat I wear, like Julian:
power focused by constraint.
All shall be well, little hazelnut.
All shall be well, beloved.

Witch is a hat I wear, like Hildegard:
scribbling, drawing, racing to catch enough
of what the mind sees and hears.

Witch is a hat I wear in the forest, in the garden,
when I gather eggs from my chickens,
when I walk with my goats.

Witch is a hat I wear when I cast my cards,
when I read Scripture with a heretic’s eye,
when I throw down the tablets
and grind the calf to dust.

Witch is a hat I wear—
do I dare?
Yes, I dare.

Witch is a hat I dare
to wear.

The post Witch is a hat I wear appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Facing facts

Have you ever really looked at projections for sea-level rise? On a map? Of where you live?

This morning I did. The map’s legend identified red as “land at risk.”

To the north of us, half of Vancouver, BC, was red. Including its busy international airport. When? In thirty years.

I looked south, to Seattle, where the city sits on land that rises straight up from the sea—on mountains whose feet are already underwater. Sea level rise will affect low-lying areas between Tacoma and Seattle, along the Seattle waterfront, and north of Seattle in Marysville, Everett, and Snohomish. The region’s main north-south highway, I-5, will be underwater, both south and north of the city, as will the city’s ferry docks.

Big changes, coming at us fast.

What will we do?

Mental strength—and particularly the ability to regulate our emotions, to respond rather than react—and climate change adaptation are inextricably linked.

We all know people with a deep and wide antisocial streak, a toxic amalgam of cynicism, narcissism, paranoia, and straight-up sociopathy. They look at climate projection maps and start planning how to survive. Not as a community. Not as a species. As individuals.

Plant your flag on higher ground. Prepare to defend it. Build an arsenal—and a bunker.

Most people play ostrich. Climate change? Ah, the weather’s always changing. We’ve always survived before. Don’t worry so much.

I lean toward anxiety and despair.

“OMG! The sky is falling! We’re all going to die! Suffer, and then die!” screams my Henny Penny brain.

“I know, I know,” groans my Eeyore brain. “And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Developing mental strength

As a species, we need to develop the kind of mental strength that says to our ruthless, survivalist brain, “Yeah, I know you’re looking out for number one. Did you know that working together with others is our best chance of survival?”

That says, “Um, excuse me, Ostrich. I know this is scary and you’d rather not think about it. But not thinking about it just makes the inevitable worse. Can we pull our heads out of the sand? Find other people to face facts with? It will be less scary if we’re not alone.”

That says, “Thank you, Henny Penny, for sounding the alarm. I’m sorry people are not paying attention, or doing exactly the wrong thing, or think that nothing can be done. You’re right to be scared. How about we find a few people who are paying attention, and trying to do the right thing? We’ll still be scared, but we’ll be working together to do what we can.”

That says, “Hey, Eeyore. That gloom and doom thing? Not what we need here at the end of the world. We need courage, and the best way to get courage is through camaraderie. Let’s find some friends, and get to work. We might die, but we’ll die doing our best, with friends at our side.”

The sky is falling. The water is rising. I’m working on my mental strength. I don’t have nearly enough—yet. I’m planning new career moves so I can help others become more mentally strong.

The sky is falling, and the water is rising. This is how I’m responding. How are you responding? Would you like to work together?

The post Climate change adaptation will require mental strength appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Oh, the irony of my last post! Here I was imagining that climate change would be the big disruptor. That we needed to begin building bridges on I-5 between Tacoma and Bellingham. That Vancouver would need a new airport.

It never is what you expect, right?

Instead of rising waters, it’s an insidious disease, spreading from person to person to person before there’s a single symptom to alert anyone to danger. It’s exponential increases in number of persons infected, and death tolls that make mass shootings look small.

It’s an economic tsunami, wiping out small businesses and threatening to upend large ones. It’s unemployment spiking—and grocery providers desperate for workers to fill pickup and delivery orders. It’s Amazon putting fast delivery of most products on hold, to prioritize necessities.

My kids have been at home from elementary and preschool for what seems like forever. I go back and forth between “Let’s do structure” and “OMG here’s your tablets just go away.”

Today is a structure day. I stayed up late last night creating a flexible lesson plan based on suggestions from the kids’ schools. We didn’t get started on it until midday, but so far, so good. We’ve gotten ourselves dressed and fed, and two of us brushed our teeth.

We took our first fresh air break—a walk with the goats where we took notes about the signs of spring we saw (white alyssum, blue lithodora, daffodil buds about to burst, red alder catkins—and buds, a few viola, and green strawberry leaves).

Now we’re all having writing time. Willa is writing about “signs of spring,” while Thomas is supposed to be sorting the magnet letters and numbers. I’m writing this.

Maybe we’ll plant the indoor starts later today, or maybe we won’t. The dishes do need to be done, and I suppose we need clean clothes.

One good thing about all this: the driving urgency that pushed so many of us has abated some. The days stretch ahead of us without end, without any reliable timeline of when life will return to something resembling normalcy. We are all waiting, and waiting makes it hard to plan and execute. So we just wait, and every day things change. So far, they keep on changing for the worse, and no one knows when we’ll get to the downhill side of the curve.

Life has slowed down to this moment, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one.

Some people say that’s a good thing.

The post This moment, and the next one appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

As schools closed and governors issued stay-at-home orders, people with experience working from home published how-to lists for the masses of others joining us.

Most lists included some version of this: “Keep to your routines!”

Those lists, and the urgent messages about routine-keeping, reveal our anxiety: “Who am I if I am not productive? I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”

We have an opportunity—a global one, but particularly in hard-driving, industrialized countries. The forces that drive us have been knocked off-kilter. In some cases, they have been completely stilled. With fewer external drivers, and with those that remain weakened by this shutdown, we have a chance to hear our internal voices.

I first noticed this in my kids’ sleep patterns. Thomas, my early-riser, has been sleeping later—and still going to bed at night relatively easily. Willa, my night owl, has not been sleeping till noon like I thought she might. Instead, she goes to bed at night with less of a fight and wakes up ready to enjoy whatever the day brings.

It’s as if, with their routines disrupted, they are discovering their biological rhythms.

Without really thinking about it, many of us are responding to the pressure to “keep to our routines” with the simple question, “Why?”

If there isn’t a good answer, we just don’t do it.

Now, I can hear in my head the objection that this is a middle-class perspective. Sure. No doubt.

But maybe that’s changing, too. I saw this morning that Instacart workers are planning a strike. My first response was, “Oh no! So many people rely on them for groceries!”

As I thought more about it, however, I saw the strike as further evidence of weakening external drivers. The Instacart workers are pushing back against conditions that endanger them, or at the very least make their lives miserable.

With a looming threat circling the globe, Instacart workers have the mental space to question their situation. Why would they want to risk their lives to deliver groceries for a company that does not protect them? Wouldn’t it be better to cast their lots with the millions of people with employment insecurity? What kind of world might they create together, free from corporate, one-percent masters?

This pandemic has changed the calculus of what we can and can’t do. Projects big and small, things we’ve said, “Oh, we can’t do that.” And now we say, “Why not?”

If it works for you, sure, keep to your routines.

Having a shower first thing in the morning helps me feel more awake, alert, ready to face the day. I’ll (try to) keep that routine.

But why does it need to be at six in the morning? It doesn’t. Today Thomas didn’t wake up until almost nine o’clock. Almost enough time for me to finish this blog post, without setting an alarm.

It’s ok to ease up on our routines, and to sort through which ones are life-giving. I suspect it’s a short list.

More important than our routines are our rhythms—the ebb and flow of our bodies, long-ignored as we struggled to obey external demands.

Today Willa and Thomas woke up within half an hour of each other, without nudging from me. They’re both happy, playing and chattering with each other.

It’s a glimpse of how it must have been before the clock, before the sundial, when we marked time with the sun and the moon and the seasons and our bodies.

I don’t like the sickness and death of this pandemic; but I do like this drastic re-ordering of our lives toward freedom, creativity, connection, and compassion.

Who knows what the world will look like when this is all over? If we work together, each free to honor our rhythms? Who knows what kind of world we might create?

The post Disrupted routines and emerging rhythms appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

I hear three-year-old feet as I begin this post. They’ve paused. What have they found to occupy them, on the other side of my door?

It is good to hear them, to be reminded of Spring, because this post is about late Fall and long Winter.

Sometimes Deathwinter comes slowly, with time to transition and say good-bye and harvest the bounty of a long life well-lived. COVID-19’s Deathwinter is not that way. It is sudden and wasteful, with so much left to rot in the field.

These days, in the current resurgence of Tarot, it is common to hear reassuring interpretations of the Death card: it’s just the end of something, a transition, a letting-go of one thing so that something new can emerge.

But in the context of so many COVID-19 deaths, I like the imagery of the Brady Tarot. Emi Brady’s Death card shows a human skull, and beneath that a saber-toothed tiger’s skull, and beneath that, the open jaws of a tyrannosaurus rex.

This is the reality of death, of the passing of one thing so that another can emerge. It is the rotting compost giving its body for Spring’s new shoots.

It is not pretty. It is brutal. It is existentially terrifying. And when it comes close, its grief cuts to the bone.

The post This sudden Deathwinter appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

How many of us fell into that trap, at first? The one that lured us in, promising that we would accomplish so much with all this “extra time.”

Early on, I bought a gallon of non-homogenized milk—local, with a yellows tinge. I wanted to make yogurt again, this time with my kids. But it’s still in the fridge, taunting me.

I imagined baking, too. Cupcakes, muffins, cookies, and of course, bread.

Nope. None of that, either.

Some days I slide way in the opposite direction. Lower the bar, people say. And then lower it again, and again.

I’ve decided it’s not really about the bread, or the yogurt.

It’s about the why.

If the why is shame-based, skip it. If the cattle prod in my head is saying, “Hey, you’ve got all this extra time! Use it to get your shit together!,” then no, let’s not bake bread and make yogurt.

But if the why is joy-based, go for it! If bread-baking sounds like fun, bake bread. If you can’t wait to see your kids’ faces light up, watching the little jars of milk turn into soft yogurt, then get the milk out of the fridge, warm it up, add starter, and wait for the miracle of yogurt. At least with yogurt—and bread—you know about how long you have to wait!

The post To bake, or not appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

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In the final days of 2019, I chose three decks—two tarot, one oracle (Sasuraibito, Playful Heart, and Animal Spirit), and pulled a card from each of them for every month in 2020.

March 2020 freaked me out. From each of the tarot decks I pulled the Tower card. Old systems crumbling. The familiar, the comfortable, the secure—gone. Massive symbols of strength leveled.

From the oracle deck I pulled the Cosmic Egg, the final card in the deck. One that speaks of endings and beginnings, of the completion of a cycle, and the beginning of a new one. The individual among the collective, the collective comprised of many, many individuals.

Then March 2020 arrived. So many towers crumbled. Personal towers. Collective towers. We had to begin to find ways to stay connected while staying apart. The old way of doing things lurched, and fell.

These days the Star keeps appearing in my daily draws. The card of new beginnings. Spaciousness. The card that encourages us to begin imagining what might replace the Tower. Not rebuilding yet. But imagining.

In many decks, the Tower is a huge, old-growth tree. I learned recently from a WSU forester that old growth trees are not the most effective sequesters of carbon. They may be huge, but they are also decaying at a rate that counters the amount of carbon dioxide they absorb.

Clear-cutting old-growth forests is not the answer. But when the old trees fall, they make room for new life. And they clear a bit of night sky, so we can see the stars.

The post After the Tower, the Star appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

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Sixty years ago, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy faced off in the nation’s first televised presidential debate. As the story goes, those who listened on the radio thought Nixon had won, while those who watched on TV felt that Kennedy was the clear winner.  The difference? On television, Kennedy seemed healthy, confident, and relaxed, while Nixon looked pale, sweaty, and anxious.

Kennedy won that election, but eight years later, Nixon won the presidency. Did he suddenly become more charismatic and telegenic? No. Nixon, a Republican, won (in part) by using the Southern Strategy—discreetly wooing white Democrats from the South who were angry about Johnson’s role in passing the Civil Rights Act.

Now the Oval Office is occupied by someone whose persona is more bravado than confidence, whose tan is a bad fake, and whose wildly swooping hair is . . . well, there are no words. He has no interest in being discreetly racist. No, his bravado extents to being openly, blatantly, unapologetically racist.

It feels like the end of something, these dystopian years—like we are reaping a harvest long-ago sown. We have played out persona and public image to their ugly, farcical end.  We are longing, some of us, for what is real, what is human, what is messy, what is imperfect. We believe that a world created from diverse gifts, abilities, and ideas will be stronger and more resilient than the one we live in now.

These days, I’m sporting what I call the WYSIWYG haircut. I waited long enough into the pandemic no one had hair clippers in stock, but eventually, they arrived and I found my courage. As clumps of my hair fell to the bathroom floor, I emerged, cutting myself free from years of shoulds and oughts and not-good-enoughs.

My hair is thin in the front. A lot of it is gray. I have big, swirly cowlicks on each side of my head as if I were a polled goat. It’s who I am. No hiding, no apologies, just me, showing up to do my part.

“What you see is what you get” feels amazing. Powerful. Free.

Wanna try it?

The post The liberating power of WYSIWYG appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

That voice is annoying. You know the one I mean.

It tells you what you don’t want to hear. What you fear might be true.

It tells other people what they don’t want to hear, what they fear might be true.

It risks conflict and speaks uncomfortable truths.

I have a lifelong habit of keeping my foot firmly planted on that voice’s throat, my hands clamped over its mouth—until the pressure builds beyond my strength, and it all comes out, messy and mixed up and jumbled.

But I’m beginning, slowly, slowly, to listen to that voice. To hear its objections. To address its concerns as they arise.

And you know what? When you listen, and listen, and listen, you discover that the voice is right. That the path it suggests is the path of joy and freedom. It warns you about overcommitting and underdelivering. It tells you when you’re about to say yes to something when you’d rather, deep down, say no.  And vice versa.  It’s a voice that keeps you in your lane, honoring your boundaries and those of other people.  It tells you, “Be yourself, and no one else.”

It’s the voice of tough love. It has terrified me all these years because I could only hear the tough. But I’m beginning to hear the love, too, and that makes all the difference.

The post Hearing all objections appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Those of us with ADHD struggle with working memory. Long before I was diagnosed, I described my brain as a Wiffle ball—the more I crammed in, the faster it came streaming out the holes.

Today I figured out something new. My to-do list at the moment includes several items that I dread doing. So I’ve been putting them off. But here’s the thing. They’re not just sitting somewhere harmlessly. Nope. They’re running in the background like all those programs and apps we forgot to shut down. And all the while they’re siphoning off much-needed energy.

I tell myself again and again: do what you dread. Understanding the hidden costs of avoidance gives me new incentive to do just that.

Master Promissory Note, here I come.

The post The energy cost of dread appeared first on Rev. Heather Lou.

Heather Beasley Doyle

Heather McDuffee

Continue reading "Be-coming Out"

Heather McDuffee

Continue reading "Be-coming Out"

Heather Beasley Doyle