Clearing the cobwebs

Giving ourselves permission to need what we need

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A song I’ve been enjoying:

Polaroid in the Santa Cruz Mountains, 2011.

I’m in my office this morning as I write and the chill of early air is bringing a different energy to newsletter-writing. I usually write these while cozy in bed first thing in the morning, overhearing my husband and daughter playing in the living room, but I decided to change things up today and head outside to my little space in our backyard — something I’ve been trying to do more of. And I’m just noticing how being in a different space, a different temperature, a different environment is changing the experience of writing in felt ways.

This morning, I’m writing about something I haven’t even shared with many people in my life yet. I don’t usually do this, but writing and sharing about it in this way feels important and supportive for me — it feels like the best way I know how to process and integrate my experiences right now. Sometimes, this is how processing works: in our own ways, and not necessarily in the order we’re taught we should do things. We are allowed to listen to what feels most aligned and nourishing for us, even if it goes against what we’ve been told to do.

On Friday, I started taking medication for ADHD. I was diagnosed with Inattentive Type ADHD a few months ago and have been processing it deeply during that time. I’ve been thinking back to struggles I assumed were anxiety or depression (and they may have partly been), to the inner battles I fought while trying to complete the endless list of projects in my mind or on my Google Drive, to the tally of things I’ve quit when they stopped being interesting, to the difficulty I’ve felt doing simple tasks like scheduling appointments, following through, and remembering to text people back, to the running dialogue in my mind about 1000 different things that never seemed to cease, to my endlessly messy room as a child and teen, even though I hated clutter and mess… I’ve been thinking back to so many things I long blamed myself for. And it’s been both painful and healing to recognize I’m not just lazy, or incapable, or bad at being an adult… I just have a brain that works differently than our world is set up for. And it isn’t my fault. And if your brain works differently, too, it isn’t your fault.

I’ve also been thinking about all the ways I denied myself acknowledgement that I might have ADHD. My internalized stigma of neurodivergence kept me from integrating part of myself. All the “that’s just depression” (even when it wasn’t) or “I’m just feeling anxious and that’s why this task is hard” (even though I wasn’t). It kept me from seeing myself clearly. Stigma and society so often create this effect.

I have the urge to justify why I started taking medication — to share my beliefs about medication and the reasons it might be necessary sometimes — to go into depth about the nuance of medication in the society we live in. Yet I am realizing it isn’t my job to prove to you why I make the decisions I make… it’s my job to align myself with my own decisions and hold them fiercely. So I won’t be explaining, justifying, or wading through the both/and of something as complex as medication. I will trust you to hold your own experiences and beliefs with tenderness, as I am with mine.

Friday was the first day I can remember feeling little to no anxiety in my body. It was the first day I could remember thinking about doing something and just doing it. It was the first day I could remember getting through my list of to-do’s without frustration, without feeling like I was behind, without wondering if there was something else I should be doing, without over-processing every possible scenario. It was the first day I felt like my brain was cleared of built-up debris, of cobwebs, of clouds. It was the first day I didn’t question why something as simple as going to the grocery store was so impossibly hard for me. It was the first day I felt like myself in years.

Yesterday was similar.

This morning, I am in deep contemplation around how to hold this shift — how to hold the fact that medication is what made it possible — how to hold the idea that I don’t want to take medication long-term, yet I do want to feel like my brain is moving with my body long-term — how to let myself be with the stillness in my brain that usually feels like a storm unless I’m working extremely hard to find the still space.

I’m also pushing against shame. It’s right on the periphery of my body, trying to find its way in. It is knocking on the door of my heart and asking to take over the place. I feel it on the edges of me, which is a very different experience than letting it take up space within me. It’s yelling through the window, “you’re weak! You shouldn’t need medication! Just meditate! Just figure it out! You are going against your body’s natural healing capacity! You’re taking the easy way out! Anyone who reads this is going to view you badly.” It’s loud, and I hear it, but I’m not internalizing it. I’m just noticing it’s there and returning to myself. Noticing it’s there and returning to myself. Noticing it’s there and returning to myself.

This share is personal, but it is also one that holds a collective reminder:

We know ourselves best.
We know our needs best.
We know our bodies best.
We know our capacity best.

And it’s okay to let yourself trust that, even when it isn’t so simple. It’s okay to let yourself receive support, even when it isn’t the kind of support you think you’re supposed to need. It’s okay to believe in natural healing and need something different during some seasons of life. It’s okay to hold more than one idea about something complex. It’s okay to need in ways you aren’t sure you should need. It’s okay to let yourself receive in whatever ways are most aligned with the season you are in. It’s okay to feel a lot of ways about it. And it’s okay to not quite know how you feel.

When I ask myself why it feels tender and also meaningful to share this, I come to a few answers:

1. We are urged to suffer in silence, to assume our difficulties are too much, and to quietly move through the harder stuff while sharing the bright spots only.
2. Helping professionals and caregivers especially are taught to hide what we’re moving through, to need less, to cut ourselves off at our humanity and be seen in the hollowness of what is left after doing so.
3. We live in a society that tells us everything is our fault and therefore everything is our individual responsibility to fix or change (but only “naturally”, of course).
4. Seeing ourselves in one another is healing. Seeing our hard parts mirrored in people we admire or resonate with is healing. Undoing narratives about what we should and shouldn’t need is healing. And knowing we aren’t the only ones figuring out how to do so in our persona lives is healing.

As you move through this week, a few invitations to consider:

Notice when shame is trying to find its way in, and see what it’s like to choose to let it linger at the door instead of inviting it into your sacred space.
Notice where you take on societal messages that don’t actually align with you as truth, or as proof you’re doing something wrong. And notice what it’s like to orient back toward your truth, your needs, and your experience.
Notice how it feels to explore the parts of you that have been pushed away, denied, or not acknowledged.
Notice what it’s like to embrace your humanity with care and kindness instead of using your humanity as proof of you not trying hard enough, not knowing enough, not doing enough, not being enough.
Notice what might shift if you allowed the truth of your experience to be valid.

Thank you for reading, for witnessing, and for being here, as always. It is wild to write a weekly newsletter to folks who choose to actually read something more long-form off of social media. It’s wild to have a space to share what’s on my heart, whether it be more personal or more expansive. It’s wild to feel safe writing here — to know in my body what feels important and meaningful to share. And it’s wild that I get to share with you, from my little backyard office to wherever you may find yourself in this moment. I am so deeply grateful.

May we all give ourselves permission to receive in all the ways we may need to receive in order to move closer to letting our full selves take up space in our lives.

△ The writing of June Jordan

△ This poignant interview

Body Acceptance Stops At The Skin. Why?

△ Healing through art

△ This gorgeous write-up on the house tour I shared last week

△ I’m making this today and bringing it to a picnic

△ I sowed some wildflower seeds outside of my office today and had a distinct feeling of hope in my body: that mix of excitement and not knowing, visioning and not assuming what will or won’t happen. It reminded me that gardening is hope embodied; it’s believing in what could become. I am eager to see what does or doesn’t grow, knowing something will become regardless.

△ Joy. Just joy:

△ On “quiet quitting”

△ The power of pendulation

△ Wild geese flying above our yard, making me pause for a moment of magic.

With care,
Lisa