The Writing

Confidence, inspiration, and an award winning essay.

Photo by Lauren Mancke on Unsplash

I’ve been working on a post for a few weeks now - a post about my daughter’s issues with Misophonia. It’s a piece I’ve wanted to write for a long time. Here’s where I struggle (a LOT!) - how much background information is enough, and how much is too much! But, also here’s where some of the magic happens sometimes: I write out the background, say that’s too much, scrap it, and then pick a here and now starting point, or somewhere in the middle, and fill in gaps where necessary. But, writing it all out (which takes a really long time) helps me in some ways to #1 just get it out, #2 get a better sense of what’s important and what can be pitched, #3 process.

In the meantime, I got an email from Substack a few days ago, letting me know that this newsletter is ranked 79th and rising in the Parenting category. What? I mean, yeah, 79 isn’t a very high number, but to even be a number on a chart is cause for celebration! 🎉 It was short-lived and I’m back off the charts, but thankful to have made it on the chart at all!

I’ve been thinking a lot about the essay I wrote last year (2024) for the Midwest Writing Center’s annual Iron Pen contest (a 24-hour writing contest) - because before I got the prompt, I was really wanting to write about my daughter’s Misophonia, which had reached an all time high in January of 2024, so I was hoping it was a prompt that would let me (force me) to write the things I needed to write about.

Writing can be a funny thing. I really set out to write an essay about my daughter’s Misophonia because it felt like the prompt would allow me to focus on that, but something a little different came out, and I just had to go with it. Adding anything about her issues with Misophonia would have taken away from what came out.

The essay ended up taking first place in the non-fiction category. I’m pretty proud of it (even though when I submitted it, I didn’t think it was going to be a winner). I’ve thought about cleaning it up a bit and making some revisions to submit somewhere, but I just lack the hustle, so it will probably just end up in a collection I self-publish at some point. Placing first in this contest did a lot for my confidence, just when I needed that kind of a boost.

I’ve also been thinking about the essay because I’m gearing up to attend the 20th annual Midwest Writing Center’s David R. Collins Writers’ Conference this week from Thursday through Saturday. Attending this conference back in 2019 for the first time was so incredibly inspirational. I’ve attended the conference every year on a scholarship, and since that first year have only taken the one nonfiction workshop they offer. This year, I’m taking all four of the classes and immersing myself fully in writing and plan on enjoying every minute of being among a bunch of other writers.

I figured that I should probably just share this essay here - and I’m still struggling with all the parenting struggles I was when I wrote this essay in February of 2024!

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(The first line in bold was the writing prompt for the competition)

You won't tell folks what you fear any of this says about you

I won’t have to. They will smell it wafting from every pore of my being. Or maybe just the armpits of the hoodie I’ve lived in for the past week.

As mothers, so often we fear failing our children, we fear the judgment of others over the ways in which we parent, and the things we do, or don’t do. There are so many areas we can be failing in at any given moment. Sometimes, it feels like all the plates are stacked against us.

I have been working on an essay for too many days now, utilizing the full plate analogy. Which works well when paired with the spoon theory^[1]. Spoons. Plates. Mountains of fucking dishes. My plate is full of shit, and all my spoons are missing.

Analogies of self-care aimed at mothers: “Put your oxygen mask on first,” or “You can’t pour from an empty cup,” (ooh hey, that one fits in with the plates and spoons!) make so much sense in theory. But, how about the practice? What about when you are in one of your lowest mental health states, lying on the ground, and your daughter messages you from high school, threatening suicide?

There’s not the time to put my mask on first. Instead, I take my mask and put it on her. Because that is what any good mother would do. Every single time. The mask analogy does not hold up in this situation. In reality, it would take a person all of two seconds to put their mask on first. States of mental health crises are not quick and easy fixes. You can’t just plop an oxygen mask on.

The empty cup analogy may be more fitting in this situation because maybe I find that there’s still a drizzle of backwash left in the cup when I thought it was empty. I’ve seen so many people leave just a fraction of a sip in their cup, claiming to be done. I scold them. “Are you kidding me? There’s still a sip there! What are you doing? (That’s alcohol abuse right there.)” Sometimes, I’ll just finish that sip for them. We can’t waste precious resources. But, maybe they are trying to save just enough in case they need it later. That only works if you are sitting at home, though. You can’t leave it sitting at the bar and expect it to still be there when you come back.

I’m at a friend group weekly meetup that I haven’t been to in two weeks because of weather, and mental health; co-conspirators.

Friend 1: We talked about doing an intervention, but then we thought naw, she’s probably OK.

Friend 2: What do we do when we’re lying on the floor?

Me: Well, what can I do? I lay on the floor!

Friends 1, 2, and 3 laughing: NO!!!

Friend 2: That’s when you call one of us!

My plate is so over-heapingly-full. But, their plates are full too. One has a plate of chicken with a drumstick about to slide off. Another has a plate with chicken wings, chips and salsa, grapes, celery, and ranch dressing dripping off the right side. Mine is full of mashed potatoes oozing gravy, melted cheese, and corn niblets flying off here and there. And I don’t have any spoons left to try to sculpt the mashed potatoes into Devil’s Tower^[2]. And, “There’s a dead fly in my potatoes.”

In the essay I’m writing, I get distracted thinking about the balance of food, and plates with compartments. I have written myself into a corner that I’m not seeing my way out of, so I will flesh it out with the focus of balance. While there are a lot of analogies to make about the balance of food or portions or main dishes, side dishes, and desserts, that’s not what I should be writing about at all.

The analogies I desperately need to make are undeniably ones that point out the obvious.

Why is it that I have all the food on my plate, but my children have none? As a mother, isn’t it my duty to feed my children first? This one is the opposite of the oxygen mask analogy. Because that’s just how it is and has always been.

One time, my ex got all worked up telling me a story about how his first wife had the audacity to make herself a plate of food, and sit down to eat it, before feeding their baby. Disbelief raged through him. I was only an every-other-weekend fill-in mother at that point, but I knew, after all the years of watching my mother ensure that all of us had food on our plates before she sat down. Sometimes, we even had seconds before she was able to put food on her plate. More often than not, she was left alone, still eating, after we had all finished and left the table.

“Jesus! You eat so slow!” My stepfather would tell her.

“I just chew slower.” She would say.

I think of this when I tell my children, “I can’t help that I like to actually chew my food.”

There have been so many days, as a mother, where dinner is the first meal I eat all day. Sometimes, I have to eat a couple of crackers, or pieces of cheese while cooking just so I don’t pass out. Some days, I only make the dinner because there are kids to feed.

One time, a therapist asked me, “What would it look like for you to give up?”

“Well, I have kids, so I can’t. I can give up some, but at the end of the day, I still have to make them dinner.”

Two lifetimes ago, before I became a parent, a co-worker with two young children said something that stuck with me. “The hardest part of parenting is finding that line. You want to do everything for them, but you also need to teach them how to be independent.”

I realize that keeping my plate heaping is selfish. Stingy. But, most of the time, it requires more spoons than I have to shuffle and redistribute some of that load. And there’s no good analogy to account for the time requirement of shuffling and redistributing the food. I do understand that later I will see the return on the time investment, but that doesn’t mean I have the initial investment at my disposal. It can’t be borrowed.

I thought about what that co-worker said as I was making breakfast for my daughter on one of our toughest mornings to date. A day where she requested a “mental health day” off school, and I told her no. When she knew that wasn’t going to work, she suddenly had a horrible stomachache. When I told her she still had to go to school because she had missed too much, and sometimes in life, we have to show up regardless, she messaged me from her bedroom, “Mom, omg don’t you care about me at all?”

I walked down the hall and took a deep breath before opening her door. “If I didn’t care about you, I would let you stay home. I wouldn’t care whether you missed school or not.” She slammed her door so hard that it shook the entire household. She was not budging. I was not budging.

As I was coming back into the house after starting the car, she messaged, “A couple of weeks ago, my mental health was the worst it had ever been. Who’s to say it got better after.”

“Same,” I replied.

Then came her slam dunk.

“But why make everything about yourself? You chose to have children, and you have to deal with it, and I’m not trying to be rude, but your child comes first.”

I knew better than to attempt to say anything to her at that point. I also knew that if she went to school that day, it would have felt too much like the day from two weeks ago that she brought back to the surface. I would have spent the entire day trying to manage her mental health through messages back and forth when my cup was still empty. My spoons were still missing.

I came home from dropping the other kids off at school, only slightly late, and made myself an egg toast sandwich in what felt like the first step in an act of defiance.

After I had finished eating, my daughter came out to the kitchen and apologized. I apologized too, and explained that she hurt my feelings. We hugged, and I asked her if she wanted an egg sandwich.

My daughter was sitting in between me and the toaster, waiting, watching memes on her phone, as I gathered the egg, an individual container of avocado from the fridge, a paper bowl, a plate, a plastic fork, and a knife from the cart. I already had the egg in the microwave, and had set the plate, knife, and avocado in front of her. As I went to put the bread in the toaster, everything screamed to me, GIVE HER THE BREAD!!

Initially, I saw this as the second step of defiance. “Here. You do the toast.” But, no, it was not an act of defiance. It shaved off a few seconds of my time. It saved a spoon. It made my plate feel just slightly less heaping. One step closer to that line.

She put the bread in, pushed the button down, looked to me for approval, and smiled when I gave it. Her contribution, and our collaboration, after that morning of dissent and opposition, gave me a fresh spoon.

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^[1] Spoon theory - spoons equal units of energy. Each thing you do takes a certain number of spoons to accomplish. Some people only have a certain number of spoons on any given day. Doing the dishes may require 5 spoons. What happens when you only have 2?

^[2] Reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).