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Content Warning: mentions of death and abuse
Once again, I’ve been MIA. This past year has been quite a season, and I’m not really keen on it.
I would apologize, but I think of us as old friends who can pick right back up from where we left off. So, if I apologized, you would just wave it off, annoyed that I would be so ridiculous to take time for myself and let my brain stew or whatever it is that it does.
On the plus side, I have now stored up a bunch of things to tell you, and I don’t know if I have enough space this time to tell it all to you—so maybe that will make me write next week, too! I have to stop giving myself outs for not writing this newsletter, because truly, it’s fun and I enjoy chatting with you all and hearing your feedback.
So, let me reframe: I GET to chat with my internet besties over email today! YAY ME! YAY YOU! YAY US!
As with last week, you will find the following in today’s newsletter (feel free to skip to those parts):
- Personal note
- What brought me joy this week!
- What challenged me
- What else?
- Support and love our community
- Tell me more
Personal note
Lately, thanks to all my mid-life issues, I’ve been wondering how much of my personality is me, and how much of what I’ve always considered me was actually my undiagnosed ADHD. Also, I always thought I was particularly emotionally volatile in my 20s because of trauma and anger, but how much of it was because it was a side effect of taking birth control pills for a decade?
(I started using birth control pills again recently to treat perimenopause symptoms, and after 12 days, I quit because I could no longer stand being a raging monster just one hair trigger away from sobbing uncontrollably.)
So, I’m curious: For friends who got late diagnosed with mental illness or neurodivergence—or even friends who realized their medications were affecting their moods, etc., do you ever wonder how much of what you consider to be your “personality” or “character flaws/traits” are actually symptoms or side effects of undiagnosed/untreated conditions and/or medication?
And if so, do/did you feel disoriented and adrift now? And how do you deal with it?
In the end, I think we’re all in the same boat. Just bags of shit and water, who respond to electrical stimuli. We all are just trying our best. There is no net neutral state of who we are—unless souls exist outside of our bodies.
I don’t know if souls change depending on their bodies.
Wow, that’s a lot to think about on a Tuesday. My bad.
What brought me joy
Ok, in the interest of time and my varying dopamine hits, I will just list a bunch of things in no order and with no explanation and if you’re interested, please email me back and I’ll overshare! Or, follow me on Threads/Bluesky and see my daily chaotic joy posts. (I know, I can’t believe I’m still doing them, either!)
- This new ADHD system that’s been super helpful. I’ll try to talk more about it later—but be forewarned that it’s a really slick sales funnel to get you to sign up for like $6k of coaching. No thanks to that, but the $29 course has been life-changing.
- Cleaning/reorganizing my desk, the kids’ bathroom, and throwing out all this stuff they don’t use and haven’t used—9 ELECTRIC TOOTHBRUSHES for 4 KIDS AND 1 NOT YOONGI LIKE WHAT IS HAPPENING
- Korean classes (feel like i’m moving forward vs building sandcastles)
- Harvested a bunch of figs and I ate them and had little to no reaction to eating them
- Harvested a bunch of pomegranates and sent the prettiest ones to my mother (now I just have to remember to eat the ones left in my house)
- Seeing Kitsune (2.5) get more and more involved in her music and Chinese classes
- My kids thanking me for cooking, washing the dishes, and making the changes they asked for
- Cookie Monster (15) becoming more social this school year
- Gamera (13) taking Glow Worm (12) under her wing at school and integrating him into her social scene
- Consistent Zoom meetings with good friends to encourage and support each other in our creative journeys
What challenged me
Likewise, here are a bunch of my challenges with little to no explanation:
- What’s the point of doing so much stuff if it just means more things you have to do? It’s never ending!
- WHY DO MY KIDS REQUIRE SO MUCH ACADEMIC SUPPORT?? I don’t recall needing any from my parents when I was a kid.
- Of course, it’s my own fault if my kids need it because I homeschooled them. BOOOOO PAST ME!
- I spent about $500 on organizational things. Technically this belongs in JOY, but out of deference to Not Yoongi’s feelings and our budget, they’re in challenges. BOOOOOO AGAIN.
- WHY DID NO ONE WARN ME THAT SUPPORTING YOUR KIDS TAKES SO MUCH EFFORT AND TIME?
- And also, this is why I stopped cooking or caring a few years ago. It was blessedly full of free time. I guess this is good for my relationship with my kids, and also OMG ALMOST NO TIME FOR THINGS I WANT TO DO.
- I constantly need to pee.
- I also drink a lot of water/tea.
- One may inform the other.
- Taiwan 2026 planning is gearing up and OMG WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF SO MANY MOVING PARTS IT IS THE WORST AND STARTS SO EARLY!!
What else
Last month was really hard.
My grandmother died, and even though I went non-contact with her because of her toxicity, it was sad because she died alone, abused by my father, and she got exactly what she wanted—which was him.
As a result of that event, my brother contacted me, wanting to check some of his memories with mine about our childhood. Friends, that was heartbreaking and healing. For decades, I wondered how I was so unable to ask for things I needed from my parents: basic necessities like food and menstrual products. It turns out, my brother also never asked for basic necessities, and I weep for the children we both used to be.
How did that household produce two kids who were too afraid to ask for basic human rights like food, shelter, and bodily functions?
When we discuss it with our spouses, they’re both astonished at how silence was beaten into us through fear. We did everything we could to shrink ourselves and take up as little space as possible.
We tried to be invisible.
That we both try so hard to provide safe spaces for our children is a miracle. That our children never learned to be afraid in the same ways we did is a joy and a grief. A joy because all children deserve to grow up without fear. A grief because we did not experience such freedom, and I wonder what we could have been.
Support and love our community
Last month, I had the privilege of being on a panel for my friend Nikkya Hargrove’s next Writer’s Workshop. It kicks off at the end of October and you can find more info here. Here is the payment link for it.
Nikkya and I were colleagues at Scary Mommy, and she now runs Obodo Serendipity Books and published an amazing memoir recently called “Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found.”
She’s a graduate of Bard College and currently serves on their Board of Governors and is chair of the alumni/ae Diversity Committee. A LAMBDA Literary Nonfiction Fellow, she has written about adoption, marriage, motherhood, and the prison system for The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times, Scary Mommy, and Shondaland. As if that’s not enough, she also lives in Connecticut with her wife and three children.
If you’ve always wanted to write a book or memoir, Nikkya’s workshop is a great start. She knows first hand how tough it is to publish a book while running a business, being married, and parenting. Too often, these writing workshops are put on by men who have wives doing the brunt of emotional and parenting labor; what do they know of my life and how to navigate it?
I trust Nikkya to be a wonderful guide and mentor!
Tell me more
Whew! I did it! And so did you!
What have you been up to since I up and disappeared for a month? Any new shows, books, UGH moments? WHAT HAPPENED???
Please, reply to this email and let’s start a short conversation that I promise won’t continue indefinitely because I will eventually forget to reply and then you’re mercifully released from any more social interaction.
May you have a week full of chaotic joy!
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