My house is not in order. This breaks my heart, since my heart loves this place. My spouse and I have worked hard for our 1600 square foot paradise. House versus home, let me begin there. House, to me, I think of as shelter. Home is an anchoring for safety and thriving and growth.

There are periods in my creative bursts and spurts—deadlines looming and “gitRdone” militarism is necessary—turning home into wreckage. I’ve learned to live with those weeks, lately those months.

As 2023 moves into its second quarter, I take inventory of the state of my home. It has felt more shelter than sanctuary. And I want to do better by it. I guess it’s similar to neglect people experience by abandoning their bodies or finances. Gradually there is a decline then suddenly, hindsight as glaring clarity, one sees how undone one has become.

Gradually there is a decline then suddenly, hindsight as glaring clarity, one sees how undone one has become.

I’ve lost touch with the declutter bug I used to be…I want to her again. She creates the most amazing open spaces for thinking and intentional vignettes to inspire. She used to make a house a home and keep it that way.

How did I get here? Busy, I suppose. But that isn’t all of it. So much stuff has rolled in as my child is an only grandchild on both sides of our family. My own mother finds it humorous, I believe, that I physically cringe when she brings in…”just one little thing”…every time she visits. Every. Time. She. Visits. My spouse says, “We have to tell her it will have to be donated if she cannot stop herself.”

He isn’t the one who is present when she looks me and my daughter in the eye and creates a story, “I founds this special, and I hope you’ll keep it always to think of me.”

Is this how she wants to be remembered?

Hard to say. Stuff is tangible to some people whereas memories perhaps fade. I am not sure what it says about me now: I value open space more than anything else (including stuff and memories).

I move through this house and I wonder how it got so congested. My mind works fullest with an inverse to fullness of things around me. Marie Kondo brilliantly teaches a methodology of deep detoxification of one’s house to fully revive joy in the home. I listen to her book on audible twice a year while I do a two to three day clean. She says her method prevents rebound. But, she has also retracted a bit once she had her own children (after all, meaning of objects is profoundly more complicated and tender in the developmental eyes of a child). Until I get my house back into a home, I have to carve out more time for deep cleans. Otherwise, I feel like the ocean and the plastic bags are starting to suffocate me.

I’d like to get to a place where my child and spouse are so inspired they want to do small efforts of tidying and take pride in the flow of the home, akin to small increments of cardio I have naturally integrated into my life. For now, clutter continues to add fatty deposits where my health can no longer afford them. I can do better. For now, I scheduled some spa time for the house.

Join me.

This cracked sun catcher makes me smile. We spend Thursdays together. Thursdays are my weekly, for one day only, jaunt into a public space for work. As a full blown introvert who learned to act like an extrovert (or stand by my mom who talked for both of us)…I like my space. I like my quiet space to think, to nest, and to be my (braless) self. I have no need to work alongside people who also want to talk about their lives or people who need people to get work finished.

I’m my best self in a room of my own. I’m deeply connected to a personal life that through clinical insights or patterns and typing fingers to keyboard – I do my best work. I do not need a boss, other than me. Others used to just want to talk to me about their personal life or call a meeting or develop a policy that would curtail quality work. They just distracted personal and collective progress. I do not need friends at work, I adore my clients. We chat all day.

It is hard for me to imagine a time when I felt, for income’s sake, I had to work out of the home some six or seven days a week. Sometimes I’d leave at seven in the morning and return at ten in the evening. I feel privileged not to have to do that anymore. Yet, it was a very conscious process that I worked toward for years before this joy ride. While I cherish the shifts virtual work has afforded me, and I hold the greatest gratitude for days that I no longer set an alarm – moving to my own rhythms and not the industrialized pace of life – I like my Thursdays. It now feels special to leave the house.

My commute is short, heading from a bustling town borough to its neighboring historic village. There are only six or so buildings, here – as otherwise rural life recedes around me. My cooperative wellness clinic situates between an inn, a small business whole foods market, and a garden shop. I’ve been fortunate to live in esteemed and dynamic neighborhoods like Cambridge, Mass. I’ve walked the streets of NOHO, Chicago, and Amsterdam. Today, I walk up creaky stairs in this centuries-old building and I pass by this sun catcher that has (unclear to me) either deliberate or accidental tears. It reminds me of my wabi sabi style: joy in the imperfect, impermanent, incomplete nature of the universe. I look at her each week and I think, if I have to leave the house, I was meant to pass this way.

photography by Shannon McDonald at my beloved Bryn Mawr College

Instead of an advent @Jess-Honig via Instagram this month – I’m gifting the people 25 Days of Mindfulness.

Ah, Mindfulness…What is it anyhow?

Ask a dozen practitioners and you may get a dozen different definitions.

To me…

Mindfulness is awareness of various forces (circumstances, outlook, physicality) in the present moment with a discipline to focus on and follow through on the most productive angles.

Mindfulness is a quieting of volume on the past regrets, future what-ifs – a practice of being here, best influencing your now. Anchored, via our senses:

I see

I hear

I taste

I touch

I smell

I read a powerful Op-ed this weekend (11/27/22 Sunday Times) by Jessica Grose, unfortunately for me no relationship to myself as a Jessica Honig-Gross. Close but no cigar. The title: The Toxic Perfection of Momfluencers

It hit home.

Mostly, it hit at the heart of my own budding self-consciousness and budding social media platform as a budding writer. I’m aiming to grow professionally. But I worry about the ways and pace at which I grow. Might this be at the expense of mindful integrity?

I hope not.

Yet, I am guilty of glossy branding shots with my amazing daughter. I am guilty of selling things.

But what I aim to do, as my own dear literary agent (Bethany Jett) reminds me – sell what is true to you.

I sell ideas.

Bethany also said, “Don’t think so much of marketing yourself,” and thank goodness since that idea gives me hives. “Ask yourself, how may I serve others?”

That concept has made all the difference to me.

This month and always – I aim to serve mom’s like me (with a ton on their own plate, trying to feed their children equal doses of love and compassion). I aim to serve fellow CPTSDERS to keep it real and keep it as grounded as possible, maybe even sparked with joy. I aim to do this with an authentic use of self.

I get Direct Messages (DM’s) to be sponsored for teeth whiteners and anti-frizz creams.

I get DM’s to try and promo teeth straighteners. A besty asks me what will I do about my streak of gray?

I think I’d rather continue to reveal my organic self that I’m quite comfy with.

I’ll leave you with a bold quote from the Opinion Piece by Jessica Grose:

…there’s one takeaway from my reporting on the sociology of American motherhood, it’s that the ideals as they are created may serve industry but they do not serve us or our families.”

Jessica Grose, NYT Op Ed, 11.27.22

Yes, I am guilty of selling something.

I sell ideas.

At this point, they are pretty much free.

A deal, on sale and down from two-cents.

I sell the idea of being more comfortable with oneself; living our core values at a slower, simplified pace.

I am comfortable with myself these days.

Hope you are too.

After all, like the mindfulness that I pitch – being, the act of being, may just be the most priceless, precious, vital way to be.

One of my favorite avenues for art making involves making art like a toddler. They are the royal court jesters of non-representational expression. Splotch here, dash there, anything is a potential material with which to work, feeling and not overthinking.

Let’s get playful with some tips toward expanding abstraction with your artistry:

1. JUST BE: Emphasize making something rather than defining what you are making; hold a chosen tool and begin again – explorative rather than destination based.
2. ABSENCE OF MIND: Quiet the volume on thinking through steps; allow the tools before you to lead your expression.
3. IMAGINE IT SO: Consider that if your tools may create it, it is so; care not what it resembles, care for its originality in this moment.

GO INWARD THEN ONWARD, THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANOTHER YOU OR MOMENT LIKE THIS TO SHOW BACK UP TO ART MAKING…

Excerpt from Reframe Your Artistry: Mindful Tools for Art Making at Any Age, 2019 Prodigy Gold Books

Allow nature to model that change is inherent, finding possibility rather than discontent in seasons, stages, and fresh angles.

Allow imperfection to be a state of being that is momentary, disallowing mistakes or artistic bombs from being catastrophic to the lifespan of your artistry. 

Allow impermanence to highlight that our quality of mind, our emotions, and our physical states vary from moment to moment.

Recognize that productivity rides the mind, body, spirit kiddy-size rollercoaster and embrace the comings and goings with flow.

Allow incompleteness of one moment’s efforts to remind us that we care about art making, wishing to continue to carve out more time and place for it.

long before the pandemic, though compatible with our current lifestyle, i began to slowdown. let me clarify, if i’m being honest, i thought about slowing down long before i was able: in skill, in scheduling, in psyche.

the week before social distancing measures began to be enforced, i left my clinical practice, undecided if i should head right home to the soothing mechanism of eye contact with my daughter or straight to the emergency room. i’d had a prolonged tingle and numbness throughout my left side, then moving into chest pains.

i chose to drive home and hug my little heart in a five-year-old’s body.

a week later, i was informed that while life was stressful, my body was likely having these symptoms resembling a stroke because of the inability of my body to metabolize the level of folate that i was taking to offset the exhaustion and sluggishness that had settled in. my doctor explained, all that folate had nothing to bind to.

a good night’s sleep, which – ironically arose when i realized i didn’t have to leave the house for sometime – more privilege than burden for an introvert like myself – combined with a healthy dose of magnesium, and my entire body began to thaw out.

enough was enough, i began to realize.

each day, i started off, unalarmed and waking to the natural timing of my body. my commute dissolved, my to do list outside of top priorities: career and family, disappeared.

it was then, as it is now (even after a year when i was overwhelmed by the amount of need for mental health care needs – not surprised, just overwhelmed in asking: how much may i give of myself? it is then, that i have decided upon what i had considered for some time. i was conditioned rather than intuitively craving the busy bee life.

no longer do i wish to fill in the weekends with plans that i will not want to keep.

one event per weekend, no more than two weekends a month will suffice.

my daily rituals have dwindled to what i could count on one hand.

and all i still care about – career and family. though, my career, as you can see – has many dynamic sides including care for and inspiration from kind hearted nature, art, and humans.

however, if i am being honest – while i care about it all, i have improved my ability to believe for myself and convey to others – the essence of life, it is simply being: a slow flow of showing up for what matters most, the rest is learned behavior, distraction, excess.