Life is gonna life

I’m not too proud to admit this: I lost it on Matteo, my four year old, earlier this week because he went into the cupboards and grabbed a snack without asking me first. That was it. That was the whole crime.

I caught myself and felt the mom guilt wash over me, because that’s not me. I’m human, I lose my patience like anyone. But not over something trivial. Not this fast, and not this often. It’s been happening all week. Snapping at the kids over every little thing. I’ve been shorter with my husband than he deserves. Suffice to say, I’ve been running a lot closer to the edge than I normally let myself get anywhere near.

For the last three months, both my kids have been sick. Not the regular seasonal stuff — I’m talking about chronically sick. Both of them recently had pneumonia. Lucas, my two-year-old, has severe eczema all over his body. Matteo hasn’t been able to breathe through his nose in three months.

I suspected mold the whole time. One of our pipes broke in the home we’ve been renting and flooded under the floors, so we tested for it and a couple weeks ago the results came back positive. And since that night, we’ve been hopping from one Airbnb to the next, trying to get the kids the medical attention they need while figuring out where we’re going to live next — and we still don’t know when we’ll even be able to move.

It’s been challenging. My threat load has been higher than usual, and I can feel it in everything. Underneath all of it, I’m leaning hard on my tools so I don’t tip all the way over.

It’s not lost on me that in the grand scheme of things this isn’t a big deal, that other people are dealing with much worse. Which is true. But it’s worth naming that a nervous system doesn’t grade on a curve, and neither does yours. What you’re carrying is what you’re carrying.

I’m sharing this with you on purpose.

As a nervous system coach, I think it matters that I’m open about this — because this is the part of the work nobody likes to show. This is real capacity getting built in real time. I could sit here and wallow – I won’t lie, it’s what my system wants to do. Instead I keep coming back to something I’ve trained myself through the years to believe: life is working for me, not to me. This isn’t happening to punish me. It’s helping me build capacity in areas of my life that I’m going to need going forward in order to thrive.

For me, that area is uncertainty. Ambiguity. Surrender.

Because for those of you who know me — you know that I like to have my life mapped to a T. I love having a plan. I love knowing where it’s all headed. And life is teaching me what I already say to my clients all the time: life is gonna life. At some point it drops you somewhere you didn’t plan for, and the only real question is whether you’ve got the capacity to meet it from enough ground and grace to take the next aligned step — instead of white-knuckling your way through.

So in case you’re somewhere similar right now — in the middle of something you didn’t choose, being asked to surrender — here are three things I’m holding onto.

One: I check my nervous system before I make any move. Am I in safety, or am I in protection? Lately, I’ll be honest, it’s protection more than I’d like. But I can’t read the situation clearly from there, and neither can you. So that comes first, every time, before any decision gets made.

Two: I only look at the step right in front of me. Not the whole staircase. When I’m regulated enough, I can see the next breadcrumb — the one move that feels aligned. I take it. And then the next breadcrumb shows up. That’s been the whole method. One step, then the one after it reveals itself.

Three: surrender isn’t giving up control. It’s making the most aligned decision I can without seeing the full picture, and trusting that I’ll find out the rest as I go. That’s the part I’m practicing hardest right now.

That’s all I’ve got. The one breadcrumb in front of me. And that’s often all we really need.

The only question is whether we’re safe enough to see it clearly.

— Anne