I’ve been off for the last ten days.

Nothing is wrong, but also everything feels… well, wrong. Cloudy. Annoying.

It’s like I’m toying with the idea of depression but not fully lunging into it. Just letting it circle around me and go Boo! at random moments throughout the day.

You see, the family is good… well, except Dottie’s back molars are coming in and she is once again clinging to me like an octopus, which, fine, fine, fine, fine, that’s just two-year-old life.

Greg and I are in the trenches of young-kid season, where the only hour we get to actually connect alone is also the hour after getting the kids in bed and we want to go numb before putting ourselves to sleep.

Yup. We’re doing fine. And also, there’s a cloud over my head. I’m antisocial. I don’t feel like myself.

My first instinct, of course, was to blame the business.

This is my favorite trap. I get really self-conscious and self-critical, and I go straight to the money. Something must be unaligned with what I’m building. This is never going to turn into anything. I’m not worthy of any of it. I spiral. I get extra sensitive.

I went looking for evidence to support it. As in, I put my practical hat on and made a bullet list of what I set out to build and where I’m at today. Couldn’t quite find the evidence. The business is actually fine. It’s in the slow, intentional build I designed it to be. The math is the math I chose. Of course more money coming in would always be great, but I was fully aware that starting a business, especially one in the manner I’m doing it would take time.

I thought maybe it was my period. Then hormones. Then the stars. (And maybe it is all of those combined.) Normally I bounce back in a few days. Ten days in, I’m still in it.

The first week, I was just avoiding. Sulking, watching a lot of Gilmore Girls, which for me is the tell. If I’m three episodes deep into Stars Hollow something is up.

But after about a week, I’m usually better. And over the long weekend I’ve inconveniently realized I’m still in it. So I started doing the things I already know help. The things I write about and tell other people to do and then, life being chaotic and all, forget to do myself.

And then someone, I think it was my dear friend , mentioned this thing about the body holding on to memories. That your nervous system can remember trauma at the exact time of year it happened. Year after year. Like a quiet anniversary your conscious mind forgot to put on the calendar.

I sat with that for a minute. And then I realized:

It was the very end of May last year that we found out Dottie, my daughter, would need open-heart surgery in the next two months.

If you’ve been here for a while, you read about it as I was going through it. [A Heart That’s Both Heavy and Hopeful] was one of the hardest things I’ve ever written, and I think one of the most-read pieces I’ve ever published. But this part, this anniversary part, I didn’t know was a thing until this week.

The moment I said it out loud, “oh, I think this is trauma showing back up a year later,” it felt like something I’d been carrying without knowing finally got to set itself down for a second.

Another friend recommended The Body Keeps the Score. I started it a while back and never finished. Feels wildly appropriate now, so cracking it open.

Maybe it’s all of it. The trauma anniversary, the hormones, the kids, the stars, the season. I don’t actually know.

Picking myself up

So I started doing the things.. as in the things that are good for you and should make you feel better.

I went to bed early, like 9pm early. I got up before the world was awake. I walked into the woods alone.

This is the thing I’m supposed to be all about. Pause. Move your body. Get in nature. And of course, the founder of Life at Play forgets to actually live a life at play. But I like to think that’s what living a life at play is actually about. Not just appearing good, happy, and playful all the time. But having the systems and instincts to notice when you’re off, come back, and lean on play, curiosity, community and nature during the hard times.

So on Sunday I did it. 6am. Out the door before anyone was up except the birds, a freaky looking opossum, two deer, several spiderwebs, and a horse.

It had been raining all week, and the birds were alive out there and had a lot to tell me about. Likely saying “hey, where the hell have you been?”. I took the trail from across the Blue Eyed Daisy through the Wildflower Meadows, then over toward the Animal Village at the Serenbe Inn to the horses. One of my favorite walks.

One of the horses walked up to me and just stood there.

I pet her nose. And then I closed my eyes and I guess meditated with her. That’s the most accurate way I can explain what I was doing. There wasn’t a plan, it just happened, and we breathed together. I did my grounding practice and then imagined energy and love passing back and forth between us. I just paused and really saw her, and she really saw me. Suddenly tears flowed down my face. And I… well I wailed, dropping down into a squat position just staring up at this gorgeous white horse deep in all my feels.

And then as if on cue, a huge wind blew through and shook every tree around us for a good 30 seconds, and I stood and raised my hands up with a big inhale and just took it in. On the edge of the woods, at 6:30am in the morning, alone with my new friend.

Like I was in a movie.

And that was it. I gave her a kiss on the nose, a loving pat, and I walked on.

Anyway. Back to the less cinematic things Im doing to pick myself back up.

I’m painting. I’m writing. I’m napping. I’m saying no to a lot of stuff.

Im asking the local Acorn to Oak team and my primary care team where I should start – thinking I need to get my hormones checked, Im considering STAT wellness – I’ve heard great things about Elise in Peachtree city. Open to recs if you have any.

I’m not really being a great friend or extended family member these days. And I keep catching myself feeling guilty for needing more space and care than I’m used to needing. Working on that one.

I also went back to the yoga studio, which is big for me.

This is technically my second or third time back in a couple years, but it’s been a long stretch. Which is always odd to admit out loud because I very much identify as a yogi. I mean, after not one but two teacher trainings (that’s 500 hours of training, outside of actual teaching), you’d think I’d have a Sunday class on lock. But motherhood changed my practice, and I rarely find myself in a studio these last five years.

I stopped going because I… well, I just didn’t feel like it. I prioritized time with the family or friends and felt like running around with my kids was workout enough. Well that, and in my experience after having a baby the queefing noise during a yoga practice is well embaressing is an understatement. Expecting mamas, i’m not even sure when it stops but I’d like to say it took 8-12 months, and by that time I forgot how much I love a studio.

Anyway. I think I’m back, and it feels like coming home. but i’ve said that before… so we will see.

I started reading Reality Bites by Amy Mass, which is so far outside my normal reading lane. I don’t normally read romance (unless it involves dragons and fairies). And I don’t watch reality TV (except Love on the Spectrum, which I’ll defend with my life). But this book is exactly what my nervous system needed, and Amy, I cannot believe you wrote those sex scenes. Picturing you writing them in our cute little coffee shops around town has been the comic relief of the last ten days.

I’m telling Greg I’m at a 2 out of 10. Which is, apparently, what I’m still learning to do at 36. I’m so used to holding it together and doing it all that asking for softness out loud feels wildly vulnerable. Even with the man I’ve been with for 21 years. Working on it. imperfectly.

I’m sharing this because last year, when I shared the Dottie piece, I almost didn’t. Then I did, and the second I hit publish, I felt a release. The writing was the healing. Today feels like that again. I’m not okay, but I’m also completely okay. Both things, at once.

Lots of good moments are happening under it all. But we in it.

I’m hosting a Life at Play Day on June 26. One day. Small group. Think of it as “a me day”, not a spa day, a day to go inside deep, to walk into summer with intention and think about your actual life and what’s next.

Life at Play Day No. 01

Tell me, in the comments or hit reply: have you ever had your body remember something before your mind did?

I’d love to know I’m not the only one.

xx, emo Gina

P.S. If this landed for you, the easiest thing you can do is forward it to one person who might be in their own version of this right now. That’s how this little thing keeps going.