Nicole K. Twedt

Being Brave When Life Is Hard

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Weekend Roundup, September 8, 2017

09.08.2017 by Nicole Kristin Twedt //

Photo by Providence Doucet, Unsplash

Here’s a Weekend Roundup that wasn’t pulled together at the last minute or late at night.  A real shocker, I know.  It has everything to do with the kids being back in school.  Hello regular writing time!  If I’m being honest, it’s more like semi-regular writing time.  Come to think of it, this could be the first thing I’ve thrown together since the start of school.  I’ll take what I can get.

Moving on.

Before I dive into sharing the wonderful words of fellow Hope*Writers, I’d like to thank you for praying for Steven and our family as we settled into first, third, and fifth grades.  I was greatly encouraged by the comments you left on my Facebook page.

By the way, Steven had a great first week.  It’s nothing short of a miracle; and I am thankful, so very thankful.  While I was blow-dying my hair on Wednesday morning, Steven came into the master bathroom.

“Mom,” he began, “It took forever for me to fall asleep last night, and I’ve been up since 6 o’ clock!”

“Why were you up late, Buster?” I asked.

“I was sooooo worried about school,” he answered.

Of course he was.

Six o’ clock is a solid hour before Steven’s LEGO Ninjago alarm clock grants him permission to get out of bed.  Not a good start for the first day of school, especially for a boy who needs his beauty sleep.  But then he zipped off to feed the dog, as happy as can be. Later my friend Dana pointed out that it was a huge step for Steven to articulate his worries in the first place.  Actually, it’s a GINORMOUS step in the right direction.  Is that even a word?

Steven-in-the-middle went on to have an excellent first day.  Our guy adores his teacher (so do I).  It doesn’t hurt that he likes several of his classmates and is already comfortable with them. Since the night before the second day of school, he’s been sleeping well and happy each morning.  He’s hasn’t been in so much as a bad mood, which is usually the first sign that worry is taking over.  If you are wondering what the fuss is about the start of the school year, I have two words for you: childhood anxiety.

I’ve been around the block enough times to know that anxiety is an ongoing hurdle.  We’re working through it.  There will be battles ahead.  For now, however, we get to breathe a sigh of relief and offer up our hands in praise and thanksgiving.  He is good to us, so good.  And because of his tender care and affection, he’s helping Steven be brave when life is hard.

The girls also had successful first days.  Overall, it’s been a good week, and we’re excited for fall.  Well, it was a good week minus a few meltdowns from the Tiniest Tiny, and the whole sequin-covered cat ear headband debacle with Emily.  Did you know cat ear headbands are even a thing?  Apparently so.  But this isn’t a tween fashion blog.  You’re welcome for that, by the way.  Because I could write all about my first experience at the teenybopper store, Justice, otherwise known as Boutique de Rainbow Glitter and Unicorn Vomit.

I opened up a bit about childhood anxiety last week.  Here you go, you can read about it here.   But if you’ve got an older child, like a high school-er, then I highly recommend Lindsey Hausch’s essay, To the Kid in High School With Social Anxiety.  It was featured on The Mighty last week.  Honestly, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for those struggling with anxiety in late elementary to middle school to give it a read.

I loved this essay by Greer Oharah.  It’s about living now and writing later.  I really love the name Greer, which has nothing to do with anything.  I’m not sure that I’ve heard Greer as a first name.  It’s safe to say there will never be a fourth Twedtling.  But I love coming up with hypothetical names for another child.  Speaking of names, now that the big 4-0 is approaching in the not-so-distant future, I decided it was high time I put away my copy of The Best Baby Name Book in the Whole World.  Perhaps I should reconsider.  Just this morning I gave our plum-colored BOB Revolution jogging stroller to a family at school.  In terms of baby gear, we all know what happens when you give away the good stuff.   Anyway, Greer is a lovely name and she wrote a lovely essay for all you writers out there.  As someone who’d rather spend time writing before cleaning the toilets and paying the bills, this was a refreshing and encouraging read.  And beautifully written.  I definitely struggle with balancing writing time and taking care of my family and home, and being a functioning member of society in general.  I’d rather just write.

The next essay is titled The Day I Screamed at God: My Messy Awakening to Kindness and it’s by Hannah Savage.  It’s about the day Hannah basically screamed at God and learned that her stormy emotions could not shake God from his steadiness.  Stormy emotions?  Now who does that remind you of? Don’t say it.

It would hardly be a Weekend Roundup without an essay from Dorina Lazo Gilmore, don’t you think?  Her essay, Celebrating a Heaveniversary: 10 ways to honor a loved one’s death came at just the right time.   I’m usually not one for advice-style essays, but this one is dear to me.  You see, earlier in the week I had the guts to finally publish something I wrote after my dad’s 21st heaveniversary back in March.  It’s a few blog posts back.  I’m not going to link to it because I really want you to read Dorina’s essay.  Her words broke my heart and offered hope at the same time.  I identified so much with Dorina’s experience.  I have to say that I was challenged to look at and approach next year’s heaveniversary a new way.  If you’ve lost a loved one, or if you know someone who’s living a new normal without a loved one, please head over to Dorina’s website.

Edited to add: I haven’t checked my email since this morning.  Which means I missed out on most of the blog posts I subscribe to via email.  Lucky for me, Jody’s essay was also on Instagram.  Jody is a champion encourager and an eloquent wordsmith.  I have known her less than a year, but Jody is a true friend.  And in case you didn’t know it, she’s the midwife of this blog (her words, not mine and, yes, there’s a story behind her claim to fame).  I wouldn’t want you to miss this stunning tribute to September Eleventh not 9/11.

Well now, that’s about it.  Have a glorious weekend.  I hear we might actually get a bit of rain.  At least it’s my hope and prayer.  I know, I know, how often do you hear a Seattle girl praying for rain?  But the wildfires continue to rage in my beloved home state.  We really need rain.  Please hope and pray along with us.  We’re miles and miles from the flames, but it’s heartbreaking all the same.

Categories // Anxiety, Being Brave, Family, Grief, Weekend Roundups, Writing Tags // baby names, Death, emotions, Hope*Writers, school

A Postscript to Anything I Ever Wrote, Especially In February

09.05.2017 by Nicole Kristin Twedt //

Photo by Greg Raines, Unsplash

By now you may think I’m a nutcase, a real crazy person.  Especially after yesterday’s essay.   And just about everything I wrote in February.  Let me assure you, I’m not always such a downer.  Really.

Grieving for twenty odd years isn’t all blackness and tears.  I want to be clear on that.   It’s not all denial or a trip to la-la land.   I don’t want some poor reader to stumble onto my blog only to be discouraged in their own grief journey.  I still have hard days.  I think that’s normal.  But really, grief comes and goes.  Right now it’s letting me be.  For real.

Just a hint from me to you: if you deal with your stuff sooner rather than later, you might be able to work through some of what haunts you.  Really, don’t put it off.  Trust me.  You’ll thank me later.  Or at least you’ll be on your way to processing everything in a more effective manner than I did.

But I’m no expert.  Just a girl working through her stuff, being brave when life is hard.  And life is hard. And excellent.  And thrilling.  And tragic.  And beautiful.  And worthy.  The greatest adventure.

I might not be a fan of everything that happened.  I don’t need to love it all.

But I will rejoice and be glad.

That is all.

Categories // Being Brave, Grief, My Story Tags // brave, grief, hope

The Kindness of an Anglican Priest

09.04.2017 by Nicole Kristin Twedt //

Photo by Anna King, Unsplash

It’s raining this morning, and it’s Monday.  Ugh.  But I’m at a friend’s house, a wonderful distraction from this relentless Seattle rain. We sit on the floor of her living room, by the fire, espresso in hands.  Before long I’m recounting a recent storm in my life.

It’s a wonder I’m here in the first place. After all, today is Monday the sixth of March.  

If our paths haven’t crossed in real life, even if they have, you might not know about March 6, and what happened over twenty years ago.

I try to avoid making plans on the sixth of March.  I never really know how I’m going to deal with it all.  Or not deal with it.  All these memories, the longing, the aching, the missing that marks the anniversary of dad’s death.  The worst part, I rarely mention it.

Some years are harder than others. Sometimes it’s just another day. We flew kites one year. We spent one anniversary at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo.  Once or twice we remembered dad as we brunched at The Maltby Café in a small town east of us.  Of course, this was before my ban on all things dairy and gluten.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could choose when grief is going to wreck havoc, even twenty-plus years into the journey? But grief doesn’t work like that.  Not quite.  The truth is, I never know how I’ll react until the day is upon me, until it’s here.

What’s strange about today is that I woke to the rain feeling, well, just fine.  I actually went to bed last night without a sense of dread looming before me.  I know, I know, I just finished telling you that March 6 isn’t always a day of heartache.  But this year has been a doozie.  I prepared myself for drama.  I’m shocked that, today of all days, I’m not overcome with grief.  You see, I’ve been breaking down and breaking through a lot these days.

It’s like someone flipped a switch.  And just like that my time of mourning has come to an end. For now.

I know it’s coming back though.  It’s impossible to escape grief for too long, especially when you loved someone like I did.

I am, and forever will be, marked by the life and death of my father.  I wouldn’t change this for anything.  I loved him so. To this day my dad is my favorite of all my favorite people, which says a lot because I’m surrounded by people who rank above-average in the loving kindness department.

Yet I can say with absolute certainty that this recent tidal wave of grief, or storm or whatever I just went through, it is finished, calmed.  And once again it’s going to be okay.  

Photo by Chris Lawton, Unsplash

More than okay.  I’m at peace, joyful even.  It appears that this little storm cloud of mine has gone and evaporated a year after it first came my way.  Thank God.  I couldn’t have planned it better if I tried.

One year.

I don’t know why, but I’m reminded of the church calendar.  There’s much this Presbyterian turned Nondenominational turned Assemblies of God-ish girl doesn’t know about the church calendar.  I’m trying to wrap my brain around the anticipation, the hope, the despair, and the wonder of it all.  Let me tell you, much is encapsulated in the ebb and flow of the church calendar.  And life in general.  I’m beginning to see there’s a time for everything, really there is.  Everything has its season. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending how you see it, grief has its season, too.

It takes fancy footwork to allow one’s self to feel all the feels without falling into the depths of despair.  But we kind of have to.

It isn’t very convenient to grieve in this culture of ours, anyway.    Maybe we’d process grief better if we weren’t so busy and actually had the luxury to properly mourn as the lammentors of days of old, burlap tearing at our fingertips.

It’s getting better.  Now there’s even a section at Target for us feelers.

Back to the sixth of March.  My friend and I continued our conversation on the sage-green carpeted floor of her living room by the fireplace.  I continue telling my tale, describing how he (and by he, I mean God) told me it was time to process what I went through by writing about it.

At this point in our conversation, I speak a bit about running.  Not the good kind of running.  No, the kind of running that has to do with avoidance.  You see, it hurt too much to write.  I had to protect myself against heartbreak.  So I ran.

I speak also of God’s loving kindness, how he kept on, gently prompting me to write, over and over and over again until I finally did.  And when I finally gave into the charge to write, I was able to breathe once again.

I tell my friend this and how it came about while I was too sick to do anything else, thanks to a nasty sinus infection.

Jason Biscoe, Unsplash

The funny thing, if that’s what you want to call it, is that my friend shared a bit of her grief journey and how it resurfaced during a recent illness of her own.   She spoke of her priest and how he came to visit, to pray for her during her time of convalescence.

At the end of his visit he turned to my friend and asked, “Did anything come up during your recovery?”

“The mind,” he went on to explain, “has a funny way of catching up with us during illness.”

As it turns out, we can’t run when we’re sick.  All the thoughts, the feelings, everything we’re avoiding or haven’t dealt with, well, they have an interesting way of catching up with us once we’re forced to be still.  Apparently, it’s perfectly natural to deal with trauma when we’re sick.

Ah, the kindness of an Anglican priest.

He doesn’t even know it but he’s helping me be brave when life is hard.

I don’t know my friend’s priest, but I could hug him.  I want to thank this man of God for his wisdom, his divine insight, his encouragement and love. For extending grace and giving hope, for showing me (through my friend) that I’m not a crazy person after all.

I just needed to learn once again how to be still before God.  That is all.  To slow down long enough to acknowledge the passage of time, and to grieve all that happened many, many years ago by writing it out.  And through writing, God was able to break through to me and begin the business of repairing my broken heart.

N.

P.S. I’ve been planning to read Kimberlee Conway Ireton’s Circle the Seasons, about the church calendar.  And not just because I know the author in real life.  Kimberlee is a kindred spirit and her book is waiting ever so patiently for me in the white bookcase in our freshly painted living room.

The only reason I haven’t picked it up yet is because I got sidetracked by Kimberlee’s second book, Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis, which I highly recommend.  I even recommend it to those who’ve never experienced postpartum depression.  Kimberlee’s book is what got the “ah-ha, you might have anxiety” ball rolling, before we even knew our son and I struggled with it.  I am forever grateful for this book and my friend who was brave enough to write it.

Categories // Being Brave, Grief, My Story, Writing Tags // church calendar, faith, friendship, grief

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