Boats, Bridges and Beginnings

Recently, I found a pier near my office. I have started coming here everyday to read, think, sunbathe, do basically anything in the grass high above the water. It has become a ritual of my lunch break. I love doing it!

Unfortunately, my temp job ends this week. I have been looking for a job for over six months. I’ve had interviews, done social networking, revamped my résumé… It’s frustrating. So, now what?

In one sense, I have another opportunity for a new beginning. In another, I am terrified!

Maybe I’ll just be a wanderer… Wander through life looking at all of the pretty things around me and reading all of the books I can get my hands on…

I don’t think that would work out too well…

I recently moved in with my boyfriend. He is a creature of habit. I am not. However, I am a creature of control. That is, I need to know that I have a secure grip on the situation at hand, i.e., a death grip. We spent the weekend reorganizing my things in the apartment to make me feel more at home. This is the one thing I can control right now. I would say my beed for control one of my best qualities at work, and worst in personal relationships.

Sometimes, you just need to let go. This year is teaching me that. For instance, I cannot control:

-my job is ending
-my living situation is not perfect
-my friends are busy people
-my boyfriend and I are both looking for jobs and cannot spend much time together
-whether or not the trains are on time

I can, however, control my response to these things.

A favorite quote of mine is, “you control your response and therein lies your freedom”. I found it in a fortune cookie. I have kept the folded fortune in my wallet for 7 years. It just stuck with me.

So this is my response…

There are many things I cannot control right now, but I CAN walk down to a pier in the beautiful sun, breathe deeply, and read a good book when I am frustrated. I CAN adjust my attitude.

Negativity is poison which consumes us and bleeds onto the people we come into contact with daily.

Now it’s your turn. How do YOU stay positive in the face of uncertainty?

Author: Room to Regulate

Room to Regulate started as an emotional release – I was tired of giving space to all the heaviness that comes with being your family epicenter – when I'm not regulated, no one is regulated. I wrote it all down. Every overwhelming, anxious thought. I sat with it. Then I built around it – because my story isn't unique. I have ADHD – late diagnosed, of course, the Millennial Mom special. Our anxiety manifested in different ways. We were unlabeled, mislabeled, re-labeled. We held it together through our 20s. Many of us excelled in our careers, and then came motherhood. For a long time I thought the exhaustion, the mental load, the constant recalibrating was just what motherhood felt like for everyone. Don't get me wrong. Whether you are neurodivergent, raising a neurodivergent child, a house full of neurotypicals (do those exist?!), married, unmarried, working, or not – parenthood knocks the wind out of you. And when you're an information seeker, the "why" rabbit hole is endless. It took a while to understand that a lot of what I was carrying wasn't a personal failing — it was a structural one. The systems around us — schools, workplaces, insurance, policy — were never built as an ecosystem. They were built as individual systems. The byproduct of that puts families with the most structural need at the highest risk for falling through the cracks. The hardest parts of my days were the predictable result of that gap, not evidence that I was doing it wrong. View all posts by Room to Regulate