On finding a map:

February, emergence, rhythms, motherhood, and brain fog.

I hope February treated you kindly, and that you kept warm and cozy- which has been an interesting task this month, has it not? Our weather has been downright confused. We’ve had far more snow than we’re used to- so much so that our little town and the county that surrounds it ran out of salt and sand before January closed out, which made driving in February an exercise in faith and well-kept tires. We’ve also had some extremely warm, sun-filled days, teasing us and twisting our sense of things, making us think that Spring was on the move when it was most decidedly not. My godmother and I keep talking about how desperate we are to see some green and growing things. If you peek, very quietly- the daffodils and crocus are almost blooming. It is coming.

I’m writing on Friday of the week called Clean Week, as it is called in the Orthodox Church. It is the first week of Lent, and it follows after the service called Forgiveness Vespers, which was this past Sunday. So of course, my social media algorithm showed me either 1) the mass exodus of my fellow Christians announcing that they are off social media for Lent (a fairly common practice these days) or 2) beautiful aesthetic shots and videos of all the things Orthodox women were doing to ‘keep’ Clean Monday. It’s a somewhat common practice, especially for ethnic Orthodox, to scrub the whole house from top to bottom and really clean everything out in the kitchen, because you’ve hopefully eaten to the bottom of your pantries and gotten rid of all of the oil, meat, and dairy from the past year. It’s just kind of a convenient time to do it, and I do think there is a sense of historical hold over from the Jewish practice in preparation for Passover as well.

However.

My Monday- there was no way I could clean anything or really do anything at all. I was having quite a flare from a temperature inversion that gave me a horrific migraine. I’ve learned how to manage my disease somewhat well over the last year, but like anyone with a chronic illness, you are sometimes at the mercy of environmental factors entirely out of your control. Did I ‘heart’ and ‘like’ every single post of both my 1) and 2) friends while I was slumped miserably in bed? Of course. Did I also grant myself grace to entirely ignore both posts and their subtle messaging for my own wellbeing and spiritual health? Also yes.

All I could think of was young pregnant and postpartum moms being online on Clean Monday and seeing this whole swirl of visual commentary on how to behave properly on Clean Monday and how that would have made me feel as a young mom. I would- I was- very overwhelmed and felt very incapable of accomplishing much of that, if any, and consequently felt like an utter failure.

I wasn’t.

I didn’t really understand that at the time. Heck, I’m not even sure I really understood that four or five years ago after my whole world turned upside down with my own diagnosis and then my husband’s on top of it. We had been intensely active in the life of our Church. We made it a practice to get to as many services as possible, to keep the fast as much as we were able (we already had some pretty difficult food restrictions to contend with at the time because of my two youngest and their dietary needs)- we really did as much as we could.

And then suddenly we couldn’t.

And we still can’t.

I mean- even in a practical sense- and mind, the Fast is so much more than practical everyday realities like food- it’s more spiritual and food just happens to be a component….post-diagnosis, my brain fog and exhaustion was so intense and so bad that I pretty much lost my grip on everything ‘mental load’-ish. How I planned my meals, the rhythm I kept my house by, (laundry on this day, water the plants on this day, etc.)- even basic things like my children’s birthdays- it was completely, utterly, gone. I couldn’t access it at all. It was so intensely frustrating to me because I had worked hard for years to find the best rhythm for our family and needs, but I never had taken the time to write it down. It was all in my head- I just sort of intuitively moved from day to day and each day’s tasks without having a to-do list. Until I couldn’t reach for that mental picture at all.

Meal planning and food preparation suddenly became to me as strange and bizarre as trying to speak and write Russian. It was unrecognizable. I knew I was supposed to get from point A to point B but I had completely lost the map! I couldn’t make it work, at all. We were suddenly running out of all sorts of things- milk, toilet paper, all the essentials, because my brain couldn’t make sense of it. And my energy was so depleted that even thinking about any of it, or trying to make a meal- was impossible. It was a fast path to exhausted tears. (God bless the people who brought meals to us during that time. I can’t even express how absolutely necessary it was, and how much of a blessing it was.) I finally got so desperate that I told my godmother that it was just, gone. Could she help me figure out how to ‘do’ it again? It was so humbling. I knew I knew how to do it, but the path in my brain was completely blocked by fog. I remember the afternoon she came over, over tea, and shared her own system. I am not joking when I say it felt like she was speaking Russian to me for a fair bit of that conversation. I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying at all, and that got even more frustrating to me. She was so lovingly persistent though, and left behind all of her own written down rhythms that she had been using over the years, and slowly, my husband and I could both sort of follow her map back out of the fog over the following weeks and months.

That was awhile ago now and my whole home keeping rhythm has returned to what I could consider ‘normal’- and probably improved, as well, because the chaff kind of got burned away perforce. I can fairly handle everything related to my home, my children, their schooling (we homeschool- I only have two students now, compared to the four I had at the time of my diagnosis), and the extensive back and forth with the medical establishment from appointments to insurance paperwork and everything in between. That is even though we regularly experience a complete upending of everything ‘normal’ on a fairly regular basis because someone is, for example, suddenly hospitalized. Or we get hit by an illness that a normal family would get over in a few days, but due to our many challenges lasts us weeks and usually requires high-level at-home care.

To everything there is a season, is what I’m saying.

I love all my beautiful friends and all their lovely ways of celebrating and highlighting and entering into Lent.

I also wholly accept that my Fast looks very, very different now, and that’s ok. I am not a failure. I am not failing.

I am fasting. I will make mistakes because I am human. So will you, my dear friend.

May I extend to you a deep, deep breath of peace as we enter into this season? It will be okay. I promise. Pascha will come, and it will be beautiful and life-changing. I can tell you this because I have walked this. Let me extend the map to you if you are feeling lost in the fog, as my godmother did for me.

All my grand creative plans for February went right out of the window. Are we surprised? No, we aren’t. The medical testing revealed more issues, and a whole host of medicines were added, and we have even less of an idea what the path forward is for our kiddo. He’s not doing too well, and things are steadily becoming more and more emergent without really responding to care. I don’t know what that means for our (and his future), and my heart is feeling tender while I contemplate it. You all will keep right on praying, right?

I did- I did! Keep up my short and sweet (and highly constrained) square in the journal project. I did allow myself to expand out into my favorite colored pencils and palette, instead of being restricted to that limited 24 pencil set from one brand. I also sort of let my hand wander where it would; they aren’t all character studies or people. I went with what ever brought joy that day. The guy from the beginning of my letter was modeled off of a sculpture, and I really like how he turned out. Here they are below. I’d love to hear what your favorites are or what caught your eye. I haven’t been sharing these to social media, just here, and it’s been a nice change. I kind of miss hearing what people like about them though- it helps me to learn and refine. So do tell!