Katie Curtis

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

19 February, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Katie

A few years ago, I sat on the bleachers at my son’s baseball game on a warm spring day. I had one of my 9 month-old twins in tow and as we sat down, I recognized a friend from church. We both mothered many, and had always just had a bond that looked like waving enthusiastically at Mass and chatting afterwards for a few minutes until our kids’ patience expired.

So it was lovely to have many long innings before us to talk, and to play and feed cheerios to a happy baby between us. As we chatted the conversation turned to difficult stages of our kids, and then suddenly, the difficult pain of having emotionally unavailable mothers. In an instant, we were into a deep tête-à-tête, sharing wounds and nodding in understanding. Neither of us were stuck in a victim stage, both of us were accepting that our mothers were wounded themselves. But in comparing notes, we gained understanding about the impact it had on our lives, especially our roles as mothers, and found healing in sharing our stories, and the peace that comes from knowing you are not alone.

The season of Lent has just begun, and it’s helpful to remember that any progress in the spiritual life has to take an inventory of where we are at. We need to know our Point A to get to Point B. But I think the tricky thing with a mother wound, or any major needs that we had in a relationship that didn’t get met, is that the stories we tell ourselves might be so subtle, so woven into our views about ourselves and the other people in our lives, that it can be hard to really see them at work, halting our progress and sabotaging us. We might not yet know that there is both the original trauma, and also the ways it compounds because of what we let the story become, the things we let it mean, the ways we let it define us.

The easiest way to spot them is to look for the flare ups. Look for the friction in our relationships. Our wounds have a way of surfacing when they get poked, so if we want to find the wounds we just need to see when they are playing defense. When we are angry, disappointed, persecuted, outraged, and frustrated.

I thought my mother wounds were all dealt with, and I had detached with love, and met my needs by mothering myself and looking to Mary for maternal guidance. But grief and healing is an ongoing process, it’s not linear. I had gone through many rounds of healing, but this Lent it is abundantly clear that I need to dive deep once again and find further healing.

What I learned from my friend that day on the bleachers was that there are other people out there with the same wounds. I am not alone. And we all have the power and the potential to heal. So this blog post is for anyone who has a trauma, maybe it’s a father wound, maybe it is abuse of another kind, to tell you that you are not alone, and you can heal. Lent is a great time to do this, because healing our wounds frees up more room in our heart to love God and others. It also feels incredibly freeing and life affirming. In loving our selves well we can love others well too. How do we do this? By diving deep into stories that are true and healing, and expose the ones we tell ourselves that are lies and damaging.

For me this has always come through books. It can be tricky to be a Catholic in the self-help world. Religion can be misused to manipulate and guilt people, because it has all the hallmarks of tribal thinking for unhealthy people. Not surprisingly, there can be a lot of rejection of religion and in turn replacing it with New Age practices or rugged individualism. It is understandable given the abuses that have happened in it’s name, but despite the evil or mental illness that lies underneath such abuse, truth and love are not only the essence of God, they are the essence of healing. God’s desire to heal us is the central message of his life, of the Gospels. My faith has helped me heal so much, and I have grown the most through the truths of the Catholic Church and its sacraments and tools like the Rosary, all of which point to turning deeply to prayer. The more I ask Him for healing the more I have found it.

Very often the healing that is the answers to those prayers have come from self-help books. The ones about healing a narcisstic mother wound helped me start my journey. I just listened to Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters and have come away with a much lighter heart after doing the exercises. And Brene Brown offers tremendous insight from anyone needing to heal from shame and feelings of worthlessness (spoiler alert: it is everyone) so any of her books are helpful. And most recently I have been diving into The Mindful Catholic by Dr. Gregory Bottaro which brilliantly marries the worlds of psychology and faith and is so dense with insights I will be working through it for a long time. Highly recommend.

This exercise from Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters has been eye opening for me so I will leave it here for you. It is finding the starting point – moments where we are hurting or agitated – and it follows that thread down to the stories we tell ourselves about it. Of course the wounds in us started with someone else’s woundedness, and they don’t need to be minimized, but the ongoing damage was unknowingly perpetuated by our subconscious mind repeating the untrue stories we told ourselves after being hurt. They weren’t there for me, so I must be someone who wasn’t worth it. Though this is geared towards healing from our mothers, I really think this excercise can be used to uncover wounds from anyone in our life.

I did this with two examples in my life, and the roots of shame, pain, and worthlessness revealed themselves in such a shocking way. I thought I was strong and confident, but the lingering brokenness from the stories I told myself was so clear and were totally at work in my life. It was amazing to see it and to let. them. go.

Pick one example of a memory or interaction that causes you pain.

1.Write down as many uncensored details about this event – what she should have done, how your life would have been different if it hadn’t happened, etc…

2. Pare it down to the bare facts with no judgment i.e., My mother said ___.

3. Ask yourself what you made it mean about you. Write it down.

4. When you think about what you wrote in step 3 how do you feel?

5. List the things you do or don’t do when you feel that way.

6. Describe what your life looks like as a result.

7. Sum up your story as briefly as you can.

My mother (or friend, husband, sister, co-worker, boss) said:

I made it mean that I am:

There is a part of me that feels: () because ()

And when I think about that I feel:

And when I feel that way I:

As a result I:

The author writes that it is very important to forgive yourself for the things you told yourself about yourself that aren’t really true. In fact, she maintains that when you find this lie, this ugly untrue story, tell yourself the OPPOSITE story. She uses an example from Martha Beck’s book Diana, Awakening which is an allegory where Diana has experienced the most woundedness any of us could imagine. She is abandoned in a dumpster by her mother at birth and adopted by abusing parents. Understandably, she tells her self the story that she is garbage, unwanted, unworthy of love. But her guide tells her to tell herself the opposite story.

That in reality, She was infinitely worthy and beautiful and strong, and the people in her life were not capable of handling this or seeing this. They made the mistake of abandoning her, of devaluing her, but in the end she left them, because she knew she was capable of building a beautiful life full of joy and goodness.

It is so powerful to flip these scripts, and to consciously see the stories we tell ourselves. I hope this helps someone to find a starting path to healing if they need it. I am so grateful for mine, and look forward to where it will take me. It isn’t easy to share our hard stories, but when we do we will find we are not alone. And we find that if we are willing to work through the mess, to go through the Good Friday of our wounds, we find the beauty of the Resurrection.

Away, Away

11 January, 2021/2 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Katie

The day after Christmas we went away for two weeks to the Bahamas.

Our neighbors have a house and a boat there, and our families always have fun together – the dads love to fish, the moms love to laugh, the kids love to play Among Us. Plus, 80% of both of our families have ADHD and the requisite understanding that brings makes us good travel partners. They have been asking us to go for years, but the twins always made it seem impossible.

But one day in early November, we got an email from the schools that they would all be remote until January 18^th, and they texted they were going to their island and did we want to come? We talked it over at dinner and decided let’s go!, a declaration that even now, nearly two months later, I can remember like a giant exhale. When would we ever have this chance again?

We carefully thought through our decision. All of my doctor friends thought going to a house on an island with very few cases wasn’t crazy, though one suggested we Med-flight home if anyone became sick, so we got insurance. (May we all be delivered from the desire to judge people who are taking the pandemic less seriously and more seriously than we are.)

As most families with young children will tell you, life during a pandemic isn’t that different than normal life. Going anywhere with two babies is hard. During the past three years we rarely ate out or took the kids to a store. We chose activities carefully, knowing that being in our own space was the easiest place to be between napping and baby proofing.

Having our own house on a remote island with our neighbors nearby seemed low risk and doable. It was, as you would expect, both hard and magical.

The list of things that made the Bahamas hard includes: sand fleas, sensory issues that can’t tolerate small amounts of sand and water (it has to be all or nothing), a few children routinely waking up before 6am, a flat tire for three days, the food stores being closed for three days, lots of power outages, and restaurants. To be fair that last one is hard at home too.

But the list of things that is magical in the Bahamas includes the sunrises, which I wouldn’t see without those earlier risers, the sunsets, the fun in the water and the sand (once we are fully immersed), the snuggles, the little tan toddler legs running through the house, their sheer delight at creature comforts like cold apple juice or pizza or fresh jammies after a bath. A spotty Wifi is both as hard and wonderful as you can imagine. There was bonding with teens and toddlers who couldn’t understand why their show kept stopping.

The highlight for everyone was our friend’s boat, where the guys went deep sea fishing and caught massive fish. We went scuba diving in aqua blue water and sat on the deck drinking rum punch and watching flying fish. The memories made here were so worth the travel to get there.

The Bahamas is like a massage for all your senses. The bright pink bougainvillea draped around the yard, the birds’ melodic notes floating through air that is the perfect temperature all the time. Seriously, they don’t even have windows just slits on the doors that let the ocean breeze drift gently in all the time. The air makes you dreams extra vivid. The turquoise water and pink sand, the sea dotted with the gentle white-capped roll of waves, the ink-black night with the electric white glow of the full moon and the stars. The courtyard lined with conch shells like glossy pink and white kisses greeting you.

But the real fire-works show, the real magic, is the people. Their houses line the streets in every shade of sherbet, mirroring their bright and colorful spirit. They showered our kids with affection and good cheer at every turn. The gas station owner – a grandfather to twenty-five – blew kisses to the twins and said “love you!” as we pulled away. The gentlemen selling melon and tomatoes at the market who adopted the twins the second they got out of the car, with high-fives, affectionate banter, and a gentle tsk-tsking when they ran away from me – you have to stay by your momma! – and even helped me to get them back into the car. The guitar player on New Year’s Eve brought Ronan right up to have a turn strumming.

Our friends have a couple that help them care for their house and they showed up on New Year’s with a turkey dinner, conch fritters, and a salad still warm from their garden. Spending time with them has been the best reminder of what matters most back at home. Their lives are built around their beautiful churches overlooking the ocean, their families, gardens, and kitchens tables. On Sundays everyone is together, dancing to a boom box or a guitar, and everyone waves at you when you drive by.

The air made you crave well-being and I got to move and breath and soak up vitamin D. We all went to sleep at 9, since there is no Wifi then, and had the sleep of angels. If I need a reminder to not stay up late watching TV when I get home, I will remember these two weeks. We ate a ton of fresh caught fish, and local produce sold from the back of cars.

We had a long day of travel home, involving the smallest airplane I’d ever seen, and a three year old who had decided he was very over traveling halfway through the day. We were ridiculously tired but as we turned onto our familiar street, I felt so grateful. Walking through our door, our house felt so comfortable – our sink, the cat, the creak on the stairs. Everyone was sighing with happiness as they slid pizza slices out of a box from our favorite place. It almost makes you think that maybe the best thing about going away is remembering how great it is to be home.

A New Chapter

15 October, 2020/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Katie

The twins turn 3 this week and I can hardly believe it. They were little tiny explorers, all gums and chubby cheeks a second ago, weren’t they?

They just started preschool, where an amazing army of trained educators will help them grow and I am so excited for them. And for me. Because I get to write again.

I love being a mother, and creating memories for my family in the daily rhythms of life. It is a lot of work, and the wisest women I know all have found creative outlets that fill up their well so that can turn around and give to their families. This was such a hard aspect of the pandemic: so many ways to fill our wells and our kids wells were cut off. We couldn’t go to the gym, have playdates and mom get togethers, and just go to a coffee shop to be alone and work.

But some opportunities did show up. People started making slow intentional meals, reading, baking or doing more art. Time spent in nature seemed to be the universal cure for everyone. And the time spent with our kids was unhurried, slower paced, and definitely more fulfilling then the mad dash of regular life.

So it sounds strange that I actually started to have time to write when the pandemic hit. My older kids were independent for school, the faces and voices of their friends ever present on screens, but my first grader Andrew needed my help. While I didn’t set the curriculum, or send the roughly 342 emails I got each day from the school, I did set the rhythm of our days and learning, and it wasn’t all wailing and gnashing of teeth. My son was just a delight to work with and also takes ADHD medication which are quite possibly correlated facts, so in some ways it’s not fair to compare my experience to others, helped as we were by pharmaceuticals. Then again, not everyone had to do remote learning with two year old twin boys. When we weren’t keeping the crayons on lock down (though they still found them and covered approximately 30% of our furniture in crayon) we got to go where the spirit led us each day, researching outer space and ocean depths and the life of a bald eagle. He was so sweet to work with, smiling and happy and eager to learn. When writing prompts got boring, we switched to writing books on subjects he chose, which was so fun for both of us. I think it was day two of remote learning when his teacher talked about plot arc and I was like “that’s it, I have got to write this novel in my head down.” When the twins went down for a nap, everyone got free time and I could write.

My writing pace was strong from March until August, when summer vacation and time at the lake beckoned, and I took time to read other things and think about the book from afar. Surely when school started I would resume my writing pace.

But September showed me why it has been so hard to write with twins before the pandemic. There was no one else to entertain them, I was the only show in town, and so our mornings were spent on long walks or running errands or playing in the back yard. The second they are down for a nap, which during quarantine was my time to write, my older kids get off the bus, with their funny stories and pressing needs. Very little writing can happen during the post school window.

A lot of people ask me how I wrote my last novel with four kids. The answer is preschool. And now we are back in those days, and my itching fingers and mind are breathing a sigh of relief. There is something about the rhythms of drop off, coming back to a quiet house, the same cozy cardigan, and a cup of tea that lets me write my heart out. A run or a walk, a shower, and at pick up time I am a new girl, with my well all filled up, and with 1,000-3,000 new words on the page.

And (fingers crossed, an up-tick in a certain virus notwithstanding) I get to begin this rhythm this week. Today was an epic writing day and I spent 40 minutes outside running. It feels like it has been years since I had this kind of morning because, oh wait, it has been.

I think every mom figures out soon enough that they need a creative outlet. I usually appease this need with food blogging, which is creative and beautiful and has the added bonus of checking dinner off my list, and makes for the ultimate mom multi-tasking creative gig. But I feel called to write, and though it was abundantly clear that I didn’t have time in certain seasons, now that our seasons have changed it is such a joy to embark on this new chapter. (Of course, we might go back to remote learning and it could change! Again! But holding on to the fact that I’ll still have nap time.)

Like so many other mothers, my goal is to create a beautiful life for my family. There are many seasons where that looks like sacrifice of our wants and desires, and too often our modern world disdains this part of a mother’s job. But they are just seasons, and those seasons are always planting seeds for the future, and bear the most beautiful fruit. Then the harvest comes – kids go off to preschool or middle school or college. And we can tend to other beautiful things like stories or art or businesses. We can be called in so many different ways, and usually God talks to us in our needs or the needs of our families. It’s good to listen and pay attention to what is right in front of us, to hear what he is trying to say. If we do, we will always find purpose and joy, whether we are changing diapers or structuring plots or setting up an Etsy shop.

For now, I’m rejoicing in how far we’ve come, and for these new chapters we get to write. I’m excited for my boys to grow, and for the rest of us to grow too.

A Rising Tide

30 June, 2020/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Katie

Like the rest of the world, most of my goals took a beating this year.

But ever since school ended and the glorious freedom of summer has enveloped us – complete with pools of golden light in the mornings and walks around our neighborhood bursting with summer flowers and lush greens – I have felt a shift in my mind and my heart. It is bolstered by lake days with my people and beach days with strangers who I can finally, blessedly be around. It is also from a conviction that we can’t do anything to help the world if our own lives, if our own houses are not in order. We need strong hearts, strong minds, and strong bodies.

There is a powerful grace at work in the world, despite the pain and problems and discord. I saw it on FULL display at the Lux Summit last weekend with Leah Darrow and her amazing speakers. It radiates from Kristin’s ministry over at One Hail Mary at a Time. It can be seen in the work that Carrie Gress and Noelle Mering are doing at Theology of Home (their second book is coming out soon!) And it is definitely on overtime in Lisa Canning’s work. Her talk at the Lux summit was the most refreshing thing I had heard in a while, and I skip-hopped over to her Future Full of Hope seminar.

Man, is this girl on FIRE with setting goals and promoting positivity. All these ladies are, and their ministries all started with a dream God placed on their hearts. He works through our dreams and goals.

I normally set goals, and the power of small daily investments toward goals was my jam while I wrote my first novel. But recently between the twins and COVID and life with teens through toddlers I started to slowly put goals at arms reach. I stayed in survival mode and started to think there wasn’t anything extra that I could give – time, energy, focus – because I was so tapped. I started to slowly put myself last because I didn’t have that inner purpose that goals give you. Everyone else’s needs started to creep in to every crevice of time I had. I was like a boat at sea who lost the horizon line. Somehow, when this happens, doubt and fear and other people’s opinions creep in too.

I think this happens to a lot of us a lot of the time. We’re human and motherhood is hard. But it’s so important to catch when this has taken hold and turn it around.

A few weeks into the quarantine, I could feel myself losing my bearings, and I made the rather spontaneous decision to pick up the novel I was 10,000 words into and go at it with momentum. Every naptime, like a meditation, I escaped into a suspenseful world and by the time the twins woke up, my well was refilled.

This was great for the sliver of my life that is labeled ‘Career’ or ‘Meaningful Work’. But I lacked goals in the other areas of my life and they suffered. Working out, time with my husband, decluttering my house were all categories that were being put on the back burner. I walked everyday with the twins but I couldn’t find time to do a strength workout where I sweat, and I needed this. Running used to be this for me but my back doctor took an X-ray of my back and said I shouldn’t run any more, and I hadn’t found a replacement.

We’ve only had 1 class, but already all of the areas of my life have been given a jolt from the defibrillator paddles of her positivity. Lisa reminded me that the longings and dreams of our heart are gifts from God, and we should listen to them. When we do, waking up each day is exciting and fun and full of passion and purpose. Life feels like an adventure. And it tends to be contagious, which is huge for moms. When we are purposeful and passionate it rubs off on our kids.

I know this message is radiated elsewhere, but something about the way Lisa – who is a mom of eight and is very open about her families struggles especially with her husband’s depression and anxiety – says it that makes me listen and believe her. She showed us her goals and dreams that she has set that have come true, and the ones she is still working towards. They are all amazing. Since I sat down and started dreaming about what goals I have in my life, my attitude has totally changed. I’m not in survival mode. I’m looking forward to so many things and somehow far from taking the last bits of energy I have, working towards goals has given me more energy. In the last week I have:

Become fierce about protecting my work outs. I signed up for Beachbody and I’ve done Barre Blend every day. I forgot how awesome it is to be sore but strong and to move gracefully.

Went on a date night with my husband to a dreamy dinner and then sat at the beach and planned dreams for our future. I encouraged him in his dreams and it looks like we have a lot of travel in our future.

Created a vision board that is blowing my mind. What if these things came true?

Encouraged my kids in their goal setting and suddenly everyone is working out more and reading more.

Started the 54-day Rosary Novena. I usually read the daily readings and say the Rosary but I am already feeling the fruits of going deeper into my prayer life.

Maybe you need to be reminded just like I was that there is something special about flipping that switch and living intentionally as opposed to just surviving. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Books To Read While Writing

29 May, 2020/2 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Katie

When we first started out with this business of staying home/quarentining/living through a pandemic, I was talking with a friend who took her middle school son shopping. When he asked what toilet paper should he grab, she replied ‘any port in a storm.’

I still laugh at this image of them panic shopping, and this line has come to mean a lot to me in the past few months. We are all seeking out the things that comfort us, that bring us joy, or peace, or even just a dopamine hit (hello chocolate chip cookies). The people who walk with us, the Zoom calls with college friends, the routine of dinner. Like many people, books have become my biggest port in the storm. And the escape and joys and struggles of getting lost in writing my next novel has been my oasis.

It turns out a silver lining of taking our family schedule and just throwing it in the air is what happens between 2-4. Previously, my day looking like feeding and putting down twins around 1-1:30 for naps and then having my older four charge home from the bus at 2. Then there was welcoming, feeding, and taking in the requests of four busy kids before I made dinner and drove them to activites.

Now, by 2 everyone needs their own space.

What this has come to mean is I have time to write. Like clockwork I get a cup of tea, my favorite writing sweater, and these two cues put my mind in complete writing mode. And I write for 1.5-2 glorious hours, and I remember how the mornings I wrote my first novel were some of the happiest times I ever had. It is so fulfilling to sit down and not know what my mind will come up with, to be surprised everyday, to watch my word count grow and to have the next 5000 words already mapped out in my head. And the clearest sign that I should be doing it is how happy I am when the twins wake up, and I can’t wait to pick up where I left off tomorrow.

I started this book a while ago, and got busy with the twins around 10,000 words. Since quarantine started I’ve picked up momentum and am *almost* at 40,000 which is roughly half a novel. This is all first draft, and I look forward to the molding and shaping that take place in subsequent drafts. This draft just tells me it has the bones to become good, so its a track to run on.

I lot of people told me that they always wanted to write a novel and so I thought I would share the books that are really helping me. I read some of these when I wrote my first and I am returning to them constantly. Some are new ones I am reading/listening to along side writing.

Story Engineering – This book was so useful to organize my plot and feel confident about how to mold the story. He inspires you when you read it to try to push yourself and your writing powers to be the best they can be.

Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves – This is by the same writer, and I just picked it up. He makes you test your plot against criteria, and helps you elevate it in major ways. This is what I’ll be doing for the bulk of this summer. It is one of the reasons why I know my book has the bones to become good – I tested it against his criteria. Getting to the final good draft is another story and a long road but I can’t wait.

Word Painting –

I basically want to sit down and write whenever I read this book. It hones your powers of observation so that when you’re living your life, you notice more things, such as how clouds sometimes look like lily pads, and when you are writing you try hard to name the thing you are writing about correctly, such as the name of a flock of birds you are describing. It captures the really fun part of writing, and in many ways I use it more on the second draft when I have time to really think through the scenes and how to make them sing. For example, one excercise is to take an object and try to describe in in 20 different ways. You think of new things when you really try hard to paint a picture of something for someone else.

In the Woods – Tana French

The novel I am working on is a suspense novel, so I am trying to read other ones to get a feel for plot unfolding, building tensions, and of course great plot twists. French just nails her POV, her tension, her characters. Lots of great examples in her writing. Bonus: the turned it into a show called the Dublin Murders if your book stack is already too high.

Your Blue Flame – Jen Fulwiler’s book is basically the exact explanation of why I write. I started my novel before quarantine, and picked it up again before I listened to her book on Audible, but listening to it as I do dishes and fold laundry is a string of me nodding my head. She has helped me see why I need to write. Everyone will be better off if I do. This book will help anyone find their path.

The Bookshop on the Shore – Finding a new writer with a storytelling voice that sucks you in is an immediate way to be inspired to write. Bonus that this one deals with a love of books, as it centers around a bookshop and the people who work in it who have books like some people have best friends. A great reminder that reading is the healthiest escape, the best form of self care.

The Elements of Style: This book is probably the one I think about the most when I am reading over a scene or editing a nonfiction piece for freelance writing. It advocates removing every unnecessary word, and no piece isn’t improved by removing unneeded words since it always yields clarity. This will help a writer by leaps and bounds.

The Grief & Gifts of a Pandemic

28 April, 2020/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Katie

^My kids on one of our many, many family walks

For many people, this pandemic is loud and fast and devastating. They are working hard to save lives, or they are losing husbands or mothers overnight and facing the pain of their dying alone. Parents are being asked to do three jobs in the time it takes to do one, and financial catastrophe is deepening the worry lines of millions.

For most of us, the strain of being quarantined are taking its toll in quieter, but still grievous, ways. Having our lives put on hold, separated from friends and loved ones, with major milestones cancelled, the pandemic feels slow and empty and as monotonous as a hamster wheel. Businesses are closing. One of the magazines I wrote for regularly folded. Children in homes with abuse or neglect might be the biggest victims of this time, with wounds suffered in silence that can last a lifetime.

For Catholics, it seems that we are more equipped to deal with the suffering that goes along with this pandemic. We know how to be patient, to sacrifice, and to will the good of the other, whether it is a bored toddler or an elderly neighbor down the street. But on the other hand, we are all discovering the new longing of living without the presence of the Eucharist. To our modern minds this is unfathomable, though the lives of the saints are filled with examples of the Eucharist being less available due to traveling priests, sickness, or war. We are awakened to our hunger for it, and perhaps realizing how much it means to us, to not take for granted gathering at Mass or receiving the sacraments, will be a gift that keeps on giving long after the Church doors have reopened.

In between the hard moments and bored moments and moments where we’re actually ok, when we’re reflecting on everything that has happened in the last few months, or scouring the corners of our day to find what brings us joy, there is a unique opportunity. These are new experiences, and they give rise to new insights. They let us see what good things our lives have had all along, and what disordered things are there that don’t belong. With the smoke of everyday business cleared we can ask, what are my deepest longings? What do I value most? The chance to shed so much of the dead weight we all carried around is a gift unlike any other we’ve received.

In a recent Washington Post article and subsequent NPR interview about it, the writer Sarah Menedick shared how for those who suffer from anxiety, a pandemic actually helps to lessen theirs. All of a sudden, she says, “it was like my priorities shifted. And it was, well, thank God that I’m healthy. And thank God I’m here with my family. And who cares about sunscreen, you know?”

She adds, “I think a lot of anxiety is about not being able to accept any uncertainty at all and having to sort of try and control everything all the time. And I think in a situation of real fear, like the one that we’re living in now, where, you know, we know people who have passed away from this illness, all of a sudden, my anxiety just seems like it doesn’t matter, you know? Like, it’s completely futile.”

The gift this pandemic has given us is a new way to look at our life, to go back to the drawing board with more perspective. To look at what was working and what wasn’t, and to value what life is made up of: time. We have loads more of it for some things, like our family, slow living, cooking, playing with our kids, chatting with our friends. And so much less of it for striving, getting ahead, competing, defining our ego by doing things.

It seems in some ways that Americans are being forced to try out the European way of life. We’ve had to give up some of the hallmarks of our culture – working overtime, traffic, mega-prioritization of sports, overly scheduled days, meals on the run – and trade them for a way of life that offers leisurely cooking a meal, family time, plenty of sleep, creativity, having a drink with friends even if it is with six feet or a screen between us. For some of us this experiment is a welcome change, and slower living suits us. My friends who take walks together keep whispering, how will we ever go back? For my New Englander hard working husband, going back can’t come soon enough.

For myself, the slowdown of my kids’ activities has allowed me to commit every nap time to writing. Pushing through a second novel is reminding me that some of my best, happiest days were quietly writing my first. This is my biggest gift of this time: I need to write. It is my best version of self care and I am better for it. And more than ever, the value of artistic escape can be seen with every movie, show podcast and novel we lose ourselves in. If we needed an argument for the value of art, this pandemic is a good one.

Now that quarantine has become a new way of life and not just a temporary phase, we have weird schedules and a new way of carrying out our responsibilities. Old pockets of time we had to ourselves – commutes and work outs and quiet houses – are gone. Introverts and extraverts are both finding challenges and new ways to meet their needs and hopefully offering grace to each other in our differences. While I know my kids are missing their friends so much, the complete pause on all external stimuli mean they are being forced to find simple ways to be happy, to look out at the mid space as Anna Quindlin says, and see what makes them tick. My hope is that this discovery lasts long after we’ve returned to normal. Still, their spirits are definitely constrained now that we have entered the long haul, and I can’t wait for them to reconnect with the smiling faces that used to pepper their days.

It’s frustrating how much of the grief we’ve experienced is augmented by the media. They didn’t cause the virus, but the helped cause the pandemic. They intentionally tell stories to cause fear, alarm, panic, because those emotions make people pay attention, and I am growing weary of these intentions. Two side by side headlines this morning revealed the schizophrenia: one had the POV of a coroner, seeing people carelessly going for hamburgers and haircuts as his next body in a bag, and the next headline held that lower income populations might starve if we don’t open up the economy. Both meant to stoke fear. Free press is important, but we have a press that everyone I know actively tries to steer clear of, and I wonder when they will realize that peddling fear is a pyrrhic victory.

There is a good chance that we return to our normal way of life and the old habits will resume – overtime, traffic, stress. Some might return to their old anxiety. But there is still the hope that we might try to stay connected to what we learned when life slowed down for a minute. When we finally had more time with our family, get to know our kids, and pursue passions and health. And we will remember what we did with our time: learning, creating art, planting a garden, trying to connect, trying to stay strong, trying to love. Despite the fear, we’re made in his image, and this pandemic is a still life portrait of what it means to be human. His goodness hasn’t changed, even if everything else has.

March Madness

14 March, 2020/0 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Katie

Greetings from the land of quiet, of snow, of a beautiful frozen lake and toddlers that are eating Lucky Charms as we speak.

We left the craziness of our home town in Portsmouth, NH and went north to our house in Maine, with gratitude for a Target that still has toilet paper and a conscious decision to stop reading the news. We are no stranger to illness – the twin’s hand, foot and mouth disease has already had me quarantined for the last week and a half, and kept Ronan and me home from the ski mountain today.

Being here has given me some space to breathe, to look back at the events of the past week, and get out from under the cloud of anxiety hovering everywhere. I can point to when the panic spiked in and around me – Thursday morning, where in the span of one Pilates video a text chain of my friends went from should we be stocking up? to my sister has no toilet paper in Michigan. When I checked out at Target approximately 90 minutes later I looked like a crazy person with the volume of stuff on the conveyer belt. When I let everyone behind me know I have six kids, they just nodded, and one of them said, “I think you might need more wine.” As I unloaded everything from the car, I noticed that I felt the way I did on 9/11. Aware that bad things might happen, but totally unsure about when and what degree. Worrying for the elderly, the homeless, single working mothers were all mixed in with do we have enough diapers and wipes?

I noticed the unease in my belly as I drove up here and had some time to examine it. Perhaps you do too? Mine was fueled by the very little windows I had to shop while the twins napped, the news, and the heavy sighs from the Rite Aid clerk as I piled Tylenol, disinfectant spray, more wine (took their advice) and Scrabble on the counter. How to pass the time with kids home from school? We have one answer now. But the fear that drove me to grab it is unsettling.

I confess my food hoarding tendencies are in full effect, even though I rationally know we’ll be fine.

It is curious watching myself sooth my anxieties. On Tuesday I read that New Jersey ran out of hand sanitizer and in the next minute I bought eight bottles on Amazon. That seems crazy until you consider that there are none on Amazon now and I’ve handed them out to my elderly mother and neighbors. I texted my husband to buy two gallons of milk even though I brought two gallons for the weekend. When he looked at my quizzically I said, just in case our grocery delivery doesn’t really come on Monday. He just nodded. We are caught in a moment where the thing that breeds fear the most – uncertainty for the future – is everywhere and it is so easy to be swept up in that tide and become part of it.

Here’s the thing: it’s ok to feel uncertain and do weird things that make you feel better and have no rational explanation. We’re human. We don’t need to shame people for being afraid. But then take a moment to breathe and take a walk and pray. Process. Driving up here I called my sister and best friend and cried laughing at how crazy it all is, and felt immediately restored to myself. Ditto whenever I take a walk, hang out with friends, and pray. I’m paying attention to my body, and where it’s holding fear. And to my thoughts, and the ones that lead to panic I’m trying to lay down, while the ones that restore me to my better self I’ll seek out in the coming weeks. Community, prayer, nature, books. The good things are all still right there. The good news is too: we are loved, God is in his heaven, and this too shall pass.

There is a part of me that is hopeful that slowing down and families being together is actually what everyone really needs. It is a tragedy that it is taking people getting sick and dying to do it. But maybe when the tide of fear goes out, we’ll come out of this time surprisingly whole, and find treasures of community and caring and family memories left over, like seashells in the sand.

In the meantime, this scripture was the reading from early this week, and is pretty perfectly suited to these events. Thank you for reading this little corner of the internet, dear friends! I hope you all stay well. xo Katie

JER 17:5-10

Thus says the LORD:
Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings,
who seeks his strength in flesh,
whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He is like a barren bush in the desert
that enjoys no change of season,
But stands in a lava waste,
a salt and empty earth.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose hope is the LORD.
He is like a tree planted beside the waters
that stretches out its roots to the stream:
It fears not the heat when it comes,
its leaves stay green;
In the year of drought it shows no distress,
but still bears fruit.
More tortuous than all else is the human heart,
beyond remedy; who can understand it?
I, the LORD, alone probe the mind
and test the heart,
To reward everyone according to his ways,
according to the merit of his deeds.

Media & Motherhood

31 January, 2020/2 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting/by Katie

Maybe because it’s winter and I’ve been watching too much TV, maybe because Michelle Williams shouted about how she needed to kill her baby to win her last award, or maybe because trying to watch a show with my 12-year-old daughter has ads for every kind of female empowerment message EXCEPT being a mother, I am just over what the TV has to tell me about motherhood.

It’s not a new problem. On the first Monday morning after I dropped out of my PhD program in Philosophy to stay home with my then six-month-old oldest son, I was jumping into the shower as the women on the morning news talk program was spouting her book, The Feminine Mistake, and said that the worst thing a woman could do was to stay home with her children and stop being able to earn an income. Because men leave, they die, they get fired, she said.

Sure they do. And women have this working apparatus in their head that is capable of overcoming fear, problem solving, and has an uncanny capacity for knowing exactly what her family needs the most at that moment. I already knew why I was making the decision to stay home: our family would have no family time if I continued. But for someone who wasn’t sure of their decision, her fear mongering tactics equated staying home with your kids as being one step away from the homeless shelter.

The cultural waters we swim in talk about all the things a girl can be except a mother. If someone already made the choice to be a mother then there are two avenues to talk about it. Either a) complain about how unfair it is that women have to do all the work (re: every podcast calling for daycare like Denmark) or b) parade your kids as a lifestyle accessory (see every celebrity mother in People magazine).

But when they aren’t doing these things, the only discussion of motherhood is based on fear.

I’m just wondering when the narrative we are being sold is going to get old for everyone. When I think about the characters on Sex and the City, Girls, Fleabag, and the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel the outcomes for these characters are so…depressing. That scene in the hotel where the only other woman who traveled with the band told Mrs. Maisel how to have one-night stands with dirty men “if you really need it”, to carry a gun, and not to worry about your kids never seeing you for months a time because you can at least say you led an ‘interesting’ life? That one’s such a heartwarming tale. I have two year old twins trashing my house as we speak and I would rather have that then what poor Mrs. Maisel is facing. Or how about Fleabag when she looks down at her ex-boyfriend (literally the only human she wouldn’t have sex with was the white male she was in a relationship with) for having a child? The take away is she is SO much more superior than him, but in the span of 3 television hours she’ll feel the need to make out with a woman and have sex with a blind date and the next night right after the blind date came to her door after her bidding she has sex with a priest. #empowered

From magazines to movies to shows there is this maxim that if you own your circumstances, no matter how horrible they are, if they are ALL YOURS and you’re not beholden to anyone who might hold you back, then that is all that matters.

I can’t help but think that this is why motherhood is so hard for someone like Meghan Markle. Sure it’s a shift for every mother to realize just HOW much you have to give, but if you have been told to live for your own advancement, for pleasure, for power, for hustling to get ahead, then all that sacrifice and set back comes as a pretty big shock. We have been conditioned to enter into marriage and motherhood with this playbook: I’ll do this family thing because it’s what I want at this point in my life. I own my circumstances. Once they get into it, the reality that they have to be self-giving, self-sacrificing, pour themselves out for others, in order to make it all work is totally against their code. They want to change the system, change their husbands, control all the variables because the fact that the answer might be to love hard is too hard to bear.

Why aren’t we telling girls that women who love are beautiful, and giving our lives as a gift to others is the most powerful thing we can do with them? It might be hidden, yes. It might not give you a lot of social cache, or attention, or money, but it will give you a chance to get out of yourself and that is where meaning and true beauty are found.

This is a hard sell these days. I can’t help but think it’s because all the hustling and achieving are so loud and glittery, and mothers doing this noble work do it without cameras or applause or awards. They are quietly loving and cleaning and kissing booboos, only to crash into bed and then get up again and do it the next day. But what they are pouring into their families will last generations. What could they do that is even remotely as impactful as building a family? The last powerful example of this type of gift in the media that I can remember was in Charlotte’s Web, who called her babies her magnum opus.

Andrew loving on baby Michael

Why can’t we say to girls that being a mother is noble and beautiful and can be considered a magnum opus? And like any great work it’s filled with sacrifice.

Last night at a cycling class, one of the girls said that she was too afraid to become a mom because her child might be just like her and she was also afraid that it might also be just like her husband, which equally horrified her. We can laugh and be entertained by these jokes, these shows, but even the ideas we know are ridiculous (Carrie Bradshaw, I’m looking at your whole relationship with Big) are trickling down into the water and our girls are drinking it.

I don’t want my girls to be afraid to become a mom.

There is so much anxiety, fear, need to control things, worry, and insecurity in women today. Just read the message boards. When we step back and try to trust that we’re working with God in this motherhood gig, because it turns out he loves our kids too, it gets a lot easier. And more fun and beautiful. It doesn’t stop being hard but the hard gets woven into the beauty and makes it even more beautiful.

So that’s why even though I am in one of my hardest seasons of mothering yet with a new teenager and a double dose of two year olds, I want to shout from the rooftops about how I am still struck all day long by my love for these humans. I want them to feel deeply loved. And I want them to see me loving my husband well too.

That’s my gig. That’s what I signed up for. Loving and being loved sure beats the heck out of a closet of stilettos.

p.s. Does anyone else worry about Gloria Steinem being all alone when she dies? Does anyone know if she has life alert? Oh what joys she missed.

Remembering Maureen

30 December, 2019/2 Comments/in Writing/by Katie

It’s been a month since my sister Maureen died at the young age of 41.

She was 18 months younger than me, the seventh in our family of eight children so I can’t remember life without her. Even though we knew her death was coming it still feels like a shock. She had been hospitalized many times in the last few years for kidney infections, and she had been septic eight or nine times. It was clear over the past few years that her body was breaking down, but she so often rebounded and came home. She finally had an infection that antibiotics couldn’t beat, and she passed peacefully in her sleep on November 27.

I thought leading up to it that I knew something about grief. I lost my dad to an asthma attack/heart attack when I was 19 and my brother to MS/heart attack when I was 35. But each grief is as unique as the person you lost. So I have to learn again how to walk this road.

Part of what makes it hard this time around is that Maureen’s story is complex. She was one of five people in the world with a disease where her body didn’t respond to the hormone produced by the pseudohypoparathyroid gland, affecting her whole endocrine system. Doctors at Mass General said she was a subset case of Albright’s Syndrome.

When she was born it manifested in having short fingers and toes because her body had a hard time calcifying bones. Other than some extra hospital stays and doctor appointments, Maureen’s differences were hardly noticed in the bustle of our large family, and in the brightness of her big personality. She was fun and funny, happy, smart, and had a savant-like quality of remembering everything that anyone ever said to her, dates and addresses, and the family tree of everyone we knew. She was a lot like her Down syndrome friends in Special Olympics when it came to having an outgoing personality, sense of humor, and exuberant joy. She in so many ways prepared me to be Ronan’s mom, to be a mother to a child with Down syndrome.

Her differences were noticed by her grade school friends. Her metabolism was slow and she tended to carry extra weight, and other kids would make fun of it. We got her a Garfield t-shirt that said ‘I’m not fat, I’m totally awesome.’ She learned to repeat the line with enormous confidence. It paid off. When we were in high school, I would look across campus and seeing her bounding with joy across the lawn, stopping to talk to everyone, smiling always. “You’re Maureen’s sister?” people would ask me, always chasing the question with, “she is so awesome”. “She really is,” I would always reply.

She loved school, and when she graduated, we were worried. What could she do now that would make her feel valued, give her purpose, let her engage with others? She worked at a day care for a while until her ability to stand all day grew weaker, and then she attended a day program with other adults with special needs, who became her best friends, her other family.

When I saw how wonderful my husband was with Maureen, how he made her laugh and how much she loved him, I knew he was a keeper.

When I got engaged, she got sicker. Her bones in her spine were collapsing on her spinal cord. She writhed in pain the first Thanksgiving my husband spent at our house, and we were all so worried until she finally had spinal surgery at Mass General. She wore the brace she needed as she healed to my wedding shower. She was much better by the time of our wedding, and walked with a walker as a bridesmaid down the aisle.

When I started having a family, she started having hip and knee pain. While I had three children, she had three hip replacements. After our third was born, she was in a wheel chair because the last hip replacement didn’t work. Her knobby knees started to lock at hard angles, though her face was soft and round and rosy, and her love for her nieces and nephews abounded.

By the time our fourth child was born six years ago, Maureen was losing the ability to use her arms and hands, was bound to an electric wheel chair and required a hoyer lift to be moved, powered by my mother who took such wonderful care of her even through her own hip replacement, heart issues, and breast cancer. If Maureen was tough, she was modeling what she knew from our mother.

As much as we desired to bring her into our life, it was harder and harder for my mom to take her out, and she started to have spasms and stomach aches that made it hard for her to get out of bed. We needed to come to her. Looking back, we can see that as her body was breaking down on the outside it was breaking down on the inside too. Her kidneys kept backing up and getting infected, and she was hospitalized often with UTIs and kidney infections. Her colon kept getting backed up and distended because it just wasn’t working anymore. She would say a Memorae every time she was uncomfortable or in pain.

Through all this, Maureen rarely complained. It didn’t even occur to her to feel sorry for herself. In the end she required a lot of care from my mom to help her stay comfortable, to readjust her in bed, to help her sit up. But she was always happy to see us, and when my mom brought her to Thanksgiving or Easter she tried hard to be part of the festivities, even though she would probably rather have been in bed.

Maureen’s adult life is exactly what doctors have in mind when they say children with special needs might be a burden. They might suffer. But if you ask her and my mom, they didn’t see it that way at all. We were all so thankful for every day of her life.

Maureen’s faith was like a child, and in many ways, she helped all of us keep a childlike faith. She touched everyone she met. Not by preaching words, not by any achievements. Not by anything she did, but just by who she was, and loving others well. She exemplified 1 Corinthians 13:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Maureen’s life strengthened all of our faith. From a very young age, we had a constant counterpoint to our culture’s message that worth comes from success, advancement, achievement, beauty, wealth or power. She was one of the gang, cherished and loved for just being who she was. Her unique qualities: her belly laugh, her love of the silly, her razor-sharp wit, and her ability to navigate to a person’s heart, to what matters and always reveal so clearly what does not, made her one of the most inspiring people I will ever know. The really remarkable thing about her was that she was just always her essential self. She had none of the things that trip most of us up – ego, doubt, fear – just peace and love.

The thing that’s so hard about losing Maureen, even though I am so happy she is out of pain, and I know she is a saint, is that we’re going to miss her example. Her reminder to just be who God made you to be.

But as I hear Ronan on the monitor, waking up with giggles, I am so thankful God sent us another reminder. He knew we would need it.

The Twins Turn Two

11 October, 2019/2 Comments/in Parenting, Twins/by Katie

Our twins will be two on Sunday, and it hasn’t escaped me that their birthday falls in the middle of Down syndrome awareness month. They were also born on the 100th Anniversary of the last Fatima apparition, and given my Marian Consecration in February of that year, my husband likes to say they are ‘Mary’s babies’.

One of the strangest things about having twins and having one with Down syndrome is that when they were born we were all of a sudden part of two groups – parents of twins and parents of Down syndrome. These are two amazing communities because the experience of each is overwhelming and unique. I don’t actually feel like I’ve wrapped my head around either because we’re pretty much still drinking out of a firehose everyday. Still these experiences are rich and vast and worthy of some commentary. So in honor of their birth, allow me to share a little about each piece – the twin part and the Down syndrome part – separately in this post.

THE TWIN PART:

I think most parents of twins (or any multiples) would agree that from the second you see more than one baby on the ultrasound you’re in a state of shock, and it never really goes away. It stays as sort of an ambient huh! Two babies! awareness in your psyche. Unless you buy things like coats or car seats or day care at the ski mountain and then you hear “two babies!” loud and clear.

But I think they would also agree that nothing will give you more awe of life, more wonder at its teaming, thriving, pulsating fullness than having two babies born to you, echoing each other’s needs at first, and then joys, delights, tantrums, and celebrations. Each stage bounces off of the other and makes life feel very full. In our case, with Ronan often behind Michael by about six weeks, the stages bouncing off of each other were a staccato motion, and I imagine parents of typical twins having a bit of a rougher time in the more difficult stages when they happen at the same time. But then again, we stay in them longer so maybe that is harder? We’ll let St. Peter decide.

There is just a bountiful playfulness with twins. They’re like puppies, and they always want to find out what fun the other one has found. Our older kids adore them. They are almost two and still, whenever they come home from school or come back from outings, they love to dive into play with them, and it feels like Christmas morning every time they greet them. It’s hard to believe they only just saw them seven hours ago, the reunion is so sweet. I would have thought their novelty would have faded by now but their affection has only gotten deeper. All my kids are excited (even my six year old) to jump on the very contained trampoline with them. I love peering out the window while I cook dinner and see sibling hug fests with lots of laughter. (For the record, my older kids fight, but the twins tend to distract them from it with their antics which is the actual bees knees).

There is a dimension with twins that even though they give double everything – more love, more hugs, more joy – they take away some freedoms temporarily. Like the ability to go into any environment that you can’t handle two babies or toddlers solo. Pools, parks, restaurants, parking lots. Most parents of toddlers know these are PTSD inducing with one spirited child. I found myself doing less with these toddlers than my other kids and felt the pangs of it at times. Even the mall is tough – Michael’s a runner and I can’t really leave Ronan alone while I go chase after him.

And if you happen to be a writer it will be a very big occupational hazard to have twins just so you know. Not a lot of time for reflection. Or processing. Or actual writing taking place. I totally trust God that I am exactly where I am meant to be right now and I know they grow up fast. I’ve made peace that there will be time for book writing when they are in preschool and for now food blogging and freelance writing are easier since they are much shorter time commitments.

We are buffered in some ways that Ronan isn’t waking yet and therefore isn’t trying to run out into oncoming traffic the way Michael is, but it is hard to have one of the twins crawling through wood chips at the park, or mud at the field. Ronan is almost walking, and when he does it will be a new dynamic for sure – we’ll be able to do some things more, like go to a park with pesky woodchips, but somethings less, like sporting events for the big kids where toddlers don’t see the invisible white line on the ground that indicates where ONLY PLAYERS SHOULD BE.

My memories of these boys’ first two years of life will mostly be this: that there were two sets of eyes watching me, and the minute one of them reached up and wanted cuddles and hugs, so did the other one. And so we spent a good chunk of these years on the floor, where I could always hold both of them, and my lap and my arms and my heart were routinely filled with giggling, cuddly, babbling baby boys, and I would constantly wonder how did I get so lucky? And also, how is the kitchen going to get cleaned?

THE DOWN SYNDROME PART:

For the most part, loving Ronan is just like loving my other kids. Being in tune, knowing and anticipating his needs, supporting and cheering reaching milestones. There are lots of jokes – he has the best sense of humor – and tickle sessions and hugs. We’re still working out the kinks in our relationship like a certain someone’s propensity to tip over the dog bowl or play in the toilet. No one is perfect.

Sometimes, when his Hirschsprung’s Disease gives him really bad tummy pain and he’s crying a lot or waking up in the middle of the night with a diaper rash, it crosses my mind that I’m a special needs parent. But I really never define myself that way, just like I don’t really define Ronan by having Down syndrome. He’s just Ronan, and I’m just me, and we love each other. It’s very sweet and pure and simple to be his mom.

Still, over the past two years, two very different types of parents of children with Down syndrome have been on my mind, and shaped my conception of being a parent to a son with Down syndrome.

The first was a professor who had a son with Down syndrome and wrote a book about it that I read in grad school. Even though he documented his joys and charms, he admitted he struggled with his son’s intellectual disability, since he was a professor and made his living with his mind. I get that he was being vulnerable and honest, but that is the bias that I detest the most, and the educated elite like doctors and professors are the most guilty of it. It’s pride and arrogance. He was given the best gift you could have possibly received and he didn’t understand it. He missed its worth.

The second is a family who I know through Instagram, who had a son with Down syndrome and thought he was so amazing, they felt pulled to adopt another child with Down syndrome because it’s so misunderstood everywhere, but especially in Bosnia and China. They have orphanages overflowing with children with Down syndrome. They found a child and knew it was THEIR son the second they saw him on Reese’s Rainbow. When they picked him up at the orphanage, no one had ever come to see him, no one came when he left, and he and many others passed their time licking their mattress. Now he has two loving parents and six other siblings, including an older brother with Down syndrome, and his life is full of laughter and love. These parents understood the gift they received with their son and were given more. I love this open heartedness and want to emulate it.

It might sound strange, but when I learned about the children on Reese’s Rainbow, I looked at Ronan, and decided to pour every ounce of love I could into this one boy, this one child, to make up for all the love I couldn’t pour into all these children. I know it will never be enough, and I will always try to fundraise to help these children find a home. But I hope the power of our love will help him grow up with every part of his potential developed, so that the world can see him and know how special all of these children are.

I think the biggest surprise about having a child with Down syndrome is what happens to your heart when you love someone so innocent and full of joy. They shine this back to you so freely and purely, that your whole being is overtaken by their charm. You feel peaceful, joyful, so supremely happy to be in their presence. Their natures are so good, and such a reflection of God’s goodness, that it just feels like a miracle every day to get to love them.

For example – Ronan’s hugs. They deserve their own post. Possibly their own book.

There is the tight bear hug with a head tilt on the shoulder, the way tired babies lay their head on you. And then there is the cheek to cheek hug, and then it’s like he is trying to pour his love into you via your face. Always his arms are around you so tight, like he never wants to let go. And nine times out of ten when he sees a friend or family member or new person – ok fine, everyone – he throws his arms out to them so he can hug them, fingers splayed out in his excitement. It is a very fast way to make friends I am learning. Seeing so many others cherish Ronan (and Michael too of course, but Ronan in a unique way) is the best and I am sure will be a joy for our whole lives.

He is delighted every morning when we pick him up out of his crib, and he is delighted when we tuck him in with his blanket and bunny every night. Of course he has tantrums and all the emotions his brother has, but his baseline is pure joy. He is sweetness itself.

I can’t help but think some of his sweetness rubs off on Michael, since he is quite the cuddler too. We spend a lot of our days on the floor, hugging. Which isn’t a bad gig if you ask me.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful boys. Like I say everyday, I’m so glad you’re here! We all are.