This photo was taken a few weeks ago in the waiting room at the hospital. My husband had major surgery — it was a long day, but he came home a few days later, and we were so relieved.

Once he was home, he needed a lot of help. That made it hard to flow with our regular homeschool routine, so we decided to slow down and just focus on getting through it. And honestly? Sometimes that’s the most important thing we can do for our kids -- slow down. Shift gears. Roll with it.

It’s been a bit of a bumpy road since then. He’s still on a good path to healing, and the tissue they removed was completely cancer free — so we are definitely celebrating that.

But the screen time has ramped up big time.

My daughter discovered Dandy’s World and (no surprise) she is totally hooked. She set a big goal for herself, and she wasn’t entirely sure she could do it, which was overwhelming. It was definitely topic number one in our conversations.

But here’s where it gets good.

I was listening one night as she explained how stressful this was, and my first inclination was this is causing more harm than good — the game has got to go.

But I kept listening. And as I listened, I realized this was a deeply personal, highly relevant opportunity to practice breaking a big goal into manageable chunks. This is a huge life skill!

So, that’s what we did.

We figured out how much she needed to do within the time she had, then built a pacing guide together. (If you’re familiar with Dandy’s World — she only needed to get 5% research per day to hit her goal.) And yesterday? She hit 100% — ahead of schedule! Cue the celebratory dancing!

But I started celebrating way before that. Really, once we had that plan mapped out, a weight lifted. Sleep came easier. Something that had felt almost impossible suddenly felt doable.

She had the framework to recognize when she’d accomplished enough for the day and stop on her own — with a lot less micromanaging from me.

For us, these are big wins.

Wins like this show us that we can move through the hard stuff life throws at us. We can figure out how to accomplish big goals.

And these are exactly the kinds of moments I love to work through with families in coaching — when life feels messy and overwhelming, and you’re not sure how to help your child move through it. Whether it’s a big goal that feels impossible, a routine that’s fallen apart, or a situation where your first instinct and your kid’s needs aren’t quite lining up, that’s where we do some of our best work together.

If you’re feeling stuck in moments like these, I’d love to help. ​You can book a consultation with me right here​.

So — what have you been up to lately? Do you have any wins to share?

I feel ready to surface, to re-emerge, but experience has taught me that when you’ve been swimming through mud for this long, you might feel more ready to get back to normal than you actually are. You might not realize just how tired your muscles are.

I want to have the capacity to do it all - maintain the house, the l…

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We are approaching a year since our return to homeschool.

A year of little writing but so much growth.

I was talking to a friend recently, and it reminded me that the connection between how our children experience school and their actions, behaviors, and moods outside of school is often overlooked and too rarely talked about.

It reminded me how important it is to share these experiences.

It seems like every day I am faced with reminders of how far we’ve come. It’s starting to feel normal, actually, but I still find myself thinking, “That wouldn’t have happened a year ago.”

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I can say, though, that I’ve never been prouder of the name I chose f…

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They say she has a few days left,
so I chop tomatoes,
making sure the knife strikes through and
the edges are clean.

They say she has a few days left,
so I make lunches,
go to work.

[I feel like a hollow shell.]

I sweep up the cat food
and call my best friend.

[The wind breaks through me.
I hold her in the light.
Why does it feel this hard?
I've kno…

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September is here.

For us, that means a return to more intent…

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I accepted a new job recently.

I am going to be teaching at an academic-focused, secular homeschool collective program in Portland, and I am thrilled.

The intention is for the kids to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to their education, and I am so excited to have found a place where I will truly have the autonomy to put emergent curriculum principle…

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I’m making a point of writing more. Lately, I’ve been avoiding it, honestly. I’ve felt more like complaining than writing. Complaining about the way other kids leave mine on the fringes. Complaining about the way other “smart” people brandish their intelligence, striving to be the smartest person in the room.

What they don’t know is I’ve spent my life lo…

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I didn’t know a year ago how much my life would change in this year.

I didn’t know that giving myself a space to write about anything I wanted to would be so important to me. I’ve spent the last six years writing about kids, parenting, and mindset. I needed this spa…

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I cannot let myself become stagnant.

I see this for what it is: a thought I carry, but also a deep internal drive.

I move. Like a river.

It’s why I could be a career student.

It’s also why I left my job as an archivist after two years. I set up the program. That was the fun part. The rest was just rote action and routine.

I know now that I need more than that.

This is not rare, and it’s not wrong. A gifted brain is wired to engage and expand and explore.

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We joined a homeschool book club last month. The first book assignment was The Lion of Mars. We loved it, and I loved the connections I saw my daughter making with her life, the book, and other learning experiences she was having.

We are connectors.

This month, the book is The Phantom Tollbooth.

I read The Phantom Tollbooth when I was about 12 years old. I loved it. I assumed that most kids would (because most kids I was friends with enjoyed it, too).

Now, revisiting it, I realize it’s probably not for everyone. The wordplay. The mathplay. The connections.

She didn’t like it at first. I’m sure some of it was over her head.

But she’s a connector.

The humor landed, and now it’s one of her favorite books that we’ve read recently. Well, it was until we started reading The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

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Alongside our literary adventures, we’ve been having conversations about how gifted brains work, how being gifted isn’t the same as being smart. Smart people learn easily. Gifted people extrapolate and make connections and, ultimately, learn more than what’s being taught.

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As spring peeks around the corner, I’m realizing my life has become richer, more deeply aligned.

I wake up in the shadows and breathe in the sunrise.

I do not live on Blackbird Pond, but what we have is more tha…

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I saw an article this morning about how difficult it is to fool a gifted kid because they see through all the acts and personas that the people around them are put on for the world.

And it took me back.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, the headmistress of my school told my mom, “Julia does not tolerate fools lightly.”

Most kids are in fake it ‘til you make it mode in middle school, and that just didn’t work for me. I didn’t want to fake it, and I knew I couldn’t trust them because they were faking everything. And because they were faking, I couldn’t figure out where I stood with them. I could tell that they weren’t being authentic, but I couldn’t always tell why. Eventually, I decided it was because they all hated me.

I ran into one the more authentic girls from my early middle school days when I was in college, and she said something about everyone missing me when I left. I quickly told her they did not and that I was pretty sure everyone there hated me. Her perspective? Nobody hated me, I was just quiet.

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Today is a day of watching the snow melt,

listening to the crash of sheets of ice

tree branches

and rattling coughs.

Today is savoring the slowness,

zeroing in on what's right in front of me,

and contemplating what comes next.

Change is on the horizon.

The snow melts.

The cold lifts.

I am here.

An agent of change, for myself and others.

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A little bit of a rant here.

We went to Great Wolf Lodge over the weekend to celebrate my kiddo turning 9. It was loud, overstimulating, generally a lot for me, and also? A lot of fun.

I love waterslides and water parks, so it was easy to enjoy myself with that. And it was fun to see her enjoying the experience.

But when we went to get our arcad…

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Sometimes I sit down knowing I need to write, but having no idea what to write.

I am changing on a cellular level. I feel it. I feel it in my body - in the hot flashes, restless sleep, general crankiness, irregular bleeding, cramps - and I tell myself I’m going to find the witchery, the herbs, the foods I need to support myself through this.

But I also fe…

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I just realized it’s been nearly a month since I wrote anything here.

Thanksgiving happened. And more.

Actually, since October 1st, we’ve been in a state of flux.

Friendships have become increasingly i…

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I sit here this morning with a steaming bowl of chili and so much gratitude for how simple my life is. I am so lucky.

Like everyone, I have been watching events unfold over the past month. I haven’t said much about Israel and Palestine because I’ve been sitting with my thoughts, wrestling with what to say.

Please do not mistake my …

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When I was in high school and college, I had the hardest time truly showing up for a class if the teacher was a jerk. I wasn’t motivated enough by grades to study hard for someone that didn’t get me or was flat out rude to students. I pulled myself out of the running for an IB diploma in tenth grade because I just couldn’t deal with the IB Spanish teacher.

It wasn’t worth it.

For the longest time, I attributed this to being a Montessori kid. I was taught to love learning for the sake of learning, not for the external recognition of grades and accolades.

It never occurred to me that maybe this was just a part of who I was, naturally. It never occurred to me that, even without a Montessori background, I would have had a strong sense of justice and an intolerance for people who violated that.

I know now, though, that this is a common trait in gifted kids.

And when I see it come up in my clients’ kids, it always makes me smile (not to downplay or gloss over their frustration).

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This is one of the reasons an approach like collaborative problem-solving sounds so appealing. We want them to be problem-solvers. And while I am a fan of this approach, I know it can be tricky to implement if you have a child who is resistant to having "conversations" or gets angry when you make observations about their experience.

But, if you've gotten to the point where your child is starting to come up with solutions to their problems, there is a pattern you should be on the lookout for. We adults do it, too, so it's helpful to understand even if your child isn't there yet.

It's the pattern of trying to solve your problems by changing your circumstances. If you think about it, it's often the default solution when we're feeling challenged: we look for a way out. It's a nervous system response, and sometimes it serves us well.

Other times, though, we can't change our circumstances, and if that is the only strategy we have, then whatever challenge we are facing is going to feel even harder.

This episode dives into how you can begin to support your child in expanding their repertoire and developing the skills they need to move through challenging circumstances.

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