Testing My Capacity
One little stretch at a time
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 life, the homeschool routine that I want for us, AND be the coach my people need (and keep up with writing and marketing, too). I know I have the capacity to do more; we are capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. I also know that I tend to push the edges of my capacity, then lose traction when the road starts to curve.
This morning, this is my first step. One tentative finger stretched out through the clean air to test out the sponge of the land. My attempt to step into capacity slowly, so I can handle whatever life brings me tomorrow.
18 months ago, I pulled my daughter out of school and came back to homeschooling her. She is so much happier and has grown so much as a result of this change: she has a green belt in karate and was recently invited to join her school’s extreme martial arts class (XMA), she has been in two plays (and written, directed, and starred in a third), she’s becoming a talented artist, and she’s learning to play piano and write her own songs. She’s made new friends, taught herself to make boba from scratch, is learning how to use Wondershare Filmora to edit her own videos, and her resilience and social maturity has grown by leaps and bounds. And since she’s at roller derby camp this week, I can’t forget to mention summer camps and travel!
She’s had so many adventures and is learning so many new skills. It has been incredible to witness. And exhausting. Together we’ve grown our own homeschool community, and she’s now involved with a remote public school that’s been such a perfect fit. It has given her the framework to stretch up to her potential in math and the freedom to soar in language arts. She’s getting experience taking standardized tests, but without all the pressure.
Clearly, this has absorbed a lot of my attention and planning. On top of everything she’s got going on, though, I started teaching two days a week in September at a microschool for homeschool kids. So more planning, less writing. I’m sure year two will be smoother, though.
All was going smoothly, even if a bit busy, and then we got the text message. At the end of February, our landlord reached out to let us know that he was planning to sell our house. A frenzied four months later, and here we are, settling into a condo on the other side of town that’s all ours. It even has a well-maintained pool that’s adding a lot to our summer experience. Life was slowing down a bit, and now there are new twists in the road. I’m doing my best to keep my feet on the ground and keep reaching outward.
Writing has always come in waves for me, with notable lulls between the swells. I mean, I’m always writing something, but not always writing what I want to be writing. Lately, everything in the world seems so important and my little slice of it feels so very small. I often feel like I should be talking about bigger things than parenting amazing and intense kiddos. How we’re going to survive the next century (or even the next decade) can feel more pressing than breaking rewriting what it means to be a parent.
But then I think about how we got into this mess in the first place. The values that led us here. And I remember just how important this work is. When we rewire how we respond to our kids, we create the space for them to grow into adults who seek understanding rather than retribution. Something as simple as teaching them to check on people they’ve wronged rather than insisting they say they’re sorry can have a massive effect on their world view and their relationships.
This is me remembering. My time may be more constrained now, but this is important. This is what I bring to the world. A different way of doing things. A way to create lasting change and impact that matters. I may be quieter than I once was, but I’m still here. I’m not giving up. And I’m stretching into loud, one day at a time.