My passions:

Education

There’s no greater joy than learning, each milestone achieved is a testament to human curiosity. It’s foundational for creating a well functioning society.

Literature

Books have the power to widen our perspective and broaden our horizon. Reading opens up our world and inspires our imagination.

Travel

The best way to get out of your head is to get out of your location. Navigating unfamiliar surroundings is the surest way to cultivate resiliency.

From uneducated to University-bound.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer, well not always. Not since childhood, where I just wanted to fly away. No, the desire for learning and thinking grew out of an experience of living and working in Sarajveo, Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Am I Bosnia? Nope. But I found myself there after graduating high school working for a NGO teaching conversational English to children. Funny enough I was not trained in education, but I had a severe sense of wanderlust and I was from a small town in the middle of nowhere. So when I saw the opportunity to leave the US and move overseas I jumped at the chance.

I was twenty and had worked with the organization before (it’s not around now) going with them to China and Thailand in 2004. Now it was early 2005 and the speaker from the team came to my workplace and spoke about what his team was doing in Sarajevo and that they needed team members. Say no more. Six months later I was on a plane doing my second trans-Atlantic flight in as many years on my way to Sarajevo.

Prior to this I would not call myself an academic type. I did not do well in school growing up, but now that I think about it I may have had some learning difficulties. Because (fast forward ten years)  I was accepted into a prestigious university for my Masters. So, I am not dumb, but growing up I though I was dumb. Well not dumb per sea but I never considered myself smart. AND more importantly I really wanted to get out of my hometown. So in the second semester of my high school year I started working at McDonalds and I started saving. A year and a half later I was gifted a car, and boom. I was gone.

So fast forward two years after graduating from high school I find myself listening to the call to prayer (something I had never heard before) five times a day. I was scheduled to be in Sarajevo for a year and I did it. Sarajevo imparted many things in my life, but the most important one (the most life-changing one) was the desire to learn.

I was insatiable. I was consuming every English language book I could find. I was also looking into Universities, I wanted to go to university so bad. I craved it, craved learning. I dreamed of becoming a professor, with a delightfully messy office literally covered in books and old manuscripts.

Four years after graduating high school, after traveling to two different continents I finally made it. I was enrolled in a community college in the mountains of Colorado. I made it.

To Thine own self be true

Baah ram ewe.

I know those two things don’t go together; in fact I think that there isn’t actually a real link between them. The quote belongs to Hamlet, a work of Shakespeare. “Raah ram ewe” belongs to Babe a movie from the mid 1990s. A movie about a pig none the less. But whenever I hear of think of the phrase, “to thine own self be true”, you better believe the next phrase is “Baah ram ewe”.

But the question really is, is why I think of the phrase, “to thine own self be true”. Well, this phrase really hit me when I received one of my tokens from Alcohol Anonymous.  I’m not sure for how long that token is for, but I’ve been sober for six and a half years. Now on second thought, I think my token is for a year. But it’s buried somewhere deep in one of my closets so I’m usure of where to find it.

So what does a blog for the parents of littles and AA have in common? Well probably a lot. I peruse the subreddit /stopdrinking from time to time and a common theme I see is parents struggling with consumption and its affects on their children. Now I will never judge a parent struggling with addiction. Ever. But I am and will be eternally grateful for the fact that my kiddo has never seen my drunk or high his entire life. In fact, I had about three and a half years of sobriety before I even conceived him. And I know that if I were to make a promise about never ever getting high or drunk around him, that that sentiment would be dangerous. Because the only thing I know, the only thing that I can control is that today, right in this moment… I will not drink. It’s the only active choice that I can make, and I continue to do it every day, every moment because I know where it will lead if I do not.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that in order to be true to myself I will need to always choose the sober choice. So that’s why I love this phrase, there’s no demon on my shoulder that will ever convince me, that could ever speak to me in a deeper way that how this phrase rings true in the very deepest parts of my being. That little, tiny voice that pops up sometimes telling me that its safe to drink, or to imbibe cannot ever be convincing enough to do it. There are very few things that I am beyond 100% certain of, be being true to myself, knowing that I will always need to make the sober choice is something that I can depend on because that choice represents the truest nature of my personhood.

So my sobriety is 100% concurrent with my parenting, and I know that I am not the only one. Thankfully I do not expect to be writing about sobriety often. But I felt that it was important to start off with describing why that phase means so much to me.

From a Masters student to a doula

My path to my formal education went through Sarajevo. My time there was transformational and I really started to want to learn and study when I was overseas. Once I arrived back in the states I proceeded to get two undergraduate degrees and on Master’s degree. I was locked and loaded in my niche and it only took a world-wide pandemic to knock me off my course. I was privileged enough to interview for a PhD program, but I was never accepted.

Then I moved in with my partner, then we got pregnant and then we had our kiddo. Prio to their birth a new friend told me about the work that doulas do and hoe important it is to take care of yourself after birth if you’re the birth parent. She really laid it out for me, and I was thankful because I was quite naïve about birth and recovery.

We were privileged enough to have two separate doulas postpartum, one for overnights in the first couple of months, the other a daytime postpartum doula that stayed with us for almost six months. These two individuals were so important to me. The first was like a welcomed auntie that came over the very first night we had our little home. I will be eternally grateful, because after a grueling labor and being in the hospital for three days I could simply hand my little one over to her, weakly saying, ‘help’.

My postpartum doula was the main reason I came to terms with my anxiety after birth. Everything she would walk into our home I could feel the ease of being, the confidence, or the comfortability that she exuded. It hit me like a boulder, because turns out, I had major anxiety after birth, trying to take good care of my little one. I could feel in my body anxiety’s weight crushing me, making my world so small that I really couldn’t function well (the lack of sleep didn’t help). After six months Mira said that we should end our contract, and I sadly agreed. Doula work is transitionary, it’s not meant to be a permanent arrangement.

So when my little one became old enough for daycare, and I needed to find a job/career for myself, I turned to doula work because it was so important for me and my little one postpartum. It was really the work of these three different women that led me to where I am today.

“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker than a germ.” – John Steinbeck

Benefits of Community

Being the primary caregiver to a little person is so hard, especially in modern times where we are so isolated from our community. I’m speaking as a person who has lived most of her life in the west. But I have had the privilege of living, working, or studying in different countries. So I can see how our culture here stacks up to others, and let me tell you I wish I was somewhere else with broader community support these last five years, because oooffta.

Since it’s just the three of us with no family support, the trying times feel exacerbated. For example when my little one gets sick, I really only have Google to consult.  Yes, my parents are only a phone call away but what happens if you are waken up in the middle of the night with a puking child? Who can you talk to? It would be lovely if we could live in an inter-generational home where the collective knowledge base would be much deeper.

My partner is from another land other than the one we live on. He was raised in this collective inter-generational home. He tells me stories about having his grandmother watching him as a child. How amazing would it be, both for the child and the parent if there would be a grandparent around all the time? I have a friend who is South Asian and her mother lives with her and her son. She tells me how lucky she is to have a trustful dependable person in the home.

So who do I turn to when I have wellness questions for my little one? I know a wellness coach who I can call if I have questions about boosting an immune system or for healthy ways of clearing out a snotty nose. She’s great, a really down to earth person who has two little (now a bit grown) herself. What I love about Marj is that she is such a great resource, and she understands the need for community.

Before my little one I was woefully ignorant at the vulnerability that comes from being a parent. When your little one is sick, that helpless feeling makes you want to move mountains. It’s really amazing that our species survived for so long given the delicate nature of our newborns and the tenacity that needed to survive.

I know that wellness coaches may not be for everybody, but I think it’s so important to surround ourselves with a parental community, to help support us in during difficult times.