This Week: A Collage of Thoughts
Some miscellanea. And links. And questions. Shabbat shalom!
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Dear fam,
I don’t even know how to start writing this email. It’s not that the last few weeks have been so rough — they’ve had their highs and lows like most weeks — it’s that everything is a little blurry. The days here are so jam-packed with happenings, the nights so short and punctuated with waking kids. I have a hard time recalling anything with much clarity.
As a result, this newsletter will be more of a collage than something cut of whole cloth. A collection of odds and ends from inside my head.
Baby is now fully walking around all the time. So, from here on out I’m going to start referring to her as Toddler. She dances all the time, swaying her little bottom from side to side. She claps for Big Kid when he does something cool, like jumping from the couch to the table and back again. She can now say the word ‘no,’ which is very funny to hear in her little, insistent voice. But, even without words, she makes herself very clear. Toddler know what she wants and when she wants it — and she will let you know.
I hope she never loses this groundedness. I think she gets it from my wife, whose internal compass is always pointing due north. My wife and I are different in many ways, and this is one of them.
I’m more of a meanderer. It’s taken me a long time to figure out where I want to go and how to get there. My wife? She’s known for as long as I’ve know her that her path is to be music-ing. She knows who she is, on a basic level, much more than I do.
But you know what’s cool? We both really admire the way the other person’s thought-process works. I look at her and am awed by how she follows her internal-knowing. It makes me try to listen inward more. And I know she thinks it’s pretty great that I can step into different situations and acclimate quickly, doing jobs I’ve never done or heading on an adventure to a place I’ve never been. It makes her want to adventure more.
Anyways. Here I am, wandering even now from what I set out to write.
Another thing from the last weeks? Toddler had pink-eye. Twice. And so did my wife. I don’t have a lot to say about this, except that it looks incredibly unpleasant. Plus, you know what’s really not fun? Putting eye-drops in a one-year-old’s eyes.
We had a lot of playdates! Does that sound like a simple thing? Because, as a parent to a neurodivergent kid, I can tell you it is not. Last year and the year before, we couldn’t do this. Go to someone’s house? For a hang? Unthinkable.
I once wondered whether our sweet Big Kid would ever find good friends. This thought broke my heart.
He just didn’t seem interested in playing with kids his own age. Group situations sent him running to hide somewhere with less hullabaloo. When we did go to other folks’ houses, he either played with my wife and I, or else by himself somewhere.
Plus, there’s a lot of stuff that’s easy for neurotypical kids that’s hard for him. Sensory stuff, like touching playdough or fingerpaints. Navigating emotions without exploding. Eating. Remembering to go to the bathroom.
I don’t know what it is about this place, but Big Kid is figuring it out. And, for the first time, he has several really good friends. I attribute this to a few different things.
We understand his needs a lot better. This means he’s under a lot less stress, leading to less meltdowns. Before, he was confused about his needs and there were no adults who knew what was up. Now, we can be his rock.
He is getting a lot of help at school and otherwise. He goes to two schools, both of which have inclusion classrooms and special-needs teachers. He gets occupational therapy three times a week to help with sensory and emotional stuff. All of this is crucial in helping him work out how to be in a world that’s all too much for him sometimes. Which means he can hang out with other kids and actually enjoy himself.
We found other adorable weirdos to be friends with. First, I should clarify that weirdo is a huge compliment to me. Love being weird, love folks who are weird. And we’ve some off-the-wall folks here to be pals with. Other kids who see the world a little differently. Other parents who are funny, and silly, and chill about this whole parenting thing. Such a relief.
We’re getting help for ourselves. Parenting a neurodivergent kid is objectively really hard. I know all parenting is hard. But guiding your kid through a world that is inherently not built for their emotional and physical needs is just harder than average bear parenting. When we get the support we need, we’re more able to be present for our Big Kid. For us, that means meeting with a parent counselor once a week and meeting with a support group of other queer parents with atypical kids once a month. Game. Changer.
We’ve chilled out about a lot of stuff. There are very few arguments left that I’m willing to have with Big Kid. In fact, almost nothing needs to be an argument. You want to eat peanut butter sandwiches three meals a day for a month? Fine. The outfit you chose for school is a wolf costume? Whatever. You want to take a ladybug home as a pet? Sure. This laissez faire attitude has lowered the stress-levels in the house and leads to more capacity for Big Kid when it comes to kid-to-kid interactions.
Some more miscellanea:
It snowed eight inches! My wife took Big Kid sledding and I hung out with Toddler at home, trying to write copy while she tried to hold my fingers on my keyboard.
We baked a pie! Gluten-free pastry isn’t easy, but you basically can’t go wrong with apples, cinnamon, and brown sugar so it came out fabulous.
We found a local teen to be a ‘big sibling’ for Big Kid! They went skateboarding and it was fabulous.
We watched an incredible, inspiring talk! The leaders of A Land for All, Dr. Rula Hardal and May Pundak, have been on a speaking tour around the East Coast. They gave a talk at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Manhattan last week (watch it here) Check out their work and consider donating — these are some powerful folks doing crucial work.
In the last newsletter, I wrote about how I have a new job, a full-time position with the Jewish digital library, Sefaria.org. This means I now spend all day thinking about how best to help people around the world access Jewish texts, learn from them, breathe into them.
I have long recognized that Judaism is a core part of my identity and value system. These days, I’m also thinking about how this core intersects with other values that guide my life. I’m thinking about how I believe that spirituality is a crucial tool (one of many) for understanding the world. How I believe in equality and equity. And self-determination. And civil rights. And safety. And Access to knowledge, information, the right to make up one’s own mind. Solidarity. And the inestimable power of radical empathy. How, for me, Judaism is about love.
And more stuff.
I’m still unpacking this thought process, but these thoughts have been unfolding in my mind over the last week or so. They’re also a part of the collage.
Do you wonder how everything fits together? Do you struggle to make sense of the contradictions in your mind? How do you deal with it? I want to know.
Next week, I hope to send you an interview and an essay about ADHD. Keep a look out for those!
In the meantime, wishing you a Shabbat of restoration and sense-making.
Shabbat shalom,
Mikhal
What I’m reading (on Substack)
Building a Woman from Scratch is a breathtaking essay from
. I swooned at the wisdom here. Also, Lyz has a book coming out next week! I pre-ordered it and you should, too. Her writing is wonderful always, I expect the book to be just as devourable as everything else she publishes. Click here to pre-order.- wrote an essay about how an ENT saved her life. It’s a great read! Although, I should say it’s really about how medical professionals ignore women for so freaking long. Maybe we could just believe women and nonbinary folks when they say something’s wrong?
The NY Times continues to publish unabashedly poor journalism about trans folks. These articles are not only bad and full of false claims, they’re harmful to folks who are just trying to live their damn lives.
unpacks the latest of these really shameful pieces in this well-researched article.- is a revelation. Here are two pieces she published recently that I loved: From Strangers to Lovers in the ER and Cancer Speaks its Own Language.