My husband and I are both listening to the audiobook, The Power of Now. This feels like a strange choice for me, a woman who spends most of her mental energy replaying conversations that ended hours, days, sometimes years ago. I can probably recount the exact tone someone used with me in 2019. I can tell you what I wish I had said back. My brain does not struggle to access the past, instead my brain struggles to let go of it.

Now, the future doesn’t scare me the same way. Sure, I wonder how the boys will handle a new routine during the week, a long travel day, a new type of cuisine we try for dinner. To me, that worry is manageable, I can prep them and myself on what to expect and how we will move the routine. It’s the past that keeps pulling me by the collar, asking me to relive it just one more time. So this summer as I am listening to this book, I decided to practice something small. On our morning drives, I started asking the boys to name five things we notice right now. Like what we hear, what we smell, what we see. Really it is nothing profound, just a small exercise landing in our own bodies for thirty seconds before the day swallows us.

Last weekend, on a trip, we were walking along a pier and I asked my eldest to play the game. He looked around and said it was loud. Then he said it again. It was loud. It was loud. It was an appropriate amount of sounds for a busy pier, so for me it was not loud. I asked him what he felt when it got loud like that. He thought for a second and said his brain feels rushed.

I stopped in my thoughts. That’s it, isn’t it. That is the point of this exercise. To sit in the moment, to realize the trigger, and to name it and understand it.

I told him I feel it too, that rushed feeling, and it doesn’t always take a crowded pier to bring it on for me. We talked about how everybody gets dysregulated sometimes in life, and how the real work for us isn’t avoiding those moments, it’s learning to notice them and figure out what actually calms us down once we’re in them. It is perfectly valid to step aside for a bit and take ourselves out of that situation in order to reset.

For him, it turns out, it’s noise. For me, if I’m honest, it’s two things: meal times and disrupted sleep.

Meals are hard for me in a specific way. We try to keep things moving along seamlessly, and when the kids don’t finish after a long time, I end up feeding them myself so we can get out the door or get to the next part of the evening. I know why I do it. I want them fed and I would feel bad if I didn’t add in my extra effort to try ensure that. I’ve started to wonder what it would look like to let go of the clock a little. To let them eat at their own pace without my hand hovering, ready to speed things along. That’s not a fix I’ve landed on yet perfectly, it is something that I am trying to develop. It is a trigger that I have noticed and want to work on.

Sleep is the other one. When a kid wakes up from a scary dream at two in the morning and needs me, I go to them immediately, with no resentment towards them attached. Their brains are still figuring out how to figure out what to do with a nightmare. They’re supposed to turn to us. The next morning, my body feels broken. When running on disrupted sleep, I get short. I feel rushed and everything around me is loud, even when nothing around me is actually loud. For instance, this last weekend, my eldest kept coming out of the room at bedtime so scared and even shaking. He must of read something or saw something that frightened him and felt so unsafe in a new environment. (I have been talking to him every day and have since found the trigger of a video game). He begged me not to leave. I slept with him the last night of the trip (there goes my upgrade for the hotel suite luxury!), and I knew he slept soundly next to me, while I was up for most of the night, uncomfortable almost falling off the bed. Once I heard his relaxed breathing, that did give me relief in my mind and it became worth it. My body was still tired and I know the disrupted sleep will need a few days to catch up, and that is also true.

Travel makes all of these triggers louder, in every sense. This summer we did many trips, some short, some longer. All worth it in the moment. It’s fun for the boys in a way that’s almost uncomplicated, just plain simple. For my husband and me it’s fun too overall, and the effort that it takes also costs something in the moment. New environments dysregulate kids fast, and holding four boys through that takes real physical and emotional effort. Crying through security, biting each other on the plane, refusing bedtime in new places, early wake ups with less sleep. We stick to routines as much as we can because we’ve learned that’s what lets them actually enjoy themselves instead of unraveling. And even with routines, travel asks a lot of us.

And still, so much of it was good. Genuinely, simply good. There was a moment on the ferry where I looked over and saw the boys’ eyes light up watching the water splash by, that specific kind of joy that just exists. There was the love pouring off their extended family all summer onto them, the kind of attention that makes kids feel like the most interesting people in the world. I saw moments when each boy would be holding one of their aunts hands or recounting a story to their uncles or leaning in for a hug with a grandparent, and those moments were beautiful because I want the boys to have those loving relationships. There was endless water play and new parks, the kind that leaves everyone exhausted and glowing.

On this last trip, we stayed with family who are deep in it right now, a newborn with older kids, the particular chaos of a house running on both fumes and love in equal measure. As we were leaving, I told them I remember being exactly where they are, and looking from the outside in towards them, they were not only surviving and thriving, they were rocking it. (Because they are!!)

And then I realized I needed to hear that as much as they did. We’re all rocking it, the best we can, right now. Not in some future version where the kids always sleep through the night and eat their vegetables without negotiation. Right now, mid mess, mid noise, mid rushed brain.

That’s the whole practice, I think. Tolle, the author of The Power of Now, draws a connection between the actual clock time, the kind that is useful to get us to the ferry on time, and the psychological time, the kind where my mind keeps dragging me back to a conversation from years ago. He would suggest that replaying the past is not about the past at all, it is instead my mind trying to strengthen the sense of self and staying busy. Once a mind is at rest, it starts to feel a threat to the story it has built about who I am. In the book, it also discusses how there are parts of us that carry old emotional baggage and can get triggered by small moments. I have recognized my triggers, relating to the kids are the meals and sleep, while I have many more in other aspects of life. According to the book, the way through isn’t to fight any of these moments. It is to notice the thought or feeling without becoming it, sort of like letting there be a small gap as if I am watching it rather than reacting. That’s not so different from what I am asking the boys to do on the morning drives. Naming five things in the now. Coming back into the body and letting the awareness itself be an exit ramp out of the inner turmoil. Not fixing the loud, not solving the rushed feelings, just noticing it, naming it, and staying in it a little longer before I let my mind drag me anywhere else like the past.

Five things I notice right now: my son’s hand in mine, the smell of sunscreen, the sound of my son crying because his brother took his toy, my own breath, starting to get little too fast as I embark on the quest of helping them, and the quiet, stubborn decision to stay here anyway. 🫶🏽