When sh!t happens:

Turning down the volume without tuning out

“Tina told me that she imagines that her child is a bit like a stereo. ‘Think about your kid’s nervous system almost like a volume dial. My job is to help my kid’s dial go down. And to do that, it first starts with me. If I yell at him or I join the chaos, I’m turning his volume dial up. So my job is to think about my own dial and make sure my dial doesn’t get turned way too high or too low.’” –

Michaeleen Doucleff

, Hunt, Gather, Parent

Photo by Al Elmes on Unsplash

This week has rocked me, and I’ve been sitting in pause for a while now, waiting for my fingers to catch up. A week ago, my spirited aunt—who outfitted me and took me to restaurants and stores no one else would and visited me in every city I ever lived—had a brain bleed that will require intensive rehab.

Life splintered, again. I was in multiple places at once. I was in my house, with the law work I needed to do, with the emails to answer, with my daughter who would be needing dinner and stories before bed. And I was there in the hospital, holding my mom’s hand and reassuring her about not needing to reassure me, not anymore. And I was with so many of my relatives who have died suddenly with a brain bleed or aneurysm. I was beside my brother’s bed in 2014. Beside my grandmother’s bed in 2009. Beside my teenage cousin’s bed in 2010. Beside my other aunt’s bed in 2019. All gone all at once, without another conversation. Without a goodbye I knew they could feel.

Six days later, and my aunt is still here, in a stroke recovery center. She can talk; she can hear. A miracle, as far as I’m concerned. And it’s hard as shit—for my aunt, for my mom, for my uncles.

I feel like I’ve been half processing all week. Half reaching out to friends; half talking to my parents. Halfway here; halfway there; and being very hard on myself about it.

I was trying to journal myself into a different place this morning when I remembered a page I had dog-earned in a parenting book last week. I am careful around parenting books. They are a bit like social media. I know gold crumbs exist under the shame-inducing rubble, but there’s a lot of rubble. So I’ve delegated most of this reading to my more pragmatic husband to filter out the bad and pass along the good. But I do sometimes read them, and when I do, I know I’m getting to the gold when I can think, Oh, this isn’t just about parenting. This applies to all of us, all the time. This is about how to be human.

That’s how I felt about this line from Hunt, Gather, Parent by

Michaeleen Doucleff

: “Think about your kid’s nervous system almost like a volume dial. My job is to help my kid’s dial go down.” I read it and thought, This is great to remember for my daughter. And then I stopped and thought, This is great to remember for me.

Re-reading this line now reminds me what has been happening to my nervous system. Life has turned up the noise again to a fever pitch. What I need is to turn the dial down so I can catch up to myself. But how do I do that without tuning out, or numbing?

It helps to take the focus away from myself and put it on my daughter. I’ve learned this one the hard way: The higher or louder she goes, the softer the way toward meeting her. Her big feelings feel more okay to her if they don’t become my feelings too. This is a big part of Doucleff’s message.

I have not been soft with myself this week. Instead, I’ve been responding to my nervous system overload by turning up the dial more, dashing off emails to fix problems, trying to clean every inch of my kitchen. That is when I make mistakes. My emails have typos or don’t say what I need them to say. I drop things. Literally.

It’s ironic, after last week’s message about going slow. This week, the universe is telling me to go Extra. Freaking. Slow. Today, to try to turn down the dial, I wore my noise-cancelling headphones like a life jacket. I sat with my emails for longer before sending them. I took the amount of time that I would normally allot for each to-do and doubled it. I made a plan to visit my aunt tomorrow. I told the voice inside saying I’m weak and lazy and there’s not enough time to shove it.

The louder the world, the softer the way.

And finally, the feelings start to come.

The louder the world, the softer the way.