Ya girl loves a checkpoint. The start of a week. The start of a month. The changing of a season. Back to school. New Year. And at some point I also started marking the halfway checkpoint of the year, as well as the last 100 days of the year.

For me, time has moved in a very strange fashion this year. I think because I very much started this year by stepping into the wilderness. I was dealing with so much new territory and unpaved terrain.

My word for this year has been STORY. I tried to look at everything as an important part of character development, key components of the plot. It truly has given me a new perspective about my life—and others’.

In 2020, I wrote that I had never before ended a year as such a fundamentally different person as when I began. And I already think I have changed more in these last 6 months than I did that entire insane year. Who will I be in December? Even hotter and cooler, hopefully.

This is my check-in. That brief point of reflection where your main character stops to realize how far she’s come, and what still awaits her on the road to Mordor or whatever. Here’s what I’ve faced. Here’s what I’ve learned. Here’s what I’ve changed.

#3. Work

Without sharing too much, as things are still changing and being sorted as we speak, I think the third-largest shift has been around work. I started out pretty disillusioned with my professional life. It wasn’t just my job or company—it was an existential crisis of the professional flavor. Do I like marketing? Wait, do I like working anymore? It’s been years since I’ve been a true SAHM—would I like it better now? Could I do it? Would that be better for my family?

In the late winter, I had the opportunity to teach two different lessons to two different groups of teenagers. It was like that moment when you replace a lightbulb that’s been burnt out for months and the contrast is shocking. Parts of my brain started firing, parts I’d forgotten existed. It became really obvious that passion has been missing in my professional life. I decided that whether in my current job or a new one—I was going to find a way to do work I cared more about.

I dealt with new challenges and opportunities with work in these last 6 months. I found myself in situations where I had to quickly develop skills I didn’t have: boundaries, documentation, advocacy for myself and others, design, wireframing, and even managing a booth at a conference. I am really proud of myself for learning some critical lessons and skills. I am embarrassed at my slow learnings, failures, and resistance in other areas. SO JUST A LOT OF GROWTH, GUYS.

Ultimately everything that has sucked with my professional life so far this year has taught me more than I’ve learned at several easier jobs combined.

#2. Family

The biggest piece of this is Reese, and I always wrestle with what to share. I am a sharer. I find a lot of peace and strength and camaraderie and shame-extinguishing when I share. But it’s also her life. Most of the time, I find that sharing what Reese is experiencing creates greater levels of understanding and empathy for her. At the same time, it’s hard to say what the impact will be down the line. So I’ll go with my gut on what to share with this one, and try to trust myself.

Reese started out the year… not doing well. If you’ve been around a minute, you know she’s a firecracker with some behavioral and emotional regulation issues. She’s also far too smart for a regular classroom of her peers, but with no other options. By January, we were really struggling with what to do. School felt like a daily disaster waiting to happen. I reached a point where I had to fight back the tears triggered by my ringtone, because so many calls were about her or the avenues to helping her that were dead ends. But then… by the end of February something changed. Planets started to align in our favor. We got a neuropsych evaluation, a pediatric psychiatrist, and a lead on an advanced class for next year. I wouldn’t say we’re out of the woods, but we’re for sure out of the deep, dark cave we found ourselves in the first two months of this year.

Reese’s progress definitely contributed to the next big benchmark—ENJOYING family time. It had slowly trickled out of our lives unnoticed, until this spring I had this moment of realizing “wait… we’re having FUN together as a family again.” Not just the kids. Not just me and Ryan. Not just in one-on-one parent/child dates we love to do regularly. We started enjoying time together. Not all of it. But trips and pool time and movies and listening to audiobooks and singalongs. It’s fun to see those loose sketches of what our family will be like as the girls grow up a little more.

We potty trained Steve and I’ll never have to do that again.

Ryan started a new job in January and it was an immense relief to his mental health, trickling down to all of us.

Boundaries work, my dudes. We set some boundaries with family that were scary, but it has been surprisingly strengthening for us. Our families are amazing and the boundaries were pre-emptive, but it was an important developmental stage for us to reach, I think.

#1. Personal

I tried new meds. I quit new meds. I got a new therapist. I quit my therapist. I did the recommended 6 sessions of Ketamine and it definitely recalibrated my brain in a way that’s hard to describe other than GOOD. I stuck to a good journaling and mindfulness routine. I set down exercise completely, as I physically couldn’t do it and was just using it as an unmet goal to beat myself over the head with. (And I still can’t believe that I DO NOT REGRET IT IN THE SLIGHTEST?????) Just a lot of ditching what doesn’t feel good and giving myself semi trucks full of grace.

We stepped back from the church in August of 2022, but it kind of started as a trial period or break. It was this year that we truly decided to be done, to tell our families, to tell all of you. It’s a different kettle of fish, as they say. It was big and it changed everything in the very best way.

It also pulled the metaphorical rug out from under the decision-making part of my brain. I have been slowly rebuilding trust and intuition. It’s ugly and fun and scary and encouraging. Still a long, LONG way to go here.

I care FAR less about what things look like, how they’re perceived, what people think. In a way that would truly shock 2019 Danica.

I’ve sat with tension and unknowns. Not always well. But that used to be intolerable to me. There have been actual, crystallized moments where I suddenly realized “Hey. That was bugging me. But I let it go and moved on??? Without consciously realizing???” Who is she?

Next Up

If I keep up this level of development I don’t even know who I will be by the end of the year. And that’s so exciting to me! Stripping away all the old shit that isn’t serving me anymore. Setting down heavy stuff, especially when I can’t remember why I picked it up in the first place. Digging deep. Clearing a path. Writing this story.

The biggest thing I’m hoping for in the second half of this year is to develop my own intuition and sense of trust. When you learned to trust white men (whose life experience isn’t remotely the same as yours) for your whole life, you learned to silence your own gut. At least that’s what happened for me. And now I’m listening. Or trying to, because it’s so GD loud in my house all the time.