This Wilderness Our Home

Parenting from Inside My Head and Outside My Comfort Zone

I live in my head. It’s busy in here—layers of thoughts, connections, big-picture concepts, and random facts no one asked for. I move quickly between ideas, toggling between existential crises and whether I remembered to buy cheese. It makes conversation with new people awkward and, occasionally, alienating. I’m not good at small talk. I think too far ahead and overthink my timing. I can usually read where a conversation is going, but not when to step in—so I either have to gently steer things back around later or I blurt out whatever I meant to say three topics ago like a walking footnote.

It’s not that I don’t want connection. I just tend to… process first, relate later. Writing helps. I can take my time. But in parenting—especially with kids and teens—I’ve had to unlearn the idea that timing has to be perfect or that words have to be polished to land.

Because they don’t care if I’ve mentally rewritten a thought six times.

They just want me present.

When Sarcasm Becomes a Love Language

Or: Why My Kids Know First Aid, Foraging, and How to Dispose of a Body

I’m not a hug-first, let’s-sit-with-our-feelings kind of parent. What my kids get instead is a weird mix of sarcasm, mildly unhinged humor, and spontaneous fact drops. Sometimes I roast them lovingly. Sometimes I explain why yarrow is the plant you grab if someone slices their hand open in the woods. Sometimes I remind them never to hide a body in a shallow grave—because we’re a family that prepares for the worst, darling.

And weirdly, it works.

My kids know that when I’m poking fun, I’m also paying attention. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t spend six minutes lecturing them about Greek social hierarchies to make fun of a “sigma” meme. If I didn’t love them, I wouldn’t commit to a bit so hard that it becomes part of family lore.

It’s not traditional warmth. But it’s connection, all the same.

Bus Seats and Boundaries: The Origin of My No-Touch Policy

When I was little—maybe five—my mom didn’t have a license, so we rode the bus. She was always aware of how much I hated being touched by strangers. If she could, she’d sit me by the window, shielding me from casual elbow grazes and accidental thigh contact.

But sometimes it couldn’t be helped.

Cue my quiet meltdowns: me whispering (loudly), “They’re touching me,” like a tiny courtroom witness in a very low-stakes trial. My mom would laugh awkwardly, apologize to the stranger, and pull me onto her lap so I could physically remove myself from humanity. It worked. She knew what I needed, and she protected it.

I don’t remember exactly how it felt to be that kid on the bus, announcing stranger contact like I was reporting a crime. But I remember what my mom did: she didn’t try to fix me or shame me or make me smaller. She let me be sassy, strong-willed, exactly myself. She learned early that I was stubborn—that telling me “no” meant dying on whatever hill we’d landed on, but that “maybe” worked wonders. She adapted to me.

And that’s what I’m trying to do with my own kids: meet them where they are, not where I think they should be.

That moment—those moments—still live in me. That deep need to control who has access to my body, and when. That’s the core of how I approach affection with my own kids.

Hugs Are Weird, But Necessary

I struggle with comfort and empathy sometimes. Not because I don’t feel those things—I do, intensely—but because I don’t always know how to express them in a way that feels natural.

It’s easier with my son. He doesn’t need a lot of physical affection. He reads my quick pinches or random leg-hair tugs as love, which—perfect. Minimal eye contact, maximum chaos. Ideal. My daughter understands this too, but she needs more softness sometimes. She needs a hug when I’m not quite ready to offer one. So I remind myself: a random hug won’t kill me. It might even help us both.

Now she just comes and gets a hug when she needs one, or she braids my hair or asks me to do hers. She’s learned that access is available, that I’ll meet her there. She doesn’t need to negotiate or explain. She just reaches. And I show up.

Their dad is better at the warm-and-fuzzy stuff—he’s all natural affection and ease. I’m more like: “Here is your emotionally meaningful snack, and also a quiz about 19th-century urban planning to distract from my inability to make sustained eye contact.” But it balances out. Our kids get both—the soft landing, and the weird poking.

Consent Isn’t Optional (Even When Family is Waiting)

We didn’t force our kids to hug people. Ever. If someone asked and they said no, I backed them. It didn’t matter who it was. That “But I’m family!” energy doesn’t override bodily autonomy in our house.

And most of the time, people didn’t push. But one moment stays with me—not because someone ignored my daughter’s boundaries, but because someone honored them.

She was little, maybe three or four, and she clearly wanted to hug her uncle—my husband’s younger brother. But she hesitated. Not from fear, just uncertainty. He didn’t pressure her. He just waited, open and ready, not making it weird.

So I scooped her up, and we hugged him together.

That was consent too. Not just hers, but ours. She trusted me to read her cues. And he trusted her timing. It was such a small moment, but it taught me everything about how beautiful affection can be when it’s chosen freely—and supported quietly.

Emotional Intelligence… and Other Explosives

We’re big on understanding emotions in our house. Like, really big. We name them, talk about them, try to respect them—even when they’re deeply inconvenient, loud, or seemingly illogical. I want my kids to know that what they feel matters, even if it doesn’t change the outcome.

That sounds beautiful in theory. In practice? It looks like my son sobbing on the floor because no one is listening to him (while we are literally mid-sentence trying to listen to him).

It also looks like him pressing emotional buttons like a DJ at a rave, fully aware that telling me “no” is the equivalent of stepping on a landmine and making eye contact while he does it.

Still, I try to meet him there. When he cried as a little kid—and it seemed to come out of nowhere—we’d ask him what he was feeling. Usually, he’d shrug or say he didn’t know. So we’d offer: “Are you sad? Angry? Tired? Hungry-for-something-that-doesn’t-exist?”

Still, he’d shake his head. No idea.

Until one day, he came back.

He said: “I was frustrated. Because I didn’t think you were listening to me.”

We were. But the fact that he could name that feeling—that he came back to it and unpacked it later? That felt bigger than a resolution. That was a breakthrough. We still didn’t change the outcome of the moment, but he felt heard. And he learned something about himself.

And so did I. It was a victory—not just for him naming his feelings, but for me learning to soften my “my way or the highway” instinct. To not jump ten steps ahead. To be present and let them get through it before I jump in with solutions.

Now he’s a teenager, and there’s a shift happening. He doesn’t always have the language yet, but he shows me he needs me in other ways—by bringing up random conversations from the middle of nowhere, by coming to watch a movie together, by lobbing inappropriately timed sarcasm about how he’ll be sure to drive right into a tree when he gets his license.

It’s bittersweet, watching him grow. He’s frustrating and amazing, responsible and silly, good at pushing his sister’s buttons and mine—but there when needed. He’s so much more open than I was at his age, so much more carefree. I don’t struggle with it, but at some point he’ll go, and I’ll miss him profoundly. I hope that someday he’ll bring someone home that I can be excited to see him with. Someone who can accept me as part of their family. Someone strong-willed enough to stand up to me if it’s needed—even though I’ll hate that in the moment.

Sometimes emotional intelligence isn’t about getting everything right in the moment—it’s about building a long-term map of your internal world, one weird, messy conversation at a time.

…Except Him

I should mention: there’s one person who’s allowed to break the rules.

One person who doesn’t have to wait for permission or read my facial cues like a barometer for emotional weather.

My husband is the exception.

He’s the one I fell for when we were eighteen and never fell back out of. The one who still doesn’t really know that my sharing everything with him—including food—is not totally normal. I wouldn’t even share with my mom. He doesn’t let me down. He doesn’t need me to be different. And somehow, my nervous system figured that out early and never looked back.

He’s allowed in my space without knocking. He can hug me mid-thought, mid-panic, mid-anything. He doesn’t set off the alarms. He calms them.

And maybe that’s the real secret to how we make this parenting thing work—he leads with ease and softness, and I follow with a backup hug and a three-part analysis. It’s not symmetrical. But it works.

And Sometimes, I Let People In

It’s not just my husband. There are a few others—friends who don’t flinch at my intensity or my need for space. People who draw me out gently, or sit with me when I’m not quite ready to speak. People who understand that just because I’m quiet, or weird, or giving off “leave me alone unless you brought cheese” energy… it doesn’t mean I don’t want connection.

It just means I need it to be real.

And when it is? I show up fully. Maybe awkwardly. Maybe sarcastically. Maybe with a weird emotional metaphor and an aggressively specific fact about food systems. But I show up.

And they stay.

That’s the kind of love I want to raise my kids into. The kind that honors boundaries, invites presence, and never rushes you to speak before you’re ready.

This Is Who I Am

This is who I am when I write about postpartum in my forties. When I tell you it’s okay if your baby doesn’t follow a schedule. When I say the fourth trimester is about finding yourself again, not just surviving it. When I talk about starting solids, living in a cabin in the woods, or raising kids across a big age gap.

I’m writing from inside my head—where I’ve always lived—but I’m trying to meet you where you are. Maybe awkwardly. Maybe with too many facts and a side of sarcasm. But always with the belief that your way of doing this doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.

That real is better than perfect.

And that you—however you’re wired—are enough.

Related Posts

Becoming Her Again: Postpartum in 3 ages

When the Fourth Trimester Ends

The Christmas Rhythm: Building Calm Into a Busy Season

When Your Baby Doesn’t Follow the Schedule

Author’s Note

I’m not a parenting expert, and I don’t pretend to be one. I’m a mom learning in real time—40-something, raising a teen, a tween, and a baby, doing the best I can from the inside of a very loud, very layered mind. These reflections are simply the way I’ve made sense of the world and the way I connect with my kids. If any part of this helps you feel seen, understood, or a little less alone inside your own head—I’m grateful.