Dispatch from Mom 2.0: On agency, being a highly sensitive person, and mothering a neurodivergent child

Selfie from Nashville. Fun fact: these are my “computer glasses,” which I forgot to replace with my “regular glasses” before attending the opening night party. Lasik surgery looks increasingly appealing…

My head is spinning here at the Mom 2.0 conference in Nashville, and the best thing I know to do when my head is spinning is to write about it. Well, first, it’s to listen to my favorite sound bath on the Insight Timer app (and no, they did not pay me to say that!), and then it’s to write.

The power of personal agency

The best session so far, hands down, was a conversation between musician Ingrid Michaelson and Amy Poehler Smart Girls co-founder Meredith Walker. They explored themes that matter so much to me. Most notably: Realizing that you don’t have to just accept what the world hands you — that you get to make choices. And how powerful it is to make unconventional choices that veer from the scripts life/parents/culture hand to you. If I could spread one message to the world, it would be this. It’s why I made stickers for my company, Mighty Forces, that say, “Authenticity + Agency = Hope.” I believe this down to my core.

It was all I could do not to hop up on stage and share the story of when I left college, and then came back on my own terms, and how that was when I first felt the power of personal agency, and I’ve been carving my own path in this world ever since. In fact, in the rearview mirror, I can see that I’ve been improvising adulthood since long before I discovered the art of improv comedy. I’ve been refusing the scripts that are handed to me, and instead, making it up as I go, guided by intuition and a fair amount of stubbornness; then again, improv teacher Keith Johnstone wrote that one must be very stubborn to remain an artist in our culture. When I was in my 20s, I felt like a pariah for not being able to just “suck it up” and go with the flow; now, I feel proud of the extent to which I’ve created a life that is aligned with my values and priorities.

Musician Ingrid Michaelson and Amy Poehler Smart Girls co-founded Meredith Walker in conversation on the Mom 2.0 stage

A highly sensitive woman walks into a conference…

…Not to mention, a life that works for someone who is highly sensitive. When I read the book, The Highly Sensitive Person, I felt a surreal sense of being watched. Clearly, someone had been clocking my every move and feeling, if they could describe to a tee how it felt to be me in the world. The only other book that’s ever made me feel that way is The Artist’s Way. But anyway: Long before I’d ever heard anyone talk about neurodivergence, I made choices that took me out of over-stimulating environments, creating a lifestyle that allowed enough quiet, alone time, and down time. Instead of feeling constantly drained by office politics, I feel constantly energized by my one-on-one connections with clients, which are surrounded by stretches of quiet work time. Ahhh.

In fact, this highly sensitive person is currently at her Airbnb writing this blog post instead of being at the hotel where the conference is taking place… after three 20-minute roundtable sessions in a row, on the heels of hours of programming from the main stage and conversation over lunch with fellow attendees, I hit a wall: No. More. Sensory. Input. It’s hard to explain what this feels like, physically — it’s this sense of being full-up and dangerously close to short-circuiting. Hence the sound bath, and hence, this writing, in a dark, silent room.

Who you callin’ a mom?! also, where my moms of neurodivergent kids at?

It’s been interesting to notice how it feels to be at a conference for so-called “mompreneurs.” I do not identify that way, even though I’m both a mom and an entrepreneur, because I’ve never been comfortable leading any introduction of myself with my identity as a mom. I’d feel far more comfortable saying I’m an entrepreneur who’s a mom, than saying that I’m a mom who’s also an entrepreneur. I think I have a stubborn (there’s that word again) insistence that my identity is not and should not be primarily defined by my relationship to another person. It’s why, when I read someone’s profile, and it says something like, “Wife/mother/daughter/sister/friend,” I feel like, “Right, but who are YOU, above and beyond all of those roles?”

And yet, first of all, I’m not the warden of other people’s profiles ;), and also, if some people authentically feel like the most important parts of their identity are their relationships with others — well, what’s it to me? As Amy Poehler taught me to say in her book, Yes, Please, “good for her, not for me.”

I will say that being in this “mom-forward” community is making me feel a stronger connection to my identity as the mother of a neurodivergent child. I feel more of an insta-kinship with women who have been on that particular journey. I’ve felt called for a while to pass along along all I’ve learned to mothers earlier in their journeys — it’s one of several book ideas I’m developing — and being here makes me feel a renewed energy around this.

reaching more people with my writing: possible paths

So, if I don’t identify as a “mompreneur,” then why did I come to Mom 2.0? Well, a lot of these women have followings that dwarf mine, and I want to learn from them. I’ve blogged off and on and been active on social media, since the early aughts and I preach authenticity on social media because of how many meaningful relationships and opportunities my own online presence have brought into my life. (And now I see it with my clients, time and again.) BUT, my numbers are far from astronomical — they’re more… subterranean? — and as my itch for reaching more people with my writing intensifies, I’ve decided to make growing my #s a priority for the first time ever.

This afternoon I attended a roundtable about getting an agent that made me feel so alienated. I get so tense whenever I’m in a situation that asks me to put myself in a box. I think what makes people interesting is all the complexities, nuances, and intersectionalities of their identities, and then every time I learn about the publishing world it feels like the message is just, “Flatten yourself. Be a this or a that, NEVER a little bit of this and a little bit of that.” My mind and psyche just don’t work that way.

Weighing my options…. here’s a book I picked up at the selfpublishing.com booth

I increasingly wonder if the path, for me, to getting my writing into more people’s hands really does center around growing my online audience. I’m also looking into self-publishing and hybrid publishing. From what I hear, traditional publishers hardly help authors with publicity anyway, so the main reason to go that route is for the credibility stamp and/or ego boost. And while I am not immune to the dream of being able to refer to myself as a NYT bestselling author, I also see what appears to be the exhausting hustle that authors with that accomplishment under their wing CONTINUE to do, to make any money, to get any media attention, to drum up interest in their next book.

I wonder sometimes if being a (traditionally) published author is this dream so many of us have as a kind of stand-in for wanting to be relevant or leave a legacy. But if we get all that out of the way and think about simply reaching other human beings with our words, there are so many other paths available… paths that may not make us feel like we’re constantly selling, all alone.

I don’t know. I am thinking aloud, as it were, and processing a whole lot of input. Would love your thoughts on any or all of this. Off to take a hot shower.