Designed To Be Wild

Unraveling expectations and learning to thrive in a world that wasn't designed for the wild way I grow.

Today’s post is going to look like me processing the therapy session I just had. The first thing to note is that the session was not long enough! Some days we land at the 50 minute mark and I feel solid and like I said everything that needed to be said. Today the time flew by and I feel like we barely scratched the surface. Before I get too far in, I want to say that I may go back and forth, I may not make sense, I may blather on, but I’m done apologizing. This is how I process, so it will take whatever shape it wants.

Creating something concrete and beautiful while my brain sits here, just trying to rest in the middle.

I’m halfway through my third week of medical leave, and I feel like the six week time frame is a deadline that is looming. Not just looming. The closer it gets the heavier it feels. Like this shadow that is trying to surround and infect me with something dangerous. Three weeks in and I don’t feel any better. I don’t feel any more capable of going back to work or picking up the household duties I once just did without thinking. Everything feels hard, outside of creating. And this isn’t me trying to look to the ending and figure out what is going to happen. Or, maybe it is. I’m not intending to do that. I’m trying to rest. I’m trying to be kind and patient with myself.

And on the other hand, I do feel like I have to be better.

I have to get better. I have to feel better. And so far, I don’t. In some ways, I feel worse. Not less capable of going back to work—just less capable or willing to go back to doing things the way I have always done them. I feel like I am just discovering myself for the first time, along with the rest of you.

I have been trying to grow something concrete and manicured and beautiful in a brain and body that was designed to be wild and free. To thrive outside the constraints I have always been forced to live under.

The drive to perform, to be perfect, to do it all the way or not at all is intertwined into the core of my being.

How do I unravel all of that in six weeks?

Really, in three and a half weeks, because I’ve already wasted the first three.

And I know—it isn’t wasteful, what I am doing right now. It is probably the most productive thing I have ever done, and the most healing for my brain.

But the middle here is hard to tolerate. It’s difficult to sit here, doing what feels like absolutely nothing.

Autistic burnout is no joke. This is not something I waded into because it was popular or trending. Since my diagnoses, I have been doing a lot of reading. I didn’t follow things on Tiktok or social media before about how everyone is now being diagnosed as Autistic—I didn’t even know this was happening. I didn’t hop on a trend or seek out a diagnosis because it was “all the rage” right now. I didn’t want this diagnosis. I had been telling my oldest for two years that it was just trauma, it was just C-PTSD. That was why I am the way I am and why I react to the world around me as I do. And in part, there is some truth in that. C-PTSD and different traumas throughout my life (infancy, childhood and adult) have shaped me and created behaviors in me that have weighed me down and made it hard to navigate life.

I have to remind myself that when I talked to my doctor about the struggles I was having with menopause and at work and home, she referred me to a neuropsych for the evaluation. I didn’t ask her if she could send me for it. All I did was tell her what I was struggling with, especially the ADHD portion that was preventing me from feeding myself some days or focusing on tasks at work, and that I thought it was trauma but my daughter thought it was Autism. What my doctor did was listen. Truly sit with me, hear what I was struggling with, all the ways I have been suffering quite literally, and she took the lead. Being a doctor, and one who isn’t quick to just throw medicine at me, she paused and said, “Let’s see where the ADHD is coming from, before we medicate it. Let’s explore all possibilities so we can know if it is related to menopause or something deeper.”

The neuropsych didn’t know me. He isn’t a Tiktok doctor out there promoting that he will diagnose you with whatever you want. I filled out hours of paperwork, wrote answers to 60 different questions, all open ended and some left me feeling completely stripped bare. I then talked to the doctor for 40 minutes. And then a week later, I received his report in the mail:

Autism (level/severity/however they classify it “2”—in need of significant support)
ADD
PTSD
Anxiety disorder with panic
Adjustment disorder/Active Autistic burnout with depression

When I look back at my life, I don’t take the “in need of significant support” lightly. I am not using it as an excuse or boxing myself in. I am looking at the bigger picture and how it has played out in my life up to now.

I see how I have never really lived alone. I have never had the desire to. I had a single dorm on campus my freshman year of college for all of three weeks. I don’t think it is any coincidence that God brought a beautiful girl named Addie into my life. I loved having a roommate and I loved her. I needed her. I thought at the time it was just because we clicked and became attached at the hip. One guy even called us Addie and Subtractie, because of the bond we shared. Where she went, I went. But really, I think perhaps God knew that I needed someone who knew how to keep the room clean and get up on time, shower regularly, and who helped me do those very things and more.

I roomed with her until she moved back home to commute to school after freshman year. My sophomore year, I was already engaged to Kris, and I moved off campus to live with Kris’ mom until we got married, while Kris remained on campus. I was married at 19, having lived alone for a sum total of three weeks. I literally have never lived alone outside of that short window. Perhaps that is what exacerbated my fear that Kris was going to die. I was always terrified of this, until shortly before his cancer diagnosis. God had been working in my heart since 2021 in that area and teaching me that even if I lost Kris, I would never be alone. That I would be okay. I have never felt capable of living on my own and taking care of myself fully.

And do you know what helped me understand that I would be okay if Kris died? It was the fact that I was surrounded by four amazing adult kids who loved me fiercely and would make sure I was okay. And God had given us a church family that has poured into me, loved on me, taught me to endure hugs more than ever before—I even seek them out now with those that I feel the safest with. So, even if I lose Kris, I will not be left alone. Even if I live in a house by myself, I will not truly be on my own. Between God and the amazing family (natural and spiritual) He has given to me, I truly would be okay.

I think that these are examples of how God naturally gave me the significant support that I would need as I journeyed into my adult life. And so when I think about returning to work, I have to consider what needs to change. The job I was doing isn’t a job I am incapable of. However, I can’t go back to masking everything that menopause uncovered. I will not put those masks on. Sure, when I go to church or go out into the world, there is a bit of masking that may need to be done, because there are some situations where I have to be a big girl and do hard things. So maybe the masks can stick around. In the background. In my back pocket. But I am no longer willing to live with masks on.

I’m exhausted from constantly monitoring myself and everyone around me to try to fit in. I have got to get out of survival mode and constantly watching my surroundings to prepare for whatever danger may be right around the corner.

The truth is that my brain is different. And it was designed to be! It needs to be wild. That doesn’t mean that I don’t tend to it. But it does mean that I have to stop trying to force my brain to comply with a way of life that isn’t conducive to growth. I want to grow. I want to have roots that go deep and become strong.

But I can’t get there without uprooting what doesn’t belong. And there is so much that doesn’t belong.

I told my therapist today that sitting here in the middle of my medical leave having made what feels like no progress in feeling better is suffocating. I don’t know how to be okay with not doing anything. Sure, it’s easy to literally sit and not do anything. But what happens in my brain when I do this, and how it manifests within my body—that’s the struggle. Because shame bubbles up. It is amazing to me how far I have come in terms of shame and uprooting it. Yet there are still pieces of it that remain and are tangled up with the freedom God has given me. That feels wrong to say—but it’s no less true. I can have freedom from shame and still struggle with it at times. And I see just how much shame still exists within my body and mind as all of this plays out.

It’s like the Jerusalem sunchoke that invaded my native flower beds. It is a native plant, and very beautiful, but two years ago, an accidental seed was in a coneflower that was gifted to me and I let it grow.

But I left it unchecked. I didn’t dead head it. I let it go to seed. It was my first year of native gardening and I had no idea how invasive it could be. I learned the next year and literally gave away over 600 volunteer sunchokes, and threw away many more. This year, I pulled up several as well, though I had planted other things in their place (after laying cardboard down all winter).

It is still trying to grow where it doesn’t belong.

Alternatively, I have tried to intentionally grow bee balm—the short native one, not the wild bergamot. I have that one too and it grows very well, but not the shorter variety. I have also lost coneflowers, cardinal flower, and several other native species—are flower varieties called species? And for two years, I have said “If it doesn’t grow here, it doesn’t belong.” I know I shared that last week. It keeps coming to the forefront of my mind and I realize that I have to do two things:

1. Stop trying to force things that don’t want to grow in my brain to stay. It’s okay to accept that some things grow better than others in my brain. It’s okay to uproot anything invasive—like shame, perfectionism, performance. It’s actually necessary and essential to my survival. I realize that now more than ever before.

2. Plant things that will grow well. Do things that will allow me to thrive instead of suffer. I don’t have to let things choke out my life. I can uproot them, and plant things that have proven they will grow: authenticity, honesty, kindness, encouragement, patience with myself, peace, acceptance.

So truly, if it won’t grow in my brain, or I have to fight hard to force something, it’s not made for my garden. I want to plant what will not only grow, but thrive. I have shared this before, but it’s fitting for me and I’m putting it here in case anyone else needs the hope within. Switchfoot explains it far better than I ever could:

Been fighting things that I can’t see
Like voices coming from the inside of me and
Like doing things I find hard to believe in
Am I myself or am I dreaming?

I’ve been awake for an hour or so
Checking for a pulse but I just don’t know
Am I a man when I feel like a ghost?
The stranger in the mirror is wearing my clothes

No, I’m not alright
I know that I’m not right
A steering wheel don’t mean you can drive
A warm body don’t mean I’m alive

No, I’m not alright
I know that I’m not right
Feels like I travel but I never arrive
I wanna thrive not just survive

Jamie

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