The Great Pumpkin (Village) and a Random Mental Health Update

We've been going to the Dallas Arboretum Pumpkin Village since 2013 when I was 8 months pregnant with Cora and looked like I was smuggling a pumpkin out under my shirt. It is one of my absolute favorite things we and I was very worried that we weren't going to be able to make it happen this year. But! On a Saturday where James had to be in Lewisville (north of Dallas) for an International Swim League meet at 2 p.m., Claire had a volleyball game at the downtown YMCA in Fort Worth at 2 p.m., and Landon was supposed to go to a friend's house before Claire's game so they could go to Six Flags Fright Fast, we found a spot in our morning schedule and at 8 a.m. off to Dallas we went! In separate cars with swim meet supplies, sleepover stuff, and volleyball gear stashed in the back of each one.

Girls' car; we arrived first

We were in the parking lot about 8:45 a.m., through the membership line roughly two minutes later, and were immediately greeted with this year's theme: Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin.

And it was GREAT!

The weather was gorgeous- bright blue skies and that magical temperature where no one needs a jacket and no one is sweating.

I got my required "all the kids on the pumpkins" picture, which looks increasingly funny as they get ever bigger and the pumpkins stay the same size.

And then the kids were set free to play- heading as they always do over to the hay maze, turning it in to a raucous game of tag that ends up absorbing at least five other kids around them.

James and I hung back, admiring the decorative gourds and laughing at the fact that our kids are bigger, older, and always moving at 100 mph, but are still very happy to play together for hours on a foot-tall hay bale lined path.

We wandered around the village, catching a glimpse of a kid or two of ours along the way. At one point, Cora tapped me and requested a picture of her "sitting right here on this pumpkin like this."

Nailed it.

Then Claire decided she needed a solo shot.

Landon was annoyed they'd both taken a break from tag.

After deciding we'd seen all the pumpkins we needed to see, and watching many a harried parent try to wrangle their toddlers into a picture (been there! like this year when Cora decided pumpkins were terrifying and not to be touched or trusted. now I can just yell at them to assemble, snap a picture, and let them loose), we meandered on to our other favorite parts of the Arboretum.

Like the frog fountains.

Somewhat tucked back in a corner, these have been beloved by our crew from day one. Of course everyone has to touch the water and everyone has to get a little wet.

Watching, from a safe and dry place, makes me so happy.

Look at Cora's face- pure joy.

We continued on, James and I strolling, the kids racing up and back on the winding paths. We went to the lake, found many ponds, discovered new flowers and corners and paths we hadn't found before (or, more likely, had simply forgotten).

At my personal favorite spot- the tree arched walkway, we witnessed a proposal, complete with professional photographer and all the friends waiting in the wings. The girls thought it was amazing and Landon declared it embarrassing. It was a really beautiful spot and the bride-to-be looked surprised and delighted (and said yes immediately).

We walked some more. I joked to James that it's going to be weird when someday the kids slow down and actually walk with us. Except by then, they probably won't want to go with us at all? It's hard to imagine not traveling everywhere as a fast and laughing (and tagging) pack of five, but then I look at my 12-year-old mantween, and I feel like those years aren't really that far away. And they'll be fun too, but there's something special about traveling as a party pack and I'm committed to finding the time to do more of the little local adventures we used to do so often.

After we had our fill of pumpkins and gorgeous gardens, we went to our favorite Austin restaurant, Taco Deli, which has expanded to Dallas but refuses to come to Fort Worth. We ordered approximately 85 tacos (maybe 15) and devoured them all before James headed north for his meet and I headed west with the kids. As we took Maggie for a quick walk before Claire's volleyball game I did pause to admire our own great tree, which I adore even though we spent a million dollars a year keeping it trimmed and healthy and not crushing our house. But it's gorgeous isn't it? The house was built around it 80 years ago and I feel like we're just the temporary stewards, tasked with keeping it thriving for families to play under it for decades to come.

Apropos of nothing, but this feels like the right time for a mental health update. I was weaned off the anti-depressants in July and had my last therapy appointment in August. Things are good. I hesitated to write about the changes because I didn't want to make it seem that stopping the medication or the therapy were goals of mine or should be goals for anyone else. It's just another step. My therapist's number is still saved in my phone and I have no doubt I'll give her a call for check-ins every now and then. The medication enabled me to forge new pathways of thought and reaction in my brain that were absolutely unattainable for me without it and I am deeply grateful for a therapist and doctor who worked with me to find the right medicine (we tried three brands of the same thing; the first two made gave me vertigo, headaches, and/or heartburn, the third, magically, did not) and the right dose to both get on, maintain, and then slowly wean off. It's what worked for me.

I've always believed in therapy, and after going for over a year I will say that I believe in it even more, but one thing I think people should know, because I didn't, is that therapy is HARD. It is really hard. You go in because something is making you sad or angry or anxious or is otherwise serving as an impediment to your best self and happiness and you want that thing fixed. But your history, memories, behaviors, feelings and the other people who might make you feel those things aren't in therapy. Only you are and you're the only one who can change anything about how you feel or react to those things. And it's so hard. You have to be willing to face truths about yourself, your perceptions, the fallibility and feelings of those around you, and the role you may have played in memories that hurt you and/or truths about what you can change about them. It's not a panacea and it's not a cure-all, but you- the person who walked in the room because you want things to be better- you can get better, stronger, more forgiving, more flexible, more of whatever it is you need to stop having the barriers you're currently facing. But in that room, it begins and ends with you.

And so it's work and it's hard and I was mad at it the first few times I went, but now I'm so deeply grateful. I have a different view on many things and different expectations for others. I have purged past feelings and talked and planned and practiced my words. And the medication is what allowed my brain to pause long enough to put those new plans and practices into action. Rather than spiraling into angry anxiety at triggers I didn't even realize I had, I could pause, and think- what do I want to do/say next? How do I want this to go? Or when I couldn't sleep at night because I was caught up in something I couldn't stop thinking about, I could nudge it aside juuuuust enough to put a new thought there, or to view the (probably very old and very unchangeable) thing that was bothering me in a new light. And then- because the medicine helped me to not be caught in a fight-or-flight response I never realized was happening- I could take a tiny, powerful step in a different mental direction. And then slowly, with time and practice (and medicine!), those tentative steps became natural, and my adrenaline-induced reactions of anger or upset I never realized were based in anxiety began to take a new shape.

And so here I am, flexing my new mental pathways, free (or freer) from past hurts I wanted to get over but simply couldn't, and being a better me in a number of ways I had no idea I very much needed to be.

It's still work and I'm still working, but it's good. It's remarkably good.

And so were the pumpkins.