I do not remember when I first realized raccoons were weird. Perhaps in Pocahontas. Meeko was kind of my hero. Him and Mushu.
Maybe it was the tiny masked face. Maybe it was the suspicious little hands. Maybe it was the way they appear in the world with the confidence of a creature that knows exactly what it is doing, even when it is absolutely unclear to the rest of us.
Raccoons look like they know something.
And because humans are humans, we immediately begin filling in the blanks.
We call them clever. Mischievous. Adorable. Annoying. Little forest bandits.
But here is the strange part:
The raccoon did not change.
Our perception of the raccoon did.
I know, I know. Just follow me here in good faith.
The world around us is constantly offering information, but we do not experience it like a security camera. We sort it. Translate it. Attach stories to it. Decide what matters and what gets shoved into the background.
I once went to an estate sale and came home convinced an inanimate object had a story to tell me.
We’ll come back to that.
And apparently, we start doing this before we even know we’re doing it.
Light enters the eye and hits the retina, and somewhere between light exists and oh, that’s a raccoon, your visual system has already started sorting.
The retina is not just sitting back there taking pictures.
It notices things.
Edges. Contrast. Movement. Changes in light.
Which means that before your conscious brain gets the memo, some part of you is already asking:
What is this?
Have I seen this before?
Does this matter?
Should I remember it?
This is why, after learning a new word, suddenly you seem to see it everywhere. Why a song you have not heard in years appears three times in one week. Why you can recognize a friend’s walk from across a parking lot before you can see their face.
The world did not suddenly become full of that thing.
Your attention changed.
And this is where the raccoon problem begins.
Because the same human system that allows us to find patterns can also create illusions.
We see faces in clouds. We find shapes in shadows. We connect moments together and create stories.
Sometimes those stories are wrong.
But sometimes?
Sometimes that same ability is what allows us to create art, recognize kindness, build relationships, and notice what others overlook.
The human brain is not only a machine for survival.
It is a machine for meaning.
Which is inconvenient, because now we have a new problem.
If we are always interpreting what we see, then how do we know when we are noticing something real and when we are simply noticing ourselves?
I do not think the answer is to stop looking for patterns.
That sounds healthy and reasonable.
Yes
And probably impossible.
Maybe the better question is whether we can stay curious about what we notice without immediately turning it into certainty.
Because there is a difference between:
That meant something to me.
and
That means something.
A small difference in language.
A massive difference in posture.
And honestly, I am still learning it.
The raccoon is still there.
The little masked creature, standing in the dark, looking like it knows a secret.
In Iceland, I asked life to happen without trying to curate the form.
Apparently, life heard me.
I did not realize the form it planned to stop curating was mine.
Rude.
Zero bedside manner.
Also–
Did you know that, before a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it nearly dissolves?
Not metaphorically.
I mean, it becomes soup.
Technically, not every part of the caterpillar liquefies. Some structures remain while much of its larval tissue breaks down.
But “partially intact soup” does not make me feel significantly better.
I learned this while watching a woman explain metamorphosis to Mel Robbins.
“When you’re going through a very hard time,” she began, “one thing that’s very helpful–”
Debatable.
She explained that the caterpillar enters its cocoon and becomes mush.
“Like evaporates?” Mel asked. “Like literally?”
“Like literally.”
“That’s disgusting.”
Thank you, Mel.
This was apparently news to her, too. She had always imagined that the caterpillar simply grew wings out of its existing body.
Honestly, same.
That is more or less how the metaphor has always been presented to us:
Caterpillar → Cocoon → Butterfly
So neat. So directional. So graceful.
There are plenty of phrases meant to capture the unpleasant middle:
“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“The breakdown comes before the breakthrough.”
“Sometimes things have to fall apart so better things can fall together.”
“Trust the process.”
But I find it slightly mischievous that one of our most beloved metaphors for transformation conveniently left out the part where the caterpillar loses its entire recognizable shape.
Nobody mentioned the soup.
The entire ungraceful part was left for me to discover years later.
I’ve been thinking about my life recently–and about how, right before a transformation, the shape of the life we built can begin to dissolve.
Everything liquefies.
Mush.
Not attractive. Not directional.
Just…there.
I wonder if this happens to other people, too.
If, right before we become something we have never been, we have to spend some time being nothing we recognize.
Being mush is scary.
From inside the cocoon, there is no butterfly yet.
There is only the loss of the caterpillar.
And yet, inside the caterpillar are clusters of cells that were there before it ever entered the cocoon.
Imaginal cells.
They are literally called imaginal cells.
Imagine that.
More precisely, scientists refer to imaginal discs or imaginal primordia–clusters of cells involved in forming the adult insect.
As much of the caterpillar’s old tissue breaks down, these cells begin developing into structures belonging to the butterfly.
Wings. Legs. Eyes.
All the pieces of a butterfly, apparently just hanging out inside a caterpillar.
Which feels a little unhinged.
The woman told Mel that these cells carry the roadmap–the blueprint–for becoming a butterfly.
Then she started talking about letting go.
Sigh.
About allowing yourself to be where you are.
I began to regret transcribing the conversation.
I do not enjoy discovering that a metaphor may be relevant to my life, especially when the metaphor requires me to:
surrender;
become soup;
and trust microscopic cells with an inspirational name.
But one thing she said stayed with me:
The story overlay is different.
Maybe the story is not:
“I am being completely demolished.”
Maybe it is:
“I am in a state of transformation.”
The experience might feel exactly the same from inside the cocoon.
But the story changes what we believe is happening.
And then, while writing this, I found an old video of myself.
The Universe, apparently, has lost all regard for subtlety.
The woman in the video had a crown on her head and a purpose she could explain.
She talked for fourteen uninterrupted minutes about:
loving the world;
changing one life;
and coming back softer.
She seemed to know who she was.
Bless.
A few months ago, I might have watched that video and built a case for myself.
Look at her.
Look at everything she survived.
Look at everything she accomplished.
Look at all the evidence that she mattered.
I don’t want to do that today.
I don’t want to turn my former selves into exhibits presented in defense of my existence.
I don’t want to prove that the mush was once impressive.
Because I don’t think the blueprint has ever been for a particular version of my life.
It wasn’t directing me toward a crown. Or a classroom. Or a book. Or a butterfly.
Those were forms.
Caterpillar. Cocoon. Butterfly.
Random alligator that no one asked for.
The form keeps changing.
But I have a feeling that, underneath every version of me, the blueprint has always been orienting me toward the same thing.
Love.
As a child, I said I wanted to love the whole world.
As a teacher, I wanted one child to know they mattered.
In a crown, I took it off and placed it on somebody else’s head.
And now, as mush, I am beginning to wonder whether I need a recognizable shape at all to keep moving in the same direction.
Maybe the imaginal cells do not carry an image of what I am supposed to look like.
Maybe they carry an orientation.
Maybe I don’t need to know whether I am becoming a butterfly, a moth, or some deeply concerning winged creature that immediately flies into a porch light.
For once, I don’t want transformation to become another assignment.
I don’t want to rush out of the mush.
I don’t want to demand that the new form introduce herself before she is ready.
I just want to be…mush.
Maybe with glitter.
The imaginal cells can do whatever they are doing.
The form can change.
The blueprint will keep pointing in the same direction.
On repair, motherhood, and the words we did not erase.
My daughter wrote “I don’t like Mama” on our weekly planner.
Then, a little later, I wrote:
“And I love you.”
By the end of the day, underneath my repair words, she had added the smallest possible offering:
ok.
Not a grand apology.
Not a cinematic hug with swelling music and one tasteful tear.
Not one of those soft-focus parenting moments where everyone wears linen and speaks in nervous-system-approved whispers.
Just dry-erase marker.
A hard day.
A rupture that did not become the ending.
And two tiny letters that felt like hope.
Because here is what I am learning: repair does not always look beautiful while it is happening.
Sometimes repair looks like a child writing the thing she feels before she knows how to say it gently.
Sometimes repair looks like a mother feeling the sting of those words and choosing not to make the child responsible for that sting.
Sometimes repair looks like writing back:
“You are so cute.”
“I’m sorry today felt so big.”
“And I still love you”
And sometimes, after all of that, repair looks like a tiny ok written underneath your words.
The tiny oks are hope because they prove something quietly revolutionary:
Rupture happened, and love still had somewhere to land.
For a long time, I thought good mothering meant preventing rupture.
If my child was upset with me, I had failed.
If I reacted, I was becoming everything I feared.
If repair was not immediate, eloquent, complete, and preferably witnessed by a small panel of experts confirming I had not ruined my child forever, it probably did not count.
But motherhood is teaching me something much less glamorous and much more holy:
Repair is not the absence of rupture.
Repair is what happens when rupture is allowed to be real, but not allowed to write the whole story.
Repair, I am learning, is not asking my child to reassure me.
It is showing her that I can stay present without making her feelings dangerous.
If my first post was about “The Girl With the List”, this one might be about what happens when List Girl has to mother.
“The Girl With the List” likes preparation. She likes structure. She likes the fantasy that if she can plan enough, anticipate enough, understand enough, and make the correct emotional spreadsheet, then no one will get hurt.
She is not bad.
She is trying to love through planning.
But motherhood does not always honor the list.
Children have feelings on their own timeline.
Repair does not arrive color-coded.
And some of the most important moments in a relationship cannot be controlled into safety.
They can only be met.
The list can stay.
But it cannot mother for me.
My daughter does not live with me year-round. She comes to visit in the summers, and that time is deeply precious to me. It is also a transition.
Each summer is a kind of re-entry: a new rhythm, a beloved disruption of routine, a closeness I ache for and still have to adjust to.
For someone with a very active inner world — a whole inner cast ready to offer commentary at any given moment — it can take my nervous system a beat to catch up.
Not because she is too much.
Because she matters so much.
Love raises the stakes.
And sometimes my nervous system is still catching up to what my heart already knows.
We did not erase her words.
We did not write over them.
We did not pretend “I don’t like Mama” had not been written.
We also did not let those words become the final sentence.
We let them exist.
We let them breathe.
And then, underneath them, around them, beside them, we made room for something else too:
Love.
Apology.
Connection.
A tiny ok.
I think that is what feels so different to me.
So much pain gets passed down through erasure:
That did not happen.
You are too sensitive.
You are fine.
And so much pain also gets passed down through writing over someone else’s experience:
Here is what you should feel.
Here is why your hurt is inconvenient.
Here is why my shame matters more than your truth.
But this time, we did something else.
We left the words on the board.
We let the feeling have a place.
And then we practiced coming back.
This is also complicated for me because I have spent years working with children. I have been a teacher, a nanny and a counselor. With other children, I can often access patience and curiosity more easily. I can observe. I can regulate. I can remember that behavior is communication.
But with my own daughter, more of “me” enters the room.
Not less skill.
More history.
More longing.
More fear.
More grief.
More hope.
More old wounds whispering, “Don’t mess this up,” while holding a clipboard and several pieces of unsolicited evidence.
Mothering is not harder because I know less.
Mothering is harder because more of me shows up.
And that is the part I am learning how to meet: the part of me that panics when my daughter is upset, thinks one hard moment means I have ruined everything, and forgets children do not need perfect parents.
They need parents who can come back.
So this week, I am trying to let the tiny oks count — to let repair be evidence that a hard moment is not the whole story.
Because there is proof all around me, if I look toward the light, that love finds us even after mistakes.
A child can write “I don’t like Mama” and still love her.
A mother can feel hurt and still stay soft enough to repair.
A rupture can happen, and the relationship can survive it.
A tiny ok can become a doorway.
Maybe healing does not always arrive loudly.
Maybe it does not look like a breakthrough.
Maybe sometimes healing is just two small letters written underneath an apology.
Maybe sometimes it is both of us saying, in the smallest handwriting possible:
There is a girl inside me who believes that if she can make a good enough list, she can finally feel safe.
Not a normal list.
A sacred list. A survival list. An “if I can just get all of this out of my head and onto paper, maybe my body will stop acting like there is a lion in the kitchen” list.
📝
She writes down everything.
The appointments. The errands. The texts she needs to answer. The people she might have disappointed. The gifts she still needs to wrap. The book she wants to write. The blog she wants to start. The life she is trying to build. The version of herself she is trying very hard to become.
A casual Tuesday, basically.
She is efficient, this girl.
She is also exhausted.
And dramatic.
Not just regular dramatic. More like, “If we don’t reorganize our entire life before 11:43 a.m., we may never fulfill our destiny” dramatic.
For a long time, I mistook her for discipline. I thought she was ambition. I thought she was proof that I was trying, growing, healing, becoming.
And she is trying.
But she is also (so) afraid.
🕯️
Afraid that if she slows down, everything will fall apart. Afraid that if she forgets one thing, she will become one thing: unreliable. Afraid that rest will be mistaken for failure. Afraid that if she stops managing the whole universe, the whole universe will finally have the audacity to manage itself without her.
Rude, honestly 😒
Sometimes I catch her in the act.
There I am, allegedly “taking a break,” except my break has somehow become a 17-step plan for emotional liberation, financial stability, spiritual enlightenment, and possibly reorganizing the pantry.
Because why simply drink water when you could also create a five-year plan? 🤦♀️
Why feel one feeling when you could build a comprehensive nervous system operating manual and assign it subheadings?
🌿
But lately, through EMDR, IFS, motherhood, and the deeply humbling experience of being human, I am beginning to understand something:
The list is not the problem.
The list is a part.
A protector.
A little clipboard-holding manager inside me who learned a long time ago that being prepared was safer than being present.
She does not need to be shamed. She does not need to be fired. She needs to be witnessed.
Because underneath the list is usually a feeling.
Grief. Fear. Shame. The ache of wanting to be held. The terror of being needed when I already feel empty. The old belief that I have to earn my right to rest.
And when I only add more tasks, I never reach the feeling. I just create a more organized form of avoidance.
A very color-coded dissociation, if you will.
🤍
There is another part of me now, though. A quieter one. A slower one.
She does not hate the girl with the list.
She actually kind of respects the hustle.
But she also gently asks:
What are we afraid will happen if we pause? What feeling are we trying to outrun? What if the next right thing is not the most productive thing, but the most honest one?
This question is deeply inconvenient.
I would personally prefer a spreadsheet.
I used to think healing meant finally becoming the kind of person who could do everything.
Now I wonder if healing means becoming the kind of person who no longer needs to.
✨
The list can stay.
But it cannot be God.
It cannot be my worth. It cannot be my mothering. It cannot be my authorship. It cannot be the measure of whether I am becoming who I am meant to be.
Sometimes the bravest thing I can do is not cross off another task.
Sometimes it is to put the pen down, place one hand on my chest, and say:
I am here. I am not behind. I do not have to abandon myself to become myself.
And yes, the list girl may still whisper, “Okay, but should we make a list about how to stop making lists?”
Ever walked into the middle of a movie—no clue as to what was happening prior to you seeing it. Why is that guy trying to kill the other one? Who is she, and why is she carrying a baby alligator around? Huh?
Our very existence is like watching a movie from the middle. We woke up in this world one day, with no recollection of where we were before—no recollection of where we came from, how we got here, and why we’re here.
If we’re lucky, we awoke to two “somewhat functioning” adults holding us, and helping us. And perhaps along the way, they decided to bring some other equally confused little aliens into this world. We begin to call these people “family.” Who are they? And why does it seem like they have our whole lives planned before we even can form our first words?
“What am I doing here?” Slowly, we begin to learn how to produce certain sounds that we associate with abstract objects—we call this language. We begin to communicate about things that are happening; in fact, we become so well-versed, that, some of us begin to spin poetic metaphors and literary allusions into masterpieces, which serve to capture the essence of this confounding life. These will be known as our greatest writers.
However, no matter how many literary tactics we employ to mystify and obscure the concept of human existence, we cannot, with full certainty, pinpoint the answer to the ultimate question: why are we here?
Some of us decide to gain some certainty through pulling on teachings of age-old religions, and others simply turn to testaments of our own experiences. Regardless of where we find our illusion of “certainty”, the inherent perplexity of human existence remains glaring.
As a therapist-in-training, I have some awareness of the unfortunate prevalence of addictions in our world. Yes there are the evident ones such as alcoholism, eating disorders, substance abuse, and self-harm. But then, there are also those faint addictions—the addictions that tend to get “normalized”, as they are more accepted by society. These are the addictions to other people, the addiction to things, the addiction to abstract concepts such as success and accomplishment.
I would go as far as saying that, to some degree, every single one of us is an addict. Workaholics, workoutaholics, codependents, hoarders, sex addicts, money addicts. We become addicted to our partners, to our children, to “best friends.” That’s not the end of it. Some of us suffer from addictions that are intangible—we become addicted to attaining fame, beauty, success.
Why is human existence marked with coming in and out of different addictions? I truly and wholeheartedly believe that it is because our very existence has been out of control. All the preceding addictions are mechanisms that we use to deal with the lack of control we had in our very own existence. No entity asked for my permission before I was born. I don’t recall me signing a document instating my birth. Out of the millions of choices, why did that specific sperm have to fertilize that specific egg to create ME?
This brings me to the point of this blog: CHOICES.
They are beautiful burdensome trinkets. Regardless of circumstances, everything comes down to choice. They say “10% of what happens to you is life, and 90% is how you choose to deal with it.” I am in complete agreement with that statement. The world could be crumbling outside, but I will possess have a choice in how to react to it. Every single thing comes down to choice. “Not making a choice” is also a choice.
Let me tell you about an interesting experience. 19 years into my life, I realized that I had not yet made the active choice to live. HUH? I had become a passive bystander in my life—just letting life do whatever it wanted. “The greatest choice you will ever make is the one to live. Most people simply just exist.” And that’s exactly what it came down to.
It wasn’t so much that I “gave up” on life, as “giving up”, in itself, is an active choice. It was more like I had, simply, chosen not to choose when it came to matters of my own being. I didn’t wake up and DECIDE to be happy. Instead, I let the day’s events dictate whether or not I would feel happy. It was as if, i was (and still am (to some extent)), a leaf that was just blowing around in the wind—untethered to a stable source. For 19 years, I remained unanchored to the robust, secure tree of personal choice. Circumstances dictated my mood, my self-worth, my ambition, my energy—my life.
For 19 whole years. I didn’t even once affirm “regardless of what this day brings, I choose to act in a manner that increases inner peace and happiness.”
And then, I met my husband.
Needless to say, he found me scattered at my most vulnerable, confused state of being. In a lot ways, I was undergoing an identity crisis. “Which parts of my life are truly “mine”? I questioned “Which parts are the ones that I actually chose?”
I never did find the answers to those questions. I stopped looking for them. Instead, I made the very first choice I consciously remember making.
I chose him. I chose my husband.
It’s ironic because our marriage was arranged in nature. I remember the day I chose as clearly as if it were yesterday. I remember, sitting in my blue summer dress, on the sidewalk, barefooted. My husband and his family had just left my house, after seeing me for the very first time. I was 19. I was frightened, uncertain, unprepared, shaking.
A picture of me in my blue dress FROM that very day
I liked him. It felt right. I think. Maybe? What if it isn’t right? What if he’s not the one? What if this is going to be the biggest mistake of my life? Oh my goodness, it is isn’t it? I will regret this forever. Don’t do it. Do it. Don’t do it. Do it.
My dashing thoughts were rudely interrupted by the chirping of a bird. Annoyed, I snapped back to glare at him. And there he was–eating some seeds off the middle of the road, completely at ease, unaware of his agitating chirps. In the distance, I heard a car approaching–it came closer. Closer. Closer.
My heart jumped into my throat as I fretted fearfully for the bird’s life. “WHY ISN’T IT FLYING AWAY!? Is it DEAF!?” I winced, as the car came within touching distance of the bird, and boom. There he went. He flew towards the sky. A few moments after the car passed, the bird swiftly returned to the ground and began picking at his seeds, completely at ease–completely unaware that his life had just been in danger.
I exhaled loudly and stared with wonder and perplexity at this seemingly “unintelligent” creature. And, as it’s beady black eyes met mine, a bizarre thought crossed my mind. “What if I’M the unintelligent creature?”
As human beings, we spend all day and night fretting about what could go wrong. We approach every scenario as if it is one of life and death. For some of us, it is. Many of us are truly brought to “life or death” circumstances, in which we’re spared right at the nick of time. However, so few of us ever focus on the fact that we were spared. WE ARE ALIVE. Instead, we stay inside, worried, afraid to ever go back out “on the road” because we are afraid of the next car that will drive by.
I remember laughing at my fearful thoughts regarding the encounter, and I clearly recall looking up to the sun gently setting in the sky. “In this moment, I CHOOSE to be with this man!” I declared assertively, hoping to convince any higher power that may have resided up there.
I wasn’t going to let life happen to me. In that moment, I chose my husband, and in choosing him, I took an oath to doing all that I could do to make it work. I took an oath to not giving up when things got hard, and above all, I took an oath to go into the marriage FEARLESSLY.
This brings us back to the familiar concept of fear. So many of you may question things that I have questioned before Should I even “fight” for my life? Am I worth fighting for? Do I want to take charge of my life? “Um. Maham. Duh. Shut up. OF course.” These may be answers that seem simple and easy on the surface, but how many of us can honestly say “yes” to them in a manner that is as fierce as a racehorse running, full throttle, out of the starting gate?
Oh honey! Courage is not the absence of fear. It is simply the presence of something MORE powerful than fear. So, the horse passionately runs. It does what it would naturally do, no knowledge of what comes next; he courageously gallops out of the gate, no preoccupation with what’s ahead. He does what he loves to do.
My sweet friend, this is about life being ahead of you, and you making the choice to run towards it courageously! Will you do something for me?
I want for you to figure out what you desire—it could be anything, big or small. Figure it out. Verbalize it. Write it out, and declare your intention to the universe, as I did 4 beautiful years ago.
And now, think of the racehorse. There is no going back. You can only move forwards. Just RUN towards what you want fearlessly—no doubts, no preoccupation with what could go wrong, no energy wasted in thinking about “how hard it’s going to be” or “how long its going to take.” Nobody ever accomplished anything by fretting about how “impossible” it was going to be. You’ve done harder things, and the time will pass anyway. Just run. Run towards it, with arms wide open, and a heart brimming with excitement! Get ready to catch your dream, because, the entire universe and it’s cosmos is running back, towards YOU—the world is so excited for you two to finally meet. Your dream is not a separate entity from you. It was yours. It is yours. It has always been yours.
abidmaham 