Self inventory

I’ve been thinking about connection and loneliness lately. I have always considered myself an extrovert, energized by spending time with people and pretty willing to entertain a crowd. As I get older, though, I find myself feeling less and less inclined to have a large circle of friends and acquaintances. When we’re around people at events and parties, I’m happy to talk to as many people as I can. If I’m honest, I feel some gratification in knowing so many of the parents of the kids my girls know from school – my own mom was never good at connecting in this way and I often felt a bit left out that my parents weren’t particularly interested in socializing with school families.

But the ranks of close friends, those people I can be truly vulnerable with, have been winnowed down over the years and I’ve found myself skipping out on social engagements that I would have sought out only a few years ago.

As a therapist, changes in routine are something to be investigated and curious about so I’ve been wondering if its a sign of something that’s not working the way that it should or if it’s the settling and adaptation that comes with age.

My first question is whether I feel happy. I think when clients first come to therapy, they’re unaware of the times that they’re happy during the day because the sum total of the moments they find difficult or overwhelming is swamping the good moments. They’re missing the joy or happiness they might feel from time to time because they’re always worrying and focusing on the things that are making them unhappy. If it’s something like depression, I would find it difficult to be happy EVER. That persistent weight would be dragging me under. It would be like swimming straight for shore when caught in a riptide…thrashing about and exhausting myself but making no progress.

That’s not what this feels like. I am happy for parts of every day. Right this moment, sitting on my front porch writing this, my chest feels open and warm, my thoughts are calm and peaceful, my coffee is cold and sweet, and the sunlight on my toes is warm but not yet oppressive. I’m happy. I’m content.

I also know that this is a good day because I forced myself to go for a run this morning when I really wanted to go back to bed for an hour or two after dropping off Number 71 at school. But it wasn’t THAT hard to get myself out – I’m motivated to run a half marathon next month.

So I think it’s safe to rule out depression.

But then, I’ve been emotional eating again. I work with people who binge eat so I recognize the signs of a binge – the mindlessness, the blankness that descends when you eat beyond tasting and enjoying. The feeling of guilt after you realize what you actually ate. The urge to eat more to wipe away that shame. I’m definitely prone to these behaviors. But, and I tell clients this all the time, it’s ok to choose to eat emotionally from time to time if it works for you as a coping strategy and isn’t in the way of your life/goals – so long as you make a conscious choice to engage in the behavior and have considered alternatives.

Again, curiosity is important – what’s driving me to eat? Is it shame? (It’s so often shame). I feel pretty good about life these days, but I have noticed some anxious thoughts about middle school for Number 71 and making sure that both girls are doing alright in their classes this year. I think the times that I’m choosing this coping strategy are the days that I’ve worked a long day with clients and have a lot of driving for the girls. It’s a response to stress and fatigue (when I start I actually AM tired and carbs – blessed crackers – are a natural craving for a short energy burst. The sense of resentment towards the sheer volume of driving is probably contributing to the urge to continue eating after hunger is satisfied).

So maybe it’s anxiety.

That said, I’m sleeping pretty great and my anxiety tends to wake me up in the middle of the night with racing thoughts and panic about what I failed to accomplish the day before.

So I don’t think it’s that.

Maybe it really is that I’m going through a period of feeling content to interact less. I think those are pretty normal even for extroverts. I would be a pretty poor therapist if I wasn’t able to validate a client’s desire to listen to their urges and pull in when needed. But I’m also conscious of the urge to pull in and then pull up the ladder, cutting off all contact. I hear clients sometimes talk about the appeal of being an island – avoiding the hurt and disappointment that come with connection and reliance on others. The reality that we have to accept when we seek connection is that people will disappoint us. They will fail us. Not out of maliciousness, but out of their humanity.

So I think the important take away from this self inventory is to avoid that absolute thinking. That because I feel like spending time alone that I will ALWAYS want to spend time alone and then forcing myself to do the things needed to maintain the connections I value with others even while I’m gentle with myself and accepting of my need to pull in a bit.

They will not make it to Canada…

Disney is in the title of this blog. I don’t think it’s a secret that I love all things Disney World. It’s not an uncomplicated love, in that I know there are things that Disney could improve upon, but it’s still a pretty straightforward enjoyment of all things Disney World related.

When I’m stressed and overwhelmed, Disney seems to be my go to. Last week Houston, where I live, had some flooding. We were fine and never saw the water rise nearly as much as we did in Harvey, but I did find myself trapped in a parking lot for an hour waiting for the water to go down enough for me to pick the kids up from school (it did and it was fine, we even managed a stop at the grocery store on the way home). As I sat in the parking lot, watching taller trucks than mine plow through the water, displacing large waves to crash over the hood and roof of the smaller cars coming towards them, I definitely listened to a Disney podcast and took a little mental vacation.

On my mental vacation, I went back to my favorite park (EPCOT) to one of my favorite places, Tutto Gusto Wine Cellar, and contemplated what it is that brings our family back there on almost every trip.

We first discovered the “wine cave”, as it is known in our family, on a trip 5 or 6 years ago. The kids were very small and we were very desperate for some peace and quiet and a LARGE glass of wine. I had started following EasyWDW – a truly great website – before the trip, slavishly studying the touring plans and fastpass recommendations, and remembered reading something about how the lounges in the pavilions of the world showcase didn’t actually require reservations. On that stressed out day, we stumbled in and discovered Disney nirvana. It was cool, dark, quiet, and blessedly empty. They served a full menu of pastas and pizzas and would bring almost anything the kids might want. Even better, they had full wine tasting flights. As we sat for far longer than we normally would have, enjoying our six glasses (half size of course) of wine, while the kids colored away happily, we found ourselves truly relaxed for the first time on the trip.

We didn’t need to make a reservation or plan ahead, we didn’t need to worry about whether we were taking up space that someone else might want, and we certainly didn’t feel at all aware of the world outside the cave (which is conveniently devoid of windows). We just drifted along, enjoying ourselves and each other’s company. A truly unexpected and unplanned experience in a Disney World that is increasingly intolerant of such desires.

At one point, a group drinking around the world burst into our sanctuary looking to complete Italy with a decent glass of wine at the counter. They were about half way through – clearly working their way towards Canada (we were sure of this because they were checking off each stop on their matching t-shirts – for those not in the know, they had completed five countries and had eight left counting Italy and Canada). They were pretty drunk already, but still in that happy hopeful way that anticipates success. They had not arrived at the the sick and exhausted drunk that occurs somewhere around drink 10 (France). Our Italian waiter, watched them from near our table, he leaned over and offered the girls a wink. Then he said what is quite possibly the best thing we have ever heard on a Disney vacation – “I think….” he began, his heavy Italian accent a shrug followed by an actual shrug of one shoulder, “they will not make it to Canada.”

It’s become our rallying cry whenever we spend time in EPCOT. When we’re overwhelmed. When we’ve set out to do something we cannot manage. Of course, we cannot duplicate his dry Italian fatalism when we say it, but it always brings us back to that day and that moment.

I think I loved that lunch so much because it reminded me of my first trip to Disney World, when I was 10. On an extremely rainy day, my family found ourselves at Hollywood Studios (then MGM studios) wearing our matching yellow mouse ponchos on the backlot studio tour. My poncho, of course, ripped, right along the neck where the hood joined the body, leaving me soaked following our voyage through Castrophe Canyon. We met my grandparents afterward for lunch at the Brown Derby, no reservation because in those days you didn’t need one if you were willing to wait. and I remember feeling so cozy and warm in its wood paneled interior. My dad bought me a mickey sweatshirt in a gift shop and I felt safe and dry. My mother ordered the Cobb Salad. In those days they would bring it out in a giant bowl, the ingredients tidy strips of color over the bed of lettuce, and then toss it table side. I thought this was the height of luxury and sophistication.

That day, too, like the first at the wine cave, felt spontaneous and relaxed. It felt unrushed and comfortable. It was different enough not to feel like home, but not so different that it overwhelmed. It was that Disney magic that it can be hard to track down when rushing from reservation to FastPass+.

SO, if you should find yourself in EPCOT passing by the wine cave, do yourself a favor and stop in – they welcome kids, ours have certainly been there multiple times, and slow down. Allow a trip to Disney to feel like a vacation from ordinary life. I think we often miss that chance to be truly present in a moment without thought to what comes next. After all, who cares if you make it to Canada when you’re truly enjoying Italy?

Failure…

So I’ve failed. I didn’t write anything yesterday. I almost got out of bed at 11:50 to write something quickly so as not to miss my self-imposed deadline. But I was tired and I didn’t really have anything to say. So I let those last 10 minutes tick by without writing anything.

So. It’s been a little over a month and I’ve failed in my goal to write every day.

Whelp.

There are a couple of ways that I can respond to this. I can do what comes most naturally to me – throw up my hands and say I guess there was no point in trying, I quit. This is a frequent refrain when I diet or try to lose weight. OR I could say I’m doing my best, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be perfect. I’ll keep trying.

This is a harder one to go for because it requires that I let go of the shame I feel for not just writing something. It requires me to offer myself some forgiveness about not meeting what was, after all, a pretty difficult goal. Even as I sit here writing this, I find it hard to accept. I want to argue about why I should feel bad. I want to argue with myself about why shame is appropriate. But shame doesn’t actually make me want to write.

Writing every day (or almost every day) is difficult, but it requires a lot of hope – that I have something to say and that I’ll be able to say it. It requires a lot of investment in myself to take the time needed to sit down and write something. Those are hopeful things, they’re things that help me to feel good. But let’s face it, if you’re living in shame and embarrassment and regret, you don’t want to make that person feel good.

So I’m trying to be soft with myself and offer myself some forgiveness – to give myself the same feedback that I would give my clients. To reduce my black and white thinking from pass/fail to grading for effort and giving credit for doing the best that I can on some pretty busy/crazy days.

Shame is not necessary to motivate us. Feeling good is so much better as a motivator than shame. We all want to feel good – to feel comfortable with who we are. In order to take care of ourselves we must first tell ourselves that we’re worthy of being cared for. A shameful person doesn’t really deserve care and arguing that we will do it anyway is pretty foolish.

So. It’s out of the way, I failed at the goal. But I’m still working on me and trying to write every day.

VSCO Girls….

I know it’s supposed to be Fiction Friday and I’ll probably come back to that next week, but this week I’ve been thinking a lot about how we teach our kids to be comfortable with who they are.

The Dancer is in seventh grade. She’s figuring out how to balance who she is with who her friends are and who they expect her to be. Sometimes that balance don’t come easy and sometimes it gets seriously out of whack.

It’s so hard to watch, as a parent who LOVES the person who she is. I’m so proud of her and think she is the most interesting, intelligent, caring, loyal, wonderful person that I know. But she sometimes loses that girl and out comes a girl I shall call “VSCO girl”. VSCO refers to a photo editing app and also to a certain sub-set of internet active teens and the brands/items they are obsessed with. It’s a somewhat derogatory term that the Dancer and her friends have decided to wear like a crown.

VSCO GIRL- Wears oversized t-shirts or sweatshirt with Nike shorts. Has Vans, Crocs, Birks, and wears a shell necklace. She also wears tube tops and Jean shorts. She always has a hydroflask. She can’t leave home without a scrunchie and her favorite car is a jeep.

Urban Dictionary

While I haven’t heard much about a jeep being her favorite car and she certainly doesn’t own a tube top – the rest is pretty true to our daily life.

So I’m trying to come to terms with this stranger who occasionally (and more frequently these days) has moved into our house and inhabited my daughter’s body.

But it’s so hard to hear her denigrate things I know she loves – Disney movies, camping, reading…It’s so hard to see her turn off from the world and issues facing society to fixate on brand names and fitting in. To abandon some of her special in favor of ordinary.

I know this is a part of the process of being in middle school (and it’s a LARGE part of why middle school is so terrible and difficult). But I miss her. The her who loves cartoons and cares about her grades. The her that loves to be alone in nature. The her that cares deeply about other people.

Sometimes I’m not so accepting of this new member of our family – this other girl – this VSCO girl. I get why she’s come to join us, but I don’t really feel so warmly towards her.

I’m trying. But it’s really hard to be a parent and not to feel like you maybe have screwed up when your child turns into someone who cares only about brand names and fitting in.

At the same time, I want her to feel loved and accepted so I have to choke back the urge to yell at that girl that snatches her body from time to time. I have to love that girl too and to see her as the armor that she needs to get through the day and to feel comfortable and accepted in the spaces she moves through on a day to day basis.

But it’s so hard.

Therapist….heal thyself.

Here’s a thing I’ve noticed about being a therapist – the same things tend to come up in session after session. Those things are different week to week, but techniques and subject matters seem to repeat. I’m pretty sure that’s a reflection of my own stuff and what I’m hearing/listening for at any given time.

The shame and guilt thing from yesterday has come up a lot lately.

The ideas of balance and self care being a medicine have also come up a lot.

These are things that I talk about with ALL of my clients, true. But they also seem to be things that I’m struggling with in my own life. Part of being a therapist, then, is continuing to monitor these things and asking myself whether I’m just working through my own stuff on someone else’s time or if I’m working from a truly therapeutic mindset.

To be clear, this is an important part of therapy and a thing that most therapists have to do. In order to stay present we have to be mindful of what’s the client’s need and what’s our own.

That’s part of what I like about writing like this every day. It forces me to think about what I need and what my clients need. I love therapy because I love learning about how people think and react, but what has been the biggest realization for me is that not everyone thinks and reacts the same way that I do.

Shocking. I know. But it really did surprise me.

We all have reasons for the way that we feel – both biological and environmental. We learn how to be in the world by being in the world, but we’re genetically predisposed to see different aspects of the world in different ways. To respond to stimuli in different ways. The simple truth is that different people’s bodies release different hormones in response to the same situations. Much like some people are diabetic and some are not and people can become diabetic through their environment and behaviors – some people are prone to depression and some people are not and some people become depressed in response to their environment or the events of their life.

I think there’s a relief in accepting this. In knowing that it’s not all in our control and the way we react is not all our FAULT. We’re all just doing the best that we can.

That said, as a therapist I promised my clients that the best I can means parking my stuff at the door when I’m working with them. Sure, the relationship is important and I am a person in that relationship, but it must be somewhat one-sided by its very definition. I’m not seeking support and understanding from my clients – I’m offering it. I love that I get to offer it. It helps me to put my stuff in perspective and to give me a break from it – if I’m honest.

So, back to me for a bit – I’m struggling with my self care and I’ve been irritable with my family. These are things I notice kind of concurrently. It’s hard to get off the couch to do the things I need to do – like go to the grocery store, do the laundry, go for a run. Those things are feeling overwhelming. The therapist in me knows that when I’m low motivation I need to take my medicine and just do, rather than avoid. But the non-therapist person says, I’m not teetering on the edge of a mild depressive episode because I don’t feel unhappy. Just blah.

I think just saying it here is helpful because it forces me to think about how true it is that I’m not unhappy. It’s not an existential concern, I feel pretty good about my life, but I’m also feeling a bit cut off from joy. It’s a performative happiness rather than an actual one.

I need to get back to my medicine – to running and self care and going to bed because sleep is my silver bullet. I need to start asking for support and love from my family and to accept that it’s ok if I’m not all together right now.

Therapist heal thyself a bit. It’s time.

Anger and shame

When I’m working through an emotional diagram with clients, we start with the facts of the situation, then we identify the emotion they were feeling. Often the first emotion they identify is anger, frustration, or annoyance. It’s only when pushed that they can move beneath the anger to the emotion they actually felt first – sadness, fear, loneliness, hurt.

Anger is a considered a secondary emotion. It’s an emotion felt in response to another emotion. Sadness, fear, and loneliness are deeply uncomfortable emotions. They suck. They make us feel weak and powerless. We don’t want to feel that way so we quickly react with something that makes us feel powerful and aggressive – anger.

The biggest problem with anger – the behavior it inspires (yelling, arguments, fights, aggression) generally leads to another emotion. One that’s even more crippling than sadness, fear, and loneliness.

Shame.

Shame adds to the bank of pre-exisiting emotional experiences and beliefs about ourself – that we aren’t worthy of love, that our needs are too much, that our emotions are unacceptable. Shame makes it nearly impossible for us to get the needs of the primary emotions met. When we’re ashamed we don’t ask for comfort, reassurance, or affection, which is what those emotions really need.

Shame informs the story that we tell ourselves that causes those emotions in the first place. Someone who believes they are unlovable will look for evidence that they are, in fact, unlovable and will be able to find it in almost any interaction. Feeding the cycle to continue ad infinitum.

The point of modeling our emotions is to recognize the way that we can break the cycle. One of the most difficult things to help clients see is that the first entry point into the chain isn’t challenging the story or their pre-existing vulnerabilities and beliefs about themselves – it’s the shame. Sometimes I feel that clients hold onto the shame because they think that its the only way they can motivate themselves to change – if I don’t constantly remind myself that I should feel badly about my reactions, what will ever inspire me to change them?

But shame is a terrible motivator. To see it, just think about how Brene Brown defines shame, “believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection” Shame stands between us and the things we need to feel better. To feel worthy of seeing our relationships and interactions differently. Shame leaves us wounded animals, always ready to lash out.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

Yoda

We’re suffering and shame keeps us from feeling better, from getting the help we need. This is not to say that we can’t be sorry when we overreact or get angry. We absolutely can and probably should. But we also need to offer ourselves some forgiveness and grace for the reaction if we want a chance to react differently. Remorse is NOT shame. Remorse and guilt make us want to improve, to react differently. Shame says can’t.

I once heard Brene Brown (again!) say that the difference between shame and guilt is that guilt tells us we DID a bad thing, but shame tells us that we ARE bad. If we ARE bad, what’s the point of even trying to be different? We have to learn to let go of the sense that we’re hopeless or that we can’t change. We have to let go of the operating thesis that we are unlovable – otherwise confirmation bias will just lead us to find evidence that this is true everywhere we look.

Rainy Day

It’s a rainy day. Rainy days make me want to hide out in my pajamas and comfort eat casserole.

Ever the good midwestern girl, I love a good casserole. Tuna Noodle. Turkey Noodle. Beef Stroganoff (not technically a casserole but we’ll go with it). A good hot dish on a cool, rainy day is my platonic ideal.

Alas, we live in Texas so despite the rain – it’s about 90 degrees.

Despite my inclination to crank up the AC and pretend its a good day for a sweater, I don’t actually get to hide out as much as I would like.

Must go meet with the estate planning attorney to get our will revised.

Plus, must get food to feed the children and the giant dog (who motors through a 60 pound bag of dog food in a scary short time frame).

As adults with kids and jobs and responsibilities, we don’t get to hide out anymore the way I might have in college.

A Dartmouth fall. There was a thing to behold – though I didn’t actually have a kitchen to prepare a casserole in on any of the three falls I was on campus. Dartmouth fall was all changing leaves and buses of tourists collecting moments of true New England college life to take home with them.

Rainy days make me think about the past and the future, despite my want to stay present, there’s something about a rainy day that encourages deep thoughts and dreaming.

So today I find myself thinking about retirement. As we near (and pass) 40 years old and our kids near (and enter) middle school, we’ve found our attention turning more and more to what comes next. What comes after. Where do we even want to be.

I have no idea, actually. But on a rainy day, I’m reasonably certain I want to be somewhere with a real fall.

Stickier emotions…making life worth living

Sadness, worry, embarrassment, guilt. These are all ordinary emotions that all of us experience almost every day. We experience them to varying degrees and cope with them in various ways.

The emotions themselves are not good or bad. They just are. It’s not bad to be sad when something terrible happens. It’s not wrong to be embarrassed when you make a mistake in front of a crowd. It’s not irrational to feel guilty when you do something you know you probably shouldn’t have. It’s normal to worry when you have a problem you can’t solve.

But for some people, the emotions seem stickier. More durable. Less susceptible to coping strategies and to change. Worry becomes anxiety, sadness becomes depression, embarrassment and guilt become shame. Those emotions are less comfortable to talk about and less easy to overcome.

Depression erodes our motivation and our ability to take care of ourselves.

Shame wears away at our sense that we deserve to feel better.

Anxiety eats the belief that we even could feel better if we wanted to.

So how do we make the day better? How do we deal with these stickier emotions in a way that allows us to start believing again that life can be worth living and happiness is possible and inevitable. How do we find hope when we find ourselves suffering under the weight of these feelings.

The simplest, and first thing I work with clients on, is to start taking care of ourselves. To start prioritizing our own self care and the things that make us feel good. These mental health concerns can make it difficult for us to do that. We feel that everyone else deserves something or everyone else needs something before we care for ourselves. We’re suffocating under the weight of all of the things that we put in front of our own care. When we get onto an airplane, part of the safety discussion is in the event that oxygen masks are required, they will descend from the panels above you. If you are traveling with small children or passengers in need of assistance, secure your own oxygen mask before offering assistance. Why do we need to put on our own masks before helping others? Because if we’ve passed out from lack of oxygen, we can’t help anyone.

Clients often feel overwhelmed with the idea of self care – “I can’t get to the gym every day,” they tell me. But self care is actually much smaller and simpler. It’s doing things that bring joy and satisfaction in your daily life – EVERY DAY.

For example, there is one particular street – about three blocks long – that I love driving down in Houston. The live oaks arch over the boulevard in a really beautiful way. It makes me feel glad that I get to drive on such a lovely street. It also helps me to remember when my children were babies as it runs between my house and their pre-school. This street is slightly out of my way when I’m coming home from the places I go most days. But I still often find myself driving down that street.

HOWEVER, the street doesn’t work its magic if I don’t focus on it. If, when I drive down the street, I’m worried about what I’m going to make for dinner, I don’t get the benefit. If, when I drive down the street, I’m lecturing my kids about the homework they forgot to do or the chores they ditched out on, I don’t get the benefit. If, when I drive down the street, I’m worried about being late to piano lessons, I don’t get the benefit.

We have to do these pleasant things for ourselves and we have to do them one-mindfully. Meaning we can’t multi-task while we’re doing them. We have to add these small moments into our day to lighten the suffocating weight of responsibilities and obligations that so many of us carry around constantly. We have to allow ourselves to catch our breath in order to get unstuck.

Application Season

It’s time to start thinking about a middle school for Number 71. Every fall comes a time of turmoil and strife into the lives of parents – private school and magnet school application season. In Houston, with school choice, parents can apply their children to any of the schools in the Houston Independent School District and they are then entered into a lottery – assuming they meet the school’s criteria – or allowed to audition, if the school is a performing arts magnet. This system is fairly straight forward and easily managed.

Private schools, on the other hand, are much more involved process. When I say more involved, I mean they are more involved than I remember applying to Dartmouth being. Than I remember applying to Georgetown being. Open houses, interviews, essays, recommendations, resumes, visits, tours. There are so many pieces and all are completely different for each private school. There is no common application.

These requirements, though, are not the worst part of the process.

The worst part of the process are the other parents.

All of us seem to be overtaken by an inferiority complex and competitive streak wider and deeper than anything any of us is aware could be running in our veins. Every interaction becomes an opportunity to gauge the competition and to measure your perfect child against theirs.

Why is it that we feel so measured by how our children do in a process that is, in reality, almost completely arbitrary?

That feeling of shame when things don’t work out and the loss of identity when your child doesn’t get in to a place where you thought they would so obviously be accepted. The stress of organizing and finagling and hearing about the extraordinary measures that others are taking on behalf of their kids.

It really is like those of us going through it are going through an episode of collective psychosis.

So much of our collective self worth as parents seems to be tied up in how our children are doing. We judge our performance as parents by looking to how they are doing. If they’re ok, we think we must be doing ok. We forget that OK is a much lower bar than has gotten in to the private school of our choice. This is the definition of privilege and always strikes me as wrong and worth challenging – even as it is our knee jerk. We want our children to have and excel in the things that we have an excel in. We see them bettering our lives as being OK rather than exceptional.

And it’s making us all obnoxiously and anxious.

So I’m trying to go through this application season with a little bit of humor. With a sense of the reality that Number 71 will have a middle school of some sort to attend. She will learn algebra and play on a sports team of questionable quality. She will meet new friends and, surely, some of her friends from elementary school will end up in the same school. I’m trying to keep in mind that her happy and OK will look nothing like I think they will look and that they won’t look like what mine would look like.

Mental vacation…

Today we finally had a birthday party for the Dancer. Her birthday was almost one month ago, but with the start of the school year we were just now able to get together a party for her.

Here’s a secret.

I hate throwing birthday parties.

They’re expensive and SO MUCH WORK.

This one had 15 girls all around the age of 12 at a bowling alley/night club for three hours.

It kind of felt like forever.

I wonder how I can convince my kids that we should celebrate birthdays with a family dinner out at the restaurant of their choice with one or two friends.

The fifteen friends thing is tough.

It doesn’t help that both girls have birthdays as we go back to school – meaning that we have to deal with all of the back to school craziness on top of planning two birthday parties.

SO. I need a bit of a break. Tonight, therefore, I want to write about Disney World and take a bit of a mental vacation. On our last trip we did something that I really loved that we haven’t done before. We visited the Wilderness Lodge for dinner with Snow White.

As my kids get older, the occasional character meal is so great because it lets us all have a nice sit down, relaxing dinner, even while we meet a few characters – something we don’t devote a ton of time to in the parks anymore. Never Chef Mickeys (shudder), but there are some character meals that never let us down and that are just so easy and relaxing that we always seem to end up doing them again.

So anyway. The nice thing about this Snow White meal was that they brought out three different small appetizers and three different small deserts for each person. It allowed the girls to be adventurous and to try things that they might not have if they had to choose them as their only starter. It was also a pretty cute presentation.

The other thing I like about character meals is when the characters come to the table. It’s so much nicer than standing in a line. You get more personal interactions that way too. The characters aren’t as rushed and you don’t feel the waiting eyes of other guests watching you and judging how much time and how many different pictures you’re taking with the characters.

At the meal, Grumpy and Dopey circulate along with Snow White. There’s also a backdrop set up where you can meat the Evil Queen. Your wait person will come invite you to meet her when it’s convenient and there isn’t a line so it’s no wait, even though you have to go to her.

The set menu is decent – the kids meals were AWESOME. I might even prefer the kids meal to the gnocchi, which is a thing I rarely say. But the appetizers and the deserts are brought out for everyone. The kids meal comes with a starter that involves a roll growing out of a clay pot, filled with rye dirt and ranch with vegetables. It’s much more adorable than it needs to be.

Plus, the Wilderness Lodge is not a place I had visited before. It’s so lovely. We rode over on the boat and enjoyed a breezy ride across the water on a fairly uncrowded boat – we even managed to sit in the bow and enjoy the views of the cabins that are available via the Disney Vacation Club. It was nice to escape the parks and to experience something new that I haven’t done before. I think it’s important to, even though we love doing our old favorites, to try ONE new thing every trip. It keeps things fresh and it makes Disney feel like a different, yet familiar, experience each time we go.