Connecting to a Higher Power or Purpose

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m motivated to write but don’t know what about, so I looked through a collection of journaling prompts. For some reason, the section on spirituality and belief caught my eye. One of the prompt questions is how I connect to a higher power or purpose.

This, honestly, was a lot easier when I still thought of myself as a progressive Christian than it is now. Back in the day, it was relatively easy for me to find inspiration and spiritual guidance. Now, I still occasionally look at Christian-based sources, because I still have a ton of devotionals downloaded off Bookshare. Still, it feels off. It feels as though I’m not playing by the rules of the game that is religion. Not that religion is a game, but one of the reasons I left Christianity is the fact that it is too much tied to hate towards for example the LGBTQ+ community. I always knew, even when I had suppressed my queer identity, that I was an ally to the community. However, the truth remains that the Bible is horribly homophobic. One could say that it was written 2000 years ago, but then one would essentially abandon one of the core concepts of Christianity, ie. the idea that the Bible is God’s word. I could say that I don’t care, call myself a spiritual seeker and take what speaks to me and leave the rest. But I wouldn’t be a Christian. And, if I did still find inspiration in Christian devotionals, wouldn’t that be me essentially betraying my queer self and, furthermore, the entire queer community?

But I desire to find meaning in life. I’m still struggling with connecting to a higher power now that I no longer follow Jesus. I do believe there’s “something”, some kind of higher power, but I don’t know what it is and where and how to connect to it.

I keep trying to meditate on Insight Timer, but this feels as half-hearted as my prayers were when I still claimed to be a Jesus follower. I’m struggling to genuinely believe in and surrender to a higher power. Maybe this means I’m actually an atheist or secular humanist, but I do “feel” there’s more. I just don’t know how to align my thoughts and actions with this feeling.

There are other ways of finding a higher purpose in life. I tried acceptance and commitment therapy, which is highly based on the idea of living by your values. Then again, do I really know what my values are? No, I have no idea.

I actually often feel drawn to the fluffy side of spirituality. Affirmations, essential oils (when I still had a diffuser), that kind of stuff. There’s nothing wrong with this, really, except that it often leads to a “take what I like and leave the rest” kind of attitude. And I think there’s something wrong with that, but I can’t pinpoint what it is.

Gratitude List (August 24, 2025) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s been a while since I last joined Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT), but today, I feel like it. Here are my gratefuls for the past week.

1. Baking a cake. Earlier this week, I decided to use up the second of three cake mixes I’d gotten from my parents for my birthday. It was raspberry cake. Unfortunately, I found out today that the third mix had an expiration date in April, so I threw it away. Now I do think the other mixes probably had their expiration dates at the same time, as they came in one package, but oh well.

2. A long bike ride. On Wednesday, the staff and I rode the side-by-side bike to the nearby town to get groceries, only for me to realize then that I didn’t know what groceries I’d wanted to buy, so we decided to just bike around. It turned out I’ve broken my record for the longest bike ride at 19.3km.

3. The night staff. I’ve been needing their support a few times lately and often feel like a burden. The night staff used to make that feeling worse by telling me to “just try to sleep”. Thankfully, recently they’re telling me that I am not a burden and they’re there for me as much as they are there for everyone else. Even if they don’t fully mean this, it helps me feel more comfortable.

4. The staff having cooked chicken and noodles for us on Wednesday.

5. An institution cafeteria sandwich on Thursday.

6. Green tea. Always, green tea. I’ve been requesting it in the evening more often lately and that’s been feeling good.

7. My having been allowed to play DJ again with the home’s large Bluetooth speaker. I mostly played ABBA songs, but did one MARINA song too, realizing only when it’d started that it was rather explicit. Oh well, most of the residents don’t know English and the few who do, just chuckled at it.

8. Mini candy bars. A fellow resident’s parents brought them yesterday and they are yum! I only found out that they were from Aldi today. If I’d known earlier, I’d have asked my spouse to drive by there on the way from Apeldoorn to the institution so that I could pick up a bag myself.

9. Diarium, a diary app. Recently, there was a discussion on Reddit about journaling and I decided to give this app, which is available on both Windows and iOS, another try. It has a lot fewer features than Day One, but Day One’s web-based interface (there’s no PC app) honestly sucks.

10. The weather. We’ve been having lower temps this week than last week and I’ve had to wear my jeans again and even put on a jacket some of the time. Still, it’s been warm and sunny enough.

Neurodivergence and Emotional Dysregulation

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. On Monday, I listened to an episode of the Navigating Adult ADHD podcast. It was on emotional dysregulation and it’s been on my mind ever since.

I don’t have a diagnosis of ADHD, but have wondered for years whether my emotion regulation issues are “just” autistic meltdowns, whether I have borderline personality disorder like my psychologist in the psychiatric hospital used to believe, or whether something else is going on. So far, I haven’t found a satisfactory answer and, with that, I have not found something that helps.

I tried a ton of medications but none truly helped me, except for maybe my antidepressant. That is, obviously my antipsychotic did lessen my emotional outbursts, but it didn’t do so in a pleasant way. In fact, I only felt irritability or I felt nothing. That’s not emotion regulation but being numbed down too much.

I tried dialectical behavior therapy, which I still believe could’ve been helpful if the clinician hadn’t been so horribly invalidating. I mean, there’s quite a world between going along with every single emotion I describe without question (which I realize could be counterproductive) and telling me, albeit implicitly, that my entire way of experiencing things is invalid. I haven’t been involved with DBT for long enough to know whether it in itself is invalidating or whether it was just the clinician being judgmental.

In the podcast, the speaker described six ways in which emotional dysregulation can show up. I related to all of them, though some more than others. For example, my low frustration tolerance is truly debilitating. So is my inability to calm down. I literally still fret over things that happened at the intensive support home and these influence how I react to my current staff. My spouse and I also regularly fight over both of our (but more so my) inability to let go.

The things I relate less to, interestingly, are things I see as relatively “positive”. For example, I do get slightly over-excited at times, but not to an extreme degree. Then again, the fact that I don’t experience it to an extreme degree, is probably why I see it as “positive”: after mulling over negative things for weeks, I’d love something to get overly enthusiastic about. In reality though, finding a new hobby and buying all the “needed” supplies within hours, isn’t actually good for me financially. I just wish I’d experience that rush of excitement. Then again, when, rarely, I do, it often leads to even lower lows afterwards.

I’m joining in with #WWWhimsy.

Simple Pleasures #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s prompt for #SoCS is “simple”. When I saw the prompt yesterday, I immediately thought I had to write about simple pleasures. You know, the little things that make life worth living when all else seems rather grim.

I could of course nag on about the cup of green tea. The one I got at 9PM one day over six weeks ago and that, while enjoyable, also triggered a flood of negative emotions because, really, is life all about a cup of tea? That being said, I’ve tried to make it a more regular habit to ask for a cup of tea at around 9PM.

Most of the simple pleasures I can think of right now, involve food, but not all do. Birdsong is also a simple pleasure I enjoy. So was a shower I took on Thursday when I was feeling particularly miserable.

As a multiply-disabled person living in an institution, I sometimes find joy in things that are out of the ordinary for me even though these things are normal for most people in my country and the rest of the developed world. They are, however, luxurious to people in less fortunate parts of the world. I also realize I am privileged to be able to go online when I want, as even in some other developed countries, people in the care system can’t. That doesn’t mean my life is easy. It’s not. I may have it better than people in many parts of the world, but that doesn’t mean my struggle isn’t real.

However, I do try to find positives each day. It sometimes feels like an obligation, because I used to be told all the time that I’m being negative on purpose. However, it does genuinely help me to acknowledge the simple joys each day provides.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (August 15, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this warm Friday evening. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare. I usually do mine on Saturday, but I’m motivated to write now so let’s make use of it. I just had my evening soft drink and a single-serving bag of chips. I’d recommend you’d grab something to drink if you were here. Let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been hot all week. In fact, I’m pretty sure we have a local heatwave, meaning five days in a row of daytime temps above 25°C, of which three with daytime temps of 30°C or above. I haven’t checked the news in months and don’t want to check it now, but I don’t think it’s a national heatwave.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that, thanks to the nice weather, I was able to eat outside three or four times this past week. Did I share my spouse gifted me a new outside table, because I’d broken the one I’d gotten last year? My spouse had ordered it online and had had it delivered to the institution. We hadn’t seen each other since, so yesterday after a lot of pestering, I decided to snap a picture. I rarely take pictures fully independently, so if this one’s unclear, I apologize.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you I’m still going strong with my movement and exercise goals on my Apple Watch. On Saturday, I did in fact break my active calorie record. Yesterday, I broke a record with the longest bike ride. My Apple Watch also said I burned the most calories during a cycling workout, but I doubt that’s true.

If we were having coffee, next I’d announce my participation in the Walk on Sunshine on October 4. It’s a walk to raise money for the Dutch cerebral palsy charity CPNederland. The goal is to walk at sunrise. Sunrise is at 7:45AM that day and the staff usually don’t get here until 7:30, but one of the staff agreed to come here early and do the walk with me. I signed up for the 5km walk, because that’s a challenge for me particularly in the morning, but not impossible.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you all that I’m still struggling. I experience a ton of trust issues towards my staff and am not sure these are entirely unfounded. Like, today my spouse and I were on the phone during my entire late afternoon activity and, though it was nice to talk to my spouse, I worried that the staff are going to cut my care hours because of it. After all, for some time they tried to make my spouse visit me each Sunday so that they could cut my hours.

Honestly, I think I’d be much more independent if I knew that, when I have a bad day or a bad moment, I can always get some extra support. In this sense, my psychologist back in the mental hospital was right that anxiety is part of the reason for my dependence. However, her subsequent actions to “treat” me, ie. kicking me out of the hospital into independent living with minimal support, actually worsened my situation. So did my staff’s decision back last year about my having to compensate for every moment I needed extra support due to distress. These and other strategies, while intended to encourage self-reliance, actually achieved the very opposite. After all, my abilities fluctuate and my mental state doesn’t adhere to a day schedule, so that I’m only in distress when I have one-on-one. No, I don’t purposefully work myself up in order to get more support, but my mistrust of my staff’s continued actual support does lead to distress.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (August 9, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. It’s 7:30PM, so I just had my last cup (two cups, in fact) of coffee for the day. I’ll probably take a break from writing this blog post for my soft drink at 8PM. Please join me as we chat.

If we were having coffee, first as usual I’d talk about the weather. It’s truly beautiful! Today, the temperature rose to 25°C and it was quite sunny. Rain isn’t in the forecast until next Thursday I believe. I know, climate change and all, but I’m enjoying the summer while I can.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I am still going strong with my physical activity goals. Yesterday, a staff mentioned the trampoline that’s on the campsite near the institution and we decided to check it out. Today, I went on the side-by-side bike with another staff. Because of this as well as having walked a lot today, I might break my active calories record according to my Apple Watch.

If we were having coffee, next I’d tell you that I unfortunately haven’t been crafting much lately. On Sunday, I created polymer clay earrings that are still waiting to go into the oven. Other than that, no crafty endeavors.

I did, however, create a dessert for myself and my fellow residents on Monday. It was good.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that the rest of the week was quite hard. There’s this temp worker who is absolutely clueless about how to support me and yet he’s assigned to me almost everyday. Staff keep saying I should be giving him feedback more when he’s acting in an unsupportive way. First of all, well, no, that’s not my responsibility. They don’t ask the other clients to give feedback either, but when I point this out, they say it’s different for them because they can’t. I can, sometimes, a little bit and I tried this week in fact, but the temp worker didn’t learn a thing from it. Then I get told that the staff assign to me who they choose and it’s my responsibility to deal with it.

I also was told that, when the staff feel someone is trained well enough to support me, they will be assigned to me and I don’t have a say in it. All this comes across as if it’s me being deliberately difficult with certain staff based on arbitrary things, while in reality it’s the way that they act that makes certain staff more difficult for me to deal with than others. Besides, I’ve had staff assigned to me who themselves don’t even feel they’re capable enough just because these staff want to please and their colleagues pressure them. It may be easiest for staff to assign the most inexperienced temp worker to me because I try to be helpful and, when I am not, it is easy to blame me for allegedly playing favorites.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that the Center for Consultation and Expertise found a suitable consultant for my case, but due to the summer holidays, the first contact won’t be until the end of August. This will unfortunately be a phone call with the behavior specialist. I’m not very trusting of the whole process at the moment, to be honest.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (August 2, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m once again joining #WeekendCoffeeShare. It’s almost 10:30PM, so no more drinks other than water for me. That green tea I got a month ago has gotten a meaning of its own lately, symbolizing my lack of independence and self-determination. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Grab yourself a favorite drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been rainy most of the week and honestly less warm than I’d like it to be. I refuse to wear long-sleeved shirts in the middle of summer, but today, I almost regretted going out in just a T-shirt.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that in part due to the weather, I haven’t been as physically active as I’d have liked lately. Today, my spouse and I wanted to go for a walk but it was raining pretty hard so we turned around within five minutes. That was when I was out in just a shirt. I’m hoping I can still meet my movement goal on my Apple Watch today.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I was at our house today. My spouse got a new cat about six weeks ago and I hadn’t met him yet. His name is Caleb. Unfortunately, he hid under our bed as soon as I walked in the door and had to be dragged down by my spouse for me to be able to pet him.

We originally intended to cook dinner together or get pizza delivered, but since the weather didn’t permit us taking a walk and my spouse didn’t want to stay inside the house all day, we decided to drive to Apeldoorn. I needed a new jacket, after all. My old one, I’d bought seven years ago and it’d finally gotten damaged beyond repair in addition to being quite dirty. When my spouse asked me my size, I made a guess. It turned out the old jacket was several sizes bigger. Then again, back in 2018 I was at least 10kg heavier than I am now. I finally got a jacket with a size inbetween my original guess and the old one’s and it fits perfectly.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that, as of yesterday, I’m once again a tiny step down with my medication. Specifically, I’m now on the absolute lowest dose of pregabalin. I was never on a high dose anyway, in fact having been on my start dose for years, but as it is in medicine, apparently going up is easier than going down. Six weeks from now, I’ll most likely be completely off of pregabalin.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share I’m still struggling. Part of it is the realization that my life is far from “normal” and the fact that I feel guilty about not accepting this reality. I constantly have my last home’s staff’s words in my head about never having a perfect day. I am also constantly thinking of ways in which my life could be even a tiny bit more meaningful.

If we were having coffee, finally I’d share that I did have some good moments over the past week. Like I said on Thursday, I have been quite active in the kitchen. I also on Thursday crafted another clay parrot.

The staff who’s leaving, took this one and the one we made last week home with her yesterday.

Tomorrow, one of my assigned staff is going to do my morning activity with me and we agreed to work with clay again. I have yet to think of some ideas for what to make. She wanted an elephant, but I’m not yet sure how to go about doing that.

July 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s been a few months since I last participated in the In My Kitchen linky, because I didn’t do much of note in the kitchen. This month I finally got active in the kitchen again, so I’m participating in the linky again.

First, I got some cake mixes for my birthday last month, so on July 3, I set out to bake one of the cakes. I got strawberry, raspberry and lemon-flavored cake mixes and selected the one with strawberry. To be honest, I had expected there to be more strawberries in it. It in fact looks like a plain yellow cake and that’s what it tasted like too.


Over the next few weeks, I was greatly struggling and didn’t do anything in the kitchen. That is, maybe I created a smoothie once, but I’m not even sure about that.

Speaking of smoothies though, I did create several that I loved over the past month. One, I made yesterday. I used frozen cherries, vanilla-flavored soy milk, cacao powder, instant coffee, a little honey and a dash of sea salt to make the flavors pop.

About two weeks ago, I finally got the idea again to whip something up and I decided to make overnight oats.

I made overnight oats once again this week, topping them with a tropical dried fruit mix that has an E Nutriscore, meaning it is about the least healthy food choice in its category. No photo this time.

A staff who is on sick leave and occasionally pops round as an extra, offered to help me cook a meal for my side of the home the next Tuesday. I cooked curried rice with chicken, bell peppers and bok choy. I hadn’t had bok choy since childhood and incorrectly assumed its green leaves can’t be eaten. The meal doesn’t look as thin as I believe a curry should be, but it was delicious.

The same staff came over here this Tuesday again and I was again allowed to choose a meal and cook it with her help. I chose a vegetarian pasta bake with peppers, onions, garlic, canned tomato chunks and topped with mozzarella. One of my fellow clients said she didn’t like the mozzarella, but I think it was because she didn’t recognize it and I believe she did eat it after all. Everyone else loved my meal. Next time, however, I’m going to leave some of the seeds of the peppers in, because I’d have loved it even more than I did now with a little more spice.



Since I have been cooking more lately, I decided to look for an app to organize my recipes. After trying many apps, I settled on Recipe Keeper. Like I mentioned in my coffee share last week, one of its drawbacks is the fact that I can’t have my password manager save the password. This makes me a little suspicious, but I try not to care.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (July 26, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m once again joining #WeekendCoffeeShare. It’s 9:45PM, so all I’ll have to drink before going to bed is water. I don’t mind though and hope you don’t either. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been raining all week, but temperature-wise, it’s been nice. We had daytime highs in the low 20s Celsius most days. Today, the temperature rose to 25°C. I hadn’t expected it to rain, so didn’t take a jacket with me when driving to Apeldoorn with my spouse. Thankfully, it only rained when we were in the car or somewhere else inside.

If we were having coffee, next I’d share that my spouse and I may not be divorcing after all. It’s a long story that is too personal to share on a public blog. The short version is that I sent an impulsive text last week asking my spouse to finally make arrangements, because I wanted to live independently. The reason for the text had nothing to do with my spouse, but it did get things set in motion. As it turns out though, it’s probably not practically in our best interest to divorce.

If we were having coffee, I’d go into the reason for said text: one of my “favorites” among the staff is leaving and this is at a time when I’m struggling significantly with most other staff seeming at once not to agree on any way to support me but somehow agreeing that I’m a pain in the neck. At least on a weekly basis, I hear stuff like “You can’t go anywhere anyway” or “Your spouse doesn’t want you in this state” when I’m being restrained or otherwise having my autonomy taken away.

Furthermore, it looks like my staff have decided that neither I myself nor my spouse have my best interest in mind, while in that order, we’re the ones most adamantly advocating for me. However, I saw impulsive comments my spouse made after we found out divorce may not be an option cited in my report. This wouldn’t have been such a big deal, had staff also objectively reported their own comments, like all the “You can’t go anywhere anyway” stuff. The way it sounds now, my spouse sounds like the bad one.

One of my assigned staff even got me to agree on getting more information about guardianship because she somehow feels that a person who doesn’t know me but knows the law is better able to make decisions for me. I have yet to tell my staff no on this one.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I did finally work with polymer clay again. I made a parrot for the staff who’s leaving, because this staff has two parrots. We have plans for making her other one out of polymer clay sometime this coming week.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I’ve been obsessing over recipes and cooking again. Like I said yesterday, I made a curry for myself and my fellow residents on Tuesday. The staff who helped me with it, proposed we do cooking again this coming Tuesday. This time, I chose a pasta bake. I’ve also been making smoothies and overnight oats recently.

I have an app on both my PC and iPhone to organize my recipes. It’s called Recipe Keeper and I’m half convinced it’s spyware like TikTok. Other than that, its only drawback is the fact that somehow I can’t have my password manager remember the password. This has me paranoid too. However, it’s the only app that’s available on both iOS and Windows that is remotely useable for me.

Quality of Life #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. I haven’t written a blog post in nearly two weeks, since I’ve been struggling quite badly. However, I saw the prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, which is “starts with Q”. Immediately, the word “quality” and, derived from that, “quality of life” came to mind.

I regularly write about this concept when discussing myself as a former preemie living with multiple disabilities. That’s not what I mean this time though. This time, I mean real, day-to-day quality of life. I’ve seriously been on a quest for a more meaningful life.

You might remember me talking about the cup of green tea I was allowed to have one evening. I said back then that it’s normal to choose when you want tea, so most people will not be appreciative of it. I was. However, as I spiraled further into depression, this cup of tea became the metaphor for how bleak my life is, actually.

It could be a lot worse. It was, back in the mental hospital, where, though I could grab food whenever I wanted (or at least I did), I spent most of my days lying in bed or surfing the Internet. Most of my fellow residents also have even less autonomy than I do. And yes, I know they’re severely intellectually disabled, but quite frankly that’s not an excuse. Just because you’re used to well-intentioned others making every single decision for you (and they are used to it as well!), doesn’t mean that’s how it’s always supposed to be. Or how it should be. Like I was at the time very grateful for the cup of tea at 9PM, that’s not how it always should be. That is, of course it’d be good if I remained grateful for a cup of tea, but in real life, I should be able to make the decision whether I want a cup of tea myself.

Unfortunately, I have a ton of ideas to improve my quality of life and gain more autonomy, but these don’t get to fruition. The reason is in part the fact that an idea has to be put into practice and executive functioning isn’t my best quality. Another reason is resistance from staff, either overt or covert.

I could write a book on all the ways staff have verbally, physically and in other ways hurt me under the guise of being human and having emotions too. Or conversely under the guise of safety for the group or that being the reality of staff-client relationships. But I won’t.

I’ll end by saying that, at least, on Tuesday I had a good day cooking curry for my side of the home. That’s what I mean by day-to-day quality of life: having the ability to prepare my own food, for example, or choosing what I’ll have for dinner. Of course, the other residents didn’t have a say in my choice to make curry, but they did appreciate it. We’re a long way from people in long-term care actually having meaningful lives, but this felt like a tiny contribution.