Intro note from Tara: We recorded this in early December 2025, and I only got around to finishing editing it today, in April. How fitting that this episode is about the passing of time! I have 3 other episodes in the editing queue, and Danny’s eager to record more, so we’ll have a more steady steam of episodes coming up!
D: Hi all and welcome to All Our Brave Parts! It is the last weeks of 2025. So I want to wish you all a lovely close to the year. I’m pretty tired because I’m dealing with dysregulation and it is draining.
T: Yeah. In the moment now, though, Danny, you had a big smile and a sudden little pulse of happy energy, so that’s nice to see.
D: It is good indeed.
T: I’m sorry you’ve been having such a tough several weeks, Danny. It must be exhausting. I know it’s exhausting for those of us trying to support you, and we also always have to remember that you’re the one it’s the toughest for.
D: “But someone has to do it!”
T: Our dad used to have this saying, “it’s a tough life, but someone has to do it.” So it’s one of your loops, huh?
D: Totally.
T: I hope you find a little more ease before the year ends, Danny.
D: Me too! Fly, go away!
T: Yeah we got some flies in here… it’s a little annoying, but we’ll be okay. So lead the way boss!
D: Tara, you ask
T: All right, so the question we ask each episode: Danny, what’s something brave you’ve done recently? What’s a way you’ve been brave in your heart?
D: I’m going to say that exploring my trauma and anger and dysregulation is the brave thing.
T: Yeah, that’s a big thing, Danny. That’s super brave. I know you’ve been working on it throughout the last year, but I think you’ve been focusing more specifically on it in recent therapy sessions. It’s so interesting to see how your body responds. Is it okay for me to share this?
D: Yes.
T: Okay. Sometimes when he’s about to approach a topic with his therapist, or even in your poetry, you just suddenly get up and drift away and then do a new little routine. Like lifting the dog’s leashes up out of the basket where they’re kept and throwing them down and lifting them up and throwing them down or… interesting things like that. Your body is avoiding facing it. It’s really fascinating and instructive to see, and so I’m just impressed with you digging deeper. I think it’s been helpful and I think it will continue to be helpful, even though it’s very difficult.
D: Totally. It is so important.
T: Can you, if you don’t mind, can you describe a little bit how it feels or like provide a metaphor or analogy? It’s okay if it’s too intense. We can just skip it.
D: That is interesting to think about
T: (I love your smile!)
D: I think it is like facing a precipice.
T: Hmm, yeah. Well, that explains the discomfort. Again, so… “impressed” is kind of a weird word to use, I think, but just very in awe of you going through this process. And it’s instructive for me, too.
D: Red letterboard! It is so fascinating. How about you?
T: That’s a good one, Danny. I always am at a loss. Not always. I’m often at a loss when you ask me. I will admit that I’ve been experiencing brain fog recently... I think I’m at that age where that starts happening to women. Or, as you very charitably said the other day: it has been a tough year and we’re at the end of it.
D: “But someone has to do it!”
T: I guess a brave thing… the main thing that comes to mind is that I have been exploring the idea that the standards I have for myself, in every aspect of my life (like I need my apartment to be neater and cleaner, I need my car to be cleaner, I need my life to feel more organized, I need to achieve this or that or this and that) – and it’s not for any external validation, it’s just me wanting my life to look a certain way – and I’ve been wondering lately if I can let go of some of that. It’s like: maybe it’s okay that my car is perpetually disorganized, it’s okay that there are boxes of things that are just miscellaneous and I don’t know what to do with in my apartment as long as I put them out of the way, it’s okay to just let things be and not feel this pressure for it to be different.
Now, the caveat there is there’s a part of me that’s that loves being lazy. When people are like, “oh, like my dad or mom retired and they didn’t know what to do with themselves,” I’m like, no, I would not have that problem. So there’s a part of me that can get very complacent. And so there’s this line I have to travel between acceptance of like, “my life is busy, and not everything’s going to be done the way I idealize it,” versus, “come on, Tara, you really got to pick yourself up and do your dishes.”
So that’s the line I’m straddling. Yeah, that’s the main thing that comes to mind is considering the possibility that maybe a lot of my life is okay as it is. I trust you to call me out if you see me sliding into... What’s the word? Sliding into a slovenly lifestyle.
D: I love that so much, Tara!
T: Oh thanks, Dandan.
D: I think it will be good for you
T: Nice job [speaking], dude! I think so, too. Like I said, I gotta monitor it, but yeah!
D: I think you are too hard on yourself
T: Yeah, that’s possible…
D: Remotely possible
T: I do want to say one area in which I do need to be, maybe not hard on myself, but better, is: I haven’t been as nearly as patient as I need to be or should be with your dysregulation lately. And it’s made our spelling tougher, which is, as anyone who’s a CRP to a family member: that’s can be a moment of panic. And so I apologize for that Danny… I need to make more energy or devote more energy to that
D: Thank you. I think it has been tough.
T: I’m so sorry dude
D: But I think it will pass and I will find good days again.
T: I know it will pass
D: So today’s topic.
T: Yeah, what is it, dude?
D: I want to reflect on the passing of time
T: You want to reflect on the passing of time? That’s just a quick and easy little topic, huh? All right, I’m always up for considering the passing of time. I wonder about often.
D: I am in awe of how fast this year has been
T: You know, for me, Danny, I feel like this year hasn’t been that fast, which is, I think, unusual. So, yeah. I’m interested to hear more about how it’s been.
D: I want to go to text to speech.
T: Text to speech? All right, all right, we’ll do that. Press stop.
D: The passing of time is so fascinating to think about. For my pre-spelling life, I felt time was so slow. My life was so bleak and I had little to look forward to. It was like being in the doldrums, a dragging and featureless timescape. It has moments of joy, but the primary feeling was hopelessness. So time always felt sluggish.
T: Oh, Danny, I understand. I’m really sad that that was your reality for so many years, for decades. I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s always hard to learn about these things and to know I was there with you and that I didn’t know how to help you more.
And just to contrast, you know, while you were going through that, I was going through, for a lot of it, standard schooling. So a lot of my existence with time was framed by elementary school, middle school, high school, college, graduate school, a couple years before graduate school, and then my postdoc and then my job. And then so now, this is the first time in my life I haven’t had my sense of time or the space in my life defined by something that has a set timeline. It’s a little odd to switch to that.
I’m curious how those kind of standard timelines of, like, years through high school and years in those community programs: did you have any sense of what it meant, or did it mean anything that you were approaching, let’s say, your senior year of high school, for example? Or if you don’t want to talk about it.
D: It was more sense of dread, because I didn’t know what would come next.
T: Yeah. I’m sorry.
D: But now time is so full. I am so full of things I want to do and things I can do, for the first time in my life. It is fantastic! My life feels so rich. So time passes far more rapidly. This is such a new feeling. I am now bemoaning how fast it goes, versus agonizing over it dragging. Funny how that works!
This year has been weird. A lot of big things like settling into the new home, breaking my arm, hiring my first aide, and winning and award at Motormorphosis. At the same time, I felt drained and a bit adrift, like my usual endeavors felt less fulfilling and I couldn’t connect with my passion like I had in recent years. So it felt a bit flat.
So I think it was a blur of big things that took a lot of energy plus feeling a bit lost. That is maybe why it flew past.
T: Yeah, Danny, you had some big things happen to you this year, and that includes some difficult things, but also a lot of really positive things, as well. And that’s what I think was kind of a weird thing about this year for our family, and for me individually, as well, is it all kind of seemed to be tumbled around like in a washing machine! And I feel like it was just kind of a chaotic year. Certainly politically, socially, on many different scales: very chaotic, very traumatic.
But, you know, I’m not a huge follower of astrology of any kind, but I do find it interesting and sometimes comforting or inspirational. And this was, you know, the year of the snake, which I’d read could be about shedding the old skin, which can be an uncomfortable process, to make the way for something fresh and new. And I’ve been holding on to this imagery since the beginning of the year, because I’ve had my fair share of tumultuous things happen, some big life changes, ended up having to move in the beginning of the year.
And that’s another reason you might have felt a little adrift, Danny, is we did take a step back in the intensity of our collaborations, because I had to address things in my own life. And I think it’s good for us to test out different equilibria, because hopefully we have many, many more years of being together, working together, scheming together. And I needed a little more time to figure myself out. And probably, it was nice for you to see what it was like to spend time with an aide. And you and mom have been doing a lot more together, and our sister’s picked up some stuff with you as well. And all of that was a shift. So of course, I think it’s natural to feel a little rudderless sometimes, a little, like you said, adrift.
I wanted to bring up one of my favorite authors and a quote from her that you often see floating around from her book, Their Eyes Were Watching God. So this is Zora Neale Hurston, and the quote is, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” And I don’t know what this year was for me, but I’m wondering if anything about that quote resonates with you, Danny.
D: I love that.
T: I’m glad you love that.
D: This year asked questions. So many questions! And I am excited to explore the answers next year.
T: I’ve been thinking a lot about how you structure your life, Danny, and how it must feel. Because it totally makes sense, I think, to have a doldrums year around this time, because this is, what, our fifth year working together. If you think about it, we had four years of this exciting discovery, of ramping up our efforts, of expanding into the possibilities of what we could do. And then you kind of leading us to realize how we had to also take time for you to deal with, to support your mental and emotional health.
It was, you know, four years, I think, of rapid expansion. And I think it’s totally natural for that to slow at a certain point. And I do think it’s going to be a new, and maybe not always easy, experience from you here on out in your life, to get a sense of where you are in time. That’s something you’ll learn to manage. I’ll be right next to you as you go through that.
D: Totally. It will be a learning experience.
So in the interest of time, I want to wrap up.
T: Sounds good!
D: I wish you all a wonderful end to the year, and I would love to hear how you process time.
T: I’d love to hear that, too!
D: I am looking forward to more episodes in 2026, and I hope to be more regular in our episodes.
T: As our Auntie Anne used to say: we live in hope. Anything else you want to say?
D: No.
T: Okay, well, thank you everyone for being with us, as always! [text notification] I keep getting texts whenever we’re recording. It’s like they wait to arrive.
As Danny said, wishing you a wonderful end to 2025 and a great beginning of 2026, where you’ll hear more from us. Please like, share, subscribe, comment, review, all that good stuff, and get in touch (by Substack is probably the easiest way, or you can contact Danny through his contact page on dannywithwords.com). And he does have a donation page, a Ko-fi account.
Yeah, I think that’s it, Danny. Anything else?
D: No. Happy Holidays! And Happy New Year. Bye!
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