Hums and Silence

I have an overactive mind. Just ask anyone who has had to listen to me think through literally anything, even something as mundane as to which way to get someplace. My mind jumps around all the time, and most of the time I don’t notice myself flying off the tracks.

While my ADHD allows me to find connections faster, it does not always make life easy.

However, the fact that my mind is constantly whirring along has allowed me to identify where I truly find peace, where God has intended me to be.

The Hum

Shonda Rhimes (creator of Gray's Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder, etc) describes her working life as a sort of hum. It’s this natural little sound in the back of her mind that allows her to keep working, to keep creating the shows that millions of people watch every week and binge watch frequently on Netflix. It’s an internal motivator, one that only the person working experiences.

I believe that the hum in our hearts as we work is God’s little reminder that we are working where we are meant to work.

With a mind that moves at a mile a minute, the hum is something I woud never expect to hear. 

But I did.

It was on a Saturday morning in my lab. I was working on a simple bacterial transformation. None of the “platypups” were around, and I was just reading a paper that had been sent to me from Google Scholar Alerts. There was nothing particularly special about the moment. And yet there was something profound in the simplicity of that solitary saturday morning in the basement.

My mind was completely focused without force.

When I am working in the lab, I am often responding to the questions of my undergrads, making jokes with the other grad student, or trying to keep up with what my PI needs. I am still completley focused, but I rarely get the chance to acknowledge what is going on inside my mind.

On that morning I could finally hear the hum that moved me along in the lab.

I thought back to the times when I failed, when I questioned why I had decided to leave my comfortable place in Biochemistry and become a Biologist. For some reason, I always brought myself back to the lab, after all of the people left, and set up an experiment. 

The hum of the Holy Spirit had taken me back to my bench, settled my mind as I worked, and brought forth success in ways I could not have accomplished on my own.

I have known for a long time that God had intended for me to be a biologist. The joy I feel in the lab is something I can never truly explain. How the Holy Spirit was working through me, until that moment, had been somewhat hidden in my heart.

By partaking in my God-given vocation, I could hear the hum in my normally buzzy mind.

While the hum is truly a beautiful thing, there is a far more beautiful thing that I have experienced as a result of my ADHD.

Silence

Like I said, my mind is the ultimate marathon runner. It’s moves like Forest Gump when he was just running for months. 

While many would describe this as a burden, as an unfortunate cross to bare, I would have to disagree. See there have been so many benefits from my ability to switch focus without much effort:

I can work on multiple topics at the same time

I can be in a room and acknowledge the needs of everyone there

I can adjust quickly to most situations

My marathon mind has given me the opportunity to be a highly functioning scientist, RA, dancer, and friend. It is truly a blessing to be able to build community in a space where I am working and learning. I love to run around and perform a million tasks as I listen to the life story of the person sitting beside me. Still, it is quite exhausting, keeping up with all of the many facets of my life and the many lives around me. 

But God has given me a beautiful gift

Silence in His presence

I am not saying that God does not speak to me. While I have had times where God has been difficult to hear, this profound silence is not like that at all. Allow me to explain:

I was going to Adoration with my friends at University Catholic and Alpha Gamma Delta. For my non-Catholic readers, Adoration is where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed on the altar. God’s divine presence is fully present in the Eucharist, and that means that in Adoration my Lord and Savior is before me on the altar during Adoration.

Usually when I go to Adoration I am overwhelmed with emotion, with a specific prayer that the Holy Spirit guides me to.

But at some point during my senior year, I could not think of anything.

It didn’t always happen, but it became more and more frequent as the weeks went on. As with many people who experience silence when in prayer, I was greatly distressed. At that point in my life, I was trying to adjust to moving to Notre Dame and becoming the woman that God wanted me to be in that place. I was struggling with homesickness, with loneliness, with crushes, with confusion, and I could not seem to keep up with everything.

I was exhausted.

And in the one place I thought that my whirling mind could become more clear, there was nothing there.

Still I came, day after day, begging God to speak to me.

A week in to graduate school, I recognized why this silence was a blessing instead of a struggle. At graduate student mass, the priest was talking about how God was here for us, always present in the Eucharist. He just wanted us to come. 

“Light means love. Love means that you are not alone.” the priest quoted a friend

For my non-Catholic readers, we light a red candle wherever the Eucharist is present, so that we may find God in the Blessed Sacrament. So when the priest mentioned light meaning love, he was speaking of how wherever the Sacrament is present, love is there. We are not alone when we are in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

As the homily continued, I stared at the Tabernacle. 

Suddenly it clicked.

Silence was God’s way of telling me that I could stop.

God gave me this hyperactive mind because I am able to do many good things for others with it. I am able to do His work in the world because of my mind. Yet in His presence, all I need is Him. All I needed all this time was to simple be with my Lord.

Rest in Me he said through the silence.

God does not want us to think that we have to work to be part of His fold. We are all loved unconditionally by a good good Father, and He just wants us to let Him in.

When God sent me silence, He was telling me that I needed to stop trying so hard. I did not need to keep trying to be the best in the lab, the classroom, the gym, the world. I just had to be me, happy little Felicity who wears sparkly blue skirts, skips through the grass, and loves her undergrads a bit more than the average graduate student. 

God told my mind to stop being so critical, stop being so preoccupied by the world, so that He could let me just be me.

So many of my friends have asked me if I really do believe that my God could be in the piece of bread and a sip of wine. The mystery of it, while there have been accounts of actual human cells in the Eucharist, still seems far fetched to the world. As a scientist, I will admit that it seems insane.

But I truly do believe that my God, the God that died upon the Cross and rose on the third day, is fully present in the Eucharist.

I know it because of the hum in my heart from the Holy Spirit as I sit in the lab.

I know it because the warmth in my heart when I am among people I love.

I know it because of the profound silence in my mind when I am in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. 

My mind has not been able to stop anywhere other than in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

So yes, my ADHD is hard at times. Yes, I do have to get accommodations for exams and take medicine. But it allows me to give back to so many others, to love so many activities, to do so many good works. 

In the most perfect and beautiful way, my ADHD brought me closer to God

Both in the world and in His presence in the Blessed Sacrament

I pray that each of my Dear Readers find their hum and their silence.

Stop Saying It's Ok to Not Be OK

A common phrase I have heard is "It's ok to not be ok"

That's a great phrase to say to someone else if you can tell they are struggling. Most people don't want to admit something is wrong, and they'll deny it with every fiber of their being. But it always ends up surfacing.

The first time I heard "it's ok to not be ok" was at Kairos, a retreat held for upperclassmen at my high school. 

Kairos is an amazing retreat. It allows people to open up and live in a Christian community. I was a retreater and a leader, and both times I was able to encounter people being authentic with strangers for the first time. It was a beautiful experience. Oh, and there was plenty of food

I didn't really have any major issues worth revealing, but I really did revel in the phrase, "It's ok to not be ok." And unlike the kids who really had rough lives and bottled everything up for years and years, I internalized this simple phrase in an unhealthy manner, and I believe many people do the same thing.

I could not stop crying.

If something bad happened, I let that fill my entire life and dwelled on it for as long as I could. I mean, it was ok to not be ok right? Semesters were defined by my struggles more-so than the milestones I reached, the friends I made, and the accomplishments I experienced. 

Man did I piss people off.

I kept that mentality in my head for a long time. I wish I could say there was a moment when I flipped the switch, but I can't.

That is probably a good thing.

See, you can't change everything at once.

You can't assume that if you tell yourself to stop crying, to stop being obsessive, or to stop being hurt that it will all go away. Pain isn't some simple switch. Your body, your mind, your heart...these all heal in their own space and time.

But you have to let that happen.

More importantly...

You have to make that happen.

You have to stop telling yourself that it is ok to not be ok. You have to stop letting your heart sit in the same ditch because you convinced yourself that that was a proper means to an end. By sitting in the ditch, waiting for some miracle, you are simply letting the wound fester.

To heal means to change, to redress the wound.

Therefore, instead of saying "it's ok to not be ok," say something more productive...

Say, "it's going to be ok."

It's going to be ok means that even though it sucks now that there will be a greater end. It doesn't matter why or how. You are going somewhere, and that is all that matters.

I think it was somewhere in the end of senior year of college that I stopped saying that it was ok to not be ok. When that was, I am not sure, all I know is the rewards I received from this simple mentality shift.

I forgave people.

I stopped crying by myself and actually went to get help.

I took risks, and when I failed, I laughed and took the next step.

I was happier and healthier.

My life certainly isn't perfect. I will admit that I have shed a few tears these past four months, but I won't say they lasted for long. There are too many amazing people, classes, and experiences in my life to dwell on my setbacks and injuries. 

So when it gets tough, when I am sitting alone in the lab after a rough day, I just take a breath and say

It's going to be ok Felicity

Maybe not today

But definitely sometime

You are going now.

Go be better.

It's going to be ok.

But there is something else that matters just as much that I often forget. Don't tell yourself that it is going to be ok without doing something to make yourself feel better. 

I could give a million ways, but I would like to highlight just one:

Find a friend.

Find a friend, any friend, to tell them that you are not ok. Let them know why. But most importantly, tell them that you are going to be ok. Let them know that even though you are hurting that you are going to get better, and you are trusting them with the low point so that they could celebrate the high points. 

It doesn't have to be a big thing where you sob for over an hour. Just take a second to acknowledge the hardship, and then let your friend help you move forward.

I had a good friend in undergrad who made it a point to be happy for twice the amount you were sad. So if I cried to him for half an hour, then we would make stupid jokes and play video games for an hour. If I told him that I got a bad grade, then he would tell me a somewhat longer story about something happy.

When you have someone around who is willing to just be happy with you, you have a chance to start feeling better right away.

So when a friend comes to you in distress, let their pain come, but give them a chance to smile. You may not know how many things go wrong in their day.

Also remind them that there are many people alongside you. Everyone matters, and we all are capable to help someone start to get better. In the short time I have had at Notre Dame has already shown the effects of having a lab team that is behind me every step of the way. (Some day I'll have to write a book about these kids.)

So if you are having a rough day, rough week, rough month, whatever it was, say to yourself "It's going to be ok," and then go do something fun with a friend.

Yes, it's ok to not be ok, but you have to know that it is going to be ok.

Love Thee Notre Dame

I just wanted to take a moment to be grateful.




It's funny how it hurts when you know God has answered your prayer, but you have to wait to actually see the results.

That was where I was a year ago

After having an exhausting yet fulfilling summer, I couldn't help but wish to be back at Notre Dame. It was a little taste of my heaven on earth, and I was forced back to reality. Although I loved Belmont and always will, the first two months back were extremely difficult.




When I got back to campus for my interview, I was worried that I had interpreted my god's answer wrong.

And yet...

Being back in the community I had loved so much brought me right back to where I was that summer.


One of my interviewers, a cancer researcher I had never met, said "you are actually what they say in their letters. I thought maybe you had written the letters for them to sign."

There was something about being back on campus that brought back the woman I loved so much. When I came back to campus, I felt at home. And when I got in to Notre Dame, I cried and called literally everyone I could think of. I held my head high for the rest of the school year.

I started Grad School, and I met some of the coolest people from all walks of life in both Biology and beyond. I started research again at the most chill lab with the most interesting mix of people. And while my research gave me fewer triumphs than failures, I still held on to the magic of this campus. 



I could not quite tell what it was that made this place feel so...perfect for me.

And then this weekend happened



Friday evening, I watched HIMYM and The Scooby Doo movie with the girls from my cohort, and then we talked for hours. I don't know how from 40 women that us four would be selected for the Molecular Biology side of life, but I couldn't be more grateful. We are so different and yet we have so much to share.

Saturday morning to afternoon we joined the chemists at our concession stand. The amount of dogs and burgers we sold was astounding. And what was even more amazing was how we were constantly pumping each other up, as if I were back with the TT leaders at Belmont.




And then the moment I had been waiting for since I had a crush on an ND fan and actually watched the sport for myself:

I went to the football game.



It was comical how my friends and I struggled through nearly every cheer, victory march, and general football tradition. You think you know ND tradition when you watch every game and your parents give you Lou Holtz's book to read in middle school, but you really have no clue until your sandwiched between old law students and drunken sophomores who all seem to know everything, even though they have little in common on the surface. 


Yet again they had something that brought them all together.




As I walked through the campus that night, after all of the fans had stumbled back to their cars and the students had left for their victory parties, a sweet stillness filled air. I stopped at the reflection pool and just stared at the water for a moment. I looked up and saw a few others doing the same.

And I got it.

What I had felt when I came back to Notre Dane, what I felt in the lab, what I felt simply by going to a simple movie night was one thing: a shared tradition.



The tradition of a community meant to build one another up, to reach the victory that each as human beings desire, to become what God wants us to be, that was what Notre Dame had fostered all these years.



In my lab we are all aware that science is riddled with failure. But my advisor has made it a point to help the whole person. He takes on every undergrad who approaches him because he understands that a lab can become a sort of family on campus. 

A family builds each other up, and they strive for greatness. If we live like each person is our brother or sister, then perhaps the world would feel  less intimidating and more people could be lifted up. Our lab has taken it upon ourselves to do this, and it has meant the world to me.

Why else would I talk about them nonstop?


I didn't know that such a close community was not the norm in some of the other labs.




My cohort also is filled with people who dedicated to a higher aim. We all study drastically different things, and yet we all are willing to sit and listen to stories of monkey poop and cancer alike.

I didn't know that such a supportive group was not the norm at most universities.




It appears that this sense of community, rooted in an unspoken tradition, is what makes Notre Dame so special. I know that not everyone is Catholic, but I believe that our faith is why ND has been able to maintain this strong tradition of community.

From the very beginning, a community based loosely on the Holy Family was intended for this somewhat odd spot in South Bend, IN. They have maintained it.

Mass is celebrated so often on this campus, I couldn't even keep count of it.

My undergrad once shared a conversation about the Mass with me. He talked about how it truly was about the community, not just the prayers and getting the Eucharist to fill some requirement. And as the campus changed and lost some of its Catholic identity to the outside world, it is still very clear that need for community, for bringing Heaven to Earth, is still a primary focus for Notre Dame.





It is that tradition which has made this community so great.

So why must we fight against tradition?

Why do people choose to lash out against people of faith or people with strong ties to their cultural heritage?Why do people actively sit and protest against the American flag? Why do people hate on large loving families who have nothing but love to give?


Perhaps we should all take a note from Notre Dame. Perhaps we should try to live as the Holy Family did: with an aim for a higher ideal and support in every which way.




If so many different people can come together for a football game, then why can't we all came together?




Heaven is meant for everyone who wishes with their whole heart to enter it.

And we should help everyone get there.




Thank you Notre Dame for an amazing start. I pray that I never lose sight of how blessed I am to be here.

What I Learned From a Music School

I learned a lot of great things at Belmont. It was where I learned how to study for the first time, and it’s where I learned that science and dance truly were compatible. But I learned something from Belmont that I didn’t realize was unique until I graduated and went to a different school.

Belmont is a music school.

I found that out after I enrolled. 

What is unique about a music school is that the majority of the students are going to school knowing that they were going to be in debt and potentially with a low paying job. Even though the world tells them that they shouldn’t go to school for something they could just practice at and network their way in to, they still come by the hundreds to learn.

You could imagine how many times they have to explain why they went in to music.

Many of the students talked about how music impacted their lives. Some talked about how they were happiest when they were performing. Some talked about how they wanted to be able to serve the community through music therapy. Some described the teachers they looked up to and embody in their own classrooms.

The longer I was at Belmont, the more I noticed the variations in their answers. 

Even though there were blanket categories for “why music” they always seemed to have something unique to their story that brought them to Belmont.

They had a passion, and they knew it.

This mentality of pursuing a well understood passion permeated through the student body. Regardless of the field, everyone seemed to have a passion. Some had a very developed plan, while others simply had a community they wanted to continue to be a part of. Each person had developed their “why.”

By knowing their why, each person felt like they had a deeper meaning, a God-given purpose for being in this world.

It is difficult to understand why we are where we are sometimes. I would argue that most issues with faith stem from the fear that we are unimportant, that there is no reason for our struggles, that maybe God had forgotten us.

Without some purpose, some small voice telling us “keep going,” or some understanding of why we do what we do, life is very upsetting.

The most beautiful thing that I saw from Belmont was when someone had lost their passion and what the community did to bring them back up again.

When someone was lost or hurting, everyone found some way to engage the passion of their friend. If they were upset because they lost their job, then someone would try to incorporate aspects of that job in to a social media campaign or class project. If they were upset because they didn’t make it in to an ensemble, then someone would help them make a band. If they decided they weren’t going to medical school, but rather pursue a graduate degree, then they would ask them to explain why they loved what they were researching.

Over time, the hurting soul was renewed by the passion God had given them.

Had Belmont not been a place where passion was fostered, it would not have been so easy to encourage the community to grow.

When I left Belmont, I maintained my passion for learning and learning about others with me. I took the idea that knowing someone’s why was the best way to understand who they were as a person. 

I won’t go in to detail about how it impacted my lab, because I do not know what their experience was with my incessant questioning. However, I can say that I was personally affected by the responses I received from the students at Notre Dame.

Notre Dame kids in science are like Belmont kids in music.

It really is interesting to ask the students why they are doing what they are doing. Each student has their own backstory, their own goals, their own ambitions. Some of them have been blessed with friends and mentors who have taken enough interest in them to bring these passions out.

Others unfortunately may not have had anyone take interest in their underlying goals and passions.

The way that some of the students looked at me when I asked them the same questions my advisors, RD’s, and friends did was shocking. They actually were surprised that someone would take such an interest in their desire to go in to law or medicine or business.

And while I may have seen more people caring at Belmont, I can’t help but wonder how many of my peers hadn’t been nurtured by the community.

I know that there were definitely months where I thought I was pretty alone on campus.

And I was one of the more involved people. 

If our dreams are what allows us to become the people that God wants us to be, then maybe we should take the unspoken lesson I learned from Belmont more seriously. We should know why we are doing what we are doing, and we should start finding out why other people are where they are now.

Instead of asking what, we need to start asking why.

So when you meet someone new, or you are talking to your coworker, or if you are trying to find a topic of conversation…

Just ask why.

I promise you won’t regret it.