10/26/2026
Art is where I put myself back together! ❤️
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My wife is 38 years old, and there is a box of 64 Crayola crayons in our kitchen drawer that belongs to her. Nobody else is allowed to touch it. Including me.
If you think that is childish, I used to think so too.
On her hard days, she comes home, pulls out a coloring book, and sits at the kitchen table for an hour. Same spot every time. She does not talk or look at her phone. She just colors, slowly, staying inside the lines.
For a long time, I thought she was killing time.
One night, early in our marriage, I walked in while she was coloring and said the dumbest thing I have ever said to her.
"Hey, since you're not doing anything, can you help me find the paperwork for the truck?"
She closed the book, put the crayons back in the box, and got up to help me. She did not color again for almost 2 months.
When she finally did, I asked her about it. I made sure there was nothing in my voice but a question.
She was quiet for a long time. Then she told me.
"When I was little, my dad worked doubles and the house was always loud. Stepmoms came and went. Nobody knew what kind of mood anybody would be in. But on weekends, I went to my nana's. She kept a coloring book and a box of 64 Crayolas on her kitchen table, just for me. She'd cook, and I'd color, and nobody needed anything from me for hours."
"When I color, I'm at her table. It's the only place my brain has ever been quiet."
Then she said the part she had never said out loud.
"I know it looks like I'm doing nothing. I'm putting myself back together."
My wife had built her own way to come back from a hard day when she was 7 years old, at her grandmother's kitchen table. And I had looked at it and seen a woman doing nothing.
After she went to bed, I looked it up.
In 2005, researchers at Knox College had college students spend 20 minutes coloring a detailed, patterned design. Their anxiety dropped. Free drawing on a blank page did not do the same thing. The structure was the point. Lines to stay inside. A small task that always comes out right.
Then I found something else.
Years ago, researchers at Yale ranked the 20 scents most recognizable to American adults. Crayola crayons made the list. Number 18. And smell has a more direct line to the parts of the brain that store memory and emotion than any of our other senses.
So every time my wife opens that box, she is breathing in her nana's kitchen.
What I had called killing time was a 7 year old girl figuring out how to calm her own nervous system, and a 38 year old woman still smart enough to use it.
So I changed some things.
That drawer belongs to her now. When she sits down at that table, the house goes quiet. I handle whatever comes up. If somebody needs something, they need it from me for the next hour.
I never say "since you're not doing anything" again. She is doing the most important thing in the house.
Last month, our family had a birthday party for one of our 2 year old nieces. My wife sat down at the kids' table with a coloring book while the toddlers scribbled next to her. One of the relatives laughed and said, "Aww, are you coloring for the babies?"
My wife did not even look up.
"No. This one's mine."
She finished her page, perfectly inside the lines, and slid it across the table to me like a trophy.
It is taped to the kitchen cabinet right now. It is the best thing in this house.
If you love a woman who colors, or knits, or sorts, or rewatches, or does any small, quiet thing to come back to herself, hear this. She is doing maintenance on a mind that carries more than you can see. Protect the hour. Guard the table. Never call it nothing.
She has been called childish her whole life by people who never needed a way to make the world go quiet.
What is the "childish" thing you still do that puts you back together?
A lot of neurodivergent women figured out how to regulate their own nervous systems when they were little girls, with crayons, routines, and small rituals nobody understood. Then they spent their grown up lives hiding those things because someone called them childish.
I wrote The Neurodivergent's Guide to Submission for the woman who has been quietly putting herself back together for years. It shows you why the things that calm your body are wisdom you should never apologize for, and how to give yourself to a man who protects your quiet hour instead of interrupting it.
kanecross.com/neurosub
