Ep. 8 What Cardboard Mailboxes Taught Me About Regulation (Nervous System Regulation Through Play)

I woke up grumpy. Tyson wanted to build cardboard mailboxes. What happened next reminded me that nervous system regulation doesn't always look like breathwork and stillness - sometimes it looks like cutting up boxes on the kitchen floor. This episode is about the shift from seriousness to play, why joy is actually a regulation tool, and what happens in your body when you stop performing and just show up.

Book 1:1 here

Transcript

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Hey, I'm Leslie Turner. I'm a mom, a somatic practitioner, and an intuitive coach. This is the Intuitive Drop. Short conversations about emotional truth, the nervous system, and living from your intuition in real life without losing your mind along the way. Let's drop in. Hey, hey, everybody. All right, before I say anything, just take a deep breath with me. Let's always start with that somatic, deep, grounded breath. This is one of those stories that looks small, maybe on the surface, but it bursts something open for me in a really unexpected way. And I think a lot of you will recognize yourself in it. This is about play, about learning, about nervous systems, because you know that's where I go. And how quickly things can shift when we stop forcing them and start just responding. It's also about cardboard mailboxes. So there's that. Let me set the scene. I woke up last weekend, grumpy, like capital G grumpy. Everything felt irritating. My body was tight, I suppose. My patience was very thin. And you know those mornings where you technically you're fine, but also, no, that was me. We had plans to have a friend over that afternoon. We went out for lunch with both of our kids, came back to the house, had some cake. It was lovely. And then my friend and her child had to leave. And my son, Tyson, was not ready to be done playing. And his dad was out doing other things. He was finishing some chores. And I'm standing there thinking, ugh, it's just me. And you know, I don't like getting down on the floor and playing dinky cars for hours. That's not me. I'm not that mom. I mean, I can do five minutes, maybe 10 on a really good day. And then my soul kind of leaves my body and I want to lie down. I want to crawl into bed. I want to go to bed. I just, it exhausts me. I get bored. So internally, I'm like, okay, something has to give here. I clearly still want to play with my kid, but I'm not doing the dinky car thing. And this is where my intuition stepped in quietly. I had this, I had bought a poster. It was for my business, and I still had it sitting in the kitchen. And so it came in this cardboard box. It was just sitting there. One of those long ones that have like flaps on either end. And this wasn't a Pinterest moment. I had no plans, but I just cut it in half and I said, okay, we're making mailboxes. So we cut these things, we decorated them. I put mommy's mailbox on the side of mine. I gave him his little notepad. I grabbed some line paper for myself and I said, Here's the game. We write notes to each other or draw pictures or write something funny and then we put it in each other's mailbox. And every time you do, you gotta say, you've got mail, which absolutely delighted him. So now my son is five. He turned six in a few weeks. He can't write full sentences yet, but something really cool started to happen. He started sounding things out. He wrote love as L-U-V. He started attempting words like Brachiosaurus and Megalodon, which I'm super proud of. And yeah, he didn't get it, but and the letters were not perfect. He did mix up his B's and his D's. Um, some of it was a stretch. I'm like, bud, what is this? But he was trying, and I was watching him stretch his capacity without frustration because it was fun. And at one point, I grabbed a coloring book and I colored one section. And then they put it in his mailbox, said, You've got mail, and he'd come running. And then I told him it's his job to color the next section and then put it back. And we went back and forth like this with notes and drawings and coloring for almost an hour, actually, over an hour. An hour. And here's the thing that he loved. He wasn't being pushed to do this. He wasn't being corrected. He wasn't being taught kind of in that traditional sense. He was learning because his nervous system was relaxed, because play created the safety, safety needed for expansion. And that's the part I don't want you to miss. At some point in all of this back and forth, you've got mail, my husband came in from outside. And instead of the usual, okay, bud, we're done, daddy's back now. He joined in and he started writing notes and drawing silly things. None of us are drawers, by the way. We are artists. I feel like I used to be better at this, but somewhere along the way it dropped off. And in the middle of all of this play, we had like a fun little conversation between the two of us and kind of repaired something that needed repair. And it didn't require a big conversation, heart-to-heart sit-down, and there was no processing. It was just this beautiful note back and forth, kind of like little Valentine's to each other. And there was fun again. There was levity. The house felt lighter. And I remember thinking, wow, this morning felt terrible, really heavy. And now it doesn't. Yet nothing had really changed. We didn't fix anything. We didn't solve life or put something new in place that prevented burnout and grumpiness. We just played. The thing I didn't expect, we didn't just play the mailboxes that one day. We kept doing it. And there's been several afternoons now where instead of defaulting to the TV, we pull out the mailboxes. And sometimes it's little notes to each other, sometimes it's drawings, sometimes it's the most hilariously bad stick figures you've ever seen. I drew a little snow scene with someone tobogganing, and then we weaved it into a story. And yeah, there's questionable artistic choices, but there's a lot of love sent back and forth. And what I've noticed is that our creativity has expanded. Our communication has deepened, and the connection feels easy, playful, unforced. There's way less checking out on our phones, way less numbing, more presence. And it doesn't feel like effort. It feels like just being together. Now, to be clear, I'm not anti-TV. We definitely watch our fair share. This isn't about this is how you do it right. It's about having another option, one that creates connection instead of consumption. And that's what really landed for me. This wasn't just a cute idea. It was a new pattern of trying things differently. And maybe this is how we learn. Maybe this is how we actually expand. Not by forcing ourselves to do better, setting these lofty resolutions and goals for the year, not by pushing through all of the resistance we meet and not by being more disciplined or more serious, but by creating enough safety that growth comes naturally and having fun along the way. Because I'm going to be honest with you. I am someone who's been chronically serious most of her life. And if you were in my 11-11 club back in the summer, I've talked about this: that fun doesn't come easily to me. It doesn't, it's not a natural thing. I'm always thinking two steps ahead and running the mental loop. And it's not that I don't like fun, it's that I sometimes forget that it's an option. I have to consciously put fun into my life. So sometimes it's very cultivated and very planned out. And sometimes, like this moment, it's been spontaneous. But every time I do, something in me softens. And that's when it's easier to learn, to connect, and to repair without massive effort. So I want you to think about your own life for a second. Maybe it's it's January. Maybe you've set some goals, you want to be more productive, you want to hit certain platforms as far as your business goes, or where you want to be as of next year. But where are you trying to force something right now? Are you learning, healing, growth, forcing change? Where are you white knuckling it? And what would happen if instead of pushing, you played? Now, not in a childish way, although that's really good, but in more of a regulating way. Because play doesn't mean that you're unserious. It means that you are safe enough to experience it. That's true for kids, and it's just as true for us. This is your gentle reminder today that you can turn things around, you can shift the energy in the room, you can access the best version of yourself with a little joy, a little creativity, a little bit of play. And if you're like me and fun doesn't come naturally, let it be a practice that you try on. It doesn't have to become your whole personality. Sometimes it will be intentional, sometimes it will surprise you, but either way, you've got mail.