On the heels of Halloween, I’m striding into November, full of sugar (obviously) and spice. But to be honest, I’m not feeling all that nice.
It could be the candy, but I’m a little off. I’m feeling big emotions, and I’m seeing them too. There are considerable ones coming out of my three personal children lately, and I’m (desperately) trying to remind myself that our kids will lose their minds sometimes, and we will too. Heads are gonna roll.
Our job as parents isn’t to avoid those meltdowns. It’s the opposite, the welcoming of the big emotions, that result in the biggest learnings. Guess what? We’re going to judge and compare ourselves to other parents and marriages and beat ourselves up for “not getting it right”. But you know as well as I do, there is no “right” way to do this. This relationship thing is the hardest part of this life, by far. And the ones you love the most are often the hardest to give it to.
Let’s sink into this truth: so much of this life is having to go through it. There’s no way around it. You are not doing anything “wrong,” your kids are not “fucked up” when they lose their minds, and you have every right to be overwhelmed and exhausted. It is a journey, a wild ride as they say.
All I know today, is that sinking into each moment is critically important. It doesn’t mean that anything changes, but when you set the load down for a moment, even if you have to pick it all right back up again, it has shifted. And there’s something about that shift that brings a perspective that wasn’t there before. The next, best, right, kind thing is all we need today. You and me – we’re in this together.
