Owning the Season You’re In
From the outside, it might seem like my life has been truly perfect in the last few weeks. I love being home with my kids and making everyday life with them seem magical. I love to travel. I love to read. I love thoughtfully collecting and designing my home. I love to write and to build up this Dogwoods and Dumbbells community. In the past few weeks, I have been able to have and do all of that. In some ways it has been a dream come true, but in the background it has also been overwhelming.
Being a stay-at-home mom with three young kids is no joke. It is not, as they say, a walk in the park. My days are spent trying to balance the needs and wants of three kids in three very different stages of childhood who each want all of my attention. While I love this work, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, it can leave me feeling drained and overstimulated at the end of the day. It’s one of the reasons I value peace and order so much in my home and in my life. My days are filled with joyful noise and chaos, so it helps my nervous system to look up and see clean counters and clear floor spaces. For some people, letting go of the desire for a clean, organized house might be part of accepting the season they’re in. For me, this is not just a desire. It is a necessity. So, cleanliness and order will stay.
My trip to Paris was so wonderful in so many ways. Walking the streets of Paris with two women I love was a joy. Taking in the sights, sounds, smells, and flavors of a foreign country will always be inspiring to me. But a trip can be equally inspiring and exhausting. As I am in a season of so much business and sometimes chaos at home, I was hoping for a restful, restorative trip to Paris. Instead, I met a city experiencing one of the worst heat waves they had ever known with very limited air conditioning. I did my best to rest when I could, but walking around so much in the heat (which I have never handled well) left me feeling very tired. Coming back to a house full of little kids after an exhausting (albeit wonderful) week of travel was very challenging. So much so, that it forced me to take a long, hard look at everything I was trying to accomplish knowing that I would need to let some of them go. Maybe I won’t have to shelve them forever, but I certainly do for now.
Even my dear new friend ChatGPT advised me that I was trying to accomplish too much in what is the most challenging season of motherhood I’ve ever experienced. When a computer is the one reminding you to slow down and re-align your priorities, you know you’ve gone off the deep end. I also had a lovely in-person mother and child playdate with one of my best friends this week that reminded me that we (mothers) really are all in this together. I am very much a perfectionist and am therefore very hard on myself. It took me watching someone else I love struggle through the same challenges (and some other ones) that I face to help me realize I needed to let myself have a good cry, pick myself up, and keep going. It really is the best and only way forward sometimes.
This summer I would like to have been finishing the edits on the novel I wrote, querying literary agents, and building my personal brand. It turns out everyone but me knew this was not the summer for that. Thankfully, as all good character arcs will show, my challenges have taught me something. I realized that even though I didn’t get everything I wanted, I may be in fact getting much more. This summer has not been very productive by traditional work standards, but it has been filled with laughter, messes, learning, and joy. (Also tears. Let’s not forget the tears and pretend my life is perfect.) As Chat GPT very gently reminded me, “If everyone is fed, loved, reasonably rested, and the laundry isn’t completely out of control, that may be enough” while I catch up on sleep and hydration.
All of this reminded me of an instagram post I once saw and shared with my sister-in-law. It was a post from one woman who had always admired her aunt, a working mother, and the way she had somehow managed to balance a very successful career and building a very loving, happy home. It felt worthy of resharing with you all. The general idea was that parenting (whether you are a homemaker or you work outside the home) is like juggling a million balls in the air, and that the important thing to remember was that some balls are rubber and some balls are glass. The rubber ones bounce. The glass ones break. None of us can do it all. We need wisdom to tell us which balls to drop.
When your child asks, “Will you play with me, mommy?” or when they look up and ask, “Will you lie with me for just one more minute?”…those moments are glass. A small part of them will break if you don’t give them your attention. Forgetting to pack their lunch? It might feel like glass, but that’s rubber. Some days the glass ball is your child’s trust. Others it is your own sanity, or sleep, or your marriage. Trying to catch every ball will inevitably lead to them all falling. We have to know which balls to drop.
For me this summer, the balls to drop are anything not directly related to caring for my kids. It is very much a full time job, and it is the one I care the most about. If I can squeeze in some home organization or a new blog post, wonderful. If not, I choose to let those balls drop in the name of a peaceful, happy home. If you find yourself in a hard season this summer, I urge you to take a hard look at which balls you can drop. I promise you’ll find them. It may not be easy to let them go, but I’m trusting that they will still be there when I’m ready to pick them up again. I’m sure yours will be, too.
