My post today is going to be a little different than my usual thing.
When I started this new blog a year ago, my promise to you was that I’d be completely authentic and let it all hang out. So, there’s no way I can sit down to write today without letting you know that I’m feeling extra challenged right now. Not challenged work-wise, but challenged life-wise.
As parents, my husband and I are struggling with knowing how to best support our son right now. He’s got some special needs that make him especially tricky to parent. (I wrote a guest post about what it’s like being his mom at Andrea Owen’s blog earlier this year.) Most of the time, I’m good with what’s going on. I’m a researcher, so I’ve read the books, I know the websites, I have the specialists lined up. I’m also a doer and a problem-solver, so I plow ahead and come up with plans, get everybody on board, and get to work.
But sometimes, like now, when my son is in the throes of a particularly lengthy and unpleasant regression, it’s harder.
And so I’m trying to figure out the how to balance it all. How to maintain my own self-care, how to meet my deadlines, how to tap into the creative joy and passion that drives most everything I do in my work life, while managing my energy with my son, being fully present for him, and staying grounded even when it’s raging all around me.
Though our son is 8, I still feel like I’m new at this, and as far as I can find, there’s no guidebook to tell me how to walk through what we’re experiencing at home. So for now, I’m going to keep fumbling through. I’m going to trust that things will get better (they always do) and give myself a break (I don’t have to figure it all out right now).
I’m going to find time to play more and find time to rest.
I’m going to work on letting go of the strongly held wish that things were easier (because they’re not).
I’m going to try to approach my parenting with the same creativity I put into my work and writing.
I’m sharing what’s going on because I think in today’s very public way of being and connecting through media like Facebook and Twitter, it’s easy to look around and think that everyone else is doing great…that we are the only ones going through really hard stuff. And that can hold us back from sharing, from creating, from finding peace in our circumstances.
And I think it’s important that we learn to be okay with being in this space.
It’s part of every human’s experience, in one way or another. I believe it’s all happening for a reason. I believe it’s where inspiration comes from.