🎂 Soul Snacks

2 min read

Dear Snackers,

This week I polled the audience for Soul Snacks topics -- suggestions were vast, including things like how to stop being a perfectionist, dealing with end of year madness, getting kids out the door on time for school, how to make friends, how to handle different personalities and events when it comes to family, and how to find time for yourself again after kids. I relate to so many of these. A lot of the topics come down to one common theme: overwhelm. Indeed, I too, am totally fucking overwhelmed most days.

I think a major challenge of motherhood is the unpredictability of life with kids – there truly is so much that is out of our control. You can have your entire fucking life color-coordinated, but someone can get sick, or an injury, or lice and BAM your whole week is fucked, without so much as a whisper of warning. Because our lives are already so jam packed with shit to get done, mole hills can very quickly start to feel like mountains.

Personally, last week almost broke me. I had meetings and events outside of school hours, which meant coordinating a lot of extra help with the kids. Our babysitter comes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and she is a huge help, but her English is not awesome, so explaining things outside the norm feels laborious and stressful – I’m not always totally confident I am understood. It was Lukey’s birthday mid-week, I had family coming to town for my daughter’s first communion this weekend, so we planned/hosted multiple meals at our house, and Sunday was a lot of coordinating with the mothers in my family to make things special….I haven’t stopped moving, I digress.

I was feeling like an absolute ticking time bomb, when I remembered something…my friend lost her daughter this past year to cancer…and what would have been her daughter’s 10^th birthday was May 12^th …Mother’s Day. Talk about a full fucking plate of shit to deal with. Alas, my frustrations dissipated quite a bit, as a wave of both sadness and simultaneous gratitude for my own little problems washed over me. My mountains went back to being mole hills and, although stress and overwhelm are real problems that shouldn’t be constantly minimized, sometimes putting them into perspective gives you a little more chill. More perspective = more chill. Working on it.

— Caitlin

• READ: As we talk about mother's being overwhelmed, here is an article articulating a lot of a certain aspect of the mental load. A very interesting read.

• LISTEN: Here's one less thing to worry about next time you're entertaining - the best Dinner Party playlist ever.