How do you handle full on chaos in every part of your life and not go mad?
I didn’t post last week.
When someone asked me why, I said, “I didn’t feel like a good parent or a good boss.” And she said, “So write about that.”
While I was living in Manhattan, my cousin once told me, “You can have a great apartment, a great relationship or a great job, but you can’t have all three at the same time.” Nothing is truer about being a working parent. You can have it all. But you can’t hold it all at the same time. Inevitably, if things aren’t in crisis, they are in flux.
Why was my week hard? Well, all three children needed me in very different ways. I felt pulled to give them my full attention. At work, I was giving an important webinar and felt distracted by researching and delivering that information to my work community with excellence. (Irony: Webinar topic was how to create better healthcare content for moms and kids.)
To top it all off, a direct report was frustrated with the way I had communicated an assignment. I was annoyed at myself about it. On the inside, I felt spent, exhausted and hungry for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.
What did I do?
(Spoiler alert: I did not eat the ice cream.)
Do you need to look back to move forward?
Instead of eating the ice cream, which would have been fine, but probably not solved my emotional turmoil, I looked behind me. Hard. I tried to figure out where I went wrong. I dissected conversations and events. During a walk in the woods yesterday with my husband (Go outside! You’ll feel so much better.) I said “I think it’s only valuable to look behind you if there are patterns. Sometimes there are just bad weeks. And I’m not really sure I could have done anything differently, because sometimes there’s only one way and that’s the hard way. It’s moving forward that I need to focus on now.”
So, it was a bad week. I wasn’t the greatest boss in the world. I wasn’t the greatest parent. But I did my best to show up as my best self. I spent time thinking about how to be better and decided not to sweat it so much. Sometimes, like an evil stork, all of the chaos shows up at your doorstep and you just need to deal.
I hope you have a great apartment, a great relationship and a great job. But if one of those things feels like it’s sinking, remember, you still have them. You just may not be able to hold all three right now. That’s okay. You’ll figure it out.
And if you want to eat ice cream, go ahead. It may be just what you need, right now.
Parent like a Boss, Boss like a Parent 
Today should be the start of a better week. Super Fudge Chunk usually solves all. Thanks for the reminders. (about the slight shift in outlook and the pint in my freezer).
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Yum! Save me a spoon.
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I am learning so much from your posts! Thank you!
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Thank you for reading!
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Great post! In the spirit of Dr Seuss -( today’s his birthday) good to remember
“ So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life’s A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you’ll move mountains.”
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Ahaha these articles are great -I love them. Like my really good friend Sylvia Pukel (101 years old) told me “Ruchi you only have two hands and two feet!”
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EXACTLY!
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Great post. And so true! I am sharing this with the Balanced Working Moms community group on Facebook. I think they will appreciate it too. 🙂
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Thank you!
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Really loved this post! I’m enjoying your blog!
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Thank you! That means so much coming from a superstar mom and community leader like yourself!
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I always cringe when I hear the phrase “having it all.” I don’t know what that means. I think if you’re writing about this you should define what “all” is to you. To you it may be a job, husband, home, kids. To others it could be very different, but in today’s world it almost always means the job/husband/home/kids scenario. I think this puts a lot of negative pressure on women – they may feel under-accomplished if they are not working. Maybe the phrase should be “having what’s important to you.”
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I hear how the phrase could trigger that feeling. To me, having it all would mean being able to eat that pint of ice cream and not gain weight. But that would be a blog for a different topic!
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This is fantastic!! Great advice!
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Great post and pretty much sums up how I felt about last week too. I felt much better after a 3 mile walk with a friend. Glad to know I’m not alone.
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So true, and you articulate the struggles of a working mom with multiple kids so well. Thanks for making me feel like I’m not alone.
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