All Aboard the Struggle Bus!
A very imperfect post on finding enough-ness and getting grounded in gratitude.
I'm trying so hard to stick to my personal goal of writing once a month, but I've been struggling to find inspiration. Four months into 2024, I’ve already failed. March came and went, and we are rapidly approaching the middle of April. My overachiever-goal-oriented-Self squirms uncomfortably at the missed deadline. My exhausted-mama-Self wearily regards the calendar with a resigned sigh. It was a personal goal, after all. But a goal nonetheless, and I hold myself to a high standard. Whenever I have to lower those standards in order to accept the reality of a situation, I can’t help but feel like I’m failing myself and anyone else keeping tabs (yeah, yeah, I know, no one else is really keeping tabs).
The last 3 posts were easy. I had clear topics in mind, and my thoughts flowed seamlessly. The last 2 months though, I can't seem to find a singular concept to focus on. Parenthood seems to consume every aspect of my being. I try to squeeze in work wherever I can, but, just like sleep, I can only fit it in short, incomplete bursts and at the end of the day or night, it wasn’t enough.
I’m struggling to find “enough-ness” lately: I’m not sleeping enough, eating enough, drinking enough, working enough, exercising enough, doing enough laundry, enough dishes, enough cleaning, enough cooking, enough resting, enough self-care, enough care for my family, enough garden prep for summer, enough…, enough…, enough…. It feels like I’m behind on everything. I know this is a universal struggle with parenthood, but for those of us who are high achievers, deadline-driven, and goal-oriented, it feels like a one-way ticket on the Struggle Bus.
Whenever I’m aboard the Struggle Bus, I find the best way to get off is to re-ground myself in gratitude. To let things be as they are, and start identifying all the things I love in the moment where I’m at.
The wild daffodils and trilliums are blooming. I love them so much because they don’t even look real. Each year, this marks the true beginning of springtime, which, in the PNW, really means we start bouncing back and forth between a week of sunny weather, followed by a week of freezing rain, and then another tease of sun, and then more rain. We do this until about mid-May, and then it's summer. I am soaking in those sunny days as they come, and relishing in the gentle sound of rain on the roof in between.
The days are getting longer. As much as I love the long nights of winter, I’m really appreciating being able to put baby to bed, and then have another hour of daylight to enjoy. Pretty soon, there will be even more, and I look forward to evenings out in the garden or having dinner on the back porch when it’s warm.
Simple joys. In particular, I was thinking recently about how much music, singing, dancing, and silly joyfulness our baby has brought into our lives. Not that we couldn't sing and dance around our house before, but this kid just makes it happen. We sing sweet songs to get him to sleep, or silly songs to cheer him up when he's fussing. I invent ridiculous dance moves to make him smile, and we horse around on the bed when he's being playful, giggling and flopping around with all the uncoordinated wiggles of an 8 month old. We laugh so much in this house with this baby, and celebrate all the little things--trying new foods, learning to stand, brushing our teeth, making new sounds. There's a lot you can't do with a baby in the picture, but without a baby, I probably wouldn't be finding so much joy in the tiny pleasures of life as I do now.
It’s perhaps a skill to exist simultaneously in these spaces of struggle and beauty and happiness and exhaustion and frustration all at once. But I find that in the times of difficulty when you’re on the Struggle Bus, if you don’t pause to notice the things that aren’t going haywire, it’s easy to believe that it’s all a mess. In re-grounding yourself in gratitude though, you can change your focus to the bigger picture. Look out the window of the Struggle Bus, so to speak, and be ready to hop off at its next stop. Because, let’s face it: sometimes you’re stuck on the Struggle Bus for hot minute, and you just gotta ride it out.
I loved this post so much! I too, am a very frequent passenger on the struggle bus. And very much suffer from the not enough-ness of parenthood. I found your words comforting and like you put my sleep deprived half baked thoughts so precisely into something I could so easily relate to. I say you're succeeding beautifully at your goals, even if the timelines are not what you had set out to accomplish. Go Andrea! You're rocking this bus!