JUNE 2023 BLOG POST - SUMMERTIME
Summertime. Months of endless pool parties, beach days, outdoor grilling and family vacations… and also, bored kids, dysregulated parents, a grocery bill as high as Mount Everest, and far too much TikTok for anybody’s mental health to be okay.
It’s all the things.
I’m writing this at 8:30 in the morning, trying to sneak in some dedicated work before Brad leaves for the day and my attention will soon be split between keeping children alive, fed, and safe and working full time from our home office. Our younger children have already eaten a family size bag of Cheez-Its, strewn them all over the living room, spilled drinks and refused to clean any of it up. Somebody (possibly my 7th child we call “It wasn’t me”) took a full block of cheese from the refrigerator and started gnawing on it. Another child is making a breakfast smoothie and I swear to you, that blender has been going for 5 full minutes now. Brad and I were both yelling by 8am. My auditory sensory processing system is already overwhelmed and we haven’t even started the day yet. In the next hour, our teenager will wake up and ask her daily question, “what are we doing today - I want to do something. I don’t want to just be at the house all day long today.” And, even though I’ve told her not to expect an activity every day and that part of summer requires boredom for children, she’ll still roll her eyes and groan as she leaves my office. I haven’t been alone in days.
Ah, summertime.
Sweet, sweet summertime.
I’m so tempted to get completely overwhelmed by that last paragraph and stay in the murkiness of hard. To stare the next 7 ½ weeks of summer down and just curl into a ball and cry. But, I know that there’s a different option.
We get choices. All of us. All the time.
When there’s an invitation to one emotion - what I’ve found is that there is ALWAYS an invitation to a different, opposite emotion every time. When chaos knocks on my door, peace is standing right there too. When frustration is brewing underneath the surface, gratitude is available too. Same for feeling overwhelmed… focus is right there, just waiting to be chosen.
What it takes in order to choose the other - harder to pick, easier to feel emotion is simple - it takes a pause.
You have to pause long enough to become aware of the emotion that you’re feeling, pause IN the emotion and find the opposite. What else is available to you right then. Your body will tell you.
I can get super frustrated every time that my kids walk into my office and interrupt my train of thought OR I can pause, take a breath, focus on their eyes and access the gratitude that lives inside of me that this kid… this beautiful, breathtaking, rambunctious, delightful child is mine … and summertime means that I have more time to watch them grow up right before my eyes.
I can be overwhelmed by the lack of structure, the increase of noise, and never being alone OR I can take breath, clear some part of my schedule and make a plan.
Here’s the reality… sometimes it’s “and” not “or”. Perfection can’t be the standard. I’m going to get annoyed 1,000’s of times this summer with 5 out of 6 kids at home, 2 full time working parents, and a geriatric dog that I trip over 5 times a day. I can count on it. AND I’m going to take a lot of breaths. Today, I’m going to look at my calendar and make a plan. I’m going to go to Pinterest and make some daily charts for the kids so that they can have a plan. I’m going to pick 5-8 really cool activities to make days off pack a punch, and I’m going to call that “good enough”.
So, here’s to summertime… months of endless opportunities to pause and take that breath.
