Parenting Grasshoppers

Do you ever make a great plan as a parent and then it goes totally sideways? That's how I feel about my business right now - I'm all like, "I'm going to write blogs more!" and here I am a month later just getting around to it. 

It happens in parenting all the time, too. Baking, crafts or projects, playing a game with my kids, scheduling some time for myself. Then a kid gets sick and I have to cancel (or whatever "it" is). 

I remember when my kids were really little, like infant little, and I would count SO HARD on scheduled help. And if that help went sideways, I would be so devastated. And sleep was so hard for me - it really tore apart my mental health postpartum. I work with parents in all kinds of stages of parenting and the themes largely remain the same - zig zags (unplanned events, unexpected reactions or situations, etc.) are HARD. 

Some great distant relative of mine (whose name was Anglebunny - how great is that?!) used to call abrupt changes in conversation "Grasshopper" and I love that in its original use, but also in thinking about parenting zig zags. 

So how do we manage the grasshoppers? I would never claim to have THE answer because I honestly think there are unlimited answers - we're all different and we all need and want different things. What works for me, might not work for you. Which is why I feel so passionately about stopping solution-focused, problem-solving focused intervention with parents and focusing more on rediscovering yourself. Who are you? What do you want? What do you need? Do you even know? Instead of constantly fighting to go back to who we were before babies, how do we embrace and discover who we are now. 

It's a lot like adolescence: the teen years are my FAVORITE because parents have invested so much in building moral foundations and the teen years call upon those as kids test out and decide for themselves who they want to be. I think postpartum is a lot like that - testing out different things. 

Grasshopper.

I used to love love love baking. And crocheting. I made incredible things. Those coping strategies and hobbies do not work for me in this season of life. Maybe I'll go back to them someday, but now I'm still exploring and discovering what brings me joy in the life I have. 

Postpartum is a wild ride and we really don't have the systems (at least in the US) to support parents in navigating the rollercoaster. But that doesn't mean we can't. Let's call upon each other, be curious, and build the systems of support we want and need. I love this work and I hope I get to do it for a long, long time.