i love my kids too much - who am i

Or: How Do You Get It All Done

This is coming more or less out of nowhere - but still, here it comes:

Years ago, in the midst of the #MeToo movement, I remember (and this still comes up) backlash around asking successful women who have kids “how do you do it.” How do you balance it all, how do you juggle your family and your career and your pilates and your partner and your whathaveyou and how is it possible for a WOMAN to HAVE IT ALL? That was before I had kids myself, so I was like, Yeah! Fuck the patriarchy, you’d never ask a MAN that question!

“How long are your guts?” - this has nothing to do with this post, but I love it, and this is MY newsletter, so here it is.

And yes, really everyone with a career and a family should be asked how they manage, but once I had kids of my own I really truly wanted to know how do you do it. I think I actually googled it, “how do you balance work and kids?”

How do you pack in all the moving parts that make life worth living? How do you have satisfying work, a relationship with your children, a relationship with your partner, and not just wind up resenting everyone? It felt, and at times still feels, logistically impossible. And at that time, it really was the logistics I was mainly concerned with. I really needed someone to show me how I could make all of our lives work without feeling like I was getting a shitty deal.

But now, the how has changed. It’s becoming, “how do I do it and not lose myself in love.”