Recognizing Resilience

 Well, the pandemic has been dragging on.  We're almost to a full year (coming March 13th).  We went from feeling relaxed to feeling trapped to feeling like things could return to normal-ish to feeling like it wasn't safe again to me getting a new job to dad losing his job to feeling like the world is completely out of control.

The world feels upside down.  Everything does.  The ability to parent, to work, to love, to find things to laugh about, to even just sleep peacefully.  It all feels like too much.

And yet.  We're trudging through.  Sometimes we do it well. Sometimes just okay. And sometimes absolutely horribly.  What I'm realizing is that this is actually okay.  When things go horribly I blame myself, I feel awful, I question my abilities as a parent, and frankly as a human.  And yet, getting through it is what makes us better, stronger, more compassionate, more human.  

We will have our bad moments, bad days, bad weekends, perhaps more.  And we still love one another. We still find a way to get through to the other side, to laugh, love, dream.  I can't imagine this life without my girls and Will.  Although it's easy to wonder how much "easier" things would be if we didn't have kiddos to take care of, I wouldn't change it for the world.  Yes, we might be less stressed about the future of this world we're living in.  But we wouldn't have these two incredible gifts to cherish moments with.  Evie and Cora, my note to you is to say simply this.  I'm sorry I am not perfect.  It turns out that's been my goal for far too long.  And when I fail at being perfect, well, I have such a hard time bouncing back.  That's not resilience.  That's not what I want to model for you.  I want you to know this life is messy, it's hard, it's ugly, it's confusing, it's overwhelming. And yet.  It is all of those things because it is WORTH it.  If life weren't worth it then all the ugliness wouldn't feel so ugly.  The overwhelming would feel mundane.  These feelings exist only because life is worth every ache and pain. Without that, it wouldn't be nearly as beautiful.

I promise to work to enjoy the ugly as much as the beautiful, to find ways to appreciate that this is the life we're being given and while we can make choices, we are not completely in control. And that's okay.

I love you both. We've got this.