Good morning.
Last week I was traveling for work. I came home just in time for my husband to leave for his own work trip. We basically passed the parenting baton in the driveway.
And this was not exactly the week I would have chosen to solo parent. We had spirit week, picture day, practices, the homecoming parade, soccer games, and a surprise termite problem. Because apparently the calendar wasn’t quite full enough.
I started the week the way I think a lot of us do: assuming I would figure it out. I would manage the logistics, get everyone where they needed to be, keep track of the schedules, and hold everything together until Tyler got home.
And then we missed a soccer game.
A final game had been added to the tournament schedule, but I didn’t have the team app where the update was shared. I completely missed it. The championship game, no less.
It was my mistake, and I felt terrible. It was also the first sign that maybe trying to hold the whole week in my own head wasn’t going to work.
A few days later, my youngest sprained her ankle and needed an unexpected trip to urgent care while the other needed to be picked up from practice. I simply couldn’t be in two places at once.
So I asked for help.
A neighbor handled carpool while I went to urgent care. My parents also offered help with the girls. What had felt impossible when I was looking at the week as something I had to manage by myself started to feel possible when I stopped assuming I had to.
There was another kind of help I appreciated just as much: the morning vent session at the bus stop. There is something surprisingly therapeutic about standing on the sidewalk with other parents first thing in the morning and saying, essentially, “Is everyone else’s life completely insane right now?” Nobody fixed anything. I just got to say out loud that this was hard to people who understood exactly why it was hard.
I’ve never really had that before. And it reminded me that none of this happened by accident.
A few years ago, we made the decision to move back to Ohio. One of the biggest reasons was that we wanted to be closer to friends and family. We wanted grandparents at soccer games. Friends we could call. Neighbors we actually knew. People we could help and who could help us.
We wanted to change the infrastructure underneath our family life.
This week, I got to watch that decision work.
I’ve been talking a lot here about designing systems that create more capacity. We tend to think of systems as routines, calendars, organization, technology, or some clever way of making life run more efficiently.
But people are part of that infrastructure, too. Sometimes they lighten the logistical load. Sometimes they lighten the emotional one. Both create capacity.
Maybe support isn’t the backup plan. Maybe it’s part of the design.
After this week, I cannot adequately express how much I’m looking forward to a neighborhood wine night with my best friend while her daughter babysits our girls. 🍷
And there’s something about that that makes me really happy. This is the kind of life we hoped to build when we moved here. Not one where everything is easy or where I’ve somehow become capable of doing it all myself.
One where we have people.
Your fewer, better practice
Think about the infrastructure around your own life this week. Not your calendar or your routines. Your people.
Who can you call when you can’t be in two places at once? Who can you vent to without needing them to fix anything? And who could you ask for help before something has to drop?
Is support built into the way you’re living, or are you still treating it as the backup plan?
I’m learning to build it in.
See you next Friday,
— Brittany
One fewer thing to carry. One better thing to enjoy.
Choose fewer, better. Every day.
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