Why I'm Writing This Book

Hint: Parenting is hard and we can't do it alone.

I’m currently writing a parenting memoir about all of the interesting, difficult, and uncomfortable conversations or scenarios we’ve faced together as a family. It includes topics like death, faith, racism, and mental health, among others. For a little while, I’m using this newsletter to help me focus on finishing the first draft. You can read other posts about writing my book HERE, or subscribe to stay updated:

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Hi, it’s me.

This is my 20th year as a mom.

I’m not here to tell you that it goes by so fast or to cherish every moment. If you’re a parent at any age, you hear this all the time and have already re-shared the poignant Instagram quote images to your stories with heart emojis. Maybe. I guess if you’re reading my newsletter on the regular or following me on Instagram, that may not be your style as I tend to attract a … how shall I say … snarkier crowd. 

Regardless, my perspective is that it kinda took forever to get here – to the Young Adult phase of parenting. 

My disclaimer is that I don’t love babies and I hated being pregnant – I puked through both of my pregnancies and experienced postpartum depression after my second was born. I originally wanted to field a baseball team but found the experience to be so difficult that I stopped at tennis doubles. However, once I got everyone out of diapers and they were big enough to carry their own shit through the airport, I was into it. 

Anyway, the brochures were wrong: it does not go by so fast.

Parenting is a long game. It’s a marathon! It’s a carefully built strategic plan with periodic check-ins to recalibrate when the plan flies off the rails. As new parents, we’re not sprinting off the blocks and around the track to the finish line like FloJo at the 1988 Summer Olympics! We have to pace ourselves – mentally, emotionally, and physically – for the long haul.

If your marriage is stressful, or you’re a single parent, or you’re barely paying your bills, or you live where the snow is four feet deep all winter long, you have some added challenges to an already challenging gig.

What I’m saying is, you’re going to be in this for a long time, so pack some snacks and don’t forget a phone charger – you’ll definitely need to phone a friend along the way.

Oh shit, you don’t have other parent friends? Well you best get out there and find some because parenting is the only group project that’s not irritating. As Drew Holcomb says, you gotta find your people.

When our oldest, Ruthie, was about six months old she stopped sleeping. I was led to believe at the beginning of this thing that as a baby she would fuss, eat, sleep, play fuss, eat, sleep, and so on in a fairly regular pattern. I agreed to a sleep schedule as part of the parenting plan, and Ruthie didn’t hold up her end of the agreement. I begged for a contract renegotiation, but she iced me out.

In an attempt to regain control of the situation, I plowed through stacks of books about sleep training – not reading so much as frantically trying to solve a crime before it happened. But the evidence I found didn’t make sense! Experts contradicted each other. Eye witnesses to parenting disagreed about what the facts meant. Do I let her cry it out or never put her down? Will she learn to self soothe or end up traumatized from neglect?

(2003) Me, on three hours of sleep, explaining to Bryan why babies should never sleep on their backs, except for on Tuesdays and without a blanket (unless it’s a full moon, then the blanket must be an heirloom).

During this time, Bryan was leaving for work around five or six o’clock in the morning, and every day he would gently give Ruthie a kiss before he walked out the door.

Sweet, right? What a guy. Awesome dad. He’s the best.

I hated him.

Not really.

But kinda, because sometimes his sweet and gentle kiss would stir her awake and my day would start at the butt crack of dawn with her screaming at me for hours, and I would continue my crazed quest for The Right Answer to Getting Some Sleep before I Andrea Yates’d my baby.

Do I look like a successful parent? I’m holding Ruthie’s hands and pinning her against me to keep her from hitting everyone and running into the street. (2005)

When you work for 20 years at most things — like gardening, a career, or a sport — you can usually call yourself an expert. And when you’re an expert, you can charge more money for what you do, or coach teams, or manage people, or teach skills, or become a strategic advisor in your field of expertise.

Can you call yourself an expert at 20 years of parenting?

I’m certainly not getting paid more for my experience! And what’s the benchmark of parenting success, anyway? In other words, at what point do I measure an outcome and declare myself an expert (or not)? Do I do it now, when they’re 18 and 20 and both launched into university? Or later, if/when they graduate and land a job? Or is it when they get married (What if they don’t get married?!)? Do I get extra points if they go to church and lose points if they smoke pot? Do we measure milestones and achievements or friendliness and character? Is it a success if my daughter graduates college, or a failure that her degree is English Literature? 

Who’s to say? 🤷🏼‍♀️

Most of us are at least good parents. Or we pretend to be.

Anyway, this stuff is hard, which is why I’m writing a memoir about my experience, not a parenting how-to book. Sometimes we don’t need expert advice, we just want to know we’re not alone.

Maybe you’re in the middle of it and sometimes feel like abandoning your child in the grocery store toothpaste aisle. I understand how that feels. Or maybe you know someone who’s in the middle of it who could use a laughing-while-crying kinda book. I hope you’ll tell them about me.

This weekend I worked on a chapter about apologizing and navigating conflict. Parts of it made me cry because I’ve been deeply hurt by the absence of apology. So I switched gears and wrote a funny story about my kids chanting Bible verses in the backyard that made it sound like we were sacrificing goats in our fire pit.

I’m really enjoying the process of writing this book. I hope I finish it well and get to write another one.

I’m curious: Have you ever self-sabotaged by ignoring your instinct, in parenting or otherwise? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Thanks for reading to the end — you get five gold stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Until next time,

Jen

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News + Notes

Bryan is also writing a book… about why design is hard. If that’s your sort of thing, you can following along at the Substack link below. Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt of his latest post:

I have a hunch about this existence of ours that I call the Star Wars Dented Universe Theory. It's the idea that perfect things do not resonate deeply with most folks because they don't reflect the rusty, dented, trash compactor filled universe of our experience.

This, I believe, is born of things not going as planned throughout our lives, so much so, that it begets a kind of natural law.

The world we inhabit is weary in a way that, when we encounter shiny happy perfect situations, many of us respond with a healthy nervousness about other shoes that are about to drop.

This is a rusty, dented, trash compactor filled universe story.

Learning to love this dented trash compactor universe