A childfree house is making me anxious
Can a rock star be the cure?
My children have all been at camp for a week. For the second year in a row, we get to slip on a child-free existence and see how it fits. At first, it's a relief. Entire sections of my brain free up when I no longer have to think about screen time limits or mediate sibling squabbles—much less pre-boluses and compression lows. I sleep easier. I have more time. I have so much more margin.
But the newness wears off quickly. I miss them. I miss the energy. I miss the input.
I start to think about how quickly my life will always look like this.
I start to panic.
When I was a little girl, this was the age that felt grown up. When I was a teenager, this was the age I aspired to. Everything I did in my 20s and 30s was to get here—this was the apex, the acme. My choices around family and work were to get me to this point where I'm a woman in my forties doing work I love and enjoying raising a house full of kids.
I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about what came next. Now, every June, what comes next comes knocking on my door. I find myself doing what I did when I was 10, 16, 25, and 34. I look around for people already in this life phase I can't picture for myself and see what they are doing.
Enter Bono.
I know. I know. It's a hard turn. Bono gets a bad rap. He's too famous, too rich, too earnest. That reputation is why my book club picked his memoir, Surrender, to read next—as punishment for a member procrastinating about making our next pick. "You've got 48 hours, or it's Bono." The hours came and went, and now I'm 10 hours into Bono's 20-hour audiobook.
And when I tell you, those hours are giving me life. This man is self-effacing, wise, silly, and so. damn. charming. He's a study in contrasts: the child of a Catholic and a Protestant, raised during The Troubles. An Irishman through and through who has made himself a citizen of the world. A rock star married to his high school sweetheart. A member of a collective so individually famous he goes by one name.
Listening to him reflect on his life—his mistakes, his victories—has been a pure delight. It reminds me so much of Julia Louis-Dreyfus's brilliant podcast Wiser Than Me. Looking back with such vulnerability, these people have given me a vision for the future.
I want to get to a place with less hustle and more reflection, where I worry less and live more. I want to get to a place where the quiet doesn't feel like a deficiency but a gift.
I get to practice every June; this year, it's Bono's voice guiding me through it.
Sarah and Beth share a Spicy More to Say every Thursday on our Premium Channels. Together, they talk about something on their minds that maybe they’re still working out or have a hot take on. Last week, they discussed two articles that they couldn’t stop thinking about: a Guardian piece on self-proclaimed ‘pro-natalists’ and a Slate piece about parents who only want daughters. In response, we got this email from Hannah that we wanted to share with all of you.
Hello!
I so appreciated you having this conversation, and reading the comments on Patreon has been both interesting and challenging. It also added another layer as I am currently finishing my final week of a year-long fellowship focusing on nursing care of individuals with intellectual disabilities.
I especially appreciated that you discussed the complexity of the termination of pregnancies in the setting of the medical conditions of the child. Throughout the discussions of termination over the last year has run the need for the exception for medical conditions; however so rarely is the nuance of that discussion mentioned. Just as there is no clear line for what is endangering the life of the mother, there is no clear line for what medical conditions warrant consideration of termination. The quiet part that is so rarely acknowledged is that determining that a condition warrants termination is, in some ways, saying those with that condition are less human or do not deserve life.
I work in a Pediatric Cardiac ICU and have a child with Down syndrome, so I live with the challenge and grey areas of children with complex medical conditions every day. There are no easy answers, and there are both high highs and extremely low lows. I have said goodbye to children whose lives were unexpectedly shortened and those whose lives started with the knowledge they would be too short. I also know that my life is better for having known every child, and my life is richer because of the challenges not in spite of them. Living in relationship with people is disabilities has made my home, my work, our schools, and our community better. There are no easy answers, but the discussion is a full one and not simple, and I so appreciate you bringing it to light.
Hannah
The one thing we want you to know this week…
We are excited to share the first episode of our Summer Reboot of The Nuanced Life with you today! If you missed our kick-off event, The Nuanced Life Live on Work-Life Balance (and Sarah and Beth’s immediate takes on former President Trump’s conviction), you can get tickets and watch the replay. You can get ALL the information at our Nuanced Life Hub here.
The one thing we made this week we can’t stop thinking about…
Sarah spent Monday catching up on reading the print New York Times and The Economist and her thoughts about slower-moving news stories were SO interesting.
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The audio version of Surrender was near perfect. I cried. I laughed. I ugly cried. I sang.
This hit on multiple levels. My kid is off on a school trip to Europe right now. It is both terrifying to have her on the other side of the planet and exciting that she is spreading her wings and learning to function without us. Also, I loved the Bono memoir. It's LONG, but I loved the stories, wisdom and music sprinkled throughout.