Working from home with kids

by | Sep 10, 2015 | Parenting & Co-Parenting

photo-1431932441182-250651654c23  

Working From Home With Kids

I keep a file of half-started blog posts, and today, searching for something to finish, I opened one called “Working From Home With Kids.” Surprise, surprise: it was blank.

That probably says everything already.

It’s hard to work from home when your kids are also home. I keep expecting to be more productive these days, since they mostly do their own thing now and don’t need me for much. So why don’t I have long, productive stretches of work to show for it?

Turns out I’m on constant low-level alert whenever I’m the only one home with them. Something about becoming a mother flipped a switch, and danger started feeling like it was everywhere. As my kids have gotten older, some of those dangers have faded, and new ones have taken their place. These days it’s mostly the fear that they’ll actually kill each other mid-argument. Logically, I know that’s not going to happen. My mom-brain doesn’t seem to care what logic says.

So even with them upstairs in their room, my attention splits in half, part on whatever I’m doing, part permanently on guard. Eyes in the back of my head, switched on. There’s a low hum of anxiety sitting in my stomach that makes me even less productive than I’d otherwise be.

What I’ve noticed is that I can still manage low-acuity work in that state. Bookkeeping, reconciliations, data entry, things I’ve done so many times I could do them half-asleep. Fine.

Talking to a new client about what they need? I tried. It felt like texting while driving.

Writing a new blog post from scratch? Apparently my brain needs actual space for that.

Except, wait. I just did it.

Where are the kids? It’s suspiciously quiet in here.

Better go check.

—

They were fine. I’m finally finishing this post two weeks later, with the kids back in school and some real uninterrupted time in front of me. Turns out I really do need that kind of stretch to do anything new or genuinely challenging, which became obvious the hard way over the past few weeks of summer break.

So how do I actually get that uninterrupted time? I could park them in front of a screen, or send them off to their rooms, but neither solution felt great, and both seemed to feed that same anxious feeling rather than solve it. They ended up getting plenty of screen time anyway, and I still only managed the low-level stuff.

What I actually need is better planning and more realistic expectations. Going into summer, I was anxious about only having half the summer with them, since the other half was with their dad, and I thought I’d have all this time to catch up without them around. So I hoarded the time I did have, avoided signing them up for day camps that would’ve taken them away from me even more. What I need to actually accept is that I can’t do real, effective work while they’re home with me, and trying anyway just generates anxiety for all of us.

The unexpected upside of finally understanding this: it’s going to be a lot easier now to feel genuinely grateful for the time they’re with their dad. I never thought I’d get there; I assumed I’d just be sad about it indefinitely, but I’m slowly adjusting to sharing half their lives instead of resenting it.

Day Zero

by | Sep 2, 2015 | Divorce and Separation

Day Zero

I’ve been thinking about loss lately, and how it drops a person into a stress so heavy it’s often easier to just go back to whatever you were doing before and pretend the loss isn’t sitting there.

I’ve been thinking about it specifically in relation to job loss, using my own experience losing my job as a full-time stay-at-home parent as the closest thing I have to compare it to. My first instinct was to go get a new job, and I went straight back to the exact kind of work I’d done before, even though I’d never actually been happy doing it. That unhappiness came through in every application and every interview, clearly enough that nothing came of any of it.

I’m genuinely grateful for that now. Failing to get hired gave me breathing room I wouldn’t have taken for myself otherwise, room to actually deal with the loss instead of just papering over it with a new job.

I understand how consuming that kind of stress can be. My coach kept telling me to take time and go do something enjoyable. I resisted, convinced I should be doing something more productive instead. Eventually I got low enough that she just ordered it: fifteen minutes of something enjoyable.

So I did, because I always did what I was told. I spent a whole day testing things in fifteen-minute increments, things I used to enjoy, things I thought other people might enjoy, trying to remember what enjoyment even felt like anymore.

I think of that day as day zero. None of it actually worked in the moment; nothing I tried felt genuinely enjoyable. But the next day, my mood was noticeably better, even though nothing in my actual situation had changed. I was still alone. I was still nowhere near figuring out what I wanted. But something had shifted anyway.

That was the moment I realized mood and circumstance aren’t the same thing, and that I had more control over the first one than I’d ever assumed. Once I saw that clearly, I started actually testing different ways of living, rather than just waiting for my circumstances to improve first.

I’m grateful for that lost job now. It handed me time I never would have taken for myself otherwise.

If you’re thinking you don’t have the time, money, or energy to sit with something like this, that reaction was mine too. Getting that time, energy, or space is the actual first step, and it usually takes more creativity to find than you’d expect. I did things I never would have tried before that stretch of my life. Most of them didn’t work either. A few, unexpectedly, did.

The Rules We Make up and then live by

by | Jul 31, 2015 | Divorce and Separation

The Rules We Make Up and Then Live By

I think about a certain kind of conversation I’ve had more than once over the years, always some version of the same shape. Someone in the middle of a hard divorce, scared of what a judge might decide, has quietly built a set of rules for herself that make her fear feel like fact rather than fear.

photo-1427805371062-cacdd21273f1

The shape usually goes something like this. She’s the higher earner in the marriage. Her ex works in a less lucrative field, sometimes by circumstance, sometimes by choice. Everyone else assumes she loves her work: successful, outgoing, good at it. Then it comes out that she doesn’t, not really. She stayed because someone had to earn enough to support the family, and she’s quietly dreamed for years of doing something else entirely. But she believes she can’t act on that now, because a court might read a career change as a deliberate attempt to dodge support obligations.

Then the resentment starts flowing toward the ex: if he’d just go back to a higher-paying job he’s clearly capable of, this whole calculation would look different. Why should she be the one stuck carrying an obligation that traces back to a choice he made.

The underlying belief, stated plainly, usually sounds something like: everyone has to work; that’s just how it is. Which really means: everyone has to take the highest-paying job available, whether they’re happy in it or not, and choosing otherwise is either selfish or naive.

I’ve pushed back on this kind of thinking before, and it tends to get a little heated, because underneath it are a few unspoken rules that feel like settled fact to the person holding them. Something like: you have to take the best-paying job you’re capable of if you have kids and responsibilities; otherwise, you’re flaky. Work generally sucks, and if you actually like what you do, it doesn’t really count as work. And life is inherently unfair, so whatever position you happened to hold at the moment of separation, you’re now locked into for good.

What strikes me every time is how quickly these get treated as facts about the world rather than one person’s fear-based read on their own situation. They’re not the only possible outcome. They’re just the outcome that becomes far more likely once someone decides the rule is true and stops looking for any other path.

That’s the real trap. Not the divorce, not the finances, but the rules someone builds for themselves along the way and then quietly agrees to be governed by, permanently.

If I could say one thing to anyone caught in that pattern, it would be this: hold your own rules up to the light before you decide to live inside them forever. Ask what you actually want, separate from the fear driving the rule. There’s usually more room to move than the rule wants you to believe.

Getting through the Acute Stage of Divorce

by | May 19, 2015 | Communication & Conflict, Divorce and Separation

Getting Through the Acute Stage of Divorce

Divorce is horrible. That’s an understatement. I had no real idea how horrible until I went through it myself.

Okay, maybe not for everyone. Some couples mutually agree it’s for the best and manage to work out the details amicably. Wouldn’t it be great if divorce were reliably that simple, if life coaches spent more time helping people build their dreams than helping them survive another conversation with an ex? Based on what I’ve actually seen, though, most people don’t get the amicable version.

This post is for those who don’t have the amicable version. For people who suddenly find themselves in the middle of a divorce and aren’t entirely sure how they got there.

This is meant to get you through the acute stage specifically, roughly the year or two surrounding your separation date. It’s for people too emotionally overwhelmed to sit down with a three-hundred-page book on how to divorce well, and who can’t stack a coach or psychologist’s fees on top of everything else they’re already paying for.

First thing to understand: divorce is conflict-based by definition. Two people trying to go their separate ways, each with a different idea of how to actually do it. If you agreed on the how, you’d be in the amicable category, and you wouldn’t need this post.

Second thing to understand: it’s not the divorce itself that makes things unbearable. It’s mishandling the conflict, avoiding it, caving to it, or getting some perverse charge out of it that does the real damage, especially to any kids watching. That’s not an oversimplification.

So what does handling conflict properly actually look like? Plenty of professionals have built careers researching exactly that. Here’s what I’ve found actually works:

Agree not to settle things in court. Court is built to escalate conflict, not resolve it. While you’re in it, you’re gathering ammunition against your ex instead of figuring out what you both actually need to move forward. Mediation and the Collaborative Legal approach exist as real alternatives.

Build a communication plan together, in advance, and hold yourself to it. Some basics that work:

  • Only contact your ex by email, text, or phone between 9 am and 5 pm, unless it’s a genuine emergency. Define what counts as an emergency together ahead of time, ideally with help if you can’t agree on it alone.
  • Keep every email short. Five sentences, maximum. Something like: “I bought the kids’ shoes. Would you cover half?”
  • When a reply comes back in a way you don’t like, don’t respond for at least a day, maybe two. This is genuinely hard to do. Eventually you’ll start recognizing the pattern of what happens when you engage in an email war, and that recognition alone becomes enough to stop you from starting the next one.
  • Acknowledge you received the email and let them know when you’ll respond.
  • Don’t defend yourself or argue your case in an email, or even in person, without a neutral third party present. It’s almost impossible to make your case without your ex reading it as an attack, which just gives them the opening and motivation to attack back. Defending yourself tends to read as an invitation for someone to go find the holes in it.
  • Decide what actually matters enough to you that you can’t let it go. Set up a meeting specifically to discuss that one thing. If it starts going sideways, stop talking. Adjourn, take at least a day, and reassess how important the issue really is. If it still matters, meet again, this time with a neutral third party present, ideally a mediator or lawyer.
  • Don’t discuss the details of your communication with your ex with other people.
  • Don’t try to work through serious issues in public unless you’ve both agreed to do that beforehand.
  • Don’t criticize, gossip about, or badmouth your ex. I know this is hard. I still slip. But complaining about my ex to other people keeps me stuck in a negative headspace, and I don’t want the main memories of this stretch of my life to be built entirely out of resentment. I want room left over for joy too.
  • Forgive yourself when conflict pulls you back in anyway. It takes real time and real practice to get better at this.

The five-minute fix

by | Apr 23, 2015 | Divorce and Separation

The Five-Minute Fix

People love telling you that time heals all wounds. It takes time. You’ll look back on this and laugh someday. And yet, if you ask around a bit more, plenty of people will also tell you honestly that some of the hurt never fully leaves; it just gets quieter and comes back at odd moments for the rest of your life.

I know my own hurt from my divorce hasn’t fully disappeared, though I feel like myself again most days now. But that’s not actually what I want to write about here.

I want to write about short-term time, because I’ve realized that even ten minutes can be enough to genuinely shift how I feel, and just knowing that fact has gotten me through some seriously painful moments.

My divorce coach was the first person to show me this. I’d just found out my soon-to-be ex had filed for divorce without telling me first, and then refused to find anywhere else to stay. I’m not saying I had no part in how things got there, but I was in shock at the time. Almost anything could trip me into anxiety or a low spiral in those early days. Every other day, I packed an overnight bag to stay with a friend just to avoid sharing space with him. Walking away from my life and my kids, who I’d never spent a night away from before, left me emotional in a way that basically became constant, with sharper spikes hitting every hour or so.

Any time I tried to explain what was going on, even to my own coach, I’d relive it and start crying all over again. So she taught me a technique to calm myself down enough to actually function: tapping, also known as EFT. There’s a whole body of theory behind how and why it works, but all I really knew was that it interrupted whatever thought was making me cry and bought me five or ten minutes back. After tapping for even that short a stretch, I was always calmer. More than once I ended up laughing at myself while someone nearby clearly wondered what on earth I was doing.

Over time I picked up other techniques too: meditation, which I still genuinely struggle with, switching tasks entirely, writing, or just sitting still and letting whatever I was feeling move through me without fighting it. All four of those, in their own way, are just different methods of injecting time, and over the past couple of years I’ve noticed I always feel better once I’ve taken some.

What’s actually made the biggest difference is recognizing that time itself is doing the work. That’s been a hard lesson for someone as type-A as me, someone who’s always measured efficiency by output. Sitting on the couch staring at a wall never used to register as productive.

Now, instead of trying to muscle through emotional pain to stay efficient, I let time do what it does. If I’m having a bad moment, I reach for one of my usual strategies to buy some space.

If I’m in conflict with someone, sitting through a mediation session with my ex, say, and we’ve hit a wall, I get up and take a five- or ten-minute break.

If a conflict is turning into a back-and-forth email fight, I stop myself from replying for a full day.

If I’m just sad, I let myself cry for twenty minutes, or however long it actually takes until I feel like doing something else. Almost without fail, after twenty minutes, I do.

If I’m angry, I sit down and write the email to the person I’m angry at, then send it to myself instead.

I remind myself of what I now know to be true: I might feel sad, or angry, or like everything’s hopeless right now, but in a day, sometimes even less, I won’t be able to summon this exact feeling anymore, because I’ll already be feeling like myself again.