Handle Your Sh*t

I always have a plan. Scratch that. I always have a plan and about eight contingency plans when the first one goes out the window because inevitably someone won’t be able to find their shoe despite the multiple shoe baskets in my home. Plans function partially as a solid strategy to move me through the day with purpose and partially as a coping mechanism to handle the overwhelm I experience due to constant change. Because I have a copious amount of plans to fall back on at any given moment, I hit major frustration when the people around me choose not to handle their own sh*t. 

I don’t mean the small people who live with me who are learning every day how to manage their own tasks. I mean grown, adult people who choose to complain about the problems in their lives that they are wholly capable of managing. This is the moment I should mention that I made an excellent choice in marrying someone who handles sh*t I am not great at handling in the least panicky way possible. Dude might not put his dirty socks in the hamper ever, but dude can calmly manage complex medical stuff with a calm ease of a monk. 

There are many issues in the world over which we singular people moving through it have zero control. We have no control over whether people wear masks. We have no control over small children getting sick because small children are germ factories; that’s just how they were designed. We have no control over how fools on the internet or in our political arenas choose to espouse lies and embolden others to do the same. The list goes on and on and on. 

You could use that fact as an excuse to behave as though the circumstances of your life are completely out of your control and move through each day seemingly just putting out fires and barely rising above the chaos. Or you could recognize that while many circumstances of life are completely out of your control, you are ALWAYS in control of how you respond to your circumstances. I speak from experience when I say that living in panic mode and whining about my circumstances doesn’t work. 

Let us all rewind to that time when my son got what the medical community refers to as toddler diarrhea. The most under descriptive way to name a medical condition that I know of. It was eight months of wholly unpredictable diarrhea every day to every other day. With a newly minted three year old who had just gotten potty training under control the month before it started. Side note: this is another one of those times we thank teachers who help handle literal sh*t. My son had the gift of a preschool teacher that unquestionably handles her sh*t. She jumps right in and gets it done and we love her more than words. Her name is Shirley. She is an actual angel living on Earth. She like all the other teachers deserves all the things. 

Back to literal sh*t filling up the house from a three year old while you have a three month old in the home. I did not handle it well. There was a lot of whining, a lot of “why me?”. A lot of useless complaining. This was not venting over circumstances outside of my control, like the fact that currently not enough people wear masks and handle their business. This was just unnecessary whining. Once you recognize the difference between whining and venting, you can move forward in a way where you aren’t just yelling to everyone around you about how much things suck and get to the business of doing what you can to manage your current circumstances.

This is NOT me saying you have to be superwoman and do all the things like some sort of Disney character. Nope. That doesn’t work either. Please refer back to the post concerning giving yourself permission to live in bare minimum mode. Permission to let go of any expectations you’ve set for yourself to get this “right”. There is no “right” when your house is full of literal sh*t. There is only responding with as much love as possible to a three year old who has no idea what is happening to them because they are three and living in gratitude for when bedtime comes. There is also becoming completely ok with giving up on having a potty trained child for awhile and returning to pull ups until the sh*t blessedly leaves your home. I did not respond with that gratitude. I did not return to pull ups right away. I repeat, I am speaking to you from a place of not handling my sh*t and I’d like you to know that it’s a process, but it’s a process that is 100% worth it.

Yes, this post is a bit of a rambling mish mash because I am writing it with two children at home with me still on quarantine. Yes, this is partially an exercise in therapy to discuss how toddler diarrhea effed with my brain for months. However, I maintain that once you learn how to handle your own sh*t, you can find perspective in any situation. That isn’t to say that the moment a seemingly overwhelming situation hits, you won’t feel the desire to crawl under a blanket and hide. Or that you won’t feel compelled to bake a chocolate pie to eat all by yourself when the world feels too much. It’s to say that you can feel your feelings and use your comfy coping mechanisms while also getting your sh*t done. It’s a yes, and approach.

Yes, life right now is seemingly overwhelming. But, our family is healthy and we have way more comforts than we need. Yes, e-learning is a lot even when your kid is bright and capable. But, you can model the mindset of doing the best you can and being comfortable with failing when you’ve done your best (that’s a whole post for another day because perfectionist Mary still firmly lives within me and I spend time each day tamping her tendencies down because she’s a mess). Yes, holidays at home with just the people that live in your household or your safe bubble is different and can feel lonely. But, you are safe and you are helping keep others safe. Period. 

I have a lot more to say and would like to discuss my notion that it’s selfish to complain about circumstances you can react to in healthier ways, but I’ll leave that for another post. I’ll end this post by saying I get it. There’s always hard in anyone’s life. And a lot of people’s hard is compounded by systemic racism and hate and evil. I do not subscribe to the notion that you can choose your hard. I do subscribe to the notion that you can choose how you react to your hard. And the notion that if those of us who are privileged not to have hard put upon us by a system designed to oppress us would choose to focus on changing those systems into equitable systems, we could lessen the hard and harm on others. Yes, I made it about race because yes, racism is everywhere. 

So, choose how you react to your hard. Cry, scream, eat pie, get your feelings out. Sh*t, be it literal or metaphorical, sucks. But then stand back up and handle it. Let go of everything else that doesn’t meet basic needs and handle it. Because you can. And if you can’t do it on your own, you can lean on all the available helpers who are happy to lend a hand if you let them. Until next week, I send so much hope that your house isn’t filled with literal sh*t at this moment. But if it is, feel free to DM me if you need someone to encourage you to embrace the world of pull ups and long movies and waterproof mattress pads 🙂 Happy Wednesday!