Musing From a State of Perpetual Exhaustion

 I woke up at 5:00 am this morning. I wake up at 5:00 am every morning. This has been my life for the past decade. I am living in a perpetual state of sleepiness. Yes, I make it to work just fine (50 percent of the time making it to work means moving from my desk located in the northwest corner of my bedroom), but not with the sharp mind that I would hope. I know my situation is not unique. I know I am not special. But I sharing it to normalize it nonetheless. I am not seeking sympathy, rather, I am hoping to increase your awareness that this is what happens for most parents. This is what many women in Canada who are balancing career and family are coping with in 2023, especially in the most expensive urban centre in the country. 

I have lived in the Lower Mainland for the majority of the last 15 years. I love it here. It's beautiful. There are so many days when I am taking the Skytrain to work or driving to visit friends when I think, what a beautiful place I live in, I am so lucky to live here. But it is increasingly difficult financially to stay here.

It's no secret. My partner and I made the decision to birth 4 children. We love them. They are hilarious little geniuses. But it costs money to raise children. It takes time to raise children. And both of those things we are finding we have less and less the older they get (and the older we get). My partner and I are both nurses. It's not a super financially lucrative career but it's an in demand profession that has a lot of opportunity and allows us to make a positive contribution to the world. It's a beautiful profession that we will probably always hold close to our hearts, but it is becoming more and more difficult to stay in this profession because of financial limitations but also because of the emotional burden. Healthcare is a tough profession to get into right now in terms of the heaviness in the system, overburdened as the pandemic has been declared over but the pressure of the global crisis deeply lingers.

And so, my family and I are shouldering many different burdens, while my partner and I attempt to juggling many balls and keep them successfully in the air. 

When will they drop? Hopefully not until our younger children graduates from high school. 

Love,

Michelle D. 

A Constant Flow of Toilet Paper and Toothpaste

Having children is expensive. Everything costs money, and I live in one of the most expensive places in Canada. On top of that inflation rates are higher than they have been in decades. 

In the last year, I have found that my new favourite phrase to say to my kids is, "that wasn't free." It works in many different scenarios like when they take one bite of dinner and bring it to the sink or when they use half a roll of toilet paper when they go to the bathroom. I have successfully turned into a parent, hyper-aware of all the money that is being spent on things that might immediately go into the garbage. I have also come to appreciate the amount of money that my parents spent on my sibling and I when we were growing up in a middle-class suburban neighbourhood in the 1980s and 90s (and 2000s because I lived with my parents until I was 26). 

It's quite an interesting phenomenon, that turning point in my life when I realized that I'm closer in years to retirement than I am from my high school graduation. I understand now, those nurses who I worked with at the start of my career who were in their late 40s and worried about things like their pension, and counting down the years to their retirement date. But sometimes I wonder, is this something that I am more apt to feel as a woman because at times it seems like my men peers are just winding up their careers and charging forward as they hit their 40s. I will give you an anecdotal point of comparison. My partner and I are both doing our PhDs. For him, this is a great stepping stone to bigger and better career opportunities. Meanwhile, I just want to get this done with no clear plan or idea of what happens next, or if the return on this will even be worth the amount of time it has taken away from spending time with my children and family. 

Love,

Michelle D. 

Parenting for Life - Taking It One Day at a Time

My oldest child turns 13 this summer. It seems like yesterday she couldn't get enough of Frozen and was too scared to sleep alone in her bedroom, and then I blinked and she's an almost teenager who refuses to open the door to answer questions because she's busy doing homework and watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The days are long by the years are short. 

A lot of the past 3 years have been taken up by some pretty heavy stuff. We lived through a pandemic, the killing of George Floyd,  the over-increasing death of the opiate overdose crisis, Donald Trump. It's a lot. I've been through a lot. My kids have been through a lot. The world has felt very heavy fo the past 3 years, and that's aside from all the personal stuff that I have been living through. How does one keep themselves grounded and not become a doomsayer in all of this? My secret? Constant reflection to try and keep things in perspective.

I often ask myself, did my father who was born in Eastern Europe during World War II have it better or worse? I think he didn't. I can't ask him because he died in 2006. 

Love,

Michelle D.