Intro
It was a really challenging (first world challenging) year for our family. After living in Santa Barbara and building a life there on our own we made the very difficult decision to leave and move back to our home town of Newport Beach (I said it was a first world type of challenging). The decision came on the heels of what can only be described as a complete shit storm of family “happenings”. Sometimes it felt like I was watching one of those independent films that, while you appreciate the gut wrenching performances of say, Michelle Williams or Ryan Gosling, or the artistic vision of Lars Von Trier, you’d prefer to keep the drama on the silver screen. Changes at work, deaths, divorces, and, I shit you not, a fire. Had it started raining frogs a year and a half ago I surely would have gone for the pint of Ben and Jerry’s in the freezer and high tailed it to the bunker. It was just dramz to the max. And we hate the dramz. And the dramz back at home coincided with our kids totally finding their groove in Santa Barbara and making what we can only hope will be life - long buddies. It was a groove that took a while too. So to tear them away from that weighed really heavily on the heart.
While we knew moving back and starting a new school would be hard for our kids. We really underestimated the emotional toll it would take on all of us. There were tears every day. Tantrums, fits of screaming, serious depression, and the kids were even worse. But really, my mom has always said - “a mother is only as happy as her least happy child” and the deep wrinkles and under eye bags we both earned during this last year is a testament to that statement.
But in this darkness, we learned a lot. As T-Swift so sagely says - “bandaids don’t fix bullet holes,” kids can sagely smell bull-shit from a mile a way. Sometimes you can’t make everything or even one thing better. The only thing you can do is just sit and (I fucking hate that I am using this term) “hold space” for the pain and anguish that is being experienced. Sometimes you sit your kid, or whoever and just be there for them. Other times you leave them alone and let them feel and work through their pain on their own. Pain, after all is the birthplace of empathy and empathy is you know, the all the rage right now. Just ask Oprah.
Our kids have worked hard. And after a year, the happiness, laughter, silliness and shenanigans have returned, the dust is beginning to settle with the family and, as the “what-the-fuck-just-happened?” feeling starts to set in, we say:
We need a vacation.
Have A Rad Summer.