Gosh, I feel like this one is so overdone. You know the memes. ‘How it started, how it’s going’ with these hilarious (or disheartening) before and after pictures. Usually the ‘how it started’ is some kind of Pinterest Dream, and the ‘how it’s going’ is a dumpster fire.

But the fact of the matter is, life can always have a dumpster fire component. 

It’s not ALL dumpster fire. That’s where we get thrown off.

This week, all my kids got sick.

Not one at a time. No, that would be far too convenient to work through the barf all at once.

No, we did barf dominos. You know, where one kid gets sick, and you do countless loads of laundry and scrub your hands raw with the 17x handwashing and you constantly have the ABCs stuck in your head because you’re singing them while washing hands because you heard that’s how long it takes to wash your hands properly.

And the first kid eventually comes out of it. You’re vomit-and-diarrhea-free for 48 hours, send them to school and sit down for some productive work.

And then, the other kid’s school calls to let you know they’ve ‘tried all their normal remedies but Anson just isn’t able to make it through today, could you come pick him up?’

One. At. A. Time.

And of course, in this particular instance (it almost always is Barf Dominos, FYI), I’m on the verge of leaving town for my longest ever work trip – 9 days in California espousing the virtues of email marketing to drive online sales.

I CAN’T F***ING GET SICK.

I’m washing hands, I’m washing laundry, I’m sanitizing all the surfaces, and I’m taking the Elderberry supplements and diffusing essential oils too. Kids are dropping like flies, I’m canceling meetings, the days are being, one could argue, wasted.

And yet. The cuddles.

Oh, the delicious cuddles I get from my kids.

And the memory making when I basically tell those older kiddos that they can’t get picked up from school because they’re sick and then spend all day watching YouTube videos. They gotta rest. Read a book. Color. Make some art. Do some quiet play. But no screen time.

Archer played with Barbies for hours.

Marlowe painted.

Maddox made friendship bracelets.

Anson went outside and discovered a layer of ice frozen on the standing water in our well-stored (eyeroll) fishing boat, and he took that ice and started threading it on branches and smashing it in the backyard and I sat in this very spot where I’m typing this right now and watched this child of mine revel in the sunshine and play with his sister and imagine and create. 

I can’t tell you how many times I heard, ‘Thank you for taking care of us, Mom.’

I mean, these words are priceless. 

I could focus on the dumpster fire that is norovirus and the dread of potentially getting sick. I could be exasperated and spread thin and short-fused. Or, I could accept that kids get sick. Shit, grown ups get sick. It is a fact of life. And there is beauty even in that.

I was able to get work done. I canceled meetings that probably didn’t need to be held, frankly. I was honest with clients about the situation, and there was empathy and understanding because as one said, ‘We all have kids. It happens.’ 

Grace. Empathy. All beautiful, too.

We find what we are looking for, and in life I’m just not looking for the dumpster fire.

Naturally, the sickness resulted in some adjustments to my schedule. I had a carefully curated ‘morning routine’ I wanted to try out in January to build my writing practice a bit. I have my alarm set for 4:30 am to get up and make my coffee, 5 am to journal and manage my mind, and 5:30 to 6am every day set aside for a little writing.

And you know how many times I got to that last bit this week?

Zero.

Erica Circa 2024 would have been beating me up so hard over that failure. 

Would I have been proud of myself if I had managed to write at least one of these days? Of course! But I also decided on day one that I would absolutely not be kicking my own ass over opting to get a little work done, sleep in, or focus on spending time with and caring for my sick kiddos instead. 

When your kids are sick and you’re stressed out, you don’t need to do more. You need to give yourself the grace to do less and love yourself for it.

You needed those extra hours of sleep.

You needed that time to cuddle.

You should pat yourself on the back really lovingly for getting 5 hours of work in every day despite having laundry to do and sheets to change and ramen noodles to make and then subsequently throw most of away.

I get to talk to a coach later today. It’s Friday, my 3000 word day, my ‘publish something to the blog day’ and I already know what she is going to ask me when I share the way this week has gone.

Karen is going to ask me, ‘How does a $2Million dollar a year CEO handle her kids being sick?”

If I do it right, I think she handles it exactly the way I just did. 

With grace and candor and presence and honesty. She does what she can without burning herself out and she takes care of her family first, because that’s the most important thing.