person with long dark hair hiding underneath a green sweatshirt hood

I’ve never been one to like scary movies: The blood and guts, the overwhelming sense of anxiety and dread, the inability to just skip ahead several pages to see if everything works out in the end. Frankly, it’s all too much for me.

These are three attributes one could also argue make up a good amount of parenting a medically complex child. There are a lot of gross bodily fluids. There are more anxious moments than anyone could imagine. And even a spoiler-loving girl like myself can’t read the ending first just to be sure I know what I’m getting into.

Why am I telling you this? Because these past few weeks have felt a lot like watching a scary movie at times. Those in positions of power are becoming more terrifying by the day. Fires destroyed parts of Southern California. And several families who are advocates in the disability community have recently lost young children to illness.

There are times when I just want to curl up with a good book and forget about all these frightening things going on. In fact, there have been a few days when I did just that.

But I also know that being a parent (or any adult, for that matter) means tossing off the blankets, getting out of bed, and preparing to face whatever the day has in store.

So how do we know when to push through the fear, and when to let ourselves rest? I don’t have an all-encompassing answer. Gosh I wish I did, but I don’t.

One small adjustment that has helped is limiting how much and what types of media I consume each day. I don’t need to watch every late-night host’s monologue, or read every op-ed in The New York Times. Here’s where my phrase for 2025 comes in: “Just one thing”. I can try to listen to just one podcast episode while making dinner. I can watch just one news clip while waiting for my coffee to finish brewing.

I know this is far easier said than done. Heck, the only reason you are reading this blog post right now is because I finally deleted my social media apps from my phone’s home screen after yet another downward spiral of doomscrolling.

Know that if you are also dealing with grief, dread, powerlessness in these uncertain times, you are not alone. So many people I’ve talked to in recent weeks feel the same way, for a variety of reasons. If you need help, please reach out to someone. And if you have some emotional capacity to help others in this moment, even just sending a loved one a “thinking of you” text could mean the world to that person.

 

(Photo credit: Canva / Andres Ayrton from Pexels )

Recent posts