Hi! new school year
What’s changed recently?
Kind of everything, right? A couple of weeks ago I wrote to you about the season of change that is August and the responses were overwhelming. Everything from college move ins to first days of school and work to funerals to a new fee on a utility bill, we are all feeling the changes.
As kids we get into the cycle of change that is the end of summer and beginning of the school year. And for most of us, that echoes each Labor Day whether our household has a student in it or not. For me, I can sort of pretend we’re not in the thick of the school year early wakeups, lots more obligations, and a feeling of having a tiger (or in our house several tigers) by the tail until the Tuesday after Labor Day. Now we’ve got what seems like an endless stretch of late night homework, rushed dinners and competing schedules and priorities for my high school age kids.
It feels permanent. Like the hard things will always be hard, as if we won’t learn how to flex and shift obligations and schedules to make it all more manageable. As if this is my first year of navigating school aged kids instead of my nineteenth. Somehow, in the midst of change I manage to forget that there will, inevitably, be more change.
Have you felt that? As if the good is fleeting but the bad will somehow stay forever?
That’s because our brains are doing their best to keep us alive. And the bad change feels more risky and the discomfort is, well, uncomfortable, and our brains don’t like risk or discomfort.
So we will always feel uncomfortable with changes we don’t love. And the bad stuff will also always change.
Not only that, we will always have choices about how we handle each change.
Is there a change that is making you feel stuck? Hit reply and tell me about it. Because we can change it together.
All my best,
Dr. G
