As parent writers, we can often feel like we have to apologize for the work we do. Because work is taking us away from our children and our families, and it’s cutting into the time that we might spend together, and it’s distracting us from the thing we’re supposed to be doing, which is raising our kids, right?
I am not immune to apologizing for my work.
This usually happens when my husband and I are having a budgeting meeting, and we’re talking about all the budget needs that a family of eight can accrue, and we’re trying to see what’s what, and I realize, yet again, that what I’m doing, this writing thing, isn’t contributing a whole lot to that overall what-we-need number. I spend four hours a day writing and another half hour working on business things, and I find myself apologizing for that time I’m taking away from my husband, who is the real breadwinner at this point in our lives.
Fortunately, my husband is a pretty exceptional man who understands that if I’m not pursuing my passion, I’m not the best version of myself—but that doesn’t mean I stop apologizing.
There are times he’ll take me by the elbows and shake me a little bit and says, “What you’re doing is important,” but until I can do that for myself and really, really believe it, then I’m not going to stop apologizing.
I’m going to notice how the baby is being especially fussy this afternoon, and I really should be down there taking care of him instead of holed up in my room finishing this story, and I’m going to apologize for it when the dinner bell clangs and I snap my laptop shut. I’m going to hear how the 6-year-old needs some help with his homework and I’m his mother, and I should really be down there helping him, even though my husband is a competent caregiver and fully capable of helping him do first-grade homework, but I’m still going to apologize for not being there. I’m going to miss that little school assembly that didn’t really mean much at all, because I had a deadline I needed to meet, and I’m going to apologize for not being there.
When will we stop apologizing for our work?
[Tweet “Let’s stop apologizing for choosing work over every-second-presence with our kids. Our work is important.”]
Something I’ve learned in my full-time writing pursuit is that when I’m creating stories, when I’m mapping out my life on a page, when I’m crafting my essays that celebrate the crazy life I have with six boys, I’m a more whole version of myself. I’m a better person for my separate pursuit, and it doesn’t matter how much or how little money I make at it. That’s not the measure of a whole life. The measure of a whole life is what we’re doing to cultivate the passions and talents we’ve been given—mothering and writing and creating and contributing and teaching and (fill in your own blank).
Sometimes choosing a whole life means not being in the audience of our kid’s reader awards, because there’s something we have to do, and, besides, we were there last year. Sometimes it means not volunteering at a school Christmas party, because Fridays are our busiest days and in order to stay on track, we really need to take this one as a work day. Sometimes it means working during Family Movie Night, because we need to get that one thing edited so we can get it out on the market. We don’t have to apologize for those times. We’re still spending time with our kids. We’re still nurturing, we’re still loving, we’re still present with them in all the ways that matter most.
Something my husband has told me over and over again is that it’s not about the quantity of time we spend with our kids, it’s about the quality. I know this. Fifteen minutes of quality time is much better than a whole hour of distracted time, and our kids notice the difference. So when I’m with my children, I’m with my children, and when I’m working, I’m working. I try to separate them as much as I possibly can, because if we’re always thinking about one when we’re doing the other, we’re not going to be great at either.
It’s not exactly easy to get over this apologizing habit, but it’s something we’re going to have to do if we want to ease into this writing and creating fully and completely. We’re going to have to believe that what we do, the work we produce and create, has value,and that it’s just as important to release out into the world as it is to raise our children. We have to nurture it and spend time with it and love it, too, just like we do our children.
And if we never make money or only sell a few copies of that book, or maybe none at all, we can still take comfort in the fact that we have at least brought value to one person in the world—ourselves.
[Tweet “We love best when we’re creating. That’s all the value our families need.”]
Some things to think about when guilt comes knocking, asking us to apologize:
1. What writing does for us.
For me, writing helps me clarify my world. It doesn’t take long for my world to get all fogged up with expectations and disappointments and to-do lists and things forgotten or remembered, and writing helps me take a step back and figure out what’s important and what’s really not. Writing has healing properties. It has many benefits beyond just the simple act of getting words out on a page. So one of the best ways to combat the need to apologize is to figure out just what writing does for us. I’m a more balanced person, a happier person, a more optimistic and hope-filled person when I’m creating. My kids get a better version of their mom when she holes up inside her room and creates.
2. The time we’re actually spending with our kids.
Sometimes we have an deflated sense of how much time we’re actually spending with our kids, but if we were to evaluate it, we’d see that we spend 10 minutes reading to one boy here and fifteen minutes snuggling with that one and five minutes looking into that one’s eyes in the mornings. Remember, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality. So even if we evaluate that time and think we’re not spending enough of it with our kids, it’s important to evaluate whether that small amount of time is fully focused on our kids or fragmented with all the other things on our mind.
If we find we need to carve out more time, then put away the distractions, tuck away the to-do list, and just hang out.
3. The impossibility of “all things to all people.”
Our kids will always take more time if we’ll let them. They’ll ask us to come have lunch with them at school, and they’ll ask if we’re going to make it out to their end-of-school dance party, and they’ll ask if we can take them to the store this afternoon so they can buy that new book that just came out, but the reality is, even if we’re not making money at it, our creating time is our work time. It’s not easy to see it this way when we’re not going into an actual office, when they can just knock on the office door or (more likely) barge right in, but we wouldn’t leave a normal 9-5 in the middle of the day so we could take our kid to the store. We shouldn’t do it for our creative pursuit, either.
This will make us want to apologize. But if we can remember that waiting is a necessary skill for our child to learn, maybe we won’t feel quite so guilty about it. Rushing out to give our kids everything they want at the drop of a word doesn’t teach them about things like patience and perseverance and ingenuity.
We’re going to have to miss some things along the way. We can’t be all things to all people. We can’t be everywhere at once. No one else can, either, so we can take the pressure off ourselves.
