Both Things Are True

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve had the space to write—but this one wouldn’t leave me alone…

It’s 11:00 p.m., and I’m just now sitting down for the first time since getting out of bed this morning. I’ve started this at least three different ways, and every version felt off.

So I stopped trying to make it something it’s not.

This isn’t a lesson.
This isn’t a story.

It’s just… witnessing.

So this is attempt number four. I’m just going to say it and not overthink it.

I’m not complaining. I’m just telling it as I feel it—to raise four kids [even] in a two-parent, working household is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Even that sentence sits on top of privilege. Two parents. Two incomes. And it’s still so insanely hard.

When I say I don’t know how my solo-parenting friends do it, I mean that at a cellular level—you are actual immortal beings. Parenting is… something else. It’s overwhelming even when you do have support. Let alone when you don’t.

So before I go any further—if you’re doing this alone, you can cut me in line anywhere. I’ll give you the last bite, the last scoop of my favorite ice cream, my umbrella. I’ll sleep on the couch—you can have my bed. The extra pillow, the extra blanket—always yours. You pick the restaurant, who drives, what time, where we park, what’s on the radio. Your drink is on me. Forever.

——

Raising four humans might be the definition of insanity.

An average day leaves me with that deep, bone-level exhaustion—the kind where your eyelids burn the second you stop moving. And I’m talking about a good day. Where you’re on time and had a dinner plan. No extras.

There is so. much. noise. So many questions. So much constant input that even on the “easy” days, my brain feels like crossed wires—sparking, shorting out, fried.

And the strange part? I thrive in chaos. I procrastinate, then execute. Give me a deadline and I’ll become a machine. I’ll learn it, master it, get it done—with excellence. Hell, I finished a doctoral degree without any ChatGPT or AI. This adulting stuff shouldn’t be that hard then… right?

But this—this constant, low-level, never-ending need—feels different.

The closer I get to 40, my tolerance for the everyday is shrinking.

I am overwhelmed.
I am bone-tired.
Every. single. day.

And the solutions offered feel… small.

Drink more water.
Delegate.
Minimize.
Say no.
Lower your standards.
Go to sleep at 8pm.
Less screen time and scrolling. (What screen time? Who has time for screens? Are y’all seriously able to watch TV?!)

But with four kids, the “basics” are not basic.

Even when I do all of that, it’s still an extraordinary amount of work.

And I’ll say it again—I’m not complaining.

I am in love with this life.

Do I wish I had more time for the things I love? Less fatigue? Of course. (Okay—and maybe I’d relocate to a beach town.) But beyond that, truly, I wouldn’t wish any of this away.

And that’s the part that feels remarkable.

Because if you had met my younger self, she wouldn’t recognize this life. And honestly… neither would I.

Motherhood, to younger me, felt like the path that—speaking freely here—I assumed was… lazier. Less intellectually demanding. Less complex. (In my best Elle Woods voice: “What, like it’s hard?”)

I really believed that.

I was wrong. On every account.

To be clear: I’ve programmed complex audiological devices—fine-tuning frequencies and outputs down to the smallest measurable level. I’ve counseled patients through the intricate inner workings of hearing aids, cochlear implants, and the brain itself—how sound travels, how it’s interpreted, how the brain learns to make sense of something it hasn’t heard in years.

I’ve sat in rooms where a single adjustment changed someone’s connection to the world around them.

I know complex.
I know precision.
I know what it means to hold responsibility in my hands.

And still—

This is the most mentally demanding, emotionally complex, logistically relentless work I have ever done.

It’s not just the doing.
It’s the thinking.
The tracking.
The remembering.
The anticipating.

It’s holding four separate lives in your head at all times—what they need, what they forgot, what they’re feeling but not saying out loud.

It’s solving problems before they happen.
Managing energy that isn’t just your own.
Making a thousand tiny decisions before you’ve tossed the covers aside to roll out of bed.

And none of it clocks out.

There’s no clean finish line.
No “good job, you’re done for the day.”
Just a quiet shift into the next need, the next question, the next moment.

And somehow,
in the middle of all of that—

this is the life I wouldn’t trade.

I don’t fully understand how something can be this hard
and still be something I would choose again.

But it is.

Every loud, chaotic, overstimulating, bone-tired piece of it.

Every moment where I feel like I have nothing left to give—
and still give anyway.

Every day that stretches me further than I thought I could go.

This isn’t the version of motherhood I imagined.

It’s heavier.
More complex.
More consuming.

But it’s also deeper than anything I could have understood back then.

Not easier.
Not simpler.
But fuller.

And maybe that’s the part my younger self couldn’t have known—

that a life can exhaust you,
and fulfill you,
at the exact same time.