In the initial weeks and months after I gave birth, there were days when I resented my husband for not doing his exact 50% share of caring for our daughter. The feeling would sit, like a festering pit of nerves, in my stomach. It tainted everything with the annoyance oozing out of it in waves.
Don’t get me wrong, I still appreciated things in life, but a lot of energy went into trying to stand my ground to make sure the responsibility was balanced, as we had agreed it would be before we became parents.
My husband and I argued, as he felt I was often being unreasonable. He wasn’t always wrong, but I was intent on balancing our time sheets. I was still raging at the patriarchy after an odyssey of a birth, and discovering that I was woefully underprepared and lacking support for all things postpartum.
The power of a single word
Then, maybe six months in, I started listening to podcasts again, and one of them (I wish I remembered which one! Brooke Castillo maybe?) changed everything with a concept so simple, so revolutionary, that I now apply it to as many aspects of my life as I can.
In a nutshell, the advice was to change ONE WORD in how you speak to yourself. Instead of saying and thinking “I have to”, change that to “I get to”.
You don’t have to get up at 7am to tackle your day, you get to.
You don’t have to prepare three (or however many) meals a day for your family, you get to.
You don’t have to spend half a day with your child, you get to.
It works.
How implementing this simple life hack was a revolution
A light bulb went off, and all my annoyance evaporated. Instead, I was filled with love, gratitude, and awe at the luxury of spending half of every day with my daughter and knowing that she got to spend the rest of her day with her father.
That’s when my days went from being all about logistics to focusing on “lovegistics” (I still don’t know if that really works as a concept, but I’m going with it!). I felt lighter, happier, at peace.
And I also felt a bit like an idiot for not having figured this out sooner, while also very relieved that I figured it out at all.
It doesn’t mean I don’t still sometimes struggle with inspiration around what to cook, or that I don’t look at my to do list and wonder how everything will get done. I’m still human.
But, I’m a happier human, and with regards to my now 14-month-old daughter, while lo(ve)gistics are still and always will be an integral part of every day, because parenting… My baseline is love.
