The Pivot: On Perfectionism, Plot Twists, & Learning to Leave the Ends Loose
I’m exhausted.
My bones are tired.
I’m supposed to be writing about sunscreen this week.
Sunscreen. I promised that, and I’ll deliver on it. But the past two weeks were very much about learning to pivot, which is not something that’s ever come naturally to me. It’s something the world has made a necessity in my life. Something the world makes a necessity in motherhood. An evolutionary requirement to protect and nurture at all costs, no matter the curveball.
We pivot. We sacrifice our own self-care for that of our child.
Rosie went to the ER over Memorial Day weekend.
There she was in her red, white, and blue Peter Pan collared dress, quickly covered in her lunch.
So was I.
So was the car seat.
So we left my cousin’s housewarming party before we even walked through the door. She had a high fever, which I don’t mess around with. So off to urgent care we went.
PIVOT.
As I pulled into the parking lot, she started choking. I threw the car in park and jumped out quicker than I’ve moved in a very long time.
After being turned away at urgent care, we sat in the ER for a few hours and were told it was luckily “just a virus.”
Then the next day, the rash appeared. Hand. Foot. Mouth.
Honestly a pretty innocuous thing, if it weren’t for their absolute discomfort. So I drove us seven hours back from Dallas on four hours of sleep with a very angry toddler.
PIVOT.
Seven to ten days out of daycare, the doctor said.
I made it two weeks, because there’s no way I’m going to shut down her in-home daycare and subject those sweet babies and their parents to the same misery.
So it was me and her.
Oatmeal baths. Ice. Watermelon. Triple paste.
An end-of-month quota. My clients. My classwork. My blog.
So Ms. Rachel became a crutch at a level I’m not comfortable with.
🎵 I’m not happy, I’m not happy
I’m not happy, TODAY
Jump, clap, spin, stomp, stomp, PIVOT! 🎵
The next week, when my mom got home, we followed her to Corpus because I needed an extra set of hands. Sadly interrupting what was supposed to be some R&R for her.
But after four kids and six grandkids, she’s learned how to pivot too.
On Tuesday, I received some unsettling personal news that knocked me down more than I thought it would.
It led to a sleepless night.
PIVOT.
I should have called into work. But I’ve never been able to do that very well.
Not taking care of myself that day led to major tears on the phone with my sister, forcing her to make the decision for me. She’s my boss. So I took Thursday off and barely made it through five minutes of The Gilded Age before I was out by 9pm.
After two weeks at home, on Monday she went back to daycare.
I dropped her off that morning to our angel, Ms. Tahnee, and her sweet friends that had been “asking about her every day”.
Mom guilt extinguished.
Off to work I go.
After naptime her teacher was texting me. She was throwing up.
PIVOT.
A stomach bug, food poisoning. Who knows. By the next day she was herself again, so I made the call: mom guilt and all, she was going back Wednesday. My parents were out of town. I had to get back to work, and I needed help. Desperately.
Whether I wanted to spend the day snuggling my sweet girl or not, I had a job to do.
And then Wednesday morning, she woke up screaming. Inconsolable.
So straight to the pediatrician we went, where one look in her ears was all it took.
“Maroon. Swollen. Nasty. Poor thing.” His words, not mine.
A double ear infection.
Pivot.
Plot twist.
Call it whatever you want.
I will say this, though. I think the universe makes sick babies a little extra snuggly. Just to make it all a little more bearable.
And my perfectionism, of course, was right there in it with me. Telling me I was somehow failing at my job. That I wasn’t showing up at 100% while I was home alone with a very sick toddler who needed 100% of me.
Now, I wasn’t a math teacher. But even I know the math is not mathing and in that equation, something has got to give.
And she is going to win every time.
In the thick of it, tears streaming, tugging at her ears, she kept saying, “Oooh no. Oooh no.” And then, quietly, “yay.” As if she were trying to will some small joy into her own misery. As if she were trying to talk herself out of how much it hurt.
Every part of my being wanted to make this a teaching moment. You do not have to pretend you’re not miserable, my love. You do not always have to put on a brave face for the rest of the world.
Instead I held her tight and whispered, “Me too, my girl. Me too.”
Thankfully, I had therapy. We talked about the motor inside me that hasn’t really stopped since I left my husband while I was pregnant.
The motor and the steel trap. One keeping me moving, so I’m never still enough to process the grief these last two years have caused. The other keeping that grief contained, compartmentalized so securely that the things that would knock me down and slow me couldn’t escape.
But this week, the world forced me to slow down. To find some stillness.
Back when I was teaching, we had these Christmas door decorating contests. I’m proud of the teacher I was. I believe I was a great one.
But I was not a decorate-your-door-as-a-three-dimensional-Grinch kind of teacher. And I was full of anxiety about finishing that door while wrapping up everything before break in the perfect little bow I wanted it tied in.
My therapist told me to picture my perfectionism as a person while I worked on that door. And then to kick her out.
Perfectionism doesn’t live here anymore.
It’s a battle I’ve lost a thousand times over, me and my perfectionism. This time it had me down on the mat, almost to the count, when my mom gave me a bit of grace.
Not permission. Grace.
Her words were essentially this:
We are never going to be 100%. And 70% of you, on your worst day, is more than enough.
Motherhood forces you to pivot. This has been a two-week avalanche of them. And the real pivot was being made still enough to finally feel what I’d been outrunning.
I think it’s important to acknowledge that motherhood is the hardest, most unpredictable thing you will ever do.
I want this space to be a place for that kind of honesty.
For the acknowledgment, free from judgment, free from the toxic positivity that tells us to grin and bear it. That tells women to keep the motor running and the steel trap shut, to not make too much noise, to do it all with a smile.
Saying it out loud doesn’t make us less of a mother. It makes us better ones.
Because if we lock it away long enough, it finds its way out anyway.
By the way, I didn’t win that door contest. I wrapped it in Christmas paper and slapped a giant bow on it from Hobby Lobby.
Turns out I can tie a door up in a perfect bow.
My life, though? I’m learning to leave the ends loose.
And that is perfectly okay.
