The Mom Weekly Volume 3, August 8, 2023
Notes:
Welcome to Volume 3 of The Mom Weekly!
Sorry about the button thing from last week. As I found out—and as many of you told me—an error message pops up if you press one of the buttons.
I don’t know if I did something wrong, or if having a button actually “work” is a premium feature of beehiiv, my email newsletter provider. I am using the free plan, so there aren’t a lot of bells and whistles. I will look into it.
Also, I just noticed that there was a TYPO in the headline of last week’s newsletter. The title read “Messages My Adult Children May Need to Here” !!!!!
I hope it was an autocorrect situation, because I can’t imagine writing that, but who knows. The online version is now correct, and the buttons are gone until I can figure it out. Feel free to let me know if you see other errors. Imagine that—moms making mistakes! 😉
Everyone makes mistakes
I wrote a long-ish reflection on the memoir When Breath Becomes Air that was not entirely “polished,” so I decided to work on it more before including here.
As a result, this week’s message is really short:
Everyone makes mistakes.
What’s key is that you don’t “stay there” or ruminate on your mistakes too much. And that applies to both our own mistakes and the mistakes that others make.
If you can “own” or correct your mistake and (if possible) apologize for it, do so promptly and without too much “explaining.” And when you can’t correct something, accept it and move on.
My typo mistake last week is a kind of hybrid version of that. I can “own” the mistake and apologize for it. And I can fix the online version. But I can’t correct the email that went out last week, so I have to accept that. It’s a good example because it’s so small, and offers the chance to practice letting it go, which can often be the hardest part.
Well, this is turning into more of a reflection than I expected! I’ll have to expand on this another time.
As always, remember how much I love you,
Love,
Mom
An interesting read:
What if We’re the Bad Guys Here? — David Brooks in The New York Times
This is a must-read.
Best quote:
“The ideal that we’re all in this together was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.”
An interesting listen:
I admire so much of what The Free Press is doing these days. And Bari Weiss’ explanation —- wanting to create truly independent, high-quality journalism—is just gold.
So far, I think they have succeeded. I find myself listening to the TFP podcast “Honestly” almost every episode, and the interviews and discussions are top-notch. Here are just two episodes of many that are excellent: How to Dad in 2023 (Father’s Day episode) and America Needs a Self Help Book.
I also appreciate that even if I disagree with what I’m reading or listening to at The Free Press, I don’t feel “shamed” by my views. That shaming impulse is unfortunately present in many forms of media. That, and the “cancelling” people, is just poison to healthy relationships, especially online interactions.
An action item: Start your “if I get hit by a bus” document.
I update quarterly-ish my “when I get hit by a bus” document with very short notes for the family, some suggestions, as well as instructions on how to access accounts and where to find various important things, etc. I highly suggest that you consider creating such a document—it’s a ton of work the first time, emotionally and otherwise, but updating it is much less stressful.
Sometimes people call these “in case of emergency” letter or “death binder” etc.. Ideally, you’d come up with a title more prosaic than mine.
There are various products/books/online services you can purchase to fill in, but I have found it easier to create a document to personalize it.
Since these are meant to be small steps, don’t try to complete it or even put any content in. Just create a document.
Ideally you would have it password protected. Eventually you can share its location—physical and digital—with a family member. That eliminates Google Docs, unfortunately.
That’s it for this week! We’ll come back to what to include in it in another week.
What are you doing this weekend?
The Mom Weekly schedules to post on Tuesdays. One of the reasons for this is to encourage you (and me, too!) to think about weekend plans. All too often, I have let that go until Friday, and then it’s hard to get people together, or make plans for coffee, or figure out when you go to Mass (other than the default, which is what we typically do).
So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:
*faith—when are you going to Mass?
*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?
*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?
*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).