It's September. How are YOU doing?
It's not an easy month.
Well, I don’t even know where to start. I was deeply moved by the outpouring of support you all showed me when I shared my news on Tuesday. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have never met the vast majority of you, and yet you showed up for me in such a meaningful way, and I am so grateful. It’s amazing how much easier it is to get through hard times when you have friends holding you up. Indeed, we know from the research (you know I was going to mention the research!) that supportive personal relationships are essential for resilience.
I suspect that September is challenging for many of you. A couple of years ago for The New York Times, I wrote about how to cope with fall anxiety, because it really is A Thing. Especially for parents. Fall anxiety, fall stress, fall depression… they’re all real and can be very difficult.
Among other things, getting kids adjusted to school can be a momentous challenge, even if they enjoy it. A friend of mine is going through a big daycare transition with her toddler, and she recently shared how guilty she feels seeing her daughter cry at drop-off. She worried that her daughter hates daycare, but I gently pointed out that transitions themselves can be extremely hard for kids, regardless of what they are transitioning to. Her daughter may well love her daycare days; still, the change itself is a challenge. When you’re a little kid, you have very little control over your life, so you find peace and calm in stability and routine. When that’s upended, it takes time to adjust. Unfortunately, we as parents are typically the ones who deal with the fallout — even as we try to transition to our own new fall schedules, too. (Not to mention navigate all the other crazy things going on in this world.)
Today I want to hear about how you’re coping. I heard from many of you last week about the insanity of your fall schedules, but that’s different from asking after how you’re doing. So: How are you doing? Where and in what ways do you need more support? Please share your stories and needs in the comments.
My husband and I took our kids to the amusement park recently and we tried a ride which according to Wikipedia is called the "rock-o-plane" - it's like a ferris wheel but you're in a little cage so you can rock around and even flip if you get up enough momentum. My husband was with my nine year old in one cage and they had a ton of fun rocking around... I was with my five year old who decided they did not want to rock, so my job was to rock myself around as a counterweight to keep the cage steady. It took a lot of effort and gave me weird sensations, but I stabilized the cage throughout the ride! Anyway sometimes that's what September feels like as kids go through all these emotional transitions. We have to move and adjust and absorb and stabilize, and the end result looks like not much is happening at all. Phew!
I tend not to do well in September. I have fall anxiety even though it is my favorite season. There are myriad reasons for the anxiety- unresolved feelings of stress from when I worked as an elementary school counselor 2014-2016 so I associate fall with feeling uncertain and overwhelmed; my body remembers the feelings of anxiety from my first miscarriage which occurred in September of 2015; the transitions of those around me (namely my sister and nephews) somewhat affect me because I am her primary sounding board and best friend so if her boys are having a tough time with transition I also feel that anxiety.
My niece just had a baby and we are trying to buy a house for her/her baby and her mom and my mother-in-law to live in (and pay us discounted rent) so that my niece doesn’t have to continue to live with my father-in-law due to financial strain (my father-in-law is not a super supportive family member so ideally she would be in our neighborhood since there are multiple houses for sale). And finally, election stress affects me because my husband supports Trump and I support Kamala, so while we have been mostly civil, election season and having more discussions of our beliefs cause more anxiety.
There’s a lot going on so I am not sleeping well, and the way I am coping is by doing my Swiftie dance parties in the AM and trying to dance it out like Meredith and Cristina on Grey’s Anatomy. It is definitely making me feel better!