One Founder's Honest Truth on Side-Hustle Work

"In no way am I saying I made a bad decision, but I did recently had a 'grieving' period around this all being in my past."

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Getting Better

Words by Hannah Weil McKinley

As I’m parenting bigger kids and saying my goodbyes to having babies in the house, there’s a piece I’m mourning. It got to me when I was cleaning out my girls’ room this past week—how I reluctantly put away the alphabet blocks that spelled out each of their names and marked their bedside tables and dressers since they were born, and they haven’t asked about them since. How I’m packing away stuffies and making room for chapter books, and the shelves all look different, but my memories of early motherhood are still stuck to the sides, mucking everything up a little. 

In the beginning, it’s all bodies and growth and physical milestones. The emphasis on how they move and eat, and then talk and play. Now, it’s all feelings. Mine and theirs—and theirs more and more. I have girls with emotions; not the simpler ones driven by hunger or exhaustion. I can’t fix it with a bottle or an early bedtime, at least, not often. There are little people developing with big ideas and big, beating hearts that see and feel what’s in and around them with passion and empathy. 

My first-grader cares what other people think and wants answers for almost everything. She wants to know “why” some parents get divorced and why “people have to die.” It’s the big stuff, presented often at bedtime when I’d rather be happily snuggling and pretending these harder bits don’t actually exist, at least not in our little world—not now, not tonight. 

When I’ve referenced my fear around parenting bigger kids with bigger problems before, I’ve failed to maybe articulate the “why.” The truth is that there’s too much of me in it. My fears all reflected back to me when my daughter asks with earnestness why there are homeless people or why women and Black people weren’t allowed to vote. There’s not always a good answer; and there are difficult truths. Uncomfortable realities that are so beyond me, that, of course, they’re beyond a six year-old, I think. And so, when I’ve had the luxury of redirecting the conversation, sometimes I have. I’m lucky that I haven’t had to address school shootings or explain the death of a loved one yet. Sometimes, I think it would break me to see my daughters trying to wrap their brains around that kind of hurt.