Like, if I'm yelling or I'm being loud, there's communication happening.
We can come to an agreement. If I'm quiet, you are so super fucked.
I'm not mad at dad. I'm not. He literally has nothing to do with this
at all. And she was like, but you're yelling at him. And I was like,
no, I'm yelling in his general direction. This is productive.
Like, I might as well have just chugged rocket fuel when one of my
kids tells me that something is annoying. Because, man, I'm gonna do it 10,000 times
now. All right, here we go.
I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record, because that feels right. Okay, I'm pressing record.
Boop. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard.
Welcome to Different Not Broken, which is our
podcast on exactly that. That there are a lot of people in this world walking
around feeling broken. And the reality is you're just different, and that's fine.
Now, I want to be very clear about something. My husband has an excellent life
that I facilitate for him in so many different way.
He gets to be a full time househusband, which he loves. He gets to be
a full time dad, which he also loves. For whatever reason, he really likes
these kids, probably because they act just like him, which is like my
nightmare. But it's fine. But he likes both of those things. I
recognize and acknowledge that I am not a picnic at all.
That I am a neurotic mess, like, 95% of
the time. But there are trade offs in life and you're. You're
super awesome setup where you get to be a full time
house husband with a full time nanny might mean that
you get to deal with your wife, who's not a picnic. And I think that's
okay. He also is my I'm
angry at the world receptacle. We've reached a point in our marriage, and I think
this is probably just like the fact that our marriage is a high
school sophomore. Now we've reached the point in the marriage that we have recognized
that we can be yelling, but not yelling at each
other. Like, he's Italian, he's loud, he
doesn't have a volume. That is not yelling
so much so that, like, he and his mother yell at each other
constantly. And they have no idea. They think they're just having a
conversation. And I'm like, you guys are screaming at each other. You're basically
insulting each other's intelligence constantly, over and
over, and you don't understand why everybody around you is like, are they
okay? That is Just the way they communicate it is the way they talk to
each other. I finally recognize that. To me, it's wild
that they can have these conversations where they're going after
each other for 30 straight minutes about really important things
like mulch. And if you think that's an exaggeration, it's
not. But they will go after each other. And it
brings the whole energy up of the room up to frenetic. Especially if
you're, like, trying to have a meal and you're like, why does my digestion feel
all weird? And maybe it's because there are two people next to me yelling at
each other. And then they get done with it, and they're like, all right, you
want to go get pizza? And you're like, you just yelled at each other for
45 straight minutes, and you just. You want to go
snag dinner now? Cool. Anyway, it's taken me a long time to realize
that's just how they communicate, and that's the only way they hear each other. I
just don't get involved with it. But anyway, the point is that my husband and
I have now kind of just like, reached a point in our relationship where
we can yell and know we're not yelling at each other. And I'm
not really a yeller for the most part. Like,
you're in way bigger trouble if I'm quiet. Like, if I'm
yelling or I'm being loud, which, again, doesn't happen that often, or I'm
talking, even if I'm, like, edgy about it, you're fine.
There's communication happening. We can come to an agreement. We're gonna find
a compromise. If I'm quiet. You are so super,
like, something nuclear is about to happen, and I am not even going to
apologize for it. Years and years ago, when I
was working at a company that built software, we had a really
good development team who could very
easily develop the end goal, big solution,
but not the things that facilitate that thing actually happening.
So they would build the platform that was amazing and super functional,
and then you'd be like, okay, how do people actually access it? And they'd be
like, that's a good question. And so one time,
after many, many of these conversations, they sold the
solution to someone. And as the person who was responsible for
deploying it in this group's environment, I was trying to write
the implementation plan, and I went, you know what? I'm realizing that
I have absolutely no idea how this part talks
to this part and what we need to do to actually Build that out.
Do we need developers involved? So I went over to our CTO and I was
like, hey, can you explain to me how this piece works? Because we're supposed
to launch this in 30 days. And I have no idea. Like, there's a whole
bunch of pre work we have to do. I have no idea how to do
that. And there wasn't a lot that I didn't know how to do on the
system. And he just looks at me and he's like, oh, we don't have a
way to do that. And I was like, okay, but we just sold $120,000
contract to do that. And he was like, yeah, we probably have to build
it. And I was like, you say that. Is that like a one week
process or like a six month process? And he was like, I mean,
it's probably a several month process. And I was like,
you do know that we just sold a go live
of six weeks from today with this solution. And
he was like, yeah, that sounds like a problem. I went
silent because nobody was gonna give them this information. It was on
me to tell them that our sales team sold something that we can't
do. And our development team didn't know that we actually needed to do it.
Even though they built the thing, they didn't know that anybody needed to use it.
And usually if I was in the office, because I wasn't in the office that
often, somebody was at my desk, like every five minutes. It was constant.
And so I almost got nothing done in the office because there was just constantly
people at my desk. And so I noticed after like 45
minutes or an hour that nobody had come by my desk. And I also had
gotten very little done. I was just like, sitting there, like, deep breathing. The person
who I am, L2, because she was L1, came over to
my desk eventually, and she's still one of my very best friends. And she was
like, they're all in the conference room talking because they think you're gonna go nuclear.
And I was like, that is a safe assumption at this point because this
is a stupid decision that is now on me to fix. And she was like,
yeah, but it's fun to watch. And the conference room was like, glassed in. So
she was like, just come sit at my desk and watch. And I was like,
all right. So we just went and sat at her desk, and we didn't have
popcorn, but we should have had popcorn. So
anyway, if I'm quiet, you're in trouble. And the people who
know me know you're in trouble. So
if I'm yelling about something, it usually means
that I'm like, trying to get to the solution about it. And so
my very sweet husband, who is sweet in his own
way, yesterday got so many earfuls
and my 7 year old came up to me and was like,
mom, why are you mad at dad? And I was like, I'm not mad
at dad. I'm not. He literally has nothing to do with this at all. And
she was like, but you're yelling at it. I was like, no, I'm yelling in
his general direction. This is productive
yelling. I was like, it is almost no different than me yelling at the
wall. He is just there to receive and
occasionally jump in and say, what if we. Or could we try? And then it
gives me something new to yell about. And then I get all my yells out
and I say, I can't do this anymore. I'm so angry about all this and
how could this happen? And all these people. And then I walk away and I
go get my shit done because I've yelled at the
receptacle of all of my ire. And he doesn't take it
personally. And he has also learned not to help too much
because then it does become yelling at him then, even though he is very
much trying to help and I so love that he so wants
to help. Then it becomes, oh, you think in all of my
five years of stressing about this thing that I didn't consider that
then I just didn't think of that thing that is right in front of my
face, really. So he's just learned to just be like, I
don't need to help. I just need to cheerlead. I just need to be like,
y' all figure it out, babe. So my children are getting a lesson in
marital communication, which maybe is not what
is generally recommended, but it works for us. And it's the same thing that he
does. Usually he comes in to yell about the contractor who's working on our house
and be like, I told him. And then he said, and now it's
been. Whereas he usually just like
agrees with me and pats me on the head. I kind of do that
when we're on the same page, but I'm also there with a lighter and matches
like, you wanna. You wanna burn it down? Do you wanna. Do you wanna. Do
you want me to just light it on fire? Do you just want me jump?
Like, I won't actually use a lighter in matches, but I really, I can be
mean in writing. Do you want me to do that. Because I will do that.
Do you want me to handle them? I will handle them. But anyway, this poor
man yesterday got so many tongue lashings that
had nothing to do with him. And thankfully he fully understands that and just
knows that it is the price of doing business with having a
nice car and dealing with me on the regular. Just, there are many,
many perks to it. That's like the worst part of it. And he just
deals with it very well.
My nine year old's greatest claim to fame. My nine year old is she comes
up to my chin. She's giant. I'm small, but she's a giant.
And she's also like 50 pounds. Like
she's probably four and a half feet
ish and she's 50 pounds. She is
a string bean. My youngest says that. My youngest is
a potato and my oldest is a french fry. She definitely got
my husband's genetics as far as her entire
setup is concerned. But my youngest is like 8
inches shorter than her sister and she's 2 pounds lighter. When
they were like probably 2 and 4,
I was like, what do you do when the universe gives you a child in
the 80th percentile for height and at the 20th percentile for height?
I dress them up like Mario and Luigi because what else do you do? So
they used to dress up like Mario and Luigi all the time. My oldest loves
Olive Garden and when she's going through a growth spurt, like she
will eat drywall, she just like shovels things into her
mouth. There is not an ounce of extra
body fat percentage on her at all whatsoever. And so we took
her to Olive Garden one day because during one of her Olive Garden kicks
and she got the adult lasagna, let them eat chicken nuggets because
otherwise they turn out to be hella expensive. These kids go and order like
$20 plates in restaurants and I'm like, why just get
the chicken nuggets. Anyway, so she ordered this whole plate of lasagna, which is.
I don't know if anybody's seen Olive Garden lasagna, but it literally is like
an 8 inch round bowl filled with
lasagna. It is more than three
adults should eat. She ate the whole thing herself.
The server came over and asked her if she needed a box and she was
like, no, I'm done. She. And she looks down and she's like,
did you eat that whole thing? She was like, yeah. She
was like, where did you put it? I don't know. But anyway,
she has the metabolism of
something with a very fast metabolism. She's the opposite of Garfield
in most ways, except for the lasagna. I actually don't really like
lasagna at all. It's something my husband's mother makes all the time, and her
lasagna is very good, but it's just not a food that I like. Don't be
offended. Lasagna. But a lasagna
saved me from what was only
a certain meltdown and
gave me the tools that I needed to figure out how to
get through decision fatigue. And I had no
idea that this was coming. My youngest was eight weeks early. My oldest was
six weeks early. I undercooked them, which is why there is not a third child.
They keep coming out al dente. So when my oldest was eight weeks early,
we were going back and forth to the nicu, like basically
constantly. And the NICU is not close to where we live. It's
30 minutes away at best, without
traffic. And we were going back and forth multiple times
a day. I had just had a C section. I couldn't drive, so I either
had to take an Uber or I had to have my husband drive me. And
we had a two year old at home. It was way more chaotic the second
time. Like, you think if you've been through it the first time, you're like, the
second time I know how to handle this. Well, the second time we had a
kid who couldn't come with us to the NICU all the time. And so we're
basically like dividing and conquering all the time because what else do you do? And
so I was getting up there every day, going and spending most
of the day with her coming back again. I
just had major surgery. Anybody who tells you a C section, it's not major surgery
is lying. Bite me. Major, major surgery. I was
uncomfortable. I was in pain all the time. She was eight weeks early,
so that was a thing. And even at that age,
she was stubborn. Just the sheer amount of things
that were on our plate was insane. And we are very
fortunate that we have family and friends and a whole bunch of people who
are reaching out saying, what can we do? What can we do? Can we bring
you something? What can we do? And we wouldn't take them up on any of
it. And so we were figuring out food and we were
doing our laundry and we were running back and forth between two
kids and we were dealing with doctors and I
was doing my follow ups and I was healing and recovering
from surgery. And we have 7,000 different things going
on and lots of things that people could have helped us with,
and that we probably would have happily accepted help with. But
delegating is often as difficult as doing it yourself.
Or figuring out where you need to delegate is often as bad as doing
it yourself when you're in that, like, overload. And so
you just go without clean clothes, or
you wear the musty clothes from the dryer that sat in the washer for
too long because you have to have something to wear, the executive
function to get it all done, like, it's gone. There's not enough bandwidth to
do all of this. And it wasn't because we didn't have people
to do the things. Like, we had people who would have shown up and done
the laundry had we asked them to do the laundry. But making the list
that emotional labor is still labor, it's still
work. And this is not a criticism of anybody around us. It's just how I
learned that, like, in those situations, that's not
the question to ask. And so we were probably two
weeks into this. I was on the verge of
some sort of meltdown. My 2 year old had a
virus, which not great when you have a
newborn, and we're trying to get our newborn out of the nicu,
and now we have a boogery feverish two year old in
our house who is not great at keeping her
hands and saliva to herself. And we had to figure out how to get
our baby home. We had to figure out when they were gonna let her come
home. We had to, like, basically quarantine the house in two places.
There were so many things that needed to be done. I couldn't even tell you
the first of them. It was absolute chaos. We had
a particularly bad day. I don't remember what
happened, but I just know it was a really bad day. The doorbell rings. We
weren't expecting anybody, but also, like, we could have forgotten literally
anything at that point. So I answer the call and it's this woman I
sort of recognized. Not well enough to know
her name. I just knew this was a person who was like,
did she live in our neighborhood? Is she somebody my mom knew? I didn't know
who this person was, but I kind of knew who she was. So I didn't
think I was about to get stabbed or anything, but always a chance. And
I open the door and she says, hey, Lauren. And I'm like,
hello, strange person who knows my name. How can I assist?
And she literally, without prompting, without waiting, hands
me a plate of lasagna, a loaf of bread,
a bag of salad, and says, that's only half the
Lasagna and half the bread. I figured you guys needed dinner. Let us know if
you need anything. By this time I had put together, she was a friend of
my mom's who also lived in our neighborhood. So I'm sure my mom had told
her, but she was just like, these people just had a baby. I
don't know if they like lasagna, but they probably need food, so I'm going to
bring them food. And so she showed up and all of a
sudden I went from I have no idea what the fuck I'm going to do
next to keep everything in order or even get it in some semblance
of order to oh my God, we have dinner. I don't have to think about
dinner. Dinner's done. I don't even care if I like this food. This
could be a big pile of anchovies. And I'd be like, get me a fork,
get me a fork. So we went in, we sat down, we all had
dinner. We didn't have to think about it. It didn't matter. I guess my
mom gave her my number because she texted me later and she was like, did
you guys have enough? Because I have more lasagna. And I'm like, we are so
good on the lasagna. Thank you so much. You are a delight. Thank you. You
have literally changed my day. It didn't matter that it wasn't
food that we would have picked. It didn't matter that
I didn't know if my 2 year old would eat lasagna. It didn't matter that
she didn't ask. Something was done and it
required literally no thought from me because I didn't even know
it was happening. It was probably like 7 o' clock at night at that point.
And it hadn't even occurred to me that somebody needed to be fed.
That's how crazy and chaotic and out of control things were.
She showed up, she didn't ask. She didn't expect
us to do the emotional labor of making a choice. She
didn't ask us what time she should be there. She didn't ask
anything. She took a risk. Worst case scenario, she was gonna leave cooked food
on the porch was a note. Worst case scenario, we weren't gonna eat it.
That's not that bad a scenario for that night
we were fed. That's was a big act in that she
like literally cooked all this food for us. Like, amazing. So nice of her.
But also it really showed me that people
are so kind and compassionate when they ask you what they can do
and nine times out of 10, they really mean it. And whatever the answer to
that is, they will do. It's not like a platitude that they're
throwing out. No. Usually when people are asking that they really want to help,
but the emotional labor of decision making,
of task building, of figuring out what
needs to be done and making sure that it's done right
when you're already overwhelmed. That's why there are a lot of people who are bad
at asking for help. I happen to be one of them a lot of the
time. But often it's not about not wanting help,
it's about how asking is the same amount of work. So if you want to
take something off somebody's plate, figure out what the thing is. Hey, I'm bringing
you dinner tonight. Do you want tacos or a
salad? Hey, do you have clean clothes? If not,
put them all in a bag, I will come grab it. Do you have any
detergent allergies? Hey, you've been running back and forth to
the NICU and you've probably have had a kid strapped to you for the last
three days. Do you want me to take your two year old for an hour
and you can go rest? Tangible, very direct
asks. And that was my situation. It's the same thing when you're caregiving,
when you're caregiving an adult, when you have just
had a medical procedure, if you got hurt, if you've been sick,
if you're going through a traumatic loss, if somebody's saying
no to you, when you genuinely want to help, make the ask
specific and you might actually get a yes from it. If you
come to me and say, this is actually like on a global scale, something that
I struggle with a lot. And my husband will come down to my office a
lot and say, hey, where do you want to go for dinner? And I'll be
like, nowhere. If I have to pick because I got other
stuff going on. I'm so busy and overwhelmed all the time
and I care so little about what the outcome of that decision is. But you
probably care a whole lot more than I do. So I'm not picking.
That's the thing that I have given away. Responsibility to
decisions are emotional labor, burns calories, burning
calories is. I wish it was more effective at burning calories, but
like, that's work. So if somebody's not asking you for help or
you want to be helpful, don't leave it open ended.
And if you're struggling with accepting help
because you know you're drowning but you can't Figure out
how to ask for help, or you can't figure out how to ask for it
correctly. Ask the person, what kind of stuff could you do?
Yes, I need help. I'm really struggling with figuring out what
thing you should help with because there's so much. What kind of stuff can you
do? They might be like, I'm great at laundry.
Can I do your dishes? Cool. Go do it. It's often
not about not wanting help. It's about the fact that the
ask is actually labor in and of itself, and that's
prohibitive. And now we'll go to
Allison, who has this week's small talk. We have a
small talk from Darnell from Atlanta, Georgia.
My teenage daughter told me last week, completely
deadpan, that I was the most predictable person she had ever
met. I laughed it off at the time, but honestly, it's been
sitting with me ever since. And here's the thing. I pride
myself on routine. I wake up at the same time, I make the same
breakfast. I take the same route to work. It keeps me calm,
and it keeps me functional. But now I'm wondering if my need for sameness is
embarrassing or limiting. Has anyone in your world ever
had to figure out how to be a little more spontaneous without
it completely derailing? You would love to hear how you'd
handle a teenager's verdict. Okay, I have
many thoughts. I'm processing through all of them all at the same
time. If it hasn't occurred to you that it's embarrassing, then it's not embarrassing.
Like, you're not embarrassed by it. Your teenager is embarrassed
by it, which they're allowed to be embarrassed by their parents. In
fact, they probably should be. Like, it puts some patina on them.
Like, your parents are supposed to be embarrassing. But
if you're saying that you do this thing because it's good for your mental health
and you're more productive when you do things this way
and you feel more in control of things when you do this way. And it's
not something you want to change, but you are thinking about changing it
for, like, acceptance from your teenager. Do
they like having food on the table? Do they like getting spending
money when you give it to them? Do they like
your predictability, your reliability? They probably actually really like
your predictability. Because kids, whether they fight against it or not, love
routine and love boundaries. And as they get a little bit
older, they rail against them because that's part of brain development. But kids love
routine, and it's why they get so excited when routine
gets broken, because it Feels new and novel and special. But
they're usually begging for routine. Whether they actually say that or not, they're
begging for somebody to put the limits on them. That's what their brains need.
And so I would wear it as a badge of honor if my. I'm just
getting to the point where my kids are embarrassed by me or annoyed by me.
And I did not realize that is like fuel. Like,
I might as well have just chugged rocket fuel when one of my
kids tells me that something is annoying. Because, man, I'm gonna do it 10,000
times now I'm gonna do it 11,000 times. I'm gonna
say things that they think are not funny because it makes me laugh that
they think they're not funny. And I don't really remember my parents being
that way. Also, like, if my parents were a little embarrassing, but in typical teenage
ways, like, I was never worried about bringing my parents places.
Like, the only time I was worried about bringing my parents places was when
I knew it was gonna be a place that my dad was gonna need a
lot of accommodation because he couldn't see well. And I
wasn't sure that I was going to be available to make sure that was
done for him like, that we were able to do that for him. And so
that was the only time that I cared if my parents came. Like, I didn't
have that relationship with them, but. And not that my kids, who either. They're still
too young for that. But embarrassing your kids is like a rite of passage. You
worked for this. You, like, tried hard for this.
And their embarrassment does not have to be yours.
Now, if you would like to change your routine
occasionally, not because of any outside influences, not because of somebody
telling you you should. But nobody can tell you why you should. If somebody says
you should and you ask why. And the answer is because that's what people do.
Maybe some people don't. That's not a real answer. I haven't heard a real answer
as to why you need to change up the way you do things, other than
it embarrasses my teenager. Good. Embarrass your
teenager. That's good parenting. Gently. Like
embarrassing. Just embarrass them for humor, for
mortification. Light mortification. You know what I'm trying to say? Take good care
of them, but also make them roll their eyes
when you come near. But, yeah, I just haven't heard a good reason why you
need to. My dad was a successful person
who had four kids and a whole career, and he
ate an egg sandwich for lunch for 20 years, every day,
every single day, it was just easier. He didn't care. He didn't need to change
it. People would say, don't you want something other than an egg sandwich? And he'd
say, no, I'm good with my egg sandwich. And he would eat an egg sandwich.
And then he would go home and he would go to the gas station and
he would buy bags of Funyuns and like slam
Funyuns on the way home, which is not. Don't do that. You can have routine,
but you don't need to. You don't need to eat bags of
fried onions. That's just the worst. So that part of the routine
was not good. But there's nothing that says that to be
an interesting person you can't have routine. There's nothing that says
there's anything wrong with it. If it's something you want to change, hey, there's a
thing I'd like to go to on Saturday, but that's going to be at the
same time as something that I want to do or something that I do every
week. And that's not a thing I have to do every week. But that's just
my routine. And it's going to be really dysregulating. If I
don't do that thing at that time, then that's something to try out.
I'm going to see how I can work, how I can manage my
anxiety, how I can prepare myself to do something different on this day,
at this time, because it's something I want to do because
I'm incentivized to do it. And
it will make me uncomfortable. But that's okay. Remember, we can do
anything scared. We shouldn't have to do things unsafe.
So what you're asking for is how is it? Is there a way
to approach things that I am scared of without completely
throwing off my whole existence? Absolutely. We can do anything
scared. But if it's something really important, like
an appointment that you have to make because it's for your health, you have
to keep this very specific schedule because otherwise
you're. You have tremendous anxiety and interferes with your ability to do your
job. And so we have to do very small, incremental things to try to
expose yourself to that. That's a very different beast than
I really just like going for a walk at 9am every Saturday morning. And
I think I would be upset if I did. So you can do
anything scared. If you want to change your routine, if there's a thing
in front of you that you prefer or you want to try, go for it.
But if it is just a matter of seeming cool in front of your teenager,
I assure you that as soon as you fix that, they will find
a new way, that you are decidedly
uncool and you will be on a constant hamster
wheel of trying to impress your teenager that
somehow ends with acid washed jeans. I don't know how, but
that's where that ends. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you.
Mina,
Please don't fucking bring up mulch to me. Jesus Christ.