The Limit-Embracing Auntie
I'm barely holding it together, but prioritizing the kids in my life helps.
Welcome! I’m Lisa Sibbett and this is The Auntie Bulletin, a newsletter for people who are helping to raise other people’s children. You can read my archive here. If you value this newsletter and want to support the hard work that goes into it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5 a month or $50 for the year. You can also “like” this post below. It only requires a click, and it helps other people find my Substack.
A few years ago, I learned to juggle. It was a big accomplishment for me, someone who grew up with a persistent self-narrative that I am not coordinated, not good with throwing and catching. My partner is an expert juggler, however, as well as a patient teacher. First he showed me how to successfully throw and catch one ball, over and over and over. Then two. I practiced standing facing a wall so that balls that arced outward would bounce back in my general direction, often such that I could actually catch them and keep going. I became competent at juggling two balls for a long period – a big deal given my aforementioned self-concept as an uncoordinated person. When I introduced the third ball, it took weeks of practice before I could reliably keep all three in the air – but Aunties, I got it down. I juggle now. I’m a juggler.1
Okay, but is it reasonable to try to go from juggling two balls straight to juggling four?? Do not pass three, do not experience competence? Because that has been my week. Just to be clear, for people who are not married to expert jugglers, juggling four balls entails juggling two balls in one hand, juggling two balls in the other, and then weaving it all together using magic. “Four,” my partner tells me, “is exponentially harder.”
Boy, is it ever. I’m currently in the midst of an enormous ramp-up of responsibilities, a massive acceleration of pace, and earlier this week the overwhelming flood of new demands had me near panic. Nevertheless, in the midst of my frenzy of activity, a kid I love unexpectedly stopped by for a couple hours, I paused everything to hang out with her, and it was the right choice. Balls were dropped, but the most important one – my community – stayed up.
A Hard Truth
Let me sketch where I’m at in life. For the past year, I’ve been off work due to a chronic health condition, and it’s been an enormous gift. I’ve rested, cared for my body, and had space to attend to what I care about the most: a little community organizing, a labor-of-love research project, and showing up for my friends and family. I’m unfortunately attached to values like productivity and responsibility, so my slowing down came with a degree of self-recrimination, but Katherine May’s book Wintering was a big help. She writes:
“The tree [in winter] is waiting. It has everything ready. Its fallen leaves are mulching the forest floor, and its roots are drawing up the extra winter moisture, providing a firm anchor against seasonal storms. Its ripe cones and nuts are providing essential food in this scarce time for mice and squirrels, and its bark is hosting hibernating insects and providing a source of nourishment for hungry deer. It is far from dead. It is in fact the life and soul of the wood. It’s just getting on with it quietly. It will not burst into life in the spring. It will just put on a new coat and face the world again…. Life goes on abundantly in winter — changes made here will usher us into future glories.”
For the past twelve months, I channeled the life and soul of that tree, and – to mix metaphors – I kept two balls in the air, and it’s been mostly lovely. It’s also financially unsustainable.
Currently, I’m exploring how to make a living while also having enough flexibility in my schedule to take care of my physical needs, so this fall I committed to several small-to-midsize jobs in the naive belief I’d be able to juggle them, with space in between for doctors appointments and physical therapy. Now, of course, here I am with a weekly newsletter, a university class to design and teach, and two academic research projects – four balls. I need to keep taking care of my body, which takes (a lot of) time. I need to keep taking care of myself, which takes (a lot of) rest. And I need to keep showing love to my people, or what is this one wild and precious life for?
On Tuesday I found myself up against the hard, bare truth that I simply cannot do everything I intend to. Probably you haven’t been paying attention to The Auntie Bulletin publishing cadence, but I’d made an internal commitment to publish a longer essay on Monday evenings (with a hard deadline of Tuesday morning), and then a shorter post Thursday evenings (hard deadline Friday morning). This past Monday I started teaching, a bumpy start to be honest, and by Tuesday evening I hadn’t even begun my Auntie Bulletin post for the week. I was running on fumes and self-flagellation, determined to publish something, anything before I went to bed, to not drop cadence so early in my newsletter writing career. That’s when a child I love unexpectedly stopped by my house for a visit, and I had to decide whether or not to send her home.
Earlier that very day, I had started reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. The average human lifespan is about four thousand weeks, Burkeman explains, and while our tasks and commitments and responsibilities will keep arriving in an unending, infinite flood, the time we have in which to address them is “strictly finite.” Rather than despair, Burkeman encourages us to embrace these limits. Once we accept that we definitely won’t have time to do everything we want to do, we can stop beating ourselves up for failing, and “focus instead on building the most meaningful life [we] can, in whatever situation [we’re] in.” He writes:
Every decision to use a portion of time on anything represents a sacrifice of all the other ways in which you could have spent that time, but didn’t – and to willingly make that sacrifice is to take a stand, without reservation, on what matters most to you.
Having just read that, I was able on Tuesday night to drop all my urgent tasks, put down my Auntie Bulletin publishing timeline, and spend a couple of hours with a wonderful kid.
The next day, I did some reflection and recalibration. I identified a few short-term and medium-term commitments that I can either slow down or let go. I realized I need to renege on a major commitment I’ve made, and some people may be frustrated and inconvenienced as a result. I’m making the choice to let that happen – to drop that ball – in the interest of taking a stand on what matters most to me. This is what Burkeman calls “the limit-embracing life.” We let go of our predetermined plans for success. We “respond to the needs of our place and our moment in history.” It’s scary, and it’s hard, and it’s necessary.
Drawing scenes from Home Alone with a kid on a Tuesday evening may not seem like a life-defining act, but I argue hyperlocal community-building *is* responding to the needs of history. Every time we prioritize people over productivity, we cultivate an understanding of what matters – an understanding that will serve us and our communities throughout our lifetime. We practice building connection and capacity, the core requisites of social change. We reject the expectation of the endless hustle, and we model that rejection for others, including kids. We require ourselves to find a better way.
Speaking of Which, Some Changes for This Newsletter
A practical upshot is that I’m backing off from two Auntie Bulletin posts per week to one. I’ve also been attempting to cultivate a community of Aunties through Substack’s comments function, but I’m skeptical that’s actually the best place for us to connect. For me, an online comments thread makes me feel like I have to compose my thoughts, and I wonder if that’s the case for Auntie Bulletin readers, as well. I prefer informal group conversations on a text or WhatsApp thread -- a place where I can participate casually, in brief, on my phone. So I’d like to see if we can get more of a group thread going in Substack chat – a place for Aunties, the Auntie-esque, and those who love us connect about Auntie stuff, ask each other questions, celebrate wins, vent, whatever. I hope you’ll join the conversation.2
How to Get Started
Get the Substack app here or using the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent via email, so turn on push notifications if you’re up for that kind of thing, or just visit the app from time to time. You can also access the chat online.
Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two black talk bubbles in the bottom bar.
That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.
Three Recommended Reads
Recently at one of my favorite Substack newsletters, The Double Shift, Katherine Goldstein wrote about the Care Can’t Wait bus tour, “an effort by Caring Across Generations to rally supporters in swing states around care as a voting issue.” At the tour stop she attended, Goldstein met a young man in his 20s who became the primary caregiver for his mom when she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s.
Stites’ mom passed away in 2022, about four and a half years after her diagnosis. While caring for her, he maxed out his student loans, to the tune of $40,000, while going to grad school online so that he’d have enough money to care for them both. He describes his mother's illness as heartbreaking and devastating, and he continues to advocate after her death because he wants people to know “how much purpose that experience gave [him].”
“I feel closer to the human experience,” he told me. “I wouldn't trade that experience of providing care as lonely as it was. It made me a stronger person.”
Men and childless people in their twenties aren’t who you expect on stage at a care rally. But stories like Sam’s show that becoming a caregiver can happen to anyone at any age.
Finally, The Cute Kid Video of the Week
Did you know babies babble in American Sign Language?
Nothing Sold, Bought, or Processed
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I’m so happy if you got that that was a What About Bob? reference. If you have not seen What About Bob? (1991), make haste! It’s one of Bill Murray’s most wonderful movies, right up there with Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day. Apparently today I am all about circa 1990 movies starring loveable white dudes.
Hat-tip to Dacy Gillespie, whose recent shift to community-building in Substack chat has helped me understand the potential of the chat platform to support reader connection. Dacy’s Substack is Unflattering, where she provides personal style advice that gives us permission to reject diet culture and choose clothes that make us feel good in our bodies. Recommended!
Oh you may be right! I was thinking SHHHHH was the sound of the scary furnace in Kevin‘s basement. But your one makes more sense!
I believe the "ATAP" in the kid's drawing goes with the "SHHH" above it -- i.e., SHHHATAP." Translation: "SHUT UP!" lol