Thanks for these encouraging words Dixie; the feel like a balm. After organizing a homeschool co-op every year over more than 12 years (apart from covid), I am taking a break because I realized I just needed a more restful stretch this season. And it feels like a relief. It allows me to spend more time with my youngest and actually enjoy all the wonderful aspects of homeschooling. It also leaves me with enough energy to have people over for tea or dinner (such as this afternoon when a young woman interested in learning more about homeschooling is coming over for coffee). I think the 'seasons' likely do affect women much more, as they are generally the ones actively involved in preparations. I think the 'seasons of hospitality' are also important for the family as a whole, where there are times when we just turn toward each other and enjoy our own company. Thanks again :)
I am guilty of the same -- dedicating myself so fully to (good!) groups like co-ops that then I do not have the energy to enjoy time spent with my children or have coffee with friends. There was one year a couple of years ago when I became seriously overcommitted, and I ended up crying almost every day! But all the things were "good" things -- but they didn't honor my own or my family's more pressing needs. Cutting back on those things actually led to the emergence of my short-form writing, which *is* something that is in line with these needs...this less-committed time has been so surprising and lovely to see unfold for us.
I agree with you that this can apply to whole families, too. Sometimes a mother (or father, but again, as you say, often the mom is making the plans/doing the prep) can overcommit a family out of very, very good intentions. Sometimes I do this at holidays!!
Accepting our seasons, and also being brutally honest with ourselves about *what we actually like doing* can change things immensely. I don't do homeschool co-ops because overall, we just don't like them. They don't help us. I do run an outdoor winter gatherings group because I've designed it so that it is lo-commitment, clear, and welcoming -- it's actually truly easy and fulfilling.
But I am trying *very* hard not to start any more groups right now!!
I'll be writing a guest post for "How we homeschool" next week, describing a day at our classical homeschool co-op. Knowing that I have taken a break from the group this year, might help in not compelling you to start one:)
Thank you for always engaging with your readers so thoughtfully!
I will look forward to reading your post, Ruth! I'll watch for it.
I have a piece coming out at Hearth & Field this week about teaching history that is partly geared towards homeschoolers...I would be interested to hear your thoughts if you have a chance to read it.
It will come out later today/tonight on the site but I will post it here tomorrow. (As an aside, I don't know how the internet gremlins make it happen, but my essays always seemed to get stacked on top of each other on the same day like this! So am trying to at least spread them out here on Substack with an overnight in between!)
This was such a good reminder for me, especially as I have been feeling a lot of exhaustion and burnout at the end of the summer and the turn of the seasons! As an unmarried woman without children, I often feel the need to fill my days with endless commitments and social engagements, hosting and attending parties and giving back to the community as much as possible. My womanly desire to welcome and nurture others always seems like a higher cause than nurturing myself and taking care of my own home, which in contrast feels almost selfish. Instead of taking care of my own tasks, combating loneliness by filling my schedule to the max often leaves me depleted and, in the end, a sad excuse for a hostess. Knowing how to identify seasons of hospitality is definitely a skill I need to master. Thank you so much for sharing, Dixie!
Rachel, let me affirm to you that your vocation in this time of your life is certainly to give of yourself (as it is for all of us) but not to, well, destroy yourself! It's difficult to find the right words here because of course we should seek to decrease and let the Lord increase in us and help us give out to others. But what happens if we do it to the degree that the Lord has, well, nothing left to work with in us?
God has given us hot chocolate and cool breezes and cozy blankets and the potential for evenings at home in order to restore and delight us. He has given us these things for a reason. Our liturgical year involves feasting and fasting both...if you are always giving out, you are not allowing the Lord to give you the feasting you need.
So, we are meant to be seasonal, cyclical, etc. We aren't machines. When the poetry of your humanity is jamming your machine (to paraphrase Malcolm Guite's wonderful poem), honor that!
I think this can be particularly hard for singles in our community (I know you and I live in roughly the same area). Sending love!!
Thank you so much for this encouraging response! It means so much to me to hear from someone else in this charming yet sometimes exhausting community we live in.
I definitely feel this boom-bust cycle. Mostly in this particular season (non sleeping baby, homeschooling, lots of littles) I find it difficult to balance the need for introvert time to recharge and having any time at all to invest in others. It’s usually a “pick one” proposition, until I’m about to hit my edge one way or the other. I’m an externally processing introvert who often depletes her social battery talking with people under the age of 10…
I want to be with people for the relational component but the sensory impact of a group of people is enough to make me want to run for the hills some days.
I don’t have any good answers, but I think there’s wisdom in this idea that we shouldn’t always expect the same bandwidth of ourselves, that it’s natural to cycle up and down.
Once again, you and I are very alike, Annelise. It's especially hard when you have a baby on hand (and with the sleep trouble, oof) because really, you need to prioritize restoration and rest, but some of that has to come from socializing with other adults or you'll go mad! It's very tricky deciding when to push yourself and when not too.
I think one thing that has helped me just a little bit with this is trying to become more honest with myself about what (and who) I actually enjoy. If the book club has some good things about it but I end up being exhausted the other day...maybe I need to quit the book club. If taking the kids to someone else's house for a play/coffeedate restores me, but having another family over to my house just makes me stressed (or vice versa), geez...I should probably honor that.
It's so hard because my moral compass is always screaming at me "STANDARDS!!!"
Sep 13, 2023·edited Sep 13, 2023Liked by Dixie Dillon Lane
I am right there with you. The perennial question for us in this area we've only lived in for 2 years is how do we make friends with 2 littles and a baby? When I'm already maxed out, over-stimulated as an introverted, full-time caregiver who craves time for focused silence, alone..... and yet the loneliness can be real.... but which to choose at any given time?
We are trying a new rhythm where my husband will come home at 4pm every Tuesday and he handles everything else for the night, and I can do whatever. Yesterday was the first time. Hopefully having a guaranteed time to breathe could be the start of being more open to time for friendships... because it is rough these days trying to muster the energy when minutes seem to be precious. ha
Thanks for the thoughtful essay, Dixie. I'm going to be mulling this one over. (And, yes the energetic, outgoing Haley around ovulation is a different Haley than other times.... so I'm glad we can recognize the social implications for us women!)
I am so much in sympathy with your situation, Haley. We don't have good ways to make friends and develop support systems when we don't have much time or energy. Really, we ought to be having babies with these systems already in place, but that just doesn't work out for one reason or another in so many situations.
I think that when I was in your situation, I thought that the solution was to push myself to make friends and to be as welcoming as possible, host at holidays, etc. That may be part of the reason I eventually found great friends, so I can't say "don't do that." But on the other hand, I pretty much broke myself emotionally and to some degree physically while doing that. So I want to warn the mother I once was to STOP!!!
There must be some middle ground between just having patience and trying to make it all happen. I'm thinking that being honest about where we are in our cycles of energy, etc. and honoring those may be part of that middle ground. Maybe I could've given myself more by giving others less...
The set time to have a minute to breathe has been a game changer for me in the past (for a while that was early Sat AM so it didn’t interfere too much with family time and also gave me a chance to get away after a long week and then actually want to spend the weekend with the kids instead of wanting to run away). I need to implement it again but it’s tricky with the tiny nursing baby & my husband’s schedule. My only suggestion would be that in order for the time to be helpful it requires that you do what would *actually* be restorative vs. just errands that are easier without littles. If I use the time to knock things off my to-do list first then I’m still tired. If I use it to be a person and do something that sounds enjoyable it helps recharge mentally so I feel like a human not a milk machine.
Another thing that worked well when I was in the tiny stages - was to host/coordinate a “playgroup”. I rounded up a group of moms with littles at church, and I coordinated the email/schedule. We tried for every other week I think? And rotated houses? I did the coordination piece to keep it moving but the hosting duty was shared which helped. We had a million 1/2 conversations but it helped in a really lonely season. Have you heard of Wild & Free groups? I met some people that way too and the groups tend to be low commitment. It’s a really tricky balance to strike. I’d say 9/10 times if I have the chance to go be with other adults without my kids I don’t want to go and am also glad I went after. But it’s really tough to organize and hype yourself up. (One last recommendation: I just finally started using paper plates anytime we have more than 10 people to feed). And I pretty much always make a burrito bar.
Oh, Annelise -- you just told Haley that if she's lonely, she should start a group!
I know, I know -- and it actually is good advice to consider something like this. Wish I had emojis to show that I get it and I'm not criticizing :) But it just cracked me up...because really, what are we supposed to do? The only way to meet people is to...arrange ways to meet people.
😆 gahhhh I know I know. I have not found a way around this inconvenient truth! I would LOVE it if someone else would start the ding dang group. But I love it more when I see friends and have them. One day…
Don't know how...that is actually a really interesting question. Somebody else was chatting with me -- ack, who was it? -- about hospitality being some people's charism. Not everybody is good at it.
But I've often kind of thought that although organizing people is a skill of mine, it doesn't always really restore me. So maybe it's hard when that's your particular makeup: you have the skills to make meet-ups happen (so you should), but it takes a lot out of you (so you should also be careful!).
Thank you for this. There is so much to learn in what you've laid out. I feel like I might understand my wife's social anxieties a little more now. And that it may not be social anxiety as much as it is just not the proper season for her hospitality. I'm an extrovert and alway willing to take on a task or project and invite people over. That might be the male way..hahah. But this has not always played out ideally and my wife is not always up for hosting. I chalked it up to a personality difference but it may just not be that simple.
Thanks, Derek. I think a lot of people are a combination of extroverted and introverted, which may be part of it. But there is also a steadiness to men's day-to-day experience (and I speak only generally, of course -- individuals differ, and everyone, man or woman, has times that are up or down!) that is just not the norm for women. I think it's common for women to feel up and down frequently in various kinds of boom and bust cycles. I agree that there is a lot to chew on here...
This piece is an absolute balm to my soul. How many times have I apologized for "flaking out" rather than honoring both interior and exterior cycles?
"The truth is that the always-on nature of modern society is draining, no matter how well-intentioned its socializing may be." I've often thought about how social media in particular is so anti-seasonal - it trains us to ignore cycles and instead continue to pour ourselves out into its endless stream.
Thank you so much for this article - it really has helped me reframe my thinking.
Kristin, your comment brings me joy. We all need these balms now and again.
I spent years "flaking" and feeling so bad about it. But it wasn't really flaking; it was having committed to things I wasn't sure I could do and then having real, important reasons to cancel -- often health-related reasons. But it *was* inconsiderate of others to have unwisely made those plans.
I hope I am learning not just to cancel when I should but also to plan in ways that minimize my need to cancel: to honor my seasonality *as I am making plans* rather than only in cancelling (with guilt). Because it does inconvenience others when we cancel frequently, no matter the reason! So if we can know ourselves better and accept and expect our seasonality, we might be able to better care for ourselves while also being considerate of others.
So for example, the music director at our church is relentless...he won't take "no" for an answer when we are working out the cantor schedule for the next season (I am a cantor)! Finally I told him, "I will take X and Y dates but only if you understand that if I am not feeling well I will have to cancel." He accepted those terms! And in the end, I was able to cantor on date X but when I had a cold on date Y I had absolutely no guilt about cancelling.
That is a great point about social media!! The endless stream...it's really not good for anyone.
This was so timely for me -- I've been thinking about my own participation in a group at our church that I love being a part of that is in a season of either needing additional leadership or going somewhat dormant. *maybe I could help more* I think.... and then I remember that I'm having a baby in less than three months. The thoughts you offered in this essay help me approach that situation with no guilt. Perhaps it's someone else's time to "boom" (and it's definitely my time to stay in my house with that newborn for most of the winter!)
Also, we recently started inviting friends to our house (totally spontaneously) for dessert after evening mass (because no one with children goes to an evening mass without feeding them first--at least, we don't!). It's low pressure. It's lovely. It fits the rhythm.
Dessert sounds like such a great idea! So casual but so friendly. And easy to "dress up" with homemade goods when you're booming and "dress down" with ice cream and Milano cookies when you're busting.
You sound a lot like me -- until the past 18 months or so, when someone would ask me to do something, I had a tendency to ask myself "Could I make that happen?" instead of "Is this a good thing for me to take on right now?"
"The former is not really the right question"--and, in the end, it wouldn't be good for the group to have someone who wasn't fully committed. Interesting how attending to "is this good" before "is this possible" changes things.
Very much. And sometimes you are choosing between goods; discernment is just plain hard! But when you keep making choices that end up draining you, something needs to change about your discernment...
It took me a very long time to realize I cannot commit to anything after 7 pm. (Unless it’s truly a one time event but no ongoing “every Tuesday at 7:30 type things). I am just too tired from a full day of parenting. This was very frustrating for many years because most women’s groups and Bible studies meet in the evening. I finally found a women’s Bible study that meets one morning a week and offers childcare (!!) but it took me 7 years to find this and there were many lonely feeling years in between! I will admit I do find it frustrating that so many people feel comfortable canceling now when they are over extended. While I completely understand the need to prioritize family and existing obligations, it can really exacerbate existing feelings of loneliness. Not sure what the answer is!
Girl, it took me *years* to admit to myself that evening things just don't work for me except on occasion!!
Yes -- the thing is, cancelling like that *is* inconsiderate if it's done frequently and it *is* rude and it *does* put people out. I think that partly it's because sometimes people don't care if they're rude (I presume?) but maybe also, like in my case at times, it's because I didn't consider my likely needs and seasons realistically. I.e. I should not have made the plan in the first place, but I did it out of pride or guilt or desire or a mistaken belief in my abilities.
It's my hope that if we can observe our own patterns we can learn to make commitments that match well with our actual personalities, health, hearts, etc. and then we will only have to cancel when something truly unexpected happens!
Ok, that does make sense! I recently committed to read a book and participate in a one-time discussion with a group of lovely moms but every.single.person canceled the day of besides the host citing the busyness of back to school. The poor host had an entire spread of food that went uneaten! It definitely would have been better if everyone had realized this wasn’t a good time of year ahead of time!
That is so dispiriting. I once arranged a tour of a museum for 12 homeschool families and 11 cancelled the night before. (My family was the one that didn't cancel!) Some of them did so because of sickness but...all 11 cancelled.
It was so embarrassing.
So I now do two things: A) I don't arrange tours for anybody but my own family or us and one or two close friend families; B) I try to arrange commitments with people I don't know well in ways that really don't matter if they cancel.
It's good to realize that starting a group doesn't eliminate loneliness. I have not always listened to my own needs, and it has been hectic. It will be good for me to observe my times of the month. Thank you for your insight!
Thank you, Jaime! Groups fill a certain role, but a limited one. They don't create intimate friendship, although they can spark it! So we need more than just outings and groups. And sometimes they are indeed exhausting...
Thanks for these encouraging words Dixie; the feel like a balm. After organizing a homeschool co-op every year over more than 12 years (apart from covid), I am taking a break because I realized I just needed a more restful stretch this season. And it feels like a relief. It allows me to spend more time with my youngest and actually enjoy all the wonderful aspects of homeschooling. It also leaves me with enough energy to have people over for tea or dinner (such as this afternoon when a young woman interested in learning more about homeschooling is coming over for coffee). I think the 'seasons' likely do affect women much more, as they are generally the ones actively involved in preparations. I think the 'seasons of hospitality' are also important for the family as a whole, where there are times when we just turn toward each other and enjoy our own company. Thanks again :)
I am guilty of the same -- dedicating myself so fully to (good!) groups like co-ops that then I do not have the energy to enjoy time spent with my children or have coffee with friends. There was one year a couple of years ago when I became seriously overcommitted, and I ended up crying almost every day! But all the things were "good" things -- but they didn't honor my own or my family's more pressing needs. Cutting back on those things actually led to the emergence of my short-form writing, which *is* something that is in line with these needs...this less-committed time has been so surprising and lovely to see unfold for us.
I agree with you that this can apply to whole families, too. Sometimes a mother (or father, but again, as you say, often the mom is making the plans/doing the prep) can overcommit a family out of very, very good intentions. Sometimes I do this at holidays!!
Accepting our seasons, and also being brutally honest with ourselves about *what we actually like doing* can change things immensely. I don't do homeschool co-ops because overall, we just don't like them. They don't help us. I do run an outdoor winter gatherings group because I've designed it so that it is lo-commitment, clear, and welcoming -- it's actually truly easy and fulfilling.
But I am trying *very* hard not to start any more groups right now!!
I'll be writing a guest post for "How we homeschool" next week, describing a day at our classical homeschool co-op. Knowing that I have taken a break from the group this year, might help in not compelling you to start one:)
Thank you for always engaging with your readers so thoughtfully!
Yes! No more groups, Dixie!!
I will look forward to reading your post, Ruth! I'll watch for it.
I have a piece coming out at Hearth & Field this week about teaching history that is partly geared towards homeschoolers...I would be interested to hear your thoughts if you have a chance to read it.
I certainly will! Will you be posting it here as well or should I have a lookout on the website?
It will come out later today/tonight on the site but I will post it here tomorrow. (As an aside, I don't know how the internet gremlins make it happen, but my essays always seemed to get stacked on top of each other on the same day like this! So am trying to at least spread them out here on Substack with an overnight in between!)
This was such a good reminder for me, especially as I have been feeling a lot of exhaustion and burnout at the end of the summer and the turn of the seasons! As an unmarried woman without children, I often feel the need to fill my days with endless commitments and social engagements, hosting and attending parties and giving back to the community as much as possible. My womanly desire to welcome and nurture others always seems like a higher cause than nurturing myself and taking care of my own home, which in contrast feels almost selfish. Instead of taking care of my own tasks, combating loneliness by filling my schedule to the max often leaves me depleted and, in the end, a sad excuse for a hostess. Knowing how to identify seasons of hospitality is definitely a skill I need to master. Thank you so much for sharing, Dixie!
Rachel, let me affirm to you that your vocation in this time of your life is certainly to give of yourself (as it is for all of us) but not to, well, destroy yourself! It's difficult to find the right words here because of course we should seek to decrease and let the Lord increase in us and help us give out to others. But what happens if we do it to the degree that the Lord has, well, nothing left to work with in us?
God has given us hot chocolate and cool breezes and cozy blankets and the potential for evenings at home in order to restore and delight us. He has given us these things for a reason. Our liturgical year involves feasting and fasting both...if you are always giving out, you are not allowing the Lord to give you the feasting you need.
So, we are meant to be seasonal, cyclical, etc. We aren't machines. When the poetry of your humanity is jamming your machine (to paraphrase Malcolm Guite's wonderful poem), honor that!
I think this can be particularly hard for singles in our community (I know you and I live in roughly the same area). Sending love!!
Thank you so much for this encouraging response! It means so much to me to hear from someone else in this charming yet sometimes exhausting community we live in.
"Charming but sometimes exhausting!" Yes!!
I definitely feel this boom-bust cycle. Mostly in this particular season (non sleeping baby, homeschooling, lots of littles) I find it difficult to balance the need for introvert time to recharge and having any time at all to invest in others. It’s usually a “pick one” proposition, until I’m about to hit my edge one way or the other. I’m an externally processing introvert who often depletes her social battery talking with people under the age of 10…
I want to be with people for the relational component but the sensory impact of a group of people is enough to make me want to run for the hills some days.
I don’t have any good answers, but I think there’s wisdom in this idea that we shouldn’t always expect the same bandwidth of ourselves, that it’s natural to cycle up and down.
Once again, you and I are very alike, Annelise. It's especially hard when you have a baby on hand (and with the sleep trouble, oof) because really, you need to prioritize restoration and rest, but some of that has to come from socializing with other adults or you'll go mad! It's very tricky deciding when to push yourself and when not too.
I think one thing that has helped me just a little bit with this is trying to become more honest with myself about what (and who) I actually enjoy. If the book club has some good things about it but I end up being exhausted the other day...maybe I need to quit the book club. If taking the kids to someone else's house for a play/coffeedate restores me, but having another family over to my house just makes me stressed (or vice versa), geez...I should probably honor that.
It's so hard because my moral compass is always screaming at me "STANDARDS!!!"
If I could just tell my moral compass to take a hike every once in a while…
Standards are great, so are convictions, so is accepting grace and being a human (she says with more confidence than belief).
Well said!
I am right there with you. The perennial question for us in this area we've only lived in for 2 years is how do we make friends with 2 littles and a baby? When I'm already maxed out, over-stimulated as an introverted, full-time caregiver who craves time for focused silence, alone..... and yet the loneliness can be real.... but which to choose at any given time?
We are trying a new rhythm where my husband will come home at 4pm every Tuesday and he handles everything else for the night, and I can do whatever. Yesterday was the first time. Hopefully having a guaranteed time to breathe could be the start of being more open to time for friendships... because it is rough these days trying to muster the energy when minutes seem to be precious. ha
Thanks for the thoughtful essay, Dixie. I'm going to be mulling this one over. (And, yes the energetic, outgoing Haley around ovulation is a different Haley than other times.... so I'm glad we can recognize the social implications for us women!)
I am so much in sympathy with your situation, Haley. We don't have good ways to make friends and develop support systems when we don't have much time or energy. Really, we ought to be having babies with these systems already in place, but that just doesn't work out for one reason or another in so many situations.
I think that when I was in your situation, I thought that the solution was to push myself to make friends and to be as welcoming as possible, host at holidays, etc. That may be part of the reason I eventually found great friends, so I can't say "don't do that." But on the other hand, I pretty much broke myself emotionally and to some degree physically while doing that. So I want to warn the mother I once was to STOP!!!
There must be some middle ground between just having patience and trying to make it all happen. I'm thinking that being honest about where we are in our cycles of energy, etc. and honoring those may be part of that middle ground. Maybe I could've given myself more by giving others less...
The set time to have a minute to breathe has been a game changer for me in the past (for a while that was early Sat AM so it didn’t interfere too much with family time and also gave me a chance to get away after a long week and then actually want to spend the weekend with the kids instead of wanting to run away). I need to implement it again but it’s tricky with the tiny nursing baby & my husband’s schedule. My only suggestion would be that in order for the time to be helpful it requires that you do what would *actually* be restorative vs. just errands that are easier without littles. If I use the time to knock things off my to-do list first then I’m still tired. If I use it to be a person and do something that sounds enjoyable it helps recharge mentally so I feel like a human not a milk machine.
Another thing that worked well when I was in the tiny stages - was to host/coordinate a “playgroup”. I rounded up a group of moms with littles at church, and I coordinated the email/schedule. We tried for every other week I think? And rotated houses? I did the coordination piece to keep it moving but the hosting duty was shared which helped. We had a million 1/2 conversations but it helped in a really lonely season. Have you heard of Wild & Free groups? I met some people that way too and the groups tend to be low commitment. It’s a really tricky balance to strike. I’d say 9/10 times if I have the chance to go be with other adults without my kids I don’t want to go and am also glad I went after. But it’s really tough to organize and hype yourself up. (One last recommendation: I just finally started using paper plates anytime we have more than 10 people to feed). And I pretty much always make a burrito bar.
"...in order for the time to be helpful it requires that you do what would *actually* be restorative..." Yes. 100%!
Oh, Annelise -- you just told Haley that if she's lonely, she should start a group!
I know, I know -- and it actually is good advice to consider something like this. Wish I had emojis to show that I get it and I'm not criticizing :) But it just cracked me up...because really, what are we supposed to do? The only way to meet people is to...arrange ways to meet people.
😆 gahhhh I know I know. I have not found a way around this inconvenient truth! I would LOVE it if someone else would start the ding dang group. But I love it more when I see friends and have them. One day…
I think most people don’t know how?
YES OTHER PEOPLE JUST PLEASE START THE GROUPS.
Don't know how...that is actually a really interesting question. Somebody else was chatting with me -- ack, who was it? -- about hospitality being some people's charism. Not everybody is good at it.
But I've often kind of thought that although organizing people is a skill of mine, it doesn't always really restore me. So maybe it's hard when that's your particular makeup: you have the skills to make meet-ups happen (so you should), but it takes a lot out of you (so you should also be careful!).
I have so many thoughts but I have to put people down for naps 😆. Newsletter topic!
Oh! It was @bythesea
Thank you for this. There is so much to learn in what you've laid out. I feel like I might understand my wife's social anxieties a little more now. And that it may not be social anxiety as much as it is just not the proper season for her hospitality. I'm an extrovert and alway willing to take on a task or project and invite people over. That might be the male way..hahah. But this has not always played out ideally and my wife is not always up for hosting. I chalked it up to a personality difference but it may just not be that simple.
Much to chew on. Thanks again!
Thanks, Derek. I think a lot of people are a combination of extroverted and introverted, which may be part of it. But there is also a steadiness to men's day-to-day experience (and I speak only generally, of course -- individuals differ, and everyone, man or woman, has times that are up or down!) that is just not the norm for women. I think it's common for women to feel up and down frequently in various kinds of boom and bust cycles. I agree that there is a lot to chew on here...
This piece is an absolute balm to my soul. How many times have I apologized for "flaking out" rather than honoring both interior and exterior cycles?
"The truth is that the always-on nature of modern society is draining, no matter how well-intentioned its socializing may be." I've often thought about how social media in particular is so anti-seasonal - it trains us to ignore cycles and instead continue to pour ourselves out into its endless stream.
Thank you so much for this article - it really has helped me reframe my thinking.
Kristin, your comment brings me joy. We all need these balms now and again.
I spent years "flaking" and feeling so bad about it. But it wasn't really flaking; it was having committed to things I wasn't sure I could do and then having real, important reasons to cancel -- often health-related reasons. But it *was* inconsiderate of others to have unwisely made those plans.
I hope I am learning not just to cancel when I should but also to plan in ways that minimize my need to cancel: to honor my seasonality *as I am making plans* rather than only in cancelling (with guilt). Because it does inconvenience others when we cancel frequently, no matter the reason! So if we can know ourselves better and accept and expect our seasonality, we might be able to better care for ourselves while also being considerate of others.
So for example, the music director at our church is relentless...he won't take "no" for an answer when we are working out the cantor schedule for the next season (I am a cantor)! Finally I told him, "I will take X and Y dates but only if you understand that if I am not feeling well I will have to cancel." He accepted those terms! And in the end, I was able to cantor on date X but when I had a cold on date Y I had absolutely no guilt about cancelling.
That is a great point about social media!! The endless stream...it's really not good for anyone.
This was so timely for me -- I've been thinking about my own participation in a group at our church that I love being a part of that is in a season of either needing additional leadership or going somewhat dormant. *maybe I could help more* I think.... and then I remember that I'm having a baby in less than three months. The thoughts you offered in this essay help me approach that situation with no guilt. Perhaps it's someone else's time to "boom" (and it's definitely my time to stay in my house with that newborn for most of the winter!)
Also, we recently started inviting friends to our house (totally spontaneously) for dessert after evening mass (because no one with children goes to an evening mass without feeding them first--at least, we don't!). It's low pressure. It's lovely. It fits the rhythm.
Dessert sounds like such a great idea! So casual but so friendly. And easy to "dress up" with homemade goods when you're booming and "dress down" with ice cream and Milano cookies when you're busting.
You sound a lot like me -- until the past 18 months or so, when someone would ask me to do something, I had a tendency to ask myself "Could I make that happen?" instead of "Is this a good thing for me to take on right now?"
The former is not really the right question.
"The former is not really the right question"--and, in the end, it wouldn't be good for the group to have someone who wasn't fully committed. Interesting how attending to "is this good" before "is this possible" changes things.
Very much. And sometimes you are choosing between goods; discernment is just plain hard! But when you keep making choices that end up draining you, something needs to change about your discernment...
It took me a very long time to realize I cannot commit to anything after 7 pm. (Unless it’s truly a one time event but no ongoing “every Tuesday at 7:30 type things). I am just too tired from a full day of parenting. This was very frustrating for many years because most women’s groups and Bible studies meet in the evening. I finally found a women’s Bible study that meets one morning a week and offers childcare (!!) but it took me 7 years to find this and there were many lonely feeling years in between! I will admit I do find it frustrating that so many people feel comfortable canceling now when they are over extended. While I completely understand the need to prioritize family and existing obligations, it can really exacerbate existing feelings of loneliness. Not sure what the answer is!
Girl, it took me *years* to admit to myself that evening things just don't work for me except on occasion!!
Yes -- the thing is, cancelling like that *is* inconsiderate if it's done frequently and it *is* rude and it *does* put people out. I think that partly it's because sometimes people don't care if they're rude (I presume?) but maybe also, like in my case at times, it's because I didn't consider my likely needs and seasons realistically. I.e. I should not have made the plan in the first place, but I did it out of pride or guilt or desire or a mistaken belief in my abilities.
It's my hope that if we can observe our own patterns we can learn to make commitments that match well with our actual personalities, health, hearts, etc. and then we will only have to cancel when something truly unexpected happens!
Ok, that does make sense! I recently committed to read a book and participate in a one-time discussion with a group of lovely moms but every.single.person canceled the day of besides the host citing the busyness of back to school. The poor host had an entire spread of food that went uneaten! It definitely would have been better if everyone had realized this wasn’t a good time of year ahead of time!
That is so dispiriting. I once arranged a tour of a museum for 12 homeschool families and 11 cancelled the night before. (My family was the one that didn't cancel!) Some of them did so because of sickness but...all 11 cancelled.
It was so embarrassing.
So I now do two things: A) I don't arrange tours for anybody but my own family or us and one or two close friend families; B) I try to arrange commitments with people I don't know well in ways that really don't matter if they cancel.
It's good to realize that starting a group doesn't eliminate loneliness. I have not always listened to my own needs, and it has been hectic. It will be good for me to observe my times of the month. Thank you for your insight!
Thank you, Jaime! Groups fill a certain role, but a limited one. They don't create intimate friendship, although they can spark it! So we need more than just outings and groups. And sometimes they are indeed exhausting...