The Year I Found My Appetite

Welcome to YTF Community, a place to safely share in the challenges and joys of feeding our families. And make all of it easier! This is a weekly members post with timely advice and encouragement that I hope helps offer a little reassurance.

I realized last week that I’d sailed right past the anniversary of my divorce, which I sort of love because it shows me that I’m doing a good job being present in my current life. But once I noticed it, I started to think about all of the ways that I’ve made progress in feeding myself, and ease in feeding my kids, over the course of that year.

Both of those things have fundamentally changed the way I operate in my kitchen—and in my own life.

Primarily, I want to share this part of my story because I deeply wish I could have understood more of this when I was married. And when my kids were younger and the daily demands of life were so much more intense.

In retrospect, I wish I’d had the courage and bandwidth to have said more of:

“I need help today. It’s your turn to handle lunches.”
“I know it seems like I can handle all of this on my own, but it really is too much for me.”
“Take the baby while I eat my lunch.”
“Honey, I know you want me to pick you up, but mama needs to eat her sandwich. I will pick you up as soon as I’m done.”
“Can you pick up a grocery order for me?”
“We are having cereal for dinner. If you want something else, help yourself.”
“What is your dinner plan for this week?”

I don’t feel badly that it wasn’t possible for me to do that because this really is very hard. And our circumstances and experiences always impact how we are able to show up at various points in our lives.

But I do want to normalize the ways in which we can make ourselves more visible in our lives as moms to help ensure that we are able to nourish ourselves, take up space, and also model to our kids that our needs really matter, too.

I admit there is no perfect here and as parents, we will likely always be grasping for ways to make things easier—feeding a family is a LOT of work no matter how you do it. But I hope that by sharing what has worked for me, I might be able to give you a few ideas to try and sooner than later.

Because at the very least, we all deserve to know that it’s okay to want more ease for ourselves. We all deserve to know, deep down, that whatever we are able to do is enough.

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