Keep Calm and Rant On

Just one week after Victoria’s surgery, we were cleared to come back to Nashville, so we threw all of our stuff in bags and flew home yesterday afternoon. We surprised Wren and were at home when she got back from school:).

Victoria and I are very much looking forward to getting back into a semi-normal routine as a family while we’re here. We know it will be fleeting and that we will have to leave again, but we’re making the most of our time here while we can.

We slept so well in our own beds last night and Victoria was up and ready to head back to school this morning. The last time I was at home alone was back in May when the girls were still in school, so I’m actually feeling a bit of separation anxiety. Never in a million years would I have expected to miss my kids after being trapped ALL summer, but I’m so used to having Victoria only a room away where I can constantly pop my head in and check on her. I highly doubt she’s experiencing the same toward me.🤣

We both look forward to seeing as many of our friends as possible while we’re home. The feeling of isolation was becoming unbearable for both of us. Victoria could at least talk to her friends throughout the day over the summer, but when school started back and it was just the two of us in an unusually, long two-weeks of full cloud coverage in Boston, we felt all the feels.

It seems like people are hesitant to talk about anything difficult that they may be going through because they think it pales in comparison to what we’re going through. We all have our personal battles, big or small, and they are ALL relevant. Not for one second will I ever think your struggle is less than mine. Life is hard. Raising kids is hard. Feeling like your kids are being left out or struggling in school, caring for a sick parent, grieving the loss of a pet, getting laid off from a job…. IT ALL MATTERS. Our struggle isn’t worse than yours. It’s just different.

I am a listener/empath by nature. I love for people to share both the positives and negatives going on in their lives at the moment. The support and human connection is what gets us through these times. Please don’t ever feel like you can’t vent or rant to me about anything and everything. Venting is healthy and I will 100% jump right in and join you. There’s nothing better than laughing at the things that drive us crazy on a daily basis….our husbands, our kids, group text chains, last minute school projects sprung upon us, not remembering we volunteered for something and then wanting to kick ourselves for signing up in the first place, fruit that rots entirely too quickly, why we can’t keep our plants alive, why sandwiches or cereal aren't considered “dinner”….these shared annoyances make me laugh harder than anything else.

In fact, it was during one of these amazingly funny venting sessions with my high-school friends that led to our finding out about Victoria’s cancer. I was complaining about having to share a hotel room with Victoria because of her freight-train snoring and how I always had to wear noise cancelling AirPods that would either get lost or tangled in my hair. First of all, let’s go ahead and acknowledge the complete snobbery of my comment. 🎻 We’re lucky to be able to travel and stay in hotels in the first place, let alone have multiple pairs of AirPods! 🤦🏼‍♀️ HOWEVER, my shallow complaint led to a discussion about snoring and sleep apnea and the effect it has on your entire quality of life, and THAT conversation is what motivated me to contact an ENT about Victoria’s snoring. Vent. Complain. Rant about the trivial things you experience. They may not end up being trivial after all.

Whenever Travis and I used complain about something to each other, we’d always bring the other one back down to reality by saying something like, “it could be so much worse! One of our kids could have cancer or some other terrible illness.” Well, we are now living through our “so much worse” scenario, but that doesn’t keep us from realizing that it STILL could be SO MUCH WORSE. The fact that we have the means to get Victoria the best treatment possible, that she attends a school that fully supports her, that we have an army of people willing to help out in any way, that Travis has the ability to take time off work (although he never lets himself) and was able to be in Boston with us for all three of Victoria’s surgeries… these are ALL recognized blessings without which our situation would be WAY worse.

I guess the lesson of today’s blog is to share your complaints. Everyone can relate (if they say they can’t, they’re 100% lying) and it always makes for hysterical conversation at the very least. My stupid complaint led to a conversation and subsequent diagnosis that would save my child’s life.

Have great weekends and happy ranting!!

Xo,

Paige