How to Make a Difference When Everything Seems Awful

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How to Make a Difference When Everything Seems Awful (Photo: Hand-painted sign of The Lorax with the quote 'Unless someone like you cares a whole lot, nothing will change, it's not.')

The headlines never end. More school shootings. White people putting people of color in danger for merely living. The gap between rich and poor growing ever wider. America having the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world. The 400th straight month of higher-than-normal temperatures from climate change.

There is so much wrong with the world. I am so damn tired from it all. It’s so easy to be.

Unfortunately, no one’s going to come around and fix it. Change starts with us. It’s about radical kindness in your daily life. It’s about standing up and demanding justice and fairness from our policy makers. The political is personal and the personal is political.

When it feels like the world is awful, here are some ways you can make a difference:

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How Parenting Brings Out the Best Contradictions

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How Parenting Brings Out the Best Contradictions (Photo: Small white boy looking at a pretend giant honey pot)

Hugging my son, I felt him shake a little as thunder clapped and the lights cut out. A booming voice declared, “Oh, I didn’t mean to frighten you prematurely. The real chills come later.”

“That’s the worst part, honey,” I swore to him, squeezing him close. As we walked into the Haunted Mansion’s “doom” buggies at Disney World, I kept glancing at him, taking his emotional temperature. As we rode the ride, I pointed out little jokes and kept up a jovial attitude to help him enjoy himself.

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How to Garden Round the Seasons

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How to Garden Round the Seasons (Photo: Small child playing in the dirt surrounded by tomato plants)

My beans have wilted, either from the slugs slurping on them or the sun beating down on them. Random holes in my garden are a testament to the birds digging for worms. The squash leaves are full of nibbles. Every year around late spring, I begin to despair about my garden.

Yet every late summer and fall, we have produce fresh from the backyard. (Sometimes bountiful, sometimes less so.) At the end of every year, I find growing my garden worthwhile. It brings our food miles down to zero, ensures my food is totally organic, stores carbon in the soil, creates habitat for animals, and is a wonderful way to bond with my kids.

But how do we go from those spring days to the (semi)-successful harvests? The whole process starts in the winter.

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Why You Should Share Your Struggles with Your Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Why You Should Share Your Struggles with Your Kids (Photo: A woman kissing a child she is holding)

“Let’s remind each other to be positive and flexible this trip,” I told my four-year-old the day before going on vacation.

“What’s flexible mean?” he asked.

“Being willing to change plans. It’s something I’m working on. We both need to help each other out, okay?” I responded.

That’s neither the first or last time that I’ve told my kids about my own struggles. Some parents may feel like admitting to mistakes or challenges decreases their authority, but I think it actually does the opposite. We shouldn’t dump on our kids or reveal more than they can handle, but discussing issues at an age-appropriate level can be valuable. Thankfully, talking about this a little bit can go a long way.

Here are some of the benefits:

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What Happens When We Trust Kids’ Imagination?

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What Happens When We Trust Kids' Imagination? (Photo: Young white boy hugging the character of Chip, a giant chipmunk, in front of a table with food.)

“They’re just people in costumes, right?” my four-year-old asked me about the Disney characters months before our trip to Walt Disney World. “Yep,” I answered, being truthful but not elaborating.

Yet despite knowing that, my son jumped up and down upon meeting them, hugging and high-fiving Chip, Dale, Pluto, and Mickey as they came to our table for a character lunch.

How did he manage that? I wondered. He knew they weren’t “real,” but his enthusiasm was genuine. I like “meeting” the characters too, but not with that level of joy. I’m always seeing layers down, wondering about who is in the costume or the logistics of it.

I think our responses reveal something important that most adults miss: kids can teach us so much about how to balance reality and imagination if only we let them.

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When Parenting Shows You How Little You Know

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When Parenting Shows You How Little You Know (Photo: White young boy smelling flowers in a giant pot)

“I don’t know what to do.”

As a mom, I’ve said those words more times than I can count. When my kid’s fever has spiked – again. When I was so delirious with sleep deprivation that I thought I might be hallucinating. When my kid got out of bed for the tenth time that night. When I was nursing our younger son and our older son was desperate to sit in my lap.

“I don’t know what to do.” Six words that mean so much.

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The Magic and Freedom of Low Expectations

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The Magic and Freedom of Low Expectations. (Photo: Young white boy facing a fence, looking at a fountain that looks like a manatee)

My younger son points urgently at the manatee stamp on his arm and then at the real creature in the water. “That’s right, a manatee!” I exclaim and smile. I watch it float, just letting the water hold its massive bulk like magic. “Geeze, they really aren’t very bright, are they?” I think. Then I shrug and think, “Eh, whatever.”

We’re at Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park, a state park in Florida that’s home to five resident manatees and a variety of other Florida animals. It’s also where I had a life-changing experience when I was 10.

As a nature-loving third grader, I fell hard for the manatees. They were so cute and so innocent! I found out they were endangered, convinced my class to adopt one, and became a lifelong environmental activist.

Except when I returned as an adult, Homosassa was not the same as I had remembered it. Disappointing is an understatement. I left with a bad taste in my mouth, my heart just a little broken.

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10 Funny Truths About Parenting

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“Your shirt is not a mechanism for storing snacks,” I said to my two-year-old after he tried to shove food down his shirt. Better than throwing it, I suppose, but not exactly what we were going for.

There are a lot of funny moments in parenting, but very few of them are substantial stories worthy of a blog post. For at least some of them, I’ve made them into memes that I share on the blog’s Facebook page. As I’ve never shared them here, I thought it would be fun to gather a number of them together in one place.

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Learning to Accept the Uncertainty of Being a Mom

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Learning to Accept the Uncertainty of Being a Mom (Photo: Two young boys sitting on a couch that looks like a giant pair of lips)

“Tell me I’m a good mom,” I say to my husband, Chris. Most of the time when I say that, I’m half-joking. This time, I’m not.

We’re sitting on our couch side by side. I’m usually writing or reading blogs while he watches people play video games on YouTube. Today, I’m staring blankly at the turned-off TV. He looks up.

“You’re a good mom,” he replies. He’s not smiling. His seriousness just reinforces my worry.

“We’ve done what we can, right? I mean, I think it would have been worse if we had done other things.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault.”

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How I Became a Third Grade Environmentalist and What Happened Next

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How I Became a Third Grade Environmentalist and What Happened Next (Photo: Manatee swimming in water)

My parents didn’t have a clue what the impact of bringing me to Homosassa Springs State Park in Florida at the tender age of nine was going to be. It ended up not only shaping my elementary school passions, but determining my life’s work.

I first wrote this essay about the strange ways childhood experiences shape us for the wonderful live show (and podcast), The Story Collider. I performed it live at Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C. on January 26, 2017 and you can check out the video on Facebook. As I’ll be returning to Homosassa Springs tomorrow with my kids, I thought now was an appropriate time to share it!

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