Before I start… let’s all just get one thing straight. Adult life is, at the baseline, objectively hard. Whether you’re single or married, whether you have kids or not, whether you are working or not. Adult life comes with many different challenges and everyone has things that they find hard. Let’s just agree with that.

As we’re entering a new academic year, and this year we’re going to be settling two anxious girlies into school for the first time, I thought I’d share with you things that we do that help make our life feel a little less crazy and a little more manageable with the challenges that we have.

Some of what I share may seem obscenely privileged to you and other things may seem basic and obvious. Just take what is good for you and leave the rest. The thing I’m trying to do here is to give you permission to make life easier for yourself. Of course, you don’t need permission really, but I’m here giving it.

• Grocery delivery

Before our recent holiday, we took the kids to big Asda, chucked the twins in the trolley and did a big shop. Our 7 year old son found the environment incredibly overwhelming so asked to be carried most of the time, which limited my husband’s ability to grab things to chuck in the trolley. As I pushed the trolley (with two 4 year olds in), it gradually got heavier and heavier with all the shopping until I was having to use my full body to push it round corners!! Needless to say, we normally stick to online grocery deliveries. Navigating big shops is just a no go for us right now.

• Hello Fresh

Getting sent the ingredients and recipes for three grown up, nutritious meals each week has been a game changer for us as we were sick of just eating the three meals the kids will eat. Get yourself a husband who will cook them for you and you’re in for the win.

• Cleaner fortnightly

Once we got a cleaner, I knew we would never go back! We had a break from having one for a few months and I noticed how the house slowly declined as I just don’t have the time, energy or inclination to clean. If you can afford it, go for it!

• Washing weekly

When we weren’t having a cleaner, I enlisted the help of a wonderful lady who took some of our washing away, cleaned it, dried it and returned it beautifully folded a few days later. Her help was so valuable and reasonably priced that we’ve kept her on. Some weeks I just chuck her the last little bits that I haven’t got to, sometimes she gets all of our grown up clothes when I’ve spent all week washing the kids’ clothes and sometimes she gets sheets and towels. Outsourcing at its finest 👍🏻.

• Refills

This is good for the environment and I’ve found it’s good for us too. Instead of buying hand wash, shampoo, conditioner and body wash regularly, we buy them in huge bottles and refill the smaller bottles we already had. We use Miniml and I find it to be really reasonably priced and great quality. Just knowing that we always have some (I buy more every 6 months or so) is one weight off my mind. Buying in bulk in general is a good idea.

• Sharing and asking for help

I am by nature a bit of an oversharer (can you tell by this blog?) but I really find it helpful to share stresses and problems I’m having and asking for advice or prayer. Whether it’s on a Facebook group of like minded people in the same situation or in a WhatsApp message to some Christian friends, for me, sharing really does lessen the load. Plus, when I’m fresh out of ideas and do not have the mental energy to figure something out, it’s often helpful to get different perspectives on our situation.

• Pray

I believe in a God who is able, always listening and always present. So, even when I’m in the middle of chaos, I often pause, open up my hands and just say “help me”. Sometimes that’s all that’s necessary for me to experience a tiny bit more peace in that moment. Other times I bring him monologues asking for his help in different areas of my life and, even though I don’t get an “I’ve got it” response, I believe and trust that he has heard me and he is always working, even when I can’t feel it or see it.

So there you go! There is no shame at all in asking for help, even if you feel you don’t “need” it. If anything, now is a good time to get it as there will inevitably come a time you suddenly could do with the extra help. Unfortunately one of the big challenges of adulthood is that no one is going to swoop in to help you and take away all your problems (even Jesus, he promises to be with us in the mess, not that there won’t be any mess). If you need help, you have to ask for it.

We need each other. Whether you pay for it with money, chocolate or effusive thanks, it’s always worth exploring.

What help do you have that makes your life easier?

It can be really hard to explain your life to someone who isn’t living it. You can find yourself trying to justify things that really you have no need to justify, the conversation can just veer that way. Maybe their face is taking on a quizzical expression, or they’re asking questions that show you they really don’t understand.

It’s even harder when you’re living even slightly out of the mainstream. Take screens for example. Oh the noise around screens and how they’re destroying our children’s brains, halting their development and turning them into monsters. What do we think we’re doing not putting any restrictions in place? Why do we let them have screens at mealtimes or when we’re out and about? We can explain until we’re blue in the face about how screens help our children regulate and how it’s necessary for them to escape into a screen when the outside world gets too overwhelming for them. But still it’s hard to not feel judgement, not to question “are we bad parents?” for allowing this. Even though we know we have to do what’s right for our children and ignore what others think, it’s hard.

Then “picky eating”. Our kids would live on sandwiches and fruit if they could. There is a rotation of 2-3 meals we go through that they (or at least 2 out of the 3 of them) will reliably eat. Even then, sometimes they might not eat anything. We’ve tried to introduce new food but either we will get screamed at or it gets thrown on the floor. This is fairly expected for babies and toddlers but when it’s your older-than-preschooler age children, it becomes less so. So I’m grateful for your suggestions of tofu or peas and sweetcorn to get protein into our children. Problem is, they won’t eat them. And when we see parents on social media bemoaning having picky eaters but being able to serve them chicken or spag bol… Well that’s when you realise you’re not only not in the same race, you’re not even on the same field.

Over the next few weeks we have a number of assessments and appointments for the twins so we can figure out how best to support them when they start school. We’ve decided to send them to school in a different town because it is smaller and more nurturing. Like my counsellor said in one of our sessions “it’s not as simple as just sending them to the school down the road!” It’s not. We already know our girls wouldn’t cope there. Now, we are not sure what the assessments are going to conclude, if anything at all and I’m not sure how I’m going to feel whatever the outcome is. It may be a case of “wait and see”, where we’ll wait until they’re older to see if these current struggles are an age and stage thing or a neurodivergence. Or we may get diagnoses. Time will tell.

We’re living our life as if we have 3 ND kids as that’s what it currently feels like. So our life inevitably will look different to yours or to other families you know. I hope that by giving you glimpses into our life you will be able to view other families that do things differently to yours, or to your expectations, with more compassion and grace.

It’s not the life I imagined when we first talked about having children. Every now and then I need to kick myself in the butt to snap me out of self pity or “what could have been”. It’s pointless, fruitless and dismisses the beauty of the life we have. I try to remind myself that some families face hardships beyond what we could imagine. That doesn’t diminish our struggles but it helps put things in perspective.

A poem that reflects this tension of living a life you didn’t expect to is “Welcome to Holland” by Emily Perl Kingsley.  I’ve posted it below.

I hope you have the courage and support to live your life how you need to and want to. This world can be so noisy and heavy with assumptions and expectations. But this is your “one wild and precious life” as Mary Oliver says. So live it.