How Not To Do It Alone: Find Your People

Thanksgiving is here! I’m sure many of you are getting ready for the big day and I am, too.

I wanted to start the day off with a post about one of the things I am most thankful for. Namely, the people who help make my life run the way it does.

As you already know, I am a woman who does a lot of things. I have a full time job on “TBBT.” I run GrokNation and I make videos for my YouTube channel. I have my third book coming out in May (“Girling Up: How to Be Strong, Smart and Spectacular”) and I lend my voice to charity organizations and do public speaking throughout the year.

I also have a personal life. I have two sons who are 8 and 11 and I am divorced so I have 50% custody; I don’t have a nanny or housekeeper or a chef, so life is pretty hectic. I have friends, I struggle to find ways to balance work with a social life without my kids and with them. I spend Shabbat with families similar to mine so I can socialize with my children and give them a grounding in their Jewish identity. I have a mom who lives in town and I take an active part in her life.

My life is busy and I’m often asked how I juggle it all.

The answer is something I am so thankful for every day and especially today: I juggle it all with help.

Here’s who helps me and how:

I have an assistant named Todd who helps manage all of the email requests I get. He organizes and consolidates all of the correspondence between my agent, my manager, my lawyer, and the various publicity outlets I speak to weekly. Todd doesn’t completely run my personal life although he knows my schedule and reminds me when I’ve accidentally triple-booked something. He is incredibly helpful. He drives me to work most days and if I have a non-work day with several appointments we go about the day together. I would be a wreck without an assistant, and even though I used to do all of these things on my own, the business that is me runs much smoother with an assistant. My publicist and manager especially appreciate Todd because on days when I am with my boys and don’t want to be constantly checking my phone, they can check in with Todd if they need things. Todd is super-helpful and I’m thankful for him.

In terms of parenting, I get asked a lot how I have learned to manage my kids in a way that seems to work well for all of us. I am not a naturally inclined-to-gentleness person; I had a very difficult period of adjustment to becoming a parent and I struggled with a lot of anger and frustration which I did not know intuitively how to manage well. I learned the principles of gentle discipline from the La Leche League meetings and support I received as a breastfeeding mother, and I continued to expand my knowledge of the benefits of gentle discipline through the Quality Parenting program, which seeks to help parents understand their motivations for anger and tendencies to want to punish children. Quality Parenting has been a mainstay of my parenting development, and I am so grateful for the classes I took with a few friends and for the books Ilene Val-Essen has written supporting this philosophy.

As for the relationship I have with my ex, which I discuss in this YouTube video, this also did not come naturally. One thing my ex and I did was to seek the support of a family therapist who helped us understand some of the challenges to even the most well-adjusted children growing up in divorce. We were told what ‘warning signs’ to look for in children that might warrant a need for more support, such as outbursts of anger or violence, nightmares, or new anxious behaviors such as nail-biting or skin-picking. One thing that was most helpful was hearing from a professional why you shouldn’t comfort a sad child who misses their other parent by saying things like, “You’ll see your dad tomorrow; don’t be sad.” The notion of not constantly trying to distract children from legitimate negative feelings never occurred to me. The family therapist we used has some excellent parenting tidbits on her website if you want to get a taste for what a gentle family therapist is like.

Like many people (and many women in particular), I constantly doubt myself. I always wonder if I’m doing “it” right: am I being a patient-enough friend? A loving-enough lover? A supportive-enough daughter? A firm-enough-but-not-too-firm mom? I wonder if I am reading the right books, going to synagogue enough, meditating enough, eating fried food too much (most certainly). I have a lot of days I don’t feel like I’m doing anything right. I couldn’t get through those days – and weeks – alone. I see a therapist every week. I have several very caring and emotionally-intelligent friends I can reach out to who help me process all of that. I never do life alone, and it makes a difference to have that kind of support.

It took me a long time to find support in my life, and I’m still finding it in new ways. I started seeing a therapist when I was 18, and one of my closest friends who I can’t imagine living without I just met in the past 5 years. It’s an ongoing process. Life presents us with so many challenges and it doesn’t always feel like it gets instantly better when you fill-in-the-blank: start high school, enter college, meet your future partner, have a child, get a dope job, make a certain amount of money, etc.

Life is long, and I wish you all whatever support you need. 

I hope you find the people who best support you if you haven’t already. Have a lovely day of thankfulness and serenity today. Happy Thanksgiving!

** Special Note: Mayim is doing a Facebook Live Q&A Friday, November 25th at 1pm PST. Tune in on her Facebook and ask whatever you want! www.Facebook.com/MissMayim **