Living Well – Today's Family Advice Column
Welcome to Living Well, a new column from Today’s Family magazine with local life coach Rebecca Fellenbaum. We welcome your questions about parenting, mindfulness, wellness, and everyday life. Rebecca will share tools, tips, and heartfelt advice to help you feel understood, supported, and inspired to truly enjoy this stage of life with your kids and family. If you’re wondering about it, chances are another parent is too — so don’t be shy! Let's talk about it... and start Living Well. Submit your question here for consideration for future columns.
Feeling blah
Dear Rebecca: On the outside, things are fine. I’m managing life, kids, and work. But it feels like something is off. I’m blah and disconnected. I’m not really sad, but I’m not happy either. I keep telling myself to be grateful, but it falls flat. How can I feel better? ~ Lauren, Solon
Dear Lauren: Thank you for reaching out. I appreciate your honesty, and I know many readers will relate.
It sounds like you’re in what I call autopilot living. You’re going through the motions, but somewhere along the way, you stopped feeling fully present. That can be exhausting.
Let’s start with curiosity. When did you notice something was off? Did something happen, or was it a slow slide into your current state? Do you feel this way all the time or is it seasonal? Your answers to these questions can help you better understand how you got here.
From there, let’s go deeper. When you say “blah” or “disconnected,” what does that feel like? There is likely a feeling or need that hasn’t been acknowledged. Can you imagine what the opposite would look like? If you were “on” and happy and grateful, how would you feel? What would you be doing? What would you think?
Once you’ve answered those questions, write down what you might need to get there. Let yourself dream big (a live-in nanny would be nice) and then move into reality (a babysitter once a week, perhaps). Do this for all areas of your life that feel off.
To shift out of autopilot, we need small ways to move into our conscious mind, in the present moment, and live with fact and truth. When you find yourself going through the motions, try grounding yourself with a deep breath, a hand on your heart, or by repeating “I’m here,” or “I’m okay.”
Finally, I admire your instinct to practice gratitude. When we are grateful, we move from seeing the world through our mind and drop into viewing the world from our heart. Can you find three things per day to appreciate and allow to land in your heart? Gratitude is like a snowball rolling down a hill. The more you are grateful, the more things you find to be grateful for.
Thank you for reaching out. I wish you success and happiness!
Exhausted manager of everything
Dear Rebecca: I manage everything for our family. My husband helps, but sometimes it’s more work to ask him to help, and the whole cycle leaves me exhausted. I get resentful about being underappreciated, and when I try to talk about it, it usually turns into an argument. How do I bring this up without it blowing up? ~ Amanda, Willowick
Dear Amanda: That is a common and relatable struggle. Thank you for naming it so clearly.
Before I offer solutions, let’s reflect for a moment. Has it always been this way, or has it changed since having kids or perhaps other changes? Understanding how you got here can ease the conversation and remind you it didn’t happen overnight.
Before bringing this to your husband, I suggest doing a brain dump. Write out everything you do, the tasks and your mental energy behind them. Seeing them on paper gets them out of your head, and that’s validating. Once you have your list, you can start to sort it into three columns: keep, ditch, and distribute.
The keep list includes responsibilities you don’t mind owning. You might want some help sometimes, but these are reasonable for you. By manage, I mean the entire mental load of, say, grocery shopping or laundry.
The ditch column is things you’re ready to let go of altogether. Maybe they’re up for grabs for someone else in your household, but you’re done. This could be things like signing up for the bake sale, hosting the holidays every year, or painting your kids' bedroom. In reality, you might not be able to ditch everything on this list all at once, but it goes here if you’d like to talk about ditching it.
Finally, the distribute list. These are tasks you think should still get done, but you’re no longer willing to carry the entire mental load. This might be managing summer camp sign-ups, coordinating sports schedules, or planning dinners for the week. Can you outsource some of this? Can you ask your husband to own things from this list? The caveat here is that if he does, you have to let go of control so you don’t get to micromanage how he does it.
You might not have much off your plate right away, but with everything laid out for you and your husband to see, you can continue the discussion. The best way to view the list is as a partnership where you are a team, and the list is the issue. It’s you and your husband vs. the list!
And Amanda, if anyone can handle this, it’s you. You’ve already proven yourself as the manager of everything.
Rebecca Fellenbaum is a certified life coach, writer, and Cleveland area mom who helps parents enjoy this time in their lives. You can find her at rebeccafellenbaum.com.
Dear Rebecca: On the outside, things are fine. I’m managing life, kids, and work. But it feels like something is off. I’m blah and disconnected. I’m not really sad, but I’m not happy either. I keep telling myself to be grateful, but it falls flat. How can I feel better? ~ Lauren, Solon
Dear Lauren: Thank you for reaching out. I appreciate your honesty, and I know many readers will relate.
It sounds like you’re in what I call autopilot living. You’re going through the motions, but somewhere along the way, you stopped feeling fully present. That can be exhausting.
Let’s start with curiosity. When did you notice something was off? Did something happen, or was it a slow slide into your current state? Do you feel this way all the time or is it seasonal? Your answers to these questions can help you better understand how you got here.
From there, let’s go deeper. When you say “blah” or “disconnected,” what does that feel like? There is likely a feeling or need that hasn’t been acknowledged. Can you imagine what the opposite would look like? If you were “on” and happy and grateful, how would you feel? What would you be doing? What would you think?
Once you’ve answered those questions, write down what you might need to get there. Let yourself dream big (a live-in nanny would be nice) and then move into reality (a babysitter once a week, perhaps). Do this for all areas of your life that feel off.
To shift out of autopilot, we need small ways to move into our conscious mind, in the present moment, and live with fact and truth. When you find yourself going through the motions, try grounding yourself with a deep breath, a hand on your heart, or by repeating “I’m here,” or “I’m okay.”
Finally, I admire your instinct to practice gratitude. When we are grateful, we move from seeing the world through our mind and drop into viewing the world from our heart. Can you find three things per day to appreciate and allow to land in your heart? Gratitude is like a snowball rolling down a hill. The more you are grateful, the more things you find to be grateful for.
Thank you for reaching out. I wish you success and happiness!
Exhausted manager of everything
Dear Rebecca: I manage everything for our family. My husband helps, but sometimes it’s more work to ask him to help, and the whole cycle leaves me exhausted. I get resentful about being underappreciated, and when I try to talk about it, it usually turns into an argument. How do I bring this up without it blowing up? ~ Amanda, Willowick
Dear Amanda: That is a common and relatable struggle. Thank you for naming it so clearly.
Before I offer solutions, let’s reflect for a moment. Has it always been this way, or has it changed since having kids or perhaps other changes? Understanding how you got here can ease the conversation and remind you it didn’t happen overnight.
Before bringing this to your husband, I suggest doing a brain dump. Write out everything you do, the tasks and your mental energy behind them. Seeing them on paper gets them out of your head, and that’s validating. Once you have your list, you can start to sort it into three columns: keep, ditch, and distribute.
The keep list includes responsibilities you don’t mind owning. You might want some help sometimes, but these are reasonable for you. By manage, I mean the entire mental load of, say, grocery shopping or laundry.
The ditch column is things you’re ready to let go of altogether. Maybe they’re up for grabs for someone else in your household, but you’re done. This could be things like signing up for the bake sale, hosting the holidays every year, or painting your kids' bedroom. In reality, you might not be able to ditch everything on this list all at once, but it goes here if you’d like to talk about ditching it.
Finally, the distribute list. These are tasks you think should still get done, but you’re no longer willing to carry the entire mental load. This might be managing summer camp sign-ups, coordinating sports schedules, or planning dinners for the week. Can you outsource some of this? Can you ask your husband to own things from this list? The caveat here is that if he does, you have to let go of control so you don’t get to micromanage how he does it.
You might not have much off your plate right away, but with everything laid out for you and your husband to see, you can continue the discussion. The best way to view the list is as a partnership where you are a team, and the list is the issue. It’s you and your husband vs. the list!
And Amanda, if anyone can handle this, it’s you. You’ve already proven yourself as the manager of everything.
Rebecca Fellenbaum is a certified life coach, writer, and Cleveland area mom who helps parents enjoy this time in their lives. You can find her at rebeccafellenbaum.com.