You know that meem about tossing your hair in a high top bun, putting on “gangster rap” and handling it? That’s kind of how I feel every day right now.

I’m not joking.

As I was coming back from Minneapolis today, I was walking through the airport, baby on body, passports in mouth, pushing a stroller, pulling a duffle bag ( don’t ask me how ) and I just sort of left my body for a second and felt like I was floating and watching life from above- sort of like in a bad movie. I was fully viewing myself and what was happening from outside my body.

I’m just going to come out and say it – I looked badass. Even more than looking it, I felt badass. Not just because I was multitasking in a way that I don’t think any husband/partner could do in that moment but because it just somehow felt fluid. Like Aggie and I were on the same wave length. She knew I needed her to be a champion, and I knew that I needed to put up every possible emotional barrier I could think of and just take a deep breath and walk off that plane, get through immigration, baggage claim, out to a cab, to get our car, load it up and get home only to have to grocery shop and put her to bed. There was no way I was doing that without a high bun and a hardcore rap song.

When I finally got her down, I felt so FULL – that spot in my chest that always gets tight when I get stressed just felt like it could burst, so I decided to take a shower. I decided to take my own advice and break away from the immediate, step away and let the water wash away whatever surface emotional stress was being compounded by a day filled with hellish travel and solo parenthood.

It worked. I was able to view the situation from above – to see what was big and what was little. What was happening on the way to the big stuff, things that needed to be in place in order to get us to the final home stretch. But that doesn’t mean that cropped up amidst all of that is nothing. If anything, it usually means the opposite. It means in between those big milestones are these little things – things you can feel guilty about, angry about, unhappy about and just plain resentful about.

But after that shower I recognized something. Those little things are still mine to deal with. Just because they’re little and they suck doesn’t meant that they aren’t mine to take a deep breath over and find my own way of letting them go, or in this case, handling them.

As an adult we are always going to be faced with stuff. In the world of fertility it could be the struggle of getting pregnant and having to book all of these insane appointments just to see a handful of people that are supposedly there to get you pregnant. In pregnancy maybe you feel as though the weeks are flying by and like you don’t have enough time to even sit and breathe with your partner before the massive moment the baby comes into your life. And as for having the baby – sometimes it just feels like time has just disappeared. There is little stuff all the time.

Little steps towards a big milestone. Worth it – but in the heat of it, sometimes they are just a really big fucking headache.

How do we balance it all? I’ve come to realize ( at this point at least ) that sometimes we can’t balance it all. Sometimes it just is too much for too long. Sometimes, even though we feel like bursting into tears and getting a big hug, what we really need is to throw our hair in a bun, listen to something great and h a n d l e  i t . Because feeling badass and in charge and powerful in a moment when you actually have no clue what you’re doing tricks your mind into smoothly sailing through whatever mountain you don’t think you can climb.

And then once you’ve handled it – once you’ve gotten to the milestone, you can breathe and release whatever emotion is lying beneath the surface.

We’re all going through some version of this in our own lives – just know that despite what you might be telling yourself, you absolutely can handle this.

And this song to finish because commonnnnn, you can’t help but to smile.