Yesterday evening, my husband and I sat on our back porch discussing how thrilled we were with our parenting ‘win’ over the weekend. Our two boys (15 & 10) had spent numerous hours, some with friends, a few hours with my husband, and many hours just the two them, building mountain bike trails in the woods behind our neighbors house (with permission of course!). Both Saturday and Sunday nights, I had to go down to extract them from the woods, after dark, and as we sat down to a family dinner, they couldn’t stop talking about how excited they were. Excited for what they had accomplished, excited to have a place to ride their mountain bikes when they only have limited time between school, sports and homework. They even drew out trail maps and named each trail section.
As a Mom, I often find myself bogged down in the moments where I feel like I’m failing as a parent and so this ‘win’ got me to reflecting on how the win came about. And to be completely cliche…it took a village. Building your community, finding your tribe, making time for friends and family, sitting down to eat with your children and your friends; these are the activities that contribute to longevity, health and happiness. Ben Hirshberg, author of Traditional Nutrition, came to an interesting conclusion when reviewing studies of Buettner’s Blue Zones (or populations with the greatest number of people living to be 100). While their diets varied across all combinations of macro-nutrients from whole foods sources and the majority consumed both coffee and alcohol, one thing remained constant across all groups. The focus on community, family and social gatherings was forefront for each of these populations.
So how do we build the relationships and communities that can help us to live longer, happier lives? My reflection on this parenting win gave me some insight into this. Our family has moved twice in the past five years and prior to our 10 year stint in Denver, my husband and I had lived in 3 different places after leaving college. While this amount of moving pales in comparison to many, it has given me insight on the benefits and difficulties of both maintaining long distance relationships and building new communities when you move. First, I believe that our priority to have family meals whenever possible was critical. Our family of four is our most important community and it’s over family meals where we share thoughts, opinions, arguments and even some feelings! While the frequency of our time around a dining table has changed over different periods in our lives, all four of us expect that when we are all home at dinner time, we will sit down and eat together. This time allows us to know what our children are thinking about when we aren’t focusing on sports schedules, homework and daily planning.
But here is the difficult part for me. Taking what I learn from our family time and being open to show vulnerability to my new friends is where the real growth has happened. By saying yes to every invite and activity after moving to a new place, you meet new people and while it takes time, YOUR people will emerge from these yeses. Once you find your people or even just your person, the ability to ask for help or answer honestly when that person says, “Hey, how are you?” is the key to building the village that leads to a parenting win. When I started sharing the hard parts of parenting, marriage, and daily life with friends, I found that we had a lot to offer each other. The stresses that build up when we try to manage everything ourselves are toxic to our overall wellness. Creating a village, to share your truths with, helps to alleviate those stresses. Simultaneously, your village will also look to you when they need to share hard moments and the satisfaction of being able to help someone else out is so good for the soul.
So to bring this rambling post full circle, it was one of my new friends that had sent me the sign up for the local mountain bike team. She knew I was looking for a new activity for my teen. Through the mountain bike team, we have found even more people that we connect with. Both my husband and I have found new friends and my son has expanded his friend group, an absolute must as a freshman in a large high school. And just so you know that our village is a modern day one, I have to give credit to YouTube as my teen had started searching mountain bike videos after the first few practices and he discovered a You Tuber, in North Carolina, that has built miles of trails on his property. This man inspired my son to want to do something similar. My husband and I became aware of these videos and our son’s desire to built his own trails over our family dinners. When our kids started building jumps in our backyard, our neighbor offered up the wooded area of their property as additional trail space.
So though creating a village, my husband and I were able to sit on our porch, sipping an evening cocktail, discussing how proud we were of our kids. This moment makes the inevitable discussions of a poor grade or a poor decision a little less stressful, which helps us all to live longer, healthier and happier.