Handling The Hard Stuff

Handling the Hard Stuff: A Blog about Life and How to Deal

Failing is learning

As kids we try and fail at literally everything. It’s how we learn to walk and grab things and feed ourselves. Kids try everything. But somewhere along the line we lose that. As adults we have this idea that we’re supposed to know how to do everything without ever having attempted it. We watch a…

January 17, 2023
Being the Villain

Being the bad guy is hard for a lot of us. Strong boundaries and being “mean mommy” goes against the nature of a lot of people for a lot of reasons. For children of trauma, reducing conflict is a gut instinct. For people accustomed to excess, strict rules and processes may not come naturally. Those…

January 12, 2023
Pride

Do you remember the last time you actually stopped and were proud of yourself? I am terrible at this. I don’t know if this is a me thing or a woman thing or a family thing or just society in general, but I’m terrible at giving myself accolades. This is especially ridiculous for me because…

January 10, 2023
Adulting 101

It’s that time of year when we all decide this is gonna be the year we get our s$#@ together. Good for you. Good for us. But holy crap is it overwhelming! Where to begin?? I don’t know that I could keep any of this stuff up on a daily basis for an extended period…

January 5, 2023
Full Disclosure

Navigating a relationship is tough. That’s not news. But for those of us still learning how to have a relationship and be in a relationship and communicating in a relationship, every minute is a learning experience. And sometimes that’s exhausting. I had been largely single my entire life until my mid thirties. I was a…

January 3, 2023
This Too Shall Pass

Like many of you, I spent the holidays in visiting my childhood home. And like many of you, my parents consistently send me home with mementos and items from my childhood bedroom whenever I go visit them. This year’s stash was a pile of journals from middle school and high school. Reviewing them was fascinating.…

December 31, 2022
Budgets Are a Girls’ Best Friend

When BF and I first started dating we were not on the same page financially. He’d spent most of his twenties having adventures and odd jobs and hadn’t thought much about retirement. I spent my twenties getting into boatloads of education debt and starting my own business during a recession. I stressed about little else…

December 30, 2022
Freedom

Different people in different places in their lives will define freedom differently. Maybe it’s the freedom to carve out an hour to exercise. The freedom to choose when and where you work. The freedom to live where you want to live. The freedom to buy what you choose. The freedom to opt to work or…

December 27, 2022
“If You Wanna Be Somebody,

If you wanna go somewhere, you better wake up and pay attention” -Sister Act 2 This has been a recurring theme in my life in various seasons and stages. It’s an important one. We’ve stopped paying attention. I am super guilty of this. I’ll waste hours on Instagram reels. I’ll go down a Pinterest rabbit…

December 16, 2022
Self-Care is about Connection

This is the time of year when most of us are run ragged for various reasons. We’re getting presents for everyone under the sun, we’re running low on funds because all those “annual” bills are starting to come due, we’re scrambling to get our end-of-year work projects and finances together, and most of us have…

December 15, 2022