It's a lot

I’m sitting on the floor in the dark outside my younger kids’ bedrooms right now. I think they’re finally asleep. I also think I’ve cried about 50 times today. It was one of those days. (Wait, could the flu shots we all got yesterday cause emotional fluctuation?)

One of my kids started middle school — a huge transition. Another started fourth grade. My big kids go back to their junior years at boarding school this weekend — which I know is the right thing for both of them, but right now I just want everyone to stay as close as possible.

My team, which goes remote for the summer, is now back in the office. I’m trying to be there all day — but then I have to race out to take my kids to their last doctors’ appointments. And then pick up the littles.

Everything has suddenly changed, for everyone. New teachers. New routines. New pick-up and drop-off times. Where is the summer?! I want to go back!

In the midst of it all, I’m juggling my regular work, which was already too much, and also now managing the launch of our new anthology, On Being Jewish Now. I am so proud of this book. It means everything. But it’s definitely a unique challenge being both the editor of the book — and the publisher. I go from recording “pick-ups” of the audiobook to pitching media outlets for coverage; from organizing events to making visuals; from selecting endpapers and fonts, to fine-tuning my own essay.

It’s a lot.

And then there’s the world.

I opened Instagram this morning and learned that Eden, one of the recently murdered hostages whose sisters I met this summer at the “Screams Before Silence” screening, had been starved in captivity and died weighing 79 pounds. How do you put the phone down after that? How you go back to an inbox full of potential podcast guests and think clearly? How do you realize that the captors filmed those six souls before murdering them — and then run another kid to the allergist?

How do we go about our business with such evil all around us? Do we ignore it? Pretend it couldn’t happen to us? Go back to chit-chat at pick-up about upcoming birthday parties?

It’s a lot.

What helped the most today was a heart-to-heart I had with one of the Zibby Books authors

Ava Dellaira

, whose brilliant, page-turning novel Exposure comes out next Tuesday. (I filmed an Instagram reel about it today.) It started as a pre-pub update but ended with us just venting, confiding, agreeing that this time feels particularly tricky. Fraught. Somehow reassuring her reassured me. Right now, we are in a good place. We are set up for success. We will adjust to all the changes. We will be role models for our children through our work, even if it means being apart from them. We laughed and I felt immediately better. For at least a little bit.

Not to mention that the anniversary of September 11th is next week. I mean, come on. This weather — the blue sky, the temperature, all of it — always harkens back to that day. Terrorism, as

Daniella Rabbani Sirkin

and I discussed on her podcast Mom Curious earlier today, isn’t just theoretical for me. I’ve seen it and felt it personally having lost my closest friend. I feel it deeply now.

And here it is again — far away but so close.

I’m probably not making any sense. I should really delete this. As my son says, “Don’t send anything you write after 10 pm.” And nothing’s really wrong. But I’m wondering if maybe, some of you are feeling like this, too? Maybe not all of it, but some of it? Or maybe it’s just me. Adjusting. Off balance. Spinning as the seasons shift. Trying to find my bearings in a new normal on every front.

It’s a lot. But at least we’re all in it together.

Good night, friends.