Mel Johnson. Ep 71

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode seventy one. We're talking with our guest mel Johnson today about becoming a single mother by choice. I know we've have a lot of listeners who've asked us to cover issues related to single parenting, and this is certainly one angle that is one a lot of people have thought about as they build their families. So we're very excited to hear from her and all that's going on with that, and her about her life with her young daughter, Daisy, who's about the same age as Genevieve. Right, yeah, oh, good segue. So by the time this episode airs, Genevieve will be a year old, which is very exciting and yeah, it's it's been quite the year. Quite the year. Yeah, and which means that are the pumping should be done right now. Yes, the pumping will be done by the time this airs, and I am super super excited for that moment. I did make the goal, my arbitrary goal that I set for myself, to basically make it until she's a year, and I feel kind of at peace with the fact that I did it. I think I still, you know, made certain things more difficult this year, but it wasn't a terrible year despite that, and I would do it again. Well, I won't do it again for baby number four happened, but I don't forget my decision to do it. I'm glad I did it. I mean, we're at that nice sweet point where nursing is very easy and very fast, and I hope that she kind of continues to do some on demand even once the pumping is done, and then if not, I'm like at peace with that too. I feel like I got to enjoy it, you know, for a nice long period and whatever happens happens, and enjoy it, like did you enjoy it? I enjoyed the weekend and nighttime, like not overnight to enjoy that way. I love the like that superpower of being able to soothe her just through that. It's like amazing to me and just felt special. And yeah, so I guess I would say I did enjoy it. I enjoyed putting her for naps and like you know, you go from the squirming kid to like this like peaceful, milk drunk, and it was a lot more fun, I would say, the last four or five months of it, when it wasn't wasn't her full nutrition anymore, it was very stressful keeping up with it when it was really trying to be everything and it was and she was fine, but it was it was hard. So we're gonna sugarcoat that. Well, we can celebrate that to celebrate a successful year of nursing a baby while doing everything else as well. But potentially not holiday cards, right, are you skip the rs? Yeah? Do you do holiday cards? We do, We just you've just gotten them. Well, we just put together our one for this year. We did a photo session in early November with just some beautiful leaves. We hit the timing perfectly in terms of fall color in our yard, and they came out really well with the sort of blazing scarlet leaves, which which turns out to be good for holiday colors in terms of perfect. Yeah, you throw some green in there in your set. We're sat or set, so yeah, put that together. They should show up and we'll get those out. And but you don't even have an address really at this point, right, So that's I'm trying to decide. I mean, obviously we have our male being forwarded. I just everything's very in flux, and I was thinking, oh, maybe I'll just put this off until we do have like an official address and then we could send like change of address cards. But then again, we've done New Year's cards every year for probably the last at least ten years, so I feel like, I don't know, I don't necessarily want to break the streak. So we'll see. Do you have a good address organization system? Mine sucks? I mean it's Excel and I don't print labels from it. I mean I just write the addresses myself, which we'll see how I feel about it this year, because I was going to do a lot more of them. I was just going to send a lot of cards to people who also got copies of my last book, you know, like early copies of the clock because I have all those addresses, like those physical mailing addresses, so it's just going to send people holiday cards because like why not. But it's starting to get enough of them that handwriting all the addresses, that's going to be a bit of a pain, I think. So I hate doing it and I'm not good at like keeping it updated. So every year it kills me, like I guess, you know, four or five cards back a month later, return to center, and it's like, why don't I fix this? But at least I have excel this year. I finally did that last year. In the past, I'd just sort of been like would get to December and be like, oh, yeah, who do I need to send this to? And then I'd like go try to find everyone's addresses and new which which is just so silly. I mean, it's not the kind of thing I would ever, like, you know, if I'm telling somebody else a productivity tip, like anything you're going to do more than once, which guess what it is going to be Christmas again, like get here it will be restless again. Like you may want to set up a system to make it easier but I totally agree. I feel like I'm not myself in this particular task. But maybe you know, I put it all in one place and keep it updated. Yeah, well, maybe i'll update it better this year. But I've still never entirely figured out the whole mail merge and like printing onto labels, and it's just not unless until I, like hire an assistant, it's not going to happen. So no, it's a lot easier. Now it's a lot easier. You can like upload an Excel file to one of the major card companies and we'll that's dress them for you, so they can even have them stamp it. But it's a matter of having the correct input to do it. Yeah, I mean I think that would be my problem too, is I like I wouldn't do or you know, there's a bunch of places in Massachusetts right where it's started in New Jersey where they start with zero. The zip code starts with zero, so you have to do something different and Excel because it doesn't like leading zeros, and so then it always gets screwed up. And I know there's a simple solution for it, but I don't know what it is like, So people who do a lot of data entry obviously would know exactly what you have to do to get the leading zero and excel, but it's still just like everything you could google that I could google that. Okay, yes, someone's going to listen to this and give us the answer. That's the other that's the slow method, just for somebody. So wait for somebody to or just volunteer to be my virtual assistant, which is something I need to do. Eventually I'm hiring. But well maybe that's a goal for twenty nineteen. But yeah, no, so the holidays, we'll do it. And we're excited to talk with our guests, who is doing a great many things in her life, exciting on her own. So let's transition to Mel. Well, we're very excited to welcome Mel Johnson to the podcast. Mel is the owner of the Stork and I, which she'll tell about that business a minute, and she is also the mother of a young daughter. So Mel, why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners. Hi, thank you so much for having me so, as you said, my name is Mel. I have just turned forty, I live in the UK and I am a solo mum to my daughter Daisy, who's just herned nine months, and I think solo mum, single mum by choice. There seems to be some sort of different terminologies, but basically I had her on my own using a sperm donor, which is something we have not talked about on this podcast before. So we were really excited that Mel was willing to come on and share the story of becoming a parent and what led to that. So why don't you set the scene for us what you would described to us as you're approaching forty thinking about motherhood, Like what was going through your mind? Yeah, so basically around so, I split up from a long term partner when I was twenty nine. We've been dating for seven years and we split up, and I thought, you know, I'm twenty nine, I've got loads of time still to meet somebody, get married, have children, it's no problem. But for one reason another that just didn't happen. So I went on plenty of dates but just couldn't find the right partner to settle down with. As I was approaching thirty five, I think thirty five is the number in your mind where you think your fertility starts to, you know, to decline. And I started to become quite anxious as I was approaching thirty five to think, gosh, is this not going to happen for me? So yeah, that's when I started looking into a backup plan if you like, are there going to be any other options if I don't meet the right person. And so this idea of becoming a single man by choice and actually having the child yourself, as opposed to adopting or something like that. Why did you finally decide on that? So I really wanted to experience pregnancy and that whole thing, and I looked into it. It took me so long to decide. It was something over a number of years because it was such a big decision for a number of different reasons, and to be very honest, and this is what lots of other women are struggling with because I worried what other people would think of me. I worried about was it fair to the baby, lots of different things. But after giving it some considerable thought and having great support, particularly from my mum, I decided I'm going to give this a try and if it works, fantastic. If it doesn't work, then this wasn't meant to be my route and I would do something different. Yeah, and so can you talk about the process itself? Imane, was it stressful going through that? Because I suppose, I mean, you're trying to conceive a child and you don't know if you're going to be in to so the same things many couples go through experiencing potential, and something I talk about quite a lot to the other women I speak to is something I call unknown fertility And for me, that was really stressful. So I can see some of my friends around me a struggling to conceive with their partner having to go through IVF, and I wasn't even at the stage to know if I would struggle because I didn't have a partner to try with. And the anxiety that that causes, not being even able to get to the stage of trying, that's what caused me real anxiety. I'm a control freaker, I know lots of people are, and I felt so out of control on this not knowing. So yeah, so I made the decision to try IVF. I went to a fertility clinic in Manchester in the UK. They treat lots of women on their own, so they're really you know, they know what they're doing in terms of chatting to women in my situation. They made me feel really welcomed and supported. And to cut a long story short, I had IVF with a donor sperm, which produced three embryos, and on the second embryo transfer, my daughter Daisy, was a positive pregnancy test that came up. That's wonderful, I have a quick, sort of slightly medical question. Yeah, sure, And it was the reason to choose IVF versus just doing IUIS with a donor so that you could get more than one embryo to kind of open up possibility to the future. There was a number of reasons. So personally for me, I felt like IUI has a much lower percentage likelihood of working, and I felt like that might cause me more emotional turmoil. So the likelihood, just talking in percentage statistics, is that there might be a lot more times where I wasn't successful, whereas IVF has a as a higher percentage, And that was the main reason. With the added benefit that I now have also got one more embryo left, which is a potential sibling in the future if I decide to That totally makes sense, especially you know, it would be different depending if you were twenty seven years old and deciding to do it versus a little bit older. So I think exactly when I did it, I was thirty seven, and so the percentage like hed of IUI working is even lower. Now. I've spoken to girls where IUI has worked first time, And this is another thing that people battle to make the decision on because there's obviously a massive price differential if you're paying for your own treatment, and so it's a really difficult decision to make because it is purely a gamble. IUI can work first time, but statistically, percentage wise, IVF has a much higher chance of working. And in terms of the donner sperm, I'm curious what process that was in terms of, you know, choosing that strikes me as a sort of frat choice and it's of what you're going for there, So talk about that some. Yeah, So there's loads of different ways to do it. It depends on which country you're using and which clinic you're using. But in my case, the clinic I used has its own sperm bank, which does make life easier. And what you do is you complete a questionnaire where you choose physical characteristics, and that's just personal choice. Whether you choose something that's similar to you, or whether you choose something that's maybe similar to a potential to a partner you've had in the past. So you can choose hair color, eye color, height, build, etc. You can also choose things like education, religion, but for me that's more nurture. But that's just a personal belief, so I was less worried about that. And then when you choose them, the clinic then sends you two profiles that match the choices of the questionnaire, and on the profiles they've written two letters. They've written a letter to you and then they've written a letter to your unborn child, just in slightly different ways, explaining why they've decided to donate. And at first I thought, too, that's just like such a small choice, But actually both of the letters were beautiful, Both of the reasons that they'd given were lovely, and it was actually difficult to decide between those two. Now I know other women who've used a different spem bank. They have almost like a catalog and they're choosing between fifty and they're doing spreadsheets and so there's lots of different ways. But for me, the way that it worked was easier because some of the anxiety was taken out and yeah, and that's how I made my choice. And is it completely blind that like these men will never like if your daughter asks about it in the future, is there a way to track it or is it completely private? In the KAY it's a really interesting situation we're in at the moment. So in the UK the law has just changed and it has to not be anonymous. So any one who donate sperm is very well aware and they have to go for counseling mandatory that when the child is eighteen they will receive your contact details and if they want to, they can contact you. So in the UK they believed that this was massively in the welfare of the child, and I've spoken to some DONA conceived children who've agreed. They said, just knowing you can contact them if you want to is everything you want. Maybe you'll decide not to, but having the choice is what's required. But I know every country is different. The thing to bear in mind is that with advances in DNA testing, it's actually becoming very difficult to keep it confidential anyway. So I don't know if you've heard of the site. I think it's called twenty three and me it's like the ancestry site. If you send off your saliva in a sample, it matches you with people who will be your family members, and it's causing all sorts of interesting things to come up where people didn't realize that they were only conceived, but they were, and they're finding out this way. So much better, to be honest, it would be very difficult not to be going down the line. Yeah, so you you wind out, you know, you find out you're pregnant, you know, get the positive pregnancy test. Very exciting. What was it like going through pregnancy solo? And I'm curious what you told people when they asked, because people ask pregnant women all sorts of rude questions anyway, so proud Pabo, you got even more rude questions. How So I just came up with a sort of like a one liner where I could very confidently just enter into a conversation telling people straight away. So because some people were like, but you're single, and they almost couldn't hide their their surprise. So I said, yeah, you know, I'm pregnant. I'm doing it on my own because I thought if I didn't take this action, then I might miss out on being a mum altogether, which is something I just didn't want to consider, and overwhelmingly there is has just been so supportive. Yeah, so I was very open with people with work, colleagues, my boss, anybody I met really and have just had a really positive reaction from it. And then how about birth itself? Did you have you know, support from your mom or friends going through that. Yeah, so my mum was my birth partner. She was really supportive, and I think that I didn't find pregnancy all the birth more difficult, I think than any other person being on my own, because I knew what I was going into. I think it would be very difficult if you were going into it as a two and then something happened and you ended up on your own, because that's not what you've signed up for. But going into it on your own, you know that you're doing it on your own. And then I had my mum alongside me. She came to all my auntie natal classes, she she was there at the birth, she's and she's been with me, you know, for the last nine months, supporting me as and when I needed it. Really so feel really supported, and I think friends have also really stepped up more so than they would have had I had a partner. I think they've really tried to make sure they're helping that little bit extra that I needed. Well, that's probably a big thing for people who are entering single parenthood by choice to sort of set up to sort of look at the strength of their social network and what they can do to even strengthen it further. I mean is that some of the advice you give people. Support network is the number one thing that I talked to all of my clients about and all the people who chat to me. So it's so important to have your support network in place. And I think often if you're in this situation, a lot of the girls that I speak to, they're quite independent women who are used to doing things on their own. I know that that's me, you know, quite strong willed and want to do everything myself. And this is one scenario where it's really for me, it's been best to accept that I actually need other people to support me. So I think I had to be really clear to people what support I needed. I needed to understand that myself. So I'm helping people to understand what are all the areas you might possibly need support in, and who have you got in your network, and if you haven't, how do you meet people who can help you? And there's so many different ways, and I think with technology as it is now, there's I've been using quite a few different apps to meet other mum friends. There's an app that's just coming out Furlough that is specifically for single parents, and that's going to be fantastic because you can just meet other people in your local area who are in the same situation and then you can all help each other out and all support each other. So definitely support network is key, and being really quite bold about what support you need and not being scared to ask for help, which I know for a lot of women and for myself definitely is is a bit of a hurdle to get over. So that's great that there's a logistical supports that are coming in. You said, you know the practical parts you need in your network. What does that mean, like somebody who could take the kid on short notice, for instance, if you're sick, Like I mean, what are we talking, Yes, perfectly need So I have got that exact example today. So my daughter's in nursery and yesterday she got a temperature a nursery call to say she's got a temperature. So this morning I was thinking, what am I going to do? Am I going to Is she going to be at home? So I called my dad and said, you know, Dad, can you come around just in case Daisy needs to come home from nursery because I need a backup plan and he's got her now. So it's having people when everything goes to plan, everything's fine, but nothing usually goes to plan. When you're talking about nine month old there's always sickness or something that comes out of the blue, or something that you need to do different. So it's having those people who you can call on short notice. But also for me, it's you know, I'm still a person as well as a mum. I need some time to myself. So who can, you know, let me just have a little bit of time, whether that's to just rest and have a lion, or whether whether it's to go out. Maybe I want to go on a date, go out with friends, whatever it might be to do. So it's just having those people around who can allow you that. So let's talk about a day in the life of mel right now. What is it? You know, our listeners always love hearing about what people's days look like. Yeah, so I am just transitioning back into working. I'm going to go back four days a week rather than five, So I get up at six. Daisy also gets up at six. She's an early riser like me, So we have some quality time together in the morning where we just spend some time and play and then I've got my routine together where I can get ready, where so she comes into the bathroom with me whilst I'm getting ready. And that's been something that I've needed to figure out because a lot of my mum friends figure out with their partner how both of them can get ready in the morning in time to leave the house, whereas I've had to find out how I can get ready with Daisy. So I've got different things in place where there's certain toys that she can play with or things that she can do whilst I'm getting ready. She loves to sit and watch me dry my hair, just simple things like that. But getting my little techniques in place to get us both ready. Then we have to leave the house at half past seven. I take her to nursery. It's just around the corner, so I can what I quite often do is put my gym stuff on, walk to the nursery with her, and then go for a run on the way back from nursery so I can fit on some exercise. And this is what I've found, just all these little sort of tips and tricks on how to try and fit everything in in the precious time that I've got. I then come home if I'm working, spend the day at work. I get her from nursery at about five o'clock and then we just have a little evening routine where we do some more playing, give us some food, and then she goes to bed about seven o'clock. And then quite often I'm in the evening then doing some coaching calls for the stalk and I so a pretty full on day. And then my mom stays over with me one nice week, which is great, so I try to use that night for socializing and going out and you know, doing my own thing. And my mum. This is a recommendation for anybody who can get their mums to do this, or somebody to do it. She gives me a lie in from six to eight one day a week, so she takes my daughter at six am and I just have these precious two hours of enjoying a lie in. And that is the biggest gift my mum can ever give me a gift anyone can give a mind fantasizing about that luck right now, my three year old was up at five fifteen this. Oh no, hopefully your your daughter will not do that to you. So tell us about the Stark and I, because you know you went through this journey and then you wanted to help other women who are contemplating it. So what is the business and what do you talk to your clients about? So basically, when I was going through this, I felt really alone. I felt like I was the only person in the world who was going through this situation. It felt like all my friends around me were meeting their partners and starting if they wanted to to try for a family, and I just didn't know anybody else in my situation and it made me feel honestly, it made me feel a bit of a failure in that sense of finding a partner, although I felt very successful in every other area of my life. And so after I had Daisy, I thought, I want to set up a community so that other women know that there are other people out there who are in the same situation, and I want to be able to support them going through that journey. So anyway, I am a life coach, and so the Stalk and I has just focused that in on coaching single women in their thirties and forties, usually who want to have a family, but I haven't got a partner to just look at what their options are. So it might not be that they want to do the same thing I've done, but it's helping them unpack what are their options and what do they want to do, and just making them feel part of a community and helping them understand that they're not on their own. And I have been overwhelmed by the number of women who've contacted me since here in my story saying, oh, I'm so relieved that you've shared your story because I'm in exactly the same position. And it's just people love having a community that really understand what they're going through. And that's what the Stork canize about. What are the most common questions people ask you? So the there's two big things. The first big thing is making the decision, So it's how do I know whether I should go ahead and do this if being a solo mum is or a single mum by choice is what they're thinking about. It's letting go of thinking that I need to do this with a partner. It's really difficult because you know, when you're a little girl, you're not dreaming of, you know, doing this on your own. You're thinking you're going to do it with someone else. And so it's working through helping people on at what time do I decide to do this on my own rather than with a partner? And what I help them work through is it's not giving up on that dream, it's just doing it in a different order. So you know, I'm absolutely still planning to meet a partner, just that my fertility wouldn't wait for me to do that because I was taking a bit too long. So so that's the first thing helping them make the final decision. The second thing that most people ask me is how do I choose a FERM donu? So you know, where do I go? What are the options? It's a minefield. There's so many different options and ways of doing it, and you know, anonymous not anonymous, a known donor, an unknown donor from what country? There's so many different choices. So helping them work through that and then I think support network helping people understand who they're going to need to help them make this as easy as they can be. And let's talk a little bit about the dating, because you said, you know, you think a partner might be in your future. It's just the order of things as different. I mean, are you dating now or looking to or planning to in the future. I mean, I was so exhausted with a nine month old that I'm not sure. But you know, maybe you have more energy than I do. Well, I don't know about that, buy I have been dating. So I find dating now so much easier than I was doing before because all that pressure has been taken off me. Now I'm dating just to hope that I meet a lovely partner that I connect with. And you know, let's see what happened before. It was almost like the panic and this loud ticking of my biological clock and you know, losing sight on was I looking for a partner or actually was I looking for a sperm downer? You know that the father of a child as opposed to a partner. So now my time is a lot more precious because obviously I've got a lot more things going on. I'm a lot more, you know, specific that I will only go out with somebody if I really think that it's you know, that it's a good use of my time. And I've had some really I've had some really nice dates. I haven't met anybody that you know, where it's I think there's a future in this. But I definitely have found dating easier, and I'm really optimistic that I will meet somebody. I just need to keep looking. And what are you going to tell your your daughter as she grows up? But I mean, I guess, particularly in the light of of let's say, you know, by the time she starts thinking about this, like you're partnered with somebody who is then her dad. You know, I'm curious how you're going to you're going to approach this whole story with her. Yeah, So I've had quite a lot of advice on this for people who are further down the line, who you know, who've got older children. And I'm going to be completely honest. I've purchased a book that somebody's written that helps people in my situation explain, like dona conceive children in a way that children can understand. So I'm going to be completely honest about it. And as she grows, I'll just change the explanation to match her age of what she can understand. And it's completely based on what other people have done, on what's worked well, and the advice that I've got. So at the moment, it's very much just abound who's our family, so explaining it's me and Granny Bev, and Granddad Tom and Uncle Dan and some of my friends who I also call my family, and just show knowing her who our family is. And then and I've done that through like a lovely soft picture book that I've made with all the pictures in, and then as she gets a little bit older, it will be going into a little bit more detail to say families are made up from all different scenarios. You can have two moms, two dads, a mom and dad, just like you can have every different scenario, and this is our scenario. And then as she gets even older, you can explain, you know, to you know, how a baby is made and when it's only a woman on her own that you need to have, you need to have sperm basically from a man to make that. And I'll just sort of change the story to add in more facts that she can understand that are age appropriate, but be completely honest. And then if there's a guy in my life, you know, just explain where he fits into it all. And yeah, but honestly, I think having spoken to donor conceive children, they all really emphasize this, just be honest. We don't want any surprises. We can handle any scenario, but don't let it be a surprise. So that's definitely the advice I'm going to take. Well, I think that's good, good advice for life in general. Sarah, do you have any more questions? No, and I apologize because I have no voice, so I didn't contribute much to no one. I would have to listen to this horrible sound. But Mel, that was a fascinating discussion. I think I wish we'd had you on sooner because I think that we want to make sure we include all types of families. And you know, this is just incredibly valuable for many of our listeners, whether they're in your shoes or they have a friend who is because many of us do. Yeah, exactly, And I think if anyone does know anybody who is in this position who's thinking about it. I actually hold webinars for completely free webinars for women who are thinking about it, just to take them through some of the basics. So that will definitely be a starting point for people who are in the situation of thinking about it to just understand some of the basics and where they should start. So please go check out Mel Johnson's The Stork and I and we'll put links to that in the blog post. Well, Mel, thank you so much for being our guest. We really appreciate it. No worries. Oh wait, does Mel have a love of the week? Real quick? Okay, I just thought of that. Something that I'm loving this week. Let me see. I'm going to say this new app follow being able to meet other single parents. I am so I know I'm a bit geeky on apps, but I'm so excited to be able to sort of swipe write on them on other single parents that'll connect me. That's probably my love of this week. Awesome, Sarah, how about you? I guess I'll do an app too. So I think I had mentioned that I took Instagram off my phone and I did get the Flume flu me E app to work. I got the professional so it was ten dollars. But now I can comment on Instagram posts on all of my accoun through my computer. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, no, that is pretty cool. I think I've said it before, but I'm going to say it again. The Uber app is like rocking my world right now. Yesterday I was trying to get from a very complicated transportation situation from somewhere in the middle of New Jersey back to the Philadelphia train station, and I could do it. It was, you know, not a big deal at all, whereas in the past it completely would have been a very expensive car services. So it was greatyway, thank you, Melvi. I really appreciate it, No worry, thank you. Well, that was a fun interview. I love having guests with lovely accents like that. I have a question that I picked out of our survey, which, by the way, I'm going to leave it open for the next month or two just in case anyone still feels like they like to chip in. We got a huge number of wonderful ideas and feedback and questions from that, and you can still find the handle to it on the link to it on my Instagram the Best of Both Worlds podcast Instagram. So this is a question that came from that, as you'll hear also in the next few episodes. Here we go as a fellow upholder, introvert and definitely more of a task oriented over people oriented person. I like to know what family activities are so I can mentally prepare and be fully engaged during the time. The challenge is my family is extroverted, spontaneous, and most importantly, they feel like if it's on their calendar it's a task item and they feel hurt by that. I've tried to explain that making it too my calendar means it's a priority and something I value. My question is any advice being mentally and emotionally present when you weren't planning on that people time, Laura, do you have any thoughts? Well, I totally get this, and I'm not sure that somebody who's more extroverted would would get this at all, Like that you have to mentally prepare even for people that you love. So it's not that you don't love them, right, It's just that there's a certain energy that you put into people and then certain things that you do to like be your introverted self too, and so you're trying to kind of balance the two of these, and you can put in a lot of people time, but you kind of want to know, right, and you want to know what you're getting into so you can sort of manage your energy for say, you know, three hours of ice skating with the family, Like that's a certain amount of energy you're planning for that. Or if it's like, you know, two hours going on a walk somewhere, you want to know that. Or if it's like three hours that you're all just hanging out at home watching a movie, that's a different sort of energy. But you just want to sort of prepare yourself for these things. And so I totally understand, and I can also understand how other people viewing that would be, like, what do you mean you need to prepare your energy to see me? It's like, way, I thought you loved me. Why are you even saying this? But I think that. So I'm trying to, you know, figure out what would be a good way for her to convey this without her, because it's also that they like to switch plans too, Like they don't feel that switching plans is a big deal where she does, right, I mean, so maybe you're splitting the difference because you're a very extroverted person. But you like, it's an extroverted person. I like the structure. So my way of thinking was more like, Okay, I'm just going to have to decide that like that, you know, whatever full day. You know, at least they could probably commit to, like a full day, like we're going to spend Friday together, even if they don't have an agenda. If they can't commit to that, then I mean, I don't know, at some point both sides probably have to compromise. And I think that's a reasonable compromise, Like it's Friday going to be a family day. Okay, Well if that's the case, then like I can just kind of succumb to that and think, if I, you know, I could visualize my planner, it would just be like it would say unstructured family time. And I know that's so silly, but you know, by having it sort of intentionally dedicated for me, that's enough of a structure even in my mind to kind of just make peace with it. And I don't think that's necessarily going to work for everyone. And I see what you're saying about the mental energy of extraversion, which is not as much of an issue for me, But I wonder if that person, the person who wrote in, could sort of give them her agenda, like I was. I was suggesting that perhaps she could tell them what is not family time, like when she won't be available, like well, we can do whatever you guys want together on Friday, just so you know, I'm not going to be there on Saturday because I have plants, you know. And then she can kind of craft her own mixed agenda and they can either go with it or not. And this this goes a little bit too. You know those tendencies that that Gretchen Rubin likes to talk about, where you know, if they're rebels, they're not going to want to be planned for, Like they're not going to want you to say, well we're going to do this, like they're gonna they're going to bristle at that. But you can say I'm going to do this and you could come if you feel like it, and then that may appeal to them. And you can kind of have your cake and eat it too by having the agenda that you want and having it either be family or time or not, but leaving that choice to them. I mean, this this does sound though, like it's a challenge. So I would also say that you know, sort of vague plans that can be done whenever are the sorts of things that the spontaneous sorts like to move around for reasons that are known only to them. I mean, I'm a planner, so I I don't you know, I don't get it, but but they do, you know, like, oh, but maybe in the mood moment, we'll feel like doing something different or whatever. But one thing you could do, though, is if you have like tickets to something. Even people are more spontaneous are less likely to kind of want to move that around, Like if there's already been some level of commitment like oh, you know, I got us tickets for X, And that can be a way of sort of planning at least one event that you know that that's what you're thinking of. You plan your energy for that family event and then maybe the rest of the day goes as it good. Or you can even just buy your own ticket and be like I'm going to that, and you can if you'd like, Because I also just feel like, I think this person needs to not impose there. They have to be very careful enough to impose their preferences of planning. No, that's true on the other it would be like, oh, this sounded like something really fun for all of us, and there's still more tickets available. I'm going available. Yeah, it's I mean, this is just the reality. And we're coming into the holidays here, like planning for extended families and trying to get everyone together to do something, and the reality is you can't ever please everyone, and there's always gonna be like someone who doesn't go to something because they don't like to do it, or they aren't feeling good, or it just you know, wasn't gonna work out for that. You can't. I think everyone on all sides has to just sort of be a little bit less sensitive to all of this. Just realize, you know, as long as we're to gather and having some fun time, you know, we don't need to have every day of an extended family get together be everyone doing everything together. And you're allowed to have your own stuff that you're happy with if you need a little bit of time away, you know, especially if this is like in laws, you can let your you know, spouse deal with it for a while while you go do something else. You know, just think about what you really would like for you to do over the time as long as it's not the whole day, maybe it's an hour or two of your stuff during the day, you'll probably be fine. And as long as you know you're getting to do your stuff that can often go along. Yes, extended family get togethers feel much better, I agree. Yeah, well great, Well this has been Best of Both Worlds. An episode where we've been talking with mel Johnson about being a single mom by choice and the logistics of becoming one and how she's dealing with that. So tune in next week for more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the Best of Both Worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.