Ann Imig's Blog, page 10

Now she’s the mom and I got to spoil her

This post is sponsored by Luvs.

Ten years ago, my life-long friend Megan would sit for hours in my living room, cuddling my newborn to her chest or playing with my toddler, listening to me detail the prior night’s wake-ups and current day’s kid messes. Trust me, this constantly-interrupted and totally uninteresting diatribe is even less captivating if you’re happily living the single/no-kid life as Megan was at the time. Regardless, she generously gave me her patience and presence, and my kids her super-snuggly arms.

One of the many evenings my husband’s job took him to another city, Megan came for a visit and surprised me with a bag full of new bath products. She kept me company while I cried exhausted tears into the peony-scented bubbles, which–mercifully for both of us–made the bathroom smell more like a spa, and less like a state-of-the-art competitive potty-training facility.

She was always the first sitter I hired; not only because of our friendship over decades, but also because of the tenderness she constantly showed my kids. Years before becoming a mother herself, Megan possessed the unique ability to be fully present with children–whether feeding and changing them, or playing action figures.

Now, a decade later, she’s the mom of a little boy, and I get to be the extra pair of snuggling hands, the bringer of comfort, the listener, and yes even the occasional diaper changer.

When Luvs asked me to select a parent to spoil, I knew exactly who to pick. Megan is in those full-immersion mothering years that provide ceaseless moments of both wonder and stomach viruses, laughter and sleep-deprivation, motherhood soul-filling, and personal-identity-outside-of-motherhood soul-searching.

Luvs armed me with plenty of diapers for her two-year-old, and a generous gift card for my spoiling-a-parent spree. I shopped with Megan in mind and remembered back to life with a toddler. What luxuries did I crave, yet rarely if ever afford myself? It was the little things that provided an immediate lift–things that didn’t require much effort or planning lest they become yet another chore to add to the never-ending parental to-do list: a manicure and pedicure, a babysitter included for the manicure and pedicure (because why bother otherwise), gourmet chocolates. And a little lipstick really does make a huge difference to a weary lipstick lover, which Megan most definitely is, so I got her three in accordance with the mandate to spoil .

 

I brought Megan the gift yesterday. She cried. We all ate the chocolate. I got to read to her son and help put him down for his nap. He gave me several delicious toddler hugs. She’ll schedule that mani/pedi soon and then I’ll babysit and get even more toddler hugs. Share the love, indeed.

Luvs is encouraging parents to “Share the Luv” this February with fellow deserving parents. Also – to make sure everyone gets to share in the Luv – Luvs is offering a great money-saving opportunity with a $1 print-at-home coupon.

Visit http://www.coupons.com/brands/luvs-coupons/ to access a Luvs coupon of $1 off any one diaper pack.
Print the coupon at home and use it at any mass, discount or grocery stores where Luvs Diapers are sold.
All Luvs Diapers are included in this particular offer, except trial/travel sized diaper packs.
Print-at-Home coupons expire 30 days from the date the coupon is printed by the consumer.

Luvs Ultra Leakguard Diapers with NightLock Plus™ are softer and more absorbent than before, with large stretch tabs for easy fastening, ultra-leakage protection and a money-back guarantee.

This post is sponsored by Luvs. All ideas are my own. 

Sunburst Arms

I wish I played an instrument. My parents bought me lessons in both piano and violin, and I had no lasting interest nor talent for either. Maybe most kids don’t, and maybe it’s up to the parents to coax and push their children through. In any case, my parents had enough coaxing and pushing to do while navigating their day-to-day reality of divorce, blended families, and four kids in co-custody.

So, my voice became my instrument of choice. I sung constantly. I sang passionately, and I sang well. That said, no matter how deftly 8-year-old me belted the full score of Annie while gazing out the backseat window, there were only so many Tomorrows my family could abide in any one day. Given that it took us kids 90 minutes to clean the kitchen, my “you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the FACTS OF LIFE! THE FACTS OF LIFE” refrain did not provide an ersatz “hi ho hi ho it’s off to work we go” vibe (more a shut up shut up shut up already vibe).  No matter how deftly I crested the full “What a Feeling” Flashdance soundtrack standing on the couch in the living room, no applause greeted me. Unless you count the chorus of slamming bedroom doors. My family would eventually become loyal devotees, but during my formative years they weren’t yet fans. It didn’t faze me. I sung to sing, period.

Singing both filled me and emptied me. It served as an outlet for self-expression at an age too young to make sense of what I wanted or needed to say. It filled me with a longing for the stage that allowed me to dream about my future. I spent hours learning the lead roles to musicals my parents had on 33 RPMs; from Peter Pan and Annie as a girl, into my teenage years studying Luisa in The Fantastiks, Eliza in My Fair Lady, Kim MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie, Morales in A Chorus Line, Hodel in Fiddler on The Roof, Lola in Damn Yankees, Coco in Fame, Marian The Librarian in The Music Man, then Cats, Phantom, Les Miz, and the Disney movie musicals. I went on to play many of these very roles in high school and young adulthood. You can credit my landing those roles with talent and excellent teachers, yes, but especially my early habit of practicing for practice sake, combined with the tenacity and drive that comes with having a dream.

Me as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady

 

See, as opposed to my experience with attempting to learn an instrument, practicing singing never felt like a chore. Musicals introduced me into a new family–a family that relished a shared electric jolt from tight harmonies, who appreciated the sacred silence of “places” and stood earnestly in tableau behind a scrim as the curtain rose, whose souls burst with joy along with our sunburst arms. Song provided both an escape and a coming home, all at the same time.

 

Me as Judy “Number 23!” in A Chorus Line. Sunburst arms!

 

I may never learn a musical instrument, and I admit I sing rarely these days. Had I the means to accompany myself, I think my kids would’ve grown up singing with me and not only at bedtime (although having an opus sure helped calm fussy sleepless babies). I regret that, but also appreciate how in my coming-of-age, music gave me joy and not rote task-master drudgery.

My career coach once asked me to notice what it is I’m doing when time seems to fly by–that these clues serve as powerful guides toward finding work we love. As 2017 begins, I have no plans to learn an instrument, nor to take up singing again in any serious way, but I will pay attention to what I’m doing when the hours fly by–when my heart and mind harmonize, and my arms sunburst.

How to Turn 10

Open your bedroom door to the morning of your ten-year-old life. You are the first one awake and you wear footie pajamas; they are skull-and-crossbones manly footie pajamas with a shelf-life that extends comfortably into double-digits. Even if they squish your toes a bit.

Follow the candy-interspersed-with-Pokemon-cards path on the floor that leads to the kitchen. Your shuffles and the packaging wake your mom who mercifully fell back asleep despite waking up at an ungodlike hour fearing the surprise would be ruined by your going to the bathroom, because she and your dad actually said YES for once to the overpriced enormous icee at the movies last night. Your dad bounces out of bed immediately, which you can’t remember ever seeing on a weekend.

“I can’t even hold it all” you exclaim as you dump the MikeandIke JellyBellies Airheads and Pokemon packs onto the kitchen counter while taking in this sight…

Your older brother emerges despite his late night at a sports center Bar Mitzvah party where he wore a velcro suit and threw himself against a velcro wall for 3 hours.

He greets you with “Open a pack.” He wants to see if you got any good Pokes.

“Ummm, how about Happy Birthday?” mom redirects your brother. She has to use her teeth to form the consonants because her lips are busy smiling super big.

“Happy Birthday” your older brother, he tries again. He means it. Everyone agrees you should open a pack of Pokes even though everyone really wants to put donuts in their mouths as soon as possible.

Before your parents even brace themselves for the inevitable Pokemon card brand-new-pack-all-crap-cards anticlimax, you let out a gasp– you score a MewToo Ex. This is good news and this is only the first pack! Celebration/relief ensues.

Mom suggests lighting the donut cake on fire. Everyone sings and she shows you the “10” made by the cruller and the sprinkle donut on top. Your older brother asks for just one airhead, please? Your birthday brings not only candy and Pokemon cards, donuts, presents and new snow–your birthday brings power.

You get the DS game and the Harry Potter book and an owl puppet with a head that turns around. He looks a lot like Hedwig, but you might return the owl because the puppet you really want is a human puppet that says bad words on YouTube.

It’s 8 am and you’ve pretty much gotten everything you wanted plus that anime action figure that hasn’t even arrived yet.

Your dad eats 3 or 4 donuts and goes back to bed. You and your brother go to the basement for your favorite past-time; video games and rage. Your mom drinks her coffee and watches new snow falling, wondering about tracks the single-digits maybe left behind in their haste to leave the Imig household once and for all.

My kids are genuine helpers now, not fake helpers-in-training

As part of their #WhatULuv campaign, the folks at Luvs asked me about what I truly value and feel thankful for as a parent. The following immediately came to mind: My 9 and 12-year-old are now genuine helpers–with the capability of actual helpfulness–instead of fake helpers-in-training. For instance:

My kids now empty the dishwasher and put away the dishes, instead of emptying the dishwasher and leaving everything on the counter they “can’t reach.” I called them out on the “can’t reach” counter when they could rest their elbows for prolonged emptying-the-dishwasher breaks in the very cupboard where the mugs belong.
Now that they have huge feet, I can slip on the boys’ shoes when I need to run to the mailbox, and **bonus** we can all steal each others socks.
When we rake the leaves they actually rake the leaves and complain, instead of push them around in circles and complain.
In a pinch I can get a decent back massage from my sons instead of what amounts to a toddler mole-check.
Best of all, my children no longer require gear they can’t carry in their own backpacks, and they can get themselves dressed and out the door (when “dressed” means flipflops in 37 degree freezing rain).

 

Honestly, my kids help out quite a bit–they even do their own laundry, even if the dirty socks they leave all over the house never actually make it into their laundry. Regardless, a cozy warm clean(ish) house and healthy happy kids tops my gratitude list, and Luvs helped keep my kids cozy, warm and dry in affordable diapers during those long diaper decades years.

Luvs recently introduced the new and improved Luvs Ultra Leakguard Diapers with NightLock Plus™. Softer and more absorbent than before*, with large stretch tabs for easy fastening, ultra-leakage protection and a money-back guarantee, Luvs provide features babies and parents need for less cost than premium brands.

Join the #WhatULuv Twitter party hosted by @iConnect and @Luvs, on November 29th, 9-10pm EST to share what you value as a parent.

COUPON!! To make sure everyone gets their share of value – Luvs is offering a great money-saving opportunity with a $1 print-at-home coupon.  Visit http://www.coupons.com/brands/luvs-coupons/ to access a Luvs coupon of $1 off any one diaper pack. Print the coupon at home and use it at any mass, discount or grocery stores where Luvs Diapers are sold. All Luvs Diapers are included in this particular offer, except trial/travel sized diaper packs. Print-at-Home coupons expire 30 days from the date the coupon is printed by the consumer.

This post is sponsored by Luvs, as part of my ongoing work with Luvs Most Valuable Parents.

Join me at Madison Women’s Expo!

Grab your people and head to the Alliant Center for Listen To Your Mother live-storytelling this Saturday November 19th at 11 am on the DreamBank stage! Enjoy funny and moving true stories from Erin Clune, Beverly Davis, Cate Guggino, Jane Wright Jones, Jessie Loeb, Jolieth McIntosh, De’Kendrea Stamps, and me!! Then “explore, engage and experience” Madison Women’s Expo’s treats, shopping, speakers, entertainment all weekend long. Find discounted expo tickets here.

 

Join me for a lighthearted soul-filling event. Hope to see you there!

Again

A week before the election I had a vivid nightmare. I dreamed of election night, of sitting with my once-senator uncle and rabbi aunt as we awaited an “October surprise.”  We had received word that something big and damaging was about to go down, and we turned on the TV just in time to watch a Nazi flag unfurl inside our nation’s capitol. We looked at each other with stony expression, with a shared understanding–not of an immediate threat to us personally–but that our own country had reached this moment in our lifetime, happening in real time before our very eyes. As soon as the flag dropped, hundreds of protesters stormed into the rotunda chanting NO. NO. NO. That’s what I woke up hearing in my head. No. No. No.

This dream sobered me to the extent I shared it with my mom and a few friends. Even my sub-conscience felt extreme, and I relegated it to the generational trauma we now know is literally imprinted in our DNA. I knew the dream related to the rise in and more mainstream antisemitism and racism virulent on social media–plaguing journalists and online friends as a direct result of Trump’s campaign–coupled with the hate speech on display at a recent UW football game (which was initially defended as “free speech” by administrators).

I put the dream behind me, chalking it up to the darkness I carry, and that can halt a perfectly pleasant exchange with an innocent bystander in its tracks; for instance should they ask me where I get my sense of humor and I say something like Jews are funny because we need something to distract people before they kill us.

***

Fast forward to Election night. We sat in the hotel suite watching the returns, periodically turning our heads from the screen to each other–our eyes screaming No. No. No.

As Trump’s electoral college count climbed, I thought one thing: Here we are; Again.

Again; the place our elders implored us with warnings over, the reason for the slogan Never Again and “the why” behind terrifying childhood lectures and lessons over the holocaust. Beyond knowing our history, the reason we tour museums and memorials and some people even the concentration camps themselves. We seek to understand how the holocaust happened, and how we make sure it happens Never Again.  It’s the reason we bear witness to hard-to-hear narratives and films depicting the brutality of chattel slavery, the Jim Crow era, and the fight for civil rights–Never Again.

Listen. I’m not suggesting a final solution scenario is imminent, necessarily, so bear with me and keep reading. As my brother pointed out to me recently, there’s a whole spectrum of cruelty and torture a nation can inflict on its people before mass extinction.

I do, however, believe we’re standing in the vestibule with the door open for Again.

As overly-simplistic as it is, for many years I think we white people took for granted a fragile confidence that our nation had come to its senses–at least in the north–and understood that while bigotry remained a dangerous threat, that sick collective conscience had been treated, even while violent flare-ups occurred. That confidence, however, for me and many members of my family began eroding as we learned about the enormity of modern America’s toll on people of color–mass incarceration, police brutality, poverty, and inequity. We’ve watched it play out online and in our communities–yes in the north too, in our own state–and wrestled with how to effectively lend our voices and use our power for resistance.

Watching the KKK-endorsed candidate win state after state on our map–the one who not only failed to disavow his white-supremacist base but actively encouraged them–I realized that for disenfranchised Americans the scars of the collective trauma of the Holocaust, slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights era have healed to silvery remnants too easy to fade into the background, and too easy to relegate to that seldom opened history book belonging to another time and other people–regardless of the fact that many of the problems still exist.

Today I taste a drop of that metallic fear my friends of color have to swallow on a daily basis in large quantity in this America; The fear of sending your kids and loved ones into a world hostile to their very existence. And the fear mixed into daily life for my family living in Israel; the fear of geo-political and domestic instability, new wars requiring new drafts… and involving very personal sacrifice.

Please do not give me assurances. We have no idea what is to come, what our families might face, and what will be asked of us–especially when our president-elect is busy filling his transition team with  and anti LGBTQ extremists. White supremacy is on proud display, but this time with hoods off.

The election is over and I’m no longer trying to reach the unreachables–those that ignored Trump’s own deplorable words and inexcusable actions. My arms will need to reach wider than ever before and lift others like never before–those getting hijabs torn off their heads, or sitting in cafeterias where their classmates chant BUILD THAT WALL. Even while I understand the real frustrations and problems in our country that contributed to a Trump vote, third party vote, or total abstention– if you didn’t do everything in your power for Never Again–if you voted your pocketbook or your anger or your independent-minded values–you might have your first answer to that famous moral question about Hitler’s rise: What would I have done? Except they didn’t have the benefit of recent history to learn from. We do.

I am not hysterical. I do not fear for my immediate safety today, and do find encouragement in articles like this one. However, my eyes are wide. The red flags are unfurled. They are waving.

8 years of blogging, 8 tentacles still spinning

original ann’s rants header taken by Husband

 

Eight years ago I felt like an octopus. An octopus with a mom cut. One tentacle permanently affixed to sippy cups, the second reached for a clean diaper, the third nabbed a kid mid-air before falling on his head (always on the head).

My fourth tentacle Heimlich’ed tortilla chips or sushi rolls out of esophogi, had the mess cleared the bill paid and the family gone from any establishment within three minutes. My fifth tentacle precision-paused the VCR (VCR!) the exact moment on the Healthy Food video when Muppet fruit faces popped open their eyes, giving my toddler–who demanded to watch said video on repeat regardless of abject terror–time to run and hide behind the kitchen island.

A sixth tentacle changed crib sheets and scraped dried up forgotten cat puke found by lucky playdate guests. The seventh sprayed the bathroom ceaselessly in a futile effort against toilet misses and, really, the entire phase of life. My last slippery tentacle feebly clutched the landline and/or a beer, while venting to my mom or girlfriend and waiting for my husband to return from his travels. On the occasion my tentacles had 17 minutes to themselves, they ranted here. They reached out. They found YOU.

Next came somewhat of a reprieve known as parenting grade school kids. Husband traveled less or not at all, and some of the tentacles got to rest some of the time–even relaxing into date nights and girls’ nights and exercise. An iPad replaced the TV. A Wii replaced the VCR. We began watching tolerable PG movies for movie night. I got to pick out clothes for the boys–fancy formal wear like jeans–and they consented to wear them instead of say, track pants. Husband and I took our first vacation in a decade, with only our own tentacles and whatever we chose to do with them. The kids still hurt their heads, the cats died. Blissfully, the Heimlich disappeared from the regular rotation.

And now? Well holy logistical hell basket we have an almost tween and an almost teen and my tentacles are spinning in a pencil-top fury. The first tentacle nearly always grips my iPhone WHEN I CAN PRY IT FROM POKE-HANDS as I try to manage the constant onslaught of texts and emails and notifications with actually living a life, looking into alive faces and finishing one complete thought/putting that important thing I can’t forget on the calendar before PING BUZZ MOM PULL OVER THERE’S A PIKACHU.  The second tentacle pops the car in reverse only to put it back in the garage to make sure the karate gear or soccer balls made it into my trunk from Husband’s car before he left town, and that I have whatever dish I promised to pass. My third tentacle tries 13 different passwords for 13 different team sign-ins and doctor charts and school communications apps, while the forth auto-ejects across the room to close the fridge doors because WE AREN’T EVEN FINISHED WITH DINNER YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY NEED A SNACK, AND DO NOT ASK ME FOR DESSERT BEFORE I EVEN SIT DOWN TO EAT EVEN IF YOU ARE HOSING THOSE GREEN BEANS LIKE A CHAMP.

The fifth tentacle is making sure we have clean soccer socks even though the kids now “do” their own “laundry,” while the sixth tentacle occasionally remembers to scan search histories and bust a child for playing Xbox with people he doesn’t know on Yom Kippur whom he calls “friends in Arizona” because IT’S 9 AM ON A WEDNESDAY AND IF THOSE “FRIENDS IN ARIZONA” WERE MINORS THEY WOULD BE IN SCHOOL IN ARIZONA RIGHT NOW omg.

The sixth tentacle plans a Bar Mitzvah for Mr. Bowl Cut Board Book pictured above, while the seventh is producing events scheduled through May 2017 featuring hundreds and hundreds of tentacles from eight years online and trying to support my community while I binge online TV series self-help books sugar and infuriating election news. Warning: election news may cause manic mutant recessive additional tentacles to spawn. 

My eighth weary protuberance splits time holding my brain in my head and my hand on my heart– fending off desperate requests for a kitten (of course I TOO WANT A KITTEN but not as much as I DON’T WANT A KITTEN) reading aloud to Nine (that baby in bibs with feet now bigger than mine), and savoring the occasional sound of Twelve’s Torah portion chanting, landing me every time in a sublime and super specific awareness of now. That and clods of dirt and grass from soccer cleats all over the floor. Better than cat puke, any day.

Here’s what I know. On the my life is hard spectrum, mine falls in the fully-resourced not hard at all quadrant. These are the tentacles of a full life surrounded by love and plenty. This busyness of raising healthy future adults and nurturing my relationships while honoring my own ambitions may leave me looking discombobulated and feeling overwhelmed at times, but it’s also the antidote to the loneliness and disconnect that plagues so many. Thank you for sharing the last eight years with me and taking the time to wrap your own tentacles around me, my family, and my words.

***

ICYMI, I made this video announcement for Listen To Your Mother’s grand finale 33-city season. Makes me pretty darn proud. Hope you like it (click here if you don’t see the image).

 

 

 

Happy Jewish New Year! What’s on your Do-Better list for 5777? #ImJudgingYou giveaway

May this be a year of love and kindness

May strangers come to be friends

May truth and compassion always guide us.

Amen

This #NewYearPrayer song came through my Facebook feed this morning via NYC’s famous 92nd Street Y, and as I play it on repeat it holds a hopeful grip around my heart. If this were 2009, I might embed the song on a loop for this post, but then I’d immediately have something to repent for come Yom Kippur. For those of you blissfully unaware of the auto-playback, in ye olde blogginge days of yore some foolish folks arranged it so when you’d visit their blog a song blasted each visitor hello (and then goodbye as they ran to slam the door to that website, never to return.)

  A new year, a good year, a chance to all start over. A new year, a sweet year, a chance to bring us closer.

 


In celebration of the new year,  I’m celebrating a chance for all of us to do better by giving away a copy of the bold, hilarious, and urgently important brand new New York Time’s immediate best-seller: Luvvie Ajayi’s I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual

 

From life and culture in general, to social media and fame, I’m Judging You could be subtitled “Laugh and Get Woke 101” and should be required reading for all of us. We can all do better, and Luvvie shows us how with her thought-provoking irreverent no-holds-barred guide, complete with slang conveniently annotated and decoded for even the whitest among us (raises hand).

 

 

 

This book inspires you to contemplate and confront what you think you know, expanding your worldview and loosening your TMJ from wide-mouth cackling. Bonus: I’m including this journal designed by Molly Campbell for you to write down your own Do-Better action plan, or you can fill it with your favorite Luvvie quotes like:

 

Christians swear up and down that Jesus was a white man with blond hair and blue eyes. Did the Bible say he had hair of wool? Maybe he was rocking a Jew-fro, since he was actually Jewish. How did y’all come up with this Jesus who has hair that’s been flat-ironed so straight, I’m left wondering what anti-frizz spray he used? Was that how he used the myrrh oil the wise men brought him on his birthday? (I’m Judging You, p. 141).

 

 

As I enter the Jewish High Holy days, I will be considering my own Do-Better list. How will you Do-Better in 5777 ?? Leave a comment below with an item from your Do-Better plan, and I’ll pick a winner at random (continental US for shipping, please).

 

p.s. Locals, don’t miss a chance to hear Luvvie read from her new book as part of the Wisconsin Book Festival coming up soon at 9pm on October 22nd!

 

She’s a warm funny-as-hell truth teller.

 Me and Luvvie at SheKnows #BlogHer15 meet-up in Chicago. Note: I have no explanation or justification for my hand placement, but Luvvie this is one place I can definitely Do-Better. 

When fear shows you the way

This summer I told Robin, my career coach of 15 years, how tired I felt from lugging fear around with me all the time. She responded “Maybe it’s time you made friends with fear. It doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere soon.”

Her words shot straight to my gut. Instead of facing fear or trying to hide from it, what if I simply made room for fear? What if I let fear out of the trunk and let her ride in the passenger seat? I’d already fed her half a bag of dill pickle potato chips, the least I could do was give her a little leg room and a butt-warmer.

The rest of that week I thought about the role fear played in my career path; how it held me back. I wondered what might happen if I chose to hold hands with fear instead of constantly trying to run her down, or suffocate her in the spare tire compartment where she smashes out my tail lights flailing SOS SOS SOS in my wake.

I got to thinking; I’ve been afraid of Listen To Your Mother since the day it expanded. Until that point in late 2010 I never want to lead an organization or manage people. NeverEver. was my stated intention to the universe. I never wanted my own business, and entrepreneurship never entered my vocabulary, not to mention my identity. Yet, I never let fear stop me. I filed an LLC, I trademarked my brand, I entered into agreements, I hired consultants, paid lawyers. I became a producer overnight, formed a leadership team and developed a curriculum of training and resources to teach others to do the same. I learned how to serve and lead–at the same time. I learned how to sit with uncomfortable conversations and turn them into powerful conversations.  I edited a book and media-trained myself with each interview. I learned skills and endured situations that frightened me and still do. I felt afraid all the time, yet I always pushed onward.

As I wrote about fear and LTYM in my homework for Robin, the answer jumped out at me in magic marker letters: I never let fear stop me, because fear actually served as my guide this entire time. 

Whoa.

It turns out if you let fear in the passenger seat, she might tune the radio station to precisely what you need to hear–that while you considered her something rotten and possibly eating through the wires of your engine, she was actually holding your hand the entire time, navigating you toward a version of you and what’s possible for you that you could never have dreamed for yourself.

Thelma and Louise photo

For the past year I explored and conversed, analyzed and spread-sheet-ed, dreamed and contemplated the future of LTYM. All potential avenues–in a variety of different sectors–required years of hustle, investment and resources on my part, and on the part of my leadership team. Mostly on my part, as founder.

I considered LTYM’s mission, where we’ve been and where we go from here. The beauty of having a clear, strong mission from the very inception of a project is that it provides the true north for your organization as it navigates twists and turns. A mission also gives you a gauge for progress. Every decision made for LTYM circles back to that mission statement, and that mission delivers clarity every single time.

While the mission continues to serve, seasons are changing all around me,  including and especially my own and that of my family. Instead of tiny children demanding my focus minute-by-minute during weeks-long seeming days, the weeks and months fly by like days and college and retirement demand a shift in focus and priority.  Blogging and the online space–plus the way people consume media online– is in a vastly different season now than it was in 2010 as well. Everything has its season, everything has its time (Pippin).

Robin worked with me over the summer and it became clear that the time had come to go big or go home. Again. I say again because LTYM has done nothing but go big since day one. The leadership team and I– we knew that going big in a big way–again–wasn’t feasible for many reasons, but also agreed that bigger didn’t really move our mission forward*. We didn’t want LTYM to become the TV show that runs too long, collapsing from fatigue and losing its integrity, not to mention its energy, focus, audience, and impact along the way.

Meanwhile Robin said to me “You know this is going to end eventually don’t you? Endings are part of the natural life cycle of every single thing. Ending is part of the process.”

I felt afraid of the end, and that fear showed me exactly where LTYM needed to go next. It’s time for me to hold hands with fear and ride with LTYM into our most meaningful season yet–our grand finale! I hope you’ll ride along with us all the way to Mother’s Day 2017. Our full city line-up will be announced soon. Subscribe to the LTYM newsletter for updates.

Read the LTYM 2017 Grand Finale announcement here.

 

Join me next week at the DreamBank where I’ll share more of this personal story about how LTYM took off in 2010, and how I built my wings along the way. I know schedules are full-to-bursting, and if you can squeeze in my talk at the Thursday 9/8 at 6:15, I’d love to see your supportive smiling faces. Register here for this FREE event.

What do you do when your dream takes flight before you’re ready? Ann Imig experienced it firsthand. When her stage show, “Listen To Your Mother,” became a national and social media phenomenon, she suddenly found herself leading a huge project involving thousands of people. Ann will share her unplanned journey and the lessons she’s learned about letting go, trusting, having faith and finally building her wings.

 

*Thank you to my dear friend and brilliant LTYM Madison co-producer Darcy Dederich for showing me the difference between bigger and forward as I wrestled over all of this.

#7FirstJobs By The Grade School Columnist

You have to admit it’s been practically forever and a day since you’ve heard from me. But I’m really into lists and check boxes and excellent pens that write perfectly so I say why not? That’s why not! Get it? Hahaveryfunny Ann Krinsky.

Here are my first 7 jobs of my life: Don’t tell because these are b.s. baby games for the first jobs.

Driving and parking on my bike. My job is take you to Mom’s or take you to Dad’s or take you wherever you want and no you don’t need to ride a bus or even have Megan’s mom give you a ride home. I will pick you up and drop you off and maybe we will even go rent a VCR because this is your lucky day. While my pretend children are at figure skating and flute and beauty school, I am biking in circles and doing talented tricks like an arabesque with one leg in the actual air, or both legs through the handle bars while my butt is on the seat still. I’m great at driving and parking even though sometimes I forget the kids if I’m reading the new Dynamite or walking down to Glenway to buy Tangy Taffy.
I run a store in my room! What you need for store is something you can slide over something else for your credit card machine. That’s the whole job unless it’s Christmas and we are preparing to make old Chatty Cathy’s Christmas dreams come true–like that she’ll have another disk to stick in her rib so she can say something new for once that isn’t all static and way too fast or way too slow, or maybe she would enjoy a back without a pull string in it. Or maybe she wishes she was a new doll that wasn’t an ugly antique that I shouldn’t have cut the hair on. Maybe she doesn’t like the bob I gave her, but everyone knows you can’t get long hair for Christmas. That’s duh or I’d have a pony tail instead of 27 bobby pins. I don’t even celebrate Christmas but we sell Christmas dreams in my store just like I say in my commercials in the bathroom mirror.
Setting the table. Barf.
Babysitting is a real job and I get paid and it’s super boring and I never feel normal watching Hill Street Blues on someone else’s couch. I worry if three bowls of sugar smacks was inappropriate and if they’ll wake up and yell GOOD MORNING WORLD ANN KRINSKY ATE ALL OF OUR BREAKFAST AND NOW WE HAVE NOTHING TO EAT.
Bus boy. I have a real job when I’m only 13 (ESP ALERT PSYCHIC ALERT!) I almost drop the dish tubs because the dishes are so heavy but I must pretend it is all no problem. My goal is to work the cash register in the deli because nails look good on a register. But here is a problem: like I don’t even get how people count money backwards when they make change. This might alter the course of my future. Like growing out my hair, But that would change my life in the good nails way not the bus tub way.
I am going to be the World’s Best Camp Counselor who mainly focuses on the boy counselors instead of on my campers and gets that constructive criticism in her performance review. Whoa am I ESP or WHAT?? Told you so. This doesn’t even happen until I’m 18.
Famous Broadway singer psychic blond Esprit Model wife of The Flamingo Kid (hot!), Ricky Schroeder (babe!), or David Addison (old but totally in my league I hope!)