Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Journeys to Belonging on today’s episode 3 of my #oneword2023 bittersweet or the feeling of bittersweetness. Today I’d like to talk a little bit about why bittersweet is my word for 2023. In the first two episodes, I talked a little bit about the journey of my life and my reflections on the bittersweetness that I’ve experienced already. But you might be wondering why I chose this word for 2023. Last September, my daughter had twins, a boy and a girl, and my son had a baby girl. So I’m a nana of three now and so excited to be a grandma, but the bittersweetness part is that I don’t live near either of them. My daughter lives in Boston and my son lives in New Jersey. That means I have to decide when I can spend time with them.
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Of course, my home is in Kuwait and so I have family there. My husband is there most of the time although he sometimes travels and visits the grandchildren with me. So I think you begin to see why my feeling moving forward is bittersweetness. First of all, because I am constantly saying hello and goodbye to family. In addition, my mother is 98 and lives in Buffalo and I haven’t seen her since last July. Normally, I see her three or four times a year and usually spend quite a bit of time with her, but with the grandchildren now, my nana-ing has taken priority I talk to her several times a week on Zoom or Skype, but it’s not the same as being with her. Luckily, she has terrific neighbors, friends, and my sister and nephew live nearby, so she has people coming by and she has company, but it’s not the same as when I stay with her for several weeks or months at a time. I’m hoping to visit her soon since I’m currently in Boston with the twins, and I’ll be spending a couple of long weekends with my granddaughter in New Jersey.
So again, you know it’s balancing who I visit; the sweetness of being with them, and then the bitterness of having to say goodbye. Missing milestones of the babies and then coming back again and of course, missing Kuwait where I’ve lived since 1984 and I you know it’s it’s ah it’s a constant now in my life. This bittersweetness. And so besides that, there’s also bittersweetness in relation to balancing my personal life and my new role as a nana with my professional role. My second book is about to be launched by Edumatch Publishing on February 21st. It’s called Pathways to Belonging in Education and is a companion resource to Journey to Belonging: Pathways to Well-Being that was published in 2021. My latest book has a number of lessons and contributions from amazing educators and I have also added some lessons, tips, and stories.
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I miss the professional part a bit but not completely because I have committed my time to being present with the babies and supporting my children as they kind of go through the parenting journey. I want to support my daughter as she heads back to work at the end of February and my son-in-law as he begins his PhD. journey. My professional journey is really important, so I have expectations that I’ll be back in the game over the summer. But again, that’s the bittersweetness: What I love is part of my life and my passion is the thing I work on in terms of education and supporting educators. But there’s a time and place for everything, so I think that bittersweet is the best #oneword for this year. It helps me stay focused on exactly where I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to be doing right now.
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There are things that I maybe can’t have right now or have chosen not to be involved in right now and when I see others who are very active on social media and doing lots of things that I’ve decided not to do right now so I have to kind of keep reflecting and putting things in perspective because I’ve made the choice to really focus on being a nana and supporting my children. I feel so blessed to be able to do that right now because I’m retired and I don’t have full-time obligations, which is wonderful. Not every Nana can do that. Also, I’m grateful that I have the financial means to be able to travel back and forth to be there for my kids and my grandkids. It’s exciting and daunting and as I said I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things more actively in the next few months.
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So this will be the last episode for now about my #oneword bittersweet although I will probably revisit it midyear and then I’ll reflect again at the end of 2023 on how Bittersweet affected my journey during this year. In the next few episodes, I will talk about my journey as a nana, especially in regard to belonging I mentioned in an earlier episode. I really want to emphasize how important it is to create a sense of psychological safety and a sense of belonging in even the youngest children. I’m talking about starting from the first days of life and creating an environment where they feel they can trust people and their surroundings.
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So the next few episodes will be what my journey’s been like and how I have been able to or made an effort to create that sense of belonging through words and actions and just modeling that for my children, the new parents. I’m excited to share that with my listeners. I plan to record the first episode within the next week and publish it. Until then, stay well, and please keep in touch online by commenting about the episode and subscribing to your favorite podcast player.
