Parenting

A vote of confidence.

Hello! Hello!

I have an offering. An invitation, if you will.

Reading and participating in this community of really great Dudley The Fox friends is significantly better (imo) once you leave your inbox and join us on the Substack App. So I am inviting you to take just a moment to sign up (it’s free). I have included an easy little button below to get you on your way.

Once you are on the app, then we can interact and sincerely engage via comments, notes and subscriber chats. Also, I bet once you join you will find some of your absolute favorite reading there. Topics including, but not limited to, news, fashion, business, finance, food, parenting, entertainment, bitcoin, and travel written by people you know and love and those you don’t know with whom you will fall in love. I pretty much promise! So trust me and give it a try.

xoxo - WRW

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Dear Friends,

I have been thinking a lot about you. The truly amazing person you are. How you have impacted my life in such wonderful ways. What lights you up? What keeps you up at night? What do you need and what do you want?

In thinking about you, I also detoured to ponder the same questions of me. I am lit up writing and exploring how I can really hone what makes my offering awesome for you. As a matter of fact, I was driving my son home from school the other day giddily telling him how wonderful it is to fall in love again with a purpose. That even though writing vulnerably, yet hopefully smartly, what I have learned and processed, is hard work and takes a lot of time, it is such a worthwhile joy.

The things I contend with, on the other hand, in the quiet, private recesses of my inner world are my son’s health dynamics that he and I have been navigating for the past 8 years. Lyme and inflammation of the brain. Two separate yet simultaneous conditions. Additional co-infections as well. I hesitate to write about it. I do not want to further solidify what we are working so hard to erase. To eradicate.

Instead I remind myself, “My son is whole. He is perfect. He is complete. He is healthy. And so it is. It is written. It is done.”

And yet the years have collected, collated, reams with which I could write a book on our journey and especially on the unbelievable agency to which my son has shown a commitment, beyond his years, to do what it takes to heal. I am constantly in awe of this amazing person, who happens to be my son.

I also struggle with the dynamic tension between educating that same son, my burgeoning middle schooler, around healthy lifestyle habits, enforcing subsequently “unpopular” rules, and allowing him to grow with adequate autonomy. Sometimes it feels like I am either trying to push my son up a rapidly flowing waterfall in an attempt to get him to do what is in his best interest or dousing his sometimes questionable, yet age appropriate, desires with a fire hose.

I think of all of these incredible parents I know and admire who truly are raising amazing humans of all ages and stages. And yet, like me, they toil on whether they are doing right by their children.

A family with two young children on the verge of a mid school year, cross country move to the Hamptons. (Can I go please?)

A family whose oldest decided to forgo applying for Early Decision in the college application process despite the increased chance of getting into a preferred school of her choice.

A family whose son struggled last year in school socially, creating feelings of isolation and ostracization for both the child and the family within the school community.

A mother and father with two school aged children embarking on divorce.

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All of us want the absolute best for our children. All of us agonize over the decisions we face on how to best confront what we must. Questions rattle around within us.

“How do we leave the special community and connections we and our children have forged for the unknown?”

“How much is too much when it comes to encouraging our child to do what we as parents think is in their best interest, versus allowing our child to make their own college application decisions?”

“How do we support the needs of our child socially and also compassionately remind ourselves that ‘this too shall pass’ as we figure out what our son needs to thrive.”

“Do we divorce or stay together for the children?”

We tie ourselves in pretzels often trying to deliver the absolute best that we can for our children. We agonise. We ache from the idea that our children may falter especially at the hands of our navigation. We struggle. What should we do? We churn our options, our research, our conditioning, our worries against our faith that everything will work out for the best. Against our lack of control.

I am too close to my own situation. However, I am not too close to yours. I hear you. I witness you. I know you.

And I see the most extraordinary mothers and fathers who are raising joyous, kind, resilient humans. No matter a left or right turn on the arc of their journey, they will continue to shine their light on the world. There are many routes to get to the same destination. Just as your life has traversed many roads, bending in directions impossible to truly know where they will lead. And here you are bringing forth your own, forgetting perhaps that you were once a similar iteration.

So may I remind you of what an amazing parent you are, whose dedication to this profoundly hard job is evident as seen in the incredible children at your side.

While so much easier said than done, let us parents pause in our worry and trust the unfolding.

With love, xoxo, WRW

P.S. Please share what’s got you excited these days and/or what you could use a little tenderness around. Hope to connect with you in the comments over on the Substack App. You can easily and quickly join by tapping the button below.

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