Messages for the Working Parent—and Other Medical Parents—Out There

You hold so much in you—in your mind, in your heart, in all those pain spaces that ache when things are out of your control.

I have had the kind of life that is hard to explain when people politely ask, and it feels hurtful when, after they ask, they are already looking past your shoulder for an excuse to exit the conversation.

I cringe when clients ask me how I am doing, even though they are just being polite. I cringe because it’s a very loaded question these days, and it’s not my session.

Working full time—and, for many of my colleagues, working full time for yourself—can feel extra hard and lonely when your outside-of-work life is experiencing stress, or sadness, or grief.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my outside-of-work life. I wouldn’t change a thing. The messy pile of random Tupperware in the cupboard that often pops open, spilling out our eclectic display of misfit containers. The sounds of my youngest swing dancing in the kitchen to some album my partner is introducing to us all, enhancing our musical appreciation. I crave those messy, silly, joyful moments when the stress hits.

I sit there, session after session, with some five-to-seven-minute breaks in between, holding my clients’ pain with them, exploring it, sitting in it with them, offering some insight. Some of it lands. Some of it misses. I care so hard. And I know that sometimes I need to pull back a little and let them be in it while I am the healthy witness.

This is similar to parenting kids with medical conditions. It’s different, too, though, because they are my kid. I hold space, but in that holding of space, my body is bracing for the worst-case scenario. I can’t help it when it’s happening.

And this worry—it breaks my body at times.

I walk slowly with the pain, knowing: this is sorrow, this is grief, this is worry.

When I have to cancel sessions and clients seem frustrated, I want so badly to tell them: There is one of me, and my kid comes first.

But it’s not their story to know. It’s not about me. It’s about their care.

And sometimes I wonder if I am not the right therapist for them if they can’t handle a therapist who sometimes needs to cancel because her kid has a procedure, or more tests, or some sort of setback. I feel like I am holding a secret from them, so I try my best to be professional yet transparent. It’s a careful balancing act that sometimes I fumble with.

I wonder if there are other therapists out there like me. Those who have been in the field for a while, who are caring for a family member—or two—who has medical “stuff.” How do they manage?

Short-term disability insurance for a small practice costs a lot of money each month just to have. I know I need it, and yet I can’t seem to figure out how to afford it. The systems created for situations like mine also cost a lot of money, and without being part of a giant machine—a bigger practice, hospital system, corporate job, and so on—I am left wondering how to make this all possible while still giving myself the much-needed flexibility to continue showing up for my family in the ways they need and deserve.

I have learned the hard way that it’s brutal out there.

Bigger practices can run like the machines we all swear off once fully licensed, like businesses that lose sight of the human part of things. I think some of the best treatment I received was while working for a bigger entity, when an HR rep quietly told me about a certain type of FMLA I could apply for, allowing me time off without jumping through all the HR hoops often required when you randomly need time off for family emergencies or situations.

I yearn for a day when I find a soft landing in this helping field I have been called to work within.

I truly love it. I love my clients. I love the programs I create, hoping they reach people who will benefit from them.

I don’t love how difficult it is to pour your heart into helping others while the system is designed in a way that often leaves your own cup empty, with nothing left for you at the end of the day. Often because of bureaucracy and the overall reality that you can work 60-plus hours a week and much of it is unpaid.

I sat with someone today processing just that. How lawyers charge per email, but social workers helping kids and families are often expected to return emails quickly, even though this work is unpaid. How insurance companies have codes we can use for phone sessions or emergency meetings with families about the kid, but then often don’t approve the claim after we spend the hour writing the note and submitting the claim for said emergency meeting—or after talking on the phone with the kid’s school counselor.

Where I choose to land is here.

With the struggle, along with the freedom to care for my family in the way I need to.

It’s hard sometimes, and not so hard on other days. I will keep shifting my perspective toward what is good while also accepting the things that are out of my control. But I will also keep raging against the fucking machine, because people working in the helping field have been used and abused for far too long.

And maybe that is the strange dance I am trying to name here.

I am a working parent. I am a therapist. I run a business. I am responsible for showing up for my clients and holding so much with them. I am responsible for keeping that business running—for getting notes done, submitting claims, following up on claims, paying bills, and somehow making sure there is enough money coming in to keep doing all of it.

And I am also a parent to a child with a medical condition.

I depend on insurance companies to pay me for the work I do, while also depending on insurance companies to approve the care my loved one needs. I spend hours navigating systems that can randomly deny a claim for a session I already provided and, in another part of my life, deny a test, procedure, medication, or piece of medical care that someone I love needs.

I depend on the machine while also raging against it.

I need flexibility because sometimes my kid needs me. Sometimes there is a procedure, another test, a setback, or something unexpected. I need to be able to stop working and show up. But the protections supposedly designed for those moments can feel almost impossible to access when you work for yourself. Short-term disability insurance could help protect me if I needed time away, but the monthly cost of protecting myself from the possibility of not being able to work becomes one more expense I have to figure out how to afford while I am still able to work.

It is a very strange dance.

Trying to be present with my clients while carrying my own worry. Trying to run a business while navigating systems that seem to forget there are actual human beings on the other side of every claim. Trying to earn enough money to care for my family while also needing the freedom to step away from earning that money when my family needs me most.

Trying to hold all of it without letting all of it break my body.

I don’t have a neat answer for how to do this. Some days I feel deeply grateful for the life I have built. Some days I am exhausted by how much work it takes to keep it all standing. Most days, both things are true.

My anger is stabilizing, informative, and medicinal at times. My sadness is evidence that I am tired from the fight, but also that I am in need of rest so I can keep shouting when my voice returns.

And maybe I am writing this because I wonder if there are others out there doing this same strange dance.

The working parents. The medical parents. The therapists and helpers who spend their days holding other people’s pain while carrying their own. The people running businesses because they need the flexibility to care for someone they love, only to discover that the price of that flexibility is often having fewer protections when they themselves need care.

If you are somewhere in this strange dance too, I hope this reaches you.

I hope you know there are others out here trying to hold all of it, too.