Episode 187 with Abbie Halberstadt
Hard is Not the Same Thing as Bad
SHOW NOTES:
Throughout the episode, Abbie reflects on the messages she receives from parents, with a particular focus on the challenges of dealing with toddlers. Finally, she provides valuable advice: never base life decisions solely on the difficulties of the current season. Tune in to this episode to gain a fresh perspective on parenthood, personal growth, and the beauty of forging authentic connections in the journey of motherhood.
Check out Abbie's newest book here >> https://amzn.to/3PoQQNv
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
187 ABBIE HALBERSTADT
Ginny Yurich Here we go. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I'm so excited. I have a friend with me today, Abbie Halberstadt. Welcome.
Abbie Halberstadt Thanks for having me, Ginny.
Ginny Yurich This is awesome. It's so cool because we met in person. We were at a conference together down in Texas, and then we got to go to this really cool restaurant together with Stephanie, and it was this French restaurant. Well, that place was good, wasn't it?
Abbie Halberstadt It was really good.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, it was a fun time. I was nervous we were going to get back to late for the next sessions, but then I had the timing wrong, so I was nervous for no reason. But it was a great time together. It was so cool to meet you in person.
Abbie Halberstadt It was so cool to meet you too. And you really were nervous. We were all teased. We were like, Jenny, it's okay. We're good on time.
Ginny Yurich I was like, biting my nails. We're going to miss it. And then I was just totally wrong with everything that was going on. Actually, you were on the cusp of leaving to go to Europe.
Abbie Halberstadt Yes, that's true. Yeah, We were leaving like, three days later.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. So you did that and you took your family of.
Abbie Halberstadt 12, ten children? Yes. Yeah. Yes. And we took someone. We took someone with us, too. So there were 13 of us traveling together total.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. Tell us about that. You went to.
Abbie Halberstadt Everywhere? We went to everywhere. Yeah. I mean, I wish we could really, truly have gone to everywhere. It was a 45 day trip. We actually planned this trip three years ago. Four years ago, we planned it, and then we tried to execute it in 2020. And as you can imagine, it did not go well. Just like everybody's spring 2020 plans did not go well. And so it got canceled. Last minute. I was pregnant with twin boys. I would have been about four months pregnant at that point. And so I really think that, like God, nobody was doing like, hey, you do not need to be pregnant with twin boys, because just knowing how much walking we did, I mean, I knew we would do a ton of walking, but still feel like I kind of got saved from that. So we didn't know that we would ever do it again. But about a year ago, and I think June of 22, we started talking about the possibility again. And at that point that we originally planned the trip, it was eight kids. Now it's ten, a set of twins at the end. They're toddlers. It's just a whole thing. It's a lot. And we just really kept getting opened doors, Just, you know, maybe if we can find somebody to take with this so that we could go do things with older kids, then that would and we found the perfect person. And maybe if we can find plane tickets for a reasonable price, even though everything has tripled in price and without plane tickets for $500 a person and you mean just thing after thing, I can't fly to Philadelphia for $500. I mean, you know, we couldn't.
Ginny Yurich Go see each other for 500 bucks.
Abbie Halberstadt Much less travel there and back across the Atlantic. So we went to London and then we were only there for a second because when we originally planned the trip, we didn't know as Coronation Week because there was no Coronation Week when Elizabeth was still alive. That's how far ahead of I mean, we we planned it like nine months out and then kept working on it and fine tuning it and until the day we left because if you recall, we were picking up a passport for one of my two year olds. The day I do recall I was at that conference, we were like, we didn't cut it close. We went plenty early enough to get passports, but the passport office, like, didn't like its photo and rejected it. Even though they took his twin brothers photo. It was nuts. So three days before we left, we're still fine tuning details and getting passports because we were, you know, running. It was crazy. So we landed in London and ended up switching to going to Paris so we wouldn't be there during Coronation Week because it was just insanely busy. And we did Paris, we did French countryside. We hopped over to Italy into the twin Quatre, which like five little towns on the Mediterranean coast would have Venice and Rome. We did Tuscany. We did Bavaria, which was insanely gorgeous. We didn't do much else in Germany, and I would love to do more in Germany in the future, assuming we can ever I don't know. I don't know that that will ever happen again. It was probably a once in a lifetime thing, but it was so worth it. And then we went to Switzerland, which each place we went was successively more beautiful, which was kind of nuts. We were like, Wow, this is amazing that we go to the next place to be. Like, This is even more amazing. And so our last kind of big country was Switzerland before we hopped back over to London for a week and then we came back and that was 45 days and we had perfect weather, 99.9% of the time. It was constantly forecasting rain everywhere we went. Oh, you might be able to go out one day, but it's going to. Nope, never rained. It was sunny, It was perfect weather. I live in East Texas and it's really hot in the summer. So right now it's literally 106 before the heat index and our humidity is really high. So the heat index is like 117 and we're walking around like 68 degrees. No humidity in the Swiss Alps. And I'm like, I don't know if I could go. This is when we landed in Texas at 11 p.m. at DFW. It was like 90 degrees. And so that was that was kind of a shock coming back. But it was the best trip that it possibly could have been.
Ginny Yurich Wow. 45 days. And so I would imagine that most people listening would probably not consider taking ten kids for a 45 day trip to Europe, including twin toddler boys. And so this is the premise, somewhat, of this new book that you have coming out. You have two books. Your debut book is for Mama, hugely successful. Both of these books are absolutely stunningly gorgeous. Like, they're so pretty.
Abbie Halberstadt No, thank you.
Ginny Yurich And it's so cool that your friends it's like your friends have helped with this. Yes. With some of the different parts.
Abbie Halberstadt Yes. My best friend in the whole wide world illustrates them. And we get to work together. And we also have an art print business and a T-shirt business together. So the fact that we get to collaborate on the artist is really special.
Ginny Yurich That's like a dream come true. I worked with my best friend. Yeah, Right after high school, we lifeguarded together. Oh, fine. There is nothing like working with your friends.
Abbie Halberstadt You're right.
Ginny Yurich It's a really special thing to get to do that. So this gorgeous book, both of them are gorgeous. The newest one is hard is not the same thing as bad. The perspective shift that could completely change the way you mother. And so really, this 45 day trip is such a perfect glimpse into that concept that it is hard. You're dealing with time change, you're dealing with all sorts of unknowns. And that's a really hard thing with parenting. You don't know where are we going to eat, what kind of food are they going to have all of these different decisions that you have to make?
Abbie Halberstadt Yeah, Yeah.
Ginny Yurich When you're out of your routine. But it's not bad, you know?
Abbie Halberstadt Not bad at all. Right.
Ginny Yurich And so what a cool lead in.
Abbie Halberstadt I would say like we didn't really in parenting, I'm always encouraging parents to say, listen, exactly what you just said. I don't know the outcome. So, man, did we have a lot of unknowns. You're right about that trip. But we were just kind of like just going to go for it and see how it goes.
Ginny Yurich And you never would look back and say, I wish you wouldn't have gone. No. And I would imagine there was a lot of sticky parts. You know, kids get sick, You know, if you're gone for 45 days and you have ten kids, there's going to be meltdowns and there's going to be kids that are tired. There's going to be kids that don't want to do this or don't want to do that, or you just have so many extra decisions that you have to make. And sometimes you make the wrong ones or you make ones that make things a little harder instead of making it easier. And yet you would never go back and not have made those memories together. And so you do hard things. And I think it's a great little mantra to have in the back of your mind, this is hard, but that doesn't mean that it's bad. So one of the biggest themes in this book, which I really, really loved, was this theme of parenting as a venue for personal growth. Yeah, so we become a parent and it's hard for me, it was hard from the get go. I struggled. I have friends who ease into it a little bit better than I did. I thought it was hard from the get go. So then you're kind of annoyed that it's hard. I was annoyed, yeah. It was like, This is harder than I thought. And what in the world am I going to do? But your perspective here is that, hey, you're going to grow because of this. And you say there was a sentence that said, If we never faced another challenge in parenting, chances are we'll stagnate. And who wants to stagnate? So can we talk about.
Abbie Halberstadt The.
Ginny Yurich Ways that you've grown? You know, having ten children, how have you changed pre mother to mother? And why is all of this hard stuff good?
Abbie Halberstadt Right. So I would say that one of the main questions that I get asked, or maybe I'll put it this way, one of the main assumptions that people make about me since I have ten children, is that I must be naturally motherly. I must be just out of this world, naturally patient. I must be naturally just hyper organized. Like I must just have it together naturally, because otherwise I wouldn't do this. And I just giggle because, of course, there are people that have things together more than others, naturally. But I would not say that I'm naturally motherly. I would not say that I'm naturally super patient. I would say that I'm good with time organization, but not small stuff organization. And yet, what do little kids do? They bring in so much? I mean, your stuff multiplies. So this assumption that we're kind of supposed to have it all together and our ducks in a row before we tackle something hard is not really usually the way life works. So I would say that every mother I being mother, I was competitive, I was focused, I was an achiever. I was a productive person. That's kind of my personality. And those can all serve you really well in motherhood, but they can also hinder you when you start feeling frustrated that these little cute impediments take up your time and, you know, get in the way of your productivity and keep you from being X, Y, and Z. Right. And so the perspective shift there is not this child is getting in my way and keeping me from achieving, but instead this child is worth pouring into. And instead we focusing on my quote unquote, achievements. A child is not an achievement. That's not what I'm saying to pouring into this kid and answering the calling of mothering. Well. So I always tell people and they're always surprised by this as well, that for me and for my husband as well, he agrees with this. My hardest mothering years were when I quote unquote, only had two, and they were both incredibly small. Because you have zero perspective, you have zero guarantee that you're going to get a potty trained kid, a kid that speaks well, a kid that can follow instructions, a kid that can fold a washcloth or unload a dishwasher, a kid that can interact with you in an emotionally meaningful way. That's super fun, where you're like telling each other jokes. Like, none of that is available. There's the snuggles, there's the sweetness and the cuteness and those I've come to appreciate because you ask, How have I changed? I think as a really young mom and kind of a go getter personality. I didn't appreciate my first two baby years like I do now. I still loved how small they were and how cute they were, but I just do you just kind of can't grasp it when you're 23, how fast this goes, You know, how little of this squishy, snuggly sweetness that you get. And now with my twin toddlers, I'm like, Oh, you don't have to grow up. You're good. You're good. I'm so happy for you to be little and sweet and tiny. Even though toddlers are really, really hard. Like three is not my favorite age even now. And they are my ninth and ten three year olds that I've parented. So I hear a lot from moms that are like, Listen, I had a really hard first. I don't want to do that again. And I just really want to encourage parents like, you have no guarantee either way, you might end up with a super easy second or you might have had a really compliant first and could be like, Oh, I got this parenting thing down, you know, like we got this kind of thing. So I think more and more the Lord has just pried my fingers off and said, You're not the one in control anyway. You're not guaranteed a singleton. You might get another set of twins. You're not guaranteed easy toddlers, you're not guaranteed compliant teenagers, but you are guaranteed to grow like you're talking about and to change and to mature and to have your perspective widened and broadened as long as you're willing to not give up. So that's where I am now.
Ginny Yurich And here in time, the go getter personality is still there and it still sure comes out in other ways. And the venue for, you know, it sometimes it just comes in time, like maybe it doesn't come when you have just the two little ones at home. But in time.
Abbie Halberstadt Oh, absolutely.
Ginny Yurich You know, things change.
Abbie Halberstadt Yeah. And I encourage moms all the time who are looking at me in the season that I am now launching a second book, the first book having done well, that just blew my mind. And they're like, I could never And I go, Oh, you know, honey, you have two small children. You're in the trenches. You might not be there yet to whatever that there is. But a lot of so much of what I've done to get to the point of books and podcasts and blogs and all of that with little bitty pockets of time and kind of being faithful in the small things and inching forward and never knowing whether it was going to produce the outcome. That I was hoping and praying for, but doing it for its own sake because it was the right thing to do. Even if it didn't get a book deal, which was why I started a blog 12 years ago. But I don't know that I actually believed that was going to get me a book deal. You know, like you hypothetically, you're supposed to start the blog and then you get a readership and then you could pitch yourself and the Lord one up to me by I never I pitched myself way back when, and then I kind of stopped because it was clear that I was in a season that I really didn't need to be writing a book. It was going to be too much. It was going to be more stress on my family. And so he just kept saying, Wait, wait, wait. And then I got really content with just kind of where I was sharing online. And someone showed up in my inbox and was like, Hey, I want to write a book for us. And at this point, up to this point, the rest is history. Who knows what's going to happen next?
Ginny Yurich But and that's the thing. It's like, well, 12 years is a long time to do that is a long time to just be faithful in the small things and to just keep plodding away at what you're doing. I love the story. In the book we talk about having all your ducks in a row, but then you had a goose story, which I think really exemplifies the fact that you weren't the kid that was like babysitting for all of the neighbors. No, you were the kid that was like, Can someone get this toddler out of my lap? Can you tell that story?
Abbie Halberstadt Yeah. So I only have one brother. That's another big assumption that I get. Because if I have ten kids, I must have come from a giant family. Right this. But again, this must come naturally to me. And yet, if anybody examines their lives, so much of the things are the places where we end up are not where we started. And they don't look like what we expected, and they don't necessarily track with what our personality, quote unquote, should be doing. Right. So when I was about 12 years old, I grew up homeschooled and I was visiting with a homeschool family. That is what people think of the stereotype, what my family is like, what the kids and all this stuff. And it's great. It's happy and loud and wonderful. But I didn't have a lot of experience because I didn't have any younger siblings. I one older sibling these four years older than I am, my mom would have happily had as many kids as she could have, and that's just how many she got. And so I didn't have much experience. I'm sitting on the ground. We have just like jumped on the train playing in the water. So we're wet and sticky and I'm sitting on the ground in the grass, which is already kind of like an uncomfortable situation. And I see the two year old of this family backing his little caboose toward me covered in grass. And I'm just thinking, is he coming towards me? Like, why? Why me? And of course, he's picking me because I'm the new girl and this is fun. Like, oh, new friend plops down on my lap and I just know my expression was like, horrified. Like, what in the world? So, yeah, not naturally motherly, you know? And if, if a two year old backed up and plopped himself on me, now, obviously, I'd be like, Hey, but what's up? Like, this is normal. But it wasn't normal for me. It was a growth process to get to the point of enjoying that little stage. And it is different when it's your kids. I mean, something just switches in your brain and you're like, This one's mine, you know, and goodness, do I love him?
Ginny Yurich Yeah, But but interestingly, I think that there are some people that would say, like, I remember when I was 12, 13, I really like toddlers and I remember working in the church class and the vibes. And so like you said, some people have are naturally leaning that way or they have the experience. At least I'm an older sister, so I had younger siblings and here you are now as a mom of ten, never having a little sibling. And so you did it. You're doing it so you don't have to necessarily have that background in order to make it work. And I think the same is true for homeschooling. So we'll throw that out there too. Heading into this back to school season, the same things that you say about mothering can also translate to homeschooling. Like a lot of people have the same assumptions. You must be super patient, you must be super organized, you must be really smart, you know? And it's like, Well, no, maybe none of those things are true. Yeah, but you love your kid and you can still have a successful home school and really cool that you're a successful home schooler. So that always helps people, right?
Abbie Halberstadt Yeah. We made it. You made it.
Ginny Yurich You did. You did. So I love this. If we never face another challenge in parenting, we'll stagnate. I actually read this really interesting book called Humans Need Not Apply. It's about sort of like the robots are coming. But in the book, the author talked about how he knew a bunch of people that they'd sold their businesses, like they became wealthy, beyond wealthy and didn't need to work anymore. And he said that they totally stagnated in their personalities.
Abbie Halberstadt Mm hmm.
Ginny Yurich So it's kind of like we wish for ease, right? We wish, like, that would be a dream of anyone like, sell a business. Now, I don't have to work. But he was saying like, no, actually, you know, you become kind of this boring person. And he said he noticed it immediately with a lot of these people. So those little stressors and these hard seasons, they do a lot for us as well. So a such an encouragement in their parenting as a venue for personal growth. It goes all the way through and. And you talk about how we're not victims.
Abbie Halberstadt Mm hmm. Mm hmm. That's huge for me. We have a culture of martyrdom or victim motherhood that's going really strong in some arenas of motherhood. And I really pushed back against that. And it was her mama, my first book. Because we see the means about the day drinking to survive Our kids. We see the memes about if you haven't cursed at your kid today, you're not a real mom. And we kind of, Oh, yeah, they're there, you know, like if you haven't kind of muttered curse words under your breath and then you just haven't really been in the trenches of motherhood. And so I can't I don't relate to those personally, but I do relate to losing my temper or feeling irritated over silly things or, you know, not wanting my need. Time interrupted. So it's what we do with that. Are we honest with ourselves and saying, Oh, I might actually be contributing to this stress because I have a chapter in the book on that as well. Like you might be your own worst enemy because putting together a better schedule for yourself is hard and you don't want to do it. But then you wake up too late and the kids are up ahead of you and they've made a mess, and then you're upset and then you have to clean the mess. And the day just starts off bad and it goes from there. And if you had said, okay, go to bed an hour earlier, establish this better pattern. So, yeah, I do feel like we often say someone is doing this to me instead of what can I proactively do to improve this because we aren't helpless and we always have a choice. We always have a choice even when our circumstances are outside of our control. I have friends who have kids with severe special needs and they have had to learn to be so disciplined and to be so proactive and they are not victims. It's amazing the joy that some of them have even in the midst of the incredible hard to say, I wouldn't have chosen this. And yet now that I've experienced it, I don't know that I would change it because I wouldn't be the person that I am now if I hadn't gone through this crucible and I wouldn't have learned exactly what you were talking about if I were just sitting around on my desk in total ease, which is never motherhood. But if I were just sitting around and eating bonbons, I wouldn't be forced to be more creative and more resourceful. And my capacity for empathy and generosity and love wouldn't be stretched all the time. And those are all good things, even though we might not love the actual stretching process.
Ginny Yurich Right. Well, in this part about not being victims was very eye opening to me. I would say one of my favorite sentences in the book was when you said few things Crush my spirit as an adult more than being made to feel like a burden. And so just this sort of like, what do our kids in actually do? I quoted someone you quoted someone who who said, like my mom, we were a martyrdom. She barely survived. It has been really depressing for us children. So just the thought of when we portray that, you know, why are you why would you do that to yourself? That's what some people say to you, right? You have these kids.
Abbie Halberstadt And when you portray.
Ginny Yurich It that way, how does the kid.
Abbie Halberstadt Feel? Mm. So, so good. Jenny Because the kid doesn't feel good. But what you're saying is good because as a mom of many, there's kind of this assumption that there's open season. On commenting on the number of children that we have. Do we know what causes that? All of the kind of classic big family elbow to the rib cage type of thing? And I'm used to it and honestly, it doesn't offend me. I hear moms that are really offended by the phrase you have your hands full. And I just really very rarely find that to be truly like a mean phrase. It's just acknowledging like, you're busy, you have a lot going on. Look at all these kiddos. That can be great. But I actually had people say things like, I would kill myself if I were in your situation or so much better than you. You than me. I would hate this. And they don't take into account that little ears are listening and they are absorbing the fact that they might be the cause of someone's demise like that. Someone would actually they think, or at least they would carelessly say, I would rather be dead than have to deal with these small, wonderful humans. And I get that that's coming from a place of potentially overwhelm or thoughtlessness. But our words have such power. And so one thing that I always encourage one to and something that I am striving to practice always is whatever the comment is that we receive, I am turning it around to let my kids hear me say that they are blessings and I enjoy them. And I like your hands are full. Yes, they're full of good things. My goodness, you must be busy. We are. And it's so fun. Like they're so fun. You know what? I talk about this a lot, too. The assumptions in our culture can be really negative. Children are viewed as burdens. In many, many cases we have. Articles that are being released that say things like the most eco friendly thing you can do is not have children or humans with the virus or, you know, just kind of these really negative views toward humanity. Right. And so I think one of the ways that we can flip that narrative is instead of saying, woe is me. Even if you're having a bad day, it is not toxic positivity to look for the good. You don't have to gloss over everything and say everything is wonderful. If someone says, Goodness, two year old twins must be tough. The answer is they really are. But they're also a lot of fun. Like it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun. It can be both. And. And what I've discovered is so often when you choose to acknowledge the good rather than simply wallowing in the hard, it changes other people's perspectives as well. They will go from kind of like this wink wink, nudge nudge of we all understand that this is miserable to oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. Really are fun, aren't they? You know, who knows if they mean it or not. But I've had I've had moms turn around and say, wow, what a refreshingly kind thing to say about your kids. I'm just so used to moms complaining that I think that I just, like, got stuck in that mode or people complaining. It's not just moms. I'm not ragging on moms. We have a lot on our plates, but they'll say like, Oh, I haven't heard the response full of good things in a long time. Well, that helped me today, you know, And I think that's not just motherhood. We can do that in all kinds of circumstances where people are focusing on the negative. And you can say, man, I know it's hard and I can come alongside you and support you in that. But there's good here, too, just like we were talking about before in the growth. And it can it can change people's perspective and that's important.
Ginny Yurich Well, I love that. I love responding in a way that's unexpected. That's more fun anyway. Yeah. And I think I think to circle back to on the day drinking, because we've actually never talked about this on our podcast, but I want to throw this out there. I have a friend from high school who struggled with drinking post high school, maybe in high school and then post high school. And she's been sober for a really long time and she's so proud of it. She post about it. It's around like St Patrick's Day every year and she always posts about it this many years sober. And she's a mom, she's got two daughters and she talks about how the celebration of day drinking is actually really awful for her. And like when it comes to Mother's Day and it's like by the wine, all of these types of things, that it really is like something that she feels shouldn't be related to the two and it's getting thrown in her face. And so just a perspective I wanted to throw out there because I think that's another one of those things that's just so culturally dominant that you have to drink to survive it. And I think it's good to be sensitive and to know that there are mothers that maybe are really struggling with that. And so like, let's maybe not have that be the focus so often every time I see it, I just feel I feel for her and I just I don't like it, you know?
Abbie Halberstadt Yeah, Yeah, true. Very true.
Ginny Yurich Okay, so let's talk about friendships, motherhood, friendships with your friend helped you with the book, helps with your company. And there are there is so much joy in motherhood, friendships, but they are hard. And I would imagine you get a lot of questions about this. How do you find your people? Yes. How do you find your community? I'm lonely. I'm desperate. What do you tell people?
Abbie Halberstadt So I have been there in the I don't know about lonely and desperate specifically, but in the kind of not great friendship, you know, the toxic kind of We're friends, but we also just have this struggle and we grind against each other as opposed to the Bible talks about that is iron sharpens iron. So can a good friend sharpen another good friend? But it's not grinding someone down, it's sharpening them in a good way. It's not sharpening them for sharp words and sharp actions. It's sharpening them to be better and to be pointed in the right direction. And so I've had a couple of situations and a lot of good ones, but I had kind of a lonely season where the main friendship I was in was very good in some aspects and very hard in other aspects. And I prayed for a long time for the kinds of friendships where I felt like it was just a mutual flow of encouragement. And while that is not as common as I wish it were, it is possible. But it took a lot of years and a lot of refining in my heart and a lot of habit changes and personal growth before God gave me those kinds of friends. So one big encouragement to these moms is well to, I would say from a Christian perspective, pray for those friends that you don't even know yet. And then to be the kind of friend that you want to attract. So many moms are sitting on the sidelines wondering why no one's taking them, but they're not going out and picking anyone else either. And there's another mom on the sideline that would be thrilled to be invited over. And so this mom sitting on the sideline wondering why she's being left out of the click. Anytime someone message me about clicks, I tell them, Listen, you don't want to be in a. Group that doesn't want you in it. Like that's not where you want to be. You want to be somewhere where someone wants you. So go find somebody outside of that group that you wish you were in but doesn't seem to know you exist and befriend them and make your own group not to be a click, but to be welcoming to anyone that wants to join. And that's like surprisingly, a lot of people like, Oh yeah, I thought I had to be picked. I didn't know I had the power to do that.
Ginny Yurich If they had to be wild to be a home schooler talking about clicks.
Abbie Halberstadt Yeah, well.
Ginny Yurich Did you grow up with that at all? It's just something that's come out more from people asking questions online.
Abbie Halberstadt Well, and this isn't necessarily all just homeschool moms asking me. Of course, this is church cliques. This is which I wish didn't exist. Oh, but listen, humans, we like to find our people and then circle the wagons so that we feel special, like it's just kind of universal. And it takes a lot of intentionality to be generous with our time and our availability and our welcome to people. And so I it's funny that you ask about the homeschool thing. I think clicks can be anywhere. I mean, there's homeschool co-ops now where there's still going to be the popular kids and the awkward kids, you know.
Ginny Yurich Meaning the parents, meaning the moms.
Abbie Halberstadt Yes. Yeah, exactly. The awkward kids.
Ginny Yurich Well, this is really an amazing chapter in the book. So I think it's a common thing that gets brought up all the time. Even in our Facebook group, people are saying, I have no friends and what can you do? So you have a fantastic chapter in Heart is not the same thing as bad about finding your tribe, finding your community. You talk about how for you it just takes time that my most cherished friendships have developed slowly over time. And then you have this list of ten or 11 ideas. So one of them is make the first move, which is huge. That's what you're talking about. Another one is do it distracted. What do you mean by that?
Abbie Halberstadt Yeah. So I think that as moms, we can desire to have those coffee dates where we actually can finish a sentence.
Ginny Yurich Like this conversation, Right?
Abbie Halberstadt Like this conversation, you know? Yeah, I'm not a coffee drinker, but I know so many coffee drinker moms who want to just finish their coffee while it's still hot. That's a whole meme, right? So we idolize or idealize, I should say, maybe idolize this just strongly. Somebody could we idealize these mom connections that look like pretty kid connections, and that's not realistic. So most of my motherhood experiences where I'm connecting with moms have to do with talking to them while I am wiping a bottom and changing a diaper, grabbing something out of the cupboard for a kid, getting a snack, nursing a baby, bouncing somebody on my knee, answering four questions. And you know what? It makes you a master multi-tasker. Like you can keep up with 15 threads of conversation at the same time. By the time you're done with everything, you're like, Oh, wow, we covered a lot and it was very fragmented. And yes, that's kind of frustrating. But we did it distracted. We didn't just say, You know what, this is going to be frustrating, so I don't want to. That's another thing that I feel like I really encourage moms and is whether it's doing it distracted or whatever, you miss out on all kinds of opportunities for friendship when you're trying to get the ideal situation rather than just doing the dang thing right. It's just showing up is the first step for sure.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. And I tell you what, man, these are some good friendships, aren't they? Like in I feel like also, I'm friends with the kids. And my mom always said, have friends of all ages. That's what she always told me. So listen, I got a friend. Does he's eight or nine, you know, got friends in it, you know, And you know, your kids come over and certain ones are more talkative and you behind you bonded not only with the parent, but you also bond with the kids. And they're growing up. You know, you got a 15 year old, a 16 year old. Are you kidding me? You can have a great conversation with those kids. Now, you've known for a decade. You know, you've always been a part of their life. So I love the post kid connections. You know, you say we idolizes pre kid. No way. No way. I love this. There's nothing better. It's it's even different than like for me, it's like, you know, we in school, a lot of times it's like, well, you'd have a really good friend and you wouldn't be in class with them the next year. But this has been a growth of five, six, ten years where you really get to know people and there's nothing better. I think it's been Yeah.
Abbie Halberstadt I love that about homeschooling. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich And just friendships in general.
Abbie Halberstadt On the flip side. Yes. Well, and on the flip side, I love encouraging women to not reject or ignore the possibility of friendships with people who are much older than they are. So some of my best friends, the lady that does the editing for my book, she's not my editor. She's like one of my best friends, but she edits my books. In fact, Harvest House, my publisher wanted me to have or or offered me things like, Here, here's a dedicated editor for your second book. And I was like, I can't do it. I already have this friend, and we just work together well, you know, And they're like, okay, okay, you know, whatever works for your writing process. Well, she is 5758, and she's one of my dearest friends in the. Whole wide world and we get each other. And she has actually 12 children, but they are a lot older than mine. So her youngest three line up almost perfectly in age and gender with my oldest three. So we have that connection. She'll have grandkids running around like it's just a home. Schooling to me is one of the best aspects of home schooling, is that intergenerational inter age connection that is hard to achieve in a traditional school because it's segregated by age. And that's the kind of track with, like you say, you're not necessarily going to see that person again. You're not necessarily going to have a five, six year relationship unless you're in the same class. So those older Titus, two women that can pour into you are amazing.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, I have friends of all ages. Yes, I love that's when my mom always has good advice and that comes from her and I love it. And even you talk in that chapter, too, about sometimes it's hard. And you had talked about this like I really related to this. Someone sent you a hard email and you do you do say, I'm a much better friend for having weathered less than ideal relationships. So that happens. I think it's important that you put that out there like it's not always rosy and there's hard things, but you just talk about the power of our words because someone sent you an email and you say, I only read it once, but, but all those words are still in my mind.
Abbie Halberstadt Mm Yeah, that's from like eight years ago. And I can still remember full phrases and I literally read it once and I was probably in shock while I read it, you know, like that just waves of, you know, just like, I don't know, hard emails are hard. Yeah, yeah. Don't send hard emails. Have hard conversations. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich I just know that even you like when you talk about, you know, you have this friend that edit your book and she's 57 and you have these, you have really solid relationships at this stage in life, but there's also been some hard instances and we've had that too. So I just think it's good for people to know that it's not always going to be perfect, but you're going to grow through it and we're going to find people that you can really be close with and do life with. So I love that chapter. On Mom friendships. You also talk about doing things afraid, and I think that someone would look at you and think, Oh, she must never be afraid. But here you are. You know, you're.
Abbie Halberstadt Not.
Ginny Yurich Coming out with a book. And I feel this way. I think you feel well. I remember a couple of years after I had started writing, which actually writing is not my forte, but I started writing. And then another mom came along and she was doing something different and she was in a different situation, Like she had less kids and her kids were in school or they were in daycare. And I just remember thinking like, I can't ever be enough. That's kind of how I felt like, you know, and sort of the start of I'm not ever going to be able to put into this at the same level maybe as someone else. Or so those fears start to creep in. Yeah, you can only do what you can do. And and your first priority is raising your family. And, you know, we do the homeschool thing. Yeah. So how have you dealt with your now coming out with the second book, Ten Kids? How have you dealt with fears along the way?
Abbie Halberstadt Well, so coming at it from a Christian perspective, I'm just going to say that I feel like the Lord was gracious to kind of just move me along inch by inch. It's kind of I was talking about before it was do write a blog post, get a social media account, even if this never goes anywhere. So I talk in the book about how I had I don't even know that I can name the three figures that I talk about in the book, but one was I wouldn't have an audience to bring to a publisher. Another was that I wouldn't have anything to bring to a conversation that was adding anything, right? And the third was that if for some reason somebody decided to give me a book deal, it wouldn't sell. And the Lord has answered every one of those fears in your head. So there's a quote from Elizabeth Elliott in there that basically says, sometimes the fear does not subside and we must do it. Afraid so. There are so many things we are called to that don't make a lot of sense. That would be way easier to just avoid that. As you say, we don't feel enough for and I think that's by design. We aren't supposed to feel enough. I don't think we are enough in our own strength. And yet we keep doing them because we have this conviction and we have this passion and we have this knowledge over and over again. And we have people like my husband, who is my favorite human in the entire world, saying, You do have a voice. What you're saying does matter. You need to keep going. I believe in you. I mean, that sounds so cheesy like a Disney movie, but it's so valuable because we've talked about how our words have value and the fact that there's someone that I trusted more than anybody else in the world was telling me, You can do this, and I want you to keep doing this because it has worth like, I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to cry. But he really inspired me so much to keep going. And then the lady that I was talking about with the 12 kids from the moment I gave. The introduction of M is her mama. She told me it was going to be a bestseller. Guys, I didn't believe her because that happens to other people and I was almost afraid of its being successful because then what do you do? Who knows what will happen kind of thing and how I would handle that, or juggle that or whatever with everything that's on my plate. But she said, No, no, this is going to do really well and it's going to reach a lot of women and it's going to have an impact for the kingdom. And do you know what being told from the very beginning of your book that what you're writing has value and is going to have an impact and is going to reach people, does for your heart in your mind, like it just energizes you so much to keep going and then the fear doesn't matter as much anymore because you're still afraid. But you're you're hearing this is going to be worth pushing through this. And it has been. And each thing that has been added to my plate, I feel like has been at the right time for it to be a season where it could work as opposed to those moments ten years ago where I was trying to force it and I had an agent wanting me to message him and I just did it because the Lord was like, Now you're not ready. This isn't the season. It will cause stress. And now to ask my husband because he was saying the same thing You're doing good work. Keep going. But I don't think this is quite the right time to do this. And now he's like, Man, I don't know that we could fully articulate all the reasons why this works as well as it does right now. But we are not more stressed by this than we are working together as a family. And sometimes he's he was there for that conference that you were at and he was sitting out there in the audience grinning at me the whole time, which is like the best thing ever. It's so much fun. So I could not have foreseen in my fear that I might not sell more than ten books, you know, that I might achieve like the the name on the book, which had been a dream and a goal since I was probably six or seven years old. I wanted to be an author. That never changed. Wow.
Ginny Yurich I didn't know that.
Abbie Halberstadt It's like the one thing in my life that has never changed. Yeah, I mean, it is. If you had asked me what I was going to be when I grew.
Ginny Yurich Up, Gaby, how could.
Abbie Halberstadt Know? And it finally came to fruition when I was 39 years old. So I really want to encourage and it was the perfect timing, like it really was the right time for it to happen. If it had happened earlier, I think it would have been a little bit of a hot mess too. So yeah, so I want I want to use that to encourage people that are doing things, afraid that you may not be to the place of saying like, why this is what you're being called to, or what if the timing is going to work, but saying it is not the same thing is bad.
Ginny Yurich You have to trust day by day.
Abbie Halberstadt And that's the way to.
Ginny Yurich Live life, right? You don't know five years down the road. And from a biblical perspective, then there is that verse that says the word is a lamp on to our feet, which I've always loved that one. It's like, all you get is the next step. A lamp does not give you much less right. It gives you don't get a spotlight for five miles.
Abbie Halberstadt Yeah, it's not it's not a big floodlight. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich And you get a lamp. And I think if you live that way, then it works out. And I had read a quote that really meant a lot to me when I was in those years with toddlers and kind of really looking around to see what everyone else was doing and feeling a little like less than or a little unsure of myself, like, should I be doing more? And I read a quote that said, As a mom, you can do everything, just not all at the same time. And I love that. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's your story, too, right? 39 Did you have a dream for 33 years from the time you're six years old? That's a long time to wait. But the timing matters. And here you are, you having to do all these podcast interviews, you're having parties, you're running a launch team, all of these things. It has to be in the right season or like you said, it's going to derail things and it's really going to be hard for everyone, hard for you, hard for the kids. It's got to be in the right timing. Let's hit one more thing, because you say you get the most messages about toddlers.
Abbie Halberstadt I do.
Ginny Yurich I love toddlers.
Abbie Halberstadt Oh, well, I'll bless you. I do, too. I do too. Truly. And yet I always tell people it is so fun. But it's also fun, you know?
Ginny Yurich But you have some good things you're like. And I think one of the biggest ones is that, look, we have to know what they're developmentally ready for. So you say, Look, there's some things that I have my hills I'm going to die on, but a lot of things you got to let go and know that they're going to grow out of it, which I think is difficult when it's your oldest one's. Yeah, that's right. You talked about the hardest season was your to help us but demanding kids because you don't know if they're going to outgrow. And then you go down the line and you're like, Oh, that was a phase. You don't really know that at the beginning. Well, what advice you give people who are struggling with the season of toddlers.
Abbie Halberstadt So one thing that I hear a lot is family planning based on hard seasons and whether it's family planning or buying a house or schooling choices, I am all about telling people do not base big life decisions on the hard season that you're in right now. Like don't decide to never have another toddler based on your current toddler's insane behavior. Like this is not the be all. And he actually will be wiping his own. But when he's nine years old, let's just put it kind of out there, like really far away. And you're like, I can't make it till he's nine years old. I'm like, Well, then make it one more day. That is a huge piece of advice. You don't have to have this kid graduated when he's three. You have to be kind and self-controlled and generous hearted to the best of your ability for five more minutes right now, because then he's going down for now. Someone asked, Hey, there's probably somebody that that is making some snarky comment about my response yesterday. And what do you want to know? Wednesday I do this Q&A every single Wednesday, and someone asked me, what's your favorite thing about motherhood today? And I don't think people expected my answer, but it was the truth. So my almost three year old twins are just getting to that three nature phase where they want to do all the things that are capable of doing all the things that very much so frustrates them when they want to do all the things. And they're not capable of doing all the things right here. It's this wonderful tension of developing autonomy, but also not really having the ability to handle that autonomy well or the emotional maturity to respond to it. Right? So they literally screamed at me all yesterday morning about everything about the watermelon that they asked for, and then got about the plate that they demanded and then got like, you know, if you've had a toddler, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And I've had ten kids and ten toddlers. I was actually doing the math. I'm like, what's what's the percentage? Because I would be I have ten kids. I would be pretty representative. Right? We can work in 10% increments, right? What's the percentage of toddlers that are, like, naturally compliant and children? I think I've had three ish, so I would say 70% of toddlers just naturally developmentally are going to go through a real hard time at some point and struggle with that need for control and need for autonomy, but not the ability to really get there yet, which is where that awareness of developmental things is so key. So what I said in response to that question was not I learned morning time, which I do with my kids Bible reading and reading books and breakfast and Chill and sunshine. Yeah, that's great. I didn't say that. I didn't say I love family walks. That's great, too. I said, I love the fact that it is naptime right now and that even though I have been screamed at all morning, it doesn't have to define my day and I get to have this moment of reset. And when my toddlers get up, they're going to be warm and snuggly and they're going to want to snuggle with momma and we will just get to start the afternoon over. And that's such a mercy as a mom, right? Even as a mom who's done this ten times. So I'm sure people weren't expecting that. The thing I loved about motherhood today was the fact that my toddlers were asleep and we were heading toward a reset. But sometimes it's the truth, you know, so you don't have to have them graduated when they're three. You do have to make it till nap time without losing your ever loving mind. And it's key to recognize and I talk about this in that chapter, that you can do that even though they can't because you're an adult. As much as we have to be aware of their developmental things, we have to be aware that we're well beyond them developmentally. So we can't act like a toddler because our our toddler is acting like a toddler.
Ginny Yurich Yes. You talk about that. Our responsibility as adults.
Abbie Halberstadt Yep.
Ginny Yurich It's a big thing. We bear the weighty privilege of being our household emotional thermostat. So that's a big thing. Getting outside. Help me with my toddlers. I mean, they're occupied out there. And you, if you have to find respite like ours, didn't nap our stop napping, you know, 15 months. They're not even a tardy a toddler yet.
Abbie Halberstadt Jimmy Oh, my goodness.
Ginny Yurich And so we didn't have that. So I had to find other ways. And there are other ways. And I think that there are things that can help occupy your kids. You know, they talk about little bit of water, the hose, all these different things.
Abbie Halberstadt Absolutely.
Ginny Yurich You need some respite you can find at different places. And it is what all moms need. You need you got to have a little bit of a break there. So whether that's nap time or something else where they're just playing peacefully for even just a few minutes and you can reset. So I love that in toddlers, they grow out of the thing.
Abbie Halberstadt Yeah, they do.
Ginny Yurich They sure grow out of the things. And then like all the cliche things, you kind of miss it, you know, you miss how cute they were in the sound of their voice and all that stuff. So.
Abbie Halberstadt And all the cute words they say.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. It definitely changes. Abby, this has been so awesome. What a gift to have met you in person, to have listened to you speak down in Texas and to have read your beautiful books and is for Mama is the first one. They're just they're pretty like, Isn't it nice to have a pretty book?
Abbie Halberstadt Oh, man, I am. I'm shallow that way. Like 35, 50 bucks.
Ginny Yurich And they're both pretty. They kind of they go together. And as for Mama, yes, heart is not the same thing as bad. The perspective shift that could completely change the way you mother. That phrase is rolling around in my mind all the time. Now, heart is not the same thing as bad people can find you a is for mama dot net at m dot is .4. mama on Instagram and then you. Have your podcast. So tell us briefly about your podcast. It's new ish within the last year, correct?
Abbie Halberstadt Yes, I started in January and it is kind of the long form. I mean, not terribly long, 30 minutes long form answers that I do on Wednesday. So if on Wednesday you get a little slide about others on the podcast, you get two whole episodes. So I get to kind of flesh it out. It's like having just, well, I don't do coffee, but, you know, I'll drink hot chocolate, you drink coffee, we'll sit down and chat. I love it. I love.
Ginny Yurich It. So people can check out the AMA's Mama podcast as well. Abby, this is awesome. And your new book is just coming out right when this podcast launches so people can make sure they grab that. It'd be a great gift, partially because it's just so beautiful to you, but a great gift for your mom friends. You know, you give it with like a little bouquet of flowers. It's like, so cute. I love it. Yeah, it's a fantastic book. So I really appreciate your time. We always end our podcast with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?
Abbie Halberstadt Oh, well, as much as I didn't necessarily connect well with that one time that we jumped on the trampoline and then I ended up with a toddler in my lap. That was a good starting point. But one of my favorite things that my best friend and I, who was also homeschooled, used to do is we would get up super, super early in the morning and we would get all our school done. So, you know, our parents were like, If you're that motivated, man, you do your 3 hours of work in the morning, we'll check it, we'll do some of our other work at some point during the day. And then we would play all day long. We would have I don't know what world this is that we didn't have cell phones and our moms were just dropping us off in the middle of the town square. But they would drop us off in the middle of the town square and we would walk outside to the library. We'd go inside, we'd go to the soda shop. Would they pick us up? We'd come home and we'd soap the trampoline, you know, like just get it really soapy. And then we would pretend we were jumping into outer space and we were in the clouds and all that stuff. And just like, just those memories of the freedom all day. I mean, we spent probably 90% of our days in the sunshine just doing random cool stuff that kids do, you know? And it was just pretty magical.
Ginny Yurich What a child that Abbie Halberstadt has a book called Balanced and Barefoot, and she talks about having all day playdates, which that wasn't even a word when we were growing up, but make it last all day, because then the kids really have to work through getting bored and they have these deep relationships. I love that. Abbie, thank you so much for your time and congrats on book number two.
Abbie Halberstadt Thank you so much, Ginny.
