The Sandwich Generation Isn't A Metaphor - We're Literally Being Eaten Alive

Are you a Gen X mom raising kids AND caring for aging parents — while navigating perimenopause or menopause? You're not alone, and this episode is for you.

In this episode of Why Am I Yelling, we're talking about what it actually means to be the sandwich generation right now: the financial stress, the invisible labor of managing a parent's healthcare, the brain fog, the burnout — and what actually helps.

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WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE
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00:00 — Cold open: 
05:00 — Who we are: the Gen X context
11:00 — The real stressors (financial, health, mental load)
23:00 — 7 tools for the overwhelm
31:00 — Grief: anticipated and the unexpected ambush
41:00 — Gratitude (the kind that's actually earned)
47:00 — Closing: the yelling is love

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IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT
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→ The sandwich generation financial squeeze — supporting kids and aging parents at the same time
→ Perimenopause and menopause symptoms while caregiving
→ The invisible mental load of managing a parent's medical care
→ Anticipated grief: losing someone slowly while they're still here
→ Unexpected grief: mourning the life you thought you'd have by now
→ 7 practical tools to manage caregiver overwhelm
→ What real gratitude looks like in an impossibly full season

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YOU MIGHT LOVE THIS EPISODE IF...
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✓ You're Gen X and feel like you're holding everything together with duct tape
✓ You have aging parents and kids at home simultaneously
✓ Perimenopause or menopause is part of your current reality
✓ You've cried at something small and couldn't explain why
✓ You need someone to say "this is genuinely hard" and actually mean it

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CONNECT + SUBSCRIBE
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If this episode resonated, share it with someone who needs to feel less alone — because those people are everywhere and they're usually pretty hard to spot from the outside.

🎙️ Subscribe so you never miss an episode
📲 Follow on Instagram: @whyamiyellingpod
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Why Am I Yelling is an independent podcast about real life in midlife — the mess, the grief, the gratitude, and the moments that make you wonder why you're yelling when really, you just love everyone so much it hurts.

#WhyAmIYelling #SandwichGeneration #GenXMom #MidlifeWomen #Perimenopause #MenopausePodcast #CaregiversOfAging #AgingParents #MomPodcast #MentalLoad #GriefAndGratitude #GenXWomen #MidlifeMom #CaregiverSupport

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello, yellers! Welcome to Why Am I Yelling? Musings from a middle-aged menopausal mom who's really just doing her absolute best, which is some days extraordinary, and some days it's just getting everybody to Wednesday. I have had a week, you guys, I've had a week. We've had some car trouble this week. I have a kid who is on an eighth-grade trip, comes home tonight. Uh, there's just a lot of stuff going on. Um, and I um saw this, I don't know, story or meme or something on the interwebs that was talking about the topic we're going to talk about today, and it kind of tucked at my heartstrings a little bit because I've been there and uh, you know, have experience in this. So I thought, you know what, it's probably time to have this conversation. I am your host, Krista Rizzo. Welcome. And if you're new here, pull up a chair. The water's warm. Make yourself a cup of something, I don't know, strong, warm. You're gonna want to stay. Uh so let's hop into the episode that I want to talk about. I've been thinking about it for a while because it's stuff that I've actually uh coached on and uh done keynotes on and webinars and things like that, and it's actually something that's happening to the Gen X generation in this season of our lives. Uh, we are considered the sandwich generation. Uh, we are the middle of the sandwich, stuffed between two ends, and those ends are our children and our parents. We are the people who raise themselves on things like MTV and benign neglect. And we now find ourselves raising kids and parenting our parents simultaneously, while also apparently going through full-blown hormonal hormonal identity crises. So there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on over here, everybody. Today I want to talk about the real stuff of it all, right? There's financial stress, there's the health stuff that happens for you know them and for us. Uh, there's grief, which is very important to address. There's grief that sneaks up on us, uh, and the grief that you know we can see coming from a mile away and still are not fully prepared for. And because, you know, I believe deeply in not leaving you in the wreckage, we're gonna talk about what actually helps, real things, not just try journaling things. Although, yeah, also try journaling, it does help. And we're gonna end with gratitude because I truly mean it. Even on our hardest days, and there are definitely hard days, there is something to hold on to. All right, let's go. So, who are we? Here's the Gen X context segment, right? So, I want to say something that I think a lot of us need to hear out loud. We were not prepared for this. And now, to be fair, nobody is ever really prepared for anything in life, let alone midlife. But Gen X has a particular flavor of unpreparedness, and I want to name it because I think it explains a lot about why we feel the way we feel. So let's set the stage. Uh, I was born in 1972, uh, and so in somewhere around the early 80s, right around 10 years old, nine or 10 years old, probably 10. I was probably 10. Um, I became a latchkey kid. My parents had always tried really hard to be around for us when we were in our elementary school ages. I had a younger brother who was two years younger than me. So um, you know, my mom had sometimes worked during the day, my dad worked at night. He was a police officer in New York City, so he would have work nights, so he could be home with us during the day, and they like swapped those schedules for a long, long time. And then I guess they thought I became old enough to be uh responsible enough to be at home by myself or just with my younger brother for a few hours after school, right? So we were latchkey kids. We were the generation that came home to empty houses and made our own snacks and watched way too much unsupervised television. Uh, our parents were often working or figuring themselves out, or some, quite honestly, not just that emotionally available. And not because they were bad people. Let's say that too, right? That I'm sure that exists in in places, right? I mean, there definitely are not so great parents, but I think for the most part, you know, they tried and they did what they could with what they had, right? My parents tried to be present. I know there were other parents who tried to be present, but it wasn't the same way that we are being present for our kids. And I will say this: every parenting generation wants to be different from the generation before them. So their generation was different from their parents' generation. My generation and the generations behind me are definitely different from each other, for sure, right? But when you're talking about the generation that are that's in midlife now, the Gen X generation, right? We were raised by people who kind of lived by the ethos that children were meant to be seen and not heard. Our opinions were not asked when decisions were being made for the family. Not that, you know, every child's opinion should be asked for all the things, but later generations take into consideration, you know, thoughts and ideas and interactions with their children. And so while that has improved greatly in later generations, it didn't exist completely in from the baby boomers into the Gen X generation, right? And then, you know, here we were as kids, uh, you know, coming home after school, unlocking the door, starting the laundry, starting dinner, doing our homework, um, getting ready for practice, because then a parent would pick us up and drive us to wherever we needed to go, but they wouldn't necessarily stay for those, like they wouldn't stay for practice. They'd come to our games and they would do that kind of stuff to be supportive. But we were, you know, dropped around and and and dropped off and things like that. Organized play dates were not a thing. Going outside and literally getting kicked out of our houses and until you know supper time was a thing. We didn't have, you know, water bottles handed to us and snacks in our cinch bags the way we send our kids out into the world. It was go find your friends and go see, go find something to do, right? And so we grew up at some point, and we realized that we could do it differently, right? We read the books, we watched the TED Talks, some of us went to therapy, some of us still need to go to therapy, right? We decided that we were going to be different parents, the same way every generation decides they're gonna do it differently. We were gonna be more present, we were gonna be more in tune, we were going to do the emotional labor that our parents didn't do, which is beautiful, but also exhausting. And also, here's your plot twist. Our kids will probably still end up in therapy talking about us. But we are trying, right? We're trying. So here we are. We have kids at home, Gen Xers, right? Some of us have kids at home, some of us don't. Great, right? Maybe they're little, maybe they're teenagers, maybe they're young adults who have boomeranged back because let's face it, the economy. And we have parents who are aging. Maybe their health is declining, maybe they need help navigating a world that's changing faster than they can keep up with. I mean, who doesn't? Maybe they're starting to forget things. We are in the middle, and that is the sandwich generation. And I know the term has been around for decades, but I want to be honest and real with you. Being in the middle sounds cute. It's like, oh, all this stuff. It sounds like you can manage it, but it's not cute and it's not manageable on most or slash some days, right? It is standing in the kitchen at 5:30 or 6 o'clock in the morning having a good cry or in the shower, right? Because there's so much stuff. There's just so much stuff. And here's the other thing about the Gen X or specifically, we are not good at asking for help. Listen to last week's podcast. That's the one that I teach you how to ask for help, right? We're not good at it. We were raised to be self-sufficient, we figured it out. We're fine, everything's fine. We watched our parents not ask for help either. And so that's how we learned it. We internalized the idea that needing support is somehow a weakness or an imposition. So we carry everything ourselves, and then we wonder why we're exhausted. I see you, I am you, I have been you. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about the real, raw, and relentless stressors that exist. So let's name what we are actually dealing with. Because sometimes just having someone say it out loud, yeah, that's a real thing, and yes, this is hard, is enough to take the edge off a little. Acknowledgement is important. So there's the financial picture, right? Let's start with the money because that is a stress that never ever sleeps. Um, you know, the sandwich generation is often financially stretched in multiple directions at once. You may be still helping support your kids, college, or the cost of just having teenagers who eat everything in the house. And also, you're starting to take on maybe some financial responsibility for your parents. I have a kid in college who's now home for the summer, and I have a kid who is in the eighth grade, going into high school next year. So I have them around all the time. We're still, they're still on my payroll, as I like to call it, and we'll be for a long time, probably. My parents are no longer with us, sadly. Um, in fact, I am recording this two days after what would have been my mom's 79th birthday. Uh, and she has not been with us for five years, and my dad passed away nine years ago. And so um it's been a while since I've had parents. But when my parents were uh getting onto the older side, um, I was definitely helping to bear some of the financial responsibility of them. And it wasn't necessarily in like the biggest ways, right? They could pay their mortgage and they could handle that stuff, but I had them on my cell phone plan. I would, you know, maybe sometimes pick up a bill here or there, things like that. Um, also, I didn't live near them. So I picked up a lot of the emotional baggage for my mom, especially after my dad died. We would speak every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. I would have to listen to her in her depression and kind of coach her through that for the four years that she lived after my dad passed away. So it was just a lot of heaviness that I had to deal with also while raising my family and working full-time and raising my my like doing all the things, right? So maybe you are where I once was, right? Maybe you're helping cover to co cover the co-pays, right? Maybe you're chipping in for medication that isn't covered by insurance because God only knows what's happening these days, right? Maybe you've started quietly supplementing their fixed income because you've done the math and the math isn't mathing for them anymore. Because again, look at this economy. Maybe you're looking at assisted living costs and you're losing your mind because it's so expensive. Meanwhile, your own retirement savings might not be where you thought they'd be. I mean, we opened ours the other day and just closed it very quickly. Not gonna lie. It was like, oh my God, hold on, what happened? And then again, life happens, right? Maybe you had kids late and spent your 30s, you know, on diapers instead of 401k contributions. Or maybe 2008 happened and then you tried to recover from 2008, and then 2020 happened, and you're still trying to recover from markets moving and things, you know, and if there's just a lot, there's a lot, and we are now living these lives that are bigger and more material-filled, and we're having to adjust our needs and our priorities, right? And we are looking ahead and we're doing the math and we're trying hard not to panic. How am I gonna pay for college? How am I gonna pay for retirement? How am I gonna, you know, do the things that I wanted to do? But we're a little bit panicked. It's important for you to know that you are not failing. You are navigating an economic reality that is genuinely difficult. Housing costs, healthcare costs, child care costs. The financial landscape we're operating in is not nearly the same as the one that our parents operated in when they were our age. The rules have changed, and a lot of us are playing a game with old equipment. That doesn't mean it's hopeless, but it does mean it's okay to say that this is hard. This is harder than I expected. So that's the financial piece, right? And then we have the health piece. Okay, bodies, right? Our bodies, our parents' bodies. Let's start with our bodies because I know a lot of us are in the thick of perimenopause or menopause, and I just want to say this is a full hormonal renovation of your entire self, and it's happening at the same time as everything else, and it is genuinely a lot. Brain fog is real. The kind when you walk into a room and have no idea why, not once, but four times before noon, the kind where you are in the middle of a sentence and the word you need just evaporates. I love when that happens, especially when I'm in like a meeting. And you're standing there going, that thing, you know that thing. You know, the thing with the thing, you know the thing. Because you can't remember the actual word for the thing. Sleep disruption is real. Hot flashes at 3 a.m. are real. The emotional vital via I can't even say the word. Vitality, look, and I say this with full love for myself, is real. One minute you're fine. The next minute you're weeping at a dog food commercial. Hello? That's me. It's not you being crazy. It is a profound shift in the chemistry that has been running in your body for decades. And then, while you're dealing with your own body, you become, by proximity and love, the unofficial health manager for aging parents. You might be the one who notices that dad seems more confused lately. You might be the one who goes to the doctor's appointment and asks the follow-up questions because mom didn't hear what the doctor said, or didn't want to seem like she didn't understand, or just forgot to ask. You're the one researching medications, comparing specialists, googling things at midnight that you then desperately try to ungoogle because hello. WebMD is a curse. It has never been a blessing for me. Chronic illness in aging parents is its own grief, which we will we will definitely get to because you know how I like to talk about the grief. But I want to name here that managing someone else's health care, coordinating it, advocating in it, praying for parts of it, paying for parts of it. Because we do a lot of praying. I know, in it it is a job, it's an unpaid, invisible, emotionally loaded job, and it sits right on top of all of our other jobs. And then there's the relationship strain because that is a thing. If you have a partner, this season will test your relationships in ways that the wedding vows didn't fully anticipate, or the commitment that you made to each other didn't fully anticipate. You might be exhausted and touched out emotionally and emotionally depleted, right? Eden. And your partner is also exhausted, and you're both trying, and some nights you lie there in the dark feeling more alone than you did before you had all these people around you. Or maybe you're doing this solo, you are a single parent navigating all of this without a co-pilot, which comes with its own brand of exhaustion and restlessness. If you have siblings sharing the parental burden care, care burden, or more commonly, not sharing it equally, that can be its own wound, right? There's a sibling who lives further away, closer. The one who's closer potentially carries more of the burden. A lot of the times it can be sticky, family situations can be complicated and messy, and you know, they get to be difficult to navigate. Sometimes conversations turn into arguments because nobody knows how to articulate how to or why or any of those things. And so it becomes a resentment situation in a lot of in a lot of in a lot of families. And then there's this mental load. Holding all of this together is the mental load, which for those of you who are unfamiliar with that, it is the invisible cognitive labor of keeping track of everything. Every appointment, every medication refill, every permission slip and school meeting and birthday card for the grandparents and the grocery list and the car maintenance and all the lives in your head that you keep the schedules for. It does not stop. You're actually doing it right now. I'm probably doing it right now too, while you listen to this. There's a part of your brain that's running on background with a background process like our computers do, right? With 17 things that need to happen this week. It is exhausting in a way that sleep doesn't fully fix. Because you wake up and the list is still there. And even when you cross stuff off, more stuff gets added. I see you. All of this counts. And all of this is real. So what actually helps? Alright, I promised you tools, real ones. So let's get into these. Let's get into these tools, right? Number one, lower the bar on purpose. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but say it with me. I matter. Right? A lot of us were raised with very high standards. We humans, we have these expectations and these standards that sometimes are impossible to meet. Maybe not all the time, but sometimes. Maybe most of the time. Because we've put that upon ourselves to be that way. We have high standards for our homes, our parenting, our performance at work, our appearance at the school pickup line. And those standards made sense when we had the bandwidth for them. But the bandwidth has shifted. It's different now. Lowering the bar is not giving up, it is a strategic reallocation of your limited. Resources. Dinner doesn't need to be, you know, a protein, a vegetable, and a starch and a salad and a fully baked dessert. It can be cereal. The house can be messy. You don't have to attend every single event. The permission you're waiting for to let something go is granted. I've given it to you, but you also have to give it to yourself. Choose three things that matter in a day, and the rest is noise. Pick your most important things, attend to those, and then let everything else fall by the wayside and then pick those up on the next day. Number two, name what's happening in your body before you react. Right? We did a podcast episode a few podcasts ago, responding versus reacting, I think. Or we talked about responding versus reacting in an episode. Hunt that one down. When you feel the rising swell of I'm about to yell or cry, or both of those things at the same time, and you will if you haven't already, because you're human and you're under pressure, try this. Before you react, just name it. Not to anyone else necessarily, internally. I am overwhelmed right now. I am scared. I am exhausted. I am grieving. Naming the emotion activates a different part of your brain. It literally changes the neurological response. You go from reactive to slightly less reactive, which is the best any of us can do on, you know, if you're me, four hours of sleep. Number three, the 15-minute rule for caregiving administration. Pick one small caregiving task a day. One call, one form, one research rabbit hole, and give it 15 minutes. Set a timer. When the timer goes off, you stop. And then you come back to it either later to finish up that task that has to be done that day, or you come back to it tomorrow. This keeps the administrative octopus from swallowing your entire day while also making sure it actually gets done. Maybe a little bit slower, but it gets done. Number four, build a micro support network. We again are not good at asking for help. We have established this. We are especially not good at asking for help for big things. So stop trying to ask for help with the big things and start asking for micro help, right? Can you pick up my kid from practice on Tuesday?

unknown 24:46

Right?

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Can you sit with mom for two hours on a Saturday? Can you help me understand this insurance form? Small tasks, specific tasks, things people can actually say yes to. This is how you start dismantling a lot of the I can do this alone architecture and changing the culture. Number five, your hormones are information, not malfunction. If you are in perimenopause or menopause, please, please find a provider who takes it seriously. Because not all of them do. And not one who says, oh, this is normal. Here's some, you know, Lexapro or HRT or all the things, and you'll be fine. Now I will admit, I am on HRT, it has done wonders for me. Because my provider engages in conversation with me and I ask questions. I have learned to start asking questions. You want somebody who is going to engage with what is happening in your body. The symptoms are real and they are real interventions and help, hormonal and non-hormonal, that you can use. You deserve to feel like yourself in your body, which nine times out of ten on any given day is almost impossible. So try your hardest to make sure that you have somebody that you can, you know, talk to about how you're feeling internally, because that emotes externally. Number six, protect one non-negotiable thing. This will be different for everyone, right? What is a non-negotiable in your life every day? A walk, a call with a friend, 20 minutes of reading, whatever it is, one thing that belongs to you. Protect it like it is a medical appointment because it basically is. You cannot give from empty. You know this. But knowing it and doing something about it are very, very different. So I'm asking you to pick one thing and guard it. Protect it. That is yours. That is your everyday thing. Number seven, grief is not a sidebar. It's the main story right now in our lives. Which brings me to the next segment, which is the grief, the anticipated and the ambush, because they both exist, right? It's important to talk about it in two ways because we often miss one of them entirely when you're talking about the anticipated and the not anticipated, right? So anticipated grief is the kind that you see coming, right? You're watching a parent's health decline. I have several friends who are going through this right now. And it's the knowledge of, if not, when, right? It's the slow unwinding of, you know, who someone was and who they're becoming. It's maybe dementia stealing your mother's laugh before her body gives out. It's maybe your father needing help with things he used to be the one that you went to him to help you with. Right? You're grieving while they're still here. You're missing someone who is present. You're saying goodbye in slow motion. And nobody talks about how strange and heavy that is. It's really heavy. When my dad died, you know, it's the my parents both died, not weird, but they were not healthy people when you sing the words healthy. Um, but they weren't riddled with things like disease. They had heart disease. And so, yes, that's a disease, but not cancer or you know, any of the diseases that we automatically think of like that, right? They were unhealthy and they were managing their health with medication. I used to say that they were um alive by the miracle of modern medicine. And my dad passed away having one of countless heart procedures that his heart his heart just couldn't handle at 71 years old. He had been on dialysis for two years, like his body was just a mess. And I really truly believe he he was ready. He was ready to go. Like he didn't want to suffer anymore. And it wasn't like he was suffering outwardly in so much pain. I think he was just really, really tired. His body was getting really, really tired. And it wasn't like it was expected. But we all the only person that didn't see it coming was my mother, who literally lived with him every single day for 55 years. Um, and then when my mom died, that was very much unexpected. Like she wasn't, she, you know, had heart problems and she was managing it with her medication and all those things. Um, but she died of a brain aneurysm. And that caught everybody off guard. And so while we were trying to help her through her grief, and she lived in her grief for four years, like she could not get out of her own way with the sadness of losing her spouse, her life partner, my dad, right? And it's really hard to try to, you know, engage with them and encourage them that there is a lot of life left to be lived. So, you know, anticipatory grief of aging parents, it's really profound and it is allowed to be painful. You don't have to wait until someone is gone to call it grief. We don't just grieve, and this is why I went back to school to get a certification in grief education, because grief is bigger than just people leaving us. It's bigger than death. It is, you know, we learned this during COVID. It is lost of time, it's the loss of time and experiences and you know, uh relationships and connection, right? We lost events. We there was so much to grieve during COVID in those, you know, two years that we were essentially, you know, not really seeing other people the way that we're back in the world seeing them now. And so we started to call, we had to we had to name it something, and it's grief. And these conversations that I've been having about grief since since COVID, so it's been six years, have been very, very insightful for me, a big learning curve for me, a big help to me, but also to clients and to just people that I know who are willing to engage in this conversation. So it's okay to call what you're going through grief, even if there are people that are still here, because it's they're different, it's different. And then there's another layer of the anticipated grief right now that we're in it, because we're parents and we're watching our children grow up, right? And I had this conversation with parents all the time, especially parents who are about to, you know, send their children off to college or let them, you know, fly the coop for the first time for not just to sleep over at a friend's house, right? Watching your children need you less. Watching the little person who used to climb into your bed at night become someone who barely looks up from their phone when you walk into a room. Who is that me, right? The leaving that hasn't happened yet, but you can see it on the horizon. You're already mourning that too. Because that is another form of grief. And then there's the ambush grief, the unexpected, right? I want to spend a little bit more time on this because it catches us completely off guard. It's the grief that we just talked about that has nothing to do with death, right? It's the grief of the life that you thought you would have by now, right? You had a plan, or at least a vague vision, right? We have learned that not everything, most everything doesn't go according to plan. But you had a plan or a vision by this age. Maybe you would be more settled financially, maybe you would have more of yourself figured out. Maybe you didn't expect to lose a job or have a life pivot. Maybe your marriage or your relationships would look different than they do now. Maybe your marriage is no longer in your life. Maybe your career would be somewhere else. Maybe your body would still be doing things it used to do without this negotiation that you're trying to have with it. You know, you know, you're grieving a version of your life that didn't happen. That's real grief. It deserves the same acknowledgement. And then there's the grief of friendships that have quietly faded because that happens. And the grief of parts of yourself that you put aside, maybe the creative parts or the adventurous parts, or you know, the one who had time to read more and take naps. Because life got full and bandwidth ran out. That's the grief of feeling invisible. This is something that a lot of women in midlife name, right? Unappreciation, invisibility. It's this experience of becoming less visible in culture, in rooms, in conversations. After decades of being seen in a certain way, the shift is disorienting for people. Even if we intellectually reject the idea that our worth is tied to youth, the feeling of becoming somehow less noticeable is a loss. You're allowed to grieve that. So, what do you do with the grief? First, you gotta let it be grief. Stop calling it stress or being dramatic or having a moment. Grief is grief and it deserves a name. Next, find someone to witness it, not fix it, not silver lining it. Just sit with you in it. A friend, a therapist, your journal. This podcast, honestly. Right? Third, don't let it solidify into identity. Grief is something that moves through us when we let it. The only way out is through. When we shut it down, pack it in, refuse to feel it, it calcifies, lives in our necks and our backs, and our shoulders, and where you're carrying your stress. Or it becomes bitterness or numbness or anger that attaches to the wrong things. Let it move. And fourth, hold grief and love in the same hand. They are not opposites. The depth of your grief is a direct reflection of the depth of your love. End of your investment in your life. Grieving a parent who is declining means you love them. Grieving a life you imagined means you had hope, and you can still have hope. Grieving your child growing up means you are present enough to cherish it. Grief is love with nowhere to go yet. And eventually it finds a way. And you figure it out. Okay, that was a lot. I will admit that was a lot. It was a lot. Grief is hard, right? We've named hard things. And now I want to talk about gratitude. And I want to do it in a way that doesn't feel like toxic positivity, you know, fist bumping, because you deserve better than that. We all deserve better than that. And that definitely exists out there in the world, right? Gratitude doesn't mean pretending things are fine when they're not. Gratitude doesn't invalidate the grief or the exhaustion or the, you know, crying in the shower. All the things can be true at the same time. In fact, I would argue that the gratitude means more when it exists alongside the hard stuff. It's easy to be grateful when things are going good. Right? Oh, my life is so great. I'm so grateful. Blessed, hashtag blessed, you know, all those. The real muscle is finding what is true and good and worth holding on to when life is genuinely difficult. So here is my real gratitude today for this season of the lives that we are in, yellers in middle age. I am grateful to come for the complexity of all of it. And I know that sounds strange, but in this season, as crushing as it can be from every angle, it is also extraordinarily full. I'm still needed, right? I am woven into lives that matter. My kids, messy and growing and sometimes infuriating, need me. Well, not my parents so much anywhere because they're not here, but when they were still here, they needed me. That is not a burden to escape. It is a life, a full, loud, sometimes chaotic life that we are privileged to be at the center of. Sometimes at midnight these days. I wake up to text in the morning and I'm like, oh my gosh, or DMs. I have a bunch of DM chats in Instagram with my friends. We send each other memes, sometimes in the middle of the night. The girlfriends who get it without explanation, right? The ones who can say, same girl, or I know, or just show up. We weren't supposed to need each other. We were raised to be independent, this Gen X group. Except I don't think that's true. I think that our parents pushed us to be independent outside of them, but we found our people. We went and played with our neighbors' kids and we built these friendships. We need each other. And find, you know, finding these people in this stage of your life, it is one of the greatest gifts. It's the greatest. You know, I actually was away with my girlfriends a few weekends ago in New York, and we had the best time. And it was really, it was 10 moms, nine moms, and we got away for two nights, and we had the best time. And it was really like it was just so good for the soul, right? Like chicken soup is good for the soul. It was so good for the soul. And then there's our partners, right? I'm grateful for the messy middle that I am in with my partner for sure. I mean, my husband and I don't always see eye to eye on a lot of things, uh, some things, but we have definitely always been a really good team, whether it has been in our parenting or dealing with our parents. It's important to have that relationship if you are so lucky enough to have one of those relationships with a life partner. And if you're going it alone, make sure that you found your people or your one friend or somebody that you can lean on because those people are really, really important. I'm grateful for who I'm becoming. This season is definitely forging something in me, right? The woman I'm becoming, I'm definitely more honest. I am definitely less willing to perform okayness, right? I'm clearer about what matters and what doesn't. I really enjoy who I am. I didn't really expect to like her. In fact, when I was younger, I'd be like, oh, and I'm older like my mom in my mid-50s. I don't know how I'm gonna like that. I really like me. But the stripping away that happens when life gets real also strips away a lot of the noise. And that means what's left is more true. We we give a shit about less stuff and more quality. It's it's quality over quantity at this stage in our lives, and I love it. I'm grateful for small moments, right? My tea before anyone else gets up in the morning. A phone call with my bestie on my way to work, right? My kids laughing, like really laughing at something I said. They make fun of some of the words that I pronounce in my New York accent. Uh and they think it's embarrassing, but they also think it's hilarious, right? They don't fix anything, but they certainly sustain everything. And I am grateful for you. Truly. The fact that you're here, that you put this on and decided to spend some time of your very limited time, your precious time with this conversation. And that means something to me. And you're not alone in this, and that's the whole point. We are together in this. We are not alone in this. Ooh, we are over time, you guys. This is a long one. So here's what we landed on today, right? You are Gen X. You were the kids who figured it out all alone, and now you're the adults figuring it out all alone. Except you're not alone, even sometimes if it feels that way. You are in the middle of one of the most demanding seasons of your life. Raising children, caring for parents, navigating your own personal evolution, and you're doing it in a world that moves faster and costs more and expects everything. You are not failing, you are doing something genuinely hard. The yelling, real or internal, is not a character flaw. It is the sound of someone who is carrying a lot, who loves deeply, who is still in the game, even when the game is brutal. The yelling is love, it's overwhelming. With a pulse. It means you haven't given up. You haven't checked out. You haven't stopped caring. You care so much that sometimes it comes out sideways. Be gentle with yourself for that. And on the days when you can't find the gratitude, when the grief is too big and the finances are too tight, and the body won't cooperate, and the insurance company is on hold again, on those days, it's just enough to make it through the day. But I will meet you back here next time. Take care of yourselves. Drink your coffee when it's hot for once. And to whatever degree is possible, please be easy on yourself. Why am I yelling is an independent podcast, you guys. And so if today's episode resonated with you, please, please share it out with someone who needs to feel less alone or is going through this same stuff that we're all going through. Because those people are everywhere, and they're usually pretty hard to spot from the outside. Like literally everywhere. It's like everybody you know. So share this. Share this on your socials, share it with a friend, recommend it to somebody. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. I happen to be pretty popular on the Apple Podcast ones for some reason. Resources, hit me up if you want more tools and tips. You know how to connect in my bio. Check out the link. Until next time. I love you. You know it. Even the parts that are yelling.