Surprise, We're in the Sandwich Generation (and You Probably Are Too)

What happens when a journalist who covers parenting and a physician who cares for older adults enter the sandwich generation? If Zara Hanawalt and Dr. Anita Chandra's experiences are any indication, no amount of expertise can truly prepare you for what it's really like to be in the sandwich generation. 

Join longtime friends Anita and Zara they explore the complexities of the millennial sandwich generation, balancing parenthood, daughterhood, and personal identity. 

This episode offers insights, nostalgia, and community support for those navigating multi-generational caregiving and self-care.

Key Topics

• The concept of the sandwich generation and its challenges
• The impact of social media and cultural shifts on millennial parenting and daughterhood
• The emotional and mental load of multi-generational caregiving
• Nostalgia for the 90s and its influence on millennial identity
• The importance of community, friendship, and self-care in stressful times

Chapters

00:00
Welcome to the Millennial Sandwich Generation

02:20
Friendship and Shared Experiences

04:55
Nostalgia and Growing Up in the 90s

07:54
The Reality of Adult Responsibilities

10:30
Navigating Work-Life Balance

13:12
The Invisible Load of Caregiving

15:09
Understanding the Sandwich Generation

17:54
The Emotional Toll of Care Work

20:20
Redefining Care and Support

23:11
The Pressure of High Expectations

25:44
Finding Joy in the Chaos

27:51
Creating a Community of Support

36:34
Introduction to Nostalgia and Pop Culture

36:50
Millennial Moms and Dads in Nostalgia

37:37
Conclusion and Feedback on the Episode

Thanks for listening to The Millennial Sandwich! Don't forget to follow, subscribe and connect with us on social media 

Transcript

Anita Chandra 0:03

Welcome to the Millennial Sandwich, a space for real conversations about millennials in the middle. Not just of our own lives, but also of a caregiving sandwich. I'm Dr. Anita Chandra, a geriatrician and expert in elder care.

Zara Hanawalt 0:14

And I'm Zara Hanawalt, a parenting journalist and expert in American motherhood. And even we don't have all the answers. Join us as we figure out life in the middle.

Anita Chandra 0:23

Welcome to the Millennial Sandwich. That's actually the most formal introduction you'll get to the sandwich generation because you're probably already in it and did not get introduced formally. So here we are.

Zara Hanawalt 0:35

And in case you're wondering who these two random ladies who are talking to you are, we are gonna introduce each other because we've been friends for like 26 years now. So we feel qualified to tell you about the other one.

Anita Chandra 0:47

All right. Um, I guess I can go first. So I've known Zara for a long, long time. How would I introduce you or how would I how would I describe you, Zara? At first, I would say Zara is a twin mom. She is an excellent mom. And she is also a master of journalism. And she that is that an accurate description? And actually, Zara's been writing about motherhood and American motherhood culture and parenting and fertility and everything related to that space for a lot longer than she's been a mom. So yeah, she knows what she's talking about. And if you've if you read any parenting article in a big magazine or online, I don't know if people do people read magazines anymore. I don't know. Online, if you've read articles, Zara probably wrote something you read.

Zara Hanawalt 1:37

And Anita is a mom of a boy and a girl. She is an excellent mom as well and an excellent daughter. She is an eldest daughter, kind of the prototype. She is casually a doctor and also an event planner, which, you know, if you've never heard anything more millennial than that, same. And she is an enthusiast of 90s TV, like I am as well. She is, well, you would call yourself an extrovert, right?

Anita Chandra 2:06

Yeah. She has a lot of friends. I do have a big social circle, but I get do get drained a lot, which is we'll get into that.

Zara Hanawalt 2:14

Yes. And yeah, she takes care of people professionally and personally in her real life as well.

Anita Chandra 2:20

Yeah. It's funny that I didn't even mention the daughter part of it, which happens all the time, don't you think? We're all we all talk about our motherhood and our careers or whatever we're doing, but don't really talk about the daughterhood of it all. Um and we're gonna talk about daughtering a lot. So yes. Actually, our parents knew each other before we did. So we've been friends for 26 years, but we've known each other for I don't need to say, a lot, a lot longer since we were babies. Little babies.

Zara Hanawalt 2:55

It's so weird that we've known each other for 26 years, but we're also only 26.

Speaker 2 3:00

It's so crazy. I don't know how that happens. We look the same. Well, actually, no, we don't look the same.

Speaker 1 3:06

We look better.

Speaker 2 3:08

Yeah, that's true. Us particularly, we definitely you don't you don't need to. I guess I we can describe you better in middle school when we first met. I think some of some of the ways I would describe you, Zara, are still the same, but also so many things that would be different. Zara was a theater kid. That's how we met. Big surprise. Um we were both nerdy theater kids. Um, and yeah, I think even as an 11-year-old, I remember you as in the context. I mean, maybe that's true for like all of us. I remember you in the context of your parents and the way they just loved you. They still obviously still love you, but that was like a big part of how I remember you is like your parents are obsessed with you in the best way.

Speaker 1 3:57

Yeah, I think you can sum it up by just saying that the main character syndrome is really strong, thanks to my parents.

Speaker 2 4:06

But, you know, and like and the other way too, you just loved your parents so much. We spent so much time in your house. And yeah, we had so much fun laughing together. We had a lot of sleepovers, watched movies like Walk to Remember together. So really pivotal moments in our life. We watched a lot of American Idol. And yeah, I can't really. I think like that kind of sums up my memory of you as you were, I think you were a lot louder and more extroverted as a middle schooler than you are now. Would you say that's probably yeah, probably.

Speaker 1 4:38

I definitely think motherhood made me more introverted, which I think is like a lot of people can probably relate to. I hope I hope you don't get in trouble for this. But my middle school memory of you is that you would bring like really dark red lipstick and powder in your backpack and like quickly put on your face. The blue limited to eyeshadow. The blue cover girl eyeshadow that every girl had in the 90s. And and like that's such a part of being a 90s kid that I feel like is disappearing now is we were so awkward because we didn't have YouTube tutorials and we didn't have like skincare regimens and all the things that these girls have these days. And honestly, I would take how we grew up, I think. And I'm kind of sad that our daughters probably won't get to experience that.

Speaker 2 5:26

Yeah, there was a lot of um looking at magazines for what I was supposed to be doing with makeup, but I don't think anyone told me to put blue eyeshadow on my eyelids. And there was like a big, I mean, I was not allowed to be doing that, so I would wash it off before going home every day. I had like a whole change of clothes too. And I like, you know, my I'm we're both first generation Indian women and kid. I like went to school with a braid and I had to tell. Do you know how many times I told my mom that there was a lice check at school? Because I took my hair out. I came home without my like braid put up in a ribbon so many times. And she was like, oh wow, there must be like a real bad lice problem at the school. I don't know. Maybe that's please tell me that's not just me. I I I just I just wanted to fit in and I didn't.

Speaker 1 6:15

I don't think either of us did for quite we most certainly did not. And like I think that's like a very common woman of color experience, too, right? Is like we grew up when these beauty standards were incredibly Eurocentric. They still are, but they were definitely a lot more when we were growing up. And so like we just didn't fit in. But I think the benefit of that is like your glow-up comes in really, really hard and fast when you enter adulthood. So, you know, we are reporting from the other side of that. Yes.

Speaker 2 6:46

And is would you say that your life, you know, just like late 30s, early 40s, did you envision it to look and feel like this?

Speaker 1 6:57

No. No. I mean, you know, I think that every generation, I'm sure, feels a little bit lied to, but I think millennials were especially lied to because, you know, we grew up when America was in its in its prosperity era, basically, right? Like we grew up in this time of economic boom and I mean, not peace globally, but like relative peace compared to what we're dealing with now. So I think the backdrop is just vastly different. And then, I mean, many of us didn't grow up seeing parents who were juggling multi-generational care. And many of us are juggling multi-generational care. You know, the statistics about the sandwich generation are pretty clear, and we'll get into that down the line. But this is definitely a millennial issue that we are facing, where millennials are inheriting this world that is very, very rapidly changing and very unlike the one we grew up in. So yeah, I didn't, I did not think that I would be thinking about talking to my children about death at the same time as I'm thinking about what someone is telling me on social media. You know, it's like when people say, like, I didn't think that I would be dealing with wrinkles and acne at the same time, that's how I feel. Not literally, because like thank thankful for my melanin and my Indian jeans, but that's I just feel like you're constantly caught between feeling like a teenager and feeling like you have the responsibilities of someone much older. What do you think?

Speaker 2 8:28

I didn't expect to feel so stretched thin. I feel like we heard so much growing up. You just need to work hard and do everything you're supposed to do to achieve your dreams. And once you get there, everything will be so easy. And it looks like how it does on every TV show we watched. I just did not expect to feel so tired, is not even the right word. It's just this tired times a hundred, like in my bones, feeling like I am never doing enough, doing the right thing. There's just so much of that that I didn't realize I would feel every day. And some of that too is in medical training, there's so much of well, when you get to the next phase, it's such a clear path. So it's like, okay, once I get into med school, then I can exhale. All right, once I match into residency, it'll be so much better. After intern year, it's so much better. Okay, when you're in attending, then you're like, you're done. You're done. You can enjoy your life, you can enjoy, you know, traveling and your family. Um, I'm seven years out of residency, full grown-up doctor, and I do not feel like that at all. I still feel like there's so much that I'm like, what's next? And how do I still feel like why am I why am I always feeling like I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing or that I need to be doing 10,000 things that I don't even know where to start. I guess you start a podcast.

Speaker 1 9:58

That's uh that's what we're gonna do. Yeah, and I mean we both grew up with cardiologist dads, and then your mom was also a physician, is a physician, but I feel like the way our dads and your mom viewed work is like the perfect exemplification of growing up in the 90s versus being an adult right now is like they loved their work and they felt a lot of peace and they didn't have like this existential dread about waking up every day and going to work. Whereas I don't think I know a single millennial who doesn't have some of that.

Speaker 2 10:30

I'm gonna counter that a little bit because I think my dad, for example, definitely their whole generation, at least in medicine, it was all about how to get to the top in terms of being the most productive. Yeah. Definitely different than I think how we view a successful life and career. The concept of work-life balance just was not. I'm a geriatrician. We do not make a lot of money in terms of the medical spectrum of specialties. Nobody goes into geriatrics to make money. So even explaining to my parents that I wanted to do geriatrics because it made me happy and I was fulfilled and am fulfilled by my patients and the difference I'm making in their lives and their in their children's lives. It all went back to like, what about the money? How will you show that you're successful? And my dad, I guess my dad is my ride or die. He chose die. Um, maybe that's a little too dark for the first episode, but you know, that's uh my dad died suddenly at 65. He was still working as a cardiologist, but he was like, I'm not ready to retire because I want to pay for this, and I think I could make this much money in this many years, and then we can enjoy our life. Well, no, it's not that's not how it works. Unfortunately, I think that I had been trying to explain that concept to him, like, why don't you just enjoy your life now? Now, as a like that is so different than how we talked about what it means to be successful.

Speaker 1 12:12

That's really interesting because my dad was like, I think my dad would have worked for free. He just absolutely loved it. And he that was like his identity was being a doctor. I think there's also a difference too, because my mom was a stay-at-home mom. So I think there was just like a different sort of compartmentalization in my household. But yeah, like I just I don't know if people had this kind of like, am I doing the right thing feeling every single day that we millennial?

Speaker 2 12:39

Not with parenting. Like, yeah. That 100% was not a thing the way it is. We have so much to say about this, but yeah. The way we talk about parenting in terms of the fact that we know different parenting styles and terms and the way we talk to our children, the fact that we talk to our children is new. It's just new. It's not that there's like so many different ways that we are putting pressure on ourselves that didn't exist. So yeah, it's not at all this would feel like.

Speaker 1 13:14

My mom actually, just a few days ago, was telling me, you know, you guys are so lucky because when we were parenting, we didn't have the internet and we didn't have all this information and we didn't have anywhere to turn. And you guys have so much of that. And I never want to invalidate that experience because I'm sure that was really hard in a way. But also, I think what people don't understand is it's incredibly hard to have this much information and to parent with this many voices coming at you, especially with the delivery of information on social media. It's incredibly, incredibly emotionally and mentally draining to be thinking about how you parent 24-7. Obviously, my lens is a little bit different because I do this professionally too. But I feel like there is not a single point in my day where I'm not thinking about care work either for my kids or for my parents.

Speaker 2 14:05

And I mean, it's impossible to not compare with everything that's just being thrown in our faces. It's funny that your mom said it that way because it's not that I mean, I feel like my mom has a really large social circle and her family, but they don't they've made a choice to not talk to each other about what actually was going on and what it might have felt like. So maybe that's part of it too. We really value friendship in a and maybe this is only true for certain subsets of that generation, particularly, you know, immigrants. And I don't know. I can't speak to all of that. But I know that my mom definitely was not sharing how difficult things may or may not have been for her or issues she was having with us or our like that didn't leave our house. I don't think I would let my mom listen to this still, because she would be like, why would why are you why are you saying this out loud to the world? She's definitely blocked from this podcast.

Speaker 1 15:09

Yeah, I mean, yeah, there was definitely, especially around, you know, motherhood, fertility, all of those topics, there was definitely this like veil that millennial women really took down. You know, we are the ones who put conversations about like postpartum depression and miscarriage and infertility and all of these TMI taboo topics on the table, which, you know, I don't think we get enough credit for personally, because millennial women, I think, have like really moved the needle around parenting and women's health. And that's part of the impetus here, right? Like we are millennial women who talk about everything, even the stuff we're not supposed to talk about. And so now I think we want to take the conversation to the place that people haven't really gotten into yet, which is this conversation about being in the sandwich generation and being a caregiver to your kids and also to your parents at the same time, and how that is not uniquely a millennial struggle, but it's more of a millennial issue for so many reasons, right? Like we had kids later in life. So many of us had older parents and people are living longer. People are living longer. A lot of our parents, you know, haven't been able to retire the way their parents were able to and help out with kids, which affects how we parent as well in the the village and has really kind of crumbled for a lot of people.

Speaker 2 16:31

Take a step back and say, so what is what is the sandwich generation? What does that mean? So, like there's a lot of us who are in this sandwich. Um, and what does that actually mean?

Speaker 1 16:41

So the sandwich generation, by definition, and there's there's varying definitions, but I think the most sort of like concrete definition is that you are raising children while also having a parent over age 65. Obviously, as we know, that's kind of like a reductive definition because you can absolutely be caring for a parent who is younger than 65, who the experience of being in the sandwich generation really varies from person to person. And I think a lot of us think that you're only in the sandwich generation if you are like feeding and changing and bathing a parent and providing that sort of really hands-on care. Yeah, sick or like disabled or something like that. But as we all know, I mean, care comes in many different forms. A lot of care work is invisible work and it can look any number of ways, like, you know, researching a doctor for your parent to go and visit if they're having a health concern, or downloading apps on their phone to make their life easier, or ordering them adaptive clothing or walkers or devices, even just like planning your holidays around seeing parents.

Speaker 2 17:54

Like that's something I mean, we s there's so much conversation around the mental load of motherhood. But no one's really talking about the mental load of daughterhood, also. We talk about it with motherhood, with our partners, but there is so much that if you have a relationship with your parent, or even if you don't, even if you are grieving a parent, you're still very much a daughter, even if that doesn't have anywhere to go, or even if you're not even living in the same city, there's so much care work that people don't count as care work that is undoubtedly taking a toll on your brain, your body, how you live your life. So yeah, if you're even saying, Oh, I need to check in with my dad about whatever, I need to call my mom and make sure they'll be in town for this date. That we if you're the one doing that, that all counts as caring. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 18:51

Yeah. And I I think we have seen a lot of this narrative of like, I don't want my kids to feel like they need to care for me. And it's like, okay, but do you want your kids to care about you? Because if they care about you, they will probably care for you in some capacity, even if it's not caring for you when you can't feed yourself. Right.

Speaker 2 19:10

I think we posted on one of our socials, we posted something about, you know, we were talking about caring and aging parents and how our children might show up for us when we're older. And there was a comment that was like, Well, I don't want my kids to be burdened with caring for me. I just want them to find me a nice assisted living facility. Also caring. Exactly. So let's unpack that a little bit. I g I I hear that you don't want to burden your children. So we're already kind of framing love, familial love, and parental love and care as a burden, which maybe we need to unpack that in ourselves a little bit. And care as we get older to mean things that would require assisted living. So we're thinking medications or not being able to get around or meals or things like that. But I responded to that, say, I mean, as a geriatrician, a big piece of my everyday work is even more than talking to my patients, it's talking to their loved ones who are caring for them. And a big, very high cognitive task is finding a nice assisted living facility. That's not nothing. That's time, that's money, that's effort, and knowing that's, you know, thinking about, okay, I know my loved one, I know my mom, I know what she would like and not like, I know where what would geographically make sense. How often do I want to be there? Who else can be there? There's just so many things, like there's so many things that are involved in it's not just we we reduce a lot of the care we're already doing and not counting it as care. And that's the conversation I think we need to have more about, you know, things that we don't count as care are absolutely care. It's fine if you don't want to have your kids be the one to keep you at home forever and change you, feed you, whatever when you can't, if you ever get to that point. Maybe you don't. But we should just be having conversations about what it what that looks like. What if you if you care about, like you said, if you if you want your kids to care about you, what does that look like? And what are we already doing that's showing our kids how we expect and how we are teaching them to care about other human beings?

Speaker 1 21:26

Yeah. I think just like we finally started having conversations about the invisible load of motherhood and how much invisible work goes into it, I think it's time that we start having these conversations about the invisible work of daughtering. Obviously, I am not saying that sons don't provide caregiving. I'm sure there are families where the sons are doing more or only sons are a thing. But the data pretty clearly shows that women are taking on disproportionate amounts of care work for elders as well, just like they are taking on. disproportionate work in parenting. So I think that's something that we need to talk about. Obviously we are also women, so we can kind of speak to that experience in a different way. But yeah, I think it's just time we kind of unpack the invisible work of daughtering too.

Speaker 2 22:16

Yeah. I think um if someone is listening to this thinking, oh my gosh, this is so me, what can we probably what what is probably true about her life? You're probably in your late 30s, early 40s, maybe you're a mom, maybe your daughter, probably both. What else do you think is is true about somebody who would relate to all of this?

Speaker 1 22:44

I mean you probably put a lot of pressure on yourself. You're probably high achieving and you've probably been praised a lot for how much you've achieved in your career or in academics, but you're probably also really high achieving in motherhood and daughterhood also and in your marriage and in your friendships. And you probably don't get a lot of recognition for how much you put into that stuff. You're also probably used to like very tangible reward systems like good grades or promotions or good feedback from your manager and you're probably feeling a little bit lost from the fact that you don't get a lot of that in your personal relationships. And you're probably really nostalgic like we are.

Speaker 2 23:22

Yes. Everyone always talks about how millennials are obsessed with nostalgia. Well yeah you would be too if you grew up in the 90s exactly um I yeah I there's so many reasons for that too because hello have you like looked around at the current day like what's actually happening? Yeah there I mean there are a lot of things to be nostalgic for. We were talking about this recently like some of the time when I feel like oh my gosh I'm so stretched thin I can't do a single extra thing for me or someone else I find myself just like daydreaming about being a kid and being not even taken care of but like when I think about feeling carefree I think about myself sitting in front of a TV watching TGIF at my grandma's house or just being and not having a custard yeah just there was such a routine to it that somehow was universal even though we didn't have the internet to tell us all what we were doing.

Speaker 1 24:32

But yeah we were just kind of living living a nice yeah yeah and I mean I don't think we were like completely carefree even then especially you and me I think we've always been a little anxious but compared to how much we're managing mentally and emotionally now it was very simple.

Speaker 2 24:53

Yeah when Y2K panic was like the most stressful thing we'd ever encountered I think about that all the time there's so many things like that I think about all the time also the the tropes of the things we used to watch on TV like did they all just get together and decide that they needed to make an episode about quicksand why was there so much quicksand I've never encountered quicksand like there was every episode of TV someone got caught in quicksand it was like it was quicksand it was like getting hooked on benign drug like a caffeine pill or like the the getting your head stuck in the that was a real the head stuck in the railing. Even now I'm like oh no my kid's head is gonna get stuck in the railing and I will have to butter her head to try to get it out because of course that's the only that's the only solution you gotta you gotta get the country crock all over their head and slide them out.

Speaker 1 25:48

Or like a you know a 10 year old getting into the car and driving into the house.

Speaker 2 25:53

And the ears piercing everyone was piercing their own ears is that a thing like I I don't know we both are Indian we got our ears pierced like as babies. Yeah I don't know I don't know what great outcome people are doing ears pierced wise like why are you having your friend do it? You should be doing this you should have done this like when you were six weeks old like like a normal person. Duh yeah I know a lot of people have strong feelings about that but don't knock our culture so I think we all agree that life is hard motherhood is hard daughterhood is hard existing between the ages of 30 and 45 or whatever is hard and then what I don't think we need to stop at just naming that feeling like how how do we do this well or at least survive it together and that's that's kind of how we got here to this point creating this space because you know we're overachievers. We want to know how to do a better job at doing a bad job.

Speaker 1 26:57

Maybe we also talk about how we decided to do this and also the fact that it's been like it's been probably like two years in the making right that's crazy.

Speaker 2 27:07

I remember mentioning it was like a it was like a little thing in my brain that was not it was I don't even think it was going to be a podcast. I remember saying to you there's something here because every time I'm talking to my friends we're always thinking about our kids or our parents and how hard this space is but no one seems to be talking about that on a larger scale. So and I remember saying that to you and you were like oh my gosh yeah I was just saying this to like another like let's do it and you know we're crazy instead instead of looking for that space I mean I think we did look for that space and it just it wasn't there for our generation there's a lot about the sandwich generation for older generations because traditionally the sandwich generation is associated with older like yeah like we're here and yeah we we have a lot on our plates and we feel really stressed and so does everyone so what better way to deal with that stress than to start a podcast and do a whole other project and yeah I could tell you that my family is thrilled about me doing another thing. My family doesn't know that I'm doing this I'm so excited about this space because I really think that we all need it even just talking to each other about the struggles that we feel are and feeling like we're all feeling the same thing, having these conversations together um is going to be really helpful.

Speaker 1 28:35

So what questions are we trying to answer while we're here you know I think we bring a lot of expertise to the table which I know is hard for both of us to say out loud, but we do. I mean your expertise in elder care, my expertise in parenting and those dynamics I think we also know what we don't know. I really have no idea about the economic piece of this and I know that there are many, many, many millennials and you know other people in the sandwich generation who are literally going broke because of caregiving costs. So you know I would love to offer some advice to those people advice on just navigating a really complex medical system advice on things like self-care which is something that people are always telling us we need, but we don't really know how to get there. And then yeah and you know I could I think when we started talking about this project two years ago, we initially thought of it as a way to really bring our knowledge and other experts' knowledge to people. But I think what we realized in having a lot of preliminary conversations was that we didn't want to just educate people. We also wanted to entertain them. We also really want to lean into the millennial nostalgia of it all. We hope that we can make you feel better about being in the sandwich generation and feel less alone instead of feeling like this is one more thing for you to stress about. I think we just want everyone to feel like this is a community and a safe space to talk about what it's really like to be juggling all these different responsibilities while like daydreaming about being a 10 year old and watching Boy Meets World on your parents couch.

Speaker 2 30:15

Yes. Yeah I think we do not claim to have all the answers. Like you said we know what we don't know and hopefully we can all be on this journey together trying to figure it figure it out and talking to the people who might know about some of the things we don't know about and getting there together. Yeah.

Speaker 1 30:36

Yeah I mean I think if you and I feel like we have no idea what we're doing, I imagine everybody does. So hopefully we can all find the answers together and also just laugh and be nostalgic and just be just be girls, you know we're just girls together. Literally just girls.

Speaker 2 30:55

All right so let's let's not to make it sound totally overwhelming and uh a dark space what's something that has gotten better for you lately?

Speaker 1 31:07

What's something you've you've learned to let go of that has made your life easier not so much something that I've learned to let go of but my social life has gotten better recently I was just thinking about this. I feel like seven years postpartum I have finally kind of found myself socially again which has been really nice. What about you?

Speaker 2 31:26

For me it's dinner like just stopped caring about dinner. I hate making dinner and and I'll be honest I am not the one who's making dinner. It is my husband makes dinner but I'm doing the pl dinner planning. So he's not like coming up with like what am I making and which is super helpful but also like I don't care. Like I just my kids will eat they're not gonna eat what I make them anyway. So they're probably not getting the most nutritious food but letting go of my expectations of dinner has it sounds like such a small thing but it's really made a big difference in my day-to-day thinking they're getting some food they're not hungry at the end. They're okay they they definitely get nutrition they're not starving and they're fine this is super hard to explain to my mom I have to say she's like what do you mean they're not eating like five plates of buried vegetables and you're not forcing them to eat all of their food but sometimes the opposite for me really I'm like no mom you can't give my child a roti with butter and sugar for dinner. They can come to my house because that's probably what they're having yeah yeah the social life thing is so important. We talk about this all the time it's really hard and I totally I I love being at home. I love being at home I am in some ways extroverted but there's nothing more I love than sitting on my couch in sweats. I don't like to leave my house and on the other end when I see older adults living well and not just being alive when I say living well I mean they're walking they they're doing things for themselves they're enjoying things they know what's going on around them. When I ask them about their life it's pretty unanimous like they have maintained their social circles. So when I feel sometimes I'm like oh why do I I don't need to like go out and actually I do. That's just as important as exercising and eating well is maintaining friendships. And maybe that's something I say to myself to justify how I I have a lot I love I love my friends. I go out a lot I leave my kids a lot to have dinner with my friends and I'm not really sorry because I feel like that's something I'm doing for myself and for them in 40 years. Yeah I will not just be leaning on them. I've really cultivated those relationships that I know that I will have.

Speaker 1 34:00

Yeah and I would also say to anyone who's listening to this and feeling like they don't have that and like they're failing because they don't have that, it might just not be the time for you to have the thriving social life right now that might come later. I think for me my social life was kind of on pause for a little while because I had two little kids who were home with me 247 and at the end of the day I could not handle any more social interaction and I needed time to myself. But now I've kind of come out of that phase and I'm much more you know able to have a social life and I have the energy to show up for friends in a different way. So I would say don't feel guilty if you spend a lot of time with your friends, but also don't feel guilty if you don't. Yes.

Speaker 2 34:44

And maintaining friendships doesn't always mean going out on like for a night on the town and like leaving. Sometimes it's literally just text my best friend who lives across the state like hey miss you that's it's the whole that's the whole thing. Sometimes we don't respond for two weeks and it's fine. I'm still making that connection it's the feeling of thinking outside of yourself and knowing that you have some community outside of just you that's what's making your brain I don't want to say tricking your brain but I actually like would much prefer to sit on the couch and eat snacks in silence with my friends than do a whole thing. Like we need more couch friends. So that's the kind of friendship that I want to invest in somebody who will come over to my messy house and sit there. There are no plans there's no make I mean half the time it is like planning four months in advance. And because even for this we've had to reschedule this several times because of either a kid or a parent somebody needing something that's just how it is and that's fine.

Speaker 1 35:49

How it is yeah and you I think we have to have grace for each other too you know as much as I really don't like the cancel plans culture where people are like you know I love it when someone cancels plans life happens and I think we have to be respectful of each other's time but also like give people grace because sometimes there truly is nothing that can be done and you just have to reschedule.

Speaker 2 36:11

Yes. And also all of us who say that we love canceling plans, be honest with yourself when a plan is canceled what do you do? You probably fill it in with something on your to-do list or something else that you should be no I I really don't believe that especially if you're an eldest daughter you're not just like oh I have nothing to do now so I'm gonna do nothing. We just don't do that.

Speaker 1 36:34

As we mentioned millennials are hopelessly nostalgic. We are all obsessed with the pop culture that we grew up with. So we thought it would be fun to end this episode with a little game rapid fire if you will featuring our favorite nostalgic TV characters.

Speaker 2 36:50

All right a little rapid fire TV nostalgia okay what nostalgic TV character would you add to your group chat?

Speaker 1 37:00

Lizzie McGuire hands down a good one. I had Ashley from Fresh Prince which TV mom would you trust to babysit your kids Harriet from Family Matters. How about you? I think I would say Amy Matthews what TV dad would you trust to call in a crisis Danny Tanner because he would take care of business and he would clean it up too and then he would like leave us with some inspirational words what about you I would choose Alan Matthews especially if I joined a cult he would be there he would be there to save me. Which nostalgic TV character is probably crushing it as a mom in millennial mom culture? Stephanie Channer I would say Monica Geller. Honestly like the most unrealistic thing about friends is the fact that Monica was not the eldest yeah it doesn't make any sense add that to IMDB inconsistency.

Speaker 2 37:56

What about as a dad? Who would be crushing it as a dad? Eric Matthews Eric Matthews all right so we hope you had fun with us for this first episode. Some of our episodes are going to feel heavier than others we're gonna try to keep it light and entertaining but you know this is hard and it might not always feel super light and funny but we're glad you're here and hopefully we can learn and grow together.

Speaker 1 38:26

Yeah and let us know if you guys like the rapid fire at the end. Maybe that's a way for us to leave you on a happier note after talking about some really hard things. So thank you guys for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed give us any feedback you have we're all in this together so we are open to hearing from you guys and yeah thank you. All right see you next time