Very cute. Very loud.
Q. Dear Jordan,
I was wondering if you ever wrote a post about how you and Kendrick dealt with getting your children to sleep through the night? My baby girl still wakes up multiple times a night, often winds up in our bed, and still needs to nurse to sleep. I don't think I can handle full-on "crying it out," but I just started working again full-time and I am EXHAUSTED.
Hell's Kitchen, NYC | November 2011
How is it possible that I've never written about breastfeeding? I've written about Boobs After Baby (oh my god). I've written about the challenges of returning to work with a newborn. I've written about my fear that I might not love my second child as much as my first (spoiler: I do). How have I not written about a topic that's an absolutely consuming one for new mothers, not to mention a controversial one for what seems like everyone on the planet?
But after a request from a reader I went hunting for a post in which I talk about my own experiences with breastfeeding, and didn't find anything, save for an offhand mention here and there. Apparently breastfeeding is a topic that I've skipped around for nearly five years now...and when I thought about it I realized that there is a good reason for this: for a long, long time I was afraid to touch this subject, because I was afraid of what my choices might say about me.
I'm not even sure what to write today; all I can think about is how happy I am to be home.
I am so grateful to get to travel, and to get to do the kind of work I do. I'm so scared of sounding like I'm not, or like I'm not aware that I have a choice in the matter - I mean, obviously there is no one ordering me to take on multi-day shoots in far-flung locations. But the fact that I'm incredibly excited about the projects I've been working on lately doesn't change how much anxiety I'm having over the possibility that my schedule might stay this way, because I haven't been handling being away from my kids especially well, and I don't know if that's going to change.
I was talking to my mom about this, and she said something to the effect of "Jordan." (With a period, which tends to indicate that whatever's coming next is accurate and also something I should have thought of myself.) "Most working parents have to return to an office a few weeks after their children are born. You mostly get to work from home, and if now, several years in, you're starting to have to occasionally travel for a week or two, that's how it goes. Jobs evolve, and your family will evolve too."
I met with a therapist today. Not a psychiatrist - a therapist, and specifically one specializing in cognitive-behavioral therapy. What CBT is, essentially: an intensive, results-geared 12-18 week course of therapy during which you learn specific techniques that you can use to better cope with your anxiety (or depression, or whatever it is that brought you in).
I sat down on the therapist's couch next to a little machine bubbling lavender-scented steam into the air and gave him my best "Look at how happy and okay I am!" smile (because, as everyone knows, the most important part of therapy is convincing your therapist you totally don't need it. ...Right?). He asked me why I was there, and even though I knew this was a pretty unhelpful way to begin the session, I told him the truth: that I didn't know.
It really was true; these days, I feel more or less...fine. Great, actually. My anxiety is under control; my insomnia has virtually disappeared. I'm stressed about various things, of course, but they feel like things I probably "should" be stressed about, like travel and mortgage payments and such. I only booked the appointment in the first place because the psychiatrist who I see about once a month to check in on my medication suggested it, and so while I paid for that day's appointment at the reception desk I also scheduled a new one with his colleague. And then all of a sudden it was a month later and there I was: sitting in a therapist's office and talking about feelings.
It's 7AM on Mother's Day, and I'm writing this from a Southwest flight somewhere over...Colorado, I think. I was originally scheduled to fly home from St. Louis this afternoon, but yesterday morning I was on set and called my kids to FaceTime with them, and that one call ended up changing my plans. I hadn't seen their faces in a couple of days because I couldn't get my FaceTime to work (discovery: restarting one's phone more than once a year is apparently a good idea) - and when they finally popped up on my phone screen my heart started pounding and I started feeling like I might cry (which is not a thing I want to do on a set, ever). When we hung up, I went straight to my computer and started hunting for a flight - any flight - that might get me home even an hour or two earlier.
One of the hardest things about parenting - for me, anyway - has been listening to this constant refrain, everywhere I go:
"Enjoy every minute. It goes so fast."
Are you a parent? You know exactly what I'm talking about.
{ New Mexico road trip with my then-boyfriend Jason | 2005 }
For about four years in my mid-twenties (roughly ages 22 to 26), I was anorexic.
Just typing out that sentence is a big deal for me, because for a long, long time it wasn't something I admitted even to myself, and certainly not to anyone else. I've always referred to it as "that time when I was super fucked-up" or "that time when I decided not to eat ever again" - jokey, hyperbolic half-truths intended to swing the conversation towards lighter subjects. I've never even said the word "anorexia" to my mother; I called her yesterday to talk to her about this post so she wouldn't be blindsided (although of course she knew anyway). But over the past few weeks, I've found myself saying out loud to one friend or another, whenever a related subject comes up, "Oh yeah, I was anorexic." And we talk about it or we don't, but it's out there either way.
Let me tell you about the moment when I realized that even though my work is incredibly important to me, I need more separation, and I need to be able to shut off sometimes - not just in a half-assed way (where I'm technically playing with my kids but 60% of my brain is devoted to the email I need to remember to send by the end of the day), but all the way.
And I need to do this on purpose, because it doesn't come naturally.
This realization has happened to various degrees many times over the years, but it really happened - like, can't-get-it-out-of-my-head-happened - a little less than a year ago, when I was visiting a Children's Science Museum with Indy and Goldie. They were playing with this massive model of hills and trees and buffalos, and I was half-watching them play and half-checking my text messages because even though I'd taken the afternoon off I still needed (wanted?) to make sure everything was cool work-wise, and suddenly I looked up and realized how photogenic and symmetrical the background was and how great the colors were, and thought, oh hey - I should Instagram this! It's cute! And symmetrical! And those colors!
Jetlag + rain = a baby who sleeps until 9AM (and a VERY happy mother)
You know how usually you get off a plane after a cross-country flight and you're like ugggggggg I'm exhausted I just want to be home already? Yesterday, as I was pushing my daughter's stroller through the snow towards the taxi stand with one hand and pulling a sixty-pound (oops) suitcase with the other, a laptop bag and a camera bag and a diaper bag and a purse hanging from my body and a half-eaten package of popcorn suspended precariously in the cupholder, I heard actual music playing in my head. And it wasn't, like, Sarah MacLachlan: it was a TRIUMPHANT ORCHESTRAL SYMPHONY. I think it may have been the Rocky theme song.
Because I KILLED IT yesterday.
Grey Knit Hat (for women) | Smile Hat (for kids)
I was playing around with lighting and props for a shoot I have coming up, and took these test photos, and...I don't know, I just thought they came out well, so I wanted to show them to you. Sometimes it's nice to just look at a pretty photograph of flowers and pom poms.
On my drive down to LA, I started listening to a podcast - Elizabeth Gilbert's Magic Lessons, in which she discusses the process of exploring (and hopefully unleashing) your creativity. (I'm aware that this does not appear to have anything at all to do with the aforementioned flowers and hats, but bear with me, because I do have a point here.)
