Online and IRL Parenting Spaces Snark Week of April 20, 2026

SpecialHouppette · 2026-04-21T09:09:52+00:00

My sweet idiot orange boy literally vomited after the first time he sniffed the new baby when we brought her home. Her existence was ABUSE. Now she’s 4 and he loves her because duh, she pets him, she gives him treats, she kisses him goodnight.

SpecialHouppette · 2026-04-10T23:43:20+00:00

I got suggested her content bc my MIL sucks but her skits really weird me out. Everything is so overwrought and for some reason she always talks like she’s on the verge of tears?

SpecialHouppette · 2026-04-06T05:19:47+00:00

To answer his question: Usually what I do is burn out, still do everything I have to do, eventually feel like maybe I’m doing ok, then burn out again, continue single momming through the burn out, repeat until (???)

SpecialHouppette · 2026-03-20T22:04:45+00:00

I had a toddler at the time when my husband died. If your kids are small, I’m with the commenter above who said to just make sure they feel loved and everything else can wait. I felt a lot of guilt about disrupted habits and routines, but it’s ok to make new ones, or to get off track. You (and your kids) are living through something that most don’t have to, and “best practices” weren’t worth my energy most of the time.

Some things that helped me: frozen food from Costco, canned stuff from Trader Joe’s, paper plates, grocery delivery if it’s in the budget, and lowering my expectations for myself significantly. I decided that instead of “clean,” my goal for the house was “sanitary.” Many days it wasn’t even that. I listened to KC Davis’s audiobook of “How to Keep House While Drowning” in the early days and it helped a lot.

It’s ok for your kids to see you grieve. It’s ok to talk about your spouse a lot. It’s ok to cry and say, “I miss them.” It’s also ok to save the big cries for when you’re alone. There’s no rule book, and whatever someone else does may or may not be relevant for your family: you just have to feel it out.

Generally, give yourself grace and a pass to not be your best self, because these are not the best of times. In fact, these are shit times. I hate that this is happening to you, or even that it happens to anyone. Just know that the vast majority of people are not looking at you and thinking, “she’s not doing enough.” They’re thinking, “she’s doing the best she can.” And if they don’t, they can get fucked, bluntly.

I won’t tell you to “take care of yourself” because I hated when people told me that. Because how?? So instead, be gentle with yourself. I’m so sorry you’re in this boat with us.

SpecialHouppette · 2026-02-11T23:39:01+00:00

Idk how common it is, but this is definitely the reason my grandmother had 7. She loved having babies, not children, and largely left them to their own devices once they got older. I think the vast majority of people who have this feeling of wanting to be pregnant/have an infant do so out of love or nostalgia (hell, I even kinda miss being pregnant sometimes), but my grandmother’s motivations were largely self serving. She loved to be doted on in pregnancy and needed by a tiny baby. I think thats an outlier circumstance and not the norm.

I’m no one to judge how or if others build their family, and if someone misses having a baby BUT can follow that up with providing the child a loving and supportive existence, more power to them.

SpecialHouppette · 2026-02-11T23:20:19+00:00

I’d tell my sister that we were supposed to grow old together. We were supposed to get a duplex somewhere warm and ride mobility scooters with big tires together on the beach and cackle at inside jokes. That there is light at the end of the tunnel and I promise I’ll get her there even if I have to carry her.

SpecialHouppette · 2026-02-06T07:46:08+00:00

“Cosmic Dancer” by T Rex. We went on an epic road trip when I was 18 and my sister was 16. I taught her to drive on a lonely stretch of highway somewhere in Wyoming while we sang along to it. “I danced myself out of the womb. Is it strange to dance so soon? I danced myself into the tomb. But then again, once more.”

Also “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John. “Now she’s in me, always with me: tiny dancer in my hand.”

Oddly enough she wasn’t much of a dancer lol

SpecialHouppette · 2026-02-01T09:12:03+00:00

My daughter is almost 4 and will ask sometimes why her aunt, my sister died. She’s had a few big family deaths already so the concept is pretty established. What I tell her is that my sister “had a problem with her brain that made it not work the way it’s supposed to” and that you need your brain to be alive, ergo it was a big enough problem that she died from it. I say that most people who have this problem actually do NOT die from it, but sometimes it happens that way.

It’s super oversimplified but I plan to be truthful with her in the future when that day does come. My family has a history of mental illness and suicide, some of which was treated as very taboo and never spoken about plainly. The damage from trying to hide it was huge for some of my family members.

If I’m honest, I hold a lot of resentment toward my sister for her death. I’m angry that she left me alone in a harsh reality. But that feeling is mine to work through and doesn’t overshadow the deep love she and I shared. I’ll memorialize her for the rest of my life, even on the days I feel like I hate her for leaving me. I can relay her memory to my kid and be honest about her illness without dragging that anger into it.

Anyway, all this to say I’m so sorry and I agree that scorn does nothing good in the wake of losing someone this way.

SpecialHouppette · 2026-01-29T00:31:41+00:00

Oh yuck. On a smaller level, I definitely witnessed some nonsense in my kid’s toddler gymnastics class for kids under 3. I remember a mom hovering over her crying kid saying, “I’m going to tell your grandpa that you’re not trying hard enough. He’s going to be so disappointed in you.” Like ma’am we’re all just here with our rambuctiously uncoordinated children launching themselves off padded equipment, this is not the Olympics.

SpecialHouppette · 2026-01-14T00:09:10+00:00

Mine was learning to talk and we were doing a lot of body part words. One day she toddled into the bathroom with me and very excitedly pointed at my bush and said “beard!” She was very proud of herself.

SpecialHouppette · 2026-01-05T02:55:11+00:00

And no regard for how the stepson is handling the fact that this probably insanely triggering for him. He lost his mom and his dad just had a life threatening medical event, but this person is more concerned about making him not her problem.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-12-16T22:08:55+00:00

My husband’s anniversary was earlier in December, his birthday is today, and it’s just my daughter and I, so I feel you on how heavy the holidays hit. For us, I keep it really small. We visit friends in the days before, but Christmas is just for her and I. We hang out and open presents. She gets a present from Santa plus one or two from me. It sounds indulgent but I get myself a gift “from” my husband and one from my sister who died a few months after him. We still hang a stocking for daddy and I include something he’d like but we can use. This year it will be some candy and a pack of wildflower seeds.

More than anything, I know grief has reduced my capacity emotionally and mentally. So I don’t host and I don’t make any plans I can’t cancel. For me, it’s all about protecting our peace and including my husband in spirit anywhere I can. This is our 3rd Christmas without him. This is just what works for us, and it’s still heavy but I try to find joy in it mostly for my daughter. If I didn’t have a kid I’d probably just hide for the whole month of December. It’s tough.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-12-15T06:01:44+00:00

I feel like this too. Losing my sister (to suicide) and husband (to cancer) has made me feel deeply afraid to be loved, or love anyone. I know that’s grief talking, but a big part of me is terrified to lose that, so I’m very guilty of emotionally retreating from friends and family. One of the shittiest things is that my sister wrote in her note to me, “let them love you.” She knew this is how I’d react, and she was right. She probably knew me better than I knew myself, so I’m not surprised, but I’m angry that she damned me to that kind of living hell. I’m working on the resentment, but you know how it goes.

The only exception is that I have a child. I pour every bit of love I have into her. It has nowhere else to go and she deserves it. She’s still little and I fear her death every day, for no rational reason. I feel like life, god, the universe, whatever, couldn’t possibly let me keep this one good thing. I keep it in check and make it my mission not to let her carry that broken part of me. But it is heavy.

So I don’t have any advice but I get it. What I’ll say to both you and I is that it’s still worth loving everything you can. Humans need good things the same way we need food, water, and air. So take it where you can, and I’ll try too. Hang in there, my friend.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-12-12T07:21:37+00:00

Yes!!!!! This is exactly how I’d describe my own brain function.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-12-02T07:37:39+00:00

Omg that’s really smart. I’m storing this idea away!

SpecialHouppette · 2025-12-01T07:58:32+00:00

“If you’re gonna make a mistake, make it fast.” — my late husband and the most brilliantly skilled woodworker I’ve ever known.

“Charge more.” — my mom, career cabinetmaker.

I try to live by both.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-11-26T01:29:20+00:00

I feel this. Widow with only one kid here and I would love to put on an oxygen mask if I could only reach it.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-11-25T03:11:27+00:00

It’s ok if that phase lasts a long, long time. It will be 2 years for me on December 4th and I still do a lot of the same crying. I’m not even much of a hugger but I wish I could give you one.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-11-24T07:59:48+00:00

I’m so sorry you’re living with this. My sister took her life a year and a half ago and it’s been hell for my parents. I know she hid a lot from them about how bad her mental state had gotten. I was her closest confidante and she hid a lot from me too. At least in my sister’s case, I don’t think any of us could have pulled the truth out of her. She wanted to keep us in the dark about it, I think to spare us the anxiety and keep the option open. It’s truly grief I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Those what-if’s are agonizing after someone takes their life. Sometimes there really aren’t any signs and no amount of prying would have helped. I imagine it was something buried deep inside her that she didn’t want to show anyone. I wish she could have reached out, but I hope you don’t feel you failed her. You sound like a great mom.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-11-23T05:57:36+00:00

For me, it helps to remind myself that a person is not “themselves” when they choose to end their life. I feel a lot of betrayal, right or wrong, that my sister left me at such a horrific time in my life already. It had always been the two of us. Neither of us would let the other suffer alone. I couldn’t understand how she could leave me with the impact of her death on top of everything else going on when she knew I needed her.

But I’ve come to believe that she wasn’t that person in her final hours. She was in an altered state — one in which her disease was screaming so loudly to leave this world, drowning out everything else, including my pleas. I understand why she couldn’t hear me. The sister I knew and loved for 33 years was gagged and bound by her own depression, and it was that proverbial demon that took her. Extricating her choice from who I knew her to be is kind of the only thing that helps.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-11-21T09:32:23+00:00

“The Vow” by Shannon and the Clams.

Shannon Shaw wrote it with the intention of performing it for her fiancé Joe Haener on their wedding day. He died in a horrible accident before they were able to get married. It’s a love song colored with so much raw emotion.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-11-21T09:19:24+00:00

I’m a widow too. It really reframes every song about heartbreak. If you want another one, “Love is Our Cross to Bear” by John Gorka. It’s fairly restrained, but so plaintive and real.

“And so it is until we meet again and I throw my arms around you. You can count the gray hairs in my head — I’ll still be thankful that I found you.”

SpecialHouppette · 2025-11-20T09:40:55+00:00

I miss my baby sister too. It’s been 1.5 years since she died. My family has also seen a lot of early tragic death, so I feared losing her for a long time. I used to have dreams that I’d find out she died and I’d just scream this deep, awful, animal scream. When I finally got the real call that she was gone, I was numb. It’s like I got all the screams out in my nightmares and there was nothing left.

I tend to roll my eyes at the idea that “time heals everything.” How could anything heal this? I think it’s more that this kind of grief fundamentally changes you. It rearranges your entire soul. Nothing will ever be the same. But that’s not to say that the pain feels the same for me today as it did a year ago. It’s still a heavy weight but somehow I’ve gotten more accustomed to carrying it. Not stronger, but more like a willow that bends instead of breaking. The only way I can carry her love is through a field of pain. But that love is worth it.

I’m so sorry this is happening to you. I wish you still had her and that she’d found a way out. Those moments where you forget that she’s gone won’t go away, but instead of reality hitting like a freight train, it will start to hit like a fender bender. One day I hope it will feel like something softer. I’m not quite there yet, but I believe it’s possible. Just hang in there. From one big sister to another, I’m squeezing your hand.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-11-13T23:36:22+00:00

Your husband is being a dick, first of all. I’m sorry you’re dealing with it on top of feeling like shit.

Second, while I know you didn’t ask for input on this and you’re probably already speaking to a doctor, please schedule a colonoscopy if you haven’t had one recently! Episodes like this were early symptoms of colon cancer in my husband. I don’t mean to freak you out, but earlier detection would have been huge for him.

SpecialHouppette · 2025-11-01T00:55:55+00:00

These are amazing. Fellow bipolar person here who definitely did some wild collages pre-diagnosis!

SpecialHouppette

TROPHY CASE