During the recent weather chaos in Houston I found myself staring out the window, completely unsure about what to do. I grew up in an area of Texas that faced the threat of tornadoes regularly, but had never actually seen winds as strong as the ones I was watching blow past my house.

There are some parents who live for the chaos. They love being needed, and it seems like they rarely face any sort of breaking point or exhaustion. For the rest of us, we definitely have good days and fun moments, but the greatest parenting gift you can give us is the opportunity to not be a parent for a day.

In those first days and weeks, many new parents are so quickly and fully in over their heads, they often feel like they are the only ones who don’t know what they are doing. All of their friends and relatives who are parents seem to have made it through the early days unscathed, so asking someone to help when you feel overwhelmed can be embarrassing. Here is the secret though: every single parent on the face of the planet who has ever lived has a million little moments where they think, “I have no freaking clue what to do with this little human right now and I am losing my mind.”

My algorithm recently sent me some incredible videos of people running the Boston Marathon, and I loved seeing the inspirational stories of guides leading blind runners, senior citizen participants finding their spouses in the crowd, and finishers crossing hours after everyone receiving cheers for achieving something great, regardless of how long it took. It reminded me of a creator on social media who once answered the question, “why bother having kids?” with the most profound metaphor I have ever heard.

I am in a season of parenting that does not feel very fun. At 6 and 8 years of age, my children have fully entered their “torture your sibling” era. They each find an immense amount of pleasure in making the other miserable. Unfortunately, they are both incredible at this game.

It’s comforting to know that even seemingly perfect parents with all the resources in the world struggle with some of the same basic things that I do. How do you communicate big, tragic news to children when every bone in your body is working daily to shield them from pain and struggles? We all know that there will come a day when we can no longer protect them from the troubles of this world, and it is not wise to keep them insulated from reality for too long, but that does not make it easier to tell them a family member has died, or that you are facing an uncertain future in regard to your health.

I was just under two years old when my dad took me with him to meet the woman he was cheating on my mom with. Since I was unable to speak, I was the perfect alibi for him because, like any reasonable woman, my mom assumed that her husband surely could not be up to no good with a toddler in tow. Less than a year later, my parents were divorced, and I have no first hand memories of them ever being in the same room together and it not being incredibly uncomfortable.

For many years, I struggled to think of anyone other than myself. Actually, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t think about people, I just didn’t bother to reach out to anyone if I did think about them. When some friend I hadn’t spoken to in years randomly popped into my brain, I brushed the thought aside. If I saw something in the news that could have impacted someone I cared about, I rarely thought to check in and see how they were doing. Something that still shames me to this day is how I handled the death of a dear friend’s father just a couple of years out of college.

Beyoncé just did what could only be described as a complete 180 degree departure from what her fans know and love her for. Yet her followers from across the world not only tolerate her change, they are embracing and celebrating this new direction.