Hey friends. Maybe you don't have much time for reading. I can well imagine with babies and

toddlers and small children running around or maybe you're just even busier with your teenagers.

Each week I write a short essay that is designed to support you in parenting, educating, and adulting.

It's called Tea with Julie and it comes out on Sunday mornings.

I've found out, however, that many of you don't even have time to read it.

And I learned by hanging out with you at conferences that you love the podcast.

You even fold the laundry extra slowly.

So you can listen to me talk. So it occurred to me that we could start a new series called Tea with Julie.

Here, audio version,

so that all you have to do is pop in your earbuds, make a cup of tea, and listen to a snippet of encouragement.

We're going to start that series today. Today's first tea with Julie is called It's Not Selfish to meet your own needs. A family is an interdependent system. No one person can carry it alone.

There must be give and take support and nurture for each person, even if in uneven doses at times.

All you can do is become the healthiest version of you that you can be, taking care of your welfare so that you don't wake up one day and flip out.

You'll be given good advice. Be generous, give, share, listen, pay attention. Make adjustments. Become a

partner to your kids, to your spouse. Forgive. find the good, the true, the pure, let go of petty

resentments and high expectations. But you also need to take care of you.

Be sure that you, the caregiver, are being given care to, by someone, somehow, somewhere.

It's how you keep going.

When you hit your limits, you'll get advice to give more.

You'll be told what the ideals are. You'll be reminded of your original goals. You'll try harder.

We women are especially likely to take this advice to heart. Just remember, in the trying, which is right and noble and good. Stand up for

you too. You matter as much to the whole system as all the people you love and serve freely every day.

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