Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

So I decided on this week's topic when Rowan Mangan, the gracious Badger herself,

I think got some kind of an Instagram message.

Anyway, it was a message from someone we both

love who is living in a new city with two little kids and husband that travels a lot,

I mean little kids, like a one-year-old and a seven-month-old or something, that's not possible.

But anyway,

they're small. And there are possums. They don't take as long in gestation. No, they're actually

not. And I shouldn't be making fun of this poor woman's experience because she wrote, Roe put

something online about having a toddler isn't the easiest thing in the world. And she wrote

back and said, I'm so glad you said that because I love my kids. I love my husband. I love

everything we're doing, but I am drowning. And I was like, dude, I know that feeling. And

how many of you out there are drowning right now? A lot of us, a lot of us can feel like we're drowning.

It only takes a minute for something to go wrong that really scuttles our whole lives.

I'm thinking about whoever called the fire truck to 23rd Street is probably having a really bad day

and will probably be drowning for the next little while as they try to

collect themselves and start a new life after everything burned down. It's cheerful, cheerful

thoughts, but I have been in the drowning zone a lot in my life, partly because of my physical

flimsiness, which is legendary, and partly because I had three

kids close together and partly because I'm just not that well mentally.

So I know how to not drown when you're drowning, and I thought I'm going to go on and

...