■ Jess and Jared Suisted bring a “young parent” perspective to living in Ōpōtiki.

We moved to Ōpōtiki in 2018 and love raising our three young children in this beautiful piece of earth we get to call home.

and now that school holidays are over, parents with children at school can breathe a sigh of relief. We are anyway.

Don’t get us wrong, we love our kids, but school holidays present us with a big challenge with a daughter who is eager to learn and a son who is either highly active or asleep.

In our work and personal life, we talk to a lot of people like us with children.

The consensus out there is that school holidays were fun … but not a “holiday” as we used to define that word BC (before children). I mean, did we really get a “break”?

This week, I was struck by a passing conversation with another mum.

As we walked past each other at the school gate she said, “How are you?”

I sensed the genuineness in her tone, so I took a moment to think, “How am I?

No wait, how am I actually doing?” My delay in responding, probably caused her to think perhaps I wasn’t okay because she followed up by saying, “You know, it’s okay to not be okay, it’s hard work juggling everyone and everything.”

I agreed and acknowledged the sense of relief I was feeling that school is back, and there is a small space to catch my breath.

Let me get to my point. Life is a juggling act, the more responsibilities and relationships we add to the mix, the more balls we have to juggle.

Doing life well doesn’t mean juggling as many balls as possible, or juggling all our balls at one time, or juggling without dropping some. That’s not realistic.

It is normal to drop balls sometimes, and it is not possible to keep juggling too many balls for a long period of time. We only have two hands after all.

Doing life well means learning which balls need to stay in the air and which balls can be placed down for a season or indefinitely.

It means learning how to pick them back up when they get dropped and learning to pick ourselves up too.

As time goes by, we get better at knowing which balls are plastic and which balls are glass.

Glass balls are the responsibilities and relationships that matter deeply, our children.

They are the ones we concentrate on keeping up in the juggle.

Of course, even the master jugglers drop the occasional ball.

The best way to pick them up is with a good dose of humility, positivity and grace.

When there is broken glass everywhere, don’t forget the power of forgiveness.

Forgiveness can often restore smashed glass balls.

The plastic balls are the not so important responsibilities and relationships we have, the ones that are not deeply connected to our core values.

Plastic balls can bounce, so it’s not the end of the world if we drop them or choose to place them down.

So go ahead and juggle. Juggle the balls that matter to you deeply and put aside some plastic ones if you need to.

Drop the occasional ball, because you will. It’s okay, just try to drop plastic ones. They bounce.