East Flatbush Writer

Two very specific times in my adult life I have had to face the reality that I can’t do it all. And by “doing it all”  I mean, be successful in all the areas of my life that matter, at the same time.  What areas of your life matter most to you? For me it’s faith,  family and career,  in that order. It is my personal belief that you just can’t succeed at everything without sacrificing something or someone.

My life’s journey has been filled with many invitations  to participate in an assortment of activities,  some quite  extraordinary, others extremely ordinary.   I have led small and large groups,  hosted, directed,  performed,  contributed, traveled, published, sponsored, collaborated, visited,  cooked, cleaned and provided care-giving. And as impressive a list, each decision to say yes has been a choice.

The old saying goes,  every yes to something is a no to something else.   Life is a set of choices we make everyday and in the last two decades,  I have had to say no in order to say yes to the people that matter most.

It was 1999, and we were all waiting on pins and needles for the new millennium,  Y2K, the destruction of the world as we knew it.  Similarly,  my own personal new year was about to transform into something unrecognizable.  January 2000 was the year I would turn 30, quit my well-paying job as a management consultant, attend graduate school full-time and transition to being a newly divorced single parent. 

My colleagues were puzzled and inquired why I felt the need to walk away from my job just to attend graduate school.  They were of the mindset that I could do it all.  I also knew I could do it all,  just not well. 

June 2024, my 81 year old father was diagnosed with prostate cancer,  and scheduled for radiation treatments in the coming fall.  August of that same year,  my 78 year old mother was admitted to the hospital for two weeks.  As a school teacher,  I was expected back in the classroom,  the day after Labor Day.  I spent several hours during my mother’s time in the hospital putting together a mental plan that would allow me to return to work while providing the immediate support needed by both parents.  Within a week of my mother’s hospitalization, in the office of my school principal, discussing intermittent leave which would allow me to work 3 days a week,  I gained clarity of what had to be done. 

In both situations,  the temptation was to keep all the plates in my life spinning: faith, family and career without one of them falling to the floor in a crash.  But I knew in 2000, and also 25 years later, that an attempt to do it all would be at the cost of one of those three important tenants of my life. So I chose in August of 2025 to say yes to whom I chose in 2000: my family.  You can do it all,  but you can’t do it all well without sacrificing or saying no to something or someone.