On Bears and Balance

January 2, 2025

You heard it here first: Don’t eat polar bear liver.

Right now, you’re probably thinking it's unlikely you'll ever venture to the Arctic Circle, much less grill polar bear fillets. But if you somehow get the chance, DON'T. Polar bear liver is packed with an astronomical amount of Vitamin A; while we need small amounts of Vitamin A for healthy eyes and skin, the concentrated dose in a polar bear would be enough to make your future not just unpleasant but brutally short.

The takeaway from this macabre culinary trivia? Balance.

When my first child was born, my friend Vanessa—an engineer homeschooling two turbo-charged sons—gave me advice I didn’t know I needed: Remember, you ALSO matter. While one child’s needs or activities might dominate the schedule on a given day, Vanessa said, balance had to prevail over time for everyone in the family, which meant that I shouldn't neglect my own goals while raising my girls.

Growing KidsOutAndAbout.com when my kids were young meant that my work time came packaged with a generous dose of guilt: Generations of ancestral mothers would whisper Your job is to take care of your children! Don't you know there are polar bears around? from a corner of my mind. But Vanessa's words would spring from the other mental corner and counter them. To placate the ancestral voices, I kept my kids away from metaphorical (and, I guess, literal) polar bears, and the balance worked itself out.

Balance isn’t just about meeting everyone’s needs; we grownups need to model it for the kids in our orbit, so that as they grow, they see that caring for themselves is as essential as caring for others. The New Year is a great time to reset, reevaluate, and remind yourself: Everyone matters, including you.

—Deb