Frankly, fair isn’t equal.

This summer my husband and I planned a twelve day vacation to Mexico with our five kids for after Christmas.

We had a fuck ton of airline credit due to Covid cancellations and decided to book an Air BnB with my parents in the Baja. Lodging paid, car booked, flights scheduled, we focused on this fall. Kids returning to school, settling into our new home, and my work-related Amazon bullshit.

In the middle of this we forgot something vital. Essential. Our four youngest children  had passports that were expiring in October.

We didn’t remember until a few weeks before our trip. Then, a freak snowstorm the day before the flight meant the Passport Agency was closed and those expedited passports we needed were not going to happen.

So I boarded a plane to the sun with my 20 year old daughter. My husband stayed put, in a foot of snow and frozen pipes, with four moody teenagers who missed out on a family  trip to the sun with Grandma and Grandpa.

We felt terrible, my husband and I. 

Me, more so since I’m the one sipping on mezcal as I type this. I spent the afternoon beachside eating fresh tuna tostadas watching the whales. I kid you not, I am in paradise. 

My love? He’s on his Peloton pedaling to nowhere, wishing the snow would melt faster. 

We have this saying in our house, fair isn’t equal. It’s been an essential turn of phrase with all the kids because we literally cannot make everything the exact same for everyone. It isn’t humanly possible. At least not for this human. I would be spending my life making sure life was divided up in equal slices and one kid would still think they drew the short stick. We opted out and went with the fair isn’t equal motto.

Still, this feels extra unfair and not at all equal as 2/3rds of the house is in comparative misery. I can’t help but feel some guilt over that.

Guilt is a tricky thing, right? Not just in parenting -- but in all aspects of life.

And I particularly feel guilty A LOT in this business. 

For a long time my success as a romance author felt wildly unfair. I saw other writers doing the same thing as me, writing titty-fuck scenes that were just as hot, with the same bad boy heroes, buying covers from the same designer, yet I made thousands of dollars on a release and they made hundreds.