Introducing Parent of Adults

A newsletter about life after the kids move out by the author of PARENT HACKS

My daughter and me in the California coastal redwoods

Thank you for meeting me on the ground floor of this not-yet-built place! Funny how I think of this newsletter more as a place we’re meeting rather than a thing I’m doing. But that’s how this first issue feels — like a welcome into a new place for both of us.

*motions you inside, offers you coffee*

There’s a reason I titled this newsletter Parent of Adults and not Parenting Adults. Not because we stop parenting once our kids turn eighteen, or because “parenting” is a dirty word. But because, after much flailing and confusion, I realized that what I can best offer you — what I most need myself at this stage — isn’t parenting advice. It’s company. Stories. Conversation.

Like, “this happened, and huh, it made me think that which kind of helped. What about you?”

Or, “I didn’t expect this to happen. Am I the only one?”

Or, “This made me chuckle and I got to put down the burdens of the world for a moment. Maybe you, too?”

(This is pretty much the same impulse that prompted me to start the Parent Hacks blog in 2005.)

I call Parent of Adults a newsletter, but it’s more like an ongoing series of conversational jumping-off points. I’ll share thoughts and stories from my life as the parent of adults. If what I write sheds light on your life and you want to say something, you can leave a comment.

In my experience, the comments are where the real gems emerge. The heart of this newsletter will be in what comes out of our conversations. Generous back-and-forth among thoughtful folks tends to generate sturdier, more flexible wisdom because it moves us beyond my particular collection of blind spots. It’s definitely more fun.

Flexible wisdom! More fun! Sounds pretty good in today’s world, doesn’t it?

Of course, unlike me, not everyone wants to talk about everything all the time. Sometimes you just want to sit back, unfasten any restrictive articles of clothing, and listen to other people talk. Which is cool! The very act of our gathering in this Internet cul-de-sac is a comfort. I already feel more relaxed here than I do on Facebook.

We’ve all chosen to be here, and there are no algorithms messing with our minds. It’s a great place to start.

A reminder about comments: Parent of Adults is free to read, but a paid subscription is required to post comments and participate in discussions. I point this out not to pressure you to pay, but to remind you about how this “place” differs from big social media platforms. I’ve written in more detail about why I charge for community features on the About page.

The pull toward story had been building for some time but (ironically) I couldn’t find a way to describe it till now.

Almost seven months ago, before the idea for this newsletter was, as my mom likes to say, “a twinkle in your father’s eye,” I shared this in on Instagram:

About three months later, I tweeted this:

Asha Dornfest @ashadornfest

“I’ve never been this sure about something I don’t understand.” — Me, to my husband #intuition #annoying

A couple months after that I tweeted this:

Asha Dornfest @ashadornfest

Dream, hope, intention, goal: to write in a way that respects my reader as distinct, yet illuminates the vastness of what we share. #writing

Then this, in reaction to Rosalie Knecht’s essay on Literary Hub, Repetition Ruins a Narrative: On Trying to Create Amid the Sameness of Pandemic Parenting:

Asha Dornfest @ashadornfest

This piece by @RosalieKnecht has opened a window on my own blocked storytelling. My particulars are different, but the problem — a broken narrative machine — is the same. Via @lithub & @Tin_House #writing

Tin House @Tin_House

Over @lithub today— @RosalieKnecht, author of ✨Vera Kelly Lost and Found, has a smart essay about the narrative machines that power fiction and therapy, and why it's been so hard to create during the repetitions of the pandemic, https://t.co/sh7ggjYgBb https://t.co/g5W0Q8rENr

I was obviously picking up signals about the direction I wanted my writing to go but I still had no idea what form it should take. I journaled and read and ruminated and took writing workshops and listened to podcasts and blurted half-formed thoughts to a couple friends, but mostly I focused on non-writing…

…and then the idea for this newsletter hit me. Within a few weeks, I signed up for a Substack account, built out the back end, and now here we are.

Of course, that makes it all sound easier and more straightforward than it actually was. But the path always seems clearer when you look back on it. What matters most, I think, is that we’re here now, ready to look ahead.

In her musing on what makes great art, Maria Popova said something that struck me as so true it’s been ringing in my head ever since:

“All art is self-help.”

Here’s a longer excerpt for context (but I recommend reading the whole post at The Marginalian):

Here is the great hoax of culture: If you are a musician with legions of fans, if you are an artist with legions of collectors and admirers, if you are a writer with legions of readers and subscribers, it is not because legions of strangers have impartially esteemed you as a staggering creative genius. It is because what you make is making the lives of legions of strangers more livable for them — nourishing some malnourished part of them, helping them commune with some alienated part of themselves, mirroring and magnifying and clarifying their own experience.

In this regard, all art is self-help and all art is service.

In other words, your presence here helps “mirror and magnify and clarify my own experience” as much as I hope this newsletter will help you. Let’s see where this takes us.

You may be thinking, “wait a minute, what’s all this about art?! I’m just here for the stuff about being the parent of grown humans!”

Okay, fine, we don’t have to think about what we’re doing here as art. I did warn you that I’m unabashedly philosophical. But I also said I wouldn’t dwell in the depths all the time! So I’ll close with two things: an extremely adorable picture of my son hiking with me on a very hot day in Southwestern Oregon, and a promise that the next post will be on the lighter side.

(I make no guarantees about the post after that.)

On Lower Table Rock in Medford, Oregon. Get this: the vernal pools at the top of the Table Rocks are a rare habitat that supports a Federally-listed threatened species of fairy shrimp (FAIRY SHRIMP!) and a state-threatened plant called Dwarf Wooly Meadowfoam. This plant is native to the Table Rocks and is found nowhere else in the world.