Dear Tracy,

You know how in baseball when the pitcher has been throwing aces all inning long but starts to slow down a bit? Yeah, me neither, but it turns out there’s a position called a relief pitcher. Someone to come in and get the job done when you just…can’t. Sometimes? I can’t. For all intents and purposes, I’m a happily married single mother. I’m hardly the only one I know. Husbands who are pilots, students, military service members, work swing/night shift, merchant marines, or who just travel a lot for business and simply aren’t available to be the relief pitcher when their wives are worn down from inning after inning of parenting.

Sometimes, it’s too much and with no end in sight, it can feel lonely and disheartening. Which is when I reached out to you asking if you’d like to do something crazy: start a community of mothers. I know! It was either that or continue researching how to rent a tiny little fjiord-side cottage in Norway, but I’m really glad you fell for Plan A.

When being the primary (and usually only) caregiver becomes too much, I enlist the help of others. If you’ve felt as if it’s all to much, or considered running away to Norway, check out the list below and see if any of these might help you too.