Stayin' Alive
Raising a Comedian
During serious parenting moments where consequences should justly and sternly be levied, my youngest daughter Megan has routinely ruined my authority by making me laugh until my stomach hurts.
At age five, she was an aggressive cookie dough snitch. One afternoon, my own craving outweighed my maternal instincts. After the mixer stopped, I slid my finger down the beaters and claimed the dough for myself. Meg stared at me, deadpan, and dropped into a flawless, gap-toothed Mr. T impersonation:
“You see this contact lens, Flint Lockwood? This contact lens represents you! You see my eye? My eye represents my eye. I’ve got my eye on you!”
I choked, handed over the beater, and gave up parenting for the afternoon.
At eight, she woke me from a dead sleep to crawl into bed. Half-conscious, I rolled over to make room.
“Mommy?” she whispered into the dark. “If I was a dinosaur, I would have been born in the FAR-Tacious period.”
My nose understood the joke three seconds before my brain did.
By sixteen, the jokes were stealthier. One evening she asked for some cuddle time while we watched a movie. She put her head in my lap, nuzzling in close, and reached an arm around my waist. It was a rare, tender, keep-time-in-a-bottle moment. I stroked her hair, waiting for the teenage heart-to-heart.
“Mama?” she murmured softly against my shirt.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Mama, I’m your colostomy bag.”
I froze, stared at the ceiling, and decided not to unpack that.
Two Can Play at This Game
When a kid turns thirteen, a parent’s mere existence is a humiliating liability. They want to be dropped off a full block from the school doors so nobody suspects they have relatives.
I prefer to lean directly into this vulnerability.
One evening, Meg was in a downward spiral, which required an emergency run to Safeway for real chocolate, not the stale baking chips from the back of the pantry. In the parking lot, I set the ground rules: she could buy whatever she wanted, provided my iPhone stayed in my back pocket playing full-blast disco down every aisle.
Meg didn't flinch. “Game on.”
We grooved past the produce section to Michael Jackson’s “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground).” By the time we reached the candy aisle, we were fully committed, two women disco-walking between the Kit-Kats while other shoppers bobbed their heads and cleared a path. Her mood broke before we hit the registers.
Humor as Vital for Healing
When deep grief and stress take over, your body gets locked on high alert or shuts down completely. Your brain gets stuck treating everything like an ongoing emergency. Muscles tense. Breathing turns shallow. Thoughts spin in exhausted circles. You cannot simply talk or reason your way out of that physical knot. You have to change what your body is doing.
When their dad died during their childhood, our household had to absorb a massive amount of sudden, heavy reality. We carry the permanent mantle of Bob’s loss with us every day, but instinctually, our family gravitated to humor to survive it.
A real belly laugh works like an instant circuit breaker. It forces your lungs to take a full, deep breath, drops your stress hormones, and tells your nervous system that you are safe in that moment. The brain literally cannot stay locked on catastrophe while processing something completely ridiculous. We weren't laughing to pretend things were fine. We used absurdity as a deliberate tool to keep our bodies from staying permanently stuck in survival mode.
Taking the Medicine
Coping mechanisms only work if you’re willing to use them when you are the one falling apart. Fair is fair, and I’ve vowed as both mom and therapist that I’ll never suggest anything to anyone that I wouldn’t do myself.
On a particularly rough, heavy afternoon, I forced myself to put the disco playlist on speaker, slip the phone into my back pocket, and walk into Walmart with my boogie shoes on. The rule was a full perimeter lap before picking up a single item. No quick exits allowed.
People smiled as I walked in step to the Bee Gees around the outer aisles. The real test came at the self-checkout line, where the line ground to a dead halt just as Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” kicked in at maximum volume.
There is nowhere to hide when your phone is blasting a 1970s funk breakdown while you stand under fluorescent lights, red-faced, scanning a box of Borax. But you finish the scan, pay the machine, and keep your groove on all the way through the parking lot.
August 15, 2026
Stayin' Alive Maple Valley, WA July 25, 2024