Lessons from Lily Pads

Lessons from Lily Pads

I keep thinking back to our summer travels and the abundance of water lilies or lily pads clustered in all the ponds and lakes of Maine.  I think about how there are so many jumping off points, bundled close together (yet separate), and no pad is ever too far away.  I suppose it’s a lily pad village, and in all our endless talk about mothers and parents being without a village, I wondered if we could actually create a *real* and *functional* human lily pad eco system for ourselves.  

And no, I’m not just talking about parent AI bots or an app to organize a grocery list for families.  In the lily pad system I dream of, actual and helpful human beings would be on each nearby pad, ready to jump into the family, roll up their sleeves, and help.

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Why is it so hard to make this happen?  We know the usual suspects: living far away from family, the world has become seemingly scarier and less safe, market rates for in-home childcare are soaring like everything else, and even if there are these miraculous helpers living on lily pads, how do we find and integrate them into our ecosystem for enduring periods of time?!

Reach out to me and let me know your thoughts!  [email protected]