How Jimmy Fallon saved my Motherhood

Motherhood is hard, especially in those early days with a baby that needs constant attention and sucks every last ounce of energy out of you. And especially in the moments of not know what the heck you’re doing as a mom or how you wound up with a kid that and scared of how in the world you’re going to raise this kid to make a meaningful contribution to the world. In those moments of baby blues, parenting struggles, and loneliness, Jimmy Fallon saved my motherhood. Every last moment of it.

The Truth About How Jimmy Fallon Saved my Motherhood and Made me Laugh

In general, I truly enjoy sitting down to watch The Tonight Show, and in those days Jimmy was on Late Night. I genuinely enjoy his skits, creative games, and one liners. I love watching him and Higgins carry on jokes way too long and laugh so hard that you can’t help but laugh with them. It was part of my routine pre-baby that I did as a graded papers and did lesson plans when i was a teacher.

However, in the early days of becoming a mom, I just like every other mother was exhausted and got very little sleep. My whole world changed, not just my routine. I wanted to sleep in every day and go to bed early every night. And I lived in a perpetual state of frazzled.

As the weeks and months went by I started realizing that the days were hard and I was losing part of myself. The person that was loud, joked around, laughed so hard that everyone knew her laugh… she wasn’t laughing anymore.

I lost my “me time” and I lost myself. I was stuck in this rut of doing the same thing every single day and that part of motherhood is something I never expected. And I was stuck in a perpetual state of dreading the next day because I didn’t have any variation to what I did. Though I genuinely loved my daughter, at the time, I wasn’t pouring love into her like I needed to be, I was simply surviving the day. You know, those days when you have a small baby that only eats, sleeps, poops, pees, and cries? Yeah, that state of my own motherhood was one that I struggled with, but it gave me one of the best lessons I needed.

I realized I needed to laugh at least once each day, even if it was just once and at the very end of my day. So around 3 months into my first child, I decided that I was going to stay up each night and watch Jimmy Fallon. I even told my husband, that if I fell asleep early, I needed him to wake me up before the show started. It even got to the point that I would take naps in the afternoon if I could get my daughter to go to sleep too, just so I could stay awake for Late Night.

I committed to the {at least} one laugh a day policy. Even the days that were good and the days I smiled continuously, it was the medicine of laughter that recharged me so much more. And the fact that so many jokes and laughs were about the absurdity of life, made my own struggles seem laugh-worthy at times.

So as my children have grown older, I have come to know myself more, and know I must laugh at least once a day. Jimmy Fallon saved my motherhood. He saved my sanity. And he completely changed the way I thought about my day. And many days, he’s my one laugh for the day. While of course raising kids provides smiles, laughter, giggles, and precious memories, it also has it’s challenges, struggles, and moments of joylessness and frustration.

So when I tell you Jimmy Fallon saved my motherhood, what I am telling you is that I learned to laugh. I learned to decompress. I learned to let go of the little things and even laugh at myself. So even when I am not watching the show, I am sometimes seeing the life around me in the same lenses of comedy. Like when my toddler decided on her favorite words, I giggled about it as words I wish I would have never taught my toddler.  I have a new outlook on my own motherhood because there is joy and laughter even in the rough moments.

After moving to Boston, we don’t have a TV anymore, but I still try to catch clips of episodes online and get a few giggles into my day each day. in fact, sometimes it’s a great break for my now toddler. We love sitting down and laughing at musical impressions, many times of children’s songs. And we love laughing together as much as possible. And the days the baby is having a rough day, the first thing I do is try to get my toddler to help me make the baby giggle.

What do you do to decompress and laugh at least once a day?

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