A Surfing Mom Shares Her Secret To Maintaining A Hobby After Kids

When you first have a baby, and then a toddler, it can be really difficult to even remember what your life was like before they arrived, much less recreate it. I went from waking up at 11 a.m. only to head to an hours-long boozy brunch on the weekends to being screamed awake at 5 a.m. to get pooped on. Needless to say, things really aren’t going to be the same after you have a child, but that doesn’t mean giving up everything that brings you joy.

It’s a point that was beautifully made recently by mom-of-two Siece Campbell on Instagram, who encouraged new parents to maintain a hobby by sharing her motto: “Let’s do it when it’s hard so we’re not out of practice when it’s easy.”

“My best advice for anybody who really wants to feel like themselves after they have kids is think of one or two things that really make you feel like yourself that you really don’t want to give up and think about how you can continue doing them once kids come into the mix,” she advises.

And for her and her partner, that’s surfing.

Campbell went on to explain that the goal, at first, is not to have a good time: the goal is to keep up the hobby so that it doesn’t fall by the wayside. And, predictably, the first few times surfing with a toddler and an infant in tow were not fun. But by keeping it up, the kids will get used to surf days, she will get used to a surf day with her kids, and it’ll get fun again, especially as the children get older.

“People love to make fun of parents who say that they’re going to keep their lives the same once they have kids,” she continues. “But that’s what we did and it really just meant that we made room for them doing the things we already did.

“Hobbies really make you still feel like yourself even though everything else in your life is kind of changing. So having one or two things to go back to when you’re starting to feel like everything’s out of whack can really make postpartum feel a little bit easier.”

Now I think most moms probably hear some version of “don’t forget to take time for you” which is good but largely unhelpful advice. Like, “OK. Great. How exactly?” I think the real genius in the way Campbell presents this idea is the caveat that this isn’t for fun. Because, really, it’s not going to be fun. Not at first. But the “not fun now” is the cost of keeping it in your life.

It’s like taking a toddler to a restaurant. No one is having fun. The toddler is bored, the parents are embarrassed, and you just paid $15 for your kid to eat four french fries. But this is how they’re going to learn to behave in a restaurant so that it’ll be fun when they’re five or six.

Hiking (my passion) with toddlers was torture. I didn’t know one small person could whine that much. I didn’t know it could take an hour and a half to walk one mile, or that you’d need two snack stops along the way. But hiking with my teen is pretty great, actually. And even if they don’t come, I’ve stayed in the habit that it’s never been a struggle to “get back into it,” which can be demoralizing.

Parenting isn’t always fun. Doing the things you love as a parent isn’t always fun, either, but that doesn’t mean it’s never going to be fun ever again. You just have to stick with it. Trust me: it’s worth it.