One time, I was at a Q&A with Nora Roberts, and someone asked her how to balance writing and kids, and she said that the key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic & some are made of glass.

And if you drop a plastic ball, it bounces, no harm done. If you drop a glass ball, it shatters, so you have to know which balls are glass and which are plastic and prioritize catching the glass ones.

I think about this ALL THE TIME. I dropped more than one ball today. It is hard to drop any ball, and I hate it! But they were plastic, and tomorrow, it will be okay.

As this has gone viral, I have seen a lot of people interpreting this as “your kids are the glass ball” and/or referring to speeches made by men about juggling five balls, where work is plastic and family is glass.

That’s not what Nora was saying in this case.

Nora was not talking about juggling five balls. She was talking about juggling FIFTY-FIVE balls. The balls don’t represent “family” or “work.” There are separate balls for everything that goes into each of those categories. “Deadline on Project Y” or “crazy sock day at school”

And her point, addressing a room full of women, was not “prioritize kids over work.” It was “some kid stuff is glass and some is plastic, and sometimes, to catch a glass work ball, you have to drop a plastic family one, and that is okay.”

And the reverse is also true. Sometimes, to catch a glass kid ball, something at work has to slide, and that is okay, too.

If you are juggling 55 balls, some are going to drop, so you have to focus not on broad categories, but on the glass balls.