Motherhood Means Not Changing Your Earrings for 12 Years

You meant to clean the kitchen, but a very needy toddler keeps distracting you from the dishes that are stacking up. Or maybe you meant to take down the Christmas lights, but that’s fallen pretty low on your list of priorities since baby’s sleep regression kicked in. Whatever your parenting-related excuses for procrastination are, Jennifer Fulwiler is here to trump all of them: This mom of six didn’t change her earrings for 12 years.

To be fair, it wasn’t just a matter of forgetting to do so. Fulwiler, a radio host in Texas, explains that she bought a pair of new earring backs to help diamond studs stay more securely in place—and they more than did the trick.

“I went out and found earring backs that I’m pretty sure were made for astronauts undergoing maximum g-force experiments. The only problem was that the backs would not come off. At all,” she writes on Instagram. “I am not always great about checking things off of my to-do list, so it took me a little while to deal with this situation. By ‘a little while’ I mean 12 years.”

When Fulwiler first attempted to take off the studs, in 2006, she had just given birth to her second child. Raising two babies while maintaining a freelance writing career bumped getting properly-sized wire cutters from her priority list. (Yes, she says she did make time to regularly clean her piercings, which never got infected.)

“As a busy mom I was just like, ‘I’ll get to it one of these days,’” Fulwiler tells Babble. “And 12 years later, I finally got to it.”

For Fulwiler, the minor change was a major turning point.

“My children have never seen me with any other earrings. Most of my friends have never known me to wear any other accessories in my ear,” she says in her post. “But on Monday, I finally bought some small wire cutters and dealt with the situation. I cut the posts off, only barely managing not to take off part of my ear lobe in the process, and dropped the studs at a jewelry repair shop. Then I promptly went and bought my first new pair of earrings in over a decade.”

Fulwiler says the moral of the story is that a) she’s crazy and b) your to-do list can always be completed. But there’s something bigger picture going on here. Eventually—even if it takes a decade—your kids won’t need you every single second. You’ll be able to focus on yourself, and your physical appearance, if you choose. You’ll be out of what Fulwiler calls “survival mode.”

“Sometimes, I think, it’s just a healthy and good thing to do to embrace the fact that you’re in survival mode and that there are going to be some things that really get pushed to the side, maybe even for a long time and that that’s okay,” she tells Babble “I think a lot of women beat themselves up that they don’t have it perfectly all together. Anyone who is trying to balance a million things probably has a lot of things that they aren’t dealing with.”