20 Second Oxytocin Hug

Twenty seconds feels like a really long time to be in a hug, especially when you’re frazzled or prickly, but I swear you feel the oxytocin kick in after a while and start to soften. This has become a habit when my husband and I are in the depths of parenting chaos and everything feels like it’s on fire. It’s a nervous system reset but it’s also a nice way of saying hi-I-love-you-we’re-not-enemies-this-is-just-hard-but-it’s-ok.