When in doubt, respond to what you witness, not what you hear secondhand.

Being negative is easy. There will always be a downside to everything good, a hurdle to everything desirable, a con to every pro. The real courage is in finding the good in what you have, the opportunities in every hurdle, the pros in every con.

If you are being shuffled around, then you should feel shuffled around.

I have no quarrel with people who lack the skill or temperament to care for small children.

There has been, for some reason (or more likely an unfortunate accumulation of reasons) a trend over the past several decades for parents to do the work of parenting in the isolation of their own homes - and not only that, this trend has overlapped with the other trend of much deeper parent involvement in raising kids. That you also represent trend No. 3, more people raising kids solo, has only exacerbated a close-to-no-win situation.

You need to make plans for your future, so plan your own future.

When in doubt, respond to what you witness, not what you hear secondhand.