07/26/2026
Today I got to do everything I wanted to do. I saw the sunrise. I tidied up the house, started laundry, ate breakfast undisturbed. I took the dogs for a walk. I got my lift in, and then a sauna yoga session, which I haven’t done in, MONTHS. And I almost got to shower and eat lunch undisturbed, but someone woke up early from nap. (Undisturbed is doing a lot of work in that sentence.)
These things used to be everyday normalcy. Now they’ve become these exquisite, rare events that only happen if all the planets are aligned.
Most days I’m choosing. Do I sit down and eat lunch or do I take a shower. Do I work out or do I get some cleaning done around the house.
As a mom, a wife, a business owner, a student, a friend, a person, my time is just not my own anymore. And it’s not good or bad. It’s just what’s going on. It’s the phase of life I’m in, and sometimes it’s a little bit stressful.
A friend stepped over this morning and we got to talking. She reminded me of something Jacqueline Kennedy said. If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much. I keep coming back to that one.
Here’s the part I’m still learning how to say. When I do get a pocket of time back, I usually spend it restoring my batteries instead of draining them further. Which means sometimes I stay home. Sometimes I don’t come to the thing. It isn’t that I don’t want to, and it isn’t that I’m not thinking about you, because I am, constantly. It’s that I have a very small amount of capacity left over and my body is asking me to put it toward rest.
And rest really is the productive choice sometimes. A depleted nervous system doesn’t have anything to give anybody, my kids included. Restoring what I can to the tank is what lets me show up at all.
My time will be my own again at some point. Until then I’m protecting the little bit I have, and I’m trusting the people who love me to understand what the quiet means.
