It’s 3:45 a.m., and you have been lying awake for almost an hour, plagued by self-doubt and anxiety. It begins with your son’s dropping grades at school and how he is losing his confidence. This rabbit trails to your daughter’s heart and the defiance that leaves you exhausted. You blame yourself and how you are failing to reach her. The clock keeps ticking, and you move on to other stressors: you don’t call your parents enough, your siblings are far away, you have an inbox that never empties.
Two restless hours pass, and the sun is rising, and you have given up on the thought of going back to sleep. The sleep deprivation migraine kicks in, and you stumble out of bed a few minutes later to get your kids ready for school. You are a spent, hollow version of yourself, and you make a mental note to not go to bed without a Tylenol PM or Benadryl ever again.
This routine is painfully familiar for many women.
Don’t Miss
Different topics include a baby that won’t sleep, a toddler that won’t stop screaming, a husband that works too late, a friend that doesn’t call back, parents that are sick, the uncertain futures of our kids, our financial stability, and on and on it goes.
Are we grieving our lives because they don’t look the way we imagined they would when we headed off to college?
Could it be that we put pressure on our children’s potential because we realize we aren’t living up to our own?
Have we faded by surrendering every moment of our days to the cultivation of everyone else…but ourselves?
