For several years when I was a kid, my parents hosted big New Years’ Eve parties. They weren’t fancy or elaborate, but they were full of people. All of our friends and their families were invited, a mix of adults, teenagers, and younger kids in one house. About 9pm, people descended on our home to laugh, play games, drink root beer floats, eat snacks, and count down to the new year. 

I used to stay up until the early morning hours when my family got together for holidays. The night before Thanksgiving, a few of us would prepare stuffing and turkey for the next day while others chatted around the table in the eat-in kitchen. Late on Christmas nights, we’d sip leftover eggnog and eat the final few slices of Swedish Tea Ring while we laughed, cried, and told all the same stories we’ve been telling for years.

I have never been more tired than I’ve been since becoming a mom. Nighttime feedings in the infant years, the endless needs of the toddler years, and the looming anxieties coming in the big-kid years can often keep me awake at night and anxious during the day. Trying to meet the needs of everyone in my house, much less myself, is no small feat.

It’s easy to feel like I’m running on a hamster wheel, wearing myself out while little progress is made. 

Yet I’m realizing so much of my exhaustion isn’t surface-level. It’s not always just a matter of needing more sleep, although that wouldn’t hurt. It’s much more than that, deeper than that.

“Boys will be boys.” 

They use the phrase as a lazy defense 
of chaos, 
of tempers, 
of misogyny, 
of cruelty.

As if boys don’t have the ability to control themselves, 
as if that’s all we expect.

My husband and I raced to the emergency room with our then two-year-old, my face covered in tears and my entire body shaking. Our son had just taken a horrible fall. He was responsive and seemed okay, but I was not. I thought there had to only be bad news to come.

The incident happened at the height of the pandemic, so only one parent was allowed to accompany him into the hospital room. While I wanted to be with our boy, I knew my own hysterics probably wouldn’t help anyone–especially him. I opted to wait in the car, my always-calm husband assuring me he’d text with updates as often as possible.

A couple weeks ago, I sat around a lunch table at a conference talking to new friends. In between bites of sandwiches and sips of coffee I lamented, “I feel like in every part of my life–parenting, work, health, faith–I’m running the hurdles. And I know eventually I’ll get to the finish line. But I am tripping over every single hurdle in the process.”

I try to carve out time to work on an essay. Then one of my kids gets sick and has to stay home from school, so I have to pivot.

She was talking about the writing life, but I think Anne Lamott’s words in Bird by Bird are true for all of life. She wrote, “You can’t fill up when you’re holding your breath.”

Are you holding your breath right now? I mean proverbially, yes, but even physically? 

So many of us are holding our breath, afraid of letting go because we’re not sure we can handle the tears or anger or overwhelm attempting to pour out from our bodies. We hold our breath because we’re bracing for what’s next, waiting for the other shoe to drop. We hold our breath because, ironically, sometimes keeping it all inside feels like the only way to make it through another day.

My phone alarm chimes loudly on the nightstand next to me, and I fumble in the darkness to turn it off. I sit up in bed, rubbing my eyes and then glance at the time. I only have about 20 minutes before the kids wake up. They’ll plod down the steps like zombies, still half asleep but awake enough to remind me they need breakfast. Twenty minutes, I coach myself. Twenty minutes to get something done. I do my own zombie-esque walk to the kitchen, pour my mug of coffee, and curse the fact that I’ve been trying to cut back on caffeine. This cup of half caffeinated coffee isn’t going to cut it today.

I read recently about how thousands of cattle in Kansas died due to heat stress. They didn’t die from one day of hot temperatures, necessarily. But the persistent extreme heat and humidity that hit many parts of the country–particularly this one region in Kansas–wreaked havoc on herds.

Cattle can usually adapt to the summer heat. Studies show they’re resilient animals, but as one article told me, when there are multiple stressors involved, the animal struggles to cope. Not only that, but cattle need the lower nighttime temperatures to bring their internal temperature down. When nighttime temps are too high, they don’t release enough of their internal heat, and it continues to build and build and build, causing major problems when that cycle persists. Eventually, they can’t carry the cumulative heat load built up in their bodies. “Right now, if we don’t have night-time cooling hours, the animal won’t be starting each day at thermo-neutral, so they’re more at risk on the second or third day,” one veterinarian said.

Okay, let’s acknowledge the elephant (cow?) in the room. Yes, I’m about to compare us to cattle. My metaphor obviously breaks down pretty quickly, but bear with me…

In The 12 Week Year, a business and productivity book, the authors write, “If you are not in control of your time, then you are not in control of your results.”

I agree to an extent, and before I say anything else, I’ll say this book and productivity concept has been very helpful for me. But the authors clearly are not talking to moms. Because this is one of the greatest frustrations I’ve had in my 7.5 years of motherhood: I am not (entirely) in control of my time.

Sure, there is a great deal I am in control of. I can control how I use naptime. I can control the activities my kids engage in. I can control our calendar and our schedule and what I write down on our to-do list.

The baby slept through the night, something my other three kids never did at this age. Maybe it won’t last; maybe it will. But I’m thankful all the same, thankful to wake up to a sweet boy who hardly cried for food but greeted me with a smile and a coo instead.

There’s a candle lit next to me, the warm light flickering as I write. It smells like vanilla and soft blankets, the latter I realize is not a smell. But it’s cozy, comforting, even restful in a way.

I can tell they’re nervous. My son, Elijah, says as much, and my daughter, Isabel, sits quietly in the car. She’s almost never quiet, her silence a sure sign of apprehension. We pull into the parking lot and climb out of the minivan, my twins donning new backpacks, lunchboxes and masks. As we walk down the sidewalk, their nervousness spills over with a few tears and a thousand questions.

What if we don’t know where to go?
When do we eat lunch?
Where will you pick us up?
What if we forget something?