The Forty Files

Guys, I am live from the sidelines of a dreary New Jersey day. It is me, middle-aged me, sitting here thinking about life and how it sometimes just sidelines you in the cruelest ways. Last week, I had COVID. Being sick made me realize just how completely a mom’s life can be put on pause. I was forced to lie in bed, barely able to move, while my brain raced through a million things I “should” be catching up on. And of course, that made me spiral.

Because when you look at life the way it is set up, most of us spend it in a constant state of catch-up. You catch up on child-rearing, catch up on work, catch up on chores, catch up on everything that feels like it is racing past you while you are just trying to survive. The problem is, this way of living can feel endless and exhausting, like you are never really in control, always trying to get ahead, always trying to measure up.

But I realized something important. I am done with that either-or mentality. I am done with the idea that I have to either hustle past exhaustion to keep up or collapse in guilt for not doing enough. When my daughter was incoherently exhausted one night and I watched her struggle through her own little catch-up, I had a revelation. I decided I am going to do life my way. Unapologetically. On my terms.

So today, for example, I am doing four loads of laundry. Four. Not three, not five. Four is what the situation demands. And if tomorrow I decide to do five, it does not make me a superstar. It does not make me heroic. It just means I am responding to life as it comes. I am taking care of what needs to be done and letting go of the judgment that always wants to follow.

Sickness, chaos, exhaustion, obligations—they do not get to define how we feel about ourselves. We do not have to live in constant catch-up mode. We do not have to chase some unattainable standard. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is show up exactly where we are, do what is necessary, and accept that this is enough. Today I am four loads of laundry. Today, I am enough. And somehow, somehow, that feels revolutionary.