Yesterday I sat cross-legged on the grass (well the dry grass) with a bottle of water, trying very hard not to cry in front of my friend.
It was one of those perfect London summer afternoons. Not hot enough to make you sticky, not cold enough for a jacket. Just that bit of soft warmth you occasionally get in England, a light breeze moving through the trees, the grass still cool underneath you.
We hadn’t been there long. It was meant to be a quick catch-up, a pocket of time in between everything else we both had going on.
But as we talked I could feel the water gathering behind my eyes. And I remember thinking, why am I about to cry?
Nothing had happened. The kids were fine. My husband was fine. Life was, objectively, very good.
And yet there I was, in the middle of a beautiful and completely ordinary afternoon, overwhelmed by my own life.
This is the last week before the kids go back to school, and I think I had just reached the end of myself.
Not in a dramatic way. We have had such a good summer. Really, really good. We’ve gone places and seen friends, we’ve had lazy days and busy days and days where I’ve looked at my children and thought, God, I love this.
But this week it has been activity after activity. Things to organise, things to remember, people to respond to. Things for the kids and things for work. Things I’m trying to achieve, and then the things I think I should be achieving.
And I suddenly felt like there was no space left for me inside my own life.
So I was telling my friend all of this. And somewhere in the middle of explaining how overwhelmed I felt, I said something I wanted to take back immediately.
Sometimes I think my life would be easier without children.
I don’t regret becoming a mother. I don’t want to leave the life I’ve built. What I meant was that sometimes I miss being by myself. Just myself. Responsible for one person.
Waking up and thinking about what I want to do before I think about what everybody else needs. Sitting somewhere without knowing that eventually someone will need something from me.
I miss the selfishness of being alone.
It felt uncomfortable to say out loud, because I wanted this. I wanted to be a mother. I wanted a family and a home and all of it. So why, when I have it, do I sometimes want to escape from it?
I think we’re very bad at letting two things be true at once. You can love your children and need a break from them. You can be grateful for your life and completely overwhelmed by it. You can have everything you once prayed for and still think, can nobody ask me for anything for the next three hours?
I don’t think that makes us ungrateful. I think it makes us human.
And the more I sat with it, the more I realised it probably wasn’t about this week at all.
I grew up in a family of seven. There was so much love, but there wasn’t always much money. Sometimes we had what we needed and sometimes we didn’t.
For a long time I thought I knew what would have made everything better. More. More money, more opportunities, more of the things other people seemed to have. I thought if we had more, we would have worried less.
Therapy has helped me understand that what I was looking for wasn’t more. It was security. The feeling that we were going to be okay.
That feeling followed me into adulthood, and then into motherhood. Because when you have children, the wanting to give them a good life becomes enormous. I want them to have opportunities and choices. I want them to experience things I didn’t and to feel like the world is open to them.
And sometimes I wonder whether that’s part of why I’m always striving. Why there is always something else I should be building. Because somewhere inside me, more still feels like safety.
But sitting on that grass, I started wondering whether I had confused a full life with a better life.
What if my children don’t need more? What if they need me?
Not the version of me who is constantly organising something for them. Not the one who is mentally three steps ahead, trying to construct the perfect childhood. Just me. There. Listening. Bored with them sometimes. Doing absolutely nothing with them.
Maybe that’s enough. I’m still working that one out.
I’ve also been thinking about giving, because I think I’ve made it more complicated than it needs to be.
I used to think I gave freely. But if I’m honest, there was a quiet scorecard running in the background. I would show up. I would make the effort, I would remember. And when it wasn’t reciprocated, I noticed.
I might not say anything. I might even tell myself I didn’t care. But eventually I’d withdraw. Become less available, a little harder. I told myself I was protecting my energy. I think I was just disappointed.
I don’t want to live like that anymore. Giving is for you, not for the person receiving it.
I’m not saying let people take advantage of you, and I’m not saying boundaries don’t matter. They do. I mean that if I give because that’s who I am, I don’t want my ability to give to depend on what comes back. The blessing doesn’t always come from the person you gave to. Sometimes it comes from somewhere else entirely, much later, looking nothing like what you imagined.
I don’t want to become less like myself because someone didn’t reciprocate the way I hoped they would.
But there’s the other side of it. Giving freely doesn’t mean pretending you don’t have feelings. I’m allowed to be sad. I’m allowed to be disappointed. I’m allowed to have expectations of people, and I’m allowed to tell them.
That’s been a bigger lesson than I expected. I used to think emotional maturity meant needing less. Expecting less. Being understanding, letting things go, not making things difficult. But sometimes letting it go is just another way of leaving yourself out of the relationship.
Sometimes you have to say: that hurt me. I expected more from you. I need something from you.
And if I’m telling someone something difficult, it’s usually because I care enough about us to be honest. Not so they feel bad.
Anyway I digress sorry….
I want relationships where people feel safe enough to go deep. Where you don’t have to pretend you’re fine, where you can say the uncomfortable thing and know the relationship can hold it. But you can’t ask someone to be vulnerable with you if you never go first.
So I’m trying to go first. To say the thing before I know how it will be received. To admit when I’m sad, or when I’ve got it wrong, or when I need something. To say, I’m overwhelmed.
That’s what I was doing on the grass. I wasn’t asking her to solve anything. I wasn’t looking for a five-step plan. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted from her. I just needed somewhere to put the feeling.
She listened. Then she reminded me that life is actually very simple, and that it’s us who complicate it.
I knew exactly what she meant. The children were still going to need things. Work was still there. The list hadn’t disappeared. Nothing had changed except the weight of it.
Sometimes we think we need answers when what we need is somewhere safe to say the question.
That conversation didn’t make my life easier. It made it lighter. And I’ve been thinking about it ever since, because I want to be that person for other people. Not because I’ve given anybody brilliant advice or solved anything, but because they felt safe enough to tell the truth. Safe enough to be sad. Safe enough to say they don’t know, or that they need something. Safe enough to not have to be impressive for an hour.
Maybe that’s what my friend gave me. She didn’t tell me how lucky I was. She didn’t tell me to stop complaining. She let me be a little bit tired.
Somehow that was enough.
I still have things to do. The children still need me. I’m still ambitious and I still want to give them a beautiful life. But I’m starting to question whether a beautiful life has to be a constantly full one. Maybe they don’t need the most extraordinary childhood. Maybe they need a mother who isn’t exhausted from trying to give it to them.
Sometimes I just want to sit down. Sometimes I want nobody to need me. Sometimes I want to be sad without immediately trying to fix it.
I don’t think that means I want to leave my life. I think it means I needed to step outside of it for a moment. To sit on the grass. To drink some water. To tell a friend the truth.
And then, when I’m ready, to go home.
Have a beautiful rest of the weekend and bank holiday if that applies to you xx
