It was just an ordinary morning.

School run done, coffee in hand, back home before 8am. Already running the day in my head – the lifts, the extra sports, the guests, the shopping, the work that needed doing. My mother had had a bad night, which meant I had too. My husband had snored. Loudly. Again.

And somewhere between 2am and 3am I’d been lying awake doing The List. You know the one. The one that no one else sees, and absolutely no one else loses sleep over except you.

Remember to add fork to the lunchbox. Dentist appointment. That email I definitely sent. (Did I send it?) Sign the permission slip. What is my actual life purpose? Whether you need suncream in winter.

All of it. At lonely, dark 2am. Equally urgent.

Standing in the kitchen that morning, second coffee warming my hands, I had one clear thought: I am already tired and it is not even 8am.

You know this feeling. Many of usl do – we just don’t say it out loud very often because we’re too busy getting on with it.

Not sick-tired. Not broken-tired. Just human-tired. The very specific exhaustion that comes from loving a lot of people, for a long time, all at once. Every. Single. Day.

It doesn’t make the headlines. It’s not dramatic enough. It’s just Tuesday.

Here’s what I keep coming back to though; the thing I hold onto on the hard mornings:

There will come a day when no one needs us the way they do right now.

The children will leave. They’ll become wonderfully capable humans who no longer need lifts and lunchboxes and a mother lying awake at 2am itemising their lives. Our people will find their feet. The circus will quiet down.

And you might find yourself with long, peaceful, empty mornings – and miss this chaos more than you can currently imagine.

So on the hard days I try to hold both things at once: this is genuinely exhausting AND this is the season I will one day look back on with a full heart. Not to dismiss the tired — it’s real and it counts — but to remember that the busyness is proof of a life full of people who need you.

That’s not nothing. That’s actually everything.

You are, quite literally, the centre pole holding up the entire circus tent. Without you — the whole thing collapses.

That deserves rest. Real, unapologetic rest. Not just passing out on the couch at 9pm — but intentionally, deliberately putting yourself on your own list. Not last. Not after everyone else. On the list.

My small act of rebellion: once a day, I stop. Coffee, silence, four counts in through the nose, six counts out through the mouth. It takes less than two minutes. It helps more than it should.

You’re not alone in any of it. 

– G 
🌸

P.S. The suncream answer is yes. Apparently. I looked it up at 2am.
P.P,S. TThe fork? I remembered it!