Confession: girl, you need a break
Being an adult kind of sucks sometimes, right? It can’t just be me who gets burnt out and overwhelmed by the hamster wheel of my life: make money! make the kids lunch! make time for old friends! make new friends! make it happen with your husband (you know what I mean)! make a life that means something! Wake up, go to sleep, do it all again. Please notice how many of these things relate to meeting other people’s needs.
So in January of 2021, I made a commitment to myself: once a quarter, I would take a trip — for myself, by myself. Yes that’s right — no spouse, no kids (gasp). Sometimes this meant getting a hotel room down the street from my house, and other times it meant flying to New Orleans to visit my law school besties. But whatever shape it took, these solo trips did exactly what I hoped they would: they connected me to ME, and in the process, rejuvenated me and preserved my sanity. Leaving the hamster wheel for a few days was enough to make it feel like a runway when I returned instead of a cage.
The funny thing is, I realized my need for alone time away from my adult responsibilities and wife/mother/worker identity many years prior. In 2017, I wrote a piece about it for Motherly, which I will share with you below. But it took five years for me to commit to my solo trips. Only when I gave it the same deference as I would my children’s bi-annual dentist appointments, did my alone time become what I needed it to be: a consistent, sacred, non-negotiable ritual. In other words — not a luxury.
(Of course as I’m writing and reviewing this confession, I realize something: it isn’t that it took five years between realizing my needs and meeting them — it’s that I was pregnant and didn’t know it when I wrote that piece for Motherly, and it took five years for me to get back to where I was when I wrote it. Wild how we find a way to leave out the pertinent facts and judge/blame ourselves. But I digress. Back to my solo trips.)
Self Love Poetry: for Thinkers & Feelers (Urban Outfitters, special edition with bonus poetry).
This year, my solo trips included New Orleans in January, Ojai in June and July, and in two weeks, Rome, Italy (!!) (Can’t wait to report back on this one). After each of these trips, I came back not just with more energy — but also with clarity. About who I am, what I need, what I have, and what comes next for me. My summer moments in Ojai were especially illuminating. But believe me when I say even the 48 hours I spent once at the Proper Hotel in Santa Monica (a whopping 3.7 miles from my home) was transformative. Sometimes a shift in perspective requires simply that: a shift in perspective. After each trip I came back to my life with new eyes, and a new heart: both were more open.
So to each of you, today I say with the utmost urgency and compassion: girl, you need a break. And to that I will add this: especially you, mama.
Mama, You Deserve a Break by Melody Godfred
Originally published on Motherly on July 27, 2017.
To the mom who burns the grilled cheese you know your sensitive eater won’t eat anyway because you rush out of the kitchen to settle a quarrel over a stuffed animal—I see you.
To the mom who is responding furiously to work emails even though it is Saturday while your child gives you a dirty look and says, “All you do is work!”—I see you.
To the mom with greasy hair who hasn’t showered for two (okay, let’s be real, three) days, who bathes her kids daily with organic, mommy-group approved soap—I see you, too.
The Shift: Poetry for a New Perspective
All of us are all of these women at one point or another—and all of us need a break at some point.
We need a break from doing two, three, five, okay, ten things at once. A break from becoming ambidextrous in our twenties and thirties and forties simply because our circumstances demand we give more to life than one strong hand will allow.
We are the women who stir the milk with one hand while soothing the baby with the other. The mothers who meal plan and grocery shop and cook with ingredients our mothers didn’t even know about, because we spend late nights basking in the glow of our iPhones while we look up healthy recipes and try to figure out which companies are actually organic and not just fake organic (you know what I’m talking about.)
Whether we are “working moms” or “stay-at-home moms,” we are all working moms.
And it’s not just our bodies that are working all the time, shuffling us around from place to place without the sleep or nutrients needed for an average person to sustain life. Our minds are working—even while we’re sleeping. Minimizing risks, strategically planning, expertly allocating.
Our minds don’t stop, and neither do our hearts. We feel the cry before we hear the cry, and we’re down a flight of stairs before our children even realize they were crying.
We are go, go, go, and then go harder (and we make sure to smile while we’re doing it) because that is what is expected of us, from the world, from ourselves. We push ourselves to the brink because we are the only ones who can do it right (am I right?) and asking for help makes us weak. Or does it?
I see you doing it all.
And from the outside, you’re really holding it together. But is that enough? Is the fiction of perfection worth it? And is being able to say you did it all absolutely perfectly, and all by yourself, something to be proud of?
To the mom who volunteered at school, planned the Pinterest-worthy birthday party, scheduled the best-of-the-best after-school activities and handmade personalized gifts for every teacher, teacher’s assistant and administrator—I see you.
To the mom who carries a full-time workload but works before 8 a.m. and after 10 p.m. to be able to take time off to shuttle the kids to and from school—I see you.
To the mom who buys all the birthday gifts—for your side of the family and your spouse’s—and remembers every holiday, milestone and fact about everyone in the family as well—I know you’re trying.
The Shift: Poetry for a New Perspective
I’m here to tell you, all of you, that we’re failing at something.
And that something is ourselves. We schedule our children’s doctor appointments like clockwork a year in advance, but we haven’t been to the dentist in three years. We make sure our kids have enough physical activity and rest by scheduling in sports and adhering to bedtime routines, but we haven’t worked out regularly or gone to bed at a reasonable time in…forever. Everything is perfect—at our expense.
So here I am, witnessing you. And inviting you. To take a break with me.
And while a traditional break, like a trip to the spa or a mini vacation with your girlfriends or even an uninterrupted episode of your favorite TV show might help a little—the real break we all need and deserve is a mental and emotional one.
Let’s take a break from perfectionism. A break from self-sacrifice. A break from being everything to everyone else at all times.
Because here’s what taking a break from being the perfect mom, wife, and worker will do—it will give you, back to you. It will calm the worries about what you’re missing, what you’re doing wrong.
It will fill you with gratitude because you’ll have the opportunity to reflect, to breathe, to enjoy. It will remind you that underneath the mother you’ve become is the woman you’ve always been, a woman who has needs, and deserves to know and honor them.
The Shift: Poetry for a New Perspective
You may say that you can’t take a break.
You don’t have the luxury of taking one. Your kids deserve perfection, and you’re the only one to deliver it. And so I ask you—and be honest with yourself when you answer this question: do you have the luxury of not taking one?