From an outsider’s point of view, my life might seem unpleasant or exhausting. Like most lives, it is at times. A series of battles and endless research just to find resources for my kids and always asking myself is it worth it in the end and is it enough. Never really knowing if I’ve ever done enough because how do you even quantify the effort of parenting. There isn’t a pareto chart approach that will equate to an optimum result because kids aren’t data points and the target of “good” is ever evolving along with them.

So I pursue the information, the accommodation, the new therapy approaches and find myself defending my kids rights from every front. Whether it’s their right to school, services, or to just attend an activity. All the while, defending any choice I make and feeling an utter sense of futility at moments that creeps up like an ever present ghoul of depression lingering just steps behind me.

So, at times, I retreat. Either figuratively or in the form of an actual retreat like the one I’mon now thanks to A Mother’s Rest. I pull away from the routines and the schedule boards and the relentlessness of caretaking. I’m only human and I need breaks. We all do.

I want to walk without halting every few feet, bending over to hold a hand, or sprinting to avoid imminent fatalities when a child elopes. I want to have coffee that hasn’t been reheated four times until it has a milky scum on the top. I want to I crave sleep without disturbance. Watching a frivolous film that isn’t animated. Eating a meal that’s prepared by someone else and it’s still warm. Here’s to all the caretakers of the young and the old. You deserve to treat yourself the way you want your loved ones to feel treated, with gratitude and love.