I am e x h a u s t e d.
I have been struggling to find my way back to myself. Back to some semblance of center. Back to my relationship with gravity. Back to the ground.
I am sitting with this inquiry—how do you find more when you feel like you have nothing?
There have been so many moments as of late where I have felt that I have nothing. It’s not a feeling of numbness or emptiness. It’s a lack of life force, a sense of low energy. It’s the how I am going to make it through another sixteen-hour day of parenting and work and responsibilities and paying attention and showing up for the world? All the while waking at all hours of the night with a four-month-old baby, a two-year-old with night terrors, and a five-year-old adjusting to sleeping in a different room.
Before I became a parent, finding more in states of exhaustion pushed me into seasons of burnout. Each time I dug deeper into whatever energetic or bodily reserves I had, eventually I ended up in bed. Sick. Drained. Unable to work. Unable to function. For years I lived in this cycle: overwork, depletion, pushing, burnout, recovery, and eventually back to overwork. My last real bout with burnout that covered my face in hives so bad my right eye was swollen shut, sent me back to Atlanta to live with my mom at thirty years old. Not being able to see out of my eye was a clear indicator that my life was completely unmanageable.
I hit an inflection point with the survival pattern I was in. It was time to make changes. I did not know what those changes would be, but I knew I needed to move back home for a while and give myself the space to find out. There was no “more” for me to find inside of myself, no more to do, or seek, or push through. The only real option on the table was to surrender. To listen to my body through the massive cortisol spikes that manifested in hives all over my face.
These days, finding more in seasons of exhaustion is radically different. I am no longer surviving in cycles of overwork, depletion, pushing, burnout, recovery, and eventually back to overwork. While my life patterns today sometimes still include depletion, that isn’t the norm. When I do get depleted, my body comes back much quicker. My body recalibrates with greater ease because I have spent years filling my internal, energetic, emotional, and physical reserves with practices like resting, drinking water, gardening, walking in nature, and breathwork. These reserves allow me to dig deeper within myself to access wisdom, or a different behavior, or the strength to go another sixteen hours with interrupted sleep.
On days like today, when I feel that I have nothing, when I struggle to locate myself, I find more by breathing in the fresh mountain air, turning towards the trees surrounding our house, or calling back a friend. In these practices I remember that finding more can come in many ways, that it doesn’t always have to come from me, and that if I continue to hold my intentions and values close, the organic intelligence of my body will naturally move towards them.
On days when I feel that I have nothing, I find more by sensing how nurturing and reparative it can be to care for our son in the dark hours of the night when he is afraid rather than allow it to turn into the familiar frustration that I must get up AGAIN. The anger that this lack of sleep will make my workday that much harder. The potential resentment that my children are taking every drop of my life force and creativity and leaving me empty. With nothing. Bitter. Even though I chose to be a mother. Even though I love them.
This season of my life has been one invitation after the next to keep stretching, to keep reaching, to keep digging deeper than sometimes feels possible in a moment. And yet it is possible. I am resourced. Not as much as I would like to be that is for sure. But I do have internal and external resources, many of which I did not even know I had until I became a parent. Resources that were there all along, waiting for me to claim them. Waiting for me to take responsibility for my actions and behaviors. Waiting for me to notice them. The call of a hawk. The smell of damp soil. The moon rise over our deck.
In the words of Dr. Becky, my favorite child psychologist: two things are true.
I feel like I have nothing.
And I can find more.
With gratitude,
Ashley
Ooof- I feel this. You are not alone.
Three under five and you still find time to post. Your exhaustion is heroic.