There are seasons in life when it feels like you’re being stretched too thin. When caretaking becomes the default mode. When every hour is accounted for, and even the quiet ones feel heavy.
I’ve been thinking lately about how easy it is to lose yourself in that kind of stretch. To disappear behind the things you're doing for other people. It doesn’t mean you don’t love them—it just means you’re tired. Really tired. And maybe a little forgotten, even by yourself.
So this is just a soft reminder, for anyone who needs it (including me):
You still belong to yourself.
You’re allowed to want rest.
You’re allowed to say “not right now.”
You’re allowed to create little moments that are just for you—moments no one else gets to claim.
For me, sometimes it’s brushing dirt off my hands after watering the flowers.
Sometimes it’s turning on music and letting color move across a canvas with no real plan.
Sometimes it’s a pause in the doorway of my studio, just to remember that I still have a world inside me, even when everything outside feels loud.
Whatever it looks like, protecting that time doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you human. And it makes you sustainable.
Boundaries aren’t walls—they’re invitations.
They say, “I want to keep showing up, but I need to do it from a place that doesn’t deplete me.”
They say, “I matter too.”
And you do.
You matter, even when no one says it out loud.
Even when you’re not productive.
Even when you’re just a person sitting still, catching her breath.
Your art, your garden, your voice—they are still yours.
You get to return to them in your own time, in your own way.
And each time you do, it’s a kind of remembering. A kind of homecoming.
If you’ve been carrying too much lately, I hope you give yourself permission to lay some of it down.
Even just for a little while.
Even just enough to feel yourself again.
