My New Month dance is going to be particularly rapturous tomorrow.
I have been, for the most part, a mess this July.
YES, there were good moments (really good ones — Kae’s visit and our recent trip, especially!). But overall, I would say I spent most of July in a very twitchy, stressed out state.
I probably scrolled more than the rest of the year combined, and I have nothing to show for the lost time other than the aforementioned twitchiness and stress. I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT!
I mostly ate like garbage (technical term to mean way too much sugar and not enough protein).
I skipped a lot of workouts, and feel like I am leaving the month less strong than I entered it.
And of course: our house is currently kind of a disaster zone. Forget about Konmari; we are about 6 laundry loads behind.
In the spirit of self-compassion, I should also note that:
- I spent the month as the only mobile parent
- Our nanny was on vacation for the last 2 weeks (normally she does a LOT of the laundry and general housekeeping)
- I took 2 clinical days off but otherwise worked through all of the above
SOOOOOO, yeah. I am very much in need of a fresh start. And I cannot wait for Josh to be able to walk and drive again (both for his sake, of course, as well as my own!). We don’t know when that will happen but he has a 6-week follow up next week, so every finger crossed for that, though initial recs were that it would be 8-10 weeks before weight-bearing so I probably should not have high hopes.
I plan to do some reflecting tonight/this weekend as to what that might look like. While catching up on laundry . . .
More to come.
6 Comments
You deserve to have THE BEST rest of 2026 possible. I feel so sorry for all that you and your family have gone through this year! You are modeling pivoting and feeling badly about plans changing and then making the most of it for your kids SO WELL (but I’m sorry that you have to). Thinking of you a lot and sending lots of hugs from Virginia!
So challenging and all very understandable! I thoroughly enjoyed The Measure when I read it a couple years ago and love discussing with people: would you want to know when you’ll die? If yes, what would you change about your life today? I ultimately land on not wanting to know because unless I found out my time was very limited i.e. <1 year, I like how I spend my life generally so for example if I had 10 years, I'd still need to work but meanwhile it would be hanging over me all the time and I would feel more pressure in how I spend my time which wouldn't be good for me aka not allowing myself to relax enough.
I hope you have a last few months of 2026 with the level and quality of eventfulness that fills your cup. You (all of you!) have gone through it, and I want nothing but good things for you in the rest of 2026 and beyond!
July was THE PITS for you. So yay for a new, fresh month. It’s tough to be the only mobile, fully functional parent. I’ve been the disabled parent several times for reasons related to my health/surgeries/etc. Nothing to the extent of what J is dealing with, but when I was in a cast and then splint for 12 weeks in 2025, Phil had so much more added to his plate.
August is another full month of summer for us since the kids don’t go back to school until after LDW. But we close out the month with a week at my parent’s lake home which is always a highlight of our summer! Plus Kyria and Caroline will be visiting us for a night and will be here the morning of Phil’s birthday (which he isn’t big on celebrating but we’ll make it a little extra special this year since we’ll have guests). I have some other fun social plans, too, so it should be a fun month.
I loved The Measure! It would make a great book club book. Unfortunately I DNF’d her sophomore novel. 🙁
The hot tip that I’m taking from this post is to get my hands on The Measure ASAP. I was always on the fence about reading it, and I’m not sure why since pretty much everyone who has read it loved it.
Maybe it’s possible to go through having a non-mobile husband/big vacation cancelled while not scrolling, eating wonderfully, nailing every workout and keeping the house ship-shape, but most of us wouldn’t make it. You made it through and that’s good enough! Bravo! Happy New Month dance!
thank you for this compassionate comment!!!! and I think you’d like the measure – i’m super into it and it makes me think A LOT!