I Did a Thing, and The Things are Done

One thing I’ve learned as an author is that you and your book live in symbiosis: you write it, and then it forces you to consistently embody what you have written. I mean, I swear I used to take a lot of naps before writing this book, but now?? It feels like my whole life revolves around the question “When next can I rest?”

Who Makes it Safe For You to Exhale?

“So…no luggage?” About half an hour into our ride, my Uber driver finally broke down and asked me about what had clearly been on his mind the entire trip. “I’ve never known anyone to go to the airport with no luggage,” he continued. Oh I’m going to pick someone up,” I replied. “I’m meeting my mom,” I said with an all-teeth grin. “Ah…of course.” he said, nodding in understanding.

“Are we there yet?”

Remember asking that over and over as a child? And if you have children of your own, perhaps you've heard it a few hundred times yourself.

“Are we there yet?”

“Are we there yet?”

“Are we there yet?”

And all the while you’re thinking “"We're on our way. Can't you just enjoy the ride?"

The thing is, we often do this to ourselves. The bar keeps rising. The goal posts keep shifting. We find it hard to enjoy the journey, because we’re too hyper-focused on the destination. Worse yet, we keep changing the destination for ourselves so we never actually feel like we’ve arrived.

This week I’ve been thinking about how harshly we judge ourselves just for being human. About how we demand “peak performance” from ourselves as if we are machines. We repeatedly ask ourselves:

Why am I so tired?
Why is my brain so foggy?
Why can’t I just push through?

But we are not machines.

We are living beings with bodies, emotions, limits, needs, and nervous systems. Most of which, honestly, are fried. So because May is Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to offer you a reminder I find myself returning to often:

You are not burned out because you have somehow failed. You’re exhausted because the system has failed YOU.

Welcome to The Gentle Breath newsletter.

I created this safe space for us because the internet can feel loud, demanding, and exhausting. I want us all to experience a more considered life. Kinder. Softer. Slower. More human.

So The Gentle Breath is a quiet corner where we can all pause, rest, and exhale together.