Survive and Thrive

There was a time when my life ran on the bare minimum…and to be honest, I often hated myself for it.

I lived on my own. I worked nights half the week, the nights my kids were with their dad. The other half of the week, they were with me, and I homeschooled them. There wasn’t a reset in between. No recovery day. No neat transition where I suddenly became rested and capable again. I was carrying exhaustion from one half of my life straight into the other.

There often wasn’t always order in our home. At least not the kind that makes you feel proud when someone drops by unexpectedly. Things were functional, but scattered.

I didn’t have systems. I had anchors.

One of those anchors was groceries. I used to care deeply about nutrition. I still do. I believe food fuels us, that it matters. And because of that, the grocery store became a sort of war in my mind.

I knew that the first part of the week, after working nights, I wouldn’t have the energy to cook real meals. I just wouldn’t. So I bought frozen meals. Easy things. The kind you heat and serve and move on.

Even when I paired them with a vegetable, it didn’t feel like enough. Especially when my kids barely touched the vegetables anyway. I’d put them on the plate, watch them sit there, and feel that familiar tightness in my chest…like I was failing at something fundamental.

I told myself it was fine. But underneath that, there was shame.

Every week, I did enough laundry to get us through. Towels, bedding, clothes for the days ahead.

And then I stopped.

There were always full laundry baskets after that. Clean clothes folded and tucked away into closets instead of drawers. Not because I didn’t care — but because I was done. Mentally, physically, and emotionally 

Those baskets felt like evidence.

Every time I saw them, something in me whispered: “A better mom would finish this.”

“A more organized person wouldn’t live like this”.

“If you were doing okay, your house would look different.”

I felt ashamed. Not in a dramatic way, but in a way that constantly stayed in my body. Like I was always just one step behind who I wanted to be.

 

The shame wasn’t really about laundry or frozen meals.

It was about the story I told myself:

That needing less meant I was less.

That lowering my standards meant I was lowering my self worth.

That exhaustion was a moral failure instead of a human limit.

But I didn’t say these things out loud. I just carried them.

 

 

Now that I’m in a healthier place, I see someone who was stretched thin and still showing up.

I see someone who adjusted instead of collapsing. Someone who chose anchors like food, clean clothes, and shared time over appearances. Someone who made peace, even imperfectly, with what that time in my life required.

There are times in life when your routine isn’t meant to help you thrive.

It’s meant to help you survive, but gently.

And survival done with care is not something to be ashamed of.

 

So in the end, I believe I wasn’t a bad mom. I wasn’t lazy orfailing.

I was tired. I was carrying a lot. 

And I built a life that could hold me anyway.

If you’re in a season where your routines feel smaller or messier than they used to be, you’re not doing it wrong. You’re responding honestly to your capacity.

And that deserves compassion, not shame.