For years, my life felt like sprinting on a treadmill. Running as hard as I could, desperate to get somewhere different, only to look down and realize I was standing in the same place.

Now it feels like I stepped off the treadmill and onto one of those moving walkways in an airport. Somehow, I’m moving faster while working so much less.

Not less in life. Less to be understood.

The treadmill was never one person, or one relationship, or one season. It was the ground I kept ending up on.

Growing up, I didn’t know I had a voice worth using. Instead, I made my voice into whatever others wanted to hear, hoping that meant they wouldn’t leave. I learned early that people come and go, that love felt conditional, and decided the safest thing I could do was become whatever a person wanted me to be.

I learned to disappear to be kept.

I did it with everyone.

I even did it with God.

In Sunday school rooms, in friendships, in places I was supposed to feel safe, the lesson was the same: some feelings were dangerous, and being wanted mattered more than being known. I carried it into every room after, and for years, I mistook it for the way the world simply worked.

I woke up to an empty(ish) house for the second morning today. My five-month-old son and two pups are here, all three sleeping peacefully while a light rain hits the roof.

Ahhhhhhhhh.

I exhale air from the base of my lungs that likely entered my body many months ago. The realization of its exit is both refreshing and torturing. Only now, in this stillness, can I feel how wound up my body has been.

I keep glancing outside to take in the scenery. An even thin layer of clouds covers the sky, filtering the harsh sunlight of the last few days. It provides a gentle grey backdrop contrasted with bright green grass, fresh from the rain. It’s an atmosphere my soul resonates with.

My favorite “chill” album plays in the background while I sip my bougie single-origin cup of Ethiopian coffee. The last time I played it on repeat like this was a few years ago when I escaped to Maine on a solo trip. I had needed a brief getaway from day-to-day life that had become nearly unmanageable.

The trip came a little over a year after our first son joined our home. Becoming a mom for the first time to a kid with seven years of life already under his belt wasn’t as glorious as Instagram made it look. My heart was fully swooned by him – yet that didn’t erase the trauma of his past or present circumstances – trauma that would soon bring unexplored traumas to the surface for my husband and me.

Life. Can. Suck.

Sure, it can be great too. But there’s no denying its suckiness at times.

Last year, Brandon and I started planning the kid-free, work-free trip of our dreams to Hawaii for our 5th anniversary and my 30th. We were already exhausted with the business and the whole becoming-parents-overnight thing.

Real talk: while you wouldn’t have seen it on Instagram, I truly felt like I was hanging on by a thread most days.

Written a couple months ago when I went all the way to Canada to hit the “reset” button. This is what I’m striving for in 2020. Want to join me?

*S E L F C A R E*

It’s one of those blog topics that automatically makes me want to barf it’s so millennial. Then again, I love boots and Starbucks, and I upload pics of my dog to Instagram daily, so I might as well fully embrace the millennialism. I’m currently sitting in Ontario, Canada, with my phone off drinking a pumpkin spice latte (see previous millennial note). I drove here yesterday to try something for the first time ever: explore and relax somewhere random – alone.  

So far today, I baked myself a huge breakfast, sipped a mimosa by the lake, explored the southern tip of Canada at a national park, and ate an oven-fired maple bacon butternut squash pizza (say that five times fast).

Full disclosure: about two hours ago, 26 hours into this getaway of mine, I inhaled a deep breath of Canadian air, and cried a little. 

It wasn’t a long or dramatic cry – just a couple tears. But those tears held immeasurable meaning.