The Thing I Thought Would Trap Me (Set Me Free)
I woke up this morning with a bit of an aha.
Lately, I've been feeling oddly agitated and unsettled on weekends, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Tight shoulders, tight jaw, irritability, a subtle restlessness. Even on weekends when I technically wasn't "on" parenting duty, I couldn't seem to fully relax into the moment.
My kids are older now. My son drives. My daughter comes and goes. This house is still very much home base for them — their things are here, this is where they land, regroup, grab what they forgot, or just stop by for a minute. So even on weekends that are technically their dad's weekends, I truly never know when someone might pop in.
And that's when something clicked for me.
I realized I've been in resistance to this new phase of life.
Not dramatic resistance, just subtle resistance. The kind that sounds like: Can I really relax? Am I actually getting a break? Who's going to walk through the door and when?
There was a time when weekends felt a tad more predictable. When the kids were at their dad's, I knew they were there unless I was picking them up or someone was dropping them off. I could fully exhale. Walk around naked if I wanted to, eat cereal at weird hours, make plans, do nothing, just settle into knowing no one needed me for a stretch of time.
But now things are different. My kids are mobile. Independent-ish. (Heavy emphasis on the "ish.") They can show up. They often do. And while I genuinely love that this feels like home to them, I also realized something I hadn't really let myself admit:
I think I've been quietly grieving some of what has shifted in this phase of life.
Not huge losses. Invisible ones.
The loss of predictability. The loss of privacy. The loss of certainty around when I'm really "off." Even the loss of a certain kind of freedom.
And maybe — if I'm being honest — the loss of the fantasy that I was somehow much freer than I actually am.
(Lol. Earlier this month I briefly entertained the idea that maybe I could just hop on a plane and go to Bali alone for three weeks and have a tiny Eat Pray Love situation while life magically carried on at home. Reality, lovingly, had other plans and I am taking the teens with me.)
The truth is, I do have more freedom than I used to. I can make dinner plans and leave the kids home. I can have more spontaneity. I can reclaim parts of myself in ways I couldn't before.
But I'm also not fully in some post-parenting freedom chapter either.
Not yet.
And I think I skipped a few emotional steps. Somewhere inside, I think I believed that if I let myself feel frustrated, sad, or disappointed about these changes — if I accepted that my freedom still has shape and limits — then somehow I'd be trapped by that reality.
But what happened this morning surprised me.
The moment I named it, I felt lighter.
The moment I admitted: Oh… I'm grieving this transition. I'm resisting it — my whole body softened. My shoulders relaxed. My jaw loosened. The irritability lifted. I felt more settled, more present, even more joyful.
And isn't that such a strange paradox?
The thing I thought would trap me actually freed me.
Because resisting it had me living in anticipation, bracing against some imagined interruption instead of fully enjoying the freedom I actually do have in the present moment.
Maybe grief isn't only for the massive endings.
Maybe it's also for the subtle shifts. The invisible transitions. The phases of life that quietly ask us to let go of one thing while learning to love another.
If you've been feeling unusually stressed, anxious, restless, or emotionally reactive lately, I recently shared a short video about one of the simplest somatic practices I use to reconnect with myself.
In it, I talk about how our bodies often communicate what we're feeling long before our minds catch up—and how simply noticing tension, discomfort, or activation can begin to shift it.
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