“Once I get through this and things settle down, I’ll be fine.”

This might be the lie I tell myself most often.

When have things ever settled down? After my kids were born? My divorce? After I grieved losing my mother for a year? After COVID? After the election?

Nope. The hits keep coming. Will things chill out once my kids are out of diapers? When I hire someone to run the school? When I find the love of my life? When my book comes out?

Life keeps “life-ing”–full of shining achievements and painful slaps in the face. All the while, I stay busy. It’s how I like to be, how I cope, and how I feel effective.

I was always a busy person. My father used to say just looking at my Google calendar gave him an anxiety attack.

Things shifted after I had kids. In the eternal loop of feeding, burping, playing, sleeping, and cleaning, it was finally clear to me that the work would never be done and I couldn’t wait for a perfect time to relax and take a break. If I did, I’d never rest again.

With that realization, everything flipped. If a break was at all possible, I took it: a nap, a walk, a night out, an errand done alone. These are healing elixirs to a new parent.

I remember laying down in a post-natal yoga class, on my back on a mat on the floor, my baby crawling around me and the teacher saying something like, “there is a cool deep still water inside of me that no one can touch.”

I liked this. My life as a full-time new mom felt like madness. But there is a cool deep still water inside of me that no one can touch. The calm can’t come from the outside world. It’s not the baby’s job to be calm, it’s mine. My calm is on the inside and it radiates outward.

“A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not on the branch but on its own wings.” -Charlie Wardle

This is what I think true calm and confidence come from. Not because the world is tidy and organized, or because life stops throwing highs and lows at you. Not because your work is done (although you may have done great work). It’s because you’ve been through some shit and come out the other side. You know that whatever comes your way, you’ll figure it out.

Figuring it out might mean dissolving into a puddle for a while, outsourcing your executive function to your sister, or squirreling sweet treats in every room in case of emergency.

But you’ll get through it, you’ll figure it out, and you’ll find the new normal until it actually feels normal. There might be flimsy branches as far as the eye can see. But you know how to fucking fly.

I know I’m not the only person whose life is “life-ing.” There’s uncertainty everywhere – the housing market, due process, labor costs, tariffs on goods, the stock market, to name a few.

To my fellow business owners, I can’t offer you certainty. I can’t promise unbreakable branches. But I am speaking from experience when I say the break probably won’t kill you. It’s in the falling that we find our wings.