Do you know what its like to drown?

Let me tell you, even on land you can feel like you're gasping for air. This isn’t a story about failure, it’s about what happens when capacity is stretched too thin, and how we find our way back

Picture it, Friday afternoon. I feel like I've had a successful albeit hectic week, and I fall asleep on the floor in the baby's playpen. I wake up somewhat relaxed and reach to scroll on my phone, you know, very regular degular.. when I see a text that makes my heart drop. "Hey, did you forget to pick the kids up from school"? As my mind starts to rush and all the relaxation leaves my body, I begin to panic. You see, I am over afternoon pick-ups, and I forgot to alert the other parent that my son would be picked up early. Shame immediately floods me. How did I get here?

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Honestly, this mishap was formulaic. All you do is add cleaning, cooking, working, and extra-curricular activities, subtract my spouse, who is gone for months at a school thanks to the army, and remove self-care entirely, then multiply it by this constant need to carry it all, and you get this. Mistakes. Small ones, BIG ones, but mistakes nonetheless. This was a wakeup call. I needed to pull it together.

What I did next., and what I help my clients do, was pause long enough to actually see what was happening. First, I had to admit it: I wasn't functioning at my best. I'd somehow convinced myself that overfunction was just function, and I was running on fumes. Really running on fumes....sleeping in a playpen, Really Eboni? That was the wake-up call.

Then came the harder part. I had to reach out and repair things with the other parent. Apologize. Make sure their kids were okay. But more than that, I had to choose something different in myself. I could have let shame and guilt drive my next steps. Honestly, it would have been common and easy, but I knew my kids still needed me to show up, and so did the relationship with their other parent. Self-compassion meant letting go of the narrative that I'd failed, and instead asking: what do I actually need right now to recover?

And that's where everything broke down. I wasn't eating, wasn't drinking water, wasn't sleeping. No journaling, no movement. My body was screaming, and I finally listened.

The truth is, nothing about that day was unusual. That’s the part that matters.

It wasn’t one big failure. It was the slow build of doing too much, for too long, without enough support, rest, or pause.

And if I’m being honest, I know I’m not the only one living like that.

So maybe this isn’t about doing better. Maybe it’s about doing less, sooner

Looking back, none of this came out of nowhere.

I didn’t choose to sit down—so my body did it for me.