Then we blinked.

Our youngest just graduated high school.

And she did it in style.

We are incredibly proud of her achievements. Even more so, of the humanity she brings into the world and the values that quietly guide the way she lives her life.

Watching her step into this next chapter is incredibly exciting, even if it comes wrapped in the full circus rainbow 🎪🌈 of bittersweet emotions.

I am trying to feel every one of them...

This summer we officially become empty nesters.

Over twenty years of family life somehow came and went in the blink of an eye. The sleepless nights, school runs, forgotten PE kits, endless activities, appointments, and all those wonderfully ordinary moments that quietly become your life.

There were certainly times we wished for life to slow down.

Now I find myself wishing I had slowed down a little more while we were living it.

As someone who graduated in the 90s, I grew up with the promise that women could have it all. Career ✔️ Partnership ✔️ Children ✔️ Fitness ✔️ Friends ✔️

What nobody really spoke about was the cost of holding all those things together.

Or the subtle message that raising a family would simply happen around everything else.

Looking back, I realise how easily I disappeared into the doing of life. Organising, solving, planning, juggling and keeping everything moving. I told myself I was doing it for my family.

Somewhere along the way, though, I lost connection with myself.

Health? That would somehow look after itself. Right?

I stopped noticing what my own body was trying to tell me. I became less present with my own needs and, without recognising it, less present with the people I loved most.

Sometimes I was too busy to really hear their silly stories, or too depleted to sit with their worries.

Sometimes I reacted when I could have responded.

I simply thought this was what parenting under pressure looked like.

Only later did I begin to understand something that has completely changed the way I think about life and health.

The tension in our home reduced almost in proportion to the tension inside me.

The more I learned to regulate myself, the more connected I became with myself.

The more connected I became with myself, the more connected I became with the two extraordinary human beings I had helped raise.

There wasn't any big aha moment. I simply started noticing.

Breathing a little more.

Listening a little more.

Creating a little more space.

As we close one chapter and begin another, I wonder how many of us are so busy building our lives that we slowly disconnect from ourselves and what really matters.