You will never forget the moments that define your life forever.
For me, one of those moments was learning I was pregnant. It wasn't beautiful and peaceful like a pregnancy test commercial. It involved taking not one, not two, but three expired pregnancy tests - all positive, all with the same commentary live-streamed via text to my best friend: "WTF?!" It involved being freezing - literally, for the first time ever in my life, unable to warm up - and feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. It involved frantically barging into the bathroom where my husband was getting ready and holding up a stick with two lines on it, minutes before walking out the door for his company Christmas party.
You might not think that sounds out of the ordinary. But "learned" might be underselling it.
I didn't think I could get pregnant. I'd spent years working through the grief of infertility, making peace with the idea that parenthood wasn't in the cards for me - and I mean genuinely made peace with it, the hard-won kind that comes after years of grief and processing. I'd stopped the exhaustive internal debates: IVF - I knew myself well enough to know I didn't have the grit for it. Private adoption - too political, too expensive, too many people profiting from other people's heartbreak. Foster care - too much systemic corruption for someone who already struggled to keep her outrage at a manageable level. My husband wanted children but also understood my apprehension about trying too hard instead of accepting fate. Eventually I arrived somewhere quieter: it was okay to have a beautiful life that looked different than the one I used to imagine.
So I pivoted. I redirected all that pent-up maternal energy into mentoring, into being a trusted and effective manager, into dachshunds, into obsessively perfecting sourdough and growing a garden that could feed a family many times the size of ours. I reframed what family meant - two adults and some dogs is just as much a family as someone with eight children. I started thinking about early retirement and travel unbounded by school calendars. I built a life around a different version of the future - and mostly it worked. Mostly. By the time December 2024 rolled around, I rarely thought about the grief surrounding parenthood anymore. I felt relief.
And then my entire worldview had to shift in an instant.
Here's the thing about a life-altering plot twist: it doesn't just change what's ahead of you. It reframes everything behind you too. I thought I was just tired - winter can do that to a sun-seeking girl who wants to sleep whenever the sun is down. I thought my body was fighting something off. I was exhausted to my bones, but that wasn't new. I'd spent years doing more with less, working long hours because that's what it took to create something that didn't exist before - with limited resources and, obviously, never any extra budget. Feeling tired was just the background noise of being someone who gives a lot.
But there's tired and then there's depleted. And somewhere along the way - I honestly couldn't tell you exactly when - I had crossed from one into the other without noticing. The signs were there. I just had a very convincing internal narrative for why each one was fine.
The shorter fuse? I was managing a lot - it's totally normal to be frustrated when the world feels like it's falling apart and the news cycle permeates everything. The difficulty concentrating, the not being able to find the right words? I had a full plate. My PCP said it wasn't normal but also wasn't abnormal, gave me a head CT, and said everything looked fine. It turns out I had undiagnosed ADHD - the kind that manifests as your brain running at 4,938,292 mph while your mouth moves at one. The growing sense that nothing I did was ever quite enough - for the organization, for my team, for myself? That's just what high standards feel like, right? Waking up panicked about things (mainly work things) at 3am? Hormonal shifts are the reason why I was waking up at 3am, as my fertile years were over with, and plus I have a very active dream life, and I like to solve problems in my sleep so it's natural to dream about work.
Maybe. But it was also exhausting in a way I wasn't fully acknowledging.
My body was telling me it needed a break. It didn't get one. The pregnancy brought complications that forced me to slow down in ways I never would have chosen for myself, and somewhere in the middle of all of it - the fear, the uncertainty, the crash course in reorienting your entire identity with basically no warning - I could finally see clearly how depleted I actually was. Not tired. Not stressed. Burned out. Genuinely, thoroughly burned out.
Coming of age in the era of girl bosses and corporate girlies, there was no edict to rest. There was an edict to always do more, always be more, and always make more. More. More. More. Buy a bigger house, get a nicer car, reward yourself with things. Get into a trap where you can never slow down because all your happiness is tied to achievements and what's next, not what's already great about the present. Mindless micro dopamine hits zap your joy while simultaneously driving the desire for something newer, shinier, better - a cycle that's impossible to win.
In December 2024, my entire life changed as I had to pivot from a future I was certain of to one full of questions and uncertainty. All of the things I had once mourned needed to be reframed, and the decisions I had once made had to be reconsidered. I physically and mentally had to slow down - and that reignited a spark for intentionality and the desire to paint a future I would actually be happy in, instead of staying in the status quo because it was comfortable.