Parenting burnout. It's like writer's block but for life.

On being frozen, dropping plates, and doing whatever the F fills your cup.

You know writer’s block? That feeling where you know you need to write something, you have things to say, and yet — nothing. You’re frozen. Not because you’re empty, but because there’s somehow too much and too little all at once.

That’s what burnout feels like in the middle of parenting.

Except there’s no blank page. There’s a very, very full one. There’s swim class for both kids, a school flea market fundraiser, an aftercare open house, and a nonprofit Mother’s Day brunch — all in the same three hour window. There’s the teacher appreciation week gifts you cannot, for the life of you, figure out how to organize. There’s the onslaught of texts to respond to, things to sign up for, things to pay for, things to account for, logistics to wrangle, calendars to organize. And it keeps going. It does not stop. There is no release valve.

Sometimes I just stop. I just can’t. I literally cannot wrap my head around how to begin. So I do nothing. I remind myself it’s okay if plates drop — most of them are plastic anyway. And I do nothing.

And yet the onslaught continues.

Here’s the part I’m almost ashamed to admit: during the pandemic, for a few days — just a few — things slowed. The non-work appointments stopped. The classes were canceled. The weekends went suddenly, eerily empty. And I felt something I didn’t have language for at the time.

Relief.

God, even writing that. The pandemic was devastating. I never, ever, EVER want to go back to that time. And yet. For a moment, the relentless machinery of modern parenthood just... stopped. And then it came roaring back — how to educate, how to childcare, how to get groceries, how to teach healthy social and emotional processing during a goddamn pandemic — all while sheltering in place, being the primary parent, with a husband back at work in healthcare, holding down a full-time job that graciously gave us Friday afternoons to “figure shit out.” Thanks.

Even writing this, I can feel it — like gas fumes rising from my throat. Like a sewage line piping out steam. It comes from somewhere deep, some place where this particular madness lives. That feeling of being buried. Too stuck to move.

And yet you’re not covered in dirt. You’re not in a six foot grave. You’re sitting at your desk, in front of your computer, trying to organize the family calendar for the upcoming weekend.

So what do you do?

You do whatever the hell feels most nourishing to you in this moment. Consequences and broken plates be damned.

Take a nap? Yes. Exercise? Only if it actually feels nourishing — not punishing, not obligatory. Eat a sleeve of Oreos? Absolutely.

Do what fills your cup. Not what the productivity gurus say. Not what the other moms appear to be doing. Not what you think you should need.

What actually fills yours.