Finding Forty

Because loving my child sometimes means stepping back.

My son asked me to stay home with him for two days, and it absolutely broke me. 💔

The truth is… I don’t always have to send him to daycare, but I do because I know my nervous system can’t hold the 24/7 without slipping back into the generational cycles I’m working so hard to break. I send him because it keeps me regulated enough to be a safe, steady mom not because I don’t want him with me.

I can show up in short bursts with my warmest smile and my best “Mom of the Year” self. But the long days? The nonstop toddler tests? The sensory overload and emotional landmines? That’s where my cracks show. That’s where I feel like I fall short.

And even with daycare support, I still feel like I’m failing.

But deep down, I know this: choosing what protects my capacity isn’t failure. It’s love. It’s responsibility. It’s cycle-breaking in real time, even when it looks messy, imperfect, or not like the mom I imagined I’d be.

I’m doing the best I can with the nervous system I have and my boys deserve that version of me far more than the one who’s drowning. The one pretending or hoping to be someone I’m not.

I hope I’m right… that this limitation is mostly the toddler season. Because I want the summers to come the Nerf wars, the arts and crafts, the little adventures. I want to immerse myself in their worlds.

Right now, though, I’m just holding on. I’m in survival mode.

And I’m sure the unknowing daycare workers mumble about him being there while I’m at home. I get it I was young and judgmental once, too. I used to think I knew what made a “good mom.”

But what I hope they someday realize is this:

Their presence matters more than they’ll ever know.

Their patience, their grit, their hard work the playing, the comforting, the routine diaper changes, the structure, the stability all of it is part of the generational chain-breaking I’m trying to do.

They aren’t “babysitting while I rest.”

They’re helping me raise a child in a way I never experienced growing up.

They’re giving him consistency while I build the capacity to show up for him better.

They’re part of the village I never had.

And that matters more than anyone on the outside could possibly understand.

And if my boys ever look back and wonder why I needed the help, I hope they see it clearly: I chose the village so I could choose them with the gentleness I was never given. That’s how our story changes. That’s how the cycle breaks not by doing it all, but by loving them enough to step back and let us both breathe.