I’m Learning How to Stop

I didn’t realize how long I had been ignoring it. Not because I didn’t feel it. I did. The tightness, the racing, the way my body would shift before my mind could catch up. I just learned how to move through it, to keep going and keep everything in motion so nothing had to slow down long enough to be named.

There was always something next. Someone who needed to be somewhere. One more thing I could check off. A version of the day that only worked if I kept moving through it. And for a while, that worked. Until it didn’t.

Anxiety doesn’t always show up in a way that stops you. Sometimes it’s quieter than that. It becomes a baseline you get used to until you forget what it feels like to be still. And then there are moments where your body doesn’t give you a choice, where your heart races, your breath won’t settle, and something feels off even when nothing around you has changed.

I used to push through those moments too. I told myself I didn’t have time for it, that I could deal with it later, that it would pass if I just kept going. But I’m starting to understand that my body isn’t interrupting me. It’s trying to get my attention. There’s a difference between pushing through something and pushing past something, and I’ve done both more times than I can count.

I don’t naturally stop. I keep going until something makes me. I’m trying to catch it earlier now, the small shifts I used to ignore because they didn’t feel urgent yet. Because the truth is, there will always be something waiting. Something unfinished. Something that needs you. Something you could do if you just kept going a little longer. That part doesn’t change.

What I’m trying to change is how I respond to it.

Because if I don’t take those moments, no one else is going to create them for me. And as a mother, I’m starting to see that more clearly. Those little humans deserve more than a version of me that is physically there but mentally somewhere else. They deserve a mother who is actually present, not sitting at their events thinking about what still needs to get done or rushing through time that I won’t get back.

They deserve to see what it looks like to pause, to breathe, and to be in a moment without immediately moving on to the next one. That doesn’t come naturally to me. Stopping still feels uncomfortable. It feels like I’m falling behind or not keeping up with everything that still needs to happen.

But I’m starting to understand that stopping isn’t the opposite of showing up. It’s part of it. Learning how to pause is a practice, something I have to come back to again and again. Not perfectly, just intentionally.

Because I can’t keep ignoring what my body is already trying to tell me.

And still, I lead. Even through the pauses. Because stopping, even briefly, makes me more present when I return.