The Things I Don’t Make It To

I didn’t expect missing my son’s eighth birthday to stay with me the way it did. I chose where I was that day, and I understood why. It mattered. It was an opportunity I worked for, one I didn’t take lightly. But so did what I missed, and I don’t think I let myself fully feel that right away. It was easier to move on, to tell myself it made sense, that it was part of what I’ve been building, that there would be other moments. But this one didn’t pass as quickly as I expected it to. It stayed in a way that felt harder to explain, not because I regretted the decision, but because I couldn’t ignore what it cost me.

We talk about balance like it’s something you can organize, something that lives in your schedule or your ability to manage time well. But that hasn’t been my experience. It doesn’t feel clean or controlled. It feels like making decisions in real time when two things matter at once and knowing you don’t get to choose both, and sometimes not realizing what something meant to you until after you’ve already missed it. I’ve gotten used to moving through those decisions quickly, deciding, adjusting, continuing, without sitting in them too long because there’s always something next. Something else that needs you. Something that feels just as important.

That pace can start to feel like strength. Like proof that you can handle it, that you can hold everything at once and keep moving without letting anything drop. But I’m starting to question that, because there’s a difference between carrying a lot and pushing past something you actually needed to stop for, and I think I’ve done more of the second than I’ve been willing to admit.

My son didn’t mind changing his birthday plan. He was okay with it, and in the moment that made it easier to keep going, easier to believe it wasn’t as big of a deal as it felt.

But I wasn’t okay in the same way. And that’s the part that stayed with me.

Not the decision itself, but the realization that I’ve been making choices like that without always asking myself where my line is, what I’m willing to miss and what I’m not, what I can move past and what actually sits with me after everything else has moved on.

There’s a tension that comes with trying to grow into more while still holding everything else together. Wanting to show up fully in both places and realizing, sometimes in the moment, that you can’t. Not completely. Not in the way you wish you could. And I don’t think we say that out loud enough, because from the outside it can look like everything is working. Things are moving forward. You’re showing up. You’re managing it. But internally, it doesn’t always feel that clean. It feels like a constant negotiation between what matters, what’s urgent, and what you tell yourself can wait, and sometimes what you think can wait is the thing that stays with you the longest.

I’m starting to understand that boundaries aren’t something you define once and move on from. They show up in moments like this, when there isn’t a clean answer and no version of the decision feels perfect. They show up in what lingers after, in what you keep thinking about when everything else has already moved on. And I think I’ve been avoiding that part, because it’s easier to keep going than it is to sit with what something actually meant to me.

But I don’t want to keep doing that, not without being more honest about it. I’m still figuring out what that looks like.

And still, I lead.