The Hardest One Yet

Three of my boys have been sick for four days.

When it's one kid, there's something almost sweet about it — the snuggles, the way they go soft and small and just want to be held. You can sink into that.

Three is a different animal. Two toddlers and a four-year-old all running fevers, all wanting the same lap, but also not sharing the lap, ultimately causing even more tantrums. A war zone with a soundtrack of crying that turns into white noise after a while.

The week it landed on

And it landed on a week that was already big. My oldest had his kindergarten preview. The last session of a music class he and I have done together for four years — our mommy-and-me time, done. His in-class summer birthday. Milestones I'd already been holding in my chest, all stacked into the same few days the fevers and colds and big feelings hit.

The small mercy: my oldest went down first, early on, and healed in just enough time. So instead of missing all the milestones, he was present but just more moody — which, selfishly as strange as it sounds, made it a little easier to carry. I'll take grace where it comes.

I got nothing done — and stayed calm anyway

So, over these days, I got nothing "done." Work on hold. Nonstop their beck and call. Touched out. And now my own throat is scratchy, nose is running, my head's gone foggy — the cold is teasing me too.

Here's the thing.

I built my whole company on one idea: how we perform is downstream of how much capacity we have, and capacity is downstream of how well we actually are.

Wellbeing, then capacity, then performance — in that order, every time.

Most weeks I get to talk about that. This week I lived the bottom of it.

And still — I stayed calm. Not because I'm built different. Because I breathed, and because I made one decision early and didn't relitigate it forty times a day: the work could wait. All of it. I put everything down.

The old me would have called that falling behind, and carried productivity guilt on top of the exhaustion — performing "okayness" while quietly keeping score of everything I wasn't getting to. I didn't this time. It's the only reason I had anything left to give them.

The part nobody says out loud

Now, I know I'm lucky. As a founder, I can put the work down for a few days in a way a lot of people can't. And I want to be honest: even for me, putting it down is never free. The cost doesn't disappear — it just moves. Into next week. Into the foundation everything else stands on.

When you can't just walk away

So what about the weeks you can't walk away? When there's no latitude — the job still needs you, the other kids still need you, the bills don't pause for a fever?

You don't get to eliminate the load. But you almost always get to choose where it lands. That's the actual skill. Protect the one thing that holds everything else up — for me it's sleep and my nervous system — and let it be imperfect everywhere else, on purpose. Triage instead of collapse. And drop the guilt first, because guilt is just one more load you're carrying that isn't helping anyone.

That's what I teach. It's the whole reason I built The Shift — a cohort for women in exactly these seasons, who can't just clear the calendar but still need a way through that doesn't cost them their health or their footing. The first one opens mid-June.

Put it down

So if you're in your own war zone right now — sick kids, a hard season, everything at once — here's what I said to myself with a toddler on each side:

You are not behind. You're doing the right thing. Choose where the cost lands, protect the foundation, and put down what you can — starting with the guilt.

This is the hardest one yet. And getting through it on purpose, eyes open about what it costs, is the only way I know.