It’s that time of year for…

Recitals, graduations, weddings, the end of the school year, plus bar/bat mitzvahs, birthday parties, baby showers, figuring out your summer plans (when do you get that mai tai on the beach?!), double checking that you really did enroll your eldest in the right theater camp (because the confirmation email never hit your inbox), and trying real hard not to go insane.

You're muscling through May, the finish line is in sight, but are you going to make it in one piece or will you be a crumbly mess glued to your couch watching [insert your favorite feel-good movie here] on repeat until your brain cells start functioning again?

Why do we feel like we have to suck it up? That we’re not allowed to complain. That you just have to muscle through because it’s May.

Why do we do this to ourselves???

For me, May is manageable, it’s the fall that sucked the lifeforce out of me

When Nathan started his photography business, I didn’t loathe May, I loathed the fall, because from late August through the end of October, he’d be waist deep in school photography so EVERY household task and child-reering need fell to me. That meant I had to cook every meal, clean up every dish, do everyone’s laundry, and I couldn’t ask Nathan for help, because he was too busy (too anxious - I’d realize later, and too focused on work) to help.

We’d get to November and I’d go on revolt, unable to plan another meal or look at any laundry until we got to Thanksgiving. I needed weeks to recover.

It wasn’t sustainable, I was losing my mind and not getting the full recovery time that I needed to bounce back. I was starting to forget things (things that were clearly on the calendar, but I couldn’t keep them in my head) and I felt extra frustrated all the time. I don’t think I was fun to live with.

I knew that if I was going to stay on board with Nathan being an entrepreneur and running his photography business, that things needed to change. It couldn’t all fall on my shoulders for 2.5 months every year.

So it started with a conversation in mid-November one year.

Nathan has more breathing room by mid-November and is more open to conversation and problem solving beyond customer service emails and rain precautions.

I told him how overwhelmed I felt and how I can’t keep doing everything during the fall, because I’m not recovering when it’s over. There are still so many tasks and to-dos that I have to keep doing and I’m ready to revolt and run away to an all inclusive resort on a beach that doesn’t get cell service. And I realize that’s not practical either. So what can we do to make the fall easier for me?

Nathan’s first suggestion was a logical one, let’s order more take out. But there’s a snag. There’s something about ordering take out that’s really really really hard for me to do. I used to blame it on not wanting to call and talk to strangers, but even with every restaurant having an online ordering system, I freeze. There’s some block within me and it’s beyond logic or reason, it’s beyond not wanting to do it, it’s like I literally can’t and it’s totally frustrating - even to me.

So I asked Nathan if he’d be able to order take out even in the midst of school photo season, and he said as long as I figured out the restaurant, that he would.

That gave us both some breathing room.

Fewer meals to plan and cook, and fewer grocery trips meant I’d have a little more down time, proper down time, where maybe I’d just stare at the wall for 10 minutes or lie down in my bed, but it wouldn’t just be the space between doing things, it’d be a few moments for my brain to click off and go into defrag mode.

That one shift made a big difference.

Flashforward to now, I’m a part of Nathan’s business, that means the fall is my busy season too. But we’ve put in routines and we continue to communicate to support one another.

Does Nathan love the fact that I have to be off for 4 hours when we get home from a photo site? No.

I get over-peopled after interacting with 200+ students and need the hours of 12pm-4pm to eat, warm up (I usually get super cold because we photograph outside), and turn off/rest my brain.

Is that something we’re working on? Yes.

Do I have the perfect solution right now? No.

Is that ok? Definitely!

So what does this have to do with muscling through May?

With all of your external obligations, you’re not doing the things you wanna do (the things you know would energize you and make you feel better).

And even if you had time for them, you feel too tired to even try.

So you focus on the bare minimum, prioritize your coping mechanisms - an extra glass of wine, your evening bath, or mindless TV, and you try to just push through…

That doesn’t have to be the only way.

What’s one shift that would make May an easier month for you?

Grab your Ditch Your Doubts Journal to help you process your thoughts and brainstorm the small shifts that will make this month (and your busier times) easier for you.

P.S. If May is feeling like a total struggle bus on one wheel that you're pushing along the road all by yourself - you're not alone! This is a super common thing to feel, especially if you've got kids.

May is like the gateway to summer, so everything that's not summer has to get wrapped up in May, which means more crap lots of events where you layer on the concealer and hope no one noticed that you just nodded off during your kid's violin solo.

I'm wrapping you up in a big energy boosting hug, sending you patience, and beaming you the sensation of lounging on your favorite beach with four mai tais (alcoholic or not).