Love on Empty

There’s a special kind of exhaustion that doesn’t just live in your body – it rents space in your soul. The kind that accumulates slowly, over years of being capable – a fixer – someone who keeps moving even when life hands out plot twists that nobody asked for.

And now here we are: surgeries, hospitals, hard decisions, emotional landmines, work chaos – all happening at once. It’s the kind of season where even the most resilient among us would like to politely step outside the narrative and scream into the void.

The only reason I haven’t is because my family is right there in the trenches with me. Ok, ok…I have screamed into the void but I haven’t taken up residence yet. Give me time though…..

We carry different pieces of the same weight.

One thing I love most about our family is that no one had to assign roles. We just…fell into them. Instinctive. Natural. Weirdly efficient, like a slightly dysfunctional but undeniably effective special operations unit. It’s like we all looked at the overwhelming reality in front of us and just said, alright, how are we going to do this? Are we perfect at this process? HELLZ no. But we are perfectly imperfect and the way we show up for the Queen Mother? Muah! Chef’s Kiss!

We each process and perform differently:

• One handles logistics like they’re air traffic control.
• One brings humor so that everyone else can just breathe.
• One becomes the emotional translator when no one knows what they’re feeling.
• One dives into research like WebMD personally wronged them.

And yes, everyone is exhausted. Everyone is stressed. Everyone is grieving something. But everyone is showing up. We’re all in the same storm – just standing in different spots.

Messiness and the love that stubbornly stays

Our relationships with mom aren’t simple – whose are? There’s history, complexity, tenderness, frustration, old wounds, and new worries. But she’s our mom. That’s the whole sentence.

We all inherited different pieces of her – grit, resilience, kindness, a questionable tolerance for chaos – and now those are exactly the traits we’re using to take care of her.

Poetic? Mebbe

Ironic? You betcha!

Meanwhile, in my ring of the circus…

I’m juggling my own (second) surgery recovery, job decisions, fatigue, weight changes (FU perimenopause), family stress and a brain that’s been running a nonstop marathon of emotional processing since…honestly, I can’t even remember when the last off season was.

But here’s the truth:

My family is carrying their own burdens too. Their own fears. Their own forms of grief.

And watching all of us hold each other up has been one of the few bright spots in a really heavy stretch.

We keep going – not necessarily because we want to but – because we have to

We show up exhausted. We show up overwhelmed. We show up worried. Sometimes we show up with snacks. Sometimes with diet coke. Sometimes with gallows humor. And sometimes with a blank stare that says, “If one more unexpected damn thing happens, I might evaporate. POOF!” But, we show up and we do it together – even if we’re not always physically in the same place.

Is there poetry in this?

Uff. I dunno. But I do know this….

Love keeps going long after your energy runs out. Family steps in even when the tank is empty. Grace shows up – sometimes disguised as humor. And somehow, in the middle of all this, we find moments to laugh – especially when it feels wildly inappropriate. We are tired but we are here. We are overwhelmed but we are not alone. We are occasionally heartbroken but we hold each other up.

And honestly, that’s its own kind of strength. It’s the kind of strength you don’t just learn from life – it’s inherited from a mom that started a whole new life for herself after she had already raised three children who were out in world starting their own lives. This woman – with all her complexities – showed us what resilience and determination looks like long before we ever fully understood what it meant to really stand up for yourself, your dreams, your future.

Now in this strange season where roles seemingly reverse, it’s her strength we’re drawing from – each of us in our own way. The grit she lived by. The stubbornness she perfected. (I mean, dayum!) The love she offered even when she maybe didn’t always know how to show it.

We carry those pieces of her into every hospital room, every late night family text thread, every hard conversation, every moment we push through on fumes.

And maybe that’s the quiet, unexpected beauty in all of this: Even now, even in the hardest moments, our mom is still the one holding us up.