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Hi Reader, Between my husband's work schedule shifting around him lately, our community volunteer commitments ramping up for fall, and my own Tuesday choir practice, dinner has become the one thing I genuinely don't have extra energy left for by the time evening rolls around. And that's before my GI issues decide to flare and toss the whole plan out anyway. So this month, I stopped trying to plan meals and started building a rotation instead. A handful of dinners I already know how to make, leaning almost entirely on the slow cooker, air fryer, and electric grill so nothing requires standing over a hot stove in this heat. No new recipes to figure out, no decisions to make at 5 pm when I have nothing left to give it. The other piece was letting go of the idea that every dinner has to match. Some nights that's a quesadilla, an air fryer flatbread pizza, a can of soup, or microwave mac and cheese, and I've stopped needing to justify any of it. My husband helps when I need it, and I've borrowed a phrase from parenting circles that's helped more than I expected: fed is best. Some nights, that really is enough. None of this is more structure. It's less, and it's been a relief. If you're in a similarly stretched season right now, I wrote up the whole rhythm on the blog, rotation, tools, and all, in case it helps you too. |
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Hi Reader, I want to tell you about a morning recently that didn't go anything like it was supposed to. I'd had a flare bad enough that I ended up calling my husband home from work. Pain and nausea that just wouldn't let up, my body sweating and shivering through it while my nervous system tried to sort itself out. Not fun. And for a few days after, my normal morning routine, the one I actually rely on, meds before food, food before coffee, a slow unhurried shower, just didn't happen. At all....
Hi Reader, Every August the same advice shows up: get your mornings together, build a routine, start the day with momentum. It's aimed at a body that gets to choose what happens next, and that's just not how mornings work when you're managing chronic illness. This week's post is about what actually helps instead. Knowing your non-negotiables, the few things that truly have to happen. Sketching out a full-capacity and a low-capacity version of your morning before you need them. Checking in...
Hi Reader, I want to tell you about the part of self-advocacy nobody warned me about. For years I thought the whole battle was getting brave enough to speak up β with my partner, with coworkers, with doctors who didn't want to hear it. And that part is real. It took me a long time to stop hinting at what I needed and just say the actual thing out loud. But here's what I didn't expect: even after I got braver, I'd still walk into appointments and blank on the details that actually mattered....