Time for Me: A Mother's Story
Q: How do you give yourself permission to step away?
Mitali’s Dialogue
Seventeen years ago I gave birth to an adorable baby boy and as I shared my first smile with him, I don't think I comprehended how much my life was about to change. I had grown up as an only child of two doctors and moved countries three times by the age of twelve, so I spent a considerable amount of my childhood entertaining myself. I wasn't neglected or unloved but I learnt early on how to be comfortable by myself with my books and my toys when I found myself in a new culture without my familiar friends. I was also an introvert. While I enjoyed spending time with new friends I made in each school I entered, I also cherished my alone time - climbing trees, building makeshift houses for my dolls and starting small fires in our backyard to pretend to cook meals. As an adult, time not spent in the office was spent hanging with friends - going to music festivals, traveling, entertaining or by myself - enjoying lazy weekends, sleeping in late, reading and cooking.
I entered into a relationship with my now husband in my mid twenties and had barely discovered what “adult” me needed to keep me grounded. I had my first kid as soon as I started my thirties. Once I became a mom to two boys, my alone time just disappeared. With a full-time leadership role in tech, suddenly all my time was taken over by work, family and chores. My son was colicky from the start so the first year of his life, I was so exhausted that any time I got to myself was spent trying to catch up on sleep. My firstborn was a high energy kid who woke up at 5am and demanded that we all wake up and play with him, and wouldn't fall asleep by himself in his room without one of us being there. So on many nights I found myself falling asleep with him. At the age of two and a half he was diagnosed as a special needs kid so for the next few years, any time I carved away from work during the day was spent taking him to speech therapy and services to help his development and dealing with emotional meltdowns from his lack of communication skills in the evenings.
My second kid was born four years later and time became a haze between managing a household with two boys, a demanding job with travel and teams to manage, visits from grandparents who stayed with us three to four months of the year plus family travel as my husband and I packed in road trips and visits to international destinations with the kids. So with all those demands on my time, my own need for quiet time just got forgotten. I don't think I even realized for the first few years what I had given up. When my mental health started to decline, I first attributed it to postpartum. Later once we realized that we had our hands full with a special needs child and a baby, it became an impossibility to consider taking time away for myself and leaving my husband alone with two kids. The only times that I felt justified in leaving him to be a solo parent was for work trips given the constant travel demands of my job. As a mom it became easy to put myself and my needs below those of my kids, husband, job, parents, in-laws. No one stopped me from prioritizing time for myself away from work and family but myself. I just forgot to be kind to myself and recognize that my needs matter too.
It was only during the pandemic that I realized how much of an impact personal time away from the family could have on my mood and energy. I had quit my job by then so there were no work trips to leave my husband alone with the kids. My kids were twelve and eight by then so I felt comfortable asking my husband to solo parent for a weekend while I took leisure time for myself. Thanks to Kinnari who planned a couple of girls' trips with me and another friend in 2020-21, I began to experience again what it was like to have unplanned time with no one needing my constant attention.
It was glorious. I started to get back in touch with the person I used to be before I became a mom - traveling to new destinations, laughing with friends, cooking meals together. I also discovered new interests that emerged in my forties. Hiking in nature, getting body treatments, learning how to start a fire that I could huddle around with friends, reading out loud to each other from treasured books and engaging in spiritual conversations about life.
But it wasn't easy for me initially to relax when I had this time away. I could justify it as a special needs mom or a mom facing depressive episodes but did I even need to? This is a trap that many women fall into. Whether they are a stay at home mom or working mom, special needs mom or caregiver daughter to aging parents, women often feel guilty about prioritizing their own needs. It took me time to get comfortable with acknowledging this need. Deep down I knew I needed to do this for myself.
Those initial trips were tough on me - guilt for leaving my husband to deal with the chaos of two kids at home, anger at the urgent phone calls from my son or husband when the shit hit the fan at home, sadness for my inability to stick to my boundaries and get uninterrupted down time. But each trip that I took became easier for everyone in the family as we learnt new skills on how to manage these situations. I started by restricting myself to three-day trips within California so I was always a phone call away if needed. Then in 2022, I had to travel to India to help my mom with some personal matters and decided to try a three-day ayurvedic wellness retreat there to address my gut health in the hopes that it would also improve my mental health. While I was there I decided to restrict my communication with my family in the US - the time zone definitely made it easier given we were twelve hours apart.
Everyone survived and I came back much refreshed, rejuvenated and reenergized to handle tough situations again. Since then I have done a six day vipassana (silent meditation) retreat in California with no cell phone access in 2023 and a six day wellness retreat in Thailand in 2024. Each trip away from the family gave me the courage and confidence to continue to make this an annual practice. I am about to set off on a new adventure this week - a ten day trip to Patagonia, hiking in the Torres Del Paine National Park where I will have no cell phone access for most of the trip.
If there is one thing I could tell my younger self it would be to prioritize things that make you feel whole. I got so subsumed into my role as mother/manager/daughter for twelve years that I forgot who I was or what I needed. A person that needs down time to recharge and connect back with herself. A person that enjoys the company of other adults without young ones demanding her constant attention. A person that needs to connect with nature and her body to ground herself. But it's never too late to bring change into your life. It starts by recognizing what you need, trusting your intentions, asking for it and then making it happen without giving a damn about anyone else. Because you deserve it.