Say Yes to the Life You Were Meant to Live

We still remember sitting in the car, bags packed for what was supposed to be a simple weekend trip. Our son was in the back, humming to himself, kicking his little feet against the seat like he always does when he’s excited. And the truth?
We weren’t excited.
We were exhausted.

It wasn’t him. It was us.
We were tired before the trip even began, mentally stretched thin, running on fumes, emotionally disconnected from the version of ourselves we thought parenting would feel like. Travel, something we used to love, suddenly felt like one more thing to manage instead of something to enjoy together.

That drive was the moment we realized:
Travel wasn’t overwhelming because of our child… it was overwhelming because we had nothing left to give.

We remember the exact night it hit us.

It was one of those evenings when we were already running on fumes. Our son had dumped out his entire bin of Legos looking for one tiny piece, dinner dishes were still in the sink, and we kept stepping over laundry baskets just to get to the hallway. We looked around the living room and realized we were doing that thing we promised we would never do as parents, cleaning around the mess instead of dealing with it because we were just too overwhelmed to take on one more task.

We sat down on the couch, both exhausted, and for the first time we said the words out loud:
“We can’t keep living like this.”

It wasn’t that our home was dirty. It was the mental weight of constant clutter, the never-ending chores, the feeling that our house was deciding our schedule for us. Every day felt like we were behind, and we could feel the stress spilling into other parts of our life, our patience, our energy, and even the little moments we wanted to have with our son.

That was our light-bulb moment.
The problem wasn’t just the mess. The problem was that we had stopped saying yes to ourselves.

I remember the night it hit me.
We were both sitting on the couch after putting our son to bed, each lost in our own screen. The TV hummed in the background, our phones glowed in our hands, and the room felt… quiet. Not peaceful quiet, but the kind that makes you realize how far apart you’ve drifted.

I looked over at him, his red hair catching the blue light from the TV, and realized I couldn’t remember the last time we’d really connected. Not just talked about bills, schedules, or grocery lists, but talked. I couldn’t remember the last time I laughed so hard with him that my stomach hurt.

That realization hit like a light switch flipping on in the dark:
We were doing life side by side, but not together.

And it wasn’t because we didn’t love each other, it was because we were both running on empty. Between work, parenting, exhaustion, and expectations, we had stopped saying yes to ourselves.

And when you stop saying yes to yourself, you eventually stop having anything left to give to the people you love most.

That was the moment we knew something had to change.