Here in Georgia the first bell rings in a few days. There are supply lists on my counter right now, and forms that need signing, and a stack of things that have to be bought before Sunday. Somewhere in the house there is a backpack that was fine in May and is now, apparently, unacceptable. If your house looks anything like mine, you already know the feeling.

What wears women out in August is not the errands. Errands are finite. You run them, they end. It is the tracking. Somebody has to hold the whole calendar in her head, remember which child needs which folder, notice that the shoes no longer fit, know that picture day is the second Tuesday and the field trip form was due yesterday, and keep the schedule running while everyone else simply shows up. That work is invisible, which is exactly why it is exhausting. Nobody thanks you for it because nobody sees it. They only see it on the day it fails.

And nobody hands the mother a list. Every child gets one. Every teacher gets one. The woman who makes all of those lists possible walks into the school year with nothing written down for herself but a vague sense that she is already behind.

Why the tracking is the heavy part

Let me name what is actually happening, because naming it is half the relief. The errands cost you an hour. The tracking costs you your attention all day, every day, in the background, like an app you cannot close. You are standing in a meeting thinking about the permission slip. You are falling asleep running through tomorrow's pickup. Even when your hands are free, your mind is on shift.

That is why you can have a perfectly ordinary Thursday and still feel wrung out by eight o'clock. Nothing went wrong. You simply held forty small things in your head for fourteen hours and set none of them down. A mind that never sets anything down does not rest. It just waits for the next thing to drop.

Scripture has a word for the woman who tries to carry a household entirely in her own head, and it is not a compliment. It is a gentle correction.

Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed, or indeed only one.Luke 10:41-42

Notice that Jesus does not scold Martha for serving. The house needed serving. He names the worry about many things, the scattered mind that cannot sit down because it is holding everything at once. He is not asking her to stop working. He is asking her to stop carrying all of it alone, in her head, as if the whole evening would collapse if she sat down for ten minutes.

Where I get this wrong every August

Let me say the thing nobody says out loud at the back to school night. I notice everything first, and then I treat noticing as assigning. The shoes are too small, so now the shoes are mine. The form came home, so now the form is mine. The sign-up sheet went out, so now, somehow, the sign-up is mine. Nobody handed me those things. I picked them up because I saw them, and then I resented carrying them.

I also wait until October to decide what I am not doing. By then I am already underwater, and whatever gets dropped looks like a failure because it was never a choice. I let the year decide for me, and the year is not kind.

And I put myself on the calendar last, if at all. The haircut gets postponed twice. The coffee with a friend becomes a text. The thing I actually wanted to do waits for a quieter week that, I have now learned, is not coming.

Three things to do before the first bell

So this year I am doing three things before the alarm goes off Monday morning, and I am inviting you to do them with me. None of them take more than an evening. All of them are easier now than they will be in six weeks.

Name what is actually yours. Write out everything you are carrying for this school year, then go back through and mark what belongs to you. Some of it is yours. Some of it belongs to your husband, your co-parent, your child, or the school. You have been carrying items that were never assigned to you, simply because you noticed them first. Noticing is not the same as owning. A ten year old can pack her own folder. A husband can know what time practice ends. The school can send the reminder it already sends.

Decide now what you will drop. Not in October when you are already underwater. Now, while you can still think. Pick the thing you will not do this year. The elaborate lunches, the volunteer sign-up, the perfect first-day photo, the handmade teacher gift. Choose it on purpose, in advance, so that when it goes undone it is a decision instead of a failure. A decision you made in August with a clear head will not shame you in October. A failure will.

Put one thing on the calendar that is only for you. Not a haircut you have postponed twice. Something you actually want. A morning alone with your Bible and a real breakfast. A walk with a friend. A class. Then treat it like the dentist appointment you would never cancel, because you would not cancel that on your child either. If it helps, write it in the same color you use for their things. It belongs there.

A fifteen minute version if that is all you have

If the thought of an evening is laughable this week, do the short version tonight.

  1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes and write down every school thing in your head. Do not organize it. Just get it out.
  2. Put a letter next to each item: M for mine, H for his or theirs, C for the child, S for the school.
  3. Hand the non-M items to the people they belong to, out loud, before bed. Tonight, not later.
  4. Cross off one M item permanently. That is your drop.
  5. Open the calendar and write one thing for yourself on it in the next ten days. Then close it.

That is it. You will not feel transformed. You will feel about fifteen percent lighter, and in August fifteen percent is a lot.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Matthew 11:28

He says come. He does not say finish first. He does not say come once the lunches are packed and the forms are signed and everyone is settled. The weary and burdened are invited exactly as they are, mid-list, with the laundry still going.

The season will still be full

I am not going to tell you that a slow August is possible. It usually is not. The errands are real, the calendar is real, and someone does have to hold it. What is possible is going into it as a whole person instead of a scheduling system with a pulse. The difference is not how much you do. It is whether there is still a woman in there when the doing is done.

The house needs you steady more than it needs you spread thin. Your children will not remember the elaborate lunches. They will remember whether you had anything left for them at dinner. Put yourself somewhere on that list. Not at the top, if that feels like too much right now. Just on it.

Sit with this

Finish this sentence in your journal and do not stop at one line: "This school year, the thing I am quietly afraid of dropping is..." Then ask yourself who told you it was yours to hold in the first place.

If you want help telling the difference between what is yours and what you simply picked up, The Grounded Girl workbook walks through that work slowly, with room to write. It was made for women who hold the whole house in their heads and are ready to set some of it down.

With you on the journey,
Autumn