Q4 of 2024, I kept on having the realization that, “I’m overstimulated.” Years ago, I remember Khadeen Ellis talking about her body belonging to everyone else and how overwhelming it was. She had just had a baby, she had energetic needy young children, and an attentive husband who all required a piece of her. Even though I heard this before I could relate, her plight stayed with me. As I exist today, it is an undeniably accurate scenario many women find themselves in. That along with all the other roles we find ourselves juggling, it seems like burn out is a companion we see more often than we would like.
What do you do when you are overstimulated? Do you keep going? Do you reset? I find that there are complex feelings around rest. Sometimes there are feelings of guilt for pursuing the silence, other times inner self talk is loudly recounting all the things on the endless to do list, and then there is the ever elusive commodity, time. Precious, yet none of us is sure we have enough; but are very clear once it’s gone, we will never get it back. Is time meant to be spent with endless busy work that eventually creates a busy life? Sometimes we ask if we can afford to take a break, but I ask, can we afford not to?
