The Dream of Every Woman’s Heart
January 19, 2026 (Dr. Martin Luther King’s Birthday)
Several years ago, in the throes of motherhood and deep into my teaching career, I looked around and felt completely trapped and overwhelmed by my life. I felt as if I was working every minute of every day.
My typical weekday looked like this:
6:45 am: Wake up and get ready for work, waking up kids and making sure they were getting ready as needed.
Their dad often prepped them for the school day when they were very little because I needed to arrive early and he could start work later in the morning, and I’m forever grateful to him for that. Even so, mornings were still SO intense.
7:50 am: Arrive at work (a public elementary or K-8 Catholic school), take a breath, and go, go, go nonstop until 4:30 or 5 pm, unless my own kids needed to be somewhere such as music lessons, sports practice, or scouts.
Between 5:30 and 8:30 pm: Arrive home after a long, exhausting day of being a teacher, babysitter, lunch/recess monitor, peacekeeper, and chauffeur; pour some wine; throw something together for dinner; and try not to fall asleep before reading with my kids before bed. (That was my favorite part of the day.)
If I stayed awake past bedtime for my children, I would stay up with my spouse to watch TV, eat snacks, drink alcohol, and often fall asleep on the couch.
My weekends were similar, requiring a lot of running kids around town to various activities, squeezing in time with my own friends, going to church, and finding all the sneaky ways I could to add more alcohol into my day. Not to mention grading papers, especially when I taught 6 periods of middle school English-Language Arts per day. Mimosas and the occasional Bloody Mary crept their way in for breakfast eventually.
Any moments of downtime were either laced with a socially-acceptable mind-altering substance (alcohol) or spent feeling anxious about what I wasn’t doing.
The best time of my life was when my then-husband and I became friends with another couple with kids the same age as ours. That way our kids could be entertained, I could have the social time I required, and we could sample all kinds of delicious “grown-up drinks” throughout our time together. It was efficient, which was the closest thing to Heaven at the time.
My ex and I didn’t find that efficiency until we lived in North Carolina for three years, when our kids were in preschool and 2nd grade, and we didn’t find it again after we returned to Seattle. We were married when we were 21 years old, I started my teaching career at 23, and I was pregnant at 24. That life trajectory was pretty unheard of in a wealthy, liberal West Coast city like Seattle, and I didn’t ever find anyone my age with kids until North Carolina. I also didn’t find any couples who were compatible with both my husband AND with me here in Seattle.
However lovely our new connections were, my ex hated his job in North Carolina. At some point, he attended a session about a career path completely outside of his expertise and experience. He learned more and applied to three very similar global corporations.
He was so miserable in his current situation, and couldn’t figure out a way to earn more than a beginning high school teacher any time soon. I prayed hard for him to land a corporate position, hoping it would bring him the joy he was lacking, and he worked hard to prepare for the interview process.
We were thrilled and surprised when he wasn’t only offered one of the few coveted positions, but one in Seattle.
We would get to go home.
His new salary, which was less than one-third of what he makes now, meant I could take a break from teaching. That was something I desperately desired and needed.
And yet, the break from working I thought I wanted left me even more depressed and anxious. I found ways to fill up my days so I didn’t have to stop and think. I continued adding alcohol as a treat whenever I could. My ex was traveling 4 days per week, so evenings of running my children to three to five activities (each) per week still left me drained.
I didn’t know how well-trained of a worker bee I was, which meant I felt “off” when I wasn’t fully draining myself with effort on a daily basis, until much, much later.
I homeschooled my youngest child for the second half of that first school year back in Seattle. Yes, that filled up my entire days again, but it was also so much more relaxing and reconnecting than anything I had experienced prior. My baby suddenly had very few migraines, which had been happening daily in first grade. I got to find a little bit of an easeful flow to my days.
My ex didn’t like it. He didn’t want his kid to be a weirdo, and insisted that our child return to school the next year. Once my kids were both securely back in a “normal” learning environment (that’s a story for another day), I also let myself be convinced to return to teaching.
Don’t you love the passivity of that last sentence?
It would take me five more years to quit my teaching career for good, and another four to stop drinking for good and learn to just enjoy being still and in my own energy.
In that time, I found a book called Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Charles Lindbergh’s wife. He was the great aviator of the early 20th Century whose baby (and her baby too) was taken from their front yard, never to be seen alive again. They were also pro-fascist Nazi sympathizers, at least at some point, calling it pacifism. They ended up having many more children and staying married until Charles died, despite his many affairs and secret families, all of which were with women in Germany.
The book is still widely circulated thanks to their daughter, Reeve Lindbergh.
Despite the embarrassing facts surrounding the author’s early life, and really her whole life, the book itself is a beautiful siren song that irrevocably altered the direction of my life. I think it was recommended in some of the quit-lit I was reading around 2020 as I began to walk away from alcohol.
In it, Anne recommends that every woman carves out time alone. Specifically, “sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day.” Completely alone. Away from the responsibilities implicit in being a woman.
She acknowledges how challenging this is, and especially how challenging it was for women in the 1950s, most of whom were paid nothing for their at-home labor.
When I read the book, my family had the financial resources to make all of that a possibility, but most of our income wasn’t coming through me, and some part of me knew it would never fly. Even so, I did my best to achieve this carving-out. I started taking one weekend retreat per year, all by myself. My ex hemmed and hawed about money and how I always spent too much of it and never made enough of it, but even so, I went.
Somewhere along the way, I heard a podcast I don’t expect to ever find again in which two women, in passing, asked each other if maybe alcohol was keeping women subservient to our patriarchal culture.
“News Flash,” my heart said. “It is.”
So I began my slow, long walk towards ridding alcohol completely from my system and from my life–something I’ve done successfully for hundreds of days at a time, more than once, but just fully committed to as a way of life a month ago. Exactly one month before writing this, my debut blog post.
(Yes, yes, I still eat my vegetarian sushi with soy sauce, use rubbing alcohol externally when needed, and occasionally drink <0.5% ABV drinks.)
In creating that shift, I found more and more time to be fully awake and enjoy my own energy, and I learned who I am and what I care about.
More importantly, I took the scary steps toward closing the books on my teaching career and my marriage, which closed out for good in the Septembers of 2021 and 2025, respectively.
Taking small amounts of my autonomy back helped me see how trapped a woman can be in these persistent, patriarchal structures of marriage and career, even if she “likes it.”
I know from experience that the woman who is neither married nor working full time for “the Man” (sometimes that just means running her own business by rules that objectify human beings), is seen by many as basically useless.
Unless she’s old enough to retire, most of the friends of her old life disappear, one by one, because they’re some combination of too busy, too jealous, and too worried about her and/or the effect she’s having on society.
I’m here to tell you, though, that this IS the life.
This is LIFE. Period.
This is the freedom your soul is longing for, which only comes from the truth that sets you free: You are not a machine. You’re not even a cog in a machine. You are a human being, here for the purpose of loving and being loved.
That’s IT. That’s your purpose.
The world needs you to show them how to love you, so this love has to begin with you.
I recommend starting by instituting a “Goddess Hour” each day.
No alcohol or drugs.
No distractions.
No noise.
Just you, loving on yourself and experiencing pleasure, however that looks.
Take a bath. Take a nap. Take a walk. Just sit there. Be creative.
Then, when you’re ready and you’ve carved out enough space in this beautiful life you’re sculpting for yourself, create a “Goddess Day.”
I like Fridays because that day is named after Freya, Frigg, and Venus. Goddesses.
I do my best to do nearly nothing on Fridays.
Then, when you’ve adjusted to detaching enough from the grind that was once required of you, start taking a few weeks each year to yourself.
I know, I know, that sounds sooo privileged.
When I was go, go, going nonstop 10 years ago, I looked around and wondered:
How do people find time to go to yoga or work out regularly?
How do people go out for lunch with friends during the week?
How do people look just as beautiful in June as they did in September?
Yes, I was jealous. But if I had chalked it up to privilege and said it was impossible for me, I wouldn’t be here today, after my morning yoga class and before a 90-minute lunch break and leisurely walk, writing a blog post as my official job.
Instead of bemoaning what felt impossible, I planted a seed in my heart, and I started asking the Universe for solutions. Along the way I saw that women from all walks of life, regardless of their race, class, disabilities, or nationality, were creating beautiful lives for themselves by carving out this precious space for self-care and self-love.
Spending time alone created the necessary fertile void that led, one step at a time, to those solutions.
I’m so glad you’re here with me today, reading this, and even if I don’t know you, I love you so much and I want this for you. All of this freedom and love and joy.
I’d love for you to comment below one small way you can imagine carving out a bit of time, just for you. It can start with five minutes, in the bathroom with the door locked. (The baby will be okay, even if she’s crying safely in her crib, and so will the dog, even if he’s locked in the backyard for a moment.)
In the words of meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein, “Don’t just do something! Sit there!” (Yes, I saw that quote when I opened Insight Timer last week. 🌈)
