Designing a Life I Don’t Want to Run From

Amidst planning my daughter’s second birthday party, full moon parasite cleansing, and having family in town, I’m also potty training said two-year-old as we prepare for her first year alongside her brother at their part-time Waldorf homeschool.

When I list it all out, it sounds a bit unhinged. But somewhere inside the pee on the floor, the party planning, the supplements lined up on the counter, and mentally preparing for a new fall routine, I had this strangely sobering realization:

I cannot fathom wanting a different life.

As someone who has spent a majority of their life wondering, “what’s next” this feels like something worth recognizing.

I was always chasing a new thrill. Another city, another house, another version of me waiting just beyond the edges of the life I was living. Even when things were good, some part of me was scanning for the next thing.

But recently, I’m having a moment with my own life.

A moment where my “baby” is growing up, following her big brother around like a little gosling, and has very much entered the “no, I do it” phase. And with that, I can feel myself itching for “what’s next.” That newborn head smell, for my breasts to be filled up with milk again, for those moments where the littlest thing — like a smile or a giggle — is the biggest deal. I’m feeling my body yearn for round 3.

And in the same breath I’m so aware that I don’t want to miss a single second of the stage my kids are in right now. That I don’t want to rush past or run away from any of this. Because I don’t know when the last time is going to be. The last time I change a diaper of my current baby. The last time I sing twinkle twinkle to my toddler. The last time I hold my kids in exactly the way they want me and need me right now.

I’m still itching for more. But not for something else.

I’m yearning for our family to expand while holding these days close to my heart. That’s one of the things about motherhood that continues to knock the wind out of me — the anticipatory grief of one stage ending alongside the yearning for the next one to arrive.

And there’s nothing like potty training a 2 year old that catapults you right into yearning. Fantasizing about what will be on the other side of this freaking mountain that potty training requires you to climb.

And as we’ve been climbing, slowly but surely (writing this on day 3 btw IYKYK) I had planned to dissect the whole thing in gross detail as a follow up to last weeks post about envy , complete with layers of conditioning, old patterns, and loads and loads of baggage.

But the deeper I got into explaining myself, the more exhausted I became.

Maybe I don’t want to explain how and why I arrived where I’ve arrived. Maybe I just want to show you where I’ve arrived.

With that said, here are the 3 big shifts that are making my life is feel so incredibly designed by Me. So much so that I couldn’t even fathom wanting a different one:

I need to start with the house. Because the house has been the big fat question mark for us, and in a way we’ve struggled to settle in somewhere since my husband and I met. In case you don’t know the story, we met 4 years ago. We’ve moved 4 times. We have a three year old and a two year old and two dogs. Yes, we’ve been moving at warped speed.

Somewhere along the way, existing with one foot out the door became a normal part of my existence.

The house we’re currently in was supposed to be The House. Ya know, the one your parents call your “forever home?” Not a label I’ve ever vibed with… but nonetheless one that’s very popular and sought after by many. When we moved into the house 6 months ago I was still on a hiatus from my previous online business.I hadn’t started writing or sharing myself online again, and I was still very deeply intertwined in my role as the interior designer of our home reno company.

We were the picture perfect image of success. All moved into the big fancy house on the corner lot in the desirable neighborhood. And when we finally landed, I realized I was miserable, and blew everything up. You can hear more about that here.

The house was supposed to be proof that we had arrived. Instead, it became the place where I realized I no longer wanted the life I had been building.

So the house became the enemy. The demise of my existence. Gosh, if we were just in a different house everything would be different. I very quickly became obsessed with moving. And it’s not that it’s not on our radar — as “flippers” it’s a smart business decision to sell this one and roll the profits into another. But I was using this idea of our home being a temporary dwelling to resist settling in to it.

And instead of settling, I became obsessed with pointing out all the things I hated about the house. All the mistakes I made as the designer (don’t even get me started with wall texture). I was conducting a daily inspection of everything I had done wrong daily. I beat myself up and basically complained myself into exhaustion.

The shift I’ve experienced around our home is very recent. I became so tired of my own shit that I started journaling and channeling around it nightly before bed. Asking how I got myself into this situation. What the house was representing. And prayed for a different relationship with all of it.

What kept coming through was the importance of settling into the home as an act of devotion. Not as a promise that we’ll stay here forever. Or a declaration that this if officially “the one.” But as a willingness to fully inhabit the place holding our life right now.

And so, after some loving guidance, I decided that no matter how long we’re here, I am going to make this house our home.

Instead of walking through every room documenting the evidence of what I had done wrong, I started paying attention to how I felt in other people’s homes — even when I didn’t resonate with their design style. What made my body soften? What made me want to sit down, kick up my feet, and stay a while? Then I looked around my own house and realized what was missing.

Cozy

Which, as a Cancerian woman, feels like a straight up survival need.

The more I dug into my core values, the more I realized the house wasn’t necessarily misaligned because I had made all these incorrect foundational choices. I had designed a beautiful house. I just hadn’t created spaces within the home for my body to land.

There were no layers. No softness. No textiles piled on textiles. No little corners that made you melt into the room and etch your ass cheeks into the couch permanently.

It was warm. But it wasn’t cozy.

And once I started taking my desires seriously. And stopped treating cozy as a frivolous “nice to have” and recognized it as an essential for my body to feel safe enough to settle… I could suddenly see the house differently. I started having visions for how our current home could become the cozy oasis I kept imagining was waiting for me somewhere else.

I have fully committed to landing here. Even if we move six months from now.

We have a beautiful backyard that is majorly underutilized thanks to the blazing hot high desert sun without a shade tree in sight. So as we’ve been getting rolling on some bigger landscaping plans, I decided I didn’t have to wait to enjoy what’s left of summer.

We have a patio under our second floor deck that very quickly became a place where old kids’ toys went to die. Every time I walked out the walk-out slider, I was stepping over fallen scooters, wet broken chalk, and miscellaneous trash items my daughter loves to throw off the top deck.

It annoyed the hell out of me.

But in those weeks of journaling, channeling, and praying, the same message kept coming through: fall in love with the house. Tend to it. Stop withholding yourself from the beauty of it because you’re worried about what you might miss if you get too comfortable here.

Because despite all my complaining, the house is beautiful. and a literal dream for a growing family.

And once that shifted, I looked at this patio I had loathed for months and could suddenly see what had been there the entire time. It gets full shade all day. It stays cool. It’s huge. So much room for activities.

A switch flipped. And I could immediately see the vision.

It has very quickly become our favorite place to hang out. Not to mention my favorite place to trip over tiny cars, broken chalk, and dead markers.

But none of that matters, because the space is alive now.

And I’m realizing that’s what I’ve been craving in a house all along. Not perfection. Not the right wall texture. Not even a guarantee that we’ll be here forever.

Life.

A house that is alive is a Home. It’s cozy. It’s layered. It’s lived in. It’s a mess in the most beautiful way.

And as it turns out, the more life I pour into this house, the less I find myself dreaming about another one.

Speaking of home, unraveling the need to optimize and max out every day with my kids just to survive is no longer my vibe.

The energy of this summer has shown me the importance of slowing down, leaning in, and really, truly, drinking it in. I’m taking my role as a stay-at-home mom seriously.

Not in a performative, “look how devoted I am” kind of way. More like I’m finally treating the actual life of being home with my kids at the part of life that matters most. Not filler between activities. Not the long stretch of time I have to survive until I get reprieve. The actual, real thing.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit how go-go-go I’ve been with them in previous seasons. Maxing out my childcare hours at the gym used to be one of my biggest flexes. I was desperate to disappear while someone else kept my kids alive. Now I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been to the gym this month.

Not because I’m not taking care of myself, but because I’m finding ways to care for myself inside my time with my kids. I’m getting my steps in without handing my children over to a teenager on summer break saying who knows what to them. I’m moving my body while I clean the house, carry laundry up and down the stairs, chase my kids on scooters, and take walks that involve stopping every thirty seconds to collect a rock.

I’m realizing that self-care doesn’t have to mean running away from my own life just to take a breath. Instead of hauling the kids to the gym the second we rise to overheat in the sauna and stare into space for 30 minutes, I’m sipping my morning matcha with my son, we’re breathing together, we’re saying what we’re grateful for together. And I’m finding that to be infinitely more fulfilling than this story I’ve told myself that Real self-care can only happen when I’m truly alone.

I don’t necessarily want to burn it all down, fuck off our family membership, and never return. But summer has helped me rewire my priorities.

Having zero help unless a grandparent is in town made me realize how much of a workout housework actually is. And how getting my steps in on a walk with frequent breaks for my scootering toddler… is really enough.

The point is, I’m spending more time with my kids and I love it.

And the more that’s becoming the normal, the less I find myself itching for reprieve.

When I’m not expecting a break I’m far more present. Because when I am expecting one, a part of me is already gone. I’m watching the clock. I’m mentally bargaining with the morning. Treating my kids like they are stripping me of the part of the day that should belong to me.

And when I’m not maxing out our day, I’m far more tapped into their needs. I can actually hear what their asking for instead of dragging all of us through what whatever plan I decided would make the day feel productive.

At home, away from the busyness of life, we are more creative with our time. We are resting more. We are discovering more. We are playing with recycling when toys are no longer novel.

There’s usually a little boredom first. A little “what are we doing?” energy. But once we make it through that initial urge to be entertained, something else always opens up.

My kids initiate more and are far more independent than they are when we’re out and about. They disappear into their own little worlds. They make something out of nothing. They follow the threads of their own curiosity instead of waiting for me (or some brightly colored indoor establishment) to tell them what to do next.

Sure, sometimes the energy of the day calls for an outing. Sometimes we need to get out of the house to shake things up. But my fondest memories lately have been just letting the day unravel at home.

No big plan. No pressure to make it magical. No optimizing the absolute shit out of childhood. Just living.

And when we do leave the house, I’ve been paying very close attention to where we go and how these spaces make me feel. Because there are establishments we’ve frequented for years that suddenly feel so incredibly “hell no” it’s almost jarring.

Mostly the indoor play spaces. You know those ones that are oozing with hand foot and mouth and covered in fluorescent lighting? The ones you usually carry your kid out kicking and screaming and have to scrub them down head to toe because they smell like other people’s socks? My body wont even let me step in those places anymore.

I mean, I understand the library or a children’s museum when the weather doesn’t allow for outdoor play. But holy shit I only recently realized how much time I was spending in places that I literally hate being in the spirit of “killing time.”

Places I kept taking my kids because they were supposedly “for them,” even though I was overstimulated, checked out, and counting down the minutes until we could leave. And I realized my kids are sooo much more sensitive than me and also feel somewhere between slightly and completely overwhelmed by these places.

Oh, and they have infinitely times more fun outside initiating their own curiosity.

Following a trail. Throwing rocks into water. Finding bugs. Climbing something they probably shouldn’t. Stopping every four feet to inspect if the roley-poley isn’t dead.

So instead, we’ve been feeling pulled toward prioritizing nature time. And making a conscious effort to only take the kids places that we too can enjoy.

Which sounds incredibly obvious when I write it out, but I’m realizing that in order to enjoy motherhood, I have to actually enjoy what we’re doing and where we’re going too.

I had unconsciously accepted the idea that a successful day with my kids meant they had fun, even if I was miserable. As if motherhood was supposed to be one giant sacrifice. As if being a good mom meant constantly overriding my own desires in service of theirs.

But I don’t think it has to be like that.

A happy mom without a doubt makes for happier kids and a smoother day. But deeper than that, part of the magic of childhood is getting to watch your parents be so incredibly alive in their own experience too.

To see them choose the places they actually want to be and bring their children along for the ride… even if it requires a little more work, significantly more snacks, and stopping approximately one million times along the way.

Maybe childhood isn’t only about me creating magical experiences for them. Maybe it’s also about giving them the gift of seeing me discover the magic of what life has to offer.

I’m way happier at home with my kids. And I’m way happier taking them places that make me feel alive too.

Maybe it’s just a “this season” thing. Or maybe this season has shown me that less is more in every season. Less rushing. Less outsourcing. More resting. More discovering. More letting the day unravel. More bringing myself fully along for the ride.

Regardless of what’s to come — as I am very sadly aware that summer is soon coming to a close — I know these summer 2026 memories are living in my heart forever.

I didn’t realize how out of practice I’d become until I started writing and sharing myself online again. And suddenly, that channel started clearing and opening in ways I had honestly forgotten I had access to.

Don’t get me wrong, I think creating and birthing life, and then intuitively mothering that life, is one of the most spiritual and connected things we can do. There is nothing mundane about growing a human inside your body, knowing what your baby needs before they can speak, or feeling when something is off before there is any tangible evidence to point to.

Motherhood has required me to use my intuition every single day. But for the last three years, it has been almost entirely directed towards my children.

And somewhere along the way, I started spiraling about this lack of depth and connection I felt within my Self. I kept wondering where that part of me had gone. The part that could feel beyond what was being said. The part that knew things before I could explain how. The part that could reach into the dark, pull something forward, and put words to what was living beneath the surface.

Only to be reminded that it opens right back up when I start prioritizing my own creativity.

Writing has been like turning the water back on after a pipe has been sitting unused for years. A little rusty at first. A little sputtering. But then suddenly, there it is. The rushing flow I’ve been searching for outside of myself lives is inside my own self-expression.

And as I’ve been creating more, I’ve been reminded of the force that is my intuition. The way I can feel into the world around me. The way I can sense the thing underneath the thing. And I have some work to do around allowing this part of me to be seen.

Because I think I often hide the psychic-channel side of myself behind knowledge and logic. I make it digestible. I explain it through Human Design, pattern recognition, or whatever framework helps me avoid simply saying: I knew. I channeled it. It came to me in a dream.

I think part of me has always been afraid of what happens when I stop avoiding the Truth.

I’ve been channeling for paid subscribers who bring questions into my inbox. I’ve been connecting with my third baby in the spirit realm. I’ve been feeling loved ones who have passed come through around the people I’m speaking with. My dreams are more vivid than they have been in years. My intuition around my kids’ needs is on point.

It feels like a light switch flipped on. And I don’t want to turn it off.

The void I’ve been trying to fill wasn’t another project, another house, or another identity to chase. It was my own intuition. My relationship with the unseen. The part of my life that cannot always be proven but can absolutely be felt.

This is such an important part of who I am, and when I don’t nurture it, my vibrance is gone. I become flatter. More logical. More focused on the material details of life while secretly wondering why none of them feel like enough.

And now, as my son is three and articulating himself and his experiences so clearly, I feel like I’m watching this same channel begin to show itself in him. He mentions things that sound like past lives. He points out things I can’t see but can feel. He talks to imaginary friends and pets with complete certainty. And he tells me relentlessly that he has a baby brother coming.

He reminds me so much of me. And I wonder what he could become if his gifts were nurtured instead of rejected. If he didn’t learn to doubt himself before was old enough to understand what doubt even was. If instead of being told that what he sees isn’t real, he was met with curiosity.

If he was met with parents who ask questions, and leave the door open. Because I know what it feels like when the door closes.

I know what it feels like to hide what you sense behind what you can prove. To edit your own knowing before anyone else has the chance to question it. To become more palatable as your losing contact with one of the most alive parts of yourself.

Witnessing him is awakening a whole other side of my inner child that I had forgotten existed. The little girl who noticed, who knew, who was far more connected than anyone around her understood.

And maybe part of designing a life I couldn’t fathom wanting to leave is creating a home where none of us have to abandon a part of ourselves in order to belong.

It really is so simple.

Being in devotion to my home, my family, and my creativity.

It’s the combination of all of it that makes me feel so incredibly alive. And it has nothing to do with optimizing my day, meeting goals, or becoming a different version of myself.

It’s more like allowing all the parts of me that are already here to actually exist without bounds.

And maybe that’s why I can’t even fathom wanting a different one now. Because I’m Being more of what’s always been inside of me, and letting those parts of me live out loud.