Hi there,
Issue#29
There is a particular kind of tired that doesn't go away after a good night's sleep.
It sits behind your eyes in the morning. It makes small decisions feel disproportionately hard. It shows up as irritability you didn't see coming, as forgetting things you never used to forget, as a flatness that hovers even on the days when nothing is technically wrong.
If you have been quietly wondering whether something is wrong with you, whether you've somehow lost your edge, your patience, your spark, I want to offer you a different explanation.
You are not lazy. You are not failing. You are depleted. And there is a meaningful difference.
WHAT DEPLETION ACTUALLY IS
Depletion is not the same as tiredness. Tiredness is resolved by rest. Depletion is what happens when the withdrawals from your physical, emotional, and cognitive reserves consistently outpace the deposits for weeks, months, sometimes years at a stretch.
For women in the early parenting years, this is not a personal failing. It is almost a structural inevitability.
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, in her work on chronic stress and its physiological effects, describes how sustained, unrelieved stress activates the body's threat response system repeatedly, and that over time, this changes the body at a biological level. Not metaphorically. Literally.
One of the quietly liberating things about working on my own terms is the freedom to build my days around what I know works for me. I keep a loose mental note of what needs to happen the next day, something to hold onto, something to move toward.
But there are days where I know exactly what is on the list and still cannot make myself begin. I sit down. The intention is there. The energy simply is not. And this is before the morning has asked anything of me as a mother.
The harder version shows up when I have a meeting scheduled. Some days there is a quiet anxiety before it, not because I do not want to connect, but because showing up fully feels like more than I currently have. And yet commitments are commitments. So I go. I read the room. I find a genuine moment to express gratitude, ask something meaningful, and leave the conversation on a note that feels real.
What I have come to understand is that this, the showing up anyway, is not strength in the way we usually celebrate it. It is a woman running on reserve. And reserve, without replenishment, has a limit.
“Depletion doesn't announce itself loudly. It quietly narrows everything, your patience, your clarity, your willingness to begin. Until one day you realise you're not tired from doing too much. You're tired from running on too little, for too long.”
THE LIE WE WERE SOLD
Somewhere along the way, women absorbed a particular story about strength. That it looks like endurance. That managing everything without complaint is the goal. That asking for help, slowing down, or admitting you are not okay is a kind of weakness.
Early motherhood intensifies this. There is always someone who needs more than you currently have. And so you give it anyway. You find the reserve you didn't know existed and you draw from it, again and again, without ever really refilling it.
The problem is not that you aren't strong enough. The problem is that strength without replenishment is just a slower form of depletion.
WHAT THIS IS NOT
This is not a piece telling you to take a bath or book a massage. Those things are lovely. They are not solutions to a structural problem.
What depletion at this level often requires is something more honest: a real look at what is being asked of your body and mind, what support is actually available to you, and what you have been treating as optional that may not be.
Rest is not a reward for finishing everything. It is part of what makes finishing things possible.
ONE THING TO TRY THIS WEEK
For three days, keep a loose mental note (or a quick voice memo) every time you feel a moment of genuine depletion. Not stress, not busyness, but that specific flat, empty feeling. Don't try to fix it. Just notice it and name it.
At the end of the three days, look at the pattern. What time of day. What circumstances. What preceded it. You cannot address what you haven't first seen clearly.
Awareness is not a small thing. It is usually where everything else begins.
“You can't pour from a cup you've never paused to look at. Noticing is not indulgence. It's the beginning of honest accounting.”
BEFORE YOU GO
Next week we continue to talk about women’s health and mental well being. And later this month, I'm sitting down with a women's health nutritionist to talk about what replenishment can look like in real, practical terms, for the season of life you're actually in right now.
📧HIT REPLY & TELL ME
If today's newsletter echoed something you've been feeling but haven't had words for, hit reply and tell me. What does depletion look like in your life right now?
I read every single one.
P.S. Know a mom who needs to hear this today? Forward this email to her. She'll thank you for it.
Until next time,
Aradhana
Creator, Modern Mom Notes
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