Permission to pause

This #thankyouthursday, I am grateful for permission to pause.

My mom asked me yesterday if she’d misplaced last week’s gratitude email, and I found myself stumbling into a place of uncomfortable clarity:

I think it is time to pause this newsletter.

I don’t want this to be true. I feel sadness when I say it. But I also sense a kernel of inner knowing, the kind that just might blossom into something bigger if I allow it space and opportunity.

The truth is that I am…well. To say “at capacity” would be an understatement. But this is simply the reality of my current life stage, and all things considered, I am proud of how I am managing.

Except, #thankyouthursday has begun to feel like a fading obligation more than an opportunity, and I know that’s no good for me.

I began celebrating #thankyouthursday in 2015, on Instagram, because I rarely felt inspired to contribute to #tbt (#throwbackthursday) but I liked the idea of a weekly social ritual.

And while I did not care to make a weekly acknowledgment of a photo from my past, I did very much like the idea of centering gratitude, one of the most significant aspects of life we can cultivate.

Thus #thankyouthursday was born on a Thursday in July, launched with a photo of my window unit AC, for which I was indeed very grateful.

Now it is another Thursday in July, eight years later, and I’ve got a baby constantly strapped to my body and a four-year-old who never stops needing attention and a full-time job and a part-time job and a working spouse and a life that is full to bursting.

Sometimes I feel like I might burst.

I can honestly say—and I am so grateful I can say this—that gratitude is woven into the fabric of my existence. It is an integral part of how I function. Deciding to give thanks is effectively HOW I function.

I am not done being thankful. I am thankful every day—and especially every Thursday, because after eight years of a weekly ritual, how can I not regularly think about gratitude?

But I think I am done putting my very minimal discretionary creative output into the particular outlet of this newsletter. At least for now.

I can hear a whisper of something else calling, and I want to listen.

And I just can’t do everything.

So I am giving myself permission to pause. For now, I am choosing to let #thankyouthursday go, with so much love and infinite gratitude. Including for you.

Love > fear,
Christina

p.s. If you are reading this and thinking, “Nooo! I love your writing and I want to keep reading,” please do hit reply and say hello. I can (eventually, haha) tell you what’s next.