In Sunny Days at the Sweet Shop of Second Chances, Holly Berry is going away to the south of France for her best friends’ joint hen and stag do. While there’s no doubt that she wants to be there to support them and have some well-earned relaxation time, there is one thing that’s holding her back. Her eight-month-old daughter Hope.
Holly and Ben have been co-parenting Hope since she was born and doing a fantastic job. With a perfectly capable dad at home, not to mention grandparents on hand to help. Holly should feel perfectly at ease leaving Hope for only four days. But knowing that Hope’s going to be well looked after doesn’t change the feelings of guilt Holly feels at leaving her daughter and enjoying some time for herself. Sadly, I think that’s something lots of us can relate to.
If I were to ring up any of my friends today, mothers or otherwise, and ask how they are, I can almost guarantee the first word that will come out of most of their mouths is busy. It doesn’t matter where they work, or whether they have four children or none, every one of us seems to have overfilled our plate.
Sometimes it feels almost obligatory that we take on as much as we can physically handle, offering our time to different projects or people, even when we don’t have time for ourselves. The mental loads of day-to-day life are higher than ever, from rising bills and worry about the state of the economy, to working out whether it’s okay to feed your child freezer food for the second day in a row. More than ever, we need to take time for ourselves to breathe, and we need to do it without the burden of feeling like we are being lazy.
You can’t fill from an empty cup, is one of my favourite sayings, yet just like everyone else I often keep trying until we have drained every last drop from our own.
It’s not selfish to need time and space for yourself. To have time to remember who you are and what you love in life, without the burdens of everyday pushing in on you.
Now, this was meant to be a light blog post, hopefully encouraging you to go and enjoy my next Sweet Shop Book, and I’m afraid it’s taken a bit of a serious turn. I could say I’m sorry about that, but I’m not really, because I think it’s something we need to hear time and time again, until it finally sinks in.
So if you are struggling today, if you need an hour, or a day or longer to yourself, then you have mine – and Holly Berry’s – permission to make that happen, without feeling the slightest shred of guilt.