It’s Time To Draw A Line

It’s kind of crazy, right? We’re killing ourselves. Busy, busy, busy all the time. Something’s gotta give. This week I have been feeling so overwhelmed and wondering who came up with the 9-5 five day a week work week. Or who decided that kids would spend all day in school and three more hours after that finishing homework.

I cannot take it anymore. Are you with me?

This year I am making it my mission to slow me and my family down. I am learning to say “No.” period. No with a period. That’s it. No need to try to explain. Just “No”. Period.

I am putting away my phone for hours, sometimes days at a time. It’s too much. Phone calls and emails and DM’s. We were not built to accommodate literally being on call 24 hours a day all day every day.

Make your list of things that you are just no longer willing to do. Talk about it with the little ones in your life and help them by modeling all the ways you are going to be present and step off of this wheel once and for all.

Even small changes add up. You don’t have to do it all at once. Tonight, just try to put your phone in a basket by the door as soon as you come in for the night. Don’t take it out again until the next morning.

If that cannot work for you, ask your office about going to a four day work week. Or tell people that you do not answer social media messages. People either text or email me and this cuts way down on how many people contact me, as well as my stress about any messages I might have missed.

We were not built to be this busy all the time. Write to me and let me know some of the tricks you have used or will use after reading this article to get some of your time, your life, and your sanity back. I will compile them all and send a list out to remind us all that we can do this. It’s time. Be proactive, listen to your heart, and draw a line or you will look up one day and wish you had a long time ago.


About Deedee Cummings

As a therapist, attorney, author, and CEO of Make A Way Media, Deedee Cummings has a passion for making the world a better place. All 16 of Cummings’ diverse picture, poetry, and workbooks for kids reflect her professional knowledge and love of life. Colorful and vibrant, her children’s books are not only fun for kids and adults to read, they also work to teach coping skills, reinforce the universal message of love, encourage mindfulness, and facilitate inclusion for all. Cummings has spent more than two decades working within the family therapy and support field and much of her writing shares her experiences of working with kids in therapeutic foster care. As a result, her catalogs of published books for kids are filled with positive, hopeful messages. Using therapeutic techniques in her stories to teach coping skills, Cummings also strives to lessen the stigma that some people feel when it comes to receiving mental health assistance.
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