The Moment I Knew Something Had to Change

There wasn’t one dramatic breakdown or huge moment where everything suddenly fell apart. From the outside, my life actually looked pretty good. I was working, achieving, parenting, showing up and doing what I’d always done and getting on with it.

I was good at holding everything together, and because I could still function really well, I didn’t question very much of it.

But I was so bloody tired. My brain was constantly busy, I put ridiculous amounts of pressure on myself, and I had become very good at looking absolutely fine. I think I could probably have carried on like that for a lot longer.

Then I started thinking about my daughter, Abbey. She was always watching me and picking up on things I did. She was watching how I treated myself, spoke about my body and how much pressure I put on myself to make things ‘perfect’. I remember thinking: I don’t want her to grow up thinking this is how it should be.

I’m always telling her to be kind, confident and stick up for herself. I wanted her to see me believe those things about myself too. I stopped being quite so interested in how I could cope better and became much more interested in why I was putting so much pressure on myself in the first place.

Why did I feel like I had to keep everything together?

Why was I so hard on myself?

Why was I so much kinder to everyone else than I was to myself?

That curiosity ended up changing a lot. It didn’t happen overnight, and I still haven’t got everything figured out, but that was the point where something shifted for me and I stopped aiming for perfection.🩷

Jess x