For years, I assumed that taking care of yourself would become easier once the children were older.
Like many mums, I spent years in survival mode, juggling family life, work, household responsibilities and all the practical realities that come with raising children. During that season, there was always something or someone demanding my attention. Between school runs, packed lunches, activities, homework, laundry and trying to build a business, it often felt as though there simply wasn’t enough of me to go around.
Whenever life felt particularly hectic, I would find myself thinking that things would be different in the future. I imagined a season where the children were more independent, where my schedule felt lighter, and where taking care of yourself would finally happen naturally because there would be more time available.
What I’ve realised, however, is that this isn’t quite how life works.
My children are older now (11 and 20), and while they undoubtedly need me in different ways, my days are still remarkably full. In fact, if I’m completely honest, there are periods when my calendar feels just as busy as it did when they were small. The difference is not that I suddenly gained hours of free time. The difference is that the things filling those hours have changed.
That realisation has taught me something important about taking care of yourself. It isn’t something that automatically appears when your children become more independent. It is something that requires conscious attention and deliberate choices at every stage of motherhood.
The Space Doesn’t Stay Empty
When your children are young, it is easy to identify what is taking up your time. Much of your day revolves around caring for them, transporting them, feeding them, entertaining them and helping them navigate the world. The demands are obvious and often unavoidable.
As children grow older, many of those responsibilities begin to fade. They become more capable, more independent and less reliant on us for every little thing. Naturally, we assume this will create more time and more freedom.
What surprised me was how quickly that space filled up again.
The day-to-day may have become less demanding, but work expanded. The constant supervision disappeared, but other responsibilities appeared in its place. Family administration, appointments, household management, business projects, social commitments, future planning and countless other tasks gradually occupied the time that I had once imagined would be mine.
None of these things are necessarily bad. In fact, many of them are meaningful and important. The challenge is that life rarely leaves a vacuum. When one responsibility disappears, another often steps forward to take its place.
Before we know it, the season we imagined would be slower ends up looking surprisingly similar to the one before it.
Taking a Step Back and Looking at How We Spend Our Days
One of the benefits of having older children is that we finally have enough perspective to step back and look at our lives more objectively.
When we are in the thick of early motherhood, there is often very little room for reflection. We are simply doing what needs to be done to get through the day. As the years pass, however, we have the opportunity to become more intentional.
Recently, I’ve found myself asking questions that I never used to ask.
What is actually filling my days?
How much of my time is spent on things that genuinely matter to me?
Have I consciously chosen these commitments, or have they simply accumulated over time?
Am I spending my energy on things that align with the life I want to create?
These questions aren’t always comfortable because they force us to acknowledge that some of our busyness is self-created. We take on projects because we’re capable. We say yes because we want to help. We volunteer for things because nobody else seems willing to do them.
Over time, these decisions create a calendar that feels permanently full.
The problem isn’t necessarily the number of things we do. The problem is that if we’re not careful, taking care of yourself can quietly disappear from the picture altogether.
Taking Care of Yourself Doesn’t Happen by Accident
For a long time, I viewed taking care of yourself as something that would happen when life became less demanding.
I thought it would naturally emerge once there was enough time.
The reality has been very different.
Taking care of yourself requires the same intentionality as every other important thing in life. It requires the same deliberate planning that we give to work projects, family commitments and household responsibilities.
If we don’t consciously make space for it, something else will almost always fill that space instead.
There will always be another email to answer, another room to tidy, another task to complete or another project to start. The list of things competing for our attention is endless.
This is why I no longer think of taking care of yourself as a luxury or a reward. I see it as a responsibility.
Not because we owe it to anyone else, but because we owe it to ourselves.
What Taking Care of Yourself Really Looks Like
One of the biggest misconceptions about taking care of yourself is that it needs to involve grand gestures.
Social media would have us believe that self-care consists of spa days, expensive treatments, weekends away and perfectly curated morning routines.
While those things can certainly be enjoyable, they are not what taking care of yourself looks like in my everyday life.
For me, it often looks surprisingly ordinary. It looks like protecting my early mornings because I know those quiet hours help me start the day feeling calm and focused. It looks like going for a walk even when I have other things I could be doing because I know I always feel better afterwards. It looks like meal planning and keeping freezer meals on hand because reducing stress around dinner makes a meaningful difference to my week. It looks like setting boundaries around my time and learning that not every opportunity requires a yes. It looks like booking trips and experiences because I know how important it is to have things to look forward to.
Most importantly, it looks like recognising that my needs deserve a place in my life before I reach the point of exhaustion.
Why Taking Care of Yourself Matters More Than Ever
As our children grow older, there is often a subtle shift in our role as mothers. We move from being needed every minute of the day to being needed in a different way. While that transition can bring more freedom, it can also leave us questioning where we fit in.
For years, much of our identity is connected to caring for others. Then one day we realise that we have a little more room to think about ourselves again.
Rather than seeing this as a loss, I think it can be viewed as an opportunity.
It’s an opportunity to reconnect with the things that matter to us.
It’s an opportunity to examine how we’re spending our time.
It’s an opportunity to decide what we want the next chapter of our lives to look like.
Most importantly, it’s an opportunity to remember that taking care of yourself is not selfish.
When we look after ourselves, we show up more fully in every area of our lives. We have more energy, more patience, more enthusiasm and more capacity to enjoy the people and experiences that matter most.
A Gentle Reminder
If your children are getting older and you’re still wondering why life feels so busy, you’re not alone.
Many of us spend years looking forward to a season when we’ll finally have more time for ourselves, only to discover that life has a habit of filling every available gap.
That’s why taking care of yourself requires intention.
It requires us to step back occasionally and honestly evaluate how we’re spending our days. It requires us to look at our calendars, our commitments and our priorities and ask whether there is room for us in the life we’ve created.
Because the truth is that taking care of yourself doesn’t magically happen when your children become more independent.
It happens when you decide that your wellbeing deserves a place alongside all the other things you care about.
And perhaps that’s the real lesson of this season of motherhood: not that life becomes easier, but that we finally have the opportunity to choose more carefully how we spend the time we have.
I hope this blog post gives you a little food for thought. Even if you’re not here yet, this is something worth thinking about.
Love,
Nakita xxx
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