This Mother’s Day, I found myself thinking not only about mothers, but about care itself. The kind of care that pours into everyone else before it ever reaches you. The care held by mothers, aunties, titis, first daughters, caregivers, educators, and all those who learned how to nurture while quietly carrying so much of their own.
This season has reminded me that healing is not always loud. Sometimes healing looks like finally making the therapy appointment. Sometimes it looks like resting without guilt. Sometimes it looks like choosing yourself even while balancing leadership, teaching, family, love, community, and all the invisible labor that comes with being “the strong one.
This Mother’s Day season has had me reflecting deeply on healing, balance, and the reality that everyone’s “busy” looks different. As someone balancing being an Assistant Principal, professor, wife, dog mami and building Tarot with Dalila, there are moments when the weeks move so fast that I look up and realize I missed therapy for a couple of weeks. Not because I don’t value it, but because life truly moves in seasons and cycles.
In therapy today, we talked a lot about cycles. About how there are seasons where we are pouring endlessly into work, community, family, leadership, and survival. Seasons where rest feels distant. Seasons where healing feels active and intentional, and others where simply showing up is the work itself. We also talked about how everyone’s version of “busy” carries different weights, responsibilities, privileges, griefs, and pressures. Comparison steals compassion from ourselves.
Still, I showed up today.
Lately, work has felt especially heavy. There has been so much decision making around both the present and next school year, while also supporting students through emotional regulation, crisis, big feelings, and all the things children and adults carry with them into school spaces every day. Holding space for young people while also trying to hold space for yourself can feel incredibly tender.
At the same time, I recently had my last synchronous class session teaching biliteracy, and I found myself surprisingly emotional about it ending, even though yes, I still have assignments to grade that I’m looking forward to reading but all sad for the end while hoping they will continue to be advocates for their emergent bilinguals. This cohort was incredibly powerful. The kind of group that reminds you why this work matters. I know, deeply, that some of my students will become school and systems leaders one day. Watching educators grow into themselves, their voices, and their leadership always leaves me hopeful.
Ironically, these conversations around cycles and transition reminded me so much of a recent tarot reading I did for one of my dear friends, where the Wheel of Fortune came through strongly. We talked about cycles changing, timing shifting, and learning how to surrender to the reality that life will not always move in straight lines, the way we receive and accept help changes, we constantly transform. Healing transforms while being so complex and it’s ok if we do not have everything perfectly balanced. Sometimes the lesson is learning how to return to yourself after life pulls you in a hundred different directions.
Today, my return looked like 30 minutes. Now, my sessions are usually an hour, but I said, better something that further pausing the healing continuum. Just like I have boundaries around when I do my work, I must prioritize these sessions.
This is because healing justice has taught me that care does not need to be perfect to still matter. Showing up imperfectly is still showing up.
I am sending love to everyone carrying a lot right now. Especially those holding others while trying to hold themselves too. Sending love to all the women and people who identify as mothers, thank you for taking care of community! I end this blog post with a reflection:
How will you show gratitude beyond just this season for those who show up for you? How will you show gratitude to yourself?✨
Life as Dalila 
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