What If Every Morning Was Your Sunday?
I was on a Zoom call with someone from the Small Business Administration. If you are building or running a business and haven’t yet connected with the SBA, go do that. It is not just paperwork and platitudes. It is free, surprisingly personal, and often much more helpful than expected.
We sat in our little boxes on the screen, trading introductions and updates. Somewhere between connection issues and camera adjustments, he asked how I manage my time.
I smiled. The kind of smile you learn to offer after years of over-functioning. The kind that precedes the polite version of the truth.
What he could not see, of course, was the day I had just lived. I had managed a family with layered needs, run my clinical practice, written letters for three clients, returned calls, coordinated care with two providers, answered urgent texts, prepped curriculum for an upcoming group, tracked down a misplaced prescription, paid bills, and somehow found enough groceries in the refrigerator to create something that resembled dinner.
By the time we landed on that Zoom screen together, my head was aching. Not from what I had accomplished, but from everything still undone. The invisible list. The mental tabs. The pressure behind the eyes that pulses not from failure, but from relentless expectation.
He looked up and asked, “When do you do all of this?”
Internally, I thought, You’re not a mother.
Out loud, I said, “Between five and five thirty in the morning. I start early and I don’t stop until I collapse.”
He nodded. Then asked if I tracked my time. Did I use time blocks? Digital tools? Had I ever tried assigning specific hours to tasks to gain more clarity?
He was kind. His ideas were thoughtful and grounded. And still, something in me resisted.
Not out of defensiveness. Out of grief.
Because beneath his suggestions—well-meaning, practical, earnest—was the assumption that there is still room to squeeze. That if I just organized better, I would find the secret corridor of calm.
My body knew better.
The tightening began in my stomach, moved into my shoulders, and settled in my jaw. A signal. My alarm system. My body was speaking.
And it was saying: This is too much. It has been too much for too long.
I have spent years teaching others to sit with discomfort, and I do the same for myself. So I did not rush to tidy the moment. I breathed.
And into that quiet, something surprising arrived.
I remembered Sunday morning.
Not the polished brunch version. Not the filtered photograph. The kind that begins before anyone is awake. The kind where silence feels sacred.
I pictured myself at the kitchen counter. I imagined dicing an onion, slowly, with intention. The way Julia Child might have taught. The way my mother once showed me to curl my fingers, keep the knife sharp, let the rhythm of the cut steady you.
On Sunday, I move differently. I stand upright. My feet know the ground. I check my posture, not because I was told to, but because I remember I have a body.
And I let myself cry a little. Onion tears, but more than that. They come without effort. And they remind me that I am still alive.
I stir the pot. I imagine dinner coming together, ingredients cooperating. There is no urgency. Only presence.
And then the SBA advisor, still on Zoom, still unaware of the world he had accidentally unlocked, asked a question I was not expecting.
“What if every morning was your Sunday?”
He was not suggesting I abandon responsibility. He was not offering fantasy. He was asking about posture. About how we hold our time.
“Time management,” he said, “is knowing when you are working and when you are not. It is guarding your sacred time.”
That landed.
Because time management, as we have come to define it, is often a performance. It is the illusion that if we just try harder, we can fit everything in. Thirty-six hours in a twenty-four hour frame. Multitasking as a badge of honor. Over-scheduling as proof of value.
But the science is clear. Multitasking does not work.
Researchers at Stanford have shown that people who multitask frequently are less able to filter out irrelevant information and more easily distracted. The brain does not do two things at once—it switches between them, and those switches are costly. The more we toggle, the more we lose. We become less efficient, less accurate, more depleted (Ophir, Nass, and Wagner, 2009).
The American Psychological Association estimates that shifting between tasks can consume as much as forty percent of our productive time. And those who believe they are excellent multitaskers? Often the least effective of all.
When I described my day to the SBA advisor, I was not naming mastery. I was naming fragmentation. I was living with a fracture.
Let us pause here and name something else: the life of a mother—or anyone with intersecting caregiving and professional roles—often requires fragmentation. We are pulled not just by tasks, but by people. Systems. Crises. Needs.
There is a deeper commentary here about equity, gender, capitalism, and culture. I know it. And I have spent years studying it. But this is a blog, not a dissertation. So for today, I will keep the thread close to the body.
The Body Keeps The Score
When I overdo it, my body keeps the score. I do not burn out in ways that are tidy or short-lived. I get migraines. My joints flare. I feel the ache of something deep and cellular.
And the question returns: why is it so difficult to rest before collapse?
Ask yourself: How does your body let you know it needs relief?
Maybe it whispers. Maybe it screams. Maybe it stops speaking altogether.
Sometimes I ask clients this question, and they give me a list of wellness practices. Yoga. Green juice. Cold plunges. Gratitude journaling. They tell me what they do to stay well.
And then I ask: Do you do those things from a place of self-trust? Or are they just another task on the list?
Because if rest becomes one more box to check, we are still chasing.
What If Every Morning Was Your Sunday?
What if you did not have to earn your sacred time?
What if you started the day with fifteen minutes that belonged only to you?
No screens. No metrics. Just breath. A stretch. A prayer. A song. A sip of something warm.
What if you believed, even for a moment, that your worth was not tied to output?
Julia Child once said, “You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces. Just good food from fresh ingredients.”
The same is true of time.
You do not need a color coded command center. You need small rituals. Boundaries. Space. You need to remember that your life is not a series of tasks. It is a human experience.
I have decided to treat Sunday mornings not as indulgence, but as a blueprint.
They remind me how to live inside my own body. How to pace. How to pause. How to soften toward the day instead of fighting it.
They remind me that being alive is not about achievement. Sometimes it is about dicing an onion, crying a little, and letting that count as prayer.
And if you find yourself reading this on fumes, up too early or too late, wondering if anyone else feels the weight you carry—know this:
You are not alone.
At The Parents and Children Project, we offer mindfulness groups for women, parents, and professionals grounded in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy. These are not silent retreats. They are not designed for someone with unlimited time and resources. They are for people like us. Real lives. Real exhaustion. Real longing for space to breathe.
Because your life is more than a list.
You deserve Sunday mornings all week long.
With gratitude to the Small Business Administration of Manassas for this unexpected wisdom.
P.S. As I wrap this up tonight —head a little foggy, kitchen a little cluttered—I can’t help but think of Morrissey: Everyday Is Like Sunday. The irony isn’t lost on me. Shout out to those of us who played that track in 1988 and never imagined we’d still be unpacking what Sundays mean—now with kids, clients, onions, and timecards in the mix.
