Just June

I had never heard the term "Maycember" until this year.

And now, I completely understand it.

Tomorrow is the last day of school in Texas. May 28th. Which still feels wildly early to me. But school starts here in the middle of August, so I'm still learning the rhythm of a new state, a new calendar, a pace of life that doesn't quite match the one I grew up with in Vermont.

May came at me fast.

Ernie's speech schedule ramped up just as Milly's dance recitals hit. Nine minutes to get from one to the other, thirty seconds of cushion. There was summer planning colliding directly with trying to stay present for the ending of something. That particular tension is its own kind of tired.

And then, there was the Saturday before Mother's Day. I presented the award for the Journalism, Media, and Content Creation category at Austin Under 40 awards. I got dolled up, with my hair blown out at Dry Bar, and found myself in a professional mindset for more than 50% of Mother's Day weekend. And the remaining percentage still somehow felt like work, too. After going to bed at 1am, I awoke to the news that I was due at a spa at 9am. I asked if Jonny was driving, and he responded, "No, I assumed you could drive yourself?" It was only a 5-minute drive away, so I managed to drive myself, but I had zero energy left in my tank. I laid on that table with three tequilas still somewhere in my body, wanting nothing more than my own bed and the curtains closed. The massage was a 2-hour deep tissue by a woman half my height and twice my strength. She was incredible. The simultaneous pounding in my head was…less incredible.

And then, because it was Mother's Day, we had a day. Presents. A farm. The whole production. The kind of day that carries the full weight of its own expectations, the way New Year's Eve does. All that anticipation. All that pressure for the celebration to be exactly as meaningful as it's supposed to be.

It never quite goes as planned. And somehow, that makes it lonelier.

And then last Sunday at 4pm, immediately after my step-brother and his family left after visiting for the long weekend from Colorado, Milly announced she needed her ears re-pierced that day. That instant. My mom and step-dad were in town, too, and next thing you know Milly realizes Ya Ya is leaving the next morning, and we are in a race against time. She needed to look good for her final sprint of first grade and her final evening with her grandmother. I obliged. Because, fashion.

Milly sat in the chair looking beautiful and certain and older than I was ready for, and I thought: when did that happen?

She chose tiny, sparkly studs that suit her little ears perfectly. As we went to sleep that night, Milly said, "Ya Ya has bigger diamonds than you, and you have bigger ones than me, and so, I think all of our ears have the right size studs for our age." Me too, Mills, me too. I love her observations.

And tomorrow is the Thursday that holds Ernie's preK graduation at 10:30am, straight into Milly's end of year author celebration and slideshow, with a talent show somewhere in the middle. Thursday also happens to be my busiest workday. The kind of morning where my laptop is filled with priority deliverables due by EOW, which my brain reads as EOD Thursday because I don't like stressful Fridays, and urgent Slack messages needing a response instantly. Yet, you walk away because the work will be there after the kids go to sleep. You can't watch their classroom shows on Netflix at night.

Friday marks the first official day of summer, and I'm honoring it for what it is. I took the day off, and we're heading to a hotel with a water park, forty-five minutes away. One night away to formally punctuate the end of their first year of school in Texas, and the beginning of what I hope will be their best summer yet.

Starting Monday, they're off to meet new people at new places, and I want to make sure before we throw them into these new camp beginnings, we've all had a chance to exhale from our last one. Water slides and cannon balls make for the best exhale in our family.

This year has taught me how much our kids grow in new experiences, and I'm feeling the pressure to hold them tight and be present in exactly who they are right now, before we send them off to grow and expand even more.

I didn't write how I usually do in May. Instead of publishing essays on Chief Moms, I was writing love letters. Actual ones. Pen to paper. Addressed envelopes. Notes to women I've known my whole life and notes to women I've never spoken to before. Telling them what makes them special to me. Watching their necklaces arrive. Seeing pics of their joy received. Witnessing this community take shape in a way I engineered, yet still feeling delight by the simple fact it exists as I intended it to exist, and that its existence means something to all of you, too.

That part of May I wouldn't trade. It reminded me what this is actually for. Not the platform, not the content calendar, but the thing underneath it. The way women show up for each other when someone makes a little room.

I also enjoyed not focusing on publishing in May, or asking any of you to focus on it either. Because, May isn't when we publish. June is, though.

Somewhere in all of it, I started thinking about January.

Not the month. The feeling. That collective exhale after December. The world pressing reset. Dry January. Resolutions. The sudden, almost violent quiet.

Mothers need that feeling twice a year. Desperately. Because May is December for us — indulgent and loud and full of things we said yes to and things we felt we had to do. Art shows. Music performances. Teacher appreciation days. Field trips. Birthday parties. Mother's Day. Memorial Day. A month of compulsive yes-saying, where every obligation felt like something we couldn't miss.

And by the end of it, the hangover is real. Not from tequila. From the relentlessness of it.

So here is my version of a reset. My dry January. My Lent. Call it what you want.

I'm calling it Just June.

A month where we ask ourselves one question: what is the one thing I want to leave behind in May? What do I want to spend thirty days away from? What have I been giving my time to that doesn't deserve it?

For me, it's the pressure to say yes to everything. The morning urgency. The logistics that swallow presence whole.

I want slower mornings. Coffee while it's still hot. The camps we actually thought about before signing up. Dinner at home. Not leaving the house at 7:30 every morning. Later light. Less urgency.

I want a clear mind this summer. I want to be in it, not managing the logistics around it. I want to enjoy my children instead of just surviving the calendar around them.

One of our Chief Moms spends every Mother's Day weekend with her closest friends. No agenda. No farm. Just her people.

I've been thinking about that a lot. Maybe the answer for next year isn't doing Mother's Day better. Maybe it's doing it differently, on our own terms, with a lot less to perform.

Maybe that's what Just June is really about.

Not more. Just the quiet reclamation of time that was always ours to begin with, always ours to enjoy. If we choose to…

I'm finding my values clearer than they've ever been. What matters and what doesn't. I want to carry that into June. And hold it a lot longer than that.

So I'll ask you what I'm asking myself:

What do you want to leave behind in May?

And what do you want to carry into summer?

Enjoyed this story? Read Anne B's last story →