07/31/2026
The 5:47 A.M. Kind of Strong
My alarm goes off before the sun does. Again.
I used to hit snooze. Now I swing my feet onto the cold floor before my mind can talk me out of it, because if I wait until "later," later never comes. Later is homework, dinner, baths, the load of laundry I forgot about, the email from school I haven't answered yet.
So I claimed 5:47 A.M. as mine.
The garage isn't much; a rack, some weights, a mat that's seen better days. But it's quiet, and it's mine, and for twenty-five minutes nobody needs me for anything.
I think about the version of myself from a year ago, the one who kept saying "once things calm down, I'll start taking care of myself." Things never calmed down. I stopped waiting for permission from my own schedule.
By 6:15, I'm back inside; sweaty, pouring cereal, braiding hair, signing a permission slip I found crumpled in a backpack. Same chaos. Same love. Same exhaustion, honestly.
But something in me has shifted. I'm not running on empty anymore. I'm running on something I built myself, one rep at a time, in a garage before anyone else was awake.
My daughter looked up from her cereal one morning and said, "Mom, you're strong."
I laughed. "I'm working on it, baby."
But I already knew; I'd been working on it every single morning. Nobody saw it. It didn't need an audience.
It just needed me to keep showing up.
