Somewhere between packing lunches, answering emails, thinking about my dad, caring for the baby, and trying to remember which boy needed to be where, I realized I had become very efficient at keeping everything moving. Including myself. I was moving through my own life like another thing that needed managing.
There has been a lot happening in our house. Four boys, including a toddler who seems to believe my hip is his permanent residence. A father navigating health issues. A demanding career, new business opportunities, family responsibilities, and the everyday logistics of a blended family that somehow multiply between breakfast and bedtime. And then there was my own health, including a mammogram and follow-up testing that reminded me how easily I can move myself to the bottom of a list I manage so carefully for everyone else. Life got loud enough that I couldn’t hear myself think. So I went quiet here for two weeks. Not because I ran out of things to say. Quite the opposite. I’m not going to turn that into a failure or a lesson about discipline. I’m going to let it be what it was. Two weeks when my life needed more of me than my writing could have.
I am incredibly good in a crisis. Give me a complicated business problem, an impossible deadline, or a room full of people who need answers, and something in me switches on. I can see the holes. I can make decisions. I can execute. I’ve built a career on that ability. But there is a difference between being good at carrying a lot and recognizing when you’ve been carrying too much.
And I love this life. I need to say that because I think women are often afraid to admit they’re overwhelmed by things they once prayed for. I love my husband. I love our boys. I love building businesses. I love being needed, most of the time. I love that at 42, my life looks nothing like the one I imagined at 32. But loving your life doesn’t mean every part of it is sustainable at the pace you’re living it. And being grateful doesn’t mean you aren’t tired.
I’ve been here before, in different versions. In 2012, I was so stressed by work that I was constantly sick and barely functioning. I eventually pursued my certification through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition because I wanted to understand what was happening in my own body. Years later, I navigated divorce, rebuilt a family, led companies through enormous transitions, and sold a business while six months pregnant. Then came motherhood again at 40, followed by months of illness, recovery, and trying to find my footing. Every time, I learned something about starting over. And every time, I eventually discovered that the first thing I needed wasn’t a bigger plan. It was enough space to hear myself again.
So these past two weeks have made me think about the way we approach the end of a year. We tell ourselves we’ll get through November. Survive December. Finish the projects, make the holidays magical, keep the family happy, and then, on January 1, we’ll finally take care of ourselves. We’ll work out again. We’ll get organized. We’ll make the appointment. We’ll start writing. We’ll change the thing we’ve been complaining about for six months.
Why do we keep treating January like the only month we’re allowed to begin again? I don’t want to spend the next seven weeks running myself into the ground so I can announce a completely new version of myself on January 1. I don’t need a new version of myself. I need to make room for the one who’s already here.
For me, that means getting my workouts back into my week. Not because I’m chasing some imaginary version of my pre-baby body, but because lifting weights makes me feel strong, capable, and connected to myself. It means continuing the walks that have become such an important part of my days. It means giving my own appointments the same priority I give everyone else’s. And it means being more deliberate about which demands actually require my attention and which ones I’ve simply gotten used to absorbing. It also means returning to this page. Because writing is one of the few places in my life where I don’t have to be the CEO, the problem solver, the wife, the mother, or the person with an answer. I can just be Erika. I can be unfinished. I can admit that something is hard without immediately explaining how I’m going to fix it.
And if you’re new here, perhaps this is a good time to properly introduce myself. I’m Erika Hanafin Austria. I’m a mother of four boys in a beautifully complicated blended family. I’ve been a CEO, an entrepreneur, an operator, a woman navigating divorce, a woman falling in love again, and a woman who became a mother again at 40. I’ve built businesses, sold companies, started over personally and professionally, and spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand who I am when the titles and expectations fall away.
I created MOMumental Reinvention because I believe women are constantly being asked to become someone new, but we’re rarely given permission to talk about what that actually feels like. The grief that can exist inside a beautiful new beginning. The ambition that doesn’t disappear when you become a mother. The body that changes before you understand why. The marriage that ends. The career that stops fitting. The identity you spent years building that suddenly feels unfamiliar.
Every Tuesday, I write about those moments. The personal ones, the uncomfortable ones, and the practical lessons I’ve learned while rebuilding my own life. Sometimes it’s motherhood. Sometimes it’s hormones, leadership, money, relationships, or the strange experience of being a woman who can run a company but still struggles to make herself a priority. I don’t have all the answers. I’m not interested in pretending I do. What I have is experience, a willingness to tell the truth about it, and a belief that women deserve to feel less alone while they’re figuring out what comes next.
So here’s what I’m doing before the holidays, and what I hope you’ll consider doing too. I’m not making a list of everything I need to become. I’m asking what I can stop carrying. What actually matters between now and the end of the year? What have I been doing out of habit, guilt, or the belief that nobody else will do it? And what is one thing I can give back to myself without turning it into another obligation? Maybe for you, it’s booking the appointment you’ve been avoiding. Maybe it’s putting your walking shoes by the door. Maybe it’s having a conversation you’ve been postponing. Maybe it’s taking ten minutes to sit in silence without using them to plan what everyone else needs tomorrow. It doesn’t have to look impressive. It just has to belong to you.
I used to think reinvention required a dramatic before and after. A divorce. A new job. A move across the country. A baby. A business sold. Some unmistakable event that gave me permission to say everything was changing. Now I think some of the most important reinventions happen quietly. They happen when you realize you don’t want to keep doing something the way you’ve always done it. When you stop confusing your capacity with your obligation. When you understand that being needed by everyone is not the same thing as being present for yourself.
And now I’m here. Not with a perfect plan for the rest of the year. Not with a promise that everything is suddenly balanced. Just with a little more clarity about what deserves my energy, and a renewed commitment to stop giving away every last piece of it. If you’ve been feeling that same pull, the sense that something needs to shift but you’re too tired to figure out what, I hope you’ll start small. You don’t need to wait until January. You don’t even need to wait until Monday. And if the only thing you can do today is admit that you need a little room for yourself, that counts too. I’m glad to be back. And I’m glad you’re here.
You are not behind. You are becoming MOMumental.
MOMumentally,
Erika
PS. If you want a place to put that answer, The Complete Library holds the workbooks I built for exactly these seasons. You use the page you need when you need it. It is HERE.