If you haven’t subscribed to my Substack yet, here’s where I get a little more personal: writing from the heart about self-care, motherhood, wellness, and everything in between. My community loved this post, so I wanted to share an excerpt with you here..
For two years, the first thing I did every morning was check the stats on my Oura ring. I would lie in bed in the dark reading the stages of my sleep as if they were scriptures. My HRV and preparation scores told me how I should feel: if the numbers were good, it was permission to feel good. And if they weren’t, I’d feel extra stressed because (according to my ring) I was apparently already stressed.
I would do my multi-step skincare routine, exercise according to my cycle, and go the first part of the morning without coffee because Andrew Huberman said it increases cortisol. By all standards, my wellness routine was set. And I felt… good (although often tired).
But this is what I didn’t feel: free. Alive. At home in my body.
And if I’m being completely honest, I’ve also been quietly battling my own cravings for years. Restricting what I ate in the name of health. (Let’s face it: also in the name of fitting into a certain jeans size.) The reason I skipped the bread basket wasn’t because I didn’t want it. It was because I thought that shouldn’t have it. There is a difference and at some point I lost my mind.
I was devouring self-help books and wellness podcasts because deep down I knew something needed to change. I just didn’t know what that was yet.
Last summer, we were at our favorite beach in Malibu on a cloudy, slightly chilly day—the kind of day where you negotiate with yourself whether it really counts as a beach day if you don’t get in the water. Adam and the kids were already coming in, while I settled into my towel in a sweatshirt with my book, perfectly happy to stay there.
“Mom, come in!!”
I continued reading, but my mind was half-distracted by that nagging feeling that I was missing the moment. So finally, I took off my sweatshirt, got goosebumps, and ran straight into the waves before I could think twice. The cold shocked me to the core. I dove directly under a wave and then spent the next twenty minutes jumping, diving, and shivering along with my family. For two years, I started almost every morning by looking at my Oura stats and waiting for it to tell me how I was feeling. Before I even got out of bed, I reviewed my sleep, recovery, and stress levels. A good score reassured me. A disappointing one could color the entire day before it really started.
From there, I went through a carefully calibrated routine: skincare, supplements, coffee at strategic times, and workouts chosen according to what my body was supposedly doing. I consumed enough wellness content to know exactly what I should eat, when I should exercise, and how I could improve almost every part of me.
By most standards, he was doing everything right.
But I didn’t feel energized or deeply connected to my life. Most of all, I felt like he was constantly checking on me.
The same mentality had extended to food. He had learned to ignore certain cravings, to pass on things he really wanted, and to call it discipline. I looked healthy from the outside, but deep down there was a growing inability to trust my own body without first consulting a ruler, a metric, or an expert.
That afternoon brought something into focus for me: maybe wellness wasn’t supposed to be about controlling all the variables. Perhaps it was meant to help us participate more fully in our lives.
Since then, I’ve been experimenting with a slower way of living. Not slow living as another aesthetic or set of rules, but as a practice of paying attention: sleeping when I need to sleep, moving in ways that I find energizing, eating what truly satisfies me, and asking myself how many inputs I really need. I’m still interested in taking care of myself, but less interested in turning that care into another self-improvement project.
For me, an unplugged summer doesn’t mean abandoning technology completely. It means creating enough space to hear my own thoughts again and return to simple summer rituals that make me feel present: a coffee outside, swimming without checking the time, a long dinner, an evening walk without my phone.
As the end of summer approaches, I think about what it means to savor a season without putting pressure on myself to maximize it. Less optimization. More notice. More moments that leave me feeling present, connected and fully alive.
In the full post, I am sharing:
- The wellness rules I stopped following and what changed when I did
- What happened when I stopped restricting food and trusted my cravings?
- The simplest skincare routine that gave me the best results.
- How I Made Movement Energizing Instead of Mandatory
- The supplements I actually take and the ones I stopped buying
Unlock the full post on Substack and get the summer rituals that help me trade in constant optimization for a life that feels more fully lived.
