Something Like Bienveillance
I Haven’t Showered in Over a Week and That’s Not a Metaphor
I thought about not posting this.
It’s not a crisis report. It’s not a highlight reel.
It’s just where I am right now: somewhere between tired and trying, still figuring out what pause, patience, and pivot actually mean when things get messy.
I didn’t come into this week fresh, either.
There was already a low hum of grief and frustration running under everything—conversations that didn’t go the way I’d hoped, endings I still hadn’t found the words for, things I’m carrying that didn’t get lighter just because the calendar flipped over to a new week.
I’m not going to unpack all of it here.
Just know it was there.
It still is.
This isn’t a finished story.
It’s just a week in real time.
This week didn’t break me. But it didn’t exactly hold me, either.
It was long and full and weirdly floaty.
Not a crisis, not a crash—just a slow drift through days that kept happening whether I was ready or not.
Monday was the day after Easter. The kids were home. My husband had two job interviews.
I have no idea what I did. Slept, maybe. Wandered around the house.
I stayed in my head most of the day and didn’t do much else.
Tuesday had more shape.
I joined a group therapy session called “How to Navigate Changes, Loss/Grief and Other Challenges with Optimism and Confidence.”
A bold title, but surprisingly worth it.
The therapist introduced a few exercises that actually landed—identifying needs, naming “10 things that make me me,” mapping out values, and framing a personal narrative in past, present, and future.
That’s also where I first heard the term bienveillance—and something about it stuck.
The idea that self-kindness doesn’t have to be earned.
That care can just be offered, without a checklist of proof.
Later that day, I had a meeting with my business coach.
It was grounded, clarifying.
She reminded me that there are no catastrophes at the moment, just regular things. Manageable things.
We blocked out some time for art-making and admin work, and started talking about my next exhibition, which is slated for August at the local library.
It felt good to have something concrete to look toward.
It made everything feel slightly less blurry. Slightly more doable.
Wednesday started with bringing the kids to therapy in the morning, followed by a call with my artist group.
First time I’d checked in with them since the retreat.
It felt good to reconnect, even if I wasn’t entirely plugged in.
Later that afternoon, my husband and I did some joint art journaling.
We picked the prompt: “Right now, I’m carrying...”
It wasn’t magical or deep.
We didn’t solve anything.
We just sat there, side by side, putting it down onto paper.
Quiet. Steady.
That counted.
Thursday morning, I thought I had therapy at 9 a.m., so I asked my husband to handle school drop-off and I slept in until 9:06.
I woke up in a panic, threw on my hoodie, grabbed some coffee and flew into the studio to get myself to the online session.
Except… the session was actually at 9 p.m.
And realizing that mid-morning totally knocked the wind out of whatever rhythm I thought I had.
I wrote a bit on Substack instead—trying to put words around a grief that’s hard to name.
Had a call with Chaos Cooperative, where we talked about time, burnout, and space debris.
That night, I finally had the session.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t have a breakthrough. I just talked.
My therapist gave me an assignment: write a mea culpa using assertive language—no dodging, no apologizing for existing.
It felt uncomfortable.
It also felt necessary.
Friday, I went to my daughter’s school to meet with the psychoéducatrice about her adapted schedule.
We’ve been working on it because she struggles with school attendance—something I understand more than I usually say out loud.
I had my own battles with school when I was her age.
Some of it logistical. Some of it emotional. Some of it just... existing in a system that didn’t know what to do with the way my brain worked.
After the meeting, I was standing outside waiting for my husband to come pick us up when a hall monitor gave me a once-over and asked why I wasn’t in class.
I was wearing ripped jeans, Chucks, and a black hoodie, hood up—because sometimes pulling the hood up feels like a small kind of armor.
I just stared at her like, “Ma’am, I am 42 years old.”
And I laughed, because it reminded me of high school—how I was homeschooled but took one class a day at the local public school.
I was always coming and going at weird times, always getting stopped by adults asking if I was supposed to be there.
I never really fit the schedule.
Still don’t.
Later that day, I joined a therapeutic art session led by my sister.
She’s a midwife, learning how to use art with her clients to help them prepare emotionally for birth.
Since I’m not preparing for birth myself, she offered me a different prompt—one rooted in something I could connect to.
The prompt was: “Seeing myself as a parent.”
I sat down with oil pastels and just let it come through.
The piece I made was layered, colorful, a little chaotic, a little grounded—honestly, not a bad mirror of how parenting feels most days.
At the end, I wrote in the corner:
I am: adaptable, overwhelmed, grounded, curious, here, enough.
And somehow, just doing that—just naming it—felt like a kind of exhale.
Like I had made space for the truth without needing to fix it.
Afterward, I asked my husband to handle the afternoon school pickup so I could stay home and finish writing this.
Claim a little space.
Close the loop on the week.
Give myself the time to actually see it before moving on.
Which brings me back to bienveillance.
Not the Pinterest version.
Not the curated, aesthetic kind.
The kind that says: you’re tired, unshowered, overstretched—and still worthy of softness.
The kind that doesn’t demand you perform wellness before offering you rest.
I didn’t do everything well this week.
But I showed up.
For my kids.
For my work.
For my people.
And, in my own quiet, unwashed way, for myself.
Maybe that’s what real bienveillance looks like.
Or maybe it’s just the best I had in me.
Either way, I’ll take it.
