When You Finally Have Time to Yourself… and Life Has Other Plans

Warning: This post contains mild medical TMI and honest reflections about parenting, time, and the strange things that make us grateful.

March is the season of blooming. Tiny green shoots appear where there was nothing just weeks ago. Flowers start pushing through the soil with impressive determination, like nature is collectively saying, Alright everyone, let’s try again.

As a parent, March always makes me think about time. Not the poetic, slow kind you see in nature documentaries. I mean the frantic kind. The kind where you realize you have 27 minutes between school drop-off and your first meeting, and suddenly you’re deciding whether that time should be used for exercise, answering emails, folding laundry, or simply staring into space while drinking hot coffee for once.

Time feels precious when you’re a parent because it also feels… incredibly scarce.

Which brings me to this week’s family moment of enlightenment.

My husband had a colonoscopy.

Yes. We’re going there.

I warned you about the TMI.

Like many responsible adults approaching midlife, he dutifully did the prep, went to the appointment, and looked forward to the reward on the other side: an unexpected free afternoon while the kids were at school and work responsibilities were paused.

A golden window of time.

The dream.

He had plans. Maybe a walk. Maybe cutting the grass. Maybe simply existing in a quiet house without anyone asking where their shoes are.

But then he came home from the procedure.

And he felt… terrible.

Suddenly the glorious afternoon stretched ahead of him, but instead of freedom, it was filled with fatigue, discomfort, and the realization that the body sometimes has its own agenda.

At one point he looked at me and said something like,"I can’t believe how awful I feel. I had all this time today and I can’t do anything with it."

And then there was a pause.

Because almost a year ago, I had breast cancer surgery. My recovery wasn’t an afternoon. It was months of limited movement, limited energy, and the strange mental gymnastics required to stay positive while your body slowly figures things out again.

During that time, life didn’t stop. Kids still needed lunches. School schedules kept moving. Emails still arrived. The house still needed the usual tending.

Parenting doesn’t really come with a pause button.

So there we were, sitting on rocking chairs on the porch, having a slightly absurd but oddly meaningful moment of perspective—sparked by a colonoscopy recovery and a memory of breast surgery.

Parenthood has a funny way of revealing how precious time is, mostly because we’re always negotiating with it.

We dream about those small windows of time for ourselves:

• the quiet hour

• the walk

• the uninterrupted cup of coffee

• the rare afternoon with no obligations

And sometimes life hands you that time… right when your body refuses to cooperate.

It’s humbling. It’s frustrating. And honestly, sometimes it’s darkly funny.

Because if parenting teaches us anything, it’s resilience.

You learn to find joy in imperfect moments. You celebrate the small wins. You laugh at the absurdity of discussing colonoscopy recovery at the dinner table while your kids ask for more mac-n-cheese.

And eventually, like those March flowers, you get another chance to bloom.

Maybe the walk happens next week. Maybe the quiet coffee happens tomorrow.

Maybe the precious hour of time for yourself shows up when you least expect it.

Parenting makes time feel scarce. But it also makes you incredibly good at starting again.

And honestly, that might be the most impressive bloom of all.

At SYV Family School, we talk a lot about resilience in our students—about helping children grow into curious, capable humans who can adapt, persevere, and try again when things don’t go as planned.

If parenting teaches us anything, it’s that adults are practicing those same skills right alongside them.

Sometimes resilience looks like a child learning something new.

And sometimes it looks like a parent reheating their coffee for the third time and deciding that tomorrow is another chance to bloom.