When you’ve lived through loss or chaos or the kind of exhaustion that rewires your nervous system, joy starts to mean something different. It stops being about pretending you’re okay. It becomes about remembering that you’re still alive.

Feeling overwhelmed before the holidays even begin? Learn how to slow down, protect your peace, and find calm amid the season’s overstimulation.

As autumn invites us to slow down, many of us feel the quiet tension between nature’s rhythm and modern life’s relentless pace. This reflective essay explores what happens when our biology, environment, and culture fall out of sync — and how “cozy season” might really be our body’s way of seeking balance, rest, and reflection.

Unpopular opinion: our kids aren’t drowning because they can’t handle life.
They’re drowning because life no longer asks them to swim.

We’ve stripped away every bit of friction that once made childhood feel real.
Every delay. Every pause. Every unanswered question.
And we did it for all the right reasons: to keep them safe, to make things fair, to make sure they never feel the ache we once did.

But here we are.
Anxious kids. Burned-out parents.
A culture sprinting toward ease and somehow feeling more exhausted than ever.

Something has gone very wrong.