My answer to all 3 questions is the same thing. We are helping our daughter move to Iowa (we live in North Carolina) and it's a two day drive. Momma is struggling with the reality of her baby girl is moving out and starting her life away from us. When she was at college, I could deal. It was temporary and she was only an hour and a half away. This is not temporary and it's about 16 hours away. We left this morning to head there. I had a nice To Do list to get ready for the trip. I'm proud of myself for both realizing that I really didn't have the mental and physical energy to get all of those things done before the trip AND crossing them off of the list. I was still a little overwhelmed and stressed last night, but I realized that I just needed to get out of the house and do something completely unrelated to the move. So I told my husband I was going out to decompress and asked if they wanted me to bring food back for dinner. He suggested dinner out at our favorite Mexican restaurant. I left and wandered through a few stores near the restaurant and they met me there for dinner. So, I'm proud of myself for shortening that To Do List. I'm proud of myself for giving my system the break it needed. The break supported my mind, body, and soul and I did it because I trusted that small voice that was telling me to get out of the house for a bit even though it wasn't originally in the "plan".

@Dana Renee I have a few things in my bag of tricks. - curl up under the covers and listen to either the sound of rain or brown noise and do a slow breathing exercise. Sometimes I catnap Cheerio Kitty and curl up with him for added relaxation. - sit in my rocking chair and knit while listening to music. Our Dish subscription includes some Sirius XM channels. - read a book for fun - spend time in the garden. One evening I was feeling very unproductive, so I went out to the garden and spent half an hour pulling weeds. I felt much better afterwards. I've only had the garden for two years and we expanded it this year, so there's a lot of grass still popping up where I don't want it. So there's always stuff to clean up.

This was a wonderful session!