From the Desk of Tara L. Paige

Most of us treat the outdoor space like a someday project. Someday I will furnish it. Someday I will sit out there. Someday, when things slow down.

There is a difference between a busy life and a full one. Busy is a calendar. Full is a feeling. And somewhere along the way, a lot of us learned to measure our worth by how much we could carry.

You can see a place. Or you can experience it with women who get it. Those are two different trips.

There is a reason you breathe differently outside. It is not in your head, well, actually, it is, in the best way.

We get overwhelmed because we look at the whole space at once. The empty yard. The bare patio. The project that feels too big to start, so we do not start at all.

There is a particular kind of woman who holds everything together. She is the one everyone calls. The one with the plan, the spare key, the good advice. And somewhere along the way, she got so good at being needed that she forgot what it feels like to be held.

Somewhere we got the idea that rest is something you collapse into when you have run out of road. That you earn a break only after you are too depleted to enjoy it.

There is always a reason not to go. The timing. The cost. The list of people who need you. We have become so practiced at deferring our own joy that we barely notice we are doing it.