Capacity

Lately, I’m very aware of capacity. It’s not functional like bandwidth. It’s not like resilience and the ability to recover. It’s the internal room to hold, process, and respond to what life is presenting.

My personal inner container has always been able to hold… a lot. Though now, I’m no longer interested in how much I can hold. I’m interested in what is healthy for me to hold, and what I can hold sustainably without losing my center.

My tolerance for toxicity, for unnecessary chaos, even for my own husband’s missteps, is stretched thin. The emotions are louder, the edges sharper, and there’s a particular fatigue that comes from a season that asks too much without warning. But as with all the perimeno badasses, we have to go through it - there’s no way around.

So I’ve been meditating on capacity. And it’s been showing up less as a container and more as a weather system. It feels like I’m living in the eye of the storm. Around me: the noise, the mess, the pace of life, the demands. Inside: a strange, unwavering calm. From this center, I can see what’s spiraling around me and what is not mine to absorb. I can feel what deserves my movement, and what is asking to be released. I can watch the world tilt and still choose to remain steady.

But I’m human. I step into the wind. I get caught in the swirl. And once I’m in it, the view disappears. Everything becomes noise. The ground goes missing. You can’t see the shape of anything when you’re being spun by it.

So I have to learn my way back. Over and over.

Motherhood makes this navigation more intricate. Even if life were gentler, the constant hum of responsibility—the visible and invisible lists, the emotional attunement, the weight of tending to other universes—keeps me orbiting that eye of the storm, often holding things I didn’t realize I’d picked up on behalf of others.

So this is the work of capacity I’m on: not expanding endlessly, but returning. Returning to the place where I can see again. The place that steadies me long enough to gather myself before the next gust of life pulls at the edges.