We Made It Through Maycember (Barely, But Proudly)

We've officially made it through Maycember. 🎉📅😅

If you know, you know. If you don't — you're probably not a Mother.

For those of us in academia with small humans at home, May is basically December but with more field trips, end-of-year performances, teacher appreciation weeks, and the particular chaos of a school calendar that ends while your grant deadline absolutely does not care.

And yet. This week I watched my 5-year-old walk across a tiny stage at pre-K graduation with the most authoritative, unbothered, I have arrived energy I have ever witnessed in a human being of any age. Full eye contact. Steady pace. Zero hesitation. That child was not wondering whether she belonged there. She knew.

No grant funded or paper accepted would have been worth missing that moment.

Here's what Maycember keeps teaching me: it is possible to be both a present, committed parent and a productive scientist. But it doesn't happen by accident. It takes intentionality, and honestly — consistent, sometimes daily, refocusing on your actual top priorities. Which, shocker, include some small humans who walk into rooms like they own them.

And maybe that's the real lesson my 5-year-old walked across that stage and handed me without knowing it. Show up. Know what matters. Move through the chaos like you belong in it — because you do.

Happy end of Maycember. We've got this. 💛