🌒 The Moon Is Still Out, But I'm Too Tired to Meet Her

— A reflection on motherhood, isolation, and the magick I miss —

On rare occasions I step outside after putting the kids to bed — usually around 10 p.m., when the house finally exhales — and I catch a glimpse of the Moon hanging there like she’s been waiting for me. Last night it was a crescent as it hasn't been too long since the New Moon. She seemed soft in her silvery glow. The kind of Moon I used to sit under for hours, letting her light, little there may be, rinse the day off my skin.

Before motherhood, I took those simple moments for granted. The quiet stillness of it. The luxury of simply being with the night. Now I walk outside thinking, I should enjoy this. I’m a witch, after all. This is supposed to be my sanctuary. But the truth is… I’m too exhausted to feel anything mystical. I’m too tired to even pretend.

Motherhood is isolating in ways no one prepares you for. Single motherhood is even more so. And single motherhood with neurodivergent kids — without a "village," without the kind of support other families seem to have on speed dial — can feel like living inside a bubble no one else can see. It’s not that I have no help. It’s that I don’t have the kind of help that lets me breathe all too often.

The kind that lets me step outside for an hour and reconnect with myself even if the kids are awake and running the house. My sanctuary hinges on if I have completed my motherly duties for the evening. I unfortunately don't have the kind of help that lets me sit under the Moon without worrying about meltdowns, or bedtime battles, or the thousand unpredictable variables that come with raising kids on the spectrum — who need you in ways the world doesn’t always understand.

Most evenings, once we’re home from school or whatever activity we've managed to squeeze in after, we’re essentially locked in the house by 5pm. Not metaphorically — literally. My lifelines to the outside world are my girlfriends, those I've been lucky to keep through my life's upheaval, but they all live on my phone. A handful of voices through a speaker while I fold laundry or clean up dinner, all the while being "Mom'd" to death because I dare divert my attention elsewhere for a few moments of connection. Try as I might to keep the peace we all end up overstimulated from the day by the end of it.

On most weekdays, I have this tiny window — a few hours while the kids are at school — to accomplish everything I need to do for work, for the house, for myself. Because once they’re home, it’s a crapshoot whether anything will get done. Behavior, emotions, sensory overload, routines, needs — it all shifts minute to minute. There surely is no autopilot. No coasting with my crowd. There is only ever presence that must be upheld.

I’m not writing this to complain. Nor to paint myself as a martyr. I’m writing this in solidarity to other moms out there that feel like I do, in maybe similar circumstances where we are told we should be grateful for the help we do get, and feel guilty for feeling like in many ways it falls short of our needs. I'm writing this because I’m finally becoming aware of just how isolated I am — especially at night, when the world gets quiet but I remember life hasn't stopped for many. There had been baseball games last night. There had been bbqs. Things I miss and make me realize how small my radius has become.

Last night, I stepped outside to check the Jeep for something I thought I’d left behind when bringing the kids in from school. It wasn’t there. But the Moon was. Beautiful. Crescent. The kind of Moon that used to feel like an invitation.

And it hit me — not with sadness, but with a kind of clarity: I miss the parts of myself that had space to breathe. I miss the rituals that once came so naturally — even if it was just stargazing. I miss the version of me who could sit under the night sky and feel connected to something bigger than the day I just survived.

Those nights don’t happen anymore — not in this season of life. And I’d be lying if I said there isn’t a quiet ache that rises when I wonder if they’ll ever return. Most people can comfort themselves with the idea that “one day the kids will be grown,” that there will be a natural easing, a widening of space. But in my world, that promise doesn’t land the same way. Even when mine are grown, they will likely need me in ways other adult children don’t need their mother.

There’s grief in that truth, and there’s devotion in it too — a kind of love that reshapes the future you imagined and asks you to build a different one, steadier and more intentional. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe this is a chapter where the Moon watches over me instead of sitting with me. Maybe she understands. Maybe she knows I’ll come back when and if I can.

But after last night, I just needed to say it out loud:

I miss the simple things. I miss myself.

And I’m learning to hold that truth without shame, however difficult.

Holding the memory of moonlight with reverence,

Tiffany